Oregon

First study of Oregon’s seafood processing workers finds high rate of injury

kkrisberg — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 17:42:56 +0000

First study of Oregon’s seafood processing workers finds high rate of injury

As a PhD student, Laura Syron was helping her advisor with workplace safety research focused on the Pacific Northwest commercial fishing industry. The project got her thinking about worker safety throughout the seafood supply chain, from the boat to the processing plant. So she decided to do a study of her own.

The result is likely the first to examine occupational health and safety inside Oregon’s seafood processing industry. Along with her co-authors, Syron, a doctoral student at Oregon State University College of Public Health and Human Sciences, examined data from workers’ compensation disabling claims at the Oregon Health Authority. That dataset offers information on industry, occupation, worker gender and age, incident circumstances, medical costs, fatality, and temporary disability days paid. A “disabling” claim includes missing three or more days of work as well as hospitalization and long-term disability. The big takeaway: Oregon’s seafood processing workers experience injuries at a higher rate than the statewide average.

“I wasn’t sure what we would find — I was just curious if this was an industry that merited more research,” Syron told me. “And we found that it does.”

Published this month in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, the study found 188 disabling claims in Oregon’s seafood processing sector between 2007 and 2013. No worker fatalities were reported in the dataset. In that time period, the average annual claim rate in the seafood processing industry was 24 claims per 1,000 workers. Both claim frequency and the claim rate for such workers increased during the years studied, though there were slight drops in 2009 and 2013. In comparison, the disabling claim rate for all industries in Oregon was 11.9 per 1,000 workers in 2007, dropping to 8 per 1,000 by 2013. Most of the seafood processing claims were among men, with workers ages 25 to 34 experiencing the highest frequency and rate of disabling claims.

Syron and study co-authors Laurel Kincl, Liu Yang, Daniel Cain and Ellen Smit write:

Oregon's seafood processing industry disabling claim rate was nearly two and a half times higher than the all-industry rate. Additionally, while the disabling claim rate for all industries in Oregon decreased over the study period, the rate in the seafood processing industry increased. Potentially, a contributing factor for the increasing trend in the seafood processing industry claim rate over the study period could have been the increased demand for seafood preparation and packaging. During 2007-2013, Oregon seafood landings (i.e., the amount of seafood that is harvested and brought to shore for processing) experienced a 22% increase, from 271,062,716 pounds in 2007 to 349,434,448 pounds in 2013. Additional research is necessary to identify causes for the increase in disabling claims in the seafood processing industry.

“It was encouraging that there were no occupational fatalities in the industry during the study period — that’s the great news,” Syron said. “But the musculoskeletal injuries are a big concern.”

On that issue, the study found that about half of the seafood processing claims involved traumatic injuries, with the most common being injury to a worker’s muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints. More than half of claims involved worker overexertion and bodily reaction, and about one-third were due to contact with objects or equipment. Nearly all the musculoskeletal injuries were due to overexertion and bodily reaction. More than half the claims involved workers who did tasks such as cutting and trimming fish or batching food. About a quarter of claims were among workers involved in transportation and moving. Among both groups of workers, injuries to muscles, tendons, joints and ligaments were most common.

The authors noted that their findings align with previous research on seafood processing in the Pacific Northwest that also found high rates of work-related musculoskeletal disorders. For example, a study on Washington state workers’ comp data from 1987 to 1995 found that seafood cannery workers experienced some of the highest rates of carpel tunnel syndrome. On the issue of prevention — which averts injuries to workers and lowers workers’ comp costs for employers — the study said fellow animal product manufacturing sectors, such as poultry processing, could likely offer some valuable safety insights to seafood processors.

“I hope that researchers and public health practitioners can partner with industry to think about how they can work together to prevent these injuries,” Syron told me. “Hopefully, these findings can start a discussion and help workers and industry reach that goal of keeping everyone safe and healthy.”

For a copy of the seafood worker study, visit the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for 15 years.

kkrisberg Fri, 03/31/2017 - 13:42

Oregon legislature passes law on paid sick days

lborkowski — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 09:35:05 +0000

Oregon legislature passes law on paid sick days

Last week, Oregon's Senate and House passed a bill that requires businesses with 10 or more employees to let them earn up to 40 hours of paid sick time each year. Governor Kate Brown is expected to sign the bill, which would make her state the fourth in the nation mandating paid sick days. Connecticut was the first state to pass a paid-sick-days law, in 2011, and California's legislature followed in 2014. In Massachusetts, advocates introduced a ballot proposal on earned sick time, and the state's voters approved it in the 2014 election.

