An antivaccine "Thinker" calls for a boycott

This, to me, is rather cheering. It seems that Mother Jones is reinforcing my hypothesis that the educated liberal touchy-feely types are quite happy to turn to alt-med for minor conditions such as a cold or a bit of a scrape on the knee, but when it comes to important decisions, they're far more likely to let their head overrule their heart and use, y'know, proper medicine such as vaccines.

The loons at TMR haven't realised that - they're at the militant end of the alt-med spectrum, and are vastly outweighed by the likes of my mum who'll put aloe-vera on a minor kitchen burn and try acupuncture for tennis elbow, but insisted on all my vaccinations, and kept (needlessly) checking that my daughter (when younger) was up to date with all her vaccines and medical checkups.

In a way, this is a very good sign. If the "thinking" mothers feel that they now need to boycott certain outlets, then that's a sign that they are getting weaker and weaker.

Sorry for being off topic, but I thought this article might be of interest to Orac: http://www.exeterexpressandecho.co.uk/Fund-Exeter-mum-terminal-illnesse…

Go for it, you drinking-moms-revulsion members. Stand up, chug another bottle of ale/wine/beer or whatever else you oh-so-critical-thinker/drinker types mindlessly brag about on your ridiculous website and then boycott away until your soon-to-be cirrhotic livers show you firsthand what encephalopathy really is.

Speaking of liberal media Frank Bruni had a nice take down of Jenny McCarthy in todays NYTimes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/opinion/bruni-autism-and-the-agitator…

Indeed Rebecca Fisher; the drinking mums have deluded themselves into believing that a.) being concerned with a healthy lifestyle is mutually exclusive of vaccination (which frankly is part of a healthy lifestyle) and b.) that anyone really gives a toss about their little movement. The irony of them binge drinking whilst consuming organic nosh is lost on them too.

Thanks for the link, bobh. A little while ago, I read the comments in a different pro-vax article and came away feeling that we are doomed as a species because of the cr@p that the anti-vaxxers were posting. The comments on the NY Times article makes me think we might make it after all!

This is, in its own way, beautiful. 1) A wide, WIDE variety of mainstream media across the entire spectrum is calling this BS as what it is. From MJ to Fox News to gossip sites like The Superficial and Jezebel, antivaxxers are getting ripped new ones. 2) It just goes to show how delusional these people are in their isolated groups. They truly think they are a well-represented group. A minority, but a large. NO. They see their own and the pervasive delusion inflates the numbers. Unfortunately, their small numbers are still enough to damage herd immunity.

I also wonder if this "boycott" is in response to the boycott threats given to Chili's, etc recently. Trying to stir up a bit of pressure. Yeah, ok. Let's see how quickly this dies.

I find the "data" of people who "should" support anti-vaccination nonsense perplexing actually.
86% of readers consider healthy eating and good nutrition important.
My father's doctor too seems to think it is important. She is a cardiologist, my father had a hearth attack and should lose weight. She is costanty trying to make him eath healthy. Guess she is going to tell us we shouldn't vaccinate next.
39% use homeopathic/herbal remedies
I have never used homeopathic in my life, but I do on occasion take a chamomille tea to relax. Guess I should cancell my DTAP boster.
78% of readers buy organic and natural products.
Setting aside the fact that if something exist it is natural by definition, I also prefer organic meat. Gee, I should DEFINITIVELY cancell that boster.
Sarcasm aside, I think that the only two that really may correlate with anti-vax nonsense are:
84% use vitamin or mineral supplements
43% prefer alternative medicine/healing over prescription medication
And I am not entirely sure about the first (there is some good science that supports Vitamin D supplement, for example).

Squaring the MJ demographics with pro science articles is easily achieved if the consumption of woo is concentrated in a category of readers who are not parents. Pro/anti vaccine is largely a position of taken by those who have (or have had) young children. This accords with comment # 1, where as suggested the woo consumption is dillitantery, an attitude which less likely amongst that section of MJ's audience that is both more financially presssed and reality focussed, by dint of having children.

T. @9 -- As our host points out, alt med does include some reasonable ideas (e.g., you should eat healthy foods).

Over the past few months, I've noticed changes @ TMR:

- there apppear to be less frequent posts: earlier on, they had assigned a regular weekly schedule to their most prolific TMs ( e.g. Silent Sundays; Ranting Mondays) resulting in daily posts most of the time, now, nearly a week may go by without a new post.
- there are less entries from more of the TMs and more by a fewer number of the adamant.
- MacNeil is less of a presence except when she has activities at her new gig ( with Habakus and Brogan), "Fearless Parent Radio" (@ PRN) to plug or needs to rant for a while
- there are fewer comments on the average- except on recycled posts which include both old ones and new ones.
- Goes ( the Rev), Jameson ( Mamacita), Conroy ( Goddess) seem quite active The first two also appear @ AoA. frequently.

In addition, TMR seems to be less of a presence- so far -at AutismOne. I only see Seggelink ( Thalia Michelle/ Tex) and the Goes listed; they also appeared at the recent Austin Woo-fest. They have 20K @ Facebook. I wonder about book sales of their tome.

HOWEVER they do have a new project:
TeamTMR ( see website) is a non-profit org-; again. Goes ( Mr and Ms) and Conroy work on this as does Ms Karma, who contributed today's subject ( notice that this is "part 1").

They mean to re-distribute donations they receive to worthy TMs in order to "help families" in the form of biomed, homeopathy, "mainstream" GI doctors and other woo.
TMs may apply even if they are NOT low-income or newbies.
Interesting that they tell us that.

They also sell merchandise - mugs and shirts mostly.
AND there will be an e-book ( not a pages-and-cover book as the first was) involving TMs telling their tales.
So, I suppose there won't be any more book signings at book stores or at AutismOne, *quel dommage*.

And there is a Mission Statement. But you already guessed that, didn't you?

Odd thing about these so-called advocacy groups is that in order to stir up interest, they keep re-inventing themselves, kind of like Madonna.

With too much time on my hands, I notice that the Thinking Mom's Revolution has the following owner:

Helen Conroy, 6140 Towncenter Circle, Naples, FL, 34119

Her linkedin profile states: "If you had asked me a few years ago where my career in financial services was headed, I would have said an SVP position in relationship management which was, really, the next logical step.
Instead, my child was diagnosed with Autism...and that changed everything.
Today I am fortunate enough to be in the position to give back to the community that embraced my family and helped us get on the path to healing.
By day, I am the Director of Development for The Able Academy in Naples, an amazing school and outreach facility for children and families with special needs. My responsibilities include grant-writing, fund raising, PR and community awareness.
After hours, I am the President of The Thinking Moms' Revolution. This is a group of 24 parents who have written a book about their experiences with Autism (available on Amazon and bn.com), who also run a daily blog.
Autism now effects 1 in 50 school-aged children. 1 in 6 kids have a developmental disability, 1 in 5 have ADD/ADHD, and 1 in 2, some type of chronic illness. The divorce rate of families living with an autism diagnosis is 80%."

Does anyone know for sure - is TTMR a charity or not?

Denice,
TMs may apply even if they are NOT low-income or newbies.
Interesting that they tell us that.

Maybe I'm over-generalizing, but I have a feeling there aren't many "low-income" TMs. Low-income parents typically don't have time to ruminate delusions on Facebook while drinking Jordan Chardonnay and tearing apart MJ articles and talking about whether the Grey Goose they'll be drinking at the Autism One cocktail parties is organic.

Quoth T. @9: I have never used homeopathic in my life, but I do on occasion take a chamomille tea to relax.

But you don't (necessarily) drink it to treat a specific condition, which is what most people (presumably including "Karma") think of as herbal remedies. Since scientific support for the effectiveness of these remedies is ambiguous at best, that kind of thing is definitely in the category of alt med.

I speak as someone who occasionally drinks herbal tea to relax. I'm not treating any specific symptoms either; it's just sometimes easier to relax with what's basically a cup of flavored hot water.

Yes, TeamTMR is registered as such. See their website. Brand new, announced on the first of April.

@ AnObservingParty:

TMs often claim to be absolutely flat-out broke because of the high cost of biomed woo, supplements, highly specialised diets et al that they are seen around town in groddy athletic clothing, driving rundown vehicles and eating miserable standard food themselves.

They do have 20K friends but still I wonder who'll get money.

From TMR's facebook page:

they're "partnering" with Candice Foods to produce a healthy trail-mix bar which will debut @ AutismOne, proceeds going to TeamTMR. It's "GFCFSFCF" etc. Not sure what that second 'CF' means- gluten, caseine, soy are others. They also worry about "10 allergies" which are also eliminated.

The Financial Post, a supplement of Canada's right-wing national newspaper The National Post, has a regular column by Lawrence Solomon which often takes an anti-vaccination stance. Here is his latest:
http://business.financialpost.com/2014/04/16/lawrence-solomon-the-untol…
Some of our regulars have been giving it to him good in the comments.
He is also an anthropogenic global warming denialist and has some truly unique perspectives on the Middle East situation (i.e. We should invade Iran NOW).
His antivax columns have been reprinted in HuffPo Canada. Funny thing, they haven't printed his AGW or Middle East sabre-rattling rants as yet. Wonder why.

I don't get it, really. There's plenty of belief in nonsense on both ends of the American political spectrum, and both sets of people firmly believe themselves to be in the right, even though the things they believe are readily falsified. So, I have to ask : are a certain percentage of the people just gullible, or is there some other mechanism at work that I'm not aware of ?
I don't claim to know it all, I'm just throwing out some speculation. Belief in psychics, Alt-Med and other woo seem to contrast with belief in Miracles, climate denial and creationism on the other. Is there yet some hope that these issues can be corrected in time ?

It seems AoA is down again.

Following what Denice pointed out about TMR - how many regular commenters are there on AoA? About a dozen? They're pretty deluded and vicious, but I don't see too many of them. I'd look now, but, for the reason noted above, I can't. Shame. :-)

DLC,
The issue is trust, not lack of knowledge. the National Science Foundation routinely run a survey about scientific knowledge and belief. They break it down by politicla persuasion as well. In general, they find that the most conservative group tends to be better educated and more knowledgeable. In particular, this group was more knowledgeable about the process of evolution, yet they also were less likely to believe it.

What is likely comes down to is trust. Do they trust the instituions telling them the various information? Look at many of the rants against GMOs. are those rants against the science or are they screeds against evil big business, in particular Monsanto? many of the people opposed to GMOs simply do not trust businesses.

Huh, looks like AoA might be having some technical issues - too bad they are so anti-science or they might actually have someone who understood what was necessary to keep the site live.....

The same radio station that broadcasts Rush Limbaugh around here also carries some of the worst quack medicine infomercials. The one for GHR Platinum sounds like it could have been for Dr. Brinkley's goat glands, but with the name changed.

I think this has to do with the far left and far right being the tail ends of the IQ curve.

@ Denice,

I have seen those claims, and maybe it's just because I'm hateful, but it makes me roll my eyes (at them, not you). 1) Being broke because you spent your money on BS is not synonymous with "low-income." 2) "they are seen around town in groddy athletic clothing"...they might as well have said, "I couldn't get my gel manicure this week!"

I'm sure there are some low-income TMs, and I'm sure part of my vitriol is because I'm getting more and more hateful towards those groups. But maybe if they took advantage of more services (which aren't nearly enough, I admit) that provide evidence-based treatment/support options, they wouldn't be so broke.

T. #9 and Eric Lund #15: Re: Chamomile and herbal teas. Have you tried Teavana's "Tranquil Dreams"? It's the night cap at our house.

More years ago than I care to count, a nice Spanish lady advised me to bathe my face in warm chamomile tea to resolve some complexion...er..issues.

It made the bathroom smell nice for several weeks but there was no other appreciable effect.

Thanks, TBruce!

I was having an ongoing "discussion" with Mr Solomon and Emery who asks such intelligent questions as

What happens when the oral Rotavirus vaccine is injected?

Unfortunately, my last two replies disappeared into the internet. I'm ignoring Cia Parker and John Stone.

I'll try to rewrite those and post them now that my finals are done.

Does anyone have a good link to the CDC's U.S. measles death numbers? Fortunately they've been low for quite a few years. I seem to be having trouble ferreting the actual numbers out at the moment.

And, thanks to lilady and Dorit Reiss who have been making their usual excellent contributions.

So, I have to ask : are a certain percentage of the people just gullible, or is there some other mechanism at work that I’m not aware of ?

There is a certain amount of tribalism involved, and the further you move from the political center, the more intense the tribalism. So if you identify with the American political right, you are more likely to attend a church which insists that the world cannot be more than ~10k years old, and to remain a member in good standing of that church you must at least pretend to subscribe to that belief. Those on the left tend to be distrustful of corporations, as Mike mentioned above. Science based medicine tends to get it from both ends. In the case of vaccines, you have the anti-corporate screeds of the left against Big Pharma, and on the right you have people opposing the HPV vaccine because their worldview requires sex to have bad consequences for those, especially women, who enjoy it.

There is some truth to Mike's point about trust, but it's more complicated. On the left, it's a question of whether you trust any institutions, but on the right it's more about which institutions (church or university) you trust. And as the great political philosopher Stephen Colbert noted, "Facts have a well-known liberal bias."

Eric,
It is not necessarily about tribalism in the far right and far left. I thought that the most conservative groupings of people was the most educated and the most liberal groupings of people was the 2nd most educated when surveys break down the US population. The far right and the far left are generally the most knowedgeable and informed. It is the muddled middle that is less well educated and less well informed.

They do have 20K friends but still I wonder who’ll get money.

I noticed yesterday that TMR proper was claiming to expect only $5000 profit from the book.

I agree with T - reading those demographics, and noting "86% of readers consider healthy eating and good nutrition important" - well, they are important, and that's a science-based conclusion. Similarly, I take calcium and iron supplements because I'm a very active vegetarian female and have tested at the low end of the latter enough that I want to be sure I'm set. But I've seen the data and know that routine multivitamin supplementation is throwing my money away.

Or maybe I'm trying to confirmation bias my way out of having to sit in the anti-science section if I sit with the left. :P

@Mike,

Do you happen to have a link to any such studies? Based off of my admittedly shaky memory, most studies I've seen have indicated that the far right is generally not as educated as the far left (how they both compare to the middle, I don't remember).

That's not to say that highly educated people are more immune to the allure of far from center ideologies though: as has been noted on this site multiple times, the more educated are often prone to Dunning-Kruger in areas other than their own expertise, and they may be better able to come up with logical sounding arguments to fool both themselves and others into adhering to their belief.

Huh, looks like AoA might be having some technical issues – too bad they are so anti-science or they might actually have someone who understood what was necessary to keep the site live…..

This appears to still be a Typepad problem. The fact that they haven't successfully dealt with it yet (while claiming that it's similar to the Basecamp attack, which appears to have been contained in three hours) does not speak well for their prospects going forward.

she thinks that antivaccinationists like herself should cease to patronize media outlets that criticize the antivaccine movement. That is, of course, her right and the right of antivaccinationists everywhere. (America, dammit!) She also advocates not clicking, sharing, or commenting on such articles.

Proof of a cult: block out all sources of information that might contradict the cult party-line.

"y’know, proper medicine such as vaccines."
Rebecca Fisher
That's some wacko belief system you have there, what is proper about a vaccine?

"most studies I’ve seen have indicated that the far right is generally not as educated as the far left " Indigo

Well the far right, take Bush as a benchmark, tend to have been educated to believe all sorts of system crap. Left wing people tend to get over ruled by the gentry into 'making decisions'
It is all a distraction really, until we have proper placebo, not fake ones, RCT trials between vaccinated populations and non vaccinated populations there is no evidence base for efficacy.

Presently all we can do is look at who is dishing them out, take the last flu pandemic as an example - see a group of mindless idiots dishonestly telling us we are all going to die who conned many governments into paying for woo flu vaccines and make the choice.

It would seem those who chose to ignore these self styled flu gurus were right, it was all bullshit and no one needed any of that 'proper medicine'.

I choose not to vaccinate because I can see no reason at all to do it. I have two degrees, my wife has one and no one in my family needs to take medicine.

Mike & Indigo_Fire: Remember that there are two distinct groups on the US political right. One consists of people who have done very well under the present system, thank you, and therefore want to keep that system in place. This group is overwhelmingly likely to have been educated at elite universities (not just State U.). The other is essentially the religious right, of which some are educated and others not. The latter group is especially prone to tribalism: their group has been treated as the default for most of US history, but they see and fear that they are in danger of losing that status.

There are plenty of less educated people who identify with the political left, too: people who have largely been left out of the economic system but who do not subscribe to right-wing religious beliefs (this group includes many if not most of the ethnic minorities in this country). I don't know offhand how things go when you do the breakdown. However, I do recall (but don't have a link for) a study that indicated that people who are highly educated *and* identify with the political right are most likely to believe that humans have no effect on global climate. Attitudes toward evolution follow a different pattern, because that mostly follows religious beliefs, and the churches that go for young earth creationism tend to be on the right.

I choose not to vaccinate because I can see no reason at all to do it.

And what, precisely, would be a circumstance in which you did?

I have two degrees, my wife has one and no one in my family needs to take medicine.

Speaking of Dunning-Kruger: You may not have to take medicine now. But sooner or later you will get sick (or injured) and will need to do something about it. You may be able to coast off of herd immunity for a while. But sooner or later, that attitude will hurt you. Whooping cough and measles were almost unheard of in this country 20 years ago. But then some people decided they and/or their kids didn't need the vaccines, and now people get sick and even die of these diseases.

Flu is a bit trickier because those viruses evolve much faster than most. Occasionally the people who produce the vaccines will guess wrong about what strains will be prevalent that season. But it still helps to reduce transmission, especially to people (children and the elderly, plus those with compromised immune systems) who would be hardest hit. Since I have started getting the flu vaccine, I have had occasional colds, but not the flu. Flu is much worse: IIRC you are either afraid that you will die, or afraid that you won't.

It is all a distraction really, until we have proper placebo, not fake ones, RCT trials between vaccinated populations and non vaccinated populations there is no evidence base for efficacy.

See, e.g., here and here...

... and here.

Too many, too soon.

@ken

And what would the evidence for your assertion be? Since the # of antigens in the whole vaccination schedule is much smaller than the # of antigens that a typical person encounters in a day.

@ #11: Well, yeah. Those ideas didn't originate with alt-med either. And I'm sure that's there's an alt-med group out there that claims that "eating healthy" cures brain cancer. Where "healthy" includes whatever the core originators of that particular alt-med group is trying to sell you.

So, yeah, less "there's some truth in there!" and more "if you say enough, something is bound to be correct somewhere and somewhere"

Too many, too soon.

Oooh, a slogan! Well, I'm convinced.

I have two degrees, my wife has one and no one in my family needs to take medicine.

I have two degrees too (BSc in Chemistry and an MD), and I can't understand why no one will take my design for a real keen rocket plane seriously. They keep saying stuff about Aeronautical Engineering , but I say phooey. After all, I have two degrees!

I have two degrees as well. BSc in Biology and MSc in Chemistry.

However, they won't let me adjust the laser in the photonics lab. I keep pointing out that I have two degrees! I can absolutely twiddle some knobs and push that red button over there and everything will be fine and dandy!

I have two degrees, my wife has one and no one in my family needs to take medicine.

I have two degrees too (BSc in Chemistry and an MD), and I can’t understand why no one will take my design for a real keen rocket plane seriously. They keep saying stuff about Aeronautical Engineering , but I say phooey. After all, I have two degrees!

Given that the assertion seems to be that sheepskins protect against disease, I'm guessing that neither of Johnny's is in anything involving logic.

There are several issues which are interwoven so rather than disentangle them as I really should, I'll just make note of what I learned at a few of those elitist universities..
:
intelligence, education and political leanings include an additional socio-economic variable to which Eric Lund alludes-
why is a person a liberal?
- because of work place issues ( trade unionism), espousing feminism, racism, classism or an elitist education, living in an urban locale?
- similarly, why are people conservative? Old Money, Nouveau Riche ( Money), evangelical Christianity, traditionalism, being rural ?
Both span the economic/ educational spectrum.

Length of education and wealth would probably run along similar courses but TYPE of education is an entirely different story:
amongst the 'educated': was their college/ university work centred upon business, education, technical, STEM or liberal arts?

The TMs predominantly have university level education; for the most part it focuses on education, liberal arts, business and-
( gulp!) social sciences ( although not the way I studied).

Thus the "highly educated" amongst whom AoA and TMR count themselves are not necessarily well-versed in science, statistics, research and SBM.

Many of them are white, affluent suburbanites who may vote ]left of centre BUT some identifly with libertarian or conservative parties ( the Canary Party, Health Freedom, Mamacita, Sid Offit, the Larson-Blaxill-Issa matrix).

I recall a prof who taught cognitive/ social development ( and went on to bigger and better things: running a well-known institute ) would note that young kids attribute causation about poverty vs wealth to a person's action or personality ( 'He's poor because he's bad or lazy') whilst adolescents tend to attribute a person's economic situation to environmenta/ social causes (' He's poor because he lacked education, opportunity or he grew up in a family which didn't help him') sounding more like social scientists..

In other words, he said, kids became more liberal as they grew up and achieved higher levels ( e.g. concrete to formal operations) of sophistication.
See also voting patterns based on affluence and education..

To clarify: that should be- OPPOSING racism. classism

The TMs predominantly have university level education; for the most part it focuses on education, liberal arts, business and-
( gulp!) social sciences

I'm having trouble finding any evidence of postsecondary education for some of them, e.g., DragonSlayer, Cupcake, and Savage.

The Count is a software engineer.

Ok I have to take issue with the comment from Johnny labile. The H1N1 pandemic WAS a pandemic. It WAS a strain that had not been seen before. There definitely were excess deaths associated with H1N1 (and continue to be) particularly in younger persons generally not at as much risk of death, and anyone with underlying comorbidities. Also pregnant women died much more often than in the past. So as a person who worked front line public health epidemiology for that pandemic I would thank you not to characterize us in the fashion that you did. PH has taken a beating over H1N1 long enough. Yes, more people and younger people died. No, they weren't dropping dead in the streets so most of those deaths went under the radar. But if we had not done anything about it, if we hadn't scrambled to make vaccine, if we hadn't increased our surveillance, if we hadn't tried to educate people, and it HAD turned out to be as bad as 1918 then everyone would have been screaming for the director of CDC's blood in the streets. ALL flu is bad, very bad. Particularly if you have any comorbidities, are elderly, or pregnant. So take your shot like a big boy and protect your community and yourself instead of spouting nonsense. I stand by our response to H1N1 100%.
Addendum: Given H5N1 and other various permutations percolating in Asia, I would be very careful extrapolating our relatively mild pandemic to any in the future. A truly killer flu (a la 1918) is thought by most working in PH to be a matter of when not if. So I would vaccinate because you never know until its too late whether this is the one to kill you or your loved ones.

