Last night was one of those nights where I was working late because I was asked to do a panel discussion on breast cancer last night. Such are the perils of being a breast cancer expert, I guess. That doesn’t mean I don’t have time for an uncharacteristically brief notice of some particularly dumb bit of antivaccine nonsense. Just as I said in yesterday’s post, such things are like waving a cape in front of the proverbial bull. Even worse, it’s a lawyer. Let me just put it this way. When I discuss the law, I’m very circumspect. I’m not a lawyer, which means that I am acutely aware of my limitations with respect to pontificating on the law. As “Dirty Harry” Callahan (played by Clint Eastwood) said in the movie Magnum Force, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” I like to think I know mine. Clearly the lawyer featured in this story has failed to heed that wise advice:
Bexar County District Attorney Nico LaHood on Sunday screened a controversial documentary, “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe,” linking childhood vaccines to autism at a local movie theater, according to a source who received an invitation.
Elected in 2014, LaHood also was videotaped sitting at his desk in his county office making a statement on the controversial topic.
“I’m Nico LaHood,” he said. “I’m the criminal district attorney in San Antonio, Texas. I’m here to tell you that vaccines can and do cause autism.”
Well, la-de-dah.
Am I supposed to be impressed by this. Let’s put it this way. The skills set necessary to analyze legal evidence is not the same skill set needed to analyze scientific evidence, particularly with respect to the question of whether vaccines cause autism. He even made a teaser video for the team behind VAXXED, you know, the antivaccine movie by Andrew Wakefield and Del Bigtree:
The video in which he appeared is so much like antivaccine videos I’ve deconstructed over the years and suffers from the same confusing of correlation with causation. LaHood himself views the movie like a trial against vaccines and seems quite impressed by the “evidence” it presents. Unfortunately, as tempting as it is for a lawyer and DA to see everything in legal terms, science doesn’t work that way. He goes on and on about how children seemingly regressing after vaccines is “strong circumstantial evidence.” Yes, perhaps, but in science circumstantial evidence isn’t enough. In reality what Mr. LaHood calls “strong circumstantial evidence” is what we in the medical biz call anecdotal, and, in science, unlike the case in law anecdotal evidence is the weakest form of evidence.
Sadly, Nico LaHood is confusing correlation with causation with his own child, as so many parents have done, and is now abusing his position of trust as District Attorney to promote the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism:
The next shot declares that “Niko’s (sic) Story” is “coming” on Tuesday, followed by a plug for the Vaxxed documentary.
LaHood acknowledged in an interview Monday that "this is not a politically correct opinion."“We had a very normally developed child, meeting all the marks as a child – walking, eye contact … and after his 18-month vaccination we had a very different child," LaHood said. "And our story is not alone. I mean, there’s thousands of parents out there that have the same story. So my opinions are just my opinions as a daddy, as a husband who happens to be the DA.”
This daddy might happen to be the DA, but that doesn’t stop him from falling for the fallacy of confusing correlation with causation. Unfortunately, despite people trying to educate him as to the error of his ways, Mr. LaHood continues to double down. In fact, just yesterday he doubled down in a Facebook post:
Basically, in this post, Mr. LaHood urges “everyone” to view VAXXED. Bad choice. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop Mr. LaHood from diving deep into antivaccine crankery in four points.
1. Parents educate yourselves for the sake of your precious children. Stay away from rhetoric and look at hard facts.
“Educate yourselves.” You keep using that term. I do not think it means what you think it means. Ditto the term “hard facts.” Whenever you see someone spewing antivaccine talking points telling you to “educate yourself,” what he really means is to read websites like NaturalNews.com, Mercola.com, Age of Autism, and other antivaccine websites to imbibe antivaccine pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.
Let’s see what Mr. LaHood has to say next:
2. Let doctors be doctors. They should be able to take a position for or against vaccines. It is a shame that, if they do not support vaccinations, they are ostracized, slandered, and chastised by licensing boards and certain segments of the public.
Silly DA. There’s a reason why doctors who don’t suport vaccination are ostracized. It’s because they have betrayed their profession. Why? Doctors are expected to follow professional standards In pediatrics, there is no “anti-” position when it comes to vaccines, at least not in any responsible medical society. Doctors who do not vaccinate are not practicing according to the standard of care, at the very minimum, in the process endangering their patients.
