Countering the misinformation regularly promulgated by the antivaccine movement, be it antivaccinationists who are completely off the deep end, like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the crew at the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism, or that epitome of the Dunning-Kruger effect mixed with an annoying self-absorption and coffee klatch vibe (that is when it's not a wine party), The Thinking Moms' Revolution, or from seemingly more "reasonable" antivaccine advocates like pediatricians Robert "Dr. Bob" Sears or Dr. Jay Gordon. The reason is simple. Vaccines save lives. They prevent children from suffering from diseases that once devastated communities all across this nation. As a skeptic, I also find the misinformation, tropes, and pseudoscience regularly used by the antivaccine movement to justify their brand of dangerous quackery useful for general skeptical education because they are so full of common misuses of science and evidence, defects in thinking, and, of course, logical fallacies.
These sorts of issues were on full display a month ago when antivaccine guru Andrew Wakefield and former biochemical engineer turned incompetent vaccine epidemiologist Brian Hooker claimed that they had evidence that the CDC had "covered up" evidence that the MMR vaccine increased the risk of autism in certain African American boys by more than three-fold, when in reality he had done nothing more than provide more evidence that Andrew Wakefield was wrong. None of that stopped the ever-intrepid Drinking Thinking Drinking Moms from organizing "Twitter parties" and the antivaccine crankosphere turning the crazy up to 11 because they thought they had "smoking gun" evidence that the central conspiracy of the antivaccine movement, namely that the CDC knows vaccines cause autism and has been hiding data proving it, had been validated and mainstream news, apparently recognizing cranks when they saw them, was not biting despite being begged to cover the story.
Unfortunately, this mindset and these people have real effects. I was reminded of that three weeks ago by a story published in The Hollywood Reporter that noted that communities of the well-off on the west side of Los Angeles had vaccination rates lower than many Third World countries. I had meant to write about this particular article, but, blogging being what it is, somehow I never got around to it. Besides, Steve Novella took it on. However, blogging being what it is and news being what it is, not infrequently another chance presents itself. This time, that second chance came in the form of a CNN report, LA: Where the Rich Don't Vaccinate:
It's a story based on the Hollywood Reporter article, and it's disturbing. Also, our old buddy a Santa Monica pediatrician who caters specifically to those vaccine-fearing west siders in Santa Monica, "Dr. Jay" Gordon, makes an appearance in which he inadvertently reveals the selfish mindset of the antivaccine movement coupled with a denial of the very concept of herd immunity that's utterly shocking coming from a pediatrician. It just goes to show that, even though Dr. Jay seems to have learned a little bit from his days of mindlessly repeating Jenny McCarthy's "toxins" gambit about formaldehyde (which he appears no longer to do), he still hasn't learned anything new about vaccines, other than perhaps more sophisticated ways to spread the antivaccine message while maintaining plausible deniability that he is not "antivaccine." Make no mistake. He is antivaccine to the core, given the way he likes to compare vaccine companies to tobacco companies.
First, let's see the wave that Dr. Jay and Dr. Bob and other practitioners and irresponsible pediatricians are riding in California. It's a wave that's already started to result in what public health officials have long feared as a result of antivaccine beliefs: A resurgence of certain vaccine-preventable diseases in California, such as pertussis and measles. Worse, pediatricians like Dr. Bob and Dr. Jay take no responsibility for the mess they've helped cause. Dr. Bob wrote a two famous Facebook posts in essence berating his patients' parents for bugging him about whether or not they should get the MMR vaccine for their children and their (*to him) excessive concern about measles outbreaks near his Capistrano Beach office. It was a breathless bit of refusing to take any responsibility, consistent with his history of refusing to take responsibility for declining vaccination rates even though he admits that half of his practice is completely unvaccinated.
So let's look at what's going on in LA with respect to vaccination rates, and then we'll come back to Dr. Jay. According to the CNN story, vaccination rates in some areas, particularly Waldorf Schools are much lower than vaccination rates in Liberia, for instance. The Hollywood Times story puts it into more detail by recording the level of personal belief exemptions (PBEs) at various schools, you know the ability of parents to opt out of school vaccine mandates because of basically any belief at all:
The number of PBEs being filed is scary. The region stretching from Malibu south to Marina del Rey and inland as far as La Cienega Boulevard (and including Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, West Hollywood and Beverly Hills) averaged a 9.1 percent PBE level among preschoolers for the 2013-14 school year — a 26 percent jump from two years earlier. By comparison, L.A. County at large measured 2.2 percent in that period. Many preschools in this area spiked far higher, including Kabbalah Children’s Academy in Beverly Hills (57 percent) and the Waldorf Early Childhood Center in Santa Monica (68 percent). According to World Health Organization data, such numbers are in line with immunization rates in developing countries like Chad and South Sudan. These two schools aren’t outliers; dozens more — including Seven Arrows, Turning Point and Calvary Christian — report PBE levels that are five times the county average. And THR has found that administrators at many of these facilities are hardly alarmed.
It’s no secret that anti-vaccine sentiments run high on the Westside. But the data reveals a community where ambiguous fears about the perceived threat of immunization have in fact caused a very real threat. This is a hard topic to discuss, especially here in Hollywood. It hinges on parental choices that directly impact your own children and other parents’ kids, too — a dinner-party land mine to be avoided at all costs. Few parents would speak to THR on the record about their decisions for fear of the backlash.
One thing I noted about this story is the acknowledgement of something I've long known. It's the vaccines. Period. It's pointed out that, even though Andrew Wakefield's claim that the MMR causes autism has been thoroughly discredited to the point where even most antivaccine or vaccine-averse parents not in the echo chamber of AoA or TMR don't take it that seriously, concern has simply shifted:
Despite the debunking, public concerns remain strong. According to more than a dozen area pediatricians and infectious disease specialists THR spoke to, most vaccine-wary parents have abandoned autism concerns for a diffuse constellation of unproven anxieties, from allergies and asthma to eczema and seizures. “If I talk to most of my patients, who are very savvy by the way, they will say they know someone directly or indirectly who felt that their child has not been the same since the vaccine,” says Dr. Lauren Feder, whose pediatrics practice, popular with those leery of immunizations, is based just south of L.A.’s Miracle Mile.
Because, no matter what, it is always, always, always about the vaccines. But why the rich, privileged west siders of LA (and elsewhere)? Why is it that, this time around, it's more about the well-to-do? As Steve Novella pointed out, a lot of it has to do with power and privilege, coupled with a sense of entitlement. I'd add that there's also a huge helping of Dunning-Kruger effect, in which such people, catered to and able to buy almost anything they want all their lives, think that with a few hours studying at Google University they know enough to be able to reject the findings of science and the recommendations of physicians, scientists, and public health officials who have spent their lives studying infectious disease and vaccines. It's the arrogance of ignorance, and who's more arrogant than the privileged professionals of West Hollywood? The Hollywood Reporter also points out that many of these parents pay cash for concierge practices that don't take insurance, making them feel as though they can demand of their physicians things that others, whose medical expenses are paid through health insurance or other plans, would not feel entitled to demand, such as no vaccines or "personalized" vaccine schedules designed to cater to the irrational fears instilled in concerned parents by the antivaccine movement. These parents tend to be of the "crunchy" type, wanting what's "natural" and being prone to falling for the naturalistic fallacy, in which what is considered to be "natural" (whatever that means in practice) is automatically good—or at least better—than what is not.
Not surprisingly, Dr. Jay shows up in both the CNN report and the Hollywood Reporter article, spewing his usual and opining that "parents have a right to participate in the discussion, to decide when and how their children are vaccinated," as if anyone in public health says that they should not. In the CNN report, Dr. Jay says:
Reporter: Isn’t it [not vaccinating] inherently selfish?
Gordon: Yes, I’m encouraging parents to make a decision that they feel is best for their children while considering public health.
Reporter: Do you feel you’re endangering the public health?
Gordon: No. If vaccines work and everyone else is vaccinated, then there’s no risk to them.
Dr. Jay contradicts himself. He concedes that not vaccinating is inherently selfish but then claims that he's encouraging parents to do that selfish thing while considering public health. It's a contradiction that he can't resolve except by doing what antivaccine advocates everywhere do: Deny that herd immunity exists. So, in an astonishingly ignorant statement for a pediatrician to make, he invokes the old antivaccine trope that "if vaccines work and you're vaccinated" there's no risk to you. Of course, given the sloppy way Dr. Jay has constructed his sentence, it could also be reasonable interpreted as saying that if vaccines work and everyone else is vaccinated (i.e., those non-privileged suckers who aren't as savvy as my cash-paying patients) my patients have nothing to worry about. I know he probably meant the former, which is utterly wrong, but the latter is not an unreasonable interpretation, either. Either way, what about children who for medical reasons can't be vaccinated? Screw 'em! Dr. Jay is a nice guy and would be appalled that I'm attributing that attitude to him, but what other attitude is there to attribute to him? It's right there on video! He doesn't give a rodent's posterior about children with cancer, for example, his protestations about "public health" notwithstanding.
He also claims that the more information you have about vaccines the less likely you are to follow CDC recommendations, which he intentionally represents in a fashion as scary as possible as the "six vaccines at a time" schedule. Of course, if the information you're getting is the sort of antivaccine nonsense spouted by vaccine "skeptic" pediatricians like Dr. Jay and Dr. Bob and you don't have the background in science and skepticism to recognize those arguments for the BS they are, then, yes, it's reasonable to be afraid. It's a fear based in ignorance and misinformation, but if all you are hearing are ignorance and misinformation it's not unreasonable to be afraid. What is needed are science, facts, and reason to counter that misinformation and assuage the fear. Gordon also makes the astounding admission that none of his patients vaccinate according to the CDC schedule. I'm sorry. I know Dr. Jay likes to think of himself as a nice guy trying to do what's best for his patients and will likely be highly offended when I say this, but that is medical malpractice in my book.
There's little doubt in my mind that Dr. Jay and Dr. Bob and other crunchy vaccine "skeptic" pediatricians are doing nothing more than clever marketing, capitalizing on the fears instilled in their wealthy, privileged clientele by antivaccine activists. Steve Novella put it quite well:
No amount of money or privilege can buy you better science. It is perhaps for this reason that some people choose “alternative” science. They think they are getting something better than the herd. Ultimately, however, this is just a cleverly marketed deception. In the case of alternative vaccine schedules, all they are buying is higher risk for their children for infectious and potentially serious diseases. Further, they are exporting this risk to others, perhaps with less privilege.
Exactly. Dr. Bob is even highly blatant about it, telling his nonvaccinating parents not to spread it around too much that they don't vaccinated so that they can "hide in the herd," taking advantage of herd immunity provided to them by those less privileged and less "savvy" parents who vaccinate their kids.
Yes, as I once said five years ago, when the outbreaks occur, they'll start in California. Actually, they already have. We just don't know how bad it'll get yet.
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As someone who lives in California, this is extremely disturbing. I have friends with young children living in areas like Marin county, and they are understandably worried. Of course we already saw measles this year and an epidemic of pertussis (though the blame for that cannot be put only on non-vaccinating - we really need a better pertussis vaccine. But non-vaccinating doesn't help).
When it comes from a pediatrician, it's more natural for parents to believe this firmly. The harm done by Dr. Bob and Dr. Jay is very, very high.
In the other half of this segment, by the way: http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2014/10/03/cnn-tonight…, the show presented Rebecca Estepp facing off with Harvey Karp in an ugly example of false balance.
Eventually, once the outbreaks are bad enough, people will come back around - it happens time and time again....we prefer a pound of cure to the ounce of prevention (just look at New Orleans & Katrina - $15 Billion to build good levees vs. Hundreds of Billions for reconstruction...which one did we pick?)
Unfortunately, by the time public sentiment (and I mean the fringe sentiment that caused this in the first place) is thoroughly discredited in the eyes of all but the fringe of the fringe, we will have suffered deaths and disablements at a rate we haven't seen in decades......all because people are too stupid to apply logical and rationality in public health decisions.
OT but are gatherings of the "Guardians of the Galaxy "( i.e. anti-vax authors) to hawk their books whilst charging highly-priced admission ever TRULY OT @ RI, I ask you?
Plus, it's Friday....
Kent Heckenlively ( AoA) invites the public to meet with Skyhorse Publishing and HealthChoice's celebrated authors in order to push vaccination rates even lower:
Kennedy, David Lewis, Wayne Rohde, Lou Conte, Kim Mack Rosenberg, Ann Dachel, Mssrs Blaxsted, Judy Mikovits and Heckenlively himself will appear in Minneapolis on the 1st of November. It costs 149 USD.
Is that *dia de los muertes*? Or the eve of that?
@ Dorit Reiss:
I truly love Marin County and endure extremely long flights in order to visit there but seriously, many of its denizens are woo-drenched unto dripping.
Eventually, once the outbreaks are bad enough, people will come back around
Exactly. If you are younger than 50, and you haven't traveled extensively in the third world, you have probably never seen an outbreak of measles or many other vaccine preventable diseases. (Chicken pox is an exception--as I've said before, the reason I didn't get that vaccine was because it wasn't available when I was a kid, and I later got chicken pox.) It's easy to become complacent. And the cost will be high when that complacency proves ill-founded.
Andrew Wakefield, being the ambitiously greedy bugger that he is, went for his fame and fortune full tilt with his now debunked Lancet paper. He was caught, the paper was debunked and retracted and he was also stripped of his license to practice medicine by the British Medical Council. Wakefield clearly is a sewer-dwelling creature and is shunned by (almost) all.
Sears and Gordon, however, have never been sanctioned for what has been a more insidious and persistent attack on vaccines and public health. They are, however, even more guitly than Wakefield for hurting children and damaging public health. What Sears and Gordon have done, they do for monetary gain (at their cash-only-charge-what-they-want-and-not-what-insurance-will-pay practices, and from selling books and webinars and appearing at admission-fee seminars) and glory-whoring fame. They have told numerous lies about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases like Wakefield as well, including continuing to espouse that non-existent link between vaccines and autism. They have both told parents publicly on TV not to vaccinate their children in the face of measles and pertussis epidemics in their own backyard . The reason that Sears and Gordon are much more guilty than Wakefield is that they are pediatricians--Wakefield was not. Sears and Gordon do indeed know better and, they absolutley do not care about their patients or public health. Both are guilty of medical malpractice. As a pediatrician and scientist, I abhor and despise Sears and Gordon. They do not deserve to have medical licenses or the privilege to care for patients.
I've been hoping and lobbying for years that either the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) or the Medical Board of the State of California would get off their duffs and do something. How the AAP can allow Sears and Gordon to claim membership as FAAPs is beyond me (well, actually it isn't--I got the cowardly answer in 2012, see http://www.stopsearsandgordon.org/history.html). The AAP claims it is "Dedicated to the Health of All Children". Well, I call BS on that, President James Perrin MD, FAAP and other AAP leadership. You are cowards when it comes to vaccines, and you should be ashamed of your inaction.
The AAP's annual convention is next week in San Diego--right smack in the middle of a whole lot of pertussis. I have little hope that the AAP will even acknowlege the pertussis epidemic around them at their annual backslapper, let alone say anything against two pediatricians who should have been expelled from the AAP years ago--after all they did nothing at their 2010 San Francisco convention which was also in the middle of a pertussis epidemic.
Let's hear it for the AAPathy (tm), whose motto should be "Dedicated to the Health of the AAP".
"Eventually, once the outbreaks are bad enough, people will come back around".
Yep when there was an outbreak of measles ( with fatalities), in Wales, brought about by a local newspaper gulping in the anti vax message and front paging on it, the sudden clamour to vaccinate resulted in queues round the block.
I remember my Dad saying when my sister had measles she was so covered in spots you couldn't put a sixpence between them. I' m guessing a sixpence is about the size of a cent.
the sixpence is obsolete now. It used to be a teeny weeny bit bigger than a cent (I think).
I'm from the UK and I do think that the "paid-for" medicine in the States is a big part of the problem. Both doctors competing for patients and patients sense of ownership of their medical care. Bonkers "alternative" care is probably cheaper than proper medical care (which in the UK is free). A person can feel that they are a) doing what rich and famous people do b) saving money and c) exercising personal choice and self-empowerment . All this just by not doing something. What's not to like?
@DW: at the risk of being inappropriate - email me next time you do that if you want to meet.
Last I look, Orange county - Dr. Bob's heartland - had 22 out of the state's 61 cases of measles: http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/discond/Pages/Measles.aspx, and Dr. Ilaneli mentions 7 hospitalizations: http://pediatrics.about.com/od/measles/a/measles-outbreaks.htm
Prof Reiss couldn't be inappropriate.