@Johnny labile,

That’s some wacko belief system you have there, what is proper about a vaccine?

I'm sure Ms. Fisher will respond for herself, but looking over the definition of proper we find:
- appropriate to the purpose: vaccines are shown to be be effective in substantially reducing the incidence of diseases as well as limiting the effects thereof. Thus I'd say they are appropriate to the purpose of reducing disease.
- strictly belonging or applicable: since vaccines are shown to be effective, they would be the proper way to reduce the incidence of a particular disease.

By contrast, homeopathic remedies would not be considered proper medicine in any sense unless, perhaps, it wore a tie. But then, that would be formal and not necessarily proper.

@Ken - you mean too many antivaccinationists spouting off too soon? Or did you mean something else?

It is all a distraction really, until we have proper placebo, not fake ones

I read that someone compared a proper placebo to a sugar pill and found no differences in effectiveness.

The far right and the far left are generally the most knowedgeable and informed.
Where does the Fox-News audience fit in this polarisation?

In addition to Mother Jones, there are other magazines targeting the crunchy granola crowd that take a science-based view of vaccines - notably the mags run by Rodale Press (i.e. Prevention). Example of the reasonable evidence-based approach that seems to dominate their editorial view:

http://www.rodalenews.com/vaccine-safety-information?page=0,0

Now if we could only convince the powers that be behind Organic Gardening (another Rodale magazine) to stop fearmongering about GMOs...

John Quiggin makes similar points.

Will they move on to a new target now that the media is dwelling on a report that SSRI's in pregnancy may affect the autism rate in males?

@ Narad:

I should say that I got the *impression* that most of them went to u. - it wasn't explicitly stated in their short bios but in posts. A few are -btw- EFL/ ESL- DragonSlayer is from Malaysia, one is French, another possibly originally from Central America. A few mention work in teaching, school psychology, business, acting (!) and one has a degree in physics. Like AoA, they have mentioned that "surveys find" that anti- vaxxers (...vaccine DISSIDENTS?) are highly educated and affuent.

At any rate, today Ms Karma continues with the second part of her opus in which she proclaims that blogs incite arguments which harm parents so we should disengage because it's just the mainstream making money etc.

This sounds like the loons I survey:
shut off your television, stop buying things, take your money out of banks, DON'T ENABLE the corporate mainstream: we can make our own world as we like it OURSELVES etc.

What I'm not certain of yet is whether Ostroff has a pseudonym. If so, it would have to be Poppy TMR, Princess TMR, or Money TMR. The last of these is convincingly in New Hampshire and has no separate FB identity (unlike the first two), but it hasn't quite come together.

^ Oh, and there are only 38 "Rescue Angels" listed in Georgia, but I don't know whether that list is current.

More research ( from Drexel School of Public Health/ Karolinska Institute) that older mothers- as well as older fathers- increase the risk of autism in children.
And who waits until they are more than 30 to have offspring?

"And who waits until they are more than 30 to have offspring?"

I have a friend who waited until he and his wife were about forty. They both grew up poor and they wanted to be well-enough situated in life that they could properly support their child.

@ LW:

I think that the more usual reason is prolonged education and career establishment as well as second marriages.

I didn't see anyone else point this out --

In my quest to find a progressive, non-biased media presence ...

She wants her information to be unbiased, but to be written with an agenda. Huh?

This is a problem beyond the scope of mere anti-vaccinationism; while it might be confirmation bias, I feel like there's been an upswing in the use of buzzwords to make arguments intentionally vague or fashionable (and to cudgel opposing arguments by intentionally ignoring their points).

I know there's been research into frames of reference for a while now, so I know the practice isn't new, but it just seems to be everywhere I turn on the Internet as of late.

On the left-right divide over vaccinations:

As you know, Orange County, California, is experiencing a measles outbreak. I was chagrinned to learn that my own fairly liberal town, Laguna Beach, had almost 12% of parents claiming personal belief exemptions from vaccinating their children. However, the largest number of unvaccinated kids seem to be in far more conservative and somewhat less wealthy San Clemente. At least in this county, anti-vax sentiment is best predicted by wealth; in fact, the cities which elect Democrats have the highest vaccination rates.

I have to admit, glass of Fronsac from Trader Joe's in hand, that I do sometimes prefer using alternative methods of medicine/healing, and follow the advice of Dr. Khayyam:

Would you forget a woman, drink red wine;
Would you remember her, then drink red wine!
Is your heart breaking just to see her face?
Gaze deep within this mirror of red wine.

In essence, it’s a tu quoque response, in which conservatives retort, “You have your antiscience fringe, too,” such as antivaccinationists and anti-GMO (genetically modified organisms) nuts.

And fittingly enough, it is a fallacy that anti-GMO sentiment comes from the left:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2013/06/do-liberals-oppose-genet…

It's a myth promoted by Michael Shermer.

People with left-wing politics aren't likelier to eat organic food than people on the right, either. Rush Limbaugh just likes to say that they are.

Are you going to trust what a breast cancer surgeon says?

http://www.anh-usa.org/breast-cancer-industry-deceit/

Ann @68

It’s another myth promoted by Michael Shermer.

FTFY

Mark Thorson:
More than I'd trust some random dude who thinks Alliance for Natural Health is a reliable source.

I just took a little gander at the ANH Website.

My brain hurts. DO NOT go there.

@bad jim #67--that festering clump on non-vaccinating parents in San Clemente would be members of the brain-dead-yet-college-degreed cult of Dr Bob Sears--the anti-vaccine pediatrician who wrote the execrable foreword to the drinking mom's ridiculous book of autism lies.

It's amazing how it all ties together, following the stink trail from one pile of excrement to the next.

Yes, Mark. Yes, I am. Better than a website that backs up it's content with this . . .

Use of This Website: The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of the Alliance for Natural Health USA (ANH-USA), unless otherwise noted. Information on this website is provided for educational purposes only; it is not intended as a substitute for medical or professional advice of any kind. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of ANH-USA and the natural health community. Reliance upon any such opinion, advice, statement, or other information shall also be at your own risk. Neither ANH-USA, nor any of its respective agents, employees, information providers, or content providers shall be liable to any user or anyone else for any use or misuse of the information, inaccuracy, error, omission, interruption, lack of timeliness, incompleteness, deletion, defect, failure of performance, computer virus, communication line failure, alteration of, or use of any content herein, regardless of cause, or for any damages resulting therefrom.

Reliance on this information shall be at your own risk, indeed.

If only...those boozy warrior moms would boycott all those websites.

According to the California Department of Public Health, there are now 58 confirmed measles cases:

http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/discond/Pages/Measles.aspx

What I find sadly remarkable about you Orac is you exert the same cherry picking of posters that you accuse all your dissenters of doing. You are a cult in your own lunch time.

The efficacy evidence for vaccination is simply just not there because the dice is loaded - fake placebos, biased cohorts, fiddled efficacy data, the list of woo for vaccination is longer than your nose.

If vaccination was a good idea and it worked there would be no debate or dissent. Like orthodox cancer treatment, of course your baby - it is based on medieval ideas of health and the egos of people like you who are too up themselves to have the humility to comprehend what constitutes a real solution to real problems.

One of my best friends who was diagnosed with lung cancer, prostate, spleen, adrenals last summer has now, according to the oncologist, got rid of 90% of his cancer by changing his diet and doing other 'unorthodox' things. He now only has one small shrinking tumor in one lung and his bloods are normal.

Why should not this be investigated without bias and not written off as noise in the data or placebo?

@the craic - Very glad to hear about your friend. Presumably this amazing sounding case study will be written up and published in a respected journal soon. Could you let us know which one, and when please? I'd hate to miss it.

But Craic, Orac doesn't cherry pick posters, unlike sites like TMR, AoA and the Gianelloni dysfunctional family blog.

Your post being here shows this.

Also, Craic, there are basic things that can be done to shrink tumors that, unfortunately, do not kill them completely. Getting rid of 90% of his cancer is not good enough, and if you understood the nature of cancer, you would understand this. Cancer is the uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in the body. If those remaining 10% of your friend's cancer is still dividing uncontrollably, the cancer will soon be back to its original presenting size and then grow further.

@The Craic:

The efficacy evidence for vaccination is simply just not there because the dice is loaded – fake placebos, biased cohorts, fiddled efficacy data...

How are the placebos fake? In what way are the cohorts biased? And please provide proof that the efficacy data is fiddled.

If vaccination was a good idea and it worked there would be no debate or dissent.

If evolution was a good idea and it worked there would be no debate or dissent.
If Germ Theory was a good idea and it worked there would be no debate or dissent.
If wearing seatbelts was a good idea and it worked there would be no debate or dissent.
Your argument is weak. Thinking that an idea will be accepted by everyone because it's good is naive.

First it was Johnny labile with his two degrees, going on about "fake placebos" and efficacy evidence; now The Craic with the miraculously cured friend, also going on about "fake placebos" and evidence for efficacy. It is enough to shake my skepticism about Sheldrake's morphogenic fields.

Just for the record, Belgian ales ARE better than wine. But hey, even a stopped clock is right twice a day; Karma can't get everything wrong.

"Fake placebos." I snorted. Fortunately ice water and also fortunately not over my keyboard.

Hey, Johnny, I have two degrees (BA in Modern Languages and MBA), and I'm giving serious thought to an MA (Military History) after I retire next year.

May I come over and do a health screening on your family? Apparently, I'm qualified.

Johnny, I see that I have two more degrees than you. Mine are even in a biological field. I still don't pretend I know more than medical doctors or public health experts. Let me guess (wildly)- you're an engineer of some sort? And consider yourself a Libertarian?

Hmmm... I have 3 degrees, 1 more than johnny boy, ( 2 in a biological field) and looking into getting another one.

I guess, considering that I have more qualifications than johnny that I can say that johnny is an unabashed quack believer and a danger to others.

One of my best friends who was diagnosed with lung cancer, prostate, spleen, adrenals last summer has now, according to the oncologist, got rid of 90% of his cancer by changing his diet and doing other ‘unorthodox’ things. He now only has one small shrinking tumor in one lung and his bloods are normal.

Is the diet and "unorthodox things" the only treatment he's getting?
It's entirely possible that chemotherapy alone could produce such a dramatic result, depending on the type of cancer he has. If he is only using diet and "unorthodox things", this would be worth a case report. It would have to be well-supported, of course, with a biopsy-proven diagnosis, and a listing of all treatments received.

The Craic: "If vaccination was a good idea and it worked there would be no debate or dissent."

The following is from US census data covering most of the 20th century. Can you please tell me why the incidence of measles dropped 90% between 1960 and 1970 in the USA. Some restrictions: do not mention deaths, do not mention any other decade and do not mention any other country. Thank you.

From http://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/99statab/sec31.pdf
Year.... Rate per 100000 of measles
1912 . . . 310.0
1920 . . . 480.5
1925 . . . 194.3
1930 . . . 340.8
1935 . . . 584.6
1940 . . . 220.7
1945 . . . 110.2
1950 . . . 210.1
1955 . . . 337.9
1960 . . . 245.4
1965 . . . 135.1
1970 . . . . 23.2
1975 . . . . 11.3
1980 . . . . . 5.9
1985 . . . . . 1.2
1990 . . . . .11.2
1991 . . . . . .3.8
1992 . . . . . .0.9
1993 . . . . . .0.1
1994 . . . . . .0.4
1995 . . . . . .0.1
1996 . . . . . .0.2
1997 . . . . . . 0.1

I have 98.6 degrees from Fahrenheit, so there.

TBruce: "I have two degrees too (BSc in Chemistry and an MD), and I can’t understand why no one will take my design for a real keen rocket plane seriously. They keep saying stuff about Aeronautical Engineering , but I say phooey. After all, I have two degrees!"

Well at least my one degree qualifies me to work on rocket planes.

Denice Walter at 63 - I was 34 when I had my son, my husband was 42. We had a lot of fertility problems. I am in treatment again to have a sibling for him, but that will be my last pregnancy. But yes a lot of studies are showing women routinely waiting until their 30s to start having babies (career, better financial position, etc.) then finding out they have fertility problems and are further delayed in having a child. Not so unusual nowadays.

Well at least my one degree qualifies me to work on rocket planes.

And my TWO don't? That's so unfair!

Though, to be fair, TBruce, I would be required to show my work, have it checked by others and actually test everything.

Sound familiar?

Chris, it must be awfully hard for your nearest and dearest to resist making "but it's not rocket science!" comments around you.

Heh... I recently "it does take a rocket scientist" from a doctor about my pink urine sample when I had a bladder infection.

I sometimes reply, well, yes I am, but it is outside my area of expertise.

the list of woo for vaccination is longer than your nose.

Someone misheard some lyrics from a country and western song?

Eric, what is this 'herd immunity' crap, there are no studies on vaccined versus non vaccined to support the myth of 'herd immunity' where applied to vaccines.

Why is the only thing you can do when you get sick is use medicine? That assumes that all diseases are deficiencies in medicine!

Where did you learn that.?

Chris, the point you are missing is that you are providing reported cases data, not correlating mortality. Doctor's are especially biased when it's their 'treatment' under the microscope.

Reported data of cases is notoriously unreliable, especially with a 'new vaccine'. They change the diagnosis criteria and make it harder to make a clinical diagnosis count, now you need swabs etc.

If you look at mortality from measles between 1960 and 1970 you will see that vaccination made no impact on the natural decline, it actually slows the natural decline and increases mortality and it is clearly obvious on this graph.

http://childhealthsafety.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/0707275measleslog…

Don't fall into the trap of listening to doctor's fiddle data! It is a common vaxxy naughty to produce stat lists of numbers and it fooled you into thinking that there was no negative answer to your question.

Clang - was that a belief system collapse I hear

Hey Rebecca, it is happening all the time but when one tells a septic about it they usually respond like a catholic to vacuum denial.

Your sarcasm tells me you are a chemo believer and I hope you never need to go near that.

@Johnny - thank goodness for modern medicine, that we were able to keep people alive at a higher rate from measles complications.....now, please address "incidence" rates, because sanitation has little or nothing to do with preventing airborne diseases from spreading.....

As to your rant about chemo - several of my close friends are alive and well today because of chemo...so I really don't see your point.

@Johnny - the only belief system in a state of collapse is yours......because ours, on the other hand, has nothing to do about belief and everything about the facts and scientific evidence.

Eric, what is this ‘herd immunity’ crap, there are no studies on vaccine [sic] versus non vaccine [sic] to support the myth of ‘herd immunity’ where applied to vaccines.

“Herd immunity” isn’t mythical but a natural phenomenon directly observed to be operative in living populations -- in fact, it can be accurately and predictively modeled mathematically. A few minutes spent on pubmed would have revealed this to you.

That assumes that all diseases are deficiencies in medicine!

Not at all. If you have a bacterial infection and treat it with an antibiotic—for the sake of example, let’s say penicillin—the physician isn’t operating on the assumption that your system is ‘deficient’ in circulating penicillin but capitalizing on penicillin’s demonstrated ability to inhibit the formation of peptidoglycan cross-links in bacterial cell walls, resulting in bacterial death.

If you look at mortality from measles between 1960 and 1970 you will see that vaccination made no impact on the natural decline, it actually slows the natural decline and increases mortality and it is clearly obvious on this graph.

As a vaccine's primary benefit is the reduced incidence of disease, not simply a reduction in the number of deaths due to that illness, mortality isn’t an appropriate metric to determine efficacy. While the deaths due to measles decreased due to improvements in health care, the numbers of people who contracted measles annually did not decline significantly until the development of vaccines.

By ignoring the fact that people were still becoming ill, requiring hospitalization, and suffering serious adverse consequences of measles infection other than death ( blindness, deafness, mental impairment, etc.) you are arguing the equivalent of “The development of polio vaccines was completely unnecessary, since the invention of the iron lung had already reduced the number of people dying of polio every year.”

@JGC - that's exactly the same argument that I made recently - that it would be like saying the polio vaccine was unnecessary because of iron lungs.....anti-vax folks are really morons....

Johnny Labile: "Clang – was that a belief system collapse I hear"

Actually, just by posting to the website of known liars, we now know that "clang" you hear is reality hitting the side of your closed mind.

Johnny, why do you portray medicine as correcting a deficiency? With the exception of supplements and hormone replacements and diabetics taking insulin, it isn't at all. I love JGC's example about penicillin. Nobody has a penicillin deficiency; you totally don't need penicillin to live. But strep throat or urinary tract infections make life harder (and in extreme cases, can kill you). But it's like spraying to get the aphids off of your tomato plants. Your tomatoes don't suffer from pesticide deficiency; they suffer from being eaten by aphids.

Would you consider that in war anyone has a "bullet deficiency"? Of course not. The point isn't to make up a deficiency in the enemy, it's to eliminate their ability to wage war. Likewise with antibiotics and antivirals and antivenins and chemo agents; the objective is not to boost your own forces but to cripple theirs.

But then, if you don't recognize a germ theory of disease, you might find this difficult to understand. If you think all disease is because of some deficiency, no wonder you misunderstand the objective of medicine.

As far as incidence versus mortality....

When I was four, I spent weeks in the hospital with meningitis. The causative agent was never isolated, but is suspected to have been viral. (Long story. Short version: due to an influenza outbreak, the hospital was severely overloaded and they ended up losing the specimen from my spinal tap. Twice.) It was a horrible two weeks, and that's the sort of care that allowed the death rate from measles to drop off before vaccination started to reduce the incidence. If you are comfortable risking that sort of a nightmare for your child, well, you've got an interesting mindset.

And just for your education here is the data on measles between 1960 and 1981 from the CDC PInk Book Appendix G. Unlike your cute little graph it actually includes "incidence":

Disease: Measles in the USA
Year__Cases___Deaths
1960__441,703_380
1961__423,919_434
1962__481,530_408
1963__385,156_364
(^^ first vaccine licensed)
1964__458,083_421
1965__261,905_276
1966__204,136_261
1967___62,705__81
1968___22,231__24
1969___25,826__41
1970___47,351__89
1971___75,290__90
(^^^ MMR licensed)
1972___32,275__24
1973___26,690__23
1974___22,690__20
1975___24,374__20
1976___41,126__12
1977___57,245__15
1978___26,871__11
(^^^ Measles Elimination Program started)
1979___13,597___6
1980___13,506__11
1981____2,124___2

So you tell us: "If you look at mortality from measles between 1960 and 1970 you will see that vaccination made no impact on the natural decline, it actually slows the natural decline and increases mortality and it is clearly obvious on this graph."

It was a bit silly to use data from a country that did not start vaccinating for measles until 1968, and did not even include incidence.

Using American data what I see is the mortality actually declines quite consistently with incidence, and absolutely no increase in mortality. I see that the incidence in 1965 is a little over half of the 1964 numbers, and the mortality is also a bit over half. The 1967 incidence is less than a third of the 1966 incidence, and the corresponding mortality is also about a third.

It seems as more kids were getting vaccinated, the drop in incidence accelerated, with a corresponding drop in mortality. It is just simple math. You might try learning some. Along with learning the difference between morbidity and mortality.

when one tells a septic about it they usually respond like a catholic to vacuum denial

Ah, Johnny Labile with his two degrees, neither of them in English.

If you look at mortality from measles between 1960 and 1970 you will see that vaccination made no impact on the natural decline, it actually slows the natural decline and increases mortality and it is clearly obvious on this graph.

http://childhealthsafety.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/0707275measleslog…

Don’t fall into the trap of listening to doctor’s fiddle data!

Only if you agree not to fall into the trap of credulously trusting some cherry-picked statistics from England and Wales that someone arranged on a graph with maximum misleading suggestiveness and minimum fact/analysis.

Because that's what you linked to there.

Why is the only thing you can do when you get sick is use medicine? That assumes that all diseases are deficiencies in medicine!

Only if you're really, really bad at math.

Only if you agree not to fall into the trap of credulously trusting some cherry-picked statistics from England and Wales that someone arranged on a graph with maximum misleading suggestiveness and minimum fact/analysis.

Because that’s what you linked to there.

^^In the event that you missed it in Chris's response:

What makes it misleading to look at mortality from measles between 1960 and 1970 as shown on that graph as if it proved that vaccination slowed the decline during that decade is:

The UK and Wales didn't start vaccinating for measles until 1968.

Ann, you will note that in comment #87 I specifically say: "Some restrictions: do not mention deaths, do not mention any other decade and do not mention any other country. "

The reason is that when I posed that question to one of the guys behind the misleading "childhealthsafety" graphs is because he would bring up the Welsh and English stats. I had to chide John Stone for not knowing neither are part of the United States of America. You'd think that a UK citizen would know that.

Rebecca Fisher
April 23, 2014
@the craic – Very glad to hear about your friend. Presumably this amazing sounding case study will be written up and published in a respected journal soon. Could you let us know which one, and when please? I’d hate to miss it.

Johnny labile
April 28, 2014
Hey Rebecca, it is happening all the time but when one tells a septic about it they usually respond like a catholic to vacuum denial.

Confirmation, as if it were needed, that "the craic" and "johnny labile" are sockpuppets.

@Chris --

Noted!

I was just underlining the point, in hopes that our friend wouldn't respond like a Catholic to vacuum denial, whatever that means.

What does that mean, by the way?

"And who waits until they are more than 30 to have offspring?"
just in case anyone wants a statistic, in the US 1 in 4 first births in 2010 were to women over 30.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr60/nvsr60_02.pdf

Eric, what is this ‘herd immunity’ crap, there are no studies on vaccined versus non vaccined to support the myth of ‘herd immunity’ where applied to vaccines.

What part of this and this did you not understand, Monkeyboy?

Ah, that's what happens when I succumb to an accursed nap. Let's try this instead.

This, dammit.

Un sieste maudit.

I was really asking about the vaccum denial, btw.

I maybe used to have a cat who was in vacuum denial. She hated the vacuum. But other than that, I don't know what it means.

What makes it misleading to look at mortality from measles between 1960 and 1970 as shown on that graph as if it proved that vaccination slowed the decline during that decade is:

The UK and Wales didn’t start vaccinating for measles until 1968.

Clifford "Graph Boy" Miller (Wakefraud's "foreign counsel" for a bit) also refuses to his pride and joy.

ann, I have no clue about vacuum denial. Perhaps it is someone who dislikes cleaning up dust bunnies?

^ "to update"

Assuming there actually are vacuum deniers (other than cats), why would Catholics, specifically, care one way or the other about them? Is there something about vacuum(s) in Catholicism?

Assuming there actually are vacuum deniers (other than cats), why would Catholics, specifically, care one way or the other about them? Is there something about vacuum(s) in Catholicism?

