Antivaccinationists irritate me, for reasons that should be obvious to regular readers. The reason is that vaccine-preventable diseases can kill. Contrary to the beliefs of many nonvaccinating parents, who downplay these diseases as being not particularly dangerous, they are dangerous. Of these, one of more dangerous vaccine-preventable diseases is pertussis. That's why a story that popped up in my Facebook feed disturbed me so. Unsurprisingly, it's on that other wretched hive of scum and quackery (with respect to vaccines), Mothering.com:
So, my almost ten month old started coughing and after a while, we suspected that it was whooping cough. When his cough suddenly changed from normal to not normal, we took him to our ped (which is pro-vax but isn't pushy about it.) and he gave him some antibiotics in hopes it would help the cough.
My boy handles it really well. He gets really red, but he breathes through it and immediately after he's like I want to play!
My husband is having a really hard time with this. REALLY HARD. The only thing he asked for our boy to get was pertussis because it is so scary! I resisted, since I'm the one that did all the research and while I showed him he just deferred to me, even though I urged him to do his own research so exactly this issue wouldn't happen. We aren't a team in it together anymore. He's like "we should have vaccinated him, I asked for just ONE shot out of all of them" and then I reiterated 'the its a cocktail' info and he's like then why do ALL of these doctors, all these highly educated people, think that they are beneficial? Is there some great conspiracy by ALL doctors?
This is child abuse, pure and simple. Because the mother mistakenly believes that vaccines are harmful and that pertussis isn't such a big deal, she didn't vaccinate, and the result is that her son is suffering. Clearly in denial of the severity of pertussis, she tells herself that he's "handling it really well," but then describes how he "gets really red" and "breathes through it." Those of you out there who have ever had a cough so severe that it's hard to breathe know how terrifying it can be. I've experienced it myself for—thankfully—brief periods of time. It's terrifying. If it's terrifying to an adult to have a cough so bad that he can't catch his breath, how much more terrifying is it to a ten month old child?
To get a further idea of the self-absorption of the mother and her utter cluelessness with respect to pertussis, check out this passage:
Anyways. So he's upset and I'm devastated that my boy is sick but I'm just kind of like, this is biology. This is natural. He's going to be sick and we will deal with it and get help from our doctors and maybe even our hospital if it comes to that. He'll get better and his immune system will be stronger. I hate watching him cough and knowing there is nothing I can do but at the same time I can't protect him from everything. He has to live in this world and deal with germs. I won't put him in a bubble.
The naturalistic fallacy strikes again. I suppose that to this mother it would be completely natural if her son were to die of pertussis because she didn't want to vaccinate. Or if he were to get a secondary pneumonia and end up in the hospital on antibiotics or even on a ventilator, that would be completely natural too, except for the ventilator and antibiotics. I have a message for this mother: Nature doesn't care about you or your baby. What's "natural" isn't necessarily best. Before vaccines and modern medicine, huge numbers of babies never made it to adulthood because diseases like pertussis and other vaccine-preventable diseases killed them. Your child's immune system might not even be "stronger" after this. Even "naturally" acquired immunity to pertussis due to the disease is not necessarily lifelong.
I feel for the husband, too. I really do. First of all, he sounds as though he is at least semi-reasonable about vaccines because, reading between the lines of this mother's account, it sounds as though wanted his son to be vaccinated and, failing to convince his wife of that, to persuade her at least to let their son be vaccinated against pertussis. He sounds as though he was not antivaccine but that he didn't really want to fight with his wife over vaccinations even though he clealry realized that certain vaccines, at least, are very important. His wife refused, and, not wanting to make waves, he foolishly went along, probably knowing that he was endangering his son. Now his son is suffering, and so is he. No wonder he's having a hard time! He's clearly regretting his decision. Worse, because he's the stay-at-home dad, a musician who works nights and weekends while his wife appears to have a day job with more conventional hours, he has to watch his son cough up a lung every day while the mother is off working. He is seeing firsthand all day every day the consequences of his wife's decision, and he's the one who has to deal with it far more than she does. He should really tell her that he's not doing it anymore, that it's her fault that the child has pertussis, and that she needs to take some time off of work and take care of the child. The mother keeps harping about togetherness and how they should "work it out together"; yet she isn't helping. She's off at work, leaving him to deal with a sick child that is the direct result of her irresponsible behavior while whining on Mothering.com about how he is having a hard time with this. Hell, yes he is! He should have a hard time with this.
On the other hand, as much as I hate to concede this, one of the commenters has a point when she says:
While I feel for your husband (and I really do! ) you asked him to research things so you could make a decision together…and he didn't. Being mad after he abdicated responsability isn't overly appropriate.
Yes, the husband did abdicate responsibility by letting his antivaccine loon of a wife run the show with respect to vaccinating their son. Indeed, I rather suspect that he knows her viewpoint is pure quackery but ultimately capitulated because he didn't want to get into what would no doubt be a horrible fight. Instead, he appears to have been engaging in damage control by at least trying to persuade his wife to compromise on the one vaccine he thought to be the most important. Not surprisingly, because she is an antivaccine loon, she wouldn't even throw him that little bone. In this, the father rather reminds me of Dr. Oz, who, as you might recall, admitted that his wife, a reiki master who is antivaccine, runs the show with vaccines, the result of which was that they did not receive the flu vaccine. Of course, the person the husband is mad at is probably himself for doing exactly that. What he could do to make up for it is to stop being such a wimp and confront his wife, demanding that once the child recovers (and, hopefully, he will recover) he receive all his vaccines to bring him back on schedule. Otherwise, the same thing is disturbingly likely to happen again with any number of other childhood diseases.
