Time and time again, anti-vaccine activists will piously and self-righteously tell those of us who criticize their pseudoscientific fear mongering, “I’m not anti-vaccine,” followed by something like, “I’m pro-vaccine safety,” “I’m a vaccine safety watchdog,” or “I’m pro-safe vaccine.” Nothing puts the lie to these denials better than looking at the sorts of things anti-vaccine activists say and write in their own lairs.
For instance, here we have a commenter by the ‘nym of veritas (no hubris there!) over at the anti-vaccine blog Age of Autism discussing the Poul Thorsen scandal:
I just wonder, if the genocidal CDC officials bribed Thornsen to cover their own stupidity, ignorance and arrogance (by allowing poisonous vaccines to be injected to infants), or they were bribed themselves by vaccine manufacturers to produce fraudulent data on vaccine safety. It is not surprising that drug companies want to sell defective products for profits, they do it all the time (in fact they often admit that their products can kill or injure), but it is not acceptable, that the public agency, which is supposed to protect the public from toxic pharmaceuticals, conspires with manufacturers of defective products against the society. CDC officials should be severely punished for their deliberate crimes against humanity. They are not any better than Nazi Dr. Mengele.
Yes, because issuing a grant to someone who is later indicted for cheating the granting agency out of close to a million dollars is exactly like overseeing the medical wing of an extermination camp and performing twisted medical experiments on the victims based on an evil ideology that held the prisoners of the camp to be less than human.
And, oh, no, veritas is not anti-vaccine. Perish the thought! Nor is AoA for censoring any comments critical of its anti-vaccine pseudoscience while letting commenters like veritas compare the CDC to Dr. Mengele! How could you think such a thing?
149 replies on “The annals of “I’m not anti-vaccine,” part 7 (argumentum ad Nazium edition #2, 2011)”
Orac,
This is a suspiciously late-in-the-day post for RI. After laughing at augie, Shannon & Jen on the earlier post, there may be a bit less energy reserve for this one. Maybe a couple of trolls could be cajoled over or veritas itself come defend the AoA insanity. That might get the juices flowing.
The ludicrous comparison of contemporary US vaccine policy and research to Nazism & totalitarianism (in general) seems to be a common theme in anti-vax circles.
Certainly it’s a favourite of our own ugh troll.
Wow. What a total moron. Veritas, were it not for the fact that I spent the first part of my career lecturing and teaching on the Holocaust I would wish for you to experience this first hand- perhaps then you’d understand the inanity of your comment.
The sheer number of moronic comments boggles my mind, but just to touch on a few…
1. No agency, like the CDC, organizationally chooses to bribe anyone. Remember what your dear mommy told you- two people can keep a secret only if one of them is dead- and use that as a proof. The CDC employs what, thousands? YOu think that they can all keep quiet? You think that Thorsen, if he is guilty of the charges, wouldn’t cut a deal to save his own butt?
2. I’d comment on the “vaccines are poisonous” but why bother- nothing I nor anyone can say will change what little mind is not filled with woo. Suffice to say that my 2 1/2 year old and my 9 week old are 100% vaccinated, totally healthy (where is the poison?) and I’d happily stick them into a room with a kid stricken with whooping cough. Would you do the same with your kids?
3. So, ALL vaccine manufacturers have created fraudulent data? Hmm, wonder how they managed to bribe the hundreds (or thousands) of independent primary researchers to falsify data. I’d love to hear that- perhaps I could use that in my own business.
4. Have you even taken a single OTC medication? Aspirin? Penicillin for an infection? Surely that even you, as blinded as you seem to be, realize that ALL drugs carry some level of risk. Were I allergic to penicillin, no one would know this until I had the allergic reaction. Sometimes these reactions lead to death. Sometimes a man takes Viagra and dies. Well, I am not a mathematician, but if 1 guy dies for each 1,000,000 doses administered that seems to fall into the range of “statistically insignificant”.
5. Hey guess what- I agree with you on ONE thing. The CDC ought to be held accountable for one thing…allowing cranks, homeopaths, etc. to advertise and work over a gullible public. Outside of that I commend them for the work they do- underfunded for sure, and still they manage to react with swiftness and surety when a drug, no matter how well intended, creates adverse reactions outside an acceptable norm.
In short, you are WAY off base and perhaps ought to pull your lips off the woo-pipe. See reason. Read a book. Research and discover science, not superstition. Perhaps you were born 1000 years too late???
Just one step away from Argumentum ad Glaxxonium, or, it’s Teh Shapeshifting Reptilzez . . .
I googled “vaccine + holocaust”.
That was depressing.
MESSAGE BEGINS ————————–
Shills and Minions,
Well, “speak of the devil” as your people are wont to say.
Really, our lovely vaccines aren’t “poisonous,” they’re not intended to kill younlings. That would be so . . . counterproductive. No, we want a world of great, strapping, obedient primates to lift, carry and wash the obsidian units when they get dusty.
Honestly, what good would a planet of dead monkeys do us? And as for this Dr. Mangler person, I see that he was needlessly evil. His efforts seemed cruel, warped and counterproductive. He’d have been thrown to the hatchlings were he under my command.
Now, don’t you have some shifty CAMsters to intimidate?
Lord Draconis Zeneca, VC, iH7L
Forward Mavoon of the Great Fleet, Suzerain of V’tar and Pharmaca Magna of Terra
PharmaCOM Orbital HQ
0010101101001
—————————————— MESSAGE ENDS
Drug companies want to sell defective products for profits? How about the woo-mongers who become a “Masters” in one very expensive weekend and then sell their defective products for profits?
PS My 5 wk old son was the 2nd or 3rd case of whooping cough in Worcester, Massachusetts in an outbreak in 1990. It took too long to diagnose him because no one was familiar with the disease. Many, many people were exposed and had to be treated. He got it from my mother. How do you think Grammy felt about that? He was desperately ill and it was terrifying. Have you gotten your DPT lately?
I have an anecdote for anti-vaxers:
I was born at the end of 1949 and on New Year’s Eve, 1951 (prior to vaccine) I collapsed and was paralyzed. I only know this because my mother has told me the story hundreds of times–so acute was her terror that I had contracted polio, that this incident has never left her memories. It turned out to be an infection and the paralysis was temporary. I was in a few years, to my mother’s delight, immunized.
In 1952 and 1953, the U.S. experienced an outbreak of 58,000 and 35,000 polio cases, respectively, up from a typical number of some 20,000 a year. – Wikipedia
What part of this nightmarish scenario that finally ended in the early fifties do anti-vax people not understand? I also had mumps, chicken pox, and at least two types of measles. I accepted this and was glad to be in the group who didn’t have serious complications, and I was very happy that I never caught whooping cough, because we all heard terrible stories about how awful it was. My mother survived scarlet fever and diptheria, but knew many (including a sibling) who did not. Her family did not live in squalor and were aware of hygiene and germs. People went out of their way then to avoid infection, because before antibiotics, they knew that a simple cut could mean death if it became infected. My Mom used to scrub (and I mean scrub) our cuts and skinned knees and dump stinging iodine all over them, even though antibiotics were then available (my brother was allergic to penicillin however). I don’t know for sure when we got our first DPT shots, but I do know that my mother made sure we got to school that day and when I whined about my smallpox vax scar, she showed me pictures of people who had survived smallpox–and told me they were the lucky ones.
I am not a relic. I’m still alive (hell, my mother’s still alive!). I don’t even get social security yet! These things were real in my lifetime. What is the average age of an anti-vax loon?
Laika:
It DTaP for children and Tdap for adolescents and adults. The latter was not available in 1990.
Sorry about your son. Unfortunately it looks like an unfortunate consequence of Lea Thompson’s scare mongering “documentary” on the vaccine and Barbara Loe Fisher’s book in the early 1980s. That is why there was a pertussis outbreak in our county when my 22 year old son was born (he had had infant seizures so he only got the DT). It was common advice for parents of newborns to keep them away from coughing people (a friend whose daughter was born at the same time had to wear a mask).
Because pertussis a bacterial infection, there is no lasting immunity even if a person catches the disease (your mother and child can get it again), just like strep infections. This is why boosters and herd immunity are so important.
Well, I was going to suggest Grammy be water-boarded for infecting the baby and then Chris mentioned that the Tdap wasn’t even available ’till /90. Then Chris mentioned that, oh yeah, there is no lasting immunity anyways. Plus, what if Grammy gets altzheimers or some other side effect in her valiant attempts to help the cause.