Johnny could just be living 400-500 years in the past. The Church was totally committed to Aristotelian physics, where the universe was a plenum, with no empty space whatsoever. The possibility of a vacuum was heavily identified with atomism, which was anathema, because it was perceived as promoting random interaction as the origin of everything—once there was nothing but atoms falling through the void until there was an unmotivated "swerve" that caused them all to start colliding and interacting and leading to all the complexity we see today.

Atomism = Atheism was official doctrine for quite a long time, and believing in the possibility of empty space was considered the same thing.

@The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge, thank you! I'm always learnng new thngs on RI.

But that would make Catholics (400 years ago) respond positively to vacuum deniers, which seems the opposite of the intended claim.

Lawrence @28
If you're the same Lawrence posting at Shot of Prevention I think you picked up the iron lung thing from me too (as jgc56) . For the record I can't recall if I came up with it myself or cribbed it from someone else, but it's a great go-to response whenever anti-vaxers claim decreasing mortality means MMR isn't effective or necessary.

The office for national stats is an orthodox source Chris and Ann, sorry it doesn't agree with your medical bible.

The MMR has always missed the point and why the hell should the public believe the hype about its bull efficacy?
Are Merck still in court over fiddling MMR efficacy results and if it shows they did are you prepared to revise your belief system?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twch-T-n8Ns

This is a good film on why the Polio vaccine is a fraud, maybe you should get up to speed.

I mean do we really have people who believe any old crap just because a doctor says so? Who says they have any idea what health is? The standard treatment for arthritis is painkillers, no doctor would suggest an audit of the diet!

What do they learn in their training that qualifies them to suggest painkillers - do they have no scientific inquiry?

Ann, there is a difference between a graph compiled from doctors just reporting their anecdotal opinion and the coroner's office logging cause of death.

Doctors don't like admitting they are killing people, look at Vioxx which killed 160,000 people world wide from catastrophic heart rupture, just to relieve their arthritis.

I suppose blowing up the heart is a pretty effective painkiller? Quite a side effect to mitigate though.

It was only when payouts overtook profit that doctors stopped writing out scripts. You have a lot to learn my girl - a lot to learn.

Problem with US stats Chris is that the US prints stats like it prints money - they aren't worth a jot. The US medical frat is like one giant Disney park, everyone is obese and dying from cancer, that is US health through and through.

Cancer kills more kids than road traffic accidents in the US, how do they manage that? Over medication and atrophic food is a clue.

Mr. Labile, that is a fine list of excuses you have there. Too bad you don't have anything more substantial, like actual evidence.

look at Vioxx which killed 160,000 people world wide from catastrophic heart rupture, just to relieve their arthritis.

I suppose blowing up the heart is a pretty effective painkiller?

Have you ever noticed that you're extraordinarily stupid? "Heart rupture"? How about you go back and address some of the refutations to your other random babblings?

Isn't there something contradictory about making citing statistics for X numbers of people harmed by Vioxx, but denying the validity of vaccine-related statistics? If "US stats" are unreliable, maybe you shouldn't be citing any of them.

"I mean do we really have people who believe any old crap just because a doctor says so?"

Yuh, who are them doctors to tell us what's good for our health? There must be a "B" movie actress or pig farmer somewhere who can give us the real lowdown.*

*There should be an addendum to Scopie's Law ("Bacon's Corollary"?) which says that relying solely on a YouTube link in support of a dimwitted post loses you the argument and gets you laughed out of the room.

@johnny

Again, wehre is your evidence for your "assertions", since you haven't provided any.

Let's give you 3 posts to provide some actual sceintific evidence, otherwise we can all assume that you admit that you have been lying the entire time and that you admit that you have no evidence for your assertions.

Oh, and...

Vioxx which killed 160,000 people

You lose again. Go away.

The US medical frat is like one giant Disney park, everyone is obese and dying from cancer, that is US health through and through.

Cancer kills more kids than road traffic accidents in the US, how do they manage that? Over medication and atrophic food is a clue.

I take it you fail to grasp this contradiction.

It was only when payouts overtook profit that doctors stopped writing out scripts.

Trivially false.

You have a lot to learn my girl – a lot to learn.

Bite me.

Dangerous Bacon: " If “US stats” are unreliable, maybe you shouldn’t be citing any of them."

Well, he try to use mortality stats from a country that did not start using measles vaccines until 1968 to show that the American incidence of measles did not drop between 1960 and 1970:

If you look at mortality from measles between 1960 and 1970 you will see that vaccination made no impact on the natural decline, it actually slows the natural decline and increases mortality and it is clearly obvious on this graph

It is one of more creative, and very wrong, answers to my question that if vaccines did not work why did the incidence of measles drop 90% between 1960 and 1970 in the USA.

Labile @ 124: You're using a YouTube video of Suzanne Humphries in lieu of a citation?

Seriously?

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/12/19/quoth-dr-suzanne-humphries…

Vioxx which killed 160,000 people world wide from catastrophic heart rupture

Perhaps Johnny is thinking of ballistic organ syndrome.

The office for national stats is an orthodox source Chris and Ann, sorry it doesn’t agree with your medical bible.

I don't know there was a medical bible. But I think you must have mixed me up with someone else.My point was:

No matter how orthodox the stats in a graph are, it can't show a decade during which vaccination slows down the decline in measles mortality anywhere on earth if that vaccine wasn't being given there at the time.

That's all.

Hey! What's vacuum denial?

PS -- I like to think you're my girl, too.

You have a lot to learn my girl – a lot to learn.

Bite me.

Please don't talk to my lady that way. She was gently raised.

Before deciding for or against vaccinations we need to be familiar with all facts regarding the particular vaccine. Evidence of public health benefits after high quality immunization campaigns is readily available from the WHO. As I understand the reason why vaccine-derived polio (cVDPV) occurs for example is due to poor sanitation, immune-compromised communities, under- or un- immunized communities. If routine or supplementary immunization campaigns are poorly conducted which is often the case in Africa people will still be left susceptible. The problem is not the vaccine but the implementation programs.

http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/articles/drugs-medical/vioxx-victi…

Well that nails Vioxx Her Docktor

"The problem is not the vaccine but the implementation programs." More pro vaccine bull

Another common vaccine cop out is " Its not the vaccine itself that is lethal, its the process itself"

it really is like shouting "god is dead" in a church here - I mean Nadar that's some whacky belief system yow got there.

Johnny, you are full of it.

More pro vaccine bull

Except if the vaccines are not properly stored, they become useless. If there aren't enough, there are gaps in coverage.

Another common vaccine cop out is ” Its not the vaccine itself that is lethal, its the process itself”

Source for this quote, please.

Well that nails Vioxx Her Docktor

What the fυck are you drooling about now? You disgorge a seven-year-old article that has nothing to do with your original claim (and proved wrong just a few months later), which you're too fυcking stupid to determine the errors in? Here, let me remind you:

look at Vioxx which killed 160,000 people world wide from catastrophic heart rupture

@Julian - I was going to ask the same thing, since I've never seen that claim before (or would think anyone - except an anti-vaxer would make it).

everyone is obese and dying from cancer, that is US health through and through.

Yet, as I pointed out on another thread, healthy life expectancy continues to increase in the US; a study in 2008 found that "expected years of life are getting longer, health-related quality of life is improving, and health disparities between population groups are decreasing". Someone has their facts wrong, and I don't think it's the CDC.

IIRC, the number '160,000' was first linked with Vioxx in Topol's 2004 editorial in the NEJM. Topol extrapolated and dramatised the available results to say that every 10 million prescriptions meant an increased risk of 160,000 heart attacks / strokes (some of them fatal) -- of course he didn't and couldn't estimate the *actual* increase in the number, because that also depends on the *duration* of each prescription. But various breathless nimrods seized on the number anyway and turned it into a concrete death-toll.

Young Labile's additional contortion into "catastrophic heart rupture" pales in comparison, just an additional veneer of piffle.

There is a moral here, about never underestimating the willingness of bullsh1t artists to lie about anything you publish.

Cancer kills more kids than road traffic accidents in the US, how do they manage that?

True but misleading.

It used to be the case that road traffic incidents were the leading cause of death in children in the US, but more recently cancer kills about the same number of children as road accidents (each kills around 1,200 each year).

This is not because of an increase in child cancer deaths, which have more than halved since 1975 (from 5 per 100,000 to about 2.2 per 100,000). The main reason is the impressive improvement in road safety we have seen over the past few decades - non-accidental injury killed about 23 per 100,000 children aged 1-14 in 1970, falling to about 3 per 100,000 in 2009, most of this improvement is in road traffic deaths.

@#140

Come on, girlfriend. Have a heart. Please tell me what vacuum denial is.

"non-accidental injury killed about 23 per 100,000 children aged 1-14 in 197"

Did you mean accidental injury?

@LW Sure hope that's what Kreb meant.

Did you mean accidental injury?

Oops. You're quite right, of course. I know the US has a reputation for high homicide rates, but that would be truly alarming!

I came across the huge fall in child deaths from road accidents in the UK a while ago, and it's interesting it is paralleled in the US. I assume most is due to road safety improvements (seat belts, airbags, vehicle design), a fall in DUI, but I wonder how much is because today's parents are too afraid to let their children walk to school and play out like children did a few decades ago.

HDB,

Topol extrapolated and dramatised the available results to say that every 10 million prescriptions meant an increased risk of 160,000 heart attacks / strokes (some of them fatal) — of course he didn’t and couldn’t estimate the *actual* increase in the number, because that also depends on the *duration* of each prescription. But various breathless nimrods seized on the number anyway and turned it into a concrete death-toll.

I'm worried about the number of deaths calcium supplements have caused. A high dose of Vioxx taken for long periods may lead to a 73% increase in risk of acute MI, whereas calcium supplements taken alone may lead to 139% increase in risk of acute MI n = 23,980). Since 12% of the US population take calcium supplements (Why US Adults Use Dietary Supplements. Bailey et al. JAMA Internal Medicine) I estimate that they cause at least 30 million heart attacks each year, in Americans alone. Does this mean more than a tenth of Americans' hearts will literally explode inside their chests because they take a calcium supplement?

More seriously, if you look closely at the Vioxx literature it is far from clear what the cardiovascular risks really are. The VIGOR trial compared patients on Vioxx with patients on Naproxen, which has cardioprotective effects, so it's hard to say to what extent Vioxx actually increases risk or just doesn't decrease risk - the elevated risk was for MI and stroke, not deaths. There was also some controversy over some MIs that occurred shortly after the prespecified cutoff date of the VIGOR study. (different cutoff dates for cardiovascular and gastrointestinal side effects confused matters)

Other subsequent studies (such as APPROVe) comparing Vioxx to placebo found no increase in cardiovascular events until the drug had been taken for 18 months but a doubling (more in high doses) in risk of MI or stroke, but not deaths. More recent studies suggest that some other NSAIDs (ibuprofen and diclofenac for example) may have similar side effects; since these are very widely used and available over the counter, the number of cardiovascular events these may (or may not) have caused is incalculable.

The fabricated efficacy studies, while of course a very bad thing, were not evidence used to approve the drug.
I wonder how we determine the acceptable risk of NSAIDs given their extraordinary benefits. My grandmother died after suffering a massive gut bleed due to NSAIDs, but they also enabled her to remain active and mobile for several years despite her arthritis. I suspect she would have been happy with the trade-off, given a choice between a few years traveling the world (she was still going to mathematics conferences in places like Argentina and Russia, on her own, in her 70s), or a few more years of pain and immobility.

I can't take NSAIDs any more due to salicylate sensitivity (unless I want an asthma attack), and I certainly miss them for sinusitis and for an old shoulder injury - acetaminophen, codeine and even tramadol don't have the anti-inflammatory effects, and I can tell.

Krebiozen:

I assume most is due to road safety improvements (seat belts, airbags, vehicle design), a fall in DUI, but I wonder how much is because today’s parents are too afraid to let their children walk to school and play out like children did a few decades ago.

I would bet money that seatbelt laws and child restraint laws are by far the biggest contributors to the decline. When I was a little kid, child restraints in cars were pretty much optional. They were recommended, of course, but nobody forced you to get them or to use them. Today, most states allow police officers to pull you over if they suspect anyone in the car is not properly restrained; used to be, even once it was made mandatory, that police officers had to have another reason for pulling you over, like speeding, before they could ticket you for that. And there is no question whatsoever that seat belts and child restraints reduce mortality in car accidents. The accidents still happen, of course, but fewer people are dying in them.

Vehicle safety is probably the next one on the list. Seatbelt or not, accidents are far more survivable now than they were twenty years ago, for people of all ages. You're more likely to get your car totaled, because the crumple zones, well, crumple, but that's the car crumpling instead of you. A few years ago, there was a great crash test comparison done by the Institute for Highway Safety, where they slammed together a 1959 Chevy Bel Air and a 2009 Chevy Malibu. Definitely watch the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U

@ Krebiozen:

I couldn't take aspirin or naproxen ( or codeine for that matter) because of gastic sensitivity BUT I can take ibuprofen with no problems. Go figure.

Re: Vioxx

I also wonder about that. Ibuprofen has some ugly side effects, but it's incredibly widely used because it *works*. It gives people relief. Sure, we want something better, but "it might possibly increase your risk of heart attack" doesn't seem to me to be enough reason to pull it, given how it can change the life of someone with chronic pain. What's the point of not getting a heart attack if it means you're in bed all the time being miserable? Plus, if it helps people be more active, what affect does *that* have on the heart attack risk? Being inactive increases the risk of obesity and of blood clots and makes it harder to control diseases like asthma; we have to remember that the main users of these drugs are the elderly, and they are a different population than the healthy young volunteers that drug trials are done on, and the risk-benefit equation is very different for them.

Denice,
The only NSAID that has had that effect on me was diclofenac, which I simply couldn't tolerate, even after food. My mother couldn't tolerate codeine, which reliably sent her into a nightmarish altered state.

It's weird how different people react to differently to drugs. I remember in my youth I was at a party where someone had acquired some diethyl ether (popular in some unexpected circles - cocktail recipe here), which had absolutely no effect whatsoever on one of my friends, to her disappointment. One day, no doubt, we will understand these peculiar vagaries in terms of genetics.

"The fabricated efficacy studies, while of course a very bad thing, were not evidence used to approve the drug." re Vioxx
Thanks for that Kreboizen

Well there is a little gem, if you are a Vioxx believer of course you can overlook fabricated efficacy studies because the drug is soooo exciting. In fact in drug trials any old evidence will do - apparently. Same with vaccine studies, no comparisons with non vaccinated because apparently it is unethical to do this? The reason, apparently vaccines 'protect' so not being vaccinated in a study that is trying to prove efficacy is not ethical because you are not 'protecting' the group who are not vaccinated. - uh doesn't that assume that the vaccine works before it is tested?

I suppose if you are a vaccine believer then it's logical - I mean the bible is the word of god............ so pubmed must be the word of vaccine efficacy?

So considering all the med believer winging here, can you name a country that you can buy Vioxx in right now?

trying to prove efficacy is not ethical because you are not ‘protecting’ the group who are not vaccinated. – uh doesn’t that assume that the vaccine works before it is tested?

If the purpose of the proposed vaxed/unvaxed test were proving the efficacy of the vaccine, then that would be entirely ethical. If the purpose is to prove some side effect that all evidence says is not a result of the vaccination, then it's not quite so ethical.

Well there is a little gem, if you are a Vioxx believer of course you can overlook fabricated efficacy studies because the drug is soooo exciting.

Since when does a drug is so exciting??

I take a drug based on MDMA and it's boring as hell. Just let me function well.

Alain

Thanks for that Kreboizen
Well there is a little gem, if you are a Vioxx believer of course you can overlook fabricated efficacy studies because the drug is soooo exciting. In fact in drug trials any old evidence will do – apparently.

I don't see your point. Vioxx is very effective, there is no doubt about that. The fabricated trials were not part of the evidence used to approve the drug, also not in question. Should an effective drug be canned simply because one individual did wrong? What cardiovascular risks do you think are acceptable in a drug that transforms people's lives the way Vioxx can?

Same with vaccine studies, no comparisons with non vaccinated because apparently it is unethical to do this? [...] – uh doesn’t that assume that the vaccine works before it is tested?

Which vaccines have been initially marketed without placebo-controlled trials? I'm having trouble finding any. I can find 4 placebo-controlled studies of MMR: Bloom 1975 (PMID: 1151553); Lerman 1981; Peltola 1986 (PMID: 2871241); Schwarz 1975 (PMID: 128287). For Gardasil I found a number of placebo-controlled trials, for example this one.

The reason, apparently vaccines ‘protect’ so not being vaccinated in a study that is trying to prove efficacy is not ethical because you are not ‘protecting’ the group who are not vaccinated.

Once you have a vaccine that you know is effective, of course it would be unethical to withhold it from a control group. You would be putting your subjects' health or even their lives at risk unnecessarily. What do you suggest?

Also:

I suppose if you are a vaccine believer then it’s logical – I mean the bible is the word of god………… so pubmed must be the word of vaccine efficacy?

Pubmed is simply an index of journal articles, some more reliable than others. I do put more faith in a well-designed peer-reviewed study published in a reputable journal than I do lunatics I come across ranting about vaccine dangers on the internet. That's partly because I know the research I have been involved with has been honestly carried out, reported and published. Why should I distrust peer-reviewed vaccine studies published in medical journals?

If you don't believe journals, what about the huge fall in measles, mumps and rubella incidence since MMR was introduced? What about the fall in incidence of chicken pox in the US (routine vaccination) but not in the UK (no routine vaccination)?

So considering all the med believer winging here, can you name a country that you can buy Vioxx in right now?

No, but again I fail to see your point. Merck voluntarily withdrew the drug. Both the FDA and the Canadian approval agency voted in favor of its reintroduction, with the Canadian board voting 11-1 and questioning whether cardiovascular effects are common to all selective COX-2 inhibitors.

It seems likely that Vioxx will be reintroduced to the market eventually. Personally I think it's a good drug that has been unfairly demonized.

Sorry, I'm having trouble with link-closing tags recently.

Johnny Labile.

I'm not kidding. You said:

they usually respond like a catholic to vacuum denial

I want to know what it means.

What's vacuum denial?

So considering all the med believer winging here, can you name a country that you can buy Vioxx in right now?

It was withdrawn by the manufacturer, genius. So, here's a relevant question in return:

Can you explain, in your own words, a good reason why it should not be returned to market with more stringent prescribing guidelines?

no comparisons with non vaccinated because apparently it is unethical to do this? The reason, apparently vaccines ‘protect’ so not being vaccinated in a study that is trying to prove efficacy is not ethical because you are not ‘protecting’ the group who are not vaccinated. – uh doesn’t that assume that the vaccine works before it is tested?

Johnny probably doesn't realize, he's actually committing the very act he's accusing us of.

Each trial must be conducted according to the best knowledge we have, at the time we have it.

Sometimes we do test a vaccine by comparing "a group that gets the vaccine" against "a group that gets no vaccine". Does that happen often? No, it doesn't. It only happens when we don't already have a vaccine for the disease and we really don't know whether the vaccine we hope will be our first will provide greater protection than an unvaccinated person would have.

If we do have an existing vaccine, then yes, it is profoundly unethical to say "Yes, we do have a vaccine that passed its own safety and efficacy trials and represents the best protection we know of against this disease. However, if you're in the control group, we won't give you any protection at all. Why? Well, because some wanker out there has a profound distrust of vaccines, and he thinks that, instead of testing a new vaccine against the best existing vaccine, we should test each vaccine against absolutely nothing, just in case all of our previously collected data indicating the efficacy of vaccines was wrong."

Johnny accuses us of assuming the efficacy of vaccines, without having the evidence to back that view. It's actually just the reverse; Johnny wants a lack of efficacy of vaccines to be assumed, over and over again, in every single trial, even when the evidence completely contradicts that view.

@Kreb

It’s weird how different people react to differently to drugs.

On the two occasions that I snorted cocaine, I had no reaction whatsoever although others did.

It is interesting that anus Feldspar obviously has a vaccine belief system all cranked up.
Tell us why vaccines are not tested against real placebos - usually it is another vaccine or the adjunct in the vaccine.

All those fiddled efficacy studies too, all allowable under vaccine belief but rather naughty.

That complete bull about knowing they are 'safe' too, it is pushing the boundaries of 'safe' to bendy proportions.

Herd immunity is another medical urban myth, oft quoted like some psalm. The only herd immunity studies ever done were with natural immunity, not vaccines. It is all hype to suggest injecting kids with cellular detritus infers 'health'.

Like calling fast food - food, immunisation doesn't immunise anything.

Oh, maybe I am wrong. Immunisation immunises rational thinking, I mean injecting aluminum salts into kids to make vaccines work better?

Oh, maybe I am wrong. Immunisation immunises rational thinking, I mean injecting aluminum salts into kids to make vaccines work better?

This is why no one can take Johnny seriously (well, it's one of several reasons). He wants to have it both ways. He wants to say "You stupid vaccine-supporters! You don't have cold, hard facts showing that vaccines work! All you have is airy hypothesizing about what should work! Those airy hypotheses are nothing, next to cold, hard fact!"

But then he wants to turn around and utterly discount matters on which the cold, hard facts are known and are in favor of the vaccine supporters - matters such as the fact that adjuvants enhance immune response and make vaccines work better - and discount them just because he sneers. "You stupid vaccine-supporters! You only have cold, hard facts showing that vaccines work! Those cold, hard facts are nothing, next to my airy hypothesizing about why they shouldn't work!"

@Johnny Labile - I am no expert, but I was able in a rather short search to find serious studies showing that aluminum adjuvants improve immune response to vaccines. I am thus confused by what you mean by

I mean injecting aluminum salts into kids to make vaccines work better?

Yes, apparently they do.

Tell us why vaccines are not tested against real placebos – usually it is another vaccine or the adjunct in the vaccine....

Herd immunity is another medical urban myth, oft quoted like some psalm. The only herd immunity studies ever done were with natural immunity, not vaccines.

Both of these "points" have already been directly shown to you to be false.

Oh, maybe I am wrong. Immunisation immunises rational thinking,

You mean like simply repeating the same thing over and over even though you've been unequivocally, trivially shown to be wrong?

Johnny Labile: "Herd immunity is another medical urban myth, oft quoted like some psalm. The only herd immunity studies ever done were with natural immunity, not vaccines."

Citations? Though we won't expect anything but silly excuses, like what you and friends did with my question in Comment #87.

Just for your information, England and Wales are not in the USA, and there is a difference between mortality and morbidity. One difference was I did not want one of them mentioned.

Johnny Labile (my mind sees labia) clearly doesn't know what Rhinderpest is. So much for your canards Johnny.

Didn't one of our trolls have some hangup with rhinderpest?