The original version of Oregon's bill would have applied to all employers and allowed the accrual of up to seven days of paid sick time; it was amended to cover employers with 10 or more workers and allow for five paid sick days annually. George Rede reports in The Oregonian:

Proponents said the final bill won't satisfy everyone, particularly the agriculture industry, but they called for its passage nonetheless as a long-overdue step to help low-wage workers and reduce public health risks.

"This is a policy that's been years in the making," said Rep. Jessica Vega Pederson, D-Portland, a chief sponsor of the bill. "Too many Oregon workers have to face that decision of staying home themselves with a sick child or losing a day of pay."

Some 71 percent of low-wage workers in Oregon lack paid sick time, in contrast to higher-income workers who typically have that benefit, proponents said.

"It's time we took a very small step to address income inequality by providing a small measure of job security," said Rep. Paul Holvey, D-Eugene, who carried the bill as chairman of the House Committee on Business and Labor.

Rede notes that two of the state's cities, Portland and Eugene, had already passed paid-sick-days laws. Proponents reportedly argued that a consistent statewide policy would be preferable to having different municipal laws.

The news came on the heels of Chipotle's announcement that it will offer hourly workers paid sick leave, paid vacation, and tuition reimbursement. The company's salaried employees already have access to those benefits. From a public-health standpoint, it's important for the people who prepare and serve food to have the ability to take time off work to recover from an illness, rather than dragging themselves to work sick because they can't afford to lose the pay. However, fast-food workers are among the least likely to have access to paid sick days. An Institute for Women's Policy Research analysis of 2013 National Health Interview Survey data found that only 21% of workers in Food Preparation and Serving Related occupations and 28% of those in Personal Care and Service reported having paid sick leave.

I applaud Chipotle for taking this important step, but I know it would be best for our nation's health if we had a uniform requirement for employers to let their workers earn paid sick time. The American Public Health Association has adopted a policy statement calling for the US to improve access to paid sick and family leave; it notes: "Lack of paid sick leave can have substantial adverse consequences for public health, including the spread of infectious disease."

The Healthy Families Act, which would allow workers in businesses with 15 or more employees to earn up to 56 hours of job-protected sick time per year, has been reintroduced in the current Congress, but doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

I suspect we'll need to see several more states pass their own paid-leave laws in order for a US law to gain sufficient momentum. Perhaps New Jersey will be the next state, since so many of their cities have passed their own paid-sick-leave legislation: Jersey City, Newark, Passicac, Paterson, East Orange, Irvington, Montclair and Trenton, according to the May 2015 update from the National Partnership for Women and Families. New Jersey's legislature will likely need a veto-proof-majority to make the decision stick, though.

In a study just published in the journal Women's Health Issues (disclosure: I'm the journal's managing editor), researchers from Rutgers University and Widener University analyzed data from a 2013 poll of New Jersey adults and found that a preponderance of respondents in most sociodemographic categories supported proposed paid-sick-days legislation in the state. I'm not surprised that they found women to be significantly more likely than men to support such legislation, because women are disproportionately burdened by inadequate paid-leave policies.

Paid sick days can help narrow the economic gap between hourly and salaried workers, level the playing field for men and women, and improve public health. I expect the momentum for these laws will only keep building.

lborkowski Mon, 06/15/2015 - 05:35

The antivaccine movement wins in Oregon: Senate Bill 442 is dead

oracknows — Thu, 12 Mar 2015 05:45:32 +0000

The antivaccine movement wins in Oregon: Senate Bill 442 is dead

How quickly things change.

If there's one thing I always feel obligated to warn my fellow pro-science advocates about vaccines and the antivaccine movement, it's that we can never rest on our laurels or assume that the tide is turning in our direction. The reason is simple: Antivaccinationism is a powerful belief system, every bit as powerful as religion and political ideology. It's powerful not just among antivaccinationists, but also because it taps into belief systems that are very much part and parcel of being an American. In fact, depressingly, yesterday I learned of a perfect example of this unfortunate phenomenon. Remember my discussion of Oregon Senate Bill 442? It's a bill that was being considered in Oregon in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak that would eliminate nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. It's also the same bill that chiropractors (amazingly) wanted to have antivaccine guru Andrew Wakefield testify in front of the Senate health care committee, but that plan was rendered null and void by the justifiably negative reaction to the possibility of having a scientific fraud like Andrew Wakefield testify against a bill. At the time, I thought that was an indication that the bill might have a chance of passing.