People get illnesses for God’s sake you people, and now, this might shock you but one day we are all going to die. DIE. It’s true; a nasty biological reality. Boomer- a lot of anti-vaccers (or vaccine skeptics I would say, I personally picked and chose which ones my kids would get due to my nana developing GB after her flu shot-which the doc directly stated was due to said shot) are old enough to have, gasp, survived dreaded diseases like chicken pox or measles etc. -people in their forties and fifties or older. I know my husband’s grandpa didn’t think much of flu vaccines when too many of his buddies developed serious problems after getting one- including his wife who developed vasculitis soon after. He is gone (dead) now but lived to 91.
How can it be possible that anti vaxers continue to ignore Godwins Law? Surely they have been called on it many times previously.
Of course they survived, jen – you wouldn’t know the ones that hadn’t.
So you wouldn’t object if somebody stabbed you? Seriously, not all of us are utter nihilists.
I’ve survived several car accidents in my life, including being hit by one while walking. Does that make defensive driving unnecessary, because car accidents are harmless?
Dedicated lurker- but interestingly I don’t ever remember any story of friends or neighbor’s kids dying or being seriously hurt from having had the measles or chicken pox and I would remember that.
Do your personal recollections constitute the entirety of human knowledge?
I wouldn’t go this far. Vaccines aren’t 100% effective, so even if the risk of exposing my kid directly to another kid who could infect them with pertussis was pretty low, I still wouldn’t be happy about doing it without a good reason. (Watch, our resident trolls will come slithering out from under their rocks to claim I just said all sorts of things that any reasonable person can tell I didn’t. Anyone wanna get in a pool to bet who’s gonna trot out the most moronic straw man? Front-runners are of course Ugh and Thing but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of Jake or Jen rising to the occasion…)
That whole stabbing analogy? Is a little odd. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’d be pissed off and try to avoid being stabbed, just like I try not to subject myself or loved ones to unnecessary shots with, for the most part, untested effects.
No one blames Grammy. And the reason that it would be recommended that she be revaccinated is BECAUSE immunity doesn’t last forever. I am not aware of any connection between Alzheimer’s disease and vaccination. Please educate me if you know of any double blinded, placebo controlled studies that confirm this hypothesis. I think we can agree that we are all going to die. And I agree that side effects from vaccination exist. However, the science clearly backs me up that the risk of vaccine preventable illness is far greater than the risk of vaccination. That is fact, truth, not debatable. I would suggest you look at the science and skip the anecdotes. I say this in the hope that innocent babies will not have to contract vaccine preventable illnesses due to ignorance and fear. This misguided belief puts all of our children at risk.
Hey, you’re the one who said: “People get illnesses for God’s sake you people, and now, this might shock you but one day we are all going to die.” Do you still stand by that? Also, you never did address my other points.
“People get illnesses for God’s sake you people” — but interestingly, they don’t get smallpox, and in most of the world they don’t get polio. I wonder why that is.
My dearest Lord Draconis: ( please dis-regard the previous message; if you didn’t get it, better yet )
You should be very pleased with the efforts of your earnest shills last night at Brandeis! Never under-estimate them! Intimidation *cum laude* of the fraudster and his entourage! They did ya proud!
I am most serenely and respendently happy in my new title ( Dark Lady etc.)and must say that the wardrobe is fine and the men, finer still!( I truly hope that someday you might somehow ascend the phylo-genetic ladder a few steps and experience the wonders of warm-bloodedness, but I digress)
Problem is that the shills are grumbling again and talking unionism and wage hikes. Now I can talk them down and hold their hands a bit but if we’re needing _real_ negot-i-a-tion- well, you know titles are all well and good but don’t pay the bills. I’m sure you’re aware of that! I’ll do the best I can to avoid a strike.You don’t. want. a. strike.
My love, it is a harsh world indeed for both of our species and try we must to fight together against our common enemy- the rebel CAMsters and Brave Mavericks. Remember, I’m your girl!
I remain your humble and obedient servant, forever grateful and sensitive to your sundry needs,
yours, DW, DL, etc.
So “veritas” is claiming that the CDC bribed Thorsen to lie, then reported him for embezzlement? Truly a dizzying intellect there.
Thorsen should have followed Wakefield’s advice – fraud only pays if you get the money upfront, and tell lies that people want to hear.
Some days I just want to link Ad nazium posters to
Daffy the Commando http://youtu.be/xFdG8lZ4PJw
Gray Falcon, defensive driving doesn’t have side effects, vaccines do. And no, my personal recollections don’t constitute the entirety of human knowledge. I just think that it’s interesting that with all those communicable diseases floating around back in the /60’s and /70’s (not vaccinated for) that it’s interesting that I don’t recall any horror stories of kids or parents where these diseases are concerned. Of course horror stories are Chris’s thing. I’m sure she can probably name 10 neighbors that died of chicken pox alone.
Laika, I wish there were a double-blind, placebo controlled study to know if there is a connection to alzheimers etc. but therein lies the problem. There is no such study comparing vaccinated to unvaccinated.
Jen:
You got lucky then. My community was not as lucky as lucky as yours. I did not personally know the child who died from complications of chickenpox; she would have been my younger sister’s high school classmate.
And even if everyone had a 100% chance of surviving all of these diseases without any long lasting complications, why should we? Why would you want to spend weeks miserable and bedridden due to a virus, if you could avoid it?
Jen, what exaclty is it about the measles virus, chickenpox viurs, or Hep B virus that you like so much?
Jen, 400 people die of measles every day, worldwide. Most of those are children.
Do you remember the iron lung? No? Then get a clue and go check them out.
DLC @23: Errr what did I see in the background at about 1:36? I certainly don’t remember that from my Saturday morning cartoons.
Jen, I don’t remember any of my classmates or neighbors dying of measles or chickenpox, either, nor even polio. On the other hand, I was a child. My parents, and probably yours, didn’t always think it appropriate to share such stories with me. And of course, your neighborhood was what, ten or fifteen kids? Not exactly a large sample. I did recently find out that the man across the street with the limp, the father of some of our playmates, had survived polio. The fact that you didn’t see it means absolutely nothing. I also know that one of the little girls in my son’s preschool class of 12 children had to be hospitalized for chickenpox. No, she didn’t die, but why would anyone risk such suffering for a loved child?
I’ve been reading this blog for a while, but never commented. Now I feel the need. You want an anecdote?
Chicken Pox is NOT a harmless childhood illness. Despite being exposed several times as a child, my younger sister and I never caught it. Mum secretly hoped we were immune.
However, at the age of 20, I was caught chicken pox off my niece. I was so sick, my flatmate wanted to take me to hospital – I was feverish and delusional. (I honestly thought a picture of a person on a t-shirt hanging in my room was walking around.) I talked her out of it as I didn’t want to expose already sick people to what I had. She was kind enough to monitor my temperature, keep my parents updated on my condition, take me to the doctor (i stayed in the car until she could check if there were small children in the waiting room), make sure I followed all doctors instructions, call the doctor as I got worse, etc.
Finally, after 2 weeks in bed, I was better – still weak, but better. I went back to uni, started catching up on everything, went back to work. A few days later I started coughing. Badly. Turns out I had a secondary infection – namely pneumonia. I spent another 3 weeks in bed, off uni and work. I nearly failed that semester as a result, and was very weak and tired for another 4-5 months.
For the record, I would like that 6 week period back.
The doctors advised me that if I hadn’t been as fit and generally healthy (fully vaccinated) as I was, I could well have been in hospital for up to 6 months. The vaccine came out a few years later. I was most annoyed.
Don’t tell me Chicken Pox is a harmless disease.
Jen: “People get illnesses for God’s sake you people, and now, this might shock you but one day we are all going to die.”
That’s a strange statement to make on a blog run by a doctor and frequented by a large number of health-care professionals. Many of us are far more familiar with illness and death than you, I suspect. It’s our job do our best to prevent people from getting illnesses, to diagnose and/or treat them if they do get sick and to prevent premature death.
Maybe we should all just throw in the towel – those children on the pediatric ward are all going to die one day anyway.
@Jen. I am glad we agree that there is no evidence that there is a link between childhood vaccination and increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, I found one study that found just the opposite. I have to go to work, so I didn’t have time to examine the quality of the study, but here it is anyway….
