Cranks of a feather: The Nation of Islam and the Church of Scientology team with antivaccine activists to oppose SB 277

The saga of SB 277 just keeps getting stranger and stranger as its end game comes into view.

SB 277 is, of course, a big deal. If it's passed by the California Assembly and signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown, it would eliminate nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, making the largest state in the union only the third state that only allows medical exemptions. Since its passage by the California Senate last month and its clearing the Assembly Health Committee last week on a 12-6 vote, SB 277 has taken on the air of inevitability. Sure, it could still stall or be hopelessly watered down by the full Assembly, but that's looking less and less likely now. It's looking more and more likely that the bill will become law. Of course, I've expressed concern that Governor Brown might betray California children again by trying to tack on a religious exemption in a signing statement, as he did three years ago with AB 2109, a law designed to make personal belief exemptions to school vaccine mandates more difficult to obtain, but I hope he's learned his lesson after that debacle.

So, as SB 277 moves towards its final fate in the Assembly, the antivaccine contingent continues to get more and more desperate. One indication of that desperation is that now they've thrown in their lot with the Nation of Islam, and, as longtime valued commenter and tireless battler for children's health, Liz Ditz, points out, there's a call out for an "emergency town meeting" tonight in Los Angeles, as shown on the Facebook page for Californians for Vaccine Choice.

Here's the flier:

The Nation of Islam issues an antivaccine call to action. (Click to embiggen.) The Nation of Islam issues an antivaccine call to action. (Click to embiggen.)

Our people are under attack? Not in this case. Of course you know where this is going if you've been a regular reader over the last year or so. (More on that later.)

And here's the call to action:

URGENT ATTENDANCE REQUEST: LA EMERGENCY TOWN HALL MEETING

HISTORY IN THE MAKING!!! ATTEND TOWN HALL MEETING THURS, JUNE 18th!!

EMERGENCY TOWN HALL MEETING
Thursday June 18th, 2015
8038 S. Vermont Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90044
at 7pm, doors open at 6:30pm

Today, Wed. June 17th, the Nation of Islam held a meeting with over 1,400 community leaders in Los Angeles. Members already battling SB277 where present and relayed that it was an electric and historic moment as a whole new community became aware of the suppressed CDC whistleblower information revealing increased risk of autism with MMR in African American boys. That vaccine manufacturers have no liability and that there are vaccine mandate laws like SB277. They must quickly take action to oppose.

They were called to Urgent Action to contact the CA Black Legislative Caucus members: http://blackcaucus.legislature.ca.gov/
To hold them accountable to protect their children and the rights of all.

Everyone is being asked to attend an Emergency Town Hall Meeting tomorrow night, June 18th, in Los Angeles. Robert F Kennedy, Jr. , Dr. Brian Hooker and Minister Tony Muhammad will all be speaking! If you can, this is an event to attend!

The Nation of Islam and CA Republican legislators are standing with us. More and more people are awakening. We stand firm!

The issues of medical mandates, vaccine safety and efficacy, segregation, discrimination, civil and religious rights, and access to education and childcare are the cornerstone of the new civil rights movement. Legislators will cast votes on bills like SB277 that will put them on the right side or the wrong side of history.

Keep reaching out so that all people and groups from all walks of life will continue to join the fight against forced vaccinations.

For the GREATEST good, we shall not be moved!

#SB277, #JusticeOrElse, #HealthChoiceAdvocate

This has been building for a while, as the antivaccine movement has apparently been courting the Nation of Islam for a while now. For instance, last week an interview with Minister Louis Farrakhan appeared in The Final Call. It covered a number of topics, but quite a lot of verbiage was devoted to vaccines, with Farrakhan stating:

Robert Kennedy Jr. was at my home a week or so ago, and Bobby Kennedy Jr. was representing a man (Dr. William Thompson) in the Centers for Disease Control (“CDC”) who “blew the whistle” that the CDC was responsible for developing a vaccine that is genetically prepared, or concocted, to affect Black males.* [Please refer to Simpson University biochemist Dr. Brian Hooker’s research on Translational Neurodegeneration (2014) at http://www.translationalneurodegeneration.com/content/3/1/16.

This is the Bible: “Kill the male, spare the female”—and it’s going on right now. They’ll take your baby; they’re sneaking in the ward where the baby is born, if the parents are not looking, to take the babies and inject them. What are they injecting them with? According to Bobby Kennedy, and the research, and scientists, they are injecting them with vaccines that are high in mercury. And this mercury starts eating at the cells of the brain.

They realize their world is finished! There’s no more “White Supremacy” ruling—that’s over! We are awakening now: You’re going to have to compete with awakened Black men and women, awakened Brown men and women, awakened Red men and women, and awakened poor White people! You are not going to play the game over the masses of the people anymore. And that’s why Zbigniew Brzezinski said, “it is easier to kill a million people than to control a million people.” They’ve lost control; but they’re killing through food, vaccines … I’m not saying you shouldn’t take a vaccine. But you shouldn’t be stupid and think that the same man that gave the Indians smallpox through blankets, that that same man has your interest at heart when he says “we have a vaccine for you.” You better wake up, and look up!

I’m saying Bobby Kennedy can’t get support because the pharmaceuticals have bought off Congress. Did you hear me? He can’t get a congressman, a senator, to bring him before Congress and subpoena the whistle blower from [the] CDC, because the pharmaceuticals have bought off the Congress. He said the pharmaceuticals have bought off the media. I said, “Well, what about Black preachers?”—since it’s directed against Black males—what “what are we doing?” “I’m sorry. They are not responding either,” Mr. Kennedy said. Some of us have been paid off by the pharmaceutical companies. I said, “Well what about the Congressional Black Caucus?” He said, “I’m sure they would like to help, but they are weak.” He said that’s why he showed up at my door.

Elsewhere, Minister Tony Muhammad echoes Farrakhan's call, calling SB 277 a "heinous bill":

Yes, Muhammad did liken the MMR vaccine to the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. (More on that below, too.) He also said:

"I’m here to warn particularly those Black elected officials that we sent you up here, we want them to know that this building does not belong to them. It belongs to us,” he said. “And that in South Central Los Angeles, in two weeks, we’ll be having a tribunal meeting and we’re going to bring our Black politicians who vote for this vaccine bill up on charges of treason.”

Because helping to make sure that African-American children are protected against deadly diseases is race treason to the Nation of Islam.

Of course, one can't help but wonder why Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is so concerned about the MMR vaccine. After all, he declares himself (risibly) "fiercely pro-vaccine" and states time and time again that he's all about the mercury; i.e., the thimerosal preservative that used to be in most childhood vaccines but since 2002 has only been in few flu vaccines. That's what he said ten years ago when he wrote the conspiracy laden Deadly Immunity and that's what he's been saying in his latest book and on The Dr. Oz Show. Here's a hint: The MMR never had thimerosal in it because it's a live virus vaccine. Yet, here we have RFK, Jr. joining forces with Brian Hooker, whose angle is attacking the MMR vaccine. This is a man who has earlier likened the vaccine program to the Holocaustmore than once.

Brian Hooker, for those of you who don't remember it, took in a CDC scientist named William Thompson, who for whatever reason felt as though he needed to unburden himself and for whatever awful reasons decided to confide in Brian Hooker about what he felt to be a mistaken analysis by the CDC in an epidemiological study which Thompson was a coauthor that failed to find a correlation between MMR vaccination and autism. In a nutshell, in the raw data there was a statistical blip in a subgroup containing small numbers that led the unadjusted data to show a 3.4-fold increased risk of autism in African American boys associated with MMR. Of course, as I put it at the time, even if Hooker were correct (he wasn't), he had basically just proven Andrew Wakefield mostly wrong because there wasn't even a whiff of a hit of a correlation in any other subgroup. In any case, as you might imagine, Hooker used some truly incompetent statistics, analyzing data from a case control study as a cohort study, which any first year epidemiology student other than Jake Crosby would be able to tell you is a no-no. Heck, I'm not an epidemiologist or statistician and I can tell you it's a no-no. In any case, Brian Hooker taped his phone conversations with William Thompson, and Andrew Wakefield learned of the existence of these recordings.

The result was a video every bit as nasty as all the Holocaust analogies flying around about the vaccine program, in which Wakefield likened the MMR vaccine to the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, complete with lurid pictures of patients suffering from advanced syphilis and the introduction of Peter Buxton, the Public Health Service investigator who blew the whistle on the experiment. The “malfeasance” being claimed is that the CDC supposedly covered up the link between MMR and autism in African American boys, hence the puffed up rhetoric about the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. The video even concludes with the sheer Godwin-y goodness (from an entertainment standpoint) of references to the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot, because, I guess, autism is just like the mass murder of millions, at least in the minds of Wakefield supporters. Thus was born the "CDC whistleblower" pseudo-scandal, which the antivaccine movement tried to flog as the "smoking gun" evidence that the CDC has either failed or targeted African-American boys with its evil autism-causing MMR vaccine. Andrew Wakefield and Brian Hooker even went so far as to complain to the CDC, in the process portraying Thompson as a rather fragile, weak person who cracked under pressure, a portrayal that probably has more than a grain of truth to it, given his behavior.

It's also amusing to note that the paper cited by Louis Farrakhan in the video is the very same paper by Hooker that was so bad that it was retracted by the journal. Before that, he had made a video describing his work:

Money quote:

So I reanalyzed the dataset using what is a very, very simple statistical technique. I think that in statistics simplicity is elegance. And I'm not really that smart; so I like to do simple, easy things rather than much more intellectually challenging things. So I did the simplest, most straightforward analysis, which is a Chi Squared analysis...

Here’s a hint: In statistics, the simplest analysis is often not the correct analysis, and, boy, was this the case for Hooker’s reanalysis of the DeStefano et al dataset! He didn't control for simple confounders. He did a crappy statistical analysis. He botched the analysis in pretty much every way possible.

I can't for the life of me figure out how antivaccinationists opposing SB 277 think that teaming up with the Nation of Islam will help them. I really can't. The Nation of Islam is well known as a crank organization. Indeed, the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented extensively its anti-Semitism, depiction of white people as "devils" (which no doubt facilitated its believing the CDC whistleblower conspiracy theory), and its association with hate groups and authoritarian regimes. As if being racist, anti-Semitic admirers of Hitler weren't enough, of late the Nation of Islam has forged an alliance with the Church of Scientology, even to the point of apparently having merged with it. (Note that the advertised town hall meeting will be taking place at the Scientology Cultural Center.) Amusingly, the SPLC drolly characterizes this relationship thusly:

Two of America’s better known UFO-friendly religions, Scientology and the black nationalist Nation of Islam (NOI), now have more in common than unusual theologies involving intergalactic spaceships. For about a year, NOI leader Louis Farrakhan has been telling his followers to embrace Scientology in order to move closer to perfection in preparation for the end times.

According to a May 31 article in Final Call, NOI’s newspaper, nearly 700 NOI members have become Certified Hubbard Dianetics Auditors, and more will soon be trained in Church of Scientology (COS) techniques “to prepare better servants and saviours of the people by helping to clear up their minds and lives.” COS “auditors” supposedly help people ascend to higher levels of consciousness.

So let's see. Brian Hooker and RFK, Jr. are now reduced to peddling their pseudoscientific, child-endangering nonsense to a racist hate group that has arguably recently become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Church of Scientology. Both religions are known as UFO religions (the Nation of Islam believes in the "mother plane"; Scientology, Xenu), and from what I've been able to determine, the Nation of Islam would not be able to organize an event like this without the approval of the leadership of the Church of Scientology, particularly given that their town hall meeting will take place on Scientology property.

And antivaccinationists hope that this will sway African-American legislators to oppose SB 277... exactly how? This new association with the Nation of Islam is going to help the anti-SB 277 cause. . .exactly how? Truly, the stench of desperation hangs heavy in the air, and crank magnetism is in bloom. The Nation of Islam, the Church of Scientology, and the antivaccine movement: Three crappy tastes that taste crappy together. They deserve each other.

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As Attila The Stockbroker so succinctly put it;

"I don't wanna hear about Farrakhan,
Because Farrakhan is an evil man"

By Rich Scopie (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

I have found this conjunction incredibly amusing in a rather embarrassing way (in that I know I shouldn't be amused). The idea of Brian Hooker et al. hitching their cart to the Scientology movement (it is certainly true that currently the Nation of Islam is indistinguishable from the Church of Scientology).

'My enemies enemies are my friends' not withstanding, this shows a colossal lack of judgement that can only come back and bite them - something they richly deserve.

Louis Farrakhan has been telling his followers to embrace Scientology in order to move closer to perfection in preparation for the end times.

Eh? I thought it was the nuttier "Christian" fundies that were expecting the end times. And what the heck does Scientology have to do with it. Clearly Farrakan needs cash and is an impressisve crank magnet, to say the least.

And Minister Tony Mohammed? Minister?

I am glad that the Nation of Islam lets nothing as irritating as history, real religion, or reality intrude on their fantasies. I would suggest, however, that they don't go visiting their 'brothers' in ISIS.

By jrkrideau (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

In a weird sort of way, it makes sense. Scientology is very anti-medicine, particularly anything to do with the field of psychiatry, but I bet that includes pretty much the spectrum of modern day medicine as well.....not to mention that the tactics of stalking pro-vaccine activists seems to fit the Scientology profile as well.

I read through this post - twice - with my mouth hanging open. I have to confess that I, initially, thought it was joke. Are these people for real?

By SelenaWolf (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

$$$$cientology is bad shit evil, it is a mind-altering crime syndicate, the only reason why Hubbard trained his cockroaches to dead agent the psychiatry and medical industries is because they exposed the rat's distorted and treacherous scams that wants us to believe $$$$cientology has the cure for your illness.

It's almost unbelievable. I'm not sure how sb277 opposition could become less credible at this point. Readers in California, please come join us at vaccinatecalifornia.org and write a letter or make some phone calls to help us make the voice of the majority heard over this ridiculous ruckus!

By Nursemominca (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

of late the Nation of Islam has forged an alliance with the Church of Scientology, even to the point of apparently having merged with it.

*head asplode*

I didn't know much what the Nation of Islam was about. And now, in a short time, I have a lot of confusing information to process.

Do the followers of Nation of Islam know that their leaders are subjugating all of them to the white men/women who rule the Scientology Church?

By Helianthus (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

Selena @5: There is a reason for the existence of Poe's Law.

I'll admit that I haven't been following crackpot religions lately, so I had no idea that the Nation of Islam has thrown in with the Church of Scientology. The UFO obsession of the former is also news to me. I doubt that many authentic Muslims would approve of this, and as alluded to above, many in the Muslim world take apostasy very seriously (rather too seriously IMO, but that's a separate topic).

Godwin's Law doesn't explicitly cover the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, but that is another case where people should be extremely wary of drawing analogies. It's definitely unwarranted here. My recollection is that, even with Hooker's statistical methods, the association between vaccines and autism among African-American boys was only just barely significant at the p < 0.05 level, and when you consider how dodgy those statistical methods were, it looks like a case of the data being tortured until they confessed. So the Tuskegee analogy is way off base.

I'd like to suggest a better analogy: The Boy Who Cried Wolf. These people have been so busy over-hyping minimal and nonexistent dangers that they have created a bigger risk: that someday people will ignore their complaints about something that might really be a risk. It's one thing to be skeptical about new medical procedures. But vaccines aren't that new anymore, so opponents should be held to a higher standard of evidence, one that they have come nowhere close to meeting so far.

By Eric Lund (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

Hanlon's razor?

By John Danley (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

And I thought it couldn't get any better. Ginger Taylor is operating under the delusion that the Nation of Islam's involvement is v v important and what clinches it for them.

By Science Mom (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

Holy crap. I forgot about that, or I would have had some fun with Ginger. :-)

That's just scary that she thinks this is a good thing - NOI has been fringe for years & they aren't considered a legitimate organization by many people.....the connection to Scientology is just plain weird.

In another of his lunatic rantings, Mikey Adams is speculating the tragic Charleston church shooting was a false flag intended to fan the flames of racial unrest and lead to reduced gun rights in the US.

To bring this on topic, one of his equally-lunatic commenters then pipes up that the government/Big Pharma/pro-vaccine movement must have orchestrated this shooting in order to divert attention from the SB 277 rally in California.

(OT, but do these people see conspiracies everywhere? Couldn't this have just been a hate crime committed by one very disturbed individual?)

By Woo Fighter (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

Sounds like a confederacy of dunces

So I reanalyzed the dataset using what is a very, very simple statistical technique. I think that in statistics simplicity is elegance. And I’m not really that smart; so I like to do simple, easy things rather than much more intellectually challenging things. So I did the simplest, most straightforward analysis, which is a Chi Squared analysis…

I genuinely laughed out loud. So loud that I woke the dog. Thanks for this.

@ Woo fighter

OT, but do these people see conspiracies everywhere?

Was it a rhetorical question? :-)

By Helianthus (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

Thank you for your kind words, Orac.

All I can say is that the events of the last 9 days have been quite astonishing, including the total cluelessness of the white vaccine-refusal lobby about the place of The Nation of Islam in African-American culture.

I suspect that watching the hashtags could have some amusement value. Seriously, #JusticeOrElse? Is that one new? Are the Fruit of the Loom Islam guys going to be on this?

Oh dear. I'm sure Zbigniew Brzeziński would be totally flabbergasted if he heard his words quoted in such context.

The amount of stupidity of those anti-vaxxer is reaching a supernova-hot level...
Mercury eating the brain of male but not female... Aye.
A somewhat correlation of autism with subgroup coming from a flawed study with tortured data become "a vaccine that is genetically prepared, or concocted, to affect Black males"

Wait, genetically prepared mercury ...?
What's wrong with those people ? What happened to their neurons ? Hydroencephalitis ?

@Quark (#21):

Wait, genetically prepared mercury …?
What’s wrong with those people ? What happened to their neurons ? Hydroencephalitis ?

Actually, this may be the first real case of actualization. They've become so obsessed with mercury that they quite literally now have mercury on the brain!

By Richard Smith (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

Actually, this may be the first real case of actualization. They’ve become so obsessed with mercury that they quite literally now have mercury on the brain!

Well, I'd better get rid of my old Quicksilver Messenger Service LPs. And this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T3MgIRUwj0

OK Orac,you beat me to it. was all ready to post some of what the SPLC had uncovered about the Nation of Islam.But this site linked at one of the SPLC pages,makes this alliance seem a little puzzling.In addition to being bats**t crazy.L Ron Hubbard was a rabid racist,suporter of Apartheid,and made white privilege one of the founding tenets of Scientology.

Kim Baker, a South African ex-Scientologist, writes of L. Ron Hubbard's praise for Hendrick Verwoerd [offsite] in the following excerpt from her series of a.r.s. posts, "My Story".

By now, I had learnt to accept contradictory facts. Sometimes, though, the contradictions were too much for me. One evening, at roll call, a tape by Hubbard was played. On it, he spoke of how he had met Hendrick Verwoed (Hendrick Verwoed was one of the founding fathers of Apartheid in South Africa — he created the system of "Bantu" education, designed to give Black South Africans an inferior education so that they would be forced to seek employment as unskilled labourers — an unspeakably evil system that still has effects to this day).

Hubbard said that Verwoed was "a great guy". The dissonance jarred me deeply. I asked that they stop the tape, and re-play that part — I wanted to be sure I heard correctly. I did. Unfortunately, I don't have the reference of the tape — all I remember is that it was part of the Organisation Executive Course (probably being edited out by the Church now, as I write!). I stood there with my jaw hanging — "How can that be???", I asked my fellow staff members. Here we were, supposed to be saving the Planet, freeing people from their "reactive" minds — and here was our leader, saying that one of the most suppressive people in our country was "A GREAT GUY"???? The other staff members just shrugged it off, saying Hubbard must have had his reasons. I couldn't. I kept my disagreement to myself after my initial outburst — didn't want to have to go through "False Data Stripping" (a process whereby any disagreement with Hubbard or Scientology is handled to the point that the disagreement is nullified).

More

In North Africa they had the Arab with the gun and whip. He could force people to do things with a gun and a whip and he accomplished a tremendous amount of extermination, but he certainly didn't advance that civilization very much. In South Africa they had a bit of the whip but everybody just gave up. The South African native is probably the one impossible person to train in the entire world — he is probably impossible by any human standard. I'll give you an example. A South African native is being shown how to sow crops and he has a basket, and he's got some seed, and he's walking along back of the harrow disc — and he is supposed to throw seed out this way: seed out this way, seed out that way, seed out this way. A white man is riding a little tractor that's pulling the disc and scraping the soil for the seed. And this scene was enacted and was witnessed and was told to me with considerable hilarity as some kind of an idea of learning rate. The white man was sitting on the little tractor pulling the harrow, the native along behind him, sowing the seed straight down in handfuls on the ground. The white man got off the tractor, came back to the native, took the basket away from him, put his hand in the basket, threw it to the right, put his hand in the basket, threw it to the left, and gave it back to the native. And the native waited, the white man got on the tractor, drove along, and the native took a handful out of the basket and threw it straight on the ground. So the white man got off the tractor, came back, took the basket away from the native, showed the native, throw it to the right, throw it to the left, gave it back to the native, took his seat again on the tractor, the native followed along behind, took handfuls and threw it straight on the ground! And this went on for a very long time. The native never did throw any handfuls of seed to the right and left. Never did. That is farming in South Africa.

Now did anything ever come along and change that? Yes. Man had to cease to be Homo Sapiens and had to become Homo Scientologicus in order to accomplish any action that was anywhere near efficient in South Africa. And we have had some auditors [glossary] in South Africa who have actually succeeded in training natives easily and well and have successfully managed large organizations there. That's certainly something. Now with these people it was still possible to get something done. But what had this native done? Was this native what we think of as primitive stock? No, we make a great many mistakes. We say a child is in a "native state." A native is in a "native state." People are in a barbaric condition and then they grow up and become civilized. How do we know that this barbaric condition isn't a retrogression from a highly civilized condition back to an Only One [glossary] category? How do we know that isn't true? How do we know that that native didn't at one time achieve a great civilization of culture which then collapsed on him and he went back into a state of being a barbarian?

But the point is, is this true that a native is in a clearer [glossary] state, and is it true that it requires Livingness [glossary] to advance somebody in that crude state up to a condition of ability? No, that is not true. The child, the primitive, the native, are in retrograded states. They are worse off than somebody who is at a civilized or thinking or analytical level.

Only Scientologists are capable of teaching the unteachables:

By Roger Kulp (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

Alia@20

This is nothing new.Alex Jones has been applying Zbigniew Brzeziński's name in similar contexts as long as he has been on the air.

By Roger Kulp (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

Orac has posted in his not so secret other blog about Citizens’ Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) the not so secret antipsychiatry front organization the Church of Scientology has run since 1969.Noting new,but it is worth noting CCHR has this page up on their web site from last year.Brian Hooker,Ginger Taylor,MMR targeting black babies.It's all there.

By Roger Kulp (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

Only Scientologists are capable of teaching the unteachables

Holy white man's burden, Batman! The sheer arrogance in that sentence defies comparison.

It wouldn't be the first time a religion has so radically modified their views of sub-Saharan Africans in the space of a generation. The LDS church used to have a similarly low opinion of people with recent African ancestry--until they decided that it was better for the church to view them as being on a par with other potential recruits. I suspect something similar has happened with the Church of Scientology since L. Ron Hubbard's time. Otherwise, the NOI/COS alliance sounds like a fly accepting a spider's invitation to dinner.

By Eric Lund (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

@jrkrideau

Eh? I thought it was the nuttier “Christian” fundies that were expecting the end times.

My understanding is that expecting there to be end times is an actual Islamic belief, although NOI probably got the "it could happen any day now" from Christians.

By justthestats (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

The bad part of the Tuskegee experiment was that the late stages of the experiment involved KNOWINGLY withholding therapy that was known to save lives.

How is this the same as requiring vaccinations to attend public schools?

By Tsu Dho Nimh (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

Oh great.

Given the Scientology connection, how long before we see a summer blockbuster set in a dystopian future in which medical freedom fighter (Tom Cruise?) fights to protect his family from being forcibly inoculated with a witch's brew of toxic chemicals under a medical tyranny dictatorship led by the Lord High Vaccinator (John Travolta), supported by his vaccine damaged mutant hordes?

I read Going Clear and The Psychopath Test and thought my mind was sufficiently blown about Scientology. We're going to need a bigger book.

By Roadstergal (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

reader, the committee and senate floor votes shook out largely on party lines, with a few notable exceptions. I want to call out Senator Jeff Stone (R-28) gave a great speech on the need for the bill during the Senate floor vote. He's a pharmacist.

It's not surprising that the OC GOP published a resolution opposing SB277, as the California Democratic Party passed a resolution in favor of the bill. But, the GOP vote was NOT unanimous -- a number of people objected.

Narad@19
That one seems to be a NOI one for some rally they're holding. Probably just cross-promotion given that there's only one mention of vaccines by the dubious NOI Research Group that conducts important research such as:

WEB DuBois wrote in 1890 that "Jews are heirs to the slave baron." HARSH, but is it TRUE? https://goo.gl/6wDHvk

Ironic given AVers penchant for Holocaust references.

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

In other words and contrary to RI spin, Liz, reasonable people oppose SB277 despite the atrocious graphic with indefensible framing presented above.

IMO, anyone involved in the design and approval of that ludicrous poster should be replaced ASAP.

reader appears to be a drive-by baiter of some kind.

The link is to YouTube video of George Fatheree's testimony before the Assembly Health Committee. Mr. Fatheree is in fact a real-estate attorney who occasionally does pro-bono work in special education law, and not a "special-education lawyer".

Mr. Fatheree's son, unfortunately, has a neurological condition called Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome. He received that diagnosis in 2002. Children now diagnosed with L-GS are now recommended to be evaluated for Dravet Syndrome, It is not known if the younger Fatheree has ever had such a workup.

