Waldo Jaquith

Ah, what’s old is new again. 15 years ago it was Audis in the crosshairs for unintended acceleration. The eventual verdict back then (from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration? Driver error, including pedal confusion and misapplication.

I’m skeptical too–so much so, in fact, that I bought a 2010 Prius last month despite all the Toyota recall hysteria.

Posted by Jeff Uphoff on 13 March 2010 @ 7am

Gah! Missing closing parenthesis after “Administration”! I’m gonna itch all day!

)

*phew* That’s better.

Posted by Jeff Uphoff on 13 March 2010 @ 7am

I guess that’s a a tic that’s unique to programmers, huh? If I spot an unclosed container element (paren, quote, bracket, whatever), I just think it won’t compile!

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 13 March 2010 @ 10am

Waldo,
I really enjoy your posts, and your politics are full of common sense, but I can’t keep reading your comments on vaccines without saying something.

You are missing the point with the whole vaccine issue. In the courts you have to prove the vaccine causes damage or a “named disease”. This is not always a clear cut case. And you are up against a drug company with billions of dollars in profits per year.

What you can show is cellular damage or abnormal cell behavior. Cellular damage may lead to a disease, death or a life-long health condition. For the majority of people the body is strong enough to repair that damage. Why take the risk? All of our cells need to function properly!

For a healthy individual with proper nutrition, clean air, and physical activity, common communicable diseases are handled properly by the immune system. For instance, the statistics show that most of the people who have died from the recent H1N1 flu had previous health conditions, like respiratory or heart disease, a poorly functioning immune system or being obese.

Which part is foolish? Wanting the vaccine manufacturers to make safer vaccines for those who receive them?

What would you do if you saw your child have seizures or die after a vaccine reaction and you couldn’t scientifically prove the vaccine “caused” the reaction?

As long as there have been vaccines there have been vaccine reactions. My grandparents lost a child in the 1950′s from a vaccine reaction.

More often parents are discovering that injecting vaccines into healthy children is foolish, no matter what their doctor, the courts or the vaccine manufacturers tell us.

Posted by brian on 13 March 2010 @ 12pm

Brian, what you’re talking about has nothing to do with autism. It is absolutely true that, in a tiny fraction of cases, vaccines can cause bad reactions in those who receive them. (I just listened to a really interesting episode of This American Life that included the story of a guy who had a not-unheard-of reaction to a malaria vaccine that caused him to develop amnesia.) That’s precisely why there’s a special court just to deal with that problem. I don’t argue with a bit of that.

But what is absolutely not true is that there’s any link between vaccines and autism. Not only is there no causation, there’s no correlation. There is zero evidence—nothing, not a shred of evidence, after years of studies—have any connection between the two. It’s right up there with alien abductions. The fact that people believe strongly that a thing is true does not make it true. The plural of “anecdote” is not “fact.” Especially when all evidence is to the contrary. This fear-mongering is going to result in untold thousands of kids developing life-threatening diseases (measles is mind-bogglingly contagious), simply because irrational people made their parents scared for no good reason. That’s worse than nuts—it’s dangerous.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 13 March 2010 @ 1pm

Thanks for your comment, I understand where you are coming from as I’ve been hearing this story for 15 years. We are programmed to seek out information we agree with, so I don’t expect to change your mind.

Just because there is no link between vaccines and autism doesn’t mean they don’t cause personal harm. You don’t have to have a named disease to have been harmed.

What vaccines do cause is systematic inflammation, here is a good article by Mark Hyman, MD. http://bit.ly/zc0iD

Systemic inflammation is a good enough reason to avoid vaccines.

Vaccines and the Inflammatory Response

Vaccines trick the immune system into thinking the body has encountered a foreign organism. The immune system is very intelligent. It forms antibodies to the organism in the vaccine, and it also reacts to the injection wound and the vaccine’s numerous chemical preservatives. A result is inflammation. Inflammation is a known cause of disease.

Several researchers have proposed that inflammation can allow attenuated viral particles to flourish. Vaccination inflammation occurs when at-risk cells produce receptors called angiotensin II type I receptors. This can lead to continual inflammation similar to that seen in cancer. Inflammation caused by vaccines may signify that the infectious component, or the adjuvant, such as mercury, in the vaccine is winning by stealth. At the rate infectious organisms mutate, it’s not surprising that diseases such as human parvovirus B19 infection, rarely seen before the 1990s, are on the rise today.