3. Do not force vaccines on our parents. Keep exemptions and parents rights alive. It should be a parents choice “if” and “when” they will vaccinate.
Ah, yes. the old “parental rights” argument. Here’s the problem with that. Children are not the property of their parents. They are autonomous beings who have their own rights. Insofar as parents protect those rights and look out for the best interests, they are doing their job. However, failing to vaccinate is doing exactly the opposite of that, because vaccinating is almost always in the best interest of a child. The only exception is when a child has a medical condition that renders vaccination too risky; i.e., has a medical condition for which vaccination is contraindicated and thus rates a true medical exemption.
LaHood saves the most ignorant for last:
4. Ask your legislators to demand the same phase 1 safety studies that all pharmaceutical drugs go through. That is not happening with the vast majority of vaccines and no one is asking why. The CDC should be mandated to show us objective research that proves which position is right or wrong.
The stupid, it burns. It burns mightily and painfully. I feel sorry for the people of San Antonio to have such a ignorant dolt as their district attorney.
This is such a common myth among antivaccinationists—and, make no mistake, what LaHood is laying down is pure antivaccine talking points, particularly this one. This is one of those times where all I can do is to shrug and point Mr. LaHood to some links that describe the testing process for vaccines, which does include phase I clinical trials. (One wonders if Mr. LaHood even knows what a phase I clinical trial is.) He’s also risibly ignorant of how vaccines are approved.
The government already does require “objective research” to determine whether vaccines are safe and efficacious, It’s called the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act. just not how LaHood thinks. For one thing, it is the FDA, not the CDC, that approves vaccines, and vaccines go through the same approval process as any pharmaceutical. The CDC only selects among vaccines already approved by the FDA to include in its list of recommended vaccines. For a lawyer, Mr. LaHood is certainly ignorant of the law and regulations with respect to vaccines and pharmaceuticals.
LaHood concludes:
I will zealously defend our children. I will zealously defend the rights of parents to protect their children from something, they believe, may have a link to harming their children, unless it is proven otherwise. In the end, you have a right to vaccinate or not; it is your choice.
‘I will defend parents’ ‘rights’ to endanger children based on pseudoscience, fear mongering, and conspiracy theories. There, fixed that for ya.
LaHood does, however, preemptively play the victim:
Lastly, if anyone is going to criticize me for supporting the information contained in the documentary, Vaxxed, I humbly suggest they watch it first, then advocate an opinion. I’m happy to organize a public showing and discussion with anyone willing.
I have watched VAXXED. That’s why I know it’s antivaccine propaganda chock full of lies, misinformation, and pseudoscience presented so blatantly that it would make Leni Reifenstahl blush, were she still alive to see it. That a DA like Mr. LaHood would find the film so compelling does not speak well of his knowledge of science or, more importantly for his job, his critical thinking capabilities.
I can’t help but note that Tara Haelle found a rather interesting quote from Mr. LaHood about a grand jury proceeding regarding a man killed by police whom the grand jury declined to indict:
The code of criminal procedure restricts me from saying what was presented to the grand jury but let me tell you what our practice is. What the new culture is in this office. We present all evidence to the grand jury. We don't cherry pick evidence. I don't think that's honorable,
One wonders, then, why Mr. LaHood doesn’t consider Andrew Wakefield and Del Bigtree to be completely without honor. Cherry picking evidence was their favored technique in making VAXXED. LaHood might call himself an “evidence guy,” but he’s clearly anything but. In the video, he expresses disbelief that anyone could watch VAXXED and conclude “they made it up.” Well, if you know the background, you can quickly recognize which parts of VAXXED are made up and which parts are dishonest spin. That’s about 95% of the movie. The movie’s so blatant that even people, film reviewers, with no special knowledge of vaccines could tell that Bigtree and Wakefield were laying down a load of fetid dingo’s kidneys, a pack of lies. Yet Mr. LaHood believed the movie and praises it.
The people of Bexar County and San Antonio are clearly poorly represented by this clown.
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For all I know, he may be an excellent DA amd serve his county well in other ways.
But not only are his statements horribly wrong, as you point out, his initial video was in his office, in front of the flag, trying to use the power of his office to give weight to these false anti vaccine claims. Yes, his position has nothing to do with science, but it could still influence people.
That's highly inappropriate, I think. A real misuse of his position.
