While America is still in the grips of swine flu mania, let me use this opportunity to clear up a few things about my beliefs concerning the flu shot, vaccines, and health in general. I do this because there is obviously a lot of curiosity about this subject of vaccines -- it comes up in every interview I do these days, and I've been finding that people, including doctors, are privately expressing a skepticism that is still not very prevalent in public. I feel like I've become a confessor for people who want someone to be raising questions about vaccines.
But I don't want the job. I agree with my critics who say there are far more qualified people than me -- its just that mainstream media rarely interviews doctors and scientists who present an alternative point of view. There is a movement to stop people from asking any questions about vaccines -- they're a miracle, that's it, debate over. I don't think its that simple, and neither do millions of other people. The British Medical Journal from August 25 says half the doctors and medical workers in the U.K. are not taking the flu shot -- are they all crazy too? Sixty-five percent of French people don't want it. Maybe its not as simple as the medical establishment wants to paint it.
Vaccination is a nuanced subject, and I've never said all vaccines in all situations are bad. The point I am representing is: Is getting frequent vaccinations for any and all viruses consequence-free? I feel its unnecessary and counterproductive to try and silence people with condescension. Michael Shermer wrote me an open letter and felt I needed to be told that "vaccinations work by tricking the body's immune system into thinking that it has already had the disease for which the vaccination was given." Thanks, Doc, I thought there might be a little man inside the needle. Yes, I read Microbe Hunters when I was eight, I have a basic idea how vaccines work.
That's not -- or shouldn't be -- where the debate is. I admit, its hard to get as clear a picture of my beliefs, as you could, say, if I had written a book on vaccines, versus someone in the setting of a talk show. So I understand why its easy to take bits of things I have said and extrapolate into something I actually have never said. I understand it, but its not exactly "scientific."
But rather than responding to every absurd thing said, let me just tell you want I do think -- because I will admit, I have gone off half cocked on this issue sometimes, and often only had time on my show to explain a fraction of what needed to be explained, and for that I am sorry. Some of it can't be helped, some of that is the nature of the show we do: live, off the cuff, lots of interruptions. Some of it was just from me being overexcited about finally finding a health regimen that actually made me healthier and feel better. And many a time I have wanted to stop the show and clarify a point or provide the nuance I think it deserves, but I am serving many masters, and you have to get out of the way as much as you can so the guests can say their piece.
But some of it I would do differently. For example, I recently joined Twitter Nation -- what can I say, Demi Moore is a very convincing salesperson -- and what everybody told me about Twitter was that it was supposed to be whatever stray thought or thing just happened to you -- you know, for people who find blogging too formal and stuffy.
But apparently it's taken very seriously, because there was Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes asking the Secretary of Health and Human Services what she thought about the fact that "Bill Maher told his viewers anyone who gets a flu shot is an idiot."
Well, not quite. It was twittered, which I guess doesn't make a huge difference, but as 60 Minutes is the last bastion of TV journalism, accuracy is appreciated. And I see that counts for Twitter, too -- my bad -- so yes, some people are not idiotic to get a flu shot. They're idiotic if they don't investigate the pros and cons of getting a flu shot. But, come on -- it was a twitter from a comedian, not a treatise in the New England Journal of Medicine, that's not what I do.
I'm just trying to represent an under-reported medical point of view in this country, I'm not telling a specific pregnant lady what to do. With unlimited air time, I would have, for example, added to my discussion with Dr. Bill Frist on October 2 that, yes, any flu or health challenge can be dangerous when you're pregnant, and if your immune system is already compromised by, for example, eating a typical American diet, then a flu shot can make sense. But someone needs to be representing the point of view that says the preferred way to handle flus is to have a strong immune system to begin with, and getting lots of vaccines might not be the best way to accomplish that over the long haul.
Now, sometimes its OK to fuck with nature -- I believe "intelligent design" is often anything but intelligent; that "God's perfect universe" is actually full of fuck ups and design flaws, like cleft lips and Down Syndrome -- so correcting nature is sometimes the right thing to do. And then, sometimes its not. For me, the flu shot is in the "not" category.
In addition, my audience is bright, they wouldn't refuse a flu shot because they heard me talk about it, but if they looked into the subject a little more, how is that a bad thing? If they went to the CDC Web site and saw what's in the vaccine -- the formaldehyde, the insect repellent, the mercury -- shouldn't they at least get to have the information for themselves?
But just to reassure all those people who have such a romantic attachment to vaccines: I know, there are vaccines that have had their battles with the bad guys and won -- great! And if you have a compromised immune system and can't boost it naturally, as in poor countries where the children are eating dirt, then a vaccine can be a white knight -- bravo! Does the polio vaccine have the power to prevent children from getting polio, and did it indeed do just that in the 1950s? I believe it does, and it did. But polio had diminished by over 50 percent in the thirty years before the vaccine -- that's a pretty big fact in the polio story that you don't often hear and which merits debate. It may be the case that the vaccine should have been used anyway to finish polio off, but there are some interesting facts on the other side.
