In light of recent outbreaks of measles and other vaccine preventable illnesses, and the refusal of anti-vaccination advocates to acknowledge the problem, I thought it was past time for this post.
Dear parents,
You are being lied to. The people who claim to be acting in the best interests of your children are putting their health and even lives at risk.
They say that measles isn’t a deadly disease.
But it is.
They say that chickenpox isn’t that big of a deal.
But it can be.
They say that the flu isn’t dangerous.
But it is.
They say that whooping cough isn’t so bad for kids to get.
But it is.
They say that vaccines aren’t that effective at preventing disease.
But 3 million children’s lives are saved every year by vaccination, and 2 million die every year from vaccine-preventable illnesses.
They say that “natural infection” is better than vaccination.
But they’re wrong.
They say that vaccines haven’t been rigorously tested for safety.
But vaccines are subjected to a higher level of scrutiny than any other medicine. For example, this study tested the safety and effectiveness of the pneumococcal vaccine in more than 37,868 children.
They will say that doctors won’t admit there are any side effects to vaccines.
But the side effects are well known, and except in very rare cases quite mild.
They say that the MMR vaccine causes autism.
It doesn’t. (The question of whether vaccines cause autism has been investigated in study after study, and they all show overwhelming evidence that they don’t.)
They say that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism.
It doesn’t, and it hasn’t been in most vaccines since 2001 anyway.
They say that the aluminum in vaccines (an adjuvant, or component of the vaccine designed to enhance the body’s immune response) is harmful to children.
But children consume more aluminum in natural breast milk than they do in vaccines, and far higher levels of aluminum are needed to cause harm.
They say that the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (and/or the “vaccine court”) proves that vaccines are harmful.
It doesn’t.
They say that the normal vaccine schedule is too difficult for a child’s immune system to cope with.
It isn’t.
They say that if other people’s children are vaccinated, there’s no need for their children to get vaccinated.
This is one of the most despicable arguments I’ve ever heard. First of all, vaccines aren’t always 100% effective, so it is possible for a vaccinated child to still become infected if exposed to a disease. Worse, there are some people who can’t receive vaccinations, because they are immune deficient, or because they are allergic to some component. Those people depend upon herd immunity to protect them. People who choose not to vaccinate their children against infectious diseases are putting not only their own children at risk, but also other people’s children.
They say that ‘natural’, ‘alternative’ remedies are better than science-based medicine.
They aren’t.
The truth is that vaccines are one of our greatest public health achievements, and one of the most important things you can do to protect your child.
I can predict exactly the sort of response I will be getting from the anti-vaccine activists. Because they can’t argue effectively against the overwhelming scientific evidence about vaccines, they will say that I work for Big Pharma. (I don’t and never have). They will say that I’m not a scientist (I am), and that I’m an “Agent 666” (I don’t know what that is, but I’m pretty sure that I’m not one).
None of these things are true, but they are the reflexive response by the anti-vaccine activists because they have no facts to back up their position. On some level, deep down, they must understand this, and are afraid of the implications, so they attack the messenger.
Why are they lying to you? Some are doing it for profit, trying to sell their alternative remedies by making you afraid of science-based medicine. I’m sure that many others within the anti-vaccine movement have genuinely good intentions, and do honestly believe that vaccines are harmful. But as a certain astrophysicist recently said “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it”. In the case of vaccine truthers, this is not a good thing. Good intentions will not prevent microbes from infecting and harming people, and the message that vaccines are dangerous is having dire consequences. There are outbreaks of vaccine-preventable illnesses now throughout the United States because of unvaccinated children.
In only one respect is my message the same as the anti-vaccine activists: Educate yourself. But while they mean “Read all these websites that support our position”, I suggest you should learn what the scientific community says. Learn how the immune system works. Go read about the history of disease before vaccines, and talk to older people who grew up when polio, measles, and other diseases couldn’t be prevented. Go read about how vaccines are developed, and how they work. Read about Andrew Wakefield, and how his paper that claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism has been withdrawn, and his medical license has been revoked. Read the numerous, huge studies that have explicitly examined whether autism is caused by the vaccine…and found nothing. (While you’re at it, read about the ongoing research to determine what IS the cause—or causes —of autism, which is not helped by people continuing to insist that vaccines cause it).
That may seem like a lot of work, and scientific papers can seem intimidating to read. But reading scientific articles is a skill that can be mastered. Here’s a great resource for evaluating medical information on the internet, and I wrote a guide for non-scientists on how to read and understand the scientific literature. You owe it to your children, and to yourself, to thoroughly investigate the issue. Don’t rely on what some stranger on the internet says (not even me!). Read the scientific studies that I linked to in this post for yourself, and talk to your pediatricians. Despite what the anti-vaccine community is telling you, you don’t need to be afraid of the vaccines. You should instead be afraid of what happens without them.
Edited to add: This video is an outstanding summary of many of these issues. I encourage you to watch it.
“Humans try to make sense of the world by seeing patterns. When they see a disease or condition that tends to appear around the time a child is a year or so old, as autism does, and that is also the age that kids get particular shots, they want to put those things together. Parents watch kids more carefully after they get shots. Sometimes they pick up on symptoms then. Just because two things happen at the same time doesn’t mean that one caused the other. This is why we need careful scientific studies.”
Note: For people coming via a direct link, please also feel free to participate in a follow-up discussion
here.
1/13/15: Edited to update broken hyperlinks. If you find any additional broken links, please don’t hesitate to let me know. –JR
4/19/16: Edited again to update more broken hyperlinks. If you find more, keep letting us know and we’ll keep fixing them. –CM
Violent metaphors 
Sorry, Jennifer, your articles will never, ever change the mind of someone who chooses not to vaccinate themselves or their children. Never. All you are doing is just making pro vaxers more angry. Us uneducated non vaxers are fueled by articles like this. You cant stop the so called anti vaccine movement. Every point you mention I have heard time and time again. No new news here.
That’s actually not true–I’ve heard from a number of parents who changed their minds. Your movement isn’t quite as homogenous as you think.
Vaccines are so safe that a Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) exists which is shielded from normal legal procedures such as discovery. But it’s for the children, right?
Vaccines come from the same “science” that has brought us genetically modified food, which has no long term negative effects, right? So eat up and get your new FDA approved vaccine which allows you to not wash your hands after using the restroom.
Vaccines also come from the same “science” that has produced antibiotics, airplanes, space travel, anesthesia, and the computer you wrote this on. That same “science” actually says that it’s a very good idea to wash your hands after using the restroom. I hope you do so.
Oh, and if you’re curious about what the VICP actually does, check this out: https://violentmetaphors.com/2013/11/22/why-anti-vaxers-hate-the-nvicp-and-just-what-is-it-anyway-by-colin-mcroberts/
What the (VICP) does is protect the pharmaceutical industry from liability. That is a luxury a maker of a drop side crib does not have. One product causes injury it gets pulled and the maker gets sued into bankruptcy, the other product has the protection of a administrative process all the while allowing the product to remain in use. Do you understand what moral hazard is?
Yes! Thank you! Let’s ask Toyota or GM what happens when they have a defect in their product which they choose to do nothing about.
We have much better data about the safety of vaccines than just about any other mass-market product. Even if we assume that the NVICP removes litigation liability as an incentive (which is an overblown claim, since defective manufacturing and failure to warn cases can still be brought in normal court), that only matters if it results in a less-safe product. The data suggests that isn’t so.
A few thousand people have been compensated by the NVICP, even though most of them (everyone with a table injury) didn’t even have to prove causation–just that they suffered their injury after getting a vaccine. That’s like the difference between having to prove that your sugarless sweetener caused your cancer, and having to prove that you got cancer after eating sugarless sweetener. One is vastly easier than the other. NVICP claimants also get free lawyers, which is an incentive to bring claims before the vaccine court that wouldn’t ever have been heard in normal court.
In other words, even though NVICP claimants get free counsel, have less to prove than normal court plaintiffs, and recover money more often than normal court plaintiffs, only a few thousand claims have prevailed despite the many millions of vaccines given in that time. That is a very safe product–I think any crib manufacturer would give his right arm to have a product that safe.
(This isn’t because the NVICP refuses to pay on claims, either. About fifteen thousand claims have been filed since 1988, if I’m reading the numbers correctly. VAERS estimates that well over 10 million vaccines are given each year. Even if *every* NVICP claim paid out, and that would certainly be paying on claims where the vaccines did no harm at all, we’d still be talking about 15k compensable events for well over a quarter-billion doses. That’s a safe product.)
That’s a little misleading. Vaccines are so safe that the VICP exists without making plaintiffs go through discovery, which is (and I speak from extensive personal experience) a grotesquely expensive and time-consuming process.
Plaintiffs go through discovery in order to prove their case. But NVICP claimants don’t have to prove anything other than that they got a table injury after getting a vaccine. Discovery would cost plaintiffs time and money without helping them at all.
No thanks. I will choose not to blindly follow you or Colin. Go ahead and change the minds of people who would rather folloe someone else than think for themselves. For those of us who think beyond linear thinking, let us be.
I would also prefer that you not blindly follow anyone. I would much rather that you educate yourself on the science and data and make a rational, informed decision to vaccinate because it is the safe and effective way to protect yourself and your children.
I’ll take the risk of making a comment as someone who walks a line between. My children are vaccinated, with the exception of the flu vaccine. Given the prediction to actual success rates and the flu’s mutation ability, THAT I see as a rather worthless vaccine.
However, polio, pertussis, MMR, etc…all of it we vaccinate for BUT I have simply requested a Thimerisol free dose. It has been as simple as asking my pediatrician’s office about the vaccine they use, and what it contains. I do see that as a happy medium. Pharma companies aren’t stupid from a consumer standpoint. They do produce vaccines without the concerning adjuvants and preservatives…you just have to do your homework and ask about it…not eschew vaccination all together.
That said, I cannot say which companies offer what…only that I talked things over with my pediatrician and this is where we ended up. I feel it is comfortable as well as responsible. Let the flames begin 😉
In the US, Thimerosal hasn’t been used in childrens’ vaccines for years. It is still used as a preservative in adult vaccines.
I should clarify that I was referring to childrens’ MMR vaccines.
Perhaps I should clarify…it (Thimerosal) was still being used when my children were undergoing their initial vaccinations. I chose to ask for those without. My intention was to make a suggestive inference that, there may be options available without ingredients parents might find objectionable for whatever reason. One does not know unless they research and ask…this is our duty at the bottom level. Not to throw the baby out with the bathwater entirely.
That is so totally NOT true. It is still in the flu vaccine and several other childhood vaccines. Do the work and visit the CDC website. The info is right there for you to cast your eyes on.
That is so NOT true. It was removed from a couple, but flu and several other childhood vaccines contain thimerosal. Go to CDC website and look up the ingredients for yourself. It’s right there if you bother to look.
I look at the flu and the flu vaccine this way: The Flu kills. THe vaccine does not. I’m not willing to risk death in my child, or my family or someone else’s grandmother standing in line at the grocery store.
Unfortunately, what you say is not true. The flu shot has killed people. My nephew almost died, but we were lucky. He survived and now is in a wheel chair and is deaf.
I feel like the people believing all these shots are “safe” never encountered a personal experience. I think if they did, they would think twice about all these “facts” they are throwing at us. I know A LOT of horror stories and that made my mind up. I’ve had the flu. I’ve had chicken pox. I’m still alive and fine.
Yeah, because some nutjob’s anecdote TOTALLY negates actual science.
Go back to before the vaccines existed and you’ll have no problem finding people who personally experienced the actual diseases.
Try explaining to them that you don’t believe in vaccinations that save millions of lives because you knew someone who had an adverse effect but lived. Does that make any sense?
And how did polio, the mumps, rubella, and lock jaw work out for you?
I am one of those people who have had a severe adverse reaction to a vaccine. I went through 4 years of hell after having had a severe neurological reaction to the Swine Flu Vaccine in 2010. I now have a pacemaker, undergo frequent IV therapy and take 10 prescription medications a day. However, my children when I have them WILL still be vaccinated. I don’t have any predisposed genetic reasons for why my body reacted the way it did. It was a fluke in an otherwise relatively sound system.
As a health care professional in training, I understand that medicine is NOT an exact science but we’re doing everything we can to make the world a healthier place. I sympathize with and understand the people who make sure their children’s vaccines are adjuvant and preservative free and applaud them actually doing research. I am even completely understanding of the people who use the alternative vaccination schedules to spread out the childhood vaccines a little more.
I do not sympathize with people who believe the unverified research of people who are little more than fear mongers. I do not sympathize with people who put other people’s children and their own children into harms way because they can not look at the facts. There ARE some adverse reactions to vaccines, yes, just as there are some adverse reactions to medications, foods and many other things in our lives. Autism is NOT linked to vaccines. There are more children being diagnosed with it for many reasons, mothers are having children much later in life, our diets are crap and filled with all sorts of chemicals that are NOT good for us, AND this is the kicker we are better able to diagnoses this disease. We recognize it earlier and are better equipped to diagnose it. Just like any disease, the more we learn about it the better we get at diagnosing it, making it seem like an increase in the disease but really its just an increase in Diagnostic abilities. I know several adults who have lead fairly normal lives but have always been socially withdrawn from the public. They were all diagnosed with Aspergers late in life because it wasn’t as recognized when they were children.
While Jonas Salk did not win the Nobel Prize for the Polio vaccine it was only because it wasn’t until three other scientists figured out how to mass produce the vaccine by growing the virus in embryonic tissue. They were able to affect enough of the world that they did receive the Nobel Prize. This is because the Polio virus was and is horrible. We have forgotten the horrors of debilitating viruses and diseases sweeping the globe because of vaccines. We have become complacent. I pray that more people realize this before we have an outbreak of something that is easily preventable.
If you think your child’s immune system is healthy enough to fight off these diseases on its own then its darn well healthy enough to handle a weakened version of the virus in a vaccine.
Let us look at personal experiance. I am medical personal working in Africa. In the last 2 months alone I have dealt with both Polio and lockjaw cases (tetnus). The word nearly is not placed infront of died in these case. They just plan died (a few of the polio and both of the lockjaw) others with polio have varying forms of disability.
Measles outbreaks (common in refjugee camps) cut wide and dangerous swaths. These are just a few recently.
I would put forth that it is in fact you that lack the personal experiance. And this is simply a sign of living in modern times. BECAUSE of vaccinations you have never had to have personal experiance with the horror that are these pathogens.
Now in the case of the flu you must differentiate between seasonal and the ‘pandemic’. Seasonal (what we all get every couple years and feel miserable for a week) still kills tens of thousands in North America alone every year. However these are almost exclusivly the very young, the very old and those with compromised immune systems.
For seasonal flu I recommend the very young and very old and medical personal get it. I would further suggest teachers and those exposed to groups probably get it. The rest I leave to their personal judgement
The ‘pandemic’ such as H1N1 etc. target otherwise healthy individuals, often it is your own immune response that kills you. Now in this case to look at a simplistic statement ‘I have had the flu ….I’m still alive and fine’ Shows tremendous ingnorance of realitivly recent history.
The spanish flu (1918-1919) killed far more than the entire first world war. an estimated 25 million in the ‘west’ alone some reasearchers suggest that India alone had 25 million deaths.
Far more than all the famous plauges (such as the black death) combined. This is the flu when it gets nasty. It has in the past, it will again. We now have vaccinations to help fight it, to turn you back on these in such an event would be the highest act of ignorance.
As with any medication or vaccine a small number (extremely small) will react badly to it. This could be said about not only any medication but any product. And for all of those who say ‘all natural’ the all natural peanut has a reaction rate far greater than any vaccine.
In short the fact that you know someone who was in the extreme minorty who had a reaction is in fact tragic, it however is not imperical evidence against vaccinations.
@Canuck your points are valid but you and wildflower aren’t speaking the same language. She doesn’t rely on your version of evidence to make her decisions. Tragic personal experiences are powerful as I am sorry you have to encounter yourself. She is making a decision based on her evidence. I understand that the common view on here is that her view puts everyone at risk. But widely dispersed man-made chemicals is not without risk. Our wildly out of control population growth puts us all at risk but is anyone criticizing the science community for not doing more? The evidence is all there… yet we choose different decisions, ones we’re more comfortable with. Burning fossil fuels puts us all at risk… but are most policy makers really cracking down on the oil industry? Why not? The evidence is all there.. well it is more comfortable and profitable to turn a blind eye for as long as possible.
The thing I think I hate the most when people sling poop (not saying you’re doing that but generally that seems to be the theme du jour on here) at people wary of vaccinating their children is that they are targeting individuals for one arbitrary (arguably less safe) decision when private industry, our governments, and policy makers do this on a scale that makes this issue practically laughable in its comparable effect ratios.
You crew are well read and support empirical evidence. If I am correct, then you need to start actually adopting this mental framework and apply it to the bigger picture here; you are most certainly barking up the wrong tree. Advocate for change where it matters and stop picking on a random few individuals. They are likely making the decisions they are because we have been abused so many times by manipulative lawmakers, money-crazed private industries, and exposed horrific cover-ups of research gone awry in times past. These misgivings and reliance more on personal experience and anecdote than industry and policymakers have natural origins. Fix the source.
Car seats kill people too, very rarely. That’s not an argument not to put your child in car seats.
But to pro-vaccination advocates, your nephew is a fair price to pay for the common good. “Better to be deaf and in a wheel-chair than to be dead!” I hear them retort… Because that’s the kind of logic they possess.
No, but better one dead kid than thousands.
http://jennymccarthybodycount.com/Anti-Vaccine_Body_Count/Home.html
Also, I know people who are deaf and in a wheel-chair, or blind and in a wheel-chair, or any of a million other ways to be different from you, and let me tell you IT’S BETTER THAN TO BE DEAD.
Shame on you for suggesting that my friends would be better off dead than differently abled.
Great point!
Sorry, Anonymous (not quite brave enough to reveal any identity?), but it is NOT a great point or even a sensible one. The assumption that anything – in science, medicine, life – is perfect and foolproof is absurd. The attribution of callous indifference by Rosa Jo above is manipulative and devious.
Suggesting something should not be used because it is imperfect is wonderful logic, isn’t it?
PS. Ever had an auto break-down?
One good case of the flu, and you’ll be getting the flu vaccine. That is, if you are lucky enough to survive.
Lucky enough to survive?! Are you serious? The survival rate of flu infection is not that low friend. Who’s fear mongering here?
The Man flu has an astoundingly high death rate.. It is a world wide phenomenon :p
The way you hoop-de-doos carry on about the totally-true holo-pocalypse death rates of vaccines because of all those anecdotes you make up on the fly, you’d think the actual existing death rates of the flu would cause you all to go out of your minds. But then again, that’s what willful ignorance and hypocrisy does to a person.
I’ve had influenza twice… its a virus like a cold.. yes i was very ill but i survived and so do most… I still know its safer to not have the vaccine and yes SCIENCE does back the dangers of vaccines… you are not stating research here just opinion ….trying to scare people into getting shots they dont need… proper hygeine is what cured most of these illnesses….
So are you saying that washing your hands can cure small pox, polio, mumps, measles, and all the other otherwise fatal diseases? Do you know how insane that sounds? I am so sick of people who listen to Jenny McCarthy and value her fear based opinion over actual science.
Hi I’m a parent of four children. I have two very ill children too. We all have all our immunisations plus flu shots every year to help keep
My two sick ones safer and trust me its what has saved them
Many many times over. If it weren’t for my disabled daughters flu shot two years ago when she got human pneumo virus and was on life support five weeks she wouldn’t have survived because she was covered for the worst part of the flu virus that would of hit her too.
I support immunisations and flu shots 100%
They aren’t immunizations they are vaccinations
Pedant
Those two words mean the same thing. You are being immunized against a pathogen by the vaccine that is administered.
To be pedantic, being immunized means to be 100% immune to said infectious organism. To be vaccinated is an attempt at immunization. As everyone should know, vaccinations obviously fails at this attempt quite frequently.
You are absolutely right. Autoimmune response is unpredictable and some people may be genetically pre-disposed. There are plenty of studies correlating the rise in autoimmune diseases like Type 1 diabetes to vaccinations. I’m type 1 diabetic and whatever genetic component to that disease may have been passed on to my kids. I’d go with vaccinating them with the ones I have the most confidence in and the ones that have the highest risk to benefit ratio but I’d avoid multiple vaccinations at once and that kind of thing. It makes sense to me that the immune system will react more predictably that way. Anti-vaccination on the basis of government conspiracies or religious beliefs is silly, obviously, but just injecting your kids with every product the industry throws out there also seems unwise.
“I’m an evilutionist but you have to admit those crazy creationists have a point. I believe the controversy should be teach-ened.” Your faux-skepticism tricks nobody.
The fact that you cannot spell “evolutionist” is quite telling…………
Those of us who read about creationists/ID and scientists know that was *satire*. Creationists depict people who accept evolution as evil, and their more extreme elements will indeed call us evilutionists. As far as “teaching the controversy”, there is no controversy about evolution in science- teaching creationism a.k.a. “intelligent design” in a science classroom is simply introducing religion where it should not be… The comparison is apt; the satire is cutting. Well done, Mr. Rubino.
My Kids Mom,
Do you know what researchers use to induce asthma in lab animals. They mix adjuvants (aluminum compounds) with egg albumin. What do you find in most vaccines? Adjuvants and eggs. We have an epidemic of asthma that has grown up with the vaccines. But that is only the beginning. They mix collagen with adjuvants to induce arthritis in lab animals. Since they use chick embryos for vaccines do you think that there might be collagen in the connective tissue of the chick embryo? There is definitely adjuvants. Could that be responsible for the epidemic of juvenile arthritis?
Adjuvants are in nearly all vaccines. They force the immune system to do things that it otherwise would not do. We have an epidemic of all autoimmune diseases and the medical community can’t figure out why. They will never figure out why if they do not look at the vaccine epidemic.
I have done my homework and I wish I had done it earlier. I am 60 now. I will never be vaccinated again. I wish I never vaccinated any of my children.
And what is the dosage level in those injections, compared to vaccinations (and you have to factor in the body mass of the animal, too)?
Don’t drink water, die. Drink ~2 liters a day, stay hydrated. Drink ~2 liters per hour for an extended period, and you overstress the entire digestive tract, causing long term damage. Drink 10 gallons in a “water chugging” contest, and die.
We have an epidemic of immune issues that covers the vaccine globe and the time of the vaccine schedule and we have the same crap that is used to induce autoimmunity in lab animals injected dozens of times into our children before they are 5. But I am supposed to bow to your vaccine god and believe that there can’t possibly be a connection.
Sell that to someone else.
Why don’t you google the “hygiene hypothesis” and learn a little bit about why people in 1st world countries, but not 3rd world countries (where they still have vaccines – shocker!) get asthma. You’re ignorance spreads incorrect knowledge, and ultimately infectious diseases that are 100% preventable.
On the other side, would you rather have asthma or polio? Why don’t you think about the alternative for once?
Why don’t you google hygiene hypothesis debunked.
I’ll google hygiene hypothesis debunked as soon as I’m done googling “autism caused by vaccinations”! If you don’t believe in science & fact, then this article is clearly not for you.
Correlation does not equal causation but causation cannot be without correlation. Google scholar autism and brain inflammation. You will find paper after paper showing inflammation in autistic brains – chronic inflammation. So if I want to look for the cause of the autism epidemic I have to look for something that covers the world, grew in the last 30 years and causes inflammation in the brain.
Vaccines cover the world. The vaccine schedule grew in the last 30 years. Vaccines are injected into the body where the blood stream will carry their ingredients to the brain. They contain inflammatory chemicals including phenol, formaldehyde, aluminum compounds, polysorbate 80 and others.
Like it or not it fits the profile. To debunk this theory you would have to run a statistical experiment that compares the fully vaccinated population against a control group that has never been vaccinated. This has never been done. It is deemed “unethical” by pro-vaccine researchers who can’t deprive anyone of the good of vaccines.
I am still waiting for someone to name something else that fits the profile. Maybe you can be the first.
@the ed. Could you please cite some papers on RAD and immunization? I’m a researcher and most interested. Otherwise, I’m afraid I’m going to have to treat your rants as another lovely case of the Dunning-Krueger effect
My point is that we have the mechanism for causing autoimmunity in vaccines. The adjuvants are not specific. The statistics correlate the mechanism with the outcome.
I do not believe your statement that you are a researcher and are interested. If you were you would look for yourself. But you can be proud of the “gravitas” you earned by using a big word.
They could be running that study here in British Columbia but the popluation of kids that weren’t vaccinated in the Fraser Valley are passing measles around. May I ask your reflection on how this would affect the study you proposed?
Passing to whom? If vaccinations really work as advertised then it should be to themselves. The “immunized” should not be getting measles. Yet they consistently do.
I grew up with the measles, the mumps, the chicken pox as rites of passage. Children get sick and they get well. If that was not true you would not be here.
“I grew up with the measles, the mumps, the chicken pox as rites of passage. Children get sick and they get well.”
And many die.
Statistics show that vaccinations drastically impacted the rates of death, with a much smaller rate of deaths due to vaccines. Therefore statistically it is safer for everyone if the vast majority of people vaccinate.
Some people choose not to vaccinate their children so they will not be exposed to the (very small) risk of vaccine injury or death, but yet these children still benefit from all the other parents who willingly vaccinate for the good of the whole.
The ones who died had other issues such as malnourishment and other illnesses. These are also susceptible to the mal effects of vaccines.
I am still looking for the statistics you point to for the impact of vaccines. I don’t see it.
Your last statement assumes that someone who is immune cannot be a carrier. That is not true either.
In some cases vaccination means the vaccinated is not a carrier, and in some it doesn’t. But since a large number of people are vaccinated a disease will die off because the main agent a disease uses to spread from one person to the next is the sypmtoms it generates in the host. A person with an infectious agent in their blood is not highly contagious. A person coughing and spluttering or with weeping sores is highly contagious. Being a carrier is not the same thing is having the disease active in your system. Overall, herd immunity does exist.
Regarding the statistics of diseases prior to intorduction of vaqccines, you haven’t looked very hard. Are you reading this thread? It’s been mentioned before. The CDC has a lot of literature on infection rates. Changes in hygiene or diet only occasionally correlate with introduction of vaccinations. Infact in Africa many vaccination programs are introduced as much because it has been shown that when childhood survivability increases birth rates drop – so with less mouths to feed, better nutrition can actually follow vaccination programs rather than lead it.
Please look at the statistics for childhood death in the early 50’s. You will find that vaccine preventable illness was hardly discernible in the numbers. The Salk vaccine was introduced around 1955 which was the beginning of today’s vaccine schedule.
The adjuvants in vaccines are not specific. They command the immune system to do what it otherwise would not do. There is clearly a mechanism for adjuvants to cause autoimmune illness. There is clearly an epidemic of autoimmune illness. Please cite the study that compares fully vaccinated against unvaccinated and shows that there is no relationship between vaccinations and autoimmune illness.
I do not believe that the good of the whole is served by inducing autoimmune illness in more than 10% of the population ( a long lasting if not permanent illness) to prevent childhood illnesses that take a few days to get over. If I was starting a family I would not allow my children to be the cannon fodder in that battle.
You may say that I do not know that vaccines cause autoimmunity. There is a mechanism, there is correlation and there is no evidence to the contrary since there is no comparison of fully vaccinated against unvaccinated. For this I choose to believe that vaccines cause autoimmunity. You are free to choose otherwise. But please, don’t mandate other parents join you. You bear no responsibility for other children’s health outcomes.
The Ed-So you have a doctorate in immunology or biochemistry? You do realize that they use eggs for some vaccines as a cheap incubator-they are not injecting homogenized eggs as a vaccine. The virally infected eggs undergo extensive cleanup after they are harvested to remove exogenous proteins and leave you with only the virus.
When they use ovalbumin to induce reactive airway disease, the animals are immunized a couple of times with ovalbumin-then receive several doses directly into their airway. Last time I had eggs I don’t recall snorting them. Scientists actually have to work pretty hard to break tolerance.
I’ll also state that correlation does not imply causation.
Yet another Dunning-Kruger effect.
Really? So if I have an egg allergy I have no fear of an allergic reaction from the egg proteins? Not according to the vaccine inserts.
“When they use ovalbumin to induce reactive airway disease, the animals are immunized a couple of times with ovalbumin-then receive several doses directly into their airway. Last time I had eggs I don’t recall snorting them. Scientists actually have to work pretty hard to break tolerance.”
And how many times do they use ovalbumin to induce the reactive airway disease? How many times are kids shot with adjuvants and ovalbumin?
Correlation does not equal causation, but correlation is necessary for causation. Vaccines correlate over geography and time. There is a mechanism for vaccines to induce any number of autoimmune diseases. It has never been tested. (Testing would require a control group that never got vaccines and that according to the pro-vax research funders would be immoral so it will never be funded) So what makes you so certain that vaccines do not cause asthma and other autoimmune diseases. Do you have any evidence? Do you have anything else that correlates and has a mechanism?
No, of course not.
I know what the Dunning-Kruger effect is. What do they call a “professional” who acts like he knows more than he really knows?
You’re the proposing the hypothesis. Give me a mechanism. Are we breaking tolerance by killing suppressor cells? Are we generating cross reactive antibodies? Are we generating auto reactive T-cells?
You know what else correlates over time and geography with autoimmune disease? Increased longevity, automobiles, improved sanitation, increased population density, reduced exercise. All make an equivalently strong argument.
You know what really revs up an immune system? An overwhelming bacterial or viral infection. Certainly certain diseases are sequale to infections. Myasthenia gravis onset is frequently preceded by a viral infection, Rheumatic Heart fever by streptococcal infection. Strangely enough, people who live in dirty environments do seem to have a lower incidence of autoimmune disorders, but, since we don’t know what causes autoimmunity, or for that matter tolerance, distinct mechanisms are hard to come by.
Perhaps you should ask the researchers who came up with using aluminum and egg albumin to induce asthma.
The truth about aluminum or any other adjuvant is that it is not specific. It can be used to get the immune system to react to many different types of proteins. Unfortunately, some of these proteins are naturally occurring in the body. Researchers have also induced arthritis by injecting aluminum with collagen. We not only have an epidemic of asthma, we have an epidemic of juvenile arthritis.
Your argument about longevity, increased population, reduced exercise, autos, and improved sanitation is a straw man. The problem you face if you want to continue with the vaccine schedule is that vaccines provide mechanisms for autoimmune disease as well as correlating in space and time. None of the items you listed provide such a mechanism.
The second problem for you if you want to continue the vaccine schedule is that the onus is on your side to prove the safety of vaccines. Since the proofs that vaccines are safe use adjuvants in the controls, the proofs are bogus. The only way to prove the safety is to use controls that are only given saline.
