Recently, I was amazed to hear a commentary by CNN's Campbell Brown on the controversial vaccine issue. After a ruling by the 'special vaccine court' saying the Measles, Mumps, Rubella shot wasn't found to be responsible for the plaintiffs' autism, she and others in the media began making assertions that the judgment was in, and vaccines had been proven safe. No one would be more relieved than Jenny and I if that were true. But with all due respect to Ms. Brown, a ruling against causation in three cases out of more than 5000 hardly proves that other children won't be adversely affected by the MMR, let alone that all vaccines are safe. This is a huge leap of logic by anyone's standards. Not everyone gets cancer from smoking, but cigarettes do cause cancer. After 100 years and many rulings in favor of the tobacco companies, we finally figured that out.
The truth is that no one without a vested interest in the profitability of vaccines has studied all 36 of them in depth. There are more than 100 vaccines in development, and no tests for cumulative effect or vaccine interaction of all 36 vaccines in the current schedule have ever been done. If I'm mistaken, I challenge those who are making such grand pronouncements about vaccine safety to produce those studies.
If we are to believe that the ruling of the 'vaccine court' in these cases mean that all vaccines are safe, then we must also consider the rulings of that same court in the Hannah Polling and Bailey Banks cases, which ruled vaccines were the cause of autism and therefore assume that all vaccines are unsafe. Clearly both are irresponsible assumptions, and neither option is prudent.
In this growing crisis, we cannot afford to blindly trumpet the agenda of the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) or vaccine makers. Now more than ever, we must resist the urge to close this book before it's been written. The anecdotal evidence of millions of parents who've seen their totally normal kids regress into sickness and mental isolation after a trip to the pediatrician's office must be seriously considered. The legitimate concern they and many in the scientific community have that environmental toxins, including those found in vaccines, may be causing autism and other disorders (Aspergers, ADD, ADHD), cannot be dissuaded by a show of sympathy and a friendly invitation to look for the 'real' cause of autism anywhere but within the lucrative vaccine program.
With vaccines being the fastest growing division of the pharmaceutical industry, isn't it possible that profits may play a part in the decision-making? That the vaccine program is becoming more of a profit engine than a means of prevention? In a world left reeling from the catastrophic effects of greed, mismanagement and corporate insensitivity, is it so absurd for us to wonder why American children are being given twice as many vaccines on average, compared to the top 30 first world countries?
Paul Offit, the vaccine advocate and profiteer, who helped invent a Rotavirus vaccine is said to have paved the way for his own multi-million dollar windfall while serving on the very council that eventually voted his Rotavirus vaccine onto our children's schedule. On August 21, 2000 a congressional investigation's report titled, "Conflicts in Vaccine Policy," stated:
It has become clear over the course of this investigation that the VRBPAC and the ACIP [the two main advisory boards that determine the vaccine schedule] are dominated by individuals with close working relationships with the vaccine producers. This was never the intent of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires that a diversity of views be represented on advisory committees.
Isn't that enough to raise questions about the process of choosing the vaccine schedule?
With many states like Minnesota now reporting the number at 1 in 80 children affected with autism, can we afford to trust those who serve two masters or their logic that tells us "one size fits all" when it comes to vaccines? Can we afford to ignore vaccines as a possible cause of these rising numbers when they are one of the fastest growing elements in our children's environment? With all the doubt that's left hanging on this topic, how can anyone in the media or medical profession, boldly demand that all parents march out and give their kids 36 of these shots, six at a time in dosage levels equal to that given a 200 pound man? This is a bias of the most dangerous kind.
I've also heard it said that no evidence of a link between vaccines and autism has ever been found. That statement is only true for the CDC, the AAP and the vaccine makers who've been ignoring mountains of scientific information and testimony. There's no evidence of the Lincoln Memorial if you look the other way and refuse to turn around. But if you care to look, it's really quite impressive. For a sample of vaccine injury evidence go to www.generationrescue.org/lincolnmemorial.html.
We have never argued that people shouldn't be immunized for the most serious threats including measles and polio, but surely there's a limit as to how many viruses and toxins can be introduced into the body of a small child. Veterinarians found out years ago that in many cases they were over-immunizing our pets, a syndrome they call Vaccinosis. It overwhelmed the immune system of the animals, causing myriad physical and neurological disorders. Sound familiar? If you can over-immunize a dog, is it so far out to assume that you can over-immunize a child? These forward thinking vets also decided to remove thimerosal from animal vaccines in 1992, and yet this substance, which is 49% mercury, is still in human vaccines. Don't our children deserve as much consideration as our pets?