So yes, I get it, we learned how to trick our immune systems. And maybe sometimes, you gotta do it. But maybe the immune system doesn't like being tricked so many times. Maybe we should be studying that instead of shouting down debate.
Someone who speaks eloquently about this is Barbara Loe Fisher, founder of the National Vaccine Information Center. I find her extremely credible, as I do Dr. Russell Blaylock, Dr. Jay Gordon and many others, but I shouldn't have even mentioned them because I don't want to be "the Vaccine Guy"!! Look it up yourself, and stop asking me about it -- I'm already the Religion Guy, and that's enough work!
Anyway, Ms. Fisher is someone who says she is not "anti-vaccine," but just has a lot of questions about the long term effect of using a lot of vaccines. After devoting her life to studying this, she says that the influenza vaccine studies that have been done "are not persuasive in proving that a seasonal flu shot provides immunity." She also points out "that what we need, but do not yet have, are studies of vaccinated vs unvaccinated children."
Is it worth it to get vaccines for every bug that goes around? Injecting something into my bloodstream? I'd like to reserve that for emergencies. This is the flu, and there's always a flu. I've said it before, America is a panicky country. It's like we look for things to panic about.The reports from Australia, where they're over their flu season, is that its not a terribly virulent flu. The worldwide numbers support that. But you'd never get that impression from the media in this country.
60 Minutes has done two pieces on swine flu within a month. The first one introduced us to a high school football player named Luke Duvall who, we were told, was the picture of health, and then got hit by the flu so bad he was in the hospital at death's door. But later in the segment we learn that Luke had staphylococcus pneumonia along with the flu. Was that staph bug in him when he got hit by the flu? Its not clear from the reporting, but since every other kid on both football teams got the flu, as well as the cheerleaders ... ahem ... and all of them got over it just fine, then it seems quite possible that Luke had a co-existing infection, and that's why his experience with H1N1 was so different.
On the follow up visit a couple of weeks later on 60 Minutes, we were told Luke had "beaten H1N1." No, he beat H1N1 and staph together: that's very different! If 99 percent of people have relatively mild symptoms, shouldn't science's first job be finding out why the one percent get felled? Having an underlying health issue is the point I was raising with Dr. Frist: maybe Luke wasn't the picture of perfect health they described in the opening.
By the way, when Scott Pelley asked the government spokesman about the fact that only one percent of people who get the flu find it to be anything other than a typical, mild flu, the answer was an analogy to seatbelts, that "only 1 percent of people riding in a car will be in an accident, but you don't want to take a chance on being that 1 percent."
That went unchallenged, which is sad, because what a horrible analogy! I would think vaccines containing many different dicey substances shot directly into the bloodstream have a slightly greater chance of secondary effects than a piece of fabric lying across your waist. Maybe if you had to swallow the seatbelt this would be a good analogy.
If one side can say anything and its not challenged, then of course dissent becomes heresy in the minds of many. I don't trust the mainstream media to be thorough or exacting enough to inform me as much as I need on this subject. Sorry, they're just not up to it. At the very least, they should have pointed out, as we watched Luke fighting for life on a ventilator, that, of course, flu vaccines don't have any therapeutic effect on bacterial infection.
While we're on the subject of bacteria, let me say clearly I understand germ theory also -- I believe they also covered that in Microbe Hunters -- nor have I ever said I was a "germ theory denier." What I've been saying is that Western medicine ignores too much the fact that the terrain in which bacteria can thrive is crucial and often controllable, which shouldn't even be controversial. I don't care what Louis Pasteur said on his death bed -- it was probably, "Either the curtains go or I do" -- that's not the point!
And it's precisely because I am a Darwinist that I fear the overuse of antibiotics, since that is what has allowed nasty killer bugs like MRSA to adapt so effectively that they are often resistant to any antibiotic we can throw at it. There are consequences to vaccines and antibiotics. Some people want to study that, and some, it seems, want to call off the debate.
Instead of setting up this straw man of me not understanding germs or viruses, let's have a real debate about how much we should use vaccines and antibiotics. Of course it's good that we have them in our arsenal, but isn't the real skeptic the one who asks if these powerful but toxic methods do harm to what actually is a a very good defensive system, the one you were born with?
Also, I have never said there was a medical conspiracy. In fact, when Howard Dean asked me that, my response was "I wouldn't call it a conspiracy." Any more than there's a conspiracy for the Pentagon budget to be obscenely bloated and operated largely for the corporate welfare of defense contractors. If these are conspiracies, they're mostly legal ones that happen in plain sight. (Good time here to plug the hostess' book, Pigs At the Trough, it's all in there!) I have, in fact, used the phrase "medical-pharmaceutical-food industry" complex in comparing it to Eisenhower's famous depiction of a "military-industrial complex."
But no, I don't think the A.M.A. and Big Pharma and Aetna and Dr. Frist's hospital chain all meet in a board room and cackle about keeping us sick. They meet on the golf course. (Just kidding.)