Read more at Suite101: Vaccines and Inflammation: Consequences in Pets and Humans http://autoimmunedisease.suite101.com/article.cfm/vaccines_and_inflammation#ixzz0i5v1azP0

Humans have survived and thrived for thousands of years, constantly adapting to a variety of climates, viruses, bacteria and stress. Why in the last 100 years have our immune systems become so fragile that we “need” vaccines?

These childhood diseases are only “life-threatening” for those that have compromised immune systems. And if they choose to be vaccinated, shouldn’t they be safe?

Do you ever hear stories of Amish children dying of measles or whooping cough? We don’t, this is because they get the illness and their immune system handles it.

Here is the question we should ask. Are vaccinated children or unvaccinated children healthier?
http://www.encognitive.com/node/1678

If you don’t want to listen to irrational people and fear-mongering, find a Phd. in Immunology who isn’t funded by a drug company and my guess is they would tell you a healthy person is not endangering themselves or their healthy children by not vaccinating them.

Better yet, they are healthier than their vaccinated counterparts.

Posted by brian on 13 March 2010 @ 4pm

Humans have survived and thrived for thousands of years, constantly adapting to a variety of climates, viruses, bacteria and stress. Why in the last 100 years have our immune systems become so fragile that we “need” vaccines?

Humans as a species have thrived. That’s very, very different than how individuals have fared. Our immune systems are no more fragile now than they ever were. Prior to 100 years ago, bajillions of people died from diseases that are now cured because of vaccines. Smallpox killed nearly half a million people annually in Europe at the end of the 1700s. 80% of all children infected with it died. That was when Edward Jenner (remember him from your history class?) found that milkmaids who had cowpox didn’t get smallpox, developed the inoculation, and basically eradicated it. The last known case of smallpox caught in the wild (as opposed to from lab accidents) was in 1977. This story has been repeated many times with many diseases. (Thank God for the plague vaccine—it killed a quarter of the world’s population!)

I’ve spent a lot of time on mapping my family tree in the past few months. The first few generations in America, in the early 1600s, had upwards of a dozen kids apiece. Why? Because most all of them died from dysentery, smallpox, measles, etc. Those dieseases have been eradicated, largely due to immunizations.

These childhood diseases are only “life-threatening” for those that have compromised immune systems. And if they choose to be vaccinated, shouldn’t they be safe?

That attitude implies that we shouldn’t care about any children other than our own. The very definition of a society is a group of people that is concerned with its collective wellbeing. The fact that a child’s parents are foolish does not mean that I should be OK with him dying of smallpox.

Do you ever hear stories of Amish children dying of measles or whooping cough? We don’t, this is because they get the illness and their immune system handles it.

Do you hear stories of Wyoming residents dying in car accidents? No? Well, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen—that just means you’re not much concerned with Wyoming or car accidents. :)

But, in fact, many Amish children get immunized against measles and those who do not often catch measles. They have whooping cough outbreaks, too. 2% of Amish babies have birth defects because of rubella, which breaks out periodically [1, 2] among the various Amish groups. Amish aren’t superhuman. :)

I recommend that you talk to somebody over the age of, say, 80. Ask them about childhood friends or relatives who died of disease. You’ll find that it was tragically common. Look at your own family tree, and look at how many children appeared on the 1850 census, but were not to be found in 1860. Vaccines are infinitely preferable to the alternative.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 13 March 2010 @ 6pm

Yes, I’ve heard and read all of the information you’ve mentioned.

And I’ve spoken to my relatives, including my 95 year old grandmother who lost a child in the 1950′s from a vaccine reaction.

We’ll just have to agree to disagree.

Posted by brian on 13 March 2010 @ 7pm

Yes, I’ve heard and read all of the information you’ve mentioned.

And I’ve spoken to my relatives, including my 95 year old grandmother who lost a child in the 1950’s from a vaccine reaction.

We’ll just have to agree to disagree.

Wait, so, you’re saying that the loss of your grandmother’s child to a vaccine reaction is more tragic than the children lost to diseases that have been controlled via herd immunity or erradicated by vaccination? Or are you saying that death due to vaccine reaction is more common than those diseases? Or do you refute the historical record on those diseases?

This “we’ll have to agree to disagree” thing is bunk. You haven’t made a coherent case.

Posted by Ben C. on 13 March 2010 @ 8pm

There is also data showing the decline in disease due to public health improvements before the introduction of mass inoculation.
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/decline1.html

I grew up with nurses and pharmacists in my family, and it wasn’t until I personally met adults who have never received a vaccine and grew up with a healthy lifestyle that I questioned the cultural hallucination.