Oh, and best vaccines and autism site ever: http://howdovaccinescauseautism.com/

Tell us why vaccines are not tested against real placebos

Johnny clearly hasn't looked at the research, either. If he had, he would have found that several of the newer vaccines approved within recent years have been tested against saline, as well as against placebos consisting of everything but the antigen. And, if he understood clinical trial design, he would understand why the adjuvanted placebo is an important comparator.

@Science Mom --

I think mood lability. But I think lots of things can be labile. Chemicals and what have you.
__________________

I don't understand why I'm getting the silent treatment wrt vacuum denial. BTW. It's an innocent question. I really want to know.

I think both our cats are in vacuum denial.

Johnny Labile (my mind sees labia)

1. Sujet à glisser, à tomber, manquer.
 Mémoire labile, mémoire faible qui manque souvent au besoin.
  FURETIÉRE, Factums, t. II, p. 318: Elles [de mauvaises poésies] se répandaient dans des oreilles populaires, et n'étaient reçues que dans des mémoires labiles et de vrais tonneaux percés, en sorte qu'elles tombaient dans l'oubli

Like calling fast food – food, immunisation doesn’t immunise anything.

And yet, whole generations of students survived on fast food and ramen.
And yet, plenty of private businesses do nothing but inject rabbits, goats and horses with vaccines suspensions of molecules and sell the obtained antibodies.

Johnny Labile,

Tell us why vaccines are not tested against real placebos – usually it is another vaccine or the adjunct in the vaccine.

Sometimes, but how else can you distinguish between any reactions to the antibodies in the vaccine and reactions to the adjuvant? Most adjuvants have been in use for more than half a century and have a proven safety profile. How would using this kind of placebo interfere with efficacy studies anyway? Are you suggesting that the aluminum adjuvant placebo in the Gardasil trial I cited above, for example, was responsible for its effect?

When administered to subjects who had not been previously exposed to either HPV-16 or HPV-18, the prophylactic HPV vaccine was highly effective (98%) in preventing HPV-16–related and HPV-18–related cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2 or 3 and adenocarcinoma in situ.

That's one amazing placebo!

All those fiddled efficacy studies too, all allowable under vaccine belief but rather naughty.

What "fiddled efficacy studies" are you referring to? Are you suggesting the Gardasil trial I mentioned is fraudulent? Would you care to explain what evidence you have for such a claim? How are these studies "naughty"? Is it because they break the imaginary rules you came across on an antivaccine website somewhere?

That complete bull about knowing they are ‘safe’ too, it is pushing the boundaries of ‘safe’ to bendy proportions.

You mean a placebo-controlled clinical trial on thousands of people that finds no difference in side effects between a placebo and a vaccine, like the Gardasil trial is somehow invalid? That the post-marketing surveillance of millions of people finding no evidence of vaccine reactions is somehow bogus? I find it hard to conceive any better ways of assuring vaccine safety. I assume you have a better way, do share.

Herd immunity is another medical urban myth, oft quoted like some psalm. The only herd immunity studies ever done were with natural immunity, not vaccines.

That's not true. There have been many studies on herd immunity done with vaccinated people. It doesn't matter what the source of immunity is, whether natural immunity, induced by vaccines or by wearing a biohazard suit, herd immunity still functions. How could it not? It's a very simple concept, that if Fred is immune to measles he can't catch it from Mary and give it to George.

Anyone who claims that herd immunity is a myth cannot possibly understand the concept. It's like claiming that only rain will prevent the spread of a forest fire, and that artificial water cannot make a firebreak.

It is all hype to suggest injecting kids with cellular detritus infers ‘health’.

"Cellular detritus"? Sounds awful, until you look at what is in vaccines and realize that the hype is from people like you. Me, I'm full of cellular detritus, it's my main ingredient.

Like calling fast food – food, immunisation doesn’t immunise anything.

What a very silly claim. If immunization doesn't immunize anything, why do children in the UK still get chicken pox and children in the US generally don't? Why has chicken pox incidence fallen by more than 90% in the US since the vaccine was introduced, but hasn't changed in the UK. There are a hundred other pieces of evidence I could refer to.

I mean injecting aluminum salts into kids to make vaccines work better?

It's amazing how well that works, meaning the vaccine can contain less of that "cellular debris" you are so concerned about. The amount of aluminum absorbed into the bloodstream from a vaccine is less than that absorbed from food. Did you know that a dose of aluminum antacid may contain 5,000 times as much aluminum as there is in any vaccine? That even a child with poor kidney function could easily excrete the aluminum from a vaccine, just as they do the aluminum they absorb from food?

Me, I’m full of cellular detritus, it’s my main ingredient.

Me, I'm just a lawnmower, you can tell by the way I walk.

@DL #174 love the link

@sheepmilker --

Nice.

There was a lovely little uninflected Bowie snippet somewhere in something Orac quoted the other day, too. (Chiropractors; spine out of place; "Suffragette City." )

The great thing about herd immunity is that it protects you even if you don't believe in it.

sheepmilker, you're wasting your time here - there's a future for you in the fire escape trade.

DB: ha! Good one...

" “You stupid vaccine-supporters! You only have cold, hard facts showing that vaccines work! Anus feldspar

Well we don't do we, last years vaccine failure was whooping cough, highest uptake of vaccine ever coinciding with the highest outbreaks ever. Way over the mythical levels for herd immunity in the US too.

This year its 'primary mumps vaccine failure' in the US.

Most years it's primary flu vaccine failure, even says inside the packet of Fluval " there are no rigorous trials to show that Flulaval or should I say Flulol, will prevent you getting influenza".

Hardly rigorous hard facts, excuse the alliteration.

" As I understand the reason why vaccine-derived polio (cVDPV) occurs for example is due to poor sanitation, immune-compromised communities, under- or un- immunized communities" from South Africa

Well here is more vaccine failure mythology, you understand nothing. The clue is in the title, vaccine derived which is now known as Bill Gates variant Polio.

Johnny Labile --

Vacuum denial or GTFO.

@Johnny - having just read the Insert for Flulaval - I can say, without a shadow of doubt, that you are lying.

"Just for your information, England and Wales are not in the USA, and there is a difference between mortality and morbidity. One difference was I did not want one of them mentioned." Christ

Of course you didn't want it mentioned, the fact that you quoted doctor notifications as a source of totally biased data as opposed to coroner's death results which are harder to fiddle, is typical of vaccine psuedo science.

It is what we have come to expect, smoke screens, appeals to emotion and straw men - all in the normal vocabulary of the Septic thinker

"-as well as against placebos consisting of everything but the antigen. And, if he understood clinical trial design, he would understand why the adjuvanted placebo is an important comparator." Turd

Of course everything but the atigen as a comparitor is very very important. If both groups get meningitis they can rule it out of the Antigen group!

It is like testing grape shot agaiinst bird shot and excluding the mortality in both groups! Thanks for opening that up.

"The great thing about herd immunity is that it protects you even if you don’t believe in it." Dangerous bullshit

This protection shit medical myth, how about the primary vaccine failure of whooping cough and mumps in the US then, it didn't even protect those who had the vaccine!

@ Labile

What are you talking about? You are not making sense.

"like the Gardasil trial is somehow invalid? That the post-marketing surveillance of millions of people finding no evidence of vaccine reactions is somehow bogus?"
Kreb cycle

Not true at all. One year after the first cohort given Gadasil, of the recipients who had pre vaccine swabbed positive for HPV before being given the vaccine it was found that the cervical cancer rate had gone up by 44%.

Nowhere has this preswabbing been continued, I suppose that's market forces.

Well here is more vaccine failure mythology, you understand nothing. The clue is in the title, vaccine derived which is now known as Bill Gates variant Polio.

It is in the "title," but not the part that you picked. Sound it out: cVDPV.

Johnny Liar:

Well we don’t do we, last years vaccine failure was whooping cough, highest uptake of vaccine ever coinciding with the highest outbreaks ever. Way over the mythical levels for herd immunity in the US too.

Citation needed for uptake and for herd immunity levels.
@190:

the fact that you quoted doctor notifications as a source of totally biased data as opposed to coroner’s death results which are harder to fiddle

Evidence that doctor notifications are biased, please.
@192:

This protection shit medical myth, how about the primary vaccine failure of whooping cough and mumps in the US then, it didn’t even protect those who had the vaccine!

Given that most of the victims were unvaccinated or too young to get the vaccine, you are lying.
@194:

One year after the first cohort given Gadasil, of the recipients who had pre vaccine swabbed positive for HPV before being given the vaccine it was found that the cervical cancer rate had gone up by 44%.

Citation needed for this. Oh, and nothing from Tomljenovic or Shaw.

Comment of mine in moderation.

You stupid vaccine-supporters! You only have cold, hard facts showing that vaccines work!

Well we don’t do we, last years vaccine failure was whooping cough, highest uptake of vaccine ever coinciding with the highest outbreaks ever. Way over the mythical levels for herd immunity in the US too.

"Daisuke Matsuzaka was supposed to be a really great pitcher, when he got signed by the Red Sox. But then his actual performance wasn't all that great. Therefore, there is no evidence that there are any good pitchers anywhere in baseball."

It's the exact same logic.

Johnny Labile:

Not true at all. One year after the first cohort given Gadasil, of the recipients who had pre vaccine swabbed positive for HPV before being given the vaccine it was found that the cervical cancer rate had gone up by 44%.

Soooo....preventing HPV infection doesn't help if you already have HPV infection? Is that what you're saying? Because seriously, that just looks like you're confirming that HPV causes cervical cancer.

Well we don’t do we, last years vaccine failure was whooping cough, highest uptake of vaccine ever coinciding with the highest outbreaks ever.

Reported pertussis incidence was down in 2013, Johnnycake.

Johnny Labile –

Vacuum denial or GTFO.

I'm the wrong Johnny, but I'll take a crack at it.

Back in the day, Aristotle thought a vacuum couldn't exist. He had a bit of flawed reasoning behind it, but said 'Nature abhors a vacuum'.

The Catholic Church, in its first 1700 years or so, believed Aristotle had it all correct. Besides, if God is everywhere, you can't have a space where there is nothing.

In 1644 Torricelli went and actually made a vacuum by inventing the barometer. As you can imagine, this caused several others to start investigating and experimenting, until finally the evidence was overwhelming.

I don't think the Cathloics still (officially) believe Aristotle was right as far as vacuums go, but I dunno when they changed their minds.

Let's look at the 2012 Washington outbreak:

Valid vaccination history was available for 1,829 of 2,006 (91.2%) patients aged 3 months–19 years. Overall, 758 of 1,000 (75.8%) patients aged 3 months–10 years were up-to-date with the childhood diphtheria and tetanus toxoids and acellular pertussis (DTaP) doses. Receipt of Tdap was documented in 97 of 225 (43.1%) patients aged 11–12 years and in 466 of 604 (77.2%) patients aged 13–19 years. Estimated DTaP coverage in Washington among children aged 19–35 months was 93.2% for ≥3 doses and 81.9% for ≥4 doses in 2010; Tdap coverage in adolescents aged 13–17 years was estimated at 70.6% (3)....

Given the high transmissibility of B. pertussis, a proportion of vaccinated persons remains susceptible and can become infected during a pertussis outbreak. Unvaccinated children have at least an eightfold greater risk for pertussis than children fully vaccinated with DTaP (7). However, because in most of the cases the patients were vaccinated, the 4.5% of Washington school children who were exempted from vaccination during 2011–2012 represented only a small proportion of those at risk for pertussis in the state. Although vaccinated children can develop pertussis, they are less infectious, have milder symptoms and shorter illness duration, and are at reduced risk for severe outcomes, including hospitalization (8–10).

Let's also consider a revised real-world estimate for 'R₀' (there's a lower estimate in PLoS One from 2012, but it's not clear to me how well the European matrices generalize) of 10.6. The crudest estimate for the herd-protection threshold is (1 – 1/10.6)/E, where E is the proportion protected by the vaccine. This is the second source of uncertainty, and it's substantial.

What it obviously means, though, again subject to the caveat that this is a crude estimate, is that interruption of sustained transmission is impossible unless 9.6/10.6E < 1, or E > 90.6%.

For convenience (and open access), let's take Baxter et al.'s 64% for Tdap and bump it up a little (PMID 23873919; see Fig. 3), say, to 80%, to try to capture the DTaP population. This is not failure of the herd effect, it is a statement that pertussis is not currently eradicable.

doctor notifications as a source of totally biased data as opposed to coroner’s death results which are harder to fiddle

Letme get this straight.
Doctors will misreport cases, while the patient is still around to complain, but will feel constrained to tell the true when the patient is in no more shape to contradict the report.
No, because, in my country, the doctor issuing the certificate of death was often the primary care doctor.

Anyway, if we are talking about some bureaucrat shifting numbers from one Excel cell to another, how is it more difficult with mortality compared to number of sick people?

how about the primary vaccine failure of whooping cough and mumps in the US then, it didn’t even protect those who had the vaccine!

Pertussis is so obviously not primary failure that I wonder whether you know what the phrase actually means. All signs are that mumps isn't either.

One year after the first cohort given Gadasil, of the recipients who had pre vaccine swabbed positive for HPV before being given the vaccine it was found that the cervical cancer rate had gone up by 44%.

Citation needed for this.

This is usually cited as "according to FDA documents" by the usual cranks. The first thing to note is that the assertion directly contradicts its companion, that it's impossible to know whether HPV vaccination has prevented any cancers.

This was a bit of a pain in the ass to find (you're welcome, Johnnycakes), but the claim traces back to here (PDF; p. 13)...

[I need more links.]

Erm, there are two working links in the foregoing. Anyway,

... and, directly, here (PDF; p. 8). That is, to Sin Hang Lee.

Johnny Labile: "Of course you didn’t want it mentioned, the fact that you quoted doctor notifications as a source of totally biased data as opposed to coroner’s death results which are harder to fiddle, is typical of vaccine psuedo science"

Where did I mention "doctor notifications"? I clearly used census data, and provided the link to the very long pdf of a review of American census data from the 20th century.

Why don't you just answer my question of why the rate of measles incidence in the USA dropped 90% between 1960 and 1970? Measles has been a reportable disease in the USA for most of that century, and if a child was diagnosed by a doctor, the medical office was required by to notify the local health authorities. The cases that were missed were those where the parents did not take the child in for medical care.

Mr. Labile, you have made many claims, but you can't seem to back them up.

Measles has been a reportable disease in the USA for most of that century, and if a child was diagnosed by a doctor, the medical office was required by to notify the local health authorities.

Measles became notifiable to the Public Health Service in 1912, but that was a recommendation. To this day, there's no requirement to report to the CDC. Meaningfully quantifying this might require a tedious survey of the legislative history of all 50 states. Irritatingly, this is incomplete.

Thanks for the clarification, Narad. It does point to the difficulties in quantifying incidence of any disease.

It still doesn't excuse Labile's posting mortality rates from another country in response the the drop of morbidity between 1960 and 1970 in the USA.

It does point to the difficulties in quantifying incidence of any disease.

We do know to a moral certainty that U.S. measles incidence was grossly underreported in the 1950s, which is why it sprang to mind.

@The only poster named Johnny who matters, in re#201:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x8qBP5j9Mk

Much obliged. Pax vobiscum.

Narad: "We do know to a moral certainty that U.S. measles incidence was grossly underreported in the 1950s, which is why it sprang to mind."

There are some studies that were performed to see the affect of the vaccines in the 1960s. Here are a pair I found that was to see the effect of the new measles vaccine on a predicted measles epidemic in one county:

Mass measles immunization in Los Angeles County

Measles epidemiology and vaccine use in Los Angeles County, 1963 and 1966

Those paper directly contradict Mr. Labile's comment "The only herd immunity studies ever done were with natural immunity, not vaccines.”

Labile *could* be a genuinely confused loon, but his initial use of sockpuppets makes that charitable interpretation unlikely, so we're left with "time-wasting troll".

All those fiddled efficacy studies too, all allowable under vaccine belief but rather naughty.

That complete bull about knowing they are ‘safe’ too, it is pushing the boundaries of ‘safe’ to bendy proportions.

Hey, Johnnycakes, do you by any chance believe that "rabies" deaths are caused by fear?

Those paper directly contradict Mr. Labile’s comment “The only herd immunity studies ever done were with natural immunity, not vaccines.”

I remain fond of the more recent Japanese experience with immunizing schoolchildren against influenza and generating a big honking signal among the elderly.

I think we have a hit.

I think we have a hit.

The style is certainly familiar, down to the "pseudo septic scientists".

The style is certainly familiar, down to the “pseudo septic scientists”.

I'm calling it.

Here: "It is what we have come to expect, smoke screens, appeals to emotion and straw men – all in the normal vocabulary of the Septic thinker"

There: "It interests me that the septic smokescreen descends everytime there is an opportunity to discuss something of interest. Is this just ant science or ignorance JJ?"

In another thread, the sockpuppet troll alternates between 'mythbuster' and 'spiniker'.

In another thread, the sockpuppet troll alternates between ‘mythbuster’ and ‘spiniker’.

He forgot the "homologous recombinaltion."

spiniker said,
August 23, 2013 at 1:16 pm
you are pro vaccine therefore it’s impossible, like a vacuum, god tells us it doesn’t exist – but it does – burn them. All hail bar-med.

Who would have guessed it! Labile / the craic / mythbuster / spiniker is also a paediatrician!

...And over at ERV he's "buckthetrend". He's a busy wee dude.

Who would have guessed it! Labile / the craic / mythbuster / spiniker is also a paediatrician!

Add "jenson."

Add Sarah007.

"Maz."

"sara007."

"Anonymous."

In other words, it is a troll that is possibly living in his parents' basement. Random amusement is all he provides.

"Ernsty."

a troll that is possibly living in his parents’ basement

Who tends to accuse his targets of playing too much X-box. Projection? One can but speculate.

"ukeidding."

Ernsty and 'Humpty' within a single thread. He seems to stalk J.Jones.

"orwell123."

“ukeidding.”
Also 'pebbles' within the same thread. He really should see someone about that multiple-personality problem.

Ernsty and ‘Humpty’ within a single thread. He seems to stalk J.Jones.
Glancing again at that thread, he uses the additional nyms "Ernstymate" and "consultant" to agree with himself.

Heh, I forgot about this.

Doesn't Orac ban sock puppets?

"Anonymous" again.

"skepticυnt."

^ (Etc.)

"smoky mirror."

"Yolanda."

"Johnny Marsdon."

And I think we're done: The Hope Osteopathic Clinic Essex.

Doesn’t Orac ban sock puppets?

Sure does. IP check on aisles Narad and HDB please.

"lovelyday" (arguing with Narad).
"hangonaminute" (agreeing with his other sockpuppet Maz).

Sure does. IP check on aisles Narad and HDB please.
Harumph.

OK, nearly done.

Hello, Philip Hills, chickenshіt douchebag!

Oh hai Hope Osteopathic Clinic, Essex.

Goodness me, there is a Philip Hills running the Hope Osteopathic Clinic. I didn't see that coming.

Sarah007 (Feb 12, 2012):
In the immune response the percentage of ‘aquired immunity’ is about 2%. The other 98% of our reaction to any ‘disease process’ is non specific. That is fever, Diahorreah, vomiting, sweating.

Hope Osteopathic Clinic (Jan 7 2013):
"Only 2% of your total immunity is 'acquired' the other 98% is fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, sweating" Pasteur institute.

Do I win a prize?

OK, I should have looked upthread. Still claiming 2nd prize.

Narad @205: so the claim Mr Labile made is a distortion of what the research actually says?
And our commenter is a sockpuppeter whose real name is Philip Hills?
I'm quite impressed with your research skills.

Let's just say that there is a spectacularly prolific sockpuppeting troll who was initially infesting a couple of UK skeptic blogs back in 2009, popping up to defend chiropractice and osteopathy whenever they were criticised, and has since been expanding his operations, although cycling through a short distinctive list of obsessions. And that someone at the Hope Osteopathic & Homeopathic Clinic has recently posted an update to the clinic's FB page repeating many of those obsessions, word-for-word, including the same spelling mistakes

Over the years the troll has kept making the same bullsh1t claims, ignoring every well-intended attempt to correct his factual errors. His grammar has deteriorated and his insults have become more scatological. In some comment threads he has spawned half-a-dozen identities to bolster his opinions. He betrays a disturbing fondness for stalking female bloggers and introducing sexual connotations when he insults them.

He used to comment at RI under various sockpuppets (most notably 'sarah007') but has been sticking to other haunts since early 2013, when he called for a fatwa against Orac and had to be reminded of the RI 'No-death-threats' policy. Only to recently return. Therapy would not go amiss.

Wow! Narad and Dr. Bimmler, the Holmes and Watson of RI!

And that someone at the Hope Osteopathic & Homeopathic Clinic has recently posted an update to the clinic’s FB page repeating many of those obsessions....

There is zero question in my mind that that's Philip Hills. I wonder how that Rotary–polio eradication axis is panning out for him.

"Treating a wide range of health problems, with Classical osteopathy. These include ... Pregnancy; SPD; Babies...."

He seems to have forgotten about this.

The "Proud owner of a Jaguar" part of his profile certainly explains why the various sockpuppets so often fall back on mechanic / garage analogies!

the first line of ‘treatment’ is [...] like taking your car to a garage with a knocking noise and being given ear plugs

I see myself as more Inspector Lestrade.

I wonder how that Rotary–polio eradication axis is panning out for him.

He alternates between (a) sharing in the glory, and (b) gatecrashing Rotary FB threads with links to crank-website claims that "vaccines are the cause of polio!!".

When I pointed out the excellent safety profile of Gardasil and the huge post-marketing surveillance program looking, in vain, for the slightest sign of any significant vaccine-related reactions, Labile retorted:

Not true at all. One year after the first cohort given Gadasil, of the recipients who had pre vaccine swabbed positive for HPV before being given the vaccine it was found that the cervical cancer rate had gone up by 44%.

That's a blatant falsehood, based on some odd results in a single trial that hasn't been replicated despite other studies doing the same thing (see the link Narad provided). Gardasil is a remarkably safe and effective vaccine that prevents HPV infection, prevents cervical hyperplasia, prevents cervical cancer and will save thousands of lives and incalculable misery. Why would anyone want to spread lies about a medical breakthrough like this?

The other 'Labile' lie that really annoys me is the claim that, "India has a strange surge in children with paralysis" (from a FB comment). No it hasn't. As part of the final push to eradicate polio once and for all there is an active surveillance program looking for all cases of acute flaccid paralysis to make sure they are not due to polio. It isn't surprising that when teams of investigators go from village to village asking if anyone is paralyzed, they will find more cases than were reported previously.

These "extra" cases are due to other enteroviruses and to other causes such as snakebite and car accidents (which anyone who has visited India will know are all-too frequent). India has not seen a case of VAPP since 2010. And that's at a time when anyone with symptoms even remotely resembling polio are being tested for it.

