Robert De Niro Pulls Anti-Vaccine Documentary From Tribeca Film Festival
By STEPHANIE GOODMAN MARCH 26, 2016
Robert De Niro, a founder of the Tribeca Film Festival, in January. Credit Dennis Van Tine/Associated Press. Facing a storm of criticism over its plan to show a documentary about the widely debunked link between vaccines and autism, the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday pulled the film from its schedule next month.
In a statement, Robert De Niro, a founder of the festival, wrote: “My intent in screening this film was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family. But after reviewing it over the past few days with the Tribeca Film Festival team and others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for.”
The film, “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe,” was directed and co-written by Andrew Wakefield, the author of a study that was published in the British medical journal The Lancet and then retracted in 2010. Mr. Wakefield’s medical license was also revoked over his failure to disclose financial conflicts of interest and ethics violations.
Information about the film no longer appears on the festival’s website, but on Friday, the site, tribecafilm.com, did not mention Mr. Wakefield’s revoked license or the 2010 retraction, saying instead that the study “would catapult Wakefield into becoming one of the most controversial figures in the history of medicine.” And on Twitter, Mr. Wakefield described the film as a “whistle-blower documentary.”
A festival spokeswoman said on Saturday that she had no further comment about what specifically in the film raised concerns for Mr. De Niro after he initially added it to the festival. The film was to have been shown just once, on April 24, and was to be followed by a discussion with the director and subjects of the film.
Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said on Saturday that he believed “the entire board as well as Mr. De Niro have learned a lot in the last several days.”
“My hat is off to them for listening, thinking about it, discussing it and responding,” he said.
Nevertheless, Dr. Schaffner said, it was troubling for scientists that a film promoting “discredited ideas” got so close to a forum as prestigious as the Tribeca Film Festival.
“It gave these fraudulent ideas a face and a position and an energy that many of us thought they didn’t deserve,” he said. “We’re all for ongoing reasonable debate and discussion, but these are ideas that have been proven to be incorrect many, many, many times over the past 15 years.”
When the festival’s plan to show the film was made public on Tuesday, filmmakers and medical experts were vocal in their condemnation of it. The documentarian Penny Lane (“Our Nixon”) posted an open letter on Thursday in Filmmaker Magazine telling the festival that the screening “threatens the credibility of not just the other filmmakers in your doc slate, but the field in general.”
Doctors and infectious disease experts also spoke out. “Unless the Tribeca Film Festival plans to definitively unmask Andrew Wakefield, it will be yet another disheartening chapter where a scientific fraud continues to occupy a spotlight,” Dr. Mary Anne Jackson, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said in an interview on Friday.
As the criticism mounted on Friday, Mr. De Niro defended the film, saying that he and his wife, Grace Hightower, have a child with autism and that “we believe it is critical that all of the issues surrounding the causes of autism be openly discussed and examined.”
No, I actually knew people that died in car accidents. Or got hurt in them. On the other hand according to WHO in 2010 only 2 people in the US died of measles and they had complicating health issues.
That's not the point. Just because you do not know someone who died from something doesn't mean it doesn't happen. See anecdotal evidence. I don't know someone who died from a stroke, it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
junieolive , you are speculating about why it happens in countries with weak health infrastructure. It could be that people have overall weaker health and a lot of things that wouldn't kill us kill them. I have gone to the WHO site and while they recommend vaccinations the statistics for US deaths don't back up the hysteria being promoted.
I'm not promoting not getting vaccinated. But I am sceptical of they hysteria that has come up around this issue. Having a captive consumer base of over 300,000,000 for their vaccinations seems like a good incentive for pharmaceutical companies to strongly promote this.
junieolive , you are speculating about why it happens in countries with weak health infrastructure. It could be that people have overall weaker health and a lot of things that wouldn't kill us kill them. I have gone to the WHO site and while they recommend vaccinations the statistics for US deaths don't back up the hysteria being promoted.
I'm not promoting not getting vaccinated. But I am sceptical of they hysteria that has come up around this issue. Having a captive consumer base of over 300,000,000 for their vaccinations seems like a good incentive for pharmaceutical companies to strongly promote this.
Post by thecatinthehat on Mar 26, 2016 23:28:56 GMT -5
Good that you don't know anyone with adverse complication from measles or mumps. I had measles as a baby and ended up in the hospital for days. My mom thought I was going to die, so you know no big deal.
Good that you don't know anyone with adverse complication from measles or mumps. I had measles as a baby and ended up in the hospital for days. My mom thought I was going to die, so you know no big deal.
Apparently we're not accepting anecdotal evidence on this thread.
Good that you don't know anyone with adverse complication from measles or mumps. I had measles as a baby and ended up in the hospital for days. My mom thought I was going to die, so you know no big deal.
