Anti-vaxxer Sherri Tenpenny: “Doctors and Public Health officials are the enemy”
Hi Reader,
As you know, I’ve been following anti-vax rhetoric as it gets increasingly irrational and hysterical. Usually, this comes in the form of a random nutjob threatening to shoot public health officials who want to vaccinate their children, or an errant blogger calling for the lynching of all doctors and scientists. However, today we have an example of what may appear to the objective reader to be dangerous rhetoric coming from an actual, licensed Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine–Sherri Tenpenny. Now Reader, I know what you are thinking. You are saying to yourself, “Tenpenny has been thoroughly discredited by medical doctors and scientists. Just a glance at her Facebook page demonstrates that some seriously questionable misinformation is posted there on a regular basis”. But today’s post may take the cake. In it, Tenpenny states that:
“”The Middle East is from our enemies…and DOCTORS and PUBLIC HEALTH officials are Americans coming after Americans. They are the enemy within our borders”.
This post is in response to a proposed law in New Jersey that would simply require a more stringent procedure for obtaining vaccine exemptions, which is good policy and hardly seems worthy of branding doctors and public health officials as “the enemy within our borders”. Regardless, it is interesting to me that apparently Tenpenny either no longer considers herself a real doctor, or has a deep problem with her self-esteem. But more to the point, this type of language is deeply distressing coming from a person who purports to be a member of the medical community. First of all, it is sickeningly ignorant to make blanket statements about the “Middle East” and “enemies”; though in fairness this sentence fragment is difficult to decipher and is most reminiscent of “All Your Base Are Belong to Us“.
Nonetheless, much like poetry and rock-n-roll, I suppose the meaning is attached by the reader, and it sure sounds to me like Tenpenny may be going for an extremely polarizing statement here. The contextual weight of beginning a post with a comment about the ”Middle East” and following this with ”enemy within our borders” is quite heavy; indeed, there is little doubt that is yet another attempt at sinister insinuations by an anti-vaxxer.
As I’ve written here before:
“…the increasing number of examples of this type of language on the web may, some day soon, reach the ears of a person who can and will resort to violence, spurred on by people calling themselves “doctors”. As a whole, the anti-vax movement is a group of people united by an ideology which is strong on emotion and weak on rationality. I hope I am wrong, but I sense a change in a certain subgroup of anti-vaxxers that is nothing short of chilling.”
Get a freakin’ grip, Tenpenny.
UPDATE: A few hours after Tenpenny’s post appeared on Facebook, here are some of the comments that have appeared. If you think her rhetoric is not seriously dangerous, then please consider the responses her words engendered; to wit:
“Firearms are not for hunting deer is my last comment”.
“Over my dead body will they ever come near me or my precious babies with their toxic filth”.
“Soon it may be common practice to detain kill or assert dominance over those are “free thinkers” or do not agree with mandates.”
The fear-based rhetoric is racist. And it concerns me because it is feeding a fire that is hard to put out. “Be afraid, be very afraid, don’t trust anyone but me and you must pay me money to access my information.” I wish we could do something about her!
Yep, it is hard to put out the fire, particularly when lit in a mind already prone to conspiracy. The rhetoric continues to escalate.
You need a SA(a)VN for Tenpenny, Mercola, McCarthy et al. Just sayin’. Although with the highly litigious culture of the US any anti-anti group would also need a good lawyer on standby. *le sigh*
Tenpenny sounds a lot like one of those cult leaders who practicing coercive persuasion, no?
JB Handley, master manipulator behind Generation Rescue once wrote that he will not stop until the US Public Health system is on its knees. So, no, I’m not impressed that Tenpenny would write this. She swallowed a lie hook, line, and sinker one day and has gotten worse since.
That pretty much says it all about Generation Rescue. They have no idea what their lives would be like if Public Health were “brought to its knees”. Methinks they wouldn’t like it so very much.