My response to Mr LaHood:
Dear sir: as an attorney, I'm sure you find fraud and misrepresentation abhorrent. So why are you not totally appalled at the words of Dr Thompson being cut and used out of context in a number of scenes in the movie? There is even proof from Hooker's book where he gives the exact transcriptions that the movie has changed what he said and the contect.
Isn't that illegal? And, again, as an attorney, you want facts. Well, the facts - all the Thompson documents - are available on Leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk for your review. Dr Matt Carey was honest enough to ask for them from a FOIA and make them public, UNLIKE Hooker and Wakefield.
Review the facts with the open mind you claim you have, then come back and tell us you still support VAXXED as a true documentary.
(I'm betting he won't admit he's wrong.)
His supposed expertise as a DA isn't apparent when discussing matters he should know about like the whole "forced" thing. He is a shining example of the statistic that anti-vaxxers are "more educated" in general.
He's incredibly popular and has power, also resonates with families because he sees autism daily in his family. The fact that he's wrong doesn't matter to the mass media he generates, which favors him over trained medical professionals.
Like Wakefield, a popular fraud can do so much damage.
Gave myself a headache from facepalming too hard on this one. Is he serious? I certainly hope that he puts more effort into his legal cases than he does into opining on vaccines.
As to him using his position to advance a scientifically bankrupt position that endangers public health? And defending dishonest cherry-pickers and frauds? Well, I guess ethics aren't all that important to him. When I was looking into this a bit more, I discovered an ad that he ran featuring the faces of several judges, claiming that they supported his bid for DA. Except, the law prohibits judges from endorsing anyone running for an elected position. Mr. LaHood did not see any problem with his actions. Ethics, law, I guess he thinks they're more suggestions than something to be rigorously upheld.
Here's a link about that whole endorsement kerfuffle.
Silly DA. There’s a reason why doctors who don’t support vaccination are ostracized. It’s because they have betrayed their profession. Why? Doctors are expected to follow professional standards In pediatrics, there is no “anti-” position when it comes to vaccines, at least not in any responsible medical society. Doctors who do not vaccinate are not practicing according to the standard of care, at the very minimum, in the process endangering their patients.
You know my take on this, Orac. Those anti-vax doctors are ostracized, but not nearly enough, especially by their state medical boards and the medical academies to which they belong for their specialties.. Nor is Wakefield catching denouncements with Vaxxed from the media or these medical academies with Vaxxed--which means the people of San Antonio will go online and see that Vaxxed is something without any large-scale refutations which will make LaHood's claims appear more valid than they are. (for comparison, think back to 2011 when Wakefield caught a lot of very public grief in the US after he was "struck off" as well as his Lancet article retracted--do you see any of that happening now in 2016?)
Ideally the Texas AAP would at least come down on LaHood's statements immediately (and ideally the AAP would have already come down on Vaxxed and Wakefield as well when it came out in April).
We here know LaHood is simply regurging AV talking points. What concerns me is Vaxxed/Wakefield is making inroads among new parents (Bigtree stated this in a recent interview and they love to show videos on the Vaxxed FB page of new parents with saying they will never vaccinate their child after seeing Vaxxed) because parents are seeing Vaxxed being pushed at them in an echo chamber.
Everyday I scream in frustration and anger at these medical groups who can and should be doing something about this but are not. Maybe they're worried about some sort of "Streisand effect" by speaking out, but I believe it's much too late to have that concern. Anti-vaccinationists have done great harm already and optimistic silence is not the way to address this.
More and more, I believe we're going to have to see kids start dying of these diseases again to get these people to shut up.
The Forbes post attributed to Tara Haelle is actually written her book coauthor - Emily Willingham.
@chemmo: though I will mention that Tara has her own - also excellent- post on this from a day earlier:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2016/08/30/texas-das-politically…
I challenge Mr LaHood to take his own advice, and recognize that it’s Andrew Wakefield who has supplied the rhetoric, with very little hard facts.
I am so,so confused. I just listened to an interview with Andrew Wakefield over on Activistpost "Dr Andrew Wakefield Discusses Vindication of his original Study linking Vaccines to Autism" where he says that "everything in that paper was right, everything in that paper's been confirmed..........."
