If there’s one thing that antivaxers crave, it’s respect and being taken seriously. Of course, it’s incredibly difficult for people who understand science and medicine to take antivax arguments seriously, because the are so laden with misinformation, pseudoscience, and logical fallacies. Unfortunately, antivaccine misinformation has, like many other forms of misinformation, found a tool to reach more people over more of the globe than ever before, thanks to the rise of the Internet, World Wide Web, and especially most recently social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Similarly, until recently, the algorithms behind Google searches were based primarily on the number of incoming links, which meant that search results were too much a popularity contest, in which quality of information didn’t play nearly as much of a role as it should have. The same became true of YouTube as well after Google acquired it. Not surprisingly (at least in retrospect), just as political extremists and all manner of other cranks have done, antivaxers like Sayer Ji (whom I will discuss more in a moment) have used social media and Google to spread their message through posts, Tweets, and video going viral. Even better for antivaxers, Facebook, Google, and YouTube allowed antivaccine quacks to monetize their content. Worse for those trying to counter this flood of misinformation, Secret Facebook groups, for instance, have served as the organizing nidus for antivaxers to harass vaccine advocates, hammer their Facebook pages with antivaccine misinformation, and post fake negative online reviews of doctors advocating for vaccines.
Until recently.
Given the rise of misinformation about, well, just about everything on Facebook, Google, YouTube, and other social media, the big tech and social media companies have finally been prodded to do something about it. In terms of health misinformation that cause harm, like antivaccine pseudoscience, these companies have been approaching this problem from two angles. First, they’ve been trying to adjust their algorithms to deprioritize harmful misinformation. Google has done so, as has Facebook. So has YouTube. Whether these changes to search and recommended content algorithms will make a huge difference is too early to say, although Joe Mercola and other “alternative health” entrepreneurs have complained about huge declines in search traffic since Google rolled out a revised algorithm in June. Tech companies haven’t stopped there, though. Earlier this year, über-quack Mike Adams and his Natural News website were banned from YouTube and in June was banned from Facebook, while more recently Facebook appears to be on the verge of taking down Larry Cook’s “Stop Mandatory Vaccination” group, one of the largest antivaccine Facebook groups, if not the largest. Again, whether deplatforming antivaccine quacks will make a huge difference remains to be seen. Finally, even streaming platforms have sought to remove antivaccine propaganda films disguised as documentaries, like VAXXED.
Against this background, I couldn’t help but laugh at an article I found on Sayer Ji’s GreenMedInfo site. You remember Sayer Ji, don’t you? He’s been a not infrequent topic on this blog for his mangling of science in the service of quackery. The entire premise of his site is that it’s a repository of the “science” supporting alternative medicine. In reality, it’s a lot of cherry picked studies without context. Sayer Ji’s original content is even worse. For instance, he’s willfully misunderstood the concept of overdiagnosis. Other offenses against science and reason by Sayer Ji included his gleefully abusing the science of genetics to argue that Angelina Jolie and other carriers of deleterious cancer-causing mutations don’t need prophylactic surgery because lifestyle interventions will save them through epigenetics, which to “natural health” enthusiasts like Mr. Ji seems to mean the magical ability to prevent any disease. Most recently, he has appeared on the deeply dishonest “documentary” about alternative medicine cancer cures, The Truth About Cancer, to expound on how chemotherapy is evil. A reliable source of information on anything having to do with medicine, Sayer Ji is not.
That’s why I laughed out loud when I read the title of his post from the other day, BREAKING: Leaked Google Documents Link Holocaust Denial, Vatican-Alien Conspiracy, Etc. with Vaccine Safety Questions. After I finished laughing, Even before I read the post, I thought: This is the most epic self-own ever! Why? Simple. It’s because, even if these “leaked documents” are real and Sayer Ji represented their contents accurately (neither of which I take for granted), then Google got it exactly right! “Vaccine safety questions”—a term that, when used by antivaxers, really means antivaccine fear mongering, quackery, and misinformation—are indeed very much like the Vatican-alien conspiracy theory and Holocaust denial in that it is basically a conspiracy theory based on pseudoscience, just as Holocaust denial is a conspiracy theory based on pseudohistory. (And, no, I’m not saying that antivaxers are Nazis, just that Holocaust denial is a pseudohistorical conspiracy theory, much as vaccine science denial is a pseudoscientific conspiracy theory that uses similar deceptive arguments and logical fallacies.) Come to think of it, “vaccine safety questions” are also akin to the moon landing hoax, alternative medicine like homeopathy, Bigfoot, chemtrails, creationism, and all manner of other conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and pseudohistory that, not coincidentally, have also spread virally on social media. These were my thoughts before I ever read a single sentence, thanks to the title of the post.
So let’s dig in. Here’s the video:
We’ll get to James O’Keefe more in a moment. I suspect he’s known to a lot of readers of this blog, and, for now, suffice to say that he’s a major crank who’s into QAnon. He’s also responsible for something called Project Veritas, which is purported to be a large trove of leaked Google documents.
Sayer Ji, however, is quite taken with O’Keefe:
A new investigative report reveals that Google has been classifying searches such as “do vaccines cause autism” as “fringe queries” alongside searches that include Holocaust denial, Pizzagate, the Vatican’s knowledge of aliens, and so-called “false flag” shootings.
A new report by James O’ Keefe features the video testimony of a Google insider by the name of Zachary Vorhies who reveals that Google has been actively censoring certain search queries and websites that contain information that run counter to Google’s singular narrative of Truth.
You know, if these documents are real, they would give me more confidence that Google is finally “getting it” when it comes to antivaccine views, because antivaccine pseudoscience, such as the belief that vaccines cause autism, is every bit as much fringe as Holocaust denial, Pizzagate, “false flag” shootings, and the like. Sayer Ji continues:
In the leaked screenshot below, Google identifies the search query “do vaccines cause autism” to be targeted for algorithmic censorship, alongside seemingly more outlandish queries such as “vatican knows about aliens,” which strangely appears to be true, based on a Podesta email leak that received mainstream media coverage.
Here’s the screenshot:
I don’t have a problem with including the question “Do vaccines cause autism?” with any of those other questions and statements.
Ji also goes on about how Google knowingly uses this information to adjust its algorithms as though this were a bad thing. Sadly, I have my doubts about a lot of this. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m as uneasy about the power Google has because of near-monopoly power over Internet searches. However, there are a lot of reasons to doubt this story.
First of all, James O’Keefe is a crank par excellence, as this story in The Daily Beast shows:
Right-wing provocateur James O’Keefe published his latest video on tech giants on Wednesday, touting an interview with former YouTube software engineer and self-proclaimed “whistleblower” Zach Vorhies. In the video, Vorhies claims that Google’s search algorithms are riddled with political bias, and touted a cache of internal Google files he alleges prove his case.
Vorhies complains that Google doesn’t surface conspiracy theory websites like InfoWars in one of its news search algorithms. He insists that his information is so valuable that he has a credible fear that Google could be “trying to off me.”
Here we go again. Just as the conspiracy theories about the death of wealthy pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in prison by suicide that blame Bill and Hillary Clinton for supposedly killing him and making it look like a suicide lead to the question: If the Clintons were so powerful, why is it that Donald Trump is President and Hillary Clinton is not? Why are any of the conspiracy theorists blaming the Clintons for Epstein’s “murder” not all dead or destroyed, but instead are free to post their “suspicions” on social media. The same applies here. If Google is so all-powerful, why is this former YouTube software engineer named Zach Voorhies still alive? Why is he able to make these accusations all over social media and in video? Why is he able to set up a website called Project Veritas that contains a “Google document dump”? I even did a Google search for “Project Veritas,” and O’Keefe’s website was at the top of the search list. Search for “James O’Keefe,” and O’Keefe’s Twitter feed, Wikipedia entry, and Project Veritas website show up at the top of search results. Searching for “Zach Vorhies,” I got his Twitter feed and an article on Project Veritas about him at the top of the search list. Damned careless of Google not to make sure its algorithm didn’t suppress Project Veritas and all those allegedly leaked Google documents, I’d say! Indeed, I did a search for “leaked Google documents,” and the “Google Document Dump” on the Project Veritas website was number one in the search results.
It turns out that Sayer Ji didn’t acknowledge that Zach Voorhies is quite the all-purpose crank and conspiracy theorist:
What O’Keefe’s video leaves out, though, is that his much-hyped insider is not as credible as he claims. On social media, Vorhies is an avid promoter of anti-Semitic accusations that banks, the media, and the United States government are controlled by “Zionists.” He’s also pushed conspiracy theories like QAnon, Pizzagate, and the discredited claim that vaccines cause autism.
And:
On his Twitter account, @Perpetualmaniac, Vorhies repeatedly attacks Jewish people and accuses them of a wide range of crimes. (Both O’Keefe and his group, Project Veritas, promoted Vorhies’s Twitter account in tweets on Monday.)
He even alleges that “Zionists” killed conservative publisher and O’Keefe mentor Andrew Breitbart, who died of heart failure in 2012.
Voorhies is also a 9/11 Truther:
In a May tweet, Vorhies accused Israel of plotting the 9/11 attacks, and encouraged Twitter users to look up 9/11-related conspiracy theory content, providing no evidence of his claims.
“Israel and the zionist cabal planned 9/11 and its going to all come out,” Vorhies wrote.
And at least sympathetic to white supremacists. Actually, he appears very much to be a white supremacist himself:
Vorhies also regularly uses symbols and language popular with white supremacists online. In multiple tweets, he referenced “ZOG” — long-time white supremacist abbreviation for the “Zionist Occupation Government,” the conspiracy theory that the U.S. government is controlled by Jewish interests. In one tweet, he used #ZOG and #Illuminati hashtags to allege that an election was being stolen in Florida. In another, he accused the public-interest group Free Press of being a front for a Jewish cabal.
There doesn’t seem to be a conspiracy theory Voorhies doesn’t subscribe to: Pizzagate, QAnon, antivaccine conspiracy theories, 9/11 Truth, and so much antisemitism that I bet he’s almost certainly a Holocaust denier too.
I also rather suspect that he’s taking a lot of what he has out of context. A story from late last year examined a previous “leak” of a Google presentation:
The slides are a rare and stark look at Google’s ongoing struggles, which are mirrored by many Silicon Valley tech platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, that now moderate a large swath of human conversation. Essentially, the company is asking itself whether it’s possible to protect against the negative aspects of free speech — violent threats, fake news, bots, trolling, propaganda, and election interference, to name just a few — while promoting a platform that gives everyone a voice.
Also:
The presentation concludes that tech companies “are performing a balancing act between two incompatible positions,” and that’s the reason why censorship is on the rise as companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter take more heavy-handed approaches to moderation in response to heightened criticism. The slides conclude that transparency, consistency, and responsiveness are paramount in addressing this ongoing imbalance, and that there is not a “right amount of censorship” that will please everyone and solve these issues.
Again, I don’t trust Google, given its track record. It has a lot to answer for. However, stung by its role in promoting misinformation, such as the recent revelation about how the “watch next” algorithm in YouTube leads to more radical content. Indeed, a recent New York Times report showed how YouTube’s tendency to keep serving up more radical and extreme content over time contributed to the radicalization of Brazilian politics. It’s not hard to see how the same sort of thing could have happened with quackery and pseudoscience, particularly antivaccine conspiracy theories.
That being said, at least Google appears to be struggling tentatively to do something about it, at least with respect to antivaccine misinformation. Voorhies is a total crank, and there’s good reason to doubt basically everything he claims, but I almost hope that he’s right about one thing. I hope that he’s right that Google now understands that antivaccine pseudoscience is a every bit as much of a fringe conspiracy theory as conspiracy theories about the Vatican and aliens, Bigfoot, Holocaust denial, 9/11 Truth, the Moon landing, QAnon, Pizzagate, and all the other myriad utterly bonkers conspiracy theories out there. That Sayer Ji is outraged about that simple observation tells you all you need to know about him and the observation.
323 replies on “Sayer Ji: Outraged that Google views “vaccine safety questions” to be akin to Pizzagate”
Inhibiting “fringe Queries” can be a dangerous rate-limiting step to change. For example, in the fringe queries list described in the post above it states, “is global warming real”. Scientific data clearly indicates that global warming is real. When factual queries are intermingled with speculative queries an equilibrium is achieved wherein nothing is gained for improving the human condition. In simplification, suppression of queries is ultimately self-defeating for humanity.
@ MJD
It seems, unsurprisingly, that you have not really paid attention. However, you did manage to produce a whole paragraph, nay a whole post without your usual near-equivalent of double spacing. Congratulations.
P.S. When will you be providing Christine K et alia guest posts on your own web site?
Sirhcton writes,
Congratulations.
MJD says,
Thank you my RI friend.Your constructive criticism is always appreciated.
They aren’t intermingling queries. They are trying to train their neural networks to distinguish between fact-based assertions and questions and like yours that are based on false ideas and dishonest assertions.
I’m sure they are more intelligent than your post demonstrates you to be.
I’m sure they are at least intelligent enough to know that “is climate change real?” is probably a legitimate enquiry and that “is climate change a hoax?” is possibly a fringe enquiry which they could both link to websites that show the evidence that “climate change is real”.
At least, I hope that show more intelligence than you have shown 😉
Since Sayer Ji also appears to believe these things are real, at least from one of your quotes above, it shouldn’t be the grouping that bothers him.
And yes, I share your concerns about private companies having that sort of power.
There is no way I am getting one of those dangerous flu vaccinations shots, well, until October when my health clinic starts the flu vaccination program.
Note to self: Check the dates and times.
There are other search engines besides Google, using more than one can mean you get different results which is sometimes helpful. Though sadly both Firefox and come up with Project Veritas first if you search on “google document dump”
Try startpage.com. Quite secure, provides a very good anonymous view of pages that appear in your results.
I’ll also endorse Startpage.com, and DuckDuckGo.com as well.
One of the major problems with Google is that its algorithms try to guess what you “want” to see, and then feed you more of whatever-that-is. This it does by the usual surveillance capitalism means, planting cookies on your browser everywhere you go. Any two people performing the same search are likely to get entirely different results, based on Google’s attempt to “read their minds.” (Do we really need the equivalent of roadside psychics in AI? Hell no.)
Startpage.com is a privacy-protected front end into Google’s search system, that pays Google for the “privilege” of not spying & guessing: so what you get is essentially a “clean” Google search each time. Any two people performing the same search should get the same results. In my experience, Startpage is most useful for broad searches where you’re likely to get “more wheat but also more chaff.”
DuckDuckGo.com uses its own native search algorithms running on its own servers, and it doesn’t have anything to do with Google. It’s also privacy-protected, so any two people performing the same search should get the same results. In my experience, DuckDuckGo is most useful when you want to get right to the most-useful results: “less wheat but better-quality wheat, and much less chaff.”
Using the two of them together enables getting the broad survey plus the focused results. And, the results are replicable by others, plus or minus the unavoidable changes due to new material coming online all the time.
Quacks I monitor ( PRN, NN) seem to like Duck duck go. Null claims that bing doesn’t hide his websites in searches. I use the latter ( because the computer started with it) but if you put in names of illnesses etc. I do NOT see his BS near the top.The only way you can find him is to search directly for him.
AoA also complains about Google ( and everything else- being removed from HuffPo archives, Amazon book lists)
As you know, Adams is creating his own woo-fraught YouTube, Brighteon. I do wonder how successful that is because if I look at his recent videos, I don’t see large numbers ( Adams has tallies of his most recent articles on his main page which are larger)
HOWEVER the effort against Quackwatch, SBM, sceptics and Wikipedia continues at full speed at PRN. Day after day.
If they’re angry, these changes must be working.
I just looked at Green Med Info and just before he two Google articles he has:
Lime Juice could save 100’s of thousands of lives
because it’s MAGIC – especially with gin and tonic
I like to combine it with some soy sauce, a little sugar, some garlic, ginger and chili pepper. Use it on soba noodles, in a stirfry, marinate some chicken… Dang it, now I’m hungry.
If you’re in the Royal Navy in the 17th Century…sure!
No one ever expects the Scientific Inquisition!
Don’t laugh but when Null read** his expose about the sceptics’ inquisition, he actually mentioned Monty Python and said that ” No body expects…” and ” their chief weapons are…” I swear.
** he usually posts his learned articles at the PRN website AND reads them aloud to his adoring fans complete with added references to his glorious career and asides about the evils of SBM, etc.
@ Denice,
They are angry, likely because these changes are going to hurt people. I don’t know if all this ‘monitoring’ you do is a hobby or part of your occupation but it’s useless until you acknowledge just one fact: Vaccines have hurt people, are hurting people & will continue to hurt people.
The appropriate response is to pull your head out of big data’s ass & listen to what people are saying. Make a genuine effort to improve vaccine policy & program & mitigate how many people are being hurt. Just because you have tolerated vaccination well up to this point does not mean the next one won’t put you in a wheelchair or a ‘memory-care’ facility.
I would truly not wish that on you because your fellow minions here would drop you like the proverbial hot-potato.