Given the fact that autoimmunity can manifest itself long after the triggering event, the only way to be sure that vaccines are or are not causing autoimmunity is to compare the fully vaccinated population against the never vaccinated population. Am I wrong in the assumption that you do not support such a study?
Thimerisol isn’t the big problem. The big problems are aluminum and early. Injections into infant mice and rats of either vaccine relevant amounts of aluminum or antigens to provoke a strong immune response during critical periods of brain development, both cause substantial brain damage. Epidemilogical surveys show similar effects, for example regressed across the 34 countries with lowest infant mortality rate, for each 7 vaccines in the schedule, there is an extra 1/1000 infant mortality. The US has 26 vaccines before 1 year and IMR of 6.2
I have written a survey article on the safety of early adjuvanted vaccines, which cites, and links, dozens of mainstream journal articles showing danger, and pretty well establishes as well that there are no cogent articles in the peer reviewed literature supporting safety of early adjuvanted vaccines. The Pediatricians are mistaken about the science.
Dr. Raff,
Thank you very much for your thoughtful, comprehensive post including helpful links to actual scientific literature. I am a registered nurse on a respiratory unit in a children’s hospital in an area of the country that has had recent pertussis outbreaks. I am an acute care nurse only, so while I have never watched a baby die from pertussis, I have treated several, and sent them to higher levels of care. Recently one of them never came back from the PICU. Even those that do endure an unbelievable amount of suffering. Witnessing that has led me to believe, like the Penn and Teller YouTube video above, that even if vaccines did cause autism, I would still vaccinate.
I really think it is time that we start focusing on other areas of research surrounding autism that could also have causative links. For example, the recent study in Finland that found that mothers who took folic acid supplements while trying to get pregnant instead of waiting to increase their intake until after they found out they were pregnant, were 40% less-likely to have children with autism. Also the studies that found that children in the United States are born with upwards of 300 chemicals in their bloodstream that have never been tested for neurotoxicity in fetuses. These are important areas that could lead to actual causes of this disease. I also agree with a previous poster who stated that many adults go under-vaccinated. It was not until I went to nursing school that I had titers drawn that showed I was no longer protected against Hep B. I also received a Tdap booster when I got my job. My titers showed something else. The levels of varicella antibodies in my bloodstream were so high that the test result said I was still infected. This was due to a particularly nasty chicken pox infection that I endured as a child where I lost my ability to walk until the disease resolved. I would not wish that on anyone, and my mother wishes we had had the chicken pox vaccine so she didn’t have to watch it, because while I was too young to remember being sick, those images have been with her and my father for the last 27 years.
In response to tonyarn above, I am also a Libertarian. I have great respect for individual liberties. I do think we are over-regulated, and there are too many useless laws trying to put limits on our personal freedoms. Laws that try to impose religious and philosophical morals on those that don’t agree with us. I do not care what other people do as long as their actions, “neither break my leg nor pick my pocket,” as Thomas Jefferson put it. On the surface, not getting vaccines for your children seems like a choice that doesn’t effect anyone else, but what if one of your unvaccinated children who is old enough to handle contracting pertussis without a hospital stay, walks into a Walmart, Target, Supermarket, Theater, or some other public establishment, and accidentally transmits it to a baby that is too young to be vaccinated for it, and will be seriously and adversely affected by the disease. These effects will, at best, lead to hospitalization, and at worst, end in death. That falls under Thomas Jefferson’s limit on personal liberty, as far as I am concerned.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment.
Dr Raff. The idea that you can equate what is ingested with what is given in a shot is absurd. The absorption of aluminum compounds through the gut has been measured and it is only about 0.3%.
Go to the nephrologists papers. Aluminum is toxic in the blood stream at 60 mcg/L. Dementia occurs at levels from 150 – 350 mcg/L. The first injection (HepB) gives 225 mcg to a baby whose blood volume is only 1/3 L. It is given in the muscle is the hope that it will leak into the blood stream slowly. If it does not I don’t know how it will not cause brain damage.
This level is worse for children at two months who get 1200 mcg in a single visit.
The other side of this is the removal of aluminum from the body by babies whose kidneys are not fully developed.
All of this leads me to ask if there is any data on aluminum levels in babies’ blood stream after vaccination. I can’t find any. Since you already know that the aluminum compounds are safe you must know of some papers where the levels have been measured. Could you please let me know where I can find such data?
I find it amusing that they are only thoughtful when they agree with you 😉
But you just criticized me for critiquing some points that someone who agreed with me made…
I wouldn’t criticize you. You seem very intelligent and passionate from what I know but I am aware I don’t know much about you at all! I may have disagreed with something you said, that’s all.
I am in no way insulting your decision to vaccinate. But you are forgetting a few important facts regarding that baby who is too young to receive the full dose of the DTap vaccine. MOST adults are NOT up to date on this booster. In order fot “herd immunity” to exist, 90% or more of the population needs to be up to date on boosters. The population is not. So that baby is technically in danger of most adults and a tiny percentage of children. Way more children are caught up with their vaccines than adults. So that baby is more in danger from other adults, not other children. So that baby should probably not be in public at all, if you truly believe vaccines are that effective. People need to stop blaming the children. Blame the adults if you must. Back before the vaccine, mothers who caught such diseases offered antibodies to their breastfed babies and most babies avoided these diseases until later in childhood. But we humans, playing God, interfered with that.
I’m not familiar with these statistics, but let’s assume that you’re right that most adults aren’t up to date on these boosters. That’s not a good reason to leave a child unvaccinated. Quite the opposite, it’s a good reason to protect the child with a vaccine since they can’t rely on herd immunity.
Wow, sorry, but the cognitive dissonance in your mind must be staggering. If breast milk was so effective, then how come vaccines were needed to practically rid the world of pertussis, polio, etc. etc. Why have people who became vaccinated been consistently better off ever since vaccines were first introduced? How can we have ruined this incredible immunization-sharing effect when vaccines have always been more efficient than breast-feeding?
Sorry, but these diseases were on a steep decline before vaccines. Go to the CDC and see for yourself.
In the decade prior to the licensure of live measles vaccine in 1963, an average of 549,000 measles cases and 495 measles deaths were reported annually.[8] However, almost every American was affected by measles during their lifetime; it is estimated that 3-4 million measles cases occurred each year.[9-13] Following implementation of the one dose measles vaccine program, there was significant reduction in the reported incidence in the United States by 1988 resulting in decline in measles-related hospitalizations and death.[13-15]
Copy-pasted this strait off of the CDC website. It seems your claims were just untrue
I went to the CDC to see for myself and this is what I saw:
http://tinyurl.com/c3n79kn
In the years before the measles vaccine was introduced, the annual measles figures never dropped below 350,000 cases per year. Five years after the vaccine, they were down below 50,000 cases per year. By 1980 measles had almost completely disappeared.
Your claim that vaccine preventable diseases were in “steep decline” before vaccines is entirely false. Your own source, the CDC, confirms this.
Tell me, does this revelation in any way change your thinking on the issue? If not, why not?
Thoger Kari,
Are they better off? Have you seen the autism epidemic? Have you seen the asthma epidemic? Have you seen the juvenile diabetes epidemic? Have you seen the juvenile arthritis epidemic? Have you seen the epidemic of food allergies? Have you seen the epidemic of skin allergies? Have you seen the epidemic of celiac? Every category of immune issues are at epidemic levels. The adjuvants in vaccines are by definition non-specific. That is, they can make the body respond to just about anything. Do you think that our epidemic of immune issues could be related to all of the adjuvants that we have been shooting into our children?
I don’t think you understand the meaning of the word epidemic. You’re also forgetting until about 20 years ago autism often went undiagnosed. With the “diagnosis” of autism by many doctors (who may or may not be correct, it is not an easy disorder to diagnose), numbers rise. That has nothing to do with vaccinations. Additionally, juvenile diabetes is a direct result of sugar consumption. I mean seriously, do you just pick & choose what disease you like to focus on & then blame vaccines?
Please take a course in immunology, your lack of understanding of how the body responds to pathogens vs. autoimmunity & allergies is clearly influencing your thought process about this subject.
If by juvenile diabetes you mean Type 1 Diabetes, the traditional diabetes that usually begins in childhood, it has NO relationship whatsoever to sugar consumption; it is due to autoimmune destruction of the beta cells in the Islets of Langerhans in the pancreas. In fact, no form of diabetes is the result of eating too much sugar — adult onset or Type 2 Diabetes has a strong genetic component (runs in families far more clearly than does Type 1 diabetes) and the trigger for developing high blood sugars is usually long term obesity that makes the inherited abnormalities of insulin production lead to inadequate insulin effects and high blood sugars.
I don’t think you understand the meaning of the word epidemic. (You should google it. You will find that I use the word correctly.)
You’re also forgetting until about 20 years ago autism often went undiagnosed.
(No. I know what autism is and it did not exist at the level we see now.)
With the “diagnosis” of autism by many doctors (who may or may not be correct, it is not an easy disorder to diagnose), numbers rise.
(No. It is not diagnostics that has made the number of cases rise. It has been the rate change. If you do not believe that there is a change in the rate then you do not believe what the CDC is saying.)
That has nothing to do with vaccinations. Additionally, juvenile diabetes is a direct result of sugar consumption.
(You have confused type II which is a dietary issue with Type I which is an autoimmune issue.)
I mean seriously, do you just pick & choose what disease you like to focus on & then blame vaccines?
(I am focused on the aluminum adjuvants. They force the body’s immune system to do what it otherwise would not. They are non-discriminating. They are used to force autoimmune disease in lab animals.
You start with the premise that vaccines are safe and effective. I do not. The preponderance of evidence says that vaccines and autoimmune are linked. I choose to believe that they are.)
Please take a course in immunology, your lack of understanding of how the body responds to pathogens vs. autoimmunity & allergies is clearly influencing your thought process about this subject.
(This is an ad hominem attack and not worth the time to respond.)
I was serious about the immunology course, I think most of the adult population could do with a good foundation in science (especially when informing themselves about this hot topic), which I find to be lacking in our public school system. Then again, I am very biased about that issue because I work in scientific academia.
I’ve seen all the above “epidemics.” All I will say about the supposed relationship between them and vaccinations is to point out the oft-ignored truth that correlation does not equal causation, and that anecdotal evidence is just that, anecdotal.
All the evidence I’ve been presented with has been correlative, but couldn’t prove causation. Wakefield’s autism study has bee thoroughly debunked and he’s been drummed out of the medical community in disgrace. Most of the “articles” I get sent or that show up on my Facebook feed as evidence of the evils of vaccination are opinion pieces whose sources are typically other opinion pieces. I’ve had to go back three or four levels sometimes to get to an actual study, and typically those show correlation but again, no causation. The rest of the articles are made up of anecdotes of people claiming damage to their children because of a vaccine. Again, anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, and can’t be used as scientific proof unless you gather enough of them and control for other variables that may have an effect
As a parent my heart goes out to these parents who are just looking for explanations. However, those who use pseudo-science to prey on them deserve nothing more than contempt.
This just means that you are stuck with the paradigm that vaccines are safe and effective.
Correlation does not equal causation but correlation is necessary for causation. Vaccines correlate with autoimmune over time and geography and they correlate in that the same chemicals that are used to force autoimmunity are injected with almost every vaccine. If you can find something else that fits the autoimmunity epidemic like vaccines name it.
Meanwhile any study that would confirm or debunk this would require that the fully vaccinated population gets compared with the unvaccinated population. It will never happen. “It would be unethical” according to the pro-vaccinating researchers.
I choose to believe that vaccines cause autoimmune issues. I will not risk my body to vaccines.
Are these epidemics happening in other countries where vaccines are given?
Of course
Citation please?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1773315/
http://lup.sagepub.com/content/15/5/308.short
There are many papers that show the worldwide autoimmune epidemic.
Here is what anti-vaccine people are not getting, The Ed, at a fundamental level. “Google U” web browsing is not enough. Since the anti-vaccine people are coming to the opposite conclusion of the medical people and scientists who _wrote_ the articles, the ant-vaccine crowd do not understand how to read and interpret that scientific literature. They may be smart, they may be college educated, they may even work in a related field like nursing, but they are not remotely qualified to say that vaccines do not work nor say that vaccines are more dangerous than the full-blown diseases they prevent. Look up “Dunning-Kruger effect”. Smallpox was eradicated by vaccination. Polio is nearly eradicated, but for the efforts of a few thousand fearful. Measles could be eradicated, and once was nearly wiped out from the USA. It would be a major self-inflicted wound for humanity, for the loud and fearful anti-vaccine crowd to bring back deadly diseases from the brink of extinction, and sadly not just for themselves but for innocent victims including their own children.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is not what scares me. It is the Paul Offit effect. The one where he knows things are true which really are not.
He knows that aluminum is not a problem for injection since it is in the environment.
He knows that from the Eli Lilly study on thimerosal a grown man should be able to take as much as 2000000 mcg of thimerosal.
He knows that vaccines can’t possibly cause autoimmune issues.
He knows that vaccines can’t possibly cause autism.
He knows that babies can take dozens of vaccines in a single day with no ill effects.
Give me the Dunning-Kruger effect any day.
He knows what the research shows. You know what you read on a blog somewhere. Only one of you knows what he’s talking about; I suspect it’s the trained infectious disease specialist who’s reviewing the scientific literature.
The Ed, why do ID specialists, immunologists, and pediatricians overwhelmingly support vaccinations and vaccinate their own kids? Are they too stupid to understand things on your level, or too corrupt? Are they mind-controlled by the aluminum industry, shills for ALCOA?
If you are a researcher go ahead and write a paper that impugns vaccines. It will effectively end your research career.
The vaccine industry puts adjuvants in their placebos when they test for the safety of vaccines. How does that prove that vaccines are safe?
Aluminum has been studied by the nephrologists because of dialysis dementia. It has also been studied as a contaminant in the IV feeding solutions for premature babies. Both study groups impugn aluminum and thus impugn vaccines. This is ignored by the pediatricians and other pro-vaccination groups.
Are they stupid, corrupt, mind-controlled shills of the vaccine industry? I don’t have any answers on their motivation. I don’t support vaccines and apparently you do. So you tell me – why do you ignore the evidence against aluminum?
You haven’t given me any evidence against aluminum, at least in vaccines. Just wild speculation.
No, I have just given you evidence against intravenous aluminum. You on the other hand have given me no evidence that the blood levels of aluminum don’t rise after vaccination. Maybe you can explain how the aluminum gets from the vaccine site to the kidneys without raising the aluminum levels? Maybe you can tell me how it is controlled so that blood aluminum levels never reach toxic levels. I don’t see the mechanics as wild speculation. The “wild” infers that the probability is low. Given the numbers that you don’t like to see me calculate I don’t see a low probability.
Your calculations are based on assumptions, and cannot be any more valid than those assumptions are. One of the biggest is your assumption that aluminum in vaccines goes straight into the blood; you have multiple experts here, on hand, telling you that it’s not true, but you aren’t listening. You aren’t analyzing data, you’re trying to construct a rationale for maintaining an opinion you had before you started doing the math.
Your casual calculations, based on numbers you googled and clearly understand only vaguely, don’t trump the analysis of actual experts. That’s one reason why I keep asking for something objective, like clinical findings of elevated aluminum levels in infants or even adults that would validate your calculations. You haven’t found them; you might not even have looked, since you don’t need to in order to maintain your present beliefs.
In actual fact, it appears that aluminum levels don’t rise perceptibly in vaccinated infants. See http://www.chop.edu/system/galleries/download/pdfs/articles/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-ingredients.pdf, citing (inter alia) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12184360.
JerryA,
Your argument is called an ad hominem attack. If you can’t debate the argument you should stay out of it.
Amen
you are adding to this problem
A Child is overwhelming exposed to other children than to adults on a regular basis.School or daycare etc. They are around relatively few adults during the day. I don’t have a scientific article to back that up but I mean…. I shouldn’t need one it is so obvious. I mean one day at school can expose them to hundreds of other children and maybe a dozen adults.
What if you choose to go on a permanent diet (as, say many women do, though I’m sure many men are vain and ignorant enough to do so too) and your metabolism is in the toilet as a result and your immune system too. Perhaps you stroll into Walmart on a weekly basis with your persistent cold (that at times progressed to acute bronchitis, pneumonia, sinus infection etc) and you infect an immuno-compromised individual unintentionally? Or a baby?
The analogies are endless if you think about it.
http://www.inquisitr.com/1196339/flu-vaccines-raise-controversy-this-season/
Just don’t know what to believe anymore.
The popular news item you linked has a good example of false equivalence. People with no qualifications whatsoever were given equal time (or more time) that public health experts who do medical research. That manufactured controversy is the sign of a lazy reporter or an editor more interested in increasing readership (and selling ads) than informing you about what is really going on in the world. So, how can a non-expert tell the difference between a real medical controversy and a fake one? In this case, read from experts directly, including Jennifer’s post, above. Vaccines, including flu shots, save lives and do little to no harm.
I stopped reading this article once I read:
“They say that ‘natural’, ‘alternative’ remedies are better than science-based medicine.
They aren’t.”
Then you decided to stop learning. How sad.
Well…they aren’t. Deal with it.
That’s funny so did I… I thought the beginning was also full of bs as well… I have never heard such claims. And if she was so smart in her research and the study of medicine then she would know that most all science-based medicine is made from that ‘natural alternative remedies’. Such a shame people go to school for this and are taught to hate on the holistic doctors. Being close minded brings about ignorance and you’ll never learn anything for yourself except follow and believe other close minded people. Just because someone has a title behind their name does not make them an expert by all means… And clearly this post shows it.
I can remember when modern day doctors would lose their license if they were caught befriending or talking to a chiropractic doctor (as they were quacks) and now that more than 80% of the United States goes to a chiropractor, now all modern day doctors want a piece of the action… Where they feel they can take a couple of classes and now are an expert of the spine… They are now trying to push chiropractors to prescribe modern medicine… I think not.
So needless to say she has no clue what she’s talking about… A blinded follower who will probably eat her words in 10-20 years time. We can certainly benefit and get the best care by integrating the best from both worlds.
References, please, for your claims about the percentage of US citizens who see chiropractors and for the percentage of physicians (doctors of medicine – MDs – & doctors of osteopathy – DOs – [and DOs learn how to do “spinal adjustments” and such, though of the ones I’ve known, only one ever offered to do an adjustment on any patient they saw) who are “wanting a piece of the action”. Also, please, a reference documenting the physicians who lost their licenses only because they befriended a chiropractor. I’ve been paying pretty close attention to the people who practice medicine since I graduated from my nursing program in 1969 — and I’ve never heard of this happening.
I DO remember the ads in the backs of the comic books I read as a kid offering correspondence courses in chiropractic. I ALSO remember the man at my church who trusted the chiropractor until the man became paralyzed from the waist down when he finally saw a medical doctor only to be referred to a neurosurgeon who removed the large malignant tumor from his spine but was unable to do more than briefly prolong his life and keep his pain more or less controlled. Earlier accurate diagnosis and treatment might have saved his life.
Some chiropractors do EXCELLENT work helping people with back and spine related pain when that pain is not caused by a surgically correctable problem. Some chiropractors claim to cure bacterial ear infections with spinal adjustments and advocate “colonic cleansings” that can leave a person with life-threatening electrolyte imbalances.
where are all the references for the claims in the original article – they are mere statements with no support.
Did you miss the part where every single one of them linked to things to support them?
Look closer.
There are links, but there is no logical case. For example, the links on the amount of aluminum ingested, yes its true the amounts ingested are comparable to the vaccine amounts. But 99.75% of the dietary aluminum is pooped out before it ever makes the blood stream, so infants actually gets hundreds of times as much aluminum from vaccines as from diet. I’ll post an abstract below. And animal studies show injecting aluminum into neonate mice causes severe developmental problems.
I’ve surveyed the literature and written a paper that cites dozens of peer-reviewed papers arguing early vaccines with aluminum are dangerous. And I challenge you, Jennifer, to provide a single citation to a peer-reviewed paper providing cogent evidence early vaccines with aluminum are safe. Note in my paper I debunk a few candidates. They are fine papers, they just don’t apply to the aluminum issue.
—–
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20010978
J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol. 2010 Nov;20(7):598-601. doi: 10.1038/jes.2009.64. Epub 2009 Dec 16.
Infants’ exposure to aluminum from vaccines and breast milk during the first 6 months.
Dórea JG1, Marques RC.
Author information
Abstract
The success of vaccination programs in reducing and eliminating infectious diseases has contributed to an ever-increasing number of vaccines given at earlier ages (newborns and infants). Exposure to low levels of environmental toxic substances (including metals) at an early age raises plausible concerns over increasingly lower neuro-cognitive rates. Current immunization schedules with vaccines containing aluminum (as adjuvant) are given to infants, but thimerosal (as preservative) is found mostly in vaccines used in non-industrialized countries. Exclusively, breastfed infants (in Brazil) receiving a full recommended schedule of immunizations showed an exceedingly high exposure of Al (225 to 1750 μg per dose) when compared with estimated levels absorbed from breast milk (2.0 μg). This study does not dispute the safety of vaccines but reinforces the need to study long-term effects of early exposure to neuro-toxic substances on the developing brain. Pragmatic vaccine safety needs to embrace conventional toxicology, addressing especial characteristics of unborn fetuses, neonates and infants exposed to low levels of aluminum, and ethylmercury traditionally considered innocuous to the central nervous system.
To the average parent, the studies referenced in the author’s various links, are likely going to give an air of ‘conclusiveness’ in the absence of the entirety of vaccine research.
In a survey it was illustrated how in one US county, most doctors and health practitioners were confused about vaccine adverse event reporting procedures, naturally resulting in an underreporting of serious side effects. I wonder how this may effect the numbers that tell us adverse events are “extremely rare”.
Also, medical school offers only a cursory introduction to vaccinations and student doctors do not learn about serious side effects. A significant number of parents to vaccine-injured children report having difficulties communicating to their doctors about serious complications following vaccinations, even when complications arise immediately after. To illustrate, a friend had her baby vaccinated and after the nurse left the room, the child started having seizures. While the mother stayed with the child, the father ran around the clinic trying to find someone to help. Fortunately the seizures stopped after a short time, but when the nurse finally returned and upon hearing about the seizures, she merely said “that’s impossible”. They didn’t check the baby out, nada.
Similarly, I wonder how the rate of serious complications (including death) following natural infection of measles, is effected by comparing only to the number of *confirmed* cases of measles and not to the real number (which can only be estimated of course). I’m not sure how various data for measles complications are calculated, but at least in the study below, it was done with confirmed cases.
Between 1971 and 1975, mortality rate from measles “were inversely related to median family income.” (Measles Mortality Rates in the United States 1971-1975. Engelhardt)
Maybe safe to say that any disease is more deadly when combined with poverty?
Because DO’s are technically considered holistic doctors. And have had their fair share by MD’s they were not smart enough to pass medical school and chose the route of a DO. Ummm sounds like someone needs to do their own research staying open to ALL sides of the house!
FYI: Both MD’s and DO’s hold equivalent degrees. Both attend medical school with a similar curriculum (except DO’s are also taught Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment). Both are highly competitive to get in to. It is not a matter of not being smart enough to go into an MD school so instead you go to a DO school. Some applicants select DO schools over MD schools. It is a matter of preference. So its not DO<MD it is DO=MD. I just wanted to shed some light on that because it is a common misconception.
What you say may be true as far as most mainstream medicines having their roots in folk remedies and “alternative” medicine. The pharmaceutical establishment takes those things and validates them with science. They then become mainstream. Those that are left behind that are tested and NOT validated remain in the realms of “alternative” medicine.
That doesn’t imply anything good about alternative medicine. Neither does the popularity of chiropractics. Popularity is not a rational criterion for a medical practise.
What do you call alternative medicine that works? MEDICINE. If there is an effect, it can be reproduced, and it’s safe, it gets used. Herbalists found effects from plants like foxglove (digitalis/digoxin), sweet clover (coumadin), willow bark (ASA precursor), and cinchona tree (quinine) hundreds of years ago. All that the medical/pharmaceutical industry has done with those NATURAL cures is QA on the dosing and the process, so there aren’t wild swings in the range of active ingredients given — some have a narrow therapeutic index, ineffective below a certain amount, toxic above. So that which remains alternative is alternative FOR LACK OF EVIDENCE. Edward Jenner noticed milkmaids who got cowpox, didn’t get smallpox; and smallpox WIPED OUT 90% of the Pre-Columbian American (North and South) societies. It was a folk remedy, that because of evidence, has probably saved HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of lives in the last 200 years.
Do you see the light blue wording in each of the points made in the article? They are links to scientific studies and evidence that support the argument the author is making. Did you bother following any of those links and evaluating the information for yourself? Or are you so emotionally dependent on your belief system that you refuse to investigate any information that might threaten you views?
I think the point was not to rely on an alternative method of protection against these diseases, but to get vaccinated. I didn’t take it in the context that it seems some did; that all holistic medicine is not effective.
This is laughable! First you say you quit reading the article, then you accuse the rest of us of being close minded. YOU don’t need to read and seriously consider the viewpoint of others, but anyone who doesn’t consider YOUR viewpoint is “close minded.”
Hypocrite, much?
‘Natural’, ‘alternative’ remedies that have been scientifically proven to be effective are just called ‘medicine’ e.g. aspirin (and other salicylates) found in the bark of the willow tree and digoxin, derived from the foxglove plant.
@Jenniefer – caise amd [point. This is exactly why polarised arguments like this do the opposite of what you are attempting to accomplish. These polarised statements spark ire among the already converted, not necessarily provoke thoughtful reflection and an eventual change of opinion. I appreciate the research, as most people do here, but just soemthing to think about.
sorry about the typos… “case and point”
Vaccines are just one of six pillars of modern medicine and public health. Antibiotics, pasteurization, sanitation, vitamins, antiseptics, and vaccines have saved and will continue to save and improve billions of lives. Billions.
If you want to know the difference they make, just go to an old cemetery. You’ll notice how many children are buried there. Sometimes entire families worth. Often with cute little headstones. Many died so young they never even got a name; just buried under “Infant”. Then go to a newer cemetery. You’ll find few kids; most of whom died in auto wrecks anyways. The reason for the difference? The five biggest are:
Antibiotics, pasteurization, vitamins, sanitation, antiseptics, and vaccines.
People like to point out that we have words to describe people who lose their parents (orphan) or spouse (widow/er), but not one for parents who lose their children. That’s because we used to have a word: “parent.” Losing children was so normal it was just another part of parenthood. Nowadays, it’s extremely rare, because of the six pillars of modern medicine and public health: Antibiotics, pasteurization, sanitation, vitamins, antiseptics, and vaccines.
No moral person would deny their children the first four… so why the fifth?
The first five pillars are why these diseases were on the steep decline before vaccines were introduced. I am all for safe and effective vaccines. We have not reached that point yet.
Then how do you explain the fact that smallpox was eradicated from the third world? They don’t have good sanitation in the third world, or good hygiene, or good nutrition, or pasteurisation, or vitamins, and, of course, antibiotics don’t work on smallpox. That pretty much just leaves the vaccine, doesn’t it?
So tell me, where did smallpox go?
Also, may I ask in what way you are qualified to judge the safety of vaccines? Virologist? Epidemiologist? Immunology PhD? School nurse? Anything? Anything at all?
They weren’t in steep decline. That is a myth perpetuated by anti-vaxers.
Evidence?
I’ll throw in polio as well – it was JUST RECENTLY eradicated in South Asia (including India where sanitation, water supply, and good hygiene is not common practice). The eradication of polio is all because of a vaccine, there is literally no other argument for it.
The rates of Autism would appear to exceed the average number of these “outbreaks”. 1 in 64 children are diagnosed with autism while the outbreaks rarely exceed 65 total children in a large area well in excess of the 1,000 person standard. Of those who get a communicable disease many were vaccinated and few of those who get them ever die. However Autism is a life sentence for child and family and well as society. People who use the trite quip of “even if vaccines caused autism, I’d still vaccinate” need to go volunteer for 1 month in a school for autistic students. The growing use of titer tests is to be applauded and should be mandatory before administering any vaccines
Also the technicality war of cause vs. trigger needs to be revamped. All vaccines come with warning inserts, which are rarely offered to parents because the vaccine comes out to the child in a shot not a bottle. What do the vaccines inserts say? Most vaccines warnings say that high fever and/or encephalitis can result. High fevers, encephalitis etc…are known symptoms that if they do not abate quickly can trigger permanent brain damage which may not be technical “Autism” but the resulting damage leaves a child acting very “autistic”. So while the vaccine escapes direct causal linkage the direct link to trigger is very real. A fuse doesn’t cause an explosion but a bomb doesn’t detonate without one triggering the reaction.
I find it disturbing that people who call themselves “scientists” can look at the warnings and known possible damage and still say they are ok ignoring them in light of the sharp increase in autism rates. Don’t give me the “better diagnosing” bull either. Saying we are being lied to when we can extract the facts right from the vaccine manufacturers warnings deserves public shaming and an open apology! Don’t try to say everyone is operating on a touchy feeley level or is selling homeopathic alternatives and can’t argue on facts and science. The manufacturers have already provided the science. They warn against the severe reactions to limit liability, which is a joke anyway since congress has created a protected/sequestered vaccine court that does not adhere to normal court standards and admission to present a case there is one of the most grueling and time consuming processes in our legal system.
Oh well here’s just a few common vaccines and the warning label reactions:
Flu vaccine: increased rates of fever, febrile seizures, Guillian-Barré Syndrome, anaphylactic reactions, diminished immune response
Tdap – Fever, anorexia, vomiting, seizure, high fever, anaphylaxis, Long-Term Neurologic Reaction, Including Seizures, Coma, or Decreased Level of Consciousness, Permanent Brain Damage, Nodule, Arthus-Type Reaction, Brachial Neuritis, Peripheral Neuropathy, Hypersensitivity, Autism, Demyelinating Diseases, Encephalopathy, Guillain-Barré Syndrome, Hypotonia, Hypotonic/Hyporesponsive Episode, Cranial Mononeuropathy, Respiratory Tract Infection, Diarrhea. (IF YOU READ THIS LIST YOU’LL SEE AUTISM LISTED – which was removed from the label in 2005 but the vaccine has remained the same)
Gardasil: insane amounts of reactions and warnings do your own research
MMR : Panniculitis; atypical measles; fever; syncope; headache; dizziness; malaise; irritability., Vasculitis., Pancreatitis; diarrhea; vomiting; parotitis; nausea.Diabetes mellitus. Thrombocytopenia. Anaphylaxis and anaphylactoid reactions have been reported as well as related phenomena such as angioneurotic edema (including peripheral or facial edema) and bronchial spasm in individuals with or without an allergic history. Arthritis; arthralgia; myalgia. Encephalitis; encephalopathy; measles inclusion body encephalitis (MIBE) (see CONTRAINDICATIONS); subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE); Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS); acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM); febrile convulsions; afebrile convulsions or seizures;
ataxia; polyneuritis; polyneuropathy; ocular palsies; paresthesia
You are assuming that vaccines cause autism (or trigger it), but the evidence is that this is not true.