Do pharmaceutical companies want to cure diabetes or do they want to sell diabetes drugs and equipment? Well, they sure do sell a lot these days, and the food companies are what make that possible. Read David Kessler's book about the deliberate way food companies use salt, fat and sugar as foodcrack to get people literally addicted to eating bad food and too much of it. Is that a conspiracy? Only if you define corporations putting profit ahead of human health as conspiracy. The fact that Americans will do anything to each other for money is not a conspiracy, it's a scandal.
I believe in science and I believe in studies to determine the truth. I also believe Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon was correct when he said recently on MSNBC: "If you've got a checkbook in this town, you can get just about any set of facts you want." So if I remind you of a conspiracy theorist, you sometimes remind me of Britney Spears when she said "we should just do whatever the president says to do, and not ask questions and just support him." The medical community can be brutal on dissent, which would hold more weight if I thought this was a terribly healthy country, which it isn't. Health care is one sixth of our economy, and we spend way more on it than any other nation. The elephant in the room of the health care debate is that we are going to have a high health care bill every year no matter what law they pass because we're sick -- we need a lot of drugs and services.
Am I a conspiracy theorist if I suggest that since the network's nightly news broadcasts are sponsored almost entirely by prescription drug ads, that you might have to hold your breath a long time before you hear the alternative point of view to using pharmaceuticals to cure all our ailments?
Is it conspiracy theory to believe that American medicine too much treats symptoms and not root causes of disease? I always ask my friends when they go to the doctor for something, "Did your doctor ask you what you eat?" The answer is almost always 'no,' and a lot can be cured with diet and a healthier lifestyle. (And a lot can't. I also understand the role of genetics and generations of artificial selection). But Americans don't want to hear that, so doctors don't push it. It's easier and more profitable to write a prescription for Lipitor. They're not bad people, and at the end of the day, you can't make someone eat right. I like and respect all the M.D.s I've had over the years, and for the record, I have a naturopath doctor and I have a Western doctor. I would make an analogy to Republicans and Democrats: in both politics and health, I don't commit to either party because I'm on the side of the truth, whoever has it. In both cases, I'm an Independent.
Ms. Fisher said "If we want to create a society that is dependent on shots for immunity -- the same way we are getting dependent on prescription drugs, antibiotics, and surgery -- this is the path we should keep going down."
I don't think its "anti-science" to pause and consider that point of view.
Follow Bill Maher on Twitter: www.twitter.com/billmaher
Finally, I remind everyone of HuffPoster Dr. Andrew Weil's positions on all this. He says he should have taken a shingles vaccine (he has the condition) but he maintains basically the same position as Bill on the subject. On drugs, Weil says "Who says we need drugs?" Weil also objects to "for profit medicine".
Almost everyone who gets infected will be sick for days, lose money or sick days and get better. It probably will take a couple of weeks to get back to normal. That's typical.
A very, very small percentage is hospitalized with even smaller percentages in ICU and graves. The chances of dying from the virus and its complications is less than 1 in a 2000.
The risks of the vaccine are essentially zero for long term effects. The big concern was an increase in cases of GBS. That didn't happen.
Seems like a no-brainer to me.
H1N1 Vaccination: Now proven safe by millions of people.
What you say is tantamount to saying "I wore a wooly hat last week so my head wouldn't get cold. Having read what anonymous people on the internet say about how lethal hats might be, I regret having worn it."
It is in the thread about aluminum.
I don't think its "anti-science" to pause and consider that point of view."
No Bill, it's not anti-science to consider that point of view, the view is simply unscientific. Ms. Fisher doesn't seem to understand that vaccines create an immune response, but our immune system is not dependent on them to respond properly. Vaccines are a boon to the human immune system because, unlike a normal infection, they are easily handled by the typical immune system and result in immunity while avoiding the damaging effects of an infection.
But nowadays...how many vaccinations are required in the U.S. to attend school? How many does the CDC recommend? What for? More and more vaccinations for a smaller and smaller number of lives saved, in the U.S. Here is the current CDC recommended schedule: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/schedules/downloads/child/2009/09_0-6yrs_schedule_pr.pdf
37 or 38 vaccines. if you count the individual diseases it is many more (MMR as 3, for example). The schedule when I was a kid was maybe 3 vaccines needed to get into school. For my daughter it was 8-10, counting individual diseases.
Is this really the absolute best route to health? Looking around, I see more unhealthy children than I've ever seen in my life.
Canada's immunization guide doesn't include Hep A but it should. And probably will. I keep seeing those ads for the combo Hep A, Hep B vaccine that show how an ice cube made with local water (south of the US border) in a glass of bottled water is enough.
I live in Ontario. If my doctor says I'm an IV drug user I get it for free. No one will doubt it as he's one of the very few family doctors where I live that have a methadone license.
And if the world isn't going vaccine crazy fast enough, a Canadian company has been approved in Canada and is seeking approval in the US for a vaccine to be given to HEALTHY cattle. In most vaccinated cattle, it will stop the nasty to humans e. coli from being 'shed.' That 'shedding' that gets on a hide can contaminate the meat. That's a problem if the meat is ground and mixed with tons of other ground meat. Cost per cattle is $9.