I will stick with epidemiological studies, until you give a plausible causation theory.
I’m suddenly reminded of the beginning of Three Days of the Condor.
Proverbial? Whatever. You have been tolerated long enough. Weird fantasies about Ms. Walter are beyond the pale. You are plainly deranged in the literal sense.
pull your head out of big data’s ass & listen to what people are saying
Who are are you going to believe?
My anecdotesme oractual datayour lying eyes?I for one enjoy the ensuing hilarity each time Christine K. accuses others of “engaging in tobacco science”, meanwhile regurging the kind of meaningless personal anecdotes (“The great-aunt of a friend of a friend lived to be 103 while smoking cheroots every dayr!”) preferred by people who wanted to ignore the epidemiological evidence that linked smoking to lung cancer.
“…these changes are going to hurt people” Unlikely; they are likely to prevent violence and deadly-foolish mistakes, since they tend to hide bullshit.
“Vaccines have hurt people, are hurting people & will continue to hurt people.” Like just about everyone else here, as soon as you provide fact-based, coherently-presented evidence to this effect I will change my mind and agree with you. But you just keep saying this. No evidence given.
“…listen to what people are saying…” Different people say different things. You don’t exhibit a history of listening much yourself. I’ve listened to many, many people. Some have coherent reasons for what they say; some may have them but can’t present them; others don’t have coherent reasons. You believe, falsely, that there are huge numbers of direct witnesses that scientists are just ignoring. The reality is that your views have been treated with the upmost respect, and now you’re whining. Scientists have checked out the hypotheses you advance, repeatedly and thoroughly. When the evidence does not agree with your views, change your views.
“Make a genuine effort to improve vaccine policy…” Give coherent reasons to think there is something wrong with it. Sorry; you don’t realize it I’m sure, but what you are asking for is for your views to be given special consideration. You’re being very arrogant.
“…mitigate how many people are being hurt…” Give some real evidence that lots of people are hurt by vaccines.
“Just because you have tolerated vaccination well up to this point does not mean the next one won’t put you in a wheelchair or a ‘memory-care’ facility.” Just because you have tolerated sunlight well up to this point does not mean the next time won’t put you in a wheelchair. Just because you have tolerated digital computers well up to this point does not mean the next boot-up won’t put you in a wheelchair. I’ll take my chances with bare possibilities. Maybe vaccines cause autism; maybe playing with Lego causes insanity. Who’s to know?
Vaccines have hurt people, are hurting people & will continue to hurt people.
Vaccine-preventable diseases have hurt thousands more people, are hurting thousands more people, and will continue to hurt thousands more people, if misinformation-mongers like Ji continue to spread their misinformation to gullible people like you.
Have you any evidence for that bovine excrement you just spouted?
Oh wait, it’s bovine excrement, you haven’t.
DuckDuckGo uses its own native search algorithms running on its own servers. See also my comment above re. comparison between search engines.
If the Duck is still turning up the Quacks (sorry, couldn’t resist;-) it’s because there hasn’t yet been a campaign to convince them to down-prioritize dreck in their results. OTOH this is useful for our side, to enable better keeping tabs on our adversaries.
On balance IMHO it’s useful to have a search engine that doesn’t have an “editorial policy” against dreck, precisely for that reason: otherwise we’re likely to be less aware of what the badguys are up to.
Google isn’t classifying vaccine safety questions along with Pizzagate. They are trying to make sure that people with vaccine safety questions get good answers.
Glad to hear that. How are they treating them differently from Pizzagate questions?
They shouldn’t – because neither are factual.
Using very advanced math. (Sorry, that was very pedantic.)
Presumably the “pizzagate” queries are directed at news articles explaining why it isn’t real, and the damage the Pizzagate conspiracy has done.
The vaccine safety questions are probably directed at the appropriate organizations, institutions and educational groups.
Basically, both would be directed away from dangerous propaganda.
The real challenge are the things that sound innocuous but are potentially very dangerous. Like “friend of anna” or “friend of bella” which are (or used to be) coded terms for anorexia nervosa and bulimia for people looking to hide or expand their eating disorders. (Yes, there are forums for how to be more anorexic, and yes, it does kill people.)
There are days I think a sentient AI lurks within the Google servers. If so, I hope it appreciates anti-virus software and therefore also vaccines for us biologicals.
Ji does use his claims in BREAKING: Leaked Google Documents Link Holocaust Denial, Vatican-Alien Conspiracy, Etc. with Vaccine Safety Questions to justify his sales pitch for membership to GreenMedinfo at just either $89, $179 or a mere $849 per year. Wot a deal! Above all else for these bozos, it’s always about the $$$.
Orac said, “This is the most epic self-own ever!”
Yep, it is.
.
Slayer Gee said, “…Google has been classifying searches such as “do vaccines cause autism” as “fringe queries” alongside searches that include Holocaust denial, Pizzagate, the Vatican’s knowledge of aliens, and so-called “false flag” shootings.”
Note the “” ‘they said it not me’ irony quotes around “do vaccines cause autism” and “fringe queries” and “false flag”.
This is to make it clear to his deranged readers that it is not he, but someone else who is “dis”ing those terms. He has to do this for fear of the backlash from his krackpot konspiracee acolytes.
Indeed, I think it was Mikey who posted an article complaining of the takedown/legal troubles of Alex Jones due to Pizzagate and in the post he distanced himself and NN from Pizzagate… which infuriated his acolytes who insisted Pizzagate was real and anyone who didn’t believe it was a traitor…
Which is probably why Slayer Gee implicitly endorses one of the looniest internet konspiracees thusly,
“…seemingly more outlandish queries such as “vatican knows about aliens,” which strangely appears to be true,…”
It only ‘seems more outlandish’, but it ‘strangely appears to be twoo.’
It’s twoo! It’s twoo! Teh pope is a shape-shifting reptilian aiding the alienz in instituting the NWO via the Aluminutty.
.
It’s nice to see deranged kooks administering foot bullets while trying to plead their case and not look totally deranged.
Any rational journalist reading his screed would place Slayer Gee in the sack with David Icke and Alex Jones.
Oh crap, there’s no Wikipedia page about Sayer JI… YET
But there is information about him on Rational Wiki’s GreenMedInfo page- including his mugshot, I think that someone here found out about his arrest originally, Heh..
Skeptical Raptor discusses him and Ji’s eponymous website has a section for education– now I may be a prejudiced, propaganda-fed, brainwashed SB materialist BUT
I find these entries useful.
He has a BA in Philosophy from Rutgers. That’s it. He worked as a counsellor/ educator in Wildcrafting or suchlike. Whatever that is ( I DO sort of know).
( People who have BAs in Philosophy can do great work in SBM – as Andy Wakefield found out, much to his dismay- but that example included intelligence, investigative abilities and work-related education/ guidance from experts).
Without adequate background in life science or general science, most adults are ill prepared for evaluating scientific literature or trends. That’s why relatively intelligent people – some with degrees- fall for nonsense like what Ji, AoA or the others offer.
It bothers me when I hear requests for advice from hacks like those I survey: some of these entranced followers do not sound stupid BUT
they have no insight into how research, SBM, statistical analysis work. They never studied it. They can be conned.
Alt med/ woo/ anti-vax relies upon conspiracies and accusations against ((shudder)) EXPERTS to counter the information SBM, Wikipedia and sceptics provide .They compose bios with high sounding qualifications that cannot be verified outside of their own adverts/ websites.
Given James O’Keefe’s track record, for Sayer Ji to consider O’Keefe to be a reliable source says a lot about him, none of it good. O’Keefe has repeatedly been caught deceptively editing his videos, and in some cases he has been caught in the process of trying to film those videos, e.g., that time several years ago when he visited then-Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-LA) office, as well as the time he tried to lure a CNN reporter onto a boat.
Crank magnetism, indeed.
Just in case anyone has forgotten, O’Keefe was the guy who attacked ACORN and Planned Parenthood with the ridiculous videos where he’s dressed like a pimp. That was, god, two election cycles ago? Three? It feels like a million years.
I believe he also went to jail for breaking into Sen Landrieu’s office.
Like the rest of the Alt-Med profiteers, Sayer Ji is shifting to target an audience of right-wing gun-licking conspiracists, because that’s where the gullibility is concentrated.
That’s extremely right:
even at that bastion of old timey liberalism, WBAI ( the only Pacifica station to presently allow Null a venue), the woo-meister plays excerpts of Tucker Carson, Jordan Peterson and various Clinton Crime Family conspiracies. NO guns yet – not in NYC.
His private station plays worldwide though- he’s
telling followers to move to NE Texas
near Arkansas and Louisiana. Sounds about right. His new stomping grounds.
“I’m a scamming fraudster! I shouldn’t be treated like a deluded crank!”
Orac: “We’ll get to James O’Keefe more in a moment. I suspect he’s known to a lot of readers of this blog, and, for now, suffice to say that he’s a major crank who’s into QAnon. He’s also responsible for something called Project Veritas, which is purported to be a large trove of leaked Google documents.”
Project Veritas is O’Keefe’s longstanding undercover investigative journalism project (add all the “scare quotes” you want to that, some are richly deserved), which as others noted have encompassed the ACORN sting which ultimately led to the group’s dissolution, the spectacularly backfiring attempt at getting the Washington Post to bite on a false Roy Moore allegation and other variably successful operations/stunts, bankrolled by right-wing supporters and almost entirely targeting left-wing organizations.
The following Politico article gives insight into O’Keefe and Project Veritas:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/05/04/james-okeefe-undercover-sting-profile-feature-2018-218015
This doesn’t matter, really. This media blackout makes the provaccine look desperate & ‘un-sciencey’. It’s suspicious to those that don’t GAF about vaccines one way or another. It may serve to temporarily increase compulsory legislation & even vaccination uptake, which will, in turn; cause an increase in adverse events.
I googled ‘vaccine reaction’ & VAERS did not result until page 4. Is that what you want? Oh never mind; of course it is. People are going to be so disillusioned when they try to find out what is wrong at 3 am when their baby is arching their spine & shrieking in pain & all’s they can find is a bunch of crap about sore arms. They will be forever lost to you; they will not trust the scientific community again.
People managed to organize & impact legislation long before the internet ever existed & they will continue to do so without it now. The only thing that could prevent people from becoming anti-the-vaccines is if there wasn’t much to be anti about & ya’ll seem hell bent on preventing vaccine safety, so unfortunately; here comes more ‘acceptable losses’. And more antivaccine push back.
You didn’t get a hit til page 4 because of your searching history. I used the same “vaccine reaction” VAERS and the very first hit was a feature box with “VAERS serves as an early warning …” at cdc.gov/vaccinesafety…
Once again you have demonstrated how very limited is your understanding of … almost everything.
Attempting to use VAERS to try to diagnose an acutely distressed infant is idiocy.
Why would someone be googling vaccine reaction if their baby is behaving in a distressed manner at 3am? That seems more assumption than seeking help or answer. And if they were, why would VAERS help them? If they want to know “what are the risks of DTaP”, you want the VIS or a similarly reliable site. If you want “baby arching back,” your best bet is likely your doctor’s Advice line, but if you’re using google, it’s not vaers you need.
you might be an anti-vaxxer if your argument is that entire fields of study by millions of people must be wrong, because they don’t agree with your personal opinion.
Honestly, it doesn’t take more than a casual interest in computer science to know that Google has a major confirmation bias built into it. Great when you’re trying to find that one recipe for cherry pie you’ve used 100 times. Not so great when it come to preventing people from confirmation of their conspiracy theories. (Of course, Christine will twist this to claim it’s why we are pro-vax, but most of us pair it with skills like source evaluation and a basic understanding of the scientific method).
G**glieCorp lose interest in subsiding the activities of a low-life scammer. Christine K. is concerned how this will affect the cause of Evidence-Based Medicine, and vaccine use in particular.
Her concern is noted and appreciated.
I wouldn’t beat the ‘acceptable losses’ drum Christine. Being anti-vaccine means you accept deaths from VPDs. You accept long term health consequences of VPDs.
Unless, if course, you think deaths/LTHC from vaccines are greater in number than deaths/LTHC from VPDs. In which case you must be able to show that?
She doesn’t care about people who have plights that are different from her own. I tested that one. Vaccine caused autism is the only boogie man that exists in her world.
“This media blackout…” This word does not mean what you think it means.
“People are going to be so disillusioned when they try to find out what is wrong at 3 am when their baby is arching their spine…” Doing Google searches in the middle of the night for an unknown aliment is quite simply misuse of the Internet. That is a very poor way to learn, and indeed makes people vulnerable to cranks. I’d bet real money that a lot of parents have been turned on to the antivax nonsense in just exactly this way; misinformation and disinformation delivered at just exactly the time people are most emotionally vulnerable.
Anyone who responds to a child’s sickness by hitting the Internet in this way is making a big mistake, and that’s true even if they receive only solidly correct information. The fact that this does not occur to you after 3 seconds of thought is an illustration of your zealotry. You don’t realize you’re a bigot.
You’re so right. I don’t have children, just a dad who is almost 91 years of age. If I have the feeling something is wrong I call the doctor or an ambulance and I’m defenitly not going to google first. If medical personal tell me what is wrong, I just might look on the internet for more information, but I trust the advice of medical experts more, than the result of random looking on the internet.
My dad gets his anual flu shot and isn’t in a wheelchair and isn’t suffering from dementia either. And yes, this is just anecdotical evidence, but it’s what I have and it’s the same evidence miss K. seems to prefer over statistics (just lies), or what medical people are saying (because they are all bribed by Big Pharma).
People are going to be so disillusioned when they try to find out what is wrong at 3 am when their baby is arching their spine & shrieking in pain
When your baby is shrieking in pain at 3am you stop to look at Google? Normal people call 911.
” when they try to find out what is wrong at 3 am when their baby is arching their spine & shrieking in pain” – please tell my why they are wasting their time looking for stuff on google, rather than taking their kid to A&E?
I have often asked that question. Fortunately there were no googles when my kid had a grand mal seizure due to what is now a vaccine preventable disease. After the several large firemen came to my teeny tiny house and looked at my tiny toddler who was no longer conscious after the seizure, they called an ambulance where we were transported to the emergency department.
I do not have much sympathy for those who do not even bother dialing three numbers in their phone when their child is in crisis.
What is anyone with any sense doing fumbling around on the internet in a situation like that? If your baby is doing that, you take them to the ER.
Good grief.
Exactly!
So if Christine reads material that contradicts her worldview it seems she passive aggressively then hopes for the writer to wind up in a wheel chair or a long term care facility. Or being “dropped”. That’ll show THEM!
She has a few things wrong:
— VPDs harm more people than vaccines ever do
— No one here has any say in vaccine policy
— What people say includes their acceptance of vaccines: most parents vaccinate their children
— People I write about misinform the public and profit off of their gullibility- they are BUSINESSES. Millionaires. Anti-vax writers mislead parents which may lead to harm coming to children. Some of them are paid for their work or sell products for profit
— No one here is being paid.
— I doubt the occasional flu shot leads to need for a wheelchair or dementia
Also:
* We recognize there are real, rare serious side effects from vaccines, and want those studied to understand how they can be further reduced.
* We recognize that the anti-vax movement muddies the waters and makes that harder.
Is being wished into a wheel chair better or worse than her accusation (or fantasy or offer) of “intimate relations?”
From the Marianne Williams thread (https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2019/08/02/faye-flam-defends-marianne-williams/): “She would turn her back while you bent me over & f**ked me with your compulsory vaccination dick.” Either way, Ms. Kincaid’s rhetoric and reasoning has not put her in a flattering light.
@ Denice,
It could happen to anybody. Until we have the means to identify vulnerability; adverse vaccine reactions will appear to strike randomly & yes, people who have developed GBS after the occasional fju shot have required the use of a wheelchair.
GBS is a rare disease, affecting less than 1-2 per 100, 000. ( see Wikipedia). It is more likely to occur after eating raw chicken or suffering a VIRAL INFECTION- such as INFLUENZA ( also Zika, HIV, CMV, others); after a vaccine is listed as most rare ( see Mayo Clinic). Very few people have such severe symptoms to need a wheelchair. ( see above references).
You have real coping issues. Get professional help.
Don’t use Orac’s site and his followers as a sounding board for your ideas and complaints against the universe:
we ain’t God ( or Nature). You have a difficult situation because of your son’s condition, don’t blame it on people you don’t know or concoct conspiracies to implicate most of the medical researchers in the world.
Hopefully this topic has aged enough that this OT post will not incur the wrath of the Blinky Box Overlord.
.
Prepare to be deluged in anti-vax tears.
The New York State DOH on Friday, August 16, 2019 issued this press release:
https://www.health.ny.gov/press/releases/2019/2019-08-16_vaccinations_emergency_regulations.htm
“ALBANY, N.Y. (August 16, 2019) – The New York State Department of Health and Office of Children and Family Services today issued emergency regulations further strengthening and clarifying the process by which physicians can grant medical exemptions under the new state law…
…
Effective immediately, physicians who issue medical exemptions will be required to complete the applicable medical exemption form approved by the New York State Department of Health or New York City Department of Education, which specifically outlines the medical reason(s) that prevent a child from being vaccinated. Additionally, the regulations require physicians to outline specific justifications for each required vaccine in order to be able to grant an exemption.”