I was wrong. I should have known better. The power of the antivaccine dog whistle is not easily denied. If you don't believe me, take a peak at the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism and what it posted last night, basically a link to this article in the the Statesman Journal entitled Oregon senator to propose new school vaccine policy:

Oregon legislators are backing off a proposal that would have made it tougher for school children to opt out of vaccinations.

Instead, Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward said Wednesday she will propose a different policy that would encourage more school children to get vaccinated but continue to allow nonmedical exemptions. It also would provide alternative paths for parents to comply with the law.

Senate Bill 442, which had one public hearing and attracted national attention, would have eliminated religious and philosophical exemptions from school shots. Only medical exemptions would have been allowed.

So why did this happen? Why did Steiner back off? Simple. pressure from an unholy coalition of antivaccine loons and "health freedom" advocates:

Before the bill's first public hearing, Steiner Hayward was confident it had the majority of votes in both the Senate and the House. However, on Wednesday, she said that support had weakened, necessitating an alternate course.

"Some of my colleagues changed their minds," she said. "They got a lot of pressure one way or another. This is an issue that really mobilizes a very small minority of people, but it makes them very loud. I get that. That's their right. But there were a bunch of people who weren't prepared to take on this controversial of a topic at this point."

While the bill had strong support from public health and medical leaders, including Oregon Health & Science University, Oregon Medical Association and Providence Health & Services, a vocal group of parents who either delay or avoid vaccines for their children has been active in opposing the bill.

While many are concerned about vaccine safety, some opposed the bill on grounds of medical freedom and parental autonomy.

If you want to know how bad things got in Oregon, consider this. After the furor over the invitation by chiropractors to Andrew Wakefield to testify in front of the Senate committee, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr—RFK, Jr.!—lobbied Oregon lawmakers not to pass this bill. As a result, the bill appears to be dead, although it sounds as though Sen. Steiner wants to try to pass a bill similar to California Bill AB 2109, which requires parents seeking a personal belief exemption to vaccine mandates to see a health care professional to sign the exemption form. the purpose, as I discussed before multiple times when AB 2109 was being considered, was to make it more difficult for parents to claim personal belief exemptions than just signing a form. Even then, Governor Jerry Brown neutered the new law with a signing statement instructing the California Department of Public Health to include on the exemption form a religious exemption that doesn't require a healthcare professional to cosign the form. It was a profound betrayal of California children and an almost certainly unconstitutional abuse of his authority as Governor in which he basically overrode the legislature's intent.

So, instead of a strong bill that eliminates nonmedical exemptions to vaccine mandates, Oregon is likely to pass a much weaker bill, although even that is not assured, given the fierce resistance of antivaccine groups, who have been relentless. In the meantime, there is even a legislator, Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, who is considering this, ""Ultimately, we probably need to review whether or not Oregon needs a constitutional amendment to make sure parents are in control of their kids' health care." Meanwhile, another legislator, Sen. Jeff Kruse, R-Roseburg, published a newsletter saying he believed vaccines are linked to autism and accusing the CDC of mismanagement and corruption, both of which are talking points "made in the documentary Kennedy showed to lawmakers last week." What documentary was that?

Trace Amounts:

He showed the documentary "Trace Amounts," which centers on mercury in vaccines and its relationship to autism, at Cinebarre in downtown Salem. The documentary also accuses government researchers and public health agencies of corruption and fraud.

Kennedy made the trip to Salem with one goal. To influence lawmakers to vote against Senate Bill 442, the vaccine mandate bill.

It wasn't just Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., either:

Kennedy was accompanied by Brian Hooker, a California biomechanical engineer. Hooker wrote a reanalysis of a 2004 research that found no links between the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine and autism. In the paper, Hooker accuses the CDC of covering up data that showed black boys had a 3.4 times greater risk of autism associated with the MMR vaccine.

