AN OPEN LETTER TO PETER BOWDITCH
[PERMISSION IS NOT
GIVEN to Peter Bowditch or to his agents/associates/affiliates/fans/supporters
to 1) post this letter or any part of this letter (excepting Peter Bowditch's
quotes) on the web site http://www.ratbags.com or on any web site with which
Peter Bowditch is ideologically or otherwise affiliated; 2)
reproduce/publish/distribute this letter or any part of this letter (excepting
Peter Bowditch's quotes) in any media, in perpetuity.]
Peter Bowditch
To Peter Bowditch:
You state on your site:
"I happen to know
several doctors who contacted Doubleday and offered to accept his
challenge."
http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/gentlebirth.htm
The only way you could
know the identity of any of these doctors is if one or more of them had
contacted you. I have kept these doctors' identities completely secret because
their business with me is their business. I have told no one any of their
names. I find it highly doubtful, indeed improbable in the extreme, that
"several" of these doctors have contacted you, or in fact that any of these doctors have
contacted you.
If you want to back up
your statement above, thereby demonstrating your integrity and honesty, send me
by email three sets of these doctors' initials. You are also free to give me
full names, if you like. To protect the doctors' privacy in the latter
instance, send the full names in an attachment to your email.
My prediction is that
you will continue to claim on your site that you know "several"
doctors who have contacted me about the offer, but that you will not make
available to me or to anybody any kind of evidence, much less proof, that you
know the names of any, much less "several," of the doctors in
question.
You continue:
"In every case
something was found to be wrong with the application."
This is simply
incorrect.
First, there is no
application. To prove that he or she is a doctor who regularly administer
childhood vaccines, the potential participant simply 1) xeroxes his/her current
medical license and 2) sends me copies of three vaccination schedules with
patients' names whited out.
Of the doctors, or
persons claiming to be doctors, who have contacted me about the offer in the
six years since the offer was made, twelve did not write back when I asked them
to send hard-copy documentation proving them to be currently U.S.-licensed
medical doctors.
Two doctors went
further in the process. One of them asked about the contract to be signed. I
paraphrased Part A of that contract in an email to her, at which point she
dropped out. The other doctor received Part A of the contract in the postal
mail, at which point he dropped out, citing "lack of time."
Thus, you can see it
was never my decision to keep any doctor from participating in the event. It
was always the doctor's decision.
So, I'm sure you'll
agree that your assertion,
"In every case
something was found to be wrong with the application"
is incorrect, indeed
baseless. But I wonder if you'll agree that the incorrect assertion on your web
site should be changed to reflect the truth or if you will continue to
misinform people.
To read Part A of the
contract that a potential participant in the event must sign before being
allowed to participate in my vaccine offer, please go to
http://www.spontaneouscreation.org/SC/links.htm
and click on
"$75,000 Offer" . . .
and click on "Read
Part A of the contract."
You have called my work
bogus, nonsensical, buffoonery. You have called me a zealot, a liar, and a
fraud. You have said:
"It would not come
as a surprise to anyone familiar with The Millenium Project to find that I
think Doubleday and his supporters are lying both about his intentions and the
reactions of doctors."
I am fascinated by this
assertion and perplexed that you have never contacted me to ask me about my
intentions or my work or my integrity. You have, instead, tested the mettle of
assumption by simply inventing claims that occur to you.
I have not, however,
mirrored your accusatory stance. I have not made assumptions about your
intentions and called them fact. Nor will I.
And there will be no
names of derision attached to you by me in any domain, public or private. I do
not call you names or assume anything about you. Name-calling does not further
science, and science is what we must rely on to inform our views.
You state on your site that
you "have no desire to publish inaccuracies." Yet you have made no
attempt to confirm or deny the accuracy of your statements about me or my work.
You state on your site:
"If someone can
convince me that their site should not be listed here at all I may still
include it for a while together with my apology."
One may reasonably ask
what good an apology does, when hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of
readers have read your original misinformation and gone their merry ways, never
to return to your site to read your apology.
One may reasonably ask
why you are posting health information without corroborating it first through
rigorous -- or, it seems, any -- research.
Along these lines, I am
making you an offer that you can and almost certainly will refuse.
