Gentlebirth/Spontaneous Creation

Comment and Opinion

Gentlebirth – Jock Doubleday
and
Spontaneous Creation (this site disappeared in 2010, but luckily the stuff I needed was in the Internet Archive)

These sites were Highly Commended in the 2006 Millenium Awards. The citation read:

For some years, anti-vaccination liar Jock Doubleday has had a bogus challenge where he supposedly offered $20,000 to any doctor who would drink a concoction of vaccine components. Any doctor who took him up was soon made aware that there was no way of proceeding, and Doubleday himself admitted this when he said that he didn't want to be responsible for the deaths of anyone who drank the mixture. The amount of money now supposedly on offer is $75,000, but the amount doesn't matter because Doubleday has no intention of giving anything to anybody. The "challenge" exists simply as a way of derogating doctors by claiming that they are too frightened to accept the offer. There is no money, there is no challenge.

(This was originally written in June 2003)

Challenge at http://www.spontaneouscreation.org/SC/20,000Offer.htm

I typed the name "Jock Doubleday" into Google and it told me that there were about 263 matches. Most of these are anti-vaccination liar sites, and most of them report the following $20,000 offer from Doubleday (some say it's $25,000)

THE FOLLOWING OFFER is made to U.S.-licensed medical doctors who routinely administer childhood vaccinations and to pharmaceutical company CEOs worldwide.

Jock Doubleday, president of the California nonprofit corporation Natural Woman, Natural Man, Inc., hereby offers $20,000.00 (U.S.) to the first medical doctor or pharmaceutical company CEO who publicly drinks a mixture of standard vaccine additive ingredients in the same amount as a six-year-old child is recommended to receive under the year-2000 guidelines of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The mixture will not contain viruses or bacteria dead or alive, but will contain standard vaccine additive ingredients in their usual forms and proportions. The mixture will include, but will not be limited to: thimerosal (a mercury derivative), ethylene glycol (antifreeze), phenol (a disinfectant dye), benzethonium chloride (a disinfectant), formaldehyde (a preservative and disinfectant), and aluminum.

The mixture will be prepared by Jock Doubleday, three medical professionals that he names, and three medical professionals that the participant names. The mixture will be body weight calibrated.

The sites often go on to say that no doctor has ever accepted the challenge, because they all know how dangerous it would be. It would not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with The Millenium Project to find that I think Doubleday and his supporters are lying both about his intentions and the reactions of doctors. I happen to know several doctors who contacted Doubleday and offered to accept his challenge. In every case something was found to be wrong with the application. An anti-vaccinator wrote to Doubleday in early 2001 to ask him how the challenge was going. Part of his reply was:

There are two possible candidates, but they may turn out to be hoaxes. In any event, I don't foresee them really following through. A person would have to be of unsound mind, and I don't particularly relish the idea of sending a person of unsound mind (or any person, for that matter) to heaven before his or her time.

At the time I said: "He's already making excuses about why he won't be paying anyone anything. He'll refuse to go ahead because of his unwillingness to hurt someone ("first, do no harm") and, a year from now, the anti-vax mythology will be talking about how nobody took up the challenge". Was I right?

I am challenged, but not very much (13/1/2007)
As well as my regular checks on the quality of the links going out from this site, two or three times each year I do a search for sites which link inwards. Some of these can be a bit surprising (I found a highly complimentary reference once on a site devoted to neurolinguistic programming, for example), but most are in the sort of places I would expect to find them. As well as the link search, I also do an "ego surf" for mentions of my name. Not all of them are actually me, of course – there is a band in England, some famous soldier from a century or so ago, an elected member of a municipal council, another person coincidentally in the software business, someone who minds trees for a government forestry department, and, of course, the person (with the same middle name as well) who got juiced up and decided to tackle a policeman's tackle at a football match.

A fool When I did my last search, I found an open letter to me from Jock Doubleday (winner of a Highly Commended award in the 2006 Millenium Awards). Jock is famous among anti-vaccination liars for a ridiculous "challenge" which is supposed to terrify doctors to the extent that they won't take it up because it might kill them. Jock's letter to me started off with the words:

[PERMISSION IS NOT GIVEN to Peter Bowditch or to his agents/associates/affiliates/fans/supporters to 1) post this letter or any part of this letter (excepting Peter Bowditch's quotes) on the web site https://ratbags.com or on any web site with which Peter Bowditch is ideologically or otherwise affiliated; 2) reproduce/publish/distribute this letter or any part of this letter (excepting Peter Bowditch's quotes) in any media, in perpetuity.]