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/165/11/1495?eaf%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3EA
It may be tempting to make guesses about links between vaccines and all sorts of diseases, but making decisions based on guesses rather than facts is really dangerous. There is a vast amount of knowledge about vaccine safety and efficacy. Would you throw that out the window and make decisions based on anecdotes and guesses?
I was at school with a girl who was registered blind (totally blind in one eye, but could read large print with the other) from her mother getting chicken-pox when pregnant – not sure of the exact mechanism for that (we were 6 at the time I knew her: the subject only came up because my brother caught cp, and she was panicking that mine or friends’ Mums might be pregnant again). The family story was that her Mum was pretty ill too. So no deaths, but a pregnant woman in hospital, and her child maimed.
stripey_cat:
There is a risk of fetal infection from chicken pox in the mother. In early pregnancy, congenital varicella syndromemay result. This can be pretty awful, with injuries as profound as congenital rubella or Thalidomide.
But, of course, this isn’t possible, because chicken pox is harmless, just like rubella or Thalidomide.
When I was in high school, a very large number of my classmates drove drunk. Nothing happened to them.
I guess drinking and driving isn’t all that dangerous. What’s the big deal, right Jen?
One of my “favorite” comments that I see in this blog from anti-vaxxers showed up again:
“I don’t remember anyone ever dying from ____________.” Fill in the blank with your preferred vaccine preventable disease. It occurred to me that I have never had a friend, relative or neighbor die in a car accident. I don’t however assume that there are therefore never deaths from car accidents.
Jen,
I haven’t had time to read the entire paper either (also work to do) but I can tell you that they conclude:
Past exposure to vaccines against diphtheria or tetanus, poliomyelitis and influenza may protect against subsequent development of Alzheimerâs disease
So there you go.
*Waits patiently for 1) the study to be ignored or 2) the goal posts to shift*
Wow! Give an emotional anecdote and then right back into robot form.
Laikis
And then goes back to lambast an anecdote! As if she never gave one herself.
These robots have short and selective memories. Lord Draconis, is this part of the program or is that a glitch?
Jen, you either know or should know that a vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study would be completely unethical, as it would fail to provide the standard of care to the unvaxed group. The reason it would fail to provide the standard of care is that it would expose those people to all manner of very nasty diseases, and, in alzheimer’s studies, that would be a very vulnerable group already. So, no, there’s not going to be a vaxed vs unvaxed alzheimer’s study, and if you do want to see an actual vaxed vs unvaxed study, orac has an excellent post on a very well done one by german researchers which found that *Gasp* vaccines have no negative effect, unless you think getting sick is a positive.
Augie,
We give you data and links to studies, you give us single contrary anecdotes.
We give you anecdotes, you get indignant about it and say we should’ve linked studies.
We argue from the scientific literature, you say we’re cold callous robots.
We give you personal stories, often our own, and you say we’re too emotional.
@Scott C
I think there’s a word for an internet poster like that, but I can’t remember what it is.
Bowl?
Droll?
Pole?
Something like that.
@ Scott Cunningham:
Because it’s contrarianism pure and simple-
and obfuscation, prevarication, and dissemblence.
Most of the serious commenters here- whether they agree or disagree with our esteemed and gracious host- usually present their *basis* for belief ( a study, an experience, a suspicion) and *something* about themselves- perhaps about their education, occupation, or *personality*- there’s an honest attempt at a measure of transparency, *despite* ‘nyms and meaningful self-protective strategies, they manage to create a reasonably salient “voice”. Some of our trolls-although there are discernable differences in style, level of abstraction, and word usage amongst them- come across instead as cyphers. Perhaps there’s also an attempt to appear so *deep* as to be unfathomable- and unfathomable it is, but not in a good way.
Laika, the study is interesting but does have some limitations (self-reporting and not really specifying vaccine numbers, dosages, etc.). There are also studies out there that show mercury and aluminum hydroxide to be very neurotoxic (U. Of Calgary and UBC). I don’t think it is at all conclusive that vaccines don’t cause neurological damage-probably cumulative.
Captainahags-that’s crap about the vaccinated VS unvaccinated studies. There are many people (as you well know) who don’t want the “standard of care” anyways. Even if that would mean not a completely randomized study, there could be ways of comparing outcomes.
Jen:
The crap is yours. If the study you propose were done and the results were not to your liking (they wouldn’t be, of course), you clowns would all say: “Bbbbut it wasn’t a completely randomized study!!! We want our randomized study!!!Vaccines are killing us all and they haven’t been tested!!!OMG!!!”
BTW, why are you ignoring the studies that ORAC and Captainahags are referring to? Results not to your liking?
Jen: crap studies?
If you can’t tell us in your own words why you think they’re crap you need to stop throwing around those words.
I shall repeat: explain your opinion in your own words.
We should force anyone like Jen who insists on a vax/unvax study to include the design showing exactly how the unvaccinated children would be protected from vaccine preventable illness. Also, how to protect any of their infant siblings from pertussis.
For example:
Jen:
Reply:
Please show us exactly how that would be designed, and include what precautions would be implemented to keep the subjects from contracting the vaccine preventable diseases.
Do not bring up the argument about the design studies until you can provide a suitable one that follows the ethics guidelines outlined in the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki and the Belmont Report. Thank you.
I find it humorous that some of you still want to debate Augustine, Sid (Robert Schecter), and Th1Th2. They’re trolls. Don’t feed the trolls and they’ll go away. I assure you, if we didn’t reply to their stupidity for 7 days straight, they would never come back again.
The saddest thing is that all of those trolls vaccinate themselves and their kids. They’re not dumb. They hedge their bets. They know the benefits vs. the detriments. It’s just that being oppositional makes them feel in power, like they’re the only ones that know the “truth” and people have to go seek them out for it.
If they really believed the bullshit they write, they would just write it once and be done with it. “Vaccines don’t work,” would be their one and only answer. But they don’t believe their own bullshit, so they have to “debate” with the rest of us to feel better… To self-fulfill their prophecies.
Folks, don’t feed the trolls. Seven days. How about it?
Chemmomo, I didn’t say the Canadian study on altzheimers was crap, I said it had limitations. I certainly don’t think it means there is no concern re. Vaccines and neurodegenerative problems since other researchers (such as those at U of C or UBC have found evidence of neuron damage. I said it’s crap that there isn’t some way to look at outcomes of vaccinated VS unvaccinated. Overall health outcomes could somehow be looked at. The specifics of the study design would have to be up to a team of unbiased scientists, not me.
CMHS just recommended individual benefit VS risk assessment for children being given flu shots (GSK’s Pandemrix) re. anywhere from a 4 to 9 fold rise in child/adolescent narcolepsy. I think all this vaccine skepticism is a damned good thing where “pro-vaccine safety” or “safety watch dog”, as Science blogs likes to dismiss it, is concerned. Otherwise, I have no doubt there would be more damage happening and less policing.
@ Jen: The constellation of symptoms associated with elderly dementias and the degenerative nature of certain elderly dementias was first researched by Alois Alzheimer. Fellow scientists honored his diligent scientific research by naming the disease as Alzheimer Disease…in 1906.
Let me digress here to give you a quick lesson about vaccine development. In 1906, the only vaccine available was smallpox; even then some people had anti-vax views, refusing vaccination…based on their religious views…based on pseudo-science. It answers your wish to have a scientific study linking vaccines to Alzheimer disease.
There is no epidemic of Alzheimer disease, merely the demographic of an aging population who didn’t succumb to common childhood diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (vaccines became available in the 1940s) and polio (Salk vaccine, 1950s). The younger elderly didn’t succumb to measles, mumps and rubella either because vaccines to prevent these diseases became available in the 1960s. Also advances in treating hypertension, cardiac problems, diabetes and curing many cancers that are identified early, allow younger people to survive and leads to the bulging demographic of elderly people and the so-called epidemic of Alzheimer Disease.
I think it would be difficult to prove that vaccines have cured any diseases. I think you will find that cleaning up sanitation laws, inspection of cattle and stuff like that, getting rid of diseased creatures and diseased crops is really what has done the job. Now there may be a coincidence they happened at the same time. Like when they started, you know, vaccinating for one thing and at the same time had better sanitation laws and inspections. It may look like the vaccine cured the disease when actually something else cured the disease.
@Rene Najera
Alright, call it an experiment. I’ll sign up for seven days not feeding trolls. Hopefully I can remember that for a week.