The testimony was largely about the younger Fatheree's medical conditions which Mr. Fatheree squarely blamed on vaccines.

One of the regular readers here, Brian, wrote a brief note about Dravet Syndrome several years ago:

It happens that the encephalopathy that sometimes occurs following vaccination is explained by (usually de novo) mutations in the genes for neuronal ion channels, which was first reported several years following the publication of Weibel’s article and then affirmed by extensive additional work from independent groups of investigators

keeping up with the literature, which includes these more recent publications:

Reyes IS, Hsieh DT, Laux LC, Wilfong AA. Alleged Cases of Vaccine Encephalopathy Rediagnosed Years Later as Dravet Syndrome. Pediatrics. 2011 Aug 15.

Tro-Baumann B, von Spiczak S, Lotte J, Bast T, Haberlandt E, Sassen R, Freund A, Leiz S, Stephani U, Boor R, Holthausen H, Helbig I, Kluger G. A retrospective study of the relation between vaccination and occurrence of seizures in Dravet syndrome. Epilepsia. 2011 Jan;52(1):175-8

McIntosh AM, McMahon J, Dibbens LM, Iona X, Mulley JC, Scheffer IE, Berkovic SF. Effects of vaccination on onset and outcome of Dravet syndrome: a retrospective study. Lancet Neurol. 2010 Jun;9(6):592-8

Wiznitzer M. Dravet syndrome and vaccination: when science prevails over speculation. Lancet Neurol. 2010 Jun;9(6):559-61.

Note, too, that the nonsensical assertion that in more than 80 cases the NVICP has quietly compensated cases of vaccine-induced autism is similarly explained by genetic channelopathies such as Dravet syndrome, which Dr. Dravet noted is often accompanied by the development of autistic traits as well as encephalopathy and/or seizures following months of apparently normal development:

Dravet C. Dravet syndrome history. Dev Med Child Neurol. 2011 Apr;53 Suppl 2:1-6

Wolff M, Cassé-Perrot C, Dravet C. Severe myoclonic epilepsy of infants (Dravet syndrome): natural history and neuropsychological findings. Epilepsia. 2006;47 Suppl 2:4

While Mr. Fatheree came to blame the boy's condition on receipt of vaccines, it is probably not the case.

In any case, in 2004, the Fatherees took the boy to the Dominican Republic for stem-cell treatments. They reported improvements in his condition, but evidently at least by 2008 the young man continued to have his condition managed by anti-seizure medications.

reasonable people oppose SB277

[citation needed]

According to your link, the stated reasons for passing the resolution were individual liberty, government overreach, and Democrats crossing over to register as Republicans. The last is purely a political move unrelated to the merits of the issue. Individual liberty? As the saying goes, your right to swing your fist in the air ends at my face, and this principle applies here: people who must depend on herd immunity (such as those who qualify for medical exemptions, which are not threatened by this bill) have the right not to be exposed to diseases through the reckless indifference of parents who would merely prefer not to vaccinate their children. As for government overreach: The government can, and in the past has, taken much more drastic measures to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. Consider the actions taken by multiple state governments last fall against people suspected of being infected with Ebola. I'd consider a vaccination requirement much less drastic and overreaching than a mandatory quarantine, and at least we do have vaccines for measles, pertussis, etc., unlike for Ebola.

By Eric Lund (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

Overlook this alliance?

http://ocpolitical.com/2015/06/16/oc-gop-opposes-sb-277-pan-schoolchild…

Nope. I noted long ago that the antivaccine movement has co-opted conservative/libertarian language and that some Republicans pander to antivaxers:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/01/23/dr-bob-sears-perfecting-th…

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/02/20/blowing-the-antivaccine-do…

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/02/03/is-republican-party-becomi…

So I'm not in the least bit surprised that the Orange County Republican Party has joined the opposition to SB 277.

If the Democratic Party put out a position statement that the sky was Blue, there would be some idiot wing of the Republican Party that would put out a statement to the contrary.....

That one seems to be a NOI one for some rally they’re holding.

Ah, well. I haven't even seen them around in some time; they used to show up outside the Starbucks nearest the mothership on Saturdays to peddle The Final Call (charging for that always seemed like a poor marketing strategy to me).

My Assemblyman's spokesperson informed me that at the Dem Convention there was a move to put support for vax, or SB277, into the platform, but the politicos chickened out due to the swarming minions of antivax-antigmo woomammas...

These are urgent, legitimate and sufficient race concerns (unlike the appalling and incendiary claims in the Town Hall Meeting announcement):

http://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/regressive-autism-repo…

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X14001534

http://www.morganverkamp.com/august-27-2014-press-release-statement-of-…

More transparency is needed. Provide Dr Brian Hooker with unredacted CDC data from his 10 years of FOIA requests. Permit other independent scientists access to the data, too.

Anything less is #unsustainable

Hmm. I'm looking at the graphic of the flyer Orac includes at the top of his article.

Since when did Brian Hooker work for the CDC?

Alex Jones has been applying Zbigniew Brzeziński’s name in similar contexts as long as he has been on the air.

I am impressed that he can pronounce it.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

I am impressed that he can pronounce it.

I am not prepared to check at the moment, but I seriously doubt he can.

I see you Attila The Stockbroker**

He played at the Reading Festival in 1989. I particularly remember his rendition of "Ace of Spades" (performed on ukelele), in which he proved that it is actually an Existential manifesto, if sung with a French accent.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

Everything is an Existentialist manifesto, if sung with a French accent.

Our Palmetto is at half-staff today, minions.
A different world than the NOI down here, with numerous religious groups supporting the evidence-based approach taken on our campus. A different world today, indeed. At least they nabbed the SOB.

FWIW, Scientology was already onboard when AB2109 was wending its way through the legislature, via parentalrights.org, which partners with both ablechild and CCHR.

Also, wow. I had no idea that they and NOI were a thing.

And this went on for a very long time. The native never did throw any handfuls of seed to the right and left. Never did. That is farming in South Africa.

Slaves refuse to cooperate with the tasks set by their enslavers, therefore they must be stupid, and fit only to be enslaved!
It is tempting sometimes to think of Hubbard as a lovable-scoundrel con-man ripping off the rubes. Thanks for the reminder that he was an absolutely vile POS.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

Yes, MarkN. It is a tragic day. And it's terrorism, pure and simple. Not mental illness. Not an attack on religion. It's white on black terror.

Their names and what has been published so far about their lives:

Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45. Mother of three. High school track coach. Reverend at Emanuel AME Church.
Cynthia Hurd, 54. Wife. Sister. Librarian. Worshiped at Emanuel AME Church.
Susie Jackson, 87. Worshiped at Emanuel AME Church.
Ethel Lee Lance, 70, Grandmother. Sexton at Emanuel AME Church.
Depayne Middleton-Doctor, 49. Mother of four. Reverend at Emanuel AME Church.
Clementa Pinckney, 41. Husband, father of two. State senator. Reverend at Emanuel AME Church.
Tywanza Sanders, 26.
Daniel L. Simmons, 74. Father. Reverend at Emanuel AME Church.
Myra Thompson, 59. Wife.

It is tempting sometimes to think of Hubbard as a lovable-scoundrel con-man ripping off the rubes. Thanks for the reminder that he was an absolutely vile POS.

I read a biography of him last year and thoroughly enjoyed it in a certain way; it was a well-written account of a genius-level sociopath. There didn't seem to be that much about him that was lovable, though - just ask his ex-wived.

***

I know it is selfish* (or something like that) of me, but I just Can't Deal with Charleston right now.

*As in, I am not the one going through all these race-based murders in the US, and yet I am past coping.

Alison Folmar, one of the two attorneys who testified for the opposition at the Health Committee thing was also COS-connected. (Profiled in Freedom magazine, honored by CCHR on World Humanitarian Day, etc.)

Barefoot reported,

My Assemblyman’s spokesperson informed me that at the Dem Convention there was a move to put support for vax, or SB277, into the platform, but the politicos chickened out due to the swarming minions of antivax-antigmo woomammas…

The assemblymember's staffer was perhaps confused. Yes, there was a demonstration outside of the California Democractic Party Convention against SB277, but the resolution in support of SB277 passed overwhelmingly.

the real highlight was having the CDP overwhelming endorse a resolution in favor of removing the personal exemption for vaccines for school attendance. This sends a clear message to the Assembly members that the Democratic Party wholeheartedly supports enacting this bill into law.

http://www.vaccinatecalifornia.org/california_democrats_pass_resolution…

@ justthestats

June 18, 2015 @jrkrideau

Eh? I thought it was the nuttier “Christian” fundies that were expecting the end times.

My understanding is that expecting there to be end times is an actual Islamic belief, although NOI probably got the “it could happen any day now” from Christians.
======================================
Thanks for the references. I suspect this is the same level of idiotism as we see in the nutty christian fundamentalism but I'd have to run it by some Muslim friends to check. It's a big religion with lots of variation. Same as Christianity.

On the other hand, you might be amazed at one of my Muslim (? we were have a beer together) friend's opinion of the Nation of Islam.

By jrkrideau (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

I know it is selfish* (or something like that) of me, but I just Can’t Deal with Charleston right now.

*As in, I am not the one going through all these race-based murders in the US, and yet I am past coping.

Word.

(It's not selfish.)

More transparency is needed. Provide Dr Brian Hooker with unredacted CDC data from his 10 years of FOIA requests.

Yawn. What do you suppose was "redacted" in the first place? Do you mean deidentified, like what the Geiers tried to steal? What legitimate purpose do you imagine that would serve?

Permit other independent scientists access to the data, too.

Like this? Is that whole "IRB" thing too much for the "other independent scientists"?

Anything less is #unsustainable

This isn't Twatter, genius.

This ought to be hilarious. Wish I could go, or at least watch film of it.

By Politicalguineapig (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

ann, as it turns out, there are several competing factions opposing SB277 -- my count is up to four.

The last hearing (the Assembly Health Committee hearing) brought out some interesting infighting amongst the opposition.

One group, let's call them A, paid for Toni Bark, Brain Hooker, and Allison Folmar to be brought to Sacramento, with the assurance that all 3 would be part of the opposition testimony panel. Folmar represented

Group B paid for Barbara Loe Fisher, Jay Gordon MD, George Fatheree, and two other women -- Melissa Floyd, who presented herself as a "data analyst" but I think she teaches at a community college in Southern California, and Bianca Lara Amman, who runs a Waldorf preschool in Oceanside.

As it turned out, Allison Folmar did NOT testify. It's possible that Melissa Floyd turned off her mic as she leaned forward to testify.

After the bill is signed into law, I think there will be some interesting analysis.

#56 What am I unsurprised that my assemblym an's staffer is incorrectly overestimating the strength of anti-277 opposition and underestimating the resolve of the party to support it? Hint: he used to work for the main antivax,antiGMO nitwit in these regions.

It’s possible that Melissa Floyd turned off her mic as she leaned forward to testify.

I so totally hope for their own sakes, that the anti-vaxxers were not above getting a good "OH NO SHE DI-INT."out of that.

Honestly, that's fascinating. Poor Barbara Loe Fisher. Her dreams of being the Martha Stewart of crackpots must seem like they're crumbling all around her.

Everything is an Existentialist manifesto, if sung with a French accent.

Something something Laakson Lilja something.

As it turned out, Allison Folmar did NOT testify. It’s possible that Melissa Floyd turned off her mic as she leaned forward to testify.

I'm having trouble following this narrative.

@#66 --

As I understand (or maybe just imagine) it, the white-shoe-aspiring anti-vax faction (Fisher, Gordon, Fatheree) is at odds with the don't-tread-on-me anti-vax faction (Barking Tony Bark, the NOI, the attack moms) over questions of imaging, presentation, strategy and tactics.

Kinda the same problem that's afflicting the GOP, actually.

In another $cientology-related story, Mikey announces today that he's featured in a new anti-psychiatry film produced by, you guessed it, the CCHR. AKA $cientology.

By Woo Fighter (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

OT:
Johnny #42 - Thanks for that, and thanks for the NSFW warning! I'll take a listen over the weekend.

HDB #48 - I suspect it would have been his trusty mandola rather than a ukelele, but yes, it's genius.

For anyone interested, Attila has his autobiography coming out soon. Details from his website.

By Rich Scopie (not verified) on 18 Jun 2015 #permalink

Kinda the same problem that’s afflicting the GOP, actually.

It was the bit about the microphone that finally left me wondering whether there were a few column-inches left off of the recap.

@reader (#44)

Like others, I'm wondering what you mean by "unredacted"? Hooker had access to all of the data (minus individual identifiers) used by the CDC for their 2004 paper. Nothing would be gained by granting access to the identifying information of the individual subjects.

And, as Narad points out, all independent scientists can already access the data through CDC's standard access process.

As to "legitimate race concerns", turns out they aren't. You see, Brian Hooker's paper was fully retracted and the whole CDC whistleblower manufactroversy isn't what its promoters make it out to be.

well, Narad, I did leave out quite a bit. There are way more than two factions, and one faction sincerely believes that the CDC is secretly a for-profit enterprise controlled by Bill Gates. Another faction sincerely believes that the whole thing --Pan's election to the Assembly and ascension to the Senate, the measles outbreak and the introduction of SB277 -- was planned in 2005 by Merck, to increase profits, and that there never was a "patient zero" -- the measles was spread by some kind of aerosol device .... there's more, but you can catch the drift.

ORAC'S deadly timing.....

Reader comment:
"On 6/9/2015 Tony Muhammad gave a speech of religious and racial solidarity against forced vaccinations and the government . "He also spoke of a five million man march plan on Washington D.C. then a 21 year old white boy named Dylann Roof walked into Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina and murdered 9 black people doing Bible study . Something tells me there’s a lot more to this then what meets the eye .United we stand ,but divided we fall . (Tony Muhammad speech -"
http://www.activistpost.com/2015/06/dylann-roof-south-carolina-church.h…

The TIMING of this violent incident certainly supports Toto's posts.....
"Roof" is NOT a Carolina family clan name. Pinckney is.

"Update: CBS News is reporting that Dylann Roof was arrested on February 28 in a mall, while he was asking a store clerk “out of the ordinary questions.” At that time, he was found in possession of a medicine called Suboxone.

It is an addicting drug used to treat OPIATE ADDICTION. Some adverse effects: agitation, hostility, hallucinations, attempted suicide, depersonalization.

Rapid withdrawal from Suboxone can be more dangerous than taking it. "
http://www.activistpost.com/2015/06/charleston-church-shooting-larger.h…
Looks like BIG OPIUM might be involved. Charleston is the perfect setting.

By Toto "the Rock" (not verified) on 19 Jun 2015 #permalink

MarkN -- you noticed the gunman selected a church full of unarmed women and children to start his "racial war."

Fucking cowardly bastard.

This has been making its way around the Twitters.You can easily substitute one of the squares that says "Just a Kid" with "Was Vaccinated".

Toto are you a Scientologist by any chance?

By Roger Kulp (not verified) on 19 Jun 2015 #permalink
the Nation of Islam has forged an alliance with the Church of Scientology, even to the point of apparently having merged with it.

Eh, who cares what you haters think—I'm sure Louis and David will make just the dreamiest couple ever!!!!

Love really does conquer all, you guys!!!!1!!

There are way more than two factions, and one faction sincerely believes that the CDC is secretly a for-profit enterprise controlled by Bill Gates. Another faction sincerely believes that the whole thing –Pan’s election to the Assembly and ascension to the Senate, the measles outbreak and the introduction of SB277 — was planned in 2005 by Merck, to increase profits, and that there never was a “patient zero” — the measles was spread by some kind of aerosol device

No, that stuff's quite common; I don't get how Floyd could have turned off Folmar's mic.

[Also, SB's comment form is made of rogue thetans and psychiatrists.]

And, as Narad points out, all independent scientists can already access the data through CDC’s standard access process.

There's some more detail (from 2005), including criticisms, on the Data Sharing Program here.

@ Liz:

Since we're discussing your fair state, have you read Mikey's latest predictions about the dire conditions in 'Collapsifornia' (sic) as real estate values plummet and refugees flee by the thousands... what's he smoking?
-btw- the other idiot @ PRN says exactly the same.

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 19 Jun 2015 #permalink

In other news:

I just experienced a flight-long conversation with a gentleman from the Azores who discussed fish and diverse topics in a combination of English and Portuguese which I understood surprisingly well.
One never knows, do one?

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 19 Jun 2015 #permalink

@ Todd W (#73): Sorry about the confusion. I was paraphrasing Hooker's comments relating to his overall experience with CDC FOIA requests, not limited to the paper you reference, based on his interview with Anne Dachel posted at AOA on 12/6/12. Excerpt here:

"AD: What kind of information were you seeking from the CDC with your FOIA requests?

BH: All kinds. I have made over 100 FOIA requests to the CDC over the last 8 years and received thousands of pages of information. I have specifically requested information for the 5 CDC studies on thimerosal and autism prior to 2004 that led to the IOM Immunization Safety Review Committee report “Vaccines and Autism” released in May 2004. In this report, primarily due to committee chairperson Dr. Marie McCormick (Harvard University) and study director Dr. Kathleen Stratton (IOM), causation was denied between thimerosal containing vaccines and autism (as well as the MMR vaccine and autism). This report also effectively shut down government funding for any further "independent" research on vaccines and autism. This information is crucial, given the constant reference that the CDC and others make to the 2004 IOM report. Most of the key components of the FOIAed information have been completely redacted by the CDC.

I also requested information on Poul Thorsen and his connection to CDC, obviously because of his co-authorship in studies that bolstered the body of evidence denying vaccine causation in autism and his known culpability and fraud indictments, being on the DHHS OIG Most Wanted Fugitive list. The majority of this information has been withheld by the CDC.

Finally, I have requested information on two of the latest CDC studies again denying causation between neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) and thimerosal exposure including Thompson et al. 2007 (NEJM 357:1281) and Price et al. 2010 (Pediatrics 126:656). These two publications are indiscernible from an epidemiology standpoint. This information has yet to be released from the CDC."

SOURCE: http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/12/brian-hookers-testimony-autism.html

ANTI-VAXXERS, DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?

SILVER, OPIUM, AND FINANCIAL SUBVERSION!
"The British FORCED tens of millions of Chinese into OPIUM ADDICTION, in exchange for which British India was overloaded with SILVER. In 1833 Lord Napier was made Superintendent of Trade for China. They actually FORCED DRUG ADDICTION by deployment of MILITARY FORCE. Later the British sent their own Indian subjects down a slippery slope, by demonetizing SILVER in several major economies, sucking more commodities out of India by the enhanced buying power of British gold. While opium addiction was raging in China, giving rise to the Chinese phrase “foreign devils,” the British were IMPORTING TEA to England, Europe and the Colonies, giving rise to the expression “all the tea in China.” The Treaty of Nanking signed on August 29, 1842, ceded Hong Kong to the British Crown (for 155 years). An OPIUM DEALER, Sir Henry Pottinger, cited for distinguished service in the Opium War, became the first Governor General of Hong Kong after joining the BRITISH EAST INDIA COMPANY in 1806"
http://nosilvernationalization.org/30.pdf

VOTE NO TO SB277, FORCED VACCINATION, BIG OPIUM!
http://nosilvernationalization.org/30.pdf

By Toto "the Rock" (not verified) on 19 Jun 2015 #permalink

This report also effectively shut down government funding for any further “independent” research on vaccines and autism.

The scare quotes are Hooker's way of saying that government-funded studies are by definition not independent, and any negative results can safely be ignored; but at the same time the failure to fund additional dependent research for him to ignore is a scandalous conspiracy.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 19 Jun 2015 #permalink

SOURCE: ht[]p://www.ageofautism.com/2012/12/brian-hookers-testimony-autism.html

Oh, well thank goodness you weren't mindlessly emitting words such as "redacted" with no knowledge whatever of the actual process. Because you had SOURCEd a 2.5-year-old dropping – an "interview" with the Dachelbot, no less – from AoA, which is well known for its critical editoral standards.

Now, would you care to start doing something that resembles actual thought more than wasting everyone's time?

Finally, I have requested information on two of the latest CDC studies again denying causation between neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) and thimerosal exposure including Thompson et al. 2007 (NEJM 357:1281) and Price et al. 2010 (Pediatrics 126:656). These two publications are indiscernible from an epidemiology standpoint.

"AD: How's that? I know you're not an epidemiologist, but I am a Media Editor, so maybe it would help if you would walk our readers through this."

Oh, wait.

This report also effectively shut down government funding for any further “independent” research on vaccines and autism.

What are the scare quotes for?

EARLY OPIUM ABOLITIONISTS:

"THE liberality, of a kind and revered friend, the Rev. John Venn of Hereford, has made possible the publication of a large edition of the following Essay, as an appeal to English Churchmen. The Nonconformist Churches are to a great extent awake and stirring in this question of the Opium Trade, and the Church of England must not be behind-hand in dealing with it.

It has been said, perhaps with some reason, that Englishmen are a little too apt to accuse themselves of national selfishness and injustice; to indulge in a self-denunciation, the very whisper of which from outsiders would be strongly resented. But there is a tendency surely, at least as strong, that leads Englishmen to wrap themselves in a mantle of supposed integrity, and to let conscience be lulled into oblivion of national crimes and international immoralities;--lulled, I mean, partly by success, partly by mere local distance, partly by the shifting of strictly national responsibility to the shoulders of individual statesmen or of particular Governments.

The object of the following Essay, is to lead Churchmen to study for themselves the subject [v/vi] of the Opium Trade. If this study leaves them satisfied that there is no grave moral wrong in the past history or present status of the Trade, then by all means let them discountenance this war of ours against a shadow! But if, on the other hand, it convinces them that grievous wrong-doing is involved in this traffic, then let them "agitate, agitate, agitate," till the wrong is redressed.

It is no small hindrance to a Christian Missionary, to have cast at him such a Chinese proverb as this: "You bring incense in one hand, a spear in the other;" which is, being interpreted, "You bring us the Bible in one hand, opium in the other."
ARTHUR E. MOULE, B.D.,
OF THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY, DIOCESE OF MID-CHINA.
15 Dec., 1881
http://anglicanhistory.org/asia/china/moule_opium1881.html

By Toto "the Rock" (not verified) on 19 Jun 2015 #permalink

@ #80
"Disease detectives have said they likely may never find patient zero — or the person who triggered the outbreak — but believe it's someone who brought measles into the country."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/disneyland-linked-measles-outbreak-close-…

"Vaccine. 2008 Jan 17;26(3):383-98. Epub 2007 Nov 26.
Immunogenicity and safety of aerosolized measles vaccine: systematic review and meta-analysis.
Low N1, Kraemer S, Schneider M, Restrepo AM.
Author information
Abstract
Aerosols are the most promising non-injectable method of measles vaccination studied so far and their efficacy is thought to be comparable to injected vaccine. We conducted a systematic review up to May 2006 to examine the immunogenicity and safety of aerosolized measles vaccine (Edmonston-Zagreb or Schwarz strains) 1 month or more after vaccination. Where possible we estimated pooled serological response rates and odds ratios (with 95% confidence intervals, CI) comparing aerosolized and subcutaneous vaccines in children in three age groups and adults. We included seven randomized trials, four non-randomized trials and six uncontrolled studies providing serological outcome data on 2887 individuals. In children below 10 months, the studies were heterogeneous. In four comparative studies, seroconversion rates were lower with aerosolized than with subcutaneous vaccine and in two of these the difference was unlikely to be due to chance. In children 10-36 months, the pooled seroconversion rate with aerosolized vaccine was 93.5% (89.4-97.7%) and 97.1% (92.4-100%) with subcutaneous vaccine (odds ratio 0.27, 0.04-1.62). In 5-15-year olds the studies were heterogeneous. In all comparative studies aerosolized vaccine was more immunogenic than subcutaneous. REPORTED SIDE EFFECTS were mild. Aerosolized measles vaccine appears to be equally or more immunogenic than subcutaneous vaccine in children aged 10 months and older. LARGE RANDOMIZED TRIALS ARE NEEDED to establish the efficacy and SAFETY of aerosolized measles vaccine as primary and booster doses."
PMID: 18082295 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

By Toto "the Rock" (not verified) on 19 Jun 2015 #permalink

@ #80

"Established by Congress as an independent, nonprofit organization, the CDC FOUNDATION connects CDC with private-sector organizations and INDIVIDUALS to build public health programs that make our world healthier and safer, extending CDC’s life-saving work....

Because CDC is a federal agency, all scientific findings resulting from CDC research ARE AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC and open to the broader scientific community for REVIEW. Funding for CDC’s work provided through the CDC Foundation is not contingent on the outcomes of research or other scientific activity being favorable to one or more partners. The CDC Foundation works with CDC to ensure that programs will have a meaningful impact for CDC and public health, and complement CDC’s priorities and ongoing work. The CDC and CDC Foundation each have review procedures in place to safeguard against POSSIBLE CONFLICT OF INTEREST."
http://www.cdc.gov/about/business/cdcfoun.htm

GATES FOUNDATION + Lions + CDC + Big grant = measles vaccines
"LCIF and Lions are committed to fighting measles and its devastating side effects, including childhood blindness. LCIF joins a NETWORK of other humanitarian leaders through the Measles Initiative, a worldwide effort to protect children from measles and strengthen routine immunization services. UNICEF, World Health Organization (WHO), U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC),"

"To support this project, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded LCIF a grant of US$400,000, and LCIF added to those funds an additional US$300,000 in the pilot year. The Gates Foundation is a leader in addressing global health issues" - See more at: http://lcif.biz/EN/our-impact/partner-stories/gates-foundation.php#stha…

By Toto "the Rock" (not verified) on 19 Jun 2015 #permalink

Wonder of wonders - Dan Olmsted over at AoA has actually condemned the alliance of anti-vaxers with the National Islam.....