I do care about children other than my own, they should have access to wholesome foods (not high fructose corn syrup), quality water, and fresh air. Will this mean they are free from disease? No, it will mean they have a healthy immune system that can handle outside “invaders”. The medical community feels inoculation is the best way to give immunity to the masses, because they look at health from outside in, viruses, bacteria “out there” about to harm us. This differs from a “health raising” approach that looks to increase cell, organ, and system function so our body can handle outside “threats”.

The first rule of medicine should be “do no harm”. Even if .001 percent of those vaccinated dies, that is one too many.

Posted by brian on 13 March 2010 @ 8pm

There is also data showing the decline in disease due to public health improvements before the introduction of mass inoculation.
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/decline1.html

Uh…you know that you just published a website that features The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, right? A site that contains a long article entitled “The Illuminati Formula Used to Create an Undetectable Total Mind Controlled Slave”? Among scientists, “In any discussion involving science or medicine, citing Whale.to as a credible source loses you the argument immediately.” And, given the source, I can see why.

The first rule of medicine should be “do no harm”.

Well, then have I got good news for you. ;)

Even if .001 percent of those vaccinated dies, that is one too many.

Wait, what? Let’s say there’s a cancer vaccine. If you give it to a kid, he’ll never, ever get any form of cancer. But one kid will die. Some kid, somewhere in the world. Are you saying that, although it would prevent millions of deaths, that vaccine should not be permitted to be administered? Or am I misunderstanding you? If so, then what is the acceptable rate, to your understanding?

I think the difficulty here, Brian, is that I am a supporter of science, which is to say information that is demonstrably, testibly, repeatably true. You take it as an element of faith that vaccines are bad. That’s certainly your right, but you can’t possibly persuade me to agree with you provided that you’re arguing from faith, rather than from facts.

And, yeah, what Ben said. The idea that your uncle died due to an ostensible vaccine reaction somehow negates the value of vaccines for pneumonic plague and smallpox is just silly.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 13 March 2010 @ 8pm

“The first rule of medicine should be “do no harm”. Even if .001 percent of those vaccinated dies, that is one too many.”

Using that guideline, then yes, we shouldn’t vaccinate anyone. On the other hand, if your appendix were to burst, we’d have to leave it in there under the exact same guidelines because you might not come up from under the anesthetic.

Posted by Sam on 13 March 2010 @ 9pm

I went to the broadband study site, and I have some concerns.

Nowhere on that page does it differentiate between different types of broadband. I suppose broadband has a strict definition somewhere, but for the study to be useful, it should at least ask about satellite service.

The study gave me a latency rating, when satellite is a latent system. That is, I have understood up to now, that there is a delay in transmission of data in an uplink on satellite that makes things like Vonage and other such services unavailable if you have satellite internet.

I guess my question is, how would they know the data is good, when results show people like me, in the middle of nowhere with one connection? I am not near enough for DSL coverage, or receiving radio frequency-based internet.

Anyway, I just thought without complete information, the study will not be much good for rural areas like mine.

Posted by Mark Brooks on 13 March 2010 @ 11pm

I’ve never seen any other pages on whale.to, I was looking for specific images that I have seen since the early 1990′s.
Similar graphs are here:
http://www.vaclib.org/intro/present/index3.htm
http://www.healingourchildren.net/vaccine_side_effects.htm

In science if your theory is reproducible and predictable then it is scientifically “valid”.

I haven’t seen any “scientific” study that high fructose corn syrup directly leads to diabetes, but I’m not going to feed that to my kid either. HFCS leads to cellular changes, http://www.westonaprice.org/The-Double-Danger-of-High-Fructose-Corn-Syrup.html

I’m not saying that vaccines are inherently bad, there is a specific effect on the body when they are given. In some people the effects will lead to death.

How can you tell if someones life is saved by a vaccine? Raising the speed limit to 70 in Virginia will probably cause more traffic deaths.

On the cancer issue, we all have cancerous cells in our body at any given time. So what do you want? A healthy immune system that keeps them in check or an immune system over-stressed?

Posted by brian on 14 March 2010 @ 12am

To Brian, I have four words: “polio and small pox”.

And as for the mercury in vaccines; I’ve been saying it for some time now and I’ll probably say it again. You consumer way more mercury in seafood nowadays than you get in a vaccine. Every can of tuna has mercury in it. Atmospheric mercury is on the rise due to decades of coal combustion. Yes, the mercury in a vaccine is acute and given at an early age, but it is minimal compared to the amounts of “environmental” mercury and methyl mercury people are now exposed to.