Of course I will respect Jock's wishes and go right ahead and post the letter. You can read the letter and my response here. It is comforting for me to note that Jock thinks that I am immortal. I must be, because he offers $75,000 to any doctor who will swallow his mixture of "poisons" but doesn't want anyone to take him up because he doesn't want their death on his conscience, but he won't pay me anything (except 1 cent) if I take the challenge because he doesn't want me to spend the money to support this site. I can only assume that this means that he thinks that I would survive without any damage, and this can only be because I am not like other humans (perhaps due to my lizardly Illuminati blood protecting me). Or maybe Jock thinks that I might actually take him up on his absurd offer and show what a farce it is. Oh, and just in case I forget –

It seems that Jock doesn't like people pointing out that his "challenge" is non-existent. He wrote an open letter to me which appeared on this web page. (I found it in January, 2007. I don't know how long it had been there.) Jock has specifically prohibited me from reproducing any part of his letter, so I am going to reproduce the lot, including the prohibition. As Jock didn't bother to actually email me but just put his diatribe up on the web, I won't bother to respond by email. He can read my reply here. Also, I would like to thank Jock for publishing an email address of mine in a form which made it available to spammers, so I will return the favour - spammers, load up director@spontaneouscreation.org and get spamming.

AN OPEN LETTER TO PETER BOWDITCH

Oh, stop it, Jock. You're making me laugh. And I'm not laughing with you.

Peter Bowditch
mproj1@ratbags.com

To Peter Bowditch:

You state on your site:

"I happen to know several doctors who contacted Doubleday and offered to accept his challenge."

https://ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/gentlebirth.htm

The only way you could know the identity of any of these doctors is if one or more of them had contacted you. I have kept these doctors' identities completely secret because their business with me is their business. I have told no one any of their names.

So you are saying that I can't know them because you have kept it a secret? Keep the jokes coming, Jock.

I find it highly doubtful, indeed improbable in the extreme, that "several" of these doctors have contacted you, or in fact that any of these doctors have contacted you.

As you seem to find it doubtful that vaccines and hospital births are safe, your powers of doubt are suspect. The fact that you don't know something doesn't mean a thing, given the extent of your ignorance.

If you want to back up your statement above, thereby demonstrating your integrity and honesty, send me by email three sets of these doctors' initials. You are also free to give me full names, if you like. To protect the doctors' privacy in the latter instance, send the full names in an attachment to your email.

So you can harass them? Have you ever thought of writing comedy for the stage or television?

My prediction is that you will continue to claim on your site that you know "several" doctors who have contacted me about the offer, but that you will not make available to me or to anybody any kind of evidence, much less proof, that you know the names of any, much less "several," of the doctors in question.

And my predictions are that you will continue to pretend that there is some form of challenge, that you will find some pathetic excuse to reject anybody who applies, and that you will continue to say that no doctor is brave enough to apply. The reality is, of course, that doctors think that you are a blowhard and an idiot and have better things to do with their time.

You continue:

"In every case something was found to be wrong with the application."

This is simply incorrect.

First, there is no application. To prove that he or she is a doctor who regularly administer childhood vaccines, the potential participant simply 1) xeroxes his/her current medical license and 2) sends me copies of three vaccination schedules with patients' names whited out.

Sounds like an application to me. Why do you need the "vaccination schedules", and why three? Most doctors I know stick to the same schedule for all children. I suppose, though, by asking for something which it is not possible for a doctor to provide you can keep saying that nobody has applied.

Of the doctors, or persons claiming to be doctors, who have contacted me about the offer in the six years since the offer was made, twelve did not write back when I asked them to send hard-copy documentation proving them to be currently U.S.-licensed medical doctors.

Perhaps because they thought that you were an idiot with ulterior motives. Perhaps they thought that you, with your vast research capabilities, should be able to find them on registers of medical practitioners. Perhaps their licensing authorities do not issue a licence in a form which can be easily copied, or even a physical licence at all, and just maintain a register. Doctors are not obliged to carry a licence with them.

Two doctors went further in the process. One of them asked about the contract to be signed. I paraphrased Part A of that contract in an email to her, at which point she dropped out. The other doctor received Part A of the contract in the postal mail, at which point he dropped out, citing "lack of time."