In the Lancet paper however, the authors stated that "we did not prove an association between measles,mumps and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described"
Is he now saying that finding is right and has been confirmed and if so, how would that support the vindication of his original study linking vaccines to autism, when it didn't?
@Lawrence
When the news came out several weeks ago that Texas non-medical exemptions had jumped quite a bit, I predicted that they were aiming to be the state with the next big disease outbreak. LaHood's comments may help fuel that prediction toward becoming true by helping to scare more parents away from vaccines.
Part of the issue is that the anti-vaccine movement has this PR juggernaut that rolls along without caring about facts or reality. It's all emotion and fantasy, but they have a compelling (though false) story to hook people. The science-based community doesn't have that. Fear, doubt, and anger are so much more powerful than facts, reason, and logic.
Hey Chris, I see that someone responding to your review of Paul Thomas' book on Amazon says:
"I read a bunch of articles which shows Dr. Chris Hickie is a hunchman for the AAP and AMA."
Hunchman, indeed. Didn't your mama ever tell you to stand up straight?
@DB--I'd like to see what "articles" this person read showing this. (answer: none, and that's not a hunch, man).
I think the AAP dislikes me almost as much as AVers, because until the AAP expels their anti-vax FAAP pediatricians and starts directly taking on AVers like Wakefield and the NVIC, they aren't doing nearly enough to combat anti-vaccinationism. And I will keep reminding them of this every chance I get.
If you peruse some of the DA's facebook, you'll see the comments supported by medical science are way way outnumbered on the like count by the anti-vax, maybe 3 or 4 to 1.
Warms the heart that health care is shown by mass media to be better handled by a prosecutor than the clinician and hospital system that have actual medical training.
Not that infectious disease is a popularity contest best won on social media. But, it does foretell that infectious disease will be a problem here when something does break out because of the media support in favor of mis-information provided by vaxxed and furthered by the prosecutor.
If we provide vaccinations to kids as per the CDC schedule, are we now subject to prosecution?
Might work for the entitled fence-sitters but won't do a thing to change the minds of the hardcore AVers. They have a nasty habit of blaming the victim in order to protect their hive-mind mentality.
As a mother and a PhD in biological anthropology, I'm planning on addressing city council next Wednesday at their open forum.
"LaHood himself views the movie like a trial against vaccines and seems quite impressed by the “evidence” it presents. "
An attorney who actually believes this logic would be an awful attorney.
It's like saying as DA, "Well, the defense gave their argument. Sounds legit. He didn't do it. Why are we here again?"
LaHood doesn't say, "I saw this, dived into the evidence for myself and checked the claims made in the film and, damn, they are all legit."
Nope, he says, "Saw the film. Wanted to believe. Believed. Now I'm shillin' for Wakers"
@ Donna S, would you please report the results back here?
Thats a powerful video and parents are not buying the medical establishment line anymore. Just a matter of time. The writing is on the wall no matter what the cookbook you learned in medical school says. You are all just glorified chefs with no training on what these ingredients actually do in the body, Your cookbook didn't teach you making you CLUELESS. The movement is well underway and their is no turning back. http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/more-doctors-asked-abou…
Writing on the wall for what? An infectious disease to start killing kids?? You're happy about that?
"powerful video"? That is about on a par with the Sovereign Citizens and their "powerful papers", none of which have any legal validity. The video is devoid of both facts and sound science. And your comment about "glorified chefs" reveals you to be just another keyboard bloviator. Science is not a popularity contest, and facts are not avoidable or negotiable.
@ #22 Come to my office (I work in a historic cemetery) and I will show you our burial registers starting from 1850 and the pages and pages, and gawddammed frickin' PAGES of children under the age of 10 who died of those diseases that vaccines now protect against. THEN come back and pontificate about how vaccines kill.
You have no clue.
And, then, let me show you the photographs from my mother's nursing days in the 1950's when she worked the polio wards. They were full of children in varying stages of disability; from being unable to walk to being unable to breathe.
"The movement is underway..." my ass.
How ironic that LaHood, who presumably would prosecute a parent for killing a child (and who himself has a child with autism) allows himself to be interviewed by someone who has said she wouldn't judge parents who kill their child with autism.
Given that LaHood is a prosecutor, I interpreted that line as LaHood liking the way the movie was laid out in the second half a as a series of "exhibits," as though it were a prosecutor's case.
Well, somebody's.