The autism/vaccine issue really saddens me because some a-hole faked a bunch of data and sent a whole branch of research on a wild goose chase and created this entire cult of conspiracy theorists. Who knows where autism research would be now and how much further advance it would be if that a-hole hadn’t done that.

Posted by grs on 14 March 2010 @ 10am

Lauren Weinstein’s got a pretty good list of problems with the approach the FCC is taking. Worth a view – http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000688.html.

(And I just tried the test at Broadband.gov myself. First effort? 25,500kpbs down. Second, with the “alternative testing engine”? 5845kpbs. Now, I understand enough about networks to explain that difference, but I’m not at all sure how it’s useful to the FCC to get just one of those results from me.)

Posted by MB on 14 March 2010 @ 3pm

I went to the broadband study site, and I have some concerns.

Nowhere on that page does it differentiate between different types of broadband. I suppose broadband has a strict definition somewhere, but for the study to be useful, it should at least ask about satellite service.

They actually don’t need to ask, since your IP address is registered to a satellite broadband provider, so they know that it’s supposed to have the slowness that’s inherent to that.

MB, thanks for the link to Lauren’s blog. He raises some good points, although I think that many of them can be controlled for. Such as the disparities in reported speeds, as you point out, although I think those will work out in the averaging. And it’s true that it can’t be known whether people are also engaging in other internet usage at the same time that the test is being conducted, but my hunch is that the overwhelming majority of households just don’t have multiple simultaneous internet connections of any consequence. And it’s while also true that the FCC doesn’t verify the address in any way that we can perceive, I don’t think that means that they’re not doing it. If my IP resolves to my home, but I claim to be in New York, I imagine that they’ll disregard my data as unreliable.

I think that the value to this is to provide broad concepts of connection speeds. If CenturyLink is advertising 3.0 and 5.0 Mbps connections in central Virginia, and the FCC is finding that connections cluster at 1.9 and 3.3, I imagine they’ll use that as cause to do some proper investigation, rather than simply relying on that broad data as the final word.

Lauren is right that this is not an ideal method of gathering data. But I do think that it’s the best cheap, fast way to do it, and I admire that.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 14 March 2010 @ 9pm

Polio and Smallpox? (3 words)

“During the last considerable epidemic at the turn of the century, I was a member of the Health Committee of London Borough Council, and I learned how the credit of vaccination is kept up statistically by diagnosing all the revaccinated cases (of smallpox) as pustular eczema, varioloid or what not – except smallpox”
George Bernhard Shaw
From The Poisoned Needle by Elanora McBean

“Our U.S. Government staged a compulsory vaccination campaign in the Philippines which brought on the largest smallpox epidemic in the history of that country with 162,503 cases and 71,453 deaths, all vaccinated. That was between 1917 and 1919.” Howard Buttram, M.D.
From The Dangers of Immunization, 1979

Polio disappeared in Europe during the 1940′s and 1950′s without mass vaccination, and polio does not occur in the Third World where only 10 percent of the people have been vaccinated against polio or anything else.
- Robert Mendelsohn (1983)
From Immunization: The Reality Behind the Myth

Not only has mass polio vaccination not eradicated paralytic poliomyelitis, it has caused a number of outbreaks of paralysis directly linked to the administered vaccines.

These days, when a vaccinee develops poliomyelitis, it may not be called poliomyelitis; instead, it may be called viral or aseptic meningitis, ascending paralysis (Guillain-Barre syndrome), cerebral palsy (over 75 per cent of cases are not diagnosed at birth but after six months) or other such names. According to MMWR (1997; 32[29]:384-385), there are 30,000 to 50,000 cases of aseptic meningitis every year in the United States. Considering that the vast majority (99 per cent) of the reported cases in the pre-vaccine era were non-paralytic and would have corresponded to aseptic or aviral meningitis, then vaccination has actually increased the incidence of poliomyelitis. In the pre-vaccine era, such high numbers only occurred in some epidemics. Now, such numbers occur every year, year by year.
– Viera Scheibner
from: http://www.vierascheibner.org/

I could go on…

Injected mercury has toxic effects on the body:
http://autismfacts.com/services.php?page_id=203

(I’m vegetarian, so I don’t ingest mercury laden fish either)

If my education on vaccines had ended in public school or from opinions in the media I would have the same thing to say as Waldo, grs, Sam, and the majority of the population.