"Dr. Jay...doesn’t give a rodent’s posterior about children with cancer, for example, his protestations about “public health” notwithstanding."
I don't think we ever got an answer from Jay Gordon on whether he gets an annual flu shot to protect his patients (including children he encounters in the hospitals where he has privileges, as well as those who are not his patients but who are hospitalized with conditions causing immune suppression, making them especially susceptible to Gordon-germs).
What about your flu shot, Jay? Or is that someone else's problem too?
DW: Is that *dia de los muertes*? Or the eve of that?
No, it's Dia de Los Muertes. The eve would be Halloween.
Looking out preferrentially for your kids is not necessarily evil, but even so they're better off vaccinated. I had chickenpox as a child and shingles as an adult. Too bad they didn't have the shot when I was young (I'm 65).
@ PGP:
I only *bailo con las latinas*, I don't necessarily *hablo* with them ( in Spanish, anyway).
And yes, I find myself later singing songs from the class where I only understand the lyrics sporadically which is highly entertaining.
Of course Dr. Jay malpractices medicine. I believe he is an out and out quack.
He has updated his web site, and a lot of the worst anti-vax information is mostly gone, but there is still plenty of woo to be found. (May the HTML Gods protect me)
At http://drjaygordon.com/blog, the first section is 'Alternative Medicine'. In this, we find information on ear infections. See
(drjaygordonDOTcom)/alternative/earinfections-2.html
How about the common cold?
(drjaygordonDOTcom)/alternative/natural-treatments-for-colds.html
Perhaps you have depression?
(drjaygordonDOTcom)/alternative/herbal-treatment-of-depression.html
Because if you're going for unproven treatment, you want the highest quality unproven treatments.
What if your kid has ADD? Dr Jay says prescription meds can work, but don't rush into anything. Change your kids diet first.
(drjaygordonDOTcom)/alternative/add.html
Could there possibly be lots of sugar in fruits and vegetables? Nah, not in his world.
What other woo do we have outside the area set aside for it? Well, there is anti-fluoride scare tactics -
(drjaygordonDOTcom)/pediatricks/general/fluoride.html
The page has about a dozen links to ant-fluoride web sites.
Need a first aid kit? Dr Jay has you covered.
(drjaygordonDOTcom)/faqs/firstaidkit.html
Is your 'Woo Bingo Card full yet? Lets go to that old stand-by, vaccines. This should cover any blank spots you have.
How does Dr. Jay feel about the Hep B shot?
(drjaygordonDOTcom)/vaccinations/hepatitisb.html
I wonder how hard hepatitis B hits the immune system?
Rotavirus?
(drjaygordonDOTcom)/vaccinations/rotavirus.html
Screw the science and their new fangled prevention. Kids should get sick, just like back in the old days.
Flu?
(drjaygordonDOTcom)/faqs/flushots.html
You have a premature infant?
(drjaygordonDOTcom)/vaccinations/preemies.html
Well, at least he admits he just makes stuff up.
Whooping cough?
(drjaygordonDOTcom)/vaccinations/do-our-kids-need-whooping-cough-vaccinations-4.html
About the only woo I can't find is acupuncture and chiropractic. So he's got that going for him. I guess he's not a total quack.
I have been reading here for a long time, and few things make me more upset than the slimy practices of Doctors Sears and Gordon. I wish that they would both be publicly censured by the AAP. If one of their unimmunized patients infects a child to young to be vaccinated or someone who is immunocompromised, I hope that they are sued. That may be the only way to make either one of them develop a conscience.
Privilege eight times in one piece. Weird. Didn't realize you co-majored in grievance studies back in college.
Anyway, I don't think either you or Novella understand the meaning of the word
You confuse earned affluence with some type of special favor granted to one by another.
Your piece, while amusing, amounts to little more than a repetition of the neo-socialist drivel online rags such as Salon and Slate have been peddling for ages.
Yeah, because to Robert Schecter anything to do with actual science is "neo-socialist drivel "
@Sid
As a resident of a west LA, I find your notion of "earned affluence" pretty hilarious.
Excellent service A++++ Would be trolled again
Why am I not surprised that our troll is also a political wingnut?
Earned affluence? In some cases, yes. But by far the best predictor of how rich you'll get is how rich you started off.
You didn't build that. Right on, Comrade!
Sid was counting words because he can't understand those with more than 2 syllables. How cute...
Oh, Orac!
You had really better watch it using expressions like-
' rich...privileged... well-to-do...sense of entitlement... concierge practice'
IIRC Dr Jay called me racist for saying less!
Ok, I DID say 'white' which -btw- I am as well as somewhat privileged myself.
That quote, of itself, sums up Dr. Jay better than anything a third party could offer.
@ Eric Lund (but not related to #5)--is this your video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyePASErr5Q ?
Hey, Bob, what have you "built" other than a fake publishing house and lies to reporters about having published child-care books? A freebie FB page and a moribund freebie blog?
DW: I don’t necessarily *hablo* with them ( in Spanish, anyway).
And yes, I find myself later singing songs from the class where I only understand the lyrics sporadically which is highly entertaining.
I only speak a little spanish myself
> if vaccines work and everyone else is vaccinated ...
> my patients have nothing to worry about.
You're being charitable to read his meaning as anything but that -- that's exactly what his words mean. That's an accurate statement of how herd immunity works -- and of exceptionalism -- use everyone else for protection. Put the little people between you and any threat or risk, use them up.
Duh.
Well this was depressing last thing on a Friday. I have worked in PH too long not to know truth when I read it. The outbreaks as you say have already begun in CA. They won't stay there. And it is also truth that these people will not wake up to the danger until their children are in the hospital hooked up to tubes and wires or (goddess forbid) dead. There is a whole website (and I can't be fussed to look it up right now as I am headed out the door home) dedicated to showing parents stories about their unvaccinated child who contracted a disease. Many of these children died, some lived with serious disability. Google something like vaccine stories or something like that I will find it and post it. It is powerfully moving. I remember a conference I went to that had a mom speak about losing her teenage son to bacterial meningitis. I cried. He was vaccinated but hadn't received that one because she didn't know about it. It was heartbreaking. All these anti-vax parents should have to meet with the parents of a child lost to a vaccine preventable disease before they are allowed to sign that form.
For once, I looked at the ads on the page...
Down the right hand side is woo.
The very top of the page: "Immunise baby on time. Diseases don't discriminate. Immunise - their best protection. Health.govt.nz"
Sometimes our governments get it right!
A not for Sid - "privilege" literally means "private law", referring to those who for whatever reason, do not have to abide by the same rules as the hoi pollloi.
@Krebiozen
From which laws are the folks in West L.A exempt? Who grants them these exemptions
Truly ironic for someone who does nothing but bitch, moan, and idiotically ridicule and leech off of the same from others on a Facebook page for a simulacrum of prestige.
*or rules*
Would you care to rephrase this in the form of a sentence?
Put it like this: if everyone behaved like Sears' and Gordon's patients, measles and other VPDs would soon become endemic in the US again. Thousands of children would be hospitalized and hundreds would die every year. They are behaving as if the normal rules of social conduct, in this case getting their children vaccinated to protect them and others, somehow don't apply to them. They believe their special little snowflakes are too precious to be polluted with nasty vaccines, so they depend on ordinary parents to protect them by vaccinating their ordinary children. That's privilege.
@ Sid Offit --
This...
...assumes a reader who's ordinarily fluent enough in colloquial English usages to grasp that the thing being described is the word's etymology, not its definition.
And very generously so, in your case. Because you seem to have gotten confused at a more basic and elementary level.
If having earned affluence confers an advantage on people that others generally don't enjoy, it confers a privilege.
I don't know where you got that one-to-another favor-granting idea from. But it's ridiculous. There are privileges of youth. Privileges of age. Privileges of beauty. Privileges of [anything that confers an advantage on those who have it], potentially.
Try glancing around a little at the context. There are usually clues.
Really, Sid?
The passage of AB2109 did not eliminate the Personal Belief Exemption from vaccine requirements for school enrollment (Health and Safety Code, Division 105, Part 2, Chapter 1, Sections 120325-120380). The parents granted those to themselves.
Those exemptions are still in use, increasing the chances of preventable disease outbreaks at those schools with high exemption rates.
Did you skip reading the blogpost or any of the links, or are your comments intentionally obtuse?
Here's a follow up report that is mostly about public schools in the same region:
http://www.citywatchla.com/lead-stories-hidden/7646-is-your-kindergarte…
The story also contains a link to an interactive map which allows us to identify problem schools. I've already found a couple of local schools that are inadequate.
An aside: As a resident of the area, I'm not aware of a lot of publicly available information about the vaccination habits of celebrities, and it's not really evident from the maps or lists whether any of this is celebrity driven. There may be some relationship to the income levels of the parents, but perhaps the relationship is a little more complicated. For example, the fraction of families with stay at home parents of either sex, the attitude of independence that comes with having money, or some other variable. The percentage of English language speakers might show a correlation, considering that the wider area has a couple of dozen different Asian and southeast Asian languages spoken, and a few different central American dialects.
This disturbing trend is new to public discussion, but perhaps some UCLA grad student will do a study of the families that do and do not vaccinate, or use a prolonged schedule.
One last thought. The knowledge about the vaccination rates in the worst schools could generate a little backlash in the sense that a neighborhood that is known to have a dangerously undervaccinated school would be in danger of diminished property values. That would provide a different sort of social pressure on the inhabitants.
The uninitiated might enjoy taking a peek at Sid's ( i.e. Robert's) cyber *pied a terre*, the Vaccine Machine facebook page: it has a mission and disseminates information about ways to avoid vaccination and where to find 'friendly' doctors.
@Krebbie
They are behaving as if the normal rules of social conduct, in this case getting their children vaccinated to protect them and others, somehow don’t apply to them.
LOL. Please show me a copy of these "normal rules" You do know parents are forced to vaccinate, right?
I expected more from you. I guess when vaccine extremism deals you a bad hand there is only so much you can do with it
Chemmo the idiot
Those exemptions are still in use, increasing the chances of preventable disease outbreaks at those schools with high exemption rates.
You realize all can access these exemptions so they are not a privilege others are denied. Try again
Kreebie
So now privilege is dependency? Please link to a thesaurus that equates the two.
Sid
Not in California.
Please take a look at the following CA state webpage, which opens with the following statement (my emphases)
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/Pages/NR13-051.aspx
Parents who are required to use a new form to opt out of vaccines are hardly forced to vaccinate.
I love the way you fight so vehemently against a problem that does not in fact exist.
Sid Offit @42
I quoted the line from your comment #32 to which I was responding. http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/10/03/when-the-outbreaks-occur-t…
If you wish to quibble over the exact meaning of the word privilege with other commenters, go ahead.
What I did was answer the question you had posed in comment #32.
The fact that mechanism exists to avoid the force (compulsory vaccination laws) does not mean the force does not exist
Those who are unaware of an escape route vaccinate because of these laws and are therefore force into it
Further the USA is comprised of 50 states. Only 20 or so provide an escape mechanism for the general public. So to deny this state coercion / force / compulsion (they are all synonyms) exists is delusional
If I am mistaken, I am sure you would have no problem joining me to support of the repeal of these laws
Bob, I note that your small, closely set eyes seem to have missed some remarks, including one mentioning your deliberately lying on at least two occasions to reporters.
Would you prefer the response of the Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon to Mr. Blake or that of George Bailey to Henry Potter? It's merely a question of the specific form of wretched cowardice that you wish to embody this time around.
Sid @41
You do know parents are forced to vaccinate, right?
Sid @42
You realize all can access these exemptions so they are not a privilege others are denied. Try again
Again: How are they “forced” if “all can access these exemptions”?
Do you even read your own comments?
Bob, "comprised of" is always wrong. Perhaps you could better acquaint yourself with what you imagine to be your Mother Tongue, Bullethead.
It's the least that a fake publishing magnate could do.
... pointing out that you're full of shіt as usual, slapdіck? There is exactly one state that actually takes religious exemptions to actually mean something, and that's New York.
Quick, Bob, recount for me the history of Arkansas's vaccine exemption. You should have this on the tip of something or other.
How are they “forced” if “all can access these exemptions”?
All can use a legal mechanism to avoid mandatory/forced vaccination. I'm not sure what part of this simple concept eludes you.
Regardless since you see these laws having no effect you do support these overturn, correct
@Orac
Aren't you talking about quelling *envy* by mandating these 'privileged' to vaccinate (yes, I doubt it long before the standard vaccination schedule is a 'policy' which must be adhered to before attending, umm, home)? I've seen the arguments that they will not be the ones to suffer in an epidemic. I'd suggest that they'd be even more unlikely to be contributing to its' spread directly.
Crap, Hankmed would probably send Dibya over to help them with their homework as their tutors would likely be on paid leave for awhile since they can't remember to take their shoes off before french class.
Maybe doctors should all drive hondas so their patients don't blow all their spare doctor-cash on used bimmer upkeep.
@Narad
Sorry, Moron but the usage of "comprised of" is far from settled
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/comprised
English, Bob, English. Let me help you:
That is a retrenchment from this:
Now, Bob, I would appreciate it if you would quit incoherently trying to weasel around your prompt failures and take care of the backlog.
Not among those who are actually involved in publishing, Flakey McFoonterson.
Sid @ 46
The subject of the blogpost where you are commenting - please note the title above – is the state of California, and if we’re going to get more specific about it: Southern California where Dr Jay and Dr Bob practice, and where there are schools where vaccines exemptions in well-off communities result in low levels of immunity – something which concerns those of us who wish to spare children suffering from diseases when possible.
The only way you can try to keep your “ forced to vaccinate” hyperbole is to invoke other states. That’s not what’s being discussed here.
Try again.
Sid @51 Oh you did try! (my emphasis)
If it’s available to all, it’s not mandatory. I’m not sure what part of that simple concept eludes you.
@Narad
Keep digging your hole
"Usage Note: The traditional rule states that the whole comprises the parts and the parts compose the whole. In strict usage: The Union comprises 50 states. Fifty states compose (or make up) the Union. Even though careful writers often maintain this distinction, comprise is increasingly used in place of compose, especially in the passive: The Union is comprised of 50 states. Our surveys show that opposition to this usage is abating. In the 1960s, 53 percent of the Usage Panel found this usage unacceptable; in 1996, only 35 percent objected"
Chemmomo
You're being intentionally obtuse? Regardless, answer the question; why have compulsory vaccination laws if they don't compel vaccination? If you cannot answer this simple question, I see no reason to further indulge your ignorance
BTW, nice work on that attempt at a MySpace presence, protein stain.
I'm more mocking your unthinking attempts at just this, Cupcake. Are you going to get around to your overt lies? Is this an, ah, "special" evening for you?
Remember this, Bob?
Sid @58
I’ve been asking myself that since I first researched the actual wording in state law back in 2011 (I hope you’ll forgive the delay in my response as I actually doubled checked the dates from backup computer files).
The fact of matter is that in the state of California where we both live “compulsory” still belongs in quotation marks.
Time will tell what if any effect AB2109 has on immunization coverage in our schools. We just don’t know yet.
I’ve spent some time trying to figure out how to conclude this comment. The issues are not simple, and do not lend themselves to clever quirky remarks. I suspect that both Sid and I would agree that the laws as currently (fall 2014) enacted don’t quite work right, but we disagree about the best way to correct them.
If Sid is still reading and replying in good faith (yeah, past offenses forgiven), I will in kind. But give me the time to express my thoughts, thought out and worded in good faith.
The United States comprises fifty states, plus the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and a few other associated erritories such as Palau. But, as noted, this post is about California..
Will this even work? Typo correction from my location
You seem to have given up the promo site for one of the (nonexistent) books awfully promptly, Bob.
Survey says - html tags don't work on the location.
still crossposting.
*blink*
Great news for California! Parents are protecting their kids from lifelong vaccine injuries. The current autism rate of 1/48 in boys is living PROOF.
"The incidence of measles reached a 20-year high in the United States this year, with California reporting the second-largest number of cases at 61. Orange County was hardest hit, with 22 reported cases.
Of 42 cases for which the state has immunization data, 26 were unvaccinated, said Scott Sandow, a spokesman for the California Department of Public Health.”
THIS MEANS THAT 16 children experienced VACCINE FAILURE! If the MMR worked, there should have been NO cases. The LUCKY 26 unvaccinated now have NATURAL LIFELONG IMMUNITY! No one died.