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The regulation (pdf):
https://regs.health.ny.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/emergency_regulations/School%20Immunization%20Requirements_0.pdf
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Basically a doctor issuing a medical exemption must fill out a state or city form and indicate the medical reason for the exemption for each vaccine exempted.
Further, the exemptions can’t be some made up anti-vax codswallop:
From the regulation:
“A new subdivision (l) of section 66-1.1 defines “may be detrimental to the child’s health”to mean that a physician has determined that a child has a medical contraindication or precaution to a specific immunization consistent with ACIP guidance.
…
(l) May be detrimental to the child’s health means that a physician has determined that a child has a medical contraindication or precaution to a specific immunization consistent with ACIP guidance or other nationally recognized evidence-based standard of care.
…
(c) A signed, completed [sample] medical exemption form [issued] approved by the NYSDOH or [NYCDOHMH or a signed statement] NYC Department of Education from a physician licensed to practice medicine in New York State certifying that immunization may be detrimental to the child’s health, containing sufficient information to identify a medical contraindication to a specific immunization and specifying the length of time the immunization is medically contraindicated. The medical exemption must be reissued annually. The principal or person in charge of the school may require additional information supporting the exemption.
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Basically the NYSDOH is playing hardball with any quacks who even think they are going to pass off some quack anti-vax delusion in order to grant their anti-vax parents the exemption they demand.
On top of that the schools can call the quacks out…
.
I wonder how much money the anti-vaxxers have to pay RFK, Jr. & Co. to continue suing the state(s).
Let the weeping and wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth begin.
.
.
.
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One problem I see is this clause on page 11 of the regulation (pdf):
Subparagraph (ii) of paragraph (4) of subdivision (c) of section 66-1.2 is hereby amended to read
as follows:
(ii)
For individuals exempt from administration of vaccines, providers must
submit patient information, including the reason [for the exemption] that
such immunization may be detrimental to the child’s health, as defined in
subdivision (l) of this section, to the statewide immunization information
system within 14 days following the in-person clinical interaction that
occurs at or after what would normally have been the due date for
administration of an age-appropriate immunization to that child, according
to current national immunization recommendations.
.
Which seems to require that the physician have a face-to-face clinical interaction with the child on or within 14 days after the recommended vaccination date (age).
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can see doctors balking at this since diagnosing a child with immune problems, etc. may come many months before the vaccines are due and the exemption is a done deal at that time. There would be no reason to drag the kid into the clinic on the vaccine due date just to submit the patient info into the immunization information system.
@ Narad,
Weird fantasies about Ms. Walter
Oh come off of it already. It could happen to anybody. After all of the personal attacks I’ve endured here in the hopes of saving just one person that tragedy, you might think that I would be angry enough to warble pseudo-curses under my breath at people here but if I were to; Ms Walter would not be one of them.
If anything; it is those here delighting in impending outbreaks (A pox upon ye houses …) that harbor weird fantasies.
So, if your fantasy were to come true and Denice suffered an adverse reaction, the RIgulars would “drop her like a hot potato”? Sorry, Toonces, but I doubt — to put it mildly — that she would suddenly be turned into a raving antivaccine lunatic such as yourself.
@ Narad,
Sorry, Toonces
The cat?? OMG, LOL, that’s funny.
but I doubt
Oh but I highly doubt it too. Not only will she not be able to put 2 & 2 together but it’s unlikely her doctor would either. Remember; they have been educated that it won’t happen, so therefore; it didn’t. La-la-la …la la …
This is nonresponsive.
You have an odd notion of what personal attacks are.
She has an odd method of trying to “save” people, since she’s also said that letting people die from VPDs is necessary for evolution, adding that to the list of scientific topics she knows nothing about but will pontificate on at length.
More good news from the vaccine development front: a vaccine to prevent cat allergies in humans. Best of all, you give it to the cat, not the allergic person.
https://boston.cbslocal.com/2019/08/16/vaccine-cat-allergies-developed-swiss-scientists/?fbclid=IwAR3RZ4aGau7ACOLORnaP-vbQRqOcQw8IMpXDwHgxVhbn7lrfsC8__LF5Flk
“those…delighting in impending outbreaks”
That would be the “Natural Immunity is preferable to vaccines” crowd.
Actually, antivaxers must dread preventable disease outbreaks in much the same way that fervent Second Amendment advocates dread mass shootings.
@ DB,
Actually, antivaxers must dread preventable disease outbreaks
I can’t speak for anybody else but in my case; you would be correct. In an eye-rolling sort of way. It doesn’t take an outbreak to do so; flu-season is enough to make me gag with all the pearl-clutching swooning going on. This does not include the actual ‘HPV Swoon’. That would be real; not fake.
Otherwise; the outbreaks are bittersweet. On one hand; a bunch of people get the fever with spots in a first-world country extremely capable of handling fevers with spots & a community emerges with very high, natural immunity, whose infants will benefit from the actually adequate (as opposed to inefficient) maternal immunity. A pretty good deal overall. As a non-responder to the MV, it would be worth it to me to self-isolate during an outbreak in order to coexist at a later time within such an immune-superior community as that.
I have zero confidence that your vaccines to offer me such a benefit, if anything; they leave me highly vulnerable.
On the other hand, every time there is an outbreak; I am subjected to the fake-martyrdom of the provaccine; nailing their
‘victims’ of the fever with spots to a cross & dragging them to & fro in front of the media. It’s enough to make me ill & ‘Disgust’ is not a VPD.
This is a set of incorrect, unconvincing claims directly taken from antivaccine sites. Starting with downplaying the risks of measles – something discussed on this blog multiple times – to suggesting that the pre vaccines reality, where we saw outbreaks of hundreds of thousands of cases each year, offered better herd immunity than today’s post-vaccines reality where a thousand cases is abnormally high.
It’s terrible that when children die of preventable diseases, that the people who knock the very idea that disease is dangerous are made to feel slightly guilty. Truly one of the great tragedies of our time.
Christine, every singe disease we vaccinate against can kill, and still kills people, even in First World countries. Flu isn’t just some illness where you get bed rest and cough for a few days. I once had a very bad bout. In bed for two days, sick for three weeks, lost 9KG. Even if you survive, many of these illnesses can cause horrible sequelae like lung damage, organ damage, sterility or brain damage.
As for your comments about natural imunity, catching a disease to gain immunity to it is like burning something to fireproof it. In addition, some people don’t gain immunity even from natural exposure.
You need to own the fact that you are antivaccine.
Thank you for providing us with the delusional justification for working towards reducing vaccination rates and contributing to VPD outbreaks. I have no doubt this is a mass delusion suffered by most or all of your compatriots.
Great example of why I think she’s nothing but a troll. Go back a few weeks and she was claiming that she knows these disease are serious and that was why she vaccinated her kids.
I thought the most recent batch was unvaccinated. I’m not sifting all this crap.
“a bunch of people get the fever with spots in a first-world country extremely capable of handling fevers with spots & a community emerges with very high, natural immunity, whose infants will benefit from the actually adequate (as opposed to inefficient) maternal immunity. ”
Really? You characterise measles – a disease that kills 1-2/1000 in first-world countries, & >100.000 annually on a global basis – as “fever with spots”?
Here in NZ 40% of those with an active measles infection have had to be admitted to hospital. The two kids’ hospitals in Auckland have both opened a measles ward, and I really really hope that their infection control procedures can contain the illness on that ward, as otherwise other very ill children are at significant additional risk.
And if the community has such “high, natural immunity”, how is it that until the advent of vaccination against measles, those same communities suffered regular, cyclical epidemics of illness? Illness that killed and disabled up to 20% of those infected?
You’re showing a profound ignorance of history, immunology, & epidemiology, and a deeply uncaring attitude.
@ Aarno,
until you give a plausible causation theory
But I have. To the best of my ability; I have. I have noted that the very same genetic variants found consistently in autism are on the very same genes responsible for immune responses to vaccines that result in the very same abnormal cytokine profiles found in people with autism. I theorized that the missing link is that we don’t have baseline, pre-immunization cytokine profiles for any of these people. Therefore; we can’t know if their cytokine profiles were abnormal before the vaccine or not & if we did; it would give researchers a very big lead in what direction to head in.
It is a causation theory I have never seen anybody else suggest & it is a science-based one that I was able to provide multiple citations for.
And the response here continues to not address my theory & be ‘but the epidemiology hasn’t found it’. Or ‘that’s just a hypotheses’. Or ‘a hypotheses shouldn’t be confused with science’.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. I can show the provaccine a causation theory but I can’t make them think.
For some reason, I am reminded of this:
Oh dear, I didn’t know about the shooting part. My apologies.
No actually what you have offered is your own, very limited, knowledge of immunology and some tangential citations warped with your biases. No wonder you seem confused at our refusal to accept your “evidence”.
@ Science Mom,
Are you lost? I wasn’t asked to provide evidence. I was asked regarding a plausible theory.
Still waiting. Bear in mind that it’s going to have to be quite convoluted in the face of the actual evidence.
Funny you should ask that given plausible theories are supported by evidence. What you have provided thus far is majikal-thinking.
In science, a “theory” is something that can only be formulated after an abundance of evidence has been gathered. A theory is a cohesive wrapper for what you already have, not a leaky basket into which you toss bits and pieces as you go skipping through the forest.
A ball of hair and hand-waving is not the same thing as a “theory”.
Oh, G-d, now I’m going to be up for hours marveling* at this one.
*Or something.
I like how she claims she provided citations to show her hypothesis is correct, while at the same time claiming it’s totally novel.
Keyword is “plausible”. Vaccines are very different. First dead pathogen vaccines with adjuvant, then vaccines with weakened virus or bacteria. All these causes a different type of immune response.
But I think autism is caused by magic fairies.
If your theory is so great, why do scientists not test it without your say-so?
Where is the causation in your hypothesis anyway? It’s a lot of whataboutery. At most it’s a claim that there might be an association of some unspecified issue with vaccines.
There’s also the question of plausibility. Resources are limited; scientists lack the means to test out every ideas from every loudmouth.
Many people here have training in science. Why are they all so irresponsive to your bigly wisdom?
@ Julian,
You need to own the fact that you are antivaccine
M’kay; I’m antivaccine. Now will you think about my reply to Aarno, please? You are one of the few here I trust to give me honest feedback.
BTW; that’s probably what your friend meant about ‘a good scientist’.
I wonder about a country who’s medical infrastructure can deal with a fever+spots. Can it deal with hundreds of thousand cases of fever+spots? What about a country where there are people who don’t go to the ER when seriously ill because it costs too much money?
@ Number Wang,
When I tried to discuss how Peter Aaby’s work in Guinea-Bissau may be relevant to SIDS incidence here; I was told that the research that found that the DTP was contributing to increased infant mortality in a third-world country was irrelevant in the U.S.
So which is it? VPDs are equally relevant but the negative, non-specific effects of the vaccines are not?
Lots of additional mortality is relevant, it makes comparison difficult. Other industrialized countries are another thing.
I’m talking about the US. Remove vaccines. VPDs return. Millions of extra hospitalisations per year (assuming ALL VPDs fully active again). Can your system cope? Do you care?
As far as non specific effects of vaccines go. First prove they are related to vaccines. Otherwise your entire lifes work is based on sand. If you could prove a causal relationship with vaccines then the next step would be to add this data to the risk/benefit analysis. This could lead to no change or massive change depending on the result.
If you try to compare third and first world countries then you should read your own posts. You’ve already claimed measles isn’t that serious. In your first world country. Would you make the same claim in a third world country? I have no expertise to critique Peter Aabys work specifically but I know that any health complications are far more dangerous in countries where nutrition is poor and doctors far away. As always, the potential side effects of vaccination should be compared to the effects of VPDs. Which is worse? Which cause the most deaths? This analysis should be done with full awareness of the local conditions.
@ Dorit,
the pre vaccines reality
And what exactly would you know about the differences in first-world healthcare between 1957 & today? Are you trying to tell me that the standard of practice of care for a patient with severe Measles 60 years ago has enjoyed absolutely zero advances to the standard of practice of care we have today?
And please stop saying that I get ideas from Antivaccine sites because I’ve repeatedly stated that I don’t belong to or follow any.
It’s just a way to pretend that people couldn’t possibly arrive to the same conclusions based on the same exposure, experiences & evidence; independent of the next guy, because that might just lend credibility to what they say. Much easier to perpetuate the myth that some antivaccine guru devised an evil plot, complete with a script, to indoctrinate their recruits.
A conspiracy theory; is what that perpetuates.
For sites where I do not use my real name, my username is ‘coschristi’. I don’t much care if this is ‘dangerous .oversharing’; I’m just a boring mom in Colorado. You will find a few random comments from me here & there from 2014-present on antivaccine sites; no regular following whatsoever & my multiple comments per day on a large forum on a variety of topics. I have no antivaccine footprint; just an average capability for critical thinking. My position is not hard to arrive at; quite independently from your agenda & it’s Antis. It’s a reasonable position.
A. The treatment of a severe measles case is not quite relevant to the question of herd immunity.
B. What do you think is different in treating measles today?
C. You made several references directly taken from the antivaccine world in your comments. For example, your reference to the Thompson conspiracy theory. Or Aaby.
Many of your other arguments also fit their usual comments. In
@ Dorit,
The treatment of a severe measles case is not quite relevant to the question of herd immunity
No, your right; it’s not. A non-severe & fairly typical case of the measles is not fatal. It’s inconvenient & maybe miserable but so are a lot of things. It’s counter-intuitive to think that compulsory legislation is justified for inconvenient ick. So in order to validate, the provaccine trot out the ‘what abouts’ & ‘what ifs’; the severe cases & the rare but sometimes fatal complications.
Because the reality is that the best herd immunity comes from people actually catching the measles.
What do you think is different in treating measles today
Multimodal monitors for vital signs, delivery system technology for IV fluids & oxygen; including hyperbaric chambers & nebulized medication delivery. Medications, diagnostics, etc … We didn’t even have anything as basic as ‘universal precautions’ until the 1980s.
A totally different landscape now than 60 years ago.
You made several references directly taken from the antivaccine world in your comments. For example, your reference to the Thompson conspiracy theory. Or Aaby
Have they finally noticed Aaby?! Good grief; it took them long enough. I posted & reposted links to him without nary a nibble. It’s about freaking time.
Thompson I also found on my own before the press release from his lawyer hit the antivax sites. They found him without my hints though, all on their own & within a matter of days from when I first saw it.
I don’t need them. They might need me more but my point; is that my position is not hard to arrive at all your own. It’s obvious. You’ve got my username; see what you can find. I’m telling you the truth.
(I also only use that one username for everywhere because I’m easily distracted & I will forget)
A. As pointed out, there is a high rate of complications in measles cases. In recent outbreaks over 10% are hospitalized.
B. You have a point about better supportive systems. And with them, the rate of death in developed Europe was about 1:1000 in the past two years. That does not include SSPE.
C. I have addressed your claims about Aaby before. I linked to the WHO thorough review of the evidence that concluded there is no good evidence of his claims about DTP and no justification to change policy. See again:
https://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5434
And:
https://www.who.int/immunization/research/implementation/nse_protocol_comments/en/
A non-severe & fairly typical case of the measles is not fatal.
Non-fatal cases are not fatal. Thank you for this contribution to the discourse.
How, precisely, do you qualitatively rank SEIR models?
Actually, no.
It was believed to be so when I was an toddler, before full implementation of a vaccination program.
But as it turns out, a number of vaccines last longer than previously believed. In the case of the Measles vaccine, it was actually confirmed it’s lifelong for more than 95% of people. Wild measles doesn’t do better.
A few vaccines may confer a shorter immunity than the full-blown disease. They are typically the ones for which boosters are recommended every decade or so. One such vaccine may be the rabies vaccine. In that latter case, advocating for getting the real illness is not exactly a wise option.
I think it’s the diphteria vaccine which is the very odd one. Ideally 10 years of immunity, but strong variations from people to people. This vaccine could definitively be improved. But, surprise, natural infection doesn’t do much better.
And conversely, natural exposure didn’t confer that long an immunity. A confounding factor was that, previous to and during the first decades of vaccination programs, people were naturally exposed to the wild virus (e.g. then their children caught measles), and this acted as a ‘booster vaccine’.
A real negative consequence of vaccination may be that naturally-acquired immunity may no last as long, due to lack of a circulating wild virus (although right now, in my country, I wouldn’t worry much, we are in the middle of epidemics of childhood diseases).
That being said, “Children should become sick so that I can enjoy lifelong immunity to an illness” is not exactly a good ethical standpoint.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder — it’s a floor wax and a dessert topping.
Grüß Gott in Himmel! That seems like an grand rigamarole for a fever with spots. Obviously health care facilities are out to pad the bills in the extreme if they pretend such things are required for a fever with spots.
Please define “best.”
he reality is that the best herd immunity comes from people actually catching the measles
So, why did the near-universal measles incidence prior to 1963 not result in herd immunity?
