Another swing for the fences and a miss by the anti-vaccine movement

This stuff just never ends. I find it exhausting just reading about it — how do you have the energy to respond in detail to every new thing? Ugh.

Orac says:

Looking at the second claim first, only a non-physician could make such an utterly brain-dead argument as this:

Because autistic disorder is defined only by an aggregation of symptoms, there is no meaningful distinction between the terms “autism” and “autism-­like symptoms.

So how far beyond brain-dead is Paulie Offit (along with Grinker) who without any evidence whatsoever claims “geeks” of yesteryear were actually autistic.

@ Sid Offal: Things a little quiet over at your blog?

Orac, I did view the press conference and it was cringe-worthy. The lawyers and the investigator sorta downplayed the “government conspiracy” angle only stating that the cases they discovered “are just the tip of the iceberg”. Fox was there and a few other microphones set up at the podium. No panning the camera to the crowd gathered…intermittent clapping that I estimate to be 15-20 people…tops.

Several parents came to the podium to describe what happened to their children within a short interval of having received a vaccine One parent brought along her very disabled (adult) child who appeared to be very low functioning intellectually. The parents all stated that their children had very high fevers and seizures; suffered brain injuries, classified as mentally retarded with autism/autistic-like behaviors.

It appears that the thrust of their arguments…aside from stating that they were provided (annuity) compensations for their children’s autism/autistic-like behaviors caused by vaccines, is to have Congress set up hearings about the functioning of the vaccine court and to get court awards for other children with autism caused by vaccines.

We are a Pro-Choice Movement NOT an Anti-Vaccine Movement.

CBS News reported on their own study in September 2010:
Vaccines, Autism and Brain Damage: What’s in a Name?
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20016356-10391695.html#ixzz1M1BKO3et
What they found:

“Children who end up with autistic symptoms or autism have won vaccine injury claims over the years-as long as they highlighted general, widely-accepted brain damage; not autism specifically. But when autism or autistic symptoms are alleged as the primary brain damage, the cases are lost.”
. . .
Since the late 1980’s, more than 2,100 families have received compensation for vaccine injuries under the federal program designed to help in rare instances of severe vaccine side effects. And more than half of those awards are for brain injuries.

CBS article emphasis:

Total Number of Brain Injury Cases Compensated in Federal Vaccine Court

(as of May 2010 and including the newly-released settlement of the Hannah Poling autism case)

Encephalitis/Encephalopathy: 639

Seizure Disorders: 656

Autism 1*

Total: 1,296

Source: HHS-HRSA (Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration)

*In this case (involving Hannah Polling), though the government conceded before trial, it took the position that vaccines didn’t “cause” autism, but rather that the vaccines aggravated an unknown and previously undiagnosed mitochondrial disorder the child had which “resulted” in autism. It’s unknown how many other children have similar undiagnosed mitochondrial disorder.

Neither the court nor the government is tracking how many vaccine-brain damage cases involve children who also ended up with autism or autistic-like behavior. When we asked for the statistics, vaccine compensation officials told us: “The government has never compensated, nor has it ever been ordered to compensate, any case based on a determination that autism was actually caused by vaccines. We have compensated cases in which children exhibited an encephalopathy, or general brain disease. Encephalopathy may be accompanied by a medical progression of an array of symptoms including autistic behavior, autism, or seizures.”

Ah, the old “pro-safe vaccines” gambit. Then why is it, that when I do happen to come across one of these “pro-safe vaccine websites” they don’t talk about additional regulations or inspections (or for that matter studies) – they rail on vaccines, over and over – to the point of even attempting to stop vaccine clinics in school.

Does’t sound “pro-safe” to me.

I was wondering how robust the evidence for vaccine induced encephalopathy actually is when I came across an interesting article. Genetics and the myth of vaccine encephalopathy.

It suggests that mutations in the SCN1A gene may be a cause of what have previously thought to be vaccine encephalopathies. The effects of these mutations may be exacerbated by febrile illnesses, which makes vaccination all the more important.

Richard, you wouldn’t by any chance have a brother named Karl, would you?

So, once again, it comes down to them not being able to tell the difference between brain damage from a fever, and an innate developmental problem. Does that mean I’m allowed to speculate that they’re all stupid because of repeated blows to the head, or prolonged alcohol abuse, rather than because of poor education or poor genetics?

To put it another way: Orac was remarkably restrained in his response to the claim by Holland et al. that “autistic disorder is defined only by an aggregation of symptoms”.

I would less politely characterise this as “bullshit”. “Aggregation” implies that symptoms are all of equal value; and if you can pile up enough of them in one place, then you have a diagnosis. Not so. If someone shows a number of weird behaviours but not the classic triad of impairments, then they might have ASD or Asperger’s Syndrome or HFA, but they don’t have autism because that’s how it’s defined.

Conversely, if Uta Frith reads the contemporary case studies of Victor of Aveyron and sees the classic triad, then that is evidence that Victor was autistic. So if Sid @ #3 reckons that these retrospective diagnoses are “without any evidence whatsoever”, then we are operating with radically different definitions of “evidence”.

Is it just a problem that Victor never received a vaccination so Sid does not believe he could have been autistic?

I immediately noticed in reading Holland and company’s long drawn out piece yesterday afternoon that not only had they played with the numbers to meet their preconceived expectations, but that they’d also used Olmsted and Blaxill’s book (calling it a historical work, of all things) as proof of the “plausibility” of the thimerosal argument.

Does that mean I’m allowed to speculate that they’re all stupid because of repeated blows to the head, or prolonged alcohol abuse, rather than because of poor education or poor genetics?

Can’t it be all of the above? 😉

Of course, there’s at least one problem, and that’s that the authors admit that, of these 83 children, they could only find documentation of autistic symptoms for only 39.

It’s actually considerably worse than that. From the paper:

Of these eighty-­three compensated cases including autism, seventeen note an autistic disorder in a published decision of the Court of Federal Claims and twenty-­two have SCQ questionnaires confirming caregiver reports of autism. In other words, thirty-­nine of the eighty-three cases, or 47% of this sample, have confirmation of autism beyond parental report alone.

Fortunately, they provided a table containing all of the relevant data. Here are the seven categories of documentation they consider, along with number of cases for each:

A -­ Decision of Court of Federal Claims stating petitioner has autism or autism-­like symptoms: 18
B – Decision of Court of Federal Claims detailing symptoms and behavior consistent with autism: 9
C – Third party medical, educational, or court records confirming autistic disorder on file with authors: 7
D – Completed Social Communication Questionnaire by caregiver on file with authors (SCQ): 22
E – Previous public documentation by parents or caregivers in written, electronic or film media stating that the subject has autism or autism-­like symptoms: 13
F – Telephone interview with parent or caregiver in which the interviewee states that the subject has autism or autism-like symptoms: 67
S – Stipulation in docket using term “autism” or “autism-­like symptoms”: 1

Two things jump out here. Firstly, the 17 cases which “…note an autistic disorder in a published decision of the Court of Federal Claims” are actually 18 cases which note an autistic disorder or autism-like symptoms. In other words, the numbers they use to support their first claim rely on the same bait-and-switch you called them on in their second.

Secondly, only 7 cases have actual medical/educational documentation. What about the 22 supported by the SCQ? Well, it’s a screening tool, not a diagnostic one; its specificity isn’t great, and in particular is bloody awful in children with “elevated levels of behavioural problems”. So, expect a substantial number of false positives in there.

@#7

“We are a Pro-Choice Movement NOT an Anti-Vaccine Movement.”

That just drives me crazy. Who is actually suggesting that you should not have the choice of whether or not to vaccinate your child?

Calling you a moron for believing pseudoscience is not the same as removing your choice. Suggesting that your choice can be harmful to others still doesn’t remove your choice. You have the choice to be ignorant, something the United States seems to excel at. You don’t just want the choice, you want people to accept your choice and not look at you like you’re crazy. That’s an entirely different proposition. Just as you have the right to your choice, I have the right to tell you your choice is stupid.

Even having mandatory vaccination requirements for public school entry doesn’t eliminate your choice, it just changes the consequences of that choice. You can choose to not vaccinate your child, but then you can homeschool or send them to a private school that doesn’t require vaccination. But, in that case, it isn’t the choice of vaccinating or not that you want, you also want the societal rewards without having to take the same risks as everyone else (unless of course you had an actual medical reason). Sorry, but sometimes you can’t have your cake and get to eat it too.

In the end it really isn’t about choice, as I think most people here would support your right to decide whether or not to vaccinate your child. You want everyone to accept your choice as a good choice and for that choice to not have any consequences.

@ Lawrence

they don’t talk about additional regulations or inspections (or for that matter studies)

Actually, they do.

@ Krebiozen
re: Genetics and the myth of vaccine encephalopathy

We know, however, that fever is the most common complication of immunization, and that patients with SMEI often have an exacerbation in seizures with fever. Thus, it could simply be that the fever associated with the vaccine and not the vaccine itself is what provokes the initial seizure in some patients with SCN1A mutations.

I get it now. In science drunk drivers are not the cause of a victims death or injury. Clarity!

@Brian Do I have a brother, Karl? No.

“I’ve got a little list… they’ll none of them be missed”**

While anti-vaxxers are known to use these methods in order to play fast and loose with reality, I believe that my list also illustrates manoeuvres by alt med advocates whose scope is wider but no less insane: what’s more, I can provide examples.

If you have no evidence what are are the, um, *alternatives*?

1.Argumentum ad Lawyerum – above lawyers are used to argue spurious science by paper and by press conference. The next step is- obviously -to go to court. If your miserable theory is called out by more astute reasoning and data, sue the critic!

2.Woo-meisters like to go public with their “science”-so rather than presenting papers in journals, they give press conferences ( also above) or call for “Debates” with the “Orthodoxy” where they can Gish gallop to their heart’s content or appeal to the audience’s empathy with the underdog contra the “elite”. Power to the People! Right on!

3.Testimonials by those affected really pull out all the emotional stops- the evils of Big Pharma or the wonders of modern woo-meistery are equally subjects of discourse (well, actually, of yelling more usually).

4.If you are totally dis-regarded by the general public as well as by science, call for a conference of like-minded cohorts to discuss the many intricacies of your *idee fixee*. This can be announced via websites, the media, or by general ranting. ( see AoA and HIV/AIDS denialist sites to see how it’s done to perfection).

5. Create an “Information Site” on the web that disputes real information. Name it ambiguously so that you might attract true fence-sitters; never call it : “Vaccines Are Totally Out” or whatever expresses your true intent.

6. Create a Conspiracy Theory site that explains how your work was slandered by the powers-that-be: have a “Donation” section so sympathic readers can show their support. Tell of your own persecution and near-martyrdom.

7.If all else fails: resort to name-calling, “reveal” your opponent’s true loyalty, background, paymaster, hidden agenda, secret identity, and ties to an internationally corrupt secret society. ( see the school for scandal, I mean AoA)

** my apologies to G & S.

@#25

Wow! You got all that from this statement:

“We are a Pro-Choice Movement NOT an Anti-Vaccine Movement.”

You stated:

Calling you a moron for believing pseudoscience is not the same as removing your choice.

Would calling you a moron for believing I believe in pseudoscience be appropriate? Where did you come up with my belief in supposed pseudoscience? Cite me.

Since it seems the theme here by the Pro-Vaccine Camp:
Is it pseudoscience to suggest that all vaccines are created equal (i.e. efficacy, safety, etc.)?

Richard,

Your “citation” to a CBS story IS pseudoscience.

Is it pseudoscience to suggest that all vaccines are created equal (i.e. efficacy, safety, etc.)?

Now, find a single citation anywhere on this entire blog suggesting anything vaguely similar to that.

About Richard Pilkington, Karl’s brother:

@Susan Lawson: Please learn to read and spend some time on the comprehension part of reading. You apparently didn’t understand the part that says “autistic-like behaviors” are not the same as autism. Making a diagnosis of ASD requires a significant amount of information, and having a single behavior that fits within ASD while not having any of the other key behaviors is not the same as autism, nor should it be. Actual diagnosed brain damage from encephalopathy is NOT autism.

Do you understand you are communicating with real scientists on this board and not a bunch of “mommies” with google degrees?

@ Susan Lawson: We are not cold-hearted people; many of us have children with a multitude of disabilities. We only comment on vaccine-injury cases that are in the public domain. We also comment about the entire industry of lawyers who try cases in the media, alternate medical “treatments”, celebrity experts and the impact their activities have on public health.

We also comment on the ever-widening diagnostic criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorders. Apparently your child was compensated but as you state, has “autistic-like signs”. Would you like to share with us some more details of your child’s case…including the main medical diagnosis of your child…which would have been the determining factor for your child to receive compensation.

I suggest you read the link provided by Krebiozen “Genetics and the myth of vaccine encephalopathy”.

So, failing at science yet again, what the anti-vaccine movement has done is to move over to law, in essence claiming that legal decisions mean that there is a scientific case to be made in favor of the hypothesis that vaccines cause autism. This is a fallacious argument at its core, because findings of law all too often have very little to do with findings of science. Examples abound, but my favorite one is the scare over silicone breast implants during the 1990s.

I’m rather fonder of the rather older precedents that found heliocentrism to be false. The later Scopes decision, I understand, depended heavily on that precedent 😉

#25 is a complete generalization suggesting ALL vaccines are created equal stating “your choice can be harmful to others.” And, that a choice to not vaccinate (be it ONE vaccine or ALL) has societal consequences.

Which has no relationship of any kind, in any way, to

Is it pseudoscience to suggest that all vaccines are created equal (i.e. efficacy, safety, etc.)?

Saying that there are effects on other people from antivax idiocy is a completely different thing from claiming that all vaccines have equal safety and efficacy.

Your “citation” to a CBS story IS pseudoscience.
Please, educate this layperson.

Science is published in peer-reviewed journals. News stories are entirely unreliable for such purposes. Citing them proves that you have no actual understanding of science or ability to weigh evidence.

Richard Pilkington:

We are a Pro-Choice Movement NOT an Anti-Vaccine Movement.

Susan Lawson:

You are one cold hearted man. I am the mom of “one of those children” who was compensated, and does show “autistic like signs”. Will you or “your people” EVER be a little more open minded or even care about the cause? Do you even care about what happened to our kids? You write off brain injury from vaccines as NO BIG DEAL.

You are both cruel and cold hearted people. You don’t care about kids like mine that had seizures and are disabled from an actual disease (the vaccine came out a few years later). You don’t care about the ten infants who died in California from pertussis, or the at least fourteen people hospitalized with measles in Minnesota. You don’t care about the tens of thousands congenital rubella syndrome cases from the 1960s rubella epidemics, several of whom ended up in horrible places like the Willowbrook School.

You probably are like Sid (who is Robert Schecter, not this author) who happily leeches off of herd immunity.

