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Let’s all go to the movies and save ourselves some lives.

*** UPDATE: AMC Theaters will NOT be running this PSA. The theater in Long Beach, CA, however is not an AMC. If this is your local theater, or you know someone who is near Long Beach, please encourage them to contact them (thanks, Ken for the info):
LONG BEACH STADIUM 26 & IMAX
7501 East Carson Long Beach CA 562-429-3321

Regal Movie Theatres contact form:

http://www.regmovies.com/corporate/contactus.aspx ***

Things I like about going to the movies:

  • Watching movies
  • Eating popcorn
  • Having a place to go where anti-vaxxers aren’t actively killing people

Am I right? Yum! Popcorn! Yay! No one dies of meningitis!

Oh… except now Age of Autism is threatening the public by telling them they’re all going to die from the flu shots. And they’re telling you that if you need one, you’d best not get one. Because you’ll be dead from poisoning.

Starting Thanksgiving, for one week, AoA SafeMinds is airing this PSA in movie theaters:

(WARNING: Not safe for the easily enraged and well informed)

Problems with this video:

  1. Thimerosol is not poison
  2. Thimerosol is not dangerous to pregnant women or children
  3. Thimerosol is NOT DANGEROUS. Period.
  4. The flu kills pregnant women
  5. The flu shot is totes safe for preggos, forealz.
  6. It makes me angry
  7. You won’t like me when I’m angry

The good news is that it will not be nationally distributed to millions of movie goers.
(ETA: The bad news is that I can’t read emails. The worse news is that the ads are already distributed nationally. See Jared’s comment below.)

The bad news is that it is still being shown at local venues and is expected to reach at least 500,000 people.

This is not okay. Flu shots save lives and no one should be fear-mongered away from their health and safety.

We need to act.

Here is the list of theaters who will be airing this PSA (I will update when necessary):

    ****UPDATE: AMC has replied saying that they will not be airing this or any other vaccine ads.****

  • Empire 25 in New York City
  • Long Beach 26 in Long Beach, California
  • Not AMC. Get on it Long Beach! Don’t let this be viewed on your watch!

  • River East 21 in Chicago, IL
  • Boston Common 19 in Boston
  • Phipps Plaza 14 in Atlanta
  • Tyson’s Corner 16 in McLean, VA
  • Northpark Center 15 in Dallas, TX
  • Rosedale 14 in Saint Paul, MN
  • Pavillions 15 in Denver, CO
  • (Denver will not be airing the PSA.)

If any of these theaters is near you, you need to contact them. Let them know that you are displeased with their decision to air this commercial. We are calling for a boycott of all theaters showing this ad.

If you are not near any of these theaters, but know someone who is, please urge them to call, write and boycott.

And if your local theater does not think it should have to pull the ad, contact your local skeptics and organize. Get accurate vaccine informational materials together and hand them out to movie goers (off the premises). Contact your local media. Do something. Do something good. Do something to stop Age of Autism’s lies. Do something to stop your community from being threatened. Do something to save lives.

You have until Thursday.

Go.

I wish I had the time and money and resources to run a counter PSA… but I don’t.

ED 2: Thanks to @averagejenn for linking to this, where you can click to register your dissatisfaction with AMC.

ED: Jared posted the following in the comments but I’m copy-pasting it here so it doesn’t get lost:

Just got off of the phone with a manager at the AMC in Boston. He was clueless regarding this situation, and sounded totally surprised to hear about it.

Basically, he told me that all decisions regarding their “pre-show” are made at the corporate level and that they have no control, locally, over what gets shown there.

I tried to be polite and let him know that his company had just stepped on a landmine, so to speak, and warn him that my call might not be the last one he gets regarding the issue. But, again, he said that there’s really nothing he can do.

His suggestion was to try to contact AMC at the corporate level, so I will suggest the same to the rest of you whose local theater is owned by them — are these ALL AMCs?

Anyway, the manager suggested that we leave feedback on the corporate website — as @Sulis noted — or try to contact their media relations person, a move that might look stronger if done by the organizer(s) of your local skeptics group (if you have one).

