The intellectual dishonesty of the “vaccines didn’t save us” gambit

Sanitation hasn’t improved much in Africa, but measles and polio vaccines have dramatically reduced death rates.

This is one of those things I need to address over at AntiAntiVax. It’s also a variation on one of the nine questions that will supposedly stump pro-vaxers, namely, “Could you please provide scientific evidence which can prove that disease reduction in any part of the world, at any point in history was attributable to inoculation of populations?”

Here are two studies (out of many) showing the efficacy of 7-valent pneumococcal vaccine, to pick just one vaccine:
* Immunization with the 7-valent conjugate pneumococcal vaccine: Impact evaluation, continuing surveillance and future perspectives. Angela Bechini, Sara Boccalini, Paolo Bonanni. Vaccine, Volume 27, Issues 25-26, Vaccines, Immunisation and Immunotherapy, Sixth World Congress of Vaccines, Immunisation and Immunotherapy, 26 May 2009, Pages 3285-3290 (PubMed 19200829)
* Indirect Effect of 7-Valent Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine on Pneumococcal Colonization among Unvaccinated Household Members. Eugene V. Millar, James P. Watt, Melinda A. Bronsdon, Jean Dallas, Raymond Reid, Mathuram Santosham, and Katherine L. O’Brien Clinical Infectious Diseases 2008 47:8, 989-996 (PubMed 18781875)

If pressed, I could make a chart that showed how tomatoes are decreasing the incidence of anything… But only people who see evidence without a critical eye would believe it. And that is the problem. Much like the antivaxxers claim that the media has had a hand in promoting vaccines, that same culture of having talking heads interpret data for us is what makes antivaxxers claims seem reasonable to the untrained mind.
If you really want to blow their mind, you’d plot incidence on a log scale, and then see a “ginormous” drop in cases. But that would be dishonest, and we don’t play by their rules.

It makes my head hurt to see the anti-vaxxers claim that sanitation is more important than vaccination. Hey, surprise, one doesn’t replace the other, kids! I mean, breathing may be “more important” than eating, but that doesn’t make starvation a good idea. (Cue the pro-anna and airimentarian twits…)

— Steve

Yes vaccines help prevent communicable diseases, just as nuclear weapons and their use deter death.

I do have a question though, we have been around on the earth for many many years right? And vaccines are just a recent development. Do you suppose there have been a few diseases that have become extinct prior to vaccines? Is the human body able to build their own defense, perhaps over generations?

I know, I know, there are more people and disease spreads easier, but we are also well fed, sheltered, and have advances in medicine to counter the symptoms and deal with the complications. Im just curious, is it wrong to think that even without having everyone vaccinated if we would survive as a species?

Apropos Africa, they’re still using thimerosal over there.

@bensmyson
I would add that you’ve made a classic error here. It’s not in the interest of a pathogen that depends upon a host for its spread and survival to wipe out that host completely. Humans and pathogens are constantly co-evolving.

Im just curious, is it wrong to think that even without having everyone vaccinated if we would survive as a species?

No, not at all! That is perfectly correct!

In addition, I’m pretty sure if we got rid of airbags, seat belts — fuck, traffic lights and stop signs, even — we would still survive as a species.

Come to think of it, these silly laws against stealing and rape and murder… I’m pretty sure we survived as a species for millennia without them, and I’m pretty sure it would be just about the same now.

We’d probably also survive as a species without the anti-vaccine movement… so maybe you should sit the fuck down before the stoopid makes your hair catch on fire.

Equating vaccines and nuclear weapons is a good example of how horribly twisted the antivax mindset can (and often does) become.

To recapitulate a classic ’50s quote: At long last, have you no shame?

@bensmyson

wow. just wow.

Yes vaccines help prevent communicable diseases, just as nuclear weapons and their use deter death.

Let me guess, you think virii are intelligent beings who, when they read in the newspaper that a vaccine for their strain has been introduced, refuse to infect us because of fear of mutually-assured destruction (MAD)?

Re Calli Arcale

I may be uninformed here, not being either a biologist or physician, but it was my understanding that the sickle cell anemia gene is recessive and that it must be present on both chromosomes in order for the individual to suffer the condition. It was also my understanding that having the gene on one chromosome was sufficient to provide resistance to malaria. I was under the impression that this provides an explanation for the continued presence of the gene as individuals not having it in areas with high incidences of malaria leave fewer descendants and individuals having it on both chromosomes also leave fewer descendants. Thus, in such regions, individuals having the gene on one chromosome would have a selective advantage and thus leave more descendants. If I am incorrect in this impression, I would appreciate being corrected.

@23: of course, to continue to use the automotive example..
antivacc’ers will continue to drive on the same streets as the rest of us… but without routine preventive maintenance on their “vehicle” that enhances the general level of safety for all motorists on the road, by ensuring that preventable mechanical failures can be avoided…
how do you spell HERD IMMUNITY moving violation,. officer?

Infectious disease viruses can only evolve if they infect a host, change and then infect someone else with the evolved virus.

High rates of vaccination mean that the virus is not going to have much less chance of evolving into something that the current vaccines will not stop.

Perhaps there is a solution: let all the anti-vaxxers move to a health freedom- friendly place,a state designated a “health freedom zone”-that’s what’s proposed today by Mikey at NaturalNews.

SLC @ 22: That is correct; it is a regressive trait, and just carrying the trait gives you some protection against malaria. I didn’t go into adequate detail, but it was only meant as an example. In any case, the point is that it’s an awfully steep price to pay for malaria resistance. I understand some people, if they can’t get medications for it, turn to illegal drugs to get some relief from the symptoms.

(BTW, I’m not a biologist or physician either, so I would not be surprised if I’m still wrong!)

Thalassemia is another genetic blood disorder which appears to confer some protection against malaria. While sickle-cell anemia is most common among Africans, Thalassemia mainly afflicts Mediterraneans (or people decended from Mediterraneans). It’s a bit more complex than sickle-cell anemia, and there are both dominant and recessive forms of the disease.

It’s possible that similarly protective effects may be discovered for some other genetic disorders; sometimes people point towards these anemias when warning against eugenics programs and abortion following genetic testing of the fetus or the selection of test-tube embryos based on whether or not they carry such traits — the point is that we don’t know just what it is we’re removing from our gene pool.

First, why was measles not reportable for eight years? I tried a quick Google but didn’t find a reason. And second, is that supposed to be a data point in 1959, or is that just a dropping off from lack of data?

That is my interpretation. Others can correct me if I am wrong, but the US CDC does not actually have the 8 year gap. And on that plot, it is bloody obvious where the line of demarcation occurs. That is why, I think, this clown used the Canadian data, because more was missing and he could be more deceptive.

I know I’ve seen the CDC plot

here’s one

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/images/measles_incidence.gif

Pablo:

That is why, I think, this clown used the Canadian data, because more was missing and he could be more deceptive.

It might also be because he is Canadian.

@Antaeus Feldspar

You raise a good point. Those who claim that improved sanitation or nutrition are the reason for declines in deaths and that vaccines do nothing are always a bit cagey about which specific advances contributed to the declines. For example, what specific advances occurred before the decline in measles in the 1960s? Why did they have no impact on Hib? And what specific advances occurred to cause the decline of Hib in the past couple decades?

bensmyson @ 25:

I have to address the nuclear weapons thing. I use this because some people object to nuclear weapons because they have the potential to kill millions of people, as do communicable diseases.

The problem with your analogy is that you didn’t compare nuclear weapons to communicable diseases — you compared them to vaccines. Furthermore, unlike vaccines, nuclear weapons are designed specifically to kill large numbers of people. It shouldn’t be surprising that this comparison bothered people, because it implies that you think vaccines were designed specifically to kill people. They weren’t. That a very small number of people have been injured by vaccines (far fewer than alleged by the anti-vax contingent, which is prone to the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy) is not evidence that they are designed to kill. The fact of the matter is that accidental deaths happen all the time, from every intervention ever designed. If someone falls down a manhole and dies, is this an indictment of municipal water supplies? Of course not, even though that person would be alive today were it not for municipal water supplies.

Really, you cannot reasonably compare nuclear war (or even the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction) with vaccination. So this reasonably leads some to wonder if you were intending to inflame. I rather suspected you were, which is why I initially ignored the comparison. I did not believe it was intended for the purposes of actual debate, but just for stirring the pot.

I really dont think the cause of people rejecting to comply with vaccine schedules is because of Wakefield’s paper, it has to do with a lack of trust in the pharmaceutical industry and the agencies that should be protecting us against abuses and injuries.

Of course it’s not just Wakefield, and I don’t see any reason to accuse Orac of saying it’s just Wakefield. Orac writes often about *many* voices in the anti-vaccination movement, and has also discussed that the movement has been around for a very long time indeed — since long before Wakefield was even born. Wakefield is just one of the recent voices.

There is definitely a lack of trust in the pharmaceutical industry, and the agencies assigned to watch over them. But this is not neccesarily a sign that there is something wrong in either. They’re not perfect, but there also is not the vast conspiracy that is often alleged. The autism connection is actually a relatively new player in the anti-vax thing. Older claims usually are more along a eugenics line. In Africa, for instance, the most common anti-vax claim came from Islamic fundamentalists arguing that the polio vaccine was actually a secret attempt by Christian nations to sterilize African Muslims. It wasn’t, of course. But over there, Christian colonialism is a serious bogeyman. Here, it’s mainly the government and big corporations that are the bogeyman, and so they are the ones pointed to.

Bottom line: just because some people are afraid of something is not evidence that their fears are justified. But not everybody notices that, and if people who are afraid get together, they feed off one anothers’ fears and become even more afraid. And sometimes people (such as Wakefield but certainly not limited to him) take advantage of that situation, because such people are vulnerable to exploitation.

I just find it odd that people can calculate the number of deaths of innocent people weigh it against the number of lives saved and determine the value of the weapon in terms of acceptable collateral damage.

I find it odd that anyone would do anything else (leaving aside the use of inappropriate terminology e.g. ‘weapon’, ‘collateral damage’). Lives saved and injuries prevented vs. lives lost and injuries caused (and cost) is pretty self-evidently the proper evaluation. It’s what’s used for all medicine, and indeed there’s no credible alternative approach.

It is amusing that you’d make this argument, though, in the context of an analogy with nuclear weapons. With nukes, you can’t in any meaningful way quantify lives saved, and there have been no lives lost since 1945. There’s just no meaningful similarity.

questioning the safety of vaccines is an important and legitimate part of human nature, especially by parents who subject their children to these vaccines.

This is more or less true, but if you really believed that, then the person you should be most pissed off at right now is Obomsawin, because he is lying to people who are just behaving in a way that is part of human nature.

If you really believed that, then we are not the enemy, the anti-vax movement is. They prey on fears that are, as you point out, perfectly natural and expected. You are correct that it is unsurprising that many parents worry about this sort of thing… that just makes them good parents.

It is this movement which exploits those fears to propagate itself, using misrepresentations and half-truths and outright lies in order to intensify the natural fear that people feel, that’s the problem.

If you really believed this rhetoric about “questioning” and “human nature”, you would feel a burning hatred for the anti-vax movement. So I can only assume that either a) you don’t really believe that and this is just mealy-mouthed apologetics, or b) the anti-vax movement has succeeded in exploiting your fears and turning your own human nature against the best interests of your child. In which case maybe someday you’ll wake up and hate them for the unnecessary suffering they have caused you.

Bensmyson writes: I just find it odd that people can calculate the number of deaths of innocent people weigh it against the number of lives saved and determine the value of the weapon in terms of acceptable collateral damage. I mean what is the magic number? One life for 1,000?

[Sigh.] Look, Bensmyson, you will really have to learn to think more precisely about these things. The nuclear weapon/vaccine analogy doesn’t hold. What would make it a good analogy is if millions of people were being killed by radiation from, e.g., neutron bombs every year, and a technology was developed that reduced that number to hundreds.