Meanwhile, the commenters on Mothering.com seem to think that vitamin C can be used to treat pertussis. Commenter after commenter expounds upon the benefits of vitamin C for shortening the course of pertussis, even though there is no evidence to suggest that it can. Advice takes the form of brain dead suggestions like this:
Get some sodium ascorbate from the healthfood store and give it to him in some water and/or OJ, until he gets loose stools - then you have reached his bowel tolerance. This can and will cut the severity of the illness.
This commenter then claims that, because the DTaP is not 100% effective the child might have gotten pertussis anyway, a sentiment echoed later in the comment thread:
I hope you find something your little man likes, and I hope he feels better soon! You can show your husband examples of fully vaccinated kids contracting pertussis, and maybe that would help him during this stressful time.
The stupid, it burns. Seriously, this is arguably the single dumbest argument that antivaccinationists make. Let's do a little reductio ad absurdum to demonstrate why. Using this "logic," one could equally well argue that:
- Because people wearing seatbelts and young children riding in car seats still sometimes die in car crashes, seatbelts and car seats don't work. Even with a seatbelt or car seat, you or your child might die anyway if you get into a serious crash!
- Because people riding bicycles sometimes suffer severe head injuries after a spill or crash even though they are wearing their helmets, bicycle helmets don't work. Even with a helmet you might still suffer a serious head injury if a car hits you.
I'm sure you can think of more examples. The point is not that vaccines are perfect. It's that they greatly decrease the risk of the diseases they are targeted against, not that they are perfect protection. It's not a difficult concept to understand; yet antivaccinationists like this woman keep parroting the same brain dead argument like the ones above.
Ultimately, the moderator shut down the comment thread. Sadly, it was not because of the levels of antivaccine views, quackery, and pseudoscience being suggested to the mother. Instead, it was because people from outside the impenetrable cozy antivaccine bubble of Mothering.com were trying to bring some actual science into the thread. This is completely unsurprising, as Mothering.com makes it very explicit that they are not there to "debate" but rather to support whatever dangerous quackery any mother wants to use on her child, particularly if it involves not vaccinating. I'm only surprised it took the moderator so long to protect the Mothering.com denizens from anything resembling reason, science, or medicine.
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Oh, they know exactly how it works. It's a conspiracy. If pharma doesn't like it, it doesn't go up.
Greggles@498:
WTF is this deranged shite?
Do you know what a POSIX-compliant system thinks Februay 11, 2014, 0540 UTC is, Gerg? 1392097200.
From AoA: "Can't help wondering
1.Can Wikipedia be sued?(I'm guessing yes, and though I'm not a lawyer, am wondering if it might only take a stiff letter from an interested parties lawyer to make inaccurate stuff get taken off ...)
Also wondering
2. Can the people who made any unfounded or inaccurate edits about living persons be sued?
Don't think most of the Wikipedia editors are anonymous."
Not for talking about Andrew Wakefield, unless he can prove that the content was untrue and that there was malice. But given his past record, I'm sure he'd be happy to give it a go.
You have to admire their sincere devotion to free speech.
It's cute that "Aussie Dad" transformed into "Zackiegirl25" for this effort.
Slightly off topic, but does anyone have a link to some solid arguments against Dr. Tetyana Obukhanych? I'm trying to help my boyfriend convince his ex to vaccinate their child, and this was one of the links she sent him:
http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org/2012/06/13/interview-with-phd-immunol…
I've googled a bit and nothing is jumping out at me, save one blog post that was surely not convincing enough for the ex.
Any help would be much appreciated!
@Amanda
Anti-vaccination cranks are hardly off-topic at RI and certainly not in this thread.
I gave your link a quick skim and then did a Pubmed search which showed an Obukhanych TV as author (mostly co-author) which seem to be in the area of how vaccination produces memory B cells. (Sorry, that's way beyond my biological knowledge.)
But, anyway, what they seem to show is that vaccines do produce an immune response!
I also saw her listed for 6 papers while working at Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 2002-2006.
Some time after that, she apparently decided to jump the shark and start writing her own books like the one in your link and tell people that natural immunity (get the disease and then you're immune to it) is better than vaccine acquired immunity.
In other words it's better to get sick and risk the possible side effects like blindness, deafness, brain damage from encephalitis and death, than it is to get vaccinated and avoid the disease in the first place (and make it less likely that you'll pass it on to others).
I'll offer a couple quotes that show how she likes to toss around beliefs and questions instead of real evidence for her claims.
Quote 1 --
In other words, her belief (not evidence) and worry about the potential for patients to get sensitized (again not demonstrated by test results) are sufficient reason not to vaccinate.
I forget which one, but at least one major vaccine which is grown in egg has been tested and shown to be safe to administer even to patients who are already sensitive to eggs.
In fact, many vaccines offer protection for much longer than 3-5 years and we have plenty of data to support that. Those data are the basis for CDC recommendations on how often to get re-immunized with a booster shot.
Another example of her "just get the disease and suffer" attitude is here:
http://www.examiner.com/article/measles-are-marvelous-phd-immunologist-…
And, Amanda, I suggest you read Dr Hall's blog from today which was linked on another blog thread at this site.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/how-to-think/#more-30239
It also discusses Melanie's Marvelous Measles which Dr Obukhanych seems to like.