Funny, aren’t vaccines supposed to prevent disease, not cure them? Are you taking vocabulary lessons from Thingy? You are totally ignorant of history.
And you still can’t figure out why the incidence of measles dropped 90% between 1960 and 1970 in the USA, while mumps was not decreasing. Also, using the CDC Appendix G tables, you can see that the first year mumps was reportable there were over 152 thousand cases, and then ten years later there were just less than 17 thousand, a drop of almost 90%. What happened to sanitation that there was a ten year lag between the reduction of mumps compared to measles?
Then look at rubella (CDC Appendix G tables). Ooh, look in 1970 there were over 56 thousand cases, then in 1980 there were less than 4 thousand. Another 90% drop. Wow, that must have been some sanitation measure!
In 1971 the total combined reported cases of measles, mumps and rubella was 195666 cases, by 1981 that total was 10142 cases in the USA (CDC Appendix G tables, the numbers are in the same row). That is a drop of almost 95%. What creatures and crops carry measles, mumps and rubella that were culled at that time? What fantastic change in sanitation brought that about?
(oh, and I responded to your brain dead comment because it was so stupid, and the answer has been explained to you multiple times over the past several months, plus it was right after a comment from someone who is worth reading — don’t try to ignore the above questions because you have issues with everyone, especially women, being smarter than you by trying to divert to your own creepy obsessions)
Oh, rats! I missed Rene’s request. I shall commence ignoring again. Though, really the last Little Augie comment was just so stupid it burned hotter than a nuclear plant meltdown!
Jen – one study of mercury toxicity I am familiar with (and that Russell Blaylock cites as evidence that mercury in vaccines causes brain damage) found that methylmercury concentrations of 5 micromoles per liter caused glutamate excitotoxicity in mice. This is equivalent to 1000 micrograms mercury per liter (MW mercury = 200.6 grams). Another study in humans found that the maximum blood mercury levels in children after vaccination were 5.7 micrograms per liter (Pichichero).
So unless I have made an error in my math, the lowest levels of mercury shown to cause any sort of neurological damage in mice are 175 times higher than the highest levels seen in children after vaccination. Of course mice are not humans, but that’s still a very large difference between observed levels and levels shown to cause damage.
I am aware of a study that found injected aluminum hydroxide caused neurological damage in mice at similar concentrations to those in vaccinated humans, but I don’t think it has been replicated.
Do you have a link for the studies you are referring to?
Lilady, I can totally appreciate your points about Alzheimers. I don’t doubt that there could be several toxins responsible and different exposure routes (i.e. not just vaccines). I don’t even pretend to know what they all could be. It may not be just a normal part of aging and I do realize there are several forms of dementia (vascular etc.)- my uncle has Alzheimers.
Just a quick note on the whole vaccinated vs. unvaccinated thing. I wrote up a 4-part series looking into the ethics/legalities of such a study. It’s linked via my name, for those who are interested.
Jen, I strongly urge you to read it. Perhaps you will then understand why such a study is unethical.
Rene;
I know all too well not to feed ‘Net trolls, but this is one of the few places where those of you far more versed in the science than I am should constantly engage the trolls to prevent newcomers from falling under their spell. Trolls will comment on Orac’s posts in any case. *SIGHHHHHH*
BTW Chris, there are plenty of things hotter than a meltdown — the burning stupid we’ve constantly seen from the usual suspects is more “surface of the Sun” kinda stupid.
@Jen
You know what other studies have not been done? Double-blind, randomized, controlled studies examining _______ (autism, alzheimer’s, etc.) among those who were fed mashed carrots as a child vs. those who were not. Perhaps autism is caused by mashed carrots in a susceptible sub-population!
@ Jen: Really great information and the most up to date research about the disease is available through the Alzheimer’s Association available on the web at: alz.org
Note the left hand column “myths” that debunks aluminum as any causative factor…that myth was widely publicized back in the 1960s…when my grandmother sent me an article from the local newspaper.
If you view the site, you will see many of the genes identified as risk factors for the late-onset disease as well as the inherited form of Alzheimer’s disease, which can affect people in their early years.
Jen, we don’t have all the answers about causes of autism or causes of Alzheimer disease, but we do know that vaccines are not implicated, based on scientific research.
aluminum hydroxide to be very neurotoxic
You’d think that the people who swallow the stuff regularly as an antacid — or to control blood phosphate levels — would have shown some effect by now.
Not to mention its presence in the environment as a normal component of soil…
Come on, Jen. Unbiased scientists? No one is unbiased in your world. In your world, if the study discovers what has already been established, that vaccines are better than the disease, that vaccines prevent outbreaks, and that vaccines DO NOT CAUSE AUTISM, you would very quickly say or write that they are biased, that big pharma had its hand in it.
herr doktor bimler
Uh No one uses aluminum to control blood phosphate anymore. It was shown to cause rapid dementia in renal insufficency. It tends to accumulate in the brain.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=aluminum+hydroxide+dementia&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C11&as_sdtp=on
http://journals.lww.com/amjmedsci/Abstract/1989/01000/Acute_Aluminum_Toxicity_Associated_with_Oral.3.aspx
Acute Aluminum Toxicity Associated with Oral Citrate and Aluminum-Containing Antacids
http://www.era-edta.org/Proceedings/vol13/vol13%20355_363.pdf
“Aluminum Intoxication: The Cause of Dialysis Dementia?”
Probably the reason that aluminum is not used to control phosphorous anymore.
“Though, really the last Little Augie comment was just so stupid it burned hotter than a nuclear plant meltdown!”
That comment @50 was not THE Augustine.
http://journals.lww.com/drug-monitoring/Abstract/1993/12000/Aluminum_Toxicity_in_Patients_with_Chronic_Renal.25.aspx
“Aluminum Toxicity in Patients with Chronic Renal Failure”
Others are in moderation.
“As a result, this toxicity can largely be prevented by eliminating aluminum from the water used to prepare the dialysate, substituting calcium-containing phosphate-binding agents for those containing aluminum, and strict avoidance of the concomitant use of citrate- and aluminum-containing compounds.”
Personally, I have a pretty simple rule: never reply to a troll for the benefit of the troll. Only reply to a troll if the troll’s idiocy allows you to make an important point to an undecided person who might be reading.
For instance, if I knew nothing about immunology, I might actually think Th1Th2’s claims were reasonable; I think a great service has been performed by the people who have practically gotten Thingy to admit that she’s using words like “infection” and “intravenous” completely at odds with the real definitions.
Re vax/non vax study, there was one recently. I’m sure I read about it over at leftbrainrightbrain blog. It may have been from the Netherlands? I’ll see if I can dig it out and post. From memory it showed, surprise, surpirse the vax group were healthier.
Oh, I see Orac covered the study on this very blog on the 11th of March.
Lilady, I can totally appreciate your points about Alzheimers. I don’t doubt that there could be several toxins responsible and different exposure routes (i.e. not just vaccines). I don’t even pretend to know what they all could be.
Thank goodness you’ve pinned it down to “toxins,” though.
Any suggestions how we can tell the difference?
Thank goodness you’ve pinned it down to “toxins,” though.
We know that vaccines are evil, so it follows that anything contained in (some) vaccines must be evil as well. It is only a question of looking around at enough diseases until we find the particular one that is caused by a given adjuvant.
We know that vaccines are evil, so it follows that anything contained in (some) vaccines must be evil as well. It is only a question of looking around at enough diseases until we find the particular one that is caused by a given adjuvant.
No, no. Like Elvis, toxins are everywhere.
Except Th1Th2, of course. No Elvis.
Jen, you’re talking out of your ass still. You have to know the prevalence of the disease/disorder you are looking for and you have to determine the statistic difference you will accept in order to determine your sample size. Now tell me, what those numbers are and tell me how do you go about doing that?
The Petrik et al. and Shaw studies were very methodologically poor and essentially did not find any neuropathy in their treatment groups re: aluminium adjuvants. Again, tell me what was so compelling about those studies that you haven’t even read and are relying upon someone else’s interpretation of.
Jen – why does Alzheimer’s have to be caused by toxins? All of the research I’ve read about lately discusses genes.
I’ve wondered about the insistence that autism must be caused by vaccines, “toxins,” or other external causes – why couldn’t it have a (complex) genetic cause? Why do people fight against that explanation for it?
A desire for control over their environment and circumstances? Sorry, I’m not really a psychologist.
Jen,
On one hand, I applaud you for knowing your limitations.