Interesting....

So pharmaceutical companies have been buying up everyone and that's why they need to sell more and more of their evil vaccines so they can continue to keep on paying everyone off? Sounds exhausting and not very profitable overall.

I really thought Mike Adams was the crankiest crank with his rants about population control but he seems to have competition.

If the anti-vaxers had the slightest hope of maintaining political viability for their cause, everything they've been doing lately would be exactly WRONG, tactically. We're hearing the death-rattle of anti-vax as a general social phenomenon.

Which doesn't mean the anti-vax 'movement' is going away, just retreating into cult-ism. The true believers don't need to affect policy. They can get their egos boosted and their bank accounts fattened well enough inside their own little bubbles. It's all been fantasy-land all along, really, yes?

I mean, really, do they think Scientologists and the NOI are going to help them defeat SB277? That's schedenfreude either way! And imagining the OC GOP sharing the stage with Minister Farrakhan is making my day.

@ Lawrence:

Olmsted may have been correct about those racist homophobes but he then ( I assume he is in control of content @ AoA) allows rubbish like Toni Bark ..TONI BARK! to appear as well as all of the other ridiculous crap that supports AJW et compagnie and condemns SBM-oriented people like Offit, Orac, Deer etc. which has been going on for a long time.

No, I think that Dan is reacting personally as a gay man because NOI hates gays.

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 20 Jun 2015 #permalink

I'd like to handcuff Farrakhan and Wayne LaPierre to each other and drop them off somewhere in the middle of the Yuma Proving Grounds.

“His love affair with [Nation of Islam leader] Louis Farrakhan and his Jewish xenophobia are also unforgivable,” Kennedy added, according to the Post.

Oh my.

...

I used to be very slightly acquainted with him back in the '80s, just because there was a solid decade-and-a-half during which you basically couldn't participate in any kind of nighttime social activity in New York City at all without encountering various packs and swarms of the children of Bobby and Ethel Kennedy.

He doesn't really deserve it. But I can't help feeling kind of sorry for him.

Denice #96,

He should check out the scientology position on homosexuality. Not. Too. Tolerant. There's lot to read online and lots of evidence, despite the "church's" denials that it discriminates against, discourages and even bans open homosexuality.

I believe Hubbard referred to gays as "defective" and homosexuality is considered -1.1 on their "tone scale." Which is bad. Requires lot$ of auditing and coursework to fix.

There has been speculation for a long time that scientology has offered itself as a "cure" for homosexuality. And equal speculation about a couple of the church's best known celebrity members.

By Woo Fighter (not verified) on 20 Jun 2015 #permalink

@#Liz Ditz

It is a tragic day. And it’s terrorism, pure and simple. Not mental illness. Not an attack on religion. It’s white on black terror.

I hold your opinion in such high esteem that when I read the above, I decided I might have been wrong to provisionally assume that mental illness was more probable than not.
I do wonder, though. So. I realize it's more the exception than it is the rule when it comes to mass shootings. But:

Am I the only person who thinks it looks like there actually was something of a Schizophreniform-ish nature going on with this one?

It doesn't necessarily mean that he's not also a racist. After all.

Gerg chimes in at AoA to register the odd complaint that Mr. October hasn't joined their cause:

Where is Reggie Jackson or Al Sharpton to stand up for these black boys?

Narad: I am NOT going to sully my new computer to read AoA, even if Glugg is commenting something that would be funny to read. (Maybe I'll boot up the old tried and true Mac...)

Where is Reggie Jackson or Al Sharpton to stand up for these black boys?

Narad you simply have got to stop this. Kitteh on my lap was v v upset by the thrashing guffawing.

By Science Mom (not verified) on 20 Jun 2015 #permalink

Sadmar: We’re hearing the death-rattle of anti-vax as a general social phenomenon. Which doesn’t mean the anti-vax ‘movement’ is going away, just retreating into cult-ism.

When most new parents don't vaccinate anymore, that's hardly cultism. I do agree about the schadenfruede; with that many egos, it's not going to be too long before they turn on each other.

DW: Olmsted is gay? I thought he was a typical het burbie, married with 2 or three kids.

Narad: Whatever I may think of Al Sharpton, he does exhibit intelligence from time to time. Probably can spot a losing cause from two miles away.

Off topic: Guys, knock it off with the insanity defense. The Charleston boy's just a typical racist nitwit, the mirror image of Farrakhan.

By Politicalguineapig (not verified) on 20 Jun 2015 #permalink

Am I the only person who thinks it looks like there actually was something of a Schizophreniform-ish nature going on with this one?

Based on what? His photograph? Honestly, I have had it up to here with the "lone wolf! mentally ill!" garbage that apparently even intelligent people feel compelled to chant whenever a white freaking male commits a massacre in this country.

He was a violent, entitled, pig-f*cking racist terrorist with a gun. End of story, at least as far as I'm concerned.

In other news, Dr Bradstreet passed. The anti-vaxers are on full idolization status for the all bullshit he came up with.

When most new parents don’t vaccinate anymore

Citation needed.

@107 --

I'm not a person who jumps to the conclusion that mass shooting = mental illness. And there is no reason why you couldn't have asked me on what I based that provisional opinion in a manner that didn't exclude the possibility that I'd have an answer.

First of all: Unlike you, I'm not ready to say "End of story" until I have some idea what the story is.

And second of all: My belief that the reports so far look more like emergent illness than racial hatred is based on:

* his having always been shy, quiet, non-violent, non-conflict-prone

* from a non-racist family

* his having had African-American friends in childhood (and online right up until the shooting)

* the apparent absence of any resentment-inducing triggering event or experience of the kind that usually typifies rage-revenge mass shootings.

* the apparent absence of social and/or political ties to white-supremacist groups.

* the fact that his intense preoccupation with race war apparently developed over the last year or two

and

* the fact that he targeted a church.

That last one is not unheard of under some circumstances. But they don't appear to be present here.

And straight-up anger-and-hate-crazed lone male shooters usually pick targets that represent a perceived threat against masculine autonomy and personhood -- ie, the people in the mall who are excluding them happy coupledom; the kids at school with whom they aren't popular; the single black males they're afraid of being mugged by; their former co-workers at the job they got fired from; etc.

That church is definitely symbolic. But it's not conventionally threatening.

It's also a little unusual for someone to attempt to start a race war all by himself out of nothing but sheer racial hatred. Even Charles Manson was more organized than that.

So. The short answer to your hostile question is:

While I don't rule out straight-up, uncontainable, obsessive racial hatred as a motive, the only signs of it that I'm aware of all appear to have emerged comparatively recently and rapidly in someone who's at the typical age-of-onset for schizophrenia or schizophreniform disorder and whose childhood was evidently more congruent with latency for those disorders than not at all.

That might not be the whole story. In fact, for all I know, it might not be any of the story. But based on what's there so far, emergent mental illness looks like a plausible option to me

The thing is that of course, it's arguable whether race-based paranoid delusions even count as delusions for diagnostic purposes. Because: Socially normative. But IANA psychiatrist. So I don't really know.

In any event. I could be wrong. It's not like I'm rooting for psychosis.

I have had it up to here with the “lone wolf! mentally ill!” garbage that apparently even intelligent people feel compelled to chant whenever a white freaking male commits a massacre in this country.

Seriously, JP. That's out of line. The stigmatization of the mentally ill is a reprehensible thing. I'm not down with it. I don't think all white male shooters are psychos. I have never felt compelled to chant "Bernhard Goetz is a loon!" I don't think Klebold/Harris, or Kip Kinkel, or any other school shooter I can think of apart from possibly Adam Lanza was mentally ill. And I'm not sure about him.

But I do think that James Holmes was. Because it's abundantly evident that he was.

People with psychotic disorders -- or, ftm, any kind of mental illness -- are not any likelier to be violent or dangerous than people without them. But they're not immune from it. Because they're people. I don't discriminate.

@ PGP:

Dan recently wrote about how SBM is WRONG NOW as it was WRONG THEN because previously, psychiatrists labelled gays and lesbians mentally ill just like they now BLINDLY tell us that vaccines are safe. Look over his entries from the past week or so where he describes his life. marriage and partner.

Just because he's correct in one instance, doesn't make him right about vaccines.

Dan isn't an entitled parent, he only works for them. But he does live outside Washington in suburban paradise.

-btw- I am in a much lovlier paradise .

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 20 Jun 2015 #permalink

Ann,

I apologize for the tone of my comment, I suppose - I'm a bit raw at the moment. Long story, but long story short, due to another loss to the gift that keeps on giving.

You admit you're not a psychiatrist. Somebody who were a psychiatrist would not be making armchair diagnoses of people they've never personally encountered, based on information they can pick from the news, I would submit, any more than a cardiologist would diagnose somebody with heart disease over the internet.

If there's mental illness involved, experts who are a hell of a lot closer to the situation than you or I are will diagnose it. I don't see what the point of random non-psychiatrists making diagnoses is in the first place.

I am, yes, incredibly tired of people diagnosing strangers they've never met with mental illnesses, especially when it happens after a violent crime, which seems to often be the cased. You know, I presume, that the mentally ill are not more likely to commit violent acts against others, although they are more likely to be the victims of violence, or to, y'know, kill themselves.

I mean, hey, I'm crazy, and I'm kind of a lone wolf, and you know what? I don't go on f*cking shooting sprees in black churches. Ken at Popehat's crazy, and he doesn't go on shooting sprees in churches. Most of us don't. As a crazy person who's not a racist murderer, I feel perfectly fine judging even somebody who is mentally ill for the actions they take. It's not an excuse, unless he was literally out of touch with reality at the time, which, again, experts will ascertain.

"Mentally ill lone wolf" is also a really dandy way for a lot of people to avoid talking about the, uh, societal issues involved in these kinds of events.

In short, I don't see how it does any good, but it does do harm.

A broken link, I see, about Ken at Popehat.

The note about yet another white male going on a shooting spree was, I hope it's taken for granted, not an indictment of all white males. Obviously. But you can bet that if all of these mass shooters were black, or Hispanic, or women, or Muslim, that would be remarked upon, to say the least.

In short, I don’t see how it does any good, but it does do harm.

I'm not making a diagnosis. I'm speculating about the social and personal motives of someone who committed a violent crime that is also a newsworthy event. Same as everybody else.

And I'm not sure that I see how I'm doing it in a way that's more or less harmful (or, ftm, stereotype-based) than saying he's a violent, entitled, pig-f*cking racist with a gun is.

I mean, I expect to see a history of violence in a violent person. Or at least some signs of bad temper or problems with impulse control. Personally.

In any event. I don't know what happened. I don't know what the deal is with him. He's apparently not very typical of anything in particular. But a mass shooting is, by definition, an exceptional event.

I guess I feel equivocal about putting an a priori kibosh on saying anything that's fundamentally non-hateful and ordinarily reasonable.

I mean....You know. Sometimes women do make false rape accusations. It's extremely uncommon. I wouldn't assume it lightly. I can see a reason to err on the other side of caution. But I never thought Tawana Brawley was telling the truth. I thought she shouldn't be mocked, pilloried or shamed. I hated all the coverage of that case. It was vicious, misogynist and racist.

But what can you do? If you're a sensible, humane person and you remain silent under those circumstances, then the trolls take over and the truth belongs to them.

I don't know. It's not an easy call to make.

But irrespective of anything else, I'm genuinely very sorry to have touched a sore spot. I hope that I didn't misspeak. And I don't actually reject the possibility that I did. I'm just being kind of defensive, because I'm human. Please accept my apologies.

Ann,

You may not have made a formal diagnoses, but you were certainly speculating about specific diagnoses, e.g., schizophreniform disorder. That's a medical disorder, and again, bandying it about as a speculative diagnosis only adds to the stigma associated with mental illness, whether or not that's what you intended.

This was a young man who demonstrably adopted a disgusting, awful ideology, and did a disgusting, awful thing. He took away the lives of 9 beautiful human beings because of their race. I'm not going to not say that's the case, and I'm not going to not be angry about it.

Elliott Rodger, similarly, regardless of whether he had any sort of mental health diagnoses, adopted a sick, twisted, hateful, disgusting ideology and went on a murderous rampage that was driven by the ideology he adopted. I am not terribly sympathetic to claims that he was "just a crazy person!"

Because, like I said, most crazy people don't do things like that, and we do have moral agency. And people who do condemnable things are not undeserving of the harshest condemnation for those things, especially when they are so gravely condemnable.

I accept your apologies, but this is not just about personal offense. The stigma attached to mental illness when people go around casually associating awful, disgusting actions with mental illness is harmful. It discourages people from, say, seeking help for mental illness which could prevent unneeded years of suffering, or, in some cases, needless death.

^ a formal diagnosis, obvi.

And I'm not angry with you personally, and I like and respect you, but I do take issue with speculative armchair psychiatric diagnoses. Like I said, I don't see what good they do, but I do see the harm.

JP: Seconded, everything. I feel kinda ambivalent about mental illness, since I'm supposedly diagnosed, but I don't feel like it impacts me enough to have any sort of sensible input. Just wanted to say you aren't alone.

Ann: And second of all: My belief that the reports so far look more like emergent illness than racial hatred is based on:
* his having always been shy, quiet, non-violent, non-conflict-prone
* from a non-racist family

Frankly, I wouldn't take anything the family says right now at face value. Every person who's been close to a serial killer/mass shooter always says stuff along the lines of 'but they were so nice' to make up for the embarrassment of being related/having poor judgement/ etc. And of course they'd say they're not racist.

DW: Huh. To be fair, I don't read many of his posts. It's funny how Age of Autism has so many terrible writers all in one place.

Rk: If a lamprey sucked on a Palin family member, do you think it'd die?

By Politicalguineapig (not verified) on 20 Jun 2015 #permalink

"Forget race hatred.Mikey said these mass shootings are all because of SSRIs (yawn),oh yeah,and bowl haircuts.

Meanwhile blood-sucking eels are raining on Alaska."

It's only a matter of time before Mike connects the dots and realizes that the mass shootings are due to radiation released from Fukushima and heavy metal contamination of supplement products (the ones competing with supplements sold by the NaturalNews store).

By Dangerous Bacon (not verified) on 21 Jun 2015 #permalink

"But you can bet that if all of these mass shooters were black, or Hispanic, or women, or Muslim, that would be remarked upon, to say the least."

"All"?

"Of the approximately 62 mass shootings (in which four or more people were killed) in the U.S. since 1982, including 25 since 2006 (and seven in 2012 alone), according to figures compiled by Mother Jones, “more than half of the cases involved school or workplace shootings (12 and 20, respectively); the other 30 cases took place in locations including shopping malls, restaurants, and religious and government buildings. Forty four of the killers were white males. Only one of them was a woman.”

"The percentage of black assailants who kill on a scale such as (the 2013) Navy Yard shootings is about equal to the percentage of black Americans, says former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt."

“African-American shooters tend to at least represent their statistical portion of the U.S. population and include past killers like like Omar S. Thornton, Maurice Clemmons, Charles Lee Thornton, William D. Baker, Arthur Wise, Clifton McCree, Nathan Dunlap, Colin Ferguson, and the DC Snipers, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo,” (according to) Van Zandt".

http://thegrio.com/2013/09/17/african-american-mass-shooters/

(I'm not sure why the DC snipers were included in this total, since that seems to be a case of serial killers and not mass shooters)

By Dangerous Bacon (not verified) on 21 Jun 2015 #permalink

The stigma attached to mental illness when people go around casually associating awful, disgusting actions with mental illness is harmful. It discourages people from, say, seeking help for mental illness which could prevent unneeded years of suffering, or, in some cases, needless death.

This is not new territory to me. It's been a longstanding area of both activism and interest for decades. I don't think that what I said was stigmatizing. Nor do I think that the potential presence of mental illness implies the absence of racism.

But I don't want to fight with you, and it's off-topic anyway. So I can easily stop saying it. I regret the contre temps. I don't think I agree with you. However, I admire the hell out of you. And I take what you say seriously. So I'll continue to think about it.

OK? OK. (Or so I hope.)

Louis Farrakhan is not new to the anti-vax movement, calling for a moratorium on vaccination back in 1998 (influenced by Horowitz) and later claiming that the H1N1 vaccine was part of a plot to kill people.

By Vincent Iannelli, MD (not verified) on 21 Jun 2015 #permalink

“All”?

Whatever, a significant portion of. Apparently there's not a lot of good data on race (PDF, p. 11), which is not a surprise. Definitely almost all dudes, though. Definitely all had guns. Mostly semi-automatics, esp. since they've been legal again. Yay America!

Anyway, I am not doing so hot myself at the moment, and today I basically need to do a whole bunch of RA work and then go to a bar somewhere by myself and get Fathers' Day drunk.

First of all, I think that this is a fascinating discussion and I would like to reply in great and studied detail- however my mind is elsewwhere as I am in the midst of a trip and actually, there's some mist about , a ferry schedule to contemplate AND I have other worries as well but I digress...

But simply, people DO speculate about what *causes* someone to behave murderously and when something stands out much as this horrendous crime does, we ask "Why?" and "What is different about the perpetrator that makes him different from the rest of humanity who do NOT shoot innocent people?"

Is there an internal cause ( personality, emotions, mental illness) or an external cause ( reaction to a threat, being in a warzone, being attacked). People use external physical cues to speculate about internal motivation: does this person RESEMBLE others who kill in any way? How do I avoid people like this? What is the BIG CLUE?

So we look to cues that inform us in order to lull ourselves into believing that we ourselves could avoid killers like this IF we were ever in the same situation as those unfortunate victims were.

So what stands out? He was a young, white guy, a stranger, who entered a study group in a black church. He looked a certain way and wore emblems that revealed his sympathies with Apartheid. Is there a 'look' associated with SMI? People seem to think that there is. Perhaps there isn't. But we are talking about variation from the average. It's human nature and our elaborate cognitive signal detection system that leads us to speculate like this, sometimes overshooting. Forensic diagnosis, profiling, person
perception, careful speculation and wild guesses all range along a spectrum that includes stereotypes and prejudices as well.

AT aby rate, Mikey is a wanker, an attention wh0re, who will say anything to get ratings and his despicable writing is a terrible affront to people who are seriously trying to deal with this horrible tragedy. Some times I wish I believed in h3ll or in divine retribution for those who wish to profit from others' suffering.

Although I must go, be aware that there is an entire field- fieldS actually- that study these questions. Stigma, attribution, stereotyping, violence and hate are not entirely mysteries.

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 21 Jun 2015 #permalink

The fix is in. Slowly but surely the rights of the few will be taken away under the guise of protecting the public. This isn't about protecting the public. It is about controlling the public. Why else would you vaccinate a baby for Hepatitis B? All the promiscuity and sharing of needles that toddlers do?

You can discredit the messenger by finding elements to ridicule, but the fact remains that SB 277, SB792, and AB1117 will not stop the next outbreak. It will not make the public any healthier. The CDC levels for herd immunity have already been achieved for the demographic in question, so this seems to be another money grab by the pharmaceutical companies.

It starts with the kids/educators and then after the public has accepted it, the push will be for adults to get boosters, "to protect the children." Never mind, the many injured by bad batches of vaccines. That's their problem, you're fine, right? Just accept that you no longer have control of what you put into your body and that a bureaucrat will determine what is best for you. That cannot go wrong, right?

By James Nemec (not verified) on 23 Jun 2015 #permalink

This isn’t about protecting the public. It is about controlling the public. Why else would you vaccinate a baby for Hepatitis B?

Oh, oh! I've got it! I've got it! Perhaps people who actually understand infectious diseases, epidemiology, and vaccines think that vaccination of all susceptibles, including universal vaccination of newborn infants, provides the best hope we have of eliminating and eventually eradicating a disease that infects one-third of the world's population and kills about a million people each year--could that be it, or do we have to put on our tinfoil hats and invoke some wacky conspiracy theory about controlling the public?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20136972

"Why else would you vaccinate a baby for Hepatitis B?"

Because babies in this country don't live in plastic bubbles.

brian, your anti-conspiracy rhetoric is a weak response to my post and shows your lack of critical thinking. If you want someone to spoon feed you information feel free to accept it and all that comes with it. The end road though of the proposed legislation is the subversion of an individual's right to make informed decisions about their health. It is an apathetic electorate and corrupt politicians that are allowing this injustice to occur. You cheer for the possible benefits, but you fail to consider the ramifications of relinquishing your liberty. It does not stop here and it will go until useful idiots like yourself are eventually left with few decisions. Maybe you like living in a myopic world or maybe you're just another internet troll looking for purpose.

By James Nemec (not verified) on 23 Jun 2015 #permalink

James Nemec@130

brian, your anti-conspiracy rhetoric is a weak response to my post and shows your lack of critical thinking.

James, the assertions you made without evidence show your lack of critical thinking. brian's response was entirely appropriate.

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 23 Jun 2015 #permalink

Mr. Nemec: "Slowly but surely the rights of the few will be taken away under the guise of protecting the public."

So you think you should have the right to spread infectious diseases? That is weird.

Also, we vaccinate infants for a disease because they are more likely to get the chronic version, which leads to liver cancer. Hepatitis B is spread through several bodily fluids, including well meaning infected relatives who like to give smoochy kisses on boo boos.

"but you fail to consider the ramifications of relinquishing your liberty."

Ah, poor baby. Perhaps you should start your own homeschool coop for your and your compatriots' special snowflakes. Or move. I hear Somalia have very little regulation, plus some nice beaches.

James @ 130: If you want perfect liberty, then you need to go live somewhere without other people. It is inherent to living in a society that in exchange for the benefits of living with other people you give up some freedoms. That's how it's been for the past millennium or three.

Secondly, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that SB277 would result in involuntary vaccination. That is not true. You will still have the same right to deny yourself or your child medical care that you have always had. Under the very American respect for autonomy. The only difference if SB277 passes is that, in the State of California, there will be a new consequence for your individual, autonomous choice to not vaccinate your school-aged child for no medical reason: that child will not be allowed to attend public schools (and probably most private schools as well).

Even in an instance of perfect liberty, actions have consequences. That's not a conspiracy. That's just life.

By JustaTech (not verified) on 23 Jun 2015 #permalink

Definitely all had guns. Mostly semi-automatics, esp. since they’ve been legal again.

"Semi-automatic" is a Scare Word. I don't think there's ever been a time when people were legally limited to manual cycling.

Maybe you have not read the bill, cap.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=20…
The evidence is the bill itself and the gradual eroding of the individual's rights in favor a statist approach to governance.

And brian's implication that those who oppose this legislation "...put on our tinfoil hats and invoke some wacky conspiracy theory" is not appropriate, rather is an appeal to ridicule. Further, this bill will only cover the citizens of California,so I again assert this will not make the public any healthier.

Bureaucrats should not have control over what is put into our kids, period. They could be injecting them with the potential cure to all illnesses, but that does not give them or anyone else the right to force the procedure on someone, or limit their access to education, or restrict their ability to sue should an injury occur. That's the issue. The elimination of choice.

This whole hysteria stemmed from the Disneyland outbreak and no statist worth his salt is going to pass up the opportunity to use a crisis, even if it is a media frenzy created crisis. No deaths. Limited outbreak. From a foreign strain. But let's use fear and appeals to authority to push crap legislation that pays off campaign contributors. You are being intellectually lazy and extremely myopic.

By James Nemec (not verified) on 23 Jun 2015 #permalink

The evidence is the bill itself and the gradual eroding of the individual’s rights in favor a statist approach to governance.

Be sure to let everyone know why this paranoiac fantasy hasn't played out in Mississippi and West Virginia yet, where the Dark Forces have had much more time to develop their Nefarious Plan.

Yes, a "foreign strain." Because we eradicated domestic measles with the vaccine (in about a decade) you jackass.

“Semi-automatic” is a Scare Word. I don’t think there’s ever been a time when people were legally limited to manual cycling.

No, you're thinking of "assault rifle." (Some) semi-automatic weapons were banned from 1994-2004. Granted, my knowledge of the ban until recently came from the hunter's ed course* that I took as a 10-year-old, at a time when the ban was still in effect. It wasn't super effective, probably, but hey, better than nothing, I figure.

*I wasn't necessarily planning on going out deer hunting, but it was considered good form amongst my people to know how not to be a dumbf*ck around a gun.

@james

Have you ever heard of the phrase "The right to swing your fist ends wheremy nose begins.."

Why should your personal liberties take precedence over others? Are your that selfish?

Why else would you vaccinate a baby for Hepatitis B? All the promiscuity and sharing of needles that toddlers do?

Prolly because we have healthcare disparities and babies born to infected mothers have ~90% of becoming lifelong carriers and because ~1/3 of Hep B cases are acquired via unknown sources (i.e. other than IV drug use and sexual contact). But you'd know that if you'd done your research.

The CDC levels for herd immunity have already been achieved for the demographic in question, so this seems to be another money grab by the pharmaceutical companies.

In a large geographical region, uptake just about approaches herd immunity levels but herd immunity assumes equal distribution of susceptibles. There are large clusters of woefully un/undervaccinated children which are responsible for outbreaks and sustaining diseases that were once eliminated. Most vaccines on the schedule are loss leaders for vaccine manufacturers so not much incentive there. And you'd know this if you'd done your research.

t starts with the kids/educators and then after the public has accepted it, the push will be for adults to get boosters, “to protect the children.”

You say that like it's a bad thing. Isn't it better for adults to protect the children? I for one am up on my boosters and feel as though more adults should be getting vaccinated to protect the more vulnerable.

Never mind, the many injured by bad batches of vaccines.

No let's mind and tell us what bad batches have caused many injuries in any recent memory.

Just accept that you no longer have control of what you put into your body and that a bureaucrat will determine what is best for you. That cannot go wrong, right?