“I just posted the following after the first paragraph of the Andrew Wakefield Wikipedia page:
“The Wiki entry on Andrew Wakefield has a pharmaceutical Praetorian guard surrounding it preventing it from ever being corrected.”
It's a free Internet. The software is available. Rather than try to coopt and subvert a free resource produced by a network of volunteers, there's nothing stopping them from setting up their own rival Antivaxopedia.
I absolutely will, thank you so much, squirrelelite!
The anti-vax contingent could always start up their own 'pedia site.
My suggestion would be IrrationalWiki:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Anti-vaccination_movement
I'm kind of liking the mental image of me as a Praetorian Guard (my swordsmanship's kind of rusty, but I can still do bad things to people with the hilt). Do we get that bronze helmet with the long scarlet horsetail-thingy?
You're welcome, Amanda.
It does look like a great book and should be fun to read, as well.
Looks like Greg caught sight of himself in a mirror and mistook his reflection for a baboon. Again.
Comment about my comment above: anyone can sue for anything. But Andrew Wakefield should not be able to win such a suit.
Wakefield knows better than to sue Wikipedia and I think his fangirls would have trouble establishing standing (if that's the word I'm looking for). Pity, though. It would be fun to watch.
"Wakefield knows better than to sue Wikipedia " Not so sure. He sued BMJ.
@ Dorit:
If I may consult your expertise:
how do you think that the Texas case is going?
Andrew Wakefield filed additional documents on January 23. If you're asking when the decision would come down, I have no idea. If you're asking how the court would decide, I'd expect it to uphold the lower court's position - but there are no guarantees with a court.
Even if Andrew Wakefield wins on jurisdiction, his suit should not hold on the merits. He's a public figure, and he'd have to prove untruth and malice.
I'd add that this would happen more or less immediately if Wakefraud wins the appeal, because then the anti-SLAPP is reached, which he really, really does not want to happen.
Wakefraud's succeeding in the appeal is absolutely the best possible outcome for those who only have to pay for popcorn instead of lawyers and would enjoy watching him publicly spit-roasted.
OK: "Nevertheless, because there is a common misconception that vaccines also confer immunity, it is sometimes necessary to use a qualifier 'natural,' when referring to immunity, to distinguish it from vaccine-based protection."
The ex thus has no grounds to object to tetanus immunization.
Once this is settled, it's merely a matter of disassembly, brick by brick: She is SOL on pertussis, which produces unremarkable "natural immunity," so why bother contracting the disease? Hib? Not especially. Pneumococcal disease? Looks like "natural immunity" by individual serotype only. Measles? Hep B? Provide some actual evidence that the vaccine-induced immunity isn't lifelong. You know, like where all the older vaccinated adults are with the illness. Varicella? I contracted it as an adult from someone whose "permanent immunity" after the childhood bout was so naturaliciously perfect that he contracted and spread it all over again. Etc.
GreggyPoo, #498, February 11, 2014
I conjecture from this that Greg doesn't believe in International Standards, or at least IS8601 specifically. That's why he lacks the knowledge thereof, and refuses to consider evidence (even Wikipedia articles) that might enlighten him. Oh, that's right: the idea of 'enlightenment' is anathema to his Dark-Ages episteme.
I notice, also, that Greggypoo doesn't bother addressing the substantive issues of my #476 even the issue he quotes. Perhaps they're too far above his chosen DK level, or too embarrassing to mention, so he chooses (as usual for the Pro-VPD crowd in general and Greggypoo in particular) to sidetrack with invented, irrelevant personal insults.
"Who really believes that we have always had all these autistics, and we are just starting to notice them?"
So in 1943, when Leo Kanner in the US and Hans Asperger in Austria independently identified syndromes in children that they labeled "autism", they were really shilling for vaccines that wouldn't exist for decades.
The Gregger rattles once again.
Thank you, Narad! What you wrote really got through to my partner. Much appreciated.
Greg, if you're reading...
Stick the flounce this time.
Who is the poster "courage and hope" ( I think that's the moniker, but I'm tired and it's late, so I could be wrong). She posted on PBS's site and is having a fit because some of her comments were removed and she didn't care for mine.
So in 1943, when Leo Kanner in the US and Hans Asperger in Austria independently identified syndromes in children that they labeled “autism”, they were really shilling for vaccines that wouldn’t exist for decades.
Never mind those late-comers, a certain Dr Down (who has a syndrome named after him) described an identical clinical picture of autism in his 1887 lectures.
There will always be these numpties insisting that nothing could possibly have happened before they were born, otherwise they would have known about it.
Christina Waldman. See above.
@Amanda,
Just to expand on Narad's excellent precis of the "problem" of natural immunity from disease.
To recap, Measles vaccine and Hep B vaccine look like they induce lifelong immunity, and that against the other live viruses like rubella, varicella and mumps is pretty durable too.
Natural infections like pertussis do not induce lifelong immunity; it is barely better than that induced by vaccine.
Tetanus does not induce any natural immunity; after one attack you are vulnerable all over again, and again, and again... (as you also are following typhoid infection, btw). Varicella doesn't induce permanent "immunity" anyhow in one sense; what you gain is an infection that then lies dormant in your nervous system, ready to re-emerge later in life as nasty shingles. You can boost immunity against varicella which keeps the virus dormant - you can do this through either natural exposure to your kids/grandkids who have chickenpox, or through zoster vaccine. As a parent, I'd prefer the moral high ground here and suggest that most of us would be more comfortable getting a vaccine in late middleage rather than requiring our offspring or offspring's offspring to go and get an unpleasant disease, just so they can give us a natural immune booster by exposing us to fresh chickenpox. And what if the disease is something like Hep B? "Recovery" doesn't imply jolly times - 5-10% become carriers (infecting others) and get chronic liver disease, cirrhosis and liver cancer. Yeah, that's a doozy price to pay for the "benefit" of gaining "natural immunity" and not being able to catch the disease again!
