“SmartVax”: The Orwellian repackaging of old anti-vaccine tropes

Amusingly their facebook page and site comments have antagonistic comments from antivaxers, so they have succeeded in conning some folk. The facebook page info says “SmartVax is the philosophy of taking a balanced, scientific, and safe approach to vaccination”. And yet all of their Likes are antivax organisations, not one scientific Like; so much for balance..! As you say, just another antivax site claiming it’s something it’s not.

So, the current cultural definition of “fair & balanced” has come to mean be so over the top & biased on the other side of an issue (like bringing a fatter kid to sit on the other side of your perceived teeter-totter).

Yeah, that’s work out just fine…..gotcha.

Long-term double-blind placebo studies tracking both acute and chronic health conditions (e.g. asthma, allergies, ADHD, and autism) should be required prior to any vaccine approval.

Another way of reading this from how Orac did is that they want studies to follow subjects for years and years (how long is long enough? a lifetime?) before any new vaccines are approved. The length of time they likely have in mind is most likely unfeasible.

@Marty

Hey, there! So, what newborns (what age is “newborn” btw?) are injected with a “short-chain alkyl-mercury solution”? Another question for you: is 25,000ppb (aka, 25 micrograms) above or below the NOAEL for this solution?

@Marty

Why would anyone think that choosing a unit just so you get a big scary number is a sensible thing to do on a blog frequented by people who know what the numbers mean?

Why not call it a 25 parts per million solution, or a 0.025 parts per thousand solution? The only reason to choose ppb is to make the number as big as possible to scare people who don’t understand the science. Calling it 25,000,000 parts per trillion would have been a bit over the top I suppose.

What is the significance of the concentration anyway? It is the dose that is important. If you are referring to the multidose vial influenza vaccine, I think you will find it actually contains 50 micrograms of thimerosal (which is equivalent to 25 micrograms of ethylmercury) in a 0.5 ml dose.

Here’s a little perspective on this. The head of a pin weighs about 2,500 micrograms, or 100 times as much as the mercury in a flu shot. There are on average 140 micrograms of the considerably more toxic methylmercury in a 4 ounce can of tuna (average of 0.128 ppm), or more than 5 times as much as there is ethylmercury in a flu shot.

If you don’t believe me, look it up for yourself. The information is easily found.

As I’ve explained before many, many times, performing randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies of currently used vaccines is completely unethical because it leaves the control group unprotected against vaccine-preventable disease.

Sometimes real human kindness is reflected even in that analogy. Oh wait a minute. Was that supposed to be an analogy? I thought you meant you don’t want them to play your game —-the Russian Roulette.

Hi Krebiozen, the reason I use parts per billion (ppb)is because that is how mercury is monitored, measured, referenced in all material. Hazardous waste for example cannot exceed 200 ppb of total mercury. Drinking water is 2 ppb. Multi-dose vaccine vials contain 50,000 ppb (except the Hepatitis B which is administered to newborns for no reason, it contains 25,000 ppb). Now you bring up fish. Is the mercury in the fish you talk about being extracted and injected into newborns and infants? That would be a fair comparison.

As far as ethylmercury vs. methylmercury, ethylmercury is much more toxic than methylmercury. Why? Both of these short chain alkyl mercury compounds are distributed to the brain. Once in the brain, the more unstable ethylmercury compound rapidly converts to Hg++ which remains permanently trapped and has been identified as the form of mercury most responsible for degenerative brain diseases. Also, ethylmercury is injected directly into the bloodstream thus by-passing all the protective mechanisms of the gastrointestinal system.

Marty, you do realize that 25 l of drinking water contain as much mercury as that 1 ml shot? At what point do we change our newborns to a dry powder diet to avoid this fatal chronic exposure?

Gee Orac, somehow I just knew that you would jump on this story…it also helps my “intuition” to go “slumming” at Age of Autism to view their latest campaigns and “theories”.

They have got to be the dumbest group of reporters and editors that I have seen on the internet…ever…it is their last hope to show they have relevance in the autism community. Yet, no poster there (who has survived their “moderation”) ever questions their junk science, inaccurate links and their re-writing of the history of scientific discoveries.

I’ve noticed a decided desperation on their part recently with the most inane drivel with even more specious articles about government conspiracy, the martyrdom of parents of children (who may or may not meet the diagnostic criteria for autism) and their desperation to avoid any discussions about genetics, prenatal and in utero causes for their children’s disabilities. And, their closed minds and the nastiness directed toward any “non-believers”
is downright creepy.

Just keep dishing out your wonderful Respectfully Insolence about the “vaccine-autism link”, it is so appreciated in the medical community.

Mu,

Lack of understanding Nagant revolver kills.

I couldn’t agree more but still you would give them the gun anyway and force them to play the Russian Roullete.

I’m reminded of the slogan the New York City Dept. of Health used during their last outbreak of smallpox (circa 1947), when relatively few had sufficient vaccine protection and they were launching a major vaccination initiative. The slogan went something like:

“Be smart, be safe – vaccinate!”

There’s a good account of the outbreak and public health response in Berton Roueche’s story “A Man From Mexico”.

I suspect that “SmartVax” is a doomed effort. Once you’ve convinced yourself that vaccination is an evil toxin-ridden Pharma Conspiracy, it’s hard to accept even limited immunization. That antivaxers would even attempt such a campaign, however, is an acknowledgement of how badly they’ve failed in trying to shake public confidence in vaccines.

25,000ppb?

That’s 1.5E19 parts per mole!

(Unless I made a mistake on my quick post-it math)

=Karl Withakay

I am not a scientist, but I find it amusing that their efforts have the opposite of the intended effect. I live in a world where “maximum strength” is the bottle I reach for. “MaxVax” sounds ideal to me, especially in a state where, two towns down from where I live with my infant, they are closing schools due to pertussis outbreaks and, just across the river, there’s a measles outbreak.

My aunt is deaf due to measles. My brother wound up in the hospital when he had chicken pox. My daughter will, God willing, get none of these things.

Load her up. Protect my baby. Maximum strength vaccinations is JUST WHAT I WANT. The sooner she hits one and can get her MMR, the better I’ll sleep at night.

I wonder if Marty’s recitation will earn the coveted Mercury Militia merit badge.

Hi Jen,

I had a quick look at that paper (Genetic Heritability and Shared Environmental Factors Among Twin Pairs With Autism by Hallmayer et al 2011) and vaccines are not mentioned at all. It simply says that previous studies have underestimated the impact of environmental factors, it looks to be about 50% genetic/environmental and the environmental factors they list include parental age, weight at birth and those sort of things. This paper does not say vaccines cause autism (like all of the other)

@Mu
Marty, you do realize that 25 l of drinking water contain as much mercury as that 1 ml shot? At what point do we change our newborns to a dry powder diet to avoid this fatal chronic exposure?

I believe you’ve failed to appreciate the nature of Marty’s anxiety – it is all about “blood”, particularly the “pure blood of the innocent newborn”. That the environment in which we live is full of frightening poisons is too great a conceptual load to take on board for what is effectively a mass hysteria ‘hygene anxiety complex’. However the ‘piercing of the skin’ (notional rape of the innocent) to introduce even the tinniest element of the exterior toxic environment is more emotionally containable, expressed as it is as a conception of ‘an assault on the innocent’.

Marty may or may not be a religious adherent but he’s pushing a beilief system that is heavily influenced by an antichthonic determination to protect the ‘divine child’ from an earthly devil who has a hypodermic syringe extruding from the tip if his animalistic tail.

There’s actually a small but significant group of anti-vaccinators that favors vaccination for a few diseases but nothing else. Anthroposophists (the people who run Waldorf schools) have historically been in favor of vaccination for tetnus and polio, but not for any of the febrile childhood illnesses[1], because Steiner viewed getting them as a child to be developmentally important (mostly in a spiritual sense, although I have seen Anthroposophists claim that going through measles is beneficial for mental development).
Now, to be clear, I don’t think that this is what the people behind SmartVax are thinking of, but they could potentially use people with Anthroposophy-influenced views on vaccination as examples of what they claim to favor.

1. Some Anthroposophical people are so convinced of the importance of immunization against tetnus and polio and of not immunizing against “the childhood illnesses” that in jurisdictions where getting a religious or philosophical exemptions requires that you abstain entirely from vaccination, they will maintain two sets of immunization records for their children, one with no immunizations and one with the tetnus and polio immunizations done “under the table” by a sympathetic doctor.

Clare, as far as I understood it Hallmayer is only considering pre-natal exposure of the parent anyway as potential factors. So vaccines admitted to the baby are actually excluded as a cause, but that doesn’t disturb the disturbed.

Why are the websites like SmartVax so sticky? Here’s one explanation

Evidence has long shown routine vaccines to be safe and effective, but a growing community of critics still claims that they pose more danger than the diseases they prevent…..

Given the success of vaccines in preventing a long list of diseases, why is opposition to vaccination gaining hold? Decision-making expert Valerie Reyna contends that it’s because anti-vaccination messages tell a compelling story compared to official sources, and they meet people’s need to understand rare adverse outcomes…..

Reyna presented her model of vaccine decisions at the University of Erfurt, Germany, in May to an international meeting of scientists examining the implications of the Internet and social media such as Twitter on public health messages about vaccination.

“Vaccines are injected into the bloodstream through intramuscular or subcutaneous routes. Do we have any big problem with that?”

The big problem is that this is a lie. But you’ve never had even the slightest problem lying.

Krebiozen: You’ve said everything that I was going to say, but I’m going to try to simplify it a bit, in case there’s any continuing confusion.

Parts per billion is a convenient measure of the proportion of a quantity, but effects are caused by the total amount, not by the proportion. The FDA calculates the acceptable portion of a quantity based on the assumption that people will be consuming large amounts over the course of an entire lifetime – it’s ridiculous to compare the parts per billion that causes harm in that situation with the parts per billion in a tiny amount given a few times over a lifetime. Yes, the amount of thimerosal that used to be provided in a vaccine was above the parts for billion limit for drinking gallons a day for a lifetime, but so what. The amount of alcohol in a mixed drink is way above the ppb allowed in drinking water too, but unless you’re drinking nothing but mixed drinks over the course of your life, the health effects of exceeding the ppb limit by a factor of 10 or 100 is completely neglectable.

Krebiozen,

Hazardous waste is usually measured in tonnes or thousands of liters, people drink on average 2 liters of water a day, but a flu vaccine shot is only 0.5 ml.

It’s 0.5ml but you’re getting the same equivalent dose genius! Geez.

Th1Th2

“Vaccines are injected into the bloodstream through intramuscular or subcutaneous routes. Do we have any big problem with that?”

I have a problem with people incorrectly describing intramuscular and subcutaneous injections is injections into the bloodstream.

Intramuscular and subcutaneous injections are no more injections into the bloodstream than is a suppository.

Stu,

No, we have big problems with clownshoes who call that “intravenous”.

Are you talking to me? If so, provide evidence please, otherwise, go pound sand.

Stu, et.al. ignore idiot troll.

It’s 0.5ml but you’re getting the same equivalent dose genius! Geez.

If it’s the same equivalent dose, I guess you agree that the thimerosal in vaccines is no more dangerous than a few liters of tap water. I do my best to avoid ingesting hazardous industrial chemicals, but I understand it’s very popular among you antivaxxers.

Gray,

This is how vapid she is. She thinks “intravenous” and “injected into the blood stream” are two different things. Like Lawrence said, don’t bother with her.

Stupid dyslexic. There are several parenteral routes in which a vaccine can be delivered into the bloodstream, IM, SC and IV. Now do you have any problem with that?

Gray,

This is how vapid she is. She thinks “intravenous” and “injected into the blood stream” are two different things. Like Lawrence said, don’t bother with her.

Stupid dyslexic. There are several parenteral routes in which a vaccine can be delivered into the bloodstream, IM, SC and IV. All you have to do is to choose. How easy can it be?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-wFqkvK7ww&NR=1 The BRAIN IS DEVELOPING IN THE FIRST 2 YEARS OF LIFE
The CDC now reports 1 in 6 children are developmentally disabled.
Brain inflammation is a very real result of disease and vaccines.

ethylmercury is much more toxic than methylmercury. Why? Both of these short chain alkyl mercury compounds are distributed to the brain. Once in the brain, the more unstable ethylmercury compound rapidly converts to Hg++ which remains permanently trapped and has been identified as the form of mercury most responsible for degenerative brain diseases.

I am intrigued, Marty. Where are you getting this stuff? — Because you certainly aren’t reading it in any textbooks on toxicology or neuropathology. Do you hear it from the voices in your head, or the invisible leprechauns in your underpants? Do you encounter it on magical-thinking websites, and think “This runs contrary to mainstream science so it must be true”?

It really is an impressive accomplishment to write an paragraph that contains more false statements than sentences.

Where are you getting this stuff?

The Great Google answers my question… “Marty” is a cut-&-paste troll, repeating verbatim a claim that appears dozens of times elsewhere around the Intertubes.
Plagiarism, says I! For shame!

|Marty,

[Quoting a study I can’t find a full text version of] “Direct intramuscular injection of this compound provides rapid access to the blood stream and thereby privileged access to its target organs”

I suppose it depends on what you mean by “rapid”. This study suggests it takes 12-24 hours for maximal blood levels of mercury to appear after vaccination with a vaccine containing thimerosal in human infants.

Ethylmercury converts to Hg++ in about 8 hours.

Do you have any evidence for this assertion? I see no good chemical reason for a carbon-mercury bond to be more easily broken in ethylmercury than in methylmercury. Some methylmercury is excreted through the bile and converted by gut flora into inorganic mercury that is excreted in stools, some of this methylmercury is reabsorbed into the blood. It is likely that a similar process occurs with ethylmercury. I can’t find any studies that suggest ethylmercury breaks down into inorganic mercury in the body any more readily than methylmercury.

It is not cleared, it’s just converted to a different form.

That’s not true, it is excreted mostly in the stools – see the study I link to above.

Methylmercury is stable and recycles in and out of tissue.

If that is true (though I see no reason why it should be), it would support the hypothesis that it is more neurotoxic than ethylmercury, as inorganic forms of mercury are considerably less toxic than organic forms.

Ethylmercury enters the brain after the initial exposure (injection). Why? Like dissolves like.

I’m not sure what you mean by “like dissolves like” in this context. Inorganic mercury does not readily pass across the blood brain barrier, so if your assertions about ethylmercury rapidly breaking down to inorganic mercury while methylmercury does not are correct, this would mean far more methylmercury ending up in the brain than an equivalent dose of ethylmercury.

As I wrote above, my reading suggests that methylmercury is actively transported into the brain, while ethylmercury diffuses passively, resulting in a ten-fold higher concentration of mercury in the brain after methylmercury exposure as compared with ethylmercury. See the link I gave in #37.

Lara,
A year or two ago I wasted many hours looking at one of Blaylock’s articles about the 2000 Simpsonwood meeting. It was riddled with inaccuracies, misquotes and distortions, a truly appalling piece of work. I wouldn’t take anything Blaylock says seriously.

herr doktor bimler

Like dissolves like.
We are dealing with Galenic thinking here.

Echoes of Hahnemannic thinking, too. Maybe like cures like while dissolving it?

“There’s actually a small but significant group of anti-vaccinators that favors vaccination for a few diseases but nothing else. Anthroposophists (the people who run Waldorf schools) have historically been in favor of vaccination for tetnus and polio, but not for any of the febrile childhood illnesses[1], because Steiner viewed getting them as a child to be developmentally important (mostly in a spiritual sense, although I have seen Anthroposophists claim that going through measles is beneficial for mental development).”

I remember reading awhile back a mother’s gripe about the elimination of or vast reductions in once commonplace childhood diseases, on the grounds that medicine has done away with the soulful/bonding aspects of parent-child interactions during such illnesses. The idea apparently is that if your child is severely ill for a week or more with measles or other infectious disease, there’s a wonderful closeness with the parent(s) that is harder to come by now.

There’s something to that, I suppose. We’ve also lost out on a lot of hospital bedside vigils, spiritual times in the intensive care unit, long-term bonding as a result of blindness and permanent neurological sequelae of these diseases, plus the spiritual awakening that can only come when a parent has suffered the death of a child.

It’s too bad we value good health so much these days. We’re missing a lot.

“…rejection of studies failing to find a link between vaccines and autism almost before they are published.”

Pharma, that’s because SafeMinds was an external consultant to those studies as a compromise for the fact that your CDC would not open its Vaccine Safety Datalink up to independent analysis by outside researchers. After all, your CDC would defeat the point of its own tobacco science if it did.

@ lara: neuro-development is a continuous process that is prenatal ( important early critical period – first 12 weeks) and goes on throughout childhood ( important), adolescence( important), and early adulthood ( executive functions). Someone who *phrases* it in that manner is either not well versed or is deliberately trying to mislead parents about vaccines, many of which are given in that time period.