As for the vaccine court, as I’ve written here (and actual experts on the NVICP have written elsewhere) it is different from normal court in that it favors plaintiffs. The differences between the vaccine court and regular court make it easier, not harder, for people claiming a vaccine injury to win their cases.
It’s also easier to make them silent… and shielded from all public view, knowledge, or commentary.
In what way? Please be specific–I’d appreciate it if you’d cite to the rule or procedure you’re talking about. It’s an odd claim, since we’ve discussed multiple VICP cases in these comments.
Settlement negotiations often have a clause that no further action will be taken by the plaintiff and that details of the settlement aren’t published. Often all the public is informed of is whether the case was won, lost or settled out of court. So it puts these companies in the best possible light – particularly if they have a losing case. Agreeing to a settlement is not the same as publicly admitting guilt or taking responsibility but makes the threat go away so it’s superior to waiting for a judge to decide in the plaintiff’s favour and then have all the nitty gritty/dirty laundry out for all to see and gasp maybe even make their own well-informed judgements from for themselves. It’s a strategic public image tactic often used by many businesses that would prefer to sweep anything that makes them look bad under the rug than fight it to the end and risk losing
There are a few important points that occur to me in response to your comment. First, we’ve actually seen settlement documents leak from some of these cases. They were unexceptional, even in cases like the Poling child.
Second, the statistics for settlements are available, together with the total size of compensation (because the VICP is a government program instead of private litigation). We can see how many claims are filed, and how much has been paid on those claims, even in settled cases. The total size of compensation indicates that vaccines are much safer than virtually any other medicine or major product I can think of. Orders of magnitudes safer than riding in cars, for example, and every parent I know of puts their kids in cars.
Third, settlements in the VICP aren’t a strategy for the manufacturers to avoid looking bad. The manufacturers aren’t making any decisions in or for the VICP. It’s HHS, I believe, making those calls.
Please examine the data on adverse reactions to vaccines more carefully. Then do a careful search for the information to post here the following:
Per 100,000 population in this country determine:
1. Without vaccines, how many children would get tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, rubeola (measles), rubella (German or 3-day measles), or mumps (epidemic parotitis is the medical name), each year.
a. Then determine how many of the children who got each disease would, based on the well-known percentages, become permanently disabled or die from each disease other than the rubella. For rubella, examine the well known statistics regarding the birth outcomes for babies of non-immune mothers who get rubella during pregnancy. Carefully consider the percentages of the total 100,000 children involved who would be permanently affected.
b. Read the places on those package inserts that tell the percentages of persons vaccinated who suffer from those permanent outcomes.
THEN, decide where the odds are most in favor for your children.
Remember, nothing is 100% safe, but “hoping to goodness” that your child won’t get a disease is not theologically sound, nor does it make scientific or rational sense.
Here’s a link to the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health:
http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/package_inserts.htm
Just remember that the manufacturers are required to list everything that people SAID was possibly due to the vaccine — and that people do not have to PROVE diddly-squat in regard to their claims. Perhaps in your sheltered and privileged existence you’ve never known anyone who would lie about such a thing — but I’ve not been so blessed. On the other hand, I’ve also known individuals who were absolutely positive that “the doctor said” such and so when I was present during the interaction and heard something quite different. For how that can happen do a quick side search on Mondedgreens. Finally, remember the people who are desperate for “THE” answer to why their child developed a problem. Some of these folks will assign blame when the best possible answer is “nobody knows why these things happen”. I’m sad for those last people because it’s an awful situation, but I can’t let them convince me they their need to blame should overrule my need to know the facts.
Could you (or anybody else) provide a reference to a study of vaccination safety for serious side effects (like autism, paralysis …) in which the groups compared are 1) control group in which only saline was injected and no chemical or vaccine 2) control group in which injections were given with all the content of vaccines (perservatives and whatever is in there) except the active part of the vaccine and 3) a group of regular vaccine injections ?
I know that one of the claims of people advocating against vaccines is that there doesn’t exist such a study and that the only studies that do exist consist of groups 2) and 3). Such studies confirm that vaccines are effective in preventing the disease (generating the antibodies) and also show no difference in serious side effects’ rates (because groups 2 and 3 got all the potentially toxic materials) but the question remains how are the serious side effects rates’ of groups 2 and 3 in comparison to group 1 ?
What parent do you think would allow a child to be enrolled in such an unethical study? Would a parent who wants his/her child fully vaccinated consent to a study where the child was more likely to get a placebo than a vaccine? Would a parent who didn’t trust vaccines at all? Do you really think a group of faculty members from a school of medicine would allow such a study to be performed? Get real! There are numerous studies comparing outcomes for vaccinated versus unvaccinated children. If those won’t satisfy you, you’ll have to remain unsatisfied.
I don’t see it as more unethical than other studies which are being conducted like those which compare groups 2 and 3 in my original post, and like those there are loads. If I am not mistaken any new vaccine must undergo such tests, on human babies, in groups of thousands to tens of thousands.
Parents who refuse any vaccines at all will have no problem volunteering for the saline “treatment” ( and there are quite a lot these days) and as experiments comparing groups 2 and 3 are being conducted anyhow there shouldn’t be a problem there as well. Actually, it isn’t even necessary to include group 2 but rather compare just 1 and 3 (so no one needs the placebo vaccine).
Imagine that such a study is conducted and finds that there is indeed a significant difference of occurrence of serious syndromes between the saline group and the vaccinated and placebo vaccinated. If that is the case I think we will agree that serious side effects are underestimated and being intentionally repressed. We will also probably agree on the need for development of safer vaccines.
If there exists a study following the general outline of my comment I’d be glad to have some reference to it, Sadly, I think it doesn’t exist.
Sorry — obviously you’ve never spent much time observing or reading about well designed, reliable medical research. To do a study that will stand the tests for reliability and validity, you must have a “pool” or “sample” of subjects who meet the predetermined standards for age, sex, health history, and some socio-economic factors. Then you must get informed consent from the patients (or, in this case, the parents). Now, as each child enters the study, an investigator assures that the child is randomly assigned to get the injection from source a, b, or c — where the investigator and the person giving the injection have no way to tell what’s in the syringe — a different investigator has prepared the syringes — one container has the syringes filled with the saline, one container has the syringes filled with the components in the vaccine solution but not the vaccine, and one has the vaccine filled syringes. (Or there are 3 sets of vials, one set is labeled A, one set labeled B, and one set labeled C, and only the investigator who never sees the kids knows what’s in each set of vials from which the injections are drawn). Each child then gets the randomly assigned substance. NOW, the investigators track the outcomes for each child for the defined time frame — for this study I’d think the time frame would initially be quite long — at least a year, maybe longer.
To do an adequate study for finding what you want to find, you would need a LOT of patients and they’d need to be in different parts of the country so the results from your sample could be generalized to all American population.
My description is quite incomplete — however, to avoid investigator bias, to decrease placebo effect, and to decrease reporting bias (from the patients/parents reporting what they think/want to be true rather than a less emotional description of outcomes) — no one getting an injection or the parent of those children, administering the injections, talking to the patients about the injections, or evaluating the outcomes from the injections can know what solution which child received. Only the investigators looking at the data collected (with NO identifying information about the child except a number that makes it possible to later notify the parents which injection their child got) can compare outcomes from the different injections. If ALL of the precautions are not intrinsic to the study, the study is essentially worthless because someone involved can bias the data collection and scientists will assume at least some of that happened.
Some kinds of medical research designed to test medications to treat disease states have a slightly different set of requirements, but for the study you want all of the above is necessary if the study is to demonstrate any reliable and valid results. If you doubt my word, get a good book on how to collect data for a reliable study on almost any subject. You have to have a randomly selected sample for each arm of your study — you cannot have self-selected or physician-selected samples.
@ a reference for an important study-You obviously have no idea how these studies are conducted. You don’t volunteer to be in a particular group, you are randomly assigned to a group. In the best studies, neither the person receiving the treatment nor the person giving the treatment knows what is being given-all the treatments are formulated to look /taste/flow the same. After some time point (hours to years, depending on the drug and study) a third party breaks the code and figures out who got what and what their outcomes are. That way nobody actually involved in doing the observations is biased-they can’t be because they don’t know. That’s a double-blind study. Sometimes only the recipients don’t know what they are getting, but the person giving the treatment does (sometimes unavoidable, as in surgeries-it would be impossible for a surgeon not to know what he did). That’s a single-blind study. In no case does the recipient know what they are getting, because that would inherently bias what they report.
ralph and hancock, I am obviously less educated then you guys regarding the way such experiments are made but if indeed, for the reasons both of you stated, such an experiment can’t be conducted then the conclusion is that there is actually no way at all to scientifically prove beyond all doubt that vaccines (or the materials in them) may or may not cause serious adverse side effects. Furthermore, from experiments comparing groups 2 and 3, placebo vaccinated and vaccinated, it isn’t possible to deduce anything about vaccine safety since both get the same injections except the active part, the suspicion is regarding the adjuvants, preservatives and other chemicals and not so much about the actual weakened virus or whatever it may be.
” Get real! There are numerous studies comparing outcomes for vaccinated versus unvaccinated children.” – I’d be very interested in a reference to such a study if it is about outcomes in the sense of side effects and not the disease itself (I’m not arguing about the disease prevention aspect) and it compares completely unvaccinated people/children of similar socioeconomic status and other parameters ( inbreeding coefficient and the like) to fully vaccinated according to plan.
sorry I meant Scott and not ralph.
“There are numerous studies comparing outcomes for vaccinated versus unvaccinated children”Links please????
Be glad to oblige. From the clinical trial phase three for Gardasil:
Garland SM, Steben M, Sings HL, James M, Lu S, Railkar R, Barr E, Haupt RM, Joura EA. Natural History of Genital Warts: Analysis of the Placebo Arm of 2 Randomized Phase III Trials of a Quadrivalent Human Papillomavirus (Types 6, 11, 16, and 18) Vaccine. J Infect Dis. 2009 Jan 26; [Epub ahead of print]
Barr E, Gause CK, Bautista OM, Railkar RA, Lupinacci LC, Insinga RP, Sings HL, Haupt RM. Impact of a prophylactic quadrivalent human papillomavirus (types 6, 11, 16, 18) L1 virus-like particle vaccine in a sexually active population of North American women. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2008 Mar;198(3):261.e1-11.
Garland SM, Hernandez-Avila M, Wheeler CM, Perez G, Harper DM, Leodolter S, Tang GW, Ferris DG, Steben M, Bryan J, Taddeo FJ, Railkar R, Esser MT, Sings HL, Nelson M, Boslego J, Sattler C, Barr E, Koutsky LA; Females United to Unilaterally Reduce Endo/Ectocervical Disease (FUTURE) I Investigators. Quadrivalent vaccine against human papillomavirus to prevent anogenital diseases. N Engl J Med. 2007 May 10;356(19):1928-43.
Joura EA, Leodolter S, Hernandez-Avila M, Wheeler CM, Perez G, Koutsky LA, Garland SM, Harper DM, Tang GW, Ferris DG, Steben M, Jones RW, Bryan J, Taddeo FJ, Bautista OM, Esser MT, Sings HL, Nelson M, Boslego JW, Sattler C, Barr E, Paavonen J. Efficacy of a quadrivalent prophylactic human papillomavirus (types 6, 11, 16, and 18) L1 virus-like-particle vaccine against high-grade vulval and vaginal lesions: a combined analysis of three randomised clinical trials. Lancet. 2007 May 19;369(9574):1693-702.
Insinga RP, Dasbach EJ, Allen SE, Carides GW, Myers ER. Reductions in Human Papillomavirus-Disease Resource Use and Costs with Quadrivalent Human Papillomavirus (Types 6, 11, 16, and 18) Recombinant Vaccination: The FUTURE Study Economic Evaluation. Value Health. 2008 May 16; [Epub ahead of print]
Perez G, Lazcano-Ponce E, Hernandez-Avila M, García PJ, Muñoz N, Villa LL, Bryan J, Taddeo FJ, Lu S, Esser MT, Vuocolo S, Sattler C, Barr E. Safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy of quadrivalent human papillomavirus (types 6, 11, 16, 18) L1 virus-like-particle vaccine in Latin American women. Int J Cancer. 2008 Mar 15;122(6):1311-8.
FUTURE II Study Group. Prophylactic efficacy of a quadrivalent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine in women with virological evidence of HPV infection. J Infect Dis. 2007 Nov 15;196(10):1438-46. Epub 2007 Oct 31.
Ault KA; Future II Study Group. Effect of prophylactic human papillomavirus L1 virus-like-particle vaccine on risk of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2, grade 3, and adenocarcinoma in situ: a combined analysis of four randomised clinical trials. Lancet. 2007 Jun 2;369(9576):1861-8.
Giuliano AR, Lazcano-Ponce E, Villa L, Nolan T, Marchant C, Radley D, Golm G, McCarroll K, Yu J, Esser MT, Vuocolo SC, Barr E. Impact of baseline covariates on the immunogenicity of a quadrivalent (types 6, 11, 16, and 18) human papillomavirus virus-like-particle vaccine. J Infect Dis. 2007 Oct 15;196(8):1153-62. Epub 2007 Sep 17.
Garland SM, Insinga RP, Sings HL, Haupt RM, Joura EA. Human papillomavirus infections and vulvar disease development. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2009 Jun;18(6):1777-84.
Clark LR, Myers ER, Huh W, Joura EA, Paavonen J, Perez G, James MK, Sings HL, Haupt RM, Saah AJ, Garner EI. Clinical trial experience with prophylactic human papillomavirus 6/11/16/18 vaccine in young black women. J Adolesc Health. 2013 Mar;52(3):322-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2012.07.003. Epub 2012 Aug 15. PubMed PMID: 23299013.
Ruiz ÁM, Ruiz JE, Gavilanes AV, Eriksson T, Lehtinen M, Pérez G, Sings HL, James MK, Haupt RM; FUTURE I and II Study Group. Proximity of first sexual intercourse to menarche and risk of high-grade cervical disease. J Infect Dis. 2012 Dec 15;206(12):1887-96. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jis612. Epub 2012 Oct 12.
Joura EA, Garland SM, Paavonen J, Ferris DG, Perez G, Ault KA, Huh WK, Sings HL, James MK, Haupt RM; FUTURE I and II Study Group. Effect of the human papillomavirus (HPV) quadrivalent vaccine in a subgroup of women with cervical and vulvar disease: retrospective pooled analysis of trial data. BMJ. 2012 Mar 27;344:e1401. doi: 10.1136/bmj.e1401.
Haupt RM, Wheeler CM, Brown DR, Garland SM, Ferris DG, Paavonen JA, Lehtinen MO, Steben M, Joura EA, Giacoletti KE, Radley DR, James MK, Saah AJ, Sings HL; FUTURE I and II Investigators. Impact of an HPV6/11/16/18 L1 virus-like particle vaccine on progression to cervical intraepithelial neoplasia in seropositive women with HPV16/18 infection. Int J Cancer. 2011 Dec 1;129(11):2632-42. Epub 2011 Apr 13.
Lehtinen M, Ault KA, Lyytikainen E, Dillner J, Garland SM, Ferris DG, Koutsky LA, Sings HL, Lu S, Haupt RM, Paavonen J; FUTURE I and II Study Group. Chlamydia trachomatis infection and risk of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia. Sex Transm Infect. 2011 Aug;87(5):372-6. doi: 10.1136/sti.2010.044354. Epub 2011 Apr 6.
Ault KA, Joura EA, Kjaer SK, Iversen OE, Wheeler CM, Perez G, Brown DR, Koutsky LA, Garland SM, Olsson SE, Tang GW, Ferris DG, Paavonen J, Steben M, Bosch FX, Majewski S, Muñoz N, Sings HL, Harkins K, Rutkowski MA, Haupt RM, Garner EI; FUTURE I and II Study Group. Adenocarcinoma in situ and associated human papillomavirus type distribution observed in two clinical trials of a quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine. Int J Cancer. 2011 Mar 15;128(6):1344-53. Epub 2011 Jan 12.
FUTURE I/II Study Group; Dillner J, Kjaer SK, Wheeler CM, Sigurdsson K, Iversen OE, Hernandez-Avila M, Perez G, Brown DR, Koutsky LA, Tay EH, García P, Ault KA, Garland SM, Leodolter S, Olsson SE, Tang GW, Ferris DG, Paavonen J, Lehtinen M, Steben M, Bosch FX, Joura EA, Majewski S, Muñoz N, Myers ER, Villa LL, Taddeo FJ, Roberts C, Tadesse A, Bryan JT, Maansson R, Lu S, Vuocolo S, Hesley TM, Barr E, Haupt R. Four year efficacy of prophylactic human papillomavirus quadrivalent vaccine against low grade cervical, vulvar, and vaginal intraepithelial neoplasia and anogenital warts: randomised controlled trial. BMJ. 2010 Jul 20;341:c3493.
Garland SM, Ault KA, Gall SA, Paavonen J, Sings HL, Ciprero KL, Saah A, Marino D, Ryan D, Radley D, Zhou H, Haupt RM, Garner EI; Quadrivalent Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Phase III Investigators. Pregnancy and infant outcomes in the clinical trials of a human papillomavirus type 6/11/16/18 vaccine: a combined analysis of five randomized controlled trials. Obstet Gynecol. 2009 Dec;114(6):1179-88.
Brown DR, Kjaer SK, Sigurdsson K, Iversen OE, Hernandez-Avila M, Wheeler CM, Perez G, Koutsky LA, Tay EH, Garcia P, Ault KA, Garland SM, Leodolter S, Olsson SE, Tang GW, Ferris DG, Paavonen J, Steben M, Bosch FX, Dillner J, Joura EA, Kurman RJ, Majewski S, Muñoz N, Myers ER, Villa LL, Taddeo FJ, Roberts C, Tadesse A, Bryan J, Lupinacci LC, Giacoletti KE, Sings HL, James M, Hesley TM, Barr E. The impact of quadrivalent human papillomavirus (HPV; types 6, 11, 16, and 18) L1 virus-like particle vaccine on infection and disease due to oncogenic nonvaccine HPV types in generally HPV-naive women aged 16-26 years. J Infect Dis. 2009 Apr 1;199(7):926-35.
Wheeler CM, Kjaer SK, Sigurdsson K, Iversen OE, Hernandez-Avila M, Perez G, Brown DR, Koutsky LA, Tay EH, García P, Ault KA, Garland SM, Leodolter S, Olsson SE, Tang GW, Ferris DG, Paavonen J, Steben M, Bosch FX, Dillner J, Joura EA, Kurman RJ, Majewski S, Muñoz N, Myers ER, Villa LL, Taddeo FJ, Roberts C, Tadesse A, Bryan J, Lupinacci LC, Giacoletti KE, James M, Vuocolo S, Hesley TM, Barr E. The impact of quadrivalent human papillomavirus (HPV; types 6, 11, 16, and 18) L1 virus-like particle vaccine on infection and disease due to oncogenic nonvaccine HPV types in sexually active women aged 16-26 years. J Infect Dis. 2009 Apr 1;199(7):936-44.
Six L, Leodolter S, Sings HL, Barr E, Haupt R, Joura EA. Prevalence of human papillomavirus types 6, 11, 16 and 18 in young Austrian women – baseline data of a phase III vaccine trial. Wien Klin Wochenschr. 2008;120(21-22):666-71.
thanks for the response, I have looked at three of the list of references and if I am not mistaken there isn’t a study in the list which is focusing on the adverse side effects of the (in this case) HPV vaccine. Moreover, the studies, if I understood correctly, compare placebo vaccine and vaccine and not saline and vaccine so that there isn’t any expected difference in occurrence of serious adverse effects, were it to be checked.
It is interesting that you bring examples about the HPV vaccine because it is usually administered to young women and there the issue of whether the serious adverse side effects were caused by the vaccine or not is much clearer then in infants. If there is a healthy 13 year old girl which a day or a week after getting the injection becomes paralyzed, in my mind, the cause for her new condition is quite certain.
see this on the matter: http://truthaboutgardasil.org/
I understand the general claim that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the cost, but if the costs (risk for adverse side effects) aren’t rightfully measured and scientifically quantified then this claim breaks down. Usually the message from health officials is that serious adverse side effects are very rare but also cases of severe impacts of polio (for example) are extremely rare, in order to have a fair comparison you must have the right numbers and in order to get the right numbers you must have a saline placebo and not a regular vaccine placebo.
“People who use the trite quip of “even if vaccines caused autism, I’d still vaccinate” need to go volunteer for 1 month in a school for autistic students.”
People who avoid vaccinations need to go spend a month consoling the parents of dead infants who died as a result of whooping cough which they were too young to be vaccinated against, and which was present in their community because people were fearmongering over vaccines. See? Two can play that game.
For the TDaP vaccine and listed autism effect:
from http://www.fda.gov/downloads/biologicsbloodvaccines/vaccines/approvedproducts/ucm101580.pdf :
“Adverse events reported during post-approval use of Tripedia vaccine include idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, SIDS,
anaphylactic reaction, cellulitis, autism, convulsion/grand mal convulsion, encephalopathy, hypotonia, neuropathy, somnolence
and apnea. Events were included in this list because of the seriousness or frequency of reporting. Because these events are
reported voluntarily from a population of uncertain size, it is not always possible to reliably estimate their frequencies or to
establish a causal relationship to components of Tripedia vaccine.
”
It was listed as an event which occured after inoculation, out of an abundance of caution. No causal link was establish, and further research has demonstrated that it isn’t a side effect. That’s why it was removed. The same is true of all other vaccines: no causal link has been established between the vaccine and autism. Avoiding the vaccine for this reason is equivalent to avoiding vaccination because kids are occasionally killed in war following vaccination. The vaccination has nothing to do with the war, but hey, they coincided in time, so they must be related, right?
My daughter got whooping cough from her vaccinated siblings, so your whole accusation is just wrong. My son was affected by vaccines so I wont subject another. We have all found statistics to prove our points on both sides which proves statistics can be manipulated to say whatever you want, just the data is used that is needed to prove the point and the rest is omitted, plus many other ways to manipulate.
Yea, one case. Anecdotal evidence doesn’t count for much. When a large data sample is used, it’s clear that most infections of vaccine preventable illness occur due to a lack of vaccinations. The pertussis vaccine that has been used recently has been found to provide less protection than originally though, as well, though it also has fewer side effects. The benefits of it still vastly outweigh the risks, however.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/whooping-cough-vaccine-falls-short-of-previous-shots-protection/
Exactly Joe. The summer before 4th grade my best friend got hit by a car while crossing a street and passed away. That’s a terrible terrible thing to happen, but it doesn’t prevent me from crossing the street.
There will (almost) always be freak or outstanding cases. I don’t know about everyone else, but I feel safer banking on majority percentage that I (and my future children) will be safe, and not worry about the minute percentage.
However, that’s not to say if significant proof comes out that there is harm coming to children that is a DIRECT result of vaccines that I won’t change my mind. But I hardly see that happening.
Autism rates are increasing yet immunization rates have dropped. So how does that math work?
Also, this –> http://www.iflscience.com/brain/study-suggests-autism-begins-during-pregnancy#bxgwvMs1oWj0skuu.32
Wow…that’s a pretty heavy list of side effects. You missed a few, however. Check these out:
SIDE EFFECTS: Nausea, malaise, vomiting, constipation, severe dizziness, mood swings, delirium, hallucinations, shallow breathing, difficulty breathing, bradycardia, urinary retention, hives, swelling of the throat.
Oh, wait. Hang on. That’s not from a vaccine insert. Those are the side-effects of Robitussin. Man, I’ve been taking ‘tussin ever since I was a toddler. I never realised how dangerous it was.
Get it straight: When a company manufactures a drug they list every possible side-effect and reaction, no matter how rare they might be. Just because X is on a vaccine insert doesn’t mean it’s in any way a likely consequence of having the shot.
P.S. – Here are the “side-effects” of measles: Nausea, diarrhoea, high fever, a painful and itchy rash, otitis medina, corneal scarring (with associated loss of vision), pneumonia, encephalitis, and, lest we forget, death. Approximately 1 in every 500 measles patients die, and an even greater number suffer some firm of brain damage. Unless you can prove that vaccines are more dangerous than that, you don’t really have much of a case.
What a load of rubbish!! Vaccines do not cause autism. My son is autistic, and on testing, it is caused by genes. By that I mean he inherited his form of autism from family history. I am on the autism spectrum, as is my father. However back in the day when my dad was a child, and even when I was, people didnt generally get autism checks – unless of course it was a fully-fledged severe case.
I’m sure if you look back to your childhood, there were kids in your school who were a bit ‘different’, they may or may not have had autism, or just had quirky natures, but either way, diagnosis was rare back then. It seems now, just because autism awareness is raised, theres suddenly the “Vaccines cause autism” crowd!
There are lots of levels of autism on the spectrum, and these are NOT all the same. I’m lucky, my child is only high functioning autistic, so can attend a regular school and integrate reasonably well.
NOTHING TO DO WITH VACCINES!
PS – Happy Autism Awareness Day everyone!!
http://www.autismawareness.com.au/
Have you ever checked on possible side effects of prescription medicines? Nearly every medicine I have been prescribed over the past 10 years have a list of of possible reactions that include stroke, heart failure, kidney failure, severe depression, suicide and much more. Any of these risks are far outweighed by the benefits such medication provides. I’m not denying there are risks with vaccinations, but compared to the risks of not having vaccinations, the risk is infinitesimal.
I am old enough to remember a time before the polio vaccine was available. As a child, I attended a small town school where there were several children with useless or withered limbs caused by polio. I was about 5 or 6 when all children were vaccinated for polio. I caught polio 2 years later and, fortunately, like other children similarly affected after vaccination, the symptoms were not severe. In my case, I was left with a slight limp.
You may not have seen what happens to an 8 year old boy in the days before he dies from a tetanus infection. I have. I was 8 or 9 at the time, and the boy was a school friend who lived a few doors away on the same street.
As for your belief that autism is caused by vaccinations, that’s just as ridiculous as believing that fevers cause autism. Autism is something one is born with. One does not get autism. Autism rates for vaccinated and non-vaccinated children are the same (sorry I can’t find the reference at the moment), which would invalidate any claim that it is caused by vaccinations. Autism also tends to be more prevalent in some families than others, indicating there is a genetic factor.
FWIW, I was diagnosed as being autistic at age 60. No it wasn’t something I acquired at that age. That was when a label was given to a group of characteristic that make up a large part of what it is to be me.
Do you have anything that can be described as medical education? I am all for questionining everything but you need to educate yourself. High fever happens to children all the time that is not something special. If you think there is such a direct causal relationship between high fever and autism I ask you what kind of fever you think happens when a child gets one of these diseases. High fever and possible encephalitis are common presentations of many of these diseases. So by your logic any non vaccinated child is at a higher risk gor autism if they get theses diseases and are lucky enough to survive. Also listing all side effects is not impressive. The list is exactly what you said a liability document. They want to list ad many things as possible so they can protect themselves. Please educate yourself your ignorance of this information is bad enough but evangelizing your ignorance is not excusable. Also before you ask yes I am a doctor and yes I think you are a brainwashed simpleton.
If you read any medication inserts you will see side effects. vaccines are not in a class of their own for holding adverse reactions. However in the case of most of these diseases that we are trying to prevent, the disease is worse than the cure.
We also live in a world now where it is so easy to hop on a plane and travel. the amount of daily travel that spreads all sorts of disease is staggering as people travel to and from places, especially places where some of these diseases are not irradicated.
I also agree that adults need to take the initiative and get their blood titre levels done as well. Most adults are not up to date on their vaccines and need booster shots. One of the reasons pertussis is on the rise is due to adults. Adults get pertussis too, it just doesnt look the same in an adult as a child and due to the differences in our anatomy, adults are better able survive pertussis. However the vaccine argument basically surrounds the topic of autism and childen. But we as adults need to do our due diligence too and stand up and re-booster ourselves and vaccinate our children.
We also know to that yes we have a higher rate of autism. But is it directly related to vaccines. or is it related to our diets of highly processed foods, or more diagnosis where in the past these children were not diagnosed. In our society now we are quick to run to the doctor’s for every ailment and want a diagnosis. I have worked in the emergency room for many years and people come in for everything, and i mean everything. Instead of riding out a stomach bug at home they come in after 4 hours. “everyone has the flu!” when you ask them….of course many people are very ill informed and take no ownership for their own health and expect the medical system to sure them and label all their ailments.
Thank you! Great response. I agree with you whole heartedly.
I’d much rather have a child with autism then be burying my child because I didn’t get them a simple vaccinatIon.
I find it “funny” when people freak out about the influenza vaccine *possibly* causing Guillan-Barre syndrome. A person can develop Guillian- Barre syndrome from the influenza virus itself (and other viruses). I know this, because in addition to research stating the same, I work in ICU and saw 3 cases of otherwise healthy adults who came into ICU with HINI and then developed GBS this year.
Do vaccines have risks? Absolutely.
But viruses also have risks (hello Spanish Influenza!!) and vaccines have proven time and time again to save lives.
Okay, this may be Too Much Information for some. I am 64 years old. I had measles at 3, mumps at 8, and chicken pox at 15. In all three cases, I had it seriously. The chicken pox was the worst — three full weeks of agonizing itching and oozing not only on my skin, but also in and around every orifice of my body (I invite you to take a moment to thoroughly imagine that). Why any parent would actually choose to take the chance of inflicting that kind of insane suffering on their child — rather than the pin-prick of of an inoculation — is just completely beyond my understanding
I don’t need to imagine. I experienced it. And don’t forget that chicken pox can lead to shingles in later life.
Actually, having the chicken pox vaccine can still lead to shingles since the vaccine itself introduces the virus to stimulate the immune system against chicken pox. However, there is a vaccine against shingles now.
No one here has mentioned the use of the under-used western medicine: homeopathy. Homeopaths have had excellent results inoculating people against the common nasties in third world countries. See for yourself: http://www.homstudy.net/Research/
http://vaccinefree.wordpress.com/homeopathicvaccine/
I admit that I had my misgivings. What if it didn’t work? Well, my own children have been immunized through homeopathy with apparent effectiveness. When whooping cough swept through our non-immunized friends, my children didn’t contract it and everyone else did. This year we added the homeopathic nosode for the flu in spite of being exposed to kids who had the flu (BTW, they had been vaccinated!), we didn’t get sick. Yay!
Anyone who is concerned about regular vaccinations should consider homeoprophylaxis.