On the other hand, we’re all here commenting on blog posts for the sake of argument.
Iâm not asking you to write a grant and submit it for funding. Iâm asking you to use your imagination and come up with some ideas that go beyond “somehow.” Remember, this is just for the sake of argument. Think about it. Tell us what you think should be done â and how you think it could be accomplished. Seriously. I want you to think about how to get the information you think is important.
Constantly repeating âthatâs someone elseâs jobâ wonât cut it. If this is something thatâs important to you, think about it. And tell us what you think. If you canât do this, donât keep coming back here and bleating about how it hasnât been done.
“Personally, I have a pretty simple rule: never reply to a troll for the benefit of the troll. Only reply to a troll if the troll’s idiocy allows you to make an important point to an undecided person who might be reading.”
Exactly.
After my daughter’s Autism diagnosis, I got sucked into DAN! protocols and felt enormous guilt over vaccinating her on schedule; however, I never completely bought the vaccines-cause-Autism explanation and remained a fence sitter till last year.
What brought me around? Quackcast, SGU, and blogs such as this and Science Based Medicine. I learned so much from comment exchanges.
So please, keep feeding the trolls.
Rebecca, it could of course be purely genetic but I don’t see what’s so improbable about gene mutations and environmental toxins (I know I’ve heard of that in terms of Parkinsons, for example) Of course heart disease can be quite genetic in some ways – but never exercising, eating lots of trans fats, saturated fats etc. and drinking heavily (environmental factors) would also not help the genetics.
Chemmomo, I’ll have to give that some more thought…
I am amused by the kvetching over vaccines and Alzheimer’s, when those who are more likely to have that disorder probably ingested more alum from pickles than getting any in vaccines.
There is much empirical data that conclusively proves vaccinations can be harmful, and in many cases fatal, and should therefore be avoided. There is also a book available through CSE which provides in-depth information concerning the dangers of vaccinations and how they destroy our God-given immune system.
Note how augustine neither gives a location for the empirical data nor a name for the book.
I know I am SO LATE to this party, but I had to chime in to say both my husband and I are COMPLETELY BOOSTERED UP on all childhood vaccines according to the adult booster shots list on the CDC schedule. We will not be spreading Pertussis to any poor infants any time soon! I hope all (sane, rational-thinking) adults here will take the time to do the same. Even the MMR can wane over time, so everybody get boosted! 🙂
EXTRA Thimerosal in mine, pls! (What? It’s not even in there? Oh. Nevermind.)
Note how augustine neither gives a location for the empirical data nor a name for the book.
IT’S CSE! IT’S THE CSE!! Then again, the CSE I’m familiar with is mostly in the trade of ham-fistedly trying to horn in on the racket in editorial handbooks. (“H pi” region, guys, really?)
Hi Melissa: Good for you for getting boosted against pertussis. Pertussis vaccine is now available as Tdap (combined tetanus, diphtheria and acellular petussis) vaccine.
Tdap is recommended for 10 year “booster” shots for individuals aged 11-64 years old.
It is not necessary to ever “boost” MMR vaccine as long as you have an immunization record of receiving two separate MMR shots, after one year of age and 28 days apart. According to the CDC Pink Book vaccine-induced immunity against measles, mumps and rubella is long lasting and may even be lifelong.
If you are uncertain of your vaccine history, a simple blood test can determine if you have IGG titers indicating immunities against the diseases.
Augustine – the studies you link to regarding aluminum toxicity are about people with renal failure (and are all about 20 years old). Since people with renal failure are unable to excrete aluminum in their urine, it tends to accumulate in their bodies and they are advised to avoid it. People with normal kidneys can excrete the tiny amounts of aluminum in vaccines with no problems.
Aluminum dementia in dialysis patients was caused by using water with high levels of aluminum in their dialysis, which obviously would not remove aluminum from their bodies. Water in dialysis units has been treated to remove aluminum for at least a decade.
I believe aluminum hydroxide is still used to treat hyperphosphatemia, but rarely, as it is contraindicated in renal failure, which is the most common cause of hyperphosphatemia.
The blood levels of aluminum found in people with renal failure that cause toxicity are much higher than those seen after vaccination.
I won’t provide references, as my comment will get caught up in moderation like my earlier comment @55 and Augustine’s comments @63-66 were earlier. I can back all tis up with citations if necessary.
@jen:
Goodness, jen, are you referring to what happened in the Scandanavian countries? Are you ever a day late and a dollar short! That is OLD news, and so far, studies have not shown a causitive increase between vaccines and narcolepsy. If you have new research that I am unaware of, please post.
@lilady: unfortunately, I am one of those unfortunate suckers who, although having had measles, the single measles vaccine (at age 5 or so, when it came out), the MMR at age 13, and another MMR at age 30, when I went back to college for my master’s, have not become measles immune according to blood tests. So I live in fear of being exposed to measles, especially at my age.
Aluminum hydroxide is prescribed under various brand names and generic names, by a physician treating patients for peptic ulcers. If you are undoing such treatment, it is presumed you are under physician’s care and that blood tests have been performed which would determine renal function.
@ triskelethecat: Rarely, patients who have received the two MMR vaccines, when tested later do not have the elevated IGG measles titer. Studies have shown that a third MMR vaccine may raise the measles titer (an anamnestic response) temporarily…but the immunity will again fade. That is why any vulnerable person who has certain medical conditions and cannot be given MMR vaccine or non-responders such as you, depend on herd immunity.
The point is a doktor used fallacious logic to prove that aluminum hydroxide was not neurotoxic.
Her Doktor
They did. It’s not used often anymore. It is only used as rescue therapy for hyperphosphatemia. When aluminum was used as a first line therapy there were unforeseen neurological complications.
If it’s in the brain. It’s in the brain. Not in the blood. In previous dialysis settings the source of aluminum was constant.
It’s not necessary. I believe you.
BTW, the augustine @82 is not me. But I did provide the aluminum citations.
Anyone who questions the prescribed medication Amphojel which contains aluminum hydroxide should take their complaints to the FDA…to get that dangerous medication off the market.
And, please share with us the results of your communications with the FDA.
Lilady
If you think you can get nephrologists to prescribe it as a first line binder again I’m sure the pharmaceutical companies would love to have you as a key opinion leader. You could get paid big bucks on top of it.
All you have to do is woo them with you county nurse experience and throw all of your safety studies in their face.
The only problem is that doctors, through experience, found that aluminum was more toxic than phosphorous.
You’ll have to convince them to get over that nonsense.
The first line phosphate binders now are calcium based binders, a resin based polymer, and lanthanum.
Aluminum is no longer the choice of nephrologists.
7 days. That’s all it is.
“It is only used for rescue therapy for hyperphosphatemia”
Amphojel and equivalent generics are prescribe by physicians for treatment of peptic ulcers.
The complaint to the FDA doesn’t have to be made by by physicians specializing in gastroenterology…any gadfly who has credentials in the study of biology, chemistry or vaccines should be very effective to get that dangerous drug off the market.
Herr Doktor Bimler’s short posting above is correct.
“It is only used for rescue therapy for hyperphosphatemia”
The sentence reads out of context. To clarify, the context is the dialysis setting. In dialysis it is only used rescue therapy.
“7 days. That’s all it is.”
That’s all *what* is?
Augustine:
Aluminum is neurotoxic if levels in the brain are high enough. To achieve that level requires a dose or doses high enough to overwhelm renal capacity to excrete it. In those with good renal function that dose will be much higher than they are likely to be exposed to environmentally, in medications or in vaccines, as excess aluminum is quickly excreted. I’m not aware of any evidence that aluminum accumulates in the brain in higher concentrations than are achieved in blood.
Patients with renal failure cannot excrete aluminum effectively and if there is more aluminum in dialysis fluid than there is in the blood, dialysis will not remove it from the blood. Normal blood levels are around 5 µg/l and toxic levels are around 60 µg/l. One renal unit found aluminum toxicity in its dialysis patients after aluminum concentrations in the water supply increased to 200 – 1000 μg/l.
One of the most remarkable characteristics of the crank is the willingness to swallow even the most implausible set of coincidences when the only alternative is to let go of an obsession. So it doesn’t disturb augustine that no major disease has been virtually eliminated from a population without vaccination, or that the major improvements in sanitation preceded the virtual elimination of polio, measles, and chickenpox, or that measles and chickenpox are not even spread by poor sanitation. Rather than accept that vaccines might actually work to prevent disease, he will gladly embrace the notion that a bunch of different factors coincidentally caused those diseases to disappear shortly after vaccination began.