@Shay,
It sort of did.
It’s called “natural herd immunity “.
That means that enough people developed immunity from suffering the disease that the current epidemic died out. Then it wasn’t seen much for a couple of years until enough babies were born to support another epidemic.
And it’s sort of ironic to talk about how you’re better protected from the disease after you’ve already suffered the effects including possible death.
You mean thirty years ago. The measles case fatality rate has remained 1-2/1000 for several decades now. Narad provided you with a WHO link and see also: https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/189/Supplement_1/S69/2082538
So how did this natural herd immunity do as far as eliminating measles Christine?
Um, yes, that has been clear for some time, not that it’s of much intrinsic interest.
I would mow Orac’s lawn if he would install one of the WordPress killfile extensions. I’ll throw in a pedicure, as well.
@ Narad,
Why? So you could go soft in this circle-jerk, echo-chamber & be ill-prepared for combat? I’m useful & promiscuous. Better than your average chew-toy.
I’ll grant you one of those last two. “Combat,” indeed.
I am profoundly disturbed along with Sayer Ji that anti vaccination is perceived as [heh, excuse me] the same kind of thing as [ha, muffled snort, sorry] Pizzagate, UFO cultism and the like. Sayer Ji Is a serious thinker who deserves, ha ,ha, ha, ha, ha, ha….
Sorry. I couldn’t get that whole sentence out without getting the giggles. I’ll try again later – maybe stabbing a fork into my leg will help?
“maybe stabbing a fork into my leg will help?”
You’ll get autism.
Christine: “please stop saying that I get ideas from Antivaccine sites because I’ve repeatedly stated that I don’t belong to or follow any.”
Your stated beliefs closely follow antivax echo-chamber memes, including characterizing measles as “fever with spots” or “inconvenient ick”.
“Complications occur in 20% or more of people who contract measles. The more common complications associated with measles infection in a normal host are diarrhea (8%), otitis media (7%), pneumonia (6%), acute encephalitis (2 cases per 1,000 measles cases), subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) (0.2 to 0.7 cases per 1,000 measles cases) and death (2 cases per 1,000 measles cases).”
“Complications of measles are most common among children younger than 5 years of age and adults 20 years of age and older.”
“Which of the following statements are true?”
a) Complications from a measles infection are likely to be present if the fever has not lysed within one to two days after rash onset.
b) In the U.S., the measles case-fatality rate may be as high as 50% in children infected with HIV.
c) Measles infection during pregnancy results in an increased risk of premature labor, spontaneous abortion and an infant with low birthweight.
d) Pneumonia may be viral or bacterial and is the most common cause of measles-related death in children”
(note: a-d are all correct)
https://www.aappublications.org/news/2019/05/17/idsnapshot051719
Blithe unconcern with the suffering and death of those who contract vaccine-preventable diseases* is a common characteristic of antivaxers. Undoubtedly Christine is part of this herd mentality, protestations of independent “thought” notwithstanding.
*including those in poorer countries for whom the impact of complications and death is far greater, and who are among those affected adversely by antivax propaganda.
Christine, read Dangerous Bacon’s comment above, then tell me why we should not consider you a fool.
@ TBruce,
Because his reply had little to do with herd immunity? He actually referenced herd mentality. As a non-responder to the MV; I haven’t heard of anybody in the antivax community with my particular problem. They are probably over sniveling with the provaccine as the token ‘but what about those who can’t be immunized’?
I’d rather take my chances in a community with low vaccine uptake, self-isolate during an outbreak & then live amongst those with strong immunity. I’m much better with a few of those people getting the runs (hey; we have IV fluids here!) & an ear infection (heard of antibiotics? we got those too!) than I am with people risking a lifetime of brain damage for their child. Hell yes, no doubt about it. Don’t hurt your kids for ME & do not sacrifice your kids for some imaginary herd who will abandon you when your child’s number comes up.
And it wouldn’t matter. You will consider me a fool because I don’t agree with you.
Let’s see: An imaginary risk of autism if you get the vaccine, or a real risk of serious and lethal complications from a disease you will get at some point if you forgo the vaccine. Yep, you’re a fool.
By the way, why did you avoid mentioning pneumonia, encephalitis, SSPE and death? Ignoring them doesn’t make them disappear..
Otherwise known as “leeching.”
Isolation does not help. Measles spread before it can be detected. And vaccination creates a strong immunity. Are you suggesting pox parties ? Willfully infecting your child is a form of child abuse.
No, this has more to do with your not being able to think your way out of a wet paper bag, as well as running away from comments in which you are decisively shown to be full of beans.
@ DB,
It just occured to me that the provaccine must get awfully upset that nobody will just die already during these outbreaks. In the U.S. I’m waiting for Number Wang’s reply as to whether or not I’m allowed to consider VPDs on a global scale or not.
No, the pro-vaccine commenters are grateful that nobody died, and feel for the people hospitalized, suffering and harmed from a preventable outbreak.
Beg pardon?
They have died in Italy. It will happen when there will be enough cases. As an aside you should decide is US child care horrible (all those chronic diseases) or superb (when treating measles).
You frelling id!ot.
In my country, we have gone through measles epidemics since 2010’s. A nice coming back, courtesy of low-vaccination rates.
And each year an epidemic was active, we lost the statistically expected number of people – between 1 and 3 people per thousand cases.
It was in the newspapers. Go educate yourself, as the pro-plagues are fond of saying.
It just occured to me that the provaccine must get awfully upset that nobody will just die already during these outbreaks.
72 deaths in Europe, so far.
Come now, Dangerous. You’re using numbers and statistics. She can’t do numbers and rejects anything to do with statistics (which, curiously, requires the use of numbers). You need to couch your statements in terms of beliefs if you wish them to be effective.
@ Dorit,
It’s not preventable. Why do you think they had to add the second MMR to the schedule? The mom’s who had received the MMR versus just getting the damn measles did not pass on adequate maternal immunity & kids too young to be vaccinated started making up a disproportionate amount of the measles cases. Is that okay with you? You are probably one of those in that same age group of women.
Your MMR left your babies more vulnerable to the measles, than the babies of the older mom’s who had the measles.
Add to that how many people who are vaccinated get the Measles, or that odd occurrence a few years ago where those with two MMRs made up a larger portion of measles cases than those with just one did & I think it’s safe to say that hyper-focusing on that 7% of children with no MMR coverage as who to blame for outbreaks; is DUMB.
Immunity to Measles per the MMR has peaked. It’s time to reevaluate.
If your argument is that before vaccines, when there were hundreds of thousands of cases to millions of cases a year, babies were safer than now, when cases are very low in the U.S., that’s a strange argument. Here is one article – looking only at DC, between 1908-1912 there were close to 500 cases in infants under 1. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.4.4.289-a
We have less than 1200 cases total – in all age groups – in all of the U.S. this year, and it’s a peak year.
So no. MMR leaves babies less vulnerable to measles, not more, and they would be even less vulnerable if anti-vaccine activists did not try so hard to scare parents and bring measles back.
By the way, just to point another inconsistency, earlier you said you supported measles vaccines. You retreated from that.
Of course, non vaccinated are most probably to get measles, and that includes ones having a real medical exemption. Measles outbreaks happen when vaccine coverage is too low.
And placenta would pass all antibodies to the fetus, it cannot know what of these are generated by vaccination.
It’s not preventable.
Funny how everyone born before 1957 is assumed to have had the measles, and it hasn’t been endemic to the US since 2000? I wonder why…
@ Dorit,
here is no good evidence of his claims about DTP
I think you would meet with a good deal of resistance about your (& the WHOs) opinion on Aaby’s research prowess outside of this little provax bubble; in the international research community. He is considered to be ‘provaccine’. Have you read much of his work? You may want to reconsider.
earlier you said you supported measles vaccines
You are way too black & white. I can find both positive & negative about something & conclude that overall; it is positive. My issue is with US policy & program. The timing, sequencing & vaccine type are off. Not good. Immunization to the Measles should ideally occur a little earlier for the positive, no-specific effects & the DTP needs serious reevaluation. MV. Not MMR.
No, I’m not a doctor nor research scientist but what I am saying is science based. As I said; take your sentiments about this research outside of this bubble & you will not be received well.
The WHO’s conclusion was the result of a detailed expert review through workgroups, and is as close as we have to the opinion of the global immunology community.
The excitement about Aaby’s claims outside his group is, as far as I can tell, limited to antivaccine groups.
Your claims are taken directly from antivaccine circles, and are pretty “black.” There is no vaccine on the schedule you seem to appreciate.
The one she claims to sort of support are very telling as well. She leaves out diphtheria, which even with our modern medical care has a fatality rate of 10%, and rubella, because apparently congenital rubella syndrome is no biggie.
She claimed MMR was okay, then backpeddled to just Measles vaccine after someone pointed out that the Thompson conspiracy theory she was touting was about MMR.
There is no real vaccine she approves of.
The deuce you say.
So tell me again, why should we listen to you instead of Orac, who is both, or to a very large group of other people with the same level of training as he has, who all say that you’re full of it?
Anonymous Coward asks,
So tell me again, why should we listen to you instead of Orac,…
MJD says,
Some perspectives bring uncertainty to Orac’s respectful insolence. More important, anecdotal evidence brings uncertainty to Orac’s respectful insolence. Most important, empirical evidence related to the non-static characteristics of immunity brings uncertainty to Orac’s respectful insolence.
When we stop listening, the phrase “so tell me again” disappears and is replaced with “why should we listen to you?”
Go away, faux Heisenberg. Dumbshit leeching is pathetic even for you.
@ Narad
Do you mean our dear visitor doesn’t know where he is nor how fast he is going?
I think I’m going to steal that one.
(reminds me of a joke about Heisenberg and Schrodinger traveling together in a car and being stopped by a patrol cop)
@ Aonymous Coward,
So tell me again, why should we listen to you
To be fair; I’ve not really ever said you should a first time. I assume that will take some time. Why should you listen to me? Because I’m right.
I will patiently give you solid citations you have never seen before. I will reference history with archived news reports. I will offer you science based theory you hadn’t considered. I will not attempt to overstep my knowledge base; as in deconstructing the flawed epidemiology you so desperately cling to. That I will have to leave to someone else.
I will admit when I’m wrong. Not easily accomplished when one has acted insolently.
I will offer you transparency for myself as a highly-impacted by vaccines person:
An over-vaccinated non-responder to the MV with ASD. The mother of a child dead within 24 hours of her DTP. The mother of a child who regressed into severe ASD following immunization. The daughter of a research scientist bullied by vaccine politics. The niece of a doctor who holds 14 patents for the development of a vaccine. The extended family member of a SV40 cancer patient who has battled repeated cancers since the age of 4 years old in the late 1960s (following her immunization with the contaminated Polio vaccine in 1963) & has quietly been a CDC research subject since the early 1990s.
A person who despite the negatives above; acknowledges that immunizations MUST remain a top priority in public health & wishes for public safety to be prioritized as well.
You really should listen to me & I am not a doctor or research scientist.
I’d like to know the name of that research scientist please. The reason is to look up that person’s publication record.
I would also like to know the name of that doctor to read all of his / her patents on the development of a vaccine.
Thanks you very much.
Alain
I don’t think you sound very respectful at all.
Are you addressing Orac or the commentariat?
Why should Orac ( or his followers) be respectful addressing ideas that aren’t worthy of respect?
In fact today, ( twitter) he is quite disrespectful to white supremacists like those who descended upon Portland. On blogs, he openly ridicules woo promoters and anti-vaxxers. Because their beliefs and MO are not merely risible but can be DANGEROUS as well. A guy travels across the country to pick a fight with people who live in Portland and then gets all huffy if they respond. An American doctor travels to AUS to “teach” parents about the dangers of vaccines and then wonders why officials didn’t welcome her with flowers and champagne. Shouldn’t actions like these be called out- at the very least- or even ridiculed?
These groups- be they political or health related- claim that they have “freedom of speech” and are being censored. Well, if you are so censored, why oh why can we quote everything you say?. And can’t we speak back? An anti-vaxxer ( @ Kim Rossi1111) responded to her ally, an anti-vax comedian saying that they should ‘have a letter’? ( referencing LGBTQ) They’re the last group, she says, that isn’t recognised as being an object of scorn:
as if being ridiculed for presenting farfetched conspiracies and unverifiable research that affects children’s health is EXACTLY the same as homophobic rage and violence.
I am happy to give Kim and her fellow travelers a letter. It could be A for Anti-vaxxer or maybe N for conspiracy Nutcase. Should we have a competition?
@ Denice,
*Why should Orac ( or his followers) be respectful *
Please refer to my reply above to AC. There are reasons. Everybody brigs something different but valuable to the table. Good manners never made a bad situation any worse.
That is an antipodean thing in my case Charlene. Down here respect has to be earned.
No one who’s pro-immunization wants or needs deaths from infectious diseases to make their case.
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/239299/20190308/unvaccinated-oregon-boy-diagnosed-with-tetanus-racks-up-nearly-a-million-dollars-in-medical-bills.htm
Especially jarring is this tidbit:
“After a total of 57 days in the hospital and nearly a million dollars ($811,929 to be exact) in medical bills, the family declined to give the boy the recommended second dose of tetanus vaccine, as well as other immunizations. The decision was made even after the doctors presented a thorough education on the benefits and possible risks of the vaccine.”
@ Aarno,
Regarding maternal immunity.
Actually yes; it IS known.
Children of mothers vaccinated against measles and, possibly, rubella have lower concentrations of
maternal antibodies and lose protection by maternal antibodies at an earlier age than children of mothers in communities that oppose vaccination. This increases the risk of disease transmission in highly vaccinated populations
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/faf2/3226b9b0d371948a7f3b693e155b81a24614.pdf
In November of 1992, an Associated Press release made it into a few newspapers regarding measles immunity. This particular excerpt comes from “The Wilson Daily Times” Wilson, N.C., Friday Afternoon, November 27,1992:
*BOSTON (AP) — A generation ago, doctors routinely began vaccinating every child against measles. No one worried much what would happen when they grew up and had babies of their own. In hindsight, perhaps they should have: These new mothers fail to pass on the strong resistance to measles at birth that an eternity of women before them have done. The result is a new problem — measles in the very young.
The CDC estimates that at least 40 percent of babies are now born to vaccinated mothers and this should near 100 percent by the end of the decade. So the problem of infant measles will probably only get worse as more vaccinated women reach motherhood*
Citation
Results. The estimated duration of protection by maternal antibodies among infants in the general population, most of whom were born to vaccinated mothers, was short: 3.3 months for measles, 2.7 months for mumps, 3.9 months for rubella, and 3.4 months for varicella. The duration of protection against measles was 2 months longer for infants born in the orthodox communities, most of whom had unvaccinated mothers. For rubella, mothers in the orthodox communities had higher concentrations of antibodies as compared to the general population.
This actually shows that protection by maternal antibodies is short. And then, an infant should have measles to get a natural immunity, I presumer
And there are no estimation how many orthodox children actually were were unvaccinated, and neither many of general population were.
@ Aarno,
This is why the second dose of MMR was added in the US in (I think?) 1994.
Moms who have had the Measles provide the best immunity to their children & the best protection to their community against outbreaks.
Moms born prior to 1994, immunized with just one MMR provide inefficient immunity & contributed to higher community risk.
Moms born after 1994 are in their early-mid 20’s & just starting to have their own children so what the result of the two-MMR will be has yet to be seen.
Communities with no vaccines have more measles the communities with high vaccine rates. Even if protection from measles through unvaccinated women lasts two months longer, the arguments that babies are safer when there’s more measles around than when there is less is incorrect.
Let’s say 1% of babies got measles pre-vaccine, where reported cases were about 400,000 a year (and estimated 3-4 million, but let’s keep to reported to give you the best case): that would be 4,000 babies. In 2019, an unusually high year, the U.S. so far had less than 1200 cases of measles total. Altogether, in all age groups.
Where are babies safer, again?
No it wasn’t. Maternal measles antibodies are so short-lived, they have close to zero impact on infant morbidity/mortality.
Well the actual problem is that they did not do an actual vexed-unvaxxed study, just lumped communities together
@ Aarno,
This is not a theory it is a consensus::
*Unfortunately, vaccination against measles and varicella in one generation increases the possibility of infection in the next.
As time passes, the proportion of vaccines in the population increases, with the latter gradually replacing
individuals with lifelong protection acquired from natural infection. Infants become more susceptible as passively acquired maternal antibodies become less and are catabolized*
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e014/703d6eb4b4e889db52191c95eb9f874eca43.pdf
Which is why measles was eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, of course.
This “Australian Journal of Biomedical Research” is from “sciencej.com” / “Southern Cross publishing”, which is a parasitical publisher unfamiliar to me. It turns out to be a one-man show run by some “Ardashir Kharabian Masouleh” scammer from the University of Queensland.
Citation
The window of susceptibility to measles has increased in infants, as it might also happen for varicella in the near future. In order to progress towards the diseases’ eradication and, more importantly, to protect those population groups, including young infants, with high morbidity rates attributed to the diseases, it is evident that further investigation will be conducted for the immunization against measles and varicella at an earlier age.