Apparently we're not accepting anecdotal evidence on this thread.
Are you purposely trying to make me stab my eyes out?
Her point was to show you how useless a anecdotal evidence is because for every one "I don't know anyone!" there are other "I know one!"
And also to show that death of the patient isn't the only negative impact of a disease.
Post by laterbloomer on Mar 26, 2016 23:38:45 GMT -5
I've been reading all the links you guys have been posting. Making billions off of vaccines seems like a lot to me but apparently not such a big deal to big pharma. I've been doing the math on the stats of cases of measles vs deaths and from what I see it is under 1%.
I want to repeat I'm not anti vaccination, but I'm not convinced that people that don't get vaccinated are murderers.
I also don't lump all vaccinations together. I think there are some diseases that had higher risks. But I do think the risks of some are being exaggerated.
I've been reading all the links you guys have been posting. Making billions off of vaccines seems like a lot to me but apparently not such a big deal to big pharma. I've been doing the math on the stats of cases of measles vs deaths and from what I see it is under 1%.
I want to repeat I'm not anti vaccination, but I'm not convinced that people that don't get vaccinated are murderers.
I also don't lump all vaccinations together. I think there are some diseases that had higher risks. But I do think the risks of some are being exaggerated.
It's also a disease where 90% of non-vaccinated who are exposed get the disease. Current population of us is 318.7 million (per us census in 2014) . If no one was vaccinated, 90% would get it or roughly 282.2 million. So being hugely conservative at .05% of those dying, that's 1,435,050 deaths. But I mean, what's 1.4 million people, right? It's not even 1%! Wiping out the equivalent of Phoenix per year, is no big...
Of course like stated above that doesn't include any non-death complications and related issues.
I also don't understand why you wouldn't get a vaccine, OR GIVE a CHILD a vaccine, that would basically stop you from getting an infection that can cause: www.medicinenet.com/script/main/mobileart.asp?articlekey=6242&page=9 Or:http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/mobileart.asp?articlekey=6242&page=12 Why? Are you so scared a company might make a few bucks? So that your child won't have a terrible infection? So they may not be miserable for a week or have an effect that causes them pain for the rest of their life?
I also don't understand why you wouldn't get a vaccine, OR GIVE a CHILD a vaccine, that would basically stop you from getting an infection that can cause: www.medicinenet.com/script/main/mobileart.asp?articlekey=6242&page=9 Or:http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/mobileart.asp?articlekey=6242&page=12 Why? Are you so scared a company might make a few bucks? So that your child won't have a terrible infection? So they may not be miserable for a week or have an effect that causes them pain for the rest of their life?
I get confused by the fear of mumps and measles. I had both as a child, as did pretty near every kid I knew. I don't remember anyone ever dying of them. What changed?
I think initially most parents were pretty on board with vaccinating and it was an easy choice to go with the vaccine vs having their kid go through these diseases. As anti-vax stuff started up and less of us actually remember or have experience with the illnesses, there's more promotion of how serious these diseases potentially are.
I'm a child of the 80s, so besides chicken pox, I didn't have or know anyone who had any of these growing up. We vax on schedule, but I think the fear argument is used to up the stakes when people aren't taking vaccinating seriously and just counting on their kids not getting sick.
I lost my vision for almost a week from measles. I recovered, not everyone does.
My FIL had measles as an adult. It limited his family size as a result of the damage to his testicles which swelled to the size of grapefruit.
The dangers of adults getting the childhood diseases we were aware of. My Dad darn near moved out of the house when I had measles, he had never had them as a kid.
I didn't have measles as an adult. I was about 5 at the time. I remember it vividly.
Mumps are worse for adults, especially males past puberty. Rubella can be devastating for pregnant women. I have a second cousin whose hearing was damaged by the rubella her mom contracted while pg.
Your claim that those who died in the U.S. had complicating health concerns; that doesn't mean their deaths are unimportant. Herd immunity could have protected them.
Post by mrsdewinter on Mar 27, 2016 8:22:04 GMT -5
Measles is a highly contagious virus that is spread through the air. 90% of people exposed to measles who don't have acquired immunity (either through vaccination or previous measles infection) will become infected. That's a higher infection rate than HIV or Ebola. So without vaccination, endemic measles would mean virtually every child in America would become infected at some point. The CDC says 1 in 4 people infected will be hospitalized, 1 in 20 will develop pneumonia, 1 in 1000 will develop encephalitis with possible brain damage, and 1-2 in 1000 will die, even with the best medical care. Complication rates are probably worse for kids who are immunocompromised or have other underlying health conditions, like children with cancer.
So yeah, that's less than a 1% death rate, but when you have a country with a population of 74 million children, including 24 million ages 0-5, less than 1% is still a lot of dead and brain damaged children--tens of thousands of children. That's why it scares people. No one wants their kid to be that 1 in ____. No one wants to see a child suffer or die, especially when a simple shot could have prevented it.
I've been reading all the links you guys have been posting. Making billions off of vaccines seems like a lot to me but apparently not such a big deal to big pharma. I've been doing the math on the stats of cases of measles vs deaths and from what I see it is under 1%.
I want to repeat I'm not anti vaccination, but I'm not convinced that people that don't get vaccinated are murderers.
I also don't lump all vaccinations together. I think there are some diseases that had higher risks. But I do think the risks of some are being exaggerated.
See, I think that even under 1% is a very high number when you consider that the disease is preventable with a vaccination. Why would anyone want to take the risk that their kid would be the unlucky one on the bad side of statistics?
It's kind of like seat belts. No one used to wear them and all of your friends and their parents survived, right? And yet everyone wears seat belts and has fancy car seats for their kids. Not everyone dies from mumps, measles or rubella, but there are enough deaths and other side effects that warrant vaccinations.
No, I actually knew people that died in car accidents. Or got hurt in them. On the other hand according to WHO in 2010 only 2 people in the US died of measles and they had complicating health issues.
You would think by the year 2016 people would understand how vaccines work. This is the same argument non-vaxers make against vaccines; no one dies of these diseases anymore so the poison is not necessary. Eye roll.
The reason why people aren't dying in the US is because most people are vaccinated!!!!!! It is the exact point of vaccinations; to eradicate diseases. Not only to vaccinate for the safety of our own children but for those who are unable to get vaccinations due to an allergy or a compromised immune system. Jesus Christ pass me the wine.
I get confused by the fear of mumps and measles. I had both as a child, as did pretty near every kid I knew. I don't remember anyone ever dying of them. What changed?
I think initially most parents were pretty on board with vaccinating and it was an easy choice to go with the vaccine vs having their kid go through these diseases. As anti-vax stuff started up and less of us actually remember or have experience with the illnesses, there's more promotion of how serious these diseases potentially are.
I'm a child of the 80s, so besides chicken pox, I didn't have or know anyone who had any of these growing up. We vax on schedule, but I think the fear argument is used to up the stakes when people aren't taking vaccinating seriously and just counting on their kids not getting sick.
I was born in the 80s and I had the MMR (measles, mumps & rubella) shot twice - once as a child and once in university (late 80s) so I can't imagine most people didn't get this in the 80s.
I can see why people don't think measles is a big deal (same with mumps and chickenpox) - for most people who get it, it's not really a big deal (in this country at least). But for a few, it IS a big deal, a life altering or even life ending big deal, and you just don't know ahead of time which your child is going to be. So if given the chance to prevent it, why not do it? is my thinking. Hell, if they had a vaccine for the common cold, I'd get it and get my kids vaccinate too. Why not, when the risks of vaccines are so incredibly low?
And that's not even getting into your personal moral obligation to help protect those with compromised immune systems and such.
Plus there's growing evidence that the measles vaccine actually helps prevent *other* diseases besides measles which is crazy and fascinating, IMO.
I've been reading all the links you guys have been posting. Making billions off of vaccines seems like a lot to me but apparently not such a big deal to big pharma. I've been doing the math on the stats of cases of measles vs deaths and from what I see it is under 1%.
I want to repeat I'm not anti vaccination, but I'm not convinced that people that don't get vaccinated are murderers.
I also don't lump all vaccinations together. I think there are some diseases that had higher risks. But I do think the risks of some are being exaggerated.
They are murderers because unlike a lot of decisions we make in regards to our children not vaccinating your child affects other children not just your own. Children with compromised immune system such as those with cancer can be killed by these diseases because somebody is worried about their precious getting autism. Which we all know or should know is fucking bullshit.
Vaccinations can only be effective under herd immunity. I still cannot fathom how people do not understand how or why vaccinations work and are so incredibly important to our survival. Maybe if more time was spent off Facebook and taking selfies people could pick up a fucking book about the history of these horrendous diseases.
I just can't even today. Maybe Christ will actually be risen so I don't have to deal with stupid people anymore lOL.
Post by chickadee77 on Mar 27, 2016 9:41:50 GMT -5
I have also had both measles and mumps despite being vaccinated. They were miserable, even though I didn't suffer long-term effects.
Look, I'd vaccinate my kid (and myself, for that matter) against the common cold if I could, just to save her the misery and me the hassle, lol. Even if I knew there was absolutely no risk of dying from them. So I don't really understand the whole, "They're not that bad, why bother with vaccines," argument - I mean, they're still illnesses, even without complications, that are freaking miserable. Why not avoid that if you can?