Show us you actually care about children permanently disabled by meningitis, pneumonia, encephalitis from measles, mumps, polio, Hib, influenza, etc by showing us the real risks. Show us that the MMR vaccine causes more injury than measles (one out of a thousand). Give us the evidence that DTaP is worse than pertussis, diphtheria and tetanus. Show us with real science, not cries of how life being unfair to you and that we are big meanies.

Ms. Lawson, you have received compensation. Good for you. Now can you tell me how I am supposed to get compensation from my disabled adult child? Is there some kind of “Big Disease” group that has big pockets? Do you think a lawsuit for the degradation of herd immunity, especially for pertussis, would succeed against Barbara Loe Fisher and Lea Thompson?

Mr. Pilkington, to help educate you on what is considered acceptable scientific evidence check out these papers (many are available without going through a pay wall, you can find them at http://www.pubmed.gov):

Impact of specific medical interventions on reducing the prevalence of mental retardation.
Brosco JP, Mattingly M, Sanders LM.
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2006 Mar;160(3):302-9. Review.

Encephalopathy after whole-cell pertussis or measles vaccination: lack of evidence for a causal association in a retrospective case-control study.
Ray P, Hayward J, Michelson D, Lewis E, Schwalbe J, Black S, Shinefield H, Marcy M, Huff K, Ward J, Mullooly J, Chen R, Davis R; Vaccine Safety Datalink Group.
Pediatr Infect Dis J. 2006 Sep;25(9):768-73.

On-time vaccine receipt in the first year does not adversely affect neuropsychological outcomes.
Smith MJ, Woods CR.
Pediatrics. 2010 Jun;125(6):1134-41. Epub 2010 May 24.

What goes around comes around. Many people here didn’t do their due diligence. They are the ones who threw the first stone and also the first to cry. They have to reap what they sow. It is what it is. How fortunate are the unvaccinated children for their smart parents know what’s best for them.

Brava Chris for calling out Pilkington and Lawson, with real multiple scientific studies.

Parents of handicapped kids who know science…really rock… and we are concerned for all the kids and adults who have suffered because of the fringe anti-vax and free choice groups with their junk science.

She really should be concentrating more on the therapy & custody of her kids, I mean really….

Holland et al.

Because autistic disorder is defined only by an aggregation of symptoms, there is no meaningful distinction between the terms “autism” and “autism-­like symptoms.”

Because Asperger’s syndrome is defined only by an aggregation of symptoms, I can find no meaningful distinction between being diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and being a bona fide nerd.

As a nerd who loved big words and formal speech as a kid, and once had a speech impediment, and had narrow obsessive interests and is shy, I’ve sometimes been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, but I don’t see how that label ammounts to anything more than drawing a big red circle around all nerds. It includes too much. Definitions have to exclude something. The definition of Asperger’s syndrome doesn’t appear to do that.

People with Asperger’s often also have ADHD? Most of my elementary and highschool classmates were diagnosed ADHD at one time. It seems to have been a diagnostic fad and a crutch for certain teachers who couldn’t keep order in the classroom.

There’s one problem, which is conducting science by press release and testing hypotheses in the courtroom. There’s another problem, which is broad diagnostic criteria that allow you to recategorise seemingly any shy smart kid as autistic. And then there’s the daily reality of people doing ii to justify doing i and i to justify doing ii.

Parents of handicapped kids who know science…are arrogant.

They believe, because their child is mentally handicapped, and it wasn’t because of vaccines, therefore NO child could be brain damaged from vaccines or express similar signs and symptoms as their child. It’s fallacy. But hey, they know science.

Auggie, using that argument if planes ever kill anyone ever we should ban planes.

Scarecrow, who said anything about banning vaccines? Thank you for the daily use of logical fallacy on science blogs.

Do you understand you are communicating with real scientists on this board and not a bunch of “mommies” with google degrees?

Yes, scientists, I understand. I have a medical degree, thank you.

Susan:

Yes, scientists, I understand. I have a medical degree, thank you.

Why should we believe you?

Dear Mr K. Dilkington,

You are one of our most valuable anti-vaccine posters.

Susan Lawson’s award summary in Vaccine Court:

http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/MORAN.LAWSON011211.pdf

The cause listed is vaccine induced encephalitis. Given that encephalitis isn’t autism and that no one here has stated that vaccines are 100% safe, I’m wondering why “Dr.” Lawson-Giles is attacking people here for what appears to be an imagined slight?

Ms. Lawson:

I have an autistic child. I have walked more than a mile in your shoes. I have not received compensation from the VICP nor did I apply for any, so I have no motivation to see this “study” as anything more than the political stunt that it is.

There, that should establish my “credentials”.

Moving on.

So, after a long build-up, this “landmark” study shows us…what?

83 of the “nearly 2500” compensated cases (the VICP lists 2,664 as of today – 2,524 through the end of 2010; let’s use the 2010 number) have been described by somebody as having autism or behaviors that are “autistic-like”: prevalence = 3.3%

Of those 83, 39 have some type of “documentation” (including the parent-answered SCQ): prevalence = 1.5%

Of those 39, only 7 have third-party medical, educational or court records confirming a diagnosis of autism: prevalence = 0.3%

The authors of this “study” have done most of the work they need to get a real number; all they need to do is go back to their 83 probable autism cases and get medical documentation. Better yet, they could have all 83 evaluated by an independent clinician using one of the validated tests for autism.

But why is it that I don’t think they’ll do that?

Prometheus

wintermute

Is that about right?

No. It’s only right if you are trying to build a straw man argument and twist logic using a bad analogy so you can feel better about yourself.

The cause listed is vaccine induced encephalitis.

Rate of encephalitis after MMR vaccination: < 1 in 1,000,000
Rate of encephalitis after measles infection: 1 in 1000

@Susan Lawson-Giles:

I’d also like to know if you think that a decision in vaccine court is proof of vaccine harm? The entire point Orac made was that legal decisions should not be confused with medical decisions. As he has also mentioned before, the Vaccine Court has a lower demand for evidence than a standard court. Since the legal papers I provided a link to are unable to cross the privacy boundary, it is difficult to see if you have had a medical determination that the injury was caused by the MMR vaccine, or if this is just a standard vaccine court award based on the fact that your child had encephalitis and procured brain damage from it. I ask because there are other reasons for children and adults to get encephalitis.

Wow – boring troll actually said, well, part of something that I believe we can agree with. It is about choice – informed, educated choice. Parents should be making choices for their children based upon the best available information and evidence.

Unfortunately, there are numerous people, for what ever reason, continue to disseminate falsehoods that make this choice more difficult that it needs to be.

Autism isn’t caused by vaccines – there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that supports this.

Vaccines are safer & have few side-effects than the diseases they preven – that is an established fact.

Are there legitimate side-effects to vaccines – yes, this is an established fact as well & these side-effects are public information and are included in the vaccine pamplets and routinely discussed between doctor and patient (or parent).

Should everyone receive all vaccinations – no, there are many situations in which a vaccine can be contra-indicated, including need (nobody needs the Smallpox vaccine anymore), immunocompromised individuals, and other specific medical situations where there could be potentially serious complications.

Vaccines have well over a hundred years of proven efficacy in fighting the spread of disease & are a valuable tool (but not the only tool) that has helped reduce infant mortality, disease-related side-effects (like measles-induced blindness or encephilitis, or mumps-induced sterility). Of course, the advance of medical science and understand of general health issues has also been part of this process – but disease elimination and mitigation through vaccine science has played a major role and will continue to do so.

Again, it is a choice – but it should be an educated choice based on real evidence, not supposition, idea or crackpot conspiracy theory.

nygrbus

Auggie, don’t you realize that the onion is an INTENTIONALLY FALSE and SATIRICAL publication?

Naw, I thought they really beat a kid with a lead pipe.

Susan Lawson has a blog about her daughter at:

juliagrimesjourney.blogspot

In the left hand column she provides a short medical history about her daughter’s hospitalization for seizures:

“Her diagnosis? Encephalitis (inflammation of her brain) most likely attributed to the MMR-V vaccine she received 9 days earlier”.

Again, it is a choice – but it should be an educated choice based on real evidence,

… and lack of real evidence and real science.

and morals, values, principles and ethics.

augustine writes:

and lack of real evidence and real science.

…says the person for whom subtracting whole numbers, let alone the mathematics of probability, is a bridge too far.

and morals, values, principles and ethics.

…says the person whose Christian love shines forth in all his comments here.

Wading into RI is probably a bad idea. I am the mother of an infant too young to be vaccinated, and I’m daily terrified by the news of Vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks a few miles from my house. When I first became pregnant, it never occurred to me not to make sure I was fully up to date on all my vaccines, including tetanus, pertussis, flu, and etc. I had no idea how far down the rabbit hole many of my fellow new moms had gone, but a few “new mommy” group meetings had me scared enough to keep myself and my young baby far away from those who “did the research” and decided AGAINST vaccines.

I then “did the research” — and everything I found only further solidified my belief that vaccines were far and away the best choice — the best choice for my daughter, and the best choice for public health. Do they come with a risk? Of course. But the risk of being infected with a DEADLY disease is far greater.

I find the regular admonitions by the anti-vax posters here that those who choose to vax do so out of some sheeplike lack of independent thought to be ridiculous. Spend a few hours on any anti-vax site and instead of medicine and science, what you find is at best, celebrities, and at worst, advertisements for laughable or outright dangerous alt medicine therapies, denial of germ theory, birtherism, trutherism, “New world order” conspiracies…

Now I tell my fellow new mommies to look at WHO is peddling this nonsense. Is this the company you want to keep?

Wading into RI is probably a bad idea. I am the mother of an infant too young to be vaccinated, and I’m daily terrified by the news of Vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks a few miles from my house. When I first became pregnant, it never occurred to me not to make sure I was fully up to date on all my vaccines, including tetanus, pertussis, flu, and etc. I had no idea how far down the rabbit hole many of my fellow new moms had gone, but a few “new mommy” group meetings had me scared enough to keep myself and my young baby far away from those who “did the research” and decided AGAINST vaccines.

I then “did the research” — and everything I found only further solidified my belief that vaccines were far and away the best choice — the best choice for my daughter, and the best choice for public health. Do they come with a risk? Of course. But the risk of being infected with a DEADLY disease is far greater.

I find the regular admonitions by the anti-vax posters here that those who choose to vax do so out of some sheeplike lack of independent thought to be ridiculous. Spend a few hours on any anti-vax site and instead of medicine and science, what you find is at best, celebrities, and at worst, advertisements for laughable or outright dangerous alt medicine therapies, denial of germ theory, birtherism, trutherism, “New world order” conspiracies…

Now I tell my fellow new mommies to look at WHO is peddling this nonsense. Is this the company you want to keep?

Oh, I think I found one of the cases that received compensation for “autism” that the lawyers and researchers were referring to…on Susan Lawson’s blog:

juliagrimesjourney.blogspot

“I was asked by an autism researcher to write a narrative from Julia’s perspective….” (May 4, 2011)

It must be a government conspiracy to hide vaccine court compensation for autism…sure it is.

“Rate of encephalitis without exposure to measles and vaccines: 0, nada, zilch”

Highly unlikely given that there are multiple well known and easily findable causes that are mentioned in basic public access sources.

@Th1Th2 = lies

This’ll get you started:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=encephalitis

@Thingy

Rate of encephalitis without exposure to measles and vaccines: 0, nada, zilch

You know, that’s probably the first correct thing you’ve written on this blog. It’s meaningless, but technically correct.

So, how do we completely avoid exposure to measles? Magic wands? Sacrificing chickens? Living in bubble?

Allie, it is best to ignore Th1Th2. She lives in a different reality, one where children voluntarily stay away from dirt:

Why should I let the child walk on the dirt when there is a dry concrete pavement next to it? A toddler would readily know which is the safe path to take even without the knowledge of C. tetani,

CG,

The only real way is to force the virus into extinction, which requires vaccination.

Oh come on. Until now, you don’t know what’s in the measles vaccine? And yet you’re talking about extinction? Give me a break please.

Rate of encephalitis without exposure to measles and vaccines: 0, nada, zilch

If memory serves, Herpes Simplex encephalitis is the commonest (or least rare) cause. Then there are other viral forms of encephalitis… bacterial encephalitis… amoebic encephalitis… post-infection autoimmune encephalitis, e.g. the encephalitis lethargica epidemic…

augustine writes:

What I don’t get is why are you people so hell bent on defending vaccine induced autism but vaccine induced encephalitis is met with the “vaccines aren’t 100%” concession.

You’re certainly correct about one thing – you don’t get it.

If we were ideologues about vaccines, we wouldn’t distinguish between autism and encephalitis, we’d just insist vaccines were always safe. But we don’t, indicating we’re not answering in a knee-jerk fashion, we’re distinguishing on the basis of the factual evidence.

The difference is that reliable scientific evidence says vaccines can in extremely rare cases cause encephalitis. On the other hand there is no reliable scientific evidence saying vaccines cause autism. There is not only no evidence of autism occurring from vaccination, no one has presented any plausible scientific explanation for how vaccination could possibly lead to autism.

When after studies involving over 1.5 million children there is no increased incidence of autism, and no way proposed in which vaccination could lead to autism, that means to us here in reality-land that we should strongly doubt vaccines cause autism. On the other hand, when studies pick up the exceedingly rare occurrence of encephalitis resulting from vaccination (because the studies are good enough to pick up even something as rare as that), and there is a means by which vaccination could cause encephalitis, then that is enough proof for us.

Richard Pilkington:

Don’t be ridiculous. The “news story” meets the “scientific” burden. The study uses empirical data, provides supporting documentation and the means to repeat the study.

You’re joking, right? They investigated court cases, not real data. Have you even read the article above that explains the difference between legal standards and scientific standards of evidence. Try reading this part again:

No, law is not science. In law, for example, the object is to win your case, not to find out how nature works and develop models (i.e., theories) that accurately describe it and predict its behavior. In law, there are no truly objective right or wrong answers about issues of science. There is only the law and how it has been interpreted by courts.

@Thingy

CG,

The only real way is to force the virus into extinction, which requires vaccination.

Oh come on. Until now, you don’t know what’s in the measles vaccine? And yet you’re talking about extinction? Give me a break please.

Why don’t you try answering the question, rather than poking at the “extinction” part. Since you’ve said (correctly) that zero exposure to the measles virus results in zero risk of measles-induced encephalitis, how do we reach that “zero exposure” state?

Until now, you don’t know what’s in the measles vaccine?

A noncommunicable, attenuated form of the virus, which would not be used once the virus is dead.

Vaccination eradicated the close relative of measles, rinderpest.

Th1Th2, I live on Earth not Htrae. I have dealt with real children who like to play like normal children, and that includes making mud pies and digging holes in dirt for fun.

Most of us who have real children understand how they play, which you do not. That snippet is a good way to show that you should be ignored.

You have absolutely no clue about immunology nor child development. Your controlling personality (keeping kids from doing kid things), and tendency to redefine words just like Humpty Dumpty would be psychologically damaging to any child.

To Mr. Pilington, I should also note that the CBS article you linked to was by Sharyl Attkisson. She is infamous for writing articles with contradiction- and misinformation-filled bits of crankery and fawning over known frauds.

Rate of encephalitis without exposure to measles and vaccines: 0, nada, zilch

Really? Then why does PubMed health list multiple other causes of encephalitis, besides measles and an allergic reaction to vaccines? Here’s there list:

Encephalitis is most often caused by a viral infection. Many types of viruses may cause it. Exposure to viruses can occur through:

-Breathing in respiratory droplets from an infected person
-Contaminated food or drink
-Mosquito, tick, and other insect bites
-Skin contact

Different viruses will occur in different locations. Many cases will tend to cluster in a certain season.

Encephalitis caused by the herpes simplex virus is the leading cause of more severe cases in all ages, including newborns.

A number of viruses for which there is now a vaccine may also cause encephalitis. These include:

-Measles
-Mumps
-Polio
-Rabies
-Rubella
-Varicella (chickenpox)

Other viruses that cause encephalitis include:

-Adenovirus
-Coxsackievirus
-Cytomegalovirus
-Eastern Equine Encephalitis Virus
-Echovirus
-West Nile virus

The virus causes inflammation of brain tissue. The brain tissue swells (cerebral edema), which may destroy nerve cells, cause bleeding in the brain (intracerebral hemorrhage), and brain damage.

Other causes of encephalitis may include:

-An allergic reaction to vaccinations
-Autoimmune disease
-Bacteria, such as Lyme disease,syphilis, and tuberculosis
-Parasites such as roundworms, cysticercosis, and toxoplasmosis in AIDS patients and other people who have a weakened immune system
-The effects of cancer

Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002388/

Jarred C.

It’s called measles encephalitis for a reason. What is there to argue about?

Chris,

Th1Th2, I live on Earth not Htrae. I have dealt with real children who like to play like normal children, and that includes making mud pies and digging holes in dirt for fun.

So a child who doesn’t play in dirt for fun is not normal? Enlighten me.

Most of us who have real children understand how they play, which you do not. That snippet is a good way to show that you should be ignored.

You might seem to understand however you failed to give them a safe and logical choice—the aspect you’re seriously lacking.

You have absolutely no clue about immunology nor child development. Your controlling personality (keeping kids from doing kid things), and tendency to redefine words just like Humpty Dumpty would be psychologically damaging to any child.

Do you also allow them to play in the dumpster? Do you think they will notice the difference? What kind of control do you have?

Yeah, such a great mother she lost custody of her kids…..

Jesus. I get all tied up in a conference and you folks, Orac’s “people”, go hog-wild in the comments section. Sorry I missed the discussion.

CG,

Given that the measles vaccine strain is a live virus it does cause an infection, although very minor one that rarely causes disease.

Great. Did you happen to explain that to Chris as to how the measles vaccine dramatically reduced the incidence of measles infection by causing the infection itself?

I’m glad you didn’t hide your true infection-promoting agenda.

Once again, Th1Th2, assuming we eliminated the measles vaccine, what else do we need to do to prevent measles exposure and therefore measles-induced encephalitis?

If you think that you can prevent children from being exposed to any and all pathogens (whether measles, tetanus or any other), you’re not just a fool, you’re delusional.

CG,

Your dishonesty/incompetence knows no bounds. The vaccine prevents measles, the disease, by preventing infection by the wild type measles virus.

Not only you’re confused between colonization and infection with our previous discussion, you are just as clueless between infection and disease. So tell me how can the measles vaccine prevent measles, the infectious disease, when the vaccine itself causes the measles infection in the host like you proudly claimed?

I was referring to 1. vaccine-induced encephalitis and 2. measles encephalitis caused by natural measles infection mentioned in #73. Do you deny this?

Yes. I do deny this. There is no reason a person would extrapolate that you were talking about these two things specifically, and nothing else with this wording:

Rate of encephalitis without exposure to measles and vaccines: 0, nada, zilch

Since in the first part, you were talking about encephalitis caused by vaccines (which would include allergic reactions to vaccines and anything else that has to do with vaccines), and in the second part you were talking about measles induced encephalitis – which is completely different – there is no reason anyone would extrapolate that the bolded word above was specifically talking about measles encephalitis, and not any other kind (including vaccine induced encephalitis, which you happened to include in the very sentence). Especially since the conversation was talking about encephalitis in general, and specifically about two different causes of encephalitis compared to each other.

Your statement specifically said that there were no other causes and/or cases of encephalitis cause by any other means other than vaccine or measles. Your statement did not say anything else.

If you meant for your statement to say something else (like, there are no other causes of measles encephalitis than measles or vaccines), then your mistake was in your own wording, and you should state that it was a mistake in wording, followed by a corrected version of what it was that you specifically meant to say. Then, others would be able to address the argument that you meant to put forth, rather than the argument that you actually put forth; and then you can stop accusing people of shifting the goal post (since no one has shifted any goal posts on this argument, they have only addressed what you actually stated, compared to what you meant to state).

You have two options: 1) Admit you were wrong, and there are other causes of encephalitis; or 2) Admit you made a mistake in wording, and produce the corrected statement.

Correction to my previous post:

I meant to say that my friend’s mother did NOT let her or her two brothers run, ride bicycles, play outside, get dirty, etc…

@Jarred C:

Since in the first part, you were talking about encephalitis caused by vaccines (which would include allergic reactions to vaccines and anything else that has to do with vaccines), and in the second part you were talking about measles induced encephalitis – which is completely different –

According to Th1Th2, all vaccines cause the disease they’re supposed to protect against, it’s just that most of the time vaccines cause an asymptomatic instance of the disease. If the vaccine causes a symptom which is also caused by the wild-type pathogen, then it’s a partially symptomatic infection, thus encephalitis caused by a measles vaccine is measles encephalitis. You’re not going to convince Th1Th2 otherwise: she has her own list of definition for many immunology terms, and it going to stick to them no matter what. The only way to get anywhere with her is to, for the sake of argument, adopt her definitions. But that will only lead to the discovery of new terms for which she has unique definitions. For example, did you know that immunocompromised people all have asymptomatic infections, because they’re lacking the immune-response phase of the disease?

Thingie is not just innumerate, but insane.Now augustine is simply innumerate-

Annoyingly stupid vs. stupidly annoying.

But if a white blood cells ingests a dead bacterium and presents the bacterial antigens on its surface, then, according to Th1Th2, that white blood cell is infected.

What I can’t understand is, even accepting her eccentric definition of “infection”—this is bad, how exactly?

It’s tempting to believe that Mr. Pilkington is just trying to prove Poe’s Law when he states that the news story under discussion “meets the ‘scientific’ burden” and therefore should carry the same weight as a study in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.  Whether or not he’s serious, though, there may be others who don’t quite see why his suggestion is so very off-base, so it’s worth explaining why.

Science is a continuing process of gathering evidence, formulating hypotheses to try and explain this evidence, and being guided both to further searches for evidence and further refinement (or rejection) of hypotheses according to how well they fit the evidence gathered.  This much is probably known already to everyone reading this, but we absolutely must point out an aspect that far too many laymen miss completely:  just being consistent with the evidence is not enough.  What is necessary, before you can say “the scientific evidence points to this conclusion,” is that the hypothesis in question must match up with the evidence better than all other hypotheses.

And what the average layman does not want to hear is that an awful lot of those hypotheses that need to be eliminated in order to call a different hypothesis scientifically supported are simply not sexy hypotheses, in any way.  We want to hear that the organic compound detected during examination of the meteorite is proof of life in outer space, not a lab contaminant!  We don’t want to say “we’ve been looking hard for the cause of this disorder,” we want to say “we know the cause of the disorder!”  There’s just that little problem where wishing doesn’t make it so.  When there is a dramatic, sexy explanation of the evidence and a simple, unsexy explanation that matches the evidence equally well, the simpler explanation is more probably correct, and we cannot say the evidence is pointing to the sexier explanation, even if that’s the one we really want.

So when Mr. Pilkington claims that a news story, on a ‘report’ that was submitted apparently straight to the news media, bypassing examination by experts in the field, based not on scientific evaluation of the data but of legal decisions, the most charitable explanation is that he’s engaged in wishful thinking.  Science is about trying to eliminate possible sources of error and this ‘report’ has gone by a route that seems designed to introduce them.  Misunderstanding by a news media that has a terrible track record in reporting on science (especially this particular reporter); the fact that legal decisions are based on legal rather than scientific standards (and in Vaccine Court, are explicitly tilted in favor of claimants); the bypassing of peer review – these are massive opportunities for error to waltz in and for any possibility of actually advancing our understanding to drain like water out of a sieve.

Since the anti-vaccine crowd wants to turn to legal decisions and legal reasoning, let me put it this way – cases are made by eliminating reasonable doubt.  But with all their missteps, the anti-vaccine activists who put forth this ‘report’ introduced so much doubt that it simply cannot be ignored.

Wow! Surprised to come back after a few hours and see the thread blew up to almost 150 comments. Then I saw Thing1thing2, and i realized the troll had come out 🙁

Dear Straw Men,

#25, Archangl508, started with the name-calling and, without any basis in fact, stated I believed in pseudoscience.

#33, beamup followed up, citing the CBS news article I excerpted as pseudoscience.

#106 JayK said, That isn’t science. That is the use of statistics to imply causation through correlation.

#107 Chris said, You’re joking, right? They investigated court cases, not real data.

Of course, the article IS science.

Let me repeat:
The “news story” meets the “scientific” burden. The study uses empirical data, provides supporting documentation and the means to repeat the study.

You may not like the data, but that doesn’t make it pseudoscience.

What is science? A better question:
What is NOT science? Science IS NOT art.
Blogging is art. Which you’ve all got down to a science.

The Thing gets it’s medical knowledge from the collective, of course. Resistance is futile…

@ Richard Pilkington: It’s not a scientific review of cases, merely a publicity stunt by lawyers who represent clients in the vaccine court…a gambit to get more cases. It is also an exercise in legal research for the Pace Law School students. The main investigator…the ex-cop…who says he has autistic triplets…is totally unqualified to conduct a medical investigation. The diagnostic (parent questionnaire) tool that they used cannot take the place of actual neurological diagnoses.

I had a posting directed to Dr. Lawson upthread who now claims that her child has autistic-like behavior…yet her blog describes her child’s episodes of seizures following immunization and the resulting medical diagnosis as encephalopathy. We read the legal papers that awarded her child annuity payments and her youngster received the settlement due to a diagnosis of encephalopathy…not autism.

Autistic-like behaviors do not meet the medical criteria for autism. Kids who have severe developmental delays and kids who have been diagnosed with encephalopathy do exhibit autistic-like behaviors…but that does not meet diagnostic criteria for Autism.

Dr. Lawson’s child and others applied to the vaccine court and met the time limited criteria for high fevers-seizures-encephalopathy, following an immunization. There is no conspiracy on the part of the government to hide autism monetary settlements.

You say you want the option for personal choice but you are totally blinded by the anti-vaccine junk science that you would be willing to put your children and others in the community at risk. I say you’re playing the herd immunity game and that you and your ilk are a public health menace.

Mr. Pilkington, you claimed the review of court data was scientific because they can “repeat the study.” The problem is that it is based upon rules that change, in addition to whose opinion that form the basis for the rulings. That fundamentally makes it unscientific.

First off, it is not a “study.” It is a counting of legal rulings, not a measurement of repeatable data. Unlike the natural “laws” of science (like the acceleration of gravity or how many moles of H₂O are contained in a liter), the legal rules change. Look how scientific research pulled seizures from the DTP vaccine off the table of vaccine injuries.

Despite the following plea:

But, don’t say it’s not science (or call it pseudoscience) just because it does not meet your criteria as a “scientific, peer-reviewed study.”

… you don’t get to make up the rules of what constitutes scientific data. Re-read what Orac wrote. Science is not determined in a court room, and it is not done by credulous news reporters. Especially reporters who are biased enough to leak emails to biased blogs. That is called a “Conflict of Interest.”

Now, answer my question from Comment #84: “How does one choose not to get a disease? How do you tell the various viruses and bacteria that your choice it to not be exposed to them?”

While you are at it, tell us how many people have mitochondrial disease, and how well they fare with actual diseases. Then tell us exactly how risky the MMR vaccine is compared to measles. I would really like to know what evidence you have that young Ms. Poling would have done if she had actually been exposed to the wild measles virus instead of the vaccine.

Remember, use only real peer reviewed scientific papers, no news reports.

Archangl508:

Or, am I correct in that you simply want the societal rewards without having the same risks that everyone else does?

Obviously he wants to be free to leech off of the herd immunity in his community. He wants to just like Robert Schecter and be a parasite on society.

Richard, can I ask what you would do after being bitten by a rabid dog, or being stabbed with a syringe full of HepB positive blood?

Richard Pilkington writes:

I have not seen a doctor for a cold or the flu since I was a child (probably 40+ years). I’m not saying I haven’t been sick, just not that sick. What would compel me to get a flu vaccine? Why would I risk potential vaccine side-effects? Annually?

What were the mortality and hospitalization rates for H1N1 in the USA? What were the mortality and hospitalization rates for the H1N1 vaccine? (“I knew I wouldn’t get infected with H1N1” is not an acceptable answer unless you can tell me who’s going to win, place and show in the Preakness and you turn out to be right.)

@Pilkington

The article does not provide any conclusion. The study observed data in court documents and counted observed results. It’s that simple. Some want to call it pseudoscience; it’s NOT pseudoscience. So what would it be? It’s not art. It’s a simple (little) study. It’s “science.”

Something can follow the forms of science and still produce invalid results. It’s “garbage in, garbage out.” If you want to draw a medical conclusion, then you need medical input. The input to this process was legal, not medical, so all you can do is draw legal conclusions.

Analogy time for Pilkie: I could ask my boyfriend (who can just about tell a rose from a paeony) to go out into the garden and take a survey of the green plants out there. No matter how carefully I analysed his data, I still wouldn’t get a meaningful result because I think I’m being generous if I said he could correctly identify a tenth of the species out there. If I asked my Dad, the results would be even worse. If I asked my Mum or my Granny, the results would be accurate enough to be useful as guides to further research, at least for cultivated species; if I went out there myself with a field-guide to local weeds I could probably manage 100% accuracy (maybe not on moss species!), and we could draw fairly firm conclusions.

More succinctly: GIGO.

@Mr. Pilky: Correlation/Causation means that two variables have been measured, but there is no conclusive evidence presented that indicates that the two variables are linked in any way. The only way the author links them is by the implied assumption that vaccines are a major cause of autism.

If someone turned that CBS article into me as an assignment in an advanced course, I would tell the student that they need to go into journalism or liberal arts and to get out of the sciences.

Science does not start out with an assumption that has already been proven false, and then seek out any correlation possible to encourage confirmation bias.

As for biases in the article? The author is obviously biased towards naturalism and shows a bias against vaccines, and that is just the main bias. As I mentioned the confirmation bias, there is also cognitive bias and media bias (not political).

One more thing, Mr. Pilky: It is pseudoscience because it ignores all of the data out there on vaccines and autism, just like you.

Thank You! Yeah! Someone [MartinM] actually looked at the study! Since they don’t purport to be science, then it can’t be pseudoscience. Correct?

What? Why are you arguing about whether “pseudoscience” is the right word to use or not? That’s as trivial a quibble as anyone could come up with. Are you doing this because you have absolutely no real argument?

Besides, although the disclaimer is in the document, did anyone at the press conference point that out? Has any of the media coverage of this pointed this out? It’s like the Quack Miranda. “We’re not really doing science here (wink-wink), we’ll just act as if we are by claiming that we have ‘proof’.”

JayK/ArtK/wintermute

This all started because someone stated the article excerpt I posted was pseudoscience. If we agree NO ONE is implying it is science then, of course, it can not be pseudoscience.

I DID NOT reference the (new) study.
I DID NOT imply any conclusion.

You folks just like to obfuscate and attack.

If we agree NO ONE is implying it is science then, of course, it can not be pseudoscience.

Would you consider the following (from comment #145) as implying that the article is science?

Of course, the article IS science.

Let me repeat:
The “news story” meets the “scientific” burden. The study uses empirical data, provides supporting documentation and the means to repeat the study.

How do you think the author of that comment came to make such an unambiguous statement on its scienceitude, if no-one is implying that it’s science? Or, to put it another way, one might as well claim that if we agree that no-one is implying the sun is hot, then we can live there.

Richard Pilkington writes:

I tested positive for HIV OVER twenty (20) years ago.

#157, Jud
Answering my questions with a questions– shame on you.

Because you asked in one of your comments why you should wish to expose yourself to the “risk of vaccine side-effects,” I asked questions to determine whether you had actually engaged in any sort of rational risk analysis, or were simply using language about vaccination risks to stand for whatever irrational motivations you might have.

If your HIV status was not a false positive, there are now only two alternatives:

– You have advanced HIV disease and even the flu vaccine with inactivated virus is contra-indicated in your case.

– You do not have advanced HIV disease but are at least somewhat immuno-compromised, and not getting the flu vaccine makes you an incredible sodding idiot utterly incapable of properly assessing the attendant risks.

#168, lilady

Mr. Pilkington, your “pro-choice” stand has everything to do with the undermining of public health initiatives

That is EXACTLY what I’m interested in doing. Seriously.

#174, Kristen

wouldn’t vaccines be contraindicated for an HIV positive person anyway?”

Not all of them.

#172, ArtK,
What, if anything does this paper prove?
More work needs to be done.
What should change in the world as the result of this paper?
More studies.
Does the paper provide evidence of anything related to the science around vaccines or autism?
No.
The paper served its purpose. I’m fairly certain you’ve heard. Congress holding hearing today.

#173, Jud

I asked questions to determine whether you had actually engaged in any sort of rational risk analysis

Yes. I haven’t gone to the doctor in OVER 40 YEARS (for cold or flu). Vaccines present risk. There is NO epidemic in communities, regions or places I will go. What more do I need to know?

#176, Composer99

that Pilkington bluntly and unambiguously claimed the article was science

I didn’t “bluntly” claim. Someone invoked “pseudoscience” which we’ve determined it is neither. Stop quibbling over semantics. We agree its an information article. So what. It is what it is; it served its purpose.

#178, lilady
You said people die of AIDS related illness.

Why do I think that Pilkington now shares his HIV status with us? Am I being cynical in assuming his tosses in HIV now, to evoke our sympathy or to show he has some science credentials? Pilkington I still believe you have no science background, have an inability to separate science from the dross and are anti-vaccine…masquerading as a “free choice” adherent. Tacky, tacky.

If I took state-of-science in America for its word (i.e. AZT et al) I do believe I’d be closer to death, death . . . Of course, that’s my opinion.

Don’t you think it’s odd that more people are living longer than ever before with AIDS than before AZT et al came along? What caused AIDS to go from something that would kill you in six months to something you could live with in decades?

ArtK
Thanks for being a good sport. I want to expand my answers to your questions but, gotta get ready for work. I’ll read some more via phone (very hard to type on it though).

JayK/Wintermute

And why do you deny that you did, even in light of direct quotes where you say it bold-capital-letters IS science?

Dear Strawpeople, I humbly apologize.

Seriously? Quoting your actual words, in the assumption that you meant what you said is a straw-man attack?

In that case, I posit that we have no reason to assume that when you said “Of course, the article IS science”, you didn’t really mean “People should wear hats.”

If you don’t think the words you use in a discussion should have any relationship to the ideas floating around in your brain, why should we waste any time trying to read your mind to figure out what your point actually is?

JayK writes:

A carrier does not necessarily go on to develop AIDS.

Estimates of the percentage of such people (long-term non-progressors, or LTNPs) varies from 1-2% to 5-15%. This is affected by the fact that most LTNPs do eventually develop AIDs, so the percentage of current LTNPs decreases as a given cohort is followed.

Mr. Pilkington says he tested HIV-positive more than 20 years ago, and expressed a negative opinion regarding AZT, etc., which I take to indicate he isn’t on anti-retrovirals. He also says he hasn’t been to see a doctor in 40 years for a cold or flu, but has been sick. Based on these statements, I can think of 3 possibilities:

– His test was a false positive.

– He is one of a microscopically small percentage of people who’ve had HIV for 20 years, haven’t developed AIDs, and haven’t even been significantly immunocompromised, to the point that colds and flu don’t make him terribly ill.

– He’s lying.

Because the second possibility is so very rare, I would conclude that 1 or 3 is far more likely.

Re: positive HIV test 20 years ago.

It isn’t at all unheard of for someone with a positive HIV test to live the rest of their life without signs of AIDS…if the result was a false positive.

The HIV tests of 20 years ago had a false-positive rate of 1 per thousand (or so), which means that there were a large number of false positives, especially in – for example – Illinois, where a well-meaning but scientifically illiterate state legislature required HIV testing to get a marriage license.

I believe the Illinois legislature later eliminated that requirement because, as they were testing a very low risk population, nearly all of the positive results were false positives.

If, on the other hand, Mr. Pilkington has truly been infected with HIV for 20 years, he should contact one of the many HIV research centers – his case may be of inestimable help to AIDS research.

Prometheus

Richard,

Thanks for showing your true colors. Apparently your idea of evidence is outright lies (kind of like Wakefield). And stupid lies, too, where the irrefutable proof is right there in plain sight.

So why exactly should anyone place any credence whatsoever in a single word you say?

The EBCALA paper also confuses “autistic disorder” with “autism spectrum disorders.” Make me wonder who peer reviewed this paper prior to publication in a journal run by law students.

Jarred C,

Especially since the conversation was talking about encephalitis in general, and specifically about two different causes of encephalitis compared to each other.

Please re-read #73 and don’t play stupid. The type of encephalitis that is being compared here is the one specifically caused by the measles virus derived either from natural infection or from the vaccine. So no, we’re not discussing encephalitis in general but rather measles encephalitis.

Mr. Pilkington still doesn’t get it, so let’s see if we can explain it another way.  Mr. Pilkington claims that:

The “news story” meets the “scientific” burden. The study uses empirical data, provides supporting documentation and the means to repeat the study.

So, I will talk about Dr. Scott Reuben.  That should be a familiar name to many; he was an aesthesiologist who published 21 influential papers detailing studies in pain relief.  Unfortunately, as was later discovered, the studies and in some cases the patients as well were entirely invented, and all 21 papers were retracted.

Which of those 21 papers would not meet Mr. Pilkington’s “‘scientific’ burden”?

The empirical data, the supporting documentation, the means to repeat the study – those were all there, even if they had been generated from fertile imagination rather than careful and honest observation.  So in Mr. Pilkington’s phrasing, it would seem that Dr. Reuben’s studies “meet the ‘scientific’ burden” and should bear a great deal of weight, just as he thinks the current study of legal decisions should.

Here’s what Mr. Pilkington seems determined not to understand:  the factors that he presents as the whole of “the ‘scientific’ burden” are important, but they are where good science starts, not where it ends.  There are many things that you can do to screw up what otherwise could have been a meaningful study, and the authors of the current ‘report’ have done many of them:

* Use of inappropriate surrogate endpoints.  If we wanted to know how tall the average fourth-grader is, we could pick a sample population of fourth-graders and measure each one of them from head to toe with a tape measure.  If we chose instead to wait until a fourth-grade class made a trip to an amusement park, and then counted how many were turned away from rides with “you must be this tall to ride” signs, everyone would wonder, rightfully, why we were deliberately choosing to use data that was (even if technically “empirical”) clearly at a significant remove from the best data that we could have used.

* Avoidance of evaluation by experts.  Suppose you own two properties, and each of them needs repairs to bring them up to code.  You hire two contractors, one for each of the two properties.  One says, “All right, I’ll do the repairs, and after the state inspector examines the repairs and confirms that they’re up to code, you pay me the money for the job.”  The other says, “All right, I’ll do the repairs, and after you pay me the money for the job, you can call in the state inspector to examine the repairs.  And he’ll surely confirm that they’re up to code.”  You suggest to the second contractor that he should, like the first, wait until his work passes inspection to take money for it, and he gets highly agitated.  “No!  I have to get my money before the inspection, you hear?  I can’t wait and get my money only if a professional confirms that I did it right!  I have to get my money before any professional gets a look at my work!”

Sure sounds like that second contractor knows that the job he did will never pass inspection, doesn’t it?  Sounds like he’s planning to ‘take the money and run,’ doesn’t it?  Well, that’s the impression that ‘science by press conference’ gives to those who know how science is really done.  It may be “grab the publicity and run” rather than “grab the money” but really, the principle’s the same.  If the authors of this ‘report’ thought their work was actually sound enough to survive scrutiny by experts in the field, they would have submitted it to experts in the field for examination, and then the results could have been publicized and had all the more authority because experts in the field had confirmed that the science was basically sound.  Instead, they chose to make sure their claims hit the headlines before anyone could double-check their work.  You should wonder why.

The point, once again, is that what Mr. Pilkington presents as all that’s needed to meet “the ‘scientific’  burden” is really a minimal – exceedingly minimal – starting point.  Just because a ‘report’ manages to make it up to this very modest bar does not make it good science.  Of course, I think that if he were to be fully honest, Mr. Pilkington would admit that he doesn’t regard this ‘report’ as good science because it meets the burden he described; he regards it as good science because it says what he wants to hear.

Matthew Cline,

[…]thus encephalitis caused by a measles vaccine is measles encephalitis. You’re not going to convince Th1Th2 otherwise: […]

Well, I am not a germ denialist, are you?

The South Korean study is completely irrelevant unless the same screening test they used in their study was also used on the vaccine-injured-compensated children. You can’t just say, oh the test found the rate is three time higher and the vaccine injured kids have a rate of autism that is three times higher so therefore it is no different! No, because you don’t know how many more cases would have been found among the vaccine injured if they used a different screening test.

@ Jessica:

You just blew out my irony meter. After all, the entire case put forward in the “study” is that the rate they “measured” was higher than in the general population. By your same argument, those numbers can’t be compared since they used different tests.

So tell me, do you reject those results as meaningless too?

I just noticed #27 from Mr. Pilkington

I get it now. In science drunk drivers are not the cause of a victims death or injury. Clarity!

Did you read the next sentence after the part you quoted? I’ll remind you. “Avoidance of vaccines as a potential ‘trigger’ in patients who harbour a SCN1A mutation does not make biological sense”.

FMJ,

Ooops. Sorry my bad. I didn’t know you were refuting CG’s stance that measles vaccines indeed cause measles infection. Well, that happens all the time when infection-promoters like you contradict one another like Gray and Chris. Obviously, nobody is going to criticize you except me. So how do you feel about CG’s claim?

And as for you, you claimed:

Someone who is exposed, but does not need adaptive immunity to clear the pathogen is not INFECTED. Get it?

How do you expose someone to a pathogen?

Boring deranged troll is boring and deranged.

DNFTT

Oh, dear. It would appear that I’ve managed to annoy someone. Yet another irony meter is fried as Craig accuses me of “missing the point”:

Me, “missing the point”? Pot, kettle, black, Craig. Pot, kettle, black.

No, no, no, no, JayK, you’ve got it all wrong! I’m shifting the goalposts! Craig himself says so in the comments of his post (Blogger’s down, and Craig hates me so much that deletes any comment I leave on his blog):

I mentioned this on FB, but an observation just occurred to me. The reason that Orac and his followers are so focused on the prevalence is that, to me, they are clearly trying to shift the goalposts. The claim is that vaccines don’t cause autism, and when cases (using the government’s own data, mind you) are presented that disprove this claim, they shift the goalposts and say, “Oh, well the prevalence is the same as in the Korea study.”

First off, the government’s own data do not “prove” that vaccines cause autism. Second, there is no “shifting of goalposts.” I could have easily made the same argument without the South Korean study. It was nothing more than conveniently timed icing on the cake. Craig simply does not understand the concepts that (1) correlation does not necessarily equal causation; (2) in order to justify looking for causation, you need to have at least correlation, which the PACE study doesn’t provide, given that it can’t show a significantly higher risk of autism in the VICP-compensated population; and (3) that legal evidence is not scientific evidence.

Poor Craig. With his realization that Andrew Wakefield is a fraud, I thought there was hope for him. I really did. But he appears to be backsliding.

The question that Thingy always raises in my mind is where does he/she live that the sidewalks are sterile? I went out to look at the sidewalk just outside my building and it was DISGUSTING. Gum, dirt, what I suspect was dog urine. Yuck.

I must get to Thingy when she has to quote me. At least my story points out that kids have resilient immune systems and do not need to live in the sterile fantasy she has devised in her delusional mind.

Chris,

At least you’ve made the children useful in the community by teaching them to clean up the streets. So how many grams of used gum and dirt do you require children to eat per day in order for them to become robust and healthy? Also, don’t forget to tell schoolers to always check under their desks for some gooey surprise.

Unthinking respect for authority is the worst enemy of truth. Scientism is not Science. The Pharmaceutical Industry is not in buisness to protect your health. Vaccines cause chronic illness which are a pathway to profits. Prior to 1980 vaccines were given to children before they entered school around the age of 4 years. Injecting so many foreign agents into a baby defies logic on a grand scale. It’s necessary for evey parent to educate themselves on this subject and to stop following what the so called experts are preaching. In a society so focused on power and wealth, why would anyone put their childrens health into the hands of an industry that has been proven time and time again to falsify its own data. Put your trust in Nature. It’s been around for a long time and when you follow it’s basic rules, you will be rewarded with vibrant health and well being.

Put your trust in Nature. It’s been around for a long time and when you follow it’s basic rules, you will be rewarded with vibrant health and well being.

You mean like the Black Death, the Spanish Flu in 1918, malaria in present-day Africa…? Or do you mean the “Nature” pushed by Big Vitamin and Big Health Food? (You know they effectively lobbied Congress to prevent any health and safety regulation, right?) Or some other bastardized modern-day idealized vision of Nature purveyed to people who wouldn’t last a day on a medium-stress camping trip, let alone in actual untrammeled natural conditions?

Oh yeah Jim, that wonderful nature that gave us Smallpox, Black Death, plus a myriad other diseases over the past hundred thousand years or so.

Your metaphysical views shine through. No wonder you have a philosophical basis for the “need” of medicine. You’re scared and insecure. The medicine makes you feel better about the nature of life. Return to the Oracle for wise counsel.

And what was the average lifespan of our “natural” forefathers? 25 – 30 years tops? Somehow I think we’ve managed to better than that with modern medicine over the last hundred years.

In 1950, the life expectancy for a 50 year white man was 21.6 MORE years! According to you he should have died 25 years earlier. 100 years later we factors not only including medicine added approx. ONE year to the avg. lifespan. Today the same aged man, on a population avg has gained about 7.5 more years.

Ill let you say it to yourself Doh

Moron.

From “augustine” (#227):

“In 1950, the life expectancy for a 50 year white man was 21.6 MORE years! According to you he should have died 25 years earlier. 100 years later we factors not only including medicine added approx. ONE year to the avg. lifespan. Today the same aged man, on a population avg has gained about 7.5 more years.”

Uh, “augustine”, the year is 2011 – one hundred years after 1950 would be 2050, 39 years in the future.

Also, by 1950 we already had most of the “modern” conveniences (in the US) like refrigeration, sanitary sewers, municipal water supplies, etc., so that’s not exactly comparable to our “natural” ancestors, is it?

The fact that white males have added only a few years more life (comparing men born in 1900 to men born in 1961, in “augustine’s” example) isn’t exactly an idictment of modern medicine. Despite the fact that we get less exercise and take more medications and are exposed to (hypothetically) more “chemicals”, we humans just keep living longer and longer. It’s gotta frost your pipes, “augustine”, since it puts the lie to your “sicker” society claims.

Pointless, I know, to argue with a pathological contrarian, but I just couldn’t let him/her get by with it.

Prometheus

“among this planet’s infinite organisms”

As this planet has a finite size and finite resources, I don’t see how it could have infinite organisms. Infinite is not just a 1 word version of “a lot”.

Wow – boring troll is purposely misunderstanding again. When I said “forefathers” I was reaching all the way back to pre-history (especially since some bible-thumpers claim people back then lived 900 years or more – yeah right), when even the slightest cut or abrasion could be fatal due to infections.

So yeah – you’re a moron.

And Jim, being a proponent of natural selection has obviously thrown away all trappings of modern life and must be getting his internet from the ether & living in a tree somewhere (to escape the various predators that would love nothing more than to eat him).

And we’ve gotten a lot smarter over the years – we no longer have to tolerate the death of billions by simple diseases. I would say that makes us a lot stronger, not weaker, as a species (and especially given the ever increasing rate of advancement, I’d say we are much stronger).

I mean really boring troll – you’ve avoided every direct question about your own qualifications, education or employment, isn’t about time to put up or shut up, or better yet, just shut up.

And you never answered my questions about your own “de-humanizing” comments, nor the actions of others of your ilk (the Thanksgiving AoA cannibalism cartoon specifically), or why you are so against disease eradication.

So, you’re a non-entity, a nobody, and nobody cares.

How can you relate internal medical intervetions to external objects. Technology can be a tool for increased life span (ex..sanitation) but it can also be a source of pollution and toxic burdens.

With the exception of man’s oldest disease, Malaria, the scourges of mankind have resulted from dense populations living in small compact areas…overcrowded cities with little or no sanitation. This is why Native populations of the Americas lacked immunity to the infectious diseases that ravaged Europe and Asia for centuries.

How effective was vaccination?:

…Not only had poor sanitation and nutrition lain the foundation for disease, it was also compulsory smallpox vaccination campaigns in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that played a major role in decimating the populations of: Japan (48,000 deaths), England and Wales (44,840 deaths, after 97 percent of the population had been vaccinated), Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Holland, Italy, India (3 million — all vaccinated), Australia, Germany (124,000 deaths), Prussia (69,000 deaths — all re-vaccinated), and the Philippines. The epidemics ended in cities where smallpox vaccinations were either discontinued, or never begun, and after sanitary reforms were instituted (Smallpox Vaccination).

You’re moving the goalposts: one minute you were claiming that deaths from smallpox are natural selection and hence good, so vaccination is bad, and now suddenly you’re arguing that the problem with smallpox vaccination is that it increases the death rate [citation needed]. Pick at most one: if smallpox infection is good, you should applaud an ineffective vaccine program, because it exposes more people to the pathogen.

Seriously: you’re arguing in favor of people, including children, dying in misery as somehow good for society/the species.

I’ve heard a lot of odd claims about the pre-Columbian Americas, but the idea that most of the people were living in “overcrowded cities” is a new one. [citation needed]

What part of natural law allows you to use electricity? Haha..are you kidding??

Nope. Electric appliances aren’t natural, so why are they good but not vaccination? Also, where are you getting your numbers? We have no obligation to take your word for anything.

Jim:

Haha..are you kidding??

Absolutely not. You might want to avail yourself to another thing that is not natural: your local public library. You seem to lack a basic knowledge of history, biology, anthropology, logic, and a bunch of other subjects. I suggest you read about the history of malaria, which used to be common in both Europe and the United States.

Or you can keep posting your drivel, it is good for a laugh.

It’s nice to see these two groups of infection-promoters (pro-pox vs pro-vax) arguing on how to prevent infection. Oh the irony.

Uh, “augustine”, the year is 2011 – one hundred years after 1950 would be 2050, 39 years in the future.

1850.

when even the slightest cut or abrasion could be fatal due to infections.

You mean like nonsocomial infections and iatrogenesis today?

1.7 million hospital acquired infections resulting in 99,000 deaths per year

augustine writes:

In 1950, the life expectancy for a 50 year white man was 21.6 MORE years! According to you he should have died 25 years earlier. 100 years later we factors not only including medicine added approx. ONE year to the avg. lifespan.

Oh dear, my poor dear augustine.

Listen, some friendly (really) advice: Next time you’re thinking of posting on a subject that has ANYTHING to do with math – don’t.

You have no idea how actuarial tables work, do you? Remaining life expectancy at age 50 does not equal life expectancy at birth minus 50 years. So the two quantities you cite (21.6 more years for a 50 year old in 1850, ~72.6 year life expectancy for someone born in 1950) aren’t nearly comparable in the simplistic way you imagine.

Now you’ve been told, you can go ahead and look up the correct numbers on your own, or I can come back after I’ve had some time and leisure to look and post the correct figures for you.

Now you’ve been told, you can go ahead and look up the correct numbers on your own,

Better yet, you can look at them yourself!

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html

No need to apologize or humble yourself.

Trolls trolls everywhere, and nary a drop of intelligence amongst them.

Augie thinks people should just die at home, rather than go to a hospital, thingie doesn’t show much of a clue about the discussion and Jim is just throwing out BS in order to get a rise out of people. Hey, 80 people died of measles last year in the US, so vaccines are bad, m’kay?

Ummm….Augustine, I do not think you’re arguing what you think you are arguing.
You are correct – per that table, if a white male reached the age of 50 in 1850, he could expect to live another 21.6 years. On the other hand, the life expectancy of a newborn was only 38.3 years. So a substantial number of white males did not live to see 50, much less 71.6. On average white males did not live past 40 and a substantial percentage died before age 10 (per the chart – you’ll notice that 10 year olds could expect to live 48 more years).

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Due to extensive ongoing bridge repair projects, you may expect to encounter many homeless and incoherent trolls over the coming weeks. Please do not feed them, store all food supplies securely, and pack out your garbage.

Thank you.

Continuing with Mephistopheles’ point, a white male born in 1850 had a life expectancy of a mere 38.3 years. A white male born in 1950 had a life expectancy of 66.31 years, an extra 28 years. That’s because so many born in 1950 didn’t die in infancy or childhood.

augustine has now demonstrated that it not only is totally ignorant of the most elementary concepts of probability and statistics, it also can’t even read a very simple chart.

augustine wants medicine to end, utterly and completely, and all doctors, nurses, and any other medical practitioners to quit entirely and do something else. Because no matter how dire the patient’s situation, and no matter how safe the intervention, there is always a risk that the patient might die as a direct result of the intervention.  And to augustine there is absolutely no defense to a charge of murder in that case:

It’s also the ole I’ve done more good deeds than bad deeds doctrine therefore I’m a good person. Completely ignoring that 99,000 people were needlessly killed. It’s also how war mongerers rationalize collateral damage.

Isn’t it cool how the number of iatrogenic deaths goes up every time it’s given? It’s like a game of telephone.

Jim (#223)

In a society so focused on power and wealth, why would anyone put their childrens health into the hands of an industry that has been proven time and time again to falsify its own data.

Like how Andrew Wakefield falsified his data after he was offered large amounts of money to fabricate a link between autism and vaccines, you mean?

LW,

By the way, augustine and Th1Th2, do feel free to stay far, far away from any medical treatment of any kind. Rely on sanitation and herbs. I doubt anyone here will mind.

Translation: Doctors are always right when it comes to medical diagnosis and intervention no matter what. Therefore, the 783,936 iatrogenic deaths that occur every year should not be a cause for concern, at least, it’s a professional way to die or deteriorate slowly. Patients should not panic but rather continue to trust their health (and life) to their doctors.

Th1Th2,
I don’t recall LW ever saying that doctors are always right no matter what. Would you please point to a message that specifically said so? Otherwise, your last message is merely a lie.

@jim

“With the exception of man’s oldest disease, Malaria,”

citation please?

Leprosy seems to be the oldest disease known to man. That’s what I’ve been able to find at least. Can’t find anything referring to malaria as man’s oldest disease.
random troll Jim fails.
Auger misunderstands literally everything.
Th1Th2 is still speaking Thinglish.
The sun rose and set.

@ Yojimbo

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
Due to extensive ongoing bridge repair projects, you may expect to encounter many homeless and incoherent trolls over the coming weeks. Please do not feed them, store all food supplies securely, and pack out your garbage.
Thank you.

You deserve a few internets. I salute you.

Well done, Jud. The difference in child mortality is so huge that I think it’s hard for us moderns to really imagine what it was like to live in a world where so many children simply died young.

In one of Dickens’ books there is a statement that runs something like, ” They had a visitor who stayed for a short time and then turned her face to the wall and departed.” I remember it because I puzzled over it for a while before it dawned on me that this was a delicate way of saying that they had a baby that died young. Dickens assumed his readers would understand that because of course it was a common experience.

It amazes me (actually, no it doesn’t) that the trolls who bandy about those ever-changing figures about how supposedly many iatrogenic deaths there are each year never seem to realize: nothing in “iatrogenic” specifies Western medicine. A child killed by a DAN! doctor’s chelation is just as much an iatrogenic death as one who dies from complications of surgery.

LW,

No, actually, the translation is, “doctors’ lives are difficult enough trying to figure out the many things that can go wrong with something as incredibly complicated as a human body.

Despite all that, the clueless doctor will still end up with a medical diagnosis and intervention while the patient runs the risk.

No drama please.

Th1Th2 is clueless; doctors are not. As I said, there’s no reason any doctor should have to deal with a nasty bigot like Th1Th2.

So, Th1Th2, do you have any evidence that medicine causes more deaths that it prevents? Or do you have a perfect solution that you aren’t telling us about? Here’s a hint, “Don’t get sick” isn’t a perfect solution.

“Or decubitus ulcer which is the hallmark sign of being a longtime faithful to the Church of Modern Medicine.”

My first reaction was contempt for Th1Th2’s inability to read the very wiki page it cited, which pointed out that bedsores occur in acute care (hospitals), in long term care (nursing homes), and in home care, and that they are due to pressure where the patient isn’t able to move to relieve the pressure, or doesn’t realize the need to do so. I knew someone who developed a bedsore while living at home and going to work most days; he had some nerve damage and couldn’t feel the injury that was occurring, and in fact he died of the infection. Bedsores do not exclusively occur in hospitals as Th1Th2 apparently believes.

But my second reaction was to agree that, yes, most bedsores probably do occur in people who have received a lot of medical care: the immunocompromised, the elderly and infirm, the paralyzed. Of course, they’d mostly have died much earlier if they *hadn’t* been receiving that care.

Like so many bigots, Th1Th2 appears to have never even met a member of the class it hates, despises, and maligns. It reminds me of Woody Allen in Love and Death discussing whether Jews have horns or stripes.

Certainly patients can question doctors, or get second opinions, or take whatever herbs and tonics they want; any sane person knows that. (I once insisted to a doctor that what he considered a simple asthma attack was much more serious, so he did more tests and determined that it was pneumonia — he didn’t excommunicate me for arguing!) Certainly doctors can question the consensus of the profession; look at our favorite pediatrician to the stars.

Th1Th2 is so blinded by hatred and bigotry as to be incapable of perceiving obvious facts. So there’s no point in further interaction with it.

Th1Th2 still has no evidence to back up her accusations.

“That’s quite reassuring, isn’t it? ”

Yes. If your second biggest cause of ‘iatrogenic’ deaths is pressure sores, then it’s a pretty big indication that you do not understand who gets pressure sores and why, or what iatrogenic means and what is required to be so.

You have effectively reconfirmed why you should not be ignored, but laughed at at every opportunity, and that we should continue to laugh at your weak attempts at abuse and misbehaviour until you develop a clue.

Thanks for that.

Th1Th2:

“Don’t drive recklessly”. Surprisingly, Gray does not agree because he had been planning to do exactly that. Drivers beware!

People have been in car crashes while driving safely. There’s no such thing as a perfect precaution. Of course, Th1Th2 still doesn’t know that.

lilady,

Yes. If your second biggest cause of ‘iatrogenic’ deaths is pressure sores, then it’s a pretty big indication that you do not understand who gets pressure sores and why, or what iatrogenic means and what is required to be so.

Oh here’s one. Those patients who survived ADRs and medication errors, who went into shock, intubated and now paralyzed by Doctor Smarty Smarts.

Hint: If it is an iatrogenic death, then “All roads lead to Rome.”

If it is an iatrogenic death, then “All roads lead to Rome.”

I think I’ll use that next time I teach symbolic logic.

Batshit crazy an tedious Thing continues to be batshit crazy and tedious.

If we go with Thing’s broad concept of causation, then, because I was a hospital birth, every thing that happens to me is iatrogenic.

Holy shit! Th1Th2 can copy and paste from a dictionary! THAT IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS UNDERSTANDING WHAT IS SAID!
fuck YOU doctors

Oh and maybe we should hang the horse that caused Christopher Reeve’s quadraplegia……oh what? It wasn’t a doctor? Really? Oh, never mind thingy I guess it wasn’t iatrogenic afterall…..

Terrie,

If we go with Thing’s broad concept of causation, then, because I was a hospital birth, every thing that happens to me is iatrogenic.

Did you suffer a birth injury due to hospital negligence, medical error or malpractice?

Whoever’s running “Th1Th2″—seriously, give it up. ELIZA was much more convincing and that was 45 years ago. Your program has failed the Turing Test. Salvage whatever information you can from this failure and start over.

(The same goes for whoever’s running “augustine.” Your algorithm is obviously much more sophisticated, but ultimately no more convincing.)

Lilady, the “real one” did post at 310; I couldn’t resist making an educated armchair diagnosis of Thingy’s “problem”.

I still can’t figure out who/what is running the trolls’ postings…certainly no one with minimal brain function.

Meanwhile, a measles epidemic has struck Europe with over 6000 cases so far this year, and 3 cases of acute encephalitis and 3 deaths. The UK has had approaching 300 cases. In Bulgaria in 2009 and 2010 there were over 24,000 measles cases and 24 deaths.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13378119
http://pediatrics.about.com/b/2011/04/21/measles-outbreaks.htm

The answer is simple. It depends on how you plan to get sick.

OK, I plan to get sick while travelling on a trans-continental airline flight when my seatmate – a complete stranger to me – turns out not to be suffering from allergies as she thought but is the early stages of influenza. Naturally, this travel is requested by my employers.

So – How do I avoid getting sick in this situation?

If that’s too easy, I also plan to step on a nail which pierces my shoe and infects me with tetanus. I will not see the nail before I step on it, as I will be busy avoiding the rattlesnake which reared up ahead of me.

Real-life example from 10 minutes ago.

I am at my place of work (normal 8-5 type job). I use the restroom. As I’m going about my business, water from the bathroom above suddenly drips on me. How do I avoid getting sick in this situation?

Krebiozen,

[…]and 3 cases of acute encephalitis and 3 deaths.

Wow, that sure is a very alarming number compared to the 783,936 iatrogenic deaths per year. I assumed those deceased were efficiently treated by a licensed cook since measles is generally a benign and uncomplicated disease. But you know “too many cook spoil the broth”.

Did Thingy pull yet another number out of thin air?

Do please tell us how benign and uncomplicated measles is by telling us what happened to Roald Dahl’s oldest child. Oh, and what happened to over 150 Americans when there was an outbreak in the USA a bit over twenty years ago.

Good thing there’s a killed vaccine then, right?

Mephistopheles,

If that’s too easy, I also plan to step on a nail which pierces my shoe and infects me with tetanus. I will not see the nail before I step on it, as I will be busy avoiding the rattlesnake which reared up ahead of me.

Real-life example please.

Real-life example please.

Ok. Exact same example, except it’s an 8 year old child wearing sandals running across the street. The child steps on a rusty nail he didn’t see, and the nail goes right through the sandal, into the child’s foot.

Don’t think that’s “real-life” enough? Well, it’s a real life story that happened to me when I was a kid.

Thingy, you don’t get out much, do you?

dedicated lurker,

Good thing there’s a killed vaccine then, right

There is not an inherent good whatsoever when you’re promoting infection. The goal of using killed vaccines is to promote a noncommunicable form of vaccine-induced infection.

The goal of using killed vaccines is to promote a noncommunicable form of vaccine-induced infection.

No, you’re wrong. That may well be the goal of using a LIVE vaccine, but dead vaccines do not infect by any definition but your own. That’s why they’re considered killed.

Jarred C.,

Don’t think that’s “real-life” enough? Well, it’s a real life story that happened to me when I was a kid.

Did the kid happen to plan this ahead of time, by stepping on a rusty nail he knew had lab confirmed C. tetani and guess what, that he had to wear only Havaianas sandals? The director must have sold this short film to Pixar.

@Th1Th2

Wow, that sure is a very alarming number compared to the 783,936 iatrogenic deaths per year.

So it’s OK for children to die or suffer encephalitis from a preventable disease in Europe because a lot of very sick old people die from bed sores and malnutrition in America? How would you explain that to the parents of those children?

I would like to see a reduction in deaths from poor medical and nursing care, and I would like to see preventable infectious diseases prevented. Measles remains one of the leading causes of death among young children globally, despite the availability of a safe and effective vaccine. This is shameful.

Gray,

No, this is what was known as an “accident” by those of us living in the real world.

Who else beside you here are earnestly planning for an accident to happen?

You still haven’t shown that all vaccination does is cause infection, just claimed it without evidence.

How many times did I hear you claimed that measles vaccines cause measles infection?

Vaccines can cause encephalitis and it’s NOT OK more so the 783,936 iatrogenic deaths per year, that you are trying to belittle.

I don’t believe vaccines do cause encephalitis. To quote the University of Maryland Medical Center, “Although there used to be concern that diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus and measles-mumps-rubella vaccines could cause encephalitis, recent research indicates that these childhood vaccines are very safe and do not increase encephalitis risk.”

Measles undoubtedly causes encephalitis in around 1 in 1000 cases. The math is simple.

I also don’t believe the “783,936 iatrogenic deaths per year” figure that Gary Null has cobbled together. Even assuming it is accurate, the answer is not to abandon modern medicine in favor of naturopathy, homeopathy, acupuncture or whatever. We need to improve standards of medical and nursing care. We need better and safer drugs. We need better safety protocols. We need better preventative medicine, of which vaccination is a major component. There are people busily working on all this at this very moment.

Incidentally, I wonder how [insert name of preferred woo-meister here] would cope in a trauma unit, or an intensive treatment unit. I bet you would see some iatrogenic deaths then!

dedicated lurker,

You must not have insurance. Or a disaster plan.

Do they prevent accidents?

Do they prevent accidents?

You asked about planning, not prevention.

the 783,936 iatrogenic deaths per year

See, as has been pointed out before, this figure is transparently nonsense.
Sigh. Now, sit down, put down your lego, and I’ll tell you.

#1. It’s very precise, isn’t it? To the nearest 1, in fact. Such things could only ever be an estimate – between 7 and 8 hundred thousand say (with an error bar, surely?) like, say, the number of people in your town, or the likelihood that you have any clue what you’re talking about. Actually we know that to a high degree of certaintity.

#2. What does this spurious, rectally delivered, number actually mean? xxxxxxx people were murdered by their doctors? Left to die in fetid sheets? Misdiagnosed in such a way as to fail to prevent the easily preventable? Invented?

#3. What organisation exits, or has ever existed, which would admit to this needless slaughter of eternally living beings? I mean, surely, some of these statistics would have died anyway? People do die in hospitals, you know. Some of them from natural causes – life itself could be to blame, no? And, your source is…….?

#4. Orac has, without doubt, seen many people die even after his best interventions. Was he responsible for their deaths? How is this balanced by the 2,310,576,812 people saved by doctors and health professionals last year?

#5. No. Oh, and, fuckwits, how many lives have you clueless morons ever saved? Hint – it rhymes with “hero”.

#6. Why don’t you stop spilling your ill-retained spittle over this blog, stop posting your bullshit, and spend your time doing something worthwhile, such as helping the poor and needy, being much less of an arsehole to your friends and family (based on your postings here – hint, they think you’re insufferable) – smoking pot, having sex, or, in the case of little augie, just having another wank?

#7. Little augie posted to “The Onion” last week. This is a better one – regulars, please read 😉

Th1Th2:

The study is a reflection on how inept doctors were in treating a benign and uncomplicated measles.

That is not what the study says. There are three reasons you could have said what you did:

1) You have serious reading comprehension problems.

2) You are delusional and see things on a page which are not there.

3) You are a liar.

Being that you are going on flights of fancy, cannot answer simple questions, change definitions of words and accuse people of things they did not say… I am going to go with #3. You are liar who cannot keep your fantasy world facts straight.

I think the simplest explanation is persistent stupidity, Chris.
Let’s just hope there are no children immersed in it.

AnthonyK, that may be the simplest. Though honest people who are stupid do actually learn, albeit a bit slower. She has been smart enough to use deception to steer a conversation her way, so I am guessing she is not stupid. She is a persistent liar.

I stand by my invented figure.
You fall by yours.
100% imbecile.

AnthonyK,

See, as has been pointed out before, this figure is transparently nonsense.

Trans: Iatrogenic death shouldn’t be a cause for concern.

Th1Th2 Since you are so concerned, what is your proposal to reduce iatrogenic deaths?

Chris,

She also failed to answer the question about Roald Dahl’s oldest child.

“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.
“I feel all sleepy, ” she said.
In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead. The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her.

Do you anything about the health status of the host prior to measles infection? How did Roald manage to treat measles at home? What did the doctors use to treat measles especially during the last 12 hours?

Th1Th2, she was a healthy child. It was in the article, and according to another article by her mother she was in the hospital. Your skipping those details is just another case of you being a liar.

Measles kills previously healthy children. You making excuses that the children deserve to die due to some unknown medical condition is just another lie.

But that is all you know how to do, since you are a liar.

Chris,

Th1Th2, she was a healthy child.It was in the article,[…]

I couldn’t find that word “healthy” at least in this article. MEASLES: A dangerous illness by ROALD DAHL
http://www.blacktriangle.org/blog/?p=715
http://www.encephalitis.info/images/iPdf/Resources/FactSheets/fs043MeaslesMumps.pdf

[…]and according to another article by her mother she was in the hospital.

Duh. That’s a no-brainer. It’s where all the action is. Roald knew her child was unconscious. So what do you do when your child is unconscious, you call Batman?

Your skipping those details is just another case of you being a liar.

I’m not skipping. I was asking accordingly. And you’re evading.

Chris,

Measles kills previously healthy children.

Doctors are ignorant and don’t know how to diagnose health. Do you want evidence for that?

You making excuses that the children deserve to die due to some unknown medical condition is just another lie.

Or something they did to the child.

Okay, it did not say she was healthy. But it did not say she was unhealthy. And neither does the story from her mother. There is no mention of her being sickly, and she lived in a nice home with well-to-do parents.

What evidence do you have that the only reason children die from measles is that they have other health issues? Show us the evidence. Give us the paper that the five hundred deaths that occurred annually in the USA before 1965 were only in people with health issues?

Were the Native Americans whose deaths from measles initiated the Whitman Massacre sickly before? Did they deserve to die because they were not white?

Why do you think children with genetic issues that could affect their hearts, lungs and other systems deserve to die from measles? Why do you think children who have cancer deserve to die from measles? Are only the healthy allowed life in your reality?

Plus, why do you lie?

dedicated lurker,

How do you know the food has poliovirus in it? Do we all have to have in home laboratories now?

How did they know there was poliovirus in the sugar cubes they gladly gave to millions of naive children around the world? That wasn’t an accident, was it?

Chris,

Okay, it did not say she was healthy. But it did not say she was unhealthy. And neither does the story from her mother. There is no mention of her being sickly, and she lived in a nice home with well-to-do parents.

Nobody would seem to bother. Of course, if the same event happened to a vaccine-damaged child, doctors would be blaming other causes and exonerate vaccines.

What evidence do you have that the only reason children die from measles is that they have other health issues? Show us the evidence. Give us the paper that the five hundred deaths that occurred annually in the USA before 1965 were only in people with health issues?

The health of the host is NOT the only factor that would determine prognosis. Modern Medicine has the capability to cause a wide array of injury, disability, loss of bodily function, end-organ damage, and deterioration which can lead to death, regardless. Both the healthy and not-so healthy child will die in the hands of an inept doctor!

Why do you think children with genetic issues that could affect their hearts, lungs and other systems deserve to die from measles?

First off, why do you intentionally infect them with live measles virus?

Why do you think children who have cancer deserve to die from measles?

Do you feel happy everytime you have to infect them with live measles virus?

Are only the healthy allowed life in your reality?

With Modern Medicine’s infection-promoting agenda in vaccination, I do not think their goal is to make people thrive in health.

I bet your ‘ol resident nurse lilady knows how to administer OPV on a sugar cube.

This is starting to sound suspiciously augustinian.

Doctors are ignorant and don’t know how to diagnose health.

I see a new and creative definition of ‘diagnosis’ on the way here.

Going back to the word ‘iatrogenic’, I happen to be a strict etymological originalist when it comes to definitions, forcing me to insist that ‘iatrogenic’ means ‘giving rise to doctors’. E.g. “Jewish mothers are stereotyped as being iatrogenic”. Any other meaning is just silly… next you’ll be trying to tell me that ‘carcinogenic’ means ’caused by crabs’.

Clearly there are not many fatalities that create a doctor as a side-effect (apart from the ones that inspire an onlooker to enter Med school) so I don’t understand what all the fuss is about iatrogenic deaths.

<

Poor thingy; now it can’t even tell when it’s being mocked.

Mephistopheles,

Are you dumb?

Transplanted organs —it’s not infection, it’s called rejection.

Fragments of cells—like other people’s blood? It’s not an infection, it’s called hemolytic reaction!

Certain metals or organometallic compounds—this is funny. You don’t call that infection; it’s poisoning.

Certain proteins —in certain foods? That’s food allergy, genius. You don’t call that infection.

Urushiol —that causes hypersensitivity? It’s an allergen, not a pathogen.

Now, what’s the commonly accepted definition of “infect” that applies to all foreign substances in the body?

One word. Pathogens. You wouldn’t know because you’re an absolute germ-denialist.

Antaeus,

And now everyone can see how Goofus changes the subject.  The point that I made, phrased as a syllogism rather than as an argumentum ad absurdam,

Of course, if I throw Science into these bunch of germ-denialists, they will find refuge in syllogism and metaphors. It’s always a predictable response.

1. Goofus interprets the word “infection” so broadly that every introduction of foreign substance into the body would count as “infection,” and insists that all infection is bad for the infectee.

Trans: I’m a germ-denialist. I deny the existence of pathogens. If ever they exist, I will deny they cause infection.

2. But that very broad interpretation of infection actually covers the act of feeding ourselves, which is not only good for the person fed but would be very very bad if it weren’t practiced.

Trans: Since I am a germ-denialist, I do not believe in food-borne diseases. If poliovirus is my appetizer, salmonella would be my entree.

3. Therefore, even if we were to accept Goofus’ revisionary interpretation of the word “infection,” we would have to reject her contention that introduction of foreign substance into the body is always bad.

Trans: I love measles!

Is Goofus able to respond intelligently to this syllogism?  

You mean germ-denialism?

Th1Th2, why are you grossly misrepresenting what Antaeus has written? He pointed out to you the bizarre implications of your nonsensical misunderstanding of the concept of infection. He didn’t deny germ theory, he denied what you think germ theory says. If you have evidence otherwise, provide it.

Thanks to this comment thread, I believe we have reached the point where, of Thing1Thing2, we can safely claim that “everything she says is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”

With that in mind, DNFTT.

It just occurred to me how the Thing could actually contribute to science. He should join the Mythbusters!

As the new Buster.

Mu,

germ-denialism. You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means

I really am Gobsmacked by germ theory denialism. Again.

People believe a lot of wacky things. Some of these things are merely amusingly wacky, while others are dangerously wacky. Among the most dangerously wacky of things that a large number of people believe in is the idea that germ theory is invalid. Perhaps a better way of putting it is that among the most dangerously wacky of nonsense is germ theory denialism; i.e., the denial that germs are the cause of disease[…]True, for different diseases it’s not always clear what the causative organism is or even if there is a causative organism, but these examples all fit into the general framework of the germ theory of infectious disease.

Not surprisingly, Sb is full of wacky things, wacky pretenders, and of course wacky germ-denialists including the inane and insane.

No, I do not deny it. The immune reaction against by these agents you mentioned is anything but infection. What is so obvious is your disingenuous attempt to hide your germ-denialism by redefining the term “infect” and using it inappropriately.

Part of the immune reaction to those agents is to chop them up into manageable, inactive snippets and display them on the surface of white blood cells, which you have unambiguously stated to be “infection” by your idiosyncratic definition. You should really read what you write sometime—it’s very amusing, in a guilty, making-fun-of-the-handicapped sort of way.

“I bet your ‘ol resident nurse lilady knows how to administer OPV on a sugar cube”…You lose.

I received my immunization against polio the old fashioned way with a shot in early adolescence, after the Salk vaccine became widely available.

I immunized infants while on the examining table or held in mommy’s arms with OPV dropped into baby’s mouth from an individual dose plastic tube. Older children readily opened their mouths to get their OPV dose.

@ Narad: I wonder if Thingy is one of Ugh Trolls “imaginary” children

Gray,

Th1Th2, why are you grossly misrepresenting what Antaeus has written? He pointed out to you the bizarre implications of your nonsensical misunderstanding of the concept of infection. He didn’t deny germ theory, he denied what you think germ theory says. If you have evidence otherwise, provide it.

Nope. Antaeus, like Mephistopheles, is barking up the wrong tree.

lilady,

I immunized infants while on the examining table or held in mommy’s arms with OPV dropped into baby’s mouth from an individual dose plastic tube. Older children readily opened their mouths to get their OPV dose.

Trans: I do not need to disguise the virus. I am very competent and happy infecting naive children with live poliovirus. Thank you, come again.

That’s pretty much why I stopped engaging with her. The more you do, the more you realize she isn’t really engaged with reality in the same way. It’s not that she’s lying, exactly, any more than was that poor lady complaining about government chemicals in the water making her sprinkler produce rainbows.

So if it is a pathogen, then it’s OK to acquire “infection” since it will still be mediated by the immune system to “chop them up into manageable, inactive snippets and display them on the surface of white blood cells” without really calling this event an “infection”. NEWSFLASH! Redefinition eradicates infectious diseases.

It was your (insane) definition of “infection” in the first place, lackwit!

For those wondering what Th1Th2 is talking about, I was pointing out the difference between live and killed vaccines:
http://childrenshospitalblog.org/live-virus-vaccine-vs-killed-virus-vaccine-whats-the-difference/. Measles is a live vaccine, and causes a mild, noncommunicable infection, while flu and some polio shots are killed vaccines that cause an immune reaction, but not an infection.

To Th1Th2, there are only two stances: 1) You believe all vaccines cause infections, which is somehow a bad thing (even if the infections are mild and noncommunicable), or 2) you don’t believe in germ theory at all. This should give you an idea how shaky her grasp of logic is.

Thingy, who doesn’t have a fourth grader’s knowledge of science, no less immunology, continues to post here for our amusement.

As I stated in a prior post to another troll…Thingy if your mommy told you that your lack of an education, anti-social personality disorders and other manifestations of mental derangement were caused by a vaccine injury…she lied.

No one expects the ScienceBlogs Inquisition!

Unlike you, Thingy, I happen to think that being “infected” (Oooh, I feel faint…let me clutch my pearls!) with an antigen (live, dead, synthesized fragment, whatever) that confers protection against a real infection that has a very real chance of killing, blinding, or paralyzing me is a good thing. I only wish they’d had the measles vaccines before I got rubeola and rubella (twice!) as a kid.

You obviously disagree, and the purity of your precious bodily fluids takes precedence over reason, science, logic, and public health. I would say keep babbling away to the rubber walls in your room, because reason, science, and logic can take care of themselves—unfortunately, public health cannot! Therefore, I will continue to call you out on your idiocy no matter how ridiculous it seems, because there doesn’t appear to be any idiocy no matter how extreme that can’t get a public hearing these days, and your particular brand is fucking killing people!

Th1Th2 – and I still ask … well, defy… you to show me the generally accepted definition of the word “infection” that includes the ability of a killed pathogen to cause it.

Mephistopheles,

Th1Th2 – and I still ask … well, defy… you to show me the generally accepted definition of the word “infection” that includes the ability of a killed pathogen to cause it.

A killed pathogen per se cannot infect a host on its own. Obviously it’s dead. That means, it cannot penetrate and bypass an intact human skin, mucosa and other innate barriers. It will be repelled and eliminated immediately at the site thus preventing infection.

Now, here’s what infection-promoters like you love to do. They have to use a syringe to allow these dead pathogens to penetrate and bypass the innate barriers, allowing them to contaminate the underlying tissues which are physiologically free of pathogens, inducing an immune response against the acquired infection caused by the deliberate breach of the innate immune system, allowing them to stay inside the host for a prolonged period of time instead of being eliminated and in the event the inoculation resulted to low Ab levels, they wouldn’t stop re-infecting the naive furthermore.

Barbarism at its best!

Until I learned from Th1Th2, I thought that it was safe to bring bacon into my house, since it’s “dead,” but now I realize that bacon is exactly like a wild boar – and every time I bring bacon into my house, I’m risking being gored and trampled to death. Thank you Thing – I owe you lots.

@Th1TH2:

A killed pathogen per se cannot infect a host on its own. Obviously it’s dead. That means, it cannot penetrate and bypass an intact human skin, mucosa and other innate barriers. It will be repelled and eliminated immediately at the site thus preventing infection.

The first two sentences above agree with medical science. It’s the third sentence that goes off the rails, and seems to be the source of our (rather vehement) disagreement.

Pathogens do the bulk of their damage because they are, in essence, parasites. The damage mechanisms are the same as naked-eye parasites, in that pathogens consume resources our tissues need (sometimes nutrients needed by our bodies, sometimes the tissues our bodies are made of) and/or excrete wastes that our tissues can’t tolerate. Both are a product of the parasite needing to eat.

If a pathogen is dead, it can’t eat. Therefor it cannot weaken by consuming resources and it cannot excrete wastes. Therefor it cannot harm the recipient the way live pathogens can. (Also as a result of being dead, the pathogen can’t reproduce, which is important too but I’m trying to keep this as straightforward as possible so let’s leave that aside for now.)

Mucus layers and dermal integrity don’t matter in this case; the vaccines aren’t intended to support those, as they’re just physical barriers. Vaccines are intended to prompt the many defenses that come into play should those barriers are breached.

Think of a mother cat bringing a dead mouse back to her litter for the kittens to play with; she’s letting her young learn how to attack prey without the risks of facing live prey. In this metaphor, the kittens are our immune system components (white blood cells, for example) and the dead mouse is the vaccine. The immune system learns what prey looks and smells like, and learns how to approach and grab onto its prey, without any of the risks that come from facing a live opponent… so that they learn how to respond should they face a living threat without getting hurt.

These vaccines are given by injection to allow the use of a much smaller volume of killed pathogen than would be required orally… and because it’s a more reliable way to get the “mouse” into view of the “kittens”.

— Steve

Hey Bull-axe,

I hope you’re not a phlebotomist because if it is, you’d be contaminating all the patients’ blood samples. You would use anything but a sterile vacutainer.

Th1Th2 – Using a killed vaccine can confer immunization without causing an infection, something you apparently agree with. So you were wrong when you said that a killed vaccine causes an infection.

Th1Th2 – I have been injected with Hep B vaccine. Am I infected with hepatitis B?

I think Th1Th2 has the words “infection” and “injection” confused. Maybe it is as simple as that.

So I have a hepatitis B infection due to my hepatitis B vaccination but it’s non-transmissible. Why am I not jaundiced, and why are my liver enzymes all normal?

Krebiozen,

Th1Th2 – I have been injected with Hep B vaccine. Am I infected with hepatitis B?

You have something in your system that non-Hep B individuals don’t possess, HbsAg—something you acquired from a needlestick injury. I would assume, you’re cognizant enough as to where it was derived from. Of course, non-Hep B people are abnormal in the eyes of infection-promoters like you.

Th1Th2 still didn’t answer the critical question, namely, “Why am I not jaundiced, and why are my liver enzymes all normal?” Why is the reality inconsistent with the expected results of her claims? Also, people suffer scrapes and cuts all the time, and germs get in that way as well. Why aren’t we all dead from that? And why does Th1Th2 think changing the subject is an acceptable way to answer a serious question?

Krebiozen,

So I have a hepatitis B infection due to my hepatitis B vaccination but it’s non-transmissible. Why am I not jaundiced, and why are my liver enzymes all normal?

Well, there are also people who were infected with poliovirus which is highly virulent. But why is that more than 99% of all cases do not develop into paralysis?

Q. So what do you call a polio infection in the absence of paralysis? A. Polio

Q. What do you call Hepatitis without jaundice and elevated LP? A. Hepatitis.

Gray,

As usual, Th1Th2 makes a series of claims without backing them up. If you read the link that I provided in 408, you would know that the live vaccine does not cause a communicable infection, and the killed one does not cause an infection at all. We know this because we’ve studied the effects of the vaccines. Th1Th2 still hasn’t provided any evidence otherwise, just bald assertions.

Oh I’m sure you’re just as clueless as the rest. It sounds like you’re ignorant about VAPP and VDPV -lasting reminders of the effect of continued OPV use.

Thingy admits:

Because they are dead and/or nonreplicating, the acquired infection is restricted to the host alone such as they do not promote further host-to-host transmission. Both vaccine types, however, can/will confer an infection-induced immunity.

What she will not tell us is:

WHY IS THIS BAD, you cretin?

What part of the term “acquired infection” caused by vaccines do you NOT understand? Killed vaccines, unlike live vaccines which can cause communicable infections, do cause non-transmissible infections.

Except that killed vaccines don’t cause infection, transmissible or otherwise (unless the manufacturer messed up). Which part of “they don’t” don’t you understand?

More generally, the process of pathogens by immune cells is quite different from the invasion of the host by same pathogens. The latter is infection, the former is immune response. These are not the same.

In the latter, the infecting pathogens need obviously to be alive – feeding and/or reproducing is the very definition of alive; in the former, the immune cells are the actors and their target could be in any form, dead or alive, single cell or multicellular, or downright inert material (pollen, asbestos…), it would have little bearings on the result (well, obviously, a live pathogen can defend itself; some bacteria are good at escaping or killing the immune cells trying to swallow them).

One of the differences is this: different classes of MHC receptors are used by mammal cells to display parts of suspicious molecules (antigenes), in function of the provenance of these molecules.
MHC class I receptors will display bits of molecules coming from inside the cell, including molecules produced by a pathogen which sneaked inside (viruses or some intracellular bacteria). Normal molecules from the cell will also be displayed, but will be ignored by immune cells. Abnormal molecules from cancer cells will hopefully trigger an immune response.
Class II receptors are specific of antigen-presenting immune cells and display molecules from pathogens (and other suspicious stuff) which have been captured by these immune cells. In these cases, the pathogen, while inside the immune cell, was technically never touching any internal part of the cell: it was always kept isolated in a vacuole of phagocytose. This vacuole is acting like a soap bubble inside another bigger soap bubble (the cell). They could merge but their respective contents don’t merge.

Class I MHC receptors are signaling infected cells to specialized cytotoxic cells (T cells).
Class II MHC receptors are used to recruit specialized B cells (for specific antibody production) and T cells (to hunt and kill infected cells).
Parts from a dead pathogen have no chance to end up associated with a Class I receptor, since they cannot infect cells anymore.
But they will be caught by immune cells, processed and displayed by Class II receptors.

Hey Bull-axe!

I do not know the inherent goodness let alone the ethics in acquiring infection, do you?

You really need to lay off the pipe, man.

Mephistopheles,

Th1Th2 – you agreed that a killed vaccine does not cause an infection. Why are you still arguing that it does?

You lost it, didn’t you? I did not say killed vaccines do not cause an infection. Check #333.

Andrew,

Until I learned from Th1Th2, I thought that it was safe to bring bacon into my house, since it’s “dead,” but now I realize that bacon is exactly like a wild boar – and every time I bring bacon into my house, I’m risking being gored and trampled to death. Thank you Thing – I owe you lots.

Like I said, even if they resort to metaphors and syllogisms to evade scientific reasoning, vaccinators would still fail miserably.

Andrew listen up please. *Wild boar is an important source of one of the most essential physiological need of man–food, which in your example, **the bacon. No wild boar, no bacon on the table, no food to eat, you’ll be dead. Now, you have analogized the wild boar like infectious diseases. Since your goal is to eradicate infectious diseases, accordingly you also need to wipe out the wild boars from the face of the earth. Wow, wouldn’t that be painful to live a life without those hmmm yummy bacon on the table? It doesn’t make sense to you, does it? Right, because you didn’t make any sense at all.

* any food source
** any delectable part

Thingy, if a person has received hepatitis B vaccine, they have anti-Hbs…also called HbsAb. Testing of immune status is indicated for health care workers who have exposure to blood.

Blood test results for immune status following hepatitis b vaccine consists of the following:

HBsAg Will be negative in an immunized person
anti-HBc Will be negative in an immunized person
anti-HBs Will be positive in an immunized with a lab
value equal to or greater than 10 mIu/ml

Blood tests for persons who are acutely ill with the virus consists of the following:

HBsAg Positive
anti-Hbc Positive
IGM anti-HBc Positive
anti-Hbs Negative

Testing of chronic carriers of hepatitis B consists of the following:

HBsAg Positive
anti-HBc Positive
Igm anti-HBc Negative
Anti-Hbs Negative

Blood testing of individuals who are now immune after recovering from the hepatitis B virus consists of the following:

HBsAg Negative
anti HBc Positive
Igm anti-Hbc Negative
Anti-Hbs Positive

Note the difference in blood markers in persons who are now immune to the virus following vaccine, persons who are acutely ill with the virus, persons who are chronic carriers and persons who have recovered from the virus and now have immunity.

I won’t even delve into testing for the presence of hepatitis e antigen or hepatitis delta virus and their significance attached to the transmission and virulence of the hepatitis B virus.

Thingy, you really shouldn’t be posting here without any science education or science profession. You are totally clueless regarding immunology and vaccines…you only show your great ignorance of the sciences and leave yourself open to ridicule.

Gray,

FYI: You have not presented an escape metaphor or so that actually worked in your favor.

lilady,

Note the difference in blood markers in persons who are now immune to the virus following vaccine, persons who are acutely ill with the virus, persons who are chronic carriers and persons who have recovered from the virus and now have immunity.

Hey ‘ol nurse! What serum marker do you see in a healthy non-HepB newborn?

Thingy, you really shouldn’t be posting here without any science education or science profession. You are totally clueless regarding immunology and vaccines…you only show your great ignorance of the sciences and leave yourself open to ridicule.

I’ll just wait for your next post, that is, if you can answer my question.

For starters, agents that have caused us to invent vaccines.

Good to see you admitting some responsibility here.

Narad,

Not as big as the vaccinators themselves.

Jarred C,

So let me get this straight: You are claiming that the HBsAg antigen (a protein, not a virus, which is cultured and collected from the common baker’s yeast) is injected into a person via the HBV vaccine, and must grow and reproduce within the body (which is impossible, because proteins cannot reproduce on their own) prior to the body developing the anti-HBsAg antibody.

That.

Jarred C,

Also, “inoculation” is probably not the word you wanted to use. Since the HBsAg is just a protein, the person receiving the injection cannot become infected with HBV via this vaccine.

Well, as you could see, HbsAg is not just a simple protein. It is a pathogen-associated protein and its presence in the host, with or without the virus, would indicate that a breach in immunity has taken place, hence, it’s called an infection.

Basically, HBV has that protein on its outer shell, which our T cells can recognize (e.g. an antigen), and build a defense based on that recognition. All we did (as humans designing the vaccine) was take that protein (specifically, the genes which encode for the protein) out of the virus, and grow it in harmless yeast cells. Then we kill the yeast, collect the proteins, and use that for the body’s T cells to recognize, and build a defense against HBV without the possibility of infection from the actual virus.

Of course, that’s the function of the immune system, to recognize infection (non-self) and activate a range of effector processes against the offending HbsAg.

Jarred C,

And infection is the culture of a microorganism in a host. There has to be an active culture that has sustained itself and is growing and reproducing for an infection to be present.

Like how it explains the mechanism behind natural infection and live vaccines? Don’t worry I got you there. They both promote a certain degree of host-to-host transmission.

Just the presence of a protein (specifically an antigen) in an organism is not enough to be classified as an infection.

Well, killed (inactivated,fragmented)vaccines are not enough to cause a transmissible infection because they are nonreplicating and essentially dead hence the acquired infection is limited to the recipient host. But why is there a need to depend on secondary transmission, when there are more than enough commercially available killed pathogens to infect the rest of the community?

Likewise, if a parasitic bacteria is in an organism, and has not colonized within the host, it is not an infection.

Most vaccines are abbreviated; they readily infect the underlying tissues without surface colonization.

And it has to be an organism that is parasitic. A symbiotic bacteria that has colonized, sustains a population, and actively grows and reproduces is not an infection (e.g. bifidobacterium), even though it is classified by the host organism as “non-self.”

Is there a symbiotic relationship that exist between man and infectious diseases ie VPDs?

I can see using “infection” the way you are using it in only one way: from the point of view of the T cells in the body. The T cell would encounter the antigen, and “think” an infection was present, and therefore mount a defense; but in reality, there is no infection. The body’s immune system is fighting against a feigned attack.

In reality, the immune system is able to recognize such foreign invaders as real infection based on their pathogen-associated molecular pattern through pattern recognition receptors.

It’s not an infection. In order for there to be an infection, there has to be a micro-organism actively growing and reproducing. Just as I said before.

Also, the immune system can, indeed, be fooled. A perfect example is in autoimmune diseases, where the body’s own immune system attacks its own cells.

Th1Th2 – if I understand you, vaccinations are always bad because they spread infections.

What would you do with a baby born to a woman with hepatitis B?

Jarred

Also, the immune system can, indeed, be fooled. A perfect example is in autoimmune diseases, where the body’s own immune system attacks its own cells.

You mean like with vaccines?

@MI Dawn
I thought that might be the case. I was going to suggest this was a healthcare worker who suffered a needlestick injury while pregnant, and who had been dissuaded from getting a hepatitis B vaccination by fearmongering antivaxxers, but decided that was too complicated.

@ triskelethecat: No, no, no, no, no! Don’t be alarmed! It will not affect your abilities, *au contraire*: you see, first you are able to understand how they think, then you are able to create a reasonable facsimile of their writing, and then, the world is your oyster because you then see directly into the mechanisms of their distortions of reality which you can then *communiate* to others who sit on the fence wondering which way to turn. In short, you can clarify and contrast the differences to others. Good work there, lady!

Jarred C,

It’s not an infection. In order for there to be an infection, there has to be a micro-organism actively growing and reproducing. Just as I said before.

For you, it can never be an infection if you keep on denying the existence of the pathogen and its products inside the host and nonchalantly calling them as mere microorganism and proteins. Like, Mephistopheles et al, you’re simply barking up the wrong tree or a germ-denialist.

Also, the immune system can, indeed, be fooled. A perfect example is in autoimmune diseases, where the body’s own immune system attacks its own cells.

Obviously, I was referring to the way you have portrayed vaccination of killed pathogens as a mere trick to fool the immune system and to make it “think” an infection is present. It is not a false alarm. It’s a real infection with recognizable pathogen-associated molecular pattern and the result of such immune activation is called primary immune response.

Anyway, that is not for you to decide if it is an infection. You can only deny since the evidence is already there.

Th1Th2@479: What evidence? You never provided us with anything but your say-so for everything. You keep talking about science, but you haven’t given us any. And for 480, the dead mouse was part of an analogy, not a literal dead mouse. What are you trying to say?

In Reality World, the medical definition of infection requires invasion and reproduction of the pathogen as well as injury to the host. Colonization is not an infection (non-invasive, no injury to host). An immune response is not required (example – an immunodeficient host can obviously get infected).

Killed pathogens can’t invade cells.

Killed pathogens can’t reproduce. They’re dead.
Unless they are zombies. Then it’s an open question.

Th1Th2 – OK, so I re-read 418 (which asks you to define “killed”) and 419, which you claim proves something.
All you really need to do is state the definition of “infection” that covers the case of a killed pathogen and show that it’s a generally accepted definition.
Otherwise, despite all your dead mice (you should really buy a pet that eats those things), killed vaccines do not cause infections.

It should be noted that an infection is not an immune response. It should also be noted that not all infections have to breach the barriers. For example, athlete’s foot is a fungal infection that does not breach the skin (though if it does, the symptoms can be nastier)

Th1Th2 said,

Anyway, that is not for you to decide if it is an infection.

Of course I do not decide if there is an infection. I am not a pathologist. What I do, however, is use the proper definitions of medical terms. Try picking up a medical dictionary some time; it will clear up a lot of your confusion.

As a side note, the ability to admit mistakes and errors, and correct your statements to reflect the accuracy of our knowledge as best we can, is also a very good thing. You should try it.

TBruce,

In Reality World, the medical definition of infection requires invasion and reproduction of the pathogen as well as injury to the host.

Let me expound what you’ve said.

Invasion—-Thanks to a needlestick, the killed pathogens have invaded the underlying tissues. Of course, they are also recognized as foreign invaders by the immune system. Intruders: Verified nonself with pathogen-associated molecular pattern. Alert! Alert! Alert!

Reproduction —The amount of antigenic dose has already been prepared in the syringe prior to operator-assisted invasion.

Injury to the host—Well, it’s a needlestick injury and it’s intentional. The host also has to experience clinical signs and symptoms of inflammation and infection such as pain, fever, malaise, headache, cough, flu-like symptoms, and so on and so forth.

So yes. It is an infection. The pathogen is identified, there is tissue invasion, and clinical signs and symptoms. The only thing you can do now is to deny it ever happened.

Colonization is not an infection (non-invasive, no injury to host). An immune response is not required

Like I said earlier, most vaccines (parenteral) are abbreviated such as they directly infect the underlying tissues without requiring surface colonization. Live vaccines, like OPV and LAIV, after they have established surface colonization, MUST infect and replicate in the host which is akin to natural infection. So don’t play stupid by implying killed vaccines do not cause infection because they only colonize. No. They cannot colonize the surface either because they are dead thus they will will be expelled immediately. And even though they are immunogenic, they cannot do so unassisted to invade the underlying tissues because they are dead. Therefore, their immunogenic features can only be recognized after they are injected into the host.

Killed pathogens can’t invade cells.

What are you smoking? Don’t use the vaccine and it won’t invade the cells. That’s a sure thing.

Killed pathogens can’t reproduce. They’re dead.

They are commercially prepared and readily available for an avid consumer like you.

Reproduction —The amount of antigenic dose has already been prepared in the syringe prior to operator-assisted invasion.

That is not reproduction of an organism. In order for the mircoorganism to establish an infection, there MUST be at least mitosis, which means that the microorganism has to be alive. For viral infections, there must be a virus which can transfer it’s RNA or DNA, hijack the host cell’s DNA, and reproduce via that mechanism. A prepared collection of proteins/antigens IS NOT REPRODUCTION.

Get yourself a medical dictionary.

What are you smoking? Don’t use the vaccine and it won’t invade the cells.

That is not what is meant by “invading the cells.” Antigens, like the HBsAg protein, and killed pathogens CANNOT “invade” a cell. The antigens are recognized OUTSIDE of the cell by receptors. The antigens DO NOT GO INSIDE THE CELL; therefore there is no “invasion” of the cell.

Get yourself a medical dictionary.

Here, try this one, for starters (since it’s free, and online): http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/infection

Thingy:

I regret to inform you that you do not have a clue. You are stranded on your own desert island of delusion.

Jarred C.

A prepared collection of proteins/antigens IS NOT REPRODUCTION.

The antigen load in the vaccine is a direct reflection of the pathogen as if it were replicating such as the more pathogens equals increased antigenic load. Killed vaccines, which do not replicate, contain known immunogenic parts of the pathogen that are also known to contribute to its virulence (endotoxin ,exotoxin, capsules, etc.) Yup, it’s like a garbage truck dumping waste products inside your home based on vaccine schedule.

Antigens, like the HBsAg protein, and killed pathogens CANNOT “invade” a cell. The antigens are recognized OUTSIDE of the cell by receptors. The antigens DO NOT GO INSIDE THE CELL; therefore there is no “invasion” of the cell.

Interesting. So they are never ingested, destroyed and processed INSIDE THE CELL?

Interesting. So they are never ingested, destroyed and processed INSIDE THE CELL?

I already addressed this in my post #445 above.

In short: it’s not exactly INSIDE. It’s in a pocket made of the cell plasmic membrane (the membrane surrounding the cell).

Longer story:
By a process called phagocytose (see also endocytose), antigen-presenting cells (like macrophages, dendritic cells…) surround the bugs with a little bubble made of the cell’s plasmic membrane, swallowing the bubble in the process, and then fusion this bubble with another bubble-like structure called the lyzosome, whose content will digest the content of the phagocytose vacuole. Enzymes and oxidative reagents are involved.
After digestion, the fusioned vacuoles are sent back to the cell surface, where they fusion with the plasmic membrane and release their content outside of the cell, minus a few broken parts which are associated with MHC class II receptors for presentation to any passing immune cell.
The contents of both the phagocytose vacuole and the lyzosome are never in contact with any other internal structure of the cell.
It’s quite a beautiful mechanism, actually.

you’re a devout germ-denialist

Actually, I’m a microbiologist by trade.

Yep, deaf on purpose and infirm of purpose.

Interesting. So they are never ingested, destroyed and processed INSIDE THE CELL?

Unless the cell is a phagocytic cell, then no, it doesn’t. But even with a phagocytic cell, there is still no “invasion” by the pathogen or antigen into the phagocytic cell.

As a metaphor, we can imagine a garage and a car. An “invasion” would be the car blasting its way into a closed garage; the car is invading the garage space. Contrary to that would be an open garage that pulls a car in, in order to dismantle the car; this is not an invasion.

Your description of an antigen protein or killed pathogen being engulfed by a cell is akin to the garage bringing the car in to dismantle it. That is not an invasion.

In this case, it is not a medical dictionary that you need, just a normal one (I still recommend the medical dictionary). That might help you communicate more effectively.

Jarred C,

Unless the cell is a phagocytic cell, then no, it doesn’t.

Like?

As a metaphor, we can imagine a garage and a car. An “invasion” would be the car blasting its way into a closed garage; the car is invading the garage space. Contrary to that would be an open garage that pulls a car in, in order to dismantle the car; this is not an invasion.

Metaphors to the rescue!

Well, it’s your car and normally cars are parked inside the garage so nobody is invading your garage, hence there’s no invasion whatsoever. Make sense?

Your description of an antigen protein or killed pathogen being engulfed by a cell is akin to the garage bringing the car in to dismantle it. That is not an invasion.

You have misconstrued a parking garage to a auto/collision shop.

In this case, it is not a medical dictionary that you need, just a normal one (I still recommend the medical dictionary). That might help you communicate more effectively.

Trans: I don’t know how and where to park my car.

Well, it’s your car and normally cars are parked inside the garage

Normality is such a vague point of reference.

I would like you to meet the friendly mechanics who operated in a previous neighborhood of mine. Cars, and not all of them theirs, were parked everywhere inside and outside of their garages (and not all of them theirs, too), waiting to be dismantled and reassembled.
The locals would certainly have called this car business an infection.

Whatever Thingy’s pathology may be called, I think I saw the origin of it when people first started talking about an HIV vaccine (yes, I know it’s taking longer than we thought).

I saw a lot of people declaring that even if a vaccine were developed, they’d never take it, because then they’d “test positive”. The implication being that avoiding disease and/or death was secondary to having some test that could distinguish “clean” people from those dirty, dirty queers. How could you tell if someone was exposed the “wrong” way?

Thingy doesn’t want to be “penetrated”, have her immune system “breached” and be “infected” with antigens derived from disease organisms because–how could you tell that she didn’t get “infected”the “wrong” way? Her serum would test just like somebody who wasn’t smart enough to keep from getting sick, or who didn’t wrap their kids in a thick enough plastic bubble. She and her kids wouldn’t be any “cleaner” than us germ-lovers! Can’t have that.

Heliantus,

The locals would certainly have called this car business an infection.

No, they won’t. That is still normal.

Kevin was making a joke.

But now that you bring it up, why does it matter if it’s a Trans Am or not? Don’t you park those in the same place(s) you park other cars?

I think Prometheus was right, back at 400.

OTFD. 😀

Definitely read this XKCD:

http://xkcd.com/386/

“Some people are wronger than others…”

Some people are not even wrong.

Hint: analogies don’t work with people who can’t get beyond concrete reasoning or are “distracted” by tangential thinking. That’s why they’re used as part of “bedside” psychological testing.

Prometheus

Heliantus,

It’s quite a beautiful mechanism, actually.

Right. The host defense against vaccine-induced infection is a beautiful mechanism. I just hope those “bugs” are well-taken care of.

– can we assume that there is no such definition and you were wrong when you said that killed vaccines cause an infection?

Check #491. The only vaccine that does not cause infection is a vaccine that is never used.

I’m pretty sure spouting insanity on this blog is your escape mechanism from the rigors of every day life.

Check #491. The only vaccine that does not cause infection is a vaccine that is never used.

While you’re at it, check #495.