I think I'd rather listen to the more sensible voice of Dr. Bernadine Healy, former head of the National Institute of Health, who says:
Listen to the patients and the patients will teach...I think there is an inexcusable issue, and that's the lack of research that's been done here...A parent can legitimately question giving a one-day old baby, or a two-day old baby [the] Hepatitis B vaccine that has no risk for it [and] the mother has no risk for it. That's a heavy-duty vaccine given on day two [of life]. I think those are legitimate questions.
Dr. Healy is also calling for a long overdue study of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated. Dr. Frank Engly, a researcher and microbiologist who served on the boards of the CDC, FDA and EPA during the 70s and 80s, warned:
The CDC cannot afford to admit thimerosal is toxic because they have been promoting it for several years...If they would have followed through with our 1982 report, vaccines would have been freed of thimerosal and all this autism as they tell me would not have occurred. But as it is, it all occurred.
In all likelihood the truth about vaccines is that they are both good and bad. While ingredients like aluminum, mercury, ether, formaldehyde and anti-freeze may help preserve and enhance vaccines, they can be toxic as well. The assortment of viruses delivered by multiple immunizations may also be a hazard. I agree with the growing number of voices within the medical and scientific community who believe that vaccines, like every other drug, have risks as well as benefits and that for the sake of profit, American children are being given too many, too soon. One thing is certain. We don't know enough to announce that all vaccines are safe!
If the CDC, the AAP and Ms. Brown insist that our children take twice as many shots as the rest of the western world, we need more independent vaccine research not done by the drug companies selling the vaccines or by organizations under their influence. Studies that cannot be internally suppressed. Answers parents can trust. Perhaps this is what Campbell Brown should be demanding and how the power of the press could better serve the public in the future.
-- Jim Carrey
Jenny McCarthy's Autism Crusade: Healing, Hope... And Controversy
Vaccine Ingredients and Side Effects
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The evidence for an autism epidemic is paper thin, and most of today’s children with ASDs would have received a different diagnosis, or no label at all, prior to 1989.
The benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks of serious adverse reactions, which are rare.
The scientific method is the best way that we have to separate nonsense from fact. And though imperfectly applied, it is far more reliable than talk show wisdom or diagnosis by celebrity.
http://chge.med.harvard.edu/programs/education/secondary/hhgec/documents/mccally.pdf
Read it for yourself.
Do your own research.
Make your own conclusions!
"When deposited in soil, organic mercury compounds are slowly
broken down into inorganic compounds; conversely, inorganic mercury can be converted by
microorganisms in soil and water into the organic compound methyl mercury, which is then
bioconcentrated up the food chain. Fish, particularly tuna, king mackerel, and swordfish, can
concentrate methyl mercury at high levels. Their consumption, though popular, should be limited
in frequency (e.g., to less than twice per week) and entirely avoided by women during pregnancy."
In other words the article deals with mercury in food (methyl-mercury compounds) and their potential in HIGH doses to have effects.
Thats the conclusion.
Measles outbreak 'worst in years'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/8057661.stm
So what.
1. better reporting?
2. How many cases were vaccinated versus unvaccinated
3. measles isn't deadly in developed countries
4. your just fear mongering
5. your laundry list of people who you are opposed to gives away your intentions. Would you like me to give you a list of everyone your opposed to? So predictable.
6. The british media is contriolled by Murdoch Jr. Hardley a friend of Dr Wakefields
7. the article never links unvaccinated children to the "outbreak"
8. there are more children damaged by the vaccine than measles
No, disease cases are always reported and recorded. You have used the same data for your mercury theories
"2. How many cases were vaccinated versus unvaccinated"
Latest figures show that 86% of two-year-olds in Wales have been given the MMR vaccine, ranging in different areas from 78% to 92%.
"3. measles isn't deadly in developed countries"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/4871728.stm
this is just one example.
"4. your just fear mongering"
not an argument. arent your posts on "deadly vaccines" and "mercury toxicity" any different?
"5. your laundry list of people who you are opposed to gives away your intentions. Would you like me to give you a list of everyone your opposed to? So predictable."
i'm reporting a story on measles outbreak by the bbc. how does that predict what i'm against / for? ad hominem attack
"6. The british media is contriolled by Murdoch Jr. Hardley a friend of Dr Wakefields"
this is from the bbc. murdoch does not have any control over this. if you do some research you will find the hysteria the british media created caused the drop in vaccination rates and kept quoting wakefield's bogus work. this has done more for wakefield's claims / career than anything else.
"7. the article never links unvaccinated children to the "outbreak""
yes it does
"8. there are more children damaged by the vaccine than measles"
you have no evidence for this.
woo and more woo
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-autism-lupron-may21,0,242705.story
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-autism-lupron-geiers-may21,0,983359.story
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/05/why_not_ju
Just which medical company can we attach this statement to!