CDC whistleblower Dr. William Thompson has admitted to SCIENTIFIC FRAUD regarding a 2004 “CDC study” comparing autism rates of children who received the MMR within 34 months of age. An African American cohort was shown to have a 340% increased risk of autism. That data was FRAUDULENTLY removed from the report and it was reported that the vaccine posed no risk of autism:
"On August 27, CDC whistleblower William Thompson came out of the shadows and admitted he had omitted vital data from a 2004 study on the MMR vaccine and its connection to autism.
Thompson’s official statement was released through his Cincinnati attorney, Rick Morgan.
The key piece in Thompson’s statement is:
“I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.”
“My concern has been the decision to omit relevant findings in a particular study for a particular sub group for a particular vaccine. There have always been recognized risks for vaccination and I believe it is the responsibility of the CDC to properly convey the risks associated with receipt of those vaccines.”
http://www.prisonplanet.com/cdc-whistleblowers-confession-his-personal-…
VACCINATED 8 -12 YEAR OLDS A MENACE TO SOCIETY!
"Unexpectedly limited durability of immunity following acellular pertussis vaccination in preadolescents in a North American outbreak."
RESULTS:
We identified 171 cases of clinical pertussis, 132 of which were in pediatric patients. There was a notable increase in cases among patients aged 8-12 years. The rate of testing peaked among infants but remained relatively constant across ages until 12 years. The rate of positive tests was low for ages 0-6 years and increased among preadolescents, peaking among those aged 12 years. The vaccination rate among PCR-positive preadolescents were approximately equal to that of controls. The vaccine effectiveness was 41%, 24%, and 79% for children aged 2-7 years, 8-12 years, 13-18 years, respectively.
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."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22423127
Despite which, Narad's right. It's always wrong.
Fifty states comprise the country, which is composed of fifty states.
That's what you meant.
WHAT A COINCIDENCE!
Amazing timing. They don’t seem to be using it though………
http://tulane.edu/news/newwave/101807_bioterrorism.cfm
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/corgenix-test-will-detect-ebola-in-10-mi…
"why have compulsory vaccination laws if they don’t compel vaccination?"
It's called the Constitution. The government doesn't have that power. They just fake it and hope the public school dumbed down sheep won't notice.
The country comprises 50 states.
COMPULSORY VACCINATION....Africa style
“Subject: Vaccination forced at gun point
Date: Sat, 09 Jul 2011 11:50:43 -0400
From: Ginger Taylor
To: media@gatesfoundation.org
I am writing a piece and I am looking for comment from Bill Gates or the Gates Foundation on forced vaccination.
Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation have donated billions to new global vaccination campaigns over the next decade. Gates announced at GAVI a billion over the next five years to get Pneumococcal and Rotavirus vaccines “out to every child everywhere”.
But, not every family wants these vaccines or believes that they are in their child’s best interest, and of course, all vaccines carry risk of serious injury or even death to some people.
In light of this, do Bill Gates and The Gates Foundation believe that people should be coerced or forced into vaccinating against their will in violation if their human rights to decide what pharmaceuticals go into their bodies?
Further, for more than a year now, we in the vaccine safety/choice community have been hearing about people being vaccinated at gun point in Africa, but had not had any confirmation of these reports. Today an official in Malawi confirmed that he lead such an effort, and used police to force vaccinate children of families who did not want the measles vaccine.
131 Children Vaccinated at Gunpoint in Nsanje
Do Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation support or condemn this practice?
Additionally, in the US, vaccine injury (and deaths) are recognized by all involved in vaccination and our Department of Health and Human Services has a compensation program that was set up to provide financial compensation to those injured by vaccines so that their loved ones could care for them. Will the Gates Foundation be setting up a similar system to care for those who will be injured by their vaccine campaigns?
Ginger Taylor”
http://healthimpactnews.com/2011/131-african-children-vaccinated-at-gun…
CDC WHISTLEBLOWER THOMPSON SPILLS MORE BEANS:
"Congressman Bill Posey’s office has confirmed exclusively to Benswann.com that a “very large number” of documents have been turned over by CDC scientist, Dr. William Thompson, who has admitted that the CDC suppressed information about the links between the MMR vaccine and autism in some cases.
According to Congressman Posey’s spokesman, George Cecala, “I can confirm that we have received a very large number of documents and we are going through those documents now. There are a lot of them, so it will take some time.” Cecala could not say exactly how many documents are in possession of the Congressman’s staff though sources tell me that as many as 100,000 documents have been handed over."
http://benswann.com/update-congressmans-office-in-possession-of-100000-…
Citizens are demanding that Posey make the searchable data base of documents available all citizens via the Science, Space, and Technology Committee web sight by next week. Otherwise, they will conclude that vaccines are NOT safe nor effective. They will not buy them. They have a legal right to INFORMED CONSENT (thanks to Hitler).
LOL!
ORAC, you're losing the war...........
BTW, your blog is incredibly boring. KEEP IT UP!
Could anyone explain to me why Schechter and other wingnuts use "socialism" or "socialist" as an insult, or as a synonym for "really bad"? Do they just not understand what socialism is? Or do they confuse it with Soviet-era "communism" (not communism in its true sense)? Or is it just that they couldn't care less that everyone knows they're greedy, grasping shitheads with no more care for others than the Ebola virus?
Or maybe all three.
Dr. Orenstein:
VACCINES DO CAUSE AUTISM IN MILLIONS OF KIDS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBURa-LsFKk&list=UUFCrfK5rP_B6huriP1hLApw
If you wanted to get overly-specific, several states, like Pennsylvania and Virginia, call themselves "Commonwealths" instead of States....so, we have States, a District, a few Commonwealths, plus protectorates (i.e. colonies in all but name).
Well, although Gordon won't join our comments, he did reply to my tweet: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s15/sh/19b826ed-f305-4e0b-a308-01c757dff… .
Tweeteth Gordon: "Awful editing KYung. Misrepresented my POV badly."
No, they didn't. They captured your POV spot on.
Sid,
I know you and other libertarians like to pretend such rules don't exist, but they do. The Golden Rule is the basis of civilized society, and there is a plethora of unwritten rules of social conduct. Autistic individuals often have trouble negotiating these unwritten rules, as discussed in this book.
Do you not see your inconsistency here? If parents (in California) are all able to access exemptions, they aren't forced to vaccinate; they are compelled to get an exemption if they wish to send their child to school, perhaps, but not compelled to vaccinate. As I understand it they don't even require an exemption if they decide to home-school. Your argument makes no sense, unless this is some use of the word "forced" I am unfamiliar with.
Personally I would like to see exemptions abolished except on the basis of a medical reason not to vaccinate. Why should my child be exposed to an increased risk of disease just because another parent has mistaken beliefs about vaccines?
Where did I suggest they are equivalent?
I looked at the link you posted to support this, and read, "The use of of after comprise should be avoided: the library comprises (not comprises of) 500 000 books and manuscripts". Now I'm pondering the strange phenomenon of people presenting evidence that undermines their position as if it supports it, again.
Nice to see the wing nut ding bat patrol of those who make a living off of antivaxing have turned up in full force to edumacate those of us with out the advantage of Google U Phds.
Toto,
How are you going to respond when the deaths and serious injuries from measles start in California? They are are inevitable, given falling vaccine uptake in California, and will dwarf the numbers of children allegedly currently damaged by vaccines. Are you looking forward to hundreds of children dying from measles complications, as they used to every year in the US before an effective vaccine became available?
Don't believe the claims that children won't die from measles in the US today. There is little difference between the children in Europe who have died of been made seriously ill by measles over the past few years and those children who will soon be hit by the coming measles outbreaks in California. With half a million children born in California every year, and a measles fatality rate of about 1 in 1,000 we could see hundreds of deaths every year.
Those deaths, and the thousands of hospitalizations from pneumonia and encephalitis will be in addition to the current numbers of cases of autism, because we know that vaccines have nothing at all to do with autism (apart from preventing it, by preventing congenital rubella syndrome, which California can also look forward to).
The antivaccine movement will have succeeded in vastly increasing the numbers of dead and disabled children, and incalculable misery in children with measles, mumps and rubella and their families. I'm sickened by the scenario unfolding here - it's like watching an entirely preventable car wreck in slow motion - and even more sickened by those gloating about falling vaccination rates, There will be no winners in this miserable game, and I will derive no pleasure from saying "I told you so" when children start dying..
Living proof that organic food causes autism?
No one claims that MMR is 100% effective, which is why it is important that as many children as possible are vaccinated. Since 2 doses of MMR are 99.7% effective at preventing measles, for every 16 children who did not acquire immunity to measles from the vaccine, there are at least 5,000 children who did acquire immunity. It really isn't that hard to understand.
It's true they were lucky, as they stood a good chance of getting so sick they had to be hospitalized, and a fair chance of death or permanent disability. They could have had two shots of MMR and almost certainly avoided weeks of misery and the small but very real chance of developing SSPE in the future. MMR also produces lifelong immunity to measles in most people, according to recent estimates (half life of 200 years), and serious side effects are vanishingly rare.
No he hasn't. He has misunderstood the statistics in a study he co-authored and foolishly colluded with some statistically illiterate people with an agenda.
The study didn't show that, it didn't calculate a relative risk, it calculated an odds ratio and it wasn't 340% (that idiotic mistake is never going away, it seems). It found that African American children with autism were more likely to have been given MMR earlier, probably as it is a condition of entry for early intervention programs, though the numbers were so small it would be foolish to draw any conclusions from them. Low birth weight, which is more common in African Americans and is also associated with increased risk of autism, is another possible confounder here. DeStefano et al were quite right to omit what they knew to be misleading data from their study.
Nothing was "fraudulently" removed, and their conclusion was:
That conclusion is entirely justified by their analysis, whatever Thompson has said, and whatever Hooker's incompetent mangling of the data says.
We'll ya'll better hang on to your hats because the anti-vax funded "movie", appropriately titled "Bought", but not labeled "corrupt" or even "advertisement", will be online in full next week.
I kid ye not when I say that it opens with a frenzied-haired MD and the statement - the opening statement of the movie now - declaring:
"We didn't used to see the debilitating diseases in children until recently."
It goes downhill from there.
Oh, and they are setting up an arrangement by which paid shills for the movie will promote if for money. Yes indeed, paid anti-vax shills are being recruited to promote the anti-vax funded "movie".
Correction: "We didn't used to see chronic debilitating diseases in children until recently."
In today's crossword puzzle I'm looking for an eight letter word that means "A large number of people are suddenly immunized naturally". Any thoughts?
"We didn't used to see chronic debilitating diseases in children until recently"[emphasis mine]
That's really the key word right there - they didn't see many chronicdebilitating diseases because they used to be fatal debilitating diseases.
@MO'B - Do you know any of the letters? Outbreak, epidemic, and pandemic are all eight letter words.
'Bought' is an example of the recently created genre of films portraying vaccination as an inherently dangerous activity which leads to autism and a host of chronic health conditions. Just off the top of my head, here are a few:
The Greater Good - Leslie Manookian
Who KIlled Alex Spourdalakis? - AJW et al
Vaccine Nation- Gary Null
Autism- Made in the USA - Gary Null
Silent Epidemic: the Untold Story of Vaccines- Gary Null,
which makes a grand total of 6- therefore ( probably at least) 7 or 8 hours of viewing. Perhaps TMR or AoA will sponsor a day-long film festival where anti-vaxxers can enjoy watching their cherished mis-information brought to cinematic life in a large, darkened theatre and afterward, trade war stories with other participants over cocktails, perhap culminating with a lecture or two thrown in for good measure.
All for one reasonably priced admission!
-btw- AoA is currently hawking a Skyhorse Publishing event with authors you know and love for 149 USD.
"Well, although Gordon won’t join our comments, he did reply to my tweet"
It wouldn't surprise me if he eventually shows up here to berate commenters for wasting time on this issue, after which he'll go back to tweeting nonsense about it and giving dumbass interviews.
Rebecca: "Could anyone explain to me why Schechter and other wingnuts use “socialism” or “socialist” as an insult, or as a synonym for “really bad”? "
A: Not having matured emotionally past age 15, they think Ayn Rand is still A Thing. Thus...
"Is it just that they couldn’t care less that everyone knows they’re greedy, grasping shitheads?"
A: No, it's that they're PROUD of being greedy, grasping shitheads.
@Sarah A - "epidemic" fits nicely!
In other news, Translational Neurodegeneration has completely withdrawn the Hooker paper. The wording includes: "undeclared competing interests on the part of the author which compromised the peer review process" - suggests to me that it's because they used the suggested reviewers, and those people had COIs.
"How are you going to respond when the deaths and serious injuries from measles start in California? They are are inevitable, given falling vaccine uptake in California, and will dwarf the numbers of children allegedly currently damaged by vaccines. Are you looking forward to hundreds of children dying from measles complications, as they used to every year in the US before an effective vaccine became available?"
I'm a little older. I grew up with measles, mumps, and chickenpox parties. Kids were exposed while young and healthy. After a few days of discomfort, they were fully recovered and had LIFELONG NATURAL IMMUNITY. More importantly, NO AUTISM and permanent disabilities. With four vaccine damaged sons, I'LL take the former ANY DAY.
DR. WALTER ORENSTEIN: HEAR ME WELL!
http://vaccines.emory.edu/faculty/orenstein_walter.html
This scares the living crap out of me. I am pregnant with my first and we live in Torrance, CA (Los Angeles County, South Bay area). All I want to do is hide inside until my pregnancy is over then hide my daughter inside until she is fully vaxxed. Would love to move but her are here because my husband is military. I have never been a germaphobe but I have turned into one. I did make sure I was fully vaccinated before we started trying to conceive and I can't wait until I am far enough along to get the DTaP.
Luckily I have already lined up a pediatrician who will not see non-vaxxed, selected vax or alternative vax schedule patients. Bless him. I called peds asking if they were a hard case on having fully vaxxed patients and his receptionist nearly cried to hear a rational mother-to-be on the other end.
His mother, supported by a bunch of people thinking they deserve nothing less than a perfect child?
@MO'B - Seriously? I was just going along with what I thought was a humorous rhetorical device for pointing out that what antivaxers like to glorify as "gaining natural immunity" is what the rest of us call "getting sick." Now I'm curious - what paper was the crossword in?
Re:Toto @93 - I will never cease to be flabbergasted at the number of antivaxers who show up here talking about their multiple "vaccine damaged" children yet continue to insist that all the evidence that autism is genetic is just a red herring planted by the Big Bad Pharma.
Toto:
Except that some didn't, and died.
Except sometimes they didn't.
Oh, there were LOADS of disabled when you were a child, Toto. I guarantee it. They were stuck in institutions and out of public view, but they existed. Oh, and measles can cause deafness, polio paralysis, mumps sterility, rubella miscarriages and diphtheria permanent organ damage.
Did you go to Vaccine Court? Did you open a case and apply for compensation for those supposed "vaccine injuries"? What form did these injuries take?
Also, you're a fool. The diseases we vaccinate against can cause permanent disabilities, both physical and mental.
Thanks for the info Dr. Orenstein. I know you are always looking out for the little guy:
"Because long-term vaccination follow-up studies are usually not available at the time that vaccines are licensed and vaccination policy is established, mathematical mod- els may be the only way to assess long-term effects that policy-makers must consider. Dasbach et al. (17) reviewed the literature on mathematical modeling of human papil- lomavirus disease for evaluating the potential impact of human papillomavirus vaccination policies, primarily on cervical cancer. They found considerable variation in the types of models used, the factors considered, and the ques- tions answered. They recommend that future research fo- cus on further development of dynamic models to assess the cost-effectiveness of alternative human papillomavirus vaccination policies."
Does this mean we are all guinea pigs?
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/164/3/197.full.pdf
Sure hope that HPV programmer doesn't hit a few wrong input keys. We well remember what happened with the "Global Warming Hockey Graph" disaster!
"But now a shock: Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records.
But it wasnt so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.
Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!"
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/403256/global-warming-bombshell/
Toto should be able to present his VAERS entries along with disposition of his vaccine court cases, right?
@Athena
I look forward to seeing your future contribution to #hearthiswell
https://twitter.com/hashtag/hearthiswell
You are pitiful.
Sarah A
So I took the gag too much to the surreal side with my thank you, eh? Trust your instincts on this one. And that was a very nice summary.
@Krebs
You stated, “I looked at the link you posted to support this, and read, “The use of of after comprise should be avoided: the library comprises (not comprises of) 500 000 books and manuscripts”. Now I’m pondering the strange phenomenon of people presenting evidence that undermines their position as if it supports it, again.”
This dispute was about the usage "always" being wrong. This says it should be avoided because its use is controversial not because it is "always" incorrect.