I can only assume that anyone repeating this lie is aware that it is not true, and that they are being wilfuly dishonest, especially when it is clearly part of a body of lies designed to persuade parents not to vaccine their children. Which I think is despicable.

Goodness me, there is a Philip Hills running the Hope Osteopathic Clinic. I didn’t see that coming.

That alleged "Clinic" is just a few miles from my current location in east London. I am deeply depressed to find a source of such mind-boggling ignorance in my locale. It seems that 'Johnny Labile' and his colleagues have uncritically swallowed all the most inane and insane fabricated nonsense about conventional and alternative medicine that is liberally squirted all over the interwebz. Perhaps losing all one's critical faculties is a side effect of "cosmetic acupuncture".

India has not seen a case of VAPP since 2010.

Those are VDPV numbers. The last VAPP report that I'm aware of is from 1999. The best one can do, as far as I'm aware, is reckon from the estimated risk, because there doesn't appear to be actual surveillance.

Looks like VAPP is filed as NPAFP (PDF).

^ "Captured under" would be a better way of putting that.

Harumph. My comment on the troll's Gardasil obsession has vanished into a spambucket. It must have included a few banned words.

My point, FWIW, is that some people of a trolly disposition do not handle it well when they think everything they say is sheltered by anonymity.

@Narad,
I confess the terminology still confuses me, either it is inconsistent or my brain is. VAPP = para;ysis, VDPV = virus derived from the vaccine cVDPV = circulating polio from the vaccine strain. Is that right?

Bottom line - paralytic polio from the OPV is exceedingly rare, 1 case for every 4 million doses administered on average by this account (PDF)).

It helps to have a glossary of those acronyms from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

http://www.polioeradication.org/Acronyms.aspx

HDB,

It must have included a few banned words.

It's hard to resist the temptation in the face of such incandescent nonsense.

It helps to have a glossary of those acronyms from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

Thanks lilady. I know what the acronyms stand for, its their use that sometimes confuses me. I had assumed that the WHO use of the categories 'total confirmed polio' and 'wild-virus confirmed polio' was to distinguish between wild and vaccine-derived polio, but I think I was mistaken. The reference Narad gave states that:

Identification of wild virus confirms “polio” but all other cases including VAPP are classified as “non-polio”. Finding vaccine-derived virus in cases of AFP does not prove VAPP, as it may be a mere passenger infection.

So it seems that simple surveillance cannot distinguish between AFP caused by the vaccine virus and AFP due to other causes. It takes a study like this one to estimate the incidence of VAPP. For this study:

VAPP was defined as occurring in AFP cases if there was residual weakness 60 days after the onset of paralysis, if vaccine-related poliovirus was isolated from any stool sample, and if no wild poliovirus was
isolated from any stool sample. [...] There is no standard case definition of VAPP.

I don't really see how they can rule out another cause of AFP in these cases. What if an OPV recipient contracted a different enterovirus, for example, and that caused the AFP? They would still have vaccine virus in their stools, and would be classified as VAPP, wouldn't they?

It must have included a few banned words.
It’s hard to resist the temptation in the face of such incandescent nonsense.

No obvious oaths were used. I was just observing that sockpuppet-dude's perseveration on the "Gardasil / 44%-increase" story provides one of the sets of search terms for zeroing in on his various avatars and incarnations.

Part of me wants to notify his clients and Rotary-club colleagues and warn them of his on-line skeeziness, but my other personalities are thinking "Hey, he's an osteopathy / acupuncture grifter; it's not like he's pretending to be a decent human being."

Trollery.

Brilliant.

@ Krebiozen: Here, a "freebie" chapter from the Vaccines book (6th Edition, Plotkin, Orenstein and Offit), regarding polio surveillance and differential diagnoses, including the importance of 60 day follow-up of reported cases of AFP:

https://www.inkling.com/read/vaccines-plotkin-orenstein-offit-6th/chapt…

"@Johnny – having just read the Insert for Flulaval – I can say, without a shadow of doubt, that you are lying." lawrence of the Kazi.

Here is a picture of the insert I have

http://www.whale.to/v/flulaval_vaccine7.html

And here is an extract pointing out for all you vaccine believers that antibodies don't protect because there is no correlation between levels and protection.

Clinical pharmacology
307 - Specific levels of HI antibody titres post vaccination with inactivated influenza vaccines have not been correlated with protection from influenza but the antibody titres have been used as a measure of vaccine effictivness.

Whale.to?! WHALE.TO?!?!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!
I hereby invoke Scopie's Law. "In any discussion about medicine or science, citing whale.to as a credible source loses you the argument immediately, and gets you laughed out of the forum.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi Julian
If one photocopies the leaflet and it says 'no rigorous trials have demonstrated that Flulaval vaccine works why does who flags that up matter?

Maybe we should have jerk's law, any jerk who believes medical peer review over facts is one.
The 307 quote was not from whale, it was from a general search.

Looks like Julian is a vaccine believer

Okay then, if the insert is valid (and not "adjusted") you should have no problem finding it on a trustworthy website.

Looks like Julian is a vaccine believer

Why yes I am. You say that as if it's a bad thing.

Hey, Labile/mythbuster/whatever, go click on herr doktor bimler's link on trollery. You've been found out.

Here is a picture of the insert I have

Maybe you should try the real one (PDF).

Flulaval started out as an accelerated approval in 2006 for people 18 and older. (Note that Philip Hill, chickenshіt douchebag, also failed to concern himself with wondering where section 14 is.)

It's all sitting in the regulatory history, particularly the 2011 and 2013 "summary basis" items.

^ "Philip Hills, chickenshіt douchebag"

@Narad: so the insert on Whale.to was "edited". Can't say I'm surprised, but nice work.

The 307 quote was not from whale, it was from a general search.

This seems quite unlikely, as no combination of text subsets actually turns it up in that form. It's of little consequence, as you seem to be not only under the impression that it applies beyond a narrow context, but also that it says something that it doesn't. Here's some help:

Specific levels of HI antibody titres post vaccination with inactivated influenza vaccines have not been correlated with protection from influenza

Let's pick a random U.S. version (PDF):

"A specific post-vaccination hemagglutination-inhibition (HI) antibody titer has not been correlated with protection from H5N1 influenza illness; however, HI titers have been used as a measure of influenza vaccine activity. In some human challenge studies with other influenza viruses, antibody titers of ≥1:40 have been associated with protection from influenza illness in up to 50% of subjects.[8,9]"

([8] PMID 15163501; [9] PMID 4509641)

Of course, the fact is that for a seasonal vaccine, titers aren't particularly important, actual effectiveness is.

so the insert on Whale.to was “edited”

Out of date.

Ah. Thanks again, Narad.

I can't believe Philip Hills aka Labile came back here with a sloppy whale.to reference especially after being exposed as a creepy, scientifically-illiterate quack.

Perhaps he thought he could salvage one item and pretend the rest of the ass-stomping didn't happen for long enough to start all over again.

Looks like drinking at the Osteopathy Clinic started early yesterday.
Mr Essex Osteopath has a history of making up quotations and then attributing them to authorities (flu-jab packaging; the Pasteur Institute; Sabin; the FDA). Is this typical of the level of intellectual honesty in the profession?

Is this typical of the level of intellectual honesty in the profession?

Rhetorical question?

Just a reminder that osteopaths in the USA did get their act together and go through the same licensing as MDs. Please do not confuse them with osteopaths outside of North America.

osteopaths in the USA did get their act together and go through the same licensing as MDs
Thanks. I came across a number of other osteopath / chiropractor Facebok pages circulating the same antivaxx piffle as the Hope Osteopathy Clinic Johnny Labile, but they were all UK-based.

It was one effect of the Flexner Report. The other was the closing of many homeopathic hospitals (though the name "Hahnemann" is used in the hospital name for Drexel's medical school).

One image burned in my brain is the last time my son was in an emergency department at a teaching hospital and the family medicine resident assigned to him had the initials "DO" after his name. Because here in the USA they are real doctors!

Maybe we should have jerk’s law, any jerk who believes medical peer review over facts is one.

I would love to know how one establishes "facts" about vaccines or any other medical interventions without using peer-reviewed science. My personal feeling is that people who reject medical science, invent their own "facts" or uncritically swallow dangerous nonsense from whale.to, and refuse to face reality in the face of overwhelming evidence are far worse than jerks.

would love to know how one establishes “facts” about vaccines or any other medical interventions without using peer-reviewed science. My personal feeling is that people who reject medical science, invent their own “facts” or uncritically swallow dangerous nonsense from whale.to, and refuse to face reality in the face of overwhelming evidence are far worse than jerks.

QFT.

I would love to know how one establishes “facts” about vaccines or any other medical interventions without using peer-reviewed science.

I think it's:

Step One: Find something/anything on the internet that confirms your preexisting beliefs.

Step Two: Accept it as gospel, uncritically.

Step Three: Call all things that contradict it fantasy and/or propaganda.

Step Four: Accuse those who disagree with you of doing what you're doing.

____________________

But I defer to Johnny Labile.

http://www.drugs.com/pro/flulaval.html

You Gotta be a vaccine believer to not find this:

"Indications and Usage for Flulaval

Flulaval® is indicated for active immunization of adults (18 years of age and older) against influenza disease caused by influenza virus subtypes A and type B contained in the vaccine.

This indication is based on immune response elicited by Flulaval, and there have been no controlled trials demonstrating a decrease in influenza disease after vaccination with Flulaval [see Clinical Studies (14)]."

I can hear all those septics in the thread puking in their coffee - touche

Johnny Labile, you are a liar.

[T]here have been no controlled trials demonstrating a decrease in influenza disease after vaccination with Flulaval

I clicked through to the link Narad supplied in #281. I then did a word search for "controlled".

Efficacy Trial in Children: The efficacy of FLULAVAL QUADRIVALENT was evaluated in Study 5, a randomized, observer-blind, non-influenza vaccine-controlled study conducted in 3 countries in Asia, 3 in Latin America, and 2 in the Middle East/Europe during the
295 2010-2011 influenza season.

Verdict?

Vaccine efficacy for FLULAVAL QUADRIVALENT met the pre-defined criterion of >30%
323 for the lower limit of the 2-sided 95% CI

For adults:

Efficacy Trial in Adults: The efficacy of FLULAVAL was evaluated in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study conducted in the United States during the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 influenza seasons (Study 3).

The verdict?

Non-inferiority of FLULAVAL to the comparator vaccine was established for all 6 co-primary endpoints.

The only thing we're puking our drinks over is your sheer mendacity.

so the insert on Whale.to was “edited”

I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!

Johnny, you *do* realize, don't you, that a controlled study to determine whether it prevents influenza infection would require deliberately exposing patients to influenza? Including those in your control group, who would then be reasonably expected to contract a potentially deadly disease?

Krebiozen: "My personal feeling is that people who reject medical science, invent their own “facts” or uncritically swallow dangerous nonsense from whale.to, and refuse to face reality in the face of overwhelming evidence are far worse than jerks."

They are obnoxious delusional trolls, just like Labile/mythbuster/sarah001 has aptly demonstrated over the past few years.

I can hear all those septics in the thread puking in their coffee

You might have had better luck achieving that if you had just supplied this.

" “My personal feeling is that people who reject medical science,................" Chris the soothsayer

Where is the science in medicine? Most of it is voodoo, flu vaccine is a great example of medical woo. Cochraine does a 96 season study of the efficacy of flu vaccine and tests the top 10 claims.

No 1 is "flu vaccine halves winter deaths" Cochraine tested this anecdote and found that only 10% of winter deaths are attributable to 'flu like illness'. It concluded that to halve winter deaths the flu vaccine would have to have an impact on road traffic accidents!

As for saying that it's ok for the Flulaval leaflet to say that there are no rigorous trials to show it works and cauliflower tells us it's unethical to test it, well surely if you believe the contagion theory of flu we all are exposed.

I have never had a flu vaccine and have never had flu. I am going to invent a potion for walking on water and then put inside "never known to work as testing it puts people at risk of drowning" If that's good enough for vaccine woo then surely it's good enough for any sales talk.

Like saying steroid cream is 'treatment' for eczema, all it does is reverse transport metabolites into extra cellular space, that's why when you stop using it the medical term is 'exacerbation'. What a con

Next you will be telling us that the genetic determinability of disease is a science and it will get even sillier.

Milkmaids, cowpox smallpox, little gingerbread houses....

You might have had better luck achieving that if you had just supplied this.

Perhaps Philip Hills would be so kind as to explain how fruits and vegetables have no sugar in them. And also how they will cure one of "passing frequent wind".

Next you will be telling us that the genetic determinability of disease is a science and it will get even sillier.

Tell that to my friend with Sickle Cell...

Seriously though, do you believe that there are diseases that are purely genetic? Do you believe that there are diseases caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors?

Perhaps Philip Hills would be so kind as to explain how fruits and vegetables have no sugar in them. And also how they will cure one of “passing frequent wind”.

And "urination". I've been plagued with this my whole life. Several times a day, sometimes even at night. You don't know how embarassing it is having to ask where the john is whenever the need arises.

The "What Are the Effects of Fasting?" entry is particularly curious (although I appreciate the nod to Herbert Shelton). It's just plagiarized from here, but that itself is obviously really plagiarized, with Keki Sidhwa being given credit for something that was obviously written in the 1960s.

High ethical standards over at the British Institute of Osteopathy, it seems.

Hah! It is Shelton. I'm not going to bother tracking down the precise issue; he was forever reusing his own material.

Before spending the last 13 years of his life bedridden, of course.

well surely if you believe the contagion theory of flu we all are exposed

My G-d, you're dense. Do I have to go dig out the relevant calculation?

In the meantime, I'm sure everyone would be fascinated in your replacement for "the contagion theory of flu," for about 45 seconds at least.

Like saying steroid cream is ‘treatment’ for eczema, all it does is reverse transport metabolites into extra cellular space

Script here.

Johnny:

As for saying that it’s ok for the Flulaval leaflet to say that there are no rigorous trials to show it works and cauliflower tells us it’s unethical to test it, well surely if you believe the contagion theory of flu we all are exposed.

But it *does* show trials demonstrating it works in producing the desired immune reaction. That may not be the standard of proof *you* want, but it's enough for most people -- that is, people who accept germ theory. I suppose if you don't believe in germ theory it might not be proof enough for you. But the insert is quite clear on specifically what proof they have, so I don't think you can claim it's misleading. Not without indicting your own reading comprehension.

Meanwhile, by saying that you had to be told by me that it's unethical to deliberately give influenza to vulnerable people, you reveal that you are either a germ theory denialist (that is, you do not believe it is possible to give a person influenza in this manner) or you think it's totally fine to give people influenza as long as there's science. Pretty sure neither possibility is gonna win you a lot of respect.

"It concluded that to halve winter deaths the flu vaccine would have to have an impact on road traffic accidents!"

You think it couldn't? I've never actually lost control of the car while sneezing or coughing but there have certainly been times when I've had to stop for fear of doing so.

@Philip Hills aka Johnny Labile:

I have never had a flu vaccine and have never had flu.

You're lucky, but what you're describing is not impossible under Probability theory. That is, if you're telling the truth.

No 1 is “flu vaccine halves winter deaths” Cochraine tested this anecdote and found that only 10% of winter deaths are attributable to ‘flu like illness’. It concluded that to halve winter deaths the flu vaccine would have to have an impact on road traffic accidents!

Source for this. I would think that the Cochrane review would have distinguished between influenza deaths and deaths from other causes.

flu vaccine halves winter deaths

I have absolutely never heard anyone make this claim. Source?

You think it couldn’t? I’ve never actually lost control of the car while sneezing or coughing but there have certainly been times when I’ve had to stop for fear of doing so.

I know, right? Everybody's so exercised about a text taking your eyes off the road for five seconds or so (not defending texting while driving—I've never texted in my life, FWIW), but so does a sneeze.

I hate hay fever season! I'd love to know how many accidents were caused by that "moonlight broom" they planted along I-5 here in the 30 years or so before it was replaced by the more native scotch broom–that pollen was like an evil cloud that spread several miles in either direction from the freeway.

what you’re describing is not impossible under Probability theory

About 0.13% after 40 years.

you reveal that you are either a germ theory denialist

It's the party line.

Johnny labile:

No 1 is “flu vaccine halves winter deaths” Cochraine tested this anecdote and found that only 10% of winter deaths are attributable to ‘flu like illness’. It concluded that to halve winter deaths the flu vaccine would have to have an impact on road traffic accidents!

Philip Mills of the Hope Osteopathy Clinic:

Cochraine found that as only 10% of winter deaths were caused by flu like illness, not even confirmed flu, if the jab was to halve winter death it would have to have an impact on road traffic accidents!

As 'Pebbles' at Epilogue (just before getting himself banned by that particular blogger):

The top claim for flu jab by the NHS and proper doctors is that it halves winter deaths. Cochraine found from stats that flu like illnesses, and that is not lab confirmed even, only account for about 10% winter deaths. Cochraine conclude that for the NHS claim that flu jab halves winter deaths to be true the jab would have to have an impact on road traffic accidents!

Evidently none of his various incarnations have actually read the Cochrane review (2009 updated version here), which says nothing about road traffic accidents.

You Gotta be a vaccine believer to not find this:

You could just be a person who understood that the problem with using outdated material to support an outdated claim is that stuff happens with the passage of time.

I'm also fascinated by the (to me) mysterious mindset that has no trouble accommodating the belief that vaccine manufacturers are lying to the people cheek-by-jowl with the belief that they're printing the ugly truth in their package inserts.

But never mind that.

You might remember 'lovelyday' from a RI thread last year:

Top claim is flu jab halves winter deaths. Jefferson found that only 10% of winter deaths were attributed to flu like illness, that is not even lab confirmed flu.
So this claim is a lie, doesn’t matter if you are pro or anti its a lie. He found that one would have to claim that the flu jab reduced road traffic accidents to claim 50% reduction.

Sarah007 (at SBM):

The cochraine review of the flu jab looked at many of the claims made by advocates of the vaccine and found none of the claims could be supported. One claim made is that the flu vaccine halves winter deaths. It found that only 10% of winter deaths can be attributed to flu like illnesses so to halve winter deaths the vaccine would have to have an impact on road traffic accidents.

As 'Yolanda' at "Dr Briffa Wellness" blog:

The 96 season review of the flu jab in UK by the cochraine collaboration scotched the promo myths of flu jab efficacy and found virtually nothing to support its use as a theraputic.
One myth that flu jab halves winter deaths was highlighted, only 10% of winter deaths are attributed to flu like illness, that’s not even confirmed just ‘like’. For the flu jab to halve winter deaths it would have to have an impact on road traffic accidents!

As 'Obvious':

Top NHS claim is that the flu jab halves winter deaths. Cochraine looked at this claim and discovered that only 10% of winter deaths are caused by flu-like illnesses and that isn’t even confirmed flu. Cochraine concluded that to claim that the flu jab halved winter death it would have to have an impact on road traffic accidents.

It appears that Philip Hills, chickenshіt douchebag, is also silently altering the claim that he purports to be refuting.

The search terms "96 season" + flu + cochraine are particularly productive for unearthing the troll's appearances, if one wants to follow his mental deterioration from 2009 to the present. He seems to be stuck on the notion that the Cochrane Collaboration performs season-specific metaanalyses of clinical studies.

Calli @312

But the insert is quite clear on specifically what proof they have, so I don’t think you can claim it’s misleading. Not without indicting your own reading comprehension yet again.

FTFY

I must say, for the "top NHS claim," it's awfully difficult to find even a single example of its being made in the first place.

Remarkable side-effect of measles vaccine.

MA -- *chuckles* Yes, your version is better.

No 1 is “flu vaccine halves winter deaths” Cochraine tested this anecdote and found that only 10% of winter deaths are attributable to ‘flu like illness’.

Ignoring for the moment that we can't find any actual evidence for this claim, I'm feeling rather stunned that the word "only" is here being connected with "10% of all winter deaths". 10% works out to a hell of a lot of deaths, and put is in the top 10 killers. I looked it up, and turns out it actually *is* one of the top ten killers. The number one killer in the US is cardiovascular disease, followed by cancer, followed by chronic lung disease (COPD, asthma, etc), followed by diabetes, followed by influenza and pneumonia, followed by Alzheimers, followed by motor vehicle accidents, renal failure, and lastly firearms.

Damn. Why do so many people dismiss flu-like illness so readily, if it's killing so many people even in America?

Johnny labile - ah the great morphing troll and germ theory denier.

So nice to meet you yet again. You remain wrong about the Cochrane (and do learn to spell that correctly) Review.

Ignoring for the moment that we can’t find any actual evidence for this claim

It's presumably in here somewhere. The NHS bit, not so much.

Remarkable side-effect of measles vaccine.

You've come a long way, baby.

As a side note, Kuruse et al.'s estimate of the divergence of measles from rinderpest in the 11th–12th century hasn't gone unaddressed.

Ah, I see that labile / Mythbuster / Hope Osteopathy Clinic has used the "walk on water" analogy before. He seems to repeat himself a lot.

atheistism!

Is this supposed to be clever? Really?!

It is amusing to see the scattering of the vaccine believer, even when its own minions see the facade for what it is, vaccine failure denial would be amusing if the devastation its methods wreak were not so insipid.

Smoke screens of spit and bile, meanwhile vaccine failure continues all over the place whilst those claiming high ground with the scientific inquiry of some MacArthurite zeal has only one option - to keep polishing pus.

Bring it on..................

How would efficacy studies be carried out for each season's flu season? By the time each vaccine had been tested and found to be effective (or not), the season would have passed, and the people the vaccine might have saved from hospitalization with pneumonia or worse would be dead, or immune (and probably not in a mood to be told that all along the doctors had a vaccine that could have prevented the flu that just laid them out for weeks).

Also, to embroider upon Calli's point, since about 2.5 million people die in the USA every year*, at least 600,000 people die each winter. So Labile, or lovelyday or whatever, appears to be complaining that flu vaccines "only" prevent 10% of winter deaths, that is 60,000 deaths every year.

What modality offered by the Hope Clinic might prevent 60,000 deaths each year? The cosmetic acupuncture perhaps?

* That seems awfully high? Is CAM losing its War on Death? People have been spending a fortune on alternative medicine over the past 50 years, and still 2.5 million people die every year? Surely most of them must have popped a supplement or two. Shocking.

"each season's flu season"? You know what I mean.

@ ann

I’m also fascinated by the (to me) mysterious mindset that has no trouble accommodating the belief that vaccine manufacturers are lying to the people cheek-by-jowl with the belief that they’re printing the ugly truth in their package inserts.