Well, thank goodness the movement is finally underway (I was losing hope, seeing how many times I've been informed that the movement is on the verge of sweeping away the old Pharma-Medical Complex paradigm, only to see it perpetuate itself like a regenerating anaconda or free refills at Chipotle).
But at last the writing is on the wall, it's just a matter of time and all of you Vax-Hacks will be exposed, blinking in the glaring light of, well, exposure.
And we will accept your surrender. Ha! Ha!
Hey Theo @22: I guess you missed the piece on KUOW (Seattle NPR) this morning that said that Seattle is bucking the trend and has an *increasing* vaccination rate?
You seem so excited about old diseases coming back, what, do you work for a child-coffin builder?
#6 Todd W.
So the advert shows that LaHood is unethical and he now is demonstrating that he is gullible and will swallow all kinds of crap as “evidence”.
God help the poor people of San Antonio—come to think of it definitely the poor people of San Antonio.
You seem so excited about old diseases coming back, what, do you work for a child-coffin builder?
Have you looked at the state of chronic childhood disease lately? We will take our chances on wild viruses anyday and 10 days of inconvenience than polluting our immune systems with pharmaceutical mysticism and have problems for life. Our kids are sicker than they have ever been, and pediatricians don't know why. Environmental factors they say maybe. Yeah like the environment in the blood and body after multiple doses of vaccines floating around a new baby. How about that
environment? My main point is there is no training by pediatricians on exact ingredients contained in vaccines or how it potentially impacts the body. They don't know because they are not trained. Go ask 10 doctors and or pediatricians about how vaccines effect the human body beside anti body titers. BFD! Is that all the cookbook told you? of course it is because your all glorified chefs doing what your cookbook tells you unable to consider any other way. IGNORANT What about residual aluminum build up? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25699008
A slow death to your profession is coming your way. Our movement can only get bigger and bigger and once we hit critical mass look out. We have science on our side.
I have nothing more to add other than your world view is terminal
Why is this ok with you people?http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23557144
Theo, before I became a pediatrician and I used to do research on invertebrate snails that had about 30,000 neurons and their whole body. I feel confident in stating that those snails have more functional neurological matter then resides inside your brain. You are a menace to society and I hope your children grow up to realize how stupid you are
"Doctor" La Hood seems to be ignorant of a major aspect of civil law. An adverse result stemming from failing to adhere to the standard of care in the medical community is grounds for a finding of malpractice.
Here is a quote from nolo.com, an online legal dictionary:
[M]edical negligence is always measured by the medical standard of care that applied in the specific treatment setting in which the patient was harmed....
"The “medical standard of care” is typically defined as the level and type of care that a reasonably competent and skilled health care professional, with a similar background and in the same medical community, would have provided under the circumstances...."
Vaccination of children is the medical standard of care.
As Old Rockin' Dad used to say, "Thirty days. Next case."
I'm reminded of an Ogden Nash poem in which he suggests that the cure for a parent who read an article is "a hatpin through the left ventricle of the hearticle."
ORD:“Doctor” La Hood seems to be ignorant of a major aspect of civil law.
He's an attorney general in Texas. Attorneys there are appointed, and the odds that any of them went to law school are low.
With the total lack of ability to reason and weigh evidence that he shows on his FB page I suspect that every case he has ever handled needs to be reopened and reexamined. He has to have butchered the law, evidence and peoples lives on many occasions.
I just want to mention unless a physician discusses the potential adverse effects (from the manufacturer's vaccine package insert) which can occur with each and every vaccine, the parent or patient is unable to give their informed consent for the vaccine. That alone is unethical. It should be deemed malpractice.
A physician should tell a patient the real risks and benefits of a vaccine. Under federal law they are required to give the VIS before vaccinating and that covers that information, though I think going over it orally is a good practice.
Giving the list of reported events in the insert - events not shown caused by the vaccine, and clearly including things the vaccine doesn't cause - is not required, and arguably violates informed consent by potentially tricking the patient to think these reported events are the vaccine risks.
Informed consent requires giving true information about risks, and the list in the insert is the opposite.
Reading the "warnings" part of the insert is closer, but the VIS is probably still a better source, updated reasonably often.
@THEO #33:
Where is your evidence that it has become worse?
10 days of inconvenience? Every single disease we vaccinate against can kill, and all can inflict sequelae that severely degrade your health and quality of life.