Otherwise, the next best suggestion I’ve got is to bring attention to this like Elyse said. Get in touch with local media and get them to talk about it. Pitch the story to your local news! They love controversy.

Elyse

Elyse MoFo Anders is the bad ass behind forming the Women Thinking, inc and the superhero who launched the Hug Me! I'm Vaccinated campaign as well as podcaster emeritus, writer, slacktivist extraordinaire, cancer survivor and sometimes runs marathons for charity. You probably think she's awesome so you follow her on twitter.

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68 Comments

  1. YES, keep kicking ass. Aaaaaarrrrghhhh!! I am relatively close to Long Beach, and one of my best friends is a rational, intelligent person living in Denver and I will let her know about this.

    I HATE misleading crap like this.

  2. Where is an exact source saying that this will be airing at the AMC Rosedale 14 in St. Paul, MN? I’m from that area and would like to see if I could organize something quickly. To do that, I would like to be able to show people that this is true.

    Thanks!

  3. Another point to bring up (correct me if I am wrong) is that Thimerosol was taken out of most vaccines anyways. Perhaps those who are running this campaign are betting that most of the audience does not know this detail.

  4. Thimerisol (because it is a safe and effective preservative) is still in multiple-dose bottles of flu vaccine. And, it is accurate that unused flu vaccine is disposed of as hazardous waste. Neither of those facts changes the fact that flu disproportionately harms pregnant women, that the flu vaccine is safe, and that this kind of ad campaign can cause direct harm. One thing I’m curious about is, do movie theaters charge different ad rates for straight advertisements versus things claiming to be public service announcements? Anyway, this seems like an excellent place for direct action. I’m already composing a letter in my head and I’m sure with the active Chicagoland folks, we’ll get some pamphleteering done!

  5. I already have something for a Facebook event group written but I am waiting for some kind of confirmation that the St. Paul theater is in fact running this ad.

    I also have a family member who works at this theater and I do not know if she could face any trouble if I were to do something as public as a Facebook event. (I have never done anything like this before, mind you.)

  6. Just got off of the phone with a manager at the AMC in Boston. He was clueless regarding this situation, and sounded totally surprised to hear about it.

    Basically, he told me that all decisions regarding their “pre-show” are made at the corporate level and that they have no control, locally, over what gets shown there.

    I tried to be polite and let him know that his company had just stepped on a landmine, so to speak, and warn him that my call might not be the last one he gets regarding the issue. But, again, he said that there’s really nothing he can do.

    His suggestion was to try to contact AMC at the corporate level, so I will suggest the same to the rest of you whose local theater is owned by them — are these ALL AMCs?

    Anyway, the manager suggested that we leave feedback on the corporate website — as @Sulis noted — or try to contact their media relations person, a move that might look stronger if done by the organizer(s) of your local skeptics group (if you have one).

    Otherwise, the next best suggestion I’ve got is to bring attention to this like Elyse said. Get in touch with local media and get them to talk about it. Pitch the story to your local news! They love controversy.

  7. I’m from the UK, so I’m unsure of the situation in the US with regards to advertizing. In the UK this could be reported to the Advertising Standards Agency who would nvestigate it, and in all likelyhood, ban it as being inaccurate and dangerous. Is there not a similar body in the US?

  8. I just used the contact form on AMC’s site that Skepchick reposted on FB. There’s a letter from a reader that outlines our concerns. You can ‘vote’ on that letter apparently. When I first got on the site it said ’13 people have this problem too’. By the time I finished logging my agreement with the complaint, it was up to 22.
    Now it’s almost 30.
    Update: It’s over 30 now. If everyone who reads this goes over there and throws their support behind this, or writes their own message, we can really get the numbers up!

    http://getsatisfaction.com/amc_theatres/topics/remove_the_unfounded_anti_vaccine_message_from_your_ads

  9. I think as responsible scientists, we have a responsibility not to simplify issues. Here’ the MSDS From the university of oxford
    http://msds.chem.ox.ac.uk/TH/thimerosal.html
    Clearly, because the dose is so small none of this presents a risk in normal use. However, it does present a problem in defending points 1,2, and 3 in your post.