Here's the beauty of this bill. You maintain the absolute right to reject vaccines for your children, you just have to accept the consequences like taking responsibility for their education.

By Science Mom (not verified) on 23 Jun 2015 #permalink

No, you’re thinking of “assault rifle.”

No, I'm aware that "assault rifle" is also a Scare Phrase.

"Semi-automatic" is not just a Scare Word, narad. It does, in fact, describe a class of weapons. I'm unaware of any specific legal reason that the US couldn't ban all semi-automatic weapons like Australia did; it's not like the 2nd amendment requires that civilians be legally entitled to own any type of weapon. Not that I have any hope that such a ban will happen.

Maybe you have not read the bill, cap.

Bureaucrats should not have control over what is put into our kids, period. They could be injecting them with the potential cure to all illnesses, but that does not give them or anyone else the right to force the procedure on someone, or limit their access to education, or restrict their ability to sue should an injury occur. That’s the issue. The elimination of choice.

James, maybe it's you who should read the bill; no one is forcing procedures on you and your children. You just don't get to have the right to subject the rest of us to your bad choices. Your right to an education is preserved; how you avail yourself of that is your decision.

By Science Mom (not verified) on 23 Jun 2015 #permalink

Now they are resorting to the old "illumnati" hoax https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MpWi9td3Zk
Illuminati Pharmaceutical Death Industry Exposed!! 2015 [Full Documentary]...you can't make this stuff up...May be time for rereading "The Illuminati Trilogy" comedic spoof by Robert Anton Wilson

Other that the sheer volume of their output, how can anyone pay any attention to these people at all?

James Nemec@135
Have you read the bill?

The bill would exempt pupils in a home-based private school and students enrolled in an independent study program and who do not receive classroom-based instruction, pursuant to specified law from the prohibition described above.

As others have already said no one is forcefully vaccinating kids. You are free to make poor decisions, there will just be some consequences for them.

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 23 Jun 2015 #permalink

Orac: "pseudoscientific, child-endangering nonsense "

Let's see the scientific child-endangering facts:

FDA/CDC doctors admit vaccines cause food allergies

Nobel Laureate Charles Richet discovered over a hundred years ago that injecting proteins into mammals can cause them to develop an allergy to that protein.

In 2002, the doctors from the CDC and FDA warned that gelatin-containing vaccines can cause gelatin allergy based on similar findings in Japan.

"Nonetheless, our cases with anti-gelatin IgE required some previous exposure to gelatin to become sensitized, and this may have come through ingestion of gelatin-containing food or injection of gelatin-containing vaccines."

They wrote: "Efforts should continue to identify less allergenic
substitutes for gelatin currently used by vaccine manufacturers.".

Authors:
Vitali Pool, MD, CDC, M. Miles Braun, MD, MPH, FDA, John M. Kelso, MD,Naval Medical Center, Gina Mootrey, DO, MPH, CDC, Robert T. Chen, MD,MA, CDC, John W. Yunginger, MD, Robert M. Jacobson, MD, Mayo
Clinic,Paul M. Gargiullo, PhD, CD.
Prevalence of Anti-Gelatin IgE Antibodies in People With Anaphylaxis
After Measles-Mumps-Rubella Vaccine in the United States
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/110/6/e71.long

Yet today, the CDC table here lists numerous food proteins contained in vaccines, including gelatin, egg, milk, soy, seaweed and vegetable oils (in Polysorbate 80, sorbitol).
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/B/excipi…

The result - the food allergy epidemic.

And gelatin in vaccines is still making kids sick today:

http://acaai.org/resources/connect/ask-allergist/Vaccines

Japan removed gelatin from their vaccines in 2000.

Kuno-Sakai H, Kimura M. Removal of gelatin from live vaccines and DTaP-an ultimate solution for vaccine-related gelatin allergy.Biologicals 2003;31:245-9

My son developed multiple life-threatening food allergies from these food protein contaminated vaccines.

How can this situation ever be justified?

Parents should never ever have to choose between vaccine-preventable deadly illness and vaccine-induced life-threatening diseases.

This is NOT about polio/rubella vs. allergies.
This about vaccinating children against polio/rubella etc., WITHOUT giving them a life-threatening food allergy.
This is 2015! Is that too much to ask? Why is no one talking about fixing the ROOT CAUSE? Vaccine contamination and safety problems.
Fix the root cause and exemptions will become a non-issue.

I’m unaware of any specific legal reason that the US couldn’t ban all semi-automatic weapons like Australia did…

It would be really unsportsmanlike for the US Government to sell me (see http://thecmp.org/cmp_sales/ ) a fully functional, high powered, semi-automatic rifle, that General Patton called "the greatest battle implement ever devised" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Garand ), for the expressed purpose of encouraging me to improve my shooting skills, and then turn around and take it away, but that's just my opinion.

Besides, you don't need a semi-auto firearm to spray a bunch of lead. Google Ed McGivern, and click the wiki link (it will probably be first).

Yet today, the CDC table here lists numerous food proteins contained in vaccines, including gelatin, egg, milk, soy, seaweed and vegetable oils (in Polysorbate 80, sorbitol).

I hear there's peanut protein in bullsh1t.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 23 Jun 2015 #permalink

it’s not like the 2nd amendment requires that civilians be legally entitled to own any type of weapon

McDonald v. City of Chicago ended the ability to only allow legal possession of long guns.

@Johnny:

I am personally not wild about guns for a lot of reasons, although I grew up around them and know how to shoot. (I even once shot a revolver, as a teenager, but only at pop cans. Outshot the men, I might add.) It is a lot easier to kill yourself dead with a gun than it is to bleed yourself out or figure out the right dosage of whatever pills you might be able to obtain, for one thing.

I doubt very much that the US is going to do anything very serious about gun control any time within the near future, which I consider unfortunate. Bans on handguns would be great, as far as I'm concerned, as would stricter background checks, in part just because they provide a delay when buying a gun.

It troubles me, the extent to which the US is awash in guns, especially ones which are explicitly made for killing people, lots of people, in a short amount of time. But that's just me, I guess. And again, I doubt that anything is going to be done about it.

One might ask yer typical trauma surgeon how he or she feels about nearly unfettered access to firearms, I suppose.

McDonald v. City of Chicago ended the ability to only allow legal possession of long guns.

Well, that's just dandy. Maybe we should just scrap the 2nd Amendment, then.

^ I should also note that this is a fruitless diversion and that I only pointed out the technicality because I was scrolling back from the craniosacralist's appearance.

I have not revisited the thread in which Tutu came up again; you know where to find me.

I have not revisited the thread in which Tutu came up again;

Neither have I.

Bureaucrats should not have control over what is put into our kids, period. They could be injecting them with the potential cure to all illnesses, but that does not give them or anyone else the right to force the procedure on someone, or limit their access to education, or restrict their ability to sue should an injury occur

Translation: I'm against gov't interventions when they put limitations on my freedom, but for gov't interventions when they're providing me with a free education or a venue to seek redress for my grievances. Hypocrite.

wound "appeared self inflicted"

By I. Rony Meter (not verified) on 23 Jun 2015 #permalink

While it is clearly tragic for his family, the news report does leave me wondering what Mikey Adams will make of Bradstreet's passing.

@ChrisP - word on the "conspiracy-street" is that he was killed by the FBI.

Why would they stop at the FBI? The Illuminati is a much more logical choice in faking a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The anti-vaxing soccer mom revolution is on wacked out idol status with all the crap he did. Which is a lesson to others, you don't have to be a competent practitioner to make a bunch of money, gather fame, and not get sued, you just need to exude a warm caring nice guy narcissistic persona. I'm sure five more heads of the hydra will spring up and go forth with more of his crap.

with all the crap he did
How many times and in how many different ways did Bradstreet cure his son's autism, before offering the same cure(s) to his suckers patients? I lost count after the first half-dozen.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 24 Jun 2015 #permalink

I might be on the side of possibly way more insolence than respectful. Severe depression is no joke to me, I see/have seen the worst of it. Only to point out the guy probly ended doing more harm than good toward community health as a whole.

While it is clearly tragic for his family, the news report does leave me wondering what Mikey Adams will make of Bradstreet’s passing.

Mikey will make money off Bradstreet's passing. That's his endgame, after all.

APV, the cites in your post @147 offer no evidence that vaccines cuase food allergies:

The first found only that "anaphylaxis after MMR vaccines can in some cases be attributable to hypersensitivity to gelatin", not that vaccination causes allergies to gelatin

The second lists ingredients incorporated in some vaccine formulations, but again offers no evidence vaccination causes food allergies

And the third and fourth also suggest reactions to MMR vaccination may be a result of pre-existing sensitivities to gelatin,but not that vaccination causes food allergies

I'm sorry, but one simply has to ask: did you even bother to read the citations yourself before posting them here?

My son developed multiple life-threatening food allergies from these food protein contaminated vaccines

How exactly have you established that the food allergies your son developed were in fact caused by the vaccines he received? be sepcific.

It is, I trust, on some basis other than a post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy, perhaps seasoned with a dash of "Well, what else could it have been?"

Mike Adams has a new song and video out to promote "racial healing".

I wonder if the healing process involves colloidal silver and MMS.

By Dangerous Bacon (not verified) on 24 Jun 2015 #permalink

@ JGC, if you do a search on RI for APV you will see that s/he has trotted out this nonsense before, was thoroughly debunked and of course, won't give up.

By Science Mom (not verified) on 24 Jun 2015 #permalink

Mike Adams has a new song and video out to promote “racial healing”.

I wonder if the healing process involves colloidal silver and MMS.

Everyone will have blue skin. No more racism!!!

@James Nemec

The fix is in.

There is no fix. The opposition is losing in the free marketplace of ideas fair and square. You might want to look into why with an open mind.

Why else would you vaccinate a baby for Hepatitis B? All the promiscuity and sharing of needles that toddlers do?

Babies can get chronic Hep B at birth from their mothers, and then as toddlers they can transmit them to other children through biting or bleeding. That's in addition to the other ways toddlers can get Hep B that others have mentioned in this thread. Do you really think nobody bothered to check if children got Hep B before recommending the vaccine?

By justthestats (not verified) on 24 Jun 2015 #permalink

The logical fallacies are so overwhelming here and I know now your callow and obtuse opinions will not be easily swayed. Qui cum canibus concumbunt cum pulicibus surgent.
You hide behind research that most of you do not understand; copying and pasting from the NIH or CDC is not sufficient to win this argument. You fail to consider the ethical ramifications of forcing medical procedures on people based on a bureaucrat’s interpretation of what is necessary. You are the fools that are happy that a group of people will be denied access to an education that their taxes have already paid for because they have a religious/moral objection to specific vaccines. You lose when you say, “If you do not like it, then leave.”
Know this, tyranny does not stop at what you deem acceptable boundaries. When you open this Pandora’s box, you will unleash a precedence that will be cited again and again until eventually it will touch on something you do care about. It doesn’t happen overnight; it is a gradual process that slowly erodes your rights as an individual. I pray it is not too late before the majority of you wake up to this reality.

By James Nemec (not verified) on 24 Jun 2015 #permalink

Says the person that doesn't seem to realize that these mandates have existed for more than a century.......

James: That dictionary you had for lunch disagreeing with you? Granted, projectile vomiting in latin is quite impressive- if only you knew what it meant. Calling us fools is rather rich, coming from your mouth.

By Politicalguineapig (not verified) on 24 Jun 2015 #permalink

Mr. Nemec: "Know this, tyranny does not stop at what you deem acceptable boundaries"

I was an Army brat and got to spend much of my youth overseas. One of those places was in a dictatorship where the police could pick you up just because they thought your hair was too long. The dictator restricted access to certain news stories, and sometimes headless bodies of his opponents were found in remote areas.

I find your whining about "liberty" and "tyranny" highly amusing. By the way, Somalia was an example where your notions of no regulations has been in use for decades. You must know how well that is working out.

When you open this Pandora’s box, you will unleash a precedence [] that will be cited again and again until eventually it will touch on something you do care about.

As has already been pointed out, the precedent already exists. Your job is to explain why your propaganda fantasy has failed to happen in the real world.

copying and pasting from the NIH or CDC is not sufficient to win this argument

Facts will make no difference? OK, that saves a lot of time.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 24 Jun 2015 #permalink

James @135: "Bureaucrats should not have control over what is put into our kids, period. "

So you'd like to see lead paint, leaded gasoline and a whole host of other things that "bureaucrats" say can't be put into anyone back on the market?

Things like the Pure Food and Drugs Act were passed for a reason. Some of that was demand by the public.

But, as I and others have said before, even if this bill passes you will still have your right to not vaccinate your child. Nothing in this bill says anything about "forced" or "involuntary" vaccination. Your rights will not change. Only the consequences for your actions.

By JustaTech (not verified) on 24 Jun 2015 #permalink

"Know this, tyranny does not stop at what you deem acceptable boundaries."

You wouldn't know tyranny if it bit you in your privileged ass.

How about just getting yourself and family vaccinated?

Mikey will make money off Bradstreet’s passing. That’s his endgame, after all.

Someone lost no time in setting up a GoFundMe appeal for $25000, claiming to represent Bradstreet's family, who want an independent investigation of the FBI assassination but are apparently too poor to pay for it.

http://www.gofundme.com/xscefs?fb_action_ids=10200851175799279&fb_actio…

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 24 Jun 2015 #permalink

#166 JGC,

I quoted the relevant section again here for you:

“Nonetheless, our cases with anti-gelatin IgE required some previous exposure to gelatin to become sensitized, and this may have come through ingestion of gelatin-containing food or injection of gelatin-containing vaccines.”

They wrote: “Efforts should continue to identify less allergenic
substitutes for gelatin currently used by vaccine manufacturers.”.

The study confirmed (as you point out) that people with pre-existing gelatin allergy suffered reactions to the MMR vaccine in the US.

But the authors, in the above paragraph are telling you HOW that pre-existing gelatin allergy occurred. And "injection of gelatin-containing vaccines." is the part that tells you that the VACCINE CAUSED THE ALLERGY in the first place.

In case you are not aware, it is a two step process. The first time an allergen is injected, there are no symptoms. It takes a few weeks to develop the allergy (sensitization). The second time, you are injected, you immediately have an allergic reaction (elicitation). The study/conclusion was about the second step.

The quoted paragraphs above are the authors discussing how the first step occurred.

#166 JGC,

This was among the last of a series of investigations on gelatin contaminated vaccines causing allergy in Japan..
Kuno-Sakai H, Kimura M. Removal of gelatin from live vaccines and DTaP-an ultimate solution for vaccine-related gelatin allergy.Biologicals 2003;31:245-9

http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-749%2899%2970508-7/fulltext
"We examined 165 paired sera obtained before the first dose of DTaP and 1 month after the third dose of DTaP. Of 165 paired sera, 62 were obtained from the recipients of gelatin-free DTaP, and IgE antibodies to gelatin developed in none. In 103 recipients of gelatin-containing DTaP, IgE antibodies to gelatin developed in 2 recipients."

Demonstrating that gelatin contaminated vaccines were indeed the cause of gelatin allergies in healthy non-allergic people.

Even better w/ the gofund, people are actually throwing money away on it. Idiots.

It may even be a genuine family-grift Gofundme. Apples, trees, not falling far from.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 24 Jun 2015 #permalink

Someone lost no time in setting up a GoFundMe appeal for $25000, claiming to represent Bradstreet’s family, who want an independent investigation of the FBI assassination but are apparently too poor to pay for it.

For people who pride themselves so much on "not being sheeple" and having "done their research" they are so ready to accept the improbable on the word of people they know nothing about.

How many people are allergic to gelatin, really? In my area, it's almost a food group by itself, and I can't help noticing that most of my family, friends and neighbors aren't dead or indeed seriously affected by jell-o. And you know what's in gelatin? Mostly protein. I hate anti-vaxxers who act like ordinary food is arsenic.

By Politicalguineapig (not verified) on 24 Jun 2015 #permalink

#166 JGC,

The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) says injections can cause allergy:

https://www.aafa.org/display.cfm?id=8&sub=16&cont=54

"1. Sensitization to an allergen: Being exposed for the first time

You might be initially exposed to an allergen by:

Inhalation (of pollen, mold, dust mites, etc.)
Ingestion (swallowing a type of food or medication)
Touch (coming into contact with poison ivy, latex, or certain metals, such as nickel)
Injection (receiving a medication or being stung by an insect)"

How do researchers cause egg allergy in rats?
They inject them with pertussis vaccine, alum (aluminum salt) and the egg protein ovalbumin.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22342543

How does the FDA cause milk allergy in your kid?
They inject them with pertussis vaccine (DTaP), containing aluminum salt and the milk protein casein.

http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedPr…

It is elementary immunology.

#166 JGC,

The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) says injections can cause allergy:

https://www.aafa.org/display.cfm?id=8&sub=16&cont=54

"1. Sensitization to an allergen: Being exposed for the first time

You might be initially exposed to anallergen by:

Inhalation (of pollen, mold, dust mites, etc.)
Ingestion (swallowing a type of food or medication)
Touch (coming into contact with poison ivy, latex, or certain metals, such as nickel)
Injection (receiving a medication or being stung by an insect)"

How do researchers cause egg allergy in rats?
They inject them with pertussis vaccine, alum (aluminum salt) and the egg protein ovalbumin.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22342543

How does the FDA cause milk allergy in your kid?
They inject them with pertussis vaccine (DTaP), containing aluminum salt and the milk protein casein.

http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedPr…

It is elementary immunology.

#186 Politicalguineapig,

"And you know what’s in gelatin? Mostly protein."

You are of course absolutely right. But THAT is the problem!

Protein should be EATEN NOT INJECTED. The FDA seems to have the same misunderstanding despite warnings from their own doctors.

For example, if you don't have ulcers, you can ingest cobra venom (protein) safely. It is a healthy protein source. But you obviously cannot inject it.
Ingesting is NOT the same as injecting. You are bypassing the protein digestive process with injections.

Proteins are normally broken down into harmless amino acids, by the digestive process.

Injecting proteins can cause sensitization (development of allergy) as discovered over a hundred years ago by researchers such as Dr. Richet.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1913/richet-b…

"How many people are allergic to gelatin, really?"

Gelatin is just the most well studied food protein contaminating vaccines. Vaccines are contaminated by numerous other food proteins such as egg (ovalbumin), milk (casein), seaweed/algae (agar), yeast, soy, and unspecified food protein contaminants in excipients such as Polysorbate 80 and sorbitol.

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/B/excipi…

The logical fallacies are so overwhelming here and I know now your callow and obtuse opinions will not be easily swayed.

OK, name one logical fallacy.

You hide behind research that most of you do not understand; copying and pasting from the NIH or CDC is not sufficient to win this argument.

Funny coming from someone who has spouted easily falsifiable claims and is trolling a board crawling with scientists, physicians, engineers and grad students.

You fail to consider the ethical ramifications of forcing medical procedures on people based on a bureaucrat’s interpretation of what is necessary.

For the umpteenth time, no one is forcing medical procedures on people. Your argument boils down to, "Waah, I don't wanna".

When you open this Pandora’s box, you will unleash a precedence that will be cited again and again until eventually it will touch on something you do care about.

Yea because that's so happening in Mississippi and West Virginia.

By Science Mom (not verified) on 24 Jun 2015 #permalink

Someone lost no time in setting up a GoFundMe appeal for $25000, claiming to represent Bradstreet’s family, who want an independent investigation of the FBI assassination but are apparently too poor to pay for it.

One might wonder whether there are any well-known crank private investigators ready to hand.

I know now your callow and obtuse opinions will not be easily swayed.

That's odd, I didn't think it was Talk Like a Jack Vance Character Day.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 24 Jun 2015 #permalink

^ It's also unclear to me whether the first adjective in "callow and obtuse opinions" is actually intended to serve as an intensifier. The production has a certain Bad Spiro T. Agnew Parody feel to it.

^^ Curse-a you, you rug-yanking Bimler!

APV:It is elementary immunology.

In your world, maybe. I don't think you'd recognize allergy science in the real world if it bit you. There's no milk in vaccines or gluten. And the funny thing is if you try to relentlessly sterilize everything around baby, baby ends up allergic to more things than they would be if left to their natural devices. Do you know how much alum or protein there is in a vaccine? Micrograms, maybe not even that much. Compared to all the other things a baby can ingest, I fail to see what the fuss is about. I'll leave it to the professionals around here to clean your clock, but may I suggest something? If you can't love your kids, or get so wound up about allergies you can't even be near an egg, maybe it's time to leave them with someone who can handle daily life.

By Politicalguineapig (not verified) on 24 Jun 2015 #permalink

@james

Considering that my family hosted refugees who escaped from a communist country because they wanted to escape real tyranny, your obvious lack of perspective and sensitivity is noted.

But then again, what should we expect from someone who would rather have children suffer from something preventable.

You are the fools that are happy that a group of people will be denied access to an education that their taxes have already paid for because they have a religious/moral objection to specific vaccines.

For purposes of clarification, could you perhaps present a subset that you consider to be wholly unobjectionable?

TIA.

@ Narad:

" any well-known crank private investigators"
Possibly from LA?
-which happens to be the perfect setting for a noir piece -
and who has his own crank scientific justice organisation?
Let me think..,

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 25 Jun 2015 #permalink

@Science Mom
Funny coming from someone who has spouted easily falsifiable claims and is trolling a board crawling with scientists, physicians, engineers and grad students.

Argumentum ad lapidem, onus probandi and appeal to authority all in one sentence. Shine your brilliance upon me, oh Great Nudnik of the ScienceBlog. Provide me with one paper you have authored that pertains to epidemiology or biological sciences in general.

The larger issue for many of you is how you'll set up straw man arguments that you can easily refute without ever answering the issue at hand. A medical procedure will be forced on child or that child will not have access to the same education as everyone else. The removal of the exemption is tantamount to force. I object to this specific law on the grounds that it is an unnecessary encroachment on a parent’s right to decide what is best for their child. I do not live in West Virginia or Mississippi, I live in San Diego, California and I have done so all my life. I pay my taxes. I contribute to my community. But my voice and others like me are being drowned out by technocratic socialists and their controlled by fear puppets.

Smarmy and incredulous statements about tyranny or your personal observations while being an Army brat in Somalia, does not change the fact that this is a step in the wrong direction for California. Time will tell if I am really guilty of hyperbole, but I would rather be the one speaking out then sitting on my hands as we allow our elected officials to give into mass hysteria and sell us out to corporate interests.

By James Nemec (not verified) on 25 Jun 2015 #permalink

"I object to this specific law on the grounds that it is an unnecessary encroachment on a parent’s right to decide what is best for their child."

Perhaps it's because I'm childless, but I've never understood how squirting sperm into somebody else's unprotected crotch magically endowed either the giver or receiver with superior mental powers. I've run into too many parents who aren't qualified to make decisions for themselves, let alone someone else.

"Time will tell if I am really guilty of hyperbole"

Time's up.

SB 277 passes the Assembly today 40-30 w 4 not voting. Drat! Flaterthers back to the drawing board :-/

@James Nemac:

Oh look! Irony!

Argumentum ad lapidem

Why else would you vaccinate a baby for Hepatitis B? All the promiscuity and sharing of needles that toddlers do?

Just accept that you no longer have control of what you put into your body and that a bureaucrat will determine what is best for you. That cannot go wrong, right?

Never mind, the many injured by bad batches of vaccines. That’s their problem, you’re fine, right?

Maybe you like living in a myopic world or maybe you’re just another internet troll looking for purpose.

onus probandi **

The fix is in.

[T]he fact remains that SB 277, SB792, and AB1117 will not stop the next outbreak. It will not make the public any healthier.

It starts with the kids/educators and then after the public has accepted it, the push will be for adults to get boosters, “to protect the children.” Never mind, the many injured by bad batches of vaccines. That’s their problem, you’re fine, right?

If you want someone to spoon feed you information feel free to accept it and all that comes with it. The end road though of the proposed legislation is the subversion of an individual’s right to make informed decisions about their health. It is an apathetic electorate and corrupt politicians that are allowing this injustice to occur. You cheer for the possible benefits, but you fail to consider the ramifications of relinquishing your liberty. It does not stop here and it will go until useful idiots like yourself are eventually left with few decisions.

Further, this bill will only cover the citizens of California,so I again assert this will not make the public any healthier.

Bureaucrats should not have control over what is put into our kids, period.

This whole hysteria stemmed from the Disneyland outbreak and no statist worth his salt is going to pass up the opportunity to use a crisis, even if it is a media frenzy created crisis.

But let’s use fear and appeals to authority to push crap legislation that pays off campaign contributors.

The logical fallacies are so overwhelming here

[Y]our callow . . . opinions

You hide behind research that most of you do not understand

You fail to consider the ethical ramifications of forcing medical procedures on people based on a bureaucrat’s interpretation of what is necessary.

When you open this Pandora’s box, you will unleash a precedence that will be cited again and again until eventually it will touch on something you do care about. It doesn’t happen overnight; it is a gradual process that slowly erodes your rights as an individual.

The larger issue for many of you is how you’ll set up straw man arguments that you can easily refute without ever answering the issue at hand.

But my voice and others like me are being drowned out by technocratic socialists and their controlled by fear puppets.

[W]e allow our elected officials to give into mass hysteria and sell us out to corporate interests.

appeal to authority

The CDC levels for herd immunity have already been achieved for the demographic in question. . .

Shine your brilliance upon me, oh Great Nudnik of the ScienceBlog. Provide me with one paper you have authored that pertains to epidemiology or biological sciences in general.

** I went pretty easy on this one. There are a lot of other sentences that aren't very well supported, but I left them out if there was any reasonable effort at trying, even if it was far less than convincing support.

By justthestats (not verified) on 25 Jun 2015 #permalink

Mr. Nemec: "Provide me with one paper you have authored that pertains to epidemiology or biological sciences in general."