Please tell us what has been done to them.
"...neither of them received the MMR."
Are you asserting that the MMR caused autism? If so, what in the MMR cause it?
plenty of research is being done and people are listening. science cannot come up with a cure for any disease overnight. and anyone peddling some chelation or similar treatment as a cure is not the answer either.
whilst it is good to have a prominent spokesperson to bring light to a cause, what jenny and co are doing will not help in the long term.
"Formaldehyde is naturally produced in very small amounts in our bodies as a part of our normal, everyday metabolism and causes us no harm. It can also be found in the air that we breathe at home and at work, in the food we eat, and in some products that we put on our skin."
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/phs111.html
the point being about dose
"I think they have a better safety record than vitamins"
" But it is absolutely safe if one defines 'safe' as benefits outweigh risks in a situation where the disease is present. When the disease isn't present, then one only is frankly aware of the risks, because there are no benefits."
"...there was some very poor research done in England by a surgeon named Andrew Wakefield. His findings have not been reproduced by anyone who has tried. It was bad science that, unfortunately, got a lot of press."
"There has been a fair amount of study which I think has clearly shown that the disease is at least – or at least has a genetic basis.......So that sort of takes out the environmental influenza and just looks at genetics I think and has – and there has been study after study that has shown that there's at the very least a genetic."
Copied from whale, quotes by offit
Vaccines are regulated in a way that vitamins are not. So yup.
Got no problem with the second statement, either. He defined what he meant by safe. It is safer than the risk of the disease. There are some vaccines, like chicken pox, that you could argue on.
Wakefield did crappy research and cooked the books on it (vaccine court agreed on that, by the way-- his results were completely manufactured).
Last statement, if it is referring to autism, he's correct: autism researchers do not argue over the idea that autism is genetic in origin, while not discounting the role of the environment.
And, finally, you copied it from Whale. You immediately lose 10 points for the woo factor.
The Infection Schedule versus the Vaccination Schedule
And you also get more radiation from walking around in the sunlight than you ever will working on nuclear reactors. What's your point?
Pediatrics, Thomas Verstraeten, MD (November 2003)
Conflicts:
Written by the Centers for Disease Control, the federal agency in charge of the vaccine program. The lead author, Thomas Verstraeten, left to take a job with Glaxo SmithKline — a vaccine manufacturer — after the study was written and before it was published. The U.S. Congress later cited this as an ethical violation.
When you can't trust the system that carries a monopoly on vaccines, due to the conflicts of interest, and influence peddling on govt. and its agencies.
We have no guarantee, proof or testing on vaccines today by a independent organization that has not been tainted by the drug makers. The fact that they created this mess of dishonorable conduct and all and all fraud.
We do know however that flu vaccines still carry mercury.
We also know that they will continue to put mercury in vaccines as long as it remains profitable through forced vaccinations. This new Swine Flu has not even been tested and it is ready to go in a couple of weeks time, seems suspiciously organized in the framework of a pandemic fear mongering.
Mercury does NOT belong in vaccines and cheap -dirty- vaccines are no different than shooting yourself or a baby up with street drugs and serves no health benefits or value. Mercury continues to be used by drug manufacturers -only they continue to lie about it.
fROM THE CDC: Does the influenza vaccine contain thimerosal?
http://www.cdc.gov/FLU/ABOUT/QA/thimerosal.htm
Yes, the majority of influenza vaccines distributed in the United States currently contain thimerosal as a preservative. However, some contain only trace amounts of thimerosal and are considered by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be preservative-free. Manufacturers of preservative-free flu vaccine use thimerosal early in the manufacturing process. The thimerosal gets diluted as the vaccine goes through the steps in processing. By the end of the manufacturing process there is not enough thimerosal left in the vaccine to act as a preservative and the vaccine is labeled "preservative-free".
How much thimerosal-free influenza vaccine is expected to be available for the 2008-09 season?
For the 2008-09 season, manufacturers project producing as many as 50 million doses of thimerosal-free or preservative-free (trace thimerosal) influenza vaccine. Of these 50 million doses, approximately 20 million doses represent flu vaccine products that are licensed for use in children over 3 years of age.
------------------------------
Please note that you may ask for a mercury-free flu vaccine from your physician. There is no excuse for not vaccinating your children because you are worried about the mercury.
Trace amounts. Is trace amounts of uranium toxic? Isn't mercury more toxic than uranium?
ok, where does the money come from then? jenny?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17582588?ordinalpos=14&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_Def
For those conflating methyl mercury and ethyl mercury.
http://www.fda.gov/cber/vaccine/thimerosal.htm
You are demonstrating an inability to accurately read and comprehend the information you are putting out there. It's getting old and increasingly confirms your confirmation bias. You're hitting the brick wall status. You are also steadily proving you do NOT understand how science is conducted.