Hooker's study, which was published in Translational Neurodegeneration in October 2014, has been retracted. The retraction statement reads that "post-publication peer review raised concerns about the validity of the methods and statistical analysis, therefore the Editors no longer have confidence in the soundness of the findings."

Despite that, Hooker's findings continue to be used to argue against vaccines.

You remember Brian Hooker, don't you? Think "CDC Whistleblower" pseudo-scandal. Think a reanalysis of the 2004 DeStefano et al paper that was so utterly incompetent that even a brand new journal eager to attract submissions saw no other choice but to retract it. Think a biochemical engineer who believes that the simplest statistical methodology is the best and applied it to the DeStefano et al data in such a way that epidemiologists who saw what he did wanted to tear out their eyes to unsee the atrocity against epidemiology he had committed in the name of "simplicity." (Let's just put it this way: "Simple" often means not adjusting for confounding factors.")

I've discussed the concept of the "antivaccine dog whistle" on multiple occasions before. A dog whistle, of course, produces a sound at a higher frequency range than most humans can hear, but dogs can hear it. In politics, a "dog whistle" says something that most of the population finds admirable (or at least inoffensive), but people of certain groups recognize it as speaking to them, as telling them that the person blowing the dog whistle is "one of them." It's a technique that's been used of late by everyone from antivaccine-sympathetic pediatricians like "Dr. Bob" Sears to Rand Paul to the aforementioned Oregon Sen. Robert Kruse to, yes, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.:

Kennedy made the trip to Salem with one goal. To influence lawmakers to vote against Senate Bill 442, the vaccine mandate bill.

"We can't solve a credibility problem by forcing people to undergo a medical procedure without informed consent," Kennedy said before the event.

That "health freedom" argument in which vaccine mandates are portrayed as denying parents "informed consent"? Pure antivaccine dog whistle, an appeal to parental "rights" over the rights of their children. True, it's not as blatant as Rand Paul's infamous statement, "The state doesn’t own the children. Parents own the children, and it is an issue of freedom." It does, however, do what most antivaccine appeals to "freedom" and "informed consent" do, and that's to ignore the child as an autonomous being. Rather, the child is simply an appendage of the parent, and it is the parents' "freedom" and "rights" that trump the child's right to good health care and preventive medicine.

More importantly, as I've explained multiple times, what antivaccinationists like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are really arguing for is something I've dubbed "misinformed consent." That's consent based on the antivaccine message, which massively exaggerates risks of vaccination, makes up risks that science has not found despite looking intensively (such as autism due to vaccination), and greatly underplaying the benefits of vaccination. If enough misinformation is aimed at parents to demonize vaccines as dangerous and ineffective and the parents accept that information, either because they don't know any better or because there is no counterbalancing source of information, then it becomes "reasonable" to refuse vaccinations. That is the very essence of misinformed consent.

Lately, the grande dame of the antivaccine movement, Barbara Loe Fisher herself, has been dog whistling up a storm, invoking language favored on the right of the "culture war" in a post entitled The Vaccine Culture War in America: Are You Ready?:

In this case, in addition to the usual appeals to "freedom" and "rights," Barbara Loe Fisher takes a particularly despicable turn:

More than 1.2 million people in the United States are infected with HIV 1 but government officials do not ban HIV infected children and adults from attending school, receiving medical care, being employed, or otherwise participating in society. In fact, there are anti-discrimination laws that guarantee civil rights protections for Americans infected with HIV or living with AIDS.

In 2012, public health officials reported that about two million people in America are infected with chlamydia, tuberculosis, syphilis and gonorrhea, 3 and they estimate another three million people are infected with hepatitis C. 4 Like those with HIV or AIDS, these citizens are not targeted for discrimination and blocked from getting a public education, being employed or moving freely in society.

Right off the bat, Fisher is being intellectually dishonest to a degree even beyond what I'm used to seeing from her. You can see her setting up a comparison to unvaccinated children by comparing how they are not allowed to go to school with how children with AIDS and various sexually transmitted diseases are. It's clearly and blatantly an attempt to argue that the government treats people with these diseases better than it treats unvaccinated children. Of course, HIV is not easy to spread. It requires sex or contact with blood or bodily fluids like semen, and even then it's not that easy to catch. Hepatitis C also requires direct contact with blood or bodily fluids, although it is much easier to spread by those means than HIV. The rest of the diseases, with the exception of tuberculosis, are all sexually transmitted diseases that won't spread unless the kids are having sex.