It's a contradiction common to many conspiracy theories, if not all. There is this secret cabal made of nefarious people which are at the same time all deviously cunning chessmasters and as stupid as a doorknob.
James Bond's villains tend to be like this, too.

It could be something hardwired into our brain. To make a picture of someone you consider an enemy as both something very powerful (thus, something to be afraid of) and very weak (so you can despise it - you are so much better).
Umberto Eco wrote something on these lines in his assay about ur-fascism.

The remarkable effect is not of a vaccine Her Docky, if you read the paper it a massive dose of measles virus.

Can you 'see' how your vaccine belief has clouded your vision, probably not.

Dr Russell of the Mayo is clear to point out that it is not a vaccine.

So let's get this right, you have a vaccine to stop measles but measles virus clear cancer! How clever is that?

"How would efficacy studies be carried out for each season’s flu season? By the time each vaccine had been tested and found to be effective (or not), the season would have passed, " docky

Well that's convenient. So random guesswork, clever marketing and make sure you scare governments into underwriting any fuck ups.

How clever

Someone on another message board referred to this as the "Genius Fools" theory of conspiracies.

Thus we have minds brilliant and intricate enough to orchestrate mass conspiracies (like 9/11 or vaccines) involving thousands or even millions of people in utter secrecy, yet are dumb enough to leave obvious trails for Internet nitwits to uncover.

Mind boggling, indeed.

So let’s get this right, you have a vaccine to stop measles but measles virus clear cancer!

It's called the Godzilla threshold.
To fight a very nasty monster, out of desperation you may have to decide to get another monster involved, and hope the second one will do the job and be easier to control or placate.

How clever is that?

Very clever actually.
The anti-measles vaccine - made of a attenuated measles virus - and this potential anti-cancer treatment - based on a attenuated measles virus - are both courtesy of mainstream science.

Being a critic is easy. What has the Hope Osteopathic & Homeopathic Clinic to offer against any of these two illnesses?

"those claiming high ground with the scientific inquiry of some MacArthurite zeal"

What's Dugout Doug got to do with vaccines?

vaccine failure denial would be amusing if the devastation its methods wreak were not so insipid.

Umm, what?

Isn't insipid devastation the best kind?

The new idiot continues to duck and weave, moving to a new tactic as soon as the last one fails. Now he's resorting to namecalling and conflating an attenuated measles virus with wild-type, either out of ignorance or mendacity. Ho-hum. If you were interested in arriving at some sort of valid, reliable conclusion, you'd at least try to address the responses to your various flailings-about. Since you haven't so far, you're not far removed from the assertive behavior of the hippopotamus: vigorous tail-flapping to scatter fecal matter as widely as possible.

So, labile, back up one step and defend yourself: exactly who claims that influenza vaccination reduces all deaths in the wintertime by half?

Actually, madder, Johnny Labile/Philip Hills needs to back up even further than that. He said:

Another common vaccine cop out is ” Its not the vaccine itself that is lethal, its the process itself”

Where did you see this? This sounds like an antivaccine distortion of what a pro-vaxxer said.

Oh, I'm fully aware that Labile/Hills needs to justify quite a lot of statements as well as his sockpuppetry... but for now, I'd settle for the most recent single one. Just to see if he's capable of it.

" I have never had a flu vaccine and have never had flu.

You’re lucky, but what you’re describing is not impossible under Probability theory. That is, if you’re telling the truth." Julian

Uhh, I thought medical flu theory was a science, what's luck got to do with it?

" Another common vaccine cop out is ” Its not the vaccine itself that is lethal, its the process itself”

Where did you see this? This sounds like an antivaccine distortion of what a pro-vaxxer said" More septic smoke from the Julian

This is a common weasel words press release.

"So, labile, back up one step and defend yourself: exactly who claims that influenza vaccination reduces all deaths in the wintertime by half?" Stupider

Well if you took the time to actually read the 96 season Cochraine review of the efficacy of the flu jab, one of its task was to take the top ten claims of the National Health Service otherwise known as the NHS in the UK and test them against the evidence.

It is not about being pro or anti vaxx, that's a diversion. It is about evidence. I could cut and paste the link but I think you need to be a bit more proactive and less juvenile with your rantings.

Cochraine's conclusion, specifically Tom Jefferson MD was "the top ten claims are implausible at best".

40 years of RCT's by the English government failed to prove the 'contagion theory of flu so I have no idea what your belief system is, probably playground lurgy, I mean the idea of 'catching flu'. That's pure supposition.

If there was a gram of science in you, it would interest you that the claims for flu jab efficacy are anecdotes and shown to be by the biggest medical database in the world. But as you seem to enjoy being a medical zealot, I can't help you anymore. I found the flu jab insert telling us that it had never been tested so how about an apology from the septic jerk that called me a liar?

Go on I dare you.

The remarkable effect is not of a vaccine Her Docky, if you read the paper it a massive dose of measles virus.

The stench of failure surrounds you.

"MV-NIS is a recombinant oncolytic measles virus (MV) derived from an attenuated Edmonston lineage vaccine strain (MV-Edm) that was adapted to grow on human cancer (HeLa) cells, then engineered to express the human thyroidal sodium iodide symporter (NIS) so that its in vivo spread can be noninvasively monitored by radioiodine single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT)–computed tomography (CT) imaging.[5]"

The reference:

"The Edmonston vaccine strain of measles virus (MV-Edm) propagates efficiently in a broad range of human tumor cells, killing them selectively. However, the oncolytic potency of MV-Edm in different human tumor xenograft therapy models is highly variable and there is no convenient way to map the distribution of virus-infected tissues in vivo. To enhance the oncolytic potency of MV-Edm against radiosensitive malignancies and to facilitate noninvasive imaging of infected tissues, we generated a recombinant MV-Edm encoding the human thyroidal iodide symporter (NIS)."

PMID 17133484:

"The oncolytic measles virus Edmonston strain (MV-Edm), a nonpathogenic virus targeting cells expressing abundant CD46, selectively destroys neoplastic tissue."

"Bring it on," indeed.

To finish things off, as Mr. Hills obviously has trouble putting two and two together accurately,

"We sought proof of principle that one of the safest human vaccines, measles virus Edmonston B (MV-Edm), can be genetically modified to allow entry via cell surface molecules other than its receptor CD46."

vaccine failure denial would be amusing if the devastation its methods wreak were not so insipid.

Umm, what?

Seconded.

I didn't notice any scattering, either. FTM.

Maybe he means "insidious"?

the 96 season Cochraine review of the efficacy of the flu jab, one of its task was to take the top ten claims of the National Health Service otherwise known as the NHS in the UK and test them against the evidence.

Since there is no "96 season Cochraine review of the efficacy of the flu jab", our friend's speculations and claims about its non-existent tasks are blissfully unconstrained by the surly bonds of reality.

When johnny makes stuff up about this Cochrane Collaboration review which exists only in his head, special amusement comes from his blithe assumption that Collaboration members concern themselves with claims made by a country's health service... as if it were some kind of fact-checking agency.

Cochraine’s conclusion, specifically Tom Jefferson MD was “the top ten claims are implausible at best”.

The source for this scholarly citation of specific words put into someone else's mouth? Why, that would be bottom-feeding sockpuppet "lovelyday", from last year:

Top claim is flu jab halves winter deaths. Jefferson found that only 10% of winter deaths were attributed to flu like illness, that is not even lab confirmed flu.
So this claim is a lie, doesn’t matter if you are pro or anti its a lie. He found that one would have to claim that the flu jab reduced road traffic accidents to claim 50% reduction.
He did this for all the other top 10 claims and found the evidence for flu jab efficacy was implausible at best.

(that was just before "lovelyday" took fright and ran away with tail between legs, having been reminded that issuing death threats was uncool).

@Philip Hills, masquerading as Johnny Labile @347

Uhh, I thought medical flu theory was a science, what’s luck got to do with it?

By sheer random chance, some people will never get the flu even if they've never been immunised. In the same way, there have been people who have won the lottery twice, by sheer random chance.

Where did you see this? This sounds like an antivaccine distortion of what a pro-vaxxer said” More septic smoke from the Julian

This is a common weasel words press release.

Really? Because I've never seen it before. In fact, it sounds like something an antivaccinationist would say, so...
Citation needed. Who said it? Where did you see/hear it printed or stated?

So, Mr Labile (if that is your real name), are you seriously saying that if something has a *chance* of happening, not a certainty, that it isn't real or scientific or anything like that? Oooh, Vegas must just love you.

So, Mr Labile (if that is your real name)

What makes me want to read that like Darren McGavin in A Christmas Story? 'It must be Italian: "Frah-Gee-Lay!"'

So.

Let's review!

No 1 is “flu vaccine halves winter deaths”

No such claim has been made by the NHS or anyone else.

You (or your source) misunderstood something that Cochrane said about selection bias in the non-RCTs about flu-vaccine usage by the elderly,/i> that they were meta-analyzing.

Cochraine tested this anecdote

There isn't one. So they couldn't and didn't.

and found that only 10% of winter deaths are attributable to ‘flu like illness’.

It's actually 5 percent (among the elderly), per the Cochrane review you're ostensibly summarizing..

It concluded that to halve winter deaths the flu vaccine would have to have an impact on road traffic accidents!

It says nothing remotely of the kind.

The whole thing is pure fantasy.

The whole thing is pure fantasy.

As befits someone who endorses Natural Hygiene.

Certainly.

But not as befits someone who's spent the thread calling others "believers," likening them to churchgoers, and otherwise suggesting they subscribe to a fantasy.

Gosh, away on holiday and the holy see has been busy.
Obviously suffering from septic blindness
http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001269/vaccines-to-prevent-influenza-in…

Flu jab useless in preventing flu in healthy adults

old people, anti virals are expensive sweets too

Here is what the publisher has to summarize on flu jab
http://focusonline.ca/?q=node/447

Why can't you look it up? Septic vaccine failure blindness?

David

I love these sites, proliferated by cyber geeks, it is so obvious that your 'moderation' like some catholic opus seeks to keep you pus laden 'truth' afloat.

If none of your minions can find Tom Jefferson's review and read how damning it is, the real battle is ignoring your jollop.

Hipporcates forgot more than you will ever know. Now keep this thread nice and septic, you don't want to go posting something too real.

Are you really all these people or do you just make it all up for show? Who cares?

Philip Hills writing as Johnny Labile, Tom Jefferson has been blogged about by Orac before. Just put "Tom Jefferson" into the search box on this page. Let's just say that the name Tom Jefferson is a huge red flag.

The troll's word salad keeps getting more and more incoherent....

Tom Jeffersons review is not all that damning really. It concluded that Tamiflu was indeed useful as a prophylactic treatment, but didn't help keep people out of hospital any better if given after they already had the flu.

There are several issues with the review though, not least of which was that it was all about seasonal flu, so doesn't really address the issue of a pandemic.

Ah, so now the review exists and the Pretzel aka Chrisp dismisses it because someone told him so. Of course Lord Voldemort aka Orac is famous for that, funny how so much 'orthodox science' is based on peer pressure.

The review makes it clear. Nil point

" It concluded that Tamiflu was indeed useful as a prophylactic treatment" Crispy creme

What a load of tosh, there was no post pandemic audit because when the data for Tamiflu use was demanded by the BMJ for a post scamdemic audit the official response was that they lost it. Roche that is.

No surprise there though, more modern medical myths being preached by the chosen because after all elevating anecdotes to fact is what modern medical peer review is all about. How many popes just got canonized?

I suppose without the minions like Chris we wouldn't have the Lords.

Please advise

Hmm, perhaps it's time to employ the "ultimatum question" technique in dealing with Mr. Hills? And warning him that sockpuppetry is a bannable offense here, naturally...

Mr Hills the troll is well known for his antics. Sometimes it is useful to puncture the nonsense (like about the Jefferson review), but the namecalling is juvenile and best ignored.

Truth be told, I do a far better line in name calling than Mr Hills can muster. So he fails on that score as well.

Anus, one small detail. The only thing banned here is vaccine non acceptance, no matter how many flawed trials tell us of the marvels of vaccination, even the thousand of kids maimed by polio vaccine experiments can halt the wondering at the second coming. Thing is that the evidence base,' medical peer review' is about as honest as the Resurrection.

Like posturing goats during rutting - the septicus mounts and fails to spawn, no one wants to here their rantings or respond to their feeble production.

One day you will wake up and see the earth is no longer flat.

So, Mr. Hills/Labile, we just need to "wake up" and see the source for your claim that the flu vaccine is supposed to "halve winter deaths." Where is it? Who actually says that?

@Philip Hills:

Anus, one small detail. The only thing banned here is vaccine non acceptance

And yet your comments are allowed to stand.

no matter how many flawed trials tell us of the marvels of vaccination,

Okay, pick out three trials that support vaccination and point out how they are flawed. If you can, that is.

even the thousand of kids maimed by polio vaccine experiments can halt the wondering at the second coming.

Um, evidence needed that "polio vaccine experiments" led to mass cripplings.

@philip hills

OK, please present evidence for your belief within 3 posts, or we can all assume that you have been lying to us the entire time and admit that vaccines are beneficial for people and society.

Here is what the publisher has to summarize on flu jab

You think "Victoria's magazine of people, ideas and culture" publishes the Cochrane reviews? Considering your whining about looking things up, it doesn't seem like you've gotten around to it with this:

"Influenza vaccines are effective in reducing cases of influenza, especially when the content predicts accurately circulating types and circulation is high. However, they are less effective in reducing cases of influenza-like illness and have a modest impact on working days lost. There is insufficient evidence to assess their impact on complications. Whole-virion monovalent vaccines may perform best in a pandemic."

Or the slightly paranoiac-sounding follow-up, which still concedes this:

"In the relatively uncommon [not quantified in the abstract] circumstance of vaccine matching the viral circulating strain and high circulation, 4% of unvaccinated people versus 1% of vaccinated people developed influenza symptoms (risk difference (RD) 3%, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2% to 5%). The corresponding figures for poor vaccine matching were 2% and 1% (RD 1, 95% CI 0% to 3%)."

Of course, you don't understand what a fourfold difference means in terms of the expected mean time between individual bouts of flu. Even a twofold difference changes the even-odds window from 13.5 to 27.4 years. (Haven't I said that already?)

Then again, given that you've never even been in the ballpark about what proved to be your basic item of endless droning, perhaps you don't even know what "publisher" means.

You do put yourself in a difficult position by yammering on about the nonexistent "96 season review of the flu jab in UK by the cochraine collaboration," though, because you don't believe it's contagious in the first place:

40 years of RCT’s by the English government failed to prove the ‘contagion theory of flu so I have no idea what your belief system is, probably playground lurgy, I mean the idea of ‘catching flu’. That’s pure supposition.

Try to marshal the forces of whatever ragtag band of neurons is still managing against all odds to continue to tread ethanol in the Sargasso Sea swirling between your ears: The fact that seasonal influenza vaccination is effective at all means that you are completely fυcked.

[Influenza vaccines] are less effective in reducing cases of influenza-like illness...

Are they trying to say that the flu shot doesn't provide much (or even any) protection from not-flu? Next thing you know we'll find out that seat belts don't protect us from chain saw injuries.

Next thing you know we’ll find out that seat belts don’t protect us from chain saw injuries.

They're certainly contraindicated after the fact in some circumstances.

Sometimes it is useful to puncture the nonsense (like about the Jefferson review), but the namecalling is juvenile and best ignored

Maybe it's a nervous tic and he doesn't know he's doing it.

You think “Victoria’s magazine of people, ideas and culture” publishes the Cochrane reviews?

Philip also thinks that the Cochrane collaboration maintains its own "biggest medical database in the world". He has an active fantasy life.

@Johnny - they don't? I definitely have been doing something wrong then....

I want to correct some of the misinformation Labile has spread here about the NHS and the influenza vaccine. We know that the influenza vaccine is less useful in healthy adults than it is in children, in pregnant women, in the elderly or those with asthma or other conditions, which is why the vaccine is only recommended by the NHS for high risk groups and for health care workers.

I'm bemused by Labile's claim: "Flu jab useless in preventing flu in healthy adults". Even Cochrane acknowledges that the vaccine is effective in healthy adults: "15.6% of unvaccinated participants versus 9.9% of vaccinated participants developed ILI symptoms, whilst only 2.4% and 1.1%, respectively, developed laboratory-confirmed influenza". That seems pretty impressive to me, given the difficulties in identifying which strain will be current in any season and in differentiating between flu and flu-like illnesses. Does Labile have anything that could rival that? Does echnicaea, vitamin C or whatever prevent flu as effectively? (The answer is "no", by the way, Cochrane tells us that they don't even prevent colds).

The article Labile links to (written by anti-pharma journalist Alan Cassels) states that:

The Cochrane examination of flu vaccines in healthy adults, a body of literature spanning 25 studies and involving 59,566 people, finds an annual flu shot reduced overall clinical influenza by about six percent.

The latest Cochrane review looked at "90 reports containing 116 data sets; among these 69 were clinical trials of over 70,000 people", so Cassels' article is out of date. It also looks at absolute risk instead of relative risk, which I think is misleading in this context. The risk of getting a flu-like illness in any one season is 15.6%, according to the Cochrane figures, reduced to 9.9% by vaccination. This is only a 6% reduction in absolute risk, but if I'm going to decide whether to get the vaccine or not I'm not that interested in absolute numbers, I want to know the relative risk. I want to know how my chances of getting sick compare if I get the vaccine to my chances if I don't. Cochrane's figures tell me that vaccination reduces my chances of getting a flu-like illness by 36% and reduces my chances of getting laboratory-confirmed influenza by a massive 54%. Useless? Not by any definition of the word I'm familiar with.

That's why I get the flu vaccine every year (I also have asthma, so the NHS kindly pays for my flu shot). I have had influenza, twice, and it is something I would prefer to avoid ever getting again if at all possible. Reducing my risk of getting it by half with a vaccine that, according to Cochrane, will at worst give me a sore arm and/or a fever for a day seems like a better bet than vitamin C or D or goji or whatever unproven concoction CAMsters recommend these days.

I’m bemused by Labile’s claim: “Flu jab useless in preventing flu in healthy adults”.
All the guy knows or cares is that "Cochrane Collaboration" are Yang Worship Words.

"which is why the vaccine is only recommended by the NHS for high risk groups and for health care workers. " Kreb cycle

This is LOL material and you obviously made that up. One of the section of the review specifically said that old people produced a crap immune response, even if that was important and health care workers being jabbed had no impact on outcome either.

Cochrane found that the jabs were marginally effective at best, even in the, “Relatively uncommon circumstance of vaccine matching the viral circulating strain and high circulation.” Said another way: the vaccine is next to useless for healthy adults.

Furthermore, “Inactivated vaccines,” said Cochrane, “Caused local harms and an estimated 1.6 additional cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome per million vaccinations”. But most damning was their rider in the form of a warning. Here it is verbatim – you can make up your own mind about what it means:

WARNING:

This review includes 15 out of 36 trials funded by industry (four had no funding declaration). An earlier systematic review of 274 influenza vaccine studies published up to 2007 found industry funded studies were published in more prestigious journals and cited more than other studies independently from methodological quality and size. Studies funded from public sources were significantly less likely to report conclusions favorable to the vaccines. The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions and spurious notoriety of the studies. The content and conclusions of this review should be interpreted in light of this finding.
Spotlight on Cochrane review

Let’s look at this Cochrane review that must be — as its authors state clearly — seen as compromised and biased given the available data sources. The findings in the review, entitled Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults, weren’t equivocal. The authors performed a systematic review of 40 randomised, controlled trials (RCTs) of flu vaccination versus placebo or no intervention, or RCTs comparing types, doses and schedules of flu vaccines. The authors concluded that, in a best-case scenario when the vaccine flu strain matched the circulating strain, 4% (expressed as a risk difference [RD]) of people given a flu jab of the type used in public vaccination schemes develop flu symptoms, compared with 1% of unvaccinated people. In the much more common circumstances when there is a mismatch, the figures were 1% versus 2%, respectively. The authors found no evidence that the vaccines prevented viral transmission or flu complications – the other main public-health justifications for the flu jab.

As for the live, weakened nasal vaccine destined for UK kids, “The effectiveness, according to WHO [World Health Organization] criteria, appears relatively low”. Coming to any conclusion was difficult because of, “A limited number of studies presenting conflicting results”.

All you do is try to diss the messenger, there is little or no scientific inquiry just playground na booing.

The big issue is this. Someone decided that an antibody response equated with an immune response and this has been extrapolated to 'protection' or 'immunisation'.

This is a fantasy, even Immunity Journal has pointed out that equating antibody levels with protection is not really a correlate.

Kind of makes the arguments here about efficacy dissolve into anecdotal woo.

Considering the yearly failures of for example mumps vaccine, measles vaccine, one wonders what is going on.

The big issue is this. Someone decided that an antibody response equated with an immune response and this has been extrapolated to ‘protection’ or ‘immunisation’.

This has already been dealt with in its original version. You're chasing your tail.

This is a fantasy, even Immunity Journal has pointed out that equating antibody levels with protection is not really a correlate.

"Immunity Journal"? Everyone knows that circulating antibodies aren't the whole story. The problem for you is that this does the opposite of what you "think."

Here it is verbatim – you can make up your own mind about what it means

Oh, goody, it responds to being spoon-fed something by pretending it discovered it on its own.

Said another way: the vaccine is next to useless for healthy adults.

What part of 0.95ⁿ = 0.5 ⇒ n = 13.5 but 0.975ⁿ = 0.5 ⇒ n = 27.4 do you not understand?

Said another way: the vaccine is next to useless for healthy adults.

Once again:

40 years of RCT’s by the English government failed to prove the ‘contagion theory of flu so I have no idea what your belief system is, probably playground lurgy, I mean the idea of ‘catching flu’. That’s pure supposition.

The fact that seasonal influenza vaccination is effective at all means that you are completely fυcked.

“which is why the vaccine is only recommended by the NHS for high risk groups and for health care workers. ” Kreb cycle

This is LOL material and you obviously made that up.

Apparently, the technical component of training in "classical osteopathy" includes textspeak but stops short of "what links are":

People who should have a flu jab

The injected flu vaccine is offered free of charge on the NHS to people who are at risk to ensure that they are protected against catching flu and developing serious complications.

You are eligible to receive a free flu jab if you:

* are 65 years of age or over
* are pregnant
* have certain medical conditions (see below)
* are living in a long-stay residential care home or other long-stay care facility
* receive a carer's allowance, or you are the main carer for an elderly or disabled person whose welfare may be at risk if you fall ill
* are a healthcare worker with direct patient contact or a social care worker (see below)

Considering the yearly failures of for example mumps vaccine, measles vaccine, one wonders what is going on.

Perhaps you'd like to point out the "yearly failures" here. Or here.

Kind of makes the arguments here about efficacy dissolve into anecdotal woo.