And I can never understand the imperative to gain "natural immunity" by getting the disease anyhow - if the disease is so bad that you really want to gain protection against it, why actually go and get the damn thing in the first place, just to gain immunity against "catching the disease again"? Paradoxical, irrational, illogical and plain stupid thinking, seeing as how the diseases carry great risk in themselves for many.
Ultimately, it's a risk-benefit thing. The risks from vaccines are orders of magnitude less than the risks from the diseases. now I know some say that if they keep vigilant,, they won't be exposed to disease, which may be something that is true if you stay in a community with high vaccination rates and near zero disease prevalence, but with more and more people choosing not to vaccinate the risks of exposure are rising. Look at the situation in Europe, where MMR vaccination is often so low that there are major outbreaks (up to 30,000 cases per year, with as many as 29 deaths back in 2011 I recall). That scenario could well be USA in a few years. If your ex's kids don't get exposed to some of these diseases now, they probably will be. And illnesses like varicella can be worse in adults, and things like mumps can cause orchitis/oophoritis in adults, which cann cause infertility. Plenty good reasons to vaccinate, imho.
dingo199 - Excellent points, explained in a very readable, concise manner, thank you very much! I so appreciate your time and energies phrasing things in way I am not quite capable of (this applies to everyone who responded).
Also, motivation for me to get my boosters when I'm done chemo!
Stupid question, but I heard it somewhere and want to be sure of the correct answer... Will I need to redo vaccinations after chemo anyway?
Dang, I hate it when I let bad grammar slip through.
Amanda: Perhaps this will help (starting on page 19)...ACIP General Recommendations on Vaccinations.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/rr/rr6002.pdf
#529 Ah, thank you, Narad/.
I know this is generally about childhood immunizations, but I just saw this on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/11/health/flu-miscarriage-death/index.html#c…
Absolutely tragic.
@Amanda,
you could do worse than look at Dorit Reiss's articles at shot of prevention:
http://shotofprevention.com/2014/02/11/the-rights-of-the-unvaccinated-c…
I don't understand...A study showed that 81 percent of 2010 California whooping cough cases in people under the age of 18 occurred in those who were fully up to date on the whooping cough vaccine. Eleven percent had received at least one shot, but not the entire recommended series, and only eight percent of those stricken were unvaccinated.
If they were vaccinated, then why didn't it stop them from getting whooping cough? Clearly the vaccine likely provides very little, if any, protection from the disease. In fact, the research suggests those who are fully vaccinated may in fact be more likely to get the disease than unvaccinated populations.
TClark: Only because there are more vaccinated kids, despite your fellow travelers' crusades.
TClark:
Source for this study, please, although I suspect it's somethinf like Null, Mercola, TMR or AoA.
Wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
You're wrong. According to this study, the unvaccinated were 8 times more likely than the vaccinated to contract pertussis. The reason that this is possible when (according to you) 81% of victims were fully vaccinated and 11% had received one shot was simply because well over 90% of people were fully vaccinated.
Source for this study, please, although I suspect it’s somethinf like Null, Mercola, TMR or AoA.
TClark is indeed copy-paste-spamming his/her comment unchanged from Mercola.
@hdb: nice catch.
Julian what's wrong with you??
The study that you cited at #538 to counter TClark's claim of a study finding a greater vaxxed rate for 2010 California whooping cough cases did no such thing. The study you linked merely examined whether the new DTaP vaccine provides better protection that the old DTwP. And, it found the old DTwP to be more effective.
God! -- you guys appear to be sinking to blatant dishonesty!
What's especially amusing to me is that at least some of Mercola's own audience, primed to believe his message, called him out on that attempted fast one:
You and us both, brother.
Greg, did you read the abstract or the full article?
Gleg would not know what "the abstract" meant.
@Julian,
Unfortunately, only the abstract is available online unless you want to purchase it or have a subscription or institutional access. Of course, Greg is a medical professional so this should be no problem ;)
For other references:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24082000
A better ref is:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23188029
In other words, how well the vaccine protects against pertussis declines over a five year period after completing the series. This is why regular boosters are recommended. I think I got my last one about 3 years ago.
During the first year after completing the series, vaccinated children are 50 times less likely to get pertussis than non-vaccinated. After 5 years, this declines to a little more than 3 times less likely.
@Julian
"Greg, did you read the abstract, or the full study"?
The link that you provided did not connect me to the full study. I also found another link and all it mentioned was a study comparing teenagers given the DTaP and DTwP vaccines. No mention was made about unvaccinated cases. Can you be so kind as to provide a link to the full study? Also, please quote where it states that,
"the unvaccinated were 8 times more likely than the vaccinated to contract pertussis."
I have seen this foolish conclusion corrected so many times it's hard to believe there is anyone left that still fails to understand why it's wrong. Even Greg must be able to understand why this isn't true (I wouldn't bet on it though).
Most people who suffer head injuries in car crashes were wearing seat belts, therefore seat belts don't prevent head injuries? More than 90% of people who get cancer are right-handed, therefore being right-handed causes cancer?
See the problem?