Why paraphrase part of the contract? If someone did that to me, I wouldn't bother with them any more either.

Thus, you can see it was never my decision to keep any doctor from participating in the event. It was always the doctor's decision.

So, I'm sure you'll agree that your assertion,

"In every case something was found to be wrong with the application"

is incorrect, indeed baseless. But I wonder if you'll agree that the incorrect assertion on your web site should be changed to reflect the truth or if you will continue to misinform people.

Well, it's like this, Jock. The statement was not baseless, but was made based on what the doctors had told me.

To read Part A of the contract that a potential participant in the event must sign before being allowed to participate in my vaccine offer, please go to

http://www.spontaneouscreation.org/SC/links.htm

and click on "$75,000 Offer" . . .

and click on "Read Part A of the contract."

You have called my work bogus, nonsensical, buffoonery. You have called me a zealot, a liar, and a fraud. You have said:

Where have I called you a zealot? Where have I called you a fraud? I realise that, like most anti-vaccination liars, you are averse to facts, but you shouldn't just make things up. Oh, and while you continue to tell lies about vaccination I will continue to list you with the liars. If you don't like it, stop lying.

"It would not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with The Millenium Project to find that I think Doubleday and his supporters are lying both about his intentions and the reactions of doctors."

I am fascinated by this assertion and perplexed that you have never contacted me to ask me about my intentions or my work or my integrity. You have, instead, tested the mettle of assumption by simply inventing claims that occur to you.

If I contacted you would you deny the contents of your web sites? They provide all I need to know about your intentions and your integrity. Do you deny saying "I don't particularly relish the idea of sending a person of unsound mind (or any person, for that matter) to heaven before his or her time"?

I have not, however, mirrored your accusatory stance. I have not made assumptions about your intentions and called them fact. Nor will I.

The second sentence in that paragraph does not make sense.

And there will be no names of derision attached to you by me in any domain, public or private. I do not call you names or assume anything about you. Name-calling does not further science, and science is what we must rely on to inform our views.

You state on your site that you "have no desire to publish inaccuracies." Yet you have made no attempt to confirm or deny the accuracy of your statements about me or my work.

Your work speaks for itself. Or are you really not opposed to vaccines and hospital births? How could anyone be mistaken?

You state on your site:

"If someone can convince me that their site should not be listed here at all I may still include it for a while together with my apology."

One may reasonably ask what good an apology does, when hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of readers have read your original misinformation and gone their merry ways, never to return to your site to read your apology.

As you have made no attempt to "convince me that [your] site should not be listed here at all", the point is moot.

One may reasonably ask why you are posting health information without corroborating it first through rigorous -- or, it seems, any -- research.

One may ask why you spread lies about vaccination "without corroborating it first through rigorous -- or, it seems, any -- research", and, in fact, denying or ignoring research which contradicts your ideology.

Along these lines, I am making you an offer that you can and almost certainly will refuse.

My offer is to have an open, public discussion, posted on my nonprofit's web site -- not on yours: your record of information adjustment is well-documented -- on the subject of the efficacy of vaccination.

My "record of information adjustment"? I publish criticism of me and my work verbatim. I'm sorry if that disappoints you. If you want to debate me or engage me in conversation, it will appear here. If you don't like that, too bad.

My belief is that, had you done research on the issue of vaccination before posting your opinions on the subject, you would have saved yourself much time and energy.

What do I mean by research? Am I suggesting that you get a PhD in immunology before posting on this subject? No. I'm suggesting that, before engaging in debate on vaccination, you read a number of books on the subject.

A list of these books can be found near the end of my article, "Into the Labyrinth: Discovering the Truth about Vaccination."

http://www.spontaneouscreation.org/SC/IntotheLabyrinth.htm

And what a putrid collection of fiction that is. How do you know I haven't read them? Do you think that reading idiocy will convert readers to being idiots themselves?

(This article is the updated version of my August 2004 presentation at the Chicago AutismOne Annual Conference.)

Of course, you're free to debate me in a public forum without reading up on the subject you purport to know so much about. But if you do in fact take me up on my offer to debate this issue, it may behoove you to do the research, and it will certainly save both of us, and any potential audience, a lot of time.

You state in your article titled, "Anti-vaccination Liars":

"It is almost beyond the comprehension of sane people that there should be organised opposition to vaccines."