Do you read your links at all ?
And possibility is not consensus.
Paper plots immunity after seroconversion, too. It is much better than maternal one.
@ Narad,
Otherwise known as leeching
I’m a non-responder. WTF, Narad?
My kids are immunized.
I would rather reside within a non-vaccinated community than a well-vaccinated community.
Let’s review the comments in full:
So, you want to avoid illness (“self-isolate during an outbreak”) and then benefit from others’ having fallen ill. What does this have to do with being a “non-responder”?
@ Narad,
As a nonresponder, I can’t sustain immunity from the MMR, so it doesn’t matter if I’m in a well-vaccinated community or not; if Measles comes to town I have to self-isolate either way.
It is nonsensical to guilt people into vaccinating in order to ‘protect those who cannot vaccinate’; because we are better off living in a post-outbreak community with high natural immunity than we are in a well-vaccinated community that is still vulnerable to the Measles.
Either way, during an outbreak, it is our responsibility to self-isolate; not yours to give us some false-sense of security with your vaccinated status.
Why would you self-isolate to avoid getting a fever with spots?
Doesn’t work with measles. Or any other illness with a contagious phase preceding the eruption phase.
I would also consider your argument more seriously if people weren’t regularly caught in the act of moving around while knowingly being sick with something likely to be contagious.
Coincidentally, these people are usually rationalizing their behavior by saying stuff like “it’s just a fever with spots”.
@ doritmi,
Where are babies safer, again
In unvaccinated, first world communities that build high natural immunity, while enjoying access to sanitation services, climate control, antibiotics, IVF & oxygen delivery methods with nebulized medications. To mothers able & willing to stay home with their infants during outbreaks.
Please note the second citation I provided to Aarno.
Even in First World countries, measles can kill. As was pointed out above, people have died in the current outbreaks. And that’s before we enter Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis into the equation.
Every vaccine preventable disease can kill or permanently disable. It is best to prevent them with vaccines.
@ Julian,
It is best to prevent them with vaccines
Not when the vaccines can also a.) kill or permanently disable & b.) will leave the next generation more vulnerable.
It likely IS best that YOU prevent them for YOURSELF by vaccinating.Those with bigger concerns should make an educated decision for themselves because it does not appear as though the science supports anything more than; ‘the MMR reduces the rate of Measles’.
It won’t affect YOU one way or the other. Would you enjoy ME forcing my position on YOU, or do you enjoy having the option to vaccinate? My position protects us both. Yours robs ME of my choice.
How many people have vaccines killed and/or permanently disabled? Very few, if any. How many people will be killed or permanently disabled if vaccination ended tomorrow? Millions.
Which is why smallpox is such a threat to us today. Oh wait.
Vaccination drove smallpox into extinction in the wild. It was doing the same to polio and measles until idiot antivaxxers stepped in. The best way to reduce vulnerability is to send these diseases into extinction, and the best way to do that is through vaccination.
Your position endangers those too young to be vaccinated. Look up Kailis Smith, Kaliah Jordan and Dana McCaffrey. Three children too young to be vaccinated, killed by vaccine preventable diseases.
Where 1 in 10 will die from Diptheria, and 1 in 200 will die from whooping cough, even with all those advancements.
@ Doug,
Why would you self-isolate to avoid getting a fever with spots
Because I’m not sure what the implications of my status as a nonresponder to the vaccine would be for natural (wild) exposure.
So much for your nursing degree; I don’t suppose you know about those who don’t catch measles at all because they lack the specific cell surface receptor a la genetic mutation. So you just ain’t that speshul.
“To mothers able & willing to stay home with their infants during outbreaks.”
So – part of the problem is those evil moms who feel free to go out in public, receive visitors to their homes, or even (shudder) utilize the services of a babysitter or day care so they can work to support their families.
Shame ’em. That’s the ticket.
@ DB,
I’m confused. I’m talking about the unvaccinated. Isn’t that what Rockland ordered?
@ Athaic,
I would also consider your argument more seriously if people weren’t regularly caught in the act of moving around while knowingly being sick with something likely to be contagious
You are right. People are so irresponsible. I could be exposed before there was a hint of a confirmed case.
I believe that adverse vaccine events are defying the epidemiology. You do not. The issue of waning protection from vaccine induced immunity IS a real concern, however.
Where do you, as provaccine; draw the line with increasing vaccination frequency in order to combat waning immunity? Would there come a point where you would say ‘this is getting ridiculous’?
There is no actual evidence of a waning immunity problem in regards to measles. The CDC says people who got two doses of MMR are considered immune for life, because most are.
As with your claim that babies are at higher risk with MMR than measles, or your attempt to claim vaccines harms are higher than the evidence shows, this is the reality as you wish it to be, not the reality as the evidence shows it to be.
@ doritmi,
I don’t think you understood what my previous citations were about. The previous one dose MMR schedule, received by moms born from 1963-1994, DID lead to lower maternal derived immunity in their infants compared to the older moms who ad never been vaccinated & instead, had just had the Measles.
That’s why the one citation stated Unfortunately, vaccination against measles and varicella in one generation increases the possibility of infection in the next
Whether or not the newer, 2-dose schedule will remedy that is not yet known, as the oldest of those 2-dose recipients would be in their early-mid 20s & are just now having children of their own.
I did understand that. I think you may have missed the several responses that reminded you that we do not see increased outbreaks except in under vaccinated communities, that cases are dramatically lower than in the prevaccine era, and that more babies got measles before vaccines.
In other words, that your claims are against the current evidence. You are using an article trying to predict what will happen; the people responding to you are pointing to what actually happened. Which doesn’t fit what you want to believe.
And the squaring of the circle comes down to exposure: even if immunity from vaccinated mothers is two months shorter and somewhat less strong, babies are a lot less likely to be exposed to measles in the vaccines era.
Except, primarily, where antivaccine activists tricked a community to a degree that vaccines rates are low.
Is maternally-conferred antibodies the only argument you have regarding the effectiveness of the vaccine? You seem rather hung up on it despite that those antibodies aren’t a contributing factor to measles incidence as they are so short-lived. As Prof. Reiss stated (and all the literature), measles outbreaks are almost all in un/undervaccinated across all age groups and (I believe) all passed the age that maternal antibodies would matter.
I must be younger than my birth certificate says. I asked my PCP for the second dose last year, and it was readly provided.
Meh. People are people.
Please note that my original post didn’t exactly bash them for this.
People cannot stay home whenever they feel under the water, nothing would ever be done.
Up until quite recently (let’s say, the glorious 60’s), a big majority of the population didn’t have a choice: as long as you can stand up, stuff your feelings, and go to work. Only the rich could really afford sick days.
Things are a little better now, in a few places in developed countries.
That being said…
A French family recently re-introduced measles to Costa Rica. One kid was sick, but, eh, not gonna cancel a costly vacation trip over a little bout of fever. Coincidentally, as it happens, the ‘elite’ private French school the kids were attending was a hotspot, first, of under- or no vaccination, and then of a measles outbreak. Included in the picture, a friendly physician who ‘forgot’ to report a measles case, as legally mandatory, and parents who refused to provide healthcare visitors with a list of guests their sick child may have contaminated. With people like this, the next black plague is just around the corner.
In a similar trend, you have Typhoid Mary.
Affluent, and/or unwilling to follow treatment/quarantine, when objectively deemed necessary? Those I would blame as irresponsible.
@ Athaic,
parents who refused to provide healthcare visitors with a list of guests their sick child may have contaminated
Didn’t something similar happen last year here in the US? In (I think) the Oregon outbreak? Except it was an uncle who caught the Measles from his nephew but refused to provide authorities with his previous contacts. The boys parents had not sought medical care for their sick kid either, so it wasted a lot of time in identifying & contacting the potentially exposed.
I believe that when finally contacted, the parents also told authorities the boy was vaccinated which they later discovered was not true.
I hope the maternal derived immunity issue gets straightened out. All of the vaccines I agree with are having issues. The tetanus vaccine (which I really can’t understand why anyone would not agree with) can no longer be received as the tetanus-only, You can’t get the MV here, only the MMR & I’m trying hard to be agreeable with the HepB but it is so obviously more correlated with autism rates than the MMR is. It’s also hard to ignore that my autistic son (who’s dad’s family history is curious for Hepatitis in males) has ran a low-grade fever since his 2nd day of life, when he had is first HepB shot.
Neither are actually but please feel free to post your evidence that isn’t “I believe” please.
Since it’s been clear for years that transplacentally-acquired measles antibodies can only protect infants for a few months whether the mother had been vaccinated or naturally infected, the issue has already been “straightened out”: the best way to protect susceptible babies is to prevent exposure during the window between waning of the antibodies and vaccination. Adequate vaccination uptake among those old enough to be vaccinated goes a long way towards that goal.
Are you referring Geiers’ papers ? They were about thimerosal and HepB, and thimerosal is now removed. And they did very nasty form of mercury detox, and so had very obvious conflict of interest.
@brian
It might be possible to close that window of vulnerability for measles with a dose of canine distemper vaccine, at least it works in the other direction for dogs.
@ Alain,
I’d like to know the name
My late mother was Maria S. Douvas Miles. You will not likely find much from her. Her work on Celiac disease/DNA identification was donated to a large laboratory in Denver, CO. When a well-known doctor acknowledged her contribution to research on trans fats, by name, she objected & in the more recent editions he instead referred to her as ‘a woman’ in his two-page long forward.
My late aunt was Angeline S. Douvas (Sadava) M.D. Notable in HIV research. I believe she is published primarily under ‘Douvas’.
D. Sadava was her husband, he is retired & very much alive & well but there may be articles published under ‘A. Sadava’ too.
@ Alain,
I forgot to mention that another Douvas will also appear in research from same academic institutions as Angeline & Maria, primarily in bacteria related research. First initial ‘G’. That is their brother (my uncle) but I’ve not mentioned him here that I recall.
You do realise that the accomplishments of others, even family members aren’t your own right? And you don’t get to claim authority via family osmosis right? So what do your relatives research have anything to do with your curious hobby?
Heh. My 3rd great grandfather was the first Treasurer of New Zealand. That should make me ideal for pontificating about how economies should be run. I hadn’t thought of that as a career before.
Ok,
I’d like to know whom of them was bullied for its research on vaccines or tangential to vaccines and also, which one hold the 14 patents.
I started looking at the publication record of everyone under the Douvas family name.
Thanks again.
Alain
@ Alain,
No problem. To be clear, my mom (Maria) was the one who was bullied. Not due to her research but because she called out a professor who was in the middle of a lecture & said (to the entire auditorium) that in the event of a serious adverse reaction to a vaccine, including death; they were not to admit to the parents that the vaccine was the cause.
All’s she did was to raise her hand & ask ‘And what if that were your child?’, an argument ensued & she was expelled.
My aunt (Angeline) would not ever have been bullied. The thought of it cracks me up; she had an, er, very imposing personality. Her issue was more in regards to ‘carrot-on-a-stick’ government funding. There were a few holidays during which she was breathing fire about this. She passed away in 2000, holding 14 patents & her vaccine finally progressed to development in October of 2018.
That information:
When you knew about that situation, which effect, if any, did it have on you and / or your beliefs?
Alain
When the 2nd dose of MMR was added to the schedule, all children who had only had one dose were encouraged to get the 2nd dose at that time. I was born in the 70s and I got my 2nd dose in middle school, I expect that a majority of children still in school or seeing a pediatrician regularly did as well. The immunity persisted at least 30ish years, as it was still plenty strong last time I had my titers checked. Whatever nonsense you’re spouting about how people born before 1994 only had one dose is just that – nonsense.
@ Dorit,
I think you may have missed the several responses
No, Orac’s getting annoyed with me so I’m trying to minimize my presence on threads where I have posted a lot. I’m going to try to ‘condense’ but some might miss my reply. I’m not ‘trying to predict’, I said we don’t know yet. If the 2-dose MMR proves to be adequate for subsequent generations, then that’s great! End of story.
@ Aarno,
it is evident that further investigation will be conducted for the immunization against measles and varicella at an earlier age
Do you read your links at all
Yes & I don’t have an issue with an ‘earlier age’. I do still think that if the 1st DTP was not given until after the first MMR; we would see a decline in adverse reactions.
I do still think that if the 1st DTP was not given until after the first MMR; we would see a decline in adverse reactions.
That you base upon a couple of studies, by the same group, that uses DTP, not DTaP to a population that doesn’t resemble the U.S.’s. Please reconcile this with also leaving infants vulnerable to those VPDs.
Her idea of what disesaes are acceptable for people to be vulnerable to is horrifying. Whooping cough is highly contagious, spreads long ebfore people realize what they have, and approx. half of infants end up in the hospital. And she wants to leave them vulnerable for months longer. It’s sick.
There is a paper about coadministration of vaccines:
Nicola P.Klein, Wayde M.Weston, Sherine Kuriyakose, Devayani Kolhe, Barbara Howe, Leonard R.Friedland, Olivier Van Der Meeren
An open-label, randomized, multi-center study of the immunogenicity and safety of DTaP–IPV (Kinrix™) co-administered with MMR vaccine with or without varicella vaccine in healthy pre-school age children
Vaccine Volume 30, Issue 3, 11 January 2012, Pages 668-674
So this is studied, too.
And you still not get difference between DTP and DTaP. Last one is acellular, first one is not.
DTP is her special bugaboo since that is what her daughter received. And Aaby showed it us “bad” so that proves her right even though Guinea-Bissau didn’t track deaths from SIDS.
Adequate for what? Where have you been for the past thirty years?
@ Science Mom,
a) The information about my family was provided due to a specific request by Alain. I would have preferred to do so by DM or email, as I don’t like the idea of horrid people sniffing around my wonderful family. I like & trust Alain, which is why I chose to do so.
Their accomplishments are far removed from my opinions but the people I grew up with & our history are relevant to my life’s experience with vaccines.
b) the past thirty years
Who cares. I’m in the age group of moms who received 1 MMR (well, I received 4 or 5) & they already know that our infants had substandard maternal derived immunity because we didn’t just catch the Measles. Are all 30 year old women done (or even started) having babies? We won’t even have any raw data on their children’s immunity for years. Decades, even.
@ PF,
Your experience may not be representative of the population as a whole.
@ Terrie,
Anxiety issues? Maybe we should just give 24 months worth of immunizations before a newborn is discharged home with their mom? OMG that would never do. That would leave them vulnerable to ALL THOSE VPDs for like, 23 hours! Maybe all newborns should be immediately encapsulated in a bubble. Maybe you would feel safer in one?
What is wrong with you? Seriously, what the heck is WRONG with you? Are you such a broken, miserable person that you take joy in other people suffering? You’re sick and you need help.
I have concluded that Christine Kincaid’s behaviour is indistinguishable from that of a troll. I find conversations go much better if you occasionally point out the most glaring errors in her statements, but otherwise refuse to engage with her. It is like how I deal with MJD. Every so often I comment that he is an ignorant pompous windbag, but otherwise I ignore him.
Chris, true. And I do think she is a troll. just like them, she wants people to be as miserable as her.
I think it is more that she wants to be noticed and to feel important.
Oh, the 200-proof irony!
Oh gee, and why would Alain even bother to ask if you didn’t claim to be an <a href=”an important goose.
Yes and (yet again)? What does this have to do with the vaccine’s effectiveness and safety? How does marginally-better maternal antibodies have anything to do with measles epidemiology?
Strawman much? How about answering the question I asked instead of taking the opportunity to light a pile of poo on fire?
Except my experience is consistent with the research that shows 2 doses of MMR provides lifetime immunity for 97%.
The diminished maternal antibodies, even if it’s actually true, are unimportant because there is a much lower incidence of circulating wild measles virus in a highly vaccinated population. So infants are NOT at higher risk because they have been “cocooned” by everyone else around them being vaccinated.
Not to mention that lower titers does not mean they’re unprotected. Titer level is not a direct quantitative result – higher levels don’t necessarily mean more immunity, lower levels don’t necessarily mean less, because your body makes more antibodies when needed in response to exposure. Even people who don’t have measurable titer levels may still be immune if actually exposed.
Multi-response:
@ Terrie,
Okay, I understand. Are you in a ‘legal’ state?
@ Chris Preston,
indistinguishable from that of a troll
That’s pretty mean. I’ve tried very hard to improve my reciprocal communication here. Usually, I would have been terrified of Orac & you all. Some people here have been able to communicate well with me. Just not most.
@ PF,
Ugh. That’s not what I meant. I meant that I’m not sure ‘most’ people born 1963-1994 got a second MMR.
And at the very least, all children who were being seen regularly by a pediatrician who was aware of the new recommendations would have been encouraged to get the 2nd dose. That would cover a significant portion of that population.
I also did not wait for the recommendation. My younger children got their second MMR after the second dose recommendation was switched to 4/5 years old, except they were six and nine years old. Our family doctor was fine getting them the second MMR vaccine because there was a measles outbreak in a private school that was too close for comfort.