What "problems for life" do vaccines cause? Oh, and you need to provide good evidence that vaccines cause those problems. That means PMID studies, not stuff from Mercola or Null.
Citation needed.
I read through the abstract. Some of the words that caught my eye were "so-called", "presumably", "suggests", "may be", "likely due". The paper looks like conjecture.
As for your second link:
Unconvincing, given the amount of aluminium there is in food.
You got nothing, Harris.
"2. Let doctors be doctors. They should be able to take a position for or against vaccines. It is a shame that, if they do not support vaccinations, they are ostracized, slandered, and chastised by licensing boards and certain segments of the public. "
There are lawyers that support the 'sovereign citizen' movement. Would DA LaHood support their rights or would he bring criminal charges against them?
@Ima Skeptic
A pediatrician could go over everything in the package insert, but then they'd also have to spend time explaining what the insert does and does not say. That's something that people, particularly those who are already vaccine averse, have difficulty understanding. The package insert is not a clinical document, though it does have some clinically relevant information. It is first and foremost a legal document.
As Dorit says, the VIS, coupled with one-to-one conversation, is a much better source of information for parents to allow them to make an informed decision.
You're such an arrogant, finger waving know it all. I see you have been funded by the medical establishment, NCI. Well, where's your cure for cancer, smart guy?
I guess your not to busy sine you have time to write this crap.
I do want to get back to the VIS question (patient version vs. professional version), which I've just now noticed, but I have to get ready for an appointment.
The actual reason for my visit to this thread is that Twyla Ramos mentioned something on one of the corresponding AoA ones* that I had not been aware of:
I have no problem conceiving some sort of Vaxxed RV being driven around to showings. The notion that the three of them are actually in it while it traveling the highways and byways is another matter entirely.
* Seriously, you people actually still think Robyn Ross is a "he"?
^ "while it's traveling"
C:
I had stage IV colon cancer and I am here. I think it was the Erbitux that did the most. Just got through with my year #4 CAT scan. No promises, but I think I am pretty far down the tail.
Congratulations KeithB, here's strong hopes for continued clear scans.
Relative to the DA,
New (with excellent illustrations) from epidemiologist Rene F. Najera.
"This is pretty much the case with the “thousands” of parents reporting a sudden onset of autism in their children occurring “immediately” after the administration of a vaccine. If Andrew Wakefield had committed his fraud with the Tdap vaccine instead of MMR, odds are that these parents would be reporting this transition in their children shortly after the Tdap instead of the MMR. If he had committed his fraud with the Hepatitis B vaccine, odds are that these parents would be reporting this transition in their children since birth. "
https://epidemiological.net/2016/09/02/how-many-people-need-to-experien…
# 34 THEO
BMC Med. is a BioMed Central journal. BioMed Central is one of the really sleazy publish-for-pay publishers with zero credibility among real scientists.
Publishing in a BioMed journal immediately makes the article suspect.
It is possible that some articles they publish are a) legit and b) good. Sometimes an author does no realize just how sleazy the publisher is. On the other hand, you probably would be better off having Playboy Press (does this still exist?) publish your scientific paper. It probably would have more credibility
Orac. You sound a brilliant scholar and enjoy criticising everyone else with plenty of spare time on your hands- but how about sharing your own life for a change?
Can you please provide us your life details, please give us an insight into the life of Orac.
How do you live 'your own life' in a way that in your opinion best helps prevent disease with an aim of a disease free and disability free and happy life? Or are you interested in health at all, or just partly? Perhaps you eat hot dogs and fries without a thought and rely on modern medicine to patch you up? You may practice medicine, preach it, but don't live it?
How often do you get colds, the flu? How are your joints? And so forth...
When you submit your work, please include citations of evidence if you include , ie, exercise, growing food, vitamin D etc etc.
John: "Can you please provide us your life details, please give us an insight into the life of Orac."
Stalk much?
Stalk? About 99.9% less than Orac - I have better things to do with my life.
Awww, you poor person. Your curiosity is peeked, but you can't be bothered to check Wikipedia!
Your curiosity is peeked [sic]?
What about residual aluminum build up? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25699008
Ah, Gherardi, that crank again, still pimping his syndrome that no-one else see. Is there nothing that Frontiers won't publish? (Spoiler Alert.... NO).