  10. Small correction. [It’s hard to know the players without a guidebook]

    The lying, distorting anti-vaccination PSA was produced by SafeMinds (co-founder and executive director, Lynn Redwood RN MSN). SafeMinds stands for Sensible Action For Ending Mercury-Induced Neurological Disorders and was founded in 2000.

    The PSA is being promoted by Age of Autism, a fringe anti-vaccination website and the voice of Generation Rescue, the small subset of the autism community that believes (despite mountains of evidence to the contrary) that “autism is vaccine injury” .

  11. Doing a quick search, it appears that all of the theatres except 2 (Long Beach 26 and Pavillions 15) are AMC.

    I Googled the phone number to their corporate offices. Since it’s Sunday, they’re closed of course, and the menu options don’t hold much promise. But “3” is “leave a message for a national sales rep.” And waiting on the line leads to the reception mailbox (and on Monday, presumably a receptionist). 1-800-262-4849

    There is a direct contact form, although it forces you to specify a theatre, which probably just means redirection to a local theatre:
    http://www.amctheatres.com/contact/feedback.aspx?t=theatre

    This is their general contact info page (snail mail, anyone?):
    http://www.amctheatres.com/Contact_Us/Contact_Info/

  12. I also sent a complaint letter to their feedback form (and will be posting it as an open letter on my blog):

    I just heard about your decision to show a PSA from the anti-vaccine group Safe Minds during the Harry Potter/holiday season. This decision is HIGHLY irresponsible. This so-called PSA contains misinformation and lies, advocates that people do not get vaccinated, & specifically targets high-risk populations like pregnant mothers.

    I realize that, as a private business, you have the legal right to accept a paying client and play their commercial on your screens. I also recognize that you can get out of any culpability or accountability by posting a disclaimer somewhere that says the messages in those commercials do not reflect the views held by AMC. But playing this particular PSA is a public health danger. You will be personally contributing to the increased deaths of children this holiday season by allowing this message to reach your audience.

    I find this reprehensible & will avoid all AMC theaters until this PSA is removed. More info: http://bit.ly/9xkmk4

  13. Elyse, have you tried contacting fellow skeptic Roger Ebert? Something tells me he might have more pull in the movie industry than anyone here does.

    In fact I have sent a link to this article to Mr. Ebert and a handful of lesser know reviewers on Twitter. I suggest a Twitter bomb to Mr. Ebert. A syndicated voice against this idiocy would be helpful.

  14. My local theater (AMC River East) gave me their corporate and guest services numbers and suggested I call them. I did, and was able to register a complaint with people there. For anyone interested, the numbers are:
    AMC corporate headquarters: 800/326.2432
    AMC guest services: 877/262.4450

  15. AMC is on Twitter: @AMCTheatres & @AMCHelps – I tweeted @ them with a link to my open letter in my blog, posted above

  16. You have a room where a lot of people will be sitting very close to each other and sitting in seats that have been sat in by who knows how many other people, and you don’t want them to get vaccinated? Really? Genius!

  17. @Orac: I just did a few calculations, based on the Wikipedia article about the 1918 flu pandemic and the US Census Bureau current world population estimate. (6.88 billion as of 2:58 PM EST, Nov 21, 2010)

    Imagine a picture of a football stadium, say Giants stadium, full of fans during a game. Captions “Giants Stadium” “82,566 Fans”, then fade to a shot of the empty stadium taken from the same spot, caption “Gone”. Repeat for a baseball game at Fenway Park, “37,402”, and several other well-known sports arenas. Then a voice-over. “The 1918 flu pandemic killed between 50 and 100 million people. We would have to go on like this for almost 3 hours to show all of them. If an equally severe epidemic happened today, it could kill almost half a billion people. At 5 seconds per stadium-full of 50 thousand people, it would take over half a day just to show them all on TV.”

    GET VACCINATED!