Diseases such as malaria kill millions each year. There were other diseases that used to do so until vaccines were developed for them. Now the numbers killed by those diseases are small, small percentages of the former tolls.

Do some people die from vaccines? Try finding, from reliable scientific sources, reports of fatal vaccine reactions in, say, the last two decades in a country that keeps such records.

Even if you do manage to find a very few, why exactly should this induce us to hand-wringing about “innocents”? Hint: Bacteria and viruses don’t attack only the “sinful.” Cutting death tolls and the incidence of other terrible effects by millions is a prospect before which we ought to hesitate? Whatever on Earth for?

@Bensmyson

It just comes down to risk-benefit at the end of the day.

You may not like the teleological philosophy that preventing thousands of deaths (at the risk of harming some children) is a coherent and desireable outcome.

But then the deontological philosophy (rather thousands die than one child be put at risk)that is deployed by the antivax tag teams is plain wrong.

More harm? Well there’s a new one for me. Usually the line is the benefits outweigh the damage. So if the measles kill 10,000 a year and vaccines kill 9,000 vaccines are a good thing? Really? Is that what you mean? Kill 9,000 to save the lives of 1,000?

Yes, since “kill 9,000 to save the lives of 1,000” is wrong. 10K deaths vs. 9K; the latter is clearly superior. Since vaccines are in fact orders of magnitude less risky than these figures, they’re even better.

My problem is any death is one death too many.

Better abolish cars, drinking water, farming, and everything else in existence, then. Everything has risks; for virtually everything those risks include death.

Seriously where do you draw the line, how many brain injuries and deaths from vaccines are too many?

When they’re more than the lives saved and injuries prevented, of course. And in the real world, they are in fact several orders of magnitude less.

In all seriousness – do you not see that NOTHING any human does, or indeed has ever done, would be an acceptable activity under the standards you’re applying to vaccination? Or if you do see that, how in the world do you justify the double standard?

The anti-vaccine movement never got as much political support, mainly because vaccination is a government programme so they aren’t against it, to achieve “consensus” status. Thus you don’t quite have to be a guanophrenic to oppose it.

However in pure scientific terms I would be interested to know how it is intellectually honest to oppose something purely on the basis that it is not state approved?

Alternately what “evidence, science, and reason” is there in catastrophic global warminmg, passive smoking killing, the LNT radiation theory, polar bears being endangered, peak oil, acid rain, HIV-AIDS, salt being dangerous, cholesterol & the numerous other “scientific consensii”, politically correct because promoted by those in charge, scares which are not denounced here?

as posted at #43 by Ben-my-son
*** More harm? Well there’s a new one for me. Usually the line is the benefits outweigh the damage. So if the measles kill 10,000 a year and vaccines kill 9,000 vaccines are a good thing? Really? Is that what you mean? Kill 9,000 to save the lives of 1,000? ***

ACTUALLY… BEN old chap…that would be rather ineffective vaccine… and quite likely not approved or used, BUT… if a vaccine was to be given for XXX disease, that killed 10,000 people out of, for arguments sake, 25,000, and it resulted in the SAVING of 1000 additional lives of people that would have died, I am not sure what sort of moral objection you might have???? You can get into arguments about how many is worth it…but I guess you said it best yourself when you posted(please allow me to paraphrase just a tad)
“My problem is any (preventable) death is one death too many. ”
or are you making an argument that 1,000 saved isnt enough to warrant saving anyone?

And I don’t wish you, or any of the antivaccine mob to be DEAD… I just fervently wish you “SMARTER, WISER, BETTER INFORMED” and the parents of healthy, protected children… or until then, much less strident and vocal.

Ben’s parents, measles has a known level of a encephalitis of about one in 1000. That outcomes in that 1 in 1000 are known to be deafness, blindness, paralysis, mental retardation and death (and actually, during the last major outbreak in the USA the death rate was more than 2 per 1000).

Mumps is also known to cause meningitis, deafness, and sterility along with other things, including death, at a level less than measles.

Now, come up with some numbers with evidence that the MMR vaccine causes death at a rate greater than measles. That means you have to show that at least one person per 1000 getting the MMR has died. Since there are thousands of MMR vaccines given per week, that should be an easy number to find if it actually does happen.

Also show that the MMR has caused these deaths every year since 1971.

Neil Craig appears to be a reality denialist. Only a fool would care about Neil’s opinion. Presumably, Neil cares about his own opinion, I do not.

It wasn’t, of course. But over there, Christian colonialism is a serious bogeyman. Here, it’s mainly the government and big corporations that are the bogeyman, and so they are the ones pointed to.

I read a story — I think it was Dave Barry, but he was writing perfectly serious at the time — of how a sheriff told him that 100 years ago, his office would get phone calls that a neighbor was pointing an invisible ray gun at them to interfere with their perceptions. When UFO abduction stories came about, there was a large shift away from ray-guns and towards their neighbor being a secret alien in disguise.

The mental disorder never changed, just how it was expressed.

I do have a question though, we have been around on the earth for many many years right? And vaccines are just a recent development. Do you suppose there have been a few diseases that have become extinct prior to vaccines? Is the human body able to build their own defense, perhaps over generations?

Undoubtedly, we would survive as a species without vaccines. Vaccines enhance individual survival and greatly reduce human suffering; they probably don’t do much for our survival as a species. A species can survive massive die-offs (as our species has done in the past). The survivors tend to have mutations that render them less susceptible to that disease, although often there is a price to be paid (e.g. resistance to malaria at the price of an increased frequency of child death from sickle cell disease.) And we are so abundant that there is lots of genetic diversity in the human population.

Note also that is is generally not to the benefit (evolutionarily speaking) of a disease organism to wipe out a host, so there is selective pressure on some disease organisms to evolve toward lower virulence (although this may not apply when we are only one of several hosts, such as with flu).

Don’t count on the human body building defenses over generations, however. Disease organisms have shorter generations than we do, so they evolve much faster than we. That is an evolutionary arms race that humans will nearly always lose. Our immune system carries out a kind of simulated evolution within the body, but it’s still relatively slow–often you are already dead before your body is geared up to fight the disease. Hence vaccination, to give your body a head start.

Again I know vaccines save lives, but questioning the safety of vaccines is an important and legitimate part of human nature, especially by parents who subject their children to these vaccines.

Questioning the safety of vaccines is important, yes, but it is important to realizes that this is done all the time by medical professionals. Quite a few vaccines have been removed from use because of complications that were rare, or in some cases merely suspected and never definitively established (for example Guillain-Barré paralysis).

It seems to many of us that vaccines are being held to an impossibly high standard. There are many things that we allow, and even encourage children to do that carry much greater risk, and save few if any lives:

Riding in automobiles for non-essential reasons (going to a movie, for example).
Engaging in childhood sports such as softball, football, hockey, soccer, wrestling, cheerleading, skiing, skating, bicycling, skateboarding.

So the more appropriate question is, “What is it about vaccines that makes some people believe that it is reasonable to insist on a standard of near-absolute safety that we do not demand of much of anything else?”

I have given a lot of thought to sanitation over a long period of time, and here are some of my thoughts:
1. A historical example given for the effects of sanitation is Medieval and Rennaissance Jews, who were thought at the time and since to have had a lower rate of bubonic plague deaths. However, the Jews’ own records show that even they suffered many, many deaths. My judgment is that, if there was a difference, it was strictly relative.
2. Sanitation practices evolved faster than medical practices. Approximately modern sewers were in place by ca. 1900, and after ca. 1950 it’s hard to point to any new developments.
3. Sanitation is never uniform throughout a society. Thus, it has and always will benefit some more than others. Publicly-funded vaccination, on the other hand, is provided to people of all classes, and can benefit them all equally.

Safety vs. cost is an everyday calculation. Let’s look at the aviation industry. Flying is safer than driving. It can be made safer, though, but at what cost?

For a while the FAA considered mandating that children under two be required to have a seat and be in an approved car seat rather than being allowed to fly as a lap child. The increase in cost would have caused a certain number of families to drive instead of fly and in the end more people would have died in cars than would have been saved in plane crashes.

No, vaccines are not perfectly safe. But they are going to harm far fewer people than the alternative. Perhaps they can be made safer, but we don’t have infinite resources. Perhaps after we’ve solved some more pressing health issues. Like finding the ACTUAL cause of autism.

One outcome of MAD is that it prevented the US and USSR from going to war directly, but it created a number of proxy wars. How many Koreans, Vietnamese, Afghans, and others died in these wars over the decades? I’m pretty sure those countries don’t feel MAD was a particular benefit to them. There were still plenty of others conflicts that had nothing to do with the Cold War. Did MAD actually save lives overall? Only if you assume a nuclear war would have happened without it.

benmyson: “So if the measles kill 10,000 a year and vaccines kill 9,000 vaccines are a good thing? Really? Is that what you mean? Kill 9,000 to save the lives of 1,000?”

This is another example of what Orac judiciously referred to as “intellectual dishonesty” – inventing numbers to make a false argument. The ratio of lives saved to deaths attributed to vaccines is vastly greater than that, as you must be well aware.

“My problem is any death is one death too many.”

No – your problem is that you must magnify and exaggerate every possible bad outcome that can be blamed on vaccines – while ignoring or minimizing deaths and injuries that used to be commonplace due to diseases now controlled or eliminated by vaccines.

This is yet another example of dishonesty, along with your suggesting that you weren’t really trying to equate vaccines with nuclear weapons.

It also constitutes projection – you argue that we shouldn’t trust government agencies and pharmaceutical companies, while you and other antivaxers consistently tell blatant lies about immunization.

There is always going to be a minority who think government and scientists are all evil monsters conspiring to conceal the truth from us. Increasingly, antivaxers who spread easily refutable falsehoods are limiting themselves to appealing to this minority – who are loud, but self-marginalized and very limited in influence.

“Better abolish cars, drinking water, farming, and everything else in existence, then. Everything has risks; for virtually everything those risks include death.”

All the these analogies relate to things that are participated in voluntarily, there are open discussions about vehicle safety and sports related injuries and no one accuses those asking the questions as anti-baseball or anti-automobile. Vaccines are different, they are said to be “safe” and they are not. Vaccines are required, vaccines are a product, a profitable product, vaccines are issued by the government and encouraged via billion dollar campaigns to immunize the public. Vaccines are required by law for children entering school and as brutally illustrated by more than one post here, if you dont vaccinate you should be killed. Tell me Ford Motor Company and Merck are the same thing again, I dont quite get it.

All the these analogies relate to things that are participated in voluntarily, there are open discussions about vehicle safety and sports related injuries and no one accuses those asking the questions as anti-baseball or anti-automobile.

Drinking water is a voluntary activity, then? There aren’t open discussions of vaccine safety (such as, for example, all the pre-approval testing)? And I’d love to see anyone whose position is that baseball should be banned because it carries a risk of injury – such people most certainly WOULD be called “anti-baseball.” (Note that those labelled “anti-vaccine,” like yourself, are NOT “asking questions”. They are claiming to have the answers to said questions, but are quite wrong.)

Vaccines are different, they are said to be “safe” and they are not.

Vaccines are NOT presented as perfectly safe; indeed, there’s a concerted effort made to understand and communicate the risks involved. The only sense in which vaccines are said to be “safe” is in the sense that the benefits vastly outweigh the risks (not what you seem to mean). And in that sense, they most certainly are exceedingly safe.

Vaccines are required, vaccines are a product, a profitable product, vaccines are issued by the government and encouraged via billion dollar campaigns to immunize the public. Vaccines are required by law for children entering school and as brutally illustrated by more than one post here, if you dont vaccinate you should be killed. Tell me Ford Motor Company and Merck are the same thing again, I dont quite get it.

Not one letter of this has any relevance to anything at all.

Quite a few vaccines have been removed from use because of complications that were rare, or in some cases merely suspected and never definitively established (for example Guillain-Barré paralysis).