Nice way to figure out how to harass Science Mom at her place of work.

"Smarmy and incredulous statements about tyranny or your personal observations while being an Army brat in Somalia, does not change the fact that this is a step in the wrong direction for California"

And you are still clueless. As someone with privilege, you expect all of the goodies and none of the responsibilities. You want the world to bend to your will, and yet you have no idea how it really works.

James Nemec,

an unnecessary encroachment

Why specifically is it 'unnecessary?'

technocratic socialists and their controlled by fear puppets

I would rather be the one speaking out then sitting on my hands

This is pretty funny coming from someone who is literally employed by the Catholic Church. I wonder how many people are buried in San Diego's Holy Cross Cemetery who died of vaccine preventable diseases?

#196 Politicalguineapig,

"There’s no milk in vaccines or gluten. "

Sorry, there is milk protein, casein in vaccines.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/AAAAI/25520

Milk allergy is quite different from gluten sensitivity.

"Do you know how much alum or protein there is in a vaccine? "

The quantity of alum is usually documented in the vaccine package insert.

The protein is usually NOT documented.And it takes only nanogram levels to cause allergies as shown here:

http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(11)00747-0/fulltext

"Compared to all the other things a baby can ingest, "

As I explained before, you need to understand that ingestion and INJECTION are different.

"I’ll leave it to the professionals around here "

They tried and failed miserably because they don't have the evidence. I have provided evidence straight from CDC/FDA doctors.

The number of measles cases in the recent US outbreak - 173.
The number of cases of community acquired MRSA cases/year - 15000.

If we are trying to protect immunocompromised kids in the classroom, mandating vaccines is barking up the wrong tree?

@PGP - it isn't that others offered him no evidence. I think they even attempted to explain what he misunderstood. APV just kept asserting his pet belief in the face of it... ;-)

RI regulars - how do you not get tired? I am honestly in awe of your patience. Sometimes the same trolls, sometimes new ones with the same info as previous ones, and you continue to try to educate.

I have wondered - is there any simple education blog somewhere that tries to "catch" people before they fall into woo? With things like believing vaccines cause every ailment under the sun - when people say the immune system is complex, etc., etc., and you go out and start trying to debunk "autoimmune disorders are triggered by hypersensitizing the immune system against a type of cell in the body while attempting to teach it to kill a virus," and realize you can't understand 90% of what a research paper is saying, or worse yet, as a layman can't tell the difference between a good journal and a bad one...

A lot of times I can google a certain claim and find a blog name (or even two or three) I recognize. Sometimes I can't. Sometimes I can understand why an abstract or headline can sound confirming to their biases, too, even though deeper analysis often shows it was either a false positive or totally unrelated.

I look at all the woo and all the debunking and the education required... I could finish undergrad, start grad school and never finish and still not be expert enough to debunk every woo out there in a way that would reach most, though common sense and "smell test" serve well enough alone to keep me fairly immune. I don't have the knowledge to debate a single woo believer. It makes me kind of sad.

Anyhow... I am glad you all, and especially our host, care to spend your time attempting to help people who are not experts understand the why's behind the science that makes things work (or makes woo unbelievable).

The larger issue for many of you is how you’ll set up straw man arguments that you can easily refute without ever answering the issue at hand. A medical procedure will be forced on child or that child will not have access to the same education as everyone else.

Let's cut to the chase here: There's been a lot of cutting and pasting around of how California's constitution "enshrines the right to a free education," etc. This is in fact the plan going forward for the imaginary test cases that are ready to go!

Now, I happen to know where this comes from. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've set it out somewhere here already (hint: involves roman numerals). One place that it does not come from, as I recall, is the actual California constitution.*

Perhaps you'd like to quit frothing and get down to brass tacks. Your salvo quoted above seems to suggest an equal protection argument. You complain that "I do not live in West Virginia or Mississippi, I live in San Diego, California."

This is unavailing; the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Workman. Unless you can connect some actual legal dots, you're just FREEDUMB!-ing up the joint.

* I will remind you that not only have you ignored the simple query in comment 198, it gets worse:

You are the fools that are happy that a group of people will be denied access to an education that their taxes have already paid for because they have a religious/moral objection to specific vaccines.

Do people without children not also have to pay to finance California's educational system? If they do, this is something else you're going to have to pretend you never really "said."

a group of people will be denied access to an education that their taxes have already paid for

The average 5-year-old has arguably paid.a fair amount of sales tax in the course of his or her lifetime, but it's not usually coming out of the 5-year-old's income, so what's the problem if vaccination status is an obstacle to the child attending a public school?

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 25 Jun 2015 #permalink

"I pay my taxes. I contribute to my community."

Chris Rock: "I take care of my kids!"

@ Mrs Woo:

Even if there were an educational blog like that, it doesn't mean that interested parties would find that prior to the woo-drenched sites that cast their nets for those worried about health, the quality of food and medical care. They're sensationalistic and give simple- but wrong- answers; they use all of the methods finely honed by advertising to catch readers' eyes and warp their thoughts for they have enough understanding of people's fears and desires to know how to manipulate them well.
They are indeed the antidote to education. All we can do is expose their MO and falsities publicly.

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 26 Jun 2015 #permalink

APV@209

Injection is not the same as ingestion.
I am unique,in that I am a recovered (low functioning) autistic,who accomplished this as an adult,with science based methods.I have autism due to cerebral folate deficiency,related to mitochondrial disease.

There is a growing body of scientific evidence to support this type of autism,but it is only one of many different types of autism.Ingestion of milk plays a big part here.

From the original article that found the problems with milk.

"In CFD patients with autoantibodies against FR, oral folinic acid treatment leads to substantial clinical improvement, especially if the treatment is started early in the disorder. Avoidance of milk downregulates these autoantibodies, and re-exposure to milk is followed by an increase in the autoantibody titer. Milk contains substantial amounts of FR and seems to present the triggering antigen for the autoantibody response. This indicates that the gastrointestinal tract is a likely route of exposure to the antigen and that a compromised immune barrier in this system can be considered as the potential cause of the autoimmune response. The familial occurrence of CFD in some siblings, such as that observed in three brothers, suggests a genetic component to this disorder. An autoimmune response against FR may result from genetically dictated errors during early thymic negative selection of autoreactive T-cells (CD4+ T helper cells and regulatory T cells) that fail to undergo apoptosis or do not remain in a state of anergy toward the FR antigen.Further research in families could identify the specific genetic components involved. After ingestion of milk, immunogenic peptides could cross a damaged intestinal barrier and activate peripheral macrophages, B cells, and T cells. We were unable to obtain detailed histories of early infancy to identify food allergies or allergy to milk or other conditions that may have triggered an inflammatory response and compromised the integrity of the intestinal barriers. The onset of the disorder during the first 3 to 6 months of life after the switch to bovine milk would suggest a delayed or disrupted synergy between the adaptive and innate immune systems in the gut. Because of the time-dependent evolution of typical signs and symptoms and the slow progression of CFD syndrome, diagnosis of the neurological phenotype is established much later in the disease process."

Like much of autism it is all in the gut.Further research into CFD since this article was published connect this type of autism to genetic problems with folate metabolism,and mitochondrial disease,both of which I have,and in other cases,inherited autoimmune diseases.As this article states,I had my first regression as a baby,when I was too young to be vaccinated.This is common in CFD.

After my CFD/autism was treated,I found there were serious neurological problems upon eating or drinking dairy.Depending on the amount eaten,this could range from minor cognitive problems to seizures and full autistic regression,that would require even higher doses than usual of folinic acid to reverse.I am very sensitive to dairy via the gut/brain axis.Yet,I get an annual flu shot,and am up to date on my boosters.I have yet to have a vaccine related reaction.

Haagen-Dazs is the enemy here,not DTP.

By Roger Kulp (not verified) on 26 Jun 2015 #permalink

In the presentation speech as winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work with anaphylaxis, Charles Robert Richet said, "We are so constituted that we can never receive other proteins into the blood than those that have been modified by digestive juices. Every time alien protein penetrates by effraction, the organism suffers and becomes resistant. This resistance lies in increased sensitivity, a sort of revolt against the second parenteral injection which would be fatal. At the first injection, the organism was taken by surprise and did not resist. At the second injection, the organism mans its defences and answers by the anaphylactic shock." In naming "anaphylaxis", Richet described, "Phylaxis, a word seldom used, stands in the Greek for protection. Anaphylaxis will thus stand for the opposite. Anaphylaxis, from its Greek etymological source, therefore means that state of an organism in which it is rendered hypersensitive, instead of being protected." Richet concluded his lecture by saying, "Seen in these terms, anaphylaxis is a universal defense mechanism against the penetration of heterogenous substances in the blood, whence they can not be eliminated."

Mrs. Woo: I noticed APV's curious imperviousness to facts. Also, he and Ken don't understand the difference between a virus and a bacterial illness. Also, unlike many of the regulars, I do not have a degree in biology, let alone an advanced degree. I just read a lot. Furthermore, I don't think an educational site for woobies will work. There's no amount of education that can convince an anti-vaxxer. Better to just write them off.

APV: Try again. MRSA is a bacterial illness, so no vaccines against it exist. And, you know, if doctors didn't have to treat kids with measles, or waste time with anti-vaxxers, they could use that time to do something about MRSA. Simple really.

RK: Gut brain connection doesn't exist and was made up by charlatans. You may be lactose intolerant, but not every autistic person is. It depresses me how much you still buy into Age of Autism tropes.I guess all those years of being a quisling did quite a number on you.

By Politicalguineapig (not verified) on 26 Jun 2015 #permalink

There’s no amount of education that can convince an anti-vaxxer.

That's not entirely true, as we've seen. Recently there have been a few high-profile cases of former anti-vaxxer's who came over from the dark side after their children came down with serious VPDs (pertussis, diphtheria).

That kind of education is hard on the kids, though.

WTC7 -- do you happen to have a cite that's not over 100 years old?

APV: Have you come up with a vaccine against MRSA? That's fantastic! You should tell Tara over at Aetiology about it! (Why don't we start with vaccinating against the diseases we have vaccines for, while we work on addressing other health concerns. We can do more than one thing at a time!)

(And, PGP, as a reminder, it is sometimes, but not always, possible to make a vaccine against a bacteria. See pertussis.)

Ken: I am pretty sure, though I haven't checked in a while, that researchers are working on a norovirus vaccine. Won't that be fantastic when/if it works!

WTC7; That's some pretty old thinking on allergic reactions. And I will offer this as an argument that it is possible to have allergic reactions to proteins that are never injected. How do you think people develop allergies to strawberries?

By JustaTech (not verified) on 26 Jun 2015 #permalink

@JustaTech: yeah, strawberry allergy was a very unpleasant surprise for my eldest at age 15 or so, after years of eating them. Of course, she was fully vaccinated, so maybe it was some strawberry protein that got into her vaccines that caused it!

Though...I'm still not sure how a vaccine into MUSCLE can put proteins directly into the blood, but I am sure that WTC7 can tell us, using his 1913 review!

It is now well established that small amounts of intact proteins are absorbed via the normal gut (I've posted links before; too lazy to run them down again; IIRC, most of the research work done in the past 20 years).

The removal of the exemption is tantamount to force.

Which, by definition, means that it does not represent force--agreed?

Justatech: Yeah, I know that pertussis is bacterial.Unlike MRSa, it's stayed the same for a very long time. MRSa is a challenge because it's a fairly recent mutation, and the strep family is hard to kill.

MIDawn: Little sis developed a lactose intolerance as an adult. She still hasn't come to terms with it. Tell your daughter it could be worse, I've run into two individuals who are allergic to chocolate, and one who's allergic to chicken.

Shay: Agreed that it's hard on the kids. Also, most anti-vaxxers wouldn't learn from that; easily a third are narcissists, and another third just had kids for the social points.

By Politicalguineapig (not verified) on 26 Jun 2015 #permalink

The number of measles cases in the recent US outbreak – 173.
The number of cases of community acquired MRSA cases/year – 15000.

And why was the number of cases of measles in the outbreak so low, APV? Oh, that's right! Because most of the US population has been vaccinated against it.

If you want to compare measles to MRSA (for which there is no available vaccine) you'll need to do so on the basis of the measles incidence before routine MMR vaccination. Let me fix your figures for you:

The number of measles cases in an unvaccinated population/year– between 3 and 4 million.

The number of cases of community acquired MRSA cases/year – 15000.

@PGP

Or the syndrome you can get around here from a tick bite that makes you allergic to all mammal meat. A friend of mine has that.

shay@221:

WTC7 — do you happen to have a cite that’s not over 100 years old?

Alas, the thermites ate it.

Regarding strange and unfortunate allergies, I cannot help but remember the sad case I saw on an Animal Planet series about a kennel that takes in desperate cases. They had a dog who was turned over to them because the owners could not help the dog due to his allergies. He was the aboslute picture of a labrador retriever, with a fantastic disposition and a passionate love of humans. He was allergic to tons of things, including all the tree pollen around their part of the country, but the saddest was his severe human allergy. He desperately wanted to be with humans, but humans made him sick. SO he got moved to this shelter in the desert, where there were no more of the tree pollens, and they were able to tightly control his exposure to only very well washed humans until his immune system had a chance to settle down a bit, to the point where his human allergy was manageable with antihistamines, as long as he spent as much time outside as possible and didn't sleep or eat in a human residence.

By Calli Arcale (not verified) on 26 Jun 2015 #permalink

Is there a Cat Hell where the residents are all severely allergic to humans - but humans keep coming up and rubbing against them?

I'm glad things worked out for the Lab.

By Dangerous Bacon (not verified) on 26 Jun 2015 #permalink

How To Catch People Before They Fall Into Woo

Mrs. Woo: The trolls who show up are beyond 'education.' They have 'woo'-things as core first principles, and it's pointless to try to approach them with 'facts' or 'logic' based on a different set of first principles. The minions here play 'whack-a-troll' mostly for self-amusement. Everybody gets to have a hobby, and do a few things just for pleasure, so that's cool, but it doesn't help the cause much, really.

'Education' won't really work to catch people before they fall into woo. The 'facts' are already out there... That's the problem: "out there".

IMHO, Chapter 1 of Berger and Luckmann's classic work in the sociology of knowledge The Social Construction of Reality (1966) offer a useful way to understand the problem. http://tinyurl.com/o2csxry
(No, skeptics, it's not what you think from the title, and it's not anti-science or anything.)
B&L argue that we experience layers of reality, more near or far in both distance and time. The physical here and now of everyday life always commands more attention, is always 'more real'. I think people get sucked into woo because of things that exist or happen in that inner sphere of everyday personal reality — facing the consequences of raising a child diagnosed with ASD for example, while coming from a certain personal history, with certain goals etc. etc. 'Science,' or any other subject of 'education' is removed and abstract by comparison for most people. It just doesn't matter as much in experiential terms.

Which is not to say people can't be 'caught before they fall into woo'. Only that doing so is not a matter of establishing scientific rectitude, but rather establishing personal stakes — making the scientifically accurate belief have a clear positive value (and/or the woo a negative) in terms of that inner sphere of here and now.

I realize you're asking if there's a website with collected and indexed woo-claims and appropriate debunkings — as opposed to blogs like RI which focus on a limited set of issues, and require skillful use of the Search function (and a fair bit of time) to collect Orac's wisdom on any one topic. I don't know if such a site exists, but (hypothetically) let's say there is a very good one.

You hear a friend sound a little woo-ey, and being concerned you direct them to this brilliantly written and argued resource. It's likely to have no effect: it's too peripheral in your friend's structure of 'reality layers'. But lets say you use that site as a resource for engaging in good-natured persuasion with your friend. If you're a close friend, that puts you in the layer of 'most important knowledge' so what you say makes a big difference. That's why conflict at this level is pretty traumatic, and most people avoid taking up any important disagreements about wider social issues with their friends — keeping the waters of everyday life more peaceful...

Now, think about how everyday life has changed in the last 150 years, Before the invention of telegraphy, the only way to communicate 'information' was to physically move something across a geographic gap — think Pony Express. Today, though, people living in indistrialized societies are at swim in an ocean of information calling out to us seemingly everywhere and all the time. The other day, buying some groceries, I noticed one of the popular 'women's magazines' on display in the rack at the checkout counter, and almost all the content heralded on the cover was some sort of woo. (http://tinyurl.com/oj65f5k)

Denice notes of woo websites, "they use all of the methods finely honed by advertising to catch readers’ eyes and warp their thoughts for they have enough understanding of people’s fears and desires to know how to manipulate them well." Fears and desires, c.f. Berger and Luckmann, and centered around everyday life stuff. And what does advertising do? It projects products into significant roles in those everyday concerns. The myth of advertising is that it's about the product. It's not. It's about YOU (the consumer). YOU want to be liked, loved, respected — but that's all ruined by your dandruff flakes or 'halitosis' — so here comes Head & Shoulders and Listerine to the rescue!

With such ludicrous magical thinking being advanced so ubiquitously, woo has a leg up.

There's really no way to fight this fire but with fire. Science deals in abstractions across broad populations in a distanced and arcane specialized language. People just aren't going to care about what it has to say unless it's presented in terms of their everyday life concerns. Yes, obviously that means the kinds of appeals to emotions that make science advocates uncomfortable — which we might consider odd given how often they rail angrily against person(s) 'X' for being "Stupid!'. Like that works (sarcasm).

When Orac is at his best, though, (c.f. his posts on Jess Ainscough) he does it 'right': he foregrounds the personal, emotional stakes in a way that shows some compassion for the potentially woo-ensnared, and backs it up with solid scientifically valid knowledge which is something the snake-oil salesfolk cannot do.

Of course, that has no impact on the true believers — nothing does. But true believers in anything are always a tiny (if loud) minority. But we're not talking about them. We're talking about catching people before they fall into woo. And the way to do that is to get to their everyday life concerns, and demonstrate how this stuff matters in those terms, BEFORE the woo-ists capture that territory.

@PGP: yeah, it could be worse. The biggest problem is that strawberry juice is used in a LOT of foods for flavoring and pink color. She nearly went into shock from a drink the server *swore* had no strawberry juice in it.

MIDawn: That's awful. My group of friends is pretty careful about stuff like that, and I'm always on the lookout for restaurants that offer vegan/lactose free stuff, because in my experience they tend to be good at covering other allergies.

By Politicalguineapig (not verified) on 26 Jun 2015 #permalink

MI Dawn: "The biggest problem is that strawberry juice is used in a LOT of foods for flavoring and pink color."

But it's natural! How could it be bad?

;-)

Almond pits are natural too. Eat too much and you get cyanide poisoning.

@sadmar & Denice - I had temporary delusions of "what if I figured out a very easy to understand teaching on the immune system (yeah, right) so people could understand why some woo doesn't make sense?" Acknowledging to myself that I would need six or so years of schooling to do so, of course...

It is too large and complex, I think, but possibly it is just my lack of education that makes it seem so.

A very sad artifact of Mr Woo's stroke is much of the mellowing that I managed to slowly do with Mr Woo's opinions and woo-y beliefs are forgotten. In fact, he had come to a point of believing women might be okay to preach in church if it was with the right attitude, after leaving the main branch of his church twenty years ago because they began ordaining women. He found an article that I wrote that he approved and shared at our church prior to his stroke, had no recollection of that period, and began to sit down and "correct" "bad theology" that he had approved and agreed with six months previous.

I realize something in his world view and history made/makes him susceptible to these things, but I also wonder, when I see how well put together woo advertising and websites are, including constant references to studies without actually citing them, or citing studies that contradict their claims knowing few will read them, as well as referring to each other and preaching distrust of science-based information...

I see all this and wonder if prevention might be possible. The opinion pieces being written about American anti-intellectualism and the pride so many have in their ignorance... I admire the patience of people who try, and wonder why it has to be so hard.

We’re talking about catching people before they fall into woo. And the way to do that is to get to their everyday life concerns, and demonstrate how this stuff matters in those terms, BEFORE the woo-ists capture that territory.

I think the "everyday concerns" notion is true for a certain category of people who end up buying into woo; people who are suckered by Prevention magazine and Dr. Oz and so forth into buying "miracle supplements" because they'll make you lose weight fast, clear up your general malaise, etc. This mostly only hurts peoples' wallets, though.

Trying to argue with people about this stuff, I've found, is largely ineffective, and, as my friend Bart has noticed, generally just gives people the impression that you're a miserable elitist b@stard. Which isn't to say that I'm not (and he isn't) a miserable elitist b@stard.

I'm not necessarily sure that this leads people to get into "harder woo," any more than smoking pot leads people to start mainlining heroin. I mean, when it comes to the "lighter" stuff, I think most people just buy into it because they don't care to take the time or energy to look into the claims, they're often superficially supported with cruddy studies, and hey, it sounds good.

Even my friends who are into some real dippy alt-med stuff will typically still avail themselves of "conventional" medicine for major issues, even if they see a naturopath or something as well. Like, my friend Diane broke her leg recently, pretty badly, and has been laid up for a couple weeks. She did go to a real hospital, of course; but she also mentioned that her naturopath told her to "visualize healed bones" or something like that. It's obnoxious, and it kind of sets my teeth on edge, but I'm not going to say anything about it, because whatever.

When it comes to people actually rejecting real medicine in favor of alt-med, I think it has more to do with worldview. Sadmar mentioned at one point, I think, an idea that a rise in alt-med might have something to do with the decline of traditional religion. This seems to intuitively have something to it to me, especially insofar as use of alt-med in my circles generally seems to correlate with New Age and "spiritual but not religious" beliefs. Folks of a certain stripe like to fancy themselves freethinkers when it comes to traditional religious belief, but they also don't want to live in a cold, uncaring universe that's all based on mechanism. I imagine it must be comforting to imagine that positive thoughts have an impact on reality, that Mother Nature cares about us and gives us natural remedies that the wise ancient peoples understood, etc.

I mean, to some extent, I get it. Monist materialism doesn't float my boat either, although I don't look to "spirituality" and philosophy for solace any more than I look to science for solace. My "religion" doesn't provide me with a whole lot of comfort, tbh, and I doubt it would do so for others, either.*

But I have sympathy for people who just don't buy into monist materialism; it has never been my natural inclination, either. The thing is, I think, if people are presented with "feel-good 'spirituality'" and "cold hard material reality" - a false dichotomy - a lot of them are going to choose "feel-good 'spirituality,'" including various dualistic beliefs that feed into alt-med notions, and I don't entirely blame them.

*Arguments against suicide, though, maybe. I've lately come to the conclusion that the universe is simply not so benign a place as to allow (me) an actual escape hatch, though this is more of an attitude, properly speaking, than a philosophy. There's nowhere to go, in so many words.

Roger Kulp #217,

Sorry about your health problems.

Study showing DTaP vaccine causing milk allergy:

"In addition, they induced Th2-type cytokines to the
co-administrated antigen tetanus toxoïd, as well as to the food
antigen beta-lactoglobulin."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X06007742

If people can develop antibodies to one milk protein beta-lactoglobulin that contaminated the DTaP vaccine, it is certainly possible that people are developing antibodies to another milk protein - the folate receptor (FR) protein, from milk protein contaminated vaccines.

So you have provided more evidence that at least some forms of autism can be caused by vaccines.

WTC7 #218,

In electrical engineering, engineers use Maxwell's equations from 1860.
In aeronautics, engineers use Bernoulli's law from 1738.

In medicine, they have the hubris to dismiss Nobel Laureate Dr.Charles Richet's findings of fundamental importance to immunology.

They ignored Dr. Richet's warnings and injected our kids numerous times with food protein contaminated vaccines/injections.
Predictable outcome - the food allergy epidemic.

Our kids are paying the price for this hubris.

JustaTech #222,

It is of course possible to develop allergies without being injected.

Injection is one of multiple possibilities.

"1. Sensitization to an allergen: Being exposed for the first time
You might be initially exposed to anallergen by:

Inhalation (of pollen, mold, dust mites, etc.)
Ingestion (swallowing a type of food or medication)
Touch (coming into contact with poison ivy, latex, or certain metals, such as nickel)
Injection (receiving a medication or being stung by an insect)"

https://www.aafa.org/display.cfm?id=8&sub=16&cont=54

As for strawberries, they contain histamine. So a reaction to strawberry may be non-immunologic in nature. In other words, not an allergic reaction.

"And why was the number of cases of measles in the outbreak so low, APV? Oh, that’s right! Because most of the US population has been vaccinated against it."

Yes, vaccination works. I am arguing that our kids should not have to suffer life-threatening food allergies to benefit from vaccinations.

And I am talking about priorities. There are 40,000 automobile deaths/yr, lost count of the number of gun violence deaths, second-hand smoking deaths and 15000 MRSA cases. Why the fuss about 173 measles cases when there so many bigger fishes to fry?

JustaTech #222,

"WTC7; That’s some pretty old thinking on allergic reactions."

Pl. point us to the new thinking.

KayMarie #229,

"Or the syndrome you can get around here from a tick bite that makes you allergic to all mammal meat. A friend of mine has that."

That's a great example of food protein/carbohydrate contaminated vaccinations/injections causing food allergy.

The only difference is the injection - tick bite was of natural origin.
So alpha-gal injection by tick bites is natural induction of allergy to alpha-gal containing red meat.
Food protein contaminated vaccine injection is man-made induction of allergy to those food items.

APV, you are an idiot. I suggest you sterilize yourself and never inflict any progeny with your idiocy. If you have produced children, voluntarily turn them over to sane parents while you go into a version of self-exile.

Because, seriously, you have really lost touch with realty. Especially since you think vaccines are associated with food allergies. That is some seriously real crazy talk since you presented no verifiable science to back it up.

Chris #247,

The FDA/CDC's own doctors admit that vaccines CAUSE food allergy. But obviously, you have demonstrated that you are incapable of understanding the science.