How do we trust the industry that tells us Vioxx is safe, and fabricates their own studies?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123672510903888207.html

Even if Andrew Wakefield faked data, it doesn’t change the fact that your vaccinated child is 155% more likely to have a neurological disorder than an unvaccinated child.
http://www.generationrescue.org/survey.html

If one wanted to take the time to learn more I would recommend these books:
Immunization: The Reality Behind the Myth by Walene James
A Shot in the Dark by Harris Coulter
The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child by Robert Sears

Warning: None of the authors above are funded by the vaccine manufacturers!

Posted by brian on 15 March 2010 @ 10am

“If my education on vaccines had ended in public school or from opinions in the media I would have the same thing to say as Waldo, grs, Sam, and the majority of the population.”

Um, most of my medical knowledge actually comes from my mom, in case you’re wondering. She’s been published in a number of medical journals since her post-doc at Stanford University in the early 1980s. She earned her MD and a PhD in immunology from George Washington University, which, since you mentioned it, is actually a private university, although to be fair she was on scholarship.

She’s also worked at the National Institute of Health and the Medical College of Virginia. All of her research at the NIH was funded by the federal government; all of her research at Stanford was funded by the NIH, meaning it was indirectly funded by the Federal Gov’t, because her primary focus was on HIV/AIDS in the San Francisco Bay Area. What I’m trying to impress upon you is that at no point did she ever make a buck from someone who wanted to market a new vaccine.

Also at no point during her medical career has she ever relied upon a telephone survey to derive conclusions, unlike the “study” from generationrescue.org which you so kindly linked.

Posted by Sam on 15 March 2010 @ 1pm

Brian, you have a willingness to ignore thousands of published papers and two centuries of hard data in exchange for a single shred of information from a highly dubious source. This is precisely the sort of thing that causes people to believe that we’ll find those WMDs yet, that Elvis is alive, that aliens walk among us, that the president was born in Kenya, and that the moon landing was faked. You’re simply not going to persuade anybody with an evidence-based viewpoint to agree with you.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 16 March 2010 @ 10pm

Polio and Smallpox.

Don’t worry about being vegetarian and mercury consumption. Mercury will be in our produce soon enough from atmospheric release. So you can get your dose that way, regardless if your food is grown “organically” or not. the USGS already found mercury in every U.S. mainland river and stream.

How do we trust the industry that tells us Vioxx is safe, and fabricates their own studies?

First, don’t confuse one drug and it’s happenings with the FDA with another completely different scenario. Second, how do you trust a cult movement on vaccines based on the completely made-up data of one researcher? You can’t have it both ways.

And that phone survey? Please. It wasn’t looking to see what causes Autism et al. It was blatantly looking for a correlation between vaccines and illness, that may or may not be related. I bet I could conduct the same survey but instead of asking if a child had been vaccinated, ask if they had drank city supplied water and I would get similar results. It was a poor survey, but I’m sure it sounds great in your mind to say vaccines increase autism risk by 155%. That’s not what that survey proves one bit.

My take away point, there is so much shit out there that has been dumped into our water and food systems, that to try to peg something on vaccines is ludicrous (even if I thought there was something wrong with vaccines, which I don’t).

Posted by grs on 16 March 2010 @ 11pm

The key points of the pro-vaccine theory:
Harmful, virulent disease declined from mass inoculations.
Vaccinations protect from disease.
Vaccinations are safe.

I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind. All I’m saying is there is plenty of data that shows diseases were in decline due to sanitation and public health measures before mass vaccination was widespread, or disease declined in parts of the world with no access to vaccines. There is also plenty of data showing people inoculated from communicable disease end up getting it. And, finally there is data showing vaccines aren’t safe.

Robert Mendelsohn’s book, How to raise a healthy child in spite of your doctor came out in 1984! Jenny McCarthy and Andrew Wakefield aren’t pioneers.

So the NIH is headed by independent people with no ties to the drug industry? Does anyone watch Bill Moyers? He loves to show segments on how top donors get nominated to top government positions.

The anti vaccine movement is “fringe” but not a “cult”, there is no leader, and the “followers” tend to be more educated than those who blindly follow the pediatricians vaccination schedule.

Looking for the silver bullet in medicine or vaccines never works, there isn’t one cause to any illness or one solution. That is why “associated with” is important.

I just read “The Blue Zones”, and there are many lifestyle factors “associated with” living longer. Is it just almonds? Just aged cheese? Just sweet potatoes? Is it walking 9 miles a day with your flock of sheep? If we think that way we are missing the point.

What are the factors that allow people to be exposed to a “harmful” virus and not get sick. What factors protected those from the 1918 influenza epidemic?
What are the consequences of multiple vaccines 5, 10, 15 years later?