Blalock is well known for his outlandish theory and is often featured by natural health advocates (i.e. the usual suspects eviscerated here regularly) who spew other nonsense as Krebiozen has kindly illustrated. The 1 in 6 figure reflects changes in diagnostic categories especially post DSM IV as well as long familiar syndromes. Are children really worse off or are more problems identified and addressed earlier so they may be helped? Natural health advocates would have you believe the former. They have products or treatments to sell.

@ Dangerous Bacon: Been there and done that with a critically ill child on many occasions and it is NOT a bonding experience. It is a frightening time to watch your child struggle to survive.

Perhaps the silliest thing I have ever heard are the loss of the bonding experiences “suffered” by new mothers who were unable to deliver their infant vaginally and underwent a crash C-Section. The new mothers acknowledge that the fetal heart rate was plummeting…but they nevertheless “suffer” through the loss of the bonding experience of completing their labor for delivery. See, it’s all about experiencing the “bonding” versus the risk of fetal death or an infant permanently injured from anoxia…some mighty screwed up priorities.

Denice- Merck generates over $1 billion worth of revenue from the HEP B vaccine alone. A Hep B on the first sacred day of life? Give me a break!

Pharma, that’s because SafeMinds was an external consultant to those studies as a compromise for the fact that your CDC would not open its Vaccine Safety Datalink up to independent analysis by outside researchers. After all, your CDC would defeat the point of its own tobacco science if it did.

Indeed. Sallie Bernard was happy enough to be a “consultant” on those studies, even though her scientific qualifications to serve in such a capacity are nil; that is, until the data analysis showed that the study wasn’t going to show what she wanted it to show. When that happened, she turned on her previous benefactors:

https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2008/01/sallie_bernard_responds_to_the_new_engla.php

The hilarious thing is just how ignorant Sallie Bernard is, as evidenced by her utter misinterpretation of the results of Thompson et al and her cherry picking of results.

Denice- Give me proof the Hep B is necessary at birth- Children’s lives are more important- Money-so that justifies giving Hep b at birth- I hope you are in research and not dealing with patients who would probably remain in therapy too too long….to pay for your whatevers.

And yet we are the ones that are called hateful…..

“I am unvaxed ex. for smallpox and some flu which I will never again get! IN GREAT Health -had measles,mumps, chickenpox as a child before vaccines were given and they were minor nuisances for me and all of my classmates!”

Know what you mean – people always tell me not to run red lights, but I’ve never had an accident. What a bunch of wimps people are!

Antaeus -They are 3 statements of facts #3 is not a conclusion.

Ah, that explains a lot! It’s not just that you don’t understand how syllogisms work, it’s that you don’t even understand the difference between “an assertion” and “a fact”.

I was in a hurry and don’t like to be long-winded with stupid analogies like WTC.

Well, that’s too bad. If you had more of an attention span then you might be able to apply more critical thinking skills to the YouTube videos you watch, and not be put in the embarrassing position of spouting second-hand nonsense. If you have the time to comment here five times in as many hours, you’ve got the time to educate yourself about logical fallacies, and stop packing your comments with so many of them.

That’s nothing – I’m 101 with various superpowers.

LOL Thomas! Well my daughter is only 1 and has superpowers too. I’m amazed at her ability to seek and consume the smallest item on a freshly vacuumed floor and somehow know to wake up from her nap the second I sit down with a cup of tea. Like lara’s relatives, I’m looking for answers. It might not be the vaccines, but…

As the mother of a child with chronic Hep B (acquired from birth mother), i worry daily about the non-vaccinated kids who play with my child. Yes, it is transmitted as HIV is, but it is also 100 times more contagious. And I don’t know if you have kids, but they bleed all the time. Bug bites, nose bleeds, scrapes, scratches. Most parents I see don’t teach their kids standard precautions, and kids are quick to help their friends when hurt. Hep B is out there, it’s at my house.

Thingy, if you’re using band-aids as suppositories, I have to inform you you are Doing It Wrong.

@ lara : how much does it cost to develop and test a new vaccine ( for pharma) vs how much to develop and test a new dried green vegetable powder (for a web woo-meister)?

@De-Nice, how much does it cost to develop and test a new cd? How much does it actually cost to produce said CD? Pennies. Vaccines are profit makers. End of story. Myth debunked.

Not to De-Nice: Pharmaceutical companies aren’t philanthropists. They are profit driven. And they do it better than any other industry. There’s a reason why pharma is heavily investing in vaccines and vaccine research. It’s money. Pure and simple. $$$

@ lara : Hep B is highly contagious; babies may contract it at birth or early in life through close contact with infected people. So it’s *smart* to take this precaution.

De_Nice, please provide data. And spare us the psycho babble, please. Data and context would greatly be appreciated. Please limit said data to the U.S.

Risk factors for Hep. B would also be greatly appreciated.

Could you also tell us why it would be reasonable to refuse this vaccine? Thank you.

Toddy Woddy

Even if the mother is negative, other family members, children and even casual contacts may not be.

You guys are on a roll tonight. Please explain “casual contacts” and give data to support your fear mongering.

@augie

Ask and you shall receive. (that’s 4 separate links)

By “casual contacts,” I meant people who are not caregivers, relatives or close friends, but someone with whom they may have a very brief interaction. I was not referring to “casual contact” like hugging, kissing or handshakes. If saliva (e.g., drool) is involved, there is potential for transmission of the virus.

That should be, “not only unoriginal…”

ugh troll:

Try the CDC website.

Please note that your requests for citations will be taken seriously when you begin offering either credible citations or correct interpretations of your sources.

Since you have failed to distinguish between gross revenues and net profits, your feeble attempts to argue based on “Pharma $$” are, well, feeble.

Now that the chemical castrating Geier tag team is out of commission, there may be a new calling for boy wonder cub reporter Jake Crosby; after all he is taking several combined majors, including epidemiology in grad school.

Jake, are you aware that when you apply for a real job, that the personnel wonks “Google” your name and your support of the anti-vax heroes (Geiers and Wakefield) and your association with Age of Autism, will have an impact on your chances of ever getting a job. In addition, every time you post here with some of your notorious inane theories, “Google” also picks up those postings. You better stay friendly with Handley…surely he will find a position in the mail room for his young protege.

According to Thingy “Stupid dyslexic. There are several parenteral routes in which a vaccine can be delivered into the bloodstream, IM, SC and IV. All you have to do is to choose. How easy can it be?”

Thingy, we are waiting for some clarification of your statement, specifically, which vaccines in particular are given IM, which vaccines are given SC and which vaccines are given IV?

Also, on what basis (in your clinical practice and with your vast clinical experience) do you “choose” the route for immunization?

Actually, they detected an error in the system while they were there and informed NCHS about the screw-up. The allegations the CDC made against them – which they were never meant to see – did not surface until well after they left and accused them of physically impossible actions, much in the same way Brian Deer accused Wakefield of forging physician records he never had access to.

My goodness, you’re more gullible than I thought.

Well this blog is obviously one for considerable scientific skills and extensive knowledge of ‘the double blind-placebo-control group’ tendency. I do not fit into those groups but I do possess one great skill – I can count. The problem is that even after the most extensive fifteen year period of seeking to count autistic people amongst the sizeable un-vaccinated population I can’t find any. I haven’t been able to count one. Nor do I ever get a reply when I ask the clever people who argue that vaccination is not connected to autism to point me in the direction of an autistic person who has not been vaccinated. In short I never get the opportunity to use my counting skills. I think this is a more profound observation of the facts that all your Hg ppb ethyl vs methyl nonsense. Unvaccinated autistic people do not exist QED.

Tony Bateson, Cheltenham, UK.

Jake:

Brian Deer accused Wakefield of forging physician records he never had access to.

Wakefield misrepresented the children’s medical data in his ahem Case Study. That’s what Deer accused him of doing (amongst other things). If you have a link showing where Deer accuses Wakefield of forging the physician records, please post it. Oh, and quotes of quotes don’t count.

No, thimerosal has been repeatedly associated with causing speech and language disorders since 1999.

{citation needed}

lilady,

Thingy, we are waiting for some clarification of your statement, specifically, which vaccines in particular are given IM, which vaccines are given SC and which vaccines are given IV?

Check this out. http://www.immunize.org/catg.d/p3085.pdf
IV administration of vaccines is NOT recommended.

Also, on what basis (in your clinical practice and with your vast clinical experience) do you “choose” the route for immunization?

Check it again. There are some vaccines that can be given either per IM or SC.

‘Actually, they detected an error in the system while they were there and informed NCHS about the screw-up. The allegations the CDC made against them – which they were never meant to see – did not surface until well after they left and accused them of physically impossible actions, much in the same way Brian Deer accused Wakefield of forging physician records he never had access to.’
“My goodness, you’re more gullible than I thought.”

Care to actually address any of this?

That’s not the way it works, Jake. The fact that you can repeat crazy rumors that you picked up from your friends at AoA doesn’t obligate everyone else to debunk what was never more than a triumph of wishful thinking over reality checking. Oh wait. That sentence contained too many big words. I’ll have to try and rephrase it so you can understand:

Unsupported accusations mean nothing.

No one needs to lift a finger to debunk your accusations, until you can manage to support your accusations.

Hmmm, I have the suspicion that’s still too complicated for you to process, but it just doesn’t get any simpler than that.

Here, I’ll demonstrate the principle: You accused Brian Deer of accusing Andrew Wakefield of “[the] physically impossible actions […] of forging physician records he never had access to […]” Now, obviously, when you say “forging physician records” you do not mean “Wakefield misrepresenting records from other physicians,” because there is nothing “physically impossible” about that; he obviously had access to read what those records said, and he had a responsibility to report the relevant portions of those records (which is how he got the opportunity to misreport the records, which is what the GMC determined after examining the evidence that he had done.) So, obviously, you mean that Deer accused Wakefield of literally forging physician records – ones he never had access to.

Provide the evidence that Deer ever made that accusation and I’ll donate $10 in your name to any charity you choose, even Generation Rescue if you feel like it. Remember, the evidence has to match your version of the story – Brian Deer accusing Wakefield of forging physician records he didn’t have access to, and not merely misrepresenting the records he did have access to.

When you find out you are unable to substantiate your accusation, even when money for your favorite charity is on the line, you will realize why no one else is obligated to refute that accusation. Talk is a cheap currency, Jake, precisely because people like you make big statements with nothing backing them.

@augustine

I said that it is possible to spread even if they are not close contacts (a brief contact with open wounds would be sufficient). I also said that HepB can be spread via bites/saliva. I supplied evidence to support that claim. The point of my post was to illustrate that there are more ways to get HepB than just sexually or through IV drug use, which is what most people think of. I never claimed that other modes of transmission were common or that it was “just so easy” to get. I personally do not have that data and so made no claims about that.

So, we see you building straw men to knock down and moving the goalposts (“Ah, but it wasn’t in the U.S.!”). Please stop flogging logic. What did ever do to you?

“The VSD is open to independent investigators so you would be wrong there too. Have a look yourself:”

Those are not publications by outside researchers. In fact, most of those publications share coauthors with the Thompson, Price and Verstraeten papers about thimerosal – if not those specific papers.

Jake, do define “independent” then. Most of the authors have affiliations outside of the CDC, which is independent. This would include Dr. Thompson who is with The Center for Health Studies, Group Health Cooperative, Seattle, WA. and Dr. Price with Denver Health Medical Center, Denver, Colorado. Collaboration with CDC affiliates is going to be expected; it’s called collaboration and experts commonly do this, something you would know if you had a clue about science and publication.

Why don’t you list your “independent” investigators and how they aren’t allowed to access the VSD. If your “experts” can’t even be arsed to apply for access, that is no fault of anyone else.

“My goodness, you’re more gullible than I thought.”

Care to actually address any of this? You know, they were also accompanied by an autism parent. I guess he must be lying, too, or dreamed up the whole visit just like all those parents are dreaming up the mercury in their children’s vaccines, or how the Lancet parents dreamed up their kids’ reactions to MMR.

Orac was being kind to you by calling you gullible. I will state that you are flat-out lying and woefully dishonest. What kind of public health employee do you expect to become if you refuse to check your sources’ validity? Yes, the Geiers and their so-called SAS expert are lying too. http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/92/strategic-disregard

ugh troll:

If the CDC is incorrect in its assessment of HepB and recommendations to prevent its transmission, I eagerly await your provision of evidence.

You asserting without any support whatsoever that the CDC is wrong or that it is not a legitimate source will not suffice.

@ Antaeus, Todd W., lilady, Julian, and other supporters of reality:

I nearly despair about how various trolls and scoffers, even young Jake, respond to our efforts. It’s like talking to the proverbial dining room table. However, there’s significant value for us to continue beating our heads against our respective walls.

I studied executive function, formal operational thought, metacognition ( i.e. higher mental processes), adolescence, and complex research design: yet here I find myself reviewing the activities and sales techniques of charlatans,i.e. anti-science littered with dodgy research, and occasionally ( via our esteemed host @ RI), “speaking” to its followers who repeat its memes (see above). Am I slumming? A masochist? No. I feel uniquely qualified to deal with this material and interactions: as they say, “Only Nixon could go to China”.

We are involved in cyber-education via conversation. Think “coffee houses” in post-enlightenment London but with macs or hps. OK, I’ll give you that our opposition may not be that “worthy”: yet we gain insight with every scoff and jeer. A few things that they don’t “get”: science is not a collection of isolated findings but an inter-related network of evidence transforming itself eternally via new information. If you are arguing against consensus, *you* are responsible for providing the earth-shattering evidence. No one is immune from psychological factors- that’s why we like statistics and research design so much. None of us came to our beliefs lightly, SB attitudes may follow years of pain-staking study and research- these cannot be boiled down to 15 sentences.” Oh, I could go on…

My concern for students in general brings me to Jake: I wring my hands over Jake.

@ Jake: Now you’ll probably dismiss all I say to you, because I leave off my *real* last name, like your nemesis did. I guess that makes me guilty of mis-representation. so be it. Don’t you find your anti-vaccine beliefs at odds with what you studied at Brandeis and with what you’ll study in grad school?

Your field of interest makes use of consensus information such as governmental sources. How do you fit that with your vaccination views? It’s not my field, you should speak to Rene Najera ( a/k/a EpiRen). To wrap my head around the dissonance, I can only compare it to myself studying developmental psych and then using Astrology or Reincarnation to explain personality and ability differences in individuals, ignoring the tons of research I studied and its theoretical implications.

I work with people trying to get an education and know their worries. I sincerely believe that your writings may interfere with your career path. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot. But best wishes whatever your choice. Peace.

Two economic crashes in ten years haven’t driven me to drink so I doubt that this will.

I play flute in my bow tie

If the CDC is incorrect in its assessment of HepB and recommendations to prevent its transmission, I eagerly await your provision of evidence.

If you have that data Todd is talking about then I’m sure he’d like to see it. Why don’t you see if the CDC has it?

They don’t? What do you mean? It’s the CDC!

Still not an original source.

OMG hepatitis is going to kill all of the children! We’re all at the same risk. No one is immune (except vaccinees, of course).

beamup

So why don’t you provide the evidence demonstrating that Todd’s evidence is wrong and some identifiable population is NOT at risk?

That’s not my burden. He needs to show the absolute risk for saliva hep B transmission and resultant disease to justify the fearmongering. He doesn’t have that data and neither do you.

So if you believe all populations are at risk, do you believe this risk is homogenous. Do you have evidence of homogenous risk? If you don’t believe the risk is the same then do you have absolute data that shows the differences in the least at risk to the most at risk?

You don’t?

Thank you. Have a seat.

We had to be very careful and give the man his own dishes. He was a biter. And a hitter.

Yes you are correct most people don’t play with hep B alligators like you.

The deal is kids find all kinds of ways to bleed on each other or spit on each other or all manner of really gross things.

Sounds good in theory but it just doesn’t work that way in real life. Having a kid in day care is not a major risk factor. You could help Todd out if you could tell him how many kids in day care spit swapping facilities contracted Hep B from playing with their mates last year. If you could give him some significant data as evidence it would help with his disease mongering campaign. He would appreciate that.

As I said earlier, I have a child with chronic Hep B and a very high viral load. People with hep B and HIV/AIDS have no legal responsibility to disclose their status to anyone (daycare, school, workplace, etc.). We disclose our child’s status to very few people. My point is, you often don’t know if you are around someone with Hep B. Very often, people with Hep B do not know they even have it.

I am not worried about my child spreading Hep B through his saliva. I am, however, worried about nose bleeds, scratched bug bites, and any number of other blood incidents that children have EVERY day. One bleeding bug bite meets a scrape on another child and there you go. I have seen teachers ignore bleeding bug bites in schools, I’ve seen them wipe up blood with tissues and then toss them in the trash and not use gloves or wash their hands afterwards. They’ve all received training on standard precautions, but they forget. Makes the school nurse crazy!