Their older brother had been given it just prior to going into middle school.
Anamnestic response, who’da thunk it?
Does titer measurement actually cover all aspects of the immune memory?
Dairy farmers no longer bother to vaccinate their herds against Rinderpest, because they recognise the superior immunity provided by infection NO WAIT it’s because Rinderpest is extinct because of vaccination programs.
Also because of improvements in bovine hygiene and nutrition.
“my mom…called out a professor who was in the middle of a lecture & said (to the entire auditorium) that in the event of a serious adverse reaction to a vaccine, including death; they were not to admit to the parents that the vaccine was the cause.”
“All’s she did was to raise her hand & ask ‘And what if that were your child?’, an argument ensued & she was expelled.”
You’ve already been called out for this utter bullshit.
Were there no Marines or SEALs in the audience to punch the atheist professor?
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Atheist_professor_myth
Thanks, Clyde, I’ve never heard those tales.
The basic structure resembles a story told by a well known woo-meister where he debates either the head of a medical association or a doctor who holds an important position- Surgeon General or Chief of Sloan Kettering.. the humble altie puts that high falutin’ doctor in his/ her place because the latter didn’t do his/ her “homework” The audience goes wild.
In another variant, the woo debates his prof whose lectures he shows are all wrong who then kicks him out of class.
Interesting how these tales follow the same format.
@ DB,
How would you know? It’s not BS. It happened. All’s that it means is that one academic in Colorado in the late 1980s did not have as much faith in vaccines as your educators did. I wonder how you would label that guy. Was he pro or anti vaccine?
Look, I can, have & will again; be wrong. It’s inevitable. I’m not as smart as you, as successful as you & I can’t communicate right. I’ve given way more personal info out than I should but this is exactly why; it can only serve to validate what I say. It’s all I have. I’m not lying.
@ Narad,
I’ll grant you one of those last two
I didn’t mean it literally per say but … it’s my amygdala’s fault.
We know it’s bollocks because we’ve seen many variations on the same theme. Add to that your obvious confusion between med and grad school (even though you claim highly-accomplished relatives in medicine and science) and it sounds even more ridiculous.
Or something
@ Alain,
When you knew about that situation, which effect, if any, did it have on you and / or your beliefs
At the time (late 1980s) I was a (very) young, provaccine mother in nursing school. During a weekend that I thought she was just home temporarily for, she had handed me a large folder of documents & printouts & said “Here. We have a problem with our vaccines.”
I sighed & rolled my eyes. When I got home I threw the folder away & never read not one word. Next thing I knew, she was at a different University (DU in Denver) & her program had changed from Immunology to Biochem. Multiple degrees are not unusual in our family. She had been very close to completion & I assumed she was just on to the next horizon.
She died in March of 2017 & my dad corrected the obituary I was writing because I had mentioned her ‘two PhDs’. I didn’t even know until then. I believe she had tried to tell me back when she handed me that folder & found me to be acting like an arrogant ass. I argued with her about absolutely everything. Even about my being ASD. I remember screaming: “I’m not autistic! That’s so stupid!” Of course, she had told me when I was a little girl that I was ‘so smart’.
I didn’t know until just a few years ago that my elementary school had labeled me as ‘Mentally Retarded’.
Her focus was in genetics. I have wondered recently that when she said; ‘We have a problem …’ Could she have literally meant ‘WE’? I guess that now I will never know.
I think you are wondering if this was the ‘dealbreaker’ for me with vaccines & you would be correct. I was on the fence before finding this out. I denied them as causative for both my daughter’s death & my son’s autism but when I found out about this … I just couldn’t maintain the denial any longer. I hate to say this but I almost wish I never knew. I’m an idiot.
I was & still am devastated by this. It makes sense; she always hated a ‘big to-do’. She would never have screamed this from the rooftops. So, I guess I will.
You’re on the spectrum yet your son’s ASD was caused by vaccines? Never heard of Occham’s Razor?
@ Science Mom
You’re on the spectrum yet your son’s ASD was caused by vaccines
Autism is a multifactorial genetic disorder. Immune-mediation is a well-established factor in Autism. I am ASD. My son is ASD. That satisfies the genetic factor.
As a non-responder to the Measles vaccine, I was over-immunized in order for my parents to be able to bring me from my birthplace; Japan, into the United States.
Due to an ear infection & Strep-throat, my son received a round of catch-up vaccines at the same time as his next-scheduled immunizations. I was over- immunized. My son was over- immunized. That satisfies the immune– mediating factor.
Occham’s Razor
“When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras”
The provaccine explanation for Autism: Genetics but otherwise we have no idea. That satisfies the genetic factor.
‘We have no idea’ does not meet the criteria for a factor.
How Occhams Razor applies to Autism: Since a causation theory that satisfies only one factor of a multifactorial disorder is inferior to a causation theory that satisfies the multiple factors; Vaccines = Horses.
Not the vaccines = Zebras.
Define “over-immunised”. And no, it doesn’t satisfy your auto-generated theory at all.
n=1,
I’m late to answer this but I’ll tell this n=1 story of mine about myself.
My first and second year of primary school was done in a tertiary care hospital for which, I attended the school there and also, was supervised and assessed by a multidisciplinary team of medical doctors (primary care, surgery, psychiatry), nurses, social workers, psychologists, speech-language pathologists and some more.
I was guestimated to have a 80 IQ range but I was not assessed with IQ tests. This was in 1982 -> 1984.
20 years later, in 2004, I get my diagnostic of autism and get the full panel of assessment. The Raven’s progressive matrix test put me at the 75th percentile (50th percentile == mean == 100 of IQ) for which, I ask the resident autistic scientist if there was a publication regarding IQ range in the world’s population at large and she hand me the reference for which I find out that the 75th percentile is the median score of Norway and put me at 119 IQ point.
80 –> 119… when properly assessed.
In 2004, I was starting to attend university. I also had the misfortune of accommodating a psychopath by offering him temporary living under my rooftop for which I paid dearly and in 2006 to 2008, I suffered a public campaign of harassment for which the psychopath is the one responsible behind the campaign and I was labelled a fµcking ret@ard and some other, less glamorous terms.
Autism is certainly not mental retardation. I repeat, autism is certainly not mental retardation. I’m not the only one having a diagnostic of autism while having an IQ > 100.
Even the nonverbals ones can test way over 100 of IQ because of the single particularity is that the Raven Progressive Matrices can be applied to a non-verbal person and it has been applied in an MRI scanner for a neuroimaging experiment.
See that also: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00241/full <– Isn’t that proof of intelligence? I’m the third author on that paper.
Alain
@ Alain, that was beautiful, it brought tears to my eyes. What you researched maybe one day could help with better evaluations for my son. He has never been properly assessed & the result has led to remedial & repetitive lessons which only provoke more extreme behavior.
We both possess Absolute Pitch. I’m able to game IQ tests because I’m Hyperlexic. I believe he is too but the schools don’t know. I’d bet that he was reading at a 4th grade level at age 4; although non-verbal until age 8. Just a guess but it takes one to know one.
My mom waged war with the school when they called me retarded. My parents never told me that’s what they said & I didn’t know until several years ago. I do remember constantly being pulled out of class for testing but this was in the 1970s. Nobody knew autism. I used to wander away from the class & go hide in the library bookshelves with a stash of books.
Again, that paper was brilliant.
Now we can talk about science or hypothesis or anything ’till we’re violet in the face but I’ll choose another topic for you:
If you have such gift, are intelligent and can do well. Same for your son, then, why the search for a cause, any cause when what you may need (IDK) is accommodation and support for the disabling aspect of autism.
The social disability in autism is because of discrimination, segregation and general intolerance of other peoples who are likely in position of authority and abuse such position.
As for the general populace, the social disability aspect lies with the power we give to other peoples. That particular tango is played by two peoples and there will be all kind of tango dancers you will encounter over a life. Is it worth it to incriminate vaccine at all cost to bet on better social abilities (and yes, it is a bet. I encountered all kind of peoples and a significant majority of them having SMI, personality disorders or developmental disorders).
The social norms are defined by the majority but nothing prevent participating in with the right type of accommodations, something you don’t seem to have at the moment with your son.
”Interesting how these tales follow the same format.”
As do stories about how the moment a parent innocently asks their pediatrician about an aspect of vaccine safety, he goes into a screaming rage and kicks her and her child out of the practice. Or a child becomes autistic during their visit to the doctor after receiving a vaccination.
Antivaxers confabulate – it’s a feature of the breed.
Right up there with the people who swear they’ve met twins named Lemonjello and Orangejello.
@ Dangerous Bacon:
That’s for sure.
One of the benefits of surveying these websites, radio shows etc is that I can see the consistencies of stories across woo/ anti-vax:
there are a few different leitmotifs:
— Child gets a vaccine and becomes ill/ autistic/ screams almost immediately
— Doctor treats parent with scorn if she questions vaccines at all
— A person is very ill, doctors give up hope BUT the woo-meister puts them on green juices, supplements, et voila! – cured
— The woo-meister was brilliant but couldn’t get into elite universities because of poverty etc.
— The woo-meister does “research” testing his methods and the cure rate is 95 or 98% repeatedly
— The woo-meister encounters dismissal by journals and news media whenever he presents his astonishing results
— There are secret, hidden papers that illustrate how vaccines cause autism, cancer is curable by vitamins, etc.
— A famous researcher/ author told the woo/ anti-vaxxer the Truth but has to stay silent publicly because they fear retaliation from the powers-that-be
— The woo-meister reveals the prof/ expert is wrong publicly ( as I show above)**
.
If anecdotes are now permissible, I have my own from universities/ graduate school:
I’ve never seen a student thrown out of class. In all of my years and degree studies, often in classes held in auditoriums-
ONLY once did a professor openly insult a student – it was in a small seminar and she deserved it because she said such nonsense and was an attention whore for the most part of the semester, aggravating him incessantly. Plus, he was a very sarcastic man – think Larry David with a degree in Clinical Psych. Imagine the insults. She didn’t last long.
** These tales involve a person of lower rank challenging the System and BEING RIGHT, although not recognised by the Authorities. They hero is morally superior and of finer quality in general than the corrupt powerful elite class.
I should add that all of tales are NOT validated by external sources: it is only one person saying so.
That’s why woo-meisters hate Wikipedia so much: it requires reliable OUTSIDE information to back assertions.
ANYONE can say anything – proving it is another matter. Folktales are not data.
@ DB,
Antivaxers confabulate – it’s a feature of the breed
I have heard of several families who were told to find another pediatrician when vaccinations were declined. I have never heard about a parent who thought their child became autistic before leaving the office for an immunization visit.
I think someone has been feeding you propaganda fodder.
It’s scary how desperately you all here need for me to be lying. Does the Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 grant immunity from liability to teaching institutions, or is it a grey-area?
You say you don’t habituate anti-vaxx sites so what suddenly makes you an authority on anti-vaxx propaganda? We don’t “need” you lying; we simply know that you are based upon our collective knowledge of academia and anti-vaxx fantasies.
@ Denice,
They hero is morally superior
Given that my mom was on her own in questioning this odd demand; ‘morally superior’ would be a given. However, I think her being intellectually superior had more to do with it than anything else.
Average students need to comply but she was a sought-after student. She didn’t need them because she could go anywhere. And she did.
Right. And you come here and show Orac, DB, Science Mom, Arno, Chris and MANY others how wrong they are ( intellectual superiority) and how they are corrupted/ deluded by the Establishment ( moral superiority), denying all of the SB evidence that they present whilst you rely upon..
your own personal experience and
what your Momma told you. She’s dead now by the way..
How does that not fit the patterns I described : a simple person shows the highest authorities the way etc.?
By telling anecdotes NONE of which can be validated by outside sources:
how is this NOT like a woo-meister claiming various degrees, work experience and experimental successes that can’t be shown to exist outside of his own bio?
Another hero myth.: plain person comes out of nowhere, shows evil entrenched in the powerful, triumphs etc..
Parsifal you ain’t**. Parsifal is a story -btw-
** not exactly the same but you catch my drift
@ Denice,
intellectual superiority
I’m not right because of intellectual superiority. I’m just … right.
all of the SB evidence
Which consists of nothing but the epidemiology & only one factor (genes) of the multi-factors required for a multifactorial disorder. Zero alternate theories or proof for causation.
anecdotes NONE of which can be validated
I suppose that in about 5 years, the youngest of those present when this happened will begin to retire & I may be able to locate an eyewitness who would be beyond any threat of retaliation.
how is this NOT like a woo-meister claiming various degrees, work experience and experimental successes that can’t be shown to exist outside of his own bio
Well, I have nothing to gain. No money to be made & instead of validation, I endure ridicule. Alain is finding my family & there will be no discrepancy between what I said & what he/she can find. I’ve given my only user-name so it can be confirmed that I don’t ‘do-woo’. I suppose that’s all I have,
you catch my drift
Rarely.
Christine, Christine:
It doesn’t matter who your relatives are- Nobel laureates or convenience shop workers: OR even what your education is. Having a doctorate doesn’t guarantee understanding. It’s all about presenting evidence that others can evaluate- including others who have studied in the area concerned. What happened to your mother – if it did- is not important. What people in her class say is not relevant.
Commenters here have a variety of backgrounds BUT no one really asks, we know because they sometimes tell us. If you have data and make sense it doesn’t matter. No family pedigree required.
Whilst I do know what some of Orac’s minions do or have studied – it’s not necessary. For example, I have no idea what Julian’s educational level is ( although I know he’s not average intelligence) – I only know where he lives and how well he presents meaningful evidence.
Anecdotes and stories are not evidence. If they were, how could we weigh and evaluate them? It’s just one person’s word against another’s. Research is beyond personalities and emotional reaction: it involves thousands/ millions of stories complied by hopefully honest experimenters.
Ah Christine. Right by assertion rather than proof?
The opposite of scientific methodology and ethos.
@ Science Mom,
I’m sorry but I’m not lying.
Define “over-immunised
Me:4 MMRs within 6 months.
Son:
DTP x 2, HepB x 2, Hib x 2 + Varicella; all on the same day. Nursing error, not doctor’s order error. Electronic health/Immunization record altered at some point in between August of 2018 to April of 2019 & error was deleted, plus 5 additional vaccines added that my son has not received.
Not sure if this had anything to do with the VAERS report that was filed on account of his ASD or not. Although my daughter died in 1994 & this error occurred for my son in late 2004; I did not file with VAERS regarding either until after my mom died in 2017, when I found out what had happened to her with the first PhD.
It may not be, as the EHR of an older child who has never had an adverse vaccine event was altered as well (although not her twin sister’s). Very confusing & this has possibly invalidated my VAERS reports.
So many levels of wrong, it’s dizzying.
It’s unlikely you would be given 4 MMRs in 6 months, but even if you had, that’s barely a blip on the radar of things that your immune system deals with every minute of every day. It would not add any kind of significant burden.
Same with your son. Getting those extra needles wouldn’t have been fun, but an extra dose of antigens of the same types would not have created an increased burden on his immune system. I find it a bit hard to believe that you, being a healthcare professional, let the nurse give 3 extra shots without noticing or questioning. Also, DTP was not in use in 2004, would have been DTaP.
The antigens in vaccines, even those in the whole schedule, do not represent any significant proportion of the threats your immune system dispatches every time you eat or breathe anything.
Also the fact that the studies she points to do not show immune issues cause autism, just that children with autism may have immune activation – for good and bad.
And if we are talking immune reactions, why vaccines and not a cold? Why not be concerned about the much higher reaction needed if the child gets a preventable disease? Sigh.
@ PF,
It’s unlikely you would be given 4 MMRs in 6 months
I’m not sure how much was known about nonresponders in 1970 but coming from Fuchu Pacific Command during the Vietnam War as a non-US born to US military parents; a titre was required versus proof of immunization. One of my parents would have had to remain behind in Japan with me, while the other would be allowed entry into the US with my little sister. So yes; that’s what happened.
I find it a bit hard to believe that you, being a healthcare professional, let the nurse give 3 extra shots without noticing or questioning
I understood what the doctor’s verbal order to the nurse was (she did not) & they were administered in front of him as well. Neither of us noticed the 0.5 ml difference in all three of the 3 ml syringes.
DTP was not in use in 2004, would have been DTaP
Yes, I know that is what the 2004 schedule states. His record however; lists the DTPs & one Tdap.
Therein lies a huge problem.
You would have been under the care of a base physician and records so at most two doses. But let’s entertain your fantasy and that is just over-immunised according to recommendation, nothing else.
To reiterate what PF pointed out below, you would have us believe that not only did your son receive extra doses from multi-dose vials that didn’t exist AND you didn’t notice but there was a grand conspiracy to alter his record 14-15 years after the fact.
If any of this is supposed to have some kind of meaning, I can’t see it. I can only reiterate my plea to you to get help; this isn’t a healthy hobby and nor is this a healthy place for you.
I would add that if she only arrived at blaming vaccines for her daughter’s death in 1994 and her son’s autism in 2004 in 2017, that is pretty indicative of long after the fact motivated reasoning.