Your turn, Johnnycakes: let's have the evidence for "classical osteopathy." Please also highlight some of the most significant discoveries and revisions to practice guidelines over the past 20 or so years.

The only "vaccine-failure" that seems to be at issue, is morons who refuse to get vaccinated, travel overseas to places where these diseases are endemic, and then bring these diseases back here.....that's the real failure.

@phillip hills

Let's see, that's 3 strikes, yer out.

Thanks for admitting that your argument is based on nonsense and that you admit that vaccines are safe and good for humanity.

Also, thanks for admitting that you are a liar, and that everything that you have stated should be treated as such, until you can post some actual pertinent evidence.

http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1967306,00.html Narad the oracle

To suggest that flu vaccines are effective is a vaccine belief system stance. You need to read the Cochraine review sonny and get up to speed with the lack of efficacy evidence.

Ah, so now the review exists

A review exists. But nobody ever said it didn't.

The question was whether the review you described existed. This one:

No 1 is “flu vaccine halves winter deaths” Cochraine tested this anecdoteand found that only 10% of winter deaths are attributable to ‘flu like illness.’ It concluded that to halve winter deaths the flu vaccine would have to have an impact on road traffic accidents!

^^Every word of that is a pure fantasy.

Philip Hills,

You need to read the Cochraine review sonny and get up to speed with the lack of efficacy evidence.

Firstly, your link doesn't go to a review, but to a Times Article that's over four years old. In addition, there were no links to any reviews by Cochrane (not "Cochraine") in said article.

Considering the yearly failures of for example mumps vaccine, measles vaccine

Ah, the Nirvana fallacy, a.k.a. "if it's not working all the time, then it's useless". Long time no see.

Firstly, your link doesn’t go to a review, but to a Times Article that’s over four years old. In addition, there were no links to any reviews by Cochrane (not “Cochraine”) in said article.

I have no idea what is going through Philip's mind at this point, except maybe spirochaetes.

Labile,

To suggest that flu vaccines are effective is a vaccine belief system stance. You need to read the Cochraine review sonny and get up to speed with the lack of efficacy evidence.

I repeat, Cochrane's figures tell me that vaccination reduces my chances of getting a flu-like illness by 36% and reduces my chances of getting laboratory-confirmed influenza by a massive 54%.

Anyone who can interpret that as evidence of vaccine inefficacy has some reading comprehension problems, or perhaps more serious problems.

It's interesting that it isn't just the idiotic nonsense that Labile keeps repeating, even when it is repeatedly refuted with reliable information, but the spelling errors too.

[http:]//content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1967306,00.html Narad the oracle

To suggest that flu vaccines are effective is a vaccine belief system stance. You need to read the Cochraine review sonny and get up to speed with the lack of efficacy evidence.

Apparently, you don't realize that repeatedly coughing up dumb mass-media stories quite effectively demonstrates that you yourself have done no such thing, even though the relevant one is open-access. This isn't too surprising, given that you clearly can't even keep straight what you're referring to and have a severe problem with simply making things up.

Quick: What's the relative risk CI for all-cause mortality in what the Time story is pointing at?

No? What's the title of what the Time story is pointing at?

Now kindly knock off the Toni Basil choreography impression and respond to comments 383–388.

What part of 0.95ⁿ = 0.5 ⇒ n = 13.5 but 0.975ⁿ = 0.5 ⇒ n = 27.4 do you not understand?

Someone should needlepoint that on a sampler or something.

My new intern knits. Maybe she could work it into an afghan.

Intern knits

Do you think we've got te wrong idea about all these cables and things all along? Was the US military just trying to ensnare us all?

Someone should needlepoint that on a sampler or something.

My mom used to be in a needlepoint group with Virginia Kelley. I'm not explaining it to her.

This isn’t too surprising, given that you clearly can’t even keep straight what you’re referring to and have a severe problem with simply making things up.

Our friend finds it easier to recycle stuff he made up previously, in the manner of a combination of Oroborus and the Human Centipede.

Sadly, Philip isn't clever enough to put this together, but it would have been a blast:

It is interesting that anus Feldspar obviously has a vaccine belief system all cranked up.

To suggest that flu vaccines are effective is a vaccine belief system stance.

SoP hit No. 1:

Another example that denies the assumption “antibodies = proteccion” which forms the feeble basis of the whole vaccine belief system!

No. 2:

let’s start with the Cochraine study on the industrial and academical pharma-sponsored fraud on flu vaccine data and studies

Here's an interesting quote from Tom Jefferson in that Time article:

People always ask me if I am against other vaccines. I am not. I have five children. They have all been vaccinated against the major diseases as part of the standard childhood-vaccination program. Those vaccines have strong evidence to back them up. I am not antivaccine. I am anti–poor evidence.

So, Jefferson has doubts about flu vaccines, and thinks we need larger, better studies. Personally I would bet those larger, better studies would support what the current data tell us: flu vaccines are less effective than some other vaccines, for obvious reasons, but are still an important and valuable public health tool.

Incidentally, newer more rapid vaccine production methods will soon enable vaccines to be matched with seasonal strains much more effectively, and we will see effectiveness improve greatly.

I also found it interesting to read about Jefferson's experiences looking at flu, in another of Labile's links. Jefferson discovered that the edges are blurry (when is a flu-like illness flu?) and decided that this means that flu doesn't really exist, it's all in the mind, caused by stress. We've seen that before, with mental illness, where people have claimed that because some cases are ambiguous the entire category is meaningless, so schizophrenia and other SMIs don't really exist. I think this betrays an intolerance of ambiguity, but I digress. I wonder how Jefferson reconciles this with our understanding of influenza viruses and being able to test for specific strains. A lot of flu-like illness isn't caused by flu, but this surely isn't a good reason to condemn a flu vaccine.

More to the point, Jefferson's attitude does perhaps explain some of what looks to some of us like bias against scientific medicine and, in the past at least, a curious tolerance of woo ("more studies needed") in some Cochrane reviews.

We’ve seen that before, with mental illness, where people have claimed that because some cases are ambiguous the entire category is meaningless, so schizophrenia and other SMIs don’t really exist. I think this betrays an intolerance of ambiguity, but I digress.

Not by this reader's standards. I'd say it was a very insightful point, incisively put. Being comfortably mindful of how much you don't know is essential to learning (and hence knowledge).

IMO. I just now realized. Thanks to you.

This is a fantasy, even Immunity Journal has pointed out that equating antibody levels with protection is not really a correlate.

I'd say I should have remembered the source for this, except that I only found it while trying to clean the desktop litter box. There is a locus in a 2013 January 5 rambling FB comment from the Hope Osteopathic Clinic Essex:

Do antibodies "protect"?

So this medical theory that "antibodies protect" how does that fit in with traditional osteopathic practice? Well it doesn't!

It doesn't fit with medical research either.

"Antibodies are not requied for immunity against some viruses" Immunity journal March 1 2012"

The unmatched quotation mark is in the original. Now, where does this actually come from? A ScienceDaily-regurgitated press release. There is no such issue of Immunity.

The actual item? Here.

That's right, mice and... VSV.

Wow.

He's just a calamity of epic proportions on the reading-comprehension front, isn't he?

There's a calculation he does in one of his posts to the thread you linked to several posts up ^^that way, purporting to show that DTaP exposes infants to neurotoxic amounts of mercury by EPA standards. And it's just mind-boggling how much simple, straightforward information he manages to misconstrue in the course of doing it.

It really showcases his abilities.

There’s a calculation he does in one of his posts to the thread you linked to several posts up ^^that way, purporting to show that DTaP exposes infants to neurotoxic amounts of mercury by EPA standards.

'Putinreloaded' is a different troll -- equally dishonest and stupid, but going to more effort to achieve it. Putinreloaded is a holocaust-denying, HIV-denying all-round poster-child for crank magnetism, who maintains a website.

Guest appearance of re-putin here:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/09/27/time-to-rally-the-troops-a…

Ah.

My mistake.

Sorry. I must be in vacuum denial.

Not really annie

These people need help, nomatter

No mistake ann, these people who hide behind medical peer review have probably never won anything in their lives.

It's truly remarkable that there are still people who not only believe in the woo of vaccination, they actually line their own kids up for the 'treatment'.

If that isn't child abuse...................but I suppose their defense is 'I was ordered to do it' Perhaps Her Dock should enlighten us with some vaccine psalms.

when exactly did you start to believe that vaccination was a modern medical miracle then and what exactly was it that turned you on to it?

Thanks for oozing back out of the woodwork, Philip. Now get your scammy ass in gear and deal with comments 383–388.

@Philip Hills:

[W]hen exactly did you start to believe that vaccination was a modern medical miracle then and what exactly was it that turned you on to it?

When I learned about the massive drops in the rates of the diseases after we started vaccinating against them.

Now get your scammy ass in gear and deal with comments 383–388.

Or we'll assume you're Gish Galloping because you have no answer.

[W]hen exactly did you start to believe that vaccination was a modern medical miracle then and what exactly was it that turned you on to it?

The factoid that really drove it home for me was when Mark Crislip, an Infectious disease doctor in what can reasonably be called a big city, recently said that he has only seen 2 cases of mumps in his life. My mom, just a regular housewife in the '50s, has nursed 3 cases of mumps. It's reasonable to assume that, from her grandchildren on, none of her descendants will suffer from mumps again. In fact, it's possible that within their lifetimes that we could make mumps go the way of smallpox.

We have the power to make some diseases extinct. I'd call that a modern miracle.

Now get your scammy ass in gear and deal with comments 383–388.

I'll echo the call.

All you have is medical peer review!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951028/

So did anyone tell Mark Pretzel that ovarian cancer was a killer? How many people used to die of mumps?

What kind of result is that dummy Johnny?

Oh I forgot, medical peer review can't see context, only its small result. Couple that with medical belief systems and we have a religious science.

Self validating medical peer review is about as low as it can go

Oh and Pretzel didn't get rid of mumps, did he, judging by the outbreaks in the US this year or was that the process of vaccination that failed, or the reporting or............

Johnny Lablie
Our dyslexic visitor seems to have omitted the hyphen in the middle of his second name.

Hey, Mr. Osteopath Quack. I've always been curious about what goes on in the so-called mind of a committed antivaccinationist; maybe you can satisfy my curiosity.

Tell me which of these statements is the one where the spark plugs in your brain sputter and fail:

1) MOST people who survive a bout with a particular disease do not get that disease again.

2) There must be a mechanism in the body by which it develops resistance to that disease.

3) If that mechanism was identified, we could potentially develop a method that would activate the body's resistance to a disease WITHOUT requiring that the actual disease be endured.

4) If, for sake of argument, vaccination is NOT that method, there is still every reason to believe that that method IS out there waiting to be discovered.

5) By contrast, there is neither logical evidence nor experimental evidence to indicate that osteopathy can do d----s---- for any condition.

6) Ergo, even someone who believes that vaccination as we currently know it IS NOT a means to activate the body's resistance mechanisms would logically agree, it is of more value LOOKING for that means than dropping a single dime on the ludicrous idea that yanking around bones will somehow cure skin conditions.

Well well, bit of a screw up on the mumps claim for Mr Pretzel. I see no one has conceded that the 'got rid of mumps claim' was pure speculative vaccine belief!

We don't 'catch disease' they are physiological events determined by homeostatic adjustment demands. Once the event has occured, unless circumstances demand, they are not required again.

It is the medical mythology of the mystical isolated disease state that makes no sense to me and a lot of people. The body does not go wrong and need fixing for the larger part of it.

I hear you splutter 'wot no disease'. But that would put the Pretzels all out of a job.

3 Is plain arrogant stupid, it is not about an argument. If a person with a skin condition has constipation, eats crap and puts steroids on as a treatment where is the logic in that?
The immune system does not need 'stimulating' to work!

The elephant in the room is your inability to see that the solutions to many of man's current predicaments does not need some sexed up science solution.

Who is Phillip Hills anyway,?

ah the septic moderator chops the posts and edits to keep the thread on tack.

This always confirms what one always knows.

More Catholic than the pope the orac soldiers on creating mythology...................

Philip Hills, I had a look at that report you posted.

Mumps parotitis may lead to expression and immune recognition of a tumor-associated form of MUC1 and create effective immune surveillance of ovarian cancer cells that express this form of MUC1.

Operative word MAY. And the cells have to express MUC1 for it to work.

How many people used to die of mumps?

http://www.immunizationinfo.org/vaccines/mumps

Before widespread vaccination, there were about 200,000 cases of mumps and 20 to 30 deaths reported each year in the United States.

I hope that answers your question.

Self validating medical peer review is about as low as it can go

You know Jack $h!t about peer review.
Re your little rant at #419, the only failure is with the self-appointed "vaccination experts" who refuse to get their children vaccinated and discourage other parents from vaccinating.

Lablie,

It’s truly remarkable that there are still people who not only believe in the woo of vaccination, they actually line their own kids up for the ‘treatment’.

I love it when the lunatic fringe act as if they are in the majority, and seem to believe only a shrinking number of die-hard nutters believe in vaccination, when the converse is actually true.

What is truly remarkable is that in the 21st century, in the developed world there are still people who cling on to a medieval belief system like yours. Do you not realize that the vast majority of people, including doctors and scientists, see the overwhelming evidence for the benefits of vaccination, and can clearly see your ideas are nonsense? How can anyone think that an intervention that results in a 99.99% fall in the incidence of a disease, and has serious side effects so rare that we can't even be sure they are side effects, is a failure? I find your position quite bizarre.

Oh I forgot, medical peer review can’t see context, only its small result.

I don't think you understand the peer review process. Peer review is when other scientists look at your work and do their very best to find fault with it, which includes context.

Alternative medical practitioners have to attack peer reviewed studies because they clearly demonstrate the lack of efficacy of what they do. Peer review and well-designed studies directly threaten your livelihood, don't they?

Amazing - current troll is getting more and more incoherent every time it posts....perhaps its gears are winding down.

Johnny Labile, who mendaciously denies he is Philip Hills:

We don’t ‘catch disease’ they are physiological events determined by homeostatic adjustment demands.

"Terrain of the body" was shown to be incorrect over a century ago. But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that someone who gets vaccination so badly wrong believes in it.

The elephant in the room is your inability to see that the solutions to many of man’s current predicaments does not need some sexed up science solution.

Please list those problems.

ah the septic moderator chops the posts and edits to keep the thread on tack.

Oh, stop whining. I've had posts of mine sent into moderation before. It happens.

Who is Phillip Hills anyway,?

I hope you're in the mood to start paying a lot more attention to your FB page.

The elephant in the room is your inability to see that the solutions to many of man’s current predicaments does not need some sexed up science solution respond to comments 383–388.

FTFY. Take a load off, Fanny.

Actually, Philip, because you're, ah, special, I'll give you one more:

Explain why Natural Hygiene didn't work for its creator.

Tell us why Mark Pretzel didn't get rid of mumps.

I really have no idea why you think I am Mr Hills, I suppose it gives you a distraction to the facts.

"You know Jack $h!t about peer review." Julian F

Well it seems to pass anything that pays enough,$

"Peer review is when other scientists look at your work and do their very best to find fault with it, which includes context. " Krackor pants

Well they made a shit job of validating flu vaccination!

" Everyone knows that circulating antibodies aren’t the whole story. " Narad

Well that's an admission. But elsewhere the septic line tells us that the antibody marker is the confirmation that a vaccine has 'worked' and produced an immune reaction. Weasel words that suit a bullshit line in sales, yet again.

Nosebleed or whatever you are, what is an FBI page? Still not Phillip Hill and never have been!

I also don't believe in a creator so you will have to answer that.

" The elephant in the room is your inability to see that the solutions to many of man’s current predicaments does not need some sexed up science solution.

Please list those problems. Narrod

Obesity, cardiovascular disease will do for two. Have you seen those programs on half ton women with medics calling obesity a disease that needs surgery! All through the programme the victims are eating total crap. I have never met a doctor who understands what a balanced diet is.

Philip Hills on FB:

Oh look, there is an exploding elephant in the room, but apparently clinical data is not allowed in EBM so we have to step over it, where did I put that ladder.

Troll:

The elephant in the room is your inability to see =

I am disappointed that this one doesn't explode.

Perhaps Johnny Labile could explain to me why, when someone whose terrain of the body happens to have developed the "physiological events determined by homeostatic adjustment demands" known as measles enters a population which has never developed those particular "physiological events determined by homeostatic adjustment demands" known as measles (pre-Columbian Native Americans, say), then the whole population develops those particular "physiological events determined by homeostatic adjustment demands" known as measles in a fashion very similar to, but of course entirely distinct from, an epidemic.

And while he's at it, perhaps Johnny Labile could explain why the "physiological events determined by homeostatic adjustment demands" known as measles never develop except in people exposed to other people suffering the same "physiological events determined by homeostatic adjustment demands" known as measles.

And while he's working on that, Johnny Labile might explain how it is that the "physiological events determined by homeostatic adjustment demands" known as smallpox don't occur anymore.

We don’t ‘catch disease’ they are physiological events determined by homeostatic adjustment demands.

Determined how?

How does one "catch" the specific "homeostatic adjustment demands"?

Can you convincinly demonstrate that this phrasing is anything other than a parlor game gone horribly awry?

ah the septic moderator chops the posts and edits to keep the thread on tack.

Incorrigible sockpuppet coward complains about being moderated? Whining is not a good look.

419

Oh and Pretzel didn’t get rid of mumps, did he, judging by the outbreaks in the US this year or was that the process of vaccination that failed, or the reporting or…………

422

Well well, bit of a screw up on the mumps claim for Mr Pretzel. I see no one has conceded that the ‘got rid of mumps claim’ was pure speculative vaccine belief!

432

Tell us why Mark Pretzel didn’t get rid of mumps.

I'm guessing these verbal ejaculations are related to my statement that we could make mumps go the way of smallpox (but where 'Crislip' leads to 'Pretzel' is a mystery to me).

Note that I didn't say that we were near, or even pushing hard to rid the world of mumps, only that we could in the near future. Mumps only lives in humans, and if we made a concerted effort by spreading the vaccine far and wide, we could make it extinct. Polio has almost gone the way of smallpox, and, if the anti-vaxers would crowbar a little science into their craniums, we could wipe out a few other diseases, too.

It's more than a whole army of osteopaths backed up by a fleet homeopaths could ever do.

422

We don’t ‘catch disease’ they are physiological events determined by homeostatic adjustment demands. Once the event has occured, unless circumstances demand, they are not required again.

So, are you saying that germ theory of disease is wrong? Because if that's what you believe, then it's silly to carry on.

@436 --

I'll give you an assist.

Explain why natural hygiene didn't work for Shelton.

Oh and Pretzel didn’t get rid of mumps, did he, judging by the outbreaks in the US this year or was that the process of vaccination that failed, or the reporting or…………

...the frankly admitted fact that the vaccine is 80 percent effective?

(People who get mumps can get it again, ftm.)

Well they made a shit job of validating flu vaccination!

What part of 0.95ⁿ = 0.5 ⇒ n = 13.5 but 0.975ⁿ = 0.5 ⇒ n = 27.4 do you not understand?

Johnny Labile aka Philip Hills:

“You know Jack $h!t about peer review.” Julian F

Well it seems to pass anything that pays enough,$

I know this is viewed as a jerk thing to say, but thanks for proving my point that you know nothing about peer review.

Everyone knows that circulating antibodies aren’t the whole story. ” Narad

Well that’s an admission. But elsewhere the septic line tells us that the antibody marker is the confirmation that a vaccine has ‘worked’ and produced an immune reaction. Weasel words that suit a bullshit line in sales, yet again.

You have no proper understanding of immunology. Just as the turning out of a product is proof that an assembly line works correctly, but isn't the whole story, ditto with the immune system and antibody production.
@Johnny:

where ‘Crislip’ leads to ‘Pretzel’ is a mystery to me.

I'm guessing it's a lame attempt at a pun. Crislip, crisp, pretzel.

Well well, bit of a screw up on the mumps claim for Mr Pretzel. I see no one has conceded that the ‘got rid of mumps claim’ was pure speculative vaccine belief!

In the US mumps incidence fell from over 180,000 cases every year before vaccination was introduced to fewer than 8,000 every year for the past 20 years (only a few hundred cases most years).

So where did mumps go? I suppose there must have been a mass campaign of osteopaths to adjust millions of children to prevent mumps.

Between the "weasel words" and the "elephant in the room", there's quite a menagerie accumulating over at the Hope Osteopathy Clinic.

From the "mumps and ovarian cancer" paper (linked to above):

Mumps parotitis may lead to expression and immune recognition of a tumor-associated form of MUC1 and create effective immune surveillance of ovarian cancer cells that express this form of MUC1.

In other words, an infection with mumps can result in an auto-immune condition, in which the immune system is overly vigilant towards a glycoprotein expressed both in salivary glands and in various tumours. Now this strikes me as genuinely interesting (although any autoimmune condition may well have additional, *undesirable* effects, for which the authors do not seem to have searched), because if it happens as an incidental result of mumps, there is perhaps a better-targetted way of obtaining better protection.

[Diseases] they are physiological events determined by homeostatic adjustment demands. Once the event has occured, unless circumstances demand, they are not required again.

Note to the bystanders: when a real scientist really try to explain something to non-specialists, he/she will try to use simple words. With various degrees of success, to be fair. And sometimes, there is no choice but to use big words.
By example, when I want to talk about the flu, I don't say "zoonose", but "virus jumping between different species of animals".

A con artist will play Mr Spock and spout chains of sciency-sounding terms. "Quantum" seems to come a lot. For all the big words, it's just word salad.
By example, the sentence at the top could be paraphrased as:
"Diseases are something the body does when its biological needs have changed. Once the body has done it, the disease won't occur again, unless it does."

although any autoimmune condition may well have additional, *undesirable* effects, for which the authors do not seem to have searched

Like mebbe declaring war on your exocrine glands?

So, are you saying that germ theory of disease is wrong?

He's nearly cutting and pasting from the Natural Hygiene Society:

"Most people are familiar with the term homeostasis, which refers to the body's balancing, centering, and stabilizing mechanisms. Homeostatic mechanisms are what enable your body to adjust to the relentless changes in your external and internal environments."

By extension,

"The medical historian, Shyrock, tells us in his The Development of Modern Medicine, that a new etiology based on bacteriology 'showed that the cause of tuberculosis-if not the malady itself-were indeed definite realities. It proved that there was, in the case of tuberculosis, some thing there that acted as if it were an entity.' He also points out that today a diphtheria epidemic in a community is interpreted by the board of health to indicate the presence of a definite intruder. Thus the old idea of disease as an entity is still with us, and the foregoing expressions about disease are not to be regarded as metaphors today, any more than they were when they were first used. They accurately express prevailing medical views of the nature and essence of disease.... It is the law of life that the body resists and expels whatever it cannot use. Disease is vital resistance to non-usable, therefore, injurious substances."