We had a daycare provider refuse a place for our child because only half of her other kids were vaccinated and she didn’t feel comfortable not telling those families. This is illegal, I know, but to fight the fight, we would have had to disclose his status even further. Not willing to do that.

Beamup

Essentially, you’re wanting a measurement of the temperature and spectrum of the flames coming out of the oven before calling the fire department.

Your empty rhetoric is noted.

Don’t need any of what you’re demanding to demonstrate that the risk is real.

Well demonstrate it then.

You must be a junior critical thinker/atheist. Are you new at this or is this your pinnacle?

Don’t be vague. How real? Give me some spit swapping data. You know, the results of the tested measurements of your hypothesis. And then the real life data. Otherwise sit back down.

Beamup

Let’s be clear here….

Sit back down, Junior. Nobody wants to hear your “anything is possible” speech.

anonmom,

My point is, you often don’t know if you are around someone with Hep B. Very often, people with Hep B do not know they even have it.

The shortest distance between an uninfected newborn and Hepatitis B is the vaccine.

I am really not certain why the ugh troll should think flute players in orchestras or bands wearing bow ties while performing constitutes some sort of insult.

At any rate, I am still waiting for the ugh troll to substantiate his assertion that the CDC is not accurately representing the literature on HepB.

Also, while he is at it, the ugh troll should explain, in detail, why the citations provided by Todd W and lilady are unsatisfactory.

@kelly

Um, did you read the whole article…

.

The number of Kawasaki syndrome reports does not exceed the number of cases we expect to see based on the usual occurrence of Kawasaki syndrome in children. There is no known cause-and-effect relationship between receiving RotaTeq or any other vaccine and the occurrence of Kawasaki syndrome.

The available data support the safety of the RotaTeq vaccine and its effectiveness in preventing rotavirus infection, a common cause of severe infant diarrhea and hospitalization. CDC and FDA continue to monitor the safety of RotaTeq and all vaccines.

You;re looking a little foolish there, dear

@kelly

Did you miss the parts where the number seen are not different from what is expected among those who have not received the vaccine? Or that there does not appear to be a causal connection?

Or the part where it mentions that 6 million doses have been distributed so far, with only 5 cases reported. That’s 5 out of 6 million.

Yes, CDC should keep an eye on it, but it is not a cause for concern, based on the current data.

@Lara I wish that was the case where I live. I know for a fact that I have kids at my house everyday who are not vaccinated. We’re the Boulder of the northeast… A parent told me that she didn’t do that vaccine because she knew her child wasnt a sex worker. I’m not an overly emotional person but that almost made me cry. I’ve heard similar things at playgroups, etc. People seem to most often skip chicken pox, hep b, and MMR around here.

Sit back down, Junior. Nobody wants to hear your “anything is possible” speech.

And what speech exactly would that be? You’re making stuff up (i.e. lying) again.

CG,

Except of course the part where there’s no hepatitis B virus in the vaccine.

There is no virus but the vaccine contains Hepatitis B viral genome made especially for infection-promoters like you.

There is no virus but the vaccine contains Hepatitis B viral genome made especially for infection-promoters like you.

No, it doesn’t.

You might want to look up how they actually make the HepB vaccine.

Because she knows her child isn’t a sex worker, and will never be a sex worker. And will marry her/his first sexual partner, who is magically guaranteed to have had no previous partners and to never have an affair.

The CDC guidelines for adult hepatitis B vaccination include sexually active and not in a long-term mutually monogamous relationship; the chart also says “more than one partner in the last six months.” That doesn’t just mean people who are involved with more than one partner, or are having casual sex with friends or people they meet in bars. It’s common when people are dating: break up with person A, get involved with person B three months later, do they stop to think that this puts them in a defined risk group?

Even if you believe you can raise a child so s/he will never go outside your ideas of appropriate sexual behavior, you can’t count on the strangers who are raising her/his eventual partner.

CG,

No, it doesn’t.
You might want to look up how they actually make the HepB vaccine.

The vaccine is produced using recombinant DNA technology and the residual protein and DNA levels are present in the vaccines (Recombivax HB, Engerix B, and GenHevac B)

So let me get this straight @augustine. The very real possibility for HepB infection of young via unsuspected and innocuous trasmission modes (mentioned in exhaustive detail by those before me) exists – and it can happen in any environment.

Is it more likely to happen in poor, third world countries with inadequate medical facilities? Yes. But can it happen in the U.S.? Absolutely.

Is the HepB vaccine harmful? There have been no conclusive evidence at all to suggest that it is harmful. Is HepB a terrible disease? Yes, it’s a lifelong disease that is incredibly damaging.

So, as a prophylactic measure, why NOT vaccinate against HepB? HepB is not like smallpox – the reason we don’t vaccinate against smallpox anymore is because the only known smallpox viruses remaining in the world are located in CDC and Russian research installations. Can you demonstrate that HepB has been, like smallpox, eliminated in the general population? That it is gone and that vaccination is no longer necessary because it no longer exists in the wild? No, of course not because then you’d be lying.

So your requirement as proof for transmission of an epidemiological study of HepB incidence rate due to a specific mode of transmission that is specific to the U.S. However, because HepB is so well controlled via vaccines, an outbreak of HepB in a U.S. nursery, school or hospital is exceptionally unlikely and, in order for a study like the one you want to be performed, HepB vaccines need to be suspended and “see what happens.” That, some how, sounds extremely unethical…that you should knowingly deny a access to the HepB disease in order to study the incidence of HepB among children via contact through saliva. Can justify that extreme moral lapse? And your justification can’t be “vaccines are dangerous” since there is no evidence to support that.

dwu

Can justify that extreme moral lapse?

You guys just live in some bizzaro world where science is scientism and evidence is just speculation.

In a logical world the law of identity applies. A is A. A is not A-tism. A is not A-culation.

Just some data on the number of “casual contact” Hep B infections. Either you have the evidence for justification of fear mongering or you are speculating. Plain and simple.

CG,

Correct. So any residual DNA or proteins in the vaccine are going to be yeast. There’s no viral DNA present, at most you’d have the few genes used to express the viral proteins.
No viral genome is present. Once again you’ve been caught in a lie you will promptly try to escape from. My bet is you will try to redefine genome to mean gene.

Jebus Christ, what the hell are you talking about? The residual protein and DNA levels pertain to the viral protein which is about 1-2% of the total yeast protein. (Hint: This is Hepatitis B vaccine not a yeast vaccine)

Jebus Christ, what the hell are you talking about? The residual protein and DNA levels pertain to the viral protein which is about 1-2% of the total yeast protein. (Hint: This is Hepatitis B vaccine not a yeast vaccine)

Wow, you really are quite ignorant.

It’s a recombinant vaccine. The genes for the viral proteins were cloned out and put in yeast. The yeast then express the proteins which are used to make the vaccine. This is really basic stuff.

There’s no viral DNA in the vaccine. Any DNA would be yeast. Any residual protein aside from the desired antigens would also be yeast. Both would be in minuscule amounts.

You clearly don’t know how they make recombinant proteins.

How anyone can listen to the mother of the HepB+ child talk about how worried she is of passing her child’s disease onto other children unknowingly and STILL be against vaccinating is beyond me.

There are children from third world countries where I live, There are children who are the children of sex workers and IV drug users. There are all kinds of people in the city where I live, and kids get scratches and bug bites and bloody noses and canker sores and seriously, load my child up with the vaccines she needs to fight this onslaught.

Thingy: Maybe a new brain would help? You still haven’t answered to your posting about IV vaccines and the “choices” you make about the route of administration You are still full of it and going into your typical avoidance tactics.

Give it up Thingy…you have no education in even the basics of elementary school science, certainly no college education, are totally unqualified for any job in the health care professions and cannot distinguish between truth and your imaginary play world of pretense…just another troll.

From the Recombivax HBV vaccine package insert:

The vaccine contains no detectable yeast DNA

It is impossible to get infected with hepatitis B by an antigen produced by genetically modified baker’s yeast.

“it’s called collaboration and experts commonly do this”

They also commonly allow other research teams outside their collaborations to access their data so their results can be independently confirmed – something the CDC has yet to do in this case.

How funny, after you say I have no clue about science and publication, you then link to the website of an unemployed librarian as your sole reference.

The CDC alleged that they were attempting to merge data on the basis of direct patient identifiers – information completely unavailable – rather than what they were attempting and approved to merge data for which was autism diagnoses, thimerosal exposure and the relevant demographic information to go along with them.

Seidel quoted the response out of context by saying they were attempting to merge files when they were specifically referring to information they were approved to access and not the information they could not access to but were accused by the CDC of acquiring.

She also alleged that they admitted the CDC caught them mislabeling files when in fact it was the autism parent accompanying them who had alerted the CDC of the screw-up in the first place.

You can see on Brian Deer’s own website that he said Wakefield:

‘changed and misreported results in his research’
http://briandeer.com/solved/solved.htm

And yet, in the GMC hearing, Professor John Walker-Smith testified that the pathology reports Brian Deer alleges Wakefield “changed” were “totally unrelated to Andy Wakefield.”

You owe me $10.

Krebiozen,

Who cares about yeast DNA? That’s not what the vaccine is for? Geez

Can we please stop feeding the trolls – at this point, they are regurgitating the same stupid spew over and over again.

@ Krebiozen and CG: Here’s an anecdotal but true story about the original Hepatitis B vaccine Heptavax B.

Heptavax B vaccine was the first vaccine licensed by Merck Sharp and Dohme in 1981. It was manufactured using micro organisms harvested and filtered from plasma of hepatitis B carriers.

My son was scheduled to be admitted into an ICF/DD (Intermediate Care Facility for the Developmentally Disabled) in the early part of 1985, yet I delayed his entry until mid July in order to get him immunized against the virus…once I learned that two other residents were chronic Hep B carriers.

At the time, an agency person stated there was minimal risk…which was a total lie…and that the vaccine was unavailable…another confabulation. A quick call to my local pharmacist and a check for $ 300 enabled me to secure the vaccine vial from Merck. He was immunized on schedule at 0-1-6 months schedule and when tested at 67 days post 1st and 2nd immunizations, had a high (immune) titer for surface antibody and was admitted into the facility.

In 1986, the first recombinant Hepatitis B vaccine was licensed and is still used today for protection against the Hepatitis B virus.

Each year, my son was tested for the presence of Hepatitis B surface antibody and was still immune, up until his death in 2004.

In spite of the immunization of millions of people with the plasma derived Hepatavax B vaccine…while HIV was a newly identified virus… there was never an instance of transmission of HIV or any other blood-borne disease.

Yes indeed, I’m proud to be a nurse clinician in the United States which is in the forefront of medical advances and research, especially in the fields of immunology and public health.

How about explaining in detail any problems with Todd W’s or lilady’s citations, ugh troll

Why? They are useless to the question of how many hep B infections actually occur in the manner he proposes. He was just trying incite casual fearmongering and then roll on by. I called him out. Everyone is not at the same risk for Hep B disease. Yet reccomendation for vaccine use is universal.

Ugh Troll is incapable of ever admitting he is wrong, wrong and wrong. Typical Ugh Troll behavior is to back track, back peddle and spout inanities.

I provided the Ugh Troll with a site at # 106 above and in typical Ugh Troll fashion, he puts words into other poster’s mouths. Totally unable to speak the truth, understand the truth or understand scientific facts…even if it is presented to him and smacks him upside the head.

Ugh Trolls such as Augie are at little risk for Hepatitis B unless it seeks “escorts” and has unprotected sex. Ugh Trolls imaginary children cannot contract imaginary Hepatitis B. and Ugh Trolls have no “occupational risk”…being on the dole does not qualify as an “occupation”.

@ Antaeus: I think you can see why my concern for Jake(@131) doesn’t diminish as I learn more about him.

@ Clueless Dense Ugh Troll: Go back to your cave now, we’ve had our fun with you and find you utterly boring. See if you can link up with Thingy who is on your intellectual level and has the same degree of lunacy…maybe you should read the bible together before you embark on that “friends with benefits” relationship…and let us know how that first date turns out.

Lilady Gaga

Go back to your cave now, we’ve had our fun with you and find you utterly boring.

Lilady, your IQ and education is only slightly above home schooled Venna’s. You’re not having fun or playing with anybody when it comes to intellectual games.

Now do you have data that shows how many people get casual contact saliva transfer Hepatitis B, ala Toddy’s hypothesis, or not?

Have a seat lilady.

Vaccine Industry proponents seem to think vaccines are like Groupon. They need everybody to buy in so they can get the group discount. The way they carry on you’d think their vaccine didn’t work unless a certain amount of others get in on the buy. Much like groupon doesn’t kick in until a certain number buy in. It’s all or none in vaccine fairy land.

“We’re all gonna die if we don’t get herd immunity (groupon discount) up. My vaccine will fail me”

All the babies need the Hep B vaccine. Child molesters are going to get them all. Teething babies will get the rest.

By the standards Ugh Troll applies to others, he has just committed the ad hominem fallacy.

I apply YOUR standards to YOU. But YOU can’t hold them. Your biased philosophy won’t let you. I’ve never claimed to be tabulae rasa.

The mommy on the left is a science blogger.

Unfortunately she can’t see the evidence of a forest because all she looks at is the peer-reviewed trees.

Presto! Goofus, at least with our help, at last comprehends the principle of herd immunity! Sorry Antaeus, the comprehension is but a fleeting episode of coherence…which will end abruptly.

Addressing Goofus is like talking to a blob of protoplasm, left over from a failed experiment in a laboratory. Goofus knows only too well the principle of herd immunity but doesn’t give a whit for anyone who might benefit from herd immunity; truly a self-centered ego-driven certifiable head case.

Not to be too blunt about Goofus’ mental condition, but he gets his “jollies” from insulting people including our esteemed host, Orac. Then Goofus backs off a bit until he finds himself in need of another “jollies” fix (Look it up in the DSM IV under psycho-sexual disorders).

Goofus also inhabits a fantasy world and misreads any and all comments directed at him as being complimentary and also believes he has some sort of unique ability to understand anything associated with science or medicine; probably the worst case of delusionary, removed from reality, thought processing, outside of a mental ward, I have ever seen. Thingy, his sock puppet, runs a close second in that category.

@Tony Bateson

I take offense to your statement that non-vaccinated autistic people don’t exist. My son is one. Well, he became autistic without the vaccines, but he is fully immunized now. I’m not the only parent of an unvaccinated autistic child. In fact, there is a well know anti-vax activist who had her second child, did not vaccinate and still has autism. She actually blames her second child getting autism on the vaccines her first child got. I’m not entirely sure how she worked that logic out, but that’s what she is saying. Autism has been around for ages, even before vaccines and if vaccines caused it, we would have seen an increase in cases LONG before now considering how many millions of people in the course of vaccine history have been vaccinated. Personally, I believe, once they remove PDD-NOS from the spectrum in the DSM V the incidence of ASDs will drop significantly. Of course this means little to me because my son has autistic disorder, so he will always be on the spectrum no matter what they do with the other disorders on the spectrum that aren’t actually autism. Either way, your assertion is incorrect and offensive. I’ve been told this exact same thing when I went looking for support at AoA (before I knew what they were about, which I found out pretty quickly). They called me a liar, told me my son didn’t really have autism or if he did his autism doesn’t matter since he wasn’t ‘vaccine injured’. Don’t believe everything the anti-vax people say. Most of it is not correct.

Venna,

I have lost count of the number of times I have seen Tony Bateson make this same claim on blogs and other forums. Generally someone points out one or more cases of unvaccinated autistic individuals, or a study that found the number of unvaccinated autistic individuals in the population is as chance would predict, or even higher (the Generation Rescue phone survey for example) but he just ignores this and pops up again a few months later making the same claim.

Back in 2003 he was claiming that he could find “a very few unvaccinated autistic individuals”. At other times he has described finding other unvaccinated autistics, but dismisses them because of maternal vaccination, or because they have dental amalgams. Then he forgets them all entirely and again claims, “I can’t find any. I haven’t been able to count one.” I’m quite sure he will ignore your son, and will continue claiming he can’t find even one unvaccinated autistic individual.

You completely ignored that Deer said Wakefield committed fraud, in part, because he “changed” test results, which were actually acquired entirely separately from Andrew Wakefield. That is what I call an accusation of forging physician records.

No reasonable person would call that an accusation of forging physician records, because the word “forging” has a specific meaning and it cannot be used just because you want your description to sound more dramatic, or because you want $10.

Take RFK Jr.’s error-ridden “Deadly Immunity” piece for an example. RFK read the transcripts of a CDC meeting, including descriptions of a study by the lead investigator who said, ‘we specifically looked for any indication of a link between thimerosal and autism, but even looking specifically for such a link, the data didn’t support that idea.’ Supposedly basing his claims on that study, RFK claimed falsely to be reporting on a meeting where a decision was made to cover up evidence of a link between thimerosal and autism – i.e., exactly the link the lead investigator said they had looked for but failed to find.

