When Intuition and Gut Feelings Can't Be Trusted

Intuition and "gut feelings" are a true gift.  Even the paralyzing fear one feels when their life is in danger is a positive thing, as discussed in the classic book "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin DeBecker.  Women are trained from a young age to prioritize "niceness" and congeniality above our own safety and often ignore our internal warning system for fear of appearing "bitchy" or ungrateful.  This is to our detriment.  That feeling when a man is following a little too close, when someone behaves okay on paper but their "vibe" gives you a sickly feeling...  that sort of thing should NEVER be ignored or downplayed.

However, intuition (including "mother's intuition") has its limits.  Because it's a survival instinct that originates in the primitive part of our brain, it has no ability to be rational or carry out complex analytical or critical thinking processes.  Its only purpose is IMMEDIATE survival--outrunning the lion on the Savannah, escaping seconds before lightning strikes... avoiding modern-day human predators, freak accidents or natural disasters.  The feeling is often indescribably intense and sets in seemingly out of nowhere, prompting immediate action before one even has time to think.  

This is exactly the kind of thing that works against rational, logical thought.  Intuition or doing "what feels right" when it comes to complex medical decisions or other things requiring expert levels of knowledge is dangerous because these things don't adhere to our "common sense" beliefs about what's good/bad for you, etc.  Example:  Genetically modified foods (GMOs) scare a whole lot of people, but there's 0 medical or scientific evidence to justify that fear.  Vaccine ingredient lists sound intimidating, plus nobody likes to see their child cry from the pain of being jabbed with a needle. 

Viral infections, not vaccines, trigger chronic illnesses like autoimmune disease.

But vaccines are overwhelmingly safe and far less risky than the diseases they prevent.  It SOUNDS reasonable that just letting a child acquire infections "naturally" would "build a strong immune system" but that idea actually comes from the largely discredited Hygiene Hypothesis.  In fact, the #1 reason kids didn't make it to adulthood before the 1950s was infectious disease, and many of the autoimmune diseases & chronic conditions blamed on vaccines are actually proven to be triggered by viral infections.  Entire sections of cemeteries called "baby gardens" were dedicated to just infants and toddlers who died from transmissible disease prior to childhood vaccination.  The fact that we've largely forgotten this horror speaks to their safety and effectiveness.  





Natural ≠ Safe

We tend to believe that "natural = safe" and "chemical = dangerous" but that couldn't be further from the truth.  Plenty of things in nature* will kill you with amazing speed and acuity while synthetic things like antivirals for AIDS and shingles, antibiotics, Naloxone, Epi-pens, Albuterol inhalers and the various and sundry drugs for cancer treatment, cardiovascular conditions, Type I and II diabetes and mental illness save countless lives around the world every year, month, day, minute and second.  Disagree?  Then keep your science-hating ass away from the hospital/doctor's office next time you're nursing a 104F fever or slice an artery.  Go visit your spice rack or consult a green witch.  Walk your talk.

The nonsense that started it all... Why'd it take TWELVE years to retract tho?

The anti-vaccine movement has been around since the first vaccine but gained a dangerous foothold when the internet became ubiquitous.  Measles, for instance, was declared eliminated in the U.S. in the year 2000.  Cue Andrew Wakefield's bogus retracted study and the shitstorm of celebrity advocacy by geniuses like Jenny McCarthy, Rob Schneider & others with 0 medical education/experience.  Unfunny clowns with a platform and a crowd of equally uneducated followers.  Now we're staring down the barrel of a full-blown measles outbreak.  As of late 2019, 140,000 people worldwide died from the disease, many of whom were children.  2025 saw the most cases of any year since 2000.  We're not just losing ground, we're falling off the edge of the flat Earth.

All this when it takes two fucking seconds to answer the big scawy question on all the concerned parents' minds:  whether vaccines cause autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders.  Here's your answer:

Courtesy the NHS.

I encourage you to try Googling, Bing'ing, Yandexing, Gibiru'ing, DuckDuckGo'ing and otherwise searching this question in as many ways as you can think of, because the answer is always the same.  You don't develop autism after birth just like you don't "develop" Down Syndrome post-natally.  You're born with it and will die with it, therefore vaccines nor any other thing can cause it after you exit the womb.  It's a brain wiring disorder of neurology, not psychology, and it happens when the brain's neurons, axons, myelin sheaths and other hardware is laid down in the womb. 