Actually, I’ve heard that polio might have been worse by improved sanitation, due to the fact that people were not acquiring immunity early in life, but later, when it could spread further.
Gadflies, cranks, trolls, “vaccine experts” who think they have expertise in gastroenterology should take their opinions to the FDA to remove Amphojel and its generic equivalents from the pharmacy. Let us know how that all turns out.
@ Gray Falcon: Actually, before the development of the Salk vaccine in 1955, large metropolitan areas in the United States with certifiably safe drinking water had huge outbreaks and epidemics of paralytic polio. There have been a small number of studies conducted recently in polio endemic countries, that the shedding of vaccine virus from the OPV immunizations “may possibly” offer some community immunity…if waste water contaminates drinking water. Not really a good way to provide immunity.
As of Wednesday April 12, 2011, year-to-date confirmed cases of polio worldwide is 88 cases, compared to the estimated 350,000 confirmed cases in 1988. The WHO has declared that the Western Hemisphere, Western Europe and Southeast Asia have eradicated wild strain polio. See the website for: Global Polio Eradication Initiative for case tracking and the intensive interventions to provide polio vaccine and to finally wipe out the scourge of polio globally.
BTW, the augustine @82 is not me.
I dunno, sounds pretty close. Maybe your fantasy world has outgrown you.
Surely that is simply due to improved sanitation plus nearly world-wide adoption of MS Windows.
@lilady,
Grey may be talking about something I’ve also heard talked about in a documentary about Polio. The claim made (and I’m not saying it is or isn’t accurate as I haven’t seen the studies to back it up) was that with poorer sanitation, infants were exposed to the virus while the passive antibodies from their exposed mother were still present in their bloodstream, giving them protection and “safe” exposure to the virus. Improved sanitation would lead to exposure later in life after the passive immunity from the mothers would have cleared their systems. Like I said, I haven’t seen the evidence for or against this but it seem plausible.
BS Alert!
(imagine a klaxon sound effect here — errrrt — errrrt — errrrt )
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-nowinski-phd/complementary-treatments-_b_847068.html
The Wretched Hive of Scum and Quackery strikes again!
While I will say that quoted individual in original post goes a little far in comparing current situation to Holocaust, I have no problem believing that the drug company and governing agency are in cahoots over the vaccine and other drug policies. It’s all about money, folks, and anyone who says anything different is kidding themselves.
Pretty good article in the New York Times magazine today (4/17) about the purported link between cellphone use and brain cancer. The reporter did a decent job analyzing the research and what would be needed to generate credible evidence of such a link – something we do not have.
There was a brief comparison of claims about cellphones and antivaccine allegations:
“(A similarly corrosive intersection of a rare illness, a common exposure and the desperate search for a cause occurred recently in the saga of autism and vaccination. Vaccines are nearly universal, and autism is relatively rare â and many parents, searching to explain why their children became autistic, lunged toward a common culprit: childhood vaccination. An avalanche of panic ensued. It took years of carefully performed clinical trials to finally disprove the link.)”
I imagine there’s some teeth-gnashing among the antivaxers over that paragraph, especially the last sentence. E-mails have probably been flying off the keyboards.
Robin: “I have no problem believing that the drug company and governing agency are in cahoots over the vaccine and other drug policies. It’s all about money, folks, and anyone who says anything different is kidding themselves.”
This is a comforting way to think. No worries about analyzing research, assimilating evidence or anything else requiring thoughtful effort. Just convince yourself that virtually everyone in medicine, government and the pharmaceutical industry is pure evil and do not have children of their own to be concerned with, and you can dismiss anything that disturbs the conspiratorial mindset.
Robin:
Exactly, the pharmaceutical companies need reasons to manufacture such low profit products like vaccines. Government regulations that help that are better for public health. A person will typically only get two MMR vaccines per lifetime, and upon reaching adulthood the Tdap once every ten years. Definitely not a moneymaker like insulin, cholesterol, and other medications some people need to take everyday for the rest of their lives.
The cancer drug Gleevec is an interesting study in pharmaceutical economics. Apparently the drug company did not want to spend money on a drug for a relatively rare cancer, like a couple thousand per year. But when it worked, and the patients had to take it for the rest of their lives that changed. Because the patients actually lived the numbers of people needing it went from 2000 to 4000 to 6000, and on and on.
Now compare $32000 to $98000 per year for twenty years or so to how much vaccines cost per a lifetime. Just think how many MMR vaccines could have been bought for the cost the ten children in Minneapolis with measles who needed hospital care (medications, ventilators, IV fluids, etc… easily $3000-$5000 per night).
Vaccines have a definite economic argument. The conclusion is that vaccines save money by reducing hospital costs, reducing stress, fewer sick days taken by parents to care for children, reducing the possibility of someone with immune conditions getting sick (like kids undergoing cancer treatment) and reducing the number of kids permanently disabled due to encephalitis, paralysis or losing limbs.
Due to less than factual scaremongering by Lea Thompson and Barbara Loe Fisher in the early 1980s that created lawsuits there was a real danger of having no vaccines manufactured in the USA. This is why there is a VAERS and a National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
Those who claim that vaccines are big money makers really need to show convincing data that stopping vaccination will be cheaper. Having had a toddler taken to the hospital by ambulance because of a now vaccine preventable disease, that data will have to very well documented to convince me.
Long comment in moderation, but I have one question for Robin:
How many vaccines could have been bought for the cost of the thirteen people with measles who needed hospitalization in Minneapolis? More than half of those who got measles needed hospital care.
If government wasn’t in “cahoots” for public health do you think you would have clean water, a basic sewage system, and be assured that the restaurant you ate followed food safety regulations? Having traveled and even lived in parts of this world where those were not assumed, I’ll take the government intervention anytime over dysentery and food poisoning.
@ Gray Falcon & Poodle Stomper: Interesting theory about maternal antibodies in utero or through breastfeeding. But those antibodies are temporary in nature. I do recall an investigation into a salmonella typhii (typhoid) case in a toddler. When I questioned the parents I learned that they had recently returned from a trip to an area of the world where typhoid is endemic. They and their son stayed with family and they all partook of family meals. Parents had no recollection of having severe diarrhea illnesses when they resided there for most of their childhoods and never had typhoid vaccine. They were obviously immune, probably because they were exposed many many times to minute amounts of the bacteria.
The infant didn’t have the “benefit” of contaminated water in the United States and after the maternal antibodies wore off, he became infected while visiting family with his parents.
lilady,
The fact that maternal antibodies are temporary was part of the reason why (if this was indeed correct) the problem occurred. The idea was that the infants would be exposed when the mother’s antibodies were present, which allowed the virus to be neutralized upon infection while allowing the child’s immune system to mount an attack.
Again, i’m not saying that this is the case. I saw it in a documentary but haven’t looked into whether or not there is solid evidence to back it up. I was simply wondering whether it was to this that Gray (who I misspelled as Grey last post, sorry) referred. =)
They did. It’s not used often anymore. It is only used as rescue therapy for hyperphosphatemia. When aluminum was used as a first line therapy there were unforeseen neurological complications.
I gratefully appreciate the correction.
Improved sanitation especially safe water in the United States was responsible for the decrease in polio in the United States, but temporary maternal immunity passed to an infant, before the advent of safe vaccines sixty years ago, still did not protect children. If a young women was exposure and had an inapparent infection, she would pass some temporary immunity on to the infant for the type of polio she was exposed to. But there are three types of polio virus that circulated then and are still circulating, so unless the mother had exposure and built up immunity to all three types, the infant was vulnerable due to lack of cross-immunity between the three types.
Lack of clean drinking water is still a problem in many parts of the world. Estimates conclude that minimally one billion people in the world do not have access to pure water. The have open sewers, children play in rivers contaminated by sewer water runoff and people bath in and draw off water for food preparation and drinking, from that same source. I suspect that polio will be eradicated globally through IPV and OPV trivalent vaccines, before the entire world’s population has safe drinking water.