RESULTS. The average administrative prevalence of autism among children increased from 0.6 to 3.1 per 1000 from 1994 to 2003. By 2003, only 17 states had a special education prevalence of autism that was within the range of recent epidemiological estimates. During the same period, the prevalence of mental retardation and learning disabilities declined by 2.8 and 8.3 per 1000, respectively. Higher autism prevalence was significantly associated with corresponding declines in the prevalence of mental retardation and learning disabilities. The declining prevalence of mental retardation and learning disabilities from 1994 to 2003 represented a significant downward deflection in their preexisting trajectories of prevalence from 1984 to 1993. California was one of a handful of states that did not clearly follow this pattern.
CONCLUSIONS. Prevalence findings from special education data do not support the claim of an autism epidemic because the administrative prevalence figures for most states are well below epidemiological estimates. The growing administrative prevalence of autism from 1994 to 2003 was associated with corresponding declines in the usage of other diagnostic categories.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/117/4/1028
The Contribution of Diagnostic Substitution to the Growing Administrative Prevalence of Autism in US Special Education
Paul T. Shattuck, PhD
OBJECTIVE. Growing administrative prevalence of autism has stirred public controversy and concern. The extent to which increases in the administrative prevalence of autism have been associated with corresponding decreases in the use of other diagnostic categories is unknown. The main objective of this study was to examine the relationship between the rising administrative prevalence of autism in US special education and changes in the use of other classification categories.
METHODS. The main outcome measure was the administrative prevalence of autism among children ages 6 to 11 in US special education. Analysis involved estimating multilevel regression models of time-series data on the prevalence of disabilities among children in US special education from 1984 to 2003.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/117/4/1028
Physicians are taught to be compulsive and to attend to detail, which is an inarguably desirable feature of their training. (61) They are also taught that mistakes are caused by individual failure. (62) My personal experience as a medical student and internal medicine resident was entirely consistent with these observations. (63) The medical culture persists in propagating the myth that the appropriate standard of medical care is error free. (64) Any failure to uphold this standard is viewed as an individual failure, and the doctor alone is viewed as culpable. (65)
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-2608041_ITM
Please describe it to the layperson.
anecdotal claims from an individual are treated with caution by the scientific community, unless others can prove them true (with valid experimentation).
isolated studies using treatments in animals with drug doses that are not clinically relevant are also treat the same way.
* 2. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed.
* 3. Use the hypothesis to make predictions.
* 4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and modify the hypothesis in the light of your results.
* 5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between theory and experiment and/or observation.
When consistency is obtained the hypothesis becomes a theory and provides a coherent set of propositions which explain a class of phenomena. A theory is then a framework within which observations are explained and predictions are made.
1. observe some aspect of the funders choice.
2. Invent a tenative description. Have that description edited by the editor.Twice.
3. Collect money.
4. Be called upon by your sugar daddy to defend your edited tenative description.
5. Repeat steps in no peticular order.
When consistency is obtained through proper media outlets the hypothesis becomes a theory, write a book.
http://www.ahrp.org/cms/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=575
http://www.iom.edu/Object.File/Master/65/981/COI%20report%20brief%20for%20web.pdf
http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/16325
http://www.yourlawyer.com/newsletter/read/99
http://www.haciendapub.com/severyn.html
Woo is the rejection of this in favor of the gut and the anecdote. Science is the willingness to live in uncertainty, to hedge everything, to be willing to be wrong. Woo is the wallowing in absolute certainty despite evidence to the contrary. It is the need to be right, the need to be cured, to be absolved of responsibility.
Firstly the ingredients are comprised of everything "un-natural" to the human body.
Secondly - experimenting? with infants? I don't think parents want to hear you are experimenting
with their children's very lives for the sake of experimentation.
There have been far too many "experiments" gone wrong in science and medicine today and that is the very problem presented by vaccines that are unsafe, untested and unwanted in their present form.
Making vaccines healthier should be the goal of scientific medicine if it's goal is to prevent disease rather than cause it.
"Making vaccines healthier should be the goal of scientific medicine if it's goal is to prevent disease rather than cause it."
Vaccines by definition make people healthier by not getting contagious diseases. Vaccines by definition are a preventative treatment
I thought you said you were against them and they were of no use. what happened to your stem cell cure you discovered last week?
with their children's very lives for the sake of experimentation."
I suggest you read the history and laws governing scientific experimentation and human subjects. it is quite enlightening and you'll see how woo your statement is.
http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/irb/irb_appendices.htm