Tuberculosis itself is—fortunately—no longer that common in the US, and, if it has been treated properly, rapidly becomes no longer contagious. Moreover, if a case of active TB is identified in a student, health officials do take strong action. It just happened in Oklahoma a week ago, when a student with active TB was identified. This student was isolated and treated, and 315 students were ordered to undergo TB testing.

So what's the problem? The diseases vaccinated against, with the exception of HPV, vaccination against which is intended to prevent cervical cancer, the diseases vaccinated against for school are highly contagious. Measles, for instance, is one of the most contagious diseases known to humans, with infective particles hanging in the air for long periods of time after a measles victim coughs. To compare a bunch of diseases transmitted by sexual contact and blood contact with diseases spread through the air with droplets or through contact with fomites is as intellectually dishonest as it gets. In any event, the rest of Fisher's tirade is a "greatest hits" of recent antivaccine responses to the Disneyland measles outbreak (e.g., this one) and any whiff of a hint that states want to restrict non-medical vaccine exemptions, with complaints about censorship, "shaming," and concerns about revocation of the licenses of antivaccine doctors (this last of which, by the way, will almost certainly never happen anywhere).

Here's where Fisher goes into full dog whistle mode:

Rational thinking has been the first casualty in this 21st century equivalent of a 17th century witch hunt 43 led by defensive doctors in government, industry, academia and media, who are fed up with parents asking them questions about vaccine risks and failures they can’t answer. 44 45 46 47 Assisted by communication conglomerates 48 and Astroturfers, 49 50 51 52 53 they piously wave the science flag and call parents “anti-social” if they don’t vaccinate 54 but completely ignore parents with vaccine injured children talking about how their vaccinated children are never healthy anymore. 55 Some of the most vicious attacks have been on families consciously choosing to stay healthy a different way 56 57 and on doctors caring for families whose children are unvaccinated or receive fewer vaccines on an altered vaccine schedule. 58 59

After headlines like “What would Jesus do about measles?” 60 and “God wants you to vaccinate your children” 61 marked a new low in American journalism, it became clear that the so-called “vaccine war” 62 63 is really a culture war 64 on freedoms, values and beliefs that have long defined who we are as a nation. 65 66 67 How it is fought and where it ends will determine the kind of nation America will become in the 21st century.

Funny that Barbara Loe Fisher would make a reference to the 17th century, given that the views that lead her to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about vaccines derive from ideas dating back at least that far. In any case, notice how neatly she co-opts the language favored on the right of the "culture war," language that was rose to prominence when Pat Buchanan, in his speech at the 1992 Republican Party Convention, declared a "cultural war," a "struggle for the soul of America." Her video is about as obvious an example of the antivaccine dog whistle as I've been able to find, in which it's not really about vaccines but rather about "freedom," "values," and what America should be.

If you want to know why antivaccinationists use this rhetoric, look no further than Oregon. It works. It taps into a very deep well of distrust of overweening government dating back to the very formation of our country and deeply embedded into the very DNA of our culture. Because of that, it attracts people who are not antivaccine to work for antivaccine goals, such as easier-to-obtain non-medical exemptions, all in the name of freedom. It's why antivaccinationists won in Oregon even in the middle of a major measles outbreak, an outbreak that's accounted for 119 cases in Quebec alone due to a the child of a missionary who visited Disneyland on the way home and brought measles to a religious community whose members don't vaccinate. It worked even though the Disneyland measles outbreak had seemingly turned the tide of public opinion against the antivaccine movement. Antivaccine loons will quite possibly win in California again against a similar bill designed to eliminate non-medical exemptions, SB 227 for the same reasons. Antivaccine activists appeal to emotion because they don't have the science, but it's a potent weapon, as emotion frequently does trump science. It's not enough for us to fight antivaccinationism with science. We have to find a message as potent as the invocation of freedom to counter the antivaccine dog whistle. Until we do, we will likely continue to lose.

