Talk:David Kirby (journalist)
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[edit] Kirby's telephone consults
David Kirby is selling videos and telephone conversations about vaccination and thimerosal [1]. It could be argued that there is a bit of a conflict of interest here--his sales will do significantly better if more concern is stirred up about thimerosal. I also wonder about the ethics of an individual with no formal medical training giving medical advice. (And charging for it.) I'm not quite sure how to address it. I don't want to overstate the matter, but I don't think it should be ignored. --TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 00:09, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Forgive me if I am doing this incorrectly. Selling his phone time is not the only thing questionable about Kirby.
Kirby says (on a Yahoo! group board) that he has sold the rights to the story to someone in Hollywood. The more dramatic he can make the case for widespread mercury poisoning, the better a movie sounds. The more dramatically he can portray "good guys and bad guys" the easier it is to sell the "story" of "Evidence of Harm". If you read Michael Fitzpatrick's review of the book on the British medical Journal's website you can see some serious criticism of how the information is slanted in the book to sound more dramatic.
The book also contains factual errors, one of which Mr. Kirby admits to openly and says he'll have fixed in the paperback version. Others he hasn't admitted to, at least not that I know of. It appears that "ombudsman" only wanted to tell one side of the story when he started this wiki page. I am concerned over how a large part of Kirby's career, that as a gay rights advocate was not mentioned at all in his bio. Many of the parents who are very deep into the "Evidence of Harm" theory are also very religious and anti-all-vaccines. It would appear that Mr. Kirby has chosen not to talk about his activities as a gay rights promoter because of that. Though that is only speculation, his behavior seems very odd, and in my opinion, calculated to sell books and to sell the movie rights.
Never mind the science, which is in some cases, quite twisted and distorted to support the "autism=mercury poisoning" theory. I hope that the wiki article doesn't end up promoting falsehoods so that Mr. Kirby can push his own material advantage. User: autismdiva
[edit] Lack of NPOV
The Strange Bedfellows section is badly in need of editing, as it makes several unreferenced assertions and is clearly not NPOV. - DaveSeidel 10:59, 31 May 2005 (UTC) Sorry about that, I didn't understand at first that this was a long quote. Hopefully this is clearer now on the page. - DaveSeidel 00:57, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I'd say it's still a rather NPOV page. I see almost no criticism of Kirby, save for the following phrase: "Kirby was apparently portrayed as biased and as siding with delusional conspiracy theorists", which is written to be a sideways compliment; if it was a PORTRAYL, it was probably false, and it was merely an APPARENT portrayl, well... obviously he CAN'T be biased or side with delusional conspiracy theories! And a paragraph that seems only to serve as a vehicle to provide a quote to attack the "left-wing" is so very POV ... I just can't see any relevance in that quote to the issue at hand whatsoever. If someone else has better ideas than I about how to make it NPOV, please do. I expect that if I wander back in a few days and nobody's done anything, I may just start hatcheting away some of the slant I see... Thsgrn 06:58, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
[edit] External links
Two things. First, I removed a number of whale.to external links because they didn't actually refer to David Kirby.
Second, I'm wondering if perhaps there are too many book reviews in the external links section. It was a controversial book; it was reviewed. How many links do we need? --TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 01:26, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