Nostalgia and comparing vaccine requirements have nothing to do with my post.
1. In the US for a vaccine that showed a drop in potency (nothing to do with safety) below what was allowed.
2. In Canada, a lot of vaccine that had a higher than usual number of severe allergic reactions.
I have no idea what genetic tests you're talking about. Could it be antibody tests?
As to kids with a known allergy to eggs,
http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/vaccination/public/vaccination_qa_pub.htm
Predicted mercury concentrations in hair from infant immunizations: cause for concern.
Abstract: Mercury (Hg) is considered one of the worlds most toxic metals. Current thinking suggests that exposure to mercury occurs primarily from seafood contamination and rare catastrophic events. Recently, another common source of exposure has been identified. Thimerosal (TMS), a preservative found in many infant vaccines, contains 49.6% ethyl mercury (EtHg) by weight and typically contributes 25 microg of EtHg per dose of infant vaccine. As part of an ongoing review, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced in 1999 that infants who received multiple TMS-preserved vaccines may have been exposed to cumulative Hg in excess of Federal safety guidelines. According to the centers for disease control (CDC) recommended immunization schedule, infants may have been exposed to 12.5 microg Hg at birth, 62.5 microg EtHg at 2 months, 50 microg EtHg at 4 months, 62.5 microg EtHg at 6 months, and 50 microg EtHg at approximately 18 months, for a total of 237.5 microg EtHg during the first 18 months of life, if all TMS-containing vaccines were administered. Neurobehavioral alterations, especially to the more susceptible fetus and infant, are known to occur after relatively low dose exposures to organic mercury compounds. ...
In effort, to further elucidate the levels of ethyl mercury resulting from exposure to vaccinal TMS, we estimated hair Hg concentrations expected to result from the recommended CDC schedule utilizing a one compartment pharmacokinetic model. This model was developed to predict hair concentrations from acute exposure to methymercury (MeHg) in fish. Modeled hair Hg concentrations in infants exposed to vaccinal TMS are in excess of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) safety guidelines of 1 ppm for up to 365 days, with several peak concentrations within this period. More sensitive individuals and those with additional sources of exposure would have higher Hg concentrations. Given that exposure to low levels of mercury during critical stages of development has been associated with neurological disorders in children, including ADD, learning difficulties, and speech delays, the predicted hair Hg concentration resulting from childhood immunizations is cause for concern. Based on these findings, the impact which vaccinal mercury has had on the health of American children warrants further investigation.
That's all we are saying... further investigation is necessary before the government can run around screaming from the rooftops that thimerosal is "extremely" safe.
I noticed that the paper said "Neurobehavioral alterations, especially to the more susceptible fetus and infant, are known to occur after relatively low dose exposures to organic mercury compounds...". Do keep in mind that "organic mercury" include methyl mercury, which has been shown to cause neuro-toxicity, but is not the same as ethyl mercury.
Lastly, can you post a link or PubMed ID number for this paper?
Thanks SF25, good find.
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10997&page=184
The reason NoNDescripto posted the Pichichero study in the context of this discussion was surely because it put a positive spin on thimerosal - I can't think of any other reason. The study was designed to allay fears if not to detect mercury very hard. But when I pointed out that a subsequent study - Burbacher - showed that however fast the body expelled the mercury it was likely that some crossed the blood brain barrier and stayed, NoNDescripto's basic response is that it is another kind of study (you could blow me down with a feather) which answers different questions. But even though it is a different kind of study NoNDescripto is still swift to point out that we don't whether the mercury deposited in the brain does any harm. Well, yes, but...
I think there is some basic discourtesy here - the pretence is the we don't know what we are talking about - we are not scientists like NoNDescripto (at least as he would have us believe) and that we don't know what we are talking about. I think this is less than evident.
"don't know whether the mercury deposited in the brain does any harm."
The comments I made about the two papers are true and valid: they were studying two different questions. You don't refute this point, but merely suggest that by pointing it out, I am somehow wrong. Is it possible that contents of some vaccines produce harmful effects in a percentage of the population? Yes. Has it been conclusively proven that the thimerosal contained within some vaccines causes neuro-degenerative disorders? No, it has not.
I never said I was a scientist, nor did I begin posting under the pretense that you don't understand the subject about which you so adamantly argue. I only began suggesting you don't know enough about vaccines to make a valid argument when you proved that you don't fully understand the paper you cite as sources for you arguments.
Now you are being discourteous by accusing me of something I have not done.
What point were you trying to bring to the discussion?
"Administration of vaccines containing thiomersal does not seem to raise blood concentrations of mercury above safe values in infants. Ethylmercury seems to be eliminated from blood rapidly via the stools after parenteral administration of thiomersal in vaccines."
In addition to this misleading claim from the Pichichero study itself - which was too small and imprecise to estabish any such thing - you added erroneously:
:"While I can't find a blood-level of ethyl Hg that is considered "safe", this study makes it rather apparent that infants have ethyl Hg in their blood, regardless of thimerosalÂ-containinÂg vaccines, and it doesn't appear to be harmful."
when the abstract stated:
"Only one of 15 blood samples from controls contained quantifiable mercury."