No one mentioned homoeopathy because there is no evidence that it works, there’s no plausible mechanism by which it could work, and it simply makes no sense on the face of it. Homoeopathy is based on the idea that if you introduce the substance that causes the disease to water, and then dilute the water so much that none of the substance (literally, 0 molecules), and in all likelihood, none of the original water are still in the water, and then giving them diluted solution, it will cure the disease. It is complete and total bunk.
The fact that homoeopathic “cures” are stocked on the same shelves as effective, well tested medicines is baffling.
The homeopathic industry has a powerful lobby in Congress. It’s quite an interesting history–or would be, if it wasn’t so harmful.
Where is all the harm of the homeopathic industry? And lets compare them to the big pharma industry. If vaccines were so effective then why would they need to be forced and the inserts not given to us, or have the ingredients and side effects presented to us? Why are there many more diseases now that were not prevalent before vaccines that are now? So they suppress a disease that shows to have not killed very many, hundreds at most to give them live long adult and childhood issues like diabetes, allergies, ADHD, autism? There is proof everywhere of all the damage. Just because you skip over the sites doesn’t make them less credible or less true. How do you call testing done by the companies who profit from them credible? How do you explain the http://www.hrsa.gov site that shows all the people who got paid from vaccine damage…so the millions hurt with a never curable lifelong disease is better than contracting a most likely not deadly disease that last a short time and kills only the immune suppressed. Vaccinated people shed the disease and are usually the reason of an outbreak according to many many sites of research I have done because I have felt like I was pressured to vaccinate and not my children are forever affected, not getting a disease mat not be better than getting s worse disease among many other issues all the neurotoxins do to the brain. Man I can go on and on, but you cant ever open someone’s eyes until their kid is effected by the vaccination or the vaccinated. This whole article is Bull and was same info on every other provax site..nothing new, all outdated and biased info as usual.
The harm in homeopathy is people believing it will treat their illness when it won’t, and not taking medicines that have in fact been shown to be effective. The effectiveness of a treatment has nothing to do with its side effects, that statement is a non sequitor. All medications have side effects. Homeopathic “medicines” don’t have listed side effects because… they have no effects at all. There aren’t more diseases, we’ve simply diagnosed them more effectively. People have far better access to effective health care now than they did 50 or 100 years ago. Even if there were more diseases today, there’s no causal link between the vaccines and most or all of those diseases. Hundreds at most? Look up the 1918 flu pandemic, it killed between 50 and 100 MILLION world wide. Thousands died per year from measles, thousands more developed encephalitis, and over a hundred thousand more per year developed respiratory complications. There has been no causal link established between vaccinations and ADHD or autism. In fact, it’s been clearly demonstrated that there is no link. The serious complications that do result from vaccinations are far lower than the deaths and serious complications that resulted from the viral illnesses that they inoculate against. Yes, there are sites that claim that damage exists. Most of these claimed risks of damages have been shown to be false, as I said above. Just because you chose to ignore THAT doesn’t make it any less true. We don’t just have the testing done by the companies, we have testing following vaccination programs , done independently, which demonstrate that the risk of vaccination are far outweighed by the benefits. The vaccine court doesn’t prove what you think it does, and doesn’t demonstrate any link between the vaccines and the illnesses you think they cause. If you believe vaccinated people are the reason for outbreaks, you’re simply incorrect and have no idea how viral illnesses spread. Shed the disease? What do you even mean? There are very likely more of those neurotoxins in what you ate for dinner tonight that what is in the vaccines.
Your entire post is wrong. There is not one correct statement in it. I believe that may be a new record.
Actually, homeopathic “medicines” have been found to pose possible harm. I recently read an article that described how a series of batches of homeopathic medicine had to be taken off the market because they were found to contain penicillin (through a fermentation process). MANY people have penicillin allergies, and someone could have had a serious reaction. Who would have thought water could be dangerous 😉
Vaccine science is predicated on the very same foundation as homeopathic medicine. Give the patient a bit of the “sickness” so that the body can form antibodies. That’s basic homeopathy 101, and some homeopathinc medicines even require a prescription from an MD (they are not available OTC), so homeopathy is obviously recognized by the medical industry as viable treatment.
Either you don’t understand homeopathy or you misspoke.
Like the wik-links refs (which would not be considered a primary source by even a community newspaper) and the WHO links (essentially grouping all illness, ranging from third-world sewer water rates of illness into first-word sanitary conditions).
Wakefield never said MMR = autism. Never. This has been repeated and repeated and repeated incorrectly Every Single Time his name comes up. Yet he never said that. Go figure. Can anyone name the person who first said MMR causes/doesn’t cause autism? Can anyone articulate what the findings were in Wakefield’s study? Has any poster here even READ IT? Of course not.
Actually, I did go online and read the Lancet article by Wakefield and his then associates. It’s been a while, so I won’t attempt even a paraphrase of what was said there, but I remember that his “discussion” section stated that his evidence suggested a need to further investigate the link between the combined MMR and intestinal inflammation that appeared autistic children and his remarks implied a causal relationship between the MMR and autism. By the time the popular press got through with it, his implied relationship became an actual relationship and he did NOTHING to correct the misconception. It was later shown that he “fudged” the data he used in that paper to make his results “stronger” than they actually were; he falsified patient histories, for instance. Of course, the peer reviewers should have looked closer at his sample size and his qualifications and required better evidence before suggesting that his article be printed, but he started and maintained the process — and, possibly, financially profited from what followed.
You haven’t either or else you would enlighten us.
Thank you Joe. I was about to bang my head against my desk…
Homeopathy doesn’t work. We know that homeopathy doesn’t work because you can’t overdose on homeopathic medicines, and the only “medicines” on which it ‘a impossible to overdose are those which don’t work.
Well not exactly. We know they don’t work because the supposed mechanism by which they’re supposed to work is bunk, it’s been show that in most preparations there is no active ingredient, and in controlled trials they’ve demonstrated the same effectiveness as a placebo.
You can’t overdose on most of them because there is no active ingredient to overdose on. Some of the low X dilutions could potentially have enough to have some effect if you consumed enough, but given the complete lack of testing, it’s unlikely to have the desired effect.
Truthfully I am not convinced either way but have been leaning towards a vaccine free home. I do not understand why we are told or children won’t get into daycare or school without the vaccination of our children when infact they can. I have actually had doctors lie to my face and tell me it is law. It is not law it is a choice. I feel as though we are bullied into vaccinating our children. As far as the no autism is concerned why are major pharmaceutical companies selling with multi million dollar payouts if they are not guilty or don’t fear they will lose the case? Like I said I am on the fence with much more studying to do and I appreciate your links I will definitely look into them.
It may not be law, but it’s absolutely true that public schools won’t admit your children without a) vaccination records or b) medical records showing why the child cannot be vaccinated. Day cares have varying policies but most of them have the same rule.
It is absolutely not true. I have spoken to a lawyer and you simply need to sign a form n have it notarized…the supression of information regarding legal exemption had enabled health officials to bully badger and coerce parents into vaccinating their children.
Here is cdc data that clearly shows measles wad on the decline prior to widespread vaccine usage. It’s visible in the CDC data, but not something they’re going to yell from the rooftops. In fact, if you look at many of their charts showing, for example measles rates, it will only show the few years before 1963 when the measles vaccine was released in schools, omitting the two decades prior that show a huge decline.
Data: www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/0…
“In decline” is a meaninglessly vague statement. The data show a shockingly steep decline after the measles vaccine was licensed:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm#Diseaseshadalready
It took a vaccine to get measles under control like that. And when vaccination rates drop, measles outbreaks crop up–we’re seeing that in the news today. That is because it *still* takes vaccines to keep measles under control.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00039679.htm?mobile=nocontent
I also am an older person and find it interesting that the anti vaccine group is people who have never actually seen the effects of the diseases being prevented. I had chicken pox at 2 and don’t remember much but still have a scar or two left by it. i had measles somewhere around 7 or 8 and had the corneal scarring mentioned above and immediately became very near sighted and needed glasses. I also had a classmate who became deaf from the measles virus. I had mumps somewhere around 10 and remember incredible pain in my lymph nodes. If I was a male, I could have become sterile. I don’t remember much about german measles, but i did have them and if anyone was unlucky enough to be pregnant and come in contact with me they could have had a baby with birth defects. I was breast fed, my mother’s antibodies didn’t stop these diseases. I hope these diseases never make a comeback, vaccinations can prevent this.
I know someone who was vaccinated for German measles, was pregnant, and her unborn baby contracted the disease because the mother came in contact with an unvaccinated person. Her daughter is about 16 now, and is mentally disabled. This could have been prevented.
Reblogged this on Samy Ramadan and commented:
I don’t normally reblog posts. But this really drives the point home. Parents vaccinate your kids. End of story.
shitty article.
Dear anonymous,
There’s nothing like a well thought out, elegantly written comment to provoke deep thoughts and even get me to consider changing my opinion.
Unfortunately, your extremely limited vocabulary and inarticulate communication style merely provoke extreme pity.
LOL, yet ANOTHER reason to believe that anti-vaxxers lack common sense. Great argument Anonymous!! Thanks for coming out!! You’ve convinced me! *rolls eyes
I have had my children vaccinated, although on a more broadly dispersed schedule than our pediatrician recommended. As best I can tell, the schedule for vaccinations is determined more for the benefit of pediatricians and insurance companies than it is for children. Getting 4-5 vaccinations in a single visit isn’t necessary. Also, I have had all of the vaccinations for all of our children – except for Hepatatis B. Hep B is transmitted through blood, for instance junkies who share a needle, or by unsafe sex with an infected person. Further, this vaccine can be administered safely at a later date, and there is no benefit to this vaccine in infants. I didn’t have it myself until I was an adult and traveling to India. Just some ideas for consideration.
“As best I can tell, the schedule for vaccinations is determined more for the benefit of pediatricians and insurance companies than it is for children. Getting 4-5 vaccinations in a single visit isn’t necessary.”
What data did you rely on in coming to this conclusion?
What does “as best I can tell” mean? What is your conclusion based on? You may very well be right depending on where you are, I can’t speak for other countries. I can however say that in Australia, there is absolutely no financial incentive for a bulk-billing GP to administer vaccines. GP’s charge a standard Medicare rate for a consult no matter how many vaccines they give.
Also, you’re correct that Hep B is transmitted through blood as well as other bodily fluids, however it is mainly transmitted to infants from the mother perinatally. The rationale for vaccinating earlier is to do with the risk of developing chronic hepatitis –
“The earlier the disease is acquired, the greater the chance a patient has of developing chronic hepatitis B infection. Infants (mainly infected through vertical transmission) have a 90% chance, children have a 25-50% chance, adults have an approximately 5% chance, and elderly persons have an approximately 20-30% chance of developing chronic disease” Medscape
The problem with chronic infection being a higher risk of it progressing to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma.
Hi, I work for a doctor in Australia. They do get paid to administer vaccines. They get paid for each vaccine they give. Just for your own knowledge. They do only charge a standard medicare rate but they do get paid for the vaccine they administer- you just dont see it because it gets paid by the government straight to the doctors bank account.
We used a different schedule as well with our youngest children. They were given only 2 shots at a time on a delayed schedule. When we went over seas to a 3rd world country, we all got the Hep B and Hep A series ( and something else I can’t remember.) I refused Hep B for my newborns.
Individuals who think vaccines are not necessary should read accounts of whooping cough epidemics around 1900. Families with eight children might lose four of them to a disease that we can prevent. A parent who won’t take responsibility for a child by saving them from potentially mortal illnesses is no parent at all.
Especially the pertussis vaccine does not work and has given my family issues like comas and almost death. My unvax baby got it from her vax siblings, who were all updated, so dont tell me getting the shot prevent the killing of babies, my baby almost died in my arms because the vaccination almost killed her. My kids got it first, then gave it to her…the vaccines do not work most of the time so its a crap shoot, hope all your kids dont have allergies, diabetes, autism, ADHD chronic digestive issues and possibly the disease you got the shot for and then give it to the sick too bc you spread it around not the unvax bc they do not have the antigens, the vaccinated do though.
I’m sorry to hear that. I am pro-vaccines, but I wonder what my perspective would be if my family was effected? I think that is why there is such debate. Overall it is hard to argue that vaccines don’t work though. I recognize that there are cases where a vaccine has caused harm, but hasn’t the overall effect of vaccines created a much safer environment for everyone? Your perspective (considering your experience) makes sense to me, and I don’t believe anyone could change your mind. However, it seems like many more people would suffer & possibly die without them…. and I think that’s the real debate. Is it worth it to have some of the side effects and cases where vaccines cause harm as a trade for the massive reduction in these diseases? Arguing the details and picking apart the phrases and wording in peoples comments, all the different stats, etc.. like some have here (not you) is pointless … we are missing the forest for the trees.
You are clearly a scholar of medical history – is that MLA or APA style you are using. Oh wait, you aren’t citing anything. I once ate a hamburger with a pickle on it and got a really bad neck ache so i ate some ice cream which gave made my eye hurt so i ate an orange and then my foot hurt. Hamburgers with pickles cause foot pain so don’t eat ’em.
This doesn’t even make sense. First you say your baby was Unvaccinated and got pertussis from her vaccinated sibs. THEN you say your baby almost died in your arms because the vaccination almost killed her. So …which is it? Did she almost die of pertussis, or of the vaccination?
Reblogged this on Skin Deep Exposures Magazine and commented:
One of my mom friends pointed me in the direction of this blog post. When my first born was very little, I had a friend who had me convinced that vaccinations were harmful for my daughter, (I was only 21, mind you). AS a result, my daughter was not vaccinated against diseases such as measles, chicken pox and the like. Luckily, I was a stay at home mom and so she was not very exposed to other children when she was young. When my second child and then my third were born, I continued down this path until my youngest was about 6 months old. One day she became VERY sick. She had to be on a respirator for several days which was followed by breathing treatments for months. Shortly after this my son contracted whooping cough. It was one of the most scary experiences of my life! His O2 levels were so low they were preparing us for brain damage. We began going to a new pediatritian as both children recovered and she sat down with me and walked me through the dangers of not vaccinating the kids. I felt like the worst mom ever! I was so naive! We immediately put all three kids on a schedule to get them completely caught up on all of their vaccinations. I have since read through as much research as I can get my hands on pertaining to this issue. This is such a huge issue that can have such huge effects on our kids! As parents we NEED to make informed decisions on behalf of our children, not decisions based on emotional reactions or the latest fads. That said…. this is a wonderful article.
Thank you for sharing your story. I’m very curious about what actually prompts some anti-vax parents to change their minds. I’m so sorry to hear that your family had to go through this, but I’m glad that everyone’s okay now.
Seems like bad personal experience, thoughtful discussion and information sharing and not being judged or accused from outsiders that you’re bad, if this is at all representative of others like the poster. The information in the original post is great. Maybe the polarising statements about the uselessness of anything but modern medicine/pharma and that anyone that doesn’t share your opinion is “naive” (Most people probably read this as stupid) or manipulative aren’t as helpful.
Are you open to hearing how families that did vaccinate then had a horrible experience after a child was hurt by a vaccine so they changed their minds to NOT vaccinate? I know quite a few of those, and they would LOVE to tell you their stories.
I am hearing many of them, never fear.
Thank you for such a great article! 🙂
Babies cannot get the pertussis shot, especially those born premature. It is true that most adults are not updated on their vaccinations and are putting those infants at risk. I had to get the vaccine when I had my premature twins because they could not until they were 9 months old. They were at high risk to get it. The whole family had to get the vaccine because no one was up to date. Vaccines are not 100 percent perfect I’ve so we need a good mixture of science based mess and natural homeopathic meds. Find your happy medium and lay off each other.
Inn addition babies to toddlers don’t need so many vaccines all at once. There is nothing wrong with spacing them out and allowing them to gain a strong natural immune system as well. We pick and choose our vaccines and when we do it. Our doc supports and highly suggest this course. So vaccinate what you will on a delayed schedule.
This doesn’t even begin to address the fact that some parents don’t vaccinate their kids because their parents are allergic to the vaccines and they doctors don’t want to risk giving them to the kids. My child won’t be vaccinated because i had a very severe allergic reaction to about 4 of the vaccines (all given separately because one of my parents were allergic to one of the vaccines) so no i’m not going to risk my childs life because there is a chance my child could die from the vaccines.
What exactly caused the reaction? There may be a version of the vaccine without that ingredient. Is it feasible to get an allergy test on yourself or your kids and figure out what chemicals you/they may be sensitive to? There may still be a way to vaccinate, although “deathly allergic to the medicine” is certainly a valid medical reason not to have a child vaccinated, and a demonstration of why herd immunity is so important.
I actually did discuss allergies to vaccines, and other issues that may prevent kids from being able to be vaccinated. People like your child depend on herd immunity for protection, which is why it’s so important for the rest of us to get our vaccines.
The Amish don’t vaccinate and don’t have autistic kids – coincidence ? maybe however I don’t think so
http://www.southmilwaukeenow.com/blogs/communityblogs/211735051.html
Or maybe electricity causes autism? Or maybe driving in cars causes autism? Or maybe driving horses protects you from autism? Or maybe the Amish genetic pool doesn’t carry the autism defects? Or maybe anything? This is just conjecture over a coincidence. What you “think” is irrelevant.
Maybe this. Maybe that. Your statement is ridiculous. Maybe it’s vaccines too
That’s the whole point, making the statement she/ he ORIGINALLY replied to, the ridiculous one.
The Amish do vaccinate, though at lower numbers than the mainstream population. They also have autism, at rates approaching mainstream. And most health professionals who work with the Amish agree that autism is under-reported.
Fletch,
>>
The Amish don’t vaccinate and don’t have autistic kids – coincidence ? maybe however I don’t think so
>>
False. The Amish do vaccinate and they do have autistic kids:
http://bit.ly/1acWYxx
http://bit.ly/1acZnbm
Your statements seem a little simple to be quite honest and you barely show any evidence to support your case. Sorry, not convinced.
“They will say that doctors won’t admit there are any side effects to vaccines.” If the side-effects were as mild as you claim why don’t the companies publicise them, then? The fact is, that there are always one or two children who are badly and seriously affected by vaccines but companies NEVER talk about these children. They don’t seem to have any human value.
There are links with evidence for *every single one* of the claims in the article. They’re the bits of text you can click. They’ll take you to other websites with lots of evidence.
“If the side-effects were as mild as you claim why don’t the companies publicise them, then?”
– They do. They have to, by law, report side effects, and they do. Because it’s the law. The kind of law where if you don’t do it, then it’s illegal. Are you writing this down?
“The fact is, that there are always one or two children who are badly and seriously affected by vaccines”
– The fact is,,,,,,,,,,,,, (comma after “is”? For shame!) that without vaccines there will always be (as there were before vaccines) one or two hundred-thousand children who are badly and seriously affected by vaccine-preventable diseases, and there will always be (as there were before vaccines) one or two THOUSAND *dead* children, but anti-vaxxers NEVER talk about these children. They don’t seem to have any human value.
Anti-vaxxers are responsible for the death of children. This is not something to be taken lightly.
Hey Mint, when was your last vaccine? How about your last titer test, you know you have to get boosters, right??? .. how many deaths have you caused???
Yes, adverse events are reported. Because I work in health care (with compromised individuals), I get the yearly influenza vaccine. Before I (and everyone else) get it, I receive a paper handout that describes what the vaccine is, how it works, adverse events/risks and signs and symptoms to watch out for. Every time.
There are minuses & pluses for both forms of medicine & modern medicines rootd are in natural medicine but neither should be followed blindly as Im sure both have their merits but I don’t believe sciences is always right or the truth as thr original post take thalmidalin that was given in 60 & 70s disastrous outcome. To dismiss natural remedies altogether is also stupidity. I was unlucky enough in my late teens to contract hep b from my long term boyfriend got into drugs but I was able to heal my self through a strict diet to relive the liver and taking vitamin b and within 6 months I was hep b free & had created my own antibodies a very rare thing to happen but I can tell u I did not think twice to vaccinate my children for hep b as I would never want my children to endure such an illness as I was incredibly ill for 8 weeks I actually thought I was going to die.so lets look to the meits and benefits of all medicine for our health & well being 🙂
Recent studies have shown that some types of autism start in the womb, pre-vaccine.
This thread of discussion illustrates several big problems that we have in the USA today. Distrust of educated people and a poor understanding of what defines good science. It is becoming more common for people to reject data in favor of feelings/beliefs. “My beliefs outweigh your data.” Good science requires controlled studies and detailed analyses that provide a level of certainty, probability, that the changes in the variable/factor in which we have interest is due to the treatment we have applied.
I saw homeopathic and natural treatments mentioned several times in this thread. It is true that some natural treatments work quite well, look at aspirin, arguably one of the most common drugs taken today, first isolated from the bark of the willow tree. But there is also confusion that “natural” means safe. That is very far from the truth. Natural means natural, that is all, not safe, healthy, etc.
Many of the products that people buy in the GNC and other similar stores bypass safety testing by marketing themselves as “food supplements”, which do not require the rigorous testing of drugs, etc.
I experienced some of these diseases when I was growing up, so I wrote on the subject too.
http://roseseilerscott.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/to-vaccinate-o…t-to-vaccinate
Great article Dr. Raff. It’s my understanding that the whole idea that vaccination might be linked to autism was due to the supposedly low incidence of both in the Pennsylvania Amish. I think it’s worth mentioning this origin-story in your blog post, and that the Amish apparently do have a high a vaccination rate, and may also have a normal autism rate as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish_anomaly. If it is true that the Amish have a low rate of both autism and vaccination, this is a good opportunity to talk about the difference between correlation and causation.
Also interesting that you didn’t mention Jenny McCarthy, who still suggests that vaccines should be spaced out further apart, and as far as I can tell hasn’t recanted any of the misinformation she has promoted in the past. I almost with the View would hire you instead of her, except that would mean that your own (much more interesting) research into the ancient DNA of North America would probably stall. Anyway, keep up the great work!
It’s a good point about the Amish, but in the reading I have done it seems to be that the Amish have a much low rate of vaccination than they do autism. Autism is quite common, though still under-reported, but yet the reported rates of autism are still higher than the rates of vaccination would suggest if there were a causal link between vaccination and autism. The incidence of autism is approaching normal, whereas the incidence of vaccination still lags mainstream society. That was my reading of it a year or so ago. Current research may have pinned down the statistics more accurately.
Also, it’s worth noting that autism rates have continued to climb even after thimerosal was removed from childhood vaccines in 2001 or so. So that tends to disprove the mercury/autism link (not to mention the hundreds of research papers that can find no statistical or causal link between vaccination and autism.
http://combatingautismfromwithin.blogspot.com.au/2008/01/guess-what-amish-vaccinate.html
Another good article, thanks for pointing it out. Where I live in Alberta, Canada, we recently had a small measles oubreak in the southern part of the province. All the cases were children or young adults that hadn’t been vaccinated, and apparently the vaccination rates in some parts of rural southern Alberta are as low as 60%, or possibly even lower. According to this article, many fundamentalist Protestants in this area are choosing not to get their children vaccinated: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/the-vaccination-problem-cant-simply-be-prayed-away/article15348786/
So apparently some communities have more or less accidentally conducted their own uncontrolled anti-vaccination experiments. It would be interesting to see if autism rates are lower in the younger generation in these communities, but I have a feeling they are the same as the rest of Canada (although the populations are probably too small to draw large-scale conclusions anyway).
All you parents that say vaccines cause autism, you sound very ignorant. If anything it sounds like you want to blame something else other than yourself, if you had a child late into life. Also you should be ashamed for depriving a child of vaccinations, because there are children in other countries who don’t get these vaccinations and die if not die then they have health problems the rest of their lives. Why would you want your child to suffer with small poxs, polio where they might not even walk agian, or even whooping cough. You rather a child suffer, because they might be autistic, which is nothing wrong with that. Children with autism are very smart, and very nice. I think if your child is autistic it’s a blessing that’s what the movement should be. Not this “Oh my god, can’t vaccinate my children don’t want them to be autistic” that’s ignorant.
I have never heard a more ignorant statement than yours here, Alien1313. Autism is a blessing? Are you mad?
What do you believe autism is? Many, perhaps most autistics value their uniqueness. Why shouldn’t they. It’s society’s attitude to those who are different that’s the real problem.
I think if you look at the statistics carefully, you’ll find it’s the reported/diagnosed incidence of autism that has increased markedly. In other words, most cases of autism used to go undiagnosed. Of the small group of children I was most comfortable with when growing up in the fifties and early sixties, several have subsequently been diagnosed with autism in adulthood. All of us would have been what could be called “geeky” or socially awkward or just plain “odd” and we were often cruelly mistreated by our “normal” peers, but not one of us were identified as being on the autism spectrum.
On the rare occasions I’ve disclosed I am autistic, The response is often along the lines of “when did you get that?” instead of asking the reason for the diagnosis. Such response are often followed by observations that the increase in autism is a concern and perhaps vaccines, or fluoride or plastics or a host of alternative that are the cause. The real answer is none of those. I’ve always been autistics, as have those other children I associated with. We were undiagnosed. It’s as simple as that.
With the exception of one (who was diagnosed in the nineties) the diagnosis came after 2000, in my case, in 2009. Children further along the autism spectrum than my friends and myself were kept apart from society and usually institutionalised. Even so, the diagnosis was as likely to be something else other than a diagnosis of autism. Today there is more effort put into integration such people into society.
From what I understand, the incidence of autism has not changed. It’s the definition and diagnosis that has changed. For many people the perception is that the occurrence of autism has reached epidemic proportions. I would argue that it is being recognised for what it really is – a relatively common trait that occurs in around 0.5% to 2% of the population.
You are incorrect. The incidence of autism as recently as 10 years ago was 1 in 80 (which is up drastically from any previous decade where the incidence was much lower). It is now down to close to 1 in 60. Regardless of it’s link or not to vaccinations, I needed to respond to that statement.
I see a lot of one-time association-turned experts about autism that I find frustrating. For example (all found among responses to this blog):
autism is a blessing
people with autism are “nice”
autism is a curse
autism is only genetically linked
I have autism and I know it’s not linked to vaccinations because there was no link for me.
My brother has a child with autism immediately after a fever
using autism and aspergers interchangeably
The truth about autism is that it encompasses a vast range of effects. Some children with autism can’t eat without help, have no speech, need to wear incontinence underwear for life and seem like they are permanently suffering. These cases are devastating. In my work I have a mother for a client with three children diagnosed on the ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorders) and one of her children is in this category. Every day is centred around ensuring safety in a world that doesn’t understand or accommodate enough in the slightest. There is no eye contact, rarely affection and instead lots of spitting and feces smearing and screaming and crying constantly. Her mother loves her fiercely. The behaviour is likely due to a clever brain being locked in a body that can’t communicate in the way that others can understand. I don’t give a damn what you all say… for that mom and that daughter THIS DIAGNOSIS IS HELL ON EARTH AND SHE IS FAR FROM ALONE. Don’t even get me started about the lack of adequate government supports and funding. I’d be here all night.
Others are the same as above except that seem perfectly content. Some children grow into adults who you wouldn’t know had a developmental disability at all until you get to know them a bit better. They have jobs, they learn social cues, they raise families. For this group, they may well come into their own as adults and embrace their diagnosis and unique view and talents. They become wonderful advocates for the ASD community and for people diagnosed with a developmental disability, in general. They are not all “nice” just as everyone on here is not “nice”.
Others don’t realize they think uniquely until they are in their young 20s and then are more affected by mental health issues from dealing with a world that is insensitive to their needs. This may be the most tragic group I work with – because they are lost in the vacuous gap left between the developmental and mental health worlds. Too “functional” to receive adequate developmental services (their IQs are often too high to qualify for services once they become adult) and too “atypical” in their mental health presentation and learning needs to be met well by the mental health community (which is a joke here in Ontario, Canada anyway… the health of mental health really ought to be in sarcastic quotation marks). They are often the clients I have lost to suicide or who may end up homeless. They break my heart because their demise has nothing to do with them and everything to do with our failure as a medical system, as policy makers, as a community, as compassionate human beings.
The more I work with this group of people, the less convinced I am about the diagnostic tools and whether they should be even clumped together at all since the range of prognosis is so ridiculously variable.
So, in my humble – and according to “JerryA” Google University (lol!) Expert – opinion (that I feel is no less extremely well-steeped in a vast amount of real on-the-ground, get-your-hands-dirty not just “step into my office at a charge of $300/hr” life and professional experience, before we can sort out what impact vaccines may or may not have on the outcomes mentioned above, I think we need to really tighten up our understanding of what exactly is Autism Spectrum, Autism, Aspergers, Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, and Rett Syndrome; what should be part of the “spectrum” and which should not (right now DSM V has decided Aspergers belongs in its own category and separate from the rest, yet they share a lot of the same sensory sensitivities or hyposensitivities, communication barriers, and early childhood delays seen with more classic autistic types) how to diagnose it in a way that is consistent across all health disciplines and how to become more accurate about offering helpful interventions and accurate prognoses.
“They say” and “they say” and “they say.” Is this meant to be persuasive? Science shouldn’t work on hearsay. How does someone who claims to be a scientist get away with a whole article the central refrain of which is “they say”? I’m pro-vaccine, but this makes our position just look embarrassing.
Most of the”they say”s are well documented in the lay press. Failing that, a quick Google will document them. As “they” don’t have authoritative literature sources, a comprehensive citation of the “literature” would be extremely large, and there would still be holes. What would you suggest as literature sources?
Just in general — a quote for your consideration: “The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.” –Bertrand Russell, British philosopher
You need well designed studies if you want to begin the process of demonstrating the accuracy or inaccuracy of an opinion about a medication or intervention in health care. Opinions are just that, opinions.
Wakefield was a well-designed study. Researchers still make mistakes even in good design…. hey, it made the Lancet, after all… ain’t that like an oracle from the gods among this crowd? 😉
One can argue, theoretically, that science is not flawed or, at the very least, far from absurd. But science – and particularly statistics and the interpretation of data – is only as good and honest as the people using it. And only as understood as the undereducated in the scientific disciplines journalists that butcher the report’s findings to make headlines permits. We say “peer-reviewed” like these peers are these completely impartial, dispassionate all-knowing gods whose only agenda is to critically review every study they see for it’s perfect execution of the scientific method or not. No bias, no limits or bounds in their knowledge (even if it is in a field within which they are considered an expert). Completely engaged and alert throughout their review. Incapable of missing something or not caring to call it out or just plain being mistaken.
Peers are people and people are flawed with a contained limit of knowledge, experience, and expertise. And have their own political and financial agendas. Just like the rest of us “Googlers” (you think people employed in science disciplines never Google? Please). Sure they are “experts” in something (usually extremely specific even within one discipline of scientific research, I might add) and they are likely above average intelligence (and I say likely because there is a lot of politics and socioeconomic things associated with privilege that I am not going to get into here that grossly misrepresent the ideas of “intelligence” and doctors of philosophy in general). But there are still cliques and “old boys’ clubs” in the science community that rival any bunch of lawyers or cops who stick by each other and vouch for each others’ work.