It’s always funny when the anti-vax loons (not you) bring up GBS with the swine flu vaccine. You know how many people actually got GBS due to the swine flu vaccine back in the 70s? Best estimates are 30 – 40. Out of millions of people who got the vaccine, 30 – 40 got GBS. It was something on the order of 1 in 100 000 vaccinated people got GBS.

What is flabbergasting to me is that people actually brought up GBS as an objection to the recent H1N1 vaccine. This was a virus that killed something like 1 in 100 pregnant women who got it, which was something like 1 in 100 of all pregnant women. Hundreds of otherwise healthy pregnant women died from H1N1. And yet, they were more concerned that 36 people developed GBS from a different vaccine nearly 40 years ago.

@bensmyson: how many children do you have? You gave birth to a child who most likely will live to a ripe old age, thanks to modern medicine, vaccines, sanitation, and diet.

Do you understand WHY people had large families back in the day? IIRC, 1 in 5 children didn’t live to see their first birthday, and out of the remaining children, 2 in 5 died before age 5 or so. (my numbers can be off; it’s been a while since I did this research). Epidemics would sweep through a family and kill the most vulnerable. Visit any old graveyard and see how many parents buried several of their children, often all at the same time during an epidemic (and maybe along with mother…whose health was often more stressed due to frequent childbearing. Lots of men went through 2 or 3 wives).

Sanitation definitely helped decrease those disease that were enteric – i.e. cholera, typhoid – but it had little effect on the airborne pathogens like measles. Fewer children DIED of measles after sanitation improved, but just as many GOT the measles. The vaccine decreased the incidence of measles entirely.

And, just as a comment re: sickle cell. There is sickle cell trait, where a person has only 1 of the genes. They can be asymptomatic generally, but more resistant to malaria because their red blood cells are often abnormal in shape but not the severe “sickle” shape of those with sickle cell anemia (which takes the 2 recessive genes)

@bensmyson

Again, I ask you, what is your definition of “safe”? If something does not meet this definition of “safe”, then do you argue that it should not be used, at all?

If you don’t like the auto analogies, how about eating? Eating is not really voluntary (I mean, you could starve yourself if you wanted to, but that would be kinda stupid). Food is a profitable industry that is heavily marketed. Food is said to be safe. Yet there are people who die every year from eating food (allergies, choking, contaminated, etc.), not to mention other adverse health effects (and I’m not just talking about “processed” foods, either…I’m including healthy stuff like fruits and vegetables). If any death is one death too many, then should we stop eating?

And you didn’t respond to my fire analogy. Is it better to extinguish a fire quickly, or to prevent the fire from happening in the first place?

Bensmyson takes the “nuclear option”:

“Yes vaccines help prevent communicable diseases, just as nuclear weapons and their use deter death.”

While it is arguable that the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved millions of lives – US and Japanese – that would have been lost in a conventional invasion of Japan, I think you’re stretching it to say that their use “deter[s] death”. Perhaps the threat or possibility of their use has deterred some nations from using their own nuclear arsenal, but you can’t say that their existence “deters death” (for example, see: Korean War, Vietnam War, Kashmir Conflict, etc.).

Bensmyson continues:

“I do have a question though, we have been around on the earth for many many years right? And vaccines are just a recent development. Do you suppose there have been a few diseases that have become extinct prior to vaccines? Is the human body able to build their own defense, perhaps over generations?”

and:

“Im just curious, is it wrong to think that even without having everyone vaccinated if we would survive as a species?”

The genus Homo has been around for about 2.4 million years. For most of that time, we have been without vaccines. Our sub-species – Homo sapiens sapiens – arose about 200,000 years ago. For most of that time, we were without vaccines. Clearly, our innate and adaptive immune systems were sufficient to prevent us from becoming extinct due to infectious disease.

Our genome contains clues to virus pathogens that we have overcome through evolution. There is a retrovirus (PtERV1) that has over 100 inactivated copies in the chimpanzee genome and no copies in the human genome. It appears that a protein – TRIM5-alpha – in humans mutated to make us resistant to this primate retrovirus about 4 million years ago (before we were Homo but after our lineage split from the chimpanzee). Unfortunately for us here and now, while the chimpanzee TRIM5-alpha renders them immune to HIV1 (the causative agent of AIDS), our mutated version does not.

Another thing to consider is that many of our current crop of infectious diseases were picked up relatively (in an evolutionary sense) from other species. The reason that some of them are so virulent is because they haven’t had time to adapt to us. These zoonotic diseases are usually much more lethal, since we (and they) haven’t evolved together. Ebola, Yellow fever, Hantavirus and Influenza are all zoonotic diseases that cause little or no illness in their “native” species but are “pathogens” in humans.

Measles also appears to be a zoonotic disease. Molecular phylogeny of the currently circulating measles virus strains (wild-type) suggests that they diverged from rinderpest (a similar virus found in cattle) about 1,000 years ago, with rinderpest being the “older” (ancestral) strain. Thus, the virus we call measles came from cattle. [BTW, cattle probably also got it from another animal, we just don’t know which one.]

It is also possible that measles transferred from cattle to humans on several occasions, since there are reports of measles-like diseases from about 1,200 years ago. What measles “needs”, in order to perpetuate itself, is about 250,000 to 300,000 non-immune individuals, so human measles wouldn’t have been “self-supporting” until the population density (and birth rate) were sufficient.

Anyway, that’s the long way of saying that, yes, we humans do evolve an innate immunity to diseases, but we have a longer generation time than bacteria or viruses (12 – 20 years vs a few hours), so we evolve a lot slower than our pathogens. If it weren’t in their “best interest” to evolve to not kill us, we would be extinct. Also, the current large population and massive genetic diversity of humans makes it likely that some people would survive even a “super-bug”.

Just to make a point – there are a lot of “dead” branches of the genus Homo, including four or so (there is some argument) that existed at the same time Homo sapiens sapiens (us) did. Perhaps they weren’t so lucky with pathogens as we were.

However, this is all rather beside the point. While the fossil and historical record make it clear that Homo sapiens sapiens did not become extinct without vaccines, it is also clear that vaccines prevent a great deal of death, misery and disability. A connection between autism and vaccines is not supported by data, so that argument is moot.

If, instead, you want to argue that the risk of the vaccine is greater than the risk of the disease, or that vaccines are ineffective, the data also don’t support those “hypotheses”. About the only anti-vaccine (or “pro-safe-vaccine”) argument that holds any water is that some people – generally those without education in biology or medicine – have an unsupported fear that vaccines are unsafe.

And I don’t see any indication that this “fear” is amenable to education (e.g. Bensmyson).

Prometheus

Antivaxers commonly use that trick of showing abridged graphs selected to begin at one of the cyclical low points of incidence of a disease to attempt to demonstrate that the disease was on the way out before vaccination. An honest presentation would demand that they show how incidence rates had been cyclically rising and falling for many years before the vaccine was introduced, and after that declined to extremely low numbers (or in the case of diseases like polio, were eradicated altogether).

But then, honesty has never been a requirement among the antivax

Bensmyson writes: Vaccines are different, they are said to be “safe” and they are not.

They’re not? Please cite scientific evidence, and compare “safe” to the full effects of non-vaccination: Not only potential illness for those capable of making an (ill-)informed choice, but loss of herd immunity for the public, including other people’s children.

Vaccines are required

Yep, herd immunity, so the requirement is for public health reasons. Do you think about the implications of what you are saying beyond sloganeering? Public health and safety is one of the core functions of government, thus the requirement has the force of legal sanction.

vaccines are a product, a profitable product

Incorrect. They bring Big Pharma little to no profit compared to patent-protected drugs. When was the last time you saw a pharmaceutical company television ad for a vaccine, as contrasted to one of their big-selling, big-profit drugs? Y’know, it wouldn’t take much thought for you to figure out where your “facts” are wrong. You should try it sometime.

vaccines are issued by the government

My local CVS is part of the government? Where are they on the ballot? Again, I urge just a little thought about what you have heard before you uncritically regurgitate it here.

and encouraged via billion dollar campaigns to immunize the public. Vaccines are required by law for children entering school

Would love to see the actual dollar figures behind these “billion dollar campaigns.” Once again, the encouragement/requirement is for public health and safety, just like the laws, publicity campaigns, etc. behind the [gasp!] Vast Seat Belt Conspiracy.

and as brutally illustrated by more than one post here, if you dont vaccinate you should be killed.

Oh, please. Been on the Internet much?

Orac, glad to see the correction to your graph. When I saw the abrupt drop before the gap in the one you originally posted, I thought, “Even with the big fluctuations in earlier years, it seems unlikely that it would happen to drop that much just before the vaccine was introduced; I’ll bet it isn’t real,” but I didn’t have time to check.

JUD @ 85:

You quoted: Vaccines are required, and said: Yep, herd immunity, so the requirement is for public health reasons.

You state this as if all vaccines are equal in both how they achieve ‘immunity’ and efficacy. As if we need or can achieve herd immunity to c. tetani by being exposed to tetanus toxoid.

You quoted: vaccines are a product, a profitable product and said: Incorrect. They bring Big Pharma little to no profit compared to patent-protected drugs.

Right… And vaccines are patent protected? My Gawd Man.

Exactly how much money did the USA put toward the swine flu pandemic? Where did that money go? Yes, it went to pharmaceutical companies for manufacture of vaccine, paid for by taxpayers and exempt from product liability… and then recommended by the agency that both oversees safety and is responsible for uptake.

I saw a commercial for a meningitis vaccine yesterday. I saw JLO playing the dreadful tape of a child whooping and telling me to get vaccinated to protect others. One Less Gardasil ads run pretty regular on HGTV and other networks. I can likely safely assume that other states have initiatives like mine, called Immunize Texas – where they tell me that vaccines are like hugs and everyone should get one. Only in the USA does this horrid kind of advertising exist, and people wonder why drugs cost so much. This is one area that would reduce their overall cost enormously, and possibly free up mainstream media outlets from being held under the thumb of the drug industry.

I have to address the nuclear weapons thing. I use this because some people object to nuclear weapons because they have the potential to kill millions of people, as do communicable diseases. Vaccines on the other hand only kill a handful. I just find it odd that people can calculate the number of deaths of innocent people weigh it against the number of lives saved and determine the value of the weapon in terms of acceptable collateral damage. I mean what is the magic number? One life for 1,000?

“The nuclear bombing of Japan saved lives” line of thought would only be ethically equivalent to “vaccinations save lives” if:

1) You’d give vaccine X to John Doe even if you knew it would kill him.

2) Vaccines only saved the lives of those who didn’t take the vaccines, and never saved the lives of those who did take them.

Since neither of those is true, there’s only a superficial resemblance between the two “saves more lives than it kills” arguments.

As long as we’re going around about “one death is too many,” let’s look at another medical procedure: heart surgery. Two years ago, I had two heart valves replaced. I faced certain disability and a very premature death if I did not have it done. I also, as I remember the odds quoted to me at the time, faced a 1 – 2% risk of death on the operating table. I am still here, so you know what my choice was.
So, do we ban that known killer, thoracic surgery? Or do we judge that the lives saved or vastly improved outbalance the lives that will inevitably be lost in the operating room?
By the way, my surgeon would agree that any death in the OR is one too many. That is why he is constantly trying to improve his skills, his techniques and the general state of knowledge…as most people who practice medicine do.

Is someone recommending tetanus vaccination in childhood? Did I miss that one?

And you’re totally right about Gardasil. Who ever heard of anyone dying from HPV? What a ridiculous thing to promote.

*Ring ring* Hello? Oh… really? Virtually ALL cervical cancer would be prevented you say? But surely only a handful of… many independently replicated studies? That’s all well and good, but the drug companies make more when they… $120 for a vaccine? And it’s HOW many tens of thousands of dollars to treat a case of cervical cancer?

Hey Hypocrisy guy, this person on my phone thinks you’re full of shit.

