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| Written by Brian Walsh | |||
| Wednesday, 14 September 2011 13:41 | |||
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I wonder if listeners could help me out with a favor. Leslie Botha is the public relations director for SANEVax. She also has a radio show during drive time on 88.9 FM KRFC Fort Collins in Colorado. The show is called Holy Hormones Honey! and it's a rather blatant propaganda tool for SANEVax and the anti-vaccine movement in general. Rational Alchemy is also on this station. I have been increasingly incensed that she is allowed to spew this (in my opinion) murderous nonsense over the air. I have complained about the content of her show many times, but the station management, like so many people, believes the CAM community is legitimate science. This may change if people in greater numbers than just me make their voices heard to the management. I haven't taken this to others before now out of a misguided sense of family amongst programmers, but she continues to cross the line, her show started off as a general topic alt-med show, it is purely anti-vax nonsense and anti-science hatred now. (Her episode calling for people convicted of shaking babies to death to be released because it was actually vaccines that killed them is a classic.) Like the management, people who are not exposed to science are prone to believe she is citing accepted science. Please help by calling, E-mailing and tweeting KRFC and making your opinion heard. Calling would be by far the most effective. Ending such a loud voice for SANEVax would certainly be a tremendous blow. Also, if anyone has a suggestion on how to take this plea to a wider audience, please let me know. Thanks. Her website is here: http://holyhormones.com/ The contact page for KRFC is here: http://www.krfcfm.org/contact-krfc/
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Dear KRFC
I am appalled by what I have heard of the Leslie Botha show. Offering a regular outlet to attacks on the proven science of vaccination is a piece of grossest irresponsibility, and cannot help but result in the unnecessary loss of children's lives.
I know, you probably don't care what happens to other people's children; it's "not your problem." But *your* children are equally vulnerable to potentially seriously debilitating, potentially fatal diseases like measles and whooping cough should herd immunity be lost locally through too many other children going unvaccinated because of the antiscientific fearmongering of folk like Leslie Botha.
Please reconsider your airing of this show.
To the above addressed,
It has come to my attention that there is a show entitled "Holy Hormones Honey!" on your station that frequently discusses anti-vaccine views. While I can appreciate why some people believe ideas like these, the fact is that they are wrong. Vaccines are not dangerous beyond the stated and very minor side effects known, which are more than balanced by the public health benefits given by them. Vaccines are one of the most valuable and efficacious public health interventions ever put into effect. The blatant propaganda (with all the accurate information available now, it's hard not to say "lies") regarding vaccines in general and gardasil specifically voiced by this show and its hosts is disturbing - it is tantamount to your station having a show that regularly and passionately tells people that the Earth is flat.
I hope that your station does not endorse this anti-science, anti-health, and anti-logic sentiment by keeping it on the air, disseminating nonsense and idiocy to its, hopefully tiny, audience. Doing some basic research on the topics your programming covers would do you well before putting this type of misleading scare-porn on the schedule. Additionally, I hope this letter is one of many because even if there are few voices making it to you, there are exponentially more who hear this show (and others like it, unfortunately) and simply tune out, leaving it to us in the health professions to undo the damage done by this type of irresponsible programming.
Thank you for your time and attention,
Michael McCarron