Due to the above and much more besides, science VERY WELL can, and has been in more cases than anyone here cares to admit, nothing more than opinion, legitimized, unequalled in power, and completely trusted upon by the majority due to our obsession with numbers (that we are convinced can’t be manipulated) and seemingly inarguable “facts” (that we forget can be confused, overlooked, mistaken for something else, recanted, cherry-picked as you like to say, etc.).
Labotomies were upheld, defended, and eventually performed on poor hapless souls based on “good science” in yesteryear, after all.
I’m not saying, thank goodness, that countless times the science research and those responsible for it weren’t sound, brilliant in many cases, and passionate about their work. As you all do a great job in mentioning, we have many wonderful things that have made our lives convenient, more efficient, healthier, and happier due to this work. We also have many things that had great short term benefits but we are finding produce long-term disasters now. For example, many of the processes that allow us to burn fossil fuels as quickly and grossly as we do was based off the good work scientists do to figure out to extract bitchumen from the ground, transport it to processing plants that turn it into oil and then turn that oil into gasoline. Which emphasizes my point. Science is a tool. This argument is not about science or homeopathy or prayer. It’s about what can be interpreted about vaccine use based on the literature produced and yes, anecdotes encountered, to date. The story based on these terms is NOT black and white to me. But all kinds of dirty grey. Both camps have valid points based on different facts. People wary of vaccines are likely not to produce empirically-based peer-reviewed research papers compiled in a cushy Ivey-League office or lab suite by the privileged elite and people who cannot understand any fears associated with vaccines clearly haven’t spent a lot of time getting close and personal with many families who are caring for a member with a severe disability who swear everything changed for their family member post-fever and post-vaccine.
Wakefield was emphatically not a well-designed study: his data were fraudulent. Through the normal processes of the scientific method (which you seem to be quite ambivalent about, judging by the totality of your comments), his results failed to be replicated by other researchers, and the fraud was discovered. Here’s a non-technical version of the story: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/magazine/mag-24Autism-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Scientific research is iterative–that means it builds upon itself, uncovers and corrects its own mistakes, and is thus a much more robust approach for understanding natural phenomena than “gut instinct”, personal observation, or anecdata. When all research is consistently pointing to the same result, whether it be about vaccines, evolution, or climate change, it’s critical that people pay attention to this.
You seem to suggest that the people doing the research on vaccine safety are not able to understand parents’ fears, but you couldn’t be more wrong about that. Scientists are parents, too–do you think that they aren’t just as anxious to know whether the vaccines are safe to use on their own children and loved ones?
Have you read the study yourself or are you going on what others have said?
You mean the fraud conviction isn’t enough for you??
No. I have read the paper and as far as I can see he was railroaded.
I mean that I have read the paper that caused the riot in the British medical community. I found nothing to convict him on in the paper.
I do. I also believe that it’s hard to have an objective opinion when a certain line of thinking is required to continue the work that pays to feed and clothe those children. Even without children, it’s hard to work for and with people or a movement that you yourself don’t commit to wholeheartedly.
Scientists often get into the work as young adults, long before they have children and/or forced to think about things for a more personal or subjective perspective. I include myself in that group.
My earlier point is that the Wakefield study made the Lancet… as do plenty of other research papers that are later shown to be more flawed than originally realized or admitted. That oversight and lack of understanding is often due to confirmation bias and alternate agendas.
I don’t usually comment on these threads because people on both sides of the vaccine debate can be profoundly disrespectful and down right hateful with their comments and implications towards each other. For the record, I respect any parent who makes an educated, well researched decision for their child regardless of what direction they choose to go. Two different highly intelligent people can read the same information and come to different conclusions. There is sufficient information and “scientific research” to back up both sides of this issue so debating who is “right” is nauseating. That being said, I do not wish to comment on vaccines, but the author’s comment on “science-based medicine.”
The implication that Natural Medicine is not science-based is an ignorant and reckless comment. Naturopaths are scientists and doctors in every way that medical doctors are as such. Naturopathic doctors are subject to the same scientific undergrad prequisites as MD’s, and are also subject to 4 years of rigorous “science-based”medical school program. Implying that their practice is not “science-based” is, in plain English, a lie. The reason I choose to comment on this issue is because I passionately supportive of both allopathic medicine and natural medicine.
My daughter was born with a congenital airway anomaly and has undergone over 50 surgeries to correct it. (We have spent an absurd amount of time in the hospital). She would not be alive without the heroic MDs who have dedicated countless hours to her care. We have also consulted a naturopath and included natural remedies into her treatment and have experienced remarkable results. We have changed the minds of some of the most stubborn anti-nature MDs because my daughter’s results speak for themselves.
If Naturopathic Doctors and MDs could/would swallow their pride,open their minds and work with each other regularly the world would experience miracles in healing like the world has never before experienced. Cancer Treatment Centers of America are incorporating this type of “integrative medicine” with amazing results, giving people hope where hope was lost. It is one of my greatest wishes to see more of this type of medicine practiced an offered.
This is why I deemed the author’s comment “reckless”. Comments like her’s further drive a wedge between MDs and NDs when there is a unseen power in pushing the two together. the implication that by seeking a natural cure for something you are somehow abandoning science and denying allopathic medicine is, simply, not true. You can have both. We should have both. Our children deserve both.
Thank you for reading my rant if you made it to the end! Hopefully it cleared something up for someone, at least one 😉
Holly, you say that there “is sufficient information and “scientific research” to back up both sides of this issue so debating who is “right” is nauseating.” This is a question of fact, and the facts are not in any real doubt. The people who make it their lives’ work to gather, analyze, and understand the data–the actual scientists and epidemiologists who are the experts–come down very firmly on the side of vaccination. The people who oppose vaccination are almost entirely composed of non-experts who only get the data third- or fourth-hand, filtered through the commercial enterprises (like Natural News or Mercola) that profit from steering people away from efficacious medicine to expensive but useless snake oil.
Similarly, when you say that “Natural Medicine” is “science-based,” that is just factually wrong. If it were science-based, it would proceed through experimentation, trials, empirical testing and analysis of data. It does not. No one runs double-blind studies to test whether acacia oil is more effective than a placebo in treating any medical condition. They simply package it and sell it and *tell* people that it’s as valid as real medicine. Human nature being what it is, enough people will believe them that they can make a profit on it. Real medicine gets extensively tested, “natural medicine” does not. “Natural medicine” is therefore not “science-based.” (The exception would be those “natural” treatments, like willow bark as an analgesic, that have some basis in fact. Those get tested, are found to be effective, and become part of normal medicine.)
Colin, my husband has a PhD in inorganic (medals) chemistry. Needless to say, he knows a thing or two about reading, analyzing, and understanding research, and about the ingredients in the vaccines. I am not a scientist myself so I feel incredibly fortunate to have him as my partner to help make guided parenting choices. I will reiterate the “nausea” I experience debating the scientific evidence behind the vaccine debate and end it here before my stomach turns.
It seems your beef is with “natural” products on the market and I am not arguing that every product on the market is based in science. I am stating a fact that naturopathic doctors have as much scientific training as medical doctors. The foundation of everything they study is based on science. I suggest you do some research in what it takes to become a naturopath before you assert that my claim that is is “scientific-based” is not “factual”. Do you even know what a naturopathic doctor is? Please look into into it before you make such claims and help dumb-down the general public.
Every product my family takes, and those prescribed by our ND for my daughters treatment, have been scrutinized by double-blind, placebo controlled, peer reviewed research which proves their effectiveness. But the real proof for me is in my daughter. She has a tracheostomy tube which means she breaths through a hole in her neck, which provides no filter to the lungs (the nose provides the filter for most people). We were told to expect her to catch every bug she comes into contact with and to be hospitalized frequent with viral infections. Some medical professionals even suggested we isolate her to keep her come contacting said viruses. We were also told to expect chronic ear infections because having the trach causes fluid build up in her ears. We were also told that since she has to go to the hospital every 8 weeks for a laser procedure that she sold be susceptible to even more illness. She is 4, and has never had anything more severe than a cold. Her surgeon and other members of her medical team have commended us as parents for the decisions to include naturopathy because that is the only way they can explain her remarkable health. She is leaps and bounds healthier than their other trach patients who have not included naturopathy.
When my daughter was born, her pediatrician disregarded my concerns that she was “breathing funny”. Out naturopath heard my concerns and referred us to an ENT where they discovered a worst-case-scenario airway issue our naturopath has great respect for MDs and now our MDs respect her. I will reiterate – believing in one for. Of healing does not mean you ha e to disregard another. They do not contradict but compline t each other.
Holly, hate to disagree, but this is from the national organization of Naturopaths:”In addition to a standard medical curriculum, the naturopathic physician also studies clinical nutrition, HOMEOPATHIC MEDICINE, botanical medicine, psychology, and counseling.” (emphasis added) I find it hard to believe that a naturopath could fit all the standard curriculum of medical school, plus the above, into 4 years. I’ve worked at med schools for the past 8 years, and students are hard pressed to fit the standard curriculum into 4 years. If you add in the fact that they study homeopathic medicine-which is literally nothing more than water, I have significant doubts as to rigor of the training. “In 1968 the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare issued a report on naturopathy concluding that naturopathy was not grounded in medical science and that naturopathic education was inadequate to prepare graduates to make appropriate diagnosis and provide treatment; the report recommends against expanding Medicare coverage to include naturopathic treatments. In 1977 an Australian committee of inquiry reached similar conclusions; it did not recommend licensure for naturopaths.” (excerpted from wikipedia), apparently I’m not alone in this. Additionally, they are only eligible for licensure in 16 states,so apparently they have not been very successful in demonstrating the efficacy of their treatment.
“I find that hard to believe” is a great argument. Regardless, I am glad my comments drove you to look at a website for natural medical school to see for yourself what it involves. By the way, homeopathy comprises approximately 2% of naturopathy. I hardly understand how “homeopathy is nothing more than water” – are you referring to hydrotherapy?
And quoting something from 1968 is rather outdated. I imagine Naturopathic schools have updated their curriculum since then. Back to present day… as previously mentioned, Cancer Treatment Centers of America routinely incorporate naturopathy into the treatment of some of the deadliest diseases in modern times – perhaps they know something you don’t.
Scott’s point isn’t outdated at all:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/06/07/the-problem-with-homeopathy-according-to-naturopaths/
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/02/28/naturopathy-versus-science/
Homeopathy is apparently taught in naturopathic schools and even a required part of naturopaths’ licensing examinations.
“Integrative medicine” is incorporated into real medical treatments largely because of political and financial pressures as well as to provide comfort to people who give it unwarranted credence. The test of whether alternative medicine is science isn’t whether someone *uses* it, but whether it *works.* And alternative medicine fails that test. There is a very good reason why homeopaths and naturopaths don’t do large-scale studies to prove that their snake oil works: it doesn’t.
If you don’t understand why someone would say homeopathic treatments are just water, then you don’t understand enough about homeopathy to follow serious criticisms of it. It basically boils down to this: homeopathic treatments take a substance that would not cure or treat a condition, add it to water, and then dilute the resulting substance down so far that statistically it is virtually certain that not a single molecule of the original “active” ingredient is left. Sometimes alcohol or milk is used instead.
Then–and here’s the part that really matters to homeopaths–they sell it. At enormously large profit margins. I found one homeopathic lab offering “custom” treatments (remember that these are just vials of water or alcohol) for $50 to $400.
Naturopathy endorses homeopathy, and naturopaths are apparently required to study it seriously. I cannot think of any stronger sign that naturopathy is quackery.
Why is everyone borderline psychotic in their defense of maintstream medicine and only mainstream? You are already the majority. This view is being shoved down everyone’s throats presently, as it is. Holly wasn’t even discrediting mainstream medicine. She was saying, quite rationally I might add, that there is room for both. I don’t use Naturopathic medicine because I can’t afford it but if I could I would consult with both alternative medicine experts and my family physician. Why not?
This is a disciplinary feud that is based more on peacock strutting than actual concern for patient welfare. I have two very close friends; one is now a general surgeon with her own practice associated with a local hospital and another who is a graduate of naturopathic medicine in private practice and having seen the hoops both had to jump through to get their pieces of paper, I can assure you the study is quite rigorous and demands a wealth of knowledge and practicum experience.
On the flip side if we want to find flaws among mainstream medicine, tell me: how many MD students fail out of med school? Next to none. They get to take the tests until they get it right or professors grow tired and move them on. Too much of an investment, once they are accepted and too much public outcry and backlash if people become aware students getting accepted to our local medical schools perhaps can’t hack it and yet will eventually be in charge of our survival. How nice for me to know that someone cutting me open might have had to take Anatomy 5 times before he barely passed.
Is this the majority? Thank goodness, no or I like to hope not. Are there some quacks in BOTH domains? Probably. But I am sure the majority of naturopathic doctors are well-read, well informed and have clients’ best interests at heart just like MDs. These ridiculous dichotomies are so infuriating and immature. Let the woman say her piece without jumping all over her! There are like a million people on here who have said what you already said. Can people with an alternate view and experience have a voice without being trampled all over for goodness sake?!
Holly, your husband’s PhD does not, in fact, make him an expert in epidemiology or biology. The people who are experts in those fields have reached an essentially unanimous conclusion that vaccination is safe and efficacious. Let me put it this way: one reason you might find the public debate over the science upsetting is that you can see it is largely composed of laypeople (non-experts) discussing studies they haven’t read and scientific points they’ve learned about second- or third-hand. The reason the debate happens largely among non-experts is that the experts are in virtually unanimous agreement that vaccination is the right choice.
I don’t believe that it’s true that “naturopathic doctors have as much scientific training as medical doctors.” I looked into naturopathic schools’ curricula briefly, and what I see looks nothing like what real doctors go through to earn their credentials. Schools have varying requirements, but I didn’t see any that require incoming students to have the kind of science education that medical schools expect. Nor did I see any that required students to seriously study chemistry, anatomy, or pharmacology at the level real doctors do. But the core point, that naturopathy is not science-based, doesn’t depend on what naturopaths learn in school or how long they study. Make-believe doesn’t turn into science in the fourth year of wizards’ school. If naturopathy were a scientific discipline, then naturopaths would be working in labs testing their theories and remedies the way real scientists do. The fact that they don’t, and that they’ve been unable to demonstrate the validity of their underlying principles or the efficacy of their methods, makes them unscientific.
You say that the products your ND prescribes “have been scrutinized by double-blind, placebo controlled, peer reviewed research which proves their effectiveness.” That may be true, since in some jurisdictions NDs are allowed to prescribe real medicine. But how do you know? Did you ask your ND for the studies on each substance he or she prescribed?
Your personal anecdote is neither here nor there. I’m happy that your daughter is well. She is a single data point, and taking a single data point as good evidence of anything is about as unscientific as it gets. You cannot tell—and I mean that there is no logical way for any person to know—whether she is healthy because of naturopathy, legitimate medicine, good luck, or some other cause. We look to broader evidence to determine whether naturopathic remedies can do something like prevent viral or bacterial infections. And if it turns out that a naturopathic remedy can do that, then it’s not alternative medicine anymore—alternative medicine that works is just medicine, used by real doctors to have real effect.
Well said, Colin! Kudos!
Apparently being pro “natural medicine” will get you attacked as well. I dont have to time to comb through your statement and point out all of the holes but I am glad my comments drove you to a site to look at natural schooling. A couple of points: I never implied that my husband was an expert in anything other than chemistry. I only stated that I am fortunate to have someone on my parenting team who knows how to read and comprehend scientific research. He is a scientist in every sense of the word, works in a laboratory with a white coat and safety goggles and the whole bit. He knows how to understand someone else’s research. That was my only claim.
I also never asserted that naturopaths have identical learning to medical doctors. What would be the point in that? I stated that their medicine is “science based”, oh, and wizardry, but mostly science. It may be different sciences than MDs, for example their foundation is in nutritional science, which is something completely disregarded in allopathic medical school. And, to your point about “laboratories”, they actually do have diagnostic laboratories in their medical schools. And, yes, i DID read the research on the gold-standard studies conducted on the supplements my family routinely take, if only i had someone with a “science-based” education to help me interpret them.
Holly, having a laboratory doesn’t make something scientific. Creationists build labs all the time, to make themselves look scientific–it doesn’t make their process actually science. What makes something scientific is whether it proceeds by testing its principles and empirically determining what works, as opposed to what sells. I have been unable to find any naturopathic research that concluded, “this treatment doesn’t work.” That, to me, suggests that there isn’t a real research program going on. Real research weeds out the duds, it doesn’t just rubber stamp whatever has been submitted for testing.
As I noted above, the death knell for your claim that naturopathy is “science based” is that it is built largely on homeopathy. Homeopathy is the very pinnacle of pseudoscientific quackery. It is the claim that vibrations can magically turn water into medicine, with no foundation whatsoever in chemistry, biology, physics, or any other kind of science.
If naturopathy is incapable of distinguishing between the sorcerous snake oil concoctions of homeopathy and real medicine, it has no claim whatsover to the legitimacy of science.
Colin, please see the comment I made to Scott above. There is a million to one here with your views but you each of you have to rip every last one who dares to differ apart like pitbulls. She has a legitimate point and she has a right to her view. Enough.
Priceless, your comments appear to be a nearly constant stream of tone trolling. No one has come even remotely close to denying Holly the right to have an opinion. But we need not, and should not, let factually false and misleading statements go unchallenged.
“your daughter is a single data point”
I’m sorry but I am going to break my own rule here because this is so uncalled for and call you a name: insensitive prick. If the author needs to take it down, I’ll understand. But I think my position is plenty evidence-based enough for you all, thank you very much.
What do you know of this woman’s experience? Seriously. Could you be less classy or more d-baggy? Go find some data to crunch and leave the public discourse to people who have some basic level of social skill and respect for others.
Anecdotal events in medicine are well-documented in your precious science bibles all the time, jerk. How many events are you really going to get of prosopagnosia or amnesia affecting only a specific centre of the brain? Penicillin was an accident – a single data point. The first experimental surgery to do neurostimulation with epilepsy was a single data point. You think those “useless data points” don’t make the NEJM?! Maybe you’re the one who is as unscientific as it gets.
God, the level of jerk factor of your comments leave me seething.
your facts are your perception and your opinion and your experiences. The only perceptible difference between you and I, that I can see, based on previous comments, is our level of arrogance. You have commented on just about everything on here except you represent the majority. I have commented on just about everything so that people who have an alternative opinion can have some iota of support and encouragement to do it next time instead of being muzzled by all of you – who support and repeat each other ad nauseam. Every discussion is better informed by a variety of opinions rather than one even if YOU think your position is the only one that is valid or matters. For people that all seem to support quality research it is truly concerning how much you aren’t following any of the tenets of it.
Priceless, your sensitivity seems more tactical than genuine. You are very eager that anti-vax sentiments be privileged to the same extent as empirical, scientific data, and neither questioned nor challenged without kid gloves. But your complaints are unwarranted.
As I said above, I’m glad Holly’s daughter is doing well. The fact that she’s doing well really is just a single data point, no matter how flustered that makes you. How well she does on naturopathic treatments does not constitute good evidence of whether such treatments work, since there is no way to tell from a single person’s experience whether she’s doing well because naturopathy is effective, her condition was more benign than the doctors first though, she’s been lucky enough to avoid infection, she had a particularly good response to her pharmaceutical treatments, or for some other reason. Anecdotes aren’t good data.
Your position here seems to be that the minority deserves “support and encouragement” because it’s the minority. It’s the same tactic creationists use when they complain about science textbooks not “teaching the controversy.” But whether vaccines are safe and effective isn’t up for a vote, it’s an empirical question. It can be investigated and answered scientifically. The answer to that question doesn’t seem to conform to your expectations, and you are obviously very frustrated that the mainstream browbeats you with evidence that marginalizes your preconceptions. Perhaps you should come to terms with the evidence, instead of demanding that people just stop hassling you with all that icky data?
I would prefer that your intemperate comment be left up. I think it is a pointed and useful demonstration of the quality of reasoning that informs the anti-vax movement: it’s really, truly not about the science.
You speak one language. Many other people on here, me included, speak other languages. I can speak in your language… the language where data is law and its conclusions and implications absolute and indisputable. You have demonstrated nil ability to speak in mine. Or anyone else’s besides your own and people who think EXACTLY like you, for that matter.
Well, I tired of speaking your language because it was getting me nowhere. Hence my reaction to your extremely unwarranted comments. I resorted to my language where words and the choices we make with them have meaning and where respect is valued.
Your failure to make note of the fact that I am not “anti-vaxx” after the number of my posts you have responded to and your choice not to respond to anything I say that gives a whit of credibility to my position based on empirical arguments (e.g. numerous examples of large-scale yet flawed outcomes studies; numerous examples of other large scale evidence-based issues that you choose to ignore yet irrationally balloon this issue when the scale of effects in comparison to other global issues is negligible; numerous examples where indeed one anecdote or one outlying data point was very much integral to a breakthrough in scientific discovery, etc) speaks to your apparent pin prick of a world view and utter fascination with hearing yourself speak rather than truly paying attention to what others have said. Your whole response style (engaging in logical fallacies, failing to respond to parts of the comment that would actually present question or doubt in your position, not owning up to your bias in any way) to my and others’ comments is the antithesis of good research practice (or healthy discourse for that matter) yet you accuse me of promoting the same. Again, your ignorance and hypocrisy — embodying much of what you accuse me of: everything from tactical to trolling – truly astounds me for someone who seems to be trying hard to assert intellectual superiority.
This whole article and the respondents therein represent a challenge to any position but those posed by the initial article. It is overwhelmingly in your view’s favour, likely due to the title of the article. (It certainly doesn’t shout out as a friendly invite to those who beg to differ). If opposition and alternate perspectives was handled with respectful discourse, stuck to facts, and didn’t resort to emotion-based attacks on character (and I’d hardly call any of that “kid gloves”) I’d have no reason to “defend the minority with my ‘creationist-like’ views” LOL… I always love that one… it’s the atheist/scientist’s go-to defense whenever someone challenges the legitimacy of research results. Well, dear, as it turns out there are some gaps in evolutionary theory and the Big Bang theory contains so little actual “data” it’s pretty much faith so really, not sure the Creation story is that much worse, to be honest. I think they all have a degree of faith attached. But you’d die a thousand deaths before you’d admit that, wouldn’t you? 😉
My complaints are unwarranted. Why, thank you, for clarifying. Did you use empirical data for that statement or is this another example of your excellent social skills?
You can win a Nobel-Prize for your scientific accomplishments and I still wouldn’t feel any less “flustered” (I believe I said “seething” but what do you care you only read/recall what works best for your points anyway, right? 😉 about making someone else feel terrible to prove what YOU think is a valid point. Once upon a time, some thought asserting that homosexuality was a disease was a valid point. One man held a position of power and even got it to be listed as DSM diagnosis.They could cite science all they wanted but it didn’t change the fact that they were assholes. And wrong as it turns out (but hey, trifles, science is absolute, of course, despite my countless recollections of historical events that suggest the opposite).
You are right about one thing. My reaction had nothing to do with the science. What you missed, as usual, is that your comments had nothing to do with the science, either. You didn’t say her success is an insignificant data point. You specifically said “she is an insignificant data point” and if you are so proud, foolish, and dense to the impact your words can have on other people not to see the level of insensitivity that conveys, despite your intention or your ridiculous sense of justification, then you should not work with people. Seriously. Let’s talk about your kids (which I strongly suspect you don’t have) and their “insignificance” and we’ll see how “scientific” and “empirically factual” our conversation remains.
Telling personal stories on here takes courage and you know so little about the people who post on here. You don’t know her motivation for even sharing the story. If you actually read it with the detail it deserved, provided you intended to respond to it, SHE TOLD YOU SHE VACCINATES HER CHILDREN so what difference does it make to you if she consults with a Naturopath and feels that it is helpful? She also mentioned that HER DOCTORS AGREED WITH HER about the positive changes this alternative intervention was having (I feel like caps are necessary because you get very confused on recall of the facts regarding the statements you respond to). But, oh, wait did Colin agree with her? No?! Well, to hell with what everyone who actually knows Holly and her daughter thinks, eh? Empirical studies tell you that Holly’s experiences have no value. Really, come on… how far up your ass does your head actually go?!
You cannot say with any kind of certainty WHAT the significance of her success was. Period. Even if you could, the comment wouldn’t be justified. But given that you can’t, it’s beyond crass. If you were my son or brother, I would have slapped you for such rudeness and disrespect. But you’re just some anonymous know-it-all on the internet and I have nothing more than words and “tactical concern”. The fact that you think leaving up my comment makes yours look better suggests emotional immaturity. If your brand of behaviour/comments is the first or consistent impression people wary of research and policy-making bodies get, I can totally understand why they turn tail, run the other way, and revert to their “anecdotal” experiences. At least they can trust those. Nothing about your comments engage people to consider your position who weren’t already proponents in the first place. You’re too busy trying to put them on the defensive and obsessing about how much smarter and logical you are to have anything close to a healthy conversation on a subject where both of you might actually learn something.
You have absolute confidence in research studies, empirical evidence, peer-review, and data despite the numerous examples I have provided where these were all present yet mistakes were made, conclusions and assumptions were not absolute, and compounds touted as safe had to be recalled, recanted, re-studied. Countless times in our history people have said something with certainty based on scientific evidence then were made to look foolish by future generations who demonstrated, in some cases, the exact opposite of their claims turned out to be correct (the homosexuality example stated above, for instance). You can choose to be one of the fools. I humbly choose a less certain, rash, and decidedly arrogant position.
Your absolute faith in the face of all these opposing FACTS to your immobile position is FAITH. It is no more, no less accurate than others’ faith in other types of information. Personally, and read carefully now, I also tend to put MORE faith in empirically-based knowledge than in other forms of information but unlike you I don’t dismiss the uncertainty or exceptions or pretend they don’t exist to try and strengthen my position. I don’t ignore the political, cultural, and economic world around me to live in some science fantasy land where everything is 100% free from bias, influence, and subjectivity. I don’t carry a complex of superiority despite my confidence in both academic subjects and a diverse array of rich life experiences. I have learned enough to know how much more I have yet to learn. I have learned to appreciate the diversity and education that other people’s viewpoints have to offer me. It wouldn’t kill you to do the same.
Я могу говорить на двух языках. Если адвокаты имеют свой собственный язык, то я говорю на трех языках.
You say that you “can speak … the language where data is law and its conclusions and implications absolute and indisputable,” but that I don’t speak in your language. But it sounds like your language is make-believe, where data doesn’t matter if you don’t like how it makes people feel and what’s true matters less than what we think should be true. It’s similar to how lawyers argue in court—objectivity matters less than selling the case, and style often becomes more important than substance.
But that’s not appropriate to a situation in which there’s an actual, empirical fact on the table. What’s true is true, no matter how you feel about it. It doesn’t matter whether you believe that vaccines are harmful or not, the facts have been investigated and the evidence is in.
You claim that you’re “not anti-vaxx,” but I’m dubious. I have very often seen the kind of concern trolling you exhibit here: I totally agree with you guys, but seriously, stop saying what you’re saying! It’s a very common style of disingenuous argument when people discuss vaccines, climate change, evolution (and I’m not surprised to hear that you have issues with that too), tax policies, and just about anything else that people make controversial. Your two messages on this board have been (a) please stop telling anti-vaxers that vaccines aren’t harmful; and (b) you pro-vaccine people are so wrong about everything. Yes, you’re anti-vax.
Once again, my point is very simple, but you are so focused on how you want people to talk that you are ignoring the substance of what’s being said. Holly and I were discussing her reliance on naturopathy, not specifically whether she vaccinates. She held up her daughter’s experience as evidence that naturopathy works. But one person’s experience is just an anecdote. It’s poor evidence that a treatment of any kind works, because you can’t ever know whether it did or not. If you take a mystery pill for your cold, you’re probably going to feel better, but you can’t tell whether it’s because the pill worked, the placebo effect, regression to the mean or some other cause.
That doesn’t mean that Holly’s daughter isn’t important. It simply means that her experiences are not good evidence that naturopathy works. It’s why your claim that people can trust their anecdotal experiences is so foolish: we actually can’t trust our anecdotal experiences. People fool themselves all the time, because it’s so easy for us to believe the things we want to believe. That’s why science matters, and why it works—it’s about what’s really true, instead of what we expect or want to be true. The former puts people on the moon, while the latter just puts money in quacks’ pockets. Science isn’t perfect, but when science gets it wrong, it’s not make-believe that corrects the problem. It’s more, better science.
I don’t know why you think this article and comments should be “a friendly invite to those who beg to differ.” The world is a big place, with room for lots of different kinds of conversations. Not every conversation should sound the same, in fact—there’s a time for stridency and a time for solicitousness. There is not, however, a time for lies; I’m happy to have you insult me but I won’t permit you to misrepresent me. When you write that I “specifically said ‘she is an insignificant data point’”, that’s a lie, isn’t it? You edited what I wrote before you put it in quotation marks. You put a lot of stock in your empathy and communication skills, but again it seems purely tactical—when someone disagrees with you, you resort quickly to insults, deception, and even a threat to slap me. I think if what I actually said was so egregious, you wouldn’t need to put words in my mouth.
Holly, I have ranted on here long enough to well overstay my welcome but what I have also done is read virtually every comment posted, as this is a subject I care a lot about.
I think this is probably the most thoughtful balanced comment I have read on here yet. I’m glad you took the time and hope everyone reads it.
I have no issues with vaccinating my children (all 7 of them) but I do follow an “alternative” schedule. The schedule was recommended by our doctor. We spread the shots out, getting only 2 at time. So our babies were in the health dept. more often, getting fewer shots. When we switched to this system, we saw NO side effects. No pain, no fever, no rashes. (our older kids got many shots each time and had mild reactions.)
We do not do the flu shots, however.
We also are careful to keep children who have had live vaccines away from family members who have compromised immune systems, b/c of illness or cancer treatments.
To me, the biggest problem with the current system is the number of shots given at one time (which can tax a compromised immune system—happened to my 5th child) and the fact that parents are not encouraged to keep babies away from ALL elderly during the time frame that a live vaccine is being “shed.” For instance, the chicken pox vaccine can cause an adult to develop shingles. This happened to a family member who was undergoing chemo. His doctor documented it and filed a report w/ the proper health authorities.
We shouldn’t fear vaccines, but we should not push all parents to vaccinate the same way or on the same schedule, in my opinion.