I don’t think vaccines saved me. I haven’t taken most vaccines – especially the dangerous mankiller H1N1 swine flu shot. I did not take it and I turned out okay. So did millions of others. Not only that but I plan to not ever take this deadly vaccine.

Hey, Orac – interesting article. I went on to the NVIC website and don’t see the graphs you posted. Can you please post the links so we can read what NVIC says about these data?

Some food does not need to be cooked before eating it. I wear my seat belt. If you choose not to that’s your individdual personal freedom and choice. Driving sober is a choice. I never have tasted alcohol, so I always drive sober. Alcohol is not allowed on my property. Cigaretts kill, but so does vaccines. Yes, some vaccines are mankillers. Yes I am serious. The swine flu vaccine will never enter my body. It is a mankiller. No I do not have a beeper. I find always being able to be contacted at all times very annoying. I never take my cell phone inside of a store or hospital. I leave it in my truck. I do not own annoying devices like beepers. However, i would love to own a cell phone blocker to walk around with in my pocket at the mall and in restaraunts. People yapping on those things are pesky. My uncle owned a beeper one time. Every time he went fishing that thing annoyed him. I told him to throw it in the lake and keep fishing. It was his day off.

In review:

1) some vaccines are mankillers
2) alcohol is evil
3) I forgot # 3

Medicien Man, do happen to administer the site timecube.com? I see a similarity in your language formation and creative logical structure as those seen on the very prestigious timecube site.

@Jud

When was the last time you saw a pharmaceutical company television ad for a vaccine

It’s called Gardasil Jud.

Your links –“sounded by the NVIC” and “graphs” — early in your comment lead to vaclib.org, not NVIC. Most people who are familiar with both pro- and anti-vax people know that vaclib and NVIC are run by different people with different goals. And, several of your comments refer to groups that have nothing to do with NVIC, even though you attribute them to NVIC. If you’re going to shoot at something like this, you need to point your arrows in the right direction. Also, I went to nvic.org and found absolutely nothing with graphs or articles about vaccines not saving us… please show me the proof that NVIC printed these.

Ian:

Is someone recommending tetanus vaccination in childhood? Did I miss that one?

It’s definitely recommended in childhood, and is included with the pertussis vaccine. But it is not mandatory for public school enrollment because the only person who might suffer if you don’t give it to your child is . . . your child.

Hypocrisy @ 100:

I said nothing of the actual condition, only that Jud said vaccines were required for herd immunity. A dubious argument not supported by fact. I appreciate that you fear this disease (otherwise you wouldn’t refer to it as deadly and colorfully describe treatment options) but it probably is worth noting that 95% of tetanus fatalities occur in the over 50 age group.

My point was partly that tetanus is the one and only vaccine for which herd immunity is irrelevant. It’s like saying fruits are useless because limes don’t prevent scurvy. (Limes are one of the very few fruits which don’t contain vitamin C, a lesson which some intrepid explorers learned the hard way. Long and rather fascinating story, actually.) You glossed that part over completely.

It’s true that fatalities are mostly in the over-50s in the US. Do you think there’s any coincidence that over-50s are also the group least likely to stay current on their tetanus vaccinations? (You need a booster every decade.) They’re also the least likely to tolerate the interventions, which are extreme. Why aren’t you interested in the statistics from countries which don’t vaccinate widely against tetanus? In those countries, surprise surprise, tetanus is a very common childhood killer.

I’m also interested in how deftly you dismiss the seriousness of tetanus. Do you not believe it is a serious disease? It’s not a disease you can avoid purely through sanitation; the organism is probably living in your own backyard. In the first world, mortality is about 11%, and that’s with access to first-class ICUs and respirators.

Also, did you know that if you catch tetanus and managed to survive, you will not become immune to it? Only the vaccine can produce immunity. It’s a real bastard of a disease to catch.

Calli Arcale

t’s definitely recommended in childhood, and is included with the pertussis vaccine. But it is not mandatory for public school enrollment because the only person who might suffer if you don’t give it to your child is . . . your child.

Tetanus is mandatory in California
http://www2.sduhsd.net/tp/immunization.html

—————————————-

Why aren’t you interested in the statistics from countries which don’t vaccinate widely against tetanus? In those countries, surprise surprise, tetanus is a very common childhood killer.

Because I don’t live in a country where umbilical cords are cut with rusty knives

Maternal and neonatal tetanus (MNT) killed at east 200,000 newborns and 300,000 mothers worldwide in 2001 alone. It is caused by unhygienic and unsafe childbirth practises. Tetanus bacteria can enter the infant at birth if the umbilical cord is cut with dirty instruments or if contaminated dressings are used.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=77745

Sid, we realize you don’t give a rap about people dying of preventable infectious diseases in Third World countries.

You don’t have to keep constantly reminding us of your gross insensivity.

I have the same question as Looking for Reason. I can’t find that stuff anywhere on NVIC’s website. I don’t think those graphs were produced by NVIC.

Orac, I think you blew it and got your facts wrong. You need to fess up and say so. 🙂 If you’re going to trash an organization at least trash them using facts. Isn’t this what science is about?

Three men in my family got it (two of them twice). None dead. Not an especially good mankiller, is it? Is it a mankiller in the same way that Wile E. Coyote is a roadrunnerkiller?

http://www.jstor.org/pss/4461020

yep…

Karen Ullman @ 115 — see Orac @ 112, then apologize.

On another note: Why is it that antivaxers think brain damage or death from measles is better than autism, to the point where they keep believing the garbage pushed by Andy Wakefield — a guy so skeevey even Thoughtful House finally cut off his welfare payments?

Phoenixwoman-

Autism is brain damage and a slow death in many cases.

Ask youselves this one question. Why was Polio the last disease cured? Well, techncally a vaccinination is not a cure, it is a preventative. Yes I have had a tetnus shot once when i cut my bare foot on a rusty nail when I was playing outside as a kid. The shot never harmed me.

However, most of these kind of vaccinations are harmless. it is the ones that Merck and others derived from human fetal cell lines that are mankillers. Quite anumber of people were paralyzed and some even died from the swine flu shot itself.

In 2005, there was shortage of flu vaccines becuase the company in Alabama was using human fetal cell lines manufacture the vaccine and in the process screwed it up and caused a delay in production. These tyoes of manufacturing processes are not scrutinized by the FDA, but for some unknown reason the FDA seems to want to take away my Vitamin C and cold medication. Now, what is wrong with that picture? Can you say BACKWARDS?

Oh and by the way, I am glad to see NewMax reporting what the leftist media refuses to report: Big money deals made with pharma companies through the healthcare bill. Gee, I wonder whose stocks soared when that peice of crap legislation was passed? Obamites always talk about big profits from big companies, but they always seem to forget big pharma is the largest profit sector in the world. Some manufacturers are charging 20 times what it costs to produce a drug and yet the lefties turn their eyes toward insurance companies. Gee, I suspect insurance wouldn’t be so expensive if big pharma and hospitals weren’t ripping everone off including the insurance companies. Not even the oil companies rip people off that much.

@121

Because vaccination wasn’t what eradicated measles, remember? It was all that sanitation and clean water and eating green leafy vegetables and stuff, dontcha know?

@bensmyson #119

Proving what? That one kid had a reaction 9 months after his MMR that MAY be related to his MMR? What was the clinical outcome of this case? Have there been others? Just because he wasn’t KNOWN to have had a immune problem doesn’t mean he didn’t develop one that allowed the infection.

Everyone here acknowledges that some vaccine injury occurs. You keep harping on this and claiming that one person injured by a vaccine is too many. Sometimes people have bad reactions to antibiotics, but if they didn’t take them they could well have died of their infection. People die on operating tables all the time, but would have died without the surgery. Have you ever driven somewhere you could have flown to? How could you have taken such a horrible risk when flying is safer?

Vaccines are orders of magnitude safer than the diseases they protect against. Measles should have been eradicated years ago like smallpox, but peoples’ unreasonable and unfounded fears get in the way. By delaying the eradication of measles and the subsequent cessation of vaccination, anti-vaxxers have caused deaths by measles in outbreaks and needless vaccine-related complications.

Because vaccination wasn’t what eradicated measles, remember? It was all that sanitation and clean water and eating green leafy vegetables and stuff, dontcha know?

Whenever someone tries that gambit, it’s always nice to point out that deaths decreased in the developing world as well — and the developing world is nowhere near as sanitary as the US. (Hell, Europeans think that Americans are weirdly obsessed cleanliness freaks. What, shower every day?!? How gauche!)

@130

I’ve seen that argument many times, and the anti-vaxxers always refuse to engage with it. Can’t imagine why…….

Seriously where do you draw the line, how many brain injuries and deaths from vaccines are too many?

Ever heard of the smallpox vaccine? Know why it’s no longer recommended as a routine childhood vaccine? Because enough people were vaccinated such that smallpox was no longer endemic in the world and even the tiny risk of the vaccine was greater than the now non-existent risk of the virus.

@Hypocrisy person (ugh, so pedantic)

Yes. I am joking. Cancer jokes are hilarious. They’re funny because they’re true.

10,000 adverse reactions. That sounds like a really big number. I’m totally impressed by that fact. Wait, hang on, my phone’s ringing again.

*Ring ring* Hello? Oh hey, good to hear from you. What’s that? An ‘adverse reaction’ includes local skin responses to vaccination, mild-moderate nausea, and transient low-grade fevers? Huh, that’s weird. The way she called them “adverse reactions” impressed me with its snininess, but the way YOU describe it, it sounds like the things you’d expect from pretty much ANY medical procedure.

What’s that? You go ON to say that stating a numerator without a denominator is about as useful in a scientific discussion as tits on a nun? That a number like 10,000 at a population level can actually be quite small in comparison to the total number of people vaccinated? Hang on a sec, so you mean that not only is the number potentially insignificant, but it’s completely MEANINGLESS out of context? Wow, it’s a good thing you know some basic scientific principles there, person on the phone; otherwise I’d sound like a total asshole, as opposed to just a smug patronizing dickhead.

Uh-huh, okay, I’ll tell her. Bye. *Click*

Hypocrisy human person, I think you’re all right but this guy on the phone thinks you’re a stat-mining, disingenuous, ignorant douche. However, he does agree that 20 deaths is very sad. Almost as sad as all of the people who die of cervical cancer every year.

I know, RIGHT?

Oy. The comments.

But I was wondering as was someone else waaaaay back there – why the hell DID Canada stop taking stats on measles from 59 to 68?

I’d like to know that. Were there no reported cases? Or a mistake in the formatting? (Happens all the time, right?)

Makes for a bad graph. And gives a goon a good chance to make things look the way they want.

It’s easier to repeat old lies over again in hopes no one will notice you haven’t got anything new to say.
Sorry antivax loons, but turning it up to 11 does not make you right. Further, there is no denying the fact that you keep doing the same thing and failing over and over again makes you insane.

Yep, probably.

And here we see the rare “pro-vax nut”. Note the similarity in mastery of the English language.

To answer your first question, no I don’t think it’s healthy that Ben’s parents think he’d rather be dead. However, I don’t think they’ve ever said that. Furthermore, the question you ORIGINALLY asked was ‘do I think he’s in danger’ and the answer is still no. I have no evidence (and guess what, neither do you) that bensmyson abuses or neglects their child. From reading their blog, I’d be more likely to think that they love the shit out of the little booger-miner.

To address your second issue, I’m not sure what evidence you want me to provide. You want me to provide evidence that I’m not worried? Or that you shouldn’t worry? Or prove that they don’t beat their son? I don’t know these people, and as callous as it is to say this I don’t really care about their son (except insofar as I care about any other random person on the planet). As a result, I have no evidence to suggest that they are abusive. I think belief in Christianity is stupid: there’s no evidence for it, and many people have died as a result of it. Is your argument therefore that children raised by Christian parents are at some great risk of abuse?