I doubt Dreg DOES "see the problem."
Or, commonly, here (14 times higher, capturing concentration), or here (23 times higher).
Greg:
Since I'm not a medical professional and I don't have the money, no. But please look at the links that squirrelelite and Narad so kindly provided (thank you both).
You have a link to the full study. Oh, wait, you mean you want somebody to steal it for you?
I don't have access to it from here, so I don't know whether it was a miscitation or not. I'm certainly not going to walk 20 minutes each way to the library in the slush to find out for your sake, however. Both of the items I provided above have open-access full text.
So many nasty commentators...you people act like grade school kids working on a group science project.
You try to discredit the actual facts with pharmaceutical spin and then scoff at me for not believing an industry that puts profits before people? Yea, I'm the one who needs to my head examined...but I guess if I wait long enough, they'll come up with a vaccine for that. With over 300 vaccines in the works, I can't wait to see what nonsense they can convince the overly brainwashed to have stuck in their arm. The original article appeared April 3, Reuters Health, which stated that the vaccines didn't work and recommended increasing the schedule. Gee, what a great idea.
"Conclusions. Our data suggests that the current schedule of acellular pertussis vaccine doses is insufficient to prevent outbreaks of pertussis. We noted a markedly increased rate of disease from ages 8–12 years, proportionate to the interval since the last scheduled vaccine. Stable rates of testing ruled out selection bias. The possibility of earlier or more numerous booster doses of acellular pertussis vaccine either as part of routine immunization or for outbreak control should be entertained." (cid.oxfordjournals.org/.../1730)
The information regarding the outbreak in CA happened and the people who suffered the most were the ones vaccinated, according to a study you don't agree with...I get it, ridicule and degrade anyone who doesn't hold your pharmaceutical based research to heart...as if they have a track record of transparency, integrity or morals? No matter how you want to dress it up to appease your conscience, without vaccinations, pediatricians probably wouldn't have job...and as far as mercola, goes...you are talking about the number one health newsletter online. i wonder why? Could it be the failure of the current allopathic model, designed to cure symptoms (and that they don't even do well) and ignore the actual cause, - sending people to find an alternative to petrol based pharmaceuticals? Can't make a profit if everyone is healthy...speaking of which, how do we measure the efficacy of our current health system? It's not
doing so well. People are more sick today then ever. Number one killer of children is cancer? right after suicide (thanks to those SSRIs) and everyone carries on like we're winning?
One study suggests the number is 1 out of every 300 that go into the hospital don't make it. And because you wouldn't believe me anyway, check out where we land on the infant mortality list in the industrial world...but I got a feeling you'll spin that too.
Warning: this next bit of info will be copy and paste...for those easily offended, overt your eyes.
A new survey of 7724 participants shows unvaccinated children are healthier and have vastly fewer chronic conditions than the vaccinated.
UPDATE 8 March 2012:
The survey is continually updated so we recommend you visit the source site [links below] if you want to see the updated data. There is also a summary chart comparing vaccinated to unvaccinated children for various conditions on the site on the page found here. Today numbers in the survey are 10921 participants.
What follows is the original text of this post on 26th August 2011.
You can find the up-to-date results of illnesses and diseases in unvaccinated children here in the results of the survey.
Full details of the survey appear below with graphs. The results are subdivided into different age groups. Information about country, gender, age, age distribution, breastfeeding, preferred treatment can be found here.
This is excellent work from an independent source. The survey is conducted by www.impfschaden.info and the English version www.vaccineinjury.info. The survey is originally published here The Health of Unvaccinated Children, Survey Results.
About twenty years ago in 1992 a survey by the New Zealand Immunisation Awareness Society found also that unvaccinated children are healthier than the vaccinated: Unvaccinated Children Are Healthier.
It is interesting neither the US National Institutes of Health [US$30.5 billion annual budget on medical research] nor the US Centers for Disease Control [US$11 billion budget annually] could find the time or money to fund this kind of research but instead waste US tax dollars on a great deal of pointless medical research and promotion of iatrogenic [man made] disease causing agents [modern drug company "treatments"]. Hardly surprising then that an extraordinary 115 page review was published in June 2007 by the US Senate on the US Centers for Disease Control:-
A review of how an agency tasked with fighting and preventing disease has spent hundreds of millions of tax dollars for failed prevention efforts, international junkets, and lavish facilities, but cannot demonstrate it is controlling disease.” “CDC OFF CENTER“- The United States Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security, Minority Office , Under the Direction of Senator Tom Coburn, Ranking Minority Member, June 2007.
Oddly the anti-vaccine-safety lobby not only will not carry out studies of the health of unvaccinated children but they just don’t want the studies done. Which should be a strange thing because they all insist the vaccines are safe and effective. But in the CHS article linked at the end of this paragraph we show they actively sabotage this kind of work for sport at the expense of vaccine injured children. This shows anti-vaccine-safety blogger Dr David Gorski’s self-admitted “minions” openly boasting on his blog about sabotaging this new study. That is a fraud by these cyber thugs and bullies on all the parents who provided genuine information and tells you all you need to know about the anti-vaccine-safety lobby. These animals are nasty, just nasty [Text added 2nd Sept 2011 @1240 EDT & updated 20 Sept 2011 @ 06:40 EDT]:- Unvaccinated Kids Healthier Study – Gorski & His Internet Bullies Admit Sabotage
How many here work for Gorski?