“Nonetheless, our cases with anti-gelatin IgE required some previous exposure to gelatin to become sensitized, and this may have come through ingestion of gelatin-containing food or injection of gelatin-containing vaccines.”

They wrote: “Efforts should continue to identify less allergenic
substitutes for gelatin currently used by vaccine manufacturers.”.

Authors:
Vitali Pool, MD, CDC, M. Miles Braun, MD, MPH, FDA, John M. Kelso, MD,Naval Medical Center, Gina Mootrey, DO, MPH, CDC, Robert T. Chen, MD,MA, CDC, John W. Yunginger, MD, Robert M. Jacobson, MD, Mayo
Clinic,Paul M. Gargiullo, PhD, CD.
Prevalence of Anti-Gelatin IgE Antibodies in People With Anaphylaxis
After Measles-Mumps-Rubella Vaccine in the United States
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/110/6/e71.long

Gelatin is a food item in case you did not know ...

Also:

So alpha-gal injection by tick bites is natural induction of allergy to alpha-gal containing red meat.

"Anti-Gal is the most abundant antibody in humans, constituting ~1% of immunoglobulins, and is found as IgG, IgM and IgA isotypes."

Go find the magic words, Vinu Arumugham. Four syllables.

Narad #251,

From your own reference:
"Anaphylaxis and acute allergic reactions related to the carbohydrate galactose-α-1,3-galactose (α-Gal) epitope that are present in the monoclonal antibody, cetuximab and red meat have been described in the United States and Europe populations where tick bites have been found to be the primary sensitizer. "

What part of that don't you understand?

Roger Kulp #249,

"Sorry APV it’s related to mitochondrial disease.

And I have the gene mutations to prove it."

If mitochondrial disease ALONE caused your condition, you would not see any improvement when avoiding mlik.

Your post suggested that you may also have milk FR anitbodies.
I am pointing out that one of the most efficient ways to induce milk FR antibodies is a milk contaminated vaccine like DTaP/TdaP that contains two Th2 biased adjuvants - pertussis toxin and aluminum hydroxide.

APV

Read this
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2715943/

This is not exactly the standard GFCF diet used in autism.

I have both binding and blocking folate receptor autoantibodies.It was these tests that allowed me to be tested for mitochondrial disease in the first place.I was tested for FRAs in Dr. Quadros' original clinical trial before the test went commercial.

Folate receptor autoantibodies are related to the mitochondria.They are passed from mother to child in the womb,possibly in the mitochondrial DNA.More research is needed.My mother died of an acute stroke before she could be tested,but I am in a Facebook group for CFD and FRAs.Every mother whose child has them has been tested and has them as well.

Cerebral folate deficiency syndrome is a very complicated disease.What's more there are at least three different forms.One involves coexisting mitochondrial disease.A second involves inherited autoimmune disease without mito.The third involves mutations of the FOLR genes.I also have serious genetic problems with folate metabolism.

Mothers of these children always have similar medical problems to the children.Some may have mild autism themselves.My only aunt on my mothers side had Asperger's and died in a group home.

This is a fairly new inherited disorder where autism is a key feature.It is very different from anything that has come before.As far as I know I am the only adult in the world diagnosed with it.I know I am the only autistic adult seen so far at Arkansas Children's Hospital.I had to provide them lots of medical documentation before I could get in the door.Including a rediagnosis of low functioning autism as an adult.

By Roger Kulp (not verified) on 08 Jul 2015 #permalink

Roger Kulp #254,

My understanding is that autoimmune disease RISK is inherited.
It is my understanding that autoantibodies are part of the adaptive immune system and are NOT inherited. The RISK of autoantibody synthesis can be inherited. But an external sensitizing trigger is needed (infection, vaccine etc.) to actually synthesize autoantibodies.

Please provide a reference demonstrating that autoantibodies themselves were inherited as you suggest.

APV@248

The FDA/CDC’s own doctors admit that vaccines CAUSE food allergy. But obviously, you have demonstrated that you are incapable of understanding the science.

It seems to me like you are the one who doesn't understand the science. In fact, you actually have causality reversed as is made clear at the beginning of the paragraph your quote came from:

Results from this study support the hypothesis that anaphylaxis after MMR vaccines can in some cases be attributable to hypersensitivity to gelatin.

@255

Please provide a reference demonstrating that autoantibodies themselves were inherited as you suggest.

I believe you are correct about the genetic component bearing a predisposition but you need to provide a reference demonstrating this: "[b]ut an external sensitizing trigger is needed (infection, vaccine etc.) to actually synthesize autoantibodies." (emphasis mine)

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 08 Jul 2015 #permalink

APV bullshïtted:

The FDA/CDC’s own doctors admit that vaccines CAUSE food allergy. But obviously, you have demonstrated that you are incapable of understanding the science.

This claim is not supported by the paper you quoted, not I might add by the other research on food allergies and vaccines. All that research finds that people may have an allergic reaction to a vaccine because they have an existing food allergy to a component of the vaccine. Not the other way around.

Indeed the research looking at frequencies of allergies and vaccination status finds no correlation.

So pïss off until you can learn to read the scientific literature properly.

Actually, Scientology is not anti-medicine. We acknowledge that medicine is needed and we send parishioners to the doctor for body and physical ailments. Broken bones, rashes, cancer, etc.

There is strict policy on separating out medical and spiritual. We do believe however that the human spirit is capable of healing the body of it's ailments.

That said, we are also pro self determinism, meaning the ability to make a choice. Force or coersion is frowned upon. One of the biggest tenets is "What's true for you is true."

capnkrunch #256,

Here's what the FDA/CDC doctors wrote:

“Nonetheless, our cases with anti-gelatin IgE required some previous exposure to gelatin to become sensitized, and this may have come through ingestion of gelatin-containing food or injection of gelatin-containing vaccines.”

They wrote: “Efforts should continue to identify less allergenic
substitutes for gelatin currently used by vaccine manufacturers.”.

What does that mean?

ChrisP #257,

Read the paper completely and UNDERSTAND it before you shoot your mouth off.

Here’s what the FDA/CDC doctors wrote:

“Nonetheless, our cases with anti-gelatin IgE required some previous exposure to gelatin to become sensitized, and this may have come through ingestion of gelatin-containing food or injection of gelatin-containing vaccines.”

They wrote: “Efforts should continue to identify less allergenic
substitutes for gelatin currently used by vaccine manufacturers.”.

What does that mean?

herr doktor bimler #258,

Stu and WTC7 are right. If you pulled your head out of the sand, you might understand it. Why do you insist on ignoring Richet's finding? Do you have ANY studies that disprove Richet?

There are numerous studies that have CONFIRMED Richet's findings. Food protein contaminated vaccines/injections definitely cause food allergies.

capnkrunch #256,

"The Adaptive system develops in response to infection, is protective against specific pathogens, leverages components of the innate response and develops memory. The components within the adaptive system include T and B lymphocytes, antibodies and cytokines."

http://www.fortressbiotech.com/research-development/immune-autoimmune.c…

Roger Kulp's folate receptor autoantibodies are a great example of vaccine-induced autoimmunity.

Study showing DTaP vaccine causing milk allergy:

“In addition, they induced Th2-type cytokines to the
co-administrated antigen tetanus toxoïd, as well as to the food
antigen beta-lactoglobulin.”

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X06007742

Beta-lactoglobulin is one bovine milk protein, folate receptor is another protein in bovine milk.
DTaP/TdaP are known to contaminated with milk proteins. It does not take a PhD to connect the dots. Vaccines can cause autoimmunity and autoimmunity associated autism. And we have not even begun talking about epitope spreading ...

APV@262
Nice try with the Gish Gallup there but I'm not biting. Please address the flagrant misrepresentation of the study you posted in #248. To refresh, you claimed that in this study, "[t]he FDA/CDC’s own doctors admit that vaccines CAUSE food allergy." This is demonstrably untrue and as I pointed out in #256 actually a reversal of what they actually found, that being anaphylaxis post vaccination is (sometimes) a result of gelatin hypersensitivity not that vaccination is a cause of said hypersensitivity. You can keep throwing out all the links you want but until you address this it's hard not to just assume you are either dishonest or an idiot.

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 09 Jul 2015 #permalink

APV, you are a crank. Due to being an anti-vaccine crank, even though it is on some obscure irrelevant tangent, you are one of those who has blood on their hands for every person hospitalized, disabled or killed by a vaccine preventable disease.

Think about that. Oh, wait. You don't care because you are a crank.

Stu and WTC7 are right. If you pulled your head out of the sand, you might understand it.
Are they right about the World Trade Center 9/11 Trutherism? Just checking.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 10 Jul 2015 #permalink

Actually, Scientology is not anti-medicine. We acknowledge that medicine is needed and we send parishioners to the doctor for body and physical ailments.

"Parishioners"?

That said, we are also pro self determinism, meaning the ability to make a choice. Force or coersion is frowned upon.

Heh.

Wow, those wacky Scientologists........

One of the biggest tenets is “What’s true for you is true.”

For me, it is true that Scientology is a cult that uses force and coercion to keep its members in line and silence dissent. It is also true for me that Scientology is an organization that regularly spreads misinformation, if not outright lies.

And since what is true for me is true, all of those things must be true about Scientology. QED

We do believe however that the human spirit is capable of healing the body of it’s ailments.

Presumably that's why the Church of Scientology sent a raft of "touch healers" to Haiti after the earthquake, but no medical equipment or supplies. The human body is so very well equipped to heal broken limbs, blunt force cranial trauma, and pulmonary contusions.

Force or coersion is frowned upon.

Scientology frowns upon the use of force or coersion?

The same organization behind Operation Fair Game?

The organization discusssed here http://jonathanturley.org/2010/03/07/new-york-times-scientology-defecto… ?

The organization who were found guilty of the use fo force and coersion and sentenced to pay 2.5 million in damages by the state of California in Wollersheim v. the Church of Scientology?

You just cost me an irony meter...

capnkrunch #264,

As you point out, the study found that kids who were hypersensitive to gelatin reacted to gelatin in MMR.

But you keep ignoring the SIDE NOTE in that same paper.
How did the kids become hypersensitive to gelatin in the first place? They wrote:

“Nonetheless, our cases with anti-gelatin IgE required some previous exposure to gelatin to become sensitized, and this may have come through ingestion of gelatin-containing food or injection of gelatin-containing vaccines.”

“Efforts should continue to identify less allergenic
substitutes for gelatin currently used by vaccine manufacturers.”.

"injection of gelatin-containing vaccines." THAT IS HOW THE KIDS BECAME SENSITIZED IN THE FIRST PLACE. That is why they further wrote that gelatin must be removed.

Here's proof:
http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-749%2899%2970508-7/fulltext
“We examined 165 paired sera obtained before the first dose of DTaP and 1 month after the third dose of DTaP. Of 165 paired sera, 62 were obtained from the recipients of gelatin-free DTaP, and IgE antibodies to gelatin developed in none. In 103 recipients of gelatin-containing DTaP, IgE antibodies to gelatin developed in 2 recipients.”

Demonstrating that gelatin contaminated vaccines were indeed the cause of gelatin allergies in healthy non-allergic people.

Chris #265,

We are not talking about measles vs. allergies.

We are talking about protecting kids against measles WITHOUT giving them life-threatening food allergies.

Dr. Charles Richet's Nobel speech in 1913 about injecting proteins:
"On the other hand all the proteins without exception produce anaphylaxis: one has seen this with all sera, milks, organic extracts whatsoever, all vegetable extracts, microbial proteinotoxins, yeast cells, dead microbial bodies. It would be of more interest now to find a protein which does not produce anaphylaxis than to find one that does."
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1913/richet-l…

Vaccines eradicating diseases is the greatest achievement of modern medicine. Vaccines causing food allergies and autism are among the worst blunders of modern medicine. The truth is stranger than fiction. Accept it.

In 2015, after a 100 years since Dr. Richet's discovery, is it too much to ask that our kids should get the benefits of vaccination without the risk of life-threatening side effects like food allergies?

herr doktor bimler #266,

You sidestepped my relevant question by posing an irrelevant one .. I assume you don't have any relevant answers ...

Yawn.

A more than century Nobel speech? Seriously?

You are a crank. Deal with it.

Along with the deaths your particular anti-vax crankery produces. It is not just measles, but also pertussis and more recently diphtheria. But you are well-to-do Silicon Gulch kind of guy, why should you care that kids in other countries die? You have your cash, to hell with everyone else!

Speaking of cash: how much have you funded vaccine storage and delivery that meets you liking?

A more than century Nobel speech? Seriously?

APV/vinucube/Vinu/Vinu Aramugham and Richet, I take it?

We are so constituted that we can never receive other proteins into the blood than those that have been modified by digestive juices. Every time alien protein penetrates by effraction, the organism suffers and becomes resistant.”

Whoops.

APV@272

But you keep ignoring the SIDE NOTE in that same paper.

And you are ignoring the first half of that sentence.

Nonetheless, our cases with anti-gelatin IgE required some previous exposure to gelatin to become sensitized, and this may have come through ingestion of gelatin-containing food or injection of gelatin-containing vaccines.

What you are saying is only a half truth. They became hypersensitive after exposure to gelatin. It doesn't matter how the exposure occured. Vaccines don't cause allergies any more than eating gelatin containing foods does.

If you wanted to argue that vaccination increases the incidence of gelatin allergies then you might be on to something. In fact, one of the references does just that. However, your reference finds:

However, our review of reporting trends of anaphylaxis, urticaria, and wheezing after MMR and varicella vaccination in VAERS does not support this hypothesis (Fig 1).

At best it's inconclusive but your original statement that the CDC admitted vaccines cause food allergies sure rings hollow, which, as you'll note, was my original concern.

That is why they further wrote that gelatin must be removed.

See, this is why you come off as a liar APV. They never said that and that's a hell of inference to make. Take a look at the greater context:

Results from this study support the hypothesis that anaphylaxis after MMR vaccines can in some cases be attributable to hypersensitivity to gelatin. Therefore, we recommend that for patients with a history of severe hypersensitivity reaction to a gelatin-containing vaccine, physicians seek an allergy evaluation (including anti-gelatin IgE testing) before administering a subsequent dose of any gelatin-containing vaccine. Efforts should continue to identify less allergenic substitutes for gelatin currently used by vaccine manufacturers.

Note that the results were "that anaphylaxis after MMR vaccines can in some cases be attributable to hypersensitivity to gelatin" not that MMR caused the hypersensitivity. It makes far more sense to infer that their recommendation is made to reduce the risk of anaphylaxsis in people with gelatin allergies. Similar to how the push away from latex gloves is the reduce the risk of reactions not because they cause latex allergies.

Also, speaking of being a liar, that link is broken and that quote appears nowhere else on the internet. We can keep going but as long as you're being dishonest I'll keep pointing that out before even bothering to address content.

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 10 Jul 2015 #permalink

APV@272
Well, found the proper link (pdf) for you. This is the study I referred to in my previous comment. As I said before, the study you first referenced says:

However, our review of reporting trends of anaphylaxis, urticaria, and wheezing after MMR and varicella vaccination in VAERS does not support this hypothesis (Fig 1).

Your claim that the CDC admitted vaccines cause allergies is still dishonest.

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 10 Jul 2015 #permalink

You sidestepped my relevant question by posing an irrelevant one

I'm only here to point and laugh at the stupid.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 11 Jul 2015 #permalink

I’m only here to point and laugh at the stupid.

So what is this about vaccines and peanut allergies? Apart from vincube/APV/rescueangel et al., Cia Parker crapps on abot this all the time.

Have I missed something?

On a more business as usual note, APV failed to read the paper again.

@APV, one more time with feeling:

Regardless of what a Nobel prizewinner may or may not have said, it is manifestly not possible that any at all exposure to any food protein via any route other than digestion necessarily causes food allergies. 

We, our human ancestors, and our non-human ancestors live or lived in a world where such exposure was inevitable.

You assert that milk proteins in vaccines cause allergies? Milkmaids milked cows with their bare hands for millennia. Those hands were often scratched-up, allowing milk proteins to pass through the skin. Did milkmaids regularly keel over from  anaphalytic shock? No, they did not. Exposure to food protein via a route other than digestion does not regularly cause food allergies. QED.

Hunters, trappers, and herdsmen regularly butchered animals and got blood and tissue on their hands which might be scratched-up, cut-up, or chapped. Did they regularly keel over from  anaphalytic shock? No, they did not. Exposure to food protein via a route other than digestion does not regularly cause food allergies. QED.

Anyone who has ever cooked very much has experienced cutting their hand with a knife contaminated with food. Do cooks regularly keel over from  anaphalytic shock? No, they do not. Exposure to food protein via a route other than digestion does not regularly cause food allergies. QED.

People and animals eat meat or vegetables despite cuts or open sores in their mouths. Do they regularly keel over from  anaphalytic shock? No, they do not. Exposure to food protein via a route other than digestion does not regularly cause food allergies. QED.

People and animals get scratched by thorns, cut their feet on sharp rocks, stung or bitten by insects or larger animals, etc., thereby getting all sorts of proteins through the skin all the time, and this has been true for hundreds of millions of years. If this regularly caused food allergies we wouldn't be here.  Exposure to food protein via a route other than digestion does not regularly cause food allergies. QED.

So I really don't care what your pet Nobel-prizewinner may have said, and I don't see why anyone else should care either. 

So what is this about vaccines and peanut allergies?

I wonder if it has anything to do with the anti-vaxxer conviction that vaccines at some imaginary point in time did/do/will contain peanut oil as an adjuvant.

shay #283,

Peanut allergies are caused by Vitamin K injections that are contaminated with peanut oil/protein.

Remington: The Science and Practice of Pharmacy
edited by David B. Troy, Paul Beringer
pg. 803 says, corn, cottonseed, peanut and sesame oil are most commonly used as a vehicle in Vitamin K injection formulations.
Every newborn is injected with it.

https://books.google.com/books?id=NFGSSSbaWjwC&pg=PA803&lpg=PA803&dq=Re…

See, I am not anti-vaxx. I am ANTI-CONTAMINATION.

I read the century-old speech about anaphylaxis. I wonder why so many experiments focused on "Crepitin, a phytohemagglutinin from Hura crepitans", which doesn't sound all that common, instead of any old protein that happened to be abundant in the researchers' environments -- milk, for example. It's almost like it is untrue that the minutest exposure to any protein whatsoever through the skin produces anaphylaxis. Hmm.

capnkrunch #278,

"And you are ignoring the first half of that sentence.

Nonetheless, our cases with anti-gelatin IgE required some previous exposure to gelatin to become sensitized, and this may have come through ingestion of gelatin-containing food or injection of gelatin-containing vaccines."

No, ingestion normally PROTECTS AGAINST ALLERGY by INDUCING TOLERANCE. Demonstrated here:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1414850

The FDA/CDC authors put the ingestion part in there to cover cases where patients may be on prescription anti-ulcer medication. When you reduce stomach acid, ingested proteins are NOT denatured and can cause sensitization like here:

Anti-ulcer drugs promote IgE formation toward dietary antigens in adult patients.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15671152

LW #286,

" which doesn’t sound all that common, instead of any old protein that happened to be abundant in the researchers’ environments — milk, for example. "

They certainly tested common proteins like milk and vegetable extracts (see quote below). So I am not sure I understand your statement.

“On the other hand all the proteins without exception produce anaphylaxis: one has seen this with all sera, milks, organic extracts whatsoever, all vegetable extracts, microbial proteinotoxins, yeast cells, dead microbial bodies. It would be of more interest now to find a protein which does not produce anaphylaxis than to find one that does.”
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1913/richet-l…

Chris #276,

"A more than century Nobel speech? Seriously?"

Vaccines are still made by growing virus in chicken eggs. Just as they have been for more than 70 years. Why do you vaccinate with that?

Cell phones are built using Maxwell's equations developed in 1860. Aircraft are still built with Bernoulli's findings from 1738.

It's because of ignorant people like you at the FDA/CDC that our children are being sickened with food allergies.

Narad, #277,

What's whoops about it?

1. Vitamin K is not a vaccine.

2. If you have to go all the way back to 1913 to find supporting cite, don't expect anyone to take you seriously.

capnkrunch #278,

“that anaphylaxis after MMR vaccines can in some cases be attributable to hypersensitivity to gelatin”

Yes. How did hypersensitivity to gelatin occur in the first place?

The FDA/CDC author's answered it:
"Nonetheless, our cases with anti-gelatin IgE required some previous exposure to gelatin to become sensitized, and this may have come through ingestion of gelatin-containing food or injection of gelatin-containing vaccines.”

If you ignore that then YOU are being dishonest, not me.

shay #291,

1. I did not claim Vitamin K is a vaccine. Food protein contaminated vaccines OR injection can cause food allergies.

2. People who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

Richet's 1913 finding has been proven true over and over again.

How do researchers cause egg allergy in rats TODAY?
They inject them with pertussis vaccine, alum (aluminum salt) and the egg protein ovalbumin.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22342543

How does the FDA cause milk allergy in your kid TODAY?
They inject them with pertussis vaccine (DTaP), containing aluminum salt and the milk protein casein.
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedPr…

LW #282,

"it is manifestly not possible that any at all exposure to any food protein via any route other than digestion necessarily causes food allergies. "

Pl. post a reference.

"Did milkmaids regularly keel over from anaphalytic shock? No, they did not."

How do you know?

" Exposure to food protein via a route other than digestion does not regularly cause food allergies. QED."

Wrong. Exposure via oral route PRODUCES TOLERANCE NOT ALLERGY. Demonstrated here:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1414850

"stung or bitten by insects "
"Beekeepers are strongly exposed to honey bee stings and therefore at an increased risk to develop IgE-mediated allergy to bee venom."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9824397

LW #282,

People diagnosed with pollen allergy at NOT prescribed Epipen.
People diagnosed with food allergy are prescribed Epipen.

Human and non-human ancestors who developed anaphylaxis to pollen have gone extinct. That is why anaphylaxis to pollen is rare or non-existent.

Food protein exposure through injured skin, (mlikmaid, hunters) is rare compared to pollen exposure of the entire population 24/7/365. So we have evolved to treat pollen exposure as harmless. When you inject food proteins, they are treated exactly like viral/bacterial proteins.

When viral, bacterial proteins in vaccines create antibodies, we call the vaccine effective. When food proteins in vaccines create antibodies we are surprised? That's just stupidity.

Further, due to hygiene and c-section births, a lot of our kids are atopic today. C-section births have gone up 50% in the last few decades. C-section birth increases allergy risk 5X due to sub-optimal gut microbiome. The worst thing you can do to such atopic kids is inject them with food protein contaminated vaccines, five shots to a sitting, along with powerful pro-allergy adjuvants such as aluminum salts and pertussis toxins.

The predictable result is the food allergy epidemic.

We, our human ancestors, and our non-human ancestors live or lived in a world where such exposure was inevitable.

One might note when the Nobel Prize for the discovery of blood types was rewarded to Landsteiner as compared with Richet.

Further, due to hygiene and c-section births, a lot of our kids are atopic today. C-section births have gone up 50% in the last few decades. C-section birth increases allergy risk 5X due to sub-optimal gut microbiome.

Citation, please.

APV @ 263

Did you read the article at my link?Tell me where Dr. Ramaekers mentions vaccines,or any insult to the immune system after birth?Here is some of the relevant stuff about mothers and FRAs

Autoantibodies against the folate receptor (FR) were first described in mothers with a neural-tube-defect pregnancy and provided an explanation for folate deficiency in the developing embryo resulting from autoantibodies blocking folate uptake via the FR.5 The finding of FR autoantibodies in children with CFD syndrome and the low level of 5MTHF in CSF suggested a similar mechanism by which binding of the autoantibodies to the FR on the choroid plexus would block folate transport into the CSF. In the CFD syndrome, the clinical manifestations typically occur after the switch to bovine milk. One likely mechanism for autoantibody production could be that exposure to soluble FR from milk elicits an immune response. Because of the structural homology with human FR, the autoantibodies cross-react with the FR on the epithelial cells of the choroid plexus, block folate transport, and ultimately produce the CFD syndrome.To test this hypothesis, patients with CFD with autoantibodies against FR and being treated with folinic acid to normalize their level of 5MTHF in CSF were asked to participate in the study.

In CFD patients with autoantibodies against FR, oral folinic acid treatment leads to substantial clinical improvement, especially if the treatment is started early in the disorder. Avoidance of milk downregulates these autoantibodies, and re-exposure to milk is followed by an increase in the autoantibody titer. Milk contains substantial amounts of FR and seems to present the triggering antigen for the autoantibody response. This indicates that the gastrointestinal tract is a likely route of exposure to the antigen and that a compromised immune barrier in this system can be considered as the potential cause of the autoimmune response. The familial occurrence of CFD in some siblings, such as that observed in three brothers, suggests a genetic component to this disorder. An autoimmune response against FR may result from genetically dictated errors during early thymic negative selection of autoreactive T-cells (CD4+ T helper cells and regulatory T cells) that fail to undergo apoptosis or do not remain in a state of anergy toward the FR antigen. Further research in families could identify the specific genetic components involved.After ingestion of milk, immunogenic peptides could cross a damaged intestinal barrier and activate peripheral macrophages, B cells, and T cells. We were unable to obtain detailed histories of early infancy to identify food allergies or allergy to milk or other conditions that may have triggered an inflammatory response and compromised the integrity of the intestinal barriers. The onset of the disorder during the first 3 to 6 months of life after the switch to bovine milk would suggest a delayed or disrupted synergy between the adaptive and innate immune systems in the gut. Because of the time-dependent evolution of typical signs and symptoms and the slow progression of CFD syndrome, diagnosis of the neurological phenotype is established much later in the disease process.

By Roger Kulp (not verified) on 11 Jul 2015 #permalink

@Delphine:

Citation, please.

See "Bell, Keith."