According to Webster, “if you use sense 3 you may be subject to criticism for doing so, and you may want to choose a safer synonym such as compose or make up.”
Note the word “may”
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comprise
Although “comprise” is used primarily to mean “to include,” it is also often stretched to mean “is made up of”—a meaning that some critics object to. The most cautious route is to avoid using “of” after any form of “comprise” and substitute “is composed of” in sentences like this: “Jimmy’s paper on Marxism was composed entirely of sentences copied off the Marx Brothers Home Page.”
Note the word “some”
There’s a lot of disagreement about the proper use of “comprise,” ... But there’s so much confusion surrounding the usage of this word that it may be better to avoid it altogether.
http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/comprised.html
Finally
But confusion has arisen because of uses in the passive, which have been formed by analogy with words like compose: when comprise is used in the active (as in : the country comprises twenty states) it is, oddly, more or less synonymous with the passive use of the second sense (as in : the country is comprised of twenty states). Such passive uses of comprise are common and are fast becoming part of standard English.
http://tinyurl.com/k8mz3ro
Note the phrase “common and fast becoming part of standard English.”
Since there are other, more relevant questions to be addressed, this is the last I’ll have to say on this topic
Yes, the stale line that you're trotting out promptly collapsed.
It's OK, honey, nobody expects to you be able to think in the first place.
Toto, Mann is suing several people for calling the "hockey stick" claim a fraud. More details can be found on Greg Laden's blog.
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/09/30/i-hope-judith-curry-apolog…
And
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/09/29/anti-science-nro-and-cei-f…
I can't post more than two links or I'll be sent into automatic moderation, but suffice to say, you're talking out of your backside.
@Narad - RetractionWatch has asked for additional clarification and information around the retraction of Hooker's paper. I'm sure they'll publish the results as soon as they hear back from the Journal.
Still, score one for the good guys on this one.
@Athena - luckily, the military is usually extremely diligent about vaccinations for all personnel, so at least people in close contact at the base and such should be fully immunized.
Too bad these anti-vax nitwits can't see the damage they are causing....
It's funny that you're a priggish little prescriptivist about nearly everything under the sun until it comes to your own slovenly use of your Mother Tongue, Bob. It's screamingly ironic from someone who poses as the head of a publishing house. Go take it up with Bill Walsh of the Washington Post.
Krebs
So now privilege is dependency? Please link to a thesaurus that equates the two.
Where did I suggest they are equivalent?
You said, “so they depend on ordinary parents to protect them by vaccinating their ordinary children. That’s privilege,” and raised the dependency issue when the question was about privilege. And you failed to give a coherent account of how the two are linked
Next…
Do you not see your inconsistency here? If parents (in California) are all able to access exemptions, they aren’t forced to vaccinate; they are compelled to get an exemption if they wish to send their child to school, perhaps, but not compelled to vaccinate. As I understand it they don’t even require an exemption if they decide to home-school. Your argument makes no sense, unless this is some use of the word “forced” I am unfamiliar with.
When the threat of “no school” motivates unwanted action “vaccination” i.e., the parent was forced into it.
Yes, all parents who know about the exemption are able to access it, but you assume incorrectly all the parents who vaccinate because of the school requirement know about the exemption. Some government websites make no mention of exemptions, just that vaccines are required.
Further the current law is designed to make it more difficult for parents to resist the state coercion. It may not be a high barrier it is still a barrier. Those parents who don’t want to go through the trouble to resist state coercion are still being coerced – coerced and forced are synonymous
Thus, parents with "personal belief" exemptions are forcing an unwanted risk on both parents who do and those who can't. Thanks for clarifying.
@ Julian
"Oh, there were LOADS of disabled when you were a child, Toto. I guarantee it" Cite your statistics please.
"Except that some didn’t, and died." Statistics please.
After 10 years, this CDC FOIA requested document was released in Feb. 2014 by court order:
"FILE 10 25 of 334
"Verstraeten, Thomas M, MD, NIP, Division of Epidemiology and Surveillance, Vaccine Safety and Development Branch, Mailstop E-61, 770-639-8327.
EIS Class Year of Entry: 1999..."
"Thomas M. Verstraeten, R. Davies, D. Gu, F. DeStefano" (note: same Dr. DeStefano who co-authored Thompson's claimed to be fraudulent 2004 paper)
"Increased risk of developmental neurologic impairment after high exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccine in first month of life..."
"Results: ....The relative risk of developing a neurologic development disorder was 1.8 (95% confidence intervals...) when comparing the highest exposure group at 1 month of age (cumulative dose greater than 25 micrograms) to the unexposed group. Within this group we also found an elevated risk for the following disorders: autism (RR 7.6...), non-organic sleep disorders (RR 5.0 ...), and speech disorders (RR 2.1...)."
One of mine received his full schedule of infant vaccines on time in 1997 in greater Atlanta. He has autism, sleep disorder, and speech disorder. All were manifest by 18 mos. after receiving an MMR, DTP, OPV, HbPV on the same day. Shortly after, he sustained a high fever for a week, became lethargic and could no longer walk. I had to feed him ice chips. He regained his mobility, but required 2 years of intensive speech therapy to be able to talk. He remains on the autism spectrum. The horrors we went through and issues he still struggles with are too numerous to recount here.
@Julian
"Toto, Mann is suing several people for calling the “hockey stick” claim a fraud."
Neither my post nor my quotes mentioned "fraud".
Nice try.
That refers only to INTENT. The "Casino" results still stand.
@Chemmomo
Sorry for the personal attack. I think my response to Krebiozen addresses you latest points on compulsion. Sadly I don't seeing us coming to an agreement on this point but let me end with a couple of additional points
You don't think coercion applies if a California parent does not know about exemptions and vaccinates because she was told it was required by law?
Finally you answered you don't know why we have these laws if you can avoid them. Maybe a better question would have been what you believe the effects of these laws were.
Do you not think some parents vaccinate specifically because of the law and not because of an actual desire for the vaccine? If so, the law is coercive. The only way to get around this is to say no parent in California ever vaccinated as a result of the laws existence
parents with “personal belief” exemptions are forcing an unwanted risk on both parents who do and those who can’t.
The risk of germs can only be lessened with vaccination. Non-vaccination, because it is a non-action, does not create or impose risks - doing nothing cannot force anything
"The risk of germs can only be lessened with vaccination."
Scientific documentation please.
Why don't they vaccinate those that titer for NATURAL IMMUNITY? i.e.. chickenpox.
Also, do you propose to shoot vaccines into the air to "lessen the risk of germs"? LOL!
Herd immunity is an unproven theory.
Needless to say, this article documents vaccine FAILURE. A percentage of children were exposed to vaccine injury risk (Just read the vaccine inserts) yet the reward was, THEY GOT THE MEASLES ANYWAY. Those vaccinated children represented a GREATER risk to our paranoid pregnant poster "Athena" because she would have thought herself "safe" to be around them. LOL!
Turns out the hockey stick "bombshell" article that Toto links to is TEN YEARS OLD.
Since then, the original Mann et al hockey stick has been shown to not depend on the details of the principal component analysis, and -- more important -- has been reporduced many times over by independent groups with independent data (see, e.g., the pages2k collaboration). McIntyre and McKitrick, meanwhile, continue to beat on their one tattered drum, because they're certain -- certain, I tell you! -- that climate science is all a scam.
Apparently, in denierville, one can never let solid, up-to-date results stand in the way of a good conspiracy yarn.
It's a slight, but only slight, variation on crank magnetism.
@Toto - there have been hundreds of thousands, if not millions of individuals who were consigned to mental institutions over the years....so, where are those people today?
http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/37146/A-History-of-Mental-Insti…!
Yes, Bob, we've heard this idiotic "argument" from you time and time again. However, the parents with "personal belief" exemptions are doing something – they're forcing (by your seemingly indefinite use of the term) the presence of their special little disease bull's-eyes on the other students.
^ Or should we get into your prescriptive definition versus the "standard English" descriptive definition, O beady-eyed hypocrite?
Toto, re your request for death rate data on the diseases.
From Wikipedia - Measles:
Pertussis
Haemophilus influenzae:
Diphtheria:
Mumps:
"Turns out the hockey stick “bombshell” article that Toto links to is TEN YEARS OLD."
That's because the programming data and e-mails for the graph exposed by an East Anglia insider took place that long ago.
Duh.
A trip down memory hole.....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6679082…
"Since then, the original Mann et al hockey stick has been shown to not depend on the details of the principal component analysis, and — more important — has been reporduced many times over by independent groups with independent data (see, e.g., the pages2k collaboration)."
Links please.
BTW I have paper files of the originally exposed programming code when it was dumped to the internet. It wasn't just e-mails. The code speaks volumes. (spouse is a programmer)
@Julian
WIKIPEDIA??????
Let's see some official professional websites with their data and protocol for arriving at their statistics.
Thanks.
Toto.
Have you approached the Vaccine Court? If you can prove your story, you would likely get compensation.
No, as I pointed out, they utterly collapsed a long time ago. Also, protip: I'm pretty sure everyone here knows what a Monte Carlo simulation is, so use of "the 'Casino' results" is merely a big honking sign that you don't.
Kids aside - I'm an adult in my 50s with a congenital immune deficiency. Most vaccines don't "take" for me, and I rarely develop "natural immunity" to anything.(I've had chicken pox twice, yay!). I have to work for a living like anybody else, and shop for groceries, and various other things that take me into the general public. Somebody's very, very natural, crunchy, woo-filled, unvaccinated kids will eventually kill me.
@Lawrence
"there have been hundreds of thousands, if not millions of individuals who were consigned to mental institutions over the years….so, where are those people today?"
The topic was not mental institutions and its patrons.
Autism is a new phenomenon, beginning with "Kanner's 11":
"Kanner described Donald and ten other children in a 1943 paper entitled, Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact1. In this initial description of ‘infantile autismʼ, which went on to become a classic in the field of clinical psychiatry, Kanner described a distinct syndrome instead of previous depictions of such children as feeble-minded, retarded, moronic, idiotic or schizoid. In the words of his contemporary Erwin Schrödinger, Kanner “thought what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.”
In recent years, experts have called attention to the inability of children with autism to understand that others have beliefs that are different than their own. These deficits prevent normal social intercourse, including the ability of the children to engage in joint fantasy or to empathize with the feelings of others." http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/classic-paper-reviews/2007/leo-kanner…
It's growth exceeds what one would expect from genetics alone:
"Two economists who used market theory to study the trend in autism growth, however, have confirmed that at least part of the increase is real.
Researchers Jose Fernandez and Dhaval Dave analyzed the number and wages of auxiliary health providers based on California Department of Developmental Services data from 2002 to 2011. Each time autism cases doubled, the number of autism health providers grew by as much as 14 percent over that of non-autism health providers, they found.
The wages of autism health providers also rose higher, increasing up to 11 percent more.
"We focused on auxiliary providers because, unlike physicians and psychologists who can diagnose autism, these workers cannot induce their own demand," Fernandez said.
The pair also found that although autism supplanted mental retardation in one of every three diagnoses during the period, actual autism cases still grew from 50 percent to 65 percent."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140909191843.htm
"Somebody’s very, very natural, crunchy, woo-filled, unvaccinated kids will eventually kill me."
It will more likely be the VACCINE FAILURE kids. They grossly outnumber the unvaccinated. You have a false sense of security with them. Ultimately, it was your genetic inheritance that put you in your position. BLAME YOUR PARENTS.
Viruses and bacteria are a fact of life. Cleanliness, good food, and sensible self quarantine will go a long way towards keeping you from harm. Good luck!
@Julian
Thanks for asking. However, I will not disclose personal legal matters on this blog. Suffice it to say, THERE IS NO COMPENSATION FOR THE PAIN AND SUFFERING MY CHILDREN AND FAMILY HAS ENDURED.
@BoxTurtle: then good luck to you avoiding such things. I *had* measles (yeah, I'm that old), but still show up as non-immune, even with MMR boosters. I live in fear of coming across some person with measles. At 50+ I don't want them again.
I've had several friends deal with shingles lately, too. I'm holding my breath till I'm old enough for the vaccine. I don't want the misery they went through. Thanks, chicken pox, for leaving me this concern. (Oh, and my sister had chicken pox twice, too.)
As for "safe" diseases...obviously Toto/whomever as the 'nym keeps changing...has never worked in a pediatric setting. Or had to deal with a very ill child.
Toto: remember, most autistic children were considered "retarded" so you didn't see them; they were tucked away in the "dumb kids room" at school or not allowed to attend school or institutionalized. Since you made the claim there weren't any, it's up to you to provide the facts, not up to us to show you are wrong.
"No, as I pointed out, they utterly collapsed a long time ago."
You merely ASSERTED. Statistical documentation please.
Monte Carlo has casinos. I put the word in quotes. The implication is the same.
Duh.
@MI Dawn
"but still show up as non-immune, even with MMR boosters."
This might be part of your problem.....
"According to the whistleblowers' court documents, Merck's misconduct was far-ranging: It "failed to disclose that its mumps vaccine was not as effective as Merck represented, (ii) used improper testing techniques, (iii) manipulated testing methodology, (iv) abandoned undesirable test results, (v) falsified test data, (vi) failed to adequately investigate and report the diminished efficacy of its mumps vaccine, (vii) falsely verified that each manufacturing lot of mumps vaccine would be as effective as identified in the labeling, (viii) falsely certified the accuracy of applications filed with the FDA, (ix) falsely certified compliance with the terms of the CDC purchase contract, (x) engaged in the fraud and concealment describe herein for the purpose of illegally monopolizing the U.S. market for mumps vaccine, (xi) mislabeled, misbranded, and falsely certified its mumps vaccine, and (xii) engaged in the other acts described herein to conceal the diminished efficacy of the vaccine the government was purchasing."
"These fraudulent activities, say the whistleblowers, were designed to produce test results that would meet the FDA's requirement that the mumps vaccine was 95 per cent effective. To the whistleblowers' delight, the judge dismissed Merck's objections to the case proceeding, finding the whistleblowers had plausible grounds on all of the claims lodged against Merck."
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/lawrence-solomon/merck-whistleblowers_b_58…
I remember Toto's previous appearance, a month ago:
I guess the intervening month has been spent stocking up on capital letters and new conspiracy theories.
The safety of automobiles can only be increased with maintenance. Not maintaining your automobile, because it is a non-action, does not create or impose risks – doing nothing cannot force anything. Thus mandatory automobile safety inspections are inherently worthless.
Toto,
I'm a little older too, I had measles, mumps and chicken pox as a child, and rubella in my 20s. it was unpleasant, but I survived, as most people do, but a significant minority weren't so lucky. Before the vaccine about 500 children died of measles in the US every year. Thousands got pneumonia or encephalitis, and many suffered permanent deafness. Measles caused 25 or more cases of SSPE every year. Don't they matter?
You remind me of one of those people who habitually drink and drive and claim it's just fine because they haven't had an accident. Most people who drink and drive survive the experience, but it still dramatically increases the risk of a serious accident. Basing one's estimates of risks like this on one's personal experience is almost certain to result in a gross under or over-estimate.
That just isn't true. Again you are grossly overgeneralizing from your own experiences. There was a boy in my class at school who I'm sure had classic autism. He flapped his hands and walked on his toes, and was in the "remedial" reading class. That was in the late 60s. Ten years later I volunteered at a hospital for the "mentally handicapped", an institution with several wards with a range of disabilities of different severity. Again I am quite sure that many of those with milder disabilities would be diagnosed with autism today, and probably some of the more severely disabled residents too. I saw a lot of fitting, head-banging, hand-flapping and other behaviors that are associated with classic autism.
That hospital is now an outpatient facility, with beds only for seriously mentally ill patients. I wonder where those hundreds of patients, and the hundreds with similar conditions who have been born since then are today?
I don't believe it's a choice. Without wishing to be disrespectful, how do you know your sons were vaccine damaged? If an attenuated virus could cause them damage, what would an actual measles infection have done to them? I strongly suspect that either they would have suffered measles and would have the same condition as well as the measles, or if they have a disorder that made them vulnerable to the fever induced by a vaccine, they would be even more vulnerable to a fully virulent viral infection.
This whole chickenpox/zoster/shingles thing has always confused me. I've never really looked closely other than to have casual conversation with some people who have them from time to time (bubba's purple throbbers, they're called -- 'cause they hurt). Is it really true that if they make a 'belt' all the way around one's torso then he's dead?