You know what? I'm willing to go out on a limb and suggest that it's possible that Klein, Bartlett, Fireman, Rowhani-Rahbar, & Baxter should actually be, or might as well be replaced with, Klein, Bartlett, Rohwhani-Rahbar, Fireman, & Baxter, here, which gets you the 8-fold decrease (i.e., closer to unvaccinated) from peak immunity to the gap at 10–11 years.
"People are more sick today then ever.'
Without including illnesses attributable to "lifestyle," prove this is true. Cite your sources.
And it's 'avert your eyes,' not "overt."
"check out where we land on the infant mortality list in the industrial world"
Maybe YOU should check out just how other countries measure infant mortality. Here's a clue: they don't do it the way we do. Our measures are far less forgiving than theirs.
#555 Oh, I'm guessing that's actually true.
Because before they weren't sick at all with those illnesses--they were dead. Now that they don't die, they survive to get sick.
That's a good thing.
No, TClark, we debunked the mathematically incorrect conclusion you drew from the facts (or more precisely, the incorrect conclusion that Joseph Mercola drew from the facts and that you then plagiarized.)
If I told you that I'd made a list of all those who had contracted pertussis and found that vanishingly few of them had polydactyly (extra fingers or toes), would you conclude from that that NOT having extra fingers or toes ('normaldactyly', as it were) must be a huge risk factor for pertussis? Look at the statistics! Over 99% of pertussis outbreak victims had five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot! Doesn't that PROVE that normaldactyly must be a huge risk factor for pertussis??
Of course it doesn't. A figure like "X% of the population that fell victim to the outbreak had trait Y", where "Y" is "vaccinated" or "unvaccinated" or "polydactyl", tells us nothing by itself; only when you compare it with how prevalent that trait is in the general population does it give us any information.
So tell us - what percentage of the population is completely unvaccinated against pertussis? Is it 7%? Is it 4%? 1%? If it's anything less than 8%, that's indicating that being unvaccinated against pertussis is a big risk factor. If someone showed us charity statistics that said "this group makes up only 1% of the population, yet they contributed 8% of the charitable donations this year", we'd say "wow, that group is really generous!" Well, guess what? The unvaccinated segment of the population is very "generous" when it comes to giving outbreaks their victims, but it's not a generosity that does anyone any good.
The funny thing is that several of Mercola's readers pointed out his elementary error in the comments, years before you plagiarized his error. Too bad you didn't do more reading.
It's cute that you couldn't even bother to hork up the year for this evasion. (Even better, Mercola tries to pass off press-release regurgitators "Science Daily" as a credible source.) Anyway, no. You weren't referring to a wire story, which would have been bad enough of itself, you were plagiariazing Mercola.
TClark:
"I don’t understand…A study showed that 81 percent of 2010 California whooping cough cases in people under the age of 18 occurred in those who were fully up to date on the whooping cough vaccine. Eleven percent had received at least one shot, but not the entire recommended series, and only eight percent of those stricken were unvaccinated.
If they were vaccinated, then why didn’t it stop them from getting whooping cough? Clearly the vaccine likely provides very little, if any, protection from the disease. In fact, the research suggests those who are fully vaccinated may in fact be more likely to get the disease than unvaccinated populations."
Mercola:
"In fact, the study showed that 81 percent of 2010 California whooping cough cases in people under the age of 18 occurred in those who were fully up to date on the whooping cough vaccine. Eleven percent had received at least one shot, but not the entire recommended series, and only eight percent of those stricken were unvaccinated.
"According to the authors[3]:
"'This first detailed analysis of a recent North American pertussis outbreak found widespread disease among fully vaccinated older children. Starting approximately three years after prior vaccine dose, attack rates markedly increased, suggesting inadequate protection or durability from the acellular vaccine.' [Emphasis mine]
"The pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine is included as a component in 'combination' shots that include tetanus and diphtheria (DPT, DTaP, Tdap) and may also include polio, hepatitis B, and/or Haemophilus Influenza B (Hib). CDC data shows 84 percent of children under the age of three have received at least FOUR DTaP shots—which is the acellular pertussis vaccine that was approved in the United States in 1996—yet, despite this high vaccination rate, whooping cough still keeps circulating among both the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
"So, as clearly evidenced in this study, the vaccine likely provides very little, if any, protection from the disease. In fact, the research suggests those who are fully vaccinated may in fact be more likely to get the disease than unvaccinated populations."
It's OK, you're not the only one.
Now, please identify where the Reuters item makes the profoundly boneheaded assertion in the final sentence.
@tclark
Ah yes, the old pharma shill gambit in your silly little rant, a sure sign that you have no argument to speak of.
Perhaps you tried the search function before ordering the extra bowl of copypasta.
^ "should have tried"
I don't know how anyone can say the state of our health in this country is doing great. Lifestyle is just one part of the equation...diabetes is off the charts, depression, digestive issues, neurological problems, Alzheimer is becoming the norm after 72, autism has gone from almost non existent to 1 out of whatever the number happens to be this month...because the number steadily declines and no body is actually addressing the issue, whether vaccines cause the problem or not.
The sick business is doing great in the US.
It’s depressing to look too closely at the U.S. health indicators. It’s pretty well known that our headline health figures, like life expectancy and infant mortality, are among the rich world’s worst, and the OECD confirms that impression. Of the 30 countries for which the OECD reports data, the U.S. comes in 24th in life expectancy, with poorer countries behind it. And of the same 30 countries, the U.S.has the sixth-highest incidence of low birthweight among newborns, and the third-highest level of infant mortality; again, it’s mostly poor countries like Mexico and Turkey that have more painful figures.