Did RFK prevaricate? Yes. Did he misrepresent the study, grotesquely? Yes. Did he misreport the study. Unquestionably. Did he change the results of the study as he pretended to be reporting them unchanged? Yes. But did he forge the results of the study? No. The word has a specific meaning and you just can’t stretch it that way.

Now if RFK had, for example, taken the conference transcript, erased the part where the lead investigator said “We did not find a link” and wrote “We did find a link,” and then presented it to people purporting that it was a true and accurate transcript, that would be forgery. But just because forgery is a form of misrepresentation doesn’t mean you can simply substitute “forging” wherever you see “misreprenting.” Words have meanings, Jake. If you keep throwing around accusations you don’t understand the meaning of, you’re a libel suit waiting to happen and no employer will hire you for anything better than a job in a parking garage. “My God, look at this here! He disagreed with this other guy about whether the other guy owed him ten bucks or not, so get this: he accused the other guy of ‘counterfeiting’ the ten bucks! Yeah, just because he thought there was some funny business going on with the money and he knew ‘counterfeiting’ meant some kind of funny business involving money, he accused the guy of the federal crime of counterfeiting! That settles it; I don’t want this guy anywhere where he could be mistakenly thought to be representing our company. There’s no way we can take the risk of what a guy that careless would say, and he wouldn’t even be smart enough to realize when his false claims had gotten him into trouble and stop digging himself deeper.”

@ Jake Crosby: Antaeus Feldspar just reiterated what I stated above. You seem to think you are libel and slander proof; you aren’t, no matter how invincible your handlers have told you that you are.

You already have a reputation for some dirty tricks and outrageous behaviors by your alignment with the anti-vax crowd. You continue to make the most outrageous claims for your heroes the disgraced Geiers and Wakefield and that will be duly noted by the personnel wonks, whenever you apply for a real job.

Just keep it up Jake, we take particular delight in shooting down your specious arguments…perhaps you noticed that posters here have a degree of competence never seen on the restricted Age of Autism site, where the sycophants keep complimenting you on your superb analytical skills,cub reporting and for your hero worship. The real working world is a cruel place and is not impressed with your “diagnosis”, won’t cut you any slack and each and every resume you submit will end up in the round file. And, you continue to believe your “diagnosis” is a protective halo leaving you judgment proof.

@ Jake:

I can’t help but notice that your arguments sound surprisingly like those I hear or read from natural health advocates ( e.g. Gary Null, Mike Adams) which are acceptable- and even quoted- by AoA. Did you ever think that there is a *reason* that these arguments are not generally accepted by most experts in medicine or psychology- *other* than “Pharma suppresses the Truth” or suchlike?

It is because they don’t fit into the body of research that has been developing over many years. Wakefield’s case study was done in 1998- that’s 13 years ago- a very long time period in a rapidly evolving area of research. Why hasn’t it been replicated by anyone *other* than an avowed follower? Why hasn’t a researcher – far from Murdoch, based in India or China- reported findings on related issues that would support AW’s ideas?

In order for us to call *interference* by pharma conspiracy we’d need to show multiple junctures where this has occured. Wouldn’t a hoax of this magnitude be awfully difficult to maintain? All those people sworn to secrecy?
You know how well that usually works out.

When Orac and commenters agree – is that fuelled by pharma dollars as well? How likely is that?( The only pharma money vaguely related to me in any way is that a mutual fund I own since 1997- and hold as an index- has a pharma portion. I do not cash it.) Isn’t it more likely that most of us came individually to our own conclusions based on our own diverse studies and life experiences?

I first heard of Wakefield’s study early on and wasn’t impressed because it didn’t fit at all with what I had studied in neuro-development. Plus it had only 12 subjects. I was surprised when my cousin feared vaccinating his child in 2001- I told him, ” I wouldn’t worry”. Why would I do that, endangering a child of a person who is very important to me? Because I didn’t believe it.

In short Jake, I am concerned about students in general- and you’re one. Don’t allow yourself to be inveigled out of the mainstream into a backwater of pseudo-scientific meanderings. Allow yourself to survey the scientific literature -referenced by our esteemed host, Orac- read with an open mind without the lens of the anti-vaccination movement. You owe it to yourself.

Best wishes to you.

Because wingnuttery is always more convincing in all caps…

All caps does not denote a rational argument either….

GOT YOUR ATTENTION- MY AIM

Vaccines do have side effects-I’ve seen the package inserts. Viruses mutate and I surely don’t want them to win. But nature is smart, just look at your wonderfully engineered all by nature body with a soul to boot.
Why are 1 in 6 children now developmentally disabled-I certainly don’t know.

GOT YOUR ATTENTION- MY AIM

I haven’t seen behavior like this since my daughter was 3 years old. Do you actually expect to be taken seriously, or are you just venting your sad, impotent rage, Don Kelly?

THE CURRENT VACCINATION SCHEDULE HAS NOT BEEN PROVEN SAFE

…other than millions of children undergoing it without any ill effects.

I AM SURE THAT PARENTS WHO SUPPORT A SANE VACCINATION SCHEDULE WOULD VOLUNTEER AS A CONTROL GROUP

You’re a monster.

I”M LOOKING FOR SOME SANE PEDIATRICIAN

…that agrees with my preconceived notions.

But nature is smart,

*points at his nipples and appendix*

just look at your wonderfully engineered all by nature body with a soul to boot.

Oh goody, crank magnetism. Define “soul”. I DOUBLE DOG-DARE YOU.

Why are 1 in 6 children now developmentally disabled-I certainly don’t know.

They always were — they just didn’t get diagnosed. Yesteryear’s “dumb” is today’s “developmentally disabled”.

wonderfully engineered all by nature body

You mean like the wonderfully engineered immune system that causes my asthma. Not complaining though at least it isn’t overtly trying to kill me via an autoimmune disease like lupus. And then there is human spine which is a kluge that is not suitable for walking upirght.

I will not be surprised if kelly comes back with the ‘they’re minor diseases!’ card, trying to whitewash all the blindness, deafness, and all other sorts of morbidity and death from the history books. A lot of people like kelly seem to think that the past is just another movie setting where all you have to do is change the fashions to get an accurate portrayal.

I listened to my grandmother’s experiences with disease, and childhood friends dying. I went on a tour of a graveyard filled with dead babies’ graves, and the guide mentioned how sometimes if one baby died early, they’d just name the next baby the same thing.

It’s shameful that people want to sterilize history. Part of it is vaccines being a victim of their success: They’ve been so successful, the people who believe in Disneyfied Nature have taken their health for granted.

—

Oh, and thanks for comment #220, Stu. You’ve pointed out a line I missed about unethical child experimentation in there. The anti-vax crowd is just riddled with a lot of people who think children are mere property to be toyed with.

Kelly, what did we say that was not true? Name one thing.

Ah, the arrogance card. It’s what trolls play when we refuse to let them define us with their straw men, when we refuse to defer to their say-so, and in short, when we fail to give them blind, unearned reverence.

Or maybe it’s a reference to the idea that we can improve on nature, since the Disney version of nature is never, ever, ever red in tooth and claw. I hate to break it to ya, but yes, nature is sometimes nasty.

God I really hope that the current vaccine schedule “has done no harm”

NO BRONZE DOG!!!! YOU MAKE PRESUMPTIONS ABOUT TROLL’S MOTIVATIONS!!!!

WHEN TROLLS TROLL, ARE TOTALLY BEREFT OF ANY KNOWLEDGE, THEY RESORT TO ALL CAPS!!!!AND EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!, THEN WHEN CALLED OUT ON IT STATE IT IS A GIMMICK TO GET OUR ATTENTION!!!!

I LOVE TROLLS WHO USE ALL CAPS AND USE EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!

!!!!lilady!!!!

Kelly, you’re living in a dream world if you think any medical intervention can “do no harm.” The ridicule of the Hippocratic oath is pretty weak. Of course, you are the one who brought up performing an unethical medical experiment on children that, IIRC, violates the Helsinki Declaration.

The important thing is that the vaccine schedule does far less harm than what the diseases would do, even if you factor in treatments.

Of course, I could be wrong about that last bit. The only way I could find out is if some anti-vaxxer grows a spine and cites good evidence to the contrary. Of course, that would require you to learn something about us that your altie gurus haven’t lied to you about.

Here’s a hint: There is such a thing as self-determination. You don’t get to define our beliefs for us.

Kelly posted this yesterday- She’s scared about vaccinating her child.
Kawasaki’s disease and mercury
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19075648

Kelly brought that up in the context of the concern abvout the rotovirus vaccine. Nobody responded to the comment about mercury, presumably because they were dumbfounded by the non-sequitor.

What does the potential relationship between mercury and Kawasakis have to do with RotoTec?

The only children’s vaccine that contains thimerasol is the multidose flu vaccine, which has not been associated with Kawasakis.

All I seem to find are anti-vax sites.

Any pro-vax with parents with children over the age of five fully vaxed to the current schedule?

@ Lara & Beamup: I cannot get the full report from the citation either. However I did find a rather complete report based on analysis of VAERS reports 1990-2007, reported in the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Journal on December 4, 2009; I think you will have have to key in the entire title and tag on Medscape on the end of the title:

Kawasacki Disease after Vaccination: Reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System 1990-2007

(linking of articles is still elusive for dumb lilady, sorry)

The conclusions drawn after extensive analysis and reporting is that there is no increased risk for Kawasaki Disease after any single one or combination of immunizations given to children.

Thank you Mindy, Lawrence, lilady, Beamup

@kelly

Any pro-vax with parents with children over the age of five fully vaxed to the current schedule?

Frankly, I don’t know anyone whose children are not fully vaccinated. I am in the UK (Wakefield country) and probably know a disproportionate number of people who work in health-care, but I think I’m safe in saying that everyone I know well would regard a parent who did not fully vaccinate their child as a dangerous lunatic.

@ Heather Frazer: Why not throw in bloodletting and cupping as examples of medicines doing harm? No one ever stated that there are not (very rare) incidences of anaphylaxis following the administration of vaccines or other medicines.

Just how many instances of anaphylaxis have you actually seen after administration of any vaccine? I had a long career in public health and administered thousands of vaccines in busy public health clinics and nary a one instance of anaphylaxis. My colleagues (doctors and nurses) at the Department of Health who collectively administered hundreds of thousands of vaccines, have never reported an episode of anaphylaxis following immunization. And, we always had epinephrine ampules and syringes nearby to treat anaphylaxis…they were always discarded unused upon expiration and replaced with newer ampules.

Are you deliberately confusing diphtheria toxoid used in vaccines that contains no horse serum with diphtheria anti-toxin (DAT) which contains horse serum?

Your promoting of false information to deter parents from immunization with primary series DTaP and booster vaccines is simply reckless.

Diphtheria anti-toxin (DAT) is available only through regional CDC offices and only used in ICUs when an unimmunized patient is struggling to survive a case of diphtheria. I pity the poor parents of such a patient who believe your line of horse****, as they stand vigil at bedside awaiting the arrival of lifesaving DAT.

Here’s a site for all you fence sitters who don’t immunize against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis and find yourselves in an ICU awaiting a supply of diphtheria anti-toxin:

CDC Diphtheria Anti-Toxin (DAT)

“Everyone is a pharma shill who refutes your vapid arguments?”

Nope – you’ve done no such thing.

Kelly was wringing her hands over “one in six American children are now considered developmentally disabled”, and was implying the high number was new and was caused by vaccination.

“Developmentally Disabled” sounds horrible and scary, doesn’t it? Like a child who will never learn, or never live independently in adulthood?

The facts are otherwise.

The source of the “one in six” is a paper in Pediatrics, Boyle et al. (2011) Trends in the Prevalence of Developmental Disabilities in US Children, 1997–2008 Pediatrics. 2011 Jun;127(6):1034-42. Epub 2011 May 23. doi: 10.1542/peds.2010-2989)

Unfortunately, I only have access to the abstract. I have added emphases:

Participants and Methods:We used data on children aged 3 to 17 years from the 1997–2008 National Health Interview Surveys, which are ongoing nationally representative samples of US households. Parent-reported diagnoses of the following were included: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; intellectual disability; cerebral palsy; autism; seizures; stuttering or stammering; moderate to profound hearing loss; blindness; learning disorders; and/or other developmental delays.

Screening for and remediating learning disorders are my areas of expertise. I would say the one in six figure (16.6%) is possibly low. Dyslexia is classed as a developmental disability. Some dyslexia experts put the actual prevalence rate at up to 20%.

It would be a great day for children in America if all students were screened for dyslexia at the end of kindergarten, so that appropriate remediation could begin immediately. Of course, instituting such a course of action would mean a rise in both incidence and prevalence. What a terrible thing! Not.

The change in incidence and rise in prevalence of autism has been widely discussed previously (for starters, see Steven Novella at Neurologica.

The incidence and prevalence of ADHD are well, contentious. The prevalence rates vary from about 6% to over 15% on a state-by-state basis. As the CDC notes:

…because of the evolution of the case definition and differences in how the case definition is operationalized, there is disagreement as to prevalence and precise characteristics of children with the disorder.

Due to the lack of a single, consistent, and standard research protocol for case identification, variable and disparate findings have been noted in the literature.

What’s the take-away message here? For Kelly, lara, and others who use the “one in six” headline as a prompt for fears of vaccines, I fear it won’t do much. Evidence-resistant ideologies don’t change much in response to facts…

For everyone else, when you see the “one in six” figure, now you know what it refers to, and now you know why it isn’t a fearful figure.

@ lilady- according to the CDC there are fewer than 5 cases of diptheria a year in the US

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002575/

@ lara:

Precisely because of mass vaccination. If we stopped the vaccine, it would come back.

Lara, so what? It is that low due to high levels of vaccination. Here is what happens when there is an interruption of vaccine programs: Diphtheria in the Former Soviet Union: Reemergence of a Pandemic Disease.

How many people a year need to die from a disease for you to think it is worth preventing?

Several babies have died from pertussis in the USA in the last few years. Do you think it might be worth to vaccinate against pertussis, and even more importantly to get the Tdap yourself to prevent transmitting it to a baby?

Beamup

Precisely because of mass vaccination. If we stopped the vaccine, it would come back.

What percent would be alcoholics. According to your precision science based calculations and formula, of course. Could you write out that formula that gave you your prediction for us?

Boring troll – take France & stuff it up your pie-hole, seems to me that one instance alone makes you both a liar & a putz, less vaccination = more disease.

Yes Lara, diphtheria cases are rare now, thanks to DTaP primary series and booster vaccines. An excellent reference for the incidence and rate of diphtheria, before the availability and widespread use of vaccine is contained in:

Pink Book Diphtheria

I’m a wee bit (or more) older than you with a now deceased mother who was a registered nurse who first entered the profession in the early 1930s before licensing of the diphtheria vaccine. She shared so many stories of serious cases of diphtheria and the resulting loss of life from diphtheria. And, in spite of the Trolls’ theories of public sanitation measures decreasing the incidence of respiratory diseases, DTaP (and DAT) made the difference in the incidence and rate of childhood deaths from this disease.

There was a death of a young woman from diphtheria recently in
Australia; you can read the article at:

Shocking Death in Australia: A Diphtheria Case

Please read it and learn how not getting recommended diphtheria booster vaccine caused the death of this young woman.

GSK board member James Murdoch is in charge of New Corporation’s Asian operations, so China and India are not “far from Murdoch.”

Just think, up until a few weeks ago, the recurring ad hominem against Brian Deer was that he was a free-lance journalist, and therefore less reliable than a staff reporter would be. Apparently this made him a mercenary, taking money from all sides. J. B. Handley accused him of being in the pocket of Big Pharma, the BMJ and the US Department of Justice.

See, for instance, the comments thread here, in which one Jake Crosby congratulates Handley for pointing out that Deer is “not a Sunday Times reporter, and never has been”.

And now Jake Crosby wants us to believe that Deer was working for the Sunday Times, and is therefore tarred with the Murdoch brush.

Jake, I know you’re trying to win arguments, but does it ever occur to you that there are more important goals in life, like remaining honest to yourself?

“Why hasn’t it been replicated by anyone *other* than an avowed follower?”

You mean research teams in multiple countries on continents throughout the world?

Oh do you mean those “studies” that either have nothing to do with the “gut-brain” Wankers hypothesis and/or written by him and/or his co-authors on other papers? No wonder you have a difficult time with the term “independent” and intellectual honesty.

“Everyone is a pharma shill who refutes your vapid arguments?”

Nope – you’ve done no such thing.

Yes, I did, by citing Ms. Seidel’s excellent, meticulously-sourced blogpost. All you did was the equivalent of ‘nuh-uh, she’s a librarian and I don’t like what she said.’ And now look, you cite AoA’s hand-waving post with Natural News and AoA as sources, by JB Handley no less, a financier with no science or research background. Hypocrisy, thy name is Jake. You then turn to the predictable “shill” accusation; better deepen that silly little bag of tricks there Jake because I haven’t worked outside of academia yet and have never been funded by any pharma money, all government.