Shortest flounce ever.
@ jkrideau @Herr Doktor
If you read a paper, you don't have to know about the publisher to determine if it is good or not. Bad papers are published in reputable journals too.
@Chris Hickie You are a menace to society and I hope your children grow up to realize how stupid you are
He can't argue against the evidence. The Talking Lizard only provides a raging insult
@Dorit Reiss Informed consent requires giving true information about risks, and the list in the insert is the opposite.
Sure Dorit. There are absolutely no cases of vaccine injury. The Vaccine Court is a philanthropy where conspiracy-theorists line up for hand-outs based on a first-come/first-serve basis.
@Robert Hayes, better keep that straw man away from any open flames.
From the package insert for Infanrix:
"These adverse events were reported voluntarily from a population of uncertain size; therefore, it is not always possible to reliably estimate their frequency or establish a causal relationship to vaccination."
Just because the package insert lists a side effect or adverse event doesn't mean the vaccine caused it.
"How do you live ‘your own life’ in a way that in your opinion best helps prevent disease with an aim of a disease free and disability free and happy life? Or are you interested in health at all, or just partly? Perhaps you eat hot dogs and fries without a thought and rely on modern medicine to patch you up? You may practice medicine, preach it, but don’t live it?
How often do you get colds, the flu? How are your joints? And so forth…"
Well, let's see.
I sm "interested in health", but I don't overly obsess about it. I eat fruits and vegetables whenever possible (this is a big time of year for fresh garden eggplant, okra, Asian pears and soon pawpaws) and get out for a run 2-3 times a week to supplement the fast walks I take every day during work breaks. I avoid taking a flock of supplement pills that don't do anything meaningful and could harm my liver. I take minimal regular medication beyond daily low dose aspirin. I get an annual flu shot (I've never had the flu and have had maybe one cold in the last half dozen years). My joints are not as limber as in days past, but they do the job.
Surely John's head will explode at the thought of someone eating a "natural" diet, avoiding pills of all types as much as possible while getting needed vaccines, but fortunately for John, modern medicine has ways to patch up cranial explosions.
Oh, and avoiding naturopaths and other quack practitioners helps form a solid basis for good health.
If you read a paper, you don’t have to know about the publisher to determine if it is good or not. Bad papers are published in reputable journals too.
In addition, good papers can be published in crap journals.
The crucial point in the case of Theo's suggested reading material is that Gherardi is basically the French equivalent of Wakefield (though not as good at the game)... he fabricated a nonexistent syndrome in order to batten onto the inexhaustible money-teat of the Dwoskin Foundation.
John (#53)
A perfectly valid question based upon a Socratic principle. It suffices to say that Orac's disciples consider him a paragon of health. Dangerous Bacon could not help but intervene in order to potentially save him face, which of course achieves the opposite effect of what Dangerous intended.
Incidentally, I understand that Orac's preparing to go the rounds with LaHood, so a bit of a way to go.
OH MY now vaccines are contaminated with Glyphosphate?
"but its a minuscule amount its ok" famous last words.
Layer that toxic burden on all the others coming from the umbilical cord blood and you have a toxic soup.
It simply never ends with the bad news for vaccines. Oh and this is how science evolves first its done by an independent lab. So spare me your bullshit source argument. Like Merck would actually test their vaccines and tell the public it contains Glyphosphate.
It will be another 10-20 years before the entire medical community looks back and says HOLY SHIT what did we do.
Do you realize its just a matter of time? You cannot stop the Truth it finds a way eventually.
http://www.activistpost.com/2016/09/another-vaccine-bombshell-glyphosat…
@THEO: Activist Post? And an article by Catherine Frompovich?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! And she posts YouTube footage of Congressman Bill Posey?! Thanks for the laugh.
Julian keep up your doping of this garbage its almost time for your annual FUL shot.
But Julian, Samsel is just following the trend set by all of the best scientists in the world who publish their results on YouTube. Surely you've noticed the extraordinary erudition of the peer reviews there.
Samsel, whose operation is so prestigious it has a post office box instead of a street address, and an email address @AnISP.com ('course I did the same, in the early days of my one-person insulting business)
According to Kent Heckinlively that time is now. Better get with the program THEO; you're going to end up way behind the times.
Or in Entropy with Seneff, whatever.