Just because it's not noticed by parents or others before a certain age doesn't mean it wasn't always THERE, it just means it gets worse at certain developmental stages (being a developmental disorder and all), such as when the brain grows more rapidly than at any other point between ages 1-3, or during the adolescent and teen years when puberty hormones and pruning cause extreme changes.  These developmental periods are difficult for ANY child, but for the autistic or ADHD child, they can be catastrophic in the absence of major nutritional, emotional & neuroprotective supports.

Plus, infants don't tend to do a lot of the things you'd need to do to be diagnosed with autism--playing with toys "wrong," toe-walking, hand-flapping, echolalia, extreme pickiness with food, repetitive behaviors/stimming, lack of eye contact/reciprocal emotion.  They just lay there sucking a bottle.  Still, professionals have diagnosed autism in infants as young as 6 months old because they know what to look for.





Where SHOULD You Go for Reliable Health Info?

Smart people know when to defer to the experts.  Idiots think they know more than them.

Reliable does not mean "whatever confirms my existing beliefs."  It means factual and unbiased.  People seem to have lost the ability to tell fact from opinion and to know when to defer to actual experts.  When life-altering medical decisions are involved, you can't just pick a side like you would pick a political party or Superbowl team.  There are people whose entire adult lives have been devoted to studying all the intricate and boring details of these issues and then applying them in the real world, and you will NEVER know more than they do (nor will I). 

Just as you wouldn't go to a mechanic for a root canal or a veterinarian for a colonoscopy, you should NEVER go to social media (TikTok & Youtube vids, Facebook groups, memes or other unofficial sources) for important medical info.  If you wouldn't trust a random layperson or group to perform a complex surgery or make big medical decisions for your loved one, do not accept the bullshit these non-experts churn out just because it appeals to your gut reaction or instincts.

.what?  How common web addresses stack up.

That doesn't mean nowhere on the internet is reliable, but social media algorithms are set up to show you more of what you like/follow/interact with, not more of what's reliable, fact-based or true.  This is why Zuckerberg has been on trial so many times: his website has caused civil wars in Myanmar, tampered with election outcomes in the U.S. and promoted deadly medical misinformation via this dangerous algorithm whose only goal is to get you to spend more time on the site--facts be damned.  What you want is factual, evidence-based information with no regard for opinion or what's convenient, comfortable or profitable.  Here are some places you can find that:

Cochrane

NIH

AAFP.org (American Academy of Family Physicians)

Medlineplus.gov

Harvard Health

Yale.edu

World Health Organization (WHO.int)

Science-Based Medicine (sciencebasedmedicine.org)

NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine)

Just go to Google or another search engine to find these.  Generally, well-known hospitals and health orgs like The Red Cross, Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, American Heart Association & American Cancer Society are high-quality as well.  And here's a list of the top-rated charities.  Plenty of well-known ones, like the Susan G. Komen breast cancer charity (still the highest-grossing and most well-known of its kind) are incredibly shady.  Recall their pink drill bit controversy among others.  

Not satire:  a real Susan G. Komen ad

* Oh yeah, here's that list of 100% natural things that will kill your ass deader than a hammer.  

Ricin

Oleander

Botulism

Lead, mercury & arsenic

Mosquitoes (Malaria and Zika)

Ticks (Lyme, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever & this terrifying list of tick-borne diseases) 

Anthrax

Ionizing radiation (aka "the sun")

Asbestos
the broken pits of cherries, apricots, peaches & plums (cyanide)
Tobacco, morphine, ephedra, ergot, Betel nut
Deathcap mushrooms
Deadly nightshades (scopolamine, datura, henbane, etc)
High doses of Vitamin A, E or D
Wood smoke
Carbon monoxide, radon, methane, phosgene
HPV, HIV, Black plague, rabies, Ebola, Nipah, Smallpox, Polio
Tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, tsunamis, floods

...to name a few.  


Oh yeah, a newborn baby in New Mexico just died of listeria because its mother drank raw milk, which has been under increasing scrutiny due to the presence of Avian flu in cow's milk.  So you can add that to the list.

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