But this 'old enough to get the vaccine'?? A 'shingles' vaccine? This does not sit well with me -- It just *feels* like a case of better off to 'let sleeping dogs lie'
I did come across chickenpox/zoster initiating the production of some flavor globulins ... That wouldn't be the same flavor globulins that are used to treat hepatitis, now would it?
A brief 'splainer would be appreciated.
==================================
Narad,
I'd left a post on another thread concerning low ABV beer but I guess it didn't make it (I've been doing some troubleshooting and noscript may have blocked it, or something). My amino acids (5-htp, p-5-p) have decided to act 'finicky' on me lately so that I must reduce my alcohol intake yet again. As I'd rather not reduce actual consumption of beer, I guess I'm in the same boat. If I'm not drinking beer then I'm eating bicarbonate, nitrosamine, and paint chips. sooo... Let me know if you find a tasty one.
I had this today and I don't like it. Especially at $10/six.
Joe's american pilsner (4.7%)
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/30/60838/ today
Goose Island Honker's (4.3%)
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1146/1157/
^^ Maybe that??
In a tangential note via* Retraction Watch, Baroness Susan Greenfield does the reverse with regard to ASDs.
* Yes, Bob, I also know what this word means.
Tim:
Quick primer for you, Tim. Children used to get chickenpox. What happens is that after the infection, some of the viruses go and hide out in nerve cells where the white blood cells can't take them out. If something happens to suppress the immune system, the virus comes back. Getting the vaccine won't cause shingles or chickenpox, so it's silly of you to write "let sleeping dogs lie".
PS My brother in law never had chickenpox as a child, so he's had the vaccine. Chickenpox is adults is vicious, or so I'm told.
I do see this from 'pedia, Julian Frost:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpes_zoster#Prevention
Sid @112: Real life has kept me offline today, but I did want to post:
Apology accepted.
Tim @120 --
Continuing your 'pedia quote:
That doesn't sound nearly so useless, now, right?
MORE SCARY VACCINE FAILURE STORIES.....
"A cluster of whooping cough cases among Cobb County (Georgia) elementary students is adding to concerns that an important vaccine isn’t as effective as it needs to be to stop the spread of disease.
Whooping cough, also called pertussis, is highly contagious and can cause serious illness among infants and very young children. But the vaccine is only about 85 percent effective and wears off over time, leaving a significant number of children and adults vulnerable to an infection that is more common than many realize, health officials said.
Of the 18 students in the recent Cobb cluster, 17 were properly immunized with five doses of DTaP vaccine, which protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, health officials said."
"But scientists are struggling to understand why reports of pertussis cases have risen dramatically since the 1980s. It may reflect more testing or diagnosis; it may reflect the cyclical nature of the disease. It’s even unclear how often clusters like the one in Cobb occur.
“We are frustrated by the fact that we don’t know,” Messonnier said."
"While no vaccine is 100 percent effective, some parents are surprised and angry that a vaccine they trusted is failing to protect some children."
Dr. Walter Orenstein, a leading vaccine expert, was surprised to hear that the Cobb cluster involved young students who would have received a pertussis booster as they entered school.
“The real issue is what the rate of vaccine failure is,” said Orenstein, a former CDC official who recently became deputy director for vaccine preventable diseases at the Gates Foundation in Seattle."
http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=97491
Moral: Don't blame the NATURAL immune system. Those kids were protected! Way to go, God!
Obviously, pertussis is not a "vaccine preventable disease."
It iIS a "no vaccine" preventable disease.
God 1
Orenstein 0
Idk, palindrom. I'm reading about RRR and not quite understanding.
http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK63647/
I'm also not understanding the difference betwene VZV and HZ -- It sounds to me like it's still safer and more efficatious to hug a crusty kid than to commit to a shot every seven years or so (increasing the risk of a bad outcome?).
In other words, palindrom, this looks, to a layman such as myself, like a case of mass vaccination has put another group at higher risk because of it.
Pretty bad in my early 20s. And yes, the person that I got it from had such terrific "LIFELONG NATURAL IMMUNITY" that it was his second time.
I do so miss the days of NATURAL LIFELONG IMMUNITY.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grbSQ6O6kbs
Tim @140 and 141:
You may be relieved to know that the shingles shot isn't one every seven years, it's just once. I was quite happy to get vaccinated: that means that if I get shingles anyhow, I'm much less likely to be left with chronic pain.
The set of people who might be put at risk by vaccinating children against chicken pox--adults who are not already immune--is fairly small, and most of them could also be vaccinated. An adult with immune dysfunction who can't be vaccinated would be at nontrivial risk from a chickenpox infection, so they're better off not being around children with active chicken pox.
Or, I suppose, children whose parents refuse to let them be vaccinated--but at that point you're arguing that large numbers of children should be exposed to a serious disease to protect the smaller number whose parents won't even try to protect them.
I do so miss salmon mousse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X86u4MMpnE
Tim, I am not a biostatistician, but here's how I understand this -- hopefully actual experts may correct me if I'm wrong.
If you had chicken pox, you have about a 1 in 35 chance of developing shingles late in life. If you get the shot, that risk goes down to 1 in 70 -- I think that's what's meant by a 50% relative risk reduction. Furthrmore, if you're one of the unlucky folks who was vaccinated but gets shingles anyway, it's likely to be less severe.
That strikes me as a pretty good deal.
@Narad
You were immunized. That's why you got it as an adult. When young children are prevented from getting chickenpox, and then the vaccine wears off as an adult, you are now a target. It is worse. Vaccinating children has created these adverse effects. Vaccines attempt to put off the inevitable. Orenstein is not God...LOL!
Vicki, that is not what I'm arguing. {see second quoted material #137}. I'm arguing that immune adults get an immune boost from infected children and are less likely to develop shingles. And that it 'looks' to me like it is much more effective than the shot.
If all was right in CDC Vaccine Land, Congressman Posey would release the 100,000 + documents sent to him by the whistle blower Dr. William Thompson and make them available to all citizens via a searchable database (they were sent in this format) accessible through the Science,Space, and Technology Committee website.
Until that happens, millions will assume vaccines are NOT safe and effective and we will not buy them. We have a lawful right to INFORMED consent.
It is all about risk assessment.
To sum it up:
If your children were vaccine damaged as mine have been, YOU WILL ONLY SUBMIT TO VACCINATION AT GUNPOINT....maybe.
Bye to all. Your choice to vaccinate will remove you and yours from the gene pool. Maybe that isn't so bad after all.
Stick it on your arm where the sun shines!
Mom and dad both had shingles, and let me say - Do not want!
My HMO says I have to wait another year or so for a free shingles shot, and I am considering going out and paying for one. I saw my dad almost come to tears from the pain. I'm pretty sure I don't want to hurt that bad.
For any anti-vaxers over 40 or so - I've heard the shingles shot makes your Johnson fall off. Anti-vaxers should not get the shingles shot. Get the real shingles, and get real immunity. Please?
For fυck's sake, could you actually try reading the material that you're randomly cutting and pasting (in this case, a press release). Here:
"We find that a 100% increase in autism cases increases the wages of auxiliary health workers over non-autism health occupations by 8–11% and the number of providers by 9–14%."
I'm not even going around the corner to snag this one, so you get to pay for it if you wish to defend it. Offhand, retrodictive modeling of wage fluctuations in a historically underpaid service industry doesn't exactly strike me as a particularly compelling approach.
Florida???
NEW POLIO VAX SALES PITCH?
http://sharylattkisson.com/polio-like-outbreak-claims-fifth-life-in-u-s
"In other enterovirus news: The European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) recently reported the “accidental release” by pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline of more than 11 gallons of concentrated live polio virus solution into the environment in Belgium.
Authorities say the release, due to “human error,” happened in Rixensart city and the liquid “was conducted directly to a water-treatment plant (Rosieres) and released after treatment in river Lasne affluent of river Dyle which is affluent of the Escaut/Scheldt river.”
Belgium’s High Council of Public Health stated the risk of infection for those exposed to the contaminated water is “extremely low due to the high level of dilution and the high vaccination coverage (95%) in Belgium.”
A statement from ECDC said, “ECDC’s assessment is that the accidental release in the environment of large amounts of live polio virus represents a risk to public health if susceptible populations, such as areas with low polio vaccine coverage, are exposed to contaminated waters or mud. Particularly since the Lasne and Dyle rivers are joining the Escaut/Scheldt river which flows in the southwestern part of the Netherlands where various orthodox protestant communities present a lower polio vaccination coverage, before reaching the North Sea.”
MI DAWN: AVOID BELGIUM LIKE THE PLAGUE!
@Lawrence My husband is Coast Guard so we have no military housing (very few locations have it since we are everywhere sometimes only a half dozen total at a unit), and the one military doctor that is less than 45 minutes away is incompetent so we went on Standard and only see civilians.
@Toto You are a horrible person. How DARE you say autism is the worst thing that could happen to a person? My brother in law is autistic. He is a wonderful man whom I am lucky enough to now call family. You would rather your child possibly die then turn out like him because he's not "normal"? You make me sick.
If my understanding of the current topic is correct, for those of us who had chickenpox back in the days before a vaccine against it was licensed, there are two options for exposing ourselves to the virus in later life and modulating our immune response to reduce the chance of an attack of shingles:
1. an injection; or
2. Expect other people's children to catch chickenpox... drafting them, as it were, for a Viral Exposure Corps.
#1 is more in keeping with my own moral sense, but as always, YMMV.
"Expect other people’s children to catch chickenpox… drafting them, as it were, for a Viral Exposure Corps."
Worse, drafting them for a Future Shingles Sufferers Corps so that another generation of children must suffer chickenpox to protect them, so that generation becomes subject to shingles, so that yet another generation of children must suffer chickenpox ... and on and on forever.
Or this generation of adults could stop the cycle right now by accepting the shingles shot with all its imperfections, and protect this generation of children from chickenpox, so that the disease is eradicated and no one ever has to make this choice again.
Did you see the blue letters, dear? No? Start with DOIs 10.1175/JCLI3351.1, 10.1029/2006JD008272, and 10.1007/s10584-006-9105-7. I can't wait for your analysis of the "statistical documentation."
The "implication"? No, the implication is that you were simply regurgitating your earlier cut and paste, "this method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino," because you're completely ignorant of the actual technique.
Here. See sections 7.6–7.8.
Duh.
What in G-d's name are you babbling about? "Climategate" didn't even start until five years after McIntyre & McKitrick's colossal failure.
Duh.
Probably no-one wants to know the details of shingles of the scrotum. Suffice to say that it was not so much painful, and more aesthetically unappealing.
Tim,
If you had spent any time with those people, or other with similar problems, and their families I doubt even you would think that was remotely funny.
To answer my own rhetorical question, they are in sheltered accommodation, living with their families or in some cases living independently, and now have ASD diagnoses instead of being labeled as mentally retarded, leading people like Toto to mistakenly believe there is an epidemic of autism. This was in the UK, where studies have found similar prevalence of children and adults with autism.
As I recall, that bombshell consisted of the revelation that where actual temperature data was available, researchers plotted that on the graph, and where it wasn't available they plotted proxy temperature data. Shocking.
It is obvious that all pro-vaxxers have HERD IMMUNITY. All I hear on this blog is BAAAAH! BAAAAAH! BAAAAAH!
I worry about Ebola.
However, I suspect it will serve as a modern-day reminder of why science-based medicine is so critical, including why vaccines are one of most amazing advances in modern medicine.
It won't shut up people like Toto, but it will make almost everyone else realize how insane people like Toto truly are.
"My brother in law is autistic."
Wow. What are the odds of that? Including my 4, that's 5 on the spectrum, just in this VERY SMALL cohort of posters. Obviously autism is not genetic. Obviously it is due to vaccine injury.
So you favor continual poisoning of our citizens? HOW EVIL.
Take a nice boat ride on the Ronald Reagan. LOL!
Clarification of insane re Toto: I don't mean that Toto is insane in claiming that vaccines can cause injuries...but insane because Toto very wrongly thinks that those extremely rare vaccine injuries somehow justify stopping vaccination and letting all these vaccine preventable diseases come roaring back into the US (as they have started thanks to the nonsense of Toto): http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm
"I worry about Ebola."
GREAT! $$$$$$$$$$$ Roll up your sleeve and line up!
"Human ebola virus species and compositions and methods thereof
CA 2741523 A1
Amazingly, the CDC owns “the” patent on Ebola and all future strains.
The “SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION” section of the patent document also clearly claims that the U.S. government is claiming “ownership” over all Ebola viruses that share as little as 70% similarity with the Ebola it “invented”:
Why would a government organization claim to have “invented” this infectious disease and then claim a monopoly over its exploitation for commercial use? It is clear that the CDC plans to claim royalties on Ebola vaccines. This certainly increases the likelihood that the vaccines will become mandatory, thus increasing the profit potential for the patent holders.
Publication numberCA2741523 A1
Publication typeApplication
Application numberCA 2741523
PCT numberPCT/US2009/062079
Publication dateApr 29, 2010
Filing dateOct 26, 2009
Priority dateOct 24, 2008
Also published asEP2350270A2, 4 More »
InventorsJonathan S. Towner, Stuart T. Nichol, James A. Comer, Thomas G. Ksiazek, Pierre E. Rollin
ApplicantJonathan S. Towner, 5 More »
Export CitationBiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan
Classifications (21), Legal Events (1)
External Links: CIPO, Espacenet"
@Christopher
Please do me a favor and take as many experimental vaccines as possible. Why should Africans have all the fun?
LOL!
" and now have ASD diagnoses instead of being labeled as mentally retarded, leading people like Toto to mistakenly believe there is an epidemic of autism."
So Dr. Kanner was stupid and incompetent? He does not agree with you. Now what is your degree in? Down's syndrome kids have an obvious physical facial distinction which autistics (vaccine injured) do not.
DUH!
@herr doktor bimler
Does that mean you have been removed from the gene pool? There is a silver lining in every cloud!
"those extremely rare vaccine injuries"
"The number of children in the United States with autism spectrum disorder is higher than previously thought, according to new data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC estimates that 1 in 68 children aged 8 years old had autism in 2010. That’s about 30 percent higher than the previous estimate of 1 in 88 children, which was based on 2008 data and reported in 2012.
It’s less, though, than the 1 in 48 children aged 7 to 9 who were identified in Minneapolis as having autism in a report released last fall by researchers at the University of Minnesota. That figure was also based on 2010 data."
http://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2014/03/autism-rate-among-us-kid…
Remember, CDC 1999 statistics showed that there is a Reletive Risk of 7.6 for AUTISM in babies who receive 25 micrograms of Thimerosal (mercury) at birth to 1 month as compared to those that received none during that same time period.
CDC whistle blower, Dr. William Thompson has admitted to what amounts to scientific fraud by removing statistically significant data showing a link with increased autism risk in African American boys and the MMR vaccine received by, I think, 34 months. The final 2004 report was published WITHOUT this vital data.
This same Dr. Thompson, on Sept. 8, turned over an estimated 100,000 CDC document pages through his lawyer, under legal whistle blower protection, to Florida Congressman Posey. After repeated requests, his office has refused to make those documents available to ALL citizens via a searchable data base (it was sent already in this format) with a link to the House Science, Space, and Technology committee. They gave no legal reason not to do this. By law (thanks to Hitler) citizens have a right to INFORMED CONSENT regarding human medical procedures with risk. VACCINES FALL INTO THIS CATEGORY. With evidence that some risks were deliberately withheld by the CDC, and the NON-DISCLOSURE of the whistleblower's documents, I can only conclude that VACCINES ARE NOT SAFE and I cannot make an accurate risk assessment. THEREFORE I WILL NOT BUY THEM.
Speaking of Ebola, I was astounded by the response of the Dallas authorities: quarantine possibly infected contacts in the (presumably) heavily contaminated apartment?
That's like something out of the Middle Ages when they would quarantine family members of plague victims in the house where the victim died. Unsurprisingly, the families would conceal deaths, lie about causes of death, kill the guard keeping them in quarantine and then flee, or just flee as soon as they realized they had a plague case in the house. All of which of course helped spread the plague. The first three are impractical in modern countries but fleeing as soon as you realize there's an Ebola case -- yes, you could do that. And the Dallas authorities have made that a very logical action.
ORAC: "The truth about vaccines is DANGEROUS. I must suppress it at all costs...."
Your PRAVDA skills are amazing!
Thanks, I've got plenty of censorship video to show my FB friends....
No one reads your swill anyway.
