"New" Anti Vaccine Chemist gone VIRAL ;)

[AndrewBird]

Hi all.
My lazy old friends are going crazy, posting everything that Shane Ellison, MS, says and from my limited amount of research, all I can see is that he claims to have been an ex-employee of big pharma, although the web only mentions him on alternative-therapy sites. And it's the same bio and articles, re-posted many times.

His message is or being interpreted as Anti-Vaccine, anti-everything medicinal.

Has anyone done any research on the fella?
Any hints on how I go about getting a good general background of this guy that's not written by him or PR?

 

[Tiktaalik]

Well, I took a look at both Quackwatch and What'stheharm.net and didn't find any references on either of those.

 

[Estellea]

I can't say I know every single "anti-vaxx player" but I've got a good bead on them and I've never heard of this person. Not listed here either so probably either a non-entity or not American or both.

Este

 

[AndrewBird]

Thankyou everyone! It often takes a lot of digging deep into the web to find good information.

 

[jdc324]

Never heard of him. I had a quick google and the well-respected source of information whale.to has some a page on Ellison with some quotes from 2006 but nowt more recent. Some other sites mentioned him but I'd never heard of them either.

Are you sure he's gone viral?

 

[Reality Check]

So far as I can find out, Shane Ellison is just another obscure "natural" medicine salesman with a book and products to sell on his blog. That anyone would go to an organic chemist for medical advice is just weird even if he specialized in medial chemistry. It is almost like asking an electrician to fix the plumbing in your house!


No signs of an anti-vaccination bias but he did have several dubious claims in this 2010 interview (YouTube video). N.B. this is basically a fear-mongering advertisement for his products.

• He claims that natural products can "ward off" swine flu.
• He claims that the swine flu vaccine can "reduce the effectiveness of the immune system".
• He thinks that the body is "not programmed to recognize" viruses that enter through the skin. So he agrees with the reporter when she says that by injecting a vaccine you bypass the immune system !
• He claims that he can reverse diabetes.

The biggest indicator that he is a crank is that he thinks that drugs are defined as medicine that is only used in emergencies.
So a drug that is taken to prevent emergencies (like statins to lower cholesterol and have been shown to lower secondary heart attacks by a third but seem to have only minor primary prevention) in his mind is not a medicine - it is a toxin.
And what is his fix? He wants to replace this preventative intake of tested, effective drugs with the preventative intake of untested, dubious drugs !

 

[AndrewBird]

Great answer, RC!
Any anti-med anti-science people immediately have a lot of traction in small australasian countries and in this case the video's have gone viral amongst parents who are always on the look out for a reason not to vaccinate their babies. It doesn't take a big mention at all to have large groups of people making the wrong decision… but they'll probably be okay.