Also, the authors point about breast milk containing more aluminum than vaccines is irrelivent. Breast milk is “ingested”, vaccines are “injected”. You cannot compare the two. The body’s response to something that travels through the digestive system and something injected into the body is entirely different. Someone who claims to know a lot about “science” should understand this very fundamental difference. This kind of deliberate misinformation weakens the whole article.
HOlly- ask your husband about the aluminum content of a handful of soil. I will guarantee that anybody who ever ate a carrot pulled fresh from the ground has eaten far more aluminum than in any injection.
Again, a carrot is “ingested”, not “ingested”. And, I usually wash my carrots, but that is besides the point. My point is there is a fundamental difference in the way the body responds to something eaten and something through a needle in the arm. If we were giving our babies breast milk through an injection, this comparison would be valid. Or, if we were giving our children oral vaccines, we could compare the two. That brings up a question, why aren’t vaccines oral? The immune system lives primarily in the gut, so why aren’t vaccines administered to the gut? An honest question. I don’t know the answer.
Holly, I suspect that you don’t have any idea whether ingesting aluminum makes a difference as compared to injecting it. You appear to be reaching for some justification for disregarding evidence that challenges your preconceptions. But once again, this is a factual question with a real-world answer. And once again, the facts refute the anti-vax scaremongering that you want to spread:
“Some people wonder about the difference between aluminum injected in vaccines versus aluminum ingested in food. Typically, infants have between one and five nanograms (billionths of a gram) of aluminum in each milliliter of blood. Researchers have shown that after vaccines are injected, the quantity of aluminum detectable in an infant’s blood does not change and that about half of the aluminum from vaccines is eliminated from the body within one day. In fact, aluminum causes harm only when kidneys are not functioning properly or at all (so aluminum cannot be effectively eliminated) AND large quantities of aluminum, such as those in antacids, are administered.”
Click to access vaccine-ingredients.pdf
Whoever said I was “anti-vac?” I never said that. I can’t challenge a statement without being “anti-vax?”
You certainly can. But implying that aluminum in vaccines is something to be frightened of is an anti-vax talking point, used to scare people about vaccines.
Did I imply that you should be afraid of aluminum? I simply stated that “ingesting” something and “injecting” something are not the same. For example, my daughter accidentally drank a medication that was supposed to be injected when she was a toddler. I called poison control and was told her gut would kill it and not to worry. I thought that was fascinating.
Apparently they are the same thing on here to these overzealous folk. I think the “rule” is that you are supposed to pat them on the back with agreement and complimentary statements such as they are super intelligent and things like “this ooo so much this” and then you get a pass to say what you want, thereafter… otherwise, watch yo’self 😉
Also, anecdotes like the touching one about your daughter (I am sorry to hear of your struggles but glad to hear things turned out and are turning out well) are only responded to with empathy if you say what I wrote above immediately after, give “anti-vaxxers” a thorough verbal beating and say, “thank god I vaccinated my kids… I can’t believe all the horrible lies I was fed” (or some close derivative of such). If the anecdotes DON’T comply with those criteria they are all of a sudden a “data point” (classy act, that Colin), an unhelpful single experience that is straw-manned into some sarcastic comparison about someone who felt funny after drinking orange juice and therefore thinks orange juice causes cancer and is dismissed as completely uninformed and “helping the enemy”
p.s. they only like links from journals that they think are better than any other information and cling to the words from these books (which they assume are completely immune to any bias, alternate agenda, or privilege) like a disciple did to the words of Jesus of Nazereth, so if you don’t come armoured with information laden with the kind of bias they prefer, they don’t care and will rip any links you post to shreds as being illegitimate unfounded smut… just in case you were thinking about it.
Colin, How does the aluminum get from the injection site to the kidneys without going through the blood? When it goes through the blood does it not raise the aluminum level? So how would the detectable aluminum level not change?
It’s a good question, so I googled it. It took just a few seconds to find one doctor stating that the level of aluminum in a vaccine is so low that an increase is not detectable:
http://www.utmb.edu/newsroom/article9347.aspx
There may be more information out there, but given the expert consensus that aluminum adjuvants are safe, that’s good enough for me.
Really? They were able to detect the 2 mcg/L in an infant (divide by 3 since there is only 1/3 L) but they could not detect the 1/2 of 225 mcg that made its way to the kidneys?
What am I missing?
I suspect neither of us is a nephrologist or any kind of doctor. Assuming your numbers are accurate (FYI, I don’t think you’d “divide by 3” if you were testing relative concentration), I suppose it would depend on how they’re measuring the aluminum level in the blood and in the kidneys.
In the urine, I mean, I think I misread your comment.
LOL wow. The hypocrisy on here is staggering. When people who are concerned about vaccines use Google, they demonstrate ignorance. When you use Google, it’s good enough for you.
Alrighty then.
Your reading is so constrained that I’m a little dubious that you thought this one through. There’s nothing wrong with using Google to do research. It’s foolish to make a major medical decision based on Google research, especially when that decision is contrary to the advice of legitimate experts.
Aluminum causes harm when the blood levels rise above 60 mcg/L. It causes dementia between 150 and 350 mcg/L. So say the nephrologists. There are 225 mcg of aluminum in the HepB shot and only 1/3 L of blood. It is injected in the muscle with the hope that it never moves quickly into the bloodstream. The vaccine inserts all caution against intravenous injection. That would be dangerous. Premies whose kidneys do not fully function and whose birthweight and blood level are less than newborns are given the same vaccine as newborns.
So is there evidence of aluminum concentrations above 60 mcg/L in preemies or other vaccine recipients?
You have no idea what levels are reached after vaccination. And you do not know what the variance is either. Without that knowledge you do not know how safe vaccines really are.
Is that a tacit admission that you don’t know of any evidence of aluminum concentrations at or above 60 mcg/L in infants?
Vaccine safety has been exhaustively studied–there are many links in the original post, salted throughout this thread, and of course at your fingertips via Google.
You’re the one crying out that aluminum is dangerous. Shouldn’t you be able to find some evidence supporting your claim?
Colin, What I know is that the blood volume is about 1/3 L for a 6 lb baby. For a 2 month baby approximately 10 lb there is 1/2 -2/3 L. The aluminum given is 1200 mcg in the 2 month shots. The math says that is 1800-2400 mcg//L if directly injected into the blood. It will be less than that but will it stay below 60 mcg/L every time? I doubt it. You googled a doctor and found somebody who was pontificating. Do you really think that injecting 1200 mcg into a 2 month old will always yield less than 60 mcg/L in the blood as the aluminum in the injection sites leaves? I don’t. I am not even sure that newborns will always result in less than 60 mcg from the HepB shot. In premies the ability to get rid of aluminum is not fully developed.
Yet I see doctor after doctor telling the public that they know it is perfectly safe. I really do not know how they can know that and I really don’t know how variance affects this either.
Are you kidding? The aluminum mass needed to raise the aluminum levels above 60 mcg/L is there in the first vaccine. 1200 mcg is given at 2 months into babies who have less than 1 Liter of blood. Is there any control mechanism in the shot that keeps the aluminum levels below 60 mcg/L? Of course not. The human body has not evolved for that.
As for the evidence that 60 mcg/L is dangerous, it is in the nephrologists’ literature. It is easy to find.
Vaccine safety uses controls that are given injections with adjuvants. Maybe you can explain how that proves vaccine safety.
So no, you don’t have any such evidence. That’s partly, as I understand it, because vaccines aren’t injected directly into the bloodstream–that’s the only way your numbers make sense.
Of course, we don’t need to fumble around the question. Why don’t you research it and see if there is any *evidence* of harmful aluminum concentrations resulting from vaccines?
Given the amount of aluminum injected and the size of the infants, it is magic thinking to say that there is some innate control system that keeps the aluminum from reaching toxic levels in the blood – every time. Perhaps you know about a body control system that keeps injected aluminum from reaching toxic levels in the blood. If you do please provide the citation.
I know that they give injections either intramuscularly or subcutaneously. To do otherwise would be dangerous to the life of the infant. There have been cases in animals where the injection was intravenous. The animals died.
The magic thinking is that somehow the muscles or the skin hold the poisons and release them so slowly that no harm is ever done. If the muscles and skin are not 100% effective then you cannot say that vaccines do no harm. Could you please provide the study that shows that the release into the bloodstream never reaches toxic levels?
Vaccines contain more than enough toxins to cause damage. They rely on that slow release to prevent serious damage. That slow release is necessary for vaccines to do no harm. So, where is the evidence of the slow release? Citation please.
I don’t claim vaccines are safe. You do. So please explain how you know that the slow release happens 100% of the time.
What I know is that I’ve read that there is no detectable ride of aluminum levels in the blood of infants post vaccination. I’ll try to provide a reference when I’m not connecting from a cell phone.
I also know you keep relying on numbers you found online and are calculating yourself, with no training or relevant experience. Why is that? Why do the vaccine experts not reach your conclusions? Too dumb, too lazy, too corrupt, what? Why can they not Google the same numbers as a layman and teach the same conclusions?
On the other hand, maybe your phoned-in uninformed speculation is just wrong. That’s my bet.
The calculations you refer to are simple arithmetic. I do not need a degree to be able to do them.
There is a quote about how strongly beliefs are held when one’s career is tied to them. I wish I had saved it. My career does not require vaccines to be safe. Vaccine experts have careers that need vaccines to be safe.
BTW, if you come up with a study about monitoring 2 or 3 rabbits for aluminum concentration after vaccination please note that the numbers are not sufficient. Dozens of vaccinations are given before two years of age and they are given to millions of children.
I can’t give you a study, I can give you personal experience. I’m a medic, I’ve given shots of medicine by intramuscular, subcutaneous and Intravenous methods. I can tell you that there is most definitely a time delay effect for all IM shots. The difference in onset time of the drug effects is obvious to anyone who actually gives shots for a living. IV is significantly faster than IM, which in turn is significantly faster than SC.
I can also tell you that it takes roughly 1-3 minutes for the heart to completely recycle the amount of blood in your body. By this I mean that every CC (or ml) of blood has been through the liver, and kidneys for filtration. It’s passed through the liver and undergone that important first metabolism, and it’s gone through the kidneys and excess minerals have been filtered out.
So yes, I think I can safely say that my personal experience, and the experience of every medic out there is that IM, and SC shots take significantly longer to take effect than IV, and that the amount of time it takes is more than long enough for the filtration time to limit the amount of exposure.
Now I know you are not going to want to take my word for it. But a simple question to any nurse, Dr, hospital tech, medic that you run into should clear it up.
Or if you want you can take personal experience. Ever get an IM, or SC shot of medication? You want to know why it hurts for so long, especially when compared to an IV given medication? It’s due to the pressure of the fluid that is trapped in the muscle, or in-between the skin layers. When the pain has gone away completely is about the time that the medication has been completely absorbed.
Want to know why babies cry hours after a shot if you place your hand on the injection site? It’s because there is still medication present and the increased pressure of your hand on their legs has increased the pressure on the nerves causing an increase in pain.
Or let me given you a different example. Epinephrine (adrenalin) is given for various reasons. It’s given for people whose heart has stopped beating, it’s given to people whose heart isn’t beating fast enough, It’s given for people whose blood pressure has decreased significantly. It is also needed for anaphylaxis.
Now you may be wondering how all of this proves that IM can change that amount of drug your are exposed to at any one time. So let me get to that.
Codes (stopped hearts), slow heart beat, and weak heart beat (hypotension) all get a shot of 1:10,000 ratio epinephrine via IV. The effect is immediate. The effect is potent.
Anaphylaxis gets a shot of 1:1000 ratio epinephrine via IM, and the effect is very fast, and long lasting.
Why the difference in ratios and route? it’s because there is a natural dilution when given by IM. It simply takes longer to take effect, and due to not being directly injected into the vein there is a delayed release as well.
So yes, vaccinations given IM have plenty of time for the body to have filtered out any aluminum levels before it reaches toxic levels.
If you are trying to convince me that IM is slower than IV and SC is slower than IM, don’t worry. I believe that. What I do not believe is that it is consistent.
To understand this you have to understand how consistent it has to be. If rapid flow causes a disease that occurs in 1% of the children what kind of flow consistency is needed to know that it is not causing the disease? Less than 1/5000. Do the hundreds of shots you have given cover that?
The Ed. You do realize that aluminum salts are used as adjuvants in vaccines because they are very poorly soluble and highly charged, thus binding the proteins and slowly releasing them over the course of weeks-not instaneously as you are assuming. Studies have been done in animals using Al26(a mildly radioactive tracer) and have shown the bioavailability to be quite poor. I don’t have the papers in front of me but as I recall it was about 70% absorption in a couple of weeks- which radically changes your calculations
The assumption is that they never leak. Do you understand that with the numbers of shots given it does not have to happen often. Less than 1%. How many animals did they study that they can come to that conclusion?
It sounds like you’re the one making all the assumptions–you found some aluminum numbers online, and you’re assuming that you understand the issue so well that your back-of-the-envelope calculations trump the expertise of essentially every vaccine expert on the planet.
Why don’t we move past your assumptions, and you can give us some citations to any evidence of actual aluminum toxicity in a vaccinated infant?
Why would you think that because it is an infant aluminum is not toxic? I use numbers given by the nephrologists. There are others who have studied aluminum contamination in premie IV feeding solutions and found that even in the tiny amounts that contaminate the IV solutions, premies fair better if the aluminum is cleaned out of the IV solutions. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3509507/
The problem you face is that it does not take much aluminum in an infant’s bloodstream to do do damage. Vaccine aluminum has only one place to go if it is ever to leave the muscle – into the blood. It has to trickle very slowly into the blood – every time, no exceptions. Less than 1% of the time is not good enough.
So I ask again, how do you know it trickles every time?
There are no assumptions here. It is a legitimate question. If you don’t know just say so. Then you can acknowledge that you do not know the extent of aluminum damage in babies.
The study cited lists an FDA limit on the safe exposure of aluminum of 5 micrograms of aluminum per kg of body weight per day.
Do any of the vaccines contain more than 5 micrograms of aluminum?
Do any of the vaccines that are given in the same month contain a sum of more than 5 micrograms of aluminum?
Would all of the vaccines together (all those given before age 2) contain a total of more than 5 micrograms of aluminum?
I simply don’t know the answers, so I’m looking for them.
A couple of links here might help answer your question re amount of aluminium in vaccines. Quite a lot compared to the FDA safe amount but I’m not sure whether the salts/non salts versions impact this.
The first link the author argues for caution on aluminium in childhood vaccines until more research is done on aluminium safe levels in infants with regards to vaccines. It’s a pro-vaccination article by a pediatrician and provides advice on how to schedule your child’s vaccines to reduce aluminium exposure.
The author does mention that there are no studies on the safety of aluminium in infants but also no evidence of harm.
http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/health-concerns/vaccines/vaccine-faqs
Also this article seems balanced
http://www.mtwholehealth.com/2013/09/aluminum-in-vaccines
BTW, I am on the PRO side of this debate, so any other pro vaccine advocates, if you want to shoot these articles down please do so, just don’t attack me please.
That second link mentions the issue of whether aluminium exposure causes auto-immune disease and also clarifies that nothing is proven as yet but that some researchers are working on the issue (and she provides references).
Aluminium in vaccines may end up being something like the mercury that was phased out not because of evidence of any issues, but because it was approaching unsafe levels in the increasing total numbers of vaccines given in the schedule.
Adjuvants are an important factor in vaccines since they keep down costs (which isn’t just a cop out – health costs for families (and society through government health programs) can become a major burden and keeping costs down is an important aspect of keeping people vaccinated. Adjuvants also reduce the strength of the active component required, reduce the numbers of vaccination required and improve the efficacy of the vaccine.
So throwing out aluminium as an adjuvant would be a mistake if it turns out to be safe.
The Hep B shot contains 225 mcg of aluminum and it is given to infants who weigh approximately 3 kilograms.
I’m sorry Ed, but I don’t think you’re even attempting to have a conversation. You have a belief, that vaccines are bad, and you have a narrative you’ve constructed to make that belief feel like a rational, reasoned conclusion. But if that were the case, I think by now you would have heard the actual experts here in this thread tell you the difference between IV and subcutaneous injections and taken it to heart; it might have modified your thinking, if your thinking was based on an analysis of data.
Instead, we’re back to IV injections. And is the aluminum in that study elemental aluminum, or aluminum salts? I don’t know, and I doubt you do. I also doubt you care, since such details don’t affect the facial plausibility of your narrative, and facial plausibility is all you need for your own purposes.
I don’t know “the extent of aluminum damage in babies.” You don’t know it either. The people who are qualified to make that assessment, and have the data in front of them, (a) don’t report any problems and (b) vaccinate their own children. Your analysis fails to explain why the people who know the most about vaccines rely on them for their own families; you’re merely holding up your uninformed, University of Google-style suppositions and insisting that we give them equal weight as the research experts perform. I’m not persuaded (a) that you’re correct, or (b) that you’re even making a serious effort to analyze these data you keep throwing out to create the appearance of support for your a priori assumptions.
“Just asking questions” is not the same thing as “just asking questions and ignoring answers that challenge my preconceptions.” You’re engaged in the latter.
The questions I ask are making you and others uncomfortable. I have shown unequivocally that raising the aluminum levels is damaging. I have shown unequivocally that the amount of aluminum in vaccinations is more than an order of magnitude more than what is necessary to raise the aluminum level to toxic levels. I know what happens if the shots are given intravenously – the experiments say that the child will die. I have shown that with the numbers of vaccinations given rates of reaching toxic levels that are less than 1% will cause a plague. So my question is: How do you know that the blood levels never reach toxic levels? It is clarifying question that needs an answer.
I am still looking for citations that say that it is not possible for aluminum to reach toxic levels. You said you would provide it and you haven’t.
I continue to maintain that if you do not know then you are speculating on the level of vaccine damage. It is not up to me to know. It is the responsibility of the vaccine industry to verify that vaccines are safe. Since the vaccine industry does not know what blood levels are reached they do not know whether vaccines are safe. And of course, neither do you.
Indeed, the vaccine industry, rather than trying to clarify whether aluminum in vaccines cause any issues, choose to muddy the waters by including aluminum adjuvants in their controls.
So when someone says that the controls had the same rate as the vaccinated, I ask what that means when adjuvants are given in the control group. When I get told that IM delivers aluminum to the blood slowly, I ask how consistent that delivery is since even 1% rate of toxic level would cause an epidemic. When Paul Offit says that vaccine aluminum is no big deal I ask how that applies since the body rejects nearly all aluminum that is swallowed. When the medical community says that they took out the MMR and still had autism, I ask what that means when the same base ingredients are still in all of the other vaccines that were given to the controls and there are so many other vaccines? I don’t ignore these things. I simply throw them out if they are not valid.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it! – Upton Sinclair
No, you haven’t “shown” those things. You’ve said those things in a blog comment. What’s been shown, by actual research, is that there isn’t even a detectable rise of aluminum in blood levels following a vaccine. Please see the documents I linked to earlier (that’s the CHOP pdf and the article it cites). I’m not fully qualified to follow that research, but it seems fairly cut-and-dried. As does your (a) failure to provide any actual evidence of elevated aluminum levels in vaccinated children, and (b) your tacit acknowledgment that your argument doesn’t depend on such empirical data.
If nurses are secretly injected children directly in the brain with liquid aluminum poisons on the orders of Al Qaeda, even just 0.000001% of the time, it would be just awful. Ed, where is your evidence that this isn’t happening? It’s an important question! Provide the evidence, Ed! Prove that nurses aren’t injecting kids in the brain for bin Laden!
The Ed,
I’m interested in what sort of evidence you think might convince you that vaccines are one of our safest medical interventions. However, I’m going to ask a favor: Would you please answer that question over on the the thread (on this same website) titled, “What would it take to change your mind?” Of course, I don’t think anyone would mind if you answer this question in both places, but there seems to be a bit of a dearth of vaccine safety skeptics over on that thread.
What sort of evidence would be more convincing of vaccine safety to you? What sort of experts would you like it to come from? Where would you like it to be published (what sort of publications/websites)? Who (specific people or type of expert) would you like to evaluate/interpret that evidence?
The first thing I want to see is measurement of the aluminum levels in infants after vaccination. The second is a comparison of the fully vaccinated population against the fully unvaccinated population for autism, asthma, diabetes, arthritis and other autoimmune issues. There are some other things that might be done, but they require more homework before I would suggest them.
The incidence of asthma in the US is so high that a comparison against 200 never vaccinated children would be statistically conclusive for asthma. This can be done.
I doubt that any of the others will ever be done.
As for who would do it I would want someone without a dog in the fight. I would want someone who is willing to make the entire data set, the statistical methods, the design of the experiment and the conclusions public. I would want someone who fully understands statistical methods to design and conduct the experiment and is willing to protect against statistical manipulation.
I do not want the government to touch it. I do not want the medical community to touch it. I don’t want any of their money anywhere around the experiment. I understand why the medical industry would not want someone like me to do it. I would probably look for industrial engineering professionals to design and conduct the experiments.
Note that I say experiments. Vaccines are thought to be linked to autism, autoimmune, SIDs, ADD/ADHD and a host of other things. What that means is that there are many questions about vaccinations. The right questions have to be asked to make the experiment meaningful. The experiments have to be designed to answer the right questions.
As you can see, this is not a question for a blog reply. Nevertheless, I hope you can see where I am going.
The Ed,
Thank you. That’s helpful to each other’s understanding. Or, at least to mine.
Who ever funds it, even if that was you, then has a “dog in the fight.” I don’t know that there’s any way to prevent that, but there might be a way to largely negate such bias effects. Nowadays it is possible to produce live video streams of events. Suppose such experiments were done with open access to the methods, execution, data AND to the surveillance cameras of the location. Since video is streamed live, it would be nearly impossible to alter that video. Would that preclude almost all the potential lying or subterfuge you fear/expect regarless of who is funding and running the experiments? If it does not completely eliminate all potential overt and unconcious bias, it would make complete replication by others entirely possible.
Now, as to the biases you fear,
– Why would big pharma want to make vaccines out to be more effetive or less dangerous than treatments? There is money in vaccine production, but not nearly as much (as far as I know) as in treatments. So wouldn’t these companies want to discourage vaccine use?
If they were lying about vaccine effectiveness or safety, wouldn’t competitors point this out and produce their own more effective and safer vaccines? It’s not that hard to hire the scientists or executives away from a competitor and find out what they’ve been lying about.
– Why the fear of government involvement? I certainly do worry about corporate lobbying (i.e. Buying) of legislators. If that is the concern, then I’d like to suggest some options for reducing the money involved in elections (it can be done) so that legislators are accountable to their constituents and not those who fund their campaigns and lifestyles. That would dramatically reduce the potential for legislators to become beholden to corporations – but not just in regards to vaccines or even medicine as a whole, but would reduce corporate influence in all areas of politics. But, before I go on, I need to find out if that is the basis of your concern.
– What is your understanding of how university researchers get paid? What is your understanding of where their salary money comes from, and who is making how much (in general. I don’t expect you to know the specifics of any one person’s entire financial history) from that research and who is making how much from outside (books, speaking tours, etc) and who makes how much from later employment from corporate positions? Again, I’m not trying to paint them as incorruptable. I would just like to get at what you are thinking.
I hope you don’t think I’m trying to set you up.
You can look at my other posts to see that I will agree with people on the “other side” when they are willing to explain themselves in a bit more detail and I understand better what they are getting at. That is my only goal here.
But, of course, you have to judge that for yourself, based on what you find from me elsewhere on this thread.
I have been flabbergasted with the approach that has been taken with vaccine safety. Here I am not asking you to believe me. You should look for yourself.
1. Vaccine safety is done using aluminum adjuvants in the placebo group. This does not ask the question: Is this vaccine safe? It asks the question is the vaccine as safe as a saline solution that also contains the aluminum adjuvant.
2. Vaccine effectiveness is measured by the titers. this shows exposure to the virus. It does not prove immunity. Indeed, there have been numerous cases when “epidemics” of measles have cropped up and every one of the people who came down with measles had been vaccinated.
3. The vaccine industry has sold the government on the idea of eliminating diseases through vaccination. This is only possible in diseases that only occur in the human population. Otherwise, every human and every animal that harbors the disease has to be vaccinated. This is not possible. It is false pretenses.
4. The vaccine industry has manipulated the federal and state governments into making it impossible to sue them. They have manipulated the states into giving blanket immunity to doctors, nurses, clinics and hospitals. They have manipulated the states into tying school and daycare attendance to children being fully vaccinated.
This manipulation effective makes parents responsible for any vaccine injury and makes the choice of whether the same children get vaccinated theirs. It is a separation of freedom and responsibility and that is fundamentally wrong. Vaccine choice belongs to the people who bear the responsibility – the parents. I have been told that parents still have a choice to opt out of vaccines. It is still wrong even in states where you can still sign a paper saying that you have philosophical issues with vaccines. Coerced choice is not choice.
Anybody with an MD who questions whether vaccines are safe and effective is immediately attacked. I have seen it here. I get attacked but I don’t care. My livelihood does not depend on my opinion of vaccine safety. This is not true for anybody who makes his living in medicine.
Pharma and government pay for research. How much funding do you think will go to anyone who asks the wrong question? Researchers will have blatant issues with their research and as long as it is pro-vaccine they can find a place to publish it and a sponsor to pay for their next project. I know that sounds harsh but let me give you an example:
Madsen KM, Lauritsen, MB, Pedersen CB, Thorsen P, Plesner AM, Andersen PH and Mortensen PB.
Thimerosal and the Occurrence of Autism: Negative Ecological Evidence From Danish Population-Based Data.
Pediatrics. 2003;112(3):604-606
The report said that when mercury was taken out of vaccines the autism rate went up in Denmark. Therefore mercury is not related to autism. It said the right things so the CDC, the NIH and the rest of the pro-vaccination community bought it. Nobody stopped to think critically.
Statistical experiments are supposed to be controlled so that only the identified variable controls the outcome. In this case it was the mercury in the shots controlling the autism outcome. Mercury went down and autism went up. If the experiment were under control then mercury is protective against autism. Two conclusions are possible: Mercury is protective against autism; The experiment lost control and something else made the autism rate rise.
The first conclusion is doubtful. The second conclusion means that the experiment and its results have to be thrown out. It wasn’t. It said the right thing – vaccines are safe.
This posting is getting long, but you get the idea. I do not trust Pharma or the government or their funded universities to give the difference between vaccinated and never vaccinated an honest look.
The Ed,
You’re better than that. I know you can be clearer than that.
If Pharma is so directly powerful, why are the physicians who question vaccine safety still permitted to practice and the researchers are permitted to continue working? How about Wakefield himself? Why didn’t the dastardly demons kill him? This reminds me of the “proof” from conspiracy theorist who claim the eivdence of the conspiracy is in the “suspicious” deaths and disappearances of those who spoke up and were obviously murdered to keep them quiet – to which I generally ask, “So how come you’re still alive?”
How does Wakefield continue to live in very nice house in a very nice city making lots of money from speaking tours? Why doesn’t Pharma get the gov’t to arrest him on faked evidence? How did Jenny McCarthy get such a lucrative spot on daytime TV in order to restart her career if Pharma can manipulate all these tentacles to destroy individuals’ careers? All they would have to do is have all their affilitated companies, and all the companies with whom they share board members, to pull all advertising from ABC channels I think we agree that ABC would have reconsidered this particular hiring decision.
Has anyone stripped the nephrologist of her license, or stopped her from publishing criticisms?
As for researchers, I personally know plenty of researchers who have been funded by Pharma and/or gov’t who did not get the “desired” results, and none of them were threatened or discredited or maligned or even criticized. Don’t believe me. Most of the top researchers in any branch of medicine are funded by competing pharamceutical manufacturers for different studies on the same illness or treatment. That would not be possible if they were willing to discredit, malign or threaten any researcher who produced results contrary to their bottom line.
I was involved in pilot studies in the mid-80’s that showed the ingredients in two enormously profitable diet drugs (Dexatrim and Dietac) were only capable of producing weight loss through a mild nausea reaction, and that anything else that made you slightly nauseated would produce the same decrease in calorie intake. It’s true that we were not offered funding by the companies (and we didn’t apply for any) but we were not prevented from publishing and there were no men-in-black arriving to our lab.
There is, indeed, too much influence weilded by corporations, but it is not in the way you are portraying it. They do not directly attack or even limit people who speak out against them, as evidenced by the fact that this blog still exists! Their influence is in the very fabric of how research is planned and how the legislation setting up the funding agencies is constructed. It is much more subtle, and therefore probably more insidioius, than you are portraying it. But it is not capable of controlling who is permitted to practice medicine and who is permitted to work in university research departments.
If they were capable, morally and operationally, of doing as you say, why wouldn’t they just have engineered a gigantic outbreak of each of these diseases every year for the past 60 years? Why would they permit the incidence of these diseases to go down most every one of the past 60 years? The reduction in incidence has only hurt the bottom line by allowing folks like you to see the illnesses as less dangerous than the vaccines.
Pharma exec’s have illnesses and they have children who are susceptible to the very same illnesses and vaccine injuries that you and your family might get. They are not sucidal. If they intentionally left the pop’n without protection against these horrible diseases and injected their own kids with vaccines as dangerous as you say, they would have to be way too stupid to make it out of the bathroom in the morning.
But if no one can find me tomorrow, you’ll know you were right.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Perhaps it is not that bad. I will tell you that I have been through a lot of studies. It is amazing how the conclusions and the abstract differ from what is in the text.
I can only guess on motive and reasoning. Long ago I have concluded that the people who do studies where the placebo is not saline and others on the pro-vaccination side have started with the conclusion – vaccines are safe and effective – and worked from there. I have concluded this because all of the other pathways make them stupid or evil. Perhaps that is not the correct conclusion but it keeps me from raging.
Pharma is not all powerful. But I have read the paper on which Wakefield was convicted. I am still trying to understand what he did that was so bad. So far when I ask everyone on the blogsite know what a terrible person he is but none can say what he did. Pharma is not all powerful but they do have power.
I do not believe that vaccines are a conspiracy to make everyone ill. I believe it is a good idea with bad execution.
And I do not believe that the children who suffer vaccinations’ ill effects should be the cannon fodder in the war against childhood illnesses. The government and the medical establishment feel otherwise. I will be fighting them as long as they maintain the vaccine mandates that put the choice in their hands and the responsibility in the parents hands.
Wakefield’s original paper-there’s nothing wrong with it as written-except for the fact that its all a lie. About the only thing to be trusted is the author’s name, and most them retracted the paper. He proceeded with basic research without IRB approval, changed the dates of immunizations, dates of tests, altered data to support his point. Basically little is to be believed-read the follow-ups to his paper and the results of the investigations-cited earlier in these comments.
Just because this is such an important point, I’ll repost the investigative report on Wakefield’s fraud. Here it is: http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347
Are we talking about a paper whose subjects were autistic children with GI problems?
