It is still hilarious that vaccine sock puppet Brian Deer blew up at The Pathological Optimist producer after he declined to be included in the film. Nonetheless, it is not something that any anti-vaxxer or vaccine skeptic should promote. Despite being a “character study” of Dr. Andrew Wakefield according to the film’s producer, it also concludes by taking the position that vaccines are safe. The Pathological Optimist is pathological itself in that it suffers from pathological bias while purporting to be neutral by giving Wakefield a chance to respond to allegations against him. And even on that aspect of the film, it falls short.
So Autism Investigated’s editor took the film’s producer to task multiple times on Twitter:
I’ve seen the documentary and have a question for @mirandambailey – why did the documentary end saying that 100 studies dispute Wakefield without acknowledging the fact that the vaccine lobby has the resources to generate all the junk science it wants to exonerate itself? https://t.co/dxXEy80VwQ
— Jake L. Crosby (@JakeLCrosby) December 7, 2017
Ms. @MirandaMBailey, I would appreciate an answer to my question. Thanks. #ThePathologicalOptimist #Vaxxed #HearUs https://t.co/vYTfCsH4T3
— Jake L. Crosby (@JakeLCrosby) December 9, 2017
Only after she was prompted a second time in a tweet supported by multiple people including Rob Schneider did Miranda Bailey finally respond with a deflection:
My film isn’t about the Vaccine Lobby Jake. It’s a character study-A modern day Sisyphus story. Watch where the list of studies is placed-it directly relates to what my subject says in the clip before-If you would like to make a different documentary about the vaccine lobby-go4it https://t.co/ZQpWJM6azk
— Miranda Bailey (@mirandambailey) December 19, 2017
Told that it doesn’t excuse her from also incorporating facts that would show “100 studies” to be junk, she didn’t respond. Apparently, she didn’t have the budget to travel to Denmark and interview the indicted principal investigator of such “studies.” But even if she didn’t, she did a film on Dr. Wakefield’s documentary Vaxxed knowing that it was about a CDC scientist who admitted to committing fraud in one of those “studies.” Yet to her, such papers (they’re not real studies) are the final word on the topic. And that’s the anti-vaccine standard of being “fair” or “neutral?” Um, no.
But we’re all supposed to promote the film anyway, right? After all, doesn’t it give Wakefield a fair shot at responding to all the smears leveled against him? Oh wait…
Like her “100 studies” excuse, Miranda Bailey makes another bullshit deflection to dismiss Wakefield’s innocence. Here she was confronted with a British government document that exonerates Wakefield, and she said that it was not “credible” because the British government didn’t say so itself. But any idiot could read the document and see for themselves that none of it applies to a 10 year old’s birthday party far from any clinic or hospital. Bailey chose not to, just as she chose to include a list of references to government papers in her film with no context that would show them to be false.