I don’t know, but Orac’s research is being fueled by pharma dollars.

You know, whiz kid? No amount of playing six degrees, nor back pats from equally dim-witted AoA commentors validate your drivel. The fact that you really believe the accolades you receive from very disturbed individuals requires an inordinate amount of cognitive dissonance and some really piss-poor self esteem. You really don’t know what it is like to function in the real world do you? More’s the pity for you; I’d stay in school for a really long time if I were you because I just don’t see a future outside of it for you.

Jake:

>Blogging for pharma is certainly more lucrative than >blogging against pharma, isn’t it?

I’m glad you finally admit that you’re paid lucratively to blog in support of untested and dangerous pharmaceuticals.

>Thanks, but I’ll pass.

Your exams? Not too likely.

I am so enjoying this tete-a-tete
Jake is (IMHO) wrong and misguided — and sometimes I suspect that he is not entirely arguing in good faith — but he deserves a response, because at least he is not a troll… he is not simply spouting bullshit that he knows to be bullshit, for the dubious satisfaction of prompting smarter people to reply.

I would like to volunteer that I am fully vaccinated (served USN, so probably more vaccinated than many) with fully vaccinated children and now grandchildren (per schedule on the youngest) and none of them have had a bad reaction, none of them have any learning disabilities as far as I know (the youngest is 12, the other 20). They are all perfectly healthy. I do have an autistic (step) grandchild. He also has been vaccinated appropriately, and we actually suspect that, if anything, his mother’s (illicit) drug use during pregnancy affected his neural development.

I do suffer from autoimmune disorders and honestly wonder where that comes from – if it is something genetic, or environmental or both? I do wonder if the various environmental contaminants that seem more common now (pollutants, etc.) have anything to do with various autoimmune disorders, or if it is the much increased consumption of processed sugar, or the fact we no longer eat whole foods as much…. or if it is that the less hardy are able to reproduce more readily because they no longer die young.

A problem when you get into LARGE populations is that there are so many things in common you cannot (and should not) point to ONE thing that they all have in common and immediately insist that it is the cause. The one disease I have is rather rare, and I get very frustrated to read some of the support chat rooms where patients try to blame it on everything from food coloring or additives to whether or not their mother breast fed them or if they weren’t encouraged to play with other children enough at age seven (okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my point).

Vaccines get to be the boogeyman in this because they ARE so common – the largest majority of people in civilized countries get them. What better thing to blame? Maybe you should blame it on water? or air? I’m sure they all breathe, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if they DID find any small relationship that they would find that it is this vaccine ingredient with THIS genetic inheritance plus THIS other contributing source – I doubt that they will ever find ONE single thing to point to and say THIS is exactly (and the only) the thing that causes autism.

For one – there are way too many who are exposed to that who AREN’T autistic, period.

Antaeus,

You obviously lack a basic understanding of what Brian Deer accused Dr. Andrew Wakefield of doing.

“Obviously Wakefield had access to read the records in question, because he could never be expected to make accurate representations of records he couldn’t read.”

What was used in the Lancet paper was the end product of a process that begins with a routine pathologist’s review and ends with an evaluation by the expert pathologist. Deer accused Dr. Wakefield of changing the test results from the routine pathologist even though it was part of a process that had nothing to do with Dr. Wakefield. So yes, what Deer accused Dr. Wakefield of doing was physically impossible, unless Deer starts to implicate other doctors in his conspiracy theory.

“What does have a physical component, and therefore could be physically impossible, is the act of making false or altered documents and trying to substitute those documents for the originals”

Which is exactly what Deer accused Dr. Wakefield of doing with the pathology records.

“Not only is the allegation that Wakefield misrepresented the records not “physically impossible”, it’s not even incorrect, as the GMC confirmed that Wakefield did exactly that.”

Not at all – the GMC was where Prof. John Walker-Smith testified that the diagnostic process by which Deer claims Dr. Wakefield committed fraud had nothing to do with Dr. Wakefield!

“And now Jake Crosby wants us to believe that Deer was working for the Sunday Times, and is therefore tarred with the Murdoch brush.”

What? I never said Deer was a staff reporter for The Times, nor do I want anyone to believe that he is.

This does not change the fact, however, that he is being investigated for his acquisition of children’s private medical records.

“Your exams? Not too likely.”

Good one – except that I recently graduated. So I obviously passed my exams.

“who did work for the tobacco companies is…Dr. Healey.”

Because Dr. Healy used to be part of Steven Milloy’s group, which includes Michael Fumento on its advisory board? Milloy and Fumento are on your side of this issue.

“No Jakey is not a troll…and not an innocent “disabled” kid either.”

Oh, so I don’t have an ASD diagnosis? Is that what you’re claiming?

Is her child vaccine regressive?

Pay attention, troll, her child was diagnosed before he was vaccinated. Your insinuations are pointless and silly.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21691704 Although hepatitis B vaccine prevents infection, previous studies have shown that it has several side effects that are caused by the aluminum adjuvant. Therefore, we applied more sensitive and more scientifically well-grounded methods for the quality control of vaccine safety. We confirmed by quantitative RT-PCR that hepatitis B vaccine changed the expression level of seven genes that were selected as biomarkers, which reflected subtoxic/adverse effects of the vaccine, especially subtle liver injury. In addition to other genes that were significantly changed and detected by microarray comparing with control to get the fold change data as a criteria was depended in other pre- vious studies of vaccine safety by gene expression meth- ods, This study tested the hypothesis that gene expression profiling can reveal indicators of subtle liver injury that is induced by a dose of a substance that does not cause overt toxicity as defined by conventional criteria of toxicology. Microarray does not replace the classical toxicity method but it can be used in pre-clinical development vaccine.

lara, that is some serious cherry picking. Are your children mice?

Guess we’re seeing augie’s “christian” love in action here….

Narad, obviously that was some serious drunken posting from some guy living in his mother’s basement.

She believes that it’s rational to believe that one can be trapped in the wrong body and need science based medicine surgery to remedy that conundrum.

Actually, Augustine, the decay in your ability to assemble a sentence is pretty noticeable. Time to put down the Listerine.

Novalox

Guess we’re seeing augie’s “christian” love in action here….

Oh, are you a Christian? Are you also a Skeptic like James Randi?

people trapped in the wrong bodies
This is no laughing matter. I am trapped in a body that is too old, balding and unattractive to be the right one.

@ lara: So what is your interpretation…how does it apply to humans…and:

Does a study done in China on mouse livers have any relevance for the Hepatitis B vaccine that has been used successfully in the Western world since 1981 with no proven effect on the genes, the liver, any other organ including the brain and does not trigger autism, have any relevance to any discussion here.

Do you even know what type of vaccine was tested in China or are you just “assuming” it was the type used in the Western World…not very scientific of you.

How about the aluminum adjuvant? That too has been tested in thousands of studies testing the many vaccines that use aluminum as adjuvants for the past fifty years.

Too many cherry-picked hypotheses here to ever be considered as a scientific study.

herr d-

here’s the PDF

http://bit.ly/pDdDvV

I thought that would shut you up. Chris: science, logic….crickets.

science, logic….crickets.
Tractors: Turnip! Buttocks!

http://www.ntpharma.com/en/page/page.aspx?id=1a777801f6c84a5390110eee8b86185b

Pharma partners with China- GSK

Our vaccine promotion product portfolio includes GSK Engerix-B® (Junior), a hepatitis B vaccine for children; GSK Twinrix®, the only imported hepatitis A and B vaccine for adults in China; Sanofi-Pasteur Meningo A+C, the only imported 2-valent meningococcal vaccine in China; and CNBG Huiyikang, the only domestically manufactured 23-valent pneumococcal vaccine.

Genetic changes (oncogenes) have been found in the livers of people who are unimmunized against Hepatitis B and who become chronic carriers of the virus. Chronic carriage of Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C are the cause of most cases of incurable primary liver carcinomas.

3 day OLD Babies? Or did they “catch” the disease at 3 days old? Do you have the mean average, from this study you reference (yeh right you have the reference) of the age that these genetic aberrances first caught the Hep B virus and subsequent disease?

Oh you dont’? WHy I’d be silly to ask such an evidentiary question wouldn’t I?

Following, pharma shill Todd’s logic, how many of those caught Hep B. from “causual contacts” like daycare?

Oh you don’t have that evidence either? I’m sorry. I thought I was on a evidence based medicine expert website.

You better go to bet and come back with some evidence miss CDC nurse laday. I’ll be waiting for you factless or out of context post.

Your risk of hepatitis B infection is increased if you:

Have unprotected sex with more than one partner
Is your cousins grand child at risk?

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hepatitis-b/DS00398/DSECTION=risk-factors

Have unprotected sex with someone who’s infected with HBV
Have a sexually transmitted disease such as gonorrhea or chlamydia
Are a man who has sexual contact with other men
Share needles during intravenous (IV) drug use
Share a household with someone who has a chronic HBV infection
Have a job that exposes you to human blood
Receive hemodialysis for end-stage kidney (renal) disease

Lara, I mean this in all sincerity; I believe you have some issues with your worry for your cousin’s grandchild. Now if you are uncomfortable about revealing the reasons for your worry about the youngster, feel free to ignore these questions.

Are you worries about the child shared by your cousin or the child’s parents

How old is the youngster and has he/she received any Hepatitis B vaccines of the three part series? If so, has the child had any serious reactions and what were those reactions?

Just what are you concerns about the vaccine and are they justified?

Have you read the Hepatitis B VIS (available on the internet)

Will you read the Pink Book Hepatitis B chapter for some history of the natural disease and the development of vaccines to protect children and adults from acquiring the disease?

I would like to help you gain more knowledge about hepatitis B, once you have done some research on your own.

Again, feel free to ignore this posting if you find it intrusive, as it is a sincere desire on my part to educate you about the disease process and the science behind immunizing against the disease.

@ Krebiozen: Thanks for the correction…yes indeed any human size dose given to a small test animal will certainly impact the results.

The design and the administration of large doses of vaccines or medicines reminds me of the testing done on labs animals to test for MLD (mean lethal dose)in humans.

“How funny, after you say I have no clue about science and publication, you then link to the website of an unemployed librarian as your sole reference.”

LOL, I missed this diss because I’ve been too busy working, and consequently sparing myself Jake Crosby’s jejune, ideologically hidebound fulminations.

When Jake first showed up on Age of Autism back in 2008, I felt some sympathy for him; I saw him as a bright, eager kid, so clearly being manipulated and groomed by his elders to serve as the autistic mouthpiece of the autism=poisoning crusade. Since that time, he’s morphed from a naive tool to just another arrogant young extremist, convinced he’s got the whole world figured out, when his only special insight pertains to his own rectal interior.

Science Mom, thanks for sticking up for me.

I know this is a bit late, but after dealing with augustine for a while, I know the only thing I can say to him is this: If you’re not going to engage us as an adult, please leave. If he wants to act like a small, petulant child, then treat him like one.

@ Jake Crosby:

I’m so sorry to take long in responding.

I do despair for you! You don’t see the forest for the trees. I will address the latter first.

No one taught us that “homicidal parents” caused autism: Bettelhiem’s “refridgerator mother” idea was presented as a *curiosity* only. Bimler comments on this.

Orac has shown ( see search box above) how replications of AW’s work were done by adherents of his. Also Todd W.’s site.

If Orac gets pharma money, it’s news to me. Perhaps also news to him. Why not ask him.( Didn’t you get in trouble about something like this?)

The Murdochs rule the world? OK, but I doubt that that extends to Parliament.

On to grander things:

Science is a body of research findings that are continuously challenged and re-assessed, transforming endlessly, based on mathematics. Serious students learn the current consensus and its serious challenges and are tested.
I specialised in psychology, as others may survey medicine or biology.

When I spoke about my confidence re vaccines addressing my cousin’s worry, it was based *on my studies and knowledge of the consensus*- not anything else. AW’s work did not interfere one jot. Nor does it now.

The commenters here, I believe, like me, came to their conclusions through study and experience. Special interests? Yes, getting down to the nitty gritty of truth eventually via research. Is money the only reason people advocate for what they believe is valuable? I could write a book about this topic *vis a vis* attribution research.

Conspiracy is a cheap way to explain the workings of the world in comparison to our grander methodology above. It is more parsimonious to postulate a single cheat than thousands upon thousands of them: do the math. How likely would that be?

If you use phrases like “tobacco science” you place yourself in the company of poseurs like Null and Adams who see a conspiracy behind every word and deed in the universe. They are proselytisers for a belief system about health upon which their own respective financial empires rest.I have heard them speak about psychology and it is not anything like what I studied- and btw, I doubt that either is a Galileo overturning the state of knowledge.

My final question: look at your own views about vaccines and mine ( or Orac’s or the commenters in agreement with him)- ask your past and future professors about *their* own views. Do theirs resemble yours or ours more? Tally the numbers.

I truly believe that you are mistaken : being an advocate for a set of beliefs entirely out of the mainstream of science, you are risking your future. I go out on a limb to tell you this because I care about students and would help one even if they disagree with me. Education and science are the important things- eventually truth will out.

Vaccine Industry: We need your babies regardless of risk. We’re fighting a war out here.

http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/PREVIEW/MMWRHTML/00033405.htm

In the United States, most infections occur among adults and adolescents (2,3). The recommended strategy for preventing these infections has been the selective vaccination of persons with identified risk factors (1,2). However, this strategy has not lowered the incidence of hepatitis B, primarily because vaccinating persons engaged in high-risk behaviors, life-styles, or occupations before they become infected generally has not been feasible.

Vaccinating adolescents and adults is substantially more expensive because of the higher vaccine cost and the higher implementation costs of delivering vaccine to target populations. In the long term, universal infant vaccination would eliminate the need for vaccinating adolescents and high-risk adults.

Hepatitis B vaccination is recommended for all infants, regardless of the HBsAg status of the mother.

There is plenty of philosophical and scientific evidence to reject this vaccine. But keep pushing ideology over informed consent and the people.

This same strategy is and will be used for the HPV vaccine. They’re going to go after all babies. But you scientism bloggers will have to make up some more facts to change your arguments to make it look like it’s for the good of ALL.

Vaccine Industry: We need your babies regardless of risk. We’re fighting a war out here.(put’s back of hand to mouth) An economic war.

I believe it was William Schaffner, a pharma shill out of Vanderbilt Univ.,(and don’t try to defend the label, he literally is a pharma shill) who pushed this governmental medical policy on the people.

Christian Cynic

augustine: You have read that bolded portion entirely wrong, inserting your own prejudice. The author (Minor) is saying that developing countries can’t afford the vaccine because it is expensive, and so providing the vaccine –

“Efforts to vaccinate persons in the major risk groups have had limited success. For example, programs directed at injecting drug users failed to motivate them to receive three doses of vaccine.”

No I didn’t read it wrong. I said what it says. The strategy to vaccinate ONLY the at-risk targets didn’t work. They needed a new stategey. Target babies.

The same strategy also failed with the flu vaccine. New stategy: target ALL babies and Baby Mommas.

HPV a sexually transmitted virus: target babies.

Vaccine XYZ for disease that mainly affects XYZ: Target: A-Z.

Targets XYZ= no money. Targets A-Z = taxpayer treasuries= Billions of Dollars + no accounatability.

Our children are bought for a price.

Augie, you look really silly with that froth all over your mouth.

@ Tom: Have you read boy wonder cub reporter’s biography that he put on his website? It seems that boy wonder cub reporter was on a boatload of medications that indicate his original (and proper) diagnosis was ADD or ADHD…that is until ASD became the disorder de jour.

Whenever the “flavor of the month” changes, boy wonder cub reporter will get himself re-diagnosed again…

@christian Cynic,

I thinks it’s clear, to objective people, that this vaccine policy was driven by economic motivations, not by changes in disease incidence in the low risk population. Now the low risk population is the largest consumer and purchaser of this vaccine. THAT is the bait n switch.

Same thing happening with the HPV vaccine and all this HPV “education”. It’s part of the microscope PR campaign. Blow it up. Distort it. Take it out of context. Cause confusion and doubt. Presto formula works. Pharma gets rich via deception fear mongering and government medical policy.

“Trust your government on this one folks. It’s not a conspiracy. Listen to the experts. Just get your damn vaccines!” -Nancy Snyderman MD, pharma shill.

ugh troll:

There is plenty of philosophical and scientific evidence to reject this vaccine. But keep pushing ideology over informed consent and the people.

If so, you have manifestly failed to provide any.

Flute Boy

If so, you have manifestly failed to provide any.

If you weren’t so mired in mass vaccine ideology you could read what I just posted and then you would see the evidence. Let me rehash. Targeting at risk populations didn’t work. New try. Target every body and every baby to see if that works for the at risk populations. At risk populations and countries can’t afford the expensive vaccine so the non-risk taxpayers are needed to subsidize the campaign. None of what I just posted is science except for the vaccine failing to stem Hep B incidence with previous strategy. It economic driven and philosophically driven. And since there never was any science to support the mass vaccination of ALL developed country babies then YOU need to provide said science.