Food protein exposure through injured skin, (mlikmaid, hunters) is rare compared to pollen exposure of the entire population 24/7/365. So we have evolved to treat pollen exposure as harmless. When you inject food proteins, they are treated exactly like viral/bacterial proteins.

Your assertion is that one single exposure to a microscopic quantity of a food protein injected under the skin causes a food allergy. The probability of this occurring in a lifetime approaches certainty as I have pointed out with numerous examples*.

It does not matter whether exposure is 24/7 or whether it is infrequent; if picking up your lunch with a scatched-up hand and thereby getting exposed to microscopic quantities of food protein primes you to keel over dead next time you eat, that situation is common enough to exert strong selective pressure against that kind of reaction. 

By the way, about those beekeepers ... why doesn't every last one of them die of anaphalytic shock on the second incident of being stung?

Oh, and if you actually read your link about using food oils in vitamin K shots and other parenteral treatments, you might have noticed that the fixed oils must be of vegetable origin so that they will be metabolized. In other words, people who have studied the situation instead of relying on a single century-old speech  made a conscious and informed decision to mandate them. If patients commonly went into anaphalytic shock on the second shot, the use of vegetable oils would not be required.   

* You demand proof that milkmaids didn't routinely die of anaphalytic shock from exposure to milk? Are you kidding? Jenner got the idea of using cowpox because milkmaids were reputed to be especially attractive. They were not reputed to be especially dead.

APV@284

Sorry about the broken link:
Like I said before my issue was with your misrepresentation of the Pool, et al study in #248. As I said in #278 and again in #279 Pool, et al failed to corroberate the findings from that study.

However, our review of reporting trends of anaphylaxis, urticaria, and wheezing after MMR and varicella vaccination in VAERS does not support this hypothesis (Fig 1).

@287

The FDA/CDC authors put the ingestion part in there to cover cases where patients may be on prescription anti-ulcer medication.

First off, you are connecting dots that aren't there. They never said this and you can't just assume that's what they meant. Second, the link you provided doesn't say that ingestion can only cause allergies if the patient is on anti-ulcer drugs; it only says that anti-ulcer drugs increase the risk.

Note that in both their control group and the treatment group prior to treatment 10% of of the subjects already had food specific IgE. Full paper (pdf).

Before a 3 months course of anti-ulcer medication 15 of 152
gastroenterological patients (10%) had elevated specific IgE to at least 1 of 19 tested food
allergens. Similarly, in control subjects 5 of 50 (also 10%) had preexisting food-specific IgE.

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 12 Jul 2015 #permalink

APV, your link does not support your assertion. Regardless, I'd like a source on C-section rates that isn't the journal of Lamaze International, please.

Also, any handwringing you engage in on section rates should be accompanied by M&M data, please. No point in whining about how the process is flawed if you're not discussing outcomes.

As for sections/allergies, we don't yet know enough about the microbiome to draw conclusions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/02/opinion/sunday/there-is-no-healthy-mi…

Delpihine #303,
The c-section rates I provided are from the:
U.S. National Center for Health Statistics

"As for sections/allergies, we don’t yet know enough about the microbiome to draw conclusions."
Well if we don't know enough, we must be cautious and open-minded about food protein contaminated vaccines causing problems. Instead we declare vaccines are safe and mandate the injection of food protein contaminated vaccines into atopic children in the middle of a food allergy and autism epidemic.

Where are the studies demonstrating that the level of food protein contamination in current vaccines is safe for atopic children?

LW #300,

"Your assertion is that one single exposure to a microscopic quantity of a food protein injected under the skin causes a food allergy. "

For an atopic child that may be enough.
An influenza vaccine contains 15 mcg of HA viral protein.
It produces anti-HA IgE in 100% of the recipients. Part of how you gain protection against the flu.
An influenza vaccine contains on average 0.5mcg of ovalbumin. It should not be surprising that 2% of the population develops IgE to ovalbumin in the vaccine.

Facts:
The first DTaP vaccine produces antibodies in only 68% of the recipients. Children receive 5 doses to get the coverage to ~99%.
DTaP is contaminated with milk proteins.
DTaP contains two pro-allergy adjuvants - aluminum salts and pertussis toxin.
DTaP is administered along with up to 4 other food protein contaminated vaccines in one sitting.
Our children are atopic.

So we are not talking about ONE injection of microscopic quantity of food proteins ALONE in a normal individual.

We are talking about repeated adjuvanted injections with multiple food proteins into atopic children.

The predictable result - the food allergy epidemic.

Roger Kulp #298,

I did not claim Dr. Ramaekers said anything about vaccines.

I am pointing out that there is a clear and demonstrated mechanism by which milk protein contaminated vaccines can cause synthesis of folate receptor antibodies and thus cause CFD/autism spectrum disorders.

As I wrote before, antibodies are part of the adaptive immune system and it is my understanding that they are synthesized AFTER BIRTH following exposure to an antigen. Adjuvanted food protein contaminated vaccines are an especially efficient vehicle for synthesis of such antibodies.

Facts:
The first DTaP vaccine produces antibodies in only 68% of the recipients. Children receive 5 doses to get the coverage to ~99%.
DTaP is contaminated with milk proteins.
DTaP contains two pro-allergy adjuvants – aluminum salts and pertussis toxin.
DTaP is administered along with up to 4 other food protein contaminated vaccines in one sitting.
Our children are atopic.

So we are not talking about ONE injection of microscopic quantity of food proteins ALONE in a normal individual.

We are talking about repeated adjuvanted injections with multiple food proteins into atopic children.

The predictable result – the food allergy epidemic.

Nope.

Additional facts:

DTaP uptake in Thailand is 99%, but food allergy prevalence in children under five there is 1%.

DTaP uptake in Australia is 91%, but food allergy prevalence in children under five there is 10%.

DTaP uptake in the UK is 96%, but food allergy prevalence in children under five there is 4%.

And so on and so forth, as country after country after country fails to show any sign whatsoever of there being a meaningful relationship between DTaP uptake and food allergy prevalence.

You can read all about it here and here.

Where are the studies demonstrating that the level of food protein contamination in current vaccines is safe for atopic children?

Where are the stats showing -- or even suggesting -- that it's not?

Seriously. Where? You haven't even got a particularly compelling correlation in terms of timing to support your hypothesis in the United States. And in the rest of the world it falls apart completely.

So on what grounds is such a study justified?

DTaP contains two pro-allergy adjuvants – aluminum salts and pertussis toxin.

I take it that somebody has a poor grasp of the meaning of the word "adjuvant."

Further, due to hygiene and c-section births, a lot of our kids are atopic today.

Still yet more facts:

The c-section rate in Iran is 41.9% but the prevalence of atopic dermatitis in children there is 2%.

The c-section rate in Sweden is 17.3% but the prevalence of atopic dermatitis in children there is more than 16%.

The c-section rate in Albania is 25.6% but the prevalence of atopic dermatitis in children there is less than 1%.

That leaves hygiene. But it doesn't look promising.

Stats are from here and here.

Have you considered putting a little more effort into checking the validity of your predictable results? You might want to try it..

I'm sorry for going off-topic, but would you mind my asking for some help here? There's someone commenting on Left Brain/Right Brain about MMS, and he keeps posting articles about its effectiveness as a water purifier as proof of its effectiveness as a medicine. Can anyone help me out here, I'm all alone now:

http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2015/01/15/if-mms-cd-chlorine-dioxide-…

By Gray Falcon (not verified) on 12 Jul 2015 #permalink

as country after country after country fails to show any sign whatsoever of there being a meaningful relationship between DTaP uptake and food allergy prevalence.

You may be underestimating APV's willingness to spin ad-hoc hypotheses to protect his central idee fixe from hostile evidence. Recall a previous thread in which he postulated that each country has its own differently-contaminated source of vaccines to account for diet-driven variations in food allergies.

Having served their purpose, these ad-hoc hypotheses are then callously abandoned.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 12 Jul 2015 #permalink

ann #308,

You cannot even tell us how much milk proteins contaminate DTaP in the US, how are you going to tell us the level of contamination in other countries? Food protein contamination of vaccines is NOT regulated. That is the root of the problem.
It varies widely between manufacturers.

DTaP was AN example of a food protein contaminated vaccine. Many vaccines are contaminated with food proteins, not just DTaP.

In 1967, the flu vaccine contained 7.4 mcg/ml of egg proteins:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC377279/pdf/applmicro00114-0…

In 2009, as much as 38.3 mcg/ml of egg proteins:
http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749%2809%2902305-7/fulltext

The absurd result of an unregulated industry.

ann #308,

"And so on and so forth, as country after country after country fails to show any sign whatsoever of there being a meaningful relationship between DTaP uptake and food allergy prevalence."

You are still looking for CORRELATION. Why bother?
I have already demonstrated CAUSATION.

ann #309

" Where are the studies demonstrating that the level of food protein contamination in current vaccines is safe for atopic children?

Where are the stats showing — or even suggesting — that it’s not?"

You ESTABLISH safety with studies first, BEFORE you inject food proteins into ANYONE.
You don't turn the entire population into guinea pigs, inject food proteins and then use "surveillance" to see what happens.
Worse, there's a raging food allergy epidemic caused by vaccines, which the FDA wants to sweep under the rug.

Numerous examples over the years of vaccines causing food allergies:

It has been observed even in 1940 that vaccines cause sensitization/induce allergy. Second dose of the same vaccine resulted in an allergic reaction.

ALLERGY INDUCED BY IMMUNIZATION WITH TETANUS TOXOID
ROBERT A. COOKE, M.D.; STANLEY HAMPTON, M.D.; WILLIAM B. SHERMAN, M.D.; ARTHUR STULL, Ph.D.
JAMA. 1940;114(19):1854-1858. doi:10.1001/jama.1940.02810190016005.
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1160278

1952:
Paper 1.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM195204032461403
They show 5 of 319 developed dermal sensitivity to egg white due to the egg proteins present in vaccines.

Paper 2.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection may protect against allergy in a tuberculosis endemic area.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16393268

The children in Paper 1, were all under treatment for tuberculosis.
So the authors seem to have unknowingly selected a population with some protection against allergy.

So even in a population with some protection against allergy, sensitivity was detectable in 1.6% of the patients, in 1952.

1987, 36 out of 100 patients developed anti-ovalbumin IgE after the flu shot:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2249232/pdf/epidinfect00008…

Kuno-Sakai H, Kimura M. Removal of gelatin from live vaccines and DTaP-an ultimate solution for vaccine-related gelatin allergy.Biologicals 2003;31:245-9.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14624794

Study showing DTaP vaccine causing milk allergy:
"In addition, they induced Th2-type cytokines to the co-administrated antigen tetanus toxoïd, as well as to the food antigen beta-lactoglobulin."
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X06007742

You have to hand it to the anti vaxxer loons: their champions display a persistence that might be admirable were it applied to a cause less morally degenerate. APV here is a veritable Black Knight from the Holy Grail: his arm is not off, he has already demonstrated CAUSATION.

By Robert L Bell (not verified) on 12 Jul 2015 #permalink

No kidding. I'm thinking histrionic or antisocial for the all-caps drama queen.

I have already demonstrated CAUSATION.

No you haven't. Quit your kidding.

Recall a previous thread in which he postulated that each country has its own differently-contaminated source of vaccines to account for diet-driven variations in food allergies.

But that's ridiculous.

ann #319,#320,

" I have already demonstrated CAUSATION.

No you haven’t. Quit your kidding."

The FDA/CDC doctors admit gelatin in vaccines cause gelatin allergy based on findings in Japan. You have offered zero counter evidence.
So your declaration is irrelevant.

"But that’s ridiculous."

What's ridiculous? Vaccine content variation?
Then you have not studied the FDA's vaccine package inserts.

LW #300,

" In other words, people who have studied the situation instead of relying on a single century-old speech made a conscious and informed decision to mandate them. If patients commonly went into anaphalytic shock on the second shot, the use of vegetable oils would not be required. "

Pl. point us to those studies.

You must understand that the allergen quantity required to elicit a reaction is more than the quantity required to sensitize.

So contaminated vaccines/injections can be symptom less at administration. The patients will develop allergy a month later. Diagnosed may be months later. So no one links the vaccines/injection to the allergies they caused.

capnkrunch #302,

"Pool, et al failed to corroberate the findings from that study."

As the Pool study points out, the gelatin type/quanttity used in Japan, US were different. So the different results are expected.

The point is that CDC/FDA doctors agree with the Japanese researchers that gelatin in vaccines can cause gelatin allergy.
YOU CANNOT DENY THAT. It is in plain English.

"First off, you are connecting dots that aren’t there. They never said this and you can’t just assume that’s what they meant. Second, the link you provided doesn’t say that ingestion can only cause allergies if the patient is on anti-ulcer drugs; it only says that anti-ulcer drugs increase the risk."

As I wrote, oral exposure produces tolerance, not allergy.
Please post a relevant reference if you disagree.
Ingestion can of course cause allergies if you disrupt protein processing in ANY way. Anti-ulcer medication is one method of disruption.

Paper 1.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM195204032461403
They show 5 of 319 developed dermal sensitivity to egg white due to the egg proteins present in vaccines.

Perhaps you should read these papers more carefully. First point, this was a dermal (i.e. skin) reaction to egg white protein - not a food allergy. But the best bit is this:

"It appears from this experience with nonallergic children that although mild dermal sensitivity may be acquired in rare instances none of our subjects became clinically sensitive to egg."

None.

ChrisP #324,

"Perhaps you should read these papers more carefully. First point, this was a dermal (i.e. skin) reaction to egg white protein – not a food allergy. But the best bit is this:

“It appears from this experience with nonallergic children that although mild dermal sensitivity may be acquired in rare instances none of our subjects became clinically sensitive to egg.”"

You missed the next part. All 319 subjects were under treatment for TB. TB is known to PROTECT against allergy.
So even in a PROTECTED population, sensitization was observed.

Today we are talking about children who are not only not protected against allergy, they are PRONE to allergy. And the devastating effect is right under noses, ... if we pull our heads out of the sand.

You missed the next part. All 319 subjects were under treatment for TB. TB is known to PROTECT against allergy.
So even in a PROTECTED population, sensitization was observed.

Apparently not

In re: Vitamin K. If it's on the list of ingredients, it's not a "contaminant."

shay #327,

"In re: Vitamin K. If it’s on the list of ingredients, it’s not a “contaminant.”"

For the human body, it is a contaminant, whether on the list or not.

Egg protein is listed on the influenza vaccine and it is a contaminant.

Evaluation of Egg Protein Contamination in Influenza Vaccines
http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(09)02305-7/abstract

ChrisP #326,

"You missed the next part. All 319 subjects were under treatment for TB. TB is known to PROTECT against allergy.
So even in a PROTECTED population, sensitization was observed.

Apparently not"

Wrong. Real TB infection protects. The TB vaccine does not.

If egg protein were a contaminant for the human body, every Denny's in the US would go out of business.

Recall a previous thread in which he postulated that each country has its own differently-contaminated source of vaccines to account for diet-driven variations in food allergies.

That previous thread is curiously similar to this one, with APV making precisely the same claims and providing the same citations that have all been refuted before. It's almost as if s/he has learned nothing from the discussion.

By Krebiozen (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

Vitamin K is a contaminant in the human body? Uh...one of the few vitamins the human body CAN and DOES synthesize and it's a contaminant? What a maroon.

APV: can you state in 1 sentence WHY newborns are typically given vitamin K at birth? And the risks and benefits of the injection? (Hint...it's NOT a vaccine)

Yesterday on the Brian Copeland* show on the ray de oh Senator Dr. Richard Pan and a woman named Brandy Vaughan were simultaneously interviewed. Ms. Vaughan claims to the the Executive Director of something called the Council for Vaccine Safety (it sprang into being sometime in April; it may exist only on Ms. Vaughan's computer).

Ms. Vaughan's statements almost filled my anti-vaccine bingo card. Measles vaccine kills, SB277 a "pharma money grab", SB277 "unconstitutional" and SB277 "unconstitutional" Wakefield has been vindicated etc.

Have a listen here:

http://www.kgoradio.com/common/page.php?pt=Brian+Copeland+Podcast&id=43…

_____
*Copeland also has an amazing one-man show about suicide, reviewed here:

http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/after-robin-williamss-suicide-brian-…

pg. 803 says, corn, cottonseed, peanut and sesame oil are most commonly used as a vehicle in Vitamin K injection formulations.

Uhhh…no, page 803 doesn’t say this. It lists oils that are commonly used, and that fixed oils are used particularly for some homeones and vitamin K, but it nowhere does it state (as you claim) that peanut oil is commonly used in formulations of injectable vitamin K approved for administration to newborns.

And I'll note I’ve been unable to find any injectable vitamin K emulsion approved for administration to newborns which does incorporate peanut oil. (The package insert for Hospira’s Vitamin K1, for example, indicates it includes polyoxyl 35castor oil but not peanut oil.)

So tell me: which manufacturer of an approved injectable Vitamin K1 suspension do you believe includes peanut oil in that product’s formulation?

JGC, I went through exactly the same exercise you did, with exactly the same conclusions (and made some rude mutterings to myself about APV's intellect).
The very same book has some interesting bits about assorted applications of gelatin, such as Gelfoam, that may not sit will with him.

Dawn@332 -- to give APV credit, s/he doesn't claim Vitamin K is a contaminant. That's about the only thing s/he gets right, though.

APV@323
You have continually misrepresented studies, extrapolated conclusions that the authors never made, taken the conclusion from one study and forced it into another study, , and in general been intelectually dishonest. Quite frankly it's getting boring. I will address this comment, but will try to restrain myself from answering further comments (no promises, I'm a sucker for low hanging fruit).

As the Pool study points out, the gelatin type/quanttity used in Japan, US were different. So the different results are expected.

No. They expected to see similar results.

In light of what was reported from Japan about hypothesized sensitization to gelatin after changes in the Japanese immunization schedule since 1994 and increased reporting of allergic reactions, one would expect to see a similar increase in the United States. [emphasis mine]

Since they got different results they explicitly said the Japan study's hypothesis was unsupported with their data. They didn't say, "our results were different but that is likely due to differences in ingredients."

As I wrote, oral exposure produces tolerance, not allergy.
Please post a relevant reference if you disagree.

This is what I mean by extrapolating conclusions that the authors never stated. You have taken their qualified conclusion:

...sustained peanut consumption beginning in the first 11 months of life, as compared with peanut avoidance, resulted in a significantly smaller proportion of children with peanut allergy at the age of 60 months.

and turned it into an absolute (oral exposure always produces tolerance) and then inverted it (therefore oral exposure cannot cause sensitization). I don't need to provide another reference because your doesn't actually say what you claim it does.

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

The FDA/CDC doctors admit gelatin in vaccines cause gelatin allergy based on findings in Japan.

No they haven't. And since that's been repeatedly explained to you already, I won't bother repeating it.

You have offered zero counter evidence.

It's not possible to offer counter-evidence when there isn't any evidence to counter. And since you've offered none, there isn't any.

So your declaration is irrelevant.

My declaration is accurate. You have not demonstrated causation.

For example:

“We examined 165 paired sera obtained before the first dose of DTaP and 1 month after the third dose of DTaP. Of 165 paired sera, 62 were obtained from the recipients of gelatin-free DTaP, and IgE antibodies to gelatin developed in none. In 103 recipients of gelatin-containing DTaP, IgE antibodies to gelatin developed in 2 recipients.”

Demonstrating that gelatin contaminated vaccines were indeed the cause of gelatin allergies in healthy non-allergic people.

How the hell does that demonstrate that gelatin-contaminated vaccines caused gelatin allergies?

The presence of IgE antibodies to gelatin in two out of 103 subjects who received gelatin-containing DTaP doesn't even conclusively demonstrate that anybody has a gelatin allergy to begin with. And since it's hardly outlandish to suppose that two out of 103 children were exposed to gelatin via some other source, it also wouldn't demonstrate that it was caused by vaccines even if it did.

“But that’s ridiculous.”

What’s ridiculous? Vaccine content variation?

No, the idea that it's consistently, uniformly variable in the same direction over time on a country-by-country basis. It's absurd.

Then you have not studied the FDA’s vaccine package inserts.

If you can either point me to the parts of them that say vaccine contents vary consistently and uniformly in the same direction over time on a country-by-country basis or -- failing that -- to whatever source makes you think it's a realistic possibility, I'll change my mind,

Epic blockquote fail.

@Shay: I was addressing APV's fail at #328 when he/she replied to you:

shay #327,

“In re: Vitamin K. If it’s on the list of ingredients, it’s not a “contaminant.””

For the human body, it is a contaminant, whether on the list or not.

I was trying to figure out how APV came up with Vitamin K as a contaminant.

@APV, you continue to avoid a very simple question: if any microscopic amount of food protein introduced into the body via any route other than digestion causes food allergies, which is your endlessly repeated claim, then why don't microscopic amount of food protein introduced into the body via numerous easily imagined routes cause food allergies? Why don't we all have allergies to common foods?

Please do not try to evade by snaking around to "atopic babies delivered by caesarean section" because that has not been your claim and is not supported by your century-old speech.

MI Dawn@340

I was trying to figure out how APV came up with Vitamin K as a contaminant.

APV's grasp on science is wanting to say the least. This is a person who thinks that the pertussis toxin in the DTaP vaccine is an adjuvant (see Narad's comment #310). Personally, I think he would benefit by investing in a Taber's and looking up some of the words he's been bandying about. It would certainly help to have the basics down before trying to interpret clinical studies.

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

I think he would benefit by investing in a Taber’s

But there's so much more flexibility in Humpty Dumptism.

I guess you guys better stop eating leafy green veggies asap!!

@MI Dawn - my apologies for inadvertently muddying the waters.

But there’s so much more flexibility in Humpty Dumptism.

I used to be a Humpty Dumptist*, but then I started shopping at Safeway. Then the local Safeway was sold to Homeland, and the Humpty Dumpty closed.

*Humpty Dumpty was a supermarket which, among other things, invented the shopping cart.

By Mephistopheles… (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

That previous thread is curiously similar to this one, with APV making precisely the same claims and providing the same citations that have all been refuted before.

To be fair I think APV has come up with a few new forms of intellectual slovenliness in the meantime.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

Dibs on the term 'Humpty Dumpster-diving" for APV's fondness for cherry-picking evidence and then twisting it out of shape.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

Dibs on the term ‘Humpty Dumpster-diving” for APV’s fondness for cherry-picking evidence and then twisting it out of shape.

Dibs on the term "cherry pretzel" for the same action.

By Mephistopheles… (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

"Motivated unreasoning".

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

I did a quick and dirty count...Let's say we have the population in the U.S., which is about 320 million. Sounds somewhat fair, right? ok, good.

Now we have an onset rate of this auto-immune disease that attacks pancreatic cells called diabetes -- specifically Diabetes mellitus type 1 (DM1). Sound ok? Yes, that rate is about 15 per 100K (or just under 100K) for pediatrics age ranged 0-4 years old due to genetic predisposition. 48 thousand little rug rat peckerwoods needing injections multiple times a day...little fartheads.

So, we have about 48K kids with DM1, they need this special sauce...oh, lets call it a ppppppp.protein (Ah! death!!!), well okay, maybe polypeptide hormone of 51 amino acids that optimizes with disulfide bonds and a zinc binder (still, it's a pppppppp..protein --- Ah! Death!!). So intent on just wiping out those little fartknockers from the population due to their genetic inferiority, a couple guys (Banting & Best -- Best, who won a coin toss to assist in Nobel prize work -- holy shit!) figure out from a dog that magic sauce needed to get glucose into a cell. Add to that Sanger a slew of others to get this synthesized for use by all in order to carry out the scientific "master plan" of injecting proteins into everyone to take over the world ---- BWAHAHAHA!!!!

No, wait. They sold the patent for a dollar.

So anyway, why do we not have this age group of diabetics injecting themselves multiple times daily with proteins and who-know-what-crap into their bodies just keeling over into pine boxes and pushing up daisies from massive anaphylaxis reactions and sprouting little autism wings from these crazy toxic proteins??

Every diabetic should either be dead from the allergic reaction or screaming up and down the hallways that they got the autism shot....but, sadly {playing some violins, in stereo} they aren't.

Allergens and idiots, they're all around us....

capnkrunch #342 and Narad #310,

"APV’s grasp on science is wanting to say the least. This is a person who thinks that the pertussis toxin in the DTaP vaccine is an adjuvant (see Narad’s comment #310)."

Pertussis adjuvant prolongs intestinal hypersensitivity.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10436392

Pertussis toxin in DTaP is not only an active ingredient but ALSO a pro-allergy adjuvant.

LW #341,

"you continue to avoid a very simple question: if any microscopic amount of food protein introduced into the body via any route other than digestion causes food allergies, which is your endlessly repeated claim, then why don’t microscopic amount of food protein introduced into the body via numerous easily imagined routes cause food allergies? Why don’t we all have allergies to common foods?"

As I wrote, our ancestors had enough pollen exposure to evolve enough for the body to understand that pollen is harmless.

Not all our ancestors were milkmaids with finger injury.
Some milkmaids probably developed milk allergy and went extinct. There may be others whose descendants today may have milk allergy that is no worse than pollen allergy.
We know for sure that for at least a few % of the population, milk allergy is severe enough to cause anaphylaxis.

You have to understand that the NORMAL exposure of food proteins should occur through the oral route for humans. In that case, we not only have the right protein processing, but we also develop TOLERANCE, NOT ALLERGY.

LW #341,

The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) says injections can cause allergy:

https://www.aafa.org/display.cfm?id=8&sub=16&cont=54

“1. Sensitization to an allergen: Being exposed for the first time

You might be initially exposed to an allergen by:

Inhalation (of pollen, mold, dust mites, etc.)
Ingestion (swallowing a type of food or medication)
Touch (coming into contact with poison ivy, latex, or certain metals, such as nickel)
Injection (receiving a medication or being stung by an insect)”

Ann #338,

"It’s not possible to offer counter-evidence when there isn’t any evidence to counter. And since you’ve offered none, there isn’t any."

