A.k.a. Oracle (online moniker)
The Thinking Moms’ Revolution (TMR) is a group of anti-vaccine activists and insufferable mommybloggers whose mommy instincts are so powerful that they trump all evidence or advice from people who know anything about the topics they have opinions about, especially when it comes to health-related issues and vaccines. The hallmark of the group is, in other words, particularly severe Dunning-Kruger coinstantiated with motivated reasoning, and it leads to the dumbest examples of ridiculous pseudoscience and conspiracy theories you can think of: For a good example of their style, check out their Thinking Moms’ Manifesto, some four thousand words of the most concentrated, weaponized Dunning-Kruger, arrogance, and motivated reasoning you’ll ever stumble across.
Laura Hirsch, handle Oracle, is a at least a sometimes associate of the group, and an excellent illustration of how a overwhelming urge to think for herself and to do her own research tends to lead, when combined with an utter lack of ability to actually research, reflect or think at anything but the most superficial (but highly motivated) level, to simply parroting the latest fads and talking points from the silliest online sources that tells her what she already wanted to hear. Hirsch is, in particular, a champion of energy healing – “these incredible healing modalities” – for treating children she diagnoses with (vaccine-induced) autism. Ostensibly, Hirsch “learned Reconnective Healing and Quantum Touch, used homeopathy, essential oils, and flower essences, used EAV (electroacupuncture) and muscle testing for diagnosing” her own son’s autism, and “consulted with mediums to get answers from the spirit world” to help cure him (or, as she also puts it, “working with a psychic medium and his wife [Michael and Marti Parry], a spirit artist, they extended an open invitation to the spirit world to help solve the autism puzzle”; ‘spirit art’, for those not in the know, is apparently the ability to “draw friends and loved ones that have passed away without ever having seen them, personally or through pictures, or even a description!”). Her freethinking is at least strong on the free part – she employs few discernible constraints– but there is also preciously little of what we’d normally consider thinking. She is apparently also a Reiki master. Oh, and she has apparently dabbled in mediumship herself.
Apparently, her experiences with the dumbest of woo formed the basis for her book The Other Side of Autism: Famous Spirits Unveil Regressive Autism’s Causes and Remedies. Now, we can’t claim to have actually read this … thing, but in interviews, Hirsch has revealed that she learned from her psychic medium that her autistic son is allergic to a variety of things, including wheat, and that she received wisdom from a number of “very famous scientists and politicians” who taught her that, although vaccines are a contributing factor to autism, it is “not just vaccines” (indeed) but also diet, particularly GMOs (yes, Hirsch is also a “Non-GMO advocate” because there is no pseudoscience or New Age fluff she won’t devour), and radiation – after all, since radiation can cause cancer and damage DNA, it must be able to cause autism as well. And yes, the spirits also told her how to cure her son by eliminating the evil (i.e. GMOs), using iodine and supplements to “pull radiation out of his body” and employing hyperbaric oxygen. And of course “it helped” since, after all, autism is a condition involving developmental delay, not stasis, and many autistic children tend to grow out of many symptoms through normal development over the years, and if you observe this process through the lens of sufficient confirmation bias, even mediums might come to look effective. She has later written a follow-up, More than Meets the Eye: A Nonspeaker’s Journey through Music, Spelling 2 Communicate, and Becoming a Divine Messenger, a title that makes one doubt how much her previous efforts “helped” after all.
She also promotes the Autism Healing Intention Program, a “remote energetic healing intention program for autism” developed by “Autism Pioneer” Suzy Miller and legendary crackpot William Tiller, which uses “the most cutting edge remote healing techniques to offer a service for parents and autistic children” and which is – importantly – also “all natural”.
Hirsch was, together with one Helen Conroy, editor of Evolution of a Revolution, Autism and the Path from Hope to Healing, in which the TMR members shared their stories about autism and what they intuit to be the causes. According to reviewer, TMR fan and essential oils distributor (Young Living) Mel at the Holistically Whole blog, the book “is NOT an ‘anti-vaccine’ book” since “the very first chapter of the book says ‘vaccines are not the only evil contributing to this epidemic’ ”. Well, then.
Diagnosis: Oh, yes, it is all there: vaccines cause autism because intuition trumps evidence but the secret cure can be gleaned from dead politicians by a well-positioned medium who is also able to tap into the energies of the New Age. Several MLM distributors of essential oils support this message. The rest of us, meanwhile, should probably maintain a healthy distance.
Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence
