It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy

Thank you Mank – I was cringing when I saw the “his” and “man” (that may have to do with the fact that I am in the middle of a huge review exercise and we are asked not to mention gender, or, more likely, with the fact that I am a woman and resent the “automatic” assumption that a head of dept is male.

And yes, this could not have happened to a nicer guy.

“if a new chair comes in, not so infrequently, a major housecleaning will occur shortly thereafter”

It can’t be just that. Sure, a new chair might encourage some department members to look for work elsewhere. But revocation of privileges can’t be done without cause. Usually the hospital is quiet about the reason, but there has to be some substantive reason.

Oh look! It says here right on the label!

The most generous interpretation of SaneVax’s “finding” was that perhaps the pathologist who had been working to detect HPV DNA in Gardasil had actually managed to find a much more sensitive method of PCR that managed to detect HPV DNA that couldn’t be detected before.

Someone commenting under the previous article (a Mr. Pink, I believe) said that the aluminum adjuvant binding to the DNA prevented it from being detected by normal PCR tests. If this is indeed what Dr. Lee is claiming, then he might also be claiming that there’s lots of DNA in Gardasil, but it’s invisible to everyone’s tests but his own. You’d think that if prevented the DNA from being detected by PCR it would also prevent it from being expressed by any cells it made it’s way into, but Mr. Pink responded that, for all we know, there might be some unknown biochemical process in cells that removes the adjuvant from the DNA, so just to be safe we ought to have HPV vaccines tested with Dr. Lee’s proprietary test.

Aside from the possibility of misused hospital resources, Dr Lee should be anxious to share his methods in the advancement of science, right? If he really has a new PCR protocol, it only makes good moral and scientific sense for him to share and push for replication by an independent lab.

Matthew: ” invisible to everyone’s tests but his own”

Doesn’t that just say it all? This theme is so rife amongst woo-meisters and pseudo-scientists: they have special abilities, methods, or products that trump consensus every time. Whether they portray themselves as Brave Maverick-y Scientific Revolutionaries Throwing Off the Chains of Institutional Oppression or hint at powers “not of this earth”. i.e. spirit, god, or psi ( not aliens- altho’ with this crowd,I wouldn’t be surprised in the least) they know *better*.

Well, sometimes people DO come up with tests that can measure things prior tests can’t. Of course, when it’s legitimate, they then proceed to publish the work and everyone can reproduce it.

Exactly! A relevant example is the testing done on the Rotavirus vaccines and PCV. It was replicated and published, you know, Da Man’s way.

The whole Anti-Vax movement baffles me. I recently came across a great site called The Jenny McCarthy Body Count http://jennymccarthybodycount.com/Jenny_McCarthy_Body_Count/Home.html It’s definitely worth a look although, the site contains several VERY disturbing pictures of unvaccinated children who are afflicted with the diseases that could have been prevented had they only been inocculated. These pictures are not on the home page and when the link is chosen, it gives you ample warning of what you’re about to see. There’s a brief anti-vaccine history as well as the current vaccine schedule. I consider it part of my job as a mother to protect my girls against known dangers and preventable diseases falls squarely in that catagory.

(While I’m speaking more in general terms about *personality*)- woo-meisters seem to want it both ways- recognition by the general public without following the general rules that apply to regular people. Thus, applying to journals run by the Man ( the Establishment) isn’t necessary, they’ll have “their own” journals. Replication of result? Pshaw, says AW! Fits in with Narcissism as a personality style. A prof over at UConn dubs many pseudo-scientists** being so entitled.

**( HIV/AIDS denialists).

@jen,
Point? Or pointless as usual.

“Something way funnier is the beastality, I mean immunology Dr., at the CDC”

Jen, if you are going to post a pointless comment…please learn how to spell bestiality. Let me re-edit that sentence for you:

Something way funnier are the comments at AoA…including the comment about Dr. Lee being “Wakefielded” by the hospital.

Jen, is that something like being “swiftboated”? Or is it indicative of the collective paranoia and collective sub-par intelligence of your colleagues?

Run along now Jen…and make certain you send those letters and bombard the hospital CEO, the Commissioner of Health and the Attorney General with emails.

The problem, though, is that it wasn’t really entirely clear that SaneVax had found anything of the sort. If it had, it was a rather meaningless discovery and didn’t prove that Merck was lying.

In short, Orac doesn’t argue that Gardasil actually contain HPV DNA does he?

Careful CG, Thingy has “super sercret knowledge” that she’ll use to tell you what’s what! The same kind that Dr. Lee apparently has, you know, alchemy.

Slightly OT, but it’s depressing to think about how mean-spirited or ignorant (or both) some people have be to refuse their daughters protection from cervical cancer and the other cancers that this vaccine protects them from.

The argument about the vaccine “promoting promiscuity” is just about as low as even a wingnut could sink. Hopefully at least some of those girls will wake up and get the shots when they turn 18, assuming that some other vaccine-preventable disease doesn’t get them first.

Something way funnier is the beastality, I mean immunology Dr., at the CDC

Wonderful example of an ad hominem attack.

Please do not feed delusional disease-promoting troll.

CG shame on you 🙂

No point in trying to engage with Thing, its clearly deranged and terminally stupid, the damn thing can’t even get a joke.

This has “Barbara Streisand” written all over it… And I like it.

Just like a simple yes or diseases can do you.

I said I am very predictable. From so is done. No loitering allowed. Haha.

I’ll take the first, second and third options.

@GC:

Because it doesn’t. Given how its made, the only “viral” DNA it could have are fragments of the structural genes they cloned into yeast.

So it would be missing the parts required to replicate and actually cause an infection. But then you still don’t actually know what an infection is.

Oh, wow I didn’t know that. Okay, that makes it pointless to look for any DNA/RNA in Gardasil.

@Sauceress:

Any reason Dr.Lee wouldn’t put the sequences of these PCR products out there for all to see?

A defender of Dr. Lee in the previous post, a Mr. Pink, offered the possibility that his company which developed it wants to protect it’s intellectual property, just like any other medical company, but whatever he uses to do the tests is not patentable, so the only way to protect his intellectual property is to keep it a secret. However, given that his company sells tests to detect HPV genetic material in the blood of girls who got Gardasil, when Gardasil can’t contain the genes necessary for replication, makes it a lot more likely that he made the hole thing up.

Thought I’d post this

http://www.robertscottbell.com/government/april-boden-uncovers-big-pharmas-plan-to-destroy-californias-children/

Here’s an excerpt

But is HPV truly an STD? It occurs in some 80 percent of the human population. It is a harmless wart virus that does not – I repeat – does not “cause cervical cancer,” despite what the pharma propaganda machine tells the sleep-walking public. According to even the mainstream’s statistics, close to 99 percent of women who ever have the ‘virus,’ never get the disease! How’s that for ‘proof of causation?’

The reality is this: HPV is an entirely common nothing of a virus, which like most “viruses” is expressed under cellular stress, and which is suppressed or made completely inactive in a healthy, well-regulated cell.

Cells which are nurtured and fed essential nutrients, like essential fatty acids, selenium and glutathione regularly stop the expression of “viruses.” Cells which are dysregulated, starved for nutrients and intoxicated by chemicals, pesticides, heavy metals and neurotoxins often express viruses. We encourage viral expression in bodies which are starved and abused. And let’s stop to note that the very chemicals and agents which damage cells are precisely those which constitute vaccines!

But the once “hippy” Governor isn’t interested in nutrition, or cellular health, or even that long-forgotten concept of “choice” that Liberals claim to care for with such passion. No, he wants children to be able to “opt in” to eugenic ‘science’ programs that would make Goebbels blush with pride. Now ten-year-olds can be propagandized at school with the anxiety-provoking lie that they have to be afraid of getting genital cancer from something that almost everybody in the world has at one time or another.

It gets better

But what does “HIV reporting” have to do with Autism? Or even Gardasil? The answer is – California is broke, and in order to make up its endless budget shortfall, it is selling its children into pharmaceutical slavery.

Here’s how it works. Beyond asking for Gardasil, children in California can receive handfuls of the FDA’s most deadly drug – AZT – for another phony diagnosis – that of “HIV positive.”

AZT is a bone-killing, blood-suppressing, liver-destroying drug, recycled as a failed chemotherapy agent into the gay community in the late 1980s. It was given to gay men who were told they were “HIV positive,” but it did not help. The shameful and oft-hidden reality is that the death toll attributed to “HIV” in the 1990s was a direct result of AZT. Hundreds of thousands of gay men took high doses of the drug, though they were not sick, and died a short, agonizing death as a direct result.

Sorry, I didn’t read carefully. Seriously, there are people who believe that?

I mean really, I don’t think their canned letter will be received quite the way they think it will. Even if you disregard the fact that they are an anti-science organization, asking to reinstate someone for the sole reason of having that person do work that has nothing to do with the person’s job responsibilities, is probably not the best approach to take.

Robert Scott Bell has his own reality which is totally devoid of rational thought. To think this dumbbell is one of the favorites of Libertarians and the Tea Baggers is a chilling thought.

BTW, I caught last night’s Republican debate and it was the best show in town between Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, none of whom has an understanding of the economy, the national debt and the tax structure. I can’t wait for the SNL spoof on all the candidates.

Who the hell decided to call them tea baggers? Do the tea baggers refer to themselves as tea baggers?? Do they friggin know what tea bagging is ???

Sorry laughing too much, I keep seeing Mitt Romney flopping his balls on a sleeping Rick Perrys forehead but then Romney is not a tea bagger, or is he? Sarah Palin is though. Yep that mental picture is even funnier. US politics is hilarious.

@ delurked: Thank you for clarifying what “tea bagging” is…however I didn’t using the “verb” but the “noun” to describe a political movement.

As you know, the original Boston Tea Party was a revolt against the oppressive tea tax imposed upon American colonists by the British parliament.

This contemporary “Tea Party” movement had its genesis on February 19, 2009 when CNBC’s Rick Santelli went on a rant while on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange before that day’s opening of the stock market. I happened to have the TV on and actually saw it in real time and it is available to view on You Tube:

CNBC’s Rick Santelli Chicago Tea Party

This particular video is very popular amongst far-to-the-right Republicans and their Heritage Foundation think tank.

Thereafter, local protests in the Red states started appearing and the protesters stapled tea bags on their hats. So in reply to your question:

Who the hell decided to call them tea baggers? Do the tea baggers refer to themselves as tea baggers? The answer is they used tea bags to define their “movement” and they first referred to themselves as the “Tea Party”.

(I suspect that few or none of the members of the Tea Party know what tea bagging is.)

Finding “HPV DNA” in the vaccine is not that surprising and should not raise eyebrows per se. It is after all a vaccine made using recombinant DNA technology. Therefore, finding fragments of the genes that encode the proteins in the vaccine is quite possible, if one uses sensitive enough methods.

The point, though, is that gene fragments does not equal infectious virus. That point of course is lost on the antivax crowd.