oracknows Thu, 03/12/2015 - 01:45

Categories

Education

Unfortunately, we cannot fight fire with fire on this one. We can't lie. We can't missinform. We can't make spurious associations between things and publish papers to be retracted. The cult of the antivaxxers operates on the same principle as terrorism in that they only need one win to get their ideology to be heard. They only need one child to have a bad reaction to a vaccine, one lot of vaccines to be recalled, or one misstep from one of us to have a big impact on their followers and on those siting on the fence. We have millions of scientists, yet they wave Hooker and Wakefield around as if they're the high priests of all that is science. We have millions of committed physicians that love their patients and do what is best for them. They have Sears and Gordon, two men with medical degrees, to tear apart the truth that pediatricians the world over see vaccines as life savers and see even a handful of measles cases as an enormous threat. We have thousands of hours invested in our educations, verified our knowledge through exams and certifications... They have Google.
We have your blog, my blog, Todd W's blog, to explain in clear language what the science means. They have their blogs and celebrity spokespeople to obfuscate the truth. And now I have this entire comment while they're likely to take the "terrorist" part and accuse everyone who comments here of calling them terrorists.
It makes me wonder why I'm heading into Baltimore to take a biostats final exam... Oh, that's right. It's so I don't make an ass out of myself and have people laugh at me for thinking that simple statistics are more elegant than actual statistics.

A similar lobbying effort is being made by antivaccinationists in Minnesota to block a bill that would require parents be informed about the risks and benefits of vaccines before they can get a philosophical exemption. More info on that here.

I have to admit I can't be entirely rational when viewing the Barbara Loe Fischer' video. The appeals to emotion on which she relies have the opposite effect on me: it makes me ANGRY to hear her treat vaccine exemption as equivalent to HIV status in legal protection. As though being HIV+ is something that people choose to do. The rhetoric is just sharp enough to hide the fact that her viewpoint is based on fear, uncertainty and doubt.

An effort to eliminate personal exemptions in Washington state died yesterday too.

Getting vaccines is about having freedom, actual, authentic freedom, not the ersatz "treat your children like chattel" freedom that anti-vaccine activists promote.

Freedom from illness. Freedom from injury and death. Freedom from the fear of these things.

What is truly sad here is that public health policy is being decided by who is screaming the loudest instead of rational examination of medical and scientific evidence. If the people of Oregon would rather follow the misinformation and flat out lies of completely unqualified stooges like Kennedy, Hooker and Wakefield then their children will ultimately pay the price.

Did some reading on newsletter articles by Senator Jeff Kruse, the Vice-Chair of the Oregon Senate Committee On Health Care. State Senator Kruse is a turkey farmer by occupation, and his newsletter is a hilarious collection of anti-science essays:

Here's a taste, verbatim:
"The issue is not the vaccine itself; it is the chemicals they put in the vaccine to extend the life of the product which are mercury and aluminum. I have believed for some time that there is a real link between vaccinations and autism, and it is connected to these two chemicals. Unfortunately the CDC continues to deny any connection and will not allow access to the data which would either prove or disprove the assertion. Our frustration is we are not allowed access to the hard science we need and should have access to. It should also be pointed out there is no accountability, as the CDC is both judge and jury in the matter."

Re: Jeff Kruse, yes, he's the vice-chair of the health committee that would have had to vote affirmatively on this measure before it could advance to the senate as a whole.

His other views include support for anti-immigration policies and global warming denialism. He's in favor of the use of GE crops, though, so I wrote to him and asked whether he was aware that every single argument in his newsletter against vaccines had been used virtually word for word against GMOs (BigAg corruption, revolving door FDA, not enough safety studies, glyphosate causes autism, toxins, toxins, toxins).

Sadly, he hasn't written me back.

Just consider this exhibit Q that antivax sentiments do not confine themselves to a single political party. This is a sobering loss, to be sure, but we're not done trying.

“The state doesn’t own the children. Parents own the children, and it is an issue of freedom.”

This statement made me think about a question. Would those people rise to defend a person who took a gun and shot their child in the head? No reason, just because they could.

Because really, why shouldn't parents be allowed to do that? That is serious limitation of their freedom to do as they want with their "property".

I thought RFK Jr claimed he was NOT anti vaccination and he was simply concerned about "mercury" in vaccines. His actions opposing the Oregon bill certainly put the lie to that. What a loathsome piece of work he is.

Ren @ 1: The real fire is not the lying & so on, it's the use of emotional messaging. And we can fight that fire with a far more powerful fire, all of it squarely based in facts.

The antis' emotional messages have two parts: One, "freedom," the other, "fear."

