More antivaxxers. Laura Condon is an anti-vaccine activist affiliated with NVIC (National Vaccine Information Center), one of the oldest, most powerful and craziest antivaccine organizations in the US. Like manyantivaxxers and antivaccine groups, the NVIC often claims – in the words of their leader Barbara Loe Fischer– to be “not ‘anti-vaccine’” but “pro-safe vaccine”, because that sounds more diplomatic. Of course, since vaccines are safe and effective, that claim raises an obvious question: What do NVIC activists think would make vaccines safe? Laura Condon’s answer is telling: “Nothing can make a vaccine safe.” So much for the “pro-safe vaccine” gambit.
Condon is otherwise affiliated with New Hampshire’s Voice for Vaccine Choice and is one of the most vocal anti-vaccine activists in New Hampshire, where she has written numerous op-eds falsely claiming that vaccines are inherently dangerous, ineffective and unnecessary, and should be scaled back or eliminated, based on standard antivaccine PRATTs. Like many antivaxxers, Condon is the parent of a “severely non-verbal autistic” child who isn’t vaccine injured but who Condon believes, against all evidence, is in fact vaccine-injured because her perception of the child’s disabilities correlated roughly with vaccination. Therefore, concludes Condon, against all evidence, vaccines have “disabled, sickened and killed many children.”
Diagnosis: Loud, crazy and dangerous denialist, and she seems to have some clout, at least in her home state. Keep your distance, and probably don’t do what these guys did.
Hat-tip: Karen Ernst @ The Vaccine Blog