My offer is to have an
open, public discussion, posted on my nonprofit's web site -- not on yours:
your record of information adjustment is well-documented -- on the subject of
the efficacy of vaccination.
My belief is that, had
you done research on the issue of vaccination before posting your opinions on
the subject, you would have saved yourself much time and energy.
What do I mean by
research? Am I suggesting that you get a PhD in immunology before posting on
this subject? No. I'm suggesting that, before engaging in debate on
vaccination, you read a number of books on the subject.
A list of these books
can be found near the end of my article, "Into the Labyrinth: Discovering
the Truth about Vaccination."
http://www.spontaneouscreation.org/SC/IntotheLabyrinth.htm
(This article is the
updated version of my August 2004 presentation at the Chicago AutismOne Annual
Conference.)
Of course, you're free
to debate me in a public forum without reading up on the subject you purport to
know so much about. But if you do in fact take me up on my offer to debate this
issue, it may behoove you to do the research, and it will certainly save both
of us, and any potential audience, a lot of time.
You state in your
article titled, "Anti-vaccination Liars":
"It is almost
beyond the comprehension of sane people that there should be organised
opposition to vaccines."
The genre of speech you
use is in the domain of the indoctrinated. One hears this kind of language in
political debate in which people who have not studied the issue throw stones
across a gulf of ignorance.
As a writer, I am
sensitive to styles of speech. Your style is the style of a person who is
attempting to blow his words up to fill the page in the hope that the reader
won't notice the lack of data.
Your next words are not: "Here is the data!" but:
"A special place
should be reserved in Hell for people who want to kill or maim children by
preventing them from receiving vaccinations."
I wonder how it is that
you believe this kind of speech can possibly do anybody any good?
Your next words are not: "Here is the data!" but:
"I thought about
changing the word "liars" here after investigation showed that many
of these people are simply deluded, often through a lack of scientific
knowledge. However, ignorance is no excuse, especially when any attempt to
correct the ignorance or error is met with ridicule, spite and pride in
ignorance."
Your open and
ubiquitous ridicule of persons attempting politely to correct your
indoctrination somewhat dilutes the strength of your statement above.
And your pride in your
(unscientific) position on vaccine efficacy knows no match in cyber-land.
Your lack of reading in
the field of immunology -- often covered over by the catch-phrases of the
layperson, "many studies" and "real scientists" . . .
without even an attempt to document your assertions -- is evident to anyone who
has done the reading in the field.
Your indoctrination, not
your knowledge, is clear, and in the health field seemingly total. Your
statement on homeopathy alone -- that homeopathics are "distilled
water" -- is proof of an indoctrination as severe as any I've encountered.
I have spent much of my
life meeting the brick wall of indoctrination. There is no reasoning with it.
Even if you accept my offer above to a reasoned debate, it will become clear to
cyber-eavesdroppers that your ability to reason is severely hampered by belief.
Therefore, I make you
the following additional offer:
Even though you are not
a doctor or a pharmaceutical company CEO or a high-ranking CDC official (the
"usual suspects" allowed to participate in my widely circulated
vaccine offer), you hereby have permission from me publicly to drink the
"standard vaccine additive cocktail" that is at the heart of my
monetary offer. In your case, however, and in your case only, you will not be
paid the full sum of the reward for drinking the vaccine poisons, but you will
instead be paid one cent (U.S.).
I have no intention of
funding your smear campaign against 1) parents whose children are damaged by
vaccines and 2) scientists who have risked their reputations by bringing the
sacred cow of vaccination to its knees.
I am sure that your
blustery public advocacy of vaccination will suffice to put enough wind in your
sails to bring you to the port of my offer without the additional gale of a
$75,000 reward.
You complain at length
about the constant hate mail you receive from what you call "anti-vaccinators." The email you are now reading may not
sound to you as if it is in the "kinder, gentler" category. But I can
assure you that, considering what is at stake -- our children's health and the health
of the human population -- it is.
Regards,
Jock Doubleday
Director
Natural Woman, Natural
Man, Inc.
A California 501(c)3
Nonprofit Corporation
director@spontaneouscreation.org
Jock Doubleday is the
author of "Into the Labyrinth: Discovering the Truth about
Vaccination."