Instead you’ve been left a fool trying to convince non-low risk people that they are at high or unknown fear mongering risk with dubious and specious claims. The vaccine industry loves you.

It never was about the science. It was and is about the money.

If you weren’t so mired in mass anti-vaccine ideology you could read what I just posted (@330) and then you would see the evidence.

FTFY, augie.

lilady,
My cousins grandson Gage now 8 months old is looking a little spacey-(hope I am wrong) . Thank you for your offer of help but I’m still not convinced the Hep B is necessary or entirely safe. I will now longer be posting on this page. Thank you for your update on China.

Lara, it’s considered bad form to paste huge chunks of text that you got from elsewhere, with no attribution. It can also backfire on you, because other people can Google and find out that your copypasta comes from the website of a ‘naturopathic physician’ who has no credentials in real medicine.

He also is quite clearly a gullible conspiracy theorist, since elsewhere on his website, he reports with no questioning the claims that “during the Vietnam War, soldiers were injected with the Rambo chip, designed to increase adrenaline flow into the bloodstream”, that implanted microchips can transmit back to a base what the implantee sees and hears, that “zombified individuals can … be programmed to murder and remember nothing of their crime afterward … examples of this phenomenon can be found in the U.S.” and even that the description of paranoid schizophrenia in the DSM-IV was specifically tampered with by “psychiatrists working for U.S. intelligence agencies” to cover up the symptoms of microchip implantees. (I’d love to ask the author of the piece, or “NaturoDoc” who posted the raving on his website along with advertisements for “related products” “CV Complex, Livit-2, Mercury Detox, Modifilan, Phosphatidyl Serine Complex”, whether James Tilly Matthews was just suffering from a disease completely unrelated to paranoid schizophrenia, which just happens to mimic the description of paranoid schizophrenia devised by intelligence agencies centuries later, or whether he was implanted with a microchip in the 18th century.)

If “NaturoDoc” doesn’t have the expertise or the decency to recognize and refuse schizophrenic ravings such as that microchip rant, we have no reason to think that any of the things he has to say about vaccines have any more logic or accuracy.

lilady’-I’m sorry that many people have deceived you in your life and that you have become venonous and so ego-attached to certain issues. I am certainly not anti-vax but I am overly cautious and questioning. I do not tell any of my friends or relatives to not vax or vax- that is entirely their decision. I feel I have no right. My grandchildren are fully vaxed-that is their parents decision. Granddaughter had mild vaccine reaction after the flu and Dtap were given on the same day. BTW their names- Arielle and Talia.
I have an ongoing debate every year with my significant other about the flu vaccine. He is absolutely pro-vax and this year I decided not to get it- (have for the past ten years or so) contained H1N1 and mercury. Of course I will get vaxed if I travel to foreign lands I’m not stupid nor a liar.

Lara is also referencing defunct sites (www.redflagsweekly.com). IIRC, this was the website of Nicholas Regush, an HIV denialist who never saw or imagined a “medical conspiracy” that he didn’t like. He became infamous for losing the largest defamation award against the news media ever in Canada.

Wait, TBruce, that is gone? Please, lara, give an explanation of why you are using sites that no longer exist? How recent is your information?

I did a bit of googling, and saw that Ragush died in 2004. She really needs to check her sources more carefully.

“Because Dr. Healy used to be part of Steven Milloy’s group, which includes Michael Fumento on its advisory board? Milloy and Fumento are on your side of this issue. ”

So JB is lying every time he claims that Healy is on his side? I dare you to tell him that…

“”Milloy and Fumento are on your side of this issue. ”

Indeed, but:

there aren’t that many people (on ‘this’ side) who know who they are.
would care who they are if they did,
would know what views they have on vaccinations and autism,
would follow those views because of the standing of those people.

Compare this to the ‘pro-safe-vaxx’ following of Dr Healy where:

few knew who she was until she said things that could be used for their own ends,
few would have regarded her as anything less than a pharma-shill if she had come up with a pro-vaxx arguement,
her previous employment nearly two decades ago is repeatedly used as a validation of her arguement,
few use any other source but her when arguing about vulnerable sub-groups,
the arguement about vulnerable sub-groups was a fringe arguement in the pro-safe-vaxx ‘side’ until an ‘important’ figure made it. The ‘mass’ damage of ‘previously normal’ children arguement was far more popular, and still is to some extent.

Face it, Milloy and Fuemento could disappear from existance tommorrow and it wouldn’t make a bean of difference. If Healy had never popped up her head then a major strand of argumentation from ‘your’ side simply wouldn’t exist in any recognisable form or in any serious numbers, unlike today.

Healy is followed by ‘your’ side precisely because she has the background to make her seem credible, so ‘your’ side has latched onto her. Thats a world of a difference from simply having two people agree with the same things ‘we’ do.

It never was about the science. It was and is about the money.

Still waiting for your evidence on that count, ugh troll.

Kathleen Seidel,

You concocted a conspiracy theory. You’ve in effect done exactly what I am being accused of doing by your own compatriots right now – alleging a conspiracy exists amidst some people you disagree with that doesn’t.

Speaking of which, this autism=poisoning “crusade” you say I’m a mouthpiece of has certainly gotten awfully bigger over the last three years – former CDC director Julie Gerberding, former NIH director Bernadine Healy, NIH director Francis Collins, IACC chairman Thomas Insel, Columbia sociologist Peter Bearman who has ironically become something of a darling to your “neurodiversty” movement – heck, even your own friend Paul Offit has agreed that vaccines cause autism spectrum disorders!
http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/05/paul-offit-agrees-that-vaccines-cause-autistic-spectrum-conditions.html

What are you gonna do when the entire medical community – including everyone you’ve sided with – finally agrees that the autism epidemic is real? Are you going to concoct the same conspiracy theories you accuse “extremists” like myself of concocting?

Denice,

I don’t know whether to pity you, or be disgusted by you when you say the following:

“No one taught us that “homicidal parents” caused autism: Bettelhiem’s “refridgerator mother” idea was presented as a *curiosity* only.”

Kanner coined the term “refridgerator mothers” FYI. Bettelheim popularized it and took it further by saying the mothers wanted to kill their kids, who developed autism as a result of fearing for their lives. He likened them to SS guards in Nazi concentration camps. He and his cronies often took the children away while driving the parents to commit suicide. Bettelheim said and did all this and for you to claim otherwise not only shows total ignorance on your part – after lecturing me about how you came to your conclusions because of your meticulous research no less – but is also an insensitive and cruel trivialization of what had been a very bad period in history for the autism community.

“Orac has shown ( see search box above) how replications of AW’s work were done by adherents of his.”

No, it was independently replicated throughout the world.

“Why not ask him.”

Because he said so himself.

“The Murdochs rule the world?”

Um, no.

“…it was based *on my studies and knowledge of the consensus*- not anything else.”

And if your *studies and knowledge of the consensus* regarding vaccines is anything like your *studies and knowledge of the consensus* regarding Bruno Bettelheim, then I’d say you have an awful lot of restudying and relearning to do.

“Conspiracy is a cheap way to explain the workings of the world in comparison to our grander methodology above. It is more parsimonious to postulate a single cheat than thousands upon thousands of them: do the math. How likely would that be?”

You seem to be historically illiterate of the way conspiracies have worked. They don’t work anything like the way you say they do; they typically involve a small group of people in high positions of authority who become corrupted, which in turn affects the organizations they run. It does not mean that everyone in such organizations are all culpable and keeping a secret. But tragically, many such people often go along with what happens and not do anything about it. That’s why it took so long for the phone hacking scandal to become public knowledge, for example, even though it happened years ago.

In relation to Brian Deer, he was assigned to “find something big” on MMR by Paul Nuki, whose father George Nuki served on the Committee on Safety of Medicines in the eighties when it was considering to approve the MMR vaccine, banned for causing meningitis. Sitting alongside Nuki was David Hull, who as chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, started the attacking the ethics of Wakefield’s work in 1998. Such accusations of ethical violations would be exactly what Deer would accuse Wakefield of in 2004. Deer is now facing a police investigation for acquiring children’s personal medical records.

“If you use phrases like “tobacco science” you place yourself in the company of poseurs like Null and Adams who see a conspiracy behind every word and deed in the universe.”

You are really not addressing my arguments.

I’ve never said these studies are bad because they are part of some conspiracy. I’ve said they are bad because they are in fact bad science cranked out by conflicted researchers.

That said, there are instances where such researchers have found positive correlations and associations but only reported negative correlations and associations instead. There are those who knew their study designs were junk but went ahead with them anyway. There are also those who said they’ll never say autism is a true side effect of vaccines. There are also those who said that vaccine research should not have been done at all. What do you make of all of this?

“Do theirs resemble yours or ours more? Tally the numbers.”

Science is not what the majority of people think or the majority of professors. It is a self-correcting process shaped by the scientific contributions of individuals.

“being an advocate for a set of beliefs entirely out of the mainstream of science, you are risking your future.”

Then risk it I shall, because what you call “the mainstream of science” I call tobacco science for reasons previously stated.

“You have been asked to demonstrate where Deer has made the exact claim you state he has. You have yet again failed to perform even the most basic task required to have a case.”

You love to argue semantics, it’s much easier than arguing real points after all.

“It is totally false to assert that he ‘had no part’.”

That’s what was testified by the senior author of the Lancet paper.

“You have yet to bother your arse to make even the most minimal of effort to demonstrate otherwise.”

Unlike you, I provided a specific quote.

“Get to it you lazy git.” – speak for yourself.

“Face it, Milloy and Fuemento could disappear from existance tommorrow and it wouldn’t make a bean of difference”

Obviously not, otherwise Paul Offit wouldn’t have generously cited them both in his book about autism the same year Healy spoke up.

There are so many threads wrapped up now…which are tied into tenuous Big Pharma conspiracy theories, “safe vaccines” (anti-vaxers latest schtick) and of course the indefensible defense of heroes such as Wakefield and the Geiers.

Another theme is the cost to immunize infants against hepatitis B so that they don’t get infected perinatally and in turn infect their own infants perinatally. Some posters here think that it is not a worthy cause…too expensive. Such narrow minded thinking is unacceptable and based on Xenophobia. The bible even states “we are our brother’s keeper” and people who have a moral compass care about the health of infants and adults worldwide.

Using old position papers about the cost of vaccine is their justification…when newer research tells us that world leaders including some of our ex-Presidents (Carter and Clinton) have been very much involved to lower the cost of life saving vaccines and medications to prevent or treat such diseases as Guinea Worm, HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria…to name just a few.

Here, just for you Composer99 (for your diligence in trying to get straight answers from the Troll) is the latest WHO position paper on Hepatitis B immunization worldwide…such diligence for “the cause” is appreciated:

WHO Hepatitis B Position Paper October 9, 2010

There are Position Papers for every other disease that the WHO is coordinating efforts to ameliorate or eradicate worldwide.

Also Composer, WHO has weekly reports quite similar in format to the MMWR, available on the internet that describe the activities of the WHO:

WHO Weekly Epidemiology Record

There is another (monthly) journal available on the internet that you may find of interest, that details efforts to eradicate, contain and treat diseases worldwide:

CDC Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal

Now Composer stop beating your head against the wall to elicit any responses from the Troll.

Again, Jake avoids the Big Picture and focuses on Bettelheim who, by the time I was in grad school,was considered a minor figure promoting an unlikely theory.
He then evaluates my knowledge and education- in a field he never studied in depth even as an undergrad- and calls me insensitive.
OK, he’s 22 or so.It comes with the territory.

…Oh Jake, I was not presenting you with a scientific argument- others have already done that and it didn’t work very well-I was merely trying to get you to question your own involvement in the anti-vax movement and your own sources of information. I believe that if you do ask your profs, you’ll see how out of synch your ideas are: this is of *personal* not scientific relevance. I was attempting to pull you out of an intellectual backwater into the freer flowing currents of scientific consensus….

You know what they say: “No good deed goes unpunished”. So I wash my hands of him.

The ideas promulgated at Age of Autism, by AW, or on other alt med sites ( re vaccines) are very far out of the mainstream. They stand or fall by tortured logic, intimations of skulduggery on a massive scale,
and conspiracy theory. I have heard so many alt med “Galileo”s
proclaim “Scientific Revolution” or “Paradigm Shift” it sounds like a near-weekly event. I sincerely doubt the reality of these self-evaluations. Not very likely.

Perhaps my fellow and sister commenters amd I will be the subject of a post by Jake. Possible titles anyone? I suppose it’ll include “evil minions” or suchlike… To help out, I volunteer some real life information on me you might find interesting: I leave off my second last name on the internet; I have never received a cheque from Mr Murdoch ( as of today); the reason I use phrases like “how likely is that” is because probability is my first approach to issues; I have never met Orac… in person; I have worked in advertising; I have lovely blonde hair and gorgeous blue eyes; I play tennis with rich people. I monitor NYSE and FTSE on weekdays.

@Antaeus:

Whether Paul Offit said measles encephalopathy as a result of vaccines, or as an example of something that can cause autism spectrum disorders like vaccines, he clearly acknowledged that vaccines can cause autism spectrum disorders.

Since ASDs are defined solely by symptoms, something that causes symptoms which fall within the autism spectrum – by definition – causes autism spectrum disorders.

Denice,

Arguing with you is becoming a waste of time. Perhaps you ought to read Bruno Bettelheim’s 1990 New York Times obituary and see just what a “minor figure” he became. It was only weeks after the time of his death that the public started getting an accurate picture of who Bettelheim was and what he did.

“in a field he never studied in depth even as an undergrad”

How do you know? You followed me around during college?

“I was not presenting you with a scientific argument- others have already done that and it didn’t work very well”

Because they’re arguments didn’t work very well.

“in the anti-vax movement and your own sources of information.”

I’m in no such mythical movement, invented by the vaccine industry.

“I believe that if you do ask your profs…”

You know, there was faculty in attendance at Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s lecture at Brandeis, along with students and staff.

“I was attempting to pull you out of an intellectual backwater into the freer flowing currents of scientific consensus….”

…actually a scientific con posing as one.

“…are very far out of the mainstream.”

No, very far out of the corporate fringe, actually.

“Perhaps my fellow and sister commenters amd I will be the subject of a post by Jake”

Who are you speaking to?

“I have never received a cheque from Mr Murdoch”

Um, I never said you did.

“in person; I have worked in advertising”

Didn’t you just say you were a shrink?

“I have lovely blonde hair and gorgeous blue eyes; I play tennis with rich people.”

Are you feeling alright?

“I monitor NYSE and FTSE on weekdays.”

Bye Denice.

Jake, may I suggest that you start using blockquote html tags when quoting other people when you appear on Respectul Insolence?

It really, really makes things much easier following along what you are trying to say. Communication being a two-way street an all that. I am sure you are not obliged to increase the clarity of your posts. Nevertheless I am sure it would be appreciated by both those in agreement and those in disagreement with your positions.

—————
lilady, I will try to heed your advice, and thank you for pointing me to the WHO for information.

Jake,
You know you said that Andrew Wakefield’s results were replicated? Well, I’m sorry to tell you this (not really) but Wakefield was lying. He claimed that various people had replicated his results and listed five studies. Unfortunately for him, Sullivan from Left Brain Right Brain had a look at those studies.
Not one of them replicated Wakefield’s results. In fact, as I recall, one of them contradicted Wakefield.
Here’s some friendly advice from a fellow spectrumite. Stop spouting anti-vaxx falsities. You just look silly when people check them out and find that they are lies.

“For those who don’t know, Julie Gerberding is the president of Merck’s Vaccine division, and has said that children with a rare mitochondrial disorder a fever can trigger encephalopathy which shares some symptoms with autism, and that fever sometimes occurs after vaccination.”

She was referring to the case of Hannah Poling – a girl diagnosed with classic autism.

“children with this rare mitochondrial disorder”

And yet, mitochondrial disorders were found in 8 out of 10 children with autism in a recent study.

“a vaccine-preventable disease is far more likely to trigger encephalopathy than a vaccine.”

Maybe, maybe not.

“To claim that this adds Gerderding to the ranks of the anti-vaccine crusaders is laughable.”

Why, of course not. Gerberding never advocated banning all vaccines.

“Orac has written about her more than once, and I don’t need to add to that.”

Because a nameless, pharma-funded blogger is far more credible than a past director of the National Institutes of Health.

“That’s hardly a ringing endorsement of the “autism=poisoning” crusade.”

Except that admitting autism is environmentally-caused does not really leave room for much else.

Thomas Insel stated the burden of proof was on people who claim the autism increase is artificial.

Peter Bearman told me the increase in autism is real when he visited my university earlier this year and can only be partially explained by “social factors” – the latter claim I refuted here:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/07/peter-bearman-given-millions-for-his-opinions.html

“As for Paul Offitt, that’s just silly as Antaeus Feldspar has explained.”