@Krebiozen #164
Yea, that one Tim'd. I could have only meant that they're old now? Naa... I've got a touch of 'gallows humor' of late what with a little bit of *everything* and a gaggle of *the other* being escorted over here aboard the QEII -- Slowly but surely, inch by inch does the Caliphatic Cutter arrive... schicha schicka schicka schick. <--- (somebody did wonders with the audio in post on that first one, though)
==================
@herr doktor bimler #158
I didn't mean to come off sounding like a vampire... Hmm. I suppose ya'll got some unfounded grievance directed toward vampires? Racist!
@LW
"Or this generation of adults could stop the cycle right now by accepting the shingles shot with all its imperfections"
Could you please give us a list of these "imperfections"?
I'm all ears.
Toto:
I thought you were leaving us alone; it's not a remotely convincing flounce if you're back in a few hours.
Kreb @164 -- The meme that the "climategate" emails were exposed by an "insider" -- i.e., a "whistleblower" -- is part of the mythology of the Heroic Maverick.
It's more likely they were hacked; then some 10,000 emails were pored over to find the bits that provided good sound bites out-of-context ("hide the decline!"). In reality, there was no wrongdoing; the few bits of political chatter were pretty much as you'd expect from honest scientists who found they'd stepped on a political land mine.
It's on this basis that goofballs like Steyn accuse Mann of fraud. The fact that this is still a matter of contention even after the original work has been reproduced over and over by other groups is a clear indication of the poverty of the denialist argument, and their complete lack of intellectual integrity.
Toto, if you had gone through to those wikipedia pages I used, you would have found citations for all the claims I pasted. Suffice to say, Wikipedia is reasonably trustworthy when it comes to medicine and science.
PS Toto, if you're going to say "Herd Immunity is an unproven theory" you lose.
I think Toto needs to go back to Oz.
Herd immunity is just a theory, like gravity. It relies on the ridiculous proposition that if an infected person only comes into contact with people immune to their infection, none of them will catch it and subsequently spread it to others. Vaccinating people will no more protect the unvaccinated than a cannonball dropped from a tower will fall to the ground.
In other news firebreaks don't stop fires, and anti-virus programs don't prevent the spread of computer viruses. Because common sense.
/sarcasm
DEATH BY CHICKENPOX VS DEATH BY CAR CRASH:
"This study found that from 1990 through 2001, 1,465 death records listed chickenpox as the cause or a CONTRIBUTING cause of death. Chickenpox-related deaths averaged 145 per year from 1990 through 1994 (before the vaccine was licensed)"
http://www.immunizationinfo.org/science/decline-chickenpox-deaths
IN 2001 ALONE, THERE WERE A REPORTED 37,862 DEATHS FROM MOTOER VEHICLE CRASHES.
http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
My advice to fearful pro-vaxxers:
STAY OUT OF CARS AT ALL COSTS!
The only truly safe people to be around are the UNVACCINATED AMISH!
STAY AWAY FROM IONIZING RADIATION!
"A total of 1,665,540 new cancer cases and 585,720 CANCER DEATHS are projected to occur in the United States in 2014."
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/caac.21208/full
"Leukemia and most solid cancers have been linked with RADIATION. Most solid cancer data are reasonably well described by linear-dose response functions although there may be a downturn in risks at very high doses. Persons exposed early in life have especially high relative risks for many cancers, and radiation-related risk of solid cancers appears to persist throughout life."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2859619/
"One in 4 deaths in the United States is due to cancer."
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/caac.21208/full
Once again, THE AMISH are the safest citizens to be around. THEY ONLY USE HAND POWERED TOOLS.
'It relies on the ridiculous proposition that if an infected person only comes into contact with people immune to their infection, none of them will catch it and subsequently spread it to others."
You left out the mythical "95% efficacy rate":
"Is Herd Immunity Real?
In the original description of herd immunity, the protection to the population at large occurred only if people contracted the infections naturally. The reason for this is that naturally-acquired immunity lasts for a lifetime. The vaccine proponents quickly latched onto this concept and applied it to vaccine-induced immunity. But, there was one major problem – vaccine-induced immunity lasted for only a relatively short period, from 2 to 10 years at most, and then this applies only to humoral immunity. This is why they began, silently, to suggest boosters for most vaccines, even the common childhood infections such as chickenpox, measles, mumps, and rubella.
Then they discovered an even greater problem, the boosters were lasting for only 2 years or less. This is why we are now seeing mandates that youth entering colleges have multiple vaccines, even those which they insisted gave lifelong immunity, such as the MMR. The same is being suggested for full-grown adults. Ironically, no one in the media or medical field is asking what is going on. They just accept that it must be done.
That vaccine-induced herd immunity is mostly myth can be proven quite simply. When I was in medical school, we were taught that all of the childhood vaccines lasted a lifetime. This thinking existed for over 70 years. It was not until relatively recently that it was discovered that most of these vaccines lost their effectiveness 2 to 10 years after being given. What this means is that at least half the population, that is the baby boomers, have had no vaccine-induced immunity against any of these diseases for which they had been vaccinated very early in life. In essence, at least 50% or more of the population was unprotected for decades.
If we listen to present-day wisdom, we are all at risk of resurgent massive epidemics should the vaccination rate fall below 95%. Yet, we have all lived for at least 30 to 40 years with 50% or less of the population having vaccine protection. That is, herd immunity has not existed in this country for many decades and no resurgent epidemics have occurred. Vaccine-induced herd immunity is a lie used to frighten doctors, public-health officials, other medical personnel, and the public into accepting vaccinations.
When we examine the scientific literature, we find that for many of the vaccines protective immunity was 30 to 40%, meaning that 70% to 60% of the public has been without vaccine protection. Again, this would mean that with a 30% to 40% vaccine-effectiveness rate combined with the fact that most people lost their immune protection within 2 to 10 year of being vaccinated, most of us were without the magical 95% number needed for herd immunity. This is why vaccine defenders insist the vaccines have 95% effectiveness rates."
- See more at: http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org/2012/02/18/the-deadly-impossibility-o…
re the 'insider':
I hear loads of this, courtesy of PRN:
OBVIOUSLY we all know about the insiders who warned of the dangers of vaccination as well as oncologists who 'come out' and tell the REAL story of chemotherapy's inefficacy but here's a new and recent one I'm sure you'll appreciate:
the woo-meister general maintains that he often meets with professors from a nearby, well-known university often cited for its research because they all drink green, vegan juices- the guys complain how "90% of the research conducted at universities" is meaningless. So much is fixed to please the corporate paymasters and other studies merely replicate what we already know.
Because the aforementioned quack knows so many people in the highest echelons of business, education and entertainment, he KNOWS how fixed and phoney everything the so-called experts do is. Worthless.
Thus, I supposed being rejected by the mainstream, like he is or struck-off like Andy or retracted like Hooker is in reality a mark of excellence.
"Wikipedia is reasonably trustworthy when it comes to medicine and science."
You are lazy. You let Wikipedia interpret for you. Nothing replaces primary source documents, especially in science. That is why the CDC refused to supply Dr. Hooker with their RAW DATA so he could peer revue the Thompson/DeStephano et al. 2004 MMR/autism study.
Figures don't lie, but liars can figure.
@NARAD
You are working overtime for Orenstein?
His admission of how long term safety of vaccines is determined was the topic.
Your continued distractor strategy to blather on about what has already been confirmed and your continued display of programming ignorance is quite entertaining.
Africans are helping themselves....with success!
"A Liberian doctor is using HIV drugs to treat Ebola victims."
"Gorbee Logan, a doctor in rural Liberia, has given at least 15 Ebola patients lamivudine, which is considered a long-term and effective drug to treat HIV patients. All but two of them survived, Logan told CNN last week."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/10/02/a-liber…
p.s.
herr doktor bimler, vampires are kinda dicks
VHD -- Bloodlust
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A2H1bpD25A
You can have my fusion powered lathe when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
/sarcasm
Why don't you do as the Amish, and get off the Internet? Don't you want to be safe like them?
"This is why they began, silently, to suggest boosters for most vaccines"
How did they silently suggest boosters? Charades night at the CDC?
In other anti-vax news...
- believe it or not, ( Pat) Tim Bolen has assembled several anti-vax groups together under the Health Freedom banner ( Bolen Report/ October) without a trace of hair-pulling or name-calling *supposedly*. Yes, Health Choice ( the Canary Party) and Barry Segal, amongst others, sat down and formed a ThinkTank...that didn't much.
- Jake's rather abysmal blog was today graced by the presence of Orac's most esteemed minions who discussed the Hooker paper retraction.
Jake is neither impressed with Orac nor with his minions- even the highest level shills.
Fancy that!
Quick, Toto, explain how this would work.
Honeybunch, do you want to guess what I did in grad school?
You mean aside from the part where they did?
A SPECIAL TRIBUTE TO THE NATION'S SAFEST CITIZENS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOfZLb33uCg
Quoth Toto:
Ah, so Toto isn't making the completely idiotic claim that "herd immunity is an unproven theory", s/he is making the statement of fact that measles immunity in the United States is not at a sufficiently high level to provide herd immunity for measles.
Okay, Toto, let us suppose that half the adult population is not immune to measles. When someone with an active case of measles walks through the Harrisburg airport, the Atlanta airport, and a Kohl's, and further attends church services, shedding measles virus at every breath -- why aren't there measles outbreaks all over the nation?
Measles is a highly infectious disease that spreads through the air. Epidemics in non-immune populations are well-documented to occur every time the disease is introduced. In the good old days before the measles vaccine, there were epidemics every few years in America when the population of young, unexposed, non-immune children built up -- and they were far less than half the population.
So, what is preventing measles epidemics in America in 2014, Toto?
"Honeybunch, do you want to guess what I did in grad school?"
Ummm. Special Ed?
With the skyrocketing autism rate, I hear they are in great demand.
Unless you're, y'know, an Amish child. Anyway, given all the Parkinson's,* I'm not so sure those hand tools would be all that safe.
Of course, the actual fact of the matter is that you're completely full of crap, as usual:
[npr.org]/blogs/money/2013/02/22/172626089/inside-an-amish-trade-show
Actually, my immune disorder is congenital - that is, inborn, not "caught" or anything - but NOT inherited, according to my doctor. No one in my family has ever had anything like it.
I have the great good luck of having NO close friends with kids, so I very rarely am exposed to any.
Leaving aside the fact that you're too stupid to understand the text, something that I doubt you've even attempted (hint: wrong Ebolaviruses), you lose yet again.
@LW
"someone who LIKELY had the measles"
"The Health Department says the person LIKELY infected..."
One answer is that he OBVIOUSLY didn't have measles.
Another answer: God
"...attends church services"
"In that hour he cured many of diseases and plagues and evil spirits; and on many that were blind he bestowed sight."
Luke 7:21
A MODERN DAY MIRACLE!
Another answer:
He was around lots of healthy unvaccinated people. We have no way of knowing how many vaccine failures there were, as the individuals were healthy and fought it off with their own immune system.
THE REAL STORY:
His greatest risk of death was driving to all of those places after getting off the plane.
I'm looking forward to Halloween.
We're dressing up as hypodermic needles and will be going door to door giving out anti-vax literature. I can't imagine a scarier costume.
@Narad
Can you please document how Dr. Hooker obtained the raw data?
I was under the impression that Thompson gave it to him as a whistleblower. If the CDC did turn it over, was it because it was court ordered?
For someone who believes that RI commenters are pharma-shills being paid for every pro-vaccine comment, it is generous of Toto to give them so many opportunities to earn those sweet phamabucks.
So you haven't bothered to read the paper you're talking about? "Data for case and control children were provided in a de-identified form by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention".
I am shocked and disappointed.
The "well to do" also disproportionately have children later in life. Advanced parental age is a risk factor for autism. I wonder if this plays into less than critical thinking geared towards avoiding autism.
We know that the great majority of adults are vaccinated against measles (if not old enough to have suffered the actual disease). It is extraordinarily unlikely that everyone exposed was unvaccinated. Your argument is fantastical.
By the way, do you know what it's called when someone's immune system fights off a virus so quickly and completely that they never even know they were exposed?
Immunity.
Nice job. You just proved that the great majority of adult AmericanJs are immune to measles.
* Americans.
Stupid iPhone.
This Supreme Court ruling is horrifying and evil. The Creator's INFORMATION rides on the DNA molecules. God has copyrighted it. The ruling is akin to claiming copyright ownership to THE LORD OF THE RINGS because you ripped the blank pages out of your hard back copy.
"cDNA is not a “product of nature,” so it is patent eligible under §101. cDNA does not present the same obstacles to patentability as naturally occurring, isolated DNA segments. Its creation results in an exons-only molecule, which is not naturally occurring. Its order of the exons may be dictated by nature, but the lab technician unquestionably creates something new when introns are removed from a DNA sequence to make cDNA."
- See more at: http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2013/06/13/supreme-court-rules-on-myriads…
The Bible gives us fair warning.....
"And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and PESTILENCES; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven."
Luke 21:11
Is YOUR name written in the book of life?
"And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire."
Revelation 20:15
@My fellow minions: Can't we feed Toto to Lord Draconis' hatchlings? He's getting really boring to read. If we are going to have an antivax troll to chew on, can't it at least be someone with intelligence who actually tries to read things before he posts them?
I'm going to bed. Toto has given me a headache.
herr doktor bimler
Here are the details from Hooker's web sight:
"The whistleblower came to the attention of Hooker, a PhD in biochemical engineering, after he had made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for original data on the DeStefano et al MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) and autism study."
"According to Dr. Hooker, the CDC whistleblower informant — who wishes to remain anonymous — guided him to evidence that a statistically significant relationship between the age the MMR vaccine was first given and autism incidence in African-American boys was hidden by CDC researchers. After data were gathered on 2,583 children living in Atlanta, Georgia who were born between 1986 and 1993, CDC researchers excluded children that did not have a valid State of Georgia birth certificate — reducing the sample size being studied by 41%. Hooker explains that by introducing this arbitrary criteria into the analysis, the cohort size was sharply reduced, eliminating the statistical power of the findings and negating the strong MMR-autism link in African American boys."
"Dr. Hooker has worked closely with the CDC whistleblower, and he viewed highly sensitive documents related to the study via Congressional request from U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The CDC documents from Congress and discussions that Hooker had with the whistleblower reveal widespread manipulation of scientific data and top-down pressure on CDC scientists to support fraudulent application of government policies on vaccine safety. Based on raw data used in the 2004 DeStefano et al study obtained under FOIA, Dr. Hooker found that the link between MMR vaccination and autism in African-American boys was obscured by the introduction of irrelevant and unnecessary birth certificate criteria — ostensibly to reduce the size of the study."
http://focusautisminc.org/cdc-whistleblower-reveals-widespread-manipula…
Friday, August 24, 2012Last Update: 3:29 PM PT
Dad Pushing Autism Link Can Get More From CDC
"A federal judge found that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention excessively redacted information sought by a father trying to establish a link between mercury-based vaccines and autism."
"Believing that there is more to the story, Hooker sent four Freedom of Information Act requests to the CDC in 2004 and 2005."
"After Health and Human Services rejected Hooker's appeal, he filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He says that inapplicable FOIA exemptions amount to bad faith."
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/08/24/49635.htm
This does get a little confusing. However, the CDC didn't just fulfill his FOIA within three working days.......
"Pinoyfan wrote:
...Even if the Philippines achieved eradication (from measles), “imports” through tourists are a permanent threat. Sadly particularly people from, ironically, Switzerland are a high risk source since in aforementioned country exists a relatively strong anti vaxxer movement. Particularly people from cantons of Eastern Switzerland are troublesome. Cantons Appenzell Inerrhoden, Appenzell Auserrhoden, Glarus, St. Gallen are particularly big strongholds of the anti vaxxer movement in Confederatio Helvetica."
http://blogs.wsj.com/searealtime/2014/01/06/philippines-launches-vaccin…
AN INTERESTING COMMENT IN LIGHT OF THE FOLLOWING STATISTICS....
"The pharmaceutical industry, as a key driving force of the Swiss economy, was unfazed by the recent economic crisis . Growth in real gross added value during the crisis years of 2008 and 2009 was approximately 7%, with a slowdown to about 4 % in 2010 . Forecasts continue to be optimistic for the current year, so the pharmaceutical industry can again expect stronger growth than the overall economy . Although the growth in the number of persons employed in the overall economy was an average of 1 .5% per year from 2005 to 2010, growth in the pharmaceutical industry was twice as high, namely at 3% . When including jobs in the supplier industries, more than 135,000 jobs were dependent on the pharmaceutical industry in 2010 . This sector delivers above-average productivity and is directly and indirectly re- sponsible for added value of almost CHF 30 billion, equivalent to a share of 5 .7 % of nominal gross domestic product . Moreover, since 1990, the pharma- ceutical sector increased its exports by a factor of seven (in terms of value), and it now contributes more than 30% of Switzerland’s total exports ." p.4
http://www.interpharma.ch/sites/default/files/polynomics-2011_bedeutung…
DO THE SWISS KNOW SOMETHING?