Yep. I couldn't agree with myself more. I have actually had people refuse to believe me when I have told them that there are people prepared to lie in order to discourage parents from vaccinating their children. I just show them the list of liar web sites, and after they have read a few they agree with me.

The genre of speech you use is in the domain of the indoctrinated. One hears this kind of language in political debate in which people who have not studied the issue throw stones across a gulf of ignorance.

As a writer, I am sensitive to styles of speech. Your style is the style of a person who is attempting to blow his words up to fill the page in the hope that the reader won't notice the lack of data.

Firstly, those words do not appear in an "article", but in an introduction to a list of web sites of such disgusting venality that they provide a mass of data. There is no lack - there is a surfeit.

Your next words are not: "Here is the data!" but:

"A special place should be reserved in Hell for people who want to kill or maim children by preventing them from receiving vaccinations."

No, the data appears a bit further down the page when the list of egregious lying web sites begins.

I wonder how it is that you believe this kind of speech can possibly do anybody any good?

I wonder how lying about vaccination can possibly do anybody any good. It can kill and maim a lot of children, so I suppose you could consider it "doing good" if you liked that sort of thing.

Your next words are not: "Here is the data!" but:

"I thought about changing the word "liars" here after investigation showed that many of these people are simply deluded, often through a lack of scientific knowledge. However, ignorance is no excuse, especially when any attempt to correct the ignorance or error is met with ridicule, spite and pride in ignorance."

You really do have trouble recognising that an introduction to a list of lying web sites is not an article, don't you? As I said above, the data is embedded in the lying web sites. You start looking at them and you see the pattern.

Your open and ubiquitous ridicule of persons attempting politely to correct your indoctrination somewhat dilutes the strength of your statement above.

I ridicule the ridiculous. As is obvious from my response here, I reply to polite criticism politely.

And your pride in your (unscientific) position on vaccine efficacy knows no match in cyber-land.

I think that sounds like a compliment, but there are people out there who know a lot more about vaccine efficacy than I do.

Your lack of reading in the field of immunology -- often covered over by the catch-phrases of the layperson, "many studies" and "real scientists" . . . without even an attempt to document your assertions -- is evident to anyone who has done the reading in the field.

How do you know what I have read about immunology? At least I have read more than the average anti-vaccination liar, where by "read" I also imply "understand".

Your indoctrination, not your knowledge, is clear, and in the health field seemingly total. Your statement on homeopathy alone -- that homeopathics are "distilled water" -- is proof of an indoctrination as severe as any I've encountered.

OK, I am prepared to accept that homeopaths don't distil the water before they sell it. Why would they waste the time and money when they can just bottle it straight from the tap?

I have spent much of my life meeting the brick wall of indoctrination. There is no reasoning with it. Even if you accept my offer above to a reasoned debate, it will become clear to cyber-eavesdroppers that your ability to reason is severely hampered by belief.

Therefore, I make you the following additional offer:

Maybe you should actually make an offer so that there is something to add to. Challenging people to drink something to prove that injecting the same thing is dangerous is ample evidence that you are offering nothing and challenging nobody.

Even though you are not a doctor or a pharmaceutical company CEO or a high-ranking CDC official (the "usual suspects" allowed to participate in my widely circulated vaccine offer), you hereby have permission from me publicly to drink the "standard vaccine additive cocktail" that is at the heart of my monetary offer. In your case, however, and in your case only, you will not be paid the full sum of the reward for drinking the vaccine poisons, but you will instead be paid one cent (U.S.).

I'll just add that to the collection of data points that show your "challenge" is bogus. Now you're saying that if someone can do what you say can't be done you won't pay them. Thanks for finally admitting that there is no challenge, just hot air.

I have no intention of funding your smear campaign against 1) parents whose children are damaged by vaccines and 2) scientists who have risked their reputations by bringing the sacred cow of vaccination to its knees.

I am sure that your blustery public advocacy of vaccination will suffice to put enough wind in your sails to bring you to the port of my offer without the additional gale of a $75,000 reward.

Just as I thought – no $75,000, no challenge. Just empty rhetoric. By the way, your implication that I would survive and get to spend the $75,000 makes the whole thing look a bit silly, doesn't it? How does it fit in with your concern that "I don't particularly relish the idea of sending a person of unsound mind (or any person, for that matter) to heaven before his or her time"?