Stirring up "freedom" emotions basically comes down to making a value statement: "Freedom is a good feeling. You feel more free when nobody can tell you what to do." As a generalization, that's _true_, but the angels are in the generalizations and the devils are in the details. The good feeling is one of unfettered ego, which, taken to an unreasonable level, is easily identified as egotism.

Stirring up "fear" is where the overt lying etc. comes in, and we all know the list.

What do we do about that? To counter an emotional message effectively, requires invoking and inducing emotions that overcome and/or that transfer the emotions that the other side is seeking to invoke and induce.

Fear can be transferred, and this one is easy: The fear of autism is a "modern" fear, but it pales into insignificance next to the ancient and deeply-engrained fear of measles and other life-threatening contagious diseases. This we saw when the outbreak was all over the news.

Freedom has a complimentary civic value: responsibility and good citizenship. Freedom without responsibility is seen as recklessness or selfishness, both of which bring scorn that partially nullifies whatever pleasure comes from feeling "more free." Invoking the feeling of responsibility and good citizenship successfully, works in two steps: One, invoking guilt, shame, contempt, etc. toward unacceptable behaviors. Two, invoking a shift of ego identification toward responsibility as an expression of maturity.

Examples:

Slogan for use as headline on print media ads: "Measles is eight times as contagious as Ebola. Do the right thing. Protect your child and your child's friends." The first sentence is literally true, it intrinsically evokes fear, and any attempt to refute it is easily found to be an overt lie. The second sentence is a value statement appealing to the sense of responsibility. The third sentence is the action that the audience is asked to perform, and it identifies the individual child with the community at-large.

TV or radio spot: "The sound you are hearing in the background, is the sound of a baby with whooping cough. (here are some facts about whooping cough, etc.). Do the right thing. Protect your child and your child's friends." Here the audio invokes fear, and the closing lines invoke identification with the sense of responsibility.

Any testimonials by people who survived these diseases, were disabled by them, or know someone who was seriously ill, disabled, or died as a result, will also evoke fear that makes the fear of autism seem insignificant.

Statements about civic responsibility and good citizenship, by respected figures, will evoke the relevant feelings and the desire to be identified with those feelings and figures.

Putting these elements together using evocative symbols and statements, and (important) using sufficient repetition to become familiar, will overcome the antis' messages and make them seem selfish and irresponsible. This probably won't change any antis' minds, but it can reach undecideds or people who are leaning anti. And if the antis try to argue against a civic responsibility message, they will only expose themselves further as being utterly selfish and lose support.

Legitimate public health risks aside... has anybody considered the possibility that attempting to enshrine scientific consensus into law is a really, really, really, BAD idea?

I don't know what you mean, Matt--in what way is that happening in this situation?

@Gray and Ren > unfortunately in the political arena emotional appeals so often hold they day. The muck one gets into in legislative business always leaves an honest person feeling slimy. Having worked at advocacy for some time now I find focusing on the outcomes makes the inevitable appeal to emotion slightly palatable. Though facts are a very important backbone, they have to couched in rhetoric that appeals to the audience.

"But there were a bunch of [cowards] who weren’t prepared to take on this controversial of a topic at this point.”

FTFY, Senator Steiner.

I was just speaking on general philosophical grounds- not specifically to this bill.

Taking a look at this bill in particular I see now that it doesn't do that.

It does, however, declare a state of emergency. A poor choice, and dishonest in my opinion.

Scientific consensus is not in any way being enshrined in law--instead, legislation addressing public health policies are being rationally informed by scientific consensus.

Which is, or course, exactly as things should be.

So, let's see if I understand correctly:

"Health Freedom" doesn't matter when I want to put other people at risk by smoking in a restaurant

BUT

"Health Freedom" DOES matter when I want to put other people at risk by not giving my kid the polio vaccine

And nobody in Oregon sees the problem with this?

Commenters at AoA appear to be quite happy.

It does, however, declare a state of emergency. A poor choice, and dishonest in my opinion.

Only in the language of policy, which translates to the ability to enact the new measures as soon as the bill passes, rather than waiting for it to grind through months of procedural paperwork. Opponents like JB Handley made a lot of hay out of 'emergency?? I don't see any emergency!!' mockery, but a cursory understanding of the legislative system reveals that it's a strategic characterization that's used fairly routinely.