I am a Pediatrician and a Doctor of Osteopathy. I’m also a huge proponent of disease prevention and encourage all my patients to get vaccinated. Those who refuse shots need to sign a waiver as per our office policy. So people like Tenpenny are a total disgrace to the medical profession and give a bad name to Osteopaths across the board. I’m amazed that this woman still has a license to practice medicine after all the rubbish that she is feeding the public. As informedvaxer stated you have to PAY to get her stuff, so sounds like her vaccination aversion is simply a smokescreen for the real thing… making some fast cash off some misguided soul who falls into the trap.
That being said, I’m so glad I found your site, and will make sure I check back regularly. Growing up in the third world where everyone around me was being plagued by, and dying of diseases for which we have good and safe vaccinations today, has definitely fueled my desire to become a doctor and devote my life to the well-being of children. Whenever I am asked by parents whether I would vaccinate my own children, the answer is always a resounding YES! I then go on to elaborate my experiences in the third world, and my desire to avoid that mess here in the US, at all costs. I’m not always successful in my endeavors on this matter, but I will continue to try.
Thanks for your very thoughtful comments, Shaliza. Rest assured that I do not judge Osteopaths by Tenpenny. She is definitely an outlier in your profession. I also find it curious that she still has a license given that she regularly dipsenses what in my opinion is frankly dangerous information.
I also have great respect for D.O.s in general (take my kids to one) and there certainly are M.D. antivax quack pediatricians as well. Unfortunately, Tenpenny is one of the quackiest.
I guess there are quacks in any profession, unfortunately.
I just can’t believe that Tenpenny still has her license given the rubbish that she believes in and feeds the public. I know of a prominent Osteopath in the La Jolla area in CA who had her license suspended for trying to cure chronic ear infections with cranial osteopathic techniques alone. Of course that didn’t end well, and she was reported to the CA Osteopathic Board which promptly suspended her license. It cause a big stir here, as is to be expected. So the fact that Tenpenny gets away with what she does is really beyond me. Perhaps it’s because she hasn’t severely compromised the health of anyone… YET.
The reason anyone gets away with saying “stay away from drugs” is because they save lives by doing so. If they wisely replace the drugs with safer alternatives, that doesn’t mean they are evil. It’s very hypocritical to criticize that anyways, as Doctors get a kickback from all the expensive junk they push that does way more harm then good. . .or didn’t you know that malpractice from hospitals, doctors and side effects of properly taken drugs are the leading cause of death in this country? Sadly, our baby mortality rate is one of the worst in the world thanks to them too! If you actually looked at world stats, and got a bigger worldview you wouldn’t idolize the medical profession and instead would have a “holy fear” of their power over our bodies and freedoms. I would defend my child from them too, or anyone preaching hate and intolerance to those who chose differently. Your numerous posts show you to be very arrogant, are a huge Bigot. You do disservice to freethinking and intelligent humanity by your ignorant judgement of non vaxers. Didn’t your Mom teach you that if you can’t say anything nice don’t say it at all? When you have no tolerance for a different position, you can bet that you don’t understand it.
Start providing references from reputable sources for any of your claims, Angela, or you won’t be posting here much longer. In particular, I would like to see the data showing that “malpractice” is the leading cause of death in this country. In addition, our “baby mortality rate” appears to be relatively high for a number of very interesting reasons. These include, but are not limited to: 1. Very poor access to healthcare for certain groups in the U.S.; 2. Differences in how we count infant mortality vs. the rest of the world; and 3. Our ability to very precisely measure infant mortality as compared to other countries.
I don’t preach hate and intolerance to those who “choose differently”; I preach common sense to those making an emotional decision with absolutely no facts to support it. You are actually the one who is arrogant, as you seem to think that you, Angela, know better than the entire healthcare community. It’s simply a shocking state of mind. What else do you know that nobody else knows, Angela? I’m just curious.
With regard to your last comments, my Mom taught me never to let an injustice stand, which is rather more important than running around being faux “nice” to everyone. I understand your alleged position perfectly–and you are dead wrong.