Americans may be champs in the horizontal dimension, but we’re not doing so well on the vertical. The U.S. is about the only country in the OECD in which people in their early 20s aren’t taller than those in their late 40s—a distinction that cannot be explained by the immigration to the U.S. of short people. No, it’s mostly about childhood nutrition, or lack of it.
And of the ten countries for which the OECD has data, Americans have the most severe psychological problems, with nearly half experiencing some form of mental illness during their lifetimes—and over a quarter in any given year. Our mental disorders tend to be more severe, as well; though France is pretty high up in the rankings, three times as many disorders are classified as mild rather than severe; the two categories are almost equal in the U.S. And the U.S. leads in all brands of mental problems—anxiety, mood, substance abuse, and impulse control.
But it’s not just those basics. Americans are the world’s fattest people, which despite the best efforts of the fat acceptance lobby, is not something that comports with a high degree of physical or social health. Though the association isn’t statistically airtight, there is a tendency for countries with high poverty rates to have obese populations; this is certainly true for Mexico and the U.S., if not for Japan or Turkey.
http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Awfulness.html
Each year, about one million infants around the world die on the same day they’re born. That figure includes about 11,300 U.S. babies — the highest first-day infant mortality rate of any other country in the industrialized world, according to a new report from Save the Children. http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/05/07/1973341/us-infant-mortality-…
and then we have this copy and paste...
German study released in September 2011 of about 8000 UNVACCINATED children, newborn to 19 years, show vaccinated children have more than twice the diseases and disorders than unvaccinated children.
The results are presented in the bar chart below; the complete data and study results are here. http://www.vaccineinjury.info/vaccinations-in-general/health-unvaccinat…
I know this might be hard to believe, but the US does not lead the world in anything anymore but debt and killing in wars.
The US is NOT the leader in health care in the modern world.
In fact, the US is not even in the Top Ten. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the health care system in the US ranked 38th in the world in 2000. If you're thinking that was over a decade ago, maybe we're doing better now, think again.
Americans DO NOT LIVE LONGER than people in many other advanced countries.
Don't trust UN figures? How about Bloomberg? According to a Bloomberg study of the most efficient health systems in the world, the US ranks 46th, just below Iran (oops!) and just above Serbia. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Sick-in-America-What-Toda-by-Thomas-Ma…
Oh, wow, it's even better: The copy 'n' paste is from Clifford "Graph Boy" Miller (who actually shows up in the comments for a bit of barely decipherable babbling, along with Pattimmy, who may have been attempting to translate or something).
Narad, that cut and paste just proves that TClark in unable to think for himself. Especially if he thinks a self-selected online survey by a homeopath is valid.
From the CDC, Tclark: Key findings
Data from the United States’ Linked Birth/Infant Death Data Set and the European Perinatal Health Report
Infant mortality rates for preterm (less than 37 weeks of gestation) infants are lower in the United States than in most European countries; however, infant mortality rates for infants born at 37 weeks of gestation or more are higher in the United States than in most European countries.
One in 8 births in the United States were born preterm, compared with 1 in 18 births in Ireland and Finland.
If the United States had Sweden’s distribution of births by gestational age, nearly 8,000 infant deaths would be averted each year and the U.S. infant mortality rate would be one-third lower.
The main cause of the United States’ high infant mortality rate when compared with Europe is the very high percentage of preterm births in the United States.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-02/uobc-irf021512.php
Before you start yammering about infant mortality statistics, Clark, maybe you should read about them.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/276952/infant-mortality-deceptiv…
Math is a creation of Big Pharma. WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!!!!!!
I notice TClark thinks changing the subject will let him get away with anything. Have a false claim exposed, just throw up a new claim.
Too bad we have a way to deal with that behavior. Anyone want to present an ultimatum question for our visitor?
Anyone want to present an ultimatum question for our visitor?
I'm not up to it right now (trying to determine if I have Klinefelter Syndrome) but I will be able sometime either tomorrow or Thursday next week.
Alain
I'm going to Montreal again Saturday to Wednesday. In fact, I'm trying to move there.
Alain
Alzheimer is becoming the norm after 72, autism has gone from almost non existent to 1 out of whatever the number happens to be this month
Oh noes, the incidence of age-related dementia is increasing, what could be the cause?
Oh noes, the incidence of age-related dementia is increasing, what could be the cause?
The fallacy off the 100%, assuming that the body work 100% until it drop to 0%.
Alain
Could you learn to use quotation marks? Nobody's interested in random "progressive" quote-blobs from dreck such as OpEdNews (which predictably recycles Mercola material simply by wrapping a frame around it).
TClark @564:
Firstly, the most likely explanation for the increase in diagnosed cases is a combination of increased awareness, broadened criteria, diagnostic substitution and previous underdiagnosis. As to your claim that nobody is looking at it, wrong again. Finally, we have looked at whether vaccines cause autism. Multiple studies have been done, including one that looked at every child born in Denmark over a period of several years. None found any link.
Lifestyle is a major part of the problem. Obesity, lack of exercise, smoking, and excessive alcohol cause a very large proportion of the preventable ill-health and deaths in the developed world. If the US does have more health problems in some areas than other developed countries, it seems likely it is due to either lifestyle or to poorer healthcare in large numbers of people i.e. not enough of the conventional medical care that all the other countries use, not too much as TClark implies.