They are smarter, wealthier, and healthier than the average American...
@Boxturtle
Have you been tested for vitamin D deficiency?
They now recognize it as an integral part of the immune system. Very low D levels can lead to depression, anxiety, fatigue, and autoimmune disease. All four of mine have had very low vitamin D. 2000 units of D3/day made an amazing difference within two days. I think this condition may be vaccine related. It has become a bit of an epidemic. My boys do get outside every day.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.7193.pdf
J Nutr. 2005 Nov;135(11):2739S-48S.
The vitamin D epidemic and its health consequences.
Holick MF.
"Vitamin D deficiency also has other serious consequences on overall health and well-being. There is mounting scientific evidence that implicates vitamin D deficiency with an increased risk of type I diabetes, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, hypertension, cardiovascular heart disease, and many common deadly cancers. Vigilance of one's vitamin D status by the yearly measurement of 25-hydroxyvitamin D should be part of an annual physical examination."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16251641
"Vitamin D, in other words, acts a bit like the ignition key to your car: The car won't run unless you turn the key and ignite the engine. Likewise, your immune system won't function unless it is biochemically activated with vitamin D. If you're facing the winter flu season in a state of vitamin D deficiency, your immune system is essentially defenseless against seasonal flu. That's why all the people who get sick are the ones who live indoors, work indoors and exist in a chronic state of vitamin D deficiency.
That's also why virtually all the people who died from H1N1 were chronically deficient in vitamin D. They had virtually no immune system protection at all and were thus easy targets for the swine flu.
These findings about vitamin D "arming" the immune system were published in Nature Immunology. Commenting on the findings, the researchers said, "Scientists have known for a long time that vitamin D is important for calcium absorption and the vitamin has also been implicated in diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis, but what we didn't realize is how crucial vitamin D is for actually activating the immune system -- which we know now." (UK Telegraph, source below).
It seems the CDC and WHO remain utterly ignorant about this research or they would have been recommending vitamin D to fight the recent H1N1 pandemic rather than vaccine shots. Vitamin D would have been a far more effective (and less costly) defense against the pandemic than vaccine shots, especially given that even vaccines don't work unless there is an immune response, and that immune response requires the presence of vitamin D!"
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/028357_vitamin_d_deficiency.html#ixzz3FKmoch…
BA:
I'd actually like to take a look at this, because I can think of two possible confounders for what you said.
Possible Confounder 1: The "well to do" are more likely to have access to doctors who can diagnose autism and to services for autistic children. Thus, they are more likely to have their children diagnosed.
Possible Confounder 2: Because of their lack of social skills, autistics may be likely to marry later than their neurotypical peers. In other words, marrying later is not the issue. It may just be that autistics are likely to marry later.
If anybody has any data, I would appreciate it.
MOB @161
I'll see you and raise you. Not braking for pedestrians, red lights etc. is a non action and therefore blowing through a crosswalk or red light does not force anything. Poor Sid must chafe under the coercion that forces him to do so.
I have heard Ella Fitzgerald make more sense than Toto' s post while scat singing in a cutting contest with the Jazz at the Philharmonic All Stars.
Toto,
You seem to be under the impression that repeating a blatant lie over and over makes it true.
Unless by "most" your source means "pertussis", as I pointed out just a couple of days ago, that is no true. This study looked at persistence of immunity after vaccination and found estimated antibody half lives of 92 years for smallpox, 3014 years for measles, 542 years for mumps, 114 years for rubella, 11,552 years for Epstein-Barr, 50 years for varicella-zoster, 11 years for tetanus (which is why a booster is recommended) and 19 years for diphtheria (though 85% of subjects were still immune). Immunity to tetanus and diphtheria probably last much longer, but the antibody levels measured were at the detection limit of the assays used.
Give this, a large part of your argument is exposed as utterly bogus. Again.
Toto,
You don't want to believe what Mike Adams says about, well, anything. This clinical trial of vitamin D3 to prevent influenza found no difference in influenza incidence in those given D3 and those not - there were fewer cases in the D3 group during the first month, but more in the second month so overall the D3 made no difference. A systematic review found that D3 supplementation had a small and barely statistically significant effect on mortality and on deaths from cancer, even when looking only at those who were deficient: 150 people would have to be given D3 for five years to prevent one additional death.
Vitamin D is not the panacea that Adams and others claim it is.
Toto's assertions about the Swiss are amusing:TTYe Swiss don't vaccinate as much as other developed countries and the Swiss pharmaceutical industry is very healthy.
Hmm.
Do you suppose that's because treating VPDs is a whole lot more profitable for Big Pharma than preventing them via vaccination?
TTYe = they. I don't know how the iPhone managed that particular mess.
@Toto :
"I’m a little older. I grew up with measles, mumps, and chickenpox parties. Kids were exposed while young and healthy. After a few days of discomfort, they were fully recovered and had LIFELONG NATURAL IMMUNITY. More importantly, NO AUTISM and permanent disabilities."
And ? I was born in the 80s ; I almost never heard about autism or chronic disabilities in my circle. Then someone I know was diagnosed late beginning 2000s, and I suddenly realized there were a lot more autistic people than I thought.
More importantly, I learned of the existence of advocacy organizations for parents who had been battling for DECADES in order to help their children who had been institutionalized and wrongly diagnosed with psychosis and mental retardation, without adequate therapy.
So I dare you to adress the senior membres of an advocacy organization and tell them that their children can't be autistic, because you ignored their existence when young.
***
"Autism is a new phenomenon, beginning with “Kanner’s 11: "
Psychiatry, and even more child psychiatry are also relatively new phenomenon in case you don't realize. Kanner and Asperger were the first to theorize that some of their patients had similar symptoms, and they then proposed a new classification. That doesn't make Kanner's 11 "patient zero".
"So Dr. Kanner was stupid and incompetent? He does not agree with you. "
Waow... FYI, scientific information didn't travel to the same speed at this time. Moreover, not all psychiatrists became interested by Kanner and Asperger's work at the same time, so yes a lot of kids were wrongly diagnosed. And finally what we define now as "autism" now recover symptoms a lot less restrictive than Kanner's original 11. He wasn't stupid, he simply had to work with a little number of patients.
Ever heard of "diagnostic substitution" ?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18384386
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/117/4/1028.abstract
“So Dr. Kanner was stupid and incompetent? He does not agree with you.”
Kanner did not claim that the pattern he described was novel, only that it had not been recognised before. But to know that, Toto would have to read stuff, and reading is hard... Toto does not even read material before copy-pasting it.
Here's a good account of how autism existed before Kanner's paper but had not been widely recognised:
In this initial description of ‘infantile autismʼ [...] Kanner described a distinct syndrome instead of previous depictions of such children...
[Source -- one of Toto's slabs of spam, intended to prove that autistic kids appeared from nowhere in 1943]
I take back what I said in toto about toto.
Toto, you are an anti-vaccine loon--100% pure jibbering nonsense of irrationality and stupid. Furthermore, unless you are willing to disclose your real name for your rather unbelievable vaccine injuries you claim happened to your children, you should go do your mindless copy/paste/spam nonsense elsewhere--otherwise you are a nameless troll who is just lying to get attention.
Eugh... Just looked Toto's comments from the 1st september article, especially the filmed comments.
Don't pay attention to my earlier comment, I want to forget I ever attempted to argue with such a person.
I am now wishing it only is a really unsubtle Poe.
I find this to be an intriguing first-hand account of the first Ebola encounter in Zaire back in 1976. Given their initial exposure to the blood of the victim and their lack of knowledge of what they were dealing with, it is nothing short of a miracle that they did not contract the disease......
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/04/ebola-zaire-peter-piot-out…
@Toto,
It's actually a pretty good article about the history of Ebola.
Considering they didn't know much at all about the virus, they were a bit lucky. But they did have some knowledge about general disease sanitation and the good sense to wear heavy leather shoes, etc.
Their early work is starting to come to fruition with the development of vaccine(s) and treatments.
They were lucky. And, I would strongly suspect, very good at manipulating infectious samples. Sloppy microbiologists don't have a successful career.
The article provides a perfect example of why people in lab should wear sturdy shoes, not flip-flop or other sandals. One scientist is likely alive because he was wearing strong shoes.
As long as the virus did not come in contact with broken skin or with soft tissues, and the scientists washed their skin afterward, the risk of infection was strongly reduced. So far, Ebola virus's mode of transmission is more akin to hepatittis viruses than to cold viruses.
The Belgian nuns from the hospital were not so cautious: They were using unsterilized syringes to inject multiple patients with some vitamins. Maybe more a lack of resources than of training. Unfortunately but predictably, their patients and themselves were not so lucky...
NEVER FORGET!
CDC data statistics:
"Autism on the Rise"
"This chart shows the cumulative growth rate of the number of children ages 6-22 with autism from 1993 - 2006 in the United States and outlying areas, compared to all disabilities, including autism. The data show a 1,342 % cumulative growth rate of autism over that time period."
"1993 Autism: 23% All disabilities 3%
1994 Au. 45% A.D. 6%
1995 Au. 87% A.D. 10%
1996 121% 13%
1997 173% 17%
1998 247% 20%
1999 324% 23%
2000 411% 25%
2001 533% 27%
2002 662% 29%
2003 805% 31%
2004 971% 32%
2005 1,145% 32%
2006 1,342% 31%"\
Data: www.ideadata.org and cdc.gov/nchs"
Remember, the new vaccine schedule for babies/children began in 1986. In the year 2000, the CDC showed no preference for purchasing vaccines with or without Thimerosal. There is still no Federal government ban on Thimerosal containing vaccines.
Related:
"Trends in the Prevalence of Developmental Disabilities in U.S. Children, 1997-2008"
The paper not only revealed that one in six children across America suffered from a developmental disability in 2006 2008, but the rate of parent reported developmental disabilities in their children had increased 17.1% from 1997 to 2008.
Worse, in the 12 - year period, the prevalence of autism increased NEARLY 300% (289.5%)."
www.thedailysheeple.com
"Did you know? 1 in 6 Children Now has a Developmental Disability in the U.S."
"There is still no Federal government ban on Thimerosal containing vaccines."
Given that the only remaining vaccine for children in the US that contains thimerosal is influenza and the CDC recommends the thimerosal-free live virus version for children, exactly what point do you think a ban would have, Toto?
"Methodological Issues and Evidence of Malfeasance in Research Purporting to Show Thimerosal in Vaccines Is Safe"
"There are over 165 studies that have focused on Thimerosal, an organic-mercury (Hg) based compound, used as a preservative in many childhood vaccines, and found it to be harmful. Of these, 16 were conducted to specifically examine the effects of Thimerosal on human infants or children with reported outcomes of death; acrodynia; poisoning; allergic reaction; malformations; auto-immune reaction; Well’s syndrome; developmental delay; and neurodevelopmental disorders, including tics, speech delay, language delay, attention deficit disorder, and autism. In contrast, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that Thimerosal is safe and there is “no relationship between [T]himerosal[-]containing vaccines and autism rates in children.” This is puzzling because, in a study conducted directly by CDC epidemiologists, a 7.6-fold increased risk of autism from exposure to Thimerosal during infancy was found. The CDC’s current stance that Thimerosal is safe and that there is no relationship between Thimerosal and autism is based on six specific published epidemiological studies coauthored and sponsored by the CDC. The purpose of this review is to examine these six publications and analyze possible reasons why their published outcomes are so different from the results of investigations by multiple independent research groups over the past 75+ years."
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2014/247218/
"CDC's Vaccine Safety Research is Exposed as Flawed and Falsified in Peer-Reviewed Scientific Journal
Substantial Scientific Evidence Exists that Vaccine Ingredient is a Developmental Neurotoxin"
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cdcs-vaccine-safety-research-exposed-1156…
@Calli Arcale
"Given that the only remaining vaccine for children in the US that contains thimerosal is influenza and the CDC recommends the thimerosal-free live virus version for children, exactly what point do you think a ban would have, Toto?"
Those same vaccines are still available with Thimerosal. These are the vaccines sent to Africa. There is no law preventing a U.S. clinic from dispensing vaccines from a 10 dose Thimerosal containing vial. Parents must know to ask for Thimerosal-free. A clinic can say they there is none in stock and offer the one with Thimerosal. There is no law against this. What do they keep in the CDC stockpile?
The 2000 Simpsonwood Transcripts discuss this issue in detail:
http://skeptico.blogs.com/Simpsonwood_Transcript.pdf
Not only children, but also pregnant women as well - less than 50% of flu vaccines in the US contain Thimerosal & exactly 0% in those given to children or pregnant women.
Why are anti-vax screwheads so stupid?
Furthermore, unless you are willing to disclose your real name for your rather unbelievable vaccine injuries you claim happened to your children
The theory seems to be that no-one should mention Toto's children because PRIVACY; unless Toto wants to use them to win some kind of rhetorical point, in which case they are a legitimate weapon.
Sadly, my pharmacist only had single-dose vials of Fluzone QIV. My arm is still a tad sore after three days, though.
If you had actually read the Courthouse News item for comprehension, you'd see that that case, which stemmed from 10-year-old FOIA requests, had nothing to do with the DeStefano data, but rather thimerosal.
Don't believe me? Go read the complaint.
Great, you don't know the difference between a patent and a copyright or what cDNA is.
“Methodological Issues and Evidence of Malfeasance in Research Purporting to Show Thimerosal in Vaccines Is Safe”
Ah, so Brian Hooker, Boyd Haley, and the Geiers are reduced to paying to be published in a quackademic vanity press. There is progress.
What do they keep in the CDC stockpile?
All the alien bodies that spill over from Warehouse 13.
Yes, but it's... a special issue!
Oddly, it doesn't seem to be living up to its putative promise. As I've already noted, it mysteriously took three months to be "peer reviewed" and accepted without revision:
MORE ABOUT MEASLES
"By the late 1950s, even before the introduction of measles vaccine, measles-related deaths and case fatality rates in the United States had decreased markedly, pre- sumably as a result of improvement in health care and nutrition. From 1956 to 1960, an average of 450 mea- sles-related deaths were reported each year (∼1 death/ 1000 reported cases), compared with an average of 5300 measles-related deaths during 1912–1916 (26 deaths/ 1000 reported cases) [2]. .... As a result of measles virus infections, an average of 150,000 patients had respiratory complica- tions and 4000 patients had encephalitis each year; the latter was associated with a high risk of neurological sequelae and death."
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/189/Supplement_1/S1.full.pdf
The key word is ENCEPHALITIS. It sounds eerily like AUTISM:
"SSPE: a Chronic Encephalitis as a Result of Measles"
http://www.encephalitis.info/files/5413/4012/7902/FS_004V1.pdf
Read the whole article.
Now read a description of Hannah Poling's landmark Vaccine Court case:
http://vran.org/in-the-news/the-hannah-poling-case-the-us-government-co…
"In a matter of months after being injected with 9 vaccines in one day (including MMR), Hannah began exhibiting the repetitive behaviors and social withdrawal that typifies autism. “Something happened after the vaccines’” says her mother, Terry Poling, who is a registered nurse and an attorney. “She just deteriorated and never came back.”
The government in Hannah Poling’s case, insists she had a pre-existing “mitochondrial disorder” that made her vulnerable to the encephalitis which resulted in brain injury, which then led to her “autism-like” disorder. This “blame the victim” strategy implies that the genetically defective child is to blame for the vaccine reactions that led to her autism."
Comment: The "mitochondrial disorder" has been associated with an inability to excrete vaccine mercury. She was vaccinated before the gradual removal of Thimerosal from some vaccines. Ethyl mercury is a known neurotoxin. Her three month set of vaccines would have contained mercury.
Measles can cause encephalitis.
Some interesting facts about the MMR:
"
Beyond the failure of MMR vaccine to deliver the empty promise of lifelong immunity, health officials prefer to keep a tight lid on the collateral damage inflicted by the vaccine. Data compiled by the National Vaccine Information Center from government sources in the U.S. reveals the following disturbing statistics:
In the U.S. as of July 9, 2012 there have been 6,058 serious adverse events reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) in connection with measles vaccine since 1990, with over half of those occurring in children 3 and under.