You have provided ZERO studies demonstrating the safety of injecting food proteins at the levels that contaminate our vaccines.

If you cannot provide that, you are accepting that the FDA is using the general public as guinea pigs in a massive dangerous experiment.

"The presence of IgE antibodies to gelatin in two out of 103 subjects who received gelatin-containing DTaP doesn’t even conclusively demonstrate that anybody has a gelatin allergy to begin with. And since it’s hardly outlandish to suppose that two out of 103 children were exposed to gelatin via some other source, it also wouldn’t demonstrate that it was caused by vaccines even if it did."

What's the probability of that outcome with a non-vaccine gelatin exposure source?

http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749%2899%2970508-7/fulltext

The paper continues:
"Later, when they received measles vaccine, one developed urticaria 20 minutes after measles vaccination, but the other did not. We should extend the examination to know the rate of sensitization to gelatin through repeated administration of gelatin-containing DTaP.

Although gelatin was thought to be an inert substance, we should consider the possibility of sensitization through repetitive immunization of gelatin-containing DTaP vaccine. DTaP has a low incidence of clinical side effects,12 and gelatin-free DTaP appears to be desirable for avoiding unnecessary sensitization against gelatin."

You wrote:
"No, the idea that it’s consistently, uniformly variable in the same direction over time on a country-by-country basis. "

I don't recall making that claim. I said contaminants vary among manufacturers.

100X variation of ovalbumin contamination for example:
http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(09)02305-7/fulltext

There is no regulation of allergen quantities.
Not all allergens are listed.
So how are you going to account for that when comparing allergy rates among countries?

Wrong. Real TB infection protects. The TB vaccine does not.

You obviously did not read the paper.

Once again.

capnkrunch #337,

"and turned it into an absolute (oral exposure always produces tolerance) and then inverted it (therefore oral exposure cannot cause sensitization)."

I said oral exposure normally does not produce allergy and normally produces tolerance. The NEJM peanut study is just the latest confirmation for what has been demonstrated over a hundred years ago and cited here in 2013:

"The phenomenon of oral tolerance was first described by Wells and Osborne in 1911.5,6 They used guinea pigs to show that inclusion of egg white, purified egg allergens, or oats in the diet rendered the animals hyporesponsive to sensitization and anaphylaxis to those proteins. "

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3807570/

ChrisP #355,

I cited a lot of papers. Pl. be specific.

I break out in huge welts if I have gelatin. Don't know why.

I break out in huge welts if I have gelatin. Don’t know why.

So you are a vegetarian then.

They used guinea pigs to show that inclusion of egg white, purified egg allergens, or oats in the diet rendered the animals hyporesponsive to sensitization and anaphylaxis to those proteins.

And somehow APV doesn't see that this undercuts his/her claims.

Also I note that APV has focused on milkmaids and not, for instance, people who picked up food in their scratched-up hands or ate and drank while having cuts or open sores in their mouths.

Some milkmaids probably developed milk allergy and went extinct.

But I agree with APV that people who would routinely suffer anaphylaxis from microscopic exposures to food proteins would indeed die off and take that tendency with them, which is why we don't see it in the modern world. It's good to have that settled.

You have provided ZERO studies demonstrating the safety of injecting food proteins at the levels that contaminate our vaccines.

As I said, you have provided ZERO studies demonstrating that it's dangerous. So there's nothing for me to counter.

If you cannot provide that, you are accepting that the FDA is using the general public as guinea pigs in a massive dangerous experiment.

Not without a demonstration that there is a danger, I'm not.

What’s the probability of that outcome with a non-vaccine gelatin exposure source?

The probability that two out of 103 children will be exposed to gelatin is extremely high, with or without any kind of vaccination.

So the answer is "extremely high."

http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749%2899%2970508-7/fulltext

The paper continues:
“Later, when they received measles vaccine, one developed urticaria 20 minutes after measles vaccination, but the other did not. We should extend the examination to know the rate of sensitization to gelatin through repeated administration of gelatin-containing DTaP.

Although gelatin was thought to be an inert substance, we should consider the possibility of sensitization through repetitive immunization of gelatin-containing DTaP vaccine. DTaP has a low incidence of clinical side effects,12 and gelatin-free DTaP appears to be desirable for avoiding unnecessary sensitization against gelatin.”

^^That in no way answers the question.

There is no regulation of allergen quantities.
Not all allergens are listed.
So how are you going to account for that when comparing allergy rates among countries?

By assuming that they vary similarly in each country unless and until I have a reason to think otherwise.

LW #362,

"They used guinea pigs to show that inclusion of egg white, purified egg allergens, or oats in the diet rendered the animals hyporesponsive to sensitization and anaphylaxis to those proteins.

And somehow APV doesn’t see that this undercuts his/her claims."

How does it undercut?. The CDC vaccine schedule provides zero chance for any child to develop tolerance to ingested food proteins. They start the injection of food protein contaminated injections/vaccines on day one.

Ken #360,

Sorry to hear that you too may be a victim of contaminated vaccines.

ann #363,

"The probability that two out of 103 children will be exposed to gelatin is extremely high, with or without any kind of vaccination."

The question was what is probability of 62 people NOT developing gelatin allergy (gelatin-free DTaP case) while SIMULTANEOUSLY having 2 out of 103 developing gelatin allergy in the gelatin-containing DtaP group.

Your answer is obviously wrong.

Ken's latest link is actually worth a look (home page).
In my opinion, it is a very well done overview of vaccine topics, but then this might be expected, given who has reviewed the pages. I think it is well written in terms of being comprehensible by the general public and in being forthright about benefits and risks.

I would just like to point out that I have, in fact, died several times from anaphylactic shock caused by getting raw egg yolk and white into cuts and scratches on my fingers, and milk into similar scratches, and also gelatin when making jelly (jello to you heathens in the west).

And I am not sure what the various things from prepping raw meat have done to me. Nor bits of cheese...

APV@357

I said oral exposure normally does not produce allergy and normally produces tolerance.

What did I say about low hanging fruit? As long as I can see it I just can't help myself. Related note, anyone know a good killfile extension for Firefox mobile?

You have created a patchwork argument by combining 3 studies (and misrepresenting 2 of them).
-Du Toit, et al concluded that in a specific population oral exposure to peanuts reduces the risk of peanut allergy.
-Untersmayr, et al concluded that anti-ulcer medications promote the development of food allergies.
-Pool, et al stated that anaphylaxsis required prior sensitization to gelatin whether orally or by vaccine.

Your statement in #287 regarding the ingestion part was:

No, ingestion normally PROTECTS AGAINST ALLERGY by INDUCING TOLERANCE.
...
The FDA/CDC authors put the ingestion part in there to cover cases where patients may be on prescription anti-ulcer medication.

Note how the first part has been changed from a specific population and peanuts as Du Toit, et al studied, to the general population and gelatin. The second part is just straight up putting words in Pool, et al's mouths. All in all, not strong support for your original statement in #248.

The FDA/CDC’s own doctors admit that vaccines CAUSE food allergy.

Given that you don't have good evidence to base your nonsense on you have resorted to dishonesty and you aren't even very good at that.

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 14 Jul 2015 #permalink

The question was what is probability of 62 people NOT developing gelatin allergy (gelatin-free DTaP case) while SIMULTANEOUSLY having 2 out of 103 developing gelatin allergy in the gelatin-containing DtaP group.

The probability is still very high.

After all, there were actually more people who didn't have gelatin antibodies in the gelatin-containing DTaP group than there were in the gelatin-free DTaP group. By a considerable margin, percentage-wise.

Your answer is obviously wrong.

How so? Two children out of a total pool of 165 tested had antibodies. That tells you nothing. It's completely unremarkable.

capnkrunch #369,

"Note how the first part has been changed from a specific population and peanuts as Du Toit, et al studied, to the general population and gelatin. "

As I wrote in #357, the NEJM peanut is just the latest. It has been known for over a hundred years that ingesting ANY food protein, normally induces tolerance and not allergy.
I am not relying on the peanut study alone.

Since ingestion is known to produce tolerance, the only reason the FDA/CDC doctors cited ingestion as a source is because of interventions such as anti-ulcer medications.

Ann #370,

"How so? Two children out of a total pool of 165 tested had antibodies. That tells you nothing. It’s completely unremarkable."

There are two possible causes for the published outcome. The children were sensitized by the vaccine or by a non-vaccine source. Let's assume they were sensitized by a non-vaccine source.

The probability of a child being sensitized by this non-vaccine source is 2/103 or ~2%.
The probability of a child not being sensitized by this non-vaccine source is ~98%.

What's the probability of none being sensitized in a group of 62 children?
0.98^62=~0.3 or ~30%. So the published outcome has only a 30% chance of occurring due to a non-vaccine source.
In contrast, there is therefore a 70% chance that this outcome was due to the gelatin contaminated vaccine.

capnkrunch #369,

"-Pool, et al stated that anaphylaxsis required prior sensitization to gelatin whether orally or by vaccine."

Let's assume for a moment that they meant normal people can be sensitized by oral exposure. Pool et. al wrote that people can be sensitized by VACCINES ALSO as you wrote above.

13 years later, can you explain why we are STILL injecting kids with food protein contaminated vaccines? In the middle of a raging food allergy epidemic? Can you explain that?

ann,

The challenges of comparing vaccines/allergies across countries:

Pool et. al.:
"Overall the reporting rate of probable and possible anaphylaxis in our study (<2 per 1 000 000 doses of the vaccine distributed) was somewhat lower than estimates from other countries. The highest reporting rate of 10 per 1 000 000 doses of MMR distributed was observed in Finland. A rate of 4.1 cases of anaphylactic and anaphylactoid reactions per 1 000 000 doses of MMR II (Merck) distributed, as reported from Australia after the 1998 Australian measles control campaign, has the same magnitude as the minimum estimated incidence of severe anaphylaxis after measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella single-antigen vaccines in Japan from 1995 to 1997 (6.8, 7.3, 4.4, and 10.3 per 1 million doses of the corresponding vaccine).24,28 However, comparing these rates is difficult because of the different sensitivities of national surveillance systems for vaccine adverse events.29

This study had several limitations. VAERS, like all passive surveillance systems, is subject to underreporting. The reporting rates that we found thus should be considered minimum estimates.30 In addition, not all potential study subjects could be evaluated because of incomplete data provided with the VAERS report."

Murmur #368,

Dr. Gideon Lack's team found:

"This study adds to the growing body of evidence that exposure to peanut via a damaged skin barrier may increase the risk of peanut allergy,"

as reported here:

http://consumer.healthday.com/environmental-health-information-12/envir…

But the authors extensively use skin prick allergy testing that involves injecting allergens (including peanut) into damaged skin, as part of their studies. Go figure.

JGC #334,

"So tell me: which manufacturer of an approved injectable Vitamin K1 suspension do you believe includes peanut oil in that product’s formulation?"

That 2006 text book says peanut oil is used in Vitamin K formulations. I don't know which manufacturers are approved and what they use now.

Perhaps enough people have been sensitized, victimized with injected peanut proteins and made aware, that manufacturers want to avoid listing peanut oil? They have moved on to sensitize people with other allergens?

MarkN #351,

And BTW, they probably developed Type 1 diabetes because of autoantibodies synthesized against vaccines contaminated with pancreatic digest.

shay #330,

"If egg protein were a contaminant for the human body, every Denny’s in the US would go out of business."

Ingestion of proteins is NOT the same as injecting proteins.
The FDA/CDC regulators also have a problem understanding this fundamental immunology concept. Result - the food allergy epidemic.

they probably developed Type 1 diabetes because of autoantibodies synthesized against vaccines contaminated with pancreatic digest.

This amounts to a claim that diabetes didn't exist before vaccine manufacturers started using pancreatic-digested casein in cell media (perhaps someone knows the year when that started) -- causing autoallergies to destroy, not the offending exocrine part of the pancreas, but innocent insulin-secreting endocrine bystanders.

Fortunately the people at CFI have already ridiculed APV's argument so there is no need to ridicule it here.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 14 Jul 2015 #permalink

Has APV ever offered any evidence of a "raging food allergy epidemic" in all this blathering? I mean, not that APV has actually offered any evidence of any other claims, but what about this one in particular?

herr doktor bimler #380,

"This amounts to a claim that diabetes didn’t exist before vaccine"

No. There will of course be natural occurrences of Type I diabetes. It takes contaminated vaccines to create an epidemic.

I'm curious, APV: what is a "food protein" as opposed to other proteins? What is fundamentally different about food proteins compared to other proteins found in nature? You use this term quite a lot, so it *must* have a distinct meaning to you.

By Calli Arcale (not verified) on 15 Jul 2015 #permalink

No, the textbook doesn’t say peanut oil is used in Vitamin K formulations, APV.
It says that several fixed oils (including peanut oil) are commonly used as non-aqueous vehicles, and it also says that fixed oils, without specifying which ones, are commonly used as vehicles for a number of different hormones and vitamins (including vitamin K) but nowhere does it make any statement that peanut oil is a fixed oil used as a vehicle in injectable vitamin K preparations.

And, as I’ve noted, I’ve been unable to identify any approved preparation of injectable Vitamin K which includes peanut oil in its formulation.

So I ask again: which manufacturer of an approved injectable Vitamin K1 suspension do you believe includes peanut oil in that product’s formulation?

I mean, you must know of at least one if you’re going to make the claim in the first place--right?

" The FDA/CDC regulators also have a problem understanding this fundamental immunology concept"

How refreshing ! Someone who understands fundamental immunology better than everyone at the FDA and the CDC.

APV, if you're allergic to eggs, you're allergic to eggs, it doesn't matter how they are introduced to your system.

The probability of a child being sensitized by this non-vaccine source is 2/103 or ~2%.
The probability of a child not being sensitized by this non-vaccine source is ~98%.

You can't be serious. For real?

Those are not probabilities. That's not how it works.

ann #387,

You need to explain why.

shay #386,

"APV, if you’re allergic to eggs, you’re allergic to eggs, it doesn’t matter how they are introduced to your system."

We are discussing how you one becomes allergic to egg in the first place.

Calli Arcale #384,

"I’m curious, APV: what is a “food protein” as opposed to other proteins? What is fundamentally different about food proteins compared to other proteins found in nature? You use this term quite a lot, so it *must* have a distinct meaning to you."

Food proteins are proteins we eat.
Food proteins are different from pollen proteins for example.
When diagnosed with a pollen allergy, you are not prescribed epipen.
When diagnosed with a food allergy, you are prescribed epipen.

The reason is that our ancestors were continuously exposed to pollen protein sensitization via inhalation. We therefore have an immune system that has evolved to treat pollen as a harmless protein.

Food proteins were NEVER injected (exposure where sensitization can occur) on a mass scale until vaccines/injection arrived. So the immune system had no chance to evolve to treat them as harmless. The immune system treats food proteins the same as it treats viral and bacterial proteins.

So pollen allergy, a natural allergy is a harmless nuisance.
Food allergy, a man-made allergy, is life-threatening.

If vaccinations produced an egg allergy, you'd still see every Denny's in the US go out of business, given that most Americans are vaccinated.

"If vaccinations produced an egg allergy, you’d still see every Denny’s in the US go out of business, given that most Americans are vaccinated."

No. Egg protein contamination can vary by a factor of 100.
So developing egg allergy (or any other food allergy) from a vaccination is a game of Russian roulette.

So the Denny's are not going out of business yet but they face this below, taking blame for the FDA's utter failure:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/03/24/family-sues-pub…

JGC #385,
"I mean, you must know of at least one if you’re going to make the claim in the first place–right?"

It's a textbook, not a work of fiction.
It says, corn, cottonseed, peanut and sesame oil are most commonly used as a vehicle in Vitamin K injection formulations. I don't know which manufacturer uses which oil.
You found one that uses castor oil.

The point is, these oils SHOULD NOT have been used in ANY injection AT ALL.

(sigh) @APV: Vitamin K is a fat-soluble vitamin. This means we are unable to give the medication unless it's in a liquid status. (Breast milk and formula both have a lot of fat, too). So it HAS to be in an oil.

Please do some research about vitamins, their risks and benefits before coming back and making more of a fool of yourself than you already have.

The point is, APV, that you not only dont' know what you're talking about, but the works you are citing don't say what you claim they do.

Haven't you learned by now that posters on this particular board ALWAYS read your links? That USA Today story does not indicate an utter failure by the FDA nor does it support your egg-allergy speculation.

As far as I have been able to find, parenteral vitamin K for human use is an emulsion that uses a surfactant derived from a vegetable oil, specifically castor oil, as the emulsifying agent. It is not vitamin K in oil.

Maybe ricin isn't really a poison as such, but causes fatal anaphylaxis as a result of severe allergy produced by sensitization from impurities in castor oil derived detergent used in neonatal vitamin K preparations. Or not.

Ricin's toxicity is a consequence of it's ability to catalytically and irreversibly inactivate 60S subunit of eukaryotic ribosomes, inhibiting protein synthesis.

It's the fact taht the inhibition is catalytic, and not a function of something like competitive binding, which makes ricin such a potent toxin: once inside a cell a single molecule of ricin can inactivate multiple 60S subunits, associated with mutliple ribosomes, effectively killing that cell.

Doug@396 -- we saw what you did.

APV:

The point is, these oils SHOULD NOT have been used in ANY injection AT ALL.

Why not? You've failed to give any reason to support that claim. Fat-soluble vitamins need to be dissolved in fat -- oil, in other words. What do you propose as an alternative, and what evidence do you have that it is at least as safe and at least as effective?

By Calli Arcale (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

Total parenteral nutrition relies on intravenous vegetable oil (some varieties with egg lecithin in the mix).

I was a bit agast to discover that steroid users will buy peanut oil at the grocery store and use it as a vehicle for their injections.

SMOFlipid is an interesting brew.

APV @392

Once again,in the case of that boy and the publix cookies it was ingestion not injection.And certainly not intramuscular injection.

You read my post upthread about FRAs and the gut/GI tract?I had unexplained seizures for many years,starting as a child,that no doctor could figure out.They suddenly went away after I got on leucovorin and cut dairy out of my diet.

Seizures caused by food allergies are not unknown.Which only proves the very complicated relationship between the immune system,gut,and the brain.You might want to read this article,which explains,in excruciating detail,food related anaphylaxis,and the relationship the gut has to the immune system.
and the relation the gut has

By Roger Kulp (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

Total parenteral nutrition relies on intravenous vegetable oil (some varieties with egg lecithin in the mix).

IIRC, at some point Vinu was suggesting that influenza vaccination would result in anaphylaxis if one contracted the flu, or something.

HDB has a better memory for this sort of stuff than I do.

Narad, #403,

Not if you contracted the flu, but if you received another flu shot with the same viral strain as Dr. Kelso suggests below.

http://www.aaaai.org/ask-the-expert/influenza-vaccine-anaphylaxis.aspx

"The fact that the skin tests were positive suggests that these were in fact an IgE mediated reactions, perhaps to the viral proteins themselves. "

The reason is vaccinations are known to synthesize IgE antibodies to the viral and bacterial proteins contained in them, as shown below.

Influenza Specific Serum IgE is Present in Non-Allergic
Subjects
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3083.2005.01710.x/pdf

Further, the Flublok vaccine has 3X the amount of viral proteins as a standard flu vaccine. Thus increasing the likelihood of anaphylaxis.
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedPr…

Roger Kulp #402,

"Once again,in the case of that boy and the publix cookies it was ingestion not injection.And certainly not intramuscular injection."

No, please understand that allergy involves two steps.
The first step is sensitization. I am pointing out that food protein contaminated vaccines/injection cause this first step to occur. The patient is symptom free for about a month after this event. Then s/he becomes allergic to the proteins.

Second step is elicitation. Any exposure now will cause an allergic reaction or anaphylaxis.

In the case of that boy, sensitization most likely occurred due to a vaccine contaminated with vegetable oil derived from tree nuts (thus contaminated with tree nut proteins).

When exposed to the tree nuts in the cookies, he suffered an elicitation event - anaphylaxis. Most people do not even have to swallow the food. There are mast cells in the mouth that can trigger the allergic reaction on contact with the food item.

"Which only proves the very complicated relationship between the immune system,gut,and the brain."
You are of course correct. Sub-optimal gut microbiome is a risk factor for developing allergy - sensitization. Thus c-section birth is a risk factor.

Calli Arcale #399,

"Why not? You’ve failed to give any reason to support that claim. "
Because vegetable oils are contaminated with vegetable proteins. No studies have been performed to determine safe levels for such injected proteins. There is no regulation or specification limiting the level of such proteins in injectable grade oils.

Without such safety studies, oral Vitamin K may be the only option.

shay #395,

" but the works you are citing don’t say what you claim they do."

The FDA/CDC doctors wrote in plain English that gelatin-containing vaccines can cause gelatin allergy.

The title says it all here and Japan removed gelatin from vaccines due to these studies:
Removal of gelatin from live vaccines and DTaP-an ultimate solution for vaccine-related gelatin allergy.
http://oxfordhbot.com/library/vaccinations/vaccines-allergies-asthma/50…

They wrote:
"Our study on adverse events of live measles vaccines
at a time when stabilizers of both live measles vaccine
and DTaP were changed revealed, (i) gelatin was one of
the strongest allergens, (ii) DTaP was an adjuvant
vaccine containing aluminum hydroxide and minute
amounts of carry-over gelatin contained in DTaP were
able to sensitize infants to gelatin so that they manifested
allergic/anaphylactic reactions to subsequently
administered live vaccines which contained gelatin, and
(iii) clinical symptoms of gelatin allergy including anaphylaxis,
urticaria, local reactions, and rash within 3
days of vaccination, as shown by the disappearance of
those symptoms soon after gelatin was removed from
three manufacturers’ live measles vaccine (A, D, C) and
hypo-allergic gelatin was used in one manufacturer’s live
measles vaccine (B)."

Key part "sensitize infants to gelatin".

MI Dawn, #394,

"Vitamin K is a fat-soluble vitamin. This means we are unable to give the medication unless it’s in a liquid status. (Breast milk and formula both have a lot of fat, too). So it HAS to be in an oil."

That is all fine as long as it is ingested. You CANNOT inject it until you determine if the protein content is safe. And no such studies have been performed.

APV, ann handed you your ass in #311. Did I miss your reply?

Delphine #410,

"Did I miss your reply?"

Yes, several.

APV @411,

You've posted many more times since ann's @311, but you missed her point there, as with many points that she has, very patiently, and others have, maybe somewhat less patiently, made.

Part of judging a hypothesis is figuring out what you would expect to see if it were true, what you would expect to not see, and whether or not reality matches your predictions. If there are facts that don't fit, then you need to adjust your hypothesis or find a plausible explanation for those anomalous facts. I'm sure you think that's what you're doing, but when you assume that vaccine contamination varies from country to country in the precise way necessary to make your hypothesis true, that's purely ad hoc reasoning, as, again, ann has pointed out @338 and elsewhere. You would need strong evidence to make that claim, and you haven't got it.

APV never has evidence. S/he posts names of articles or cherry-picks paragraphs. Then when the minions mention the body of the article or the whole story don't support what is claimed, another piece is posted. Same song, same dance.

I have APV blocked on my home computer because of the nonsense. Unfortunately, I can't on my work computer.

In the case of that boy, sensitization most likely occurred due to a vaccine contaminated with vegetable oil derived from tree nuts (thus contaminated with tree nut proteins).

No, sensitization in that boy most likely occurred due to eating treenuts.

By W. Kevin Vicklund (not verified) on 17 Jul 2015 #permalink

W. Kevin Vicklund #414,

"No, sensitization in that boy most likely occurred due to eating treenuts."

No, eating induces tolerance, not allergy.
Demonstrated here:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1414850

And here:
“The phenomenon of oral tolerance was first described by Wells and Osborne in 1911.5,6 They used guinea pigs to show that inclusion of egg white, purified egg allergens, or oats in the diet rendered the animals hyporesponsive to sensitization and anaphylaxis to those proteins. ”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3807570/

Please provide relevant references to support your statement.

Pickwick #412,

"Part of judging a hypothesis"

Food proteins in vaccines causing food allergy is not a hypothesis. It is an ESTABLISHED FACT.
Facts:
The Japanese team demonstrated in 1999 that gelatin in vaccines causes sensitization.
The Japanese medical establishment removed gelatin from vaccines in 2000, as a result.
Gelatin allergy dropped as a result.
FDA/CDC doctors agreed with the findings that gelatin in vaccines causes gelatin allergy.
And of course, Dr. Richet demonstrated the concept over a hundred years ago.

I have provided numerous studies over the decades showing the same thing.
Today, one of the most reliable methods of inducing allergy in lab rats is to use a pertussis vaccine with aluminum salts - exactly the same ingredients as the DTaP vaccine.

"but when you assume that vaccine contamination varies from country to country in the precise way"
No, I am not assuming any such thing.
As I wrote before, there are many factors that affect country to country variation in allergy.
Allergy PREDISPOSITION factors include hygiene and c-section rates. Gut microbiome in infants is a predisposition factor for allergy. Antibiotic prescription type/duration/practice in kids, recovering and lactating mothers and diet are factors that affect gut microbiome. Antibiotics/pesticides in food/water. Then there are SENSITIZATION FACTORS - vaccine contaminants/amounts, vaccine schedules (number of simultaneous shots in one sitting). Then food allergy diagnosis and reporting methods can vary. With so many factors muddying the waters, it is impossible to try to use ann's information to draw ANY useful conclusion.

On the other hand, the studies conducted in Japan that concluded gelatin in vaccines causing allergy, was a CONTROLLED experiment with far fewer variables.