No, Antaeus Feldspar’s “explanation” is just silly, as I have responded.

“If that’s the best you can do Jake, your “movement” is in even bigger trouble than I thought!”

Nope, there’s also Phil Landrigan of Mount Sinai.

Composer99,

Tell me how, and I will.

“Stop spouting anti-vaxx falsities.”

Then by all means, show me the “falsities” I’m spouting. What’s been happening so far can be described like this: I’ll make points that no one can refute, you all change the subject and move on to something else and make similarly unsuccessful arguments, and the cycle repeats.

“Unfortunately for him, Sullivan from Left Brain Right Brain had a look at those studies.”

Well, Sullivan can play gastroenterologist all he wants.

“In fact, as I recall, one of them contradicted Wakefield.”

Um, no, the clinical findings in all the replicated studies were the same as in the Lancet papers. As I recall, the paper you cite said that it did not discover a novel disease. It still counts as a replication since no such claim was made in the Lancet paper either.

“Here is another posting on how that is a false statement: Still no independent confirmation of Wakefield’s claims.”

Those are studies which can be supportive of the role of GI disorders in ASDs; no one ever claimed they were all replications of the Lancet paper, which makes that blog post one big straw man.

How will I know if my baby girl due in sept does not have a mitochondrial disorder-
do they screen for this anywhere? My friends children are ok but I am still worried.

Since ASDs are defined solely by symptoms, something that causes symptoms which fall within the autism spectrum – by definition – causes autism spectrum disorders.

Except, as you should already know, they are not diagnosed by simply picking out one of the symptoms which are consided indicators of ASDs and saying “Okay, everyone who has this symptom has an ASD, no ifs, ands or buts!” There are plenty of people who manifest one or more of those indicators but do not have ASDs. That’s a pretty basic fact about ASDs, Jake, and it doesn’t reflect well on you or John Stone to profess ignorance of it.

You know, I’m used to antivax loonies displaying massive entitlement complexes, but the more I think about this one, the more amazed I am at its scope. The world would be a much simpler place if every single disease and disorder had a totally unique set of symptoms, and no two disorders could ever share any symptoms. That’s a nice little fairytale vision (though why you would depart that far from reality, and not just choose “diseases and disorders don’t exist,” I don’t understand.) Of course, here in the real world, it doesn’t work that way: the list of symptoms that are unique to one cause is very slim. But when John and Jake say “ASDs are defined by symptoms and therefore to have a symptom is to have an ASD,” what they’re really saying is “ASDs should be simple! We are owed that by Mother Nature! They shouldn’t share symptoms with anything else, because if they did, things wouldn’t be simple! And if we just remain stubborn and refuse to believe that anything besides an ASD could produce any of the symptoms of an ASD, maybe that’ll become reality!”

You know the irony of John and Jake’s position? If mental health professionals in the past had thought the way they insist we should all think now, we wouldn’t be talking about ASDs. Everyone that would now be diagnosed as having an ASD would be diagnosed as mentally retarded instead – because hey, if you have a symptom, there can only be one disorder associated with it, right? Absence or impairment of imaginative and social play? Mentally retarded! Restricted patterns of interest that are abnormal in intensity or focus? Mentally retarded! Mental retardation is defined by symptoms, so if you have one of those symptoms, you must have mental retardation! What sort of foolishness are you talking about, saying that those are also symptoms of something called an “autism spectrum disorder”?? How silly! Those are symptoms associated with mental retardation so anything that causes those symptoms is by definition causing mental retardation, and not anything else!

Jake:

In this thread you claim both that Bernadine Healy supports the vaccine=autism lie, and that she opposes it. Truly you have a dizzying intellect.

HTML fail on my part (this is why it is better to suggest better HTML practices rather than lecture ). Cut & paste http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_blockquote.asp

@Jake

Since ASDs are defined solely by symptoms, something that causes symptoms which fall within the autism spectrum – by definition – causes autism spectrum disorders.

Not true. Take a look at the DSM IV definition of autistic disorders (easily found, I won’t link or this will get moderated) which requires:

A total of six (or more) items from (A), (B), and (C), with at least two from (A), and one each from (B) and (C)

Or if you prefer the proposed definition for DSM V:

Autism Spectrum Disorder – Must meet criteria A, B, C, and D

I think the definitions are self-explanatory. You need a certain number of symptoms in each group for a diagnosis of autism or ASD. For example, if someone has these symptoms:

Excessive adherence to routines, ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behavior, or excessive resistance to change; (such as motoric rituals, insistence on same route or food, repetitive questioning or extreme distress at small changes).

This would be consistent with severe OCD, in the absence of other symptoms, or ASD in the presence of other specific symptoms. I had a friend who had several symptoms similar to those of ASD, but his were due to a head injury.

She was referring to the case of Hannah Poling – a girl diagnosed with classic autism.

Can you support that claim? I understood she was diagnosed with encephalopathy caused by a mitochondrial enzyme deficit.

And yet, mitochondrial disorders were found in 8 out of 10 children with autism in a recent study.

Citation? And are you suggesting that all autism is caused by permanent structural changes and irreversible damage to the brain due to encephalopathy in children with mitochondrial disorders? I would suggest that makes vaccination even more important in such children, as a full-blown measles infection, for example, could well be fatal.

“a vaccine-preventable disease is far more likely to trigger encephalopathy than a vaccine.”

Maybe, maybe not.

According to the NEJM, “whereas it is clear that natural infections can exacerbate symptoms of encephalopathy in patients with mitochondrial enzyme deficiencies, no clear evidence exists that vaccines cause similar exacerbations. Indeed, because children with such deficiencies are particularly susceptible to infections, it is recommended that they receive all vaccines”.

I’ll make points that no one can refute, you all change the subject and move on to something else and make similarly unsuccessful arguments, and the cycle repeats.

I haven’t seen you make a single point that hasn’t been refuted. That is the opposite of what I see happening here.

Jake Crosby,

And yet, mitochondrial disorders were found in 8 out of 10 children with autism in a recent study.

‘Mitochondrial disorder’ is a blanket term that includes a large number of different disorders, not just the mitochondrial enzyme deficit of the sort Hannah Poling has.

Here’s a recent study looking at the role of mitochondrial DNA mutations in autism spectrum disorder. It concludes:

Our results are compatible with the idea that mtDNA mutations are not a relevant cause of ASD and the frequent observation of concomitant mitochondrial dysfunction and ASD could be due to nuclear factors influencing mitochondrion functions or to a more complex interplay between the nucleus and the mitochondrion/mtDNA.

Jake,
They are narcissistic windbags-they are pushing me into your defense by their rantings. I really never heard any anti-vax people rant like these idiots.

Did your Jesus vaccinate?

Do you reject all modern medicine then, augie? Clearly, Jesus wouldn’t have used penicillin (aspirin, etc.), after all.

(Also, isn’t it a little absurd to ask if Jesus would have vaccinated? Wouldn’t He have just healed himself of measles? But then again, absurdity seems to be a certain someone’s M.O.)

@ lilady: *Merci beaucoup*

I tried very hard to get him to look beyond the party line- to no avail; however, he did reveal his core beliefs, made easy mistakes ( I’m a shrink?), mis-interpetted simple language, didn’t disregard irrelevant information, couldn’t see a jest or use the probability idea, etc.

It’s unfortunate because he is a young impressionable person most likely being used to dis-advantage by a coterie of adults with an agenda: which is a shame -whatever his position and not at all fair to him.

Oh well, be that as it may, I’m sure we’ll make the top 20 list @ AoA’s countdown of Top Pharma Hit Men/ Women of 2011.

Christian Cynic

Also, isn’t it a little absurd to ask if Jesus would have vaccinated? Wouldn’t He have just healed himself of measles?

I didn’t ask her to speculate would he. I asked “did he”?

Wouldn’t He have just healed himself of measles?

That’s not a miracle. Statistically most would heal from measles just fine.

“Unlike you, I provided a specific quote.”

Which was demonstrated by multiple people to contain absolutely none of the elements you claim it did, and to be based on a severe misunderstanding of Deer’s claim and to be usuing an utterly idosyncratic and possibly maliciously dishonest definition of ‘forgery’.

In short, you messed up what should have been a simple task to the point where several people are worried about your mentality, competance and employability. Again.

This is what I mean by lazy, you took a quote and then assumed it must mean to everyone else what it meant to you, even after it was pointed out to you that your accusation has a very specific meaning that was not indicated either within the quote or the arguement that the quote was from.

I remain utterly unconvinced that you’ve even personally read the relevant part of Deers work at all.

Deer went in to rather a lot of detail about precisely what he meant by ‘changing the results’. None of it matches up to claiming Deer claimed Wakefield altered the master-copies of any test result.

“You love to argue semantics, it’s much easier than arguing real points after all.”

If you have no real case then just say so.

“That’s what was testified by the senior author of the Lancet paper.”

And testified against by people who did have a part in the process.

Wakefields attendance and participation was attested to on:

Day 32, by Dr Davies, who indicated that Wakefield participated in the histpathology meetings,
Day 33, by Dr Davies, who indicated that Wakefield participated in the pathology review meetings, and that Wakefield and others had a different opinion of the interpretation of the test results.

To claim that Wakefield ‘played no part’ when the histopathologist herself clearly states that he did, and clearly lays out that Wakefields interpretation of the results was at sometimes odds with the reports, that is bloody mindedness of the highest order.

Deer makes it very clear that he is talking about Wakefield using his input into these meetings to manufature a particular interpretation when he talks about ‘changing test results’. One thing Deer does not do is accuse Wakefield of changing the master-copies.

Deer is very clear on this. The confusion is entirely yours, yet again.

Lil misled lady

…people who have a moral compass care about the health of infants and adults worldwide.

Does this industry have a moral compass? If so which way does it point? Maybe you don’t know which way YOUR moral compass points.

http://www.omsj.org/corruption/how-drug-companies-get-away-with-murder#more-3275

“Office of Medical and Scientific Justice”

Anderson Cooper explains how and why these drug companies get away with murder.

“Since ASDs are defined solely by symptoms, something that causes symptoms which fall within the autism spectrum – by definition – causes autism spectrum disorders.”

Utterly false. Not your fault this time as you have no relevant academic, clinical, vocational, voluntary or technical experience in assessment or the diagnostic process.

If you have, you have never indicated so. If you do have any, then you should know why Dr Offits statement does not mean what you have claimed it does.

ASDs are a cluster of symptoms. A condition that causes any ASD symptom does not inescapably cause enough ASD symptoms to warrant a diagnosis. For example, NvLD, PDA, S-PLD and others can share the symptoms of autism, but are not ASDs themselves. In their case, there is still some debate about whether the should be considered part of the autism spectrum or not. In the case of schizophrenia, aTBI, tTBI, OCD, CVA, Social anxiety disorder, avoidant personality disorder, anorexia, dyslexia and ADD/ADHD can have symptoms that are also on the ASD list, but this does not make them ASDs’.

Now that you have been told this multiple times by multiple people, I do not expect you to carry on making the same false claim again. Sorry, I do fully expect you to, I just don’t expect you to either recognise the falsity of it, nor do I expect you to admit to it.

The diagnostic manuals are very clear that autism is only an option if the symptoms are not better explained by the list of exclusionary disorders.

You might want to try reading them one day. For yourself that is. You might want to start reading things first hand a lot more. You’ll stop making an arse out of yourself on such a frequent basis.

Paul Offit was not referring to “one symptom” he was referring to symptoms that fall within the autism spectrum.

It seems clear that Jake insists on playing Goofus, so we have no choice to treat him as one.

Autistic spectrum disorders are not diagnosed because the person has one or two symptoms out of a list of indicators, but because the person has a high number of such symptoms.  For convenience, let’s refer to this as an “ASD confluence” of symptoms.

When Goofus says that measles encephalitis, ME, can cause ASDs, it is equivalent to claiming that ME can create not just individual symptoms that are also found in ASDs but an entire ASD confluence.

Goofus claims that Paul Offit “agrees with” this claim.  Yet if we look at the words that were actually quoted from Offit to support this claim, we find that they do not; they say nothing about ME or any other non-ASD disorder being able to create an ASD confluence.  It isn’t even any sort of logical extrapolation from what Offit said, as Offit’s entire point was that other disorders can share symptoms with ASDs without being related.

It’s as if a teacher said about a multiple-choice test, “you might get any single question right with a lucky guess, but you’re not going to get a passing grade without studying,” and a very lazy student heard only the first part and said, “Hey, if any single question could be answered right with a lucky guess, then really really lucky guessing might get every single question right!” and proceeded to tell others “Teacher told me I could get an A without having to study!”  The student’s fantasy of a lucky A may be derived from what the teacher said, but in no way is the student right to present it as what the teacher said or “agreed.”

Lilady LPN

Ugh troll, knickers all twisted up, doesn’t pay taxes and is scamming the system by using tax dollars for his on-the-dole miserable existence and for tax dollar financed health care…truly a worthless parasitic POS.

So do you have any evidence of this? With no evidence is this part of your reasoning skills? Is it an insult or is it an ad hominem? Of course it’s only an insult. Scientism bloggers are incapable of producing a logical fallacy.

Your ignorance is amusing. ONly surpassed by you ability to copy and paste from your bible, the CDC pink book.

Lilady, you’re getting bitter in your old age. Snapping at anyone who agrees with your policies and opinions. Is it your arthritis or the multiple medications you are on? This emotion is clouding your objectivity. Although it could be argued that you’ve never been objective.

Hello Ugh Troll…As you well know I am a licensed registered nurse and as we all know you have no education, no gainful employment and pay no taxes on your taxpayer supported “benefits”

Fool, everyone, except you, apparently knows that I am a techie deficient poster…I’ve owned up to that fact and poke fun at myself all the time. I don’t know how to “cut and paste” from a reference book and don’t know how to “link”. It’s nice to know that you think my postings and analyses of data in my original words, are those of a medical text writer.

You, on the other hand, “cut and paste” and liberally “link” to cherry-picked articles from non-peer reviewed journals or articles that are years old and totally disproven. What a joy to watch the misinterpretation of those very citations and links because of your imaginary qualifications in medical science. You are so amusing as your argue with people who actually know how to read an article, know the science involved and don’t “fake it” as you are wont to do.

We are still waiting for you to live the biblical life and discard your computer…because Jesus never used a computer to communicate to his disciples.

Still getting your “jollies” I see, from all the well deserved derision your postings elicit.

“In short, you messed up what should have been a simple task to the point where several people are worried about your mentality, competance and employability.”

And that’s why you abused people while hiding behind a fake name, right?

“It’s unfortunate because he is a young impressionable person most likely being used to dis-advantage by a coterie of adults with an agenda: which is a shame -whatever his position and not at all fair to him.”

For a person so quick to accuse me of assuming you’re a pharma shill, you have no problem making up assumptions about me personally as well as my motives.

“None of it matches up to claiming Deer claimed Wakefield altered the master-copies of any test result.”

Ahem:

“A Sunday Times investigation has found that altered data was behind the decade-long scare over vaccination”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5683643.ece

Actual quotes from Dr. Susan Davies in BMJ letter:

“I was not the lead pathologist for this, or any other Wakefield project.”

“Secondly, I was not responsible for reporting the majority of the biopsy specimens from the twelve children, initially written up in the Lancet paper(3).”
http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/04/histopathologist-from-the-lancet-study-rebuffs-brian-deers-article-in-british-medical-journal.html

I see you still have no quotes.

“How on earth did you not understand the point that was being made?”

You said they could disappear tomorrow and it would make no difference, but it obviously would make a difference because the vaccine industry spokesman, Paul Offit, relies on people like them to help make his case.

“I was very clearly referring to the idea that ‘your’ side has adopted Healys’ arguement for little reason other than it originates from Healy,”

Well, that’s kind of how your whole side forms its arguments, based on who they came from, the CDC, FDA, NIH, ABC, XYZ etc. And anybody who says otherwise is labeled a conspiracy theorist.

“whereas Milloy and Fuemento are important in their own right,”

Who continue to serve and be a part of that front group – also supported by pharma btw – as they’ve been for a long time. Healy’s involvement was brief and was from more than a decade ago. If anything, it suggests she’s realized pretty quickly that joining such a group was a bad idea and has since decided to help out the consumers. Saying this poisons her past somehow especially when this group is now very much on your side and supported by vaccine manufacturers, including Paul Offit.

“but are not the sole or even major cause of the majority of pro-vaxx arguements.”

Uh…neither is Healy. I’ve barely cited her throughout this thread. Had you bothered to read most of my comments you would’ve known that.

“Utterly false. Not your fault this time as you have no relevant academic, clinical, vocational, voluntary or technical experience in assessment or the diagnostic process.”

Oh and you do? Oh wait, I forgot, your only experience is abusing other people while you hide behind your silly, “phonetically-spelled” name.