As of March 1, 2012, there have been 898 claims filed in the U.S. federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) for injuries and deaths following MMR vaccination, including 56 deaths and 842 serious injuries,
There have also been 288 deaths reported to VAERS in association with the MMR vaccine. However, the numbers of vaccine-related injuries and deaths reported to VAERS may not reflect the true number of serious health problems that occur develop after MMR vaccination.
Common side effects from the MMR vaccine include low-grade fever, skin rash, itching, hives, swelling, reddening of skin, and weakness. Reported serious adverse reactions following MMR vaccination include SEIZURES, BRAIN INFLAMMATION and ENCEPHALOPATHY; thrombocytopenia; joint, muscle and nerve pain; GASTROINTESTINAL DISORDERS; measles like rash; conjunctivitis and other serious health problems."
http://vran.org/in-the-news/measles-what-health-officials-arent-telling…
"Open access publishing proposes a relatively new model for scholarly journal publishing that provides immediate, worldwide, barrier-free access to the full-text of all published articles. Open access allows all interested readers to view, download, print, and redistribute any article without a subscription, enabling far greater distribution of an author's work than the traditional subscription-based publishing model. Many authors in a variety of fields have begun to realize the benefits that open access publishing can provide in terms of increasing the impact of their work.
In an open access model, the publication costs of an article are paid from an author's research budget, or by their supporting institution, in the form of Article Processing Charges. These Article Processing Charges replace subscription charges and allow publishers to make the full-text of every published article freely available to all interested readers. In addition, authors who publish in our open access journals retain the copyright of their work"
THIS IS A GREAT 21st CENTURY FORMAT!
Any citizen can read the research for themselves. Monopolists lose control over who gets published. This is Democracy at work.
It is interesting that "Yahoo" picked up this article and posted it under FINANCE. LOL! Need I say more?
I take it that OA is a novelty to you. I doubt that it is to most everyone else around here. It's hardly a panacea for the failings of for-profit journals megapublishers such as Elsevier.
Yes, given that Yahoo is prima facie uninteresting and you haven't said anything at all.
Toto, your bag of available cut-and-paste posts must be getting pretty light. Would you like to elucidate the "eery" similarity between SSPE and autistic disorder?
You can start with the case-fatality ratio.
Yours in Psalm 7,
Narad
"Great, you don’t know the difference between a patent and a copyright or what cDNA is."
My statement stands. They presume to steal INFORMATION from God. Information is copyrighted. They REMOVED the non-information part of the DNA (introns) and claimed they had created a new INVENTION (exons only). This rivals the PRIDE of Satan.
Copyrighted book = DNA
blank pages = intron
cDNA= Copyrighted book with blank pages removed
"The RNA that is TRANSCRIBED has some sequences that will be TRANSLATED into proteins (exons) and others that must be spliced away (introns)."
"This cleaned-up, exon-only DNA is called cDNA. To make it, scientists take the fully spliced RNA and “reverse TRANSCRIBE” it. That’s exactly what it sounds like: The INFORMATION in the RNA is converted back into DNA form without the original introns."
"The focus on cDNA is particularly frustrating because the difference between cDNA and natural DNA is a purely technical matter. As some of the amici curiae pointed out, the INFORMATION CONTENT is the real issue. In his amicus brief, James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, uses the word “information” dozens of times but doesn’t mention cDNA once. cDNA is a tool, and barring its use is entirely arbitrary. The INFORMATION content of the genes is what the patents should or should not cover."
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/06/suprem…
Yes. But they forget who the AUTHOR of that information is...GOD. DNA is copyrighted not PATENTED.
@Narad
Would you post one of your peer reviewed articles?
Yahoo” picked up this article and posted it under FINANCE.
They did not "pick up an article". They were sent a press release, which they ran to fill space, that being the Yahoo business model.
Need I say more?
It would certainly be difficult to say less.
Being an Ebola suspect has a silver lining:
" A homeless Dallas panhandler who rode in the same ambulance after Duncan has been found after an extensive manhunt. The 52-year-old man — who city officials identified as Michael Lively — was admitted to Parkland Memorial Hospital Sunday afternoon after being taken into custody by Dallas police officers. County Judge Clay Jenkins said he was taken to the hospital's psychiatric ward, WFAA-TV in Dallas reports."
A CLEAN HOSPITAL BED, SURROUNDED BY NICE NURSES AND NEW FRIENDS SURE BEATS LIVING ON THE STREETS!
FREE FOOD AND RENT FOR 21 DAYS!
http://fluboard.rhizalabs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=12534
The Ebola test: let the test’s inventor speak
by Jon Rappoport
"With regard to the viral-load tests, which attempt to use PCR for counting viruses, Mullis has stated: ‘Quantitative PCR is an oxymoron.’ PCR is intended to identify substances qualitatively, but by its very nature is unsuited for estimating numbers. Although there is a common misimpression that the viral-load tests actually count the number of viruses in the blood, these tests cannot detect free, infectious viruses at all; they can only detect proteins that are believed, in some cases wrongly, to be unique to HIV. The tests can detect genetic sequences of viruses, but not viruses themselves.”
http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com
#231 :
“Methodological Issues and Evidence of Malfeasance in Research Purporting to Show Thimerosal in Vaccines Is Safe”
http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/antivaccination-…
#232 : Simpsonwood has been discussed too many times to count on this very blog. Hell, the blog you linked it from (Skeptico) tore it to pieces too ! Don't you fear the version you are linking us too has been altered by the "Big Pharma shill" running this blog ? :D
http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/06/robert_f_kenned.html
The Hannah Poling case has been discussed too.
Oh and by the way :
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Point_refuted_a_thousand_times
"Congrats" for being one of the worst cases I have seen in a long time.
LouV
And your point?
Anyone who reads the docs/articles I posted sees you for the blathering idiot that you are. Big Pharma is wasting money on you. LOL!
@LouV
BTW, The Simpsonwood document is a TRANSCRIPT of a "secret" meeting called by Dr. Walter Orenstein (CDC employee at the time). It is what it is.
It IS an ongoing headache for vaccine shills.
The only reason Skeptico linked to it was that the anti-vaxxer's obtained the document FIRST, through FOIA.
It's called LIE control. LOL! Their blathering "article" had nothing to do with the actual contents of the document. It was already out there, so they hoped the feeble minded sheep would read their article only, and not do the required fact checking by reading the PRIMARY SOURCE for themselves.
Toto, if you believe what you wrote in #252, you're delusional.
@Frosty
At 10 cents/word, you just earned $1.00. I guess paid shills have no standard regarding CONTENT. Sounds like a DREAM JOB.
FRAUD?
"Fed. R. Civ. P. 9(b) states “[i]n alleging fraud or mistake, a party must state with particularity the circumstances constituting fraud or mistake. Malice, intent, knowledge, and other conditions of a person’s mind may be alleged generally.” Fed .R. Civ. P. 9(b). The aim of this heightened pleading standard is “to place the defendants on notice of the precise misconduct with which they are charged, and to safeguard defendants against spurious charges of immoral and fraudulent behavior.” Seville Indus. Mach. Corp. v. Southmost Mach. Corp., 742 F.2d 786, 791 (3d Cir.1984). This standard “requires, at a minimum, that plaintiffs support their allegations of . . . fraud with all of the essential factual background . . . that is, the who, what, when, where and how of the events at issue.” United States of America ex rel. Ronald J. Streck v.
8
Allergan, Inc., 894 F. Supp.2d 584, 601 (E.D. Pa. 2012) (citing In re Rockefeller Ctr. Props., Inc. Sec. Litig., 311 F.3d 198, 217 (3d Cir. 2002)).2"
http://business.cch.com/ald/USMerck952014.pdf
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-AUGUST 27,2014
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM W. THOMPSON, Ph.D., REGARDING THE 2004 ARTICLE EXAMINING THE POSSIBILITY OF A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MMR VACCINE AND AUTISM
"My name is William Thompson. I am a Senior Scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, where I have worked since 1998.
I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.....
My concern has been the decision to omit relevant findings in a particular study for a particular sub group for a particular vaccine. There have always been recognized risks for vaccination and I believe it is the responsibility of the CDC to properly convey the risks associated with receipt of those vaccines....."
http://www.morganverkamp.com/august-27-2014-press-release-statement-of-…
Ebo History
Very informative....
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3035551/
Great....I live South of Jay Gordon, North of Bob Sears, and right smack next to Orange County.
Get me outta here!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Simpsonwood_CDC_conference
Yep, that's really a big secret. Dorothy is calling and she wants you to explain the mess you left on the carpet.
A very interesting article indeed.
But the point of bringing it into the current discussion is?
Do you actually have something to say for yourself about Krahling and Wlochowski, as opposed to random cutting and pasting from the complaint (which was unsealed after the DOJ looked at the underlying allegations for two years and found nothing sufficiently compelling)?
You do realize that K&W are in it for the money, right?
Except for the part where you still, despite having been advised already, were too slothful to consider the possibility that SUDV ≠ EBOV.
@Toto @251 :
My point is the only thing you are demonstrating is that you are late to the party.
You post these docs as if we have never heard of them and don't adress the truckload of criticisms that ensued when they were discussed on this blog and elsewhere.
So no, simply posting these doc is not sufficient.
FTFY, Totoonces.
Ah, yes, Rappoport, whose "nomorefakenews" coughed up the utterly fake news about Thompson's being escorted from the CDC grounds.
So, here's the thing, Toto: Mullis was yammering about HIV viral loads. Set aside the question whether this ancient comment (which could use an attestation, BTW) made sense at the time, since it's long since been made false. Please answer a simple question:
What does it have to do with EBOV diagnoses?
this ancient comment (which could use an attestation, BTW)
What are the odds that Toto is an AIDS denialist as well as everything else?
It's an ongoing source of amusement to me. Only someone with no understanding of the issues involved (or with some sort of delusional perceptual filters), would see anything at all sinister in the Simpsonwood transcript. I find it very reassuring that scientists had such a frank and open discussion about thimerosal in vaccines and its possible effects.
Toto needs a doggy downer.
Toto IS a doggy downer.
HDB
I would put even money on him being a relativity denialist and for short odds on him being a geocentrist. Hell, for long odds I would put money on Flat Earther.
@Narad
"I was not, however, aware that he was recording any of our conversations, nor was I given any choice regarding whether my name would be made public or my voice would be put on the Internet."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGOtDVilkUc
If what is on the video is SLANDER and patent LIES, then WHERE ARE THE LAWSUITS AGAINST WAKEFIELD AND HOOKER?
We KNOW they would go after Wakefield for just about ANY reason. LOL!
Militant @269 --
Please enlighten me -- is relativity denialism is strongly associated with antivax lunacy for some reason, or does it just come with the cranky territory?
It's amazing to me how the curious and the kooky so often feel impelled to take issue with a simple and elegant fix to some paradoxes in classical electromagnetism.
Perhaps there are two Totos, There was the Very Serious one earlier in the thread, demanding JUSTICE for the perpetrators of the vaccine injuries inflicted on his kids (because genetic conditions are a form of inferiority that only happen to other people); and then there's the more recent one running up and down the thread in his underpants, leaving flaming bags of dog poop on doorsteps and giggling LOL a lot.
Or else he's just another troll.
Who said anything about "slander"? Thompson, though his attorneys, was merely stating that Hooker and, later, Wakefield's "production company" had exploited and crapped all over him.
Who's the "they" that is "going after" Wakefraud for this reason? You're the one frothing about "slander." All I see is people pointing out that Wakefraud, as a result of this stunt, has proved to be an opportunist scumbag who managed to hitch his wagon to Hooker's willingness to sleazily betray Thompson's trust.
Narad @273 -- Wakefield? An opportunistic scumbag?
I'm reminded of an old parody of "Psychology Today", which satirized its pretentious restatements of the obvious through such imagined articles as "Religious Orientation of the Pontiff", and "Ursine Defecation Habits.".
DW @193
OK, I channeled you when I visited Jake's blog today.
A few things stood out:
(1) When Lawrence asked Jacob Crosby, MPH, "Hooker should have received the results of the investigation [about the retraction of Hooker's paper]– why don’t you ask him?" Jake responded with the remarkably puerile, "Who says I didn’t make any inquiries?"
(2) Lawrence then noted that "that’s not much of a “journalistic” answer…..if you made inquiries, then you should report the results of those inquiries." Channeling his inner child, Jake responded, "And who says I won’t?"
(3) Further down thread, four days later, Jake Crosby, MPH noted, "I am reaching out to [Hooker]."
That's the sort of journalism that's reminiscent of the days when Woodward and Bernstein were about seven years old, and not pathetic.
I've been mulling over whether to ask Jake about Hooker's failure to conform to multiple elements of the STROBE guidelines, but I think I just don't have the energy to complete the follow-through. I may have tipped him off to COPE in the first place.
^ Context-corrected blockquote:
@ brian:
It's nice to channelled. I think.
Jake often behaves and writes in ways that are quite disturbing to me: he's so rigid, seemingly unaware of other people's existence and intolerant of any disagreement from his own point of view. He's oddly cold and mechanical. There's something else but it's hard to put my finger on it directly- seriously I've only had a drink and a half.
@ Narad:
Your performance chez Jake is spectacular.
@Denice Walter
The way Jake argues about "guidelines are guidelines" does seem overly rigid. I can imagine a scenario in which an author made everything up out of whole cloth. If the journal retracted it for, I don't know, a change in authorship, I imagine Jake would be arguing that the study should not have been retracted at all, even after it's pointed out to him that it was completely fabricated.
"They didn't say anything about everything being made up, so they shouldn't have retracted it," he'd say. I don't think that he'd even concede that there was a legitimate reason to retract the study.
I will reiterate that his initial point about TN simply yanking the paper was, as far as I'm concerned, 100% sound. It's unfortunate that this turned into target-of-opportunity frothing, but I would not rule out the possibility that Jake's beating this drum ultimately had something to do with getting TN to get their act together as far as handling formal expressions of concern.
Would anyone with a more robust understanding of statistic than I possess care to comment on Jakes' explanation of why Orac's and Jim Frost's eviscerations of Hooker's study are faulty? I believe the main problems are that Hooker used data from a case control study, which means the control group was not randomly selected, and could be affected by confounders if treated as if it were as Hooker did. This alone makes his reanalysis invalid. He also failed to correct his cut-off points for statistical significance for multiple comparisons, and failed to to correct for birth weight - simply removing those children with low birth weight from the dataset doesn't remove the confounder, it just reduces its effect somewhat. Does that sound about right?
Please enlighten me — is relativity denialism is strongly associated with antivax lunacy for some reason, or does it just come with the cranky territory?
It’s amazing to me how the curious and the kooky so often feel impelled to take issue with a simple and elegant fix to some paradoxes in classical electromagnetism.
Once you have slipped the surly bonds of Earth, there is really no limit on what you can believe. But that only describes the How of crank magnetism, and does not address the question of Why, and Which.
I suspect that Oppositional Defiance is involved, and also a sense of intellectual superiority over the little-brained Sheeple (or at least the desire for such a sense). Given those two, the knowledge that the majority of scientists accept theory X is enough to inspire a believe in Not-X.
Hence the "human biodiversity" racial-superiority loons (feeling superior to all the anthropologists and paleontologist who are in thrall to political soundness), who are also AGW-denialists AND HIV-denialists AND Ebola-denialists AND yadda yadda. Each rejection of received wisdom feeds into their Esteem-engines.
I sorely doubt that I have a more robust understanding of statistics as far as things go around here, but I've at least been meaning to run down the references in this. (Knowledge of true prevalence is assumed, so the details aren't directly applicable to a vax/unvax study, which is why I was looking in the first place.)
Hooker was definitely stuck with what the design allowed. Jake's ship, though, appears to founder promptly:
"So Hooker conducted a simple analysis to quantify that risk among that particular subgroup of study participants to see if the results supported what the whistleblower was saying. In doing so, he stratified for all the key variables, and the results were significant despite being found in arguably small groups."
Hooker was so far from "stratifying for" "all the key variables" (viz., the lone target) that he was comfortable with simply truncating a "stratum" to something something that-looks-like-enough for Table 4.
This table, though, is just a throwaway embellishment based on the birth-certificate sample. I think he recognized the confounder and simply hoped that nobody would notice the half-finished Windolene.
Flaws in Jake's apologetics for Hooker, of course, are different from flaws in the TN paper itself.
Yeah, Wakefield is so a martyr. That he did for his now-retracted Lancet article was just probing young children without a sound medical reason and "adjusting" the dates when quoting medical reports, so a few onsets of autism would appear to have happened soon after MMR vaccination, rather than before. Among other things.
Really no reason at all to be upset with him.