Most of the people I know who choose not to vaccinate follow a healthier lifestyle. I never suggested the phone interview showed vaccines cause brain injury because there are so many factors involved in disease. No scientific study can control all the factors (in living beings).

Getting back to the vaccine issue, if you decide to not vaccinate it is your responsibility to take care of your health and immune system.

If you start off in life with a less than functioning immune system or yours is damaged, then I would look into them as a way to prolong your life. And if your immune system isn’t functioning properly, then it is even more important to adopt a healthy lifestyle to improve what function you do have.

Posted by brian on 17 March 2010 @ 12pm

“I think the difficulty here, Brian, is that I am a supporter of science, which is to say information that is demonstrably, testibly, repeatably true.”

As I understand it, the scientific method requires documented testing; for example, a double-blind placebo-controlled study to show that a hypothesis is “demonstrably, testibly, repeatably true.”

I haven’t found any studies like that which show that vaccines are effective in reducing morbidity or mortality rates. Do you know of any?

Posted by Malena on 19 March 2010 @ 9pm

As I understand it, the scientific method requires documented testing; for example, a double-blind placebo-controlled study to show that a hypothesis is “demonstrably, testibly, repeatably true.”

I haven’t found any studies like that which show that vaccines are effective in reducing morbidity or mortality rates. Do you know of any?

Sure. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Thousands of people die from a given strain of flu every year, but not if they get a flu shot. For instance:

During 10 seasons, influenza vaccination was associated with significant reductions in the risk of hospitalization for pneumonia or influenza and in the risk of death among community-dwelling elderly persons. Vaccine delivery to this high-priority group should be improved.

And TB vaccines:

On average, BCG vaccine significantly reduces the risk of TB by 50%. Protection is observed across many populations, study designs, and forms of TB. Age at vaccination did not enhance predictiveness of BCG efficacy. Protection against tuberculous death, meningitis, and disseminated disease is higher than for total TB cases, although this result may reflect reduced error in disease classification rather than greater BCG efficacy.

And pneumonia:

This heptavalent pneumococcal conjugate appears to be highly effective in preventing invasive disease in young children and to have a significant impact on otitis media.

I could go on. :)

Seriously, the idea that vaccines don’t do anything is just nuts. It’s like believing that evolution is a conspiracy, only even more bizarre, what with the stunning coincidence that virtually everybody who receives a vaccine does not receive the disease against which they’ve been vaccinated, while those who have not received the vaccine continue to get said disease at the same rate. The fact that millions of people don’t die from smallpox every year has nothing to do with washing our hands and everything to do with the smallpox vaccination.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 19 March 2010 @ 10pm

I took a look at those sites, Waldo, but I didn’t see any that demonstrated the double-blind placebo-controlled approach. I thought that meant that you started with two identical populations, gave some the vaccine and gave the others a placebo and then followed both populations to record the incidence of morbidity. Am I misunderstanding? :-)

Also, you didn’t mention any of the major vaccines: polio, smallpox, DTaP, MMR,or the three HEPs.

I have always asked doctors for studies showing the efficacy of vaccines and they’ve always told me there were none. Given that western medicine is based on the idea of “demonstrably, testibly, repeatably true” science (this is a great term, which is why I keep using it :-) that always seemed odd to me.

Another example of oddness was the MRI Radiologist who told me that the element they use to create a contrast during the MRI procedure, Galantine, is perfectly safe. I asked him for the studies too, and he told me that he didn’t need any since he has been doing this for a long time and has never had a problem. What about for children? Same answer. I’d be willing to be that this is the case more often than not (that folks are given medications and vaccines that have not been scientifically tested for those situations), particularly in the case of children being given substances that have only been tested on adults (as if a child is only a miniature adult!).

So… sometimes it seems to me that western medicine only demands a strict application to the scientific method for other approaches to medicine and not its own.

Posted by Malena on 20 March 2010 @ 9am

I took a look at those sites, Waldo, but I didn’t see any that demonstrated the double-blind placebo-controlled approach. I thought that meant that you started with two identical populations, gave some the vaccine and gave the others a placebo and then followed both populations to record the incidence of morbidity. Am I misunderstanding?

Well, the very pneumonia study that I cited was randomized, placebo-controlled, and double-blind.

But there’s a reason why these are relatively uncommon for severe illnesses. See, you can’t tell people that you’re giving them something that could save their life that won’t. Not only is it highly unethical, but if you tell somebody that they’re getting a vaccine, but they’re not, then their behavior will change. They might not bother to put up that mosquito netting. They might not bother with that condom. To see why such a study would be so reprehensible, look no further than the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.