Lilady — I have actually had four MMR vaccines. Two in early childhood, on schedule, another when there was an outbreak of German measles among vaccinated teens in my neighborhood (there was some concern about the potency of the particular batch of rubella vaccine that we’d all had), and yet another when I had my first baby. Because of the extreme risk of rubella to a fetus, many doctors like to check the rubella titers of their pregnant patients. Mine were too low, so I was revaccinated after I gave birth. (MMR is not a vaccine considered safe in pregnant women, because it is a live-virus vaccine.) By the time I had my second one, my titers were fine, but imagine if I had encountered an unvaccinated person with rubella during my first pregnancy….
Point is, rubella immunity is *not* always lifelong, even if you are properly vaccinated, highlighting the importance of high vaccination rates.
@ Calli Arcale: My children born in 1970 and 1976, each had one immunization with the single antigen shots (MMR combined vaccine was not available then. I recall being probably only testing for Rubella antibodies, syphillis and gonorrhea, during my pregnancies. (I’m so ancient that when I went for my marriage license in 1966, it was not issued until my husband and I were tested for syphillis via the Wassermann test). In the 1980s there was a measles outbreak and every child had to have a second MMR vaccine. Technically, it is not considered a “booster”, it is done to protect the small number of children (less than 2 %), who weren’t immunized with the one immunizing shot…thus increasing “herd” immunity in a community.
In the 1980s obstetricians started to do panels of blood tests to determine actual disease status or immunity status commonly referred to as the TORCH panel:
T – Toxyplasmosis
0 – Other
R – Rubella
C – CMV (Cytomegalovirus)
H – Hepatitis B
“Other” tests are tests for syphillis, gonorrhea and now HIV.
CDC now recommends that if a pregnant woman is not immune to Rubella, that she receives Rubella (MMR) vaccine, prior to discharge from the delivery hospital, to protect future children. There is no danger to the baby who nurses after the maternal immunization.
The major improvements in sanitation in the US occurred long before the elimination of polio, which did not happen until the vaccine was widely available. It is likely that improved sanitation exacerbated the severity of the US polio epidemic, because it resulted in a tendency for people to be exposed at a later age, when the damage tends to be greater.
Chris stated:
Not necessarily. Although that would be the ethical thing to do, there is no scientific reason (again, apart from ethics) that we should try to control for wild-type vaccine-preventable illnesses.
After all, if the result show that vaccines are associated with autism, the next thing the “vaccines-cause-autism” promoters will insist on will be an end to vaccinating children. For that reason, it would be better to study vaccinated children compared to unvaccinated children in an environment where the vaccine-preventable diseases are endemic.
Of course, such a study would be completely unethical because we already know the risks of the vaccine-preventable diseases. That’s why we developed vaccines.
On a related topic, “Jen” made the oft-cited observation that nobody she knew had ever died of a vaccine-preventable disease, even those that were endemic in her childhood. Unless she’s older than I am (a physical impossibility, according to my children), that would pretty much be limited to chicken-pox, hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenza B (HiB).
HiB meningitis was (mercifully) relatively rare even “back in the day” and hepatitis B does it’s killing (of people who get it as newborns) either right away (so she wouldn’t have known them) or in adult life (as liver cancer). And chicken-pox doesn’t typically kill (or disable) a lot of children – it does most of its dastardly deeds on adults (shingles, encephalitis, etc.).
Even measles only kills about 1- 2 per thousand, so if “Jen” had been a school-age child in the early 1950’s, the odds of one of her friends or acquaintances dying (or being diabled) by measles would have been low (in those pre-Facebook days, hardly any grade-school child had 1,000 friends).
I don’t know if this particular fallacy has a name, although I refer to it as the fallacy of large numbers. In short, people can’t easily grasp the concept that just because they haven’t seen something happen that it isn’t necessarily a rare event. And even if something is “rare” (i.e. 1 or 2 per thousand), it can add up to a large number if the population at risk is large.
So, 1 per thousand (let’s take the low end) dead from measles and a population at risk of 4 million (number of births per year in the US, roughly) gives a total of 4,000 deaths from measles each year. And that’s the low-ball estimate.
Sure, that’s lower than the death rate from plague or smallpox, but it’s still a lot of kids dying every year from a preventable cause.
But, hey! If “Jen” hasn’t seen it, it must not really exist, right?
Prometheus
What makes you think it would go to 4000 without a vaccine?
You have a problem. There weren’t 4000 measles deaths in the years immediately preceding the measles vaccine. There was an avg of 450 deaths per year. The CDC estimated that 3-4 million cases occured per year. Most cases were mild to moderate. No going to the doctor. No reporting. Throws off your 1/1000 case fatality numbers just a little. It put the case mortality at about 1/6000-8000.
Just another case of number skewing to get the desired outcome. Fear and then vaccination.
It’s called check your facts to see if they make sense first.
You do realize that means, before the vaccine, there were over four hundred preventable deaths a year?
Doc Rocketscience: “I think there’s a word for an internet poster like that, but I can’t remember what it is. Bowl? Droll? Pole? Something like that.”
Bugger … there’s me thinking it rhymed with ‘hat’!
Prometheus: “But, hey! If ‘Jen’ hasn’t seen it, it must not really exist, right?”
Okay – how’s this for a syllogism?:
P1- nobody can directly see his/her own arse.
P2- ‘jen’ cannot therefore see her own arse.
?3- if ‘jen’ cannot see it, it does not exist.
C1- jen’s arse does not exist.
@ Gray Falcon: According to the CDC Serious Complications of Measles are:
Pneumonia 6 %
Encephalitis 0.1 %
Seizures 0.6 – 0.7 %
Deaths 0.2 %
According to the WHO Measles Fact Sheet-Dec, 2009:
“Worldwide, as high as 10 % of measles cases result in death in populations with high levels of malnutrition and a lack of adequate health care”.
We can safely assume that the unvaccinated childred who died were infected via the “typical” route (droplet transmission) and that they weren’t infected by lack of sanitation. Also, the lower morbidity and mortality rates for measles in the United States is because of good nutrition and access to good medical care, should youngsters be exposed to an “imported” measles case and parents have opted out of MMR vaccines.
It is so sad that in areas of the world without vaccine- induced high herd immunity, thousands of kids die each year.
We also know that measles is just an airplane trip away from us…as evidenced by the recent outbreaks in Boston, Minneapolis and Utah, where the index cases were not immunized and brought the disease back to their communities.
WoW! The local county nurse has gone delusional again! In one sentence she talks about worldwide measles deaths(which she has zero expertise in because she was just the local vaccine dispenser)which are properly attributed to malnutrition and then in another sentence she implies that the exact same thing will happen in the U.S simply because of air travel.
She is engaging in fearmongering.
It’s dishonest and deceitful nursing. If that’s what you want to call “nursing”. You should be ashamed of yourself, nurse Barny Fife. Trying to create a situation that isn’t so you can increase your own self importance. Please talk about the Utah, Minnesota, and Boston deaths. Please talk about the lifelong immunity they will receive. Please talk about the lifelong boosters that you need. What is it up to now? 5, 6, 7? I lose count. You mean one won’t eradicate measles?
Measles in the developed world is not a big killer. If you believe other wise please state you scientific case. And before you credit vaccine with that just note that I will be willing to make you look like the fool you are.
Why should we believe you now? You’ve never accomplished making anyone other than yourself look a fool before.
Augie: We know that you have no education, no gainful means of employment and that you leach off the system. Your last few postings have demonstrated that you cannot comprehend the simplest words, no less sentences or paragraphs.
Firstly, I provided statistics about serious complications associated with measles infections in the United States.
Secondly, I provided statistics for the death rate from measles in areas of the world where children are malnourished and don’t have access to good medical care.
Thirdly, I provided the manner in which measles is transmitted.
I then made a comment about the terrible impact measles has on children who live in underdeveloped countries
My final paragraph dealt with recent outbreaks in the United States.
Funny, how every other poster here understood the meaning of my post.
Go haunt someone else; you bore me.
lillady:
Augie:
I think we can agree that one in every five hundred children (one in ten, in less fortunate parts of the world) who contract measles will even recieve life-long immunity from all other diseases. Want to talk about that, augie?
Hmmmmm…..the information & opinions from a Board-certified nurse or the rantings, ramblings and flailings of some internet troll…..
Wow, hard choice.
Wintermute:
On another blog someone was claiming since they had had measles and was fine, that must be true for everyone. I told him/her there is a reason why Roald Dahl’s oldest child could never say “I had measles and I am okay.” One clueless guy then answered “Chris it sounds like you are describing autistic children.”
I was never under the impression that autistic children were dead and buried. I have no idea what Mr. Coe thinks about them.