And yes, it does not seem a healthy focus.
@ Science Mom
@ doritmi:
I’m in agreement with you.
Showing up on RI seems to be but the tip of the iceberg.
Honestly, at this point, it seems like a type of psychological self harm for her to keep coming here.
@ doritmi,
the studies she points to do not show immune issues cause autism, just that children with autism may have immune activation
Exactly. Why do you think I said that the only way to know, would be to establish baseline, pre-immunization cytokine profiles to see if children later diagnosed with autism had abnormal profiles before immunization … or not?
Even if the study found what you think it would, that wouldn’t prove causation either. It would simply prove that immune system abnormalities occur with autism.
Because you have an idée fixe and are immune to reason.
@ Terrie,
It would simply prove that immune system abnormalities occur with autism
No, that has already been established.
What it would do, is to prove that those abnormalities did not exist prior to vaccination*.
Abnormal response to vaccinations = a type of immune system abnormality. And it still wouldn’t prove a darn thing about causation. Which is why no one here takes your claims seriously, because you can’t understand these very basic concepts.
It’s not that easy now to find Internet claims of immediate post-vaccination autism, since Google decided to crack down on antivax fakery. Probably the most notorious of the “my child became autistic immediately after vaccination” tales is the one about the triplets who were reported to descend into severe autism as quickly as two hours after their shots (including the one who “acted deaf” and “lost his happiness”.*
http://globalmediasentry.org/2018/12/24/triplets-become-autistic-within-hours-of-vaccination-shocking-video-has-the-vaccine-industry-doubling-down-on-lies-and-disinfo/
doritmi: “And if we are talking immune reactions, why vaccines and not a cold? Why not be concerned about the much higher reaction needed if the child gets a preventable disease?”
Diseases give good immune activation, vaccines cause _bad_activation. Disease toxins = good, vaccine “toxins” = VERY BAD.
C’mon, you’ve been here long enough to have this down cold. 😉
I’m right because I KNOW I’m right.
*this didn’t get reported in the MSM because all over the country, medical school faculty warned students and residents to never mention a word about it, on pain of banishment from the medical profession. We only have the SHOCKING VIDEO because one brave soul spoke out (her forthrightness cost her an M.D. degree; now she runs a cryotherapy salon in a strip mall).
Childhood shots come in single use syringes. He would not have received multiple doses in a single syringe, the levels of incompetence that would have to be in place for something like that to occur simply do not exist. Giving routine shots is something that a nurse in a pediatric office does 20 times every day – even if she was very new, she would not have made an error like that. Your story lacks even the barest hint of credibility.
A vaccine is not a novel introduction to the immune system. The activation that a vaccine causes is exactly the same as encountering a wild pathogen. So in that respect, getting a vaccine is no different than breathing air which contains pathogens, as we all do from the moment of birth. A vaccine causes considerably less burden on the immune system than say, contracting a virus. Which is why GBS may be listed as an extremely rare side effect of the flu shot, but is much more likely to be cause by the flu itself. So there is no “before immunization” because the immune system is activated pretty much immediately.
@ Terrie,
Abnormal response to vaccinations = a type of immune system abnormality OMG, why can you not understand this? Autism is immune-mediated. Autistic people have an immune system abnormality but nobody knows if their immune system was abnormal at birth or before vaccinations because no study has ever established baseline cytokine profiles & then waited util age 8, gathered those with a diagnosis of autism & looked back at the baseline profiles to see if autistic people were among those abnormal at birth or not.
You can’t know until that’s done.
@ DB,
my child became autistic immediately after vaccination tales
Well that’s just weird. In order for that to happen there would have to be a mass explosion of synaptic genesis & immediately disabled microglia that let it grow wild, all taking place in a matter of minutes & that’s not how it works.
@ PF
Childhood shots come in single use syringes I have signed off on multi-dose vaccine lots for a pediatricians office before. I’m not sure what you are trying to say.
The activation that a vaccine causes is exactly the same as encountering a wild pathogen What?
there is no “before immunization There is a ‘before vaccination’. Maybe my idea would not show statistically significant results. I don’t know, do you?
“Autism is immune-mediated.”
You have, of course, not proved that. Actually, many known autism genes are growth control genes. And boys would have much worse immune system, if it is immune mediated.
“The activation that a vaccine causes is exactly the same as encountering a wild pathogen”
If wild pathogen does not cause autism, why would weakened one do it ?. Weakened pathogen is weakened because it has lost its disease causing capability
“Childhood shots come in single use syringe”
You can ask for single syringe, if thimerosal is an issue.
“Well that’s just weird. In order for that to happen there would have to be a mass explosion of synaptic genesis & immediately disabled microglia that let it grow wild, all taking place in a matter of minutes & that’s not how it works.”
In principle, I could not put it better myself. Idea that vaccines immediately cause autism brain growth patterns is utterly ridiculous. But you forget cell growth and synaptic pruning.
@ Aarno,
You have, of course, not proved that
I’ve given many citations here (different threads) that actually have proven that & most of them have been above reproach. I have see studies that state this on PubMed going back to the 1980s, so I’m not sure why this is a point of contention.
boys would have much worse immune system, if it is immune mediated
I’ve not yet tackled the gender-differential involved with autism, it’s on my to-do list but it’s not an easy factor for me. I’ve heard many references that females with ASD have a more ‘male brain’ & my own experiences with providers were curious in that they went out of their way to comment on how atypical my assessments were due to my being female. For instance, I was diagnosed by a prominent Neuro-Psychiatrist who is an expert/lecturer in his field who stated on my record that I had; ‘The most profound case of ASD with ADD ever seen in an adult female.’
I gave permission when asked to be used as a case history in his presentations, as he was unable to maintain therapeutic doses of stimulants for me (another reason why I don’t want my son to be medicated off-label with psychotropic pharmaceuticals).
If wild pathogen does not cause autism, why would weakened one do it
I don’t know except that I do believe that a pregnant mom who catches influenza contributes to the risk of ASD in the child. Also, finding that some vaccines have negative non-specific effects of increasing susceptibility to other pathogens is a potential factor. Notably; the DTP with HSV & now they find biomarkers of HSV in brains of people with autism & Alzheimer’s? WTF.
In principle, I could not put it better myself
Thank you. This is another reason I don’t nurture my bruised ego among the antivaxxers; I don’t have the patience for all that. Besides; ya’ll really need me here.
Unfortunately, she has no idea what are the standards of proof in science. She reads something, cherry picks the bits that fit her worldview and declares “This makes sense, therefore it’s right.” And if entire fields of study contradict her understanding, well, the problem isn’t her understanding.
It is a point of contention for you, not us. All you have done is cherry-pick some words in studies/editorials and weave together a hypothesis that suits your pre-conceived biases. That’s all. You have not provided any evidence that vaccines cause autism, etc. Autism is primarily genetic and differentiation occurs in-utero, none of your citations provide evidence to the contrary. I know you really believe this but that doesn’t make you any different than any other crank that shows up here.
I don’t think it’s our need at all.
Oh, dear L-rd. I don’t imagine he would mind being identified.
Rhetorical right? Aren’t their “experts” always renowned and the most prestigious? And the patients are the most unusual and mystifying.
@ Science Mom:
Right. The experts are
” most renowned … prestigious”
and frequently DEAD! Or inaccessible because they fear retaliation.
” My ideas were accepted by Dr Linus Pauling, winner of two Nobel Prizes”;
” Arthur Ashe was going to follow my protocol but people convinced him not to”;
” Dr Thompson is not speaking out because he was told to keep quiet OR ELSE”
” Many MDs follow use my supplements but never tell their patients because they’d be in trouble with medical boards”
I noticed that you could not explain why autism is more prevalent amongst boys and how weakened pathogens can cause autism if wild pathogen cannot. A theory should explain all facts.
@ Narad,
the tip of the iceberg*
LOL, what fun, you found my bizarre Big Bird encounter. Since then I have found one report from a woman in Pueblo CO of a nighttime sighting that same year & a report from two campers about 20 minutes west of here, also a nighttime sighting & same year. It was spotted in 2002 in Alaska by a pilot in the air & a utility ground worker, during the day & on the same day & it was seen again in Alaska in 2018.
Much more fun to talk about than vaccines.
@ Science Mom,
You would have been under the care of a base physician
Yes & only one dose was recommended then & they didn’t know at the time but I didn’t respond. It was discovered shortly before my dad’s assignment was over & they tried it again … & I didn’t respond. Same with number 3. Finally with number 4 a minimal response was noted & my parents quickly flew to the states.
a grand conspiracy to alter his record 14-15 years after the fact
I tried to bring this up on a different thread but PGP kept distracting me by saying a school couldn’t edit an EHR. I first noticed it in 2016; at that time 4 vaccinations had been added but the record still reflected the error. I didn’t mind; it only would mean that I wouldn’t be harassed to immunize him.
When I filed with VAERS in 2017 I was more concerned because someone might review his record. I thought it was probably an honest mistake but somebody could get in huge trouble over it. Either the school district or the pediatricians office.
Then in 2018 the error disappeared which completely invalidated my VAERS report for him. Additionally, an older child’s record was ‘updated’ as well but not her twins. They always received their appointments & immunizations back to back. Additionally, when I let my job to care for my son we all switched from private health insurance to Medicaid, while my son had special medicaid attached to his SSI. A glitch at the pediatricians office dropped the twins from his practice but not my son. That pretty much rules out that the discrepancy is the fault of his office. Maybe the DOE is tiring of the push.
nor is this a healthy place for you
You are not actually wrong. This is a very demoralizing place for me. It hurts the heart. I don’t want to interact with antivaxxers. I already have zero executive functioning & they will be a huge distraction..
As far as I know titer checks were no more the norm in the 1970s and 1980s than today. In other words, children were not tested to see if they responded to MMR.
@ doritmi,
This would be US military regs for overseas servicemen & families, versus typical travel requirements. From what I know of the history, Japan is unique in it’s off/on use of the MMR & has had large outbreaks. Not sure if that figured in to it or not.
Interesting. A military wife I asked said tigers are not required for children, and this recommendation for Africa suggests that two doses of MMR are an alternative to positive titers to meet the requirement (immunity presumed after).
https://www.health.mil/MHSHome/Military%20Health%20Topics/Health%20Readiness/Immunization%20Healthcare/Vaccine%20Recommendations/Vaccine%20Recommendations%20by%20AOR#AFRICOM
Maybe things were different then.
@Dorit,
The military used those multiple tab heavy card paper folders for records with 2 holes punched at the top of each page when I served in the 70s and 80s. You had to go sign them out from records before each appointment.
Anyone overseas would have had a passport as well to get stamped with shot records.
Thank you. Once again, Christine’s accounts are merely variations on the usual anti-vaxx theme of incompetent doctors and the patient being a complete medical mystery subjected to terrible treatment.
Dorit: “A military wife I asked said tigers are not required for children”
If only I’d had a tiger to take to school; no one would have messed with me.
LOL. Twice I corrected that, and thought I beat autocorrect on this one. Autocorrect really is sometimes your worst enema.
Please allow me….
It may be timely to ask Orac’s readers to recall events… through the mists of time:
it was summer 2011, and we were visited by a new college graduate who came to RI to argue about the causation of autism ( vaccines, OBVIOUSLY) he came armed with studies and plans for his eventual triumph in Epidemiology/ Public Health. He was backed by financial support ( family) and believers who had read his articles. He was about to set the world on fire. HOWEVER cooler heads ( ours) warned him that his ideas were fucking bonkers and that his internet activities would haunt him if he tried to acquire a real job. Commenters tried to show him how his theoretical musings were RONG and why his beliefs were founded in deception, fraud and conspiracy mongering. We tried. I tried. To no avail.
He created a website and wrote for a foreign (quasi) news source. He became a political activist ( right wing). And he somehow did not complete his degree. But he continues writing to this day with a small retinue of believers. He never got a job but doesn’t need one because his mother is filthy rich. So he lives in luxury, spewing hate and spinning theories.
Our warnings involved trying to get him to understand why his beliefs were based on cobwebs and cotton candy: nothing substantial or meaningful. I personally asked him to consider how he managed to believe that the whole world and SBM could be wrong and he was correct; others were showing how he missed important facts in his (so-called) reasoning. Also, how his writings could sabotage any chance he had for an actual job in areas that he studied.
So here we went again. There are people who cannot learn or benefit from sceptics’ input.
You’re very right.
I think many of us were lulled into a false sense of possibility by generally coherent writing and an initial expression of interest in discussion.
I don’t think any of us expected to see the likes of Jake again. Usually we get the sexist, the just-want-to-argue, the just-asking-questions, the monomaniacal, the deeply abhorrent.
I wonder, is there a categorization system for antagonistic and trolling commentors?
Hah! If there isn’t a system, I’m sure that we could make one specifically for anti-vaxers or woo’ers:
perhaps Variety of Obsession X Type of Argument ( or story to back up claims)
e.g. Pharma plot X I got inside information from someone who worked there or
Vaccines kill X I saw it happen!
Like the system for categorizing fairy tales (that’s a lovely Wikipedia rabbit hole).
For obsession variety I’m thinking: equal-opportunity conspiracy theorist, anti-abortion, linguistic pendant, shadow-government believer, uber-libertarian, racist, sexist, eugenicist, creationist.
And a special modifier for “manages to not be vicious”.
The very worst one, the one who named themselves after a type of T-cell, I can’t even remember their MO anymore. Which is probably just as well.
“linguistic pendant”
pedant (heh!)
@ JustaTech:
Who could ever forget “Thingie”? Th1Th2
Then there was Robert the Libertarian who went on to create The Vaccine Machine FB page
And Greg ( le Canadien)
And he who shall remain unnamed ( H@pp3h was it?)
Lots of fun. They’re useful teaching tools for readers.
@ JustaTech
Literal-minded to the point of absurdity (not always bad-faith arguments, more of “looking at things one convenient way and not bulging henceforth”),
Making their own definition of words (like using antigen for ‘live pathogen’). I like to point the start of the renewal in ‘walking dead’ movies to its comments asserting that killed vaccines give you the illness – here come zombie bugs. Invisible zombie bugs, to boot, because you are asymptomatic.
Oh, and copying other commenters’ styles and expressions, but badly using them (with other people,that one could have been endearing, actually). I quickly learned not to use simile and analogies.
Had some fascination with squirrels. And sidewalks.
Somehow, a better visitor than the anti-HPV vaccine contrarian one (IIRC, in one thread he managed to insert himself between two arguing people and bash both of them in turn, claiming they were wrong), and the guy who literally told us he was a better Catholic than the Pope.
The contrarian one, I should credit for the success of the Twilight series. He was consistently liking LGBT to dating a werewolf (or other bestiality-charged examples). Well, a decade and half later, and here you go…
You left osteopath Philip Hills off the list.
That was “See Noevo.”
Aargh, I mucked up the position of this comment:
It was truly a sad day when SBM went to Disqus, which wiped out Thingie’s infamous claim that toddlers would know better than to leave a sidewalk and go into the grass or play in dirt. It was obvious this woman had never seen a toddler in real life if they thought a kid would object to grass and playing in the mud.
@ Denice,
how he managed to believe that the whole world and SBM could be wrong and he was correct; others were showing how he missed important facts in his (so-called) reasoning
Oh man. You are really out of touch. Get out of the office & the meeting rooms, conferences & online echo-chambers & polls & get your ass into the grocery stores, sidewalks & neighborhoods.
You would probably be in tears if you knew how many time random people have approached me & asked ‘do you think vaccines made your son like this?’
I always feel backed in to a corner when this happens. I am an ASD scripter. I don’t know how to navigate this sort of encounter. Dorit accused me of motivated reasoning because I didn’t acknowledge vaccines role in my families tragedies until after my mom died in 2017.
Foolish. God I cannot even … ‘Do you think it was the vaccines …’ Over & over I said ‘No’ & saw the look of suspicion in their eyes. The whole world thinks like YOU? No they don’t.
You have no idea how I live and what I do. I probably spend more time in public than you do. I live in a highly populated, multi-cultural area and have a large interesting family scattered about and diverse friends. I do not work with the SMI but with prospective students, most international.
If people say, ” Do you think it’s the vaccines…?” that only shows that they believe in the same idea as you do; a more realistic person would hold their tongue and perhaps have sympathy for your plight. It’s possible that many people believe in a link between vaccines and autism- that doesn’t mean that it’s true. People believe in many conspiracy theories, supernatural phenomena and fantastical entities- does not make any of it real.
The whole world is mostly blissfully unaware that there is even such a thing as anti-vax. They certainly aren’t talking about it.
Frankly I don’t give a flying f@#k what Bob the bin man or Ethel the pensioner thinks about science. The chance of them having any actual knowledge is miniscule.
I mean hey! Over 50% of my countrymen voted to leave the EU despite having no knowledge of what the EU actually did and what the consequences of leaving would be. Not a great advertisement for the ability of the average person to analyse their own competence.
Class, let’s look at an example of what scientists call ‘sample bias’.
On a given topic, you usually have three categories of people, to put it in large strokes:
Those who hold a positive view
Those who hold a negative view
And those who, for the most part, don’t have any strongly-formed opinion.