For diseases that have a low morbidity rate, you can get closer. For instance, the oral cholera vaccine, in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study:

About 3 months after immunization, 51 of these volunteers were orally challenged with 105 CFU of virulent V. cholerae O1 El Tor Inaba strain N16961, prepared from a standardized frozen inoculum. Ninety-one percent of the vaccinees had a 4-fold rise in serum vibriocidal antibodies after vaccination. After challenge, 9 (39%) of the 23 placebo recipients and 1 (4%) of the 28 vaccinees had moderate or severe diarrhea (≥3-liter diarrheal stool) (P < 0.01; protective efficacy, 91%). A total of 21 (91%) of 23 placebo recipients and 5 (18%) of 28 vaccinees had any diarrhea (P < 0.001; protective efficacy, 80%). Peak stool V. cholerae excretion among placebo recipients was 1.1 × 107 CFU/g and among vaccinees was 4.9 × 102 CFU/g (P < 0.001).

And here’s a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind study on how much the flu vaccine reduces absenteeism among health care workers:

[D]ays of work lost because of respiratory infections (1.0 days vs. 1.4 days, respectively, P = 0.02) and especially total numbers of days the study persons felt themselves unable to work when either on or off duty (2.5 days vs. 3.5 days, P 0.02) were significantly decreased. Conclusion. Influenza vaccination reduced absenteeism related to respiratory infections by 28%.

Oh, and a seminal 2005 study on the HPV vaccine basically eliminating cervical cancer, likewise randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled:

Combined incidence of persistent infection or disease with HPV 6, 11, 16, or 18 fell by 90% (95% CI 71–97, p<0·0001) in those assigned vaccine compared with those assigned placebo.

Wow!

Here are 1.8 million scholarly papers on the topic—have at it. :)

Also, you didn’t mention any of the major vaccines: polio, smallpox, DTaP, MMR,or the three HEPs.

We’re talking about whether vaccines, as a concept, work. It shouldn’t matter which vaccines that I mention.

This stuff is easy: If you get the vaccine, you don’t get the disease; if you don’t get the vaccine, you might.

Another example of oddness was the MRI Radiologist who told me that the element they use to create a contrast during the MRI procedure, Galantine, is perfectly safe. I asked him for the studies too, and he told me that he didn’t need any since he has been doing this for a long time and has never had a problem.

Well, that’s just one radiologist saying something dumb. :) I once had a radiologist try to give me an x-ray without covering my midsection with lead shielding. When I complained, she said of the x-ray machine: “it’ll only be on for a minute.”

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 20 March 2010 @ 12pm

It is only unethical or reprehensible if you start out with the basic assumption that the vaccine is effective. (In the case of the Tuskegee experiments, the doctors knew that penicillin was a scientifically-proven remedy and they withheld it – not the same thing at all.) Starting out with unproven assumptions has no place in the scientific method. =)

In any case, there appears still to be no scientifically-proven evidence that at least the polio, DTaP, and MMR vaccines are effective in reducing morbidity or mortality rates. (I don’t think it is scientifically justifiable to assume that if one vaccine works all of the others will.) There is a plethora of anecdotal evidence that the illnesses subsided upon introduction of the vaccines. Scientifically, this does not work because you cannot isolate the effects of other variables such as the improvements experienced during those times in sanitation, habitation, and nutrition.

Vaccines have many ingredients that are toxic to humans, particularly babies and children. Formaldehyde, aluminum, thimerosol, MSG, cells from monkeys, chickens, lambs, cows, and aborted fetuses are not the kind of things most folks would ordinarily feel comfortable about injecting into their bodies, no matter how small the amount. (http://www.informedchoice.info/cocktail.html) In addition, to my knowledge, there are no studies demonstrating the long-term effects of injecting these toxins into the human body.

And the fact is, the don’t always work. My son contracted whooping cough even though he was vaccinated against it.

I think the most crucial thing that folks should take away from this discussion is the importance of informed decision making. There are pros and cons to vaccines of which everyone should be made aware before they go under the needle.

Folk need to do this for themselves. I mean… how many doctors do you think are willing to tell parents they are about to inject monkey kidney cells into the baby before they push the plunger of polio vaccine in?

Posted by Malena on 20 March 2010 @ 1pm

Waldo,
I find it incredibly ironic that you keep mentioning evolution.

Evolution is one of the most valuable arguments against vaccination. Viruses and Bacteria evolve, and picking a point in time to create a vaccine doesn’t protect against future evolution of said virus or bacteria.