Yep, please see Dr. Raff’s link to the official report on the paper (below)
So you rely on Dr Raff for your opinion?
Here is my problem with the Wakefield case. Let’s start with the assumption that everything Dr. Raff says was true. Now let’s assume that you are a researcher looking at doing research, the results of which might impugn vaccinations. Would you even propose it? Having seen what happened to Wakefield, most won’t.
Let’s assume you are a GI specialist and a mother brings an autistic child in for GI problems. All of the manifestations of gut issues become “just autistic” because as you said, everything in Wakefield’s paper was a lie.
There were axes ground in the Wakefield case. Because there were Wakefield has become a martyr.
I don’t rely on Dr. Raff for my opinions. The Wakefield case is infamous in science-he violated so many basic precepts of science in that paper that its used as a case study of what not to do in science. It wasn’t that there were axes to grind-in science if you have a new and fabulous finding, everybody tries to replicate it. If they can, wonderful, we’ve learned something new. If they can’t, people ask to see the notes and original data-what did you do that I didn’t? If they can figure it out-still great, we’ve learned a new caveat. If when they look at your notes and see you made an honest mistake, or misinterpreted the data, still no problem- a bit of embarrassment and you retract the paper. However, if they look at the notes and things don’t jib-dates are changed, test results don’t match the original data, the original data can’t be found (or was made up)-now we have a problem. If you insist that obviously fraudulent data is real-now we have a really big problem. That’s the problem with Wakefield-the data was altered or made up out of whole cloth, and he insisted that it was correct. Millions of dollars have been spent testing the hypothesis he proposed, in many different countries, and all have come to the same conclusion. His original data was totally without merit. That is why he lost his medical license, the paper was retracted by the journal, and the other authors have requested that the paper be withdrawn
The Ed,
NO.
No one here is (or should be) relying only on Dr Raff for any opinion.
The statement to which you replied suggested you should look at the resource identified by the link, not just look at the fact that Dr Raff included the link.
But you knew that. You are obviously too intelligent to have missed that point. But you are throwing out the idea that Scott Nelson relied on Dr Raff for his opinion about Wakefield as a complete red herring. That was not the point; you know it was not the point; but now you are trying to get response to that idea to distract from the actual point:
Wakefield was paid a huge sum of money by a lawyer who did not want an honest answer to the question; he wanted a particular answer to make his intended lawsuit worth a fortune. Wakefield took the money, enrolled children without proper consent to do so, FAKED the results, was found out and punished (not really nearly enough) and then claimed martyrdom. Wakefield is responsible for probably thousands of deaths as a result of fanning the flames of an idiot conspiracy into a conflagration of false blame and false hope.
And that is my opinion, based on having watched this occur over the past 20 years, reading the research as it was published in excellent journals, and watching the expert opinions adjust over those years (based on the evidence) from skeptical concern to worry to very skeptical of Wakefield’s claims as inability to reproduce the results was combined with criticism of the conclusions and even the basic data, to outrage that this scam was pulled of my Wakefield on a public and a system that started out presuming he had only the best intentions.
But that’s just what I base my opinion of him on.
How about you?
What’s your opinion of Wakefield based on?
I have heard both speak on the paper and frankly, I find Wakefield far more credible. As far as I can see, nobody here has heard any exculpatory evidence that Wakefield has to present.
Seriously The ED? the whole losing his medical license, and everyone else involved in his research and published paper disavowing it? I guess that’s no reason to think he did anything wrong.
Seriously, the results were what was wanted. The entire medical community got the message. “Thou shalt not impugn vaccines.”
Seriously, Wakefield has put together a decent defense and you have never heard it.
Seriously, if you only hear one side of the case you should try listening to the other.
Seriously, I expect that this is how you treat the entire vaccine question.
Please stop assuming that because an argument seems to be irrefutable to you that the rest of us must not have been exposed to that argument. Wakefield’s arguments are lame.
Max, why don’t you elaborate. Which arguments did I find irrefutable? Which arguments have you been exposed to and which of Wakefield’s arguments are lame?
sorry, but unlike you I don’t listen to charlatans. Wakefield lost his medical licence for what he did. His paper was retracted, and all the people that did research with him, have renounced his results. He’s nothing more than a snakeoil salesman at this time.
There are plenty of drugs out there that didn’t get the results that were wanted, There are plenty of drugs that failed the FDA testing requirements. Heck even Viagra didn’t get the results that they wanted. The results they did get were a fortunate effect that made them billions of dollars. as far as I can tell none of the people publishing results that the Pharma comapnies didn’t like have actually lost their medical licence though.
I didn’t listen to him for many years either. I have only said is that now that I have listened to him and to his accuser, Brian Deer, I have found him to be more credible. You have made your decision without hearing both sides. I find that to be closed minded.
The medical community did get what they wanted. Anybody with a medical license knows that they will be vilified if they dare speak out against vaccines. Not many would risk their medical license to say anything against them.
The Ed,
Please name all these physicians who have lost their employment or their license or their practice because of an anti-vaccine opinion.
I think we would be lucky if the Medical Boards would remove the licence of more than 10% of those who actually commit malpractice, but true charlatans, cheats and thieves go on practicing for years while Medical Boards sit idly by. On the rare occasions such physicians are caught, it seems to be more often by law enforcement agencies than by the professional organizations who are supposedly watching out for us.
Again, please name all these physicians who have lost so much just because of an anti-vaccine opinion. How about just 10?
That is not the point. The point is that if you are a physician you cannot go against all of your vaccinating colleagues and say this is wrong. And they don’t.
But answer this. Why do hospitals have to mandate vaccines if the medical personnel are in lock step?
That is the point.
You have not one single physician who has been bounced from the profession for questioning vaccines, yet you claim that they are.
If they were in lock step, as you claim, due to such threats, there would be no need for the hospital mandates you now claim.
Which is it? Your two points are mutually exclusive.
You can’t reasonably simultaneously claim that
A) they are drummed out of the profession for questioning vaccines and,
B) hospitals must have mandates to keep them in lock step.
BTW, what hospital mandates are you talking about?
Hospital policies are public. Which one(s) are you referring to?
So now I’m waiting for the names of ten physicians (of the entire profession) you claim are somehow required to espouse only one opinion on the matter,
and I’m waitng for one hospital policy “mandating” that patients receive vaccination whether the pt wants it or not.
I am referring to the ones that get you fired if you do not get vaccinated.
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/mandatory_flu_vaccination/faq.html
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/12/23/mandatory-shots-should-hospitals-force-health-care-workers-to-get-the-flu-vaccine/
So what happens to the doctor or nurse who does not believe in vaccination?
Oooohhh….you mean employers establishing policies that demand employees do not endanger customers. Those policies.
‘Yup. And they’re also not permitted to smoke inside the hospital.
Outrageous!
And how would you interpret numbers from private hospitals showing patient deaths due to nosocomial diseases drop after such policies are instituted? If your father or grandmother had to go into a hospital, would you choose the one where the death rate from diseases transmitted BY the hospital staff were higher or the one where they are lower?
But I’m still not understanding what that has to do with your assertion that any physician who questions vaccine policy is drummed out of the business.
And still waiting for just ten verifiable names.
We have physicians who throw parents out of their practice if they do not get their children vaccinated. You think that they do not play such power games with each other? If I were a physician who had been fired for disagreement over vaccines would I put it out for everyone to know?
Take a look at the few who are willing to tell you openly what happens when you inject aluminum salts into a tiny baby. Can you name one who has not been labeled a quack?
The power game is going on in front of your eyes and you don’t want to see it.
The Ed,
You made a claim that physicians are being required (bullied? controlled? what would you like to call it?) to adhere to a pro-vax line, and that they will be drummed out if they express questions about vaccine recommendations. What made you write that if you don’t have a single shred of evidence, not even one testimonial, not one “hostile work environment” case, not one claim of “constructed firing,” not a single lawsuit?
How can there be not even one anecdote?
Not one physician who trumpets the anti-vax opinion has been stripped of his/her license for that opinion. (Wakefield was drummed out…for lying about compensation, faking the numbers, and enrolling children in an experiment without proper consent – not for the anti-vax opinion, which is evidenced by the fact that his license was not threatened until years later when the truth of his actions (not the opinions) was revealed.)
Yes, I expect that if a physician was fired over this one issue and lost his/her livelihood and the ability to pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars in educational loans, you would be hearing about it.
According to the Federation of State Medical Boards , in 2012 there were 1.7 million actively licensed physicians in the US (http://www.fsmb.org/pdf/census.pdf), and all I asked for was ten names of physicians who have experienced what you claim is rampant.
So, yes. I’m still waiting for your list of ten out of the 1.7 million to whom you claim this happening.
And you don’t think that they apply the same bullying tactics to keep each other in line that they apply to parents who do not vaccinate?
Doctors tow the line very well. If you had hundreds of thousands in debt that you cannot discharge and cannot pay off without the job you are in what would you do?
It is not hard to see problems. Let’s just take one of the ingredients, aluminum salts.
They are used to force an immune reaction. They are used by researchers in combination with egg albumin to induce asthma. Since they put egg albumin and aluminum salts in vaccines could this be responsible for the asthma epidemic seen in our schools?
Researchers also combine aluminum salts with collagen to cause rheumatoid arthritis in lab animals. Could the aluminum salts in vaccines be what is causing the epidemic of childhood arthritis? Could they be related to any of the other epidemics of auto-immune illness that are showing up in the US? With the numbers of vaccines given, vaccines only have to be successful less than 1% of the time at causing autoimmunity to cause the epidemics we are seeing. Where is your study comparing vaccinated against unvaccinated populations? Using the common practice of including the adjuvant in the placebo will not prove anything.
Do you question anything about vaccines? Or are you one of the 1.7 million doctors?
The Ed,
You keep saying it’s happening, but now you seem to be claiming that the evidence to support your claim is that not a single case of that experience (being fired over questioning vaccines) even exists.
If the doctors who question vaccines are being stripped of their licenses, those doctors would have every reason to fight such firings in court, on the internet, in the news.
If your conspiracy theory is true, why are the doctors who question vaccines (several noted in this thread) still practicing?
Or is the vast and powerful conspiracy so incompetent that it cannot silence you or any of the other vaccine-deniers or the doctors who blog, speak at meetings (and sell supplements and home cures on the net) in even one single instance?
If the conspiracy is so powerful, why do they let Wakefield make a very nice living, live in a beautiful house, and go from city to city enjoying celebrity and fortune? Why haven’t they slienced him completely?
I’m still waiting for the verifiable names of just ten doctors who have been stripped of their licenses because of an opinion about vaccines.
You’ve made a claim of utter malpractice against 1.7 million, stating that they have permitted themselves to be controlled by this conspiracy of yours, but the MD’s in the vaccine-denier movement have not had a single legal or license move made against them. I’m waiting for one sliver of evidence.
I’ll see your “proof by lack of evidence” and raise you two chemtrails.
The bet is two chemtrails up to you. What d’ya got?
Here’s the list for New York state.
Any of them had their licenses stripped?
http://vaclib.org/basic/health/novaxdoctors.htm#New York
The attack on Andrew Wakefield was vicious, thorough and public. Do you really expect me to believe that any doctor who has reservations about vaccines is not going to think about what happened to him before voicing any reservations?
Now answer this. Why should anyone vaccinate their child when the question of vaccines and autoimmune disease is in play?
I’ll give you the answer – they are coerced by a state that refuses schooling and daycare for any child who does not.
Why should employees of a hospital get vaccinated if they have reservations about vaccines. – They are coerced by a hospital that will fire them if they do not.
The ends do not justify the means. The ends are the means.
The coercion is there.
You continue to insist the problem is rampant, but have not one case.
I’ve given you lists including a couple hundred names of doctors who are willing to discuss not vaccinating or alternate vaccine schedules, but still practicing – proving your conspiracy does not exist.
Doctors and chemists and immunologists vaccinate their children, but you insist they all know that vaccination is a giant lie perpetrated on the public.
Vaccine workers are being murdered in parts of the world, for a cause that you claim they know is a lie.
Some hospitals (not all) require some immunizations (not all) because it has clearly reduced deaths from nosocomial diseases, but those employees are welcome to work elsewhere wtihout recrimination.
You got nothing but your insistence that it must be true because you say it is true.
He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
Go hide in an abandoned mine so you are not poisoned by the chemtrails.
The fact that you feel that it is appropriate to coerce individuals to get the shots says that you feel that the actions taken are okay. The ends do not justify the means. The ends are the means. The next time you may be on the other side that feels the procedure is wrong, dangerous, or otherwise should not be done. The precedent is set.
The Ed. Requiring vaccinations as a requirement of employment is no more coercion than requiring random drug tests of people in positions of responsibility or requiring surgeons to scrub and gown prior to operating. Would you want to be treated at a hospital where a surgical scrub and sterile technique were optional in the OR?
On that you are wrong. My employer requires that I stay off drugs if I want to stay employed. I am okay with that because it is not harmful for me to stay off drugs. It is not okay for my employer to require me to vaccinate because that risks vaccine injury. My responsibility, my risk, my choice.
You say this as if the influenza germ were the only thing to worry about. I expect the hospital to guard against all germs in the OR. The flu is just one of thousands of germ types that can infect if no precautions are made.
The Ed,
” I am okay with that because it is not harmful for me to stay off drugs.”
Let’s take that analogy right there.
What if you found out that there was a 1/5000 chance that a truck driver’s urine drug test could harm him/her in some minor way? Would you then advocate for removing such drug screen requirements for truckers on the road at the same time as your son or daughter?
This argument does not wash. The issue with a hospital requiring vaccinations is that cleanliness is what keeps germs from spreading. Vaccines are too selective to do the job that cleanliness does.
As for the drug screen, you fix the drug screen. There is no possibility of fixing vaccines so that they do no harm. Therefore the choice has to go to the person who bears the responsibility for the risks – not to the pediatrician or me or you.
The Ed
“Therefore the choice has to go to the person who bears the responsibility for the risks – not to the pediatrician or me or you.”
That would be the hospital patient.
The Ed,
The fact that you feel that it is appropriate to coerce individuals to
(please choose any four coercions of the list below you want to eliminate)
– drive under the speed limit
– refrain from smoking in restaurants
– not punch random strangers on the sidewalk
– make hospital nurses stay home when they have a dangerous, contagious illness
– not shoot guns for target practice inside their apartment
– show up to work at the store you own without being dirty and smelly, or naked
– ask patients presenting to the ER to wear a mask if they have a fever and a cough
– not store tons of fireworks in cardboard boxes in their suburban garages
– submit to drug testing when showing up to work at a private trucking company
says that you feel that the actions taken are okay. The ends do not justify the means. The ends are the means. The next time you may be on the other side that feels the procedure is wrong, dangerous, or otherwise should not be done. The precedent is set.
Still waiting for your listing of ten doctors out of the 1.7 million who are being “coerced” who have been stripped of their licenses…
you know what, let’s make this easier on you:
A list of ten doctors who have had their license merely threatened solely because they questioned vaccine recommendations.
I gave you two lists with hundreds of names. Take a few minutes to call them.
The bet is still two chemtrails up to you.
Your comparison is specious. The assumption not mentioned is that the actions to which you are being coerced are not harmful to you.
The question ultimately boils down to who has the responsibility. My child, my responsibility, my choice. No, you have not convinced me that vaccines are harmless. It is my responsibility to care for my child if he has a vaccine preventable illness. It is my responsibility to care for my child if he has a vaccine injury. MY responsibility MY choice.
If you cannot see the coercive power of what was done to Wakefield, guilty or not, I cannot help you.
Wakefield is more wealthy now than before this all started.
Your supposed vast and powerful conspiracy failed again.
Why would anyone be so concerned with a conspiracy that has never accomplished a single thing?
Gewisn been trying find out what evidence you have for the claim that 1.7 million physicians in the US will have their licenses stripped if they question vaccines.
Even you admit that you have absolutely no evidence. Not even one anecdote.
So, yes, we are done with the topic of physicians being coerced, threatened, defrocked, deported, or killed as a part of your supposed vast and powerful conspiracy.
More importantly, you have made it clear that you have no interest in the evidence from any source, even from those who agree with you.
The argument is not whether or not doctors have had their licenses stripped. It is whether or not they are coerced. I have no question that they are coerced. Coercion is applied to the rest of us who do not agree. Why would I believe that doctors are not coerced?
“Why would I believe that doctors are not coerced?”
Because out of 1.7 million doctors, you have zero cases.
But you have made it clear that you make up your beliefs out of thin air, so there is no reason anyone would expect you to pay the least bit of attention to evidence or the lack of evidence.
Oh, and BTW, if hospital sanitation was capable of preventing the spread of these illnesses, there would be no nosocomial influenza infections. There are. Done.
Tbat argument is specious itself. First, the available evidence shows that vaccinating is safer on the whole than not vaccinating, so forcing people to vaccinate decreases their exposure to.harm. It’s only if you accept that there is doubt about the efficacy of vaccines that your argument stands. Fortunately the public health system does not.
Your second argument is also specious. Wakefiled was shown to have lied and cheated to.obtain his results, which have been shown to be unreplicable. Saying his treatment coerces other researchers to be silent about their vaccine beliefs would be like saying accusing an incompetent surgeon of malpractuce coerces other surgeons to not conduct operations.
The Ed– I sincerely hope that nobody relies on me for their opinion. If they do, they miss the entire point of this site.
Now, you seem to believe that Wakefield’s study has at least some legitimate points. Is that a correct interpretation of your argument? Would you please elaborate on which aspects of his research were valid? Or, at least elaborate on which parts of Brian Deer’s investigation were unfair. What “axes” were ground here?
The axes that I am grinding are:
1. If you are a medical professional, thou shalt not impugn vaccines.
2. If you are a GI specialist then the bowel issues become just being autistic.
3. If research supports vaccines it passes with no further scrutiny. If it goes against vaccines it is hacked to pieces.
4. Autism research is focused primarily on “I didn’t do it” research. The next biggest set of research funding goes to the genetic research.
5. Autism is a medical illness and yet autistic children are given to the behaviorists because pediatricians have no clue what to do with them.
6. I have heard both Brian Deer and Andrew Wakefield talk about his case and I find Andrew Wakefield more credible. Have you listened to both of them? I will tell you honestly that I lean toward Wakefield having been railroaded though I will also say that I cannot say for sure where the truth actually lies. But I have seen no evidence here that both sides have been heard.
7. The responsibility for vaccine safety belongs to the ones who sell them. I see that being turned on its head.
I won’t belabor this post with any more for now.
You are still trying to find out what Wakefield did that was bad? Doctoring data and publishing fake results isn’t clear enough?
Choice is not always something people should fight for or have for the benefit of everyone. You can be a great driver when you are drunk but are you really going to fight for your freedom to decide to drive drunk?
Did you read the paper?
BTW, I get one who says that it is gone in no time and another who says that it stays in the muscle. Which is it really?
Ed,
Have you ever given an injection? To inject SC or IM you insert the needle, pull back on the syringe to make sure you’re not in a vessel, and if no blood comes into the syringe, you then proceed with the injection. It’s pretty hard to hit vessel in a muscular area, even harder SC, because most vessels run deeper than skin surface.
Actually, both are correct. Best fit gave a trimodal curve. A rapid initial elimination, and two much slower rates. Not done in humans, because the depot effects have the potential to cause radiation burns, not really ethical. You have to use an isotope to follow the injection because otherwise you lose the signal because it’s buried from environmental inputs-food, water, soil (which is mostly aluminum silicates )
I’m trying to understand this last statement and questions you have… please expound on this
“If you are trying to convince me that IM is slower than IV and SC is slower than IM, don’t worry. I believe that. What I do not believe is that it is consistent.
To understand this you have to understand how consistent it has to be. If rapid flow causes a disease that occurs in 1% of the children what kind of flow consistency is needed to know that it is not causing the disease? Less than 1/5000. Do the hundreds of shots you have given cover that?”
Are you saying that the rate of absorption varies from person to person? Of course does. However this flow rate your alluding to is not sufficiently fast in IM or SC injections as to overload the natural filtration process of the body.
As for the rest I’ll let Scott Nelson convince you (or rather attempt to) of the safety of it. Much more science knowledge in the various ion’s than I currently possess.
However this flow rate your alluding to is not sufficiently fast in IM or SC injections as to overload the natural filtration process of the body.
How do you know this? Is it always true? For example the kidney function of premies is not what a newborn’s kidney function. They receive the same HepB shot.
I am saying that even if you get away with it 99.9% of the time it is not enough. There are too many shots.
No one is denying that there is a risk. However Nothing in this world is without risk.
So then the question is, if one child harmed by vaccines – which prevent hundreds of children from suffering an equal of greater amount of harm – Then why do people drive cars with their children in them? let them go swimming? Ride motorcycles, play in a playground? Accidental death accounts for the single largest amount of childhood death. It’s roughly 32% of all child deaths age 1-14 and increases from there to 41% from ages 15 – 24.
Since this probably won’t convince you, so let me pose you a question. What activity that children engage in is completely safe? With no risk of injury?
I don’t deny that there are risks to being a kid. I just don’t believe we adults should be adding to them.
here is the part your missing. Or simply refuse to admit. That the vaccines are safer than the alternative. Or perhaps you’d take the world of the native Americans who were decimated by small pox? Or you could read about the current measles epidemic in Vietnam, due mostly to people not getting their vaccinations.
If you truly wanted to save children you would be in favor of vaccinations. They work, it’s been shown through out the last century that they do so very well.
It’s not possible to meet your demand that there be no risk. There is risk in breathing. There is risk in being born, there is risk in drinking water.
But lets say it was possible, lets say we could genetically engineer a vaccine for each individual person. What do you think that tailor made gene-therapy would cost? It would be prohibitively expensive. So who would pay for it? Insurance? hahhahahaha ha yeah right. So the Hospitals and Dr? yeah that’s not going to happen either, so it comes down to the government paying for it, or only the rich getting the vaccinations (which is not only morally wrong, but stupid as it defeats the purpose of vaccinations). The Americans, perhaps even you, are already annoyed with the taxes we have to pay, but where do you think the money would come from for the US govt to subsidize gene-therapy vaccinations?
BTW, the divide by 3 is because 2 mcg/L is in 1/3 L of blood. Therefore the amount of aluminum is only 2/3 mcg.
BTW, just a few more points. The numbers I gave I can site references for. Second, the safety of aluminum in vaccines has never been tested. Third, when the vaccine makers test for safety they have aluminum in the placebo.
I know the second because to test it they would have to test the vaccinated population against those who have never been injected with aluminum containing shots. That would mean people who have never been vaccinated. That has never been done. The third is in the vaccine inserts.
If the vaccine makers are to claim that they are safe then they should know that the level of aluminum in vaccinated babies never reaches more than 60 mcg/L. I can’t find any evidence of that.
Finally, if you listen to Paul Offit and others like him they say that there really is no limit on how many vaccines a child can receive in one day. The numbers that I see say that these glib statements are dangerous.
You write about levels “if directly injected into the blood,” but is that how infants are vaccinated?
You wrote, “Do you really think that injecting 1200 mcg into a 2 month old will always yield less than 60 mcg/L in the blood as the aluminum in the injection sites leaves?”
I think you’re a layperson juggling numbers you found on the internet. I think that these are empirical questions to be answered by experts with access to the data, and that those professionals have virtually unanimously concluded that vaccines are not an inordinate risk (aluminum included). I don’t think those professionals are too stupid or corrupt to follow the same logic that you did, which leads me to conclude that you’re probably not right about the risk of aluminum adjuvants for newborns.
But as I’ve said elsewhere, who am I to judge? Submit your findings to the experts, not the comment threads–the first would be science, the second is just scaremongering.
The Ed: “When the medical community says that they took out the MMR and still had autism, I ask what that means when the same base ingredients are still in all of the other vaccines that were given to the controls and there are so many other vaccines?”
Please give your reference for this. The MMR vaccine has never contained thimerosal nor an aluminum adjuvant since it was introduced in 1971. It comes as a dry powder that is mixed with sterile water and must be used within a few hours.
The Ed: “This posting is getting long, but you get the idea. I do not trust Pharma or the government or their funded universities to give the difference between vaccinated and never vaccinated an honest look.”
So have you applied to be a lay member of ACIP? The application form needs to be completed by November:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/committee/req-nominate.html
The Ed: “This posting is getting long, but you get the idea. I do not trust Pharma or the government or their funded universities to give the difference between vaccinated and never vaccinated an honest look.” So have you applied to be a lay member of ACIP? The application form needs to be completed by November: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/committee/req-nominate.html
Scott Nelson: “Wakefield’s original paper-there’s nothing wrong with it as written-except for the fact that its all a lie.”
Recently a video was posted with a clear explanation on how Wakefield fudged the PCR data by using a bad graph on a 2002 paper: Wakefield’s Smoking Gun by C0nc0rdance. This is not evidence by video, but an explanation of why raw PCR data is now required in papers.
The Ed: “I have heard both speak on the paper and frankly, I find Wakefield far more credible.”
Then you are gullible. You have been taken in by his accent and some kind of charm, though personally he comes across to me as smarmy. He reminds me when I was on jury duty for a civil case and we had the most charming personable judge. It turned out the judge had a very dark side, and committed suicide when he was that he was going to be on the front page because there was evidence he abused high school boys.
Psychopaths are often known to be kind of charming. You have obviously been sucked in, so much so that you can’t see the real data without the gullibility filter.
A couple of pertinent books:
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson
Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock
“As far as I can see, nobody here has heard any exculpatory evidence that Wakefield has to present.”
Why don’t you present some? I have been asking for a while for certain data that could support him, specifically the verifiable evidence dated before 1990 that autism in the USA increased at a higher rate that coincided with the use of the MMR vaccine since it was introduced in 1971. If the MMR vaccine was associated with autism, it seems obvious that the association with autism (along with gut issues) would have been noticed in a country that is much larger and using the vaccine much longer than the UK.
If the issues with the RotaShield can be found quickly, then why not the issues that Wakefield claimed for the MMR? If is can be shown that the MMR caused an increase in autism coincidental to the use the MMR vaccine, which was the preferred vaccine for the 1978 Measles Elimination Program, then we would have actual evidence that Wakefield had something other than a wad of tax payer funded cash (legal aide funds) waved at him by Richard Barr.
Le sigh. By some quirk in the blog software my comments do not appear after the comment I am responding to. It seems that the hierarchy fails a bit after over three thousand comments. And for some reason, my all appear together.
“The Ed” may never answer my questions, either because he does not read the RSS feed, or just does not have the answers.
The Ed: “That is not the point. The point is that if you are a physician you cannot go against all of your vaccinating colleagues and say this is wrong. And they don’t.”
I guess you have never heard of Dr. Jay Gordon, Dr. Bob Sears and a few others like this doctor who provided the most hilarious autism graph which showed the entire population becoming autistic, but before the girls.
“But answer this. Why do hospitals have to mandate vaccines if the medical personnel are in lock step?”
Because not all them are. There seem to be some nurses and others who don’t like vaccines. Such as the one such as the one described in a story here at bullet point #10 under the title “Patient Story: Spreading the Flu 4-2012.”
By the way, I am very glad that the hospital where my son had open heart surgery mandates vaccination. I support terminating the employment of those who do not comply. Just like the guy my spouse had to fire for getting high on drugs while at work, and I knew someone who was fired for using a company computing system for his own business. Some jobs have requirements like not smoking on the premises, not bringing in guns, not using work computers for surfing porn, etc.
The Ed: “Take a look at the few who are willing to tell you openly what happens when you inject aluminum salts into a tiny baby. Can you name one who has not been labeled a quack?”
There’s a reason for that. It is why I ask for studies done by “qualified reputable” researchers.
The only reason some folks decided that aluminum was bad was because every pediatric vaccine in the USA has a thimerosal-free version. Though it is interesting to see how many folks repeat the stuff on aluminum claiming that it is a “heavy” metal, equate the volumes used in IV solutions to vaccines, seem to assume it is in every vaccine, that it causes terrible things like sore arms, etc… but cannot come up with any study by reputable qualified researchers that any vaccine on the American pediatric schedule is more dangerous than the disease. Why is that?
When you have a chance, could you answer my questions? They are listed above because for some reason my comments are all being collated in the same spot. I am truly curious if you plan to apply to join the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and what verifiable documentation shows that autism increased in the USA that correlates to the use of the MMR vaccine after it was approved in 1971 (which contains neither aluminum nor thimerosal).
The Ed (who may never see my answers because I obviously click on the wrong button!): “Since they put egg albumin and aluminum salts in vaccines could this be responsible for the asthma epidemic seen in our schools?
Researchers also combine aluminum salts with collagen to cause rheumatoid arthritis in lab animals. Could the aluminum salts in vaccines be what is causing the epidemic of childhood arthritis? Could they be related to any of the other epidemics of auto-immune illness that are showing up in the US?”
Those are the questions asked by the folks who use the Vaccine Safety Datalink Program, go read the studies:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/library/vsd_pubs.html
“With the numbers of vaccines given, vaccines only have to be successful less than 1% of the time at causing autoimmunity to cause the epidemics we are seeing.”
Also a question that was studied, all you really have to do is to actually click on the following link and read the papers in its list:
Click to access vaccinestudies.pdf
You really ought to search PubMed and actually read the articles before presenting a bunch of questions that have already been answered by real scientists!
Also a reminder, that not every vaccine contains aluminum. Though one that does is DTaP. So where are the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that the DTaP is more dangerous than pertussis, tetanus and diphtheria.
The Ed: “The attack on Andrew Wakefield was vicious, thorough and public.”
Except for the few years peaking in 2004 when he was the media darling. Even though research from around the world, including from another Royal Free doctor, Brent Taylor, showed he was wrong, wrong, wrongety wrong. There was in a silly “docudrama” about him broadcast in the UK.
Then it was found out why he was wrong: he committed fraud. Pure and simple: he lied.
“Do you really expect me to believe that any doctor who has reservations about vaccines is not going to think about what happened to him before voicing any reservations?”
Other that the dozens who do, including those who turn anti-vaccine sentiments into a marketing plan like Jay Gordon and Bob Sears.
“Now answer this. Why should anyone vaccinate their child when the question of vaccines and autoimmune disease is in play?”
Because there is no proof. Just check out the papers I posted yesterday from the Vaccine Safety Datalink.
The Ed: “There is no possibility of fixing vaccines so that they do no harm.”
Please provide the PubMed indexed studies by qualified reputable researchers that the influenza vaccine in more dangerous than influenza. Especially since over 150 kids have died from influenza this year. Do not mention aluminum, since many do not have adjuvants, and do not mention thimerosal because almost half are thimerosal free.
“The issue with a hospital requiring vaccinations is that cleanliness is what keeps germs from spreading.”