You complain at length about the constant hate mail you receive from what you call "anti-vaccinators." The email you are now reading may not sound to you as if it is in the "kinder, gentler" category. But I can assure you that, considering what is at stake -- our children's health and the health of the human population -- it is.

If you gave a damn about children's health you would stop trying to sabotage the greatest contribution science and medicine have ever made to the health of children. And when have I ever complained about hate mail?

Regards,

Jock Doubleday
Director
Natural Woman, Natural Man, Inc.
A California 501(c)3 Nonprofit Corporation
www.SpontaneousCreation.org
director@spontaneouscreation.org

Jock Doubleday is the author of "Into the Labyrinth: Discovering the Truth about Vaccination."

Jock redux. Or should that be Jock reducks? (10/1/2009)
Definitely reducks, because Jock Doubleday is ducking and weaving away again from his ridiculous, non-existent "challenge" to doctors to consume vaccine ingredients. The clown was Highly Commended in the 2006 Millenium Awards, and in January 2007 I found out that he had created a web page devoted to me. It took the form of an open letter to me and included the following highly amusing restriction:

The moron resurfaced last week, and in an email to Martin Robbins at the Lay Scientist blog he had this to say:

The truth of any sentence beginning with the words "According to Ratbags..." should be taken with a grain of salt. Here's my open letter to Peter Bowditch ("Ratbags"). It has been up for over a year with no reply:

Of course, as anyone can see here I replied as soon as I became aware of it so Jock is lying, but that is not unexpected because lying is what he does – lies about vaccines, lies about childbirth, lies about having a challenge to doctors.

I think I need my own open letter to Jock, and I will put it in the form of some questions. The first question is rhetorical.

You lied about me not replying to your open letter, Jock. Why did you lie?
You said that I wasn't allowed to quote any part of your letter "in any media", so how was I supposed to reply?
Referring to the question above, was the reason that you placed such idiotic restrictions on me the same reason that you place idiotic restrictions on people addressing your bogus challenge – so that you can keep saying that nobody replies?
Multiple choice, Jock – answer one only please, as only one can be correct.
Which of these is a true statement?
- Anybody who drinks the poison cocktail will surely die, which is why you don't want to be responsible for sending anyone to heaven
- If I drink the poison I won't die because I am immortal, so you won't pay me the money because I would only spend it on this web site
- There is no real challenge, no $75,000 and you are a lying sack of excrement
Are you as stupid and arrogant as you appear, or is it only an act?
Bonus questions – asked of all anti-vaccination liars:
- How many dead children in a pile do you need to trigger a spontaneous orgasm?
- When unloading dead babies from a truck into a mass grave, do you prefer a mechanical shovel or do you like to get right in there with a pitchfork?

Jock's gone. How sad. (2/10/2010)
When I did my regular link check this month I found that Jock Doubleday's ludicrous vaccine "challenge" has finally disappeared. Jock is a lying sack of steaming excrement who wouldn't recognise a fact if it bit him on the face, but I won't say anything unkind about him. He used to pretend that he had an unanswerable challenge that demonstrated that doctors knew how very dangerous vaccines are, and he got very upset with people like me who called him on it. You can read the saga of my experience with Jock here, but one thing is guaranteed – Jock might have folded his tent and slipped off into the night but I will continue to be told by anti-vaccination liars that there is this challenge to drink vaccine ingredients that no doctor will accept. It will be a lie now, just as it has been a lie for the last decade, but since when have anti-vaccination liars cared about the truth.

Iiiiiiiiiiiiit's Jocky. (22/12/2012)
Jock Doubleday was once famous for offering a challenge to any doctor who was prepared to drink vaccine ingredients. The challenge was a complete farce and Jock had no intention of ever giving away the $20,000 or $25,000 or $75,000 or whatever fictitious number was being quoted from time to time. Jock once said that he didn't want anybody to take the challenge because he didn't want them to die, but would only give me $0.01 if I did it and lived. Apparently either I am immortal or the challenge didn't exist. Anti-vaccination liar web sites all over the place still claim that the challenge is both existent and extant, but lying is what they do.

Jock appeared on Facebook this week to whine about Facebook being a CIA front organisation. The irony of using the corrupt vehicle to complain about it would not have occurred to Jock, lacking as he does any intellectual capacity at all.

Normal people can only wonder at the workings of whatever passes for a mind in a paranoid conspiracist. Perhaps there is nothing there to work.