If it were only so cut and dry. Farhad's hard science on one side of the debate, and kooky mythmakers on the other side.

Alas, science is not static. What we believe, and it is a belief system, to be scientific fact today is radically different from what we believed to be scientific fact less than 100 years ago.

People have noticed firm, and also anecdotal evidence of a connection between vaccines and autism. Studies will happen. Some studies will be published by the industry that provides the vaccine. Some will be published by university research teams. Rarely will these studies be completely independent of the industry in question.

How do you think things like links between health effects and agent orange, Thalidomide, the Dalcon sheild etc... are exposed? Do you think the industries protecting the status quo had more than ample studies they could cite that supported their position, before they were eventually proved entirely wrong?

The job of an independent press is to ask these questions, not to chastise those that do ask these questions. There is nothing mythological the pursuit of the truth.

"Our study does not support a causal association between early exposure to mercury from thimerosal-containing vaccines ... and deficits in neuropsychological functioning at the age of 7 to 10 years."

What does a study that narrows the age range to 7-10 prove when the immunization Schedule for children start as early as one month of age?

In a 2004 study, Dr. Mady Hornig took different strains of mice and exposed them to mercury-preserved vaccines or to the form of mercury once present in many childhood vaccines—at the same schedule, roughly, that children were receiving around 1990. The autoimmune-sensitive strain of mice developed signs consistent with autism. A repeat of the same study did not produce the same results.

A list of additions/permutations to the scientific method over the last 100 years:

Randomized design.

Falsifiability.

Controlled placebo trial.

Computer simulation.

Double blind experiments.

Meta-analysis

Strong interference.

~ source wikipedia.

I prefer to continue the debate.

Karl, the supposed political genius, hitched his political wagon to the most reviled and inept presidencies in our nation's history. All the while giving advise. His advise on Democrats is not only a bad idea, his advise in general is a bad idea. He wrote his own mythology and the media dutifully repeated it time after time. He even wrote the whole "turb blossom" myth so we wouldn't assume that Bush wasn't in control. Karl Rove isn't a political genius, he just told us he was.

History is completely full of falsehood like the one supplied in this image. You can see that the flag is not even aimed in a spearing lunge at the "genetalia" of Mr. Landsmark, by simply noting the perspective via the bricks on the ground.

This photo is nothing more than a lie. A lie by the photographer. A lie by the newspaper that would use it for sensationalism.

This is why I have a problem with Salon's use of composite photograph illustrations.

It is also interesting that the ..."picture's aesthetic antecedents -- Paul Revere's engraving of the Boston Massacre, the flag raising on Iwo Jima, even Rubens' "Christ on the Cross." are all examples of other false images used with the intent of misinforming an already uninformed public.

I was going to post a comment regarding this article, but was distracted by a missile that shot from an ad in the left column, over the copy of the article and "destroyed" something or other in the ad in the right column. Wow, who would have thought that Salon would sink to this level. The Airforce literally shooting missiles across their copy.

U.S. Airforce. Above All! Air, space, cyberspace!

Did you go undercover for these interviews? Did you put on some acid washed jeans, a mullet wig, no shirt, Molly Hatchet on the car stereo, and a front seat full of Dollar Store bags full of Hot Pockets and Old English Malt Liquor?

Did you pull up in a fenderless Trans Am, remove your Ray Ban sunglasses and, while rubbing the spider web tattoo on your neck, ask for directions to the auto plant?

Damn I wish I was there.

Marx argued against the notion that man needs to relinquish religion to be totally free, referencing the United States as a prime example of a secular state in which religion flourishes.

He concludes that we have a material constraint on freedom by economic inequality, not by freedom of or from religion.

ref: Karl Marx "On the Jewish Question."