A Paid Message on DK?

I noticed a diary over at the GOS came up titled, “Flu Hype?”  I checked it out and it was clearly written to warn of the dangers of the Swine flu, particularly as it is hitting younger people, and to encourage people to take the H1N1 vaccine.

Now I’ve read alot of the conspiracy stuff about the vaccine.  How it hasn’t been properly tested, how the side effects may be worse than the flu itself, how it can cause autisim, etc.  I watched the videos of the 1976 Swine Flu scare and how President Ford urged the entire country to get vaccinnated.  I’ve read where the pharmaceutical companies pay bloggers and others to spread the word so their profits are maximized.

I don’t know what to think really.  I most probably won’t get the shot as I’m not that fricking old yet and I rarely get a cold let alone the flu.  I also don’t work around people and my kids are out of the house so my susceptibility and possible transfer quotients are fairly low.  

But I couldn’t help check out the person behind that diary.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

The person who wrote it appears to have just signed on to GOS on 10/19.  He freely lists his own blog on his DK page.  So I went to his blog, ScienceBlogs, to see what was there.

http://scienceblogs.com/whitec…

OK, strangely or not, sometimes I’ll follow the money on these things.  So I googled, “ScienceBlogs funding”, and I found that the blog was part of the Seed Media Group.  I then googled “Seed Media Group conspiracy”, and this came up.

http://www.ageofautism.com/200…

This blog, Age of Autism, had an article up explaining where the Seed Media Group gets its money.  It appears they get healthy doses (pun intended) of money from pharmaceutical companies like Merck and Shering-Plough and the CEO is a player with those companies and Dupont.  

Why did I write this?  Hell if I know.  We all know there are people who are paid to spread disinformation or special interest propaganda on the tubes.  This one seemed so obvious that I couldn’t help do a little research.  Of course, I haven’t proven my case, and don’t really care to proceed further.  Just wanted to warn others that we shouldn’t take for granted that the blogs are clean from the same propaganda in the MSM.