It’s cute that you’re trying to bring an absurd ad hominem attack that you’re conjuring out of thin air against people you’ve never met. However, when I do it it’s whimsical and cute. When you do it, it’s just creepy.

For the record, I think the entity known as ‘bensmyson’ is stupid, and insofar as stupidity is not good for a child’s well-being and development then I am concerned for Ben. However, I see no reason to assume they’re child abusers simply because they’re anti-science.

Thank you for your considered response. Did you even try to find out what happened to the two children mentioned?

Ben’s parents, you both really hate Ben. I am so terribly sorry

Chris, you’re an ASSHOLE!!!

First I need to point out that I’m not anti-vaccine, since some may infer that from my following question. What do you think would be the purpose of making H1N1 vaccines with adjuvants and those without? Last year in Germany there was an outcry over this because, according to Der Speigel, vaccines without adjuvants were being offered only to high officials in German government, like Angela Merkle. To placate the conspiracy theorists she said she would take the vaccine with adjuvants. Creating two vaccines like this without any explanation to the public would only feed the fear.

Heh, so in answer to my point re required vaccination as a public health measure due to herd immunity, Hypocrisy-etc. gleefully points out, “What about TEH TETANUS?” As others replied later, there is no legal requirement for childhood tetanus vaccination, so the tetanus example has nothing whatever to do with my point.

Re my attempt to inject (heh) a bit of sanity into yet another repetition of the canard that drug companies push vaccines because they are such big moneymakers, it’s been mentioned that folks have seen ads for flu vaccines and Gardasil.

First, ask yourself how many ads you’ve seen for these products versus “the little purple pill,” any of a number of cholesterol medications, Plavix, etc. Second, if anyone can disprove my guess that the total drug company (as opposed to government) marketing budget for H1N1 vaccine ads amounted to a fraction of a percent of their marketing budgets for their few moneymaker “blockbuster” drugs, please have at it. Third, yes, I’ve seen print ads for Gardasil (though I haven’t run across any on TV, in contrast to the frequent, unavoidable ads for the big drugs), but (a) I am unaware of any government requirement for vaccination with Gardasil, and (b) Where exactly is it written that a drug company must keep quiet about the availability of an efficacious treatment for a terrible disease? There is plenty of information out there from which parents and young women can make an informed choice regarding whether or not to have the vaccine. (Speaking of plenty of information, does anyone have confirmation of, and particularly context for (the “numerator”) the death-from-vaccine numbers that have been bandied about here regarding Gardasil? Even the alleged number is a tiny fraction of the death toll from cervical cancer, but I would like to deal with verified statistics here insofar as possible.)

Phoenixwoman wrote

“Hell, Europeans think that Americans are weirdly obsessed cleanliness freaks. What, shower every day?!? How gauche!”

I am not sure if you are joking about this, but, sadly, there really are some people in the US who believe that in Europe we wash less often. Just to set the issue straight, both in the UK and in mainland Europe it is normal to shower or bath every day, just as it is in the US.

The areas where we think that the US can be a bit weird is in the regular use of vaginal douching, and in the (at times obsessive) drive to kill all bacteria on every surface that a person may come into contact with. I wouldn’t be the first person to point out that there may well be good reasons for us to doubt the good sense of trying to ensure that young children have extremely low exposures to environmental pathogens (but I’d also expect that if it was shown to be good practice then we’d adopt it here, too).

Clearly I am entirely correct to point to the hypocrisy of, on 2 days, denouncing anybody who uses evidence to dispute any “consensus” & then denounces anybody who has supported what, for a short while, became close to a “consensus”, certainly in the media, over vaccination.

Go on then, point to it. You haven’t shown it in either of these posts though.

As for reason in Linear No Threshold model: it’s a reasonable conservative assumption to make in the absence of strong evidence to the contrary. I think you’re extremely misguided if you think LNT is the reason for anti-nuclear scaremongering, by the way. If LNT were disproved, would Greenpeace (a)renounce their opposition, or (b)dismiss the evidence as industry propaganda?

@bensmyson

You seem to have missed my question. What caused the 180 degree turn in your attitude? One day you say:

“Sued? SUED? I want an eye for an eye, I want criminal charges brought against PEOPLE. We pay all pay the judgements in higher costs. Also if the corporations were held accountable it would be the stockholders to have to pay. Nope I want someone to sit in prison for 29 years, right after they are horse whipped. In China a corrupt head of a drug company that sold tainted product was taken outside after he was found guilty and shot. Sounds reasonable to me, his product killed babies.

Then a couple of days later you say:

On the other side, vaccines cause an indirect threat to many, yet I wish no one dead because of that

John @ 157 — Yeah, I was exaggerating for effect. But as your examples show, Americans are far more obsessive about cleanliness (even, as with frequent doucheing, where it can do far more harm than good) than just about any other major culture on the planet.

We scrub more, we all but outlaw lead in our gasoline and in other products (a very good thing), we pasteurize our cheese (the raw-milk cheeses Europeans enjoy are illegal here), we refrigerate our eggs, we use hand sanitizer like it was going out of style, we work to keep our food-grade plastics safe, etc., etc. So if autism is a result of toxins and nastiness, America should have had less of it over time than any other place on the globe. Doesn’t seem to work out that way.

@Chris #149

Did you even try to find out what happened to the two children mentioned?

Considering that neither of the names you mentioned are children of bensmyson, I assumed it was some kind of smokescreen (well THESE people did something bad, therefore ALL anti-vaxers are child abusers). So I ignored it and went to sleep. And a dreamt such a wonderful dream. In it, people were conscious of the irony of showing up on a message board about intellectual dishonesty and making intellectually dishonest arguments. Also, I could lactate ice cream. That part was weird.

Ian, neither of Ben’s parents have denied what I said about how I perceive their attitude towards their son. The curebie culture is actually quite dangerous to children.

Ever heard of the smallpox vaccine? Know why it’s no longer recommended as a routine childhood vaccine? Because enough people were vaccinated such that smallpox was no longer endemic in the world and even the tiny risk of the vaccine was greater than the now non-existent risk of the virus.

Just think of the all the PROFITS the Big Pharma are giving up by not pushing a smallpox vaccine on us!!!!

I thought Big Pharma was All Powerful and was Forcing Dangerous Vaccines on Us just to Make a Profit? So why aren’t they forcing the smallpox vaccine on us?

Chris, the ben’s are stuck in denial for a very simple reason: They don’t like the answers science is giving them. With autism most likely being partially genetic and/or partially very early prenatal development they have no one to blame but themselves. Genetics point to some imaginary flaw, and if there is an environmental trigger that contributes (probably before the parents are even aware of the pregnancy) they actually might have done something wrong. This, combined with the realization there’s no miracle cure if you can’t reverse a trigger, leads to an irrational “can’t be” reaction, and with hundreds of other parents in the same dilemma, they circle the mental wagons and form their own reality.
And I agree that there are parents out there who do harm their kids in the name of “the cure”, no idea of the Ben’s are part of them, I don’t really keep track of all their statements. I’m not too worried about the hard core non-communicative cases, there’s probably not that much potential to destroy, but I wonder how many “on the spectrum” kids that could benefit from good behavioral therapy and schooling are instead “treated” with diet, chelation and lupron because it’s the “therapy of the month”.

“They don’t like the answers science is giving them. With autism most likely being partially genetic and/or partially very early prenatal development they have no one to blame but themselves. Genetics point to some imaginary flaw, and if there is an environmental trigger that contributes (probably before the parents are even aware of the pregnancy) they actually might have done something wrong. This, combined with the realization there’s no miracle cure if you can’t reverse a trigger”

To be fair, I would point out that (at least one of)Ben’s parents already feels personally responsible even with the vaccination-as-the-cause belief because they had to take him to the doc and sign the papers and “hold him down” for the shot. Perhaps they would feel more responsible if it was genetic, but it’s hard to know that for sure.

Personally, I think it has more to do with expectations and the second part of what I quoted above – no “miracle” cures. Like most parents lucky enough to be living in a “developed” country, there were expectations about their “perfect” child – and then he wasn’t. And no one in the medical field claimed they could “cure” him, so they look elsewhere.

Please note, however, that is purely my own theory, and I am not making claims about how much it actually represents reality (especially the specific reality for Ben and his parents).

Personally, I think it has more to do with expectations and the second part of what I quoted above – no “miracle” cures. Like most parents lucky enough to be living in a “developed” country, there were expectations about their “perfect” child – and then he wasn’t. And no one in the medical field claimed they could “cure” him, so they look elsewhere.

I agree more with this, but in a more cynical sense. They want the quick and easy fix, and don’t want to put in the work that it will take to raise a developmentally delayed child.

What? I have to have patience, and spend a lot of time working with my child in highly repetitive behaviors? Can’t I just give them a pill or something and make it better?

Phoenixwoman @163

The differences between the US and the UK are certainly interesting on things like this. I’d never seen douches in a pharmacist before I lived in the US, and people’s behaviour in the office toilets seemed most bizarre (ass gaskets, liberal use of not only washing but of gels, and using a paper towel to open the door to avoid touching the handle).

The extremely diligent hygene always seemed to be in strange contrast to the practice of having the stalls built with a two foot gap at the bottom (which I only later discovered was to facilitate senators playing footsie with neighbours).

We do have some strange habits in that department in Europe too, though. I was in Austria recently, and the airport toilets are designed so that your crap does not fall into the water, but instead sits out on a shelf in the air, where it can be closely examined before being flushed away. This has the delightful effect of allowing a large deposit to pile high enough to touch the buttocks.

“people’s behaviour in the office toilets seemed most bizarre (ass gaskets, liberal use of not only washing but of gels, and using a paper towel to open the door to avoid touching the handle).”

Oh, you can’t forget using your foot to flush the toilet (assuming it’s not an automatic flush)- is that one you would think extreme? I do and I’m American, lol – I mean, really, you’re going to be washing your hands in about 30 seconds (and possibly using a sanitizer on top of that!), would it kill you to touch the handle?

Yes, but isn’t life in general a “slow death?”

@Chris #178

That’s fair. Their rhetoric is of a particularly poor quality and it’s pretty offensive to describe ASD as “a slow death”. But let’s keep the arguments to what we know rather than inventing stuff.

@Poogles 174

I’m not sure about the home birth thing being more dangerous than hospital delivery. A research project I did a few years ago suggested to me that for normal (non-complicated) births, home delivery actually has BETTER outcomes for both mother and child. This has a bit to do with reduced birth anxiety and decreased risk of hospital-borne infection. Then again I was looking at midwifery literature, so you can take that how you want. I realize that wasn’t the central point of your argument, but I think it’s fair to point out that they aren’t both (home birth and non-vax) high-risk activities.

Poogles wrote

“Oh, you can’t forget using your foot to flush the toilet (assuming it’s not an automatic flush)- is that one you would think extreme? I do and I’m American, lol – I mean, really, you’re going to be washing your hands in about 30 seconds (and possibly using a sanitizer on top of that!), would it kill you to touch the handle?”

Oh yes, I’d say that that one was extreme. I admit, though, that people over your side of the water would probably be appalled to know that here having a sleep in the toilets is not unheard of if there’s been a miscalculation the night before about what time it made sense to leave the bar.

From the americans on here who’ve spent some time living over here in Europe, do we have sanitary habits that just seem wrong in US eyes?

@Carax 153

The german swineflu events appeared bad, but were purely an unfortunate conjunction of circumstances.

The German govt originally organised a contract the year before with Baxter to provide flu vax for essential public health personnel such as govt. employees and the armed forces if the need arose.

When the possible scale of the pandemic became obvious during the summer, it was realised that the country would need very large quantities of vax, and it organised new contracts with GSK who could produce the vaccine quicker.
There was no foreknowledge that vaccines might differ in their makeup and there were no scientific concerns about either vax. However, soon totally untrue stories hit the media to say, without any factual basis, that the GSK vaccine was riskier (having squalene in it). In fact there is no risk from squalene.