To echo Skewed, please provide us with solid evidence to back up any of your claims, Angela. And exactly how is malpractice the leading cause of death in this country? WOW… that’s certainly news to me. Please, where is your source on this? And don’t bother to quote people like Tenpenny in your reply. FYI, she is a total joke in the medical community.
And before you go off about how alternative medicine is so wonderful, I grew up in a country where it was a big deal and had all kinds of snake oil and the like prescribed with absolutely NO improvement of illnesses, whatsoever. I was a guinea pig many times, when the village medicine man was summoned for one of his miraculous cures for ear infections, weeping eczema, fevers and the like. My parents learned pretty quickly that these so called miracle remedies were all rubbish, and practiced by quacks, and that hasn’t changed several years down the line. So again, I ask you… where is the proven, evidence that so-called alternative remedies DO work?
Also, your claims that doctors get all kinds of kickbacks pushing expensive and unsafe junk into patients is VERY inaccurate. The truth is, doctors are able to pad their wallets and big time, when an unvaccinated and unmedicated child ends up in the ICU with serious complications. A classic example is one of my own patients who ended up in the ICU for several weeks, and intubated when she was exposed to pertussis from unvaccinated relatives and developed the illness. She was two weeks old at the time, and too young to receive the DTaP vaccine. So yeah… a huge ICU bill was the result.
Another example… in residency I had a 2 year old patient whose mom refused all vaccines, and refused antibiotics even for things like a routine ear infection. This child presented to our Pediatric ER with uncontrollable seizures and was admitted to the ICU. Subsequent CT/MRI scans revealed mastoiditis from an untreated ear infection and a brain abscess that caused the intractable seizures. Think about this huge hospital bill, and it could have been totally avoided if the mother had followed her PCP’s advice to treat the ear infection. But oh no, now the child is in the ICU, ENT had to perform a mastoidectomy and neurosurgery had to drain a brain abscess which ended up growing resistant bugs like MRSA. So instead of one antibiotic, the kid was on like three heavy duty IV ones, as per the recommendations of the Infectious Disease specialist. Oh and add Neurology to the ever growing list of consultants, that had to be summoned to control this child’s seizures. Needless to say, this case was reported to Child Protective Services for the negligence on the mom’s part to treat a child with an ear infection, and for no good reason except for complete aversion to things like antibiotics and vaccines. The money that the PCP would have earned from treating a routine ear infection is nothing, compared to the super expensive ICU bill that resulted when the child presented with seizures as a result of the mother’s refusal of treatment.
So it’s parents like you that make us doctors rich, Angela, when you refuse to vaccinate and label all medications as unsafe and BAD. Nothing is risk free, since I myself had a bad allergic reaction when I was prescribed Bactrim once upon a time. But that doesn’t mean that I just refuse all medications for whatever it is that ails me, since ending up in the hospital with all kinds of other complications, and huge bills, is not something that I relish. So what you don’t realize is, that when your unmedicated and unvaccinated child ends up in the hospital with what is considered an avoidable problem, then the cost is much, much more. Keep that in mind before you make ridiculous claims that doctors get huge kickbacks from vaccination and medication administration which are considered preventative medicine, and with good reason.
Finally, you call us arrogant and bigots, yet you don’t seem to take your own mother’s advice about not saying anything if there’s nothing nice to say. How’s that for hypocrisy? Practice what you preach, or don’t preach at all!
Shaliza,
I love your comments. Thanks once again!
“Doctors get a kickback from all the expensive junk they push that does way more harm then good.”
Please, Anglela, will you provide some references about these fabled kickbacks. Years into this business, I’m seeing nothing of the sort, and fear that somehow I must be missing out {:~)
And as for our infant mortality rate, this is a sad meme. If you understood the data that underlie the statistics, you might begin to have a clue about the unreliability of the denominator. The definition of “viability” of infants varies widely between nations. The US tends to have some of the highest of expectations, not necessarily a bad thing, and as a result falls short of nations who didn’t even deem the child alive to begin withn. This is something you can learn about with little effort, something your Mom would likely approve of.
take (more) care,
Orlesypal