So, it looks like you made that bit up (where would they have got ethyl mercury from anyway? - environmental mercury is "methyl mercury").
You were bringing to the discussion evidence that concern about mercury in vaccines was unwarranted, otherwise why mention it? But it wasn't a good study and didn't make a good case.
And having screwed up big-time you try and make out that no-one else understands science.
Serious adverse vaccine reactions to acellular combo vaccines (perhaps I missed it, but there does not seem to be a purely acellular pertussis vaccines):
< 6 months 2,853 53.44%
6-11 months 785 14.70%
1-2 years 951 17.81%
3-5 years 631 11.82%
6-17 years 55 1.03%
18-29 years 3 0.06%
30-39 years 2 0.04%
40-49 years 2 0.04%
50-59 years 3 0.06%
Unknown 60 1.12%
Total 5,345 100.11%
There may be as many as 534,500 vaccine reactions to vaccines containing the acellular pertussis component. So I wouldn't go so far as to consider it necessarily benign.
Could you clarify what those numbers mean? It appears to me that after the age of ~18, the percentage of patients who react adversely to the APV (acellular pertussis vaccine) is considerably less than 1%. Is this correct? If so, then would it be much more accurate to say that, after ~18 years of age, the APV is a good option (assuming, of course, that it creates a high and appropriate immune response)?
Thanks.
Mercury concentrations and metabolism in infants receiving vaccines containing thiomersal: a descriptive study.
(from abstract) INTERPRETATION: Administration of vaccines containing thiomersal does not seem to raise blood concentrations of mercury above safe values in infants. Ethylmercury seems to be eliminated from blood rapidly via the stools after parenteral administration of thiomersal in vaccines.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12480426
http://download.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140673602116825.pdf?id=5bbe37e152166496:3c1a3712:125510ad4a5:6da81259791717107
Three thimerosol containing vaccines were used: Hep. B, PTD, and Influenza A. A quick look at figure one will show that the blood-levels of ethyl Hg, the form of Hg found in thimerosal, does not differ from infants vaccinated with thimerosal-free vaccines.
Note: While I can't find a blood-level of ethyl Hg that is considered "safe", this study makes it rather apparent that infants have ethyl Hg in their blood, regardless of thimerosal-containing vaccines, and it doesn't appear to be harmful.
This is the Pichichero study.The abstract stated that "Only one of 15 blood sample from controls contained quantifiable mercury" (type unspecified) so doesn't bear out your statement. The Burbacher study using macacque monkeys subsequently showed that mercury neverthess crossed the blood-brain barrier. I will post the remarkably frank comments from Burbacher's conclusions below. Pichichero failed to make a vital disclosure which had appeared in an earlier publication:
"The author has received research grants and/or honoraria from the following pharmaceutical companies:Abbott Laboratories, Inc.;Bristol Myers Squibb Company; Eli Lilly and Company; Merck&Co.; Pasteur Merieux Connaught; Pfizer Labs; Roche Laboratories; Roussel-Uclaf; Schering Corperation; Smith Kline Beecham Pharmaceuticals; Upjohn Company; Wyeth- Lederle."
Pichichero M E, 'Acute otitis media Part I. Improving diagnostic accuracy, American Family Physician April 1, 2000: 61: 2051-6.
So, virtually all these companies manufactured thimerosal containing vaccines and Eli Lilly was the manufacturer of thimerosal itself.
Comparison of Blood and Brain Mercury Levels in Infant Monkeys Exposed to Methylmercury or Vaccines Containing Thimerosal
Thomas M. Burbacher, Danny D. Shen, Noelle Liberato, Kimberly S. Grant, Elsa Cernichiari, and Thomas Clarkson
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1280342/?tool=pubmed
They didn't establish a base level for mercury in infants. They never actually demonstrated that all of the mercury was excreted, they just assumed that it was. They also assumed that blood levels of mercury can demonstrate that mercury is being excreted: if blood levels go down then mercury must be leaving the body. Of course blood levels can go down without all of the mercury leaving the body.
The study also assumes that all of the babies metabolize mercury more or less identically. Samples were taken from different babies at different times and treated as though they all came from one "ideal" baby, to support the theory that the mercury in vaccines is rapidly excreted.
My theory about what is behind this whole "mercury in vaccines is good and necessary" narrative:
Lack of refrigeration in developing countries. Mercury is a cheap preservative. European countries quietly spotted the mercury problem and removed it from most of their vaccines. The US and the UK didn't see the problem until much later and only after they had given millions of babies significant and dangerous doses. So, when the problem is first spotted, the AAP and the CDC are all for getting the mercury out pronto, but then they start seeing some problems.
SHELDON101 WROTE:-
Another hypothetical
Assume you see a baby lying in the middle of a very quiet street. The baby is wearing fluorescent orange clothing. The sun is shining. 300 feet away a car is slowly approaching the baby. You can safely pick up and move the baby. But there's a chance that doing so will aggravate your back pain and you'll have back pain for a few days.