But the appearances were that the vaccine planned for govt. was somehow “safer” than that for the rest of the population.

The conspiracy reached full fruition.
In summary, antivaxers had disseminated untrue propaganda about the safety of the vaccines, then later they were able to point to differences in vax supplies to “prove” there was a conspiracy to give inferior vax to the public.
Game set and match to the antivaxers. And they really enjoyed the mayhem they created (thank god the flu was less bad than predicted).

But still, many people (young, pregnant, vulnerable) died in Germany after going without vaccination. And the antivaxers are real proud of that achievement too.

Luna, I wasn’t trying to imply that the hard cases are somehow not human or worth less, but that I can see a “desperate situations require desperate measures” approach for them. But there is no good therapeutic system in place for them, while a lot of what I think of more as delayed or uneven developing kids have shown reasonable improvements with therapy. And those are the ones that are most in danger (IMO) from biomed woo instead of SBM.

Only the vaccine can produce immunity

How do you become immune to a toxoid? (genuine question)

A minor correction: the tetanus vaccine actually makes you immune to the toxin; the toxoid is the deliberately and carefully weakened version of the toxin. So the question is “how do you become immune to a toxin?”

And the answer is pretty much the same in principle as it is for viral vaccines: you become immune by presenting your immune system with a deliberately and carefully weakened version of the agent you want immunity to. Because the agent presented to your system is deliberately and carefully weakened, it does not pose an actual threat, but the immune system still “sees” the antigens, “recognizes” the agent as a foreign invader, and gears up to deal with a full-on attack by that invader.

If you do then get a full-on attack by that invader — if, say, two weeks after getting the tetanus shot you step on a sharp nail that punctures your foot and introduces a flood of tetanospasmin-manufacturing Clostridium tetani into your system — then instead of invading a body with an unprepared immune system that it can race through and devastate, it’s facing a system that says “Hey, I know you. And I’ve got a large army that knows you. And we’re all patrolling the body, looking for you, ready to kick your ass.”

Like any other vaccine, a toxoid vaccine is about giving the body’s immune system a head start, so that it can clobber the invader before the invader can clobber the body.

@ Calli Arcale #186 and Pablo #190

I guess, just as in all things, it comes down to the risk/benefit calculation. If there’s no reason to suspect a priori that a complication is likely, it comes down to weighing up the risk of spontaneous complication to the risks associated with in-hospital delivery.

Personally I don’t feel strongly one way or the other. Unless something outrageously dramatic happens in the next 20 years in the field of embryology and fertility, I’m not going to be getting pregnant.

@Calli

In those countries, surprise surprise, tetanus is a very common childhood killer.

I assumed you were talking about neo-natal tetanus becasue that’s the only form of the disease that would make it a “very common childhood killer” anywhere.

http://www.emedicinehealth.com/tetanus/article_em.htm
The annual worldwide incidence is between 500,000-1 million cases. The majority of new cases worldwide are in neonates in Third World countries.

Additionally, even in the pre-vaccine era, when we all lived on farms, tetanus was rare and even rarer in children.

I looked at the Minn. requirements. Out of curiousity what leads you to say I could just bypass the tetanus requirement if I could find a DP shot?

Prometheus was the only poster here that even came close to the central argument: measles is a relatively modern disease; the most recent ancestor does indeed reflect rise in URBAN population necessary to sustain measles-like infection in immunologically naive youngsters, about 1100 years ago. The modern form is *really recent*, estimated to have emerged in the early 20th century.

Virology Journal 2010, 7:52doi:10.1186/1743-422X-7-52

Before this recent emergence, crude serological techniques were used to induce natural immunity. You can read a reasonably well constructed set of posts, a week-long blog set devoted to measles, in Mystery Rays from Outer Space. The blog author is an immunology assistant prof.

Day 1 introduces recent history of measles morbidity (this is the important one) and total and infant mortality with graphics showing a much longer national registry record for the UK and US. If you look elsewhere, you can find similar trends in morality reduction in Europe.

Unfortunately, sanitation is give short shrift as an important reason for the reduction. That ignorance arises from the blog authors lack of knowledge of modern sanitation science, put into broad practice first in Europe and then in the US, but having its antecendent movement in the mid-1800s.

Natural drop in mortality can be ascribed to (1) major improvements in urban sanitation, (2) early efforts to develop broad population immunity using antisera, (3) co-reduction in major infectious diseases that are typically prevalent in cold weather seasons, (4) reduction in residential crowding with concurrent reduction in number of residents per home, and (5) improved general nutrition and medical intervention, including the rise of modern medical practice and access to general practice clinics and hospital care.

Morbidity rose and fell with environmental factors that affected susceptible populace density, and here ease of population movement with the development of modern modes of transportation following the rise in general wealth is an important factor in 20th century measles epidemiology.

There is no doubt that the modern version of measles, a seasonal infectious agent, is different from its immediate ancestor.

At heart, a number of factors are responsible for the resurgence in recent outbreaks of measles, mostly in young adults with an average age of 17-21, associated with a rising number of naive and quasi-naive, susceptible individuals in close-crowding conditions, a pattern that began to manifest circa 2005-06 in Europe and North America.

The outbreaks of mumps, measles, and chickenpox among university students predates the decade-old mania against vaccination and also largely pre-date the practice of booster use (’96-97). Many university students who reported contracting these childhood infectious disease had been vaccinated, once. Few reported being multiply vaccinated.

This subpopulation, and their junior counterparts who have also contracted mumps, measles and chicken pox in public schools, have been shown to have reduced levels of vitamin D and have generally poor nutrition status and crappy sleep hygiene that impairs immune system function. They are subject to chronic stress that is not helped by a generally sedentary lifestyle. Many share communal sanitation facilities in schools and dorms, and they are socially active.

There is also suspect complacency among parents in the past 20 years, because large outbreaks these childhood disease had become relatively rare prior to recent teenager multinational epidemics. They needed only to hear community rumors of vaccine-health developmental effects that arose after the publication of suspect study, to reconsider the need for the 42-shot immunization series for infants.

Just as in the case of notable spike periods in measles morbidity during the first half of the 20th century (observed in the US charts), there are underlying environmental causal factors that are also reflected in the rise in general respiratory diseases with immune dysfunction, like seasonal allergy and asthma, particularly among the young in the past 15 years.

“I looked at the Minn. requirements. Out of curiousity what leads you to say I could just bypass the tetanus requirement if I could find a DP shot? ”

The fact that Td boosters are not required is an awfully big hint. You need those boosters if the tetanus immunity is to mean anything.

You still want to deny that tetanus is a problem for children. It is a common killer abroad. Number one killer? No, but I did not intend to imply that. A hell of a lot of things are common killers in other countries. Polio. Cholera. Starvation. War. Occupational injury in countries without a minimum age of employment. I don’t think we should consider any of them acceptable if there is an alternative.

I’m glad that you changed your mind Poogles! I had an unmedicated childbirth in a hospital with a certified nurse midwife. It was a textbook birth, until I started bleeding out after the placenta was delivered. I was rushed to the OR to have a cervical laceration repaired. I nearly had to have a blood transfusion. Although I never would have considered a home birth even before this, my experience drove home the fact that serious complications cannot always be predicted. I would be dead had I not been in a hospital.

As a new parent, I am so glad that I have found Orac’s blog, because it gives me ammunition in the fight against anti-vaxxers. I always try to be kind to parents who are on the fence, but I also point out the holes in the arguments against vaccinations.

“As a new parent, I am so glad that I have found Orac’s blog”

I always tell my hubby that I am SO GRATEFUL I went through the whole anti-vacc, homebirth, “natural is always best” phase before I ever even got pregnant. If I had not started looking into any of this stuff until we started trying or after I was already pregnant, I more than likely would have stayed in that mindset indefinitely, instead of coming out the other side realizing how mislead I had been. At least my crazy baby fever had one good result, LOL.

@Neil Craig:
I wasn’t actually arguing anything with you, so the accusation that I was using an ad hominem argument is kind of beside the point. I was merely stating that attempting a logical discussion with someone so bereft of reasoning ability that they would consider HIV denialism seriously is a completely pointless exercise.

I provide explanation not only for the multi-factor decrease in infectious mortality in the 20th century, I also note the historical change in *morbidity* and point to it’s importance, attributable quasi-vaccination and other measures listed that impact both individual and subgroup infectious susceptibility and symptom severity.

The steady, stepwise decline in morbidity is also shown in a brief graph, Part II, Mystery Rays from Outer Space blog, although he doesn’t comment on it, as his point was to show seasonal patterns of morbidity continued to occur alongside steep declines in measles mortality.

In the brief section on the effects of sanitation, part III, he states:

‘Measles is a classic respiratory disease; it doesn’t need water to spread, and sanitation doesn’t stop it from spreading.’

Well, that is patent nonsense. Measles spreads by fomites, and that includes GI complications that are notable in rinderpest-infected cattle and in measles infected infants and youngsters.

Moreover, morbidity is strongly effected by recent previous infectious disease in humans and animals, including the bacterial GI infectious agents that frequently and seriously weakened infants before modern drinking water treatment started approximately 1915. That pattern was directly due to contaminated surface and shall well water supply in urban centers.

The key sanitation engineering factors were the reduction in suspended matter and disinfection steps in water supply, primary wastewater treatment, and the separation of water and sewage piping systems (rather than use combined systems designed not for wastewater but for storm-water conveyance) that also directed wastewater for outfall disposal, away from urban centers.

In fact, while you’re at it, if you look at the Wiki page on Rinderpest, you’ll see that, ironically, the efforts to inoculate cattle against rinderpest predated efforts to induce seroprotection in humans:

‘The first written report of rinderpest inoculation was published in a letter signed ‘T.S.’ in the November 1754 issue of Gentleman’s Magazine,[1] a widely-read journal which also supported the progress of smallpox inoculation. This letter reported that a Mr. Dobsen had inoculated his cattle and had thus preserved nine out of ten of them, although this was retracted in the next issue as it was apparently a Sir William St. Quintin who had done the inoculating (this was done by placing bits of material previously dipped in morbid discharge into an incision made in the dewlap of the animal). These letters encouraged further application of inoculation in the fight against diseases. The first inoculation against measles was made three years after their publication.[1]’

Prometheus was the only poster to point to the recent TMRCA estimates and suspect zoonotic origin paper, the probable rise of an exceptionally recent seasonal infectious agent in modern times (which may be associated with early seroprotection efforts), part of the complex story behind the reduction in broad group of infectious disease decline in in the past 90 years.

Vaccination plays an important role in the eventual eradication of seasonal infectious disease, and I am not disputing that point.

Can anybody here please explain then why it is just a coincidence that when the polio vaccine was introduced a brand new disease with the exact same range of symptoms as polio (viral meningitis, amongst others such as Guillian Barre) cropped out of nowhere and started infecting large numbers of people. Is it also an astonishing coincidence that chicken pox and shingles were always considered harmless until such time as the small pox vaccine supposedly eradicated that disease.
Could you also please explain why it could only be coincidence that the exact same thing happened for diphtheria (regarding severe tonsillitis) or, well pretty much every disease really that has supposedly been eradicated by vaccination.
Is it always just a coincidence that whenever a vaccine is introduced a brand new disease springs up with the same symptoms as the “eradicated” disease or is it – as Occam’s razor would have us conclude – that the diseases were just relabelled and the vaccines were useless.
And again, I will ask. How do vaccinations work? How do T-cells, B-cells, antibodies or whatever remember things? I recently asked a senior lecturer in immunology and he confessed that nobody actually knew, but maybe he is wrong and someone on the board here will help me out.
Thanks in advance for your explanations.

@punter.
I see you are one of the “just asking questions” trolls.
You want to learn about the immune system, and how vaccinations work? Don’t ask people here, go do a bit of background work yourself. There are numerous sources of proper scientific/medical information. When you have looked at them, and when you have a specific query, then ask.