  18. @Buzz Parsec: The football stadium image was prompted by a mention in the Jason Goldman quote on your blog, but a more appropriate image might be a movie theater full of people. At 200/theater (a WAG about average theater capacity), and 5 seconds per theater, it would take over 4 months, 24 by 7, to show them all.

  19. What kind of person is most likely to catch a disease during an epidemic? How about someone who sits in a confined space with hundreds of other random, unscreened and unvaccinated people for an extended period of time?

    These theaters are trying to kill their own customers!

  20. I am confused by the anti-vax movement.. Are they just unaware that they are lying? What (other than people trying to sell alternative care) do they stand to gain? What are they trying to do by being so stubborn about vaccinations?

  21. AMC have theatres in OZ that I will be happy not to attend if their corporate parent company wants to be silly.

    Dennis

  22. The AMC complaint thread now has a post from Ryan Noonan, with the title of “Official Rep”:

    “Thank you all for your feedback. I know there’s a lot of passion shared on this thread today and I apologize for the short delay in response here.

    I want to assure everyone that AMC has no plans to air any ad or Public Service Announcement about the vaccination topic, nor has any ad or PSA about the issue been shown on our screens.

    Again, I appreciate you all taking the time to share your thoughts. I hope this clarifies the issue.”

    And it says “The company says this solves the problem.”

    I guess this means a win?

  23. Well, when they say “The company says this solves the problem,” I’m sure they mean it in the most pragmatic sense for them.

    It would be very nice for them to take a stance on the issue, rather than say “We’re not going to touch the vaccine topic.”

    However, if our efforts today, through making calls and voicing concerns on the feedback thread lead to the company stopping the ads, then I would count that as a win.

  24. I just looked briefly at the comment thread of the AoA post for the ad. A bunch of people posting that they were contributing money to put the ads up. My favorite comment, though, was from the AoA editor:

    “i think big pharma and the public health establishment have given us a “gift,” horrible as it is, by keeping thimerosal in flu shots. it’s happening now, and so it’s a good sharp target to go after. i think safeminds’ approach is smart and right on the money.”

  25. Hmm. Their response makes it sound as though they had never intended to run the ads in the first place. Which raises a few questions:

    Did AoA/SafeMinds fail to raise the appropriate funds to get these ads to play? OR, did AMC simply reject the ads for content reasons? OR, rather, are they only making it sound as though they’d never considered running them, and our pressure WAS the actual cause?

    I mean, in truth I’m happy with the decision. I don’t think it’s really a cinema’s job to push one side or another of this issue, even if only one side (OURS!) is right. Simply put, a captive audience in a movie theater doesn’t have the tools at hand to make an informed decision, and if an ad in the theater is enough to sway you, one way or the other, then there’s bigger issues at play with you!

    So yeah, AMC’s hands-off approach sits just fine with me, ethically and legally. But I WOULD like them to drop all of the commercials and piracy warnings… think we can make that happen, too? ;)

  26. @Expatria: I asked AMC if theatres program their own local ads, and they responded that they do show ads at the local level, but that all their pre-show programming goes through a company called National CineMedia, which appears to specialize in putting together those pre-shows. So if there are any questions about ads being vetted for AMC, they might be the people to talk to.

  27. The request link to remove the ad now features a big old “problem solved” note from Ryan Noonan (an “official rep”) stating the following:

    “AMC has no plans to air any ad or Public Service Announcement about the vaccination topic, nor has any ad or PSA about the issue been shown on our screens.”

    Well, then, sir, how on earth are people seeing it at your theaters? *Sighs*

  28. @interplanetary: Interesting! I wonder, then, if the AMC spokesman is speaking on behalf of what they accept from National CineMedia… or, perhaps, he doesn’t actually know what sort of ads National CineMedia will have pulled down for them.

    Still, the guy SOUNDS confident that they won’t be airing any such thing, so I guess all we can do is keep our eyes open. If any of you are near these theaters and happen to see a movie on or after Thanksgiving, let us know what you see!

  29. Now what about the theater that belongs to the Regal Entertainment group, Long Beach 26 in Long Beach, California?

    I would assume the complaint should come from someone who lives there, like the one started for AMC.