“You’ll stop making an arse out of yourself on such a frequent basis.”

You need to stop cyberbullying people on the internet behind a fake name. I’ve treated you with utmost respect in most cases and have spent a lot of time trying to have a civil discussion with you. But you have been horrible in every comment of yours back to me because you don’t know how to treat people nicely and because that’s all you’ve got. You have no character.

“This 2008 study states that, “Overall, there is no evidence to suggest that vaccines cause central nervous system injury, epilepsy or infantile spasms””

That’s not a study – that’s an article by one guy in Canada who obviously doesn’t pay attention to US government decisions.

“But as Dedj rightly points out, “autism is only an option if the symptoms are not better explained by the list of exclusionary disorders”.”

No, autism is only an option when the presenting symptoms fall within the autism spectrum. That’s what autism is, regardless of what caused it.

“you know your handler J.B. cannot get Google to redact the face pages that the personnel wonks locate, don’t you?”

Well, that’s because I don’t have a handler, and might also be because I have someone or some people who are perhaps manipulating the search engines…you perhaps?

It belatedly occurs to me that Jake might have been exaggerating for rhetorical effect when he wrote of the medical establishment’s “previous claim that autism was caused by homicidal parents.”

If he would like to moderate his statement, we have room for discussion, off-topic though it may be. I am aware, for instance, that Bettelheim sometimes accused the mothers of autistic children of wishing the child did not exist. This is a long call from “homicidal”… you know if a parent is homicidal because there is a dead child.

The popularity of the “refrigerator mother” theory of causation amongst medical professionals — for it is the gullibility of doctors that ultimately concerns us here — seems to a moot point. I’m trying to get motivated enough to blog about it. The Wikipedia article on Bettelheim describes emotional frigidity as “a view that enjoyed considerable influence into the 1960s and 1970s in the United States”, to which some more skeptical contributor has added “[citation needed]”. The article speaks also of the theory’s acceptance “to a considerable extent, in professional circles.” It must be borne in mind that in the 1950s and 60s, not many people cared enough about autism to adhere to one theory or another.

The Wiki article on Kanner contains some more tendentious statements but we have had enough pedantry for now.

Was gone for the weekend so am just catching up. I haven’t read all of the comments but this was truly a howler. From Jake:

Since ASDs are defined solely by symptoms, something that causes symptoms which fall within the autism spectrum – by definition – causes autism spectrum disorders.

By that logic, anyone who suffers muscle tenderness, fatigue, neck/back pain and headaches must have polio, since those are all symptoms of polio. Of course, they may also have recently finished a rigorous exercise routine, which can also cause the same symptoms.

But then, a more honest look at things would inform you that there are other bits and pieces that can rule in or out a particular diagnosis. For example, in my example above, searching for signs of the poliovirus would be the dead giveaway. For ASDs, the presence or absence of additional symptoms would confirm or disconfirm the diagnosis.

@augie

Still making with the straw man arguments, eh? For what it’s worth, not that this will stop your war on grass-based life forms, I said that HepB could be transmitted via saliva, for instance, through bites. You asked for evidence. I gave you three studies that showed the virus was present in sufficient amounts in saliva to make it a possible mode of transmission, as well as an additional study that documented verified transmission of HepB from a chronic carrier to another individual via a bite. You then proceeded to ask for evidence that transmission among casual contacts occurred frequently. Since I never made that claim (indeed, never made any claims about frequency), I need not provide you with any.

Transmission via saliva can and does occur. It may not be as common, but it is a very real risk to take into consideration, rather than to simply ignore it or think that it cannot happen. Little kids bite. It is therefore reasonable to consider that there is a risk of transmission among children via bites to or from a chronic carrier.

You can go back to playing with your wheat-and-chaff dolls.

Oops. Almost missed this one from augie:

pharma shill Todd

Woohoo! I’m a pharma shill! I guess I can be expecting those big payouts any day now. I sure could use me some filthy pharma lucre.

So, augie, ye who demands evidence at every turn, please present your evidence to substantiate that I am a pharma shill. I’ll wait, but I won’t hold my breath, as I’d likely die of asphyxiation years before you come up with any.

lilady

Ugh troll, knickers all twisted up, doesn’t pay taxes and is scamming the system by using tax dollars for his on-the-dole miserable existence and for tax dollar financed health care…truly a worthless parasitic POS.

You know how to stick your foot in your uncouth mouth don’t you? Your worthless insults don’t bother me but you’re probably making Venna feel insecure. Maybe you should think before you spout off your opinionated rants. Emotion clouds objectivity.

You’re also probably insulting the socialist posters who believe that taking from the haves and giving to the have-nots is great policy. Their consciousness encourages the welfare system through altruistic guilt. Political smack talk might not be your forte.

Didn’t you say the government is your bother’s keeper? Do you think welfare systems that are in place foster responsibility or do they encourage enabling?

Do you think Venna’s going to find her health in a bottle of pills or at the end of a surgeon’s scalpel? Do you think it’s that simple? All she has to do is “follow the evidence” and everything will be fine, right?

I wondered about the textbook definition of autism, so I got hold of a copy of DSM-IV-TR. Here’s what it says about differential diagnosis.

When a Mental Disorder Due to a General Medical Condition or a Substance-Induced Disorder is responsible for the symptoms, it preempts the diagnosis of the corresponding primary disorder with the same symptoms (e.g., Cocaine-Induced Mood Disorder preempts Major Depressive Disorder). p6

A Mental Disorder Due to a General Medical Condition is characterized by the presence of mental symptoms that are judged to be the direct physiological consequence of a general medical condition. The term general medical condition refers to conditions that are coded on Axis III and that are listed outside the “Mental Disorders” chapter of ICD. (See Appendix G for a condensed list of these conditions.) p181

348.3 Encephalopathy, unspecified p868 Appendix G

(Axis III refers to General Medical Conditions, and ICD refers to Impulse Control Disorders). Since Hannah Poling’s condition is the direct physiological consequence of a general medical condition, encephalopathy, which is listed in Appendix G of DSM IV, by these criteria she does not have autistic disorder.

And that’s why you abused people while hiding behind a fake name, right?”

If you can’t answer the challenge, please refrain from indicating very strongly with your behaviour that I am correct when I say that you prefer to dodge and weave rather than provide a straight answer.

“”None of it matches up to claiming Deer claimed Wakefield altered the master-copies of any test result.”

Ahem:

“A Sunday Times investigation has found that altered data was behind the decade-long scare over vaccination”

Where-in Deer makes it very clear that the ‘altered data’ was altered between the clinical data and the presentation in the research piece. Please try to read it next time.

“Actual quotes from Dr. Susan Davies in BMJ letter:

“I was not the lead pathologist for this, or any other Wakefield project.””

(although she was “the key pathologist for the clinical gastroenterology paediatric team”). Again, please try to read your references first.

What she did do was attest that Wakefield was a participant in the Histopathology meetings and in the review meetings. Precisely where Wakefield would have had opportunity to make the changes Deer is accussing him of.

“Secondly, I was not responsible for reporting the majority of the biopsy specimens from the twelve children, initially written up in the Lancet paper(3).”

This is irrelevant, as the pathology reports are known to have been done by the trainees and the individual pathologists, as was attested as being usual. This was extensively covered in the GMC hearing.

This does not answer the charge that Wakefield had opportunity to game the interpretation of these results in the meetings Davies attested that he attened and particpated in, and further along the line in reporting the data in the research piece. That is what Deer clearly, repeatedly and comprehensively refers to.

By the way, she also said “In personal practice, as evidenced at the GMC hearing, I had a different threshold from the other co-authors who performed the review and translated those findings into words. ”

Indicating strongly, again, that Wakefield did in fact have input exactly where Deer’s accusations would require him to have. As we know due to her GMC testimony that Wakefield was part of the review team, the letter is rather a slam-dunk against the arguement that ‘Wakefield had no part’.

Deer even states what the original records were supposed to have found. Indeed, Deer’s access to these records was a point of contention for some time. I don’t know how you managed to miss it.

Unless you are referring to a very narrow part (i.e. the phsical act of extracting and testing the specimens) it is abundantly clear – from your sources – that it is utterly false that ‘Wakefield played no part’.

—————-

A ‘forgery’ arguement would look like this:

The records say A, but the dates, signatures, handwriting, disease process, numbers and data points do not match up with the rest of the records, indicating that the master-copies have been switched or altered.

Deer’s arguement repeatedly, clearly and consistantly look more like:

The records say A, but invested party 1 says the records say B, and the invested party1 sat in on some of the meetings, therefore the invested party1 may have manipulated the ultimate interpretation of the data.

“You said they could disappear tomorrow and it would make no difference,”

I’ll repeat, I was very clearly referencing the idea that Healy was taken into the ‘pro-safe-vaxx’ arms precisely because of her (as you admit) rather outdated background.

“Uh…neither is Healy.”

No, but her input was clearly very instrumental in giving life to the ‘vulnerable sub-group’ arguement, which was the point.

“I’ve barely cited her throughout this thread.”

I don’t believe I accused you of doing so. Please stop making things up and stick to only those events that occur outside of you head.

“Oh and you do?”

Yes, on all 5 counts and for assessment, diagnostics and intervention. Minimal, but still better than the vast majority of people I see commentating on ‘your’ side.

“I’ve treated you with utmost respect in most cases and have spent a lot of time trying to have a civil discussion with you.”

No you have not, and it is most empathatically clear that you have not been so. Being ‘civil’ refers to more than just the lack of calling people names (which you certainly have done quite a bit), but it also refers to not treating your opponents as ignorant and/or corrupt, two things you do frequently.

If implying that your opponents are corrupt, part of a conspiracy, money-grubbers, ignorant, stupid, liars is what you call ‘civil’, then you have one hell of a lot of growing up to do. You have had your problematic behaviour pointed out to you very clearly by multiple people over a period of a few years. That you still regard yourself as ‘civil’ indicates that you haven’t taken a bean of it on board, and perhaps never will.

“But you have been horrible in every comment of yours back to me because you don’t know how to treat people nicely and because that’s all you’ve got.”

No, it’s just you and Harold, some guy in his moms basement in Germany, Johnathon someone, and maybe one or two others that I am like this to. The connection? All regard themselves as ‘civil’ despite making clearly uncivil comments like the one below:

“and might also be because I have someone or some people who are perhaps manipulating the search engines…you perhaps?”

….which is a clear cut accusation of conspiracy, improper behaviour, maliciousness, and it also does the dishonour of dodging the initial concerns in favour of what you (and you alone) think is the important factor.

Hardly ‘civil’.

If it was a joke, it wasn’t funny.

And what exactly is your evidence boring troll? Present something concrete to back up your host of assertions – since you have yet to do so in any of your myriad of boring and mostly inane conversations.

larry:

The jury is still out on that.

Not really. Do try to keep up.

Larry, actually read the article:

Even if SV40 DNA were definitively shown to be present in human tumors, this would not answer the question of whether the virus caused the cancer. The debate on the role of SV40 in human malignancy illustrates the difficulty in establishing cause and effect, and provides ample impetus for using genomic technologies to ensure that vaccines and other biological products are free of adventitious agents.

Oh, and Larry you forgot this bit in that article: “It was present in batches of both the Salk and Sabin poliovirus vaccines produced and distributed from 1954 to 1963.”

So the folks who had it are almost are in their fifties. You provide evidence that they have had more ill health than anyone born more than a decade before the vaccine was introduced or after 1963, and then you might have something.

Essentially bringing up SV40 is worse than bringing up thimerosal, since there have been thimerosal-free versions of all pediatric vaccines.

larry, it has to do with relative risks. Until you can prove that viruses like measles, polio, etc and bacteria like pertussis, tetanus, etc are also full of “adventitious agents”, then we will take your concerns seriously.

Just tell us exactly how much more dangerous the present form of polio vaccine, the IPV that has been free of SV40 for almost fifty years, is more dangerous than polio with real actual factual scientific evidence. And seeing how you have difficulty reading the evidence you proffered, I think what you produce will be very interesting.

Lest we forget SV40
The jury is still out on that.

Not guilty due to lack of evidence.

Boring troll – why don’t you trot out your evidence that anyone here has said anything remotely like what you’ve accused of saying?

Do vaccines have side effects – yes.

Have parents been compensated for vaccine injuries – yes, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars since the creation of the vaccine court.

Do vaccine injuries / side effects still amount to a very small fraction of the total vaccine administered population – yes.

Are the diseases that we vaccinate for (including the one we eradicated, smallpox) more dangerous, both in their historical context and current outbreaks – like France (with thousands of infected) than the vaccines – absolutely, yes, by powers of magnitude.

Is boring troll a complete idiot who hasn’t provided any particular stance of his own, supported by any measure of evidence or facts & instead merely takes the opposing view – while also conducting ad hominem attacks, while also ignoring any inconvenient facts or posts that completely demolish its infantile arguments – absolutely yes.

From Wikipedia “Hello, my name is Antaeus Feldspar.”

“I am proud to be the recipient of a WikiMedal for Janitorial Services, awarded by Topbanana.”

Chris, & Ant
Googled Antaeus name- At least Jake is transparent and Augustine is right.
This site is a waste of my time- You are both a..holes.

Larry, not only do you have issues with reading your sources (hint: when you find a link that your anti-vax lords consider evidence, do yourself a favor and actually read them), you seem to have issues understanding the concept of satire and “self depreciating humor.”

However can we recompense Larry for the time he has wasted here?

larry:

Make sure you check all those vaccines you get for mercury content

Dude, I even told you that all pediatric vaccines have had thimerosal free versions for a decade, and yet you still pull the outdated “mercury” canard. Well, at least it is less than one quarter out of date compare the silly “sv40” bit!

Well, at least you have become more entertaining.

“A Mental Disorder” is not autism.

So this claim…

“Since Hannah Poling’s condition is the direct physiological consequence of a general medical condition, encephalopathy, which is listed in Appendix G of DSM IV, by these criteria she does not have autistic disorder.”

…is false.

Jake, I rather hope for your sake that your argument in this comment is not indicative of your overall style of argumentation.

@ Antaeus Feldspar: Well you simply can’t judge Goofus’ comments here because he is so used to the sycophants at Age of Autism who think wonder boy ace reporter is brilliant.

Remember too, that the bar is set so much lower for science journalism at Age of Autism…or non-existent.

Goofus did graduate from Brandeis with some sort of BA double majors that really aren’t heavy into the sciences or analytical thinking. And, with his attitude and his “theories” on immunology, immunization and toxicity, I would love to be a fly on the wall when he attends class in pursuit of his MPH-Epidemiolgy.

@ Chris: …”He’ll be receiving a BA with a double major in History and Health: Science, Society and Policy”

Direct quote from the article: Congratulations Jake Crosby Brandeis Graduate! (Age of Autism, May 22, 2011)

Nah, Goofus never took any classes resembling serious science courses and we know that “self-taught” doesn’t work for the boy wonder ace reporter.

@ Krebiozen: (I hate to use this expression but) children with certain mitochondrial disorders are living with a “time bomb” set off by many types of stressors such as a childhood illness (vaccine preventable or non). As we well know young children spike high fevers for many of these viruses that circulate…in later childhood these same-type of viral illnesses cause slightly elevated body temperatures.

Of course the childhood diseases that vaccines prevent are much more serious for all children and are the stressors that will trigger serious neurological events in a child with a mitochondrial disorder.

@ Rene Najara: Jake doesn’t need any help…he knows it all and he will readily involve himself in debates with the professor about the curriculum. After all, he is a respected science journalist on some websites; other websites consider him to be a nasty tool of JB, a dirty trickster and a pompous ass who is in desperate need of a kick to his kishkes.

Much luck in grad school Jake!

Sorry, SteveJ. I should have made it clear it was for this particular university that does offer both BA and BS tracks in several departments, including math, science, etc.

And my former employer actually has a personnel policy that takes in account what people took in college. Fortunately there are also policies that let a person get promoted from technician to engineer/scientist through performance. I knew one guy who was hired as a tech aide because he had a self-styled BS in Engineering (no department). Through his own diligence and with the support of his supervisor he did get promoted.

As I’ve said, the irony of Goofus’ approach to diagnosis is that if it had been employed by others who came before him, he would be diagnosed as mentally retarded. There probably was someone just as stubborn and just as wedded to a pet hypothesis, and that person probably would have used most of Goofus’ lines. “Mental retardation is defined by symptoms, so these so-called ‘autisitic’ people you talk about are mentally retarded, period. Who cares if their symptoms are a much better match for this so-called ‘autism’? I have certain pet theories that are better served if they are mentally retarded, so I refuse to acknowledge that this ‘autism’ could have any relevance.”

I am with you on this one. There is so much propaganda coming out against vaccines which is not scientifically founded. I could just as well go claim that autism comes from pregnant mothers eating chocolate, or from cleaning their homes or offices. Better go hire a janitorial service, ladies, or you might give you baby autism! It’s just gotten a little bit out of hand, I think.