As Chris has pointed out, the diseases you describe as “new” are quite unrelated to and easily distinguishable from the vaccine-preventable illnesses. They are not “new”, either. Viral meningitis and chicken pox were recognised as distinct medical conditions before smallpox and polio vaccines were introduced. They did not crop out of nowhere.

Passerby, you responded to the fact that measles has a classic respiratory transmission route and that sanitation has nothing to do with it by saying “Well, that is patent nonsense.” Your posts display ignorance about the means by which measles is spread (hint, it is by inhalation of respiratory droplets or droplet nuclei containing virus) and has virtually nothing to do with what you describe as “sanitation”).

The fact that one analysis suggests the modern virus seems to have diverged in the 11th century from an ancestor that also gave rise to rinderpest virus (rather than much earlier) is of interest, but contributes nothing to our current understanding of measles transmission.

@214: Technically, the smallpox virus does still exist in freezers at the CDC in Atlanta and probably in a number of other places as a reserve backup biowarfare agent, so punter is technically correct in saying that it isn’t eradicated. However, I doubt that that’s what s/he meant.

“Occam’s razor would have us conclude – that the diseases were just relabelled and the vaccines were useless.”

Yeah Occam thinks that you’re full of shit.

@212

Bruce McNeely you are the very definition of a troll. Not a term I use lightly but nothing else fits.

Project much?

#209 punter

And again, I will ask. How do vaccinations work? How do T-cells, B-cells, antibodies or whatever remember things?

Here ya go punter…scroll 2/3 way down that page to “Immunological memory”.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bookshelf/br.fcgi?book=imm&part=A1322#A1372

Better still, if you are genuinely interested in learning how the immune system functions, read that entire page…at least. (Note that this text cannot be browsed…you must use the search function if you want to look up other immunology concepts…they’re all there 🙂

I recently asked a senior lecturer in immunology and he confessed that nobody actually knew

Just out of curiosity, was that perhaps at one of those anti-evilutionist places that teach “Creationist Science” ?

@Calli Arcale

Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t they also tend to have larger hands and ears, as well?

But autistics are quite a bit more likely to have big heads than everybody else is.

IIRC, head circumference is larger at birth and in early childhood for autistics but is about the same in adolescence and adulthood. But the difference is there before vaccination. So what’s next to blame? Vaccination of the mothers? Cell phones? Unspecified toxins?

So nobody at all disputes that what the author of the thread says is indeed dishonest 7 hypocritical.

Fair enough.

Neil Craig:

So nobody at all disputes that what the author of the thread says is indeed dishonest 7 hypocritical.

Fair enough.

Or… Nobody’s interested in engaging with a batshit lunatic like yourself. Cheerio!

I was trying to point out to Neil that he reminded me of the Wondermark comic #606 — http://wondermark.com/606/ — but my original link got hung in moderation.

Neil Craig:

You’re confusing contempt with defeat, but see post 159.

Neil Craig [#227] commented:

“So nobody at all disputes that what the author of the thread says is indeed dishonest 7 [sic] hypocritical.”

I’m sorry – I wasn’t paying any attention to you. Were you referring to this bit of nonsense:

“Alternately what “evidence, science, and reason” is there in catastrophic global warminmg, passive smoking killing, the LNT radiation theory, polar bears being endangered, peak oil, acid rain, HIV-AIDS, salt being dangerous, cholesterol & the numerous other “scientific consensii”, politically correct because promoted by those in charge, scares which are not denounced here?”

or were you asserting that “revising” historical data on infectious diseases and/or presenting it in a distorted and deceptive fashion is “OK” in your world view?

Was there a point in your comments? There didn’t seem to be.

Prometheus

@Neil Craig: you are obviously confusing apathy with scorn. You are the one making the ad hom attacks, and as a liar, you are prime. And now you have just become the 2nd person in my killfile. Congratulations for your achievement.

Neil Craig whinges:

“So 6 posts all saying they cannot or will not debate. You rarely see apathy applied with such enthusiasm.”

It’s not that I’m unwilling to “debate”, just that I’m unclear what you are proposing as your position. Is your position that all scientific consensus is invalid or is your position that Orac and/or the regular readers of this ‘blog are mindless adherents to “scientific dogma”?

Or did you have another, entirely different position?

The problem is that your arguments are so poorly constructed that it is nearly impossible to tell what you are arguing.

Try being clear and concise. Be prepared to support your position with data. If you do that, people might listen to you and treat you like an adult.

Prometheus

Testes can swell.

[citation needed]

amish kids do not have peanut allergies (unless they are vaccinated)
pharmaceutical companies are some of the most unscrupulous corporations in the world, seems like satan himself is on their board of directors. have been caught purposely spiking vaccines w/ illness causing substances
do no harm has been replace with maximize profit.

as a former business student i understand that corporations exist, first and foremost, to make a profit.
when you ask almost any US doctor about anything related to alternative medicine they say none of it works and it can be dangerous. in Germany they have the german commission e.
this is the advising board to m.d. that makes therapeutic suggestions for using herbal medicine (before trying drugs). european doctors will use nature first. that is not to say that there is not a place for pharmaceuticals but they should be one of the last treatment protocols not the first. drugs do have side effects-so need to be used with great caution. plants (herbs) are the safest substance (long track records of use-in some cases thousands of years) on the planet and often times work better than drugs without side effects. why are these being bad mouthed by MD in the US, not like they might be suggested in europe?
G R E E D !
drugs (vaccines) can be patented and are highly profitable.
as i said maximize profit has replaced do no harm.
money corruption is systemic to our medical system.
only when greed is removed will medicine become honorable.
otherwise sirs you have no credibility and have alot of blood on your hands from needless suffering.

The following is an extract from an article entitled “Homeopathy In Influenza- A Chorus Of Fifty In Harmony” by W. A. Dewey, MD that appeared in the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy in 1920.

Dean W. A. Pearson of Philadelphia collected 26,795 cases of influenza treated by homeopathic physicians with a mortality of 1.05%, while the average old school mortality is 30%.

Thirty physicians in Connecticut responded to my request for data. They reported 6,602 cases with 55 deaths, which is less than 1%. In the transport service I had 81 cases on the way over. All recovered and were landed. Every man received homeopathic treatment. One ship lost 31 on the way. H. A. Roberts, MD, Derby, Connecticut.

In a plant of 8,000 workers we had only one death. The patients were not drugged to death. Gelsemium was practically the only remedy used. We used no aspirin and no vaccines. -Frank Wieland, MD, Chicago.

I did not lose a single case of influenza; my death rate in the pneumonias was 2.1%. The salycilates, including aspirin and quinine, were almost the sole standbys of the old school and it was a common thing to hear them speaking of losing 60% of their pneumonias.-Dudley A. Williams, MD, Providence, Rhode Island.

Fifteen hundred cases were reported at the Homeopathic Medical Society of the District of Columbia with but fifteen deaths. Recoveries in the National Homeopathic Hospital were 100%.-E. F. Sappington, M. D., Philadelphia.

I have treated 1,000 cases of influenza. I have the records to show my work. I have no losses. Please give all credit to homeopathy and none to the Scotch-Irish-American! -T. A. McCann, MD, Dayton, Ohio.

One physician in a Pittsburgh hospital asked a nurse if she knew anything better than what he was doing, because he was losing many cases. “Yes, Doctor, stop aspirin and go down to a homeopathic pharmacy, and get homeopathic remedies.” The Doctor replied: “But that is homeopathy.” “I know it, but the homeopathic doctors for whom I have nursed have not lost a
single case.” -W. F. Edmundson, MD, Pittsburgh.

There is one drug which directly or indirectly was the cause of the loss of more lives than was influenza itself. You all know that drug. It claims to be salicylic acid. Aspirin’s history has been printed. Today you don’t know what the sedative action of salicylic acid is. It did harm in two ways. It’s indirect action came through the fact that aspirin was taken until prostration resulted and the patient developed pneumonia. -Frank L. Newton, MD, Somerville, Massachusetts

Aspirin and the other coal tar products are condemned as causing great numbers of unnecessary deaths. The omnipresent aspirin is the most pernicious drug of all. It beguiles by its quick action of relief of pain, a relief which is but meretricious. In several cases aspirin weakened the heart, depressed the vital forces, increased the mortality in mild cases and made convalescence slower. In all cases it masks the symptoms and renders immeasurably more difficult the selection of the curative remedy. Apparently aspirin bears no curative relation to any disease and it ought
to be prohibited. -Guy Beckly Stearns, MD, New York

Three hundred and fifty cases and lost one, a neglected pneumonia that came to me after she had taken one hundred grains of aspirin in twenty-four hours. -Cora Smith King, MD, Washington, DC

I had a package handed to me containing 1,000 aspirin tablets, which was 994 too many. I think I gave about a half dozen. I could find no place for it. My remedies were few. I almost invariably gave Gelsemium and Bryonia. I hardly ever lost a case if I got there first, unless the patient had been sent to a drug store and bought aspirin, in which event I was likely to have a case of pneumonia on my hands. -J. P. Huff, MD, Olive Branch, Kentucky.

In reading the accounts of the epidemic it seems that most of the deaths were caused by a virulent pneumonia that was especially devastating to those who depressed their system with analgesics-the most common being aspirin.

The Physician from whom I first learned homeopathy, Raymond Seidel, MD, HMD, said that he decided to be a homeopathic doctor during the flu epidemic when he was working as a delivery boy for a homeopath in New Jersey. Raymond Seidel told me that he decided to become a homeopathic doctor when he was a ten-year old delivery boy for a local homeopath. He said, “I saw that the people who were taking aspirin were dying, about half those who were drinking a lot were dying, and those that received homeopathic remedies were living.”

gee guys you hooked a live one here…a genuine necromancing factoid-filled troll who things his dreck is poetry…in the style of E.E. Cummings.

as a (failed) “former business student” who could not cut the mustard in legitimate business circles, sam now is quite successful peddling herbs and sugar water to his “marks”…sorry we are not buying them and not buying his unique retelling of history.

search Bayer knowingly sold HIV contaminated vaccines
search Biological weapon? Live avian flu virus placed in
Baxter vaccine materials sent to 18 countries

One thing that should be pointed out: “Allopathy” is pretty much an irrelevant issue to science-based medicine. I’ve been reading comments for a long time on this blog, and I’ve never met an “allopath.”

Though I suppose I can imagine some crank from the other side of the planet marketing allopathy as “Ancient Western Wisdom” in a fallacious appeal to the exotic, like many quacks do over here with ancient “Eastern” treatments. I’m pretty sure I’ve read about some doing the same for homeopathy in China or Japan. I consider the tactic to be pretty racist, of course.

Homeopaths, however, will insist on using “allopathic” as an anachronistic catch-all code word for The Other. It really doesn’t have much effect on people like us, who don’t share the same assumptions or believe in the same false dichotomies.

i guess it is a bullshit site if you say it is.
thanks for the link to the bs site Whale.com
I didn’t know about that one. Seems like this BS site is stacked with MDs who are critical of vaccines. I guess if it doesn’t fit your thinking it is bs.
i would like to see your source that said the Baxter vaccines were not distributed. If naturalnews.com said it was shipped to 18 countries than someone is not telling the truth.
Bayer isn’t that the same company that use to do research in Nazi Germany?
excuse me for mixing up a drug w/a vaccine. I guess that makes me a real idiot. Always easier to attack the messenger than the message.
Hey if you don’t believe me read the warning vaccine inserts on how they do cause sterility, cancer, death

What message are you giving us, SH? That you are barely literate and not coherent?

Yeah, no way naturalnews.com could be telling the truth
below is the link you provided – Wikipedia entry for Baxter int.
“in 2008 the company supplied contaminated heparin;
in 2009 lethal H5N1 avian flu virus was delivered to laboratories across Europe mixed with seasonal influenza vaccines;”

Am I missing something how is this not distributed?