Is it morally correct to move the baby from the middle of the street? Put another way, if you don't move the baby from the street is correct for others to condemn you.
I don't see much difference between those assumptions and my vaccination assumptions
I REPLIED:-
Sheldon101
You are not posing the moral issue at all - you are contrasting great and minor harms, but I am not impressed that you have the evidence to make such an insulting analogy. When I pointed out that my two month old son was "run over" by a whole cell pertussis vaccine, which you had previously admitted was dodgy, you could not even bring yourself to acknowledge the point.
AND STILL NO ACKNOWLEDGEMENT FROM SHELDON101 - SHELDON101, WAS THE RISK TRIVIAL?
Your argument is nothing but a straw man fallacy, meant to distract and detract from the discussion at hand.
Additionally, your insistent describing of childhood vaccination as 'unethical' and 'immoral', while provide little to no basis (ie. actual information) for your claims, also detracts from the legitimacy of your argument and opinion.
Learn how vaccines work.
Learn why vaccinations work.
The point about Sheldon's example is that on one side there are only trivial consequences, when actually the wrecked lives are not trivial, meanwhile Sheldon101 averts his gaze and you insinuate that I made it up. There is bad faith in this and it is not mine..
Regarding how vaccines work, particularly the adjuvants which were never brought up in the grade school "education" I was given on vaccination, how do they artificially boost immune response to an inactivated antigen without stimulating undesired immune responses as well?
But he assumes that I carefully read all replies to my comments I don't. I'm more interested in comments that are immediately visible and don't require me to click on "There are more comments" Or I could have chosen not to respond. I don't remember.
I dislike the way this has been raised to me, but I'll respond here.
The whole cell pertussis vaccine had many more serious side effects than other vaccines. A safer but much more expensive , acellular pertussis vaccine was approved for use in Japan in 1981. It took too many years for it to be approved for use in Canada, the US and the UK. The whole cell vaccine is still used by WHO because it is much cheaper.
. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pertussis#Whole-cell_pertussis_vaccine_controversy
John Dan Stone, I'm sorry that your son had the bad fortune to be damaged by the whole pertussis vaccine. The risks from this vaccine were not trivial. Almost all children had the benefit of protection from whooping cough, a disease that was more serious than most parents realized.
A few children had the misfortune to suffer the harm caused by the vaccine. Your son was one of them.
My post above with words in capitals 'an exchange with Sheldon101" quoting in full your previous post, and most of mine was at the top of the page for more than 12 hours yesterday, during which time you chose not to respond, so apparently you couldn't even recognise your own words, which is surprising (unless of course you are more than one person). But whether you recognised the exchange or not you made the decision not to respond again. It could also be that you did not notice if it was your habit only to respond to points on which you thought you could score and pass over the rest.
Now you express your dislike of having the matter raised - yes vaccine damage occurs and it is a very unpleasant matter. It could ruin an infants life, and it could ruin its family's life, and of course everyone can walk away pretending it hasn't happened. If you are so minded you can even join in campaigns trying to discredit the parents of vaccine damaged children, and a few people might even think you know what you are talking about.
But I am sorry for spoiling your day.
Now they admit it. Then, they didn't.
An odd and interesting study. One of the oddities is that everyone in the study got vaccinated. So how are we supposed to work out if there are any weird effects of vaccinating during pregnancy? I mean one group got a different vaccine than the other group, but if vaxes during pregnancy do something bad, this study is guaranteed not to spot the problem.
There are some other weird bits in the study. Who can spot them?
The study is explained here:
"The Mother's Gift project is a randomized trial of the strategy of maternal immunization, with the primary goal of assessing the safety and immunogenicity of sequential maternal and infant immunization with pneumococcal vaccines in Bangladesh. In our study of influenza vaccine, mothers in the control group received pneumococcal vaccine only. No infants received the influenza vaccine. We made use of the opportunity afforded by the randomized, blinded design to assess the influenza-related illnesses of the mothers who had received the influenza vaccine and their infants, as compared with those who received only pneumococcal vaccine. We report here estimates of the clinical effectiveness of maternal immunization with inactivated influenza vaccine on influenza illness in infants and mothers."
Bad things did happen during the study.It was judged these were not caused by either vaccine.
Flu Vaccination: It's smart to be vaccinated during pregnancy.
Sometimes I use the signature line
Flu vaccination: If not for yourself or your community, do it for your cat.
That needs to be changed to
Flu vaccination: If not for yourself or your community, do it for your cat or dog.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/12/01/petscol120109.DTL
There's a 99% figure here. I assume that means the strain infecting dogs was different from the strains infecting humans. That doesn't make sense to me.
http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/2009/11/china-dogs-test-positive-for-h1n1.html
I'm sure ferret owners know this, but just in case, ferrets are easily infected with human influenza virus.
A few months ago, a new influenza vaccine was approved --- for use in dogs.