The CDC also said this about measles:
Back in 1966.
CDC also estimates the actual number of measles cases (prevaccine) at 3-4 million.
So let’s see.
Pneumonia 6 % = 210,000 cases
Encephalitis 0.1 % = 3500 cases
Seizures 0.6 – 0.7 % = 21,000 – 24,5000 events
Deaths 0.2 % = 7000 deaths per year.
Something doesn’t add up with your CDC numbers. Those are not the actual numbers. Does this seem infrequent and rare? The percentages are flawed, on purpose, to scare people. Your numbers are based off of reported cases. Not actual cases.
@augustine: First of all, people still died from measles, far fewer than from the vaccine, so you can’t write them off. Secondly, it appears you’re working from reported numbers, while we’re working from actual numbers. Finally, what would the CDC hope to gain from inflating the number of cases? MMR shots aren’t exactly a big moneymaker.
Motivation for disease eradication of course. People aren’t motivated for a disease that they aren’t scared about. Measles had to be reframed as a deadly killer.
You have that backwards.
And? Measles can be a deadly killer, especially to someone with a compromised immune system. Roald Dahl’s daughter died from measles. Are you trying to tell me she doesn’t exist, or that she doesn’t matter?
And your evidence?
So can rhinovirus. Do you think of that as a big killer? Are you shaking in your boots because there is no vaccine for rhinovirus? Could you go on a rhinovirus awareness campaign to cause anxiety? Is the general population worried about rhinovirus and it’s fatality?
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/meas.pdf
“Before 1963, approximately 500,000 cases and 500 deaths
were reported annually, with epidemic cycles every 2â3
years. However, the actual number of cases was estimated
at 3â4 million annually.”
Little augie said:
Yeah, augie. Tell me about lifelong immunity. I have had measles. I have had the single measles vaccine, and the MMR twice. I am NOT immune to measles because I am a non-responder for some reason. Of course, I know that you don’t care about those of us who are older and wiser than you, so it probably wouldn’t bother you if I got measles. At my age, I will probably be quite ill. So, will you pay my bills and do all the jobs that I won’t be able to do because some careless twit gave me the measles? After all, you feel measles are no big deal, so it should be no problem for you to help me out if I get them.
Take a look in your grocery store’s washroom. You’ll notice important notes on how to wash your hands to prevent germ transmission. The awareness campaign you mention already exists.
So you’re accepting that the number of reported cases is different from the number of actual cases, but you’re assuming that the number of reported fatalities is the same as the actual fatalities. Why?
ugh troll:
With regards to linked comment, {citation needed}.
And why is disease eradication bad?
@Lawrence: I can’t speak for augustine, but he’s indicated that his issue isn’t with the ends, but the means. The problem with his argument is that the MMR vaccine has a much lower chance of side effects than the disease itself.
To clarify, I meant a cite is needed for the rhinovirus claim.
Maybe you are the careless twit spreading measles to others. You should stay locked up in your home knowing that your nothing but a disease vector. How do you know that you don’t have it right now? Spewing viruses every where you go. You know there are huge deadly outbreaks all over the country right? Have you been traveling lately? Shame on you.
@Gray
Do you have any sources, quoting the CDC, that they estimate the actual number of measles deaths to be 8x the reported amount?
By the same argument, your child shouldn’t be allowed out of the house. Somehow I suspect that you’d reject that principle. Which demonstrates what an idiotic hypocrite you are.
No, but if the reported cases differs so much from the actual cases, one can safely assume reported fatalities (and other conditions) differ from actual fatalities by a similar factor. Do you have a source saying otherwise?
Also, if you’re complaining about the low odds of death from measles, let me remind you that the odds of death from the vaccine are much lower.
Ugh Troll: You should stay with the Cochrane Review and your cherry-picked other sources of research. Troll, did you read the fine print at the bottom of the statistics chart I quoted from on pg. 174 Measles Chapter of the Pink Book? Did you also read the paragraph adjacent to this chart? Those statistics and the accompany paragraphs were based on actual confirmed cases reported to the CDC from 1985 through 1992 inclusive.
You then super-impose your own cherry-picked sentences from the Pink Book about “estimated” number of cases before measles vaccine was licensed in 1963 and apply them to the statistics of reported confirmed cases from 1985-1992 inclusive.
Nice try, Augie. You’ve been busted again for being an uneducated, unemployed, on the dole…..liar.
Only if one already believes his bias to be true. But that wouldn’t be very skeptical of you.
I wouldn’t safely assume that. You can assume it, but it wouldn’t be safe. What evidence would lead you to that conclusion? Is measles that difficult to diagnose? Again nothing by the CDC to indicate that was the case.
Because of it’s familiarity, recognition and general prognosis. Most people simply didn’t go to the doctor because of measles contraction.They recognized it and took stay at home precautions. What could the doctor do in most cases anyway in 1960? Give them an antiviral?
Or…many mild cases presented to doctor. The doctor recognized the mildness of it and did not report it.
That’s 3.5 million unreported cases per year.
@augustine: Interesting, but that’s all speculation. I need evidence. You’re making an assumption based on your own biases. I suggest removing the plank from your own eye before pulling the specks from others’.
Nurse Barney
No I didn’t. I took the percentages that you try to scare people with and applied them to a time before the vaccine was used. Years of vaccine use and now the disease is scarier.
Little augie: you are definitely showing your youth and inexperience with life. People with measles back in the day usually had a doctor who made house calls so no, they didn’t go to an office, the doctor came to them. Then, once he/she diagnosed measles, the public health nurse came by and put a HUGE quarantine sign on the house. The people in the house were not allowed to go out and the people outside the house, unless known to be immune to measles, were not allowed INTO the house. But remember, measles is infectious 3-5 days prior to the fever and spots. So the sick person had plenty of time to infect others before being put into quarantine.
And back in the day when most mothers didn’t work, quarantine may not have been too bad – except for those women who HAD to work to support their families and now could not leave the house, those adults who would normally live in the house but were not known to have had measles so they had to find someplace else to stay for a few weeks, and those children who, like Roald Dahl’s daughter, died.
But we all know that you don’t care about anyone but yourself when it comes to disease anyway. Your answer to me is proof of that.
Fuck me sideways!
jen’s arse does exist… it’s … it’s …
Can i contain myself here?
It’s … augustine!
*sigh*
Acute measles mortality in the United States, 1987-2002
Keep in mind that these are for 1987-1992. The databases, despite being enhanced since the pre-vaccination era, in several instances only picked up 1 of every 8 estimated deaths. Even with improved surveillance, estimated deaths out-numbered reported deaths anywhere from 1.5x to 3x. It is hardly a stretch that before improved surveillance, the amount estimated was 6x-8x. In fact, one of their references indicates that one enhancement (of several) increases the reported number by 42%, right from the original data. That alone moves us into the 2.2x to 4.3x range.
Of course, this data has been presented to the augustinian trolls many times before. I only write this because someone new to this blog might not realize that an 8x under-reporting is actually quite feasible.
@ MI Dawn: It just makes sense for the overwhelming majority of people who don’t have contraindications to a specific immunization to be fully immunized according to the CDC Recommendations for Children and Adults. Who would ever want to be an “imported” index case responsible for an outbreak of diseases? Indeed, who would ever want to be the contact of an index case and infect vulnerable children and adults who cannot be immunized?
People who are congenitally immunosuppressed cannot be immunized with with live vaccines. Nor can those with leukemia or lymphoma. Those who are undergoing cancer therapies with alkylating agents or antimetabolites must wait for three months after the completion of therapies in order to receive live vaccines. Such people may received inactivated vaccines…but depending on the degree of their immunosupression…they may be poor responders to inactivated vaccines.
Children and adults who are prescribed and whose medical conditions require large doses of prednisone cannot receive any live vaccines,
Anyone who has received hematopoietic cell transplants (their own or donor stem cells) cannot be re-immunized with inactive vaccines until 6 months following the procedure and cannot be re-immunized with live vaccines (MMR-V) until 24 months have elapsed.
There is a growing population of children and adults who are immunosuppressed, due to congenital diseases and syndromes, as part of their disease process or from life saving treatments.
That is why people who understand the science of immunology and understand the epidemiology of diseases fight so vehemently against the pseudoscience and voodoo medicine practiced by quacks, nutrition “experts”, celebrity “moms” and CAM artists whose collective agendas are to frighten young parents and sell them their books, their services and their supplements.