“lethal to 60% – H5N1 in Bexar vaccines delivered to 18 countries impossible to “accidently” show up in a vaccine and you are wrong it was distributed as shown in the source you sited.

What do you think has more testing a drug rushed to market w/no long term safety data and a rubber stamped approval by the industry-stacked-friendly FDA or an herb that has a history of 5,000 years of safe and effective usage?

Say, have you met Jacob?

There were a number of blood banks that removed clotting factors from donated blood and they proved to be lifesavers for hemophiliacs as well as other bleeding disorders such as *von Willebrand Disease (vWD)* Unfortunately, there were instances of hemophiliacs who used the blood factors before reliable blood testing for hepatitis C and the HIV became available and some hemophiliacs became infected. Some blood banks were sued by hemophiliacs for infected them with theses viruses.

I checked into Sam’s slur against Bayer at the “Hoaxes and Urban Legends website and found this:

“The following email is one such hoax. It claims that a drug called “FACTOR AID” or “FACTORED” manufactured by Bayer is infected with HIV and is spreading AIDS. The truth is that blood clotting agents known as “Factor VIII” were produced from donated blood and some such products were tainted with HIV before proper screening was introduced in the mid-1980s.

HIV infections did result in many countries. However, current blood clotting agents made by Bayer are not made from donated blood (see Recombinant factor VIII), so there is no risk of HIV infections.”

Of course Sam, who receives such emails purportedly implicating Bayer in the deliberately sale of tainted blood factors, immediately hits the “forward” button to send the email on. Perhaps Sam also saw the video on the internet or read Mike Adams Health Deranger’s commentary on the video that adds to the hoax.

Sam, claiming innocence then states, “excuse me for mixing up a drug w/a vaccine. I guess that makes me a real idiot. Always easier to attack the messenger than the message.”

Well Sam in the 1980’s there was a vaccine manufactured from human blood. It was the first subunit viral vaccine developed in the United States and was manufactured from the surface antigen of (shudders) gay men who were infected with the hepatitis B virus. It was called **Heptavax B vaccine** and it was clinically tested within the gay population of New York City…people who volunteered to be guinea pigs for the sake of science. It was administered to millions of health care workers and other people at risk (sex partners and household contacts of individuals already infected with the hepatitis B virus), for acquiring this chronic often deadly virus. Guess what Sam, there has never been a documented case of HIV, hepatitis b or any other blood borne pathogens being transmitted by the Heptavax B vaccine.

* My sister who has vWD Type II received Factor VIII and von Willebrand Factor (VWF) via IV infusion when it was derived from blood…it saved her life and she didn’t get infected with HIV.

** My son received the Heptavax B vaccine in 1985, never got infected and had high immunity against the virus until his death nineteen years later.

“Hey if you don’t believe me read the warning vaccine inserts on how they do cause sterility, cancer, death”

Let me fix that sentence for you Sam:

Hey if you don’t believe me read up on the diseases and read up up on the vaccines that prevent these disease and how the diseases do cause sterility (mumps vaccine), cancer (hepatitis B vaccine, HPV vaccine), death (all the recommended childhood vaccines, recommended adult vaccines and “travel” vaccines).

Falcon

Tell me, what did that ancient medicine do for smallpox?

You tell me how many people in the world did NOT get the small pox vaccine during its extinction in the world?

I just want to see if the numbers match up.

SH, you’d find people will debate you when you learn to write coherently, and actually support your statements with evidence.

I’m going way out on a limb here about Sam’s rant against Baxter and “suggest” that Sam is a regular reader of:

Alex Jones Infowars:

Journalist Fired over Flu Pandemic Lawsuit

The “journalist” is Jane Burgermeister a real nut case from Austria, who first made the allegations of a world wide conspiracy to infect people with H5N1 virus and the deliberate contamination of influenza vaccine by Baxter.

Most of the CAM websites have already taken down her videos but there is a video on You Tube:

Jane Burgermeister-The Turning Point

It seems Burgermeister who has instituted lawsuits against the U.N. and many governments is facing some “hard time” in an Austrian prison.

(I have a rather long posting stuck in moderation for Sam regarding vaccines and blood factors) I’m not too surprised that Sam is locked into conspiracy theories and woo medicine, now that I know his “sources” (viral emails and Alex Jones).

all you got is to call people names (nutcase, conspiracy theorist). back it up with taking the 68+ baby vaccines in an adult dosage, to demonstrate the safety, then you will have some credibility to talk.
How do you dispute that even Baxter admits to delivering the vaccines with the contaminated deadly H5N1? this was impossible to happen accidentally and even Baxter admits they did it. no penalty for Baxter for nearly “accidentally” killing 60% of the earth’s population. Instead they were rewarded with very lucrative contracts to product H1N1 vaccines for the WHO. can you explain this to me as other mentioned on this sight i am not too bright. how do you almost kill 60% of the earth population and then get no penalty and instead get rewarded with billion dollar contract? Do you really know who you are defending here?

I listened to the link from Jane Burgermeister. Rather than just dismissing her as a nut case what specifically did you not agree with. The fact that she is being harrassed by authorities doesn’t mean she is wrong.
In Detriot a women was swat teamed for choosing to not give her daughter a dangerous drug-that it turned out she didn’t need after all. Just because medical goons are swat teaming anyone who doesn’t go along with your medical fascism.

I am 62 years old and have never done a pharmaceutical drug in my adult life

Can’t help wondering how much experience Samuel Hahnemann actually has with doctors in Europe, to be claiming so blithely that they “will use nature first”.

“NO PROOF” – I’m not surprised.

Here’s how adult conversation works:

If you make a claim, it’s your job to provide evidence – until you do, there’s no reason to take you seriously.

Responding to requests by saying that it’s someone else’s job to provide evidence for your case, or using CAPITAL letters is not providing evidence for your claim – it’s providing evidence that you’re not serious.

Or perhaps the solvent in his homeopathic remedies is ethanol.

article entitled “Homeopathy In Influenza- A Chorus Of Fifty In Harmony” by W. A. Dewey, MD that appeared in the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy in 1920.

That citation is particularly convincing: A list of testimonials, from homeopathists, elicited by an homeopath, about the success of homeopathy.
The rationale seems to be that the more you dilute the evidence with imagination, the more convincing it becomes.

So how long do your conversations with people in real life last? Do you ramble incoherent accusations like you did here? Do they hang around long when you start shouting and telling they have to prove what you said?

cancer, heart disease and diabetes is off the charts

This puts me in mind of one of those Renaissance maps, but instead of “Here be Dragons & Tygeres” at the edges, warning the reckless mariner against cancer, heart disease & diabetes.

I would like to tell you what one could do for smallpox but i might get swat teamed for practicing medicine without a license. You think I’m kidding-I am not!

Oh, wow, that’s a convincing excuse!

I want to know why everybody is getting cancer.

Everybody? – If this is your experience it doesn’t speak well for the herbs you and your friends are using.

@sh

Why can’t they make “clean” vaccines w/ non toxic ingredients?

First, define “toxic ingredients”. Keep in mind that the dose is important. For each ingredient you consider to be toxic, please specify the dose at which toxic effects begin.

Second, if you want to know why the various ingredients are used, I suggest you take some chemistry classes to learn how they work, what their purpose is and how they are diluted out of the final product.

As for the Baxter contaminated virus material bit, I suggest you try reading the linked article again. Here is the text:

In early 2009, samples of viral material supplied by Baxter International to a series of European laboratories were found to be contaminated with live Avian flu virus (Influenza A virus subtype H5N1).[18] Samples of the less harmful seasonal flu virus (subtype H3N2) were found to be mixed with the deadly H5N1 strain after a vaccine made from the material killed test animals in a lab in the Czech Republic. Though the serious consequences were avoided by the lab in the Czech Republic,[19] Baxter claimed the failed controls over the distribution of the virus were ‘stringent’ and there was ‘little chance’ of the lethal virus harming humans.[20]

Baxter distributed viral material, not vaccines. Labs in the recipient countries used the material to produce vaccines. One of these labs, in testing the resultant vaccine that they produced using the viral material sent by Baxter, discovered that it was tainted. Vaccines made using the viral material were never administered to humans.

Before you continue any of your diatribes, I strongly recommend that you a) brush up on your reading comprehension, b) learn proper grammar so people will take your posts slightly more seriously, c) get your information from fact-based sources, rather than conspiracy mongering drivel distributors like Infowars and d) learn how to count (no child gets 68 vaccines, let alone all at one time).

Sorry, Baxter, not Bayer. It’s too late at night to be commenting.

The people at Baxter don’t care about profit. They all went to Evil Medical School. It’s what they do!

Todd W.

no child gets 68 vaccines, let alone all at one time

No child has been harmed by 10,000 vaccines let alone one vaccine.

Parents of children should not be given a choice. The children’s health decisions are the rights of the medical societies enforced by the governments of the world.

Therefore, since there really should be no choice, then education should not be aimed at informed consent. It should be aimed at getting maximum compliance without invoking government means.

If someone starts giving “education(we call it misinformation)” that could possibly lead to a second alternative choice then we should enact the government forces, regulatory agencies, political bodies, and medical societies to silence this second alternative.

But it’s really the people’s choice. Wink! Wink!

@Erwin

You’re right. Millions of people are in on the conspiracy. Each of them has been fooled into thinking that vaccines have eradicated diseases like smallpox and rinderpest. They have also fooled the rest of humanity into not being able to see the obvious outbreaks of smallpox out there. And, out of all those millions, not a single one has had the cojones to come forth with a check stub, a bank deposit receipt, a picture, a text message, an email, a letter, or even a post-it note whereby Big Pharma (or the Illuminati, Reptilians or whatever) tell them what to do. Quite the organized criminal enterprise, if you ask me.

Better than the drug cartels, which have been found out and have had many of their heads put in jail (or cut off, hahahaha).

What I’m saying is that there is not a shred of evidence of what you’ve just written, and that link of yours… Laughable. I can manipulate data with Excel as well as the next guy.

What I can’t do is deny the science.

@Chris

Yes, only one village is missing its idiots.

That said, I’d add Jake Crosby to the mix since he seems to desperately want to become bizzaro epidemiologist, to whom OR <1.0 show increased probability of being exposed and everything OUTSIDE the confidence interval is fair game.

What I can’t do is deny the science.

This is coming from a germ denialist. I see.

@ Chris:

I know. However my vocation as evangelist requires that I must present directionality to the unseen lurkers who seek enlightenment in these parts whenever apropo. I shall spare you the diagramming.

Your Disclaimer says this:
“In addition, Orac has been funded over the last decade by institutional funds, the Department of Defense, the National Cancer Institute, and various cancer charities. For the first time ever, in 2011 Orac received a little bit of pharmaceutical money in the form of a seed grant. Unfortunately, it’s not enough money for his lab to live on and will soon be gone. What that means, though, is that for the next several months Orac will no longer be able to use his favorite joke before talks, namely that no pharmaceutical company is interested enough in his research to want to give him any money. Even with that little bit of pharma lucre, like most biomedical scientists in academia, Orac must still beg the NIH and other granting agencies for the money to keep his lab going. Being a “pharma shill” doesn’t seem to pay as much as supporters of alt-med think it does.”

If you admit to being paid by Big Pharma, it is biased so why should we believe it?

@anon
I really think you need to work on your reading comprehension and you detection of sarcasm.

Kelly Bray: Mercola selling products is also biased because he convinces you of something in an article, and then at the bottom of the page he offers to sell it to you, and he makes money off of it. And this man, I question the motives of ANYONE who admits being “pharma shill”. Look up what a shill is, they get paid to convince people on behalf of who is employing them. I imagine he would WANT people to take him seriously and not question that he may be writing in the best interest of the Pharma company/companies that pay him.

(sorry about the double post)

Hey anon, I knew what the word “shill” meant in the third grade. I know how to use it, and you know how to misuse it. In the end, it’s not always who is doing the research, it’s how they are doing the research.