This isn't an H1N1 vaccine. It's a H3N8 vaccine
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/health/30flu.html
Flu Vaccination for dogs: If you live in Florida, New York City’s northern suburbs, Philadelphia and Denver and own a dog, you should think about it.
It's like Sheldon101 has gone into manufacturing as many topics as he can
What is your relation with this issue? You increasingly write as if you have some professional involvement. I think it is fair to ask. You keep on citing your own opinions as if they matter, but you also will not tell us who you are.
You just said you were going to write to the lead author of a study on Turjkish healthcare workers - apparently on our behalf - are you going to tell him/her who you are?
The study of Turkish health care workers has this sentence "An evaluation at Month 3 following influenza vaccination determined 45 severe influenza-like symptoms in 25 (4.5%) subjects."
That sentence isn't clear. Rather than continue to argue about it, I'm going to send an email to the lead author and ask him to explain it.
Here's the email I sent to the corresponding author, Hasan Naz, M.D.
Hello:
Could you explain what this sentence in your health care worker study means?
"An evaluation at Month 3 following influenza vaccination determined 45 severe influenza-like symptoms in 25 (4.5%) subjects."
I think it means that 3 months later (during flu season) only a few of those vaccinated were sick.
There are others who think it means that 3 months after vaccination, 25 people had severe ILI symptoms from the vaccination.
Here's the reply.
influenza-like symptoms during 3 months after vaccination were observed. In the discussion, but did not connect these symptoms to the vaccination
??Since we did no conduct any microbiological assessment, the severe influenza-like symptoms observed may have been due to different or similar influenza, or other viral or bacterial infections.??
Sincerely
Hasan Naz, M.D.
Department of Infectious Diseases,
Eskisehir Yunus Emre State Hospital, Eskisehir, Turkey
- "Since we did no conduct any microbiological assessment"
So no one knows the answer and all else is speculation. Great "science" Sheldon101.
__________ÂÂÂÂÂÂ_____Â_Â_Â_Â_Â_ÂÂ__Â__Â__Â_Â_Â_Â_Â_Â__Â_Â__Â_Â__ÂÂ_Â________Â________
Swine Flu Vaccination: Untested, Unsafe, Ineffective and morally not the right thing to give your kids.
You have already complained that what vaccine proponent Dr Jefferson says outside of his published papers is irrelevant. So here you go seeking comment by email outside of the published paper when it suits you.
__________ÂÂÂÂÂ______Â_Â_Â_Â_Â__Â__Â__Â__Â_Â_Â_Â___Â__Â_Â__Â_Â_____________________________
Swine Flu Vaccination: Untested, Unsafe, Ineffective and morally not the right thing to give your kids.
-----------------------------------------------------
From a report by Maggie Fox (Reuters)
Mon Nov 30, 2009 6:45pm EST:
"The CDC said just over 20 percent of specimens sent for testing from patients with flu-like illness were positive for H1N1 swine flu, meaning that 80 percent of patients had something else. At the worst, this proportion was over 30 percent."
"The CDC estimates that more than 22 million Americans have been infected with H1N1 and that 3,900 have died."
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5AO3Z420091130?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews&sp=true
Why quote the CDC from a newspaper when you can go right to the source.
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/ currently week 46
"And you learn how great a match the vaccine is
Four hundred eleven (99.8%) of 412 2009 influenza A (H1N1) viruses tested are related to the A/California/07/2009 (H1N1) reference virus selected by WHO as the 2009 H1N1 vaccine virus and one virus (0.2%) tested showed a reduced titer with antiserum produced against A/California/07/2009"
So 99.8% of the time, the infecting virus matches the vaccine--- which is great. The other 0.2% of the time, there isn't as good a match but it the vaccine may still be effective for many of those vaccinated. That's the short version. For the long version do some research.
BTW, the rate of influenza found in sample is, I believe, hiigher than usual.
Flu Vaccination: Safe and effective.
In fact, it is rather a remarkable claim that you and they would seem to be making. They are saying that 80% of the flu type illnesses tested for are not flu at all and the rest are all swine flu - so there is no seasonal flu with normal varieties at all, and no match for this year's seasonal flu vaccination.
But are they just reclassifying all flu as swine flu - I thought that was policy anyway?
Influenza vaccination in healthcare workers
http://www.jidc.org/index.php/journal/article/view/19749449/53
Out of 547 hospital personnel "An evaluation at Month 3 following influenza vaccination determined 45 severe influenza-like symptoms in 25 (4.5%) subjects."
And "Side effects included pain in 139 (25.4%), fatigue in 94 (17.2%), headache in 14 (2.6%), erythema in 8 (1.5%), swelling in 8 (1.5%), low-grade fever in 8 (1.5%), fever in 8 (1.5%), and short-term dyspnea in 1 (0.18%) subjects. An evaluation at Month 3 following influenza vaccination determined 45 severe influenza-like symptoms in 25 (4.5%) subjects."