Except airborne pathogens don’t care about water, sewage or surface cleanliness.
And the requirement is only for certain heath care providers, and their “customers” are often more vulnerable to influenza. It is amazing that a big healthy man is afraid a teeny tiny vaccine.
Colin, the first thing to do when arguing with an anti-vaccine person is to check their basic assumptions. Those are often wrong. There is no evidence that aluminum causes dementia, so arguing over the exact mcg/L concentration of Al in blood is a waste of time. See http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=102
(I linked a UK NGO website so the anti-government anti-medicine conspiracy theorists might not be tempted to chime in with their crazy.)
rather be crazy than ignorant…
Thanks, that’s very good advice. I have an unfortunate habit of trusting people…
Colin, the first thing when arguing with a provaccine person is to check their assumptions. They assume that there is no evidence that aluminum causes dementia. http://www.kidney.org/professionals/kdoqi/guidelines_bone/guide11.htm#table31
when clearly it does.
We are not all rubes.
No evidence that aluminum causes dementia? Pay the money and check with your nephrologist. You might learn something.
just out of curiousity why would I consult with a kidney specialist about dementia?
I believe that you would not. You do not want to know that aluminum causes dementia. The nephrologists know otherwise.
So a kidney specialist, rather than a neurologist would know definitively what causes dementia?
Here is a MIH meta study on aluminum (meta study is one that collates data from many studies and figures out – or tries – what it all means.
It states that more study is required, that while neurotoxicity of aluminum is well known, the link between it and Alzheimer’s requires more study, as no clear link for or against is shown.
Please note table 27 where it talks about the number of injections required to have neurogenic effect or bone toxicity as large..
“fThe amount of aluminium in one injection is not known. However, a single injection has been shown to be sufficient to cause irritation due to aluminium, hence resulting in a MOE value less than 1.0. On the other hand, for injections with typical aluminium content, neurological effects have only been observed following daily injections lasting for many months. We are unaware of members of the general population who would have to receive injections containing aluminium for this duration. Hence, the MOE is “large.” We recognize that in some highly unusual circumstances (e.g., contamination of dialysis fluid, which in the past was more common, or contamination of i.v. fluid), the possibility for aluminium toxicity as a result of exposure via injection remains.”
Let me direct you to this line specifically. “On the other hand, for injections with typical aluminium content, neurological effects have only been observed following daily injections lasting for many months.”
I’m not aware of any vaccination schedule that calls for a daily injection for duration of months. I think we can safely state that the few injections of the vaccination schedule is far below the levels they noted.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2782734/
So pardon me if I take a grain of salt with what your kidney specialist says is a cause of dementia. And I’ll need a whole bottle of salt to take with trying to link the amount of aluminum in a vaccine shot with dementia.
As for your point that the tiny amount of aluminum received by a baby during vaccinations is going to be the sole cause of neurological problem… I’m not sure there is enough NaCl available for me to consume.
In a test on rats, when given aluminum and mercury together, 100 out of 100 died. Vaccines are perfectly safe. Double plus good!! Get your vaccines, come one come all, 1 is good, 1000 even better!!
Can you cite the study that showed that? I’d be interested in the levels of each metal used. I’d also be interested in what manner the metal was introduced to their bodies. And whether or not the metals were the actual cause of death.
In my experience 100 out of 100 people who breath air die. Breathing is completely safe, come one come all lets take a deep breath of air. Easy to make a statement like that. It’s irrefutable. However it does nothing to show cause of death.
When my first son was diagnosed with autism I did so much research for the possible causes, and while vaccines came up as a possible cause, I couldn’t tell myself or anyone else that they are what causes it because there is so much research that they don’t but there are some seriously scary first hand accounts of children that have regressed after them. The truth is no one really knows what causes autism and I’m convinced it is multiple things. I, first hand, understand the fear of giving anything to my child that might cause autism, I understand not wanting to give the next child vaccines that could or could not affect his neurological development. For those people who say without hesitation “I would rather have a child with autism then have that child die from a preventable disease”, it’s not that easy. You don’t know the pain in watching your child struggle to do the things that come easy to typical children, to not hear your four year old say “I love you”, for them to not be able to tell you when they feel sick or when they are hurting, and to see the frustration and sadness in their little face when they can’t express themselves because they are trapped in their own bodies. I still believe in vaccines and am vaccinating my other child because i do believe they prevent horrible and deadly diseases. But I will break them up so my son isn’t getting so many at once. Even if it makes no difference I have to try something different this go round because if I didn’t and my second child became autistic I’d never forgive myself. I’m not here to debate whether or not vaccines cause autism or to defend those who are choosing (not out of necessity) to not vaccinate their kids because kids should be vaccinated if they can be. I’m here to tell you not to be so hard on the mother that is scared to vaccinate because they are afraid of autism. It’s not a whimsical choice they are making and while yes I would rather have 2 children with autism then 2 dead children it is the scariest thing giving my child those shots then watching more closely then I should have to for any kind of reaction or developmental delay. I lose some of the joys of just watching them grow and discover because I’m always waiting for that first sign that he’s behind. Be kind to eachother. You never know what that person is struggling with.
my youngest son has autism, and I can understand your point of view and the struggle parents must face if they link the vaccine with the cause. For me, I could see the signs of it before he had his MMR vaccination. Lets hope they can someday find out the cause of ASD, personally I am of the belief it is something they are born with, and it becomes more obvious as their brain develops. Some researchers have also shown there are clear signs even in infancy.
I came to the same compromise. It’s nice to hear a balanced alternative view for once. I have the same uncertainty and I relate to the complexity and difficulty. I think the comments about autism vs. communicable disease were insensitive and extremely misinformed.
I get the ‘willies’ running up and down my spine every time I read a ‘my anecdote is more powerful than your data’ statement. These take many forms…
“I had measles as a kid, and it wasn’t that bad. Why should I subject my kids to immunizations for this when it’s no problem?” (Because your individual experience is not the sum total of all experiences. Your experience was mild, for which we can all be happy, but the same disease could have much more serious consequences to someone else.)
“Immunizations aren’t 100% effective. Some people who get the vaccination still contract the disease they were ‘protected’ from. If you can still contract the disease, why bother to get the vaccination?’ (People who wear seat belts can still die in automobile accidents. Because seat belts aren’t a 100% guarantee of an injury free car crash, should we scrap seat belts and air bags and crumple zones in cars? Absolutely not! I have a hard time imagining parents who don’t want vaccinations for their kids similarly turning their noses up at protective car seats, seat belts, and the like.)
“Some people get sick directly from the vaccination. Why would anyone take a vaccine that could make them sick?” (Because the probability of that is waaaaaaay lower than the probability of infectious disease without vaccines. Did you ever eat a piece of pizza that was left out on the counter overnight? Eat an egg cooked after its ‘best by’ date? Eat chips and dip at a party? Then you probably ingested harmful pathogens that could have made someone very sick. You have taken far worse risks than vaccinations in all kinds of things that you have done – and are likely to do again.)
“Enough other people do it that there’s still herd immunity, so it’s not even important that I get vaccinations (for me or my kids).” (This is galling because it’s a tacit acceptance that vaccinations *are* indeed beneficial in a macro sense, but that the person wants all of the benefit of vaccinations, without any of the teensie, tiny, microscopic risk that may accompany it. This is essentially a risk : reward ‘freeloader’ argument.)
What each of these arguments, above, have in common is perspective. Each of these arguments against vaccination are constructed such that the experience of the individual (either real, or by proxy) is given far more weight than either the weight of scientific evidence or the importance of societal-level communal participation.
Very well put!
At last, a clear, logical summary of the ‘anecdote’ fallacy. Thank you very much.
Excellent comments.
yes, your data is irrefutable… just like the data for mercury in vaccines was, and Deet, and genetically modified foods, and labotomies, and growth hormone injected foods, and lithium, and several brands of estrogen birth control and thalidomide….et al
Data = god. You know everything. People with life experience know nothing.
Got it.
I don’t contend that data = god… I *do* contend that tested, vetted results trump anecdote. If the data should change, then so too should the decisions based on it. I agree that not all results presented as ‘definitive’ have stood the test of time. Perhaps you are the modern Christopher Columbus who will demonstrate an immunization equivalent to the fact that the world isn’t flat, but overcoming the mass of evidence supporting the efficacy and substantial safety of contemporary vaccines is, in my estimation, highly unlikely.
If your argument against vaccines is based on the fallibility of human beings, how can *any* assertion stand against that? You’re a human being… isn’t it then possible that *your* position is based on error? ‘Distrust the assertions of human beings’ creates something of a Schroedinger’s Cat conundrum… all positions are simultaneously valid and invalid, depending only on whether the position is yours or someone else’s. This goes back to my statement that a consistent element of anti-vax positions I see / hear / read has to do with their chosen point of perspective.
And your dripping sanctimony not withstanding, there are plenty of people with children who have autoimmune disorders, or ASD, who firmly support universal vaccination. Their ‘life experience’ in terms of wrestling with the challenges of caring for children with disabilities is no less valid than those who oppose vaccinations and are in similar situations. The same (or at least, very similar) experiences haven’t galvanized everyone who experiences them to share your viewpoint.
Thanks for summing up the smug!
I think the children of people who choose not to vaccinate without a genuine medical reason, should not be allowed into childcare centres, kindergartens and schools.
yes punish children for decisions of their parents over which they have no control.
Add to this the fact that the vast majority of children are vaccinated… which is it? Do you trust the power of vaccines or not? Is this just in the interests of those immunocompromised? Because it’s not like you are only going to encounter people in schools. Or should these children be quarantined to their homes?
Perhaps they should be strapped to their beds, just to be extra safe?
… and it’s communicable diseases that are the problem. Hmm.
Infants get hundreds of times as much aluminum from vaccines as breast milk according to peer reviewed science. The reason is, the vaccine aluminum is injected, and virtually 100% of it makes its way into the system eventually. The dietary system flushes 99.75% of ingested aluminum.
I have written a survey article on the safety of early adjuvanted vaccines, which cites, and links, dozens of mainstream journal articles showing danger, and pretty well establishes as well that there are no cogent articles in the peer reviewed literature supporting safety of early adjuvanted vaccines. The Pediatricians are mistaken about the science, as I prove.
A quick perusal of your blog suggests that you are right about vaccines, climate change, and economics, and that doctors, scientists, and economists are all wrong. At least, according to you. I’m impressed with your self-regard, if not the quality of your reasoning. You make much of a supposed correlation between adjuvants and autism, for example, but that connection has been thoroughly debunked; this appears to be part of the anti-vax effort to dredge up a new bogeyman now that thimerosol is off the table.
Will you review the dangers of organic foods next?
http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/correlation_causation_independence-98944
Please give me a citation to a peer-reviewed paper “debunking” the autism-aluminum connection, or in fact presenting any cogent evidence against it, because I have been unable to find one, and I have looked in all the safety surveys, adjuvant surveys, etc.
The peer reviewed literature is quite clear on the subject. The pediatricians, and you, are confused about what it says.
————————————-
Just to debunk the low aluminum claim made in the post above further, here is an abstract:
J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol. 2010 Nov;20(7):598-601. doi: 10.1038/jes.2009.64. Epub 2009 Dec 16.
Infants’ exposure to aluminum from vaccines and breast milk during the first 6 months.
Dórea JG1, Marques RC.
Abstract
The success of vaccination programs in reducing and eliminating infectious diseases has contributed to an ever-increasing number of vaccines given at earlier ages (newborns and infants). Exposure to low levels of environmental toxic substances (including metals) at an early age raises plausible concerns over increasingly lower neuro-cognitive rates. Current immunization schedules with vaccines containing aluminum (as adjuvant) are given to infants, but thimerosal (as preservative) is found mostly in vaccines used in non-industrialized countries. Exclusively, breastfed infants (in Brazil) receiving a full recommended schedule of immunizations showed an exceedingly high exposure of Al (225 to 1750 μg per dose) when compared with estimated levels absorbed from breast milk (2.0 μg). This study does not dispute the safety of vaccines but reinforces the need to study long-term effects of early exposure to neuro-toxic substances on the developing brain. Pragmatic vaccine safety needs to embrace conventional toxicology, addressing especial characteristics of unborn fetuses, neonates and infants exposed to low levels of aluminum, and ethylmercury traditionally considered innocuous to the central nervous system.
I think you are focusing on the conclusion you want to reach, rather than the data. The peer-reviewed science does not support a causative “autism-aluminum” connection. My perusal of the papers you cited suggests that you aren’t reviewing them critically, but assuming their validity even where they have been largely rejected by the experts. For example Tomljenovic and Shaw appear to have done some rather questionable work: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/12/08/and-global-warming-is-caused-by-the-decr/
Many anti-vaxers refuse to consider Orac’s criticisms because he is such a ferocious voice against woo, but his criticisms of that work are highly detailed and substantive. The work you rely upon uses fallacious reasoning and is poorly designed.
You asked for peer-reviewed papers regarding the safety of aluminum in vaccines. Less than ninety seconds of searching found two: Keith. LS, Jones DE, Chou CH, Aluminum toxicokinetics regarding infrant diet and vaccinations, Vaccine 2002;20(Sppl. 3):513-7; and Mitkus, RJ, King, DB, “Updated aluminum pharmacokinetics following infant exposures through diet and vaccination,” Vaccine 29 (2011) 9538-9543.
Your blog post doesn’t appear to address such research. Why not? Am I correct in assuming that your conclusion regarding the harm of vaccines predated your “review article”?
Keith and Mitkus are both models. They didn’t do any empirical measurements. And by the way, they both agree that the vaccine aluminum infants get is 100’s of times higher than the dietary aluminum. Both of them compared the modeled blood aluminum level to an MRL that was measured by feeding mice aluminum till they became sick, and dividing by 30. In other words, neither of their models is informed at all by experiments on the toxicity of injected aluminum.
To answer your question, I didn’t review them because I thought they were unworthy, since they report no empirical data. Perhaps I should insert a comment though for people who don’t understand. Thanks for suggesting it.
And, no you are wrong about my prejudging. I was a believer in vaccines doing a little due diligence and what I saw alarmed me, so I’m trying to help you out by telling you about what I found.
My reading of those papers suggested that they didn’t need to do “experiments on the toxicity of injected aluminum,” they were comparing the levels resulting from vaccine jabs to the safety standards set by others (the FDA?). Is it standard practice to omit such work from a review piece? Or to accept conceptually and structurally flawed work like the Tomljenovic/Shaw paper you rely so heavily on without dealing with those flaws? (Those are serious questions, not rhetorical ones.)
I note that your blog refers several times to your own post as having “proved … that Pediatric practice is delusional about the actual state of the scientific literature.” I’m not a scientist or doctor, but your rhetoric reduces your credibility in my eyes. First, it’s not the “Pediatric practice” that is convinced that vaccines are safe, but essentially the consensus of all medical specialties including epidemiology. Second, I’m rather skeptical that one person’s blog post has blown open an entire field’s understanding of the data. Third, in my experience (typically with legal writing rather than the sciences, but including substantial research into scientific irrationalities for a book I’m writing) grandiose claims like yours are rarely associated with careful, rational analyses.
I’m not persuaded by your post, which seems to be an advocacy piece rather thinly veiled as a review article. But who am I to say? My opinion is not dispositive. I urge you to submit your review to qualified professionals. I notice one journal has already rejected it, but there are many more.
What do you think about the vaccine court cases in which compensation was awarded to children with ASD diagnoses? (see Huffington Post who reported on it)
For many people, the adage “we do better when we know better” makes perfect sense and so I don’t see any danger as far as loosing vaccination coverage if the scientific community continues to probe the data to see why so many children have developed autism as a result of vaccine-induced encephalopathy, for example. Vehement vaccine proponents can get a little paranoid about avoiding public fear at any cost.
Josefina, you are making a lot of unsupported assumptions. I don’t believe the evidence supports loosening vaccine coverage, since the consensus of experts is that vaccines are not causatively correlated with ASD.
As for the court cases, do you mean the Cedillo case or the Poling case? In the Cedillo case, the special masters (basically the judges in an NVICP proceeding) held that the scientific evidence did not support the plaintiff’s claim that vaccines caused autism. In the Poling case, the government conceded that vaccines aggravated an existing mitochondrial disorder that manifested with features of ASD. That’s not autism, although anti-vaxers want people to think it is. (Incidentally, I read recently that the plaintiff’s mitochondrial disorder is so rare that only a few other cases are known. I don’t think there’s an epidemic in the making.)
Colin, to answer your comment below, you are right, they referred to the MRL experiments done by others, NBS I think. However, Keith describes the process, and Mitkus cites his source. I chased back to the source and found out what they had done.
If you try to figure out whether vaccines are safe by comparing the prestige of the people telling you it is to the people telling you its not, you will probably conclude they are safe.
I say I proved that the literature implies vaccines are dangerous because I have written out a proof of that. If you read my proof and understand it, then you will come to the right conclusion. There really are no papers giving a cogent argument for the safety, and lots of papers giving cogent arguments for danger. And what passes for surveys routinely do not discuss any of the dozens of papers I cited, so they clearly are not doing an unbiased search. These papers are in mainstream journals by esteemed scientists at major institutions. I’ve drawn a road map, with links and cites. I don’t know what more I can do.
Mitkus didn’t have to research the safe level of injected aluminum, he just cited a source. If you want to understand whether your child will be safe if you inject her, however, it pays to actually understand the science. And don’t forget, Mitkus didn’t measure ANYTHING. Its pure smoke. The people who have actual empirical results on injections, all report danger.
“I’m right and all the experts are wrong” is a bold claim. “I’m right and my blog post proved it and no one who understands it could possibly even disagree with me” is an even bolder claim. The kind of boldness one normally achieves only when shouting from a rooftop, or a streetcorner, wearing a bathrobe.
But as I said, I’m no expert. Since I’m not able to do a study (much less a metastudy) myself, I have to do a credibility determination: do I believe the anonymous blogger who claims to have singlehandedly overturned the scientific consensus, or the scientific consensus? That’s not really a hard choice to make. Your credulous acceptance of the debunked vaccine/autism link doesn’t help, especially when you uncritically cite deeply flawed work in support of that position.
It’s possible that you’re right. We’re lucky that there’s a method by which the rest of us can tell: submit your work for review by experts in the field (which I gather you’re not). Their opinions would mean much more than mine.
People ask for links to peer-reviewed research by someone who holds alternative opinions and you get it and still you can give no credit. What’s your new standard to take alternative views seriously, since you have reneged on pretty much all your other previously set criteria? Seriously, I am becoming increasingly hard-pressed to see how your “side” of supporters are the more logical and evidence-based and differ in any way from people who hold polarised views on the opposite side of this issue?
“What’s your new standard to take alternative views seriously[?]”
I wrote about this in another response to natphilosopher. Where we’re not qualified or unable to assess the evidence personally, by doing the research personally or critically scrutinizing all of the studies, we have to assess the credibility of the people on both sides of the question.
Here, natphilosopher says that the evidence clearly shows that aluminum causes enough harm that we should vaccinate less. Other people (many other people) disagree; the scientific consensus is that vaccines, including their adjuvants, are not harmful enough to warrant a different schedule or the development of new adjuvants.
Natphilosopher doesn’t have much credibility. He’s an anonymous blogger with an obvious bone to pick against the scientific consensus (not just with vaccines, but with global warming and I think economics as well). And he puts a lot of reliance on a study that turns out to be very severely flawed, without discussing those flaws. Finally he seems to credulously accept a causative connection between autism and vaccinations, which I’m persuaded is a pseudoscientific canard.
The scientific consensus on vaccines, on the other hand, is formed and supported by a vast community of researchers and experts with diverse backgrounds, specialties, and incentives. It is constantly and harshly tested for accuracy and validity. Its positions are not necessarily right, but they’ve been scrutinized much more, and much more carefully, than anything natphilosopher has written about vaccines. (More than anything any one person has written, really.)
In short, natphilosopher has a very tall hill to climb to persuade me. He’s not likely to do it with a couple of blog posts. He’ll need to persuade some actual experts, people who are really qualified to dig into those studies, to convince me that he’s on to something.
Have you published your findings in a peer reviewed journal?
I submitted my paper to the Journal of Pediatrics. They thought about it for a while, then declined to review it. if you go to http://whyarethingsthisway.com I posted their letter.
My paper cites dozens of articles in mainstream journals by mainstream authors showing danger. There are no articles showing safety. If you look at other surveys, they don’t cite these articles. There are no other surveys on the subject of early adjuvanted vaccines. The dangers reported in the published papers are extreme, for example it is suggested by epidemiology that vaccines are killing 4 babies in 1000 in America, and that they are creating huge numbers of autistics. For all these reasons, my paper is clearly important and for them to refuse to send it to reviewers, IMO, tells you all you need to know about the crowd think we are suffering from.
Its obvious crowd think if their minds are closed to new information. I’m citing numerous papers published in the last few years and not included in any previous surveys.
You seem to have misunderstood what the peer-review process is. Once you’re published in a peer-reviewed journal (there isn’t only one), then you can make a claim.
Send it to other journals. See how many accept it.
I’m writing a book that deals with, inter alia, creationists’ claims to scientific credibility. Their rhetoric is very similar: we’ve made this amazing discovery that totally overturns the scientific consensus, and if scientists were honest they’d admit it! The fact that experts don’t reach the same conclusions becomes evidence that those experts are corrupt or incompetent. The possibility that the theory might be wrong is rejected a priori.
Indeed, Colin! It also reminds me of conspiracy theorists: anyone who doesn’t agree is part of the conspiracy and any evidence that doesn’t agree is faked by the conspirators.
The common thread, I think, is unfalsifiability. And an idea that’s unfalsifiable–I don’t need to tell you, I’m sure–is also unscientific.
Its not a question of how many. Its only ethical to publish in one. But I think the fix is in, and I’m not getting paid for this. I’ve got better things to do with my time than court rejections. And its not as if I’m the first person to figure this out.
I’m seeking a more innovative way to fix the system. to solve crowd think itself, in a more general context. More on that on my blog later.
The flounce is in.
I googled natphilosopher’s blog post title and URL to see if it was being discussed anywhere else of note. He appears to have submitted it the Journal of Pediatrics, whose form rejection letter cut him deeply.
Aside from that, his venues of choice appear to be blog comment threads, including this one, a climate skepticism blog, and a pick-up-artist forum.
When all is said and done it is irresponsible and I would argue almost criminal if you do not vaccinate your children. Not only does it put them at risk it puts other children around at risk. Many of the parents who choose not to vaccinate have not been around to see the devastating effects of many of this diseases that vaccinations prevent. Get a clue!
Wasn’t it doctors and scientists that testified and presented researchh that smoking didn’t cause cancer and had no adverse health effects? That right smoking does cause cancer! So that scientific research was not true. Anyone is psid enough money they fond the stats and data to suit their employers. The truth will only be found when no money profits is linked to the research on both sides
Your argument fails the test of logic. it is what we call a ‘straw man argument’. You set up a dummy (smoking doesn’t cause cancer research) so you can tear it down as false.
You then attempt to use that straw man argument as proof of the falseness of other studies by transfering the falseness of those particular biased studies onto every other study you disagree with.
It is faulty logic, poor argument (or debate) and easily identified by anyone with any modicum of learning in logical argumentation or debate.
Worse, once found guilty of using these illogical methods, you lose the debate, as it is intellectually dishonest. You have lost all your credibility.
No one of any integrity will even waste their time with you, as you have shown you are only interested in defending your point of view by any means necessary.
The true aim of debate or argument is NOT to prove your point of view is the truth, but rather, to FIND the truth, and defend it against all comers as a means of proving the truth.
The hard part then, is accepting that proven truth, no matter how difficult it is to swallow. Anti-vaxxers fail on this point, continually referring to the same flawed studies, and one-in-a-million anecdotes as ‘proof’ they are doing the right thing.
Utilizing ad-hominem attacks, (also known as insults, derogatory comments etc against a commenter, rather than attacking the facts) straw man arguments, and other false, misleading and intellectually dishonest means of misrepresentation – it cannot be called debate or argument.
All they want to do is justify their belief, by any means necessary. They are not after the truth, unless it is their truth.
I believe the point is the scientists and medical experts have been wrong before so essentially they COULD be wrong again.
I think the above commenter was trying to making the point that the scientific method is inquiry-based and never represent the total truth, nor should any scientist or public health policy shaper ever make a claim that something isn’t there because a link has not been found. Instead it’s called “a link between so and so has not been found.” Anything but is propaganda.
Science has numerously and consistently been wrong. The scientif method is by it’s nature inductive. Inductive reason has the risk that new evidence that comes up tomorrow will change your mind about ‘truth’.
If we think of people who are anti-vaccine advocates as people who think that the scientific view of these medical ‘facts’ are changeable and that the sceintific method means they’re only reliable based on evidence so far, and given too, that medical science finds 30% of all drug affects are due to belief (Placebo) it’s a bit crass to call them anti-science. anti-science is takign any stance other than: based on the facts so far, this is what i’m led to believe so far, and I must accept that those facts will get added to and that my beliefs may change.
There’s no truth in science in any meaningful way, there is only justified belief.
“Inductive reason has the risk that new evidence that comes up tomorrow will change your mind about ‘truth’.”
That’s a feature, not a bug. If new evidence doesn’t change your mind about the truth, you aren’t thinking critically.
My frend was killed crossing the street, therefore, I will not cross the street any more!
Logic used by anti vaxers.
My friend was killed driving a car, so no one should drive car. I certainly wont!
Logic of vehement anti-vaxxers.
I don’t need a car. I can just bum a ride from friends and strangers!
Logic of anti-vaxxers relying on ‘herd immunity’.
I wear my seat-belt, and have a fire extinguisher in my kitchen. I also have a gun in my home. Not because I hope to use them, but just in case everything goes wrong and I desperately need it!
Logic of parents who vax.
Your logic: vaccine injury is accidental, in that despite taking common sense precautions (which are?), it happened regardless.
When you cross the street, you accept the risks involved. No one forced you to cross, and no one told you that crossing the street is always safe. The dangers are clearly visible.
Your mom might have told you how to safely cross the street so that you would be likely to avoid injury or death. When you started practice driving a car, you may have been taught how to safely navigate traffic to avoid hurting yourself and others.
What advice would you like to have given to the mother of a vaccine-injured child if you could have intervened before the accidental injury? What could have made it a safer journey? What is a good seat-belt for the kids more prone to vaccine injury?
You’re misinterpreting the analogy, perhaps on purpose. Let me clarify: in this analogy, vaccine-injured kids are likened to kids who were injured by seat belts. For instance, a seat belt has made it difficult for rescuers to get a child out of a car, and they died. This is very unfortunate and sad for the family, but it’s not a reason to campaign against seat belts, which definitely DO cost lives. But they save a lot more.
What you’re asking is, essentially, what could have made it a safer journey for that kid who was killed? The answer is probably nothing. Some people are killed; some people are injured. The question is not what particular cases are, but what the overall effect is.
I hope the analogy is clearer to you now.
“They say that measles isn’t a deadly disease.”
You actually mean to say there are vaccine skeptics who claim that an infection with the measles virus has never produced a fatal outcome? Or is this a misrepresentation?
I think the BEST part of this onion piece is that people apposed to vaccines are “doing it for profit”. As if the drug companies aren’t in it for profit!!! Yes, it’s because THEY CARE! !!
The difference is that drug companies, while working for profit, also produce positive results. Alternative medicine types, homeopaths, magnet healers, reiki people, and other con artists ONLY produce profits, never any results.
“Alternative medicine types” existed long before the existence of Big Pharma and mainstream medicine and is practiced in many parts of the world for no profit. They are the reason we exist today and are around long enough as a species to have the privilege of discovering modern medical practices.
You only/never comments make you sound grossly uneducated, culturally void, and exceedingly biased
The tone of this article is so condescending and self-righteous that it paints parents who question vaccines as somehow being egregiously misinformed, stupid, or worse. I am an intelligent woman, with a good deal of training and background in alternative health, as well as so-happens, engineering…and I know how to read research and make decisions based on the situation. I think any parent has a right and a responsibility to fully question what goes into their child’s body, and to treat a parent who is doing so as “suspect” makes it harder to take a middle of the road, fully informed approach. I would be willing to vaccinate in cases where the disease is either rampant, or unable to be treated easily in a healthy person with a strong immune system, for example. But to pile on dosage after dosage of vaccines into an infant before the immune system is fully in place, especially those the infant isn’t likely to be exposed to, seems to be equally unwise as simply refusing vaccines based on fear.
There are legitimate questions, and they are different for each vaccine, and each child and family.
How about a respectful dialog?
They are legitimate questions, and they have been answered. The fact that the “alternative health” community doesn’t like those answers doesn’t change the facts. Nor am I persuaded that a “background in alternative health” equips someone to make effective decisions based on scientific evidence; may I ask your opinion regarding homeopathy?
I have a respectful observation and follow-up questions: alternative medicine, by definition, either HASN’T been proved to work or HAS been proved NOT to work.
Do you know what the name is for alternative medicine that has been proved to work?
I ask this with all respect.
Amen; my multitude of comments, exactly.
Everything has a side effect, prescription, over counter meds. I see it this way we have come a long way since the beginning. I’m sure there are some bads in all this but you know what back in the old days no one even had vaccines or any type of drug to help anyone. Obviously the death toll dropped due to the help of vaccines. Back then no one had a chance. Everything is a debate. Good and bad is in everything. It’s all about social media and politics and the this and that. Everyday things change with this is bad for you then four years later they find out certain things aren’t anymore. Everyone is different do what you want and what you Belieave in. I appreciate the technology and vaccines and drugs they come out with Becuase ya they can help people save life’s, but then again sometimes it doesn’t. Remember we have come along way since the olden days, be happy and thankful we all get those chances.
I believe that vaccination benefits out weigh the risk, though there is always some risk. My sister received some shots, and was almost paralyzed, could hardly move for a day, she said she couldn’t move, lost a lot of hair since she received some shots, and it is still thin to this day, and she still has some type of skin issues on her head since receiving some shots, and this happened years ago. We are pretty sure this is what caused it, as she started having issues the day or, or day after. However, this was more of a mistake on the nurse as she gave her another persons shots with the same first name by mistake (which she called and admitted to my parents), after she had already received her shots just minutes before. The idea that people get as much mercury from eating fish, or as much aluminum, is probably true. However, I will say that there is a difference between eating a substance, and injecting it into your blood stream. Despite this, after reading a bit on the subject, I changed my view in support, instead of against vaccinations.
Daeyel your respone was assuptious because I am not anti vaccine in fact both my children are fully immunised Im just not so stupid to accept that science ot scientists are completely faultless or always get it right because history shows that there have been mistakes or new discoveries changr thinking and when money is involved people can be corrupted.I rather question than believe everything Im told like you.