Oh, and fasting for a week will completely sterilize your gut.

"Mumps parotitis may lead to expression and immune recognition of a tumor-associated form of MUC1 and create effective immune surveillance of ovarian cancer cells that express this form of MUC1." Noosad the oracle

"Note to the bystanders: when a real scientist really try to explain something to non-specialists, he/she will try to use simple words." Helixcanthus

Well well, one rule for................... so I take it the former is not real

"although any autoimmune condition may well have additional, *undesirable* effects, for which the authors do not seem to have searched" narad the intruder

Lots of medical myths here. Of course the medic couldn't get their head round the idea that the simpler 'disease state' may in fact be protective or preventative because that flies in the face of medical woo, that each disease state is distinct and different.

Still not Mr Hill by the way

"Oh, and fasting for a week will completely sterilize your gut." Noonoo

Well apparently if you feed a cow on starch rich corn the gut produces the lethal Ecoli 157. By observation it is also known that a switch to real grass, not hay or fake grass, clears the pathogen within days.

So there must be something in it. Alternately the mad cow scientist chooses to spray all US meat with ammonia because it is sexier than admitting corn is killing people.

"So, are you saying that germ theory of disease is wrong?" Noonoo

Well it's back to front, the environment has more to do with it than most medics give credit to. I suppose eating crap and taking antibiotics to clear up the mess is a kind of homeostasis.

"Mumps only lives in humans, and if we made a concerted effort by spreading the vaccine far and wide, we could make it extinct." some medical twat

Well the US has been jabbing way above the mythical herd immunity line for years and they still get outbreaks. What do you do when everyone has been jabbed and it still outbreaks? Pray?

Kreb:

So where did mumps go? I suppose there must have been a mass campaign of osteopaths to adjust millions of children to prevent mumps.

I know a couple of osteopaths, one of whom is a primary care physician. His approach to mumps prevention is, of course, vaccination. ;-)

Just a reminder, American osteopaths are real doctors. Unfortunately not those in the UK, as evidenced by the fact free rants of the one who is trolling this thread.

"So where did mumps go? I suppose there must have been a mass campaign of osteopaths to adjust millions of children to prevent mumps." Cauliflower

Well it went nowhere did it according to mumps 'vaccine failure' reports in the US this year. What has osteopaths got to do with this thread anyway. Leave it for 5 mins and suddenly some medical detective has decided you are someone else it is all very medical anecdotal pap!

Who wants to be a 'real doctor'? or an osteopath or Mr Hill?

How big a smoke screen do you need to hide behind, the facts speak for themselves. Vaccination is bull.

"Like mebbe declaring war on your exocrine glands?" Noob

What a paranoid idea, body killing itself, only a medic could dream that one up! Bit like pandemic woo, "we are all going to die unless we submit to advertising"

Still not Mr Hill either

Well apparently if you feed a cow on starch rich corn the gut produces the lethal Ecoli 157. By observation it is also known that a switch to real grass, not hay or fake grass, clears the pathogen within days.

You know, people used to believe in that sort of thing (I mean, people who possessed function above the brainstem.) The idea was called "spontaneous generation"; people observed baby rats emerging from piles of old rags and came to the natural conclusion that the rags had produced the rats.

Do you believe in that, Mr. Hills? Do you believe that piles of rags create rats out of nothing? You should, really; if you believe that a cow's gut can produce "Ecoli 157" where there was no E. coli before, the belief that unliving rags can produce rats differs only in scale.

“So where did mumps go? I suppose there must have been a mass campaign of osteopaths to adjust millions of children to prevent mumps.” Cauliflower

Well it went nowhere did it according to mumps ‘vaccine failure’ reports in the US this year.

If you'll check out http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/mumps.html, you'll see that "an estimated 212,000 cases occurred in the United States in 1964. Following vaccine licensure, reported mumps decreased rapidly. Approximately 3,000 cases were reported annually in 1983–1985." Further it says "Since 1989, the number of reported mumps cases has steadily declined, from 5,712 cases to a total of 258 cases in 2004. In 2006, the United States experienced a multi-state outbreak involving 6,584 reported cases of mumps."

Let's be conservative and say we've declined from 100,000 cases of mumps per year to 7,000. That's a better than 90% decline in absolute numbers, and a larger decline in the rate.

Where did the other 93,000 cases of mumps go?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong...but outside of the fact that hay is *dried* grass rather than growing grass, I don't get what the difference is. And why "growing" grass is better for cows, per Mr Labile (lay-bile - how I always read his name - and how I see his behavior) than hay. And who feeds cows fake grass (astroturf?)

Our friend in Essex does not disappoint.

Act 1. In comment #417 he cites a paper on mumps, which was circulating among the usual suspects back in 2012.

Act 2. In #447 I quote from the paper, in the course of considering its implications.

Act 3. Our friend attributes the quoted passage to someone called Noosad and complains that it is not sufficiently dumbed down for him to understand.

Had he read the paper before citing it? One has to wonder.

Well apparently if you feed a cow on starch rich corn the gut produces the lethal Ecoli 157. By observation it is also known that a switch to real grass, not hay or fake grass, clears the pathogen within days.

Alternatively, in the real world, apparently not.

I just- by chance- viewed parts of a film called "Food, Inc" yesterday which included the *cows-fed-corn-not-grass-produce-E.coli* theme ..So that's where that originated.

-btw- it was ilustrated- compleat with cow poo.

Funny how our neighbor has managed to sell his corn-fed black Angus to people for years without making them ill. Is it supposed to be common?

If ever there was justification for calling bullsh!t about the fallacy of grass-fed cattle not causing serious E coli infections, this is it:

http://extension.psu.edu/animals/beef/grass-fed-beef/articles/telling-t…

Consumer science studies show food safety is important to consumers, and it is an important feature of food buying decisions. The advertisements for grass-fed beef that claim there are no chances of E. coli infection in humans from grass-fed beef are scary and dangerous, and not because this is a threat to traditional beef products. It is dangerous because it gives consumers a false sense of security. In the case of E. coli, this contamination happens in a processing plant and has nothing to do with how or where the animal was raised. Cattle in all types of environments-feedlots and pasture- have been shown to have the virulent form of E. coli in their digestive tract, and it requires the special care that is taken in beef processing plants to prevent meat contamination. It also requires consumers to use safe handling and cooking methods common to all foods for their safety, and these false claims do not diminish that need.

Noosad the oracle

Too deep in your cups to even to figure out who wrote what, eh?

Alternatively, in the real world, apparently not.

I want a definitive statement from Shelton.

@ hdb

Act 2. In #447 I quote from the paper, in the course of considering its implications.

Using smaller and/or more descriptive words, as per my point in #448. People can look up "glycoprotein" or "salivary gland", or not, and still get the gist of what you wrote.

And act 3, indeed, the troll ignores both your comment by quoting the article itself and my qualifier "specialist talking to non-specialist" in order to complain it's too complicated for its little brain.

Addendum to my rule of thumb to identify quacks: they are very prone of twisting quotes and their opponents' names.
Helix is a favorite webcomic, character of mine. Dub round, Mr Labile.

@ Labile

vaccination is bull

And you, sir, are a duck.

“Oh, and fasting for a week will completely sterilize your gut.” Noonoo

Take it up with Shelton. Or with the former chairman of the Institute of Classical Osteopathy, whatever.

Mr Hills and his enormous number of alter-egos is purely and simply an anti-vaccine fabulist. Mr Hills has again and again around the web had it explained to him that his anti-vaccine canards are false.

He just moves on to the next blog and does the same all over again. This is seriously troll-worthy behaviour.

@#468 --

I realize that it looks as if he were saying, "No--o, no-o."

But I believe he's calling you "Noonoo," a la Teletubbies.

Using smaller and/or more descriptive words, as per my point in #448.

I too thought that was straight-up explanatory language.

Because it was.

I'm still waiting for someone who disbelieves the germ-theory to explain why so many diseases act as if they are contagious if they really aren't. 

If measles, mumps, chickenpox, and smallpox are just physiological states that any human being might experience, why did no human beings in pre-Columbian Americas ever experience them?  And why did those physiological states sweep across the continents like wildfire when Europeans, who had commonly experienced them, arrived?

If plague is just a physiological state that any human being might experience, why do no human beings in America experience that state unless they've been in contact with ground-dwelling rodents?  Why don't we all experience it now and then?

Why don't any human beings today experience smallpox, which used to be a terrifyingly common physiological state?

I truly don't understand how anyone can reasonably answer the above questions without invoking contagious particles that are capable of replication. I.e., the germ theory of disease.

but outside of the fact that hay is *dried* grass rather than growing grass, I don’t get what the difference is.

There is a place for my farmboy memories about the differences between fresh, dried and fermented (silaged) forms of grass and non-grass forage, but this probably is not it.

He just moves on to the next blog and does the same all over again. This is seriously troll-worthy behaviour.

As long as he is providing entertainment here, he is not smearing his stupid all over other blogs.

"If measles, mumps, chickenpox, and smallpox are just physiological states that any human being might experience, why did no human beings in pre-Columbian Americas ever experience them? " LW

It is more obvious than you think. Basically the Europeans brought shit food, alcohol en mass along with many other crap lifestyle modalities.

Meanwhile modern medical myths keep spreading stories about catching disease which is rather immature at the best of times. I suppose it is convenient for those wishing to sell snake oil but surely it's time to call time on this scam

"If plague is just a physiological state that any human being might experience, why do no human beings in America experience that state unless they’ve been in contact with ground-dwelling rodents? " LW

is this really a question or just bonkers? How do you get in contact with ground dwelling rodents? Maybe you are stupid enough to not grasp that drinking rat piss might be toxic?

We don't get plague anymore because we changed the way we lived, I mean no one invented a vaccine for it, there was a bloody great fire that dumped the last one in England.

"I want a definitive statement from Shelton." The noonoo screamed - well how about a paragraph or two.

It is not inappropriate to call the drug system of healing 'the art of killing', but as we are trying to avoid harsh words we will call it the science of nonsense. It is nonsense in one sense of the word, for there is no sense in it. It is nonsense systemized. It is a collection of non-sensical vagaries reduced to fixed principles of palpable absurdity. The art of treating the sick with all kinds of poisonous drugs and every kind of destructive measures, may be called the science of medicine, and the medical journals, as well as the daily press, may be filled at all times with announcements of the discoveries of great improvements in the "healing art", but all these discoveries, with which the journals teem, amount to nothing more than additional means of getting more and more poisons into the human organism. 1922 seems pretty timeless too.

"He just moves on to the next blog and does the same all over again. This is seriously troll-worthy behaviour." Her Mengelee

Yes Chris P is an issue, a legend in his own lunchtime. He has a serious personality septic disorder compounded by a religious belief in vaccination. Not the kind of doctor one would want to ask about ones children really.

He can't discuss anything that conflicts with his belief disorder, he, like many other septics, is deluded into imagining that everyone is called Mr Hill because he has cut and pasted and googled some 'key phrases' and thinks he has solved something. That's about the limit of his scientific inquiry, kind of scary for a doctor don't you think.

It is just a pity I am not and never have been Mr Hill, judging by his site I am sure he has better things to do than blog at meditwats, guilty that their vaccine lunacy has damaged so many children

What a paranoid idea, body killing itself, only a medic could dream that one up!

Are you suggesting that autoimmune diseases don't exist? Seriously?

Where do the anti-thyroid peroxidase antibodies in patients with autoimmune thyroiditis* come from? Why do they only occur in patients with that condition?

I've come across germ theory denialists but an autoimmune disease denialist? What next, gravity doesn't exist?

* Several other autoimmune diseases with equally undeniable evidence to support their existence are available, sadly.

Johnny Labile Philip Hills, chickenshіt douchebag
Up your arse

I strongly suspect that you spend so much time whοring around on the wrong side of the Ottowa scale that you can't tell whose ass you have your head up at any given moment. L-rd knows you can't even figure out what block quotations signify.

“Like mebbe declaring war on your exocrine glands?” Noob

"Noob"? You're reduced to weird monosyllabic ejaculations? Was I even addressing you in the first place? Oh, right, that's above your pay grade. Do you even know what the fυck I was talking about?

What a paranoid idea, body killing itself, only a medic could dream that one up!

Let's have it, Beriberi. In detail. In the real world, CTLs don't know "self" from a hole in the ground. How does it work in on Planet Vitalism?

What's the naturoste-Œ-EE-Œ-paygiene explanation for viviparous species? Think carefully.

What next, gravity doesn’t exist?

It had better be an improvement on expanding-Earth.

Perhaps Johnny Labile doesn't know that the US still has occasional cases of bubonic plague...fortunately, most are susceptible to antibiotics. http://www.cdc.gov/plague/maps/

As to "how do humans contact ground dwelling animals".....what does he think mice, prairie dogs, chipmunks, etc are? And kids will pick up anything lying on the ground if curious enough. Fleas desert a dead animal, bite human, and voila! Plague (if the animal was infected).

I have now placed Johnny with "kids stay on sidewalks" insane troll, mentally.

Hey, look, Johnny said something sensible!

We don’t get plague anymore because we changed the way we lived,

That's exactly right!  We have better houses, more solid, that rodents such as the Norwegian rat have a difficult time entering and spreading their fleas. Our public health authorities are aware of the diseases potentially spread by rats and work to control them. 

Well done, Johnny!

Of course, then he spoils it by saying

I mean no one invented a vaccine for it

Um, yes, they did. Ask MO'B. 

“If measles, mumps, chickenpox, and smallpox are just physiological states that any human being might experience, why did no human beings in pre-Columbian Americas ever experience them? ” LW

It is more obvious than you think. Basically the Europeans brought s--- food, alcohol en mass along with many other c--- lifestyle modalities.

Yep, it's amazing how much European food, alcohol, and other lifestyle modalities Cortes managed to cram into his little ships -- enough to poison the whole Aztec nation in two years!

Johnny's expertise in history rivals his expertise in medicine. 

is this really a question or just bonkers? How do you get in contact with ground dwelling rodents?

Nature's grand plan comes with contact with ground-dwelling rodents fully en suite in most places that humans inhabit.

So no effort is really required.

“I want a definitive statement from Shelton.” The noonoo screamed – well how about a paragraph or two.

You lose again, Philip Hills of the Hope Osteopathic Clinic Essex, and not just because you can't even fυcking successfully count to two.

Let me explain something. We call it "not requiring a structured clinical interview":

Well apparently if you feed a cow on starch rich corn the gut produces the lethal Ecoli 157. By observation it is also known that a switch to real grass, not hay or fake grass, clears the pathogen within days.

Alternatively, in the real world, apparently not.

I want a definitive statement from Shelton.

To this, you "respond" with the first paragraph of An Introduction to Natural Hygiene, which you ascribe to 1922. This – as with effectively your entire being – is utterly nonresponsive, although it does reveal Shelton to be a plagiarist:

"We often wonder how the ancients could have navigated the seas without a compass, but these mariners were more at home on the trackless ocean than a physician in a sick room."

The Indiana State Sentinel, 1849 (PDF):

"Why we wonder how the ancients could have navigated the seas, without the compass? But those mariners were more at home on the trackless ocean than are physicians in a sick room."

Basically the Europeans brought s— food, alcohol en mass

Quick, someone tell the Mesoamerican cultures that before Columbus they knew nothing of alcohol, and that the pulque they brewed must have been some kind of placebo.

Mr Hill, judging by his site I am sure he has better things to do than blog at meditwats, guilty that their vaccine lunacy has damaged so many children

Mr Hills has enough spare time on his hands to work on undermining the Rotary International "End Polio Now" vaccination campaign, by posting vaccines-cause-polio links onto the campaign's FB page. This is despite elsewhere boasting of his Rotary membership, and of his support for that campaign.

Quick, someone tell the Mesoamerican cultures that before Columbus they knew nothing of alcohol

Or syphilis.

Which Philip Hills of the Hope Osteopathic Clinic Essex might like to persuasively demonstrate the "non-catching" nature of for an encore.

Can anyone tell me why the Johnny labile troll is claiming he is not Mr Hill when nobody is saying he is?

No don't tell me, I guess I have worked it out. When you are used to making stuff up, you just keep making stuff up.

Of course, when you are reduced to quoting from Mikey you know you have no arguments left.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=774411695932887&set=a.653986761…

As an aside, I like how the clinic likes its own posts on FB. As a non-FB user, can I ask does anyone who is normal ever do this?

I'm going to go through what labile said and perform a takedown. Because I want to.
#451:

“Note to the bystanders: when a real scientist really try to explain something to non-specialists, he/she will try to use simple words.” Helixcanthus

Well well, one rule for………………. so I take it the former is not real

That's a bit rich, seeing as Helianthus and I were both quoting from the study YOU posted.
#452

Of course the medic couldn’t get their head round the idea that the simpler ‘disease state’ may in fact be protective or preventative.

"Terrain of the body" again.
#453

Well the US has been jabbing way above the mythical herd immunity line for years and they still get outbreaks. What do you do when everyone has been jabbed and it still outbreaks?

Firstly, since antivaxxers tend to congregate, you can get clusters where herd immunity isn't reached, even if the country as a whole reaches herd immunity percentages. Secondly, remember smallpox? We jabbed everyone and it went extinct in the wild.
#457

What a paranoid idea, body killing itself.

Riiiiiiigggggghhhhht. biological processes are extremely simple and don't interact with each other so things never go wrong. Oh wait.

@ ChrisP

Can anyone tell me why the Johnny labile troll is claiming he is not Mr Hill when nobody is saying he is?

Actually, some of us did. Narad and Herr Doctor Bimler tracked sockpuppets with similar style all over the internet and pinpointed a Philip Hill as a likely source of all posts. See comments 214-251 in this thread.

It has been a long thread and Mr labile, whoever he is, has left a long trail of unsupported or debunked claims. I'm thinking of re-reading the whole thread, just for the info dropped by the regulars.

@ ChrisP

I forget:

the clinic likes its own posts on FB. As a non-FB user, can I ask does anyone who is normal ever do this?

Well, anyone with a bit of ethics will know that's cheating.
On par with making a sockpuppet to endorse one's own comments.
So, short answer, no. You are not supposed to like yourself :-)

Liking your own posts on Facebook is viewed as, shall I say, onanistic.

“If measles, mumps, chickenpox, and smallpox are just physiological states that any human being might experience, why did no human beings in pre-Columbian Americas ever experience them? ” LW

It is more obvious than you think. Basically the Europeans brought s--- food, alcohol en mass along with many other c--- lifestyle modalities.

I'm trying to imagine the Johnny Labile version of the history of the Americas:

The pre-Columbian Native Americans were peacefully living their age-old healthy lifestyles, hunting with bow and arrow on horseback*, innocent of alcohol and disease, when Columbus arrived in their Edenic paradise. Poof! The continents were instantly covered with unhealthy European cities and little farming communities raising unhealthy European crops such as corn and potatoes**, and instantly the Native Americans found themselves beset by European lifestyle diseases such as measles, mumps, smallpox, chickenpox, and influenza.

* Shhh. 
** Double shhh.

Meanwhile modern medical myths keep spreading stories about catching disease which is rather immature at the best of times.

I do find 'germ theory' denialists fascinating. How does anyone maintain such an irrational belief in the face of such a huge amount of evidence?

There are many historical experiments, for example John Snow, cholera, and the pump handle, as well as the day to day experiences of doctors, that prove germ theory beyond any doubt. We can induce and cure bacterial infections in animals, see the causative organisms under a microscope, culture them and inject them into other animals that also get sick. Even the healthiest and best fed lab rats are susceptible to infections (and cancer). It works just as we would expect it to according to 'germ theory'.

We can even sequence viral DNA, and build viruses from scratch using this genetic code that make animals sick just as the natural virus does.

We also routinely culture bacteria from sick patients, find out which antibiotic kills those cultured bacteria, give that antibiotic to the patient, and they get better. Sometimes we find they have an antibiotic resistant infection and they don't get better as easily. If conventional science had it wrong it would rapidly become very obvious.

How does a germ theory denialist explain all this? Generally they don't even try, they simply ignore all the evidence that contradicts their delusional beliefs, or claim it has been fabricated.

It would be lovely if we only got sick if we didn't live a healthy lifestyle, but sadly our immune systems are not perfect and a number of pathogens have evolved to evade them. I am quite sure that if Mr. Labile was exposed to sufficient typhoid or cholera bacteria, or hepatitis B viruses by the right route he would get sick, no matter what his diet/lifestyle, unless he has been vaccinated, of course.

What a paranoid idea, body killing itself.

Seeing as you don't believe in a creator, I'd be curious to know how you account for the phenomenon of natural death if the explanation isn't that the body kills itself.

Is natural death also an idea that only a septic medic would endorse?

Is natural death also an idea that only a septic medic would endorse?

Being septic - medic or otherwise - is a good reason to consider the imminence of natural death :-)

Happily, I'm more the sylleptic type, myself.

(Note to Narad:

^^There's no syllepsis there. I realize there should be. But it's early.)

“If measles, mumps, chickenpox, and smallpox are just physiological states that any human being might experience, why did no human beings in pre-Columbian Americas ever experience them? ” LW

It is more obvious than you think. Basically the Europeans brought shit food, alcohol en mass along with many other crap lifestyle modalities.

Meanwhile modern medical myths keep spreading stories about catching disease which is rather immature at the best of times. I suppose it is convenient for those wishing to sell snake oil but surely it’s time to call time on this scam

What a fascinating delusional structure Mr. Hills has. Janet Parker works one floor above one of the last locations on Earth where the smallpox virus still exists - and she becomes the last person on Earth to die of smallpox.

But it's not because the smallpox virus causes smallpox, of course. No, Ms. Parker must have suddenly radically changed her diet to pure McDonald's burgers. It's just utter coincidence that her dietary changes, for which there is no evidence that they even occurred, came at the same time as her exposure to the non-infectious smallpox virus.

Oh, and those who visited her in the hospital, before the nature of her ailment was realized, and also contracted smallpox? It couldn't be that they were in contact with someone who transmitted an infectious micro-organism to them, because there is no such thing! Despite the obvious ecological niche that exists for "micro-organism that preys on larger species at cellular levels and reproduces itself to spread to other such hosts", evolution never produced ANY such micro-organisms, because... uhmmm... uh, well, I guess it didn't want to be accused of biting the body's style? Since the body generates EXACTLY such micro-organisms, but only in response to TV dinners? Yes, yes, that must be it. Those who contracted smallpox after visiting someone who had an ultimately fatal case of it - they, too, must have had a sudden, uncaused, undocumented, radical change of diet.

There simply is no other logical explanation, since the much more logical explanation was one that a 1920s plagiarist didn't believe in.