420 Healthcare workers in this hospital did not want flu vaccination because:
"420 (76.8%) HCWs [health care workers] included not considering influenza a serious disease in 124 (29.5%), disbelief in the efficacy of vaccination in 109 (26%), the lack of reimbursement of vaccination in 105 (25%), fear of the side effects of vaccination in 45 (10.7%), preference for other methods of protection in 75 (17.9%), and fear of injection in 29 (6.9%)."
And it looks like they were right.
__________Â__________Â__________Â__________Â__________Â_______________________
Swine Flu Vaccination: Untested, Unsafe, Ineffective and morally not the right thing to give your kids.
"The increase in the rate of influenza immunization among healthcare personnel is possible through education, contestation of fear, amelioration of misconceptions, solution of financial issues, constitution of a registry system, and tracking of vaccination [24,25]. In conclusion, we determined that the side effects of influenza vaccination are mild, transient, and do not cause absenteeism from work."
"Four hundred twenty (76.8%) of the 547 vaccinated HCWs were asked why they had not been
vaccinated in past year".
-----------------
I don't understand how a parental decision to not have their children vaccinated can conceptually or logically be positively morally correct. I can see a parent rejecting the morality argument or rejecting the risk\benefit argument. I'm looking forward to an explanation.
You are demonstrating very well how zealotic you people are in the very teeth of the evidence.
You simply have not dealt with the facts reported but have gone off on a tangent.
Don't you know that with any medical or scientific paper one must read the data and results and ignore the author's discussion and conclusions which are merely opinions and subject to author bias [including the need to avoid being ostracised by publishing stuff their employers don't like].
__________ÂÂ_________Â_Â________Â__Â_______Â___Â______Â____Â______________
Swine Flu Vaccination: Untested, Unsafe, Ineffective and morally not the right thing to give your kids.
First, the 4.5% of subject who, 3 months after vaccination, displayed severe influenza-like symptoms probably had the flu. Due to the nature of vaccines, and the heterogeneity of human populations, sometimes vaccines don't work. In this case, it appears that about 4.5% of the vaccine recipients didn't properly respond. The influenza-like symptoms are not caused by the vaccine, especially not 3 months after inoculation.
Second, the majority of side effects listed are not considered severe, and they are not unexpected. Granted, one patient developed short-term dyspnea, but that is 0.18% of the population, and once again, not unexpected. Vaccines have side-effects; no one in the medical or scientific community would suggest otherwise.
Lastly, 420 health care workers were asked why they didn't get the seasonal influenza vaccine the previous year (2005), NOT why they "did not want" the vaccine. It is also important to note, as the authors did, that proper education regarding vaccine efficacy and safety increases the voluntary enrollment rate of health care workers in vaccination campaigns.
You are, to be blunt, lying about what the intentions and implications of this paper truely are.
A batch of seasonal flu vaccine was shipped from Baxter Laboratories to European countries for distribution around the world, including the United States, which contained the live virus for H5N1 along with the two parts Type B and 1 part Type A. The error was only caught by chance when those ferrets Shaw spoke of all died. Baxter operates at a BSL-3, definition here: http://www.cdc.gov/OD/ohs/symp5/jyrtext.htm (to save space). You can infer from the definition that in order for the avian flu to get "oops-ed!" into millions of seasonal flu vaccines, it would take a lot more than one person to go "oops."
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aTo3LbhcA75I
It is believed the last outbreak of the avian flu was due to laboratory error, as most H5N1 found in wild birds is not HPAI (highly pathogenic) H5N1
Baxter was contracted to manufacture the seasonal flu and the H1N1 vaccines this year. This wasn't the first "mishap" by Baxter. They were required to pay millions to hemophiliac patients who received heparin tainted with the HIV/AIDS virus. No penalty was assessed to Baxter for these "mishaps" by the WHO,UN or US, as they are still allowed to produce vaccines (44% of their profits) and other medical products.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baxter_International
As for the rest, Baxter's explanation is probably a pack of lies, but here it is: found in 10 seconds from a search of H5N1 baxter contaminatuion
baxter h5n1 contamination
http://www.lifegen.de/newsip/shownews.php4?getnews=2009-03-02-2412
"Other new H1N1 vaccines were approved faster because they were tested and approved against H5N1 viruses. This was done to speed production and approval of an H5N1 pandemiic vaccine if avian flu develops the ability to spread from human to human." This doesn't even make any sense. H5N1 virus has nothing to do with the H1N1 vaccine being approved faster. There was no vaccine process in place for a H5N1 vaccine. It was a mistake, admitted by Baxter. It was for a seasonal flu vaccine, which they say in your link wasn't intended for human use. I'm pretty sure that is the first time I've read that out of the 20+ articles I've read, so I would go ahead and assume that's a "pack of lies." Just to not raise fear in the public. Rightly so, because the public should be able to trust these professionals, but they should still be honest.
Remember - I'm not anti-vax. I'm trying to provide a different side: you SHOULD ask questions about this. It often comes off as though you "blindly" trust these people, when really the testing isn't there. No matter what spin you put on it, a lot of the testing that people on this blog have pulled up about vaccines on the special populations for which the vaccines are highly recommended isn't done on humans until AFTER the vaccine has been released.