We are seeing the same new health challenges in the rest of the developed world. People are living longer so we see more diseases of old age. The low-hanging fruit of infectious disease are almost gone, thanks to improvements in hygiene, vaccines and antibiotics. Now we have to deal with diseases that are far less common but more difficult to deal with, and progress is being made every day.
Extraordinary breakthroughs in medicine have led to large increases in longevity and improvements in healthy active old age we have seen over the past century. How can anyone claim that conventional medicine has done the exact opposite when there is vast amounts of evidence to contradict it? It's very weird.
By the way, in regard to infant mortality, whether the figures for the US are correct or not, for developed countries the rate is currently between 2 and 7 deaths/1,000 live births. The variation depends largely on how the figure is arrived at, which differs from country to country as has been pointed out, and on premature birth rates, which have a number of different causes. The 2005 figure for the US was around 5, but in 1950 infant mortality in the US was greater than 30 deaths/1,000 live births, in 1980 it was 14.
How can anyone possibly claim that things are getting worse? Even more extraordinary, how can they claim that this imaginary deterioration in health can be blamed on the same type of medicine that is used by the other countries he compares the US to?
Similarly, how can anyone look at this:
And conclude that the problem is too much vaccination, not too little? Someone who has never seen a child with whooping cough fighting for each breath, I'd wager.
It really, really p!sses me off when people claim that those who support vaccination and other conventional medical interventions are too brainwashed or too stupid to understand what is going on, when they display a complete lack of critical thinking skills like this themselves. Do people like TClark really believe none of us read studies and think about this stuff?
I've been thinking of something.
DTaP and TDaP are both less effective than the original DTP triple jab. DTP was dropped because it was incorrectly believed to cause seizures, which were actually caused by Dravet's Syndrome.
Perhaps we should look at reintroducing the DTP.
A follow-up to my earlier comment: I got a bit of time and followed back the links to the paper cited by Mercola as the source of his figures. On page 22, we see a nifty little table showing how the proportion of the population fully vaccinated (PPV) compares to the proportion of cases in the outbreak that were fully vaccinated (PCV), both for the entire studied age range and for the three studied sub-ranges.
For the whole age range, the PPV was 90%. If vaccination did nothing to prevent against contracting the disease, the PCV should have also been 90%; if, as alleged by Mercola, vaccination increases chances of contracting against the disease, the PCV should also have been increased above 90%. But of course, the PCV was 81%, below 90%.
Now, by contrast, the percentage of the population that was un- or under-vaccinated (call it PPU) was just 10%. But what was the PCU? It was almost twice the PPU, at 19%!
A person would have to be wholly medically illiterate to conclude from this study that the vaccinated were more likely to contract the disease, when the data shows the clear opposite. Is Joe Mercola wholly medically illiterate? Or is he merely a cynical liar, who understands what the data shows but wants to conceal the truth from his customers - to prevent them from making an informed decision?
Julian Frost,
Emphasizing vaccine safety over efficacy does seem to have made things worse in this case, doesn't it? Of course it's the people who complain the most about safety who are also the first to complain if efficacy isn't as good as they want (i.e. 100%).
Antaeus Feldspar:
I'm even more cynical than you. I think he's a "true believer". He's convinced of the truth of what he says, and if the evidence contradicts him, he distorts it to fit with his preconceived notions.
Krebiozen, true. The reason I raised it was because of the discussion, and because my soon to be 7 nephew went for his boosters this week. If a person does not have an adverse vaccine reaction for the first set of shots, it may be worth it to do it.
Alzheimer is becoming the norm after 72,
That's going to be news to the local RSVP coordinator.
Julian,
I sometimes wonder about the Urabe mumps component of MMR, which was abandoned by the UK (never used in the US) after increased rates of aseptic meningitis were seen, though it did seem to provoke a stronger immunity than the strain it was replaced by. I believe it is still used in some parts of the world, as mumps causes meningitis far more frequently than the Urabe vaccine.
I'm also reminded of the tail-end of routine smallpox vaccination when, in the UK, a few deaths each year from vaccine reactions were considered acceptable collateral damage, even though most years there were no smallpox deaths at all. Times and attitudes have changed.
BTW I visited Sid's website earlier, and was amused to see he seems to have embraced the more casual attitudes to infectious diseases seen a few decades ago (measles is a mild disease), but not the tolerance of vaccine ADRs people used to have.
That's because his fraudulent libertarianism requires by definition that he not be a freeloader, although it has an obvious blind spot regarding the fact that his activity has demonstrated a complete lack of monetary value on the free market. Does anyone know whether he has actually successfully reproduced?
Narad: I can't say exactly where ( but @ RI) or when but I vaguely recall hearing something about a daughter somewhere.
-btw-I hope that the website being referenced is actually the Facebook page ( not THE website) 'cause that's where all of the activity takes place (i.e. advice about avoiding vaccines, getting exemptions, finding simpatico doctors, alt med healing consults et al)
IIRC, Offal managed to post a fact-free rant against HPV vaccine and mentioned that he would not have his daughter immunized against human papillomavirus. Poor kid; stuck with an ignorant father.
Ah, how could I have forgotten this debacle, in which the any-day-now media mogul (1) steadfastly denies that a knowledge of algebra is necessary to understand anything related to vaccines, (2) promptly demonstrates that he doesn't in fact grasp either subject well enough to comprehend trivial counterexamples, and (3) lends very strong support to Fowler's contention that it's probably pointless to try to teach adults how to use shall and will, directly undermining his own assertion that one can learn anything anytime.
And TClark pulls a Brave Sir Robin.