  30. Woot, it’s nice to have a win even if it’s a small one.

    We use AMC for the sensory-friendly movies for our kid so I was really worried they’d go all weirdo-vax-Autism-link and insist on it, so it’s super-duper-extra-awesome to see a company that caters to the autistic community AND refutes the anti-vaxers.

  31. Hi Tina,

    I am confused by the anti-vax movement.. Are they just unaware that they are lying? What (other than people trying to sell alternative care) do they stand to gain? What are they trying to do by being so stubborn about vaccinations?

    Safeminds, Generation Rescue, Age of Autism, and their followers believe with near-religious fervor that autism is caused by vaccinations; that their children with autism were perfectly normal until something in vaccines–the story has morphed over time, from mercury to “too many, too soon” to “toxins”– stole their perfect children away.

    Once you understand that the “autism = vaccine injury” crowd’s beliefs are more like religion and less like a reasoned opinion based on evidence, the picture becomes a lot more clear.

    On to the next thing: It’s not clear how much SafeMinds has raised, but I think itis less than $6,000. With AMC’s refusal to air the PSA I don’t think they will get much market penetration.

    I hope we don’t all think, OK, the job’s done!

  32. JRose@41:

    Well, then, sir, how on earth are people seeing it at your theaters? *Sighs*

    The ad was posted to YouTube on October 8 2010 & has been embedded on a number of sites, and promoted on a number of anti-vaccination discussion lists.

    So that’s where people were seeing it, not as a PSA in an AMC theater.

  33. I’d look on this as a win. I’m wondering if AMC didn’t come to the realization that running a “PSA” that is counter to stated public health policy and medical advisories might not get them into some hot water if there were…repercussions traceable back to viewing the PSA. I think it’s likely inadvisable from a legal standpoint to run ads that urge viewers to behave in ways that are counter to medical advice…or that give medical advice. Think of the contortions pharma goes through in their ads, with their “Ask your doctor about…” There’s a reason for that.

    This was interesting to watch…it grew from a few tweets this morning into a 1600+ crowdsourced negative voice letting AMC know the issues…and resulted in what looks like the right outcome…all in one day, on a Sunday no less.

  34. @Elyse: Damn right!

    Thanks for bringing this to the blog. I passed the link to JREF. I assume others passed it here and there. Together, we can reach a lot of people in a short time.

    Skeptics Rock!

  35. This PSA is awful. It is filled with misinformation and misleading images. I have sent my complaint to AMC.

    That being said, let’s try to remain intellectually honest, please.

    The PSA doesn’t say not to get vaccinated. It doesn’t say vaccines will kill you. It says, incorrectly, that Thimerosol is dangerous, and encourages people to get Thimerosol-free vaccines.

    SafeMind are assholes, but let’s not be assholes, too, by portraying them as a type of asshole that they aren’t.

  36. Damn. One of the AoA commenters said she left a pile of their brochures next to the “Flu shots here” sign in my local Target a few days ago. I was.just there last night, but didn’t see them, or I would have put them to “creative” use.

  37. I see this post has a couple of edits in it already… but I live right across the street from the Rosedale 14 and can get in contact with the local skeptics organization. So what’s the final word on this? Should we still contact someone or has it all been done already?

  38. @Piebold

    I like your thinking, it’s just that in recommending that pregnant types “don’t take the risk; demand mercury-free vaccines,” SafeMinds is telling them not to get it. The non-thimerosal-containing vaccine is not available for the preggerated, and SafeMinds knows this. It seems they mean “Demand mercury-free vaccines by not getting a flu shot.”

  39. jct2626, do you often go into movie theaters and yell “Fire!” just for fun?

    Oh, the First Amendment does not really pertain to private companies. Did you notice the words it starts out with: “Congress shall make no law…”

  40. For your information:
    Thimerosol contains mercury. Mercury is neurotoxin. Ask any scientist. It’s not debatable, it’s a fact.

  41. @Jacks22: Way to totally ignore factors like chemical form, metabolic rates, epidemiology and quantity. No wonder I think antivaxers are idiots or liars.

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