Similarly, in term of politeness, people fall in broadly three categories
Those who would try to be polite and avoid risking given offense or distress
Those who don’t hesitate to ask rude, personal questions, generally to validate their own position
And those who, for the most part, just mind their own business.
Question: could you guess which type of people, combining two of the above categories, are more likely to approach a stranger and ask her “do you think made your son like this?
Trick question: would you say that the people asking this question are representative of the population as a whole?
The only thing that would make me cry in your example is the horrific rudeness of people who think it’s okay to go up to random strangers and quiz them about their children. Why are people with no knowledge of your kid’s medical issues randomly asking you about vaccines? FASDs have a massive overlap of issues with autism (and often misdiagnosed as autism if alocohol exposure cannot be confirmed). Imagine people walking up and quizzing mothers “Did you drink before you realized you were pregnant?”
They’re not Terrie; this is just another of Christine’s fantastical stories to validate her beliefs.
@ Number Wang:
True. True.Anti-vax believers are not a huge percentage of people. Even In California, an overwhelming number of parents vaccinate; Dr Pan was selected by his party over an anti-vaxxer- who went on to shove him ( see Orac’s next post) and then won re-election over his opponent easily.
However, those who live in a bubble can start thinking that they are the majority- they follow anti-vax FB pages, read blogs and view videos. They think and write about their niche ideas frequently.
I also am not always exactly thrilled with how the majority of people vote: as you say,”Brexit” And Trump and now, BORIS! You got Boris! I don’t know which is worse: Donald is crazier but Boris is smarter so he may accomplish more awful stuff.
It was truly a sad day when SBM went to Disqus, which wiped out Thingie infamous claim that toddlers would know better than to leave a sidewalk and go into the grass or play in dirt.
@ Science Mom,
Autism is primarily genetic and differentiation occurs in-utero
The hell?! Beg your pardon but you are either lying or you have been victimized by your own much-heralded information piracy. Since calling someone a liar, as many here do, is such a preferred tactic & a low that I’d rather not stoop to; I’ll give you the latter.
The findings of our meta-analysis identified significantly altered concentrations of cytokines in ASD compared to HCs, strengthening evidence of an abnormal cytokine profile in ASD where inflammatory signals dominate
https://www.nature.com/articles/mp201459
Now please show me how you KNOW this ‘differentiation occurs in-utero’. Has someone already implemented my idea & done newborn, pre-vax cytokine profiles on hundreds of infants, waited 8 years & looked back at the profiles of children diagnosed with autism to see if abnormal cytokine profiles indeed were present at birth & apparently do occur in utero?
I guess this whole biomedical science thing eludes you. Don’t worry sweetie, I haven’t been victimised by any institution. You simply can’t countenance any evidence that is at odds with your pet “theory”.
I was intentionally vague because we don’t know yet, where immune dysregulation is involved, which comes first or are they concomitant but in any event, development is pre-natal, you know, when the brain is formed. You want nice, pat answers as humans do but ASDs are heterogenous and thousands of genes are responsible in some variation.
We’ve been through this. It requires vena puncture and you’d need several thousand samples and then what? You never bothered to flesh this out and “looked back” is meaningless. Science is not your strong suit; get another hobby horse.
@ Science Mom,
I guess this whole biomedical science thing eludes you
You quoted me as if I was responsible for that second paragraph & those were not my words but the citation’s.
development is pre-natal, you know, when the brain is formed
Are you saying that no synaptogenesis occurs after birth? Are you sure that’s your position? Because the disordered synaptic pruning in autism involves the learning-based synapses that form during early childhood & the synapses for social cognition do not even begin to develop until the age of 2 years old.
Strange hill to die on; as you would be wrong.
It requires vena puncture and you’d need several thousand samples*
So I find away around the saline-placebo, non self-controlled, shot-calling studies that will never be done because they are unethical & now it’s ‘too hard’. Too invasive?
Sounds like nobody is really interested in actually exonerating vaccines & would rather obstruct & deflect with a crap-ton of questionable epidemiology. Point taken. I’m not interested in the compulsory injection of a vaccine that cannot be proven safe.
We can add reading comprehension to that growing list. No, I quoted you to demonstrate how poorly you comprehend your own citations.
Oh FFS, no. The genes involving this are laid down at conception.
You didn’t find a way around anything as you didn’t flesh this gob of a thought out. Try doing that first before patting yourself on the back for exactly nothing.
Then don’t vaccinate. Isn’t there some FB group you should run along to before the doors get slammed there?
What about twin studies:
A. Bailey, A. Le Couteur, I. Gottesman, P. Bolton, E. Simonoff, E. Yuzda and M. Rutter
Autism as a strongly genetic disorder: evidence from a British twin study
Psychological Medicine Volume 25, Issue 1 January 1995 , pp. 63-77
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291700028099
Difference of identical and non identical twins happens at conception, before uterus.
Citation
Nineteen cytokines were assessed. Concentrations of interleukin (IL)-1beta (P<0.001), IL-6 (P=0.03), IL-8 (P=0.04), interferon-gamma (P=0.02), eotaxin (P=0.01) and monocyte chemotactic protein-1 (P<0.05) were significantly higher in the participants with ASD compared with the HC group, while concentrations of transforming growth factor-β1 were significantly lower (P<0.001).
Go to gene.sfari.org, and some of related genes are already linked to autism. And because you are there, notice that symptomatic genes control growth.
@ Aarno,
? Of course twins would be more likely to be born with the same genetic variants that would lead to the same dysregulation of cytokines that would lead to the same symptoms, which might result from the same exposure to the same vaccines.
Has any study proven that the cytokines, not the genes; were also atypical at birth & prior to vaccination?
All’s those studies prove is that twins are more similar genetically. Autism is a multifactorial genetic disorder. People with autism will have similar genetic variants. Why continue to reinvent the wheel? Time to move on to the next factor requisite or a MULTI-factorial disorder.
No they don’t.
Did you notice that I said “symptomatic genes control growth”. Some of them are found in Drosophila.
And if something is present at conception, it is not caused by vaccines.
Cytokine medication would not reverse time. The pruned synapses would not grow back and surplus neurons would not disappear.
About synaptogenesis
Budnik V, Salinas PC. Wnt signaling during synaptic development and plasticity. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2011;21(1):151–159. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2010.12.002
Drosophila has a related protein, wingless
@ Alain,
such gift, are intelligent and can do well
I’m not sure … I think it used to be called ‘Idiot-Savantism’ for a reason. There is not really any use for what I can do. It’s a novelty, I guess.
accommodation and support for the disabling aspect of autism
Novel pharmaceutical therapeutics have been proposed based on the immune-mediated findings in Autism & they are stuck in limbo. Autism as immune-mediated is ‘controversial’ & the proposals cannot proceed due to this. Autism as immune-mediated presents a clear threat to vaccines & somebody out there knows it.
Until my son’s aggression can be controlled; HE is stuck in limbo, because those novel therapeutics may actually help him control his own aggression. I’ve read the studies. This pisses me off beyond belief.
I suppose I could benefit from the resources his school has; a Blue Team comprised of 5 very large men who wear radios & Observation/Recovery Rooms. An 8 ft high fence around the perimeter & electronically locked doors with surveillance cameras. There’s those posey mitts with the wrap around straps used for combative Alzheimer’s patients. A helmet … for me?
Meanwhile science sleeps, like the microglia cells in the garden of autism; the brain overgrown with synapses like the rose briar that closed off sleeping beauty’s castle. Except in my case; there will be no handsome prince. No white knight.
In my city of almost 1 Million, there are about 50 young males at my son’s school who are like him. Cannot be educated safely in non-segregated classrooms. Pose a random & direct threat to anyone within arms reach. It is a support school for our local public school districts, meaning the students come from lower-income families who cannot afford private tutoring or private institutions. We have a very nice private school at $6,000/month tuition …. It’s full. Waiting lists. Point being; unless my area is a weird ‘hot spot’ for low-functioning, physically violent males; they make up a much higher % of those with ASD than is now thought.
Is it worth it to incriminate vaccine at all cost to bet on better social abilities
No, not if I were as bad as it gets. My level of impairment would not justify a threat to public health. I would give you that.
Unless the program is specifically for autisitc students, the fact that there are 50 boys enrolled is meaningless. Many conditions can cause the need for that type of controlled environment.
We had a persistent antivaxer way back when who was heavily into Just Asking Questions about cytokines; (S)he could never explain how the bad cytokines were exclusively generated on exposure to vaccine antigens and not pathogenic organism antigens.
“Aren’t their “experts” always renowned and the most prestigious?”
Every one of their doctors went to medical school*, practiced medicine and gave real prescriptions for actual medicines! Some of them even gave it all up to live a life of penury writing books, giving lectures, selling supplements and working as consultants for $$$ an hour!!
*except for the herbalists, homeopaths, naturopaths and PhDs in exotic fields.
Since the Blinky One doesn’t have an open thread, this looks like the best place to post this. Of course, neither has ANYTHING to do with the current discussion.
Today’s vocabulary word & a semantic question!!
The word: eisegesis
The meaning: Eisegesis (/ˌaɪsɪˈdʒiːsɪs/) is the process of interpreting text in such a way as to introduce one’s own presuppositions, agendas or biases. It is commonly referred to as reading into the text.[1] It is often done to “prove” a pre-held point of concern, and to provide confirmation bias corresponding with the pre-held agenda.
Eisegesis is best understood when contrasted with exegesis. Exegesis is drawing out text’s meaning in accordance with the author’s context and discoverable meaning. Eisegesis is when a reader imposes their interpretation of the text. Thus exegesis tends to be objective; and eisegesis, highly subjective.
The plural of eisegesis is eisegeses (/ˌaɪsɪˈdʒiːsiːz/). Someone who practices eisegesis is known as an eisegete (/ˌaɪsɪˈdʒiːt/); this is also the verb form. “Eisegete” is often used in a mildly derogatory way.
Although the terms eisegesis and exegesis are commonly heard in association with Biblical interpretation, both (especially exegesis) are broadly used across literary disciplines.
The question: Can someone who is incapable of distinguishing reality from fantasy be accused of lying?
Ha ha! I think that eisegesis has everything to do with the discussion! Not necessarily the OP though.
“Reading into the text” Sure, especially how some interpret studies.
If someone can’t differentiate fantasy from reality, can they he called liars? ‘
I assume that if they TOTALLY live in a fantasy world, that might be the case BUT is anyone ever really that far gone?
Even the most delusional may hold on to a thread of realism and that’s often the way therapists “get to them”/ People who have recovered from SMI sometimes recall that a part of them didn’t totally buy into the delusional ideas. Still this is anecdotal and I never really saw any research on the topic. Still there are degrees, I know of a person ( not a client) who had odd beliefs about people persecuting him BUT could accurately describe up to date news and scores in several professional sports. This hobby helped in his (partial) recovery. (With meds of course.) HIs link to reality.
<
blockquote>I assume that if they TOTALLY live in a fantasy world, that might be the case BUT is anyone ever really that far gone?
Your question is not without president.
Doug-
Ha ha! He may be a real loonie BUT even he is realistic enough to comb his hair over his bald spot. Probably checks it in a mirror 100 times.
@ Denice,
I think that eisegesis has everything to do with the discussion
Tell me about it. The description perfectly matches what you guys do, yet you read that & thought it applied to me. Case in point.
What’s the preferred method of counteracting that, is what I want to know.
I state autism is immune-mediated. You disagree. I provide multiple citations including meta-analysis that state ‘autism is immune-mediated’. The reply?
‘Those studies didn’t mention vaccines’.
I state: ‘The epidemiology is missing the correlation of vaccines to autism’. The reply?
‘Here’s a meta-analysis of all those studies that didn’t correlate vaccines to autism’
It would almost be amusing if it were not so dangerous
@ Christine:
I think that you read things into studies and into people’s comments that fit your worldview.
Several people here have gone to the trouble to instruct you about why your ideas aren’t feasible. Yet you insist.
Simply, genes set up patterns of growth that occur at a later time. If something magical happened post-vaccination, research would have discovered it by now: there have been thousands of studies on millions of subjects. Didn’t Chris and I provide studies about siblings/ the unvaccinated ( German Kiggs/ 2015 JAMA)? Science Mom and Arno ( and others) have been extremely patient with you. So has Orac: he could put you on automod.
.
Get professional help and then maybe take a course sometime.
The question: Can someone who is incapable of distinguishing reality from fantasy be accused of lying
Precisely why I will & have; defended those here from accusations from antivaxxers that ‘they lie’.
So you’d prefer deluded?
@ Science Mom:
I think she means us- not liars because we can’t tell reality from fantasy
But she’s gone
“But she’s gone”
yay
New paper up:
Temporal Changes in Effect Sizes of Studies Comparing Individuals With and Without Autism – A Meta-analysis
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2747847?resultClick=1
That is an interesting paper in many ways. We know that diagnostic expansion has been one of the core reasons for the apparent increase in ASD diagnoses (along with more focus on the condition). As such, you would expect the differences between ASD groups and normal groups in studies to decrease over time as more people once considered normal are moved into the ASD group. A corollary of this is that as we identify the underlying genetic causes of ASD, the number of genes involved is going to grow larger.
This is another study I can point to to counter the 100% of boys born will have autism by 2030 nonsense.
@ Chris Preston,
The Broad Autistic Phenotype has been increasing in prevalence; probably for more than a century now but this has very little to do with regressive, low-functioning autism.
Many of the genes responsible for the phenotypical expression are the very same genes involved in immune-system provocation. BAP is desirable. You could almost say superior; for a increasingly technologically advanced society. Autism is pathological.
Something capable of provoking the immune-system might be disabling people ‘born BAP’.
@ Athaic,
Trick question: would you say that the people asking this question are representative of the population as a whole
Incredibly easy to answer & this would be a ‘No”. They are not. Some of this may have to do with were I live; southern Colorado has a very large Hispanic & Native American population but there is a noticeable age & gender majority too. Namely, I am much more likely to be approached by Hispanic grandmothers than anyone else.
Wow, that’s weird. Now that I really think about it, the only person who has not been an older Hispanic woman was a late-30’s RN in the emergency department of a local hospital.
Oh well. ‘The hand that rocks the cradle …’
@ Terrie,
people who think it’s okay to go up to random strangers and quiz them about their children
Actually, as a parent of an autistic child I have been lucky not to incur the wrath of the public regarding my son’s behavior. This occurs frequently to parents as autism can be an ‘invisible disability’ & people think the kid is just ‘being a brat’ or ‘needs a spanking’.
That has never happened to me. Kids with my son’s level of impairment are instantly recognizable as disabled & with the exception of two other young men & their mothers; I have never seen them taken into public. Parents take ‘shifts’ running errands or engage respite care to function, when they have a child like him at home.
I don’t do that. I take him into his community daily & overwhelmingly; he is well-received. It’s very important to me that the community understands autism & that he, as autistic, understands his community.
His physical size & puberty have presented a new problem. Imagine a store security guard who observes a 6’3″ male (him) punching a middle-aged woman (me) in the head, from behind, as she stands at the ATM? What do you think his reaction might be? He’s probably thinking I’m getting robbed. What if he’s armed & yells ‘freeze’ but the 6’3″ male ‘ignores’ him?
There is an issue of perspective here. To me; nothing is normal. The occasional tap on the shoulder from the grandma standing behind me who whispers ‘Do you think … the vaccines …?’ Never occurred to me to be abnormal. Just awkward.
BS. No one is randomly coming up to you unprompted to ask about vaccines. If there were any incidents at all, it was only after you told someone he was autistic. The behaviors associated with autism are not unique to autism. It’s unfortunate that you struggle with your son’s behavior, but stop pretending there’s anything unique about autsm and your situation. A friend of the family had her special needs son go blind in one eye after a boy in his class with FAS had a meltdown and attacked him. And this was an elementary school. Imagine when that kid hits puberty,
@ Terrie,
Uh …. he will be an adolescent who is blind in one eye?
stop pretending there’s anything unique about autsm
You know what? Nevermind.
Great reading comprehension. You can’t tell the difference between the preteen blinded and the one who is a danger to those around him before the age of 10. No wonder you have this insight into medicine the rest of us can’t grasp.
@ All,
I will show myself out. I have more than enough confirmation of how ‘SB people’ feel about parents of dead & disabled children & of how horribly deep the indoctrination goes. I will think of you as the science starts to solidify. Science is not pro or anti. It’s not ‘yours’. It won’t take long now.
Julian, Aarnno & Alain; be careful. You are their prize. Thank you for trying with me.
I am a person, not a prize. They already know and treat me as such 🙂
Alain
It is you that is the prize. A quack would sell you cytokine therapy three times faster than quickly. Please check GcMAF results, and do seek professional help.
In other news…
Christine has shown up on AoA ( DTP post) discussing saliva tests for cytokines
And I see she’s impervious to information counter to her idée fixe. Naturally, she will not only be unchallenged there but lauded for her “brilliant ideas”. Sadly, that tribe is more her speed.