Also, our immune systems must be able to evolve to protect against future viruses and bacteria. So the question we should ask is, how do we have a healthy body and fully functioning immune system?

Posted by brian on 22 March 2010 @ 9am

It is only unethical or reprehensible if you start out with the basic assumption that the vaccine is effective. (In the case of the Tuskegee experiments, the doctors knew that penicillin was a scientifically-proven remedy and they withheld it – not the same thing at all.) Starting out with unproven assumptions has no place in the scientific method.

That’s not quite true. Imagine, for a moment, that it turned out that, somehow, a large-scale evaluation had never been done to determine whether the MMR vaccine did a lick of good—it had never been proven to work, as you say it hasn’t. Would it be ethical to withhold that vaccine from a group of children? I guarantee you that the great majority of physicians would agree that it would not be ethical to do so. An ethics board would never clear such a study. It’s only when a treatment is new and unproven that such a study would be permissible. But we’re talking about long-standing, long-proven treatments here.

In any case, there appears still to be no scientifically-proven evidence that at least the polio, DTaP, and MMR vaccines are effective in reducing morbidity or mortality rates.

Just to be clear, it’s your belief that, although recipients of these vaccines get these infections at staggeringly lower rates (92-99%) than the general population, that somehow the mortality rate might have been unaffected? For instance, WHO reports that eighteen people die of the measles every hour. But somehow, mystically, the groups that have received this vaccine contract the measles at much lower rates. It’s your belief that, even if everybody in the world received the requisite two vaccines, this rate would remain constant—eighteen people every hour?

(I don’t think it is scientifically justifiable to assume that if one vaccine works all of the others will.)

Certainly not. But Brian’s assertion is that vaccines are inherently impossible, or something like that, and my point is that if a single vaccine works, his thesis is wrong.

There is a plethora of anecdotal evidence that the illnesses subsided upon introduction of the vaccines. Scientifically, this does not work because you cannot isolate the effects of other variables such as the improvements experienced during those times in sanitation, habitation, and nutrition.

You can isolate them statistically, which is just as good. Because the alternative is that one could never study anything about human health. Sure, people who awful food all of the time die younger, but you can’t isolate the effects of other variables such as exercise, sanitation, and habitation. Except that you can. :)

Vaccines have many ingredients that are toxic to humans, particularly babies and children.

All kinds of things are toxic. The carpet in my house is toxic. The curtains on my walls are toxic. Salt is toxic. Water is toxic in sufficient quantities. I guarantee you that I’ve eaten a bunch of toxic stuff this week. Toxicity is only meaningful when gauging the quantity of the material in question relative to the body’s ability to handle it. And the materials in question in vaccine are present in such very low quantities that we wind up with that stuff in our bodies in far great quantities from other sources on a regular basis, but nobody gets too fired up about that.

Evolution is one of the most valuable arguments against vaccination. Viruses and Bacteria evolve, and picking a point in time to create a vaccine doesn’t protect against future evolution of said virus or bacteria.

It’s not that simple, Brian. They evolve, but only in response to environmental pressures, and often at relatively slow rates. And it’s not that those vaccines don’t protect against future evolution, but that they might not, or that the protection might be more limited than against the current incarnation. That’s precisely why new flu shots are created annually.

Also, our immune systems must be able to evolve to protect against future viruses and bacteria. So the question we should ask is, how do we have a healthy body and fully functioning immune system?

You’re invoking evolution, which we’ve discussed. As I said, your thinking about this is dependent on many people dying, leaving the fittest surviving. Which is scientifically accurate, but incredibly cold.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 22 March 2010 @ 10pm

http://www.nvic.org/NVIC-Vaccine-News/March-2010/Harris-Coulter-Was-a-Brave-Visionary.aspx

Posted by brian on 30 March 2010 @ 9am

What I’m proposing is helping more people be “fit”.

What is the difference if people die with our without the vaccine? (how is that cold?) Being vaccinated doesn’t always protect you from the disease.

A healthy body will protect you from the vaccine or from a “natural” case of a disease.

Posted by brian on 30 March 2010 @ 9am

The annual flu vaccine isn’t created scientifically, it’s guesswork, and often doesn’t protect against a strain they didn’t predict will be prevalent.

What do you do in this case…Have a healthy body and immune system so you best able to fight it off!

Posted by brian on 30 March 2010 @ 9am

49 deaths from Gardisil vaccine and no reaction, 52 deaths from accelerating toyotas trigger a 2 billion dollar recall.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Time-for-the-truth-about-Gardasil-89466882.html

Posted by brian on 30 March 2010 @ 2pm