#2668: Jack Christie

Jack Christie is an at-large member of the Houston City Council in Texas, first elected in 2011. During his tenure, he has managed to wreak some havoc, mainly because Christie is a hardcore antivaccine activist and conspiracy theorist – and yes, Christie buys into, and has used, most of the PRATTs in the antivaccine playbook. According to Christie and (unsupported) anecdotes he has read on antivaccine websites, HPV vaccines kill people (nope) and are unnecessary anyways if people just stopped being sluts (“sexual promiscuity is the main cause” of HPV, says Christie, which is false). And the HPV isn’t the only one: vaccines in general are killers, says Christie. Zika vaccines, for instance, are unnecessary, too, because “Zika’s been around for hundreds of years”. Just think about it.

And of course there’s a conspiracy: All these unnecessary vaccines are pushed by Big Pharma for profit, and they can, as Christie understands it (he doesn’t), not even be held liable. As such, Christie felt it incumbent upon him to “protect these children from having toxic chemicals put into them that’ll have serious side effects”. So Christie voted against a Houston proposal to accept $3.1 million in federal funding for childhood immunizations in 2013, claiming that “You don’t die from the flu.” Facts are not his strong suit.

 

But that should really not surprise you. Christie is a chiropractor, and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and pseudoscience run rampant among chiropractors. Indeed, Christie has a “Doctor of Chiropractic” degree from Texas Chiropractic College, and he is running two chiropractic practices in Houston.

 

Diagnosis: Lunatic conspiracy theorist and serious threat to public health and well-being in the Houston area.