To Todd W. on comment #2-

Thank you for that information. Reading through the post that you linked to, I noticed that only certain representatives and senators were mentioned as people to contact. Why not the others as well? Does this mean that the others are definitely in favor of SF380/HF 393?

Here, for example, the same tactic is used so that legislation regulating legal marijuana sales doesn't lag behind the onset of legalization itself: https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2015R1/Measures/Overview/SB124

A policy is different from a law. Policies are set by agencies which are typically authorized by law to create said policies.

Policies can, and should, be rationally informed by scientific consensus because, as policies, they can be updated and changed if and when the consensus changes.

Laws are much more difficult to change. As evidenced by the plethora of outdated (and ridiculous) laws on the books. For example, laws forbidding one to swear in front of a lady, or have sex in any position other than missionary.

Lately, there are attempts springing up to use the force of law to compel people to follow their doctor's advice. Vaccination is just one example. In my opinion, this is a really, really, really BAD idea.

Perhaps- similar to what was proposed in this here bill- people (including apparently Congresspeople) should be required to demonstrate that they understand how our legal system works before attempting to tinker with the laws.

@Jen Phillps

That you refer to it as a "tactic" proves my point. Words have specific meanings. The entire idea behind laws themselves rely upon words having particular meanings which everybody can agree upon.

When we change the meaning of words for reasons of "tactics" or expediency (in other words because we're too lazy to do it the right way) we undermine the entire fabric of linguistics upon which the whole concept of law is predicated.

"Commenters at AoA appear to be quite happy."

I have it on good authority that Wakefield open-mouth kissed Hooker... On the mouth.

Lately, there are attempts springing up to use the force of law to compel people to follow their doctor’s advice. Vaccination is just one example. In my opinion, this is a really, really, really BAD idea.

What? The LAW already requires that children be vaccinated as a condition of attending school or daycare. That's why the language attached to all these subsequent bills deal with "exemptions" [to the pre-existing law]. It's constitutionally established that matters of public health trump personal health freedom. Just as smoking in the theater or being naked in a convenience store, etc. are violations of established health codes, so is being unvaccinated in school. In all cases, states are allowed to regulate their own exemptions and enforcements.

Clarification of this point is really important, IMO. Many people banging the health freedom drum interpreted SB 442 as "MANDATORY VACCINATIONS OMG", which is not at all the case. Had it passed, parents would still be able to choose not to vaccinate, they just wouldn't be able to enroll their kids in school or daycare.

That you refer to it as a “tactic” proves my point. Words have specific meanings. The entire idea behind laws themselves rely upon words having particular meanings which everybody can agree upon.

When we change the meaning of words for reasons of “tactics” or expediency (in other words because we’re too lazy to do it the right way) we undermine the entire fabric of linguistics upon which the whole concept of law is predicated.

Jeez, dude. Look, if you feel that the use of the word 'emergency' is so empirical that you cannot abide its utterance outside of a very specific set of circumstances, whatever. I'm not going to argue semantics with you. My point is that, at the present time, this is how the political system works. 'emergency', in that parlance, means 'expedient'. Most importantly, the characterization of emergency status was NOT unique to this bill.

Policies are set by agencies which are typically authorized by law to create said policies.

Policies are also defiined through legislation--what other than public health policies addressing prophylactic vaccination would the now-quashed legislation eliminating non-medical exemptions have affected?

Lately, there are attempts springing up to use the force of law to compel people to follow their doctor’s advice.

What laws are you speaking of? I'm aware of none.

There have been, to be sure, attempts to craft laws which again address or establish public health policy (such as California's 2009 legislation banning restaurants from using of trans-fats), but I know of none that atempt to force ndividuals to comply with their doctor's recommendations.

Here's an example:

Arrest Warrant Issued for Florida Mom Who Refuses to Get Son Circumcised

@Jill

I included the emails for the representatives and senators on the respective committees reviewing the bills. Those who are not listed, I wasn't able to find emails for at the time I was writing the post. While it would be useful to contact other state legislators, those are the key members to convince of the facts at the moment.

Here's another example:

Should Physicians Force Patients to be Incarcerated?

... and the link to the NEJM article:

Court-Ordered Care — A Complication of Pregnancy to Avoid

@Jen Phillips

Apparently, you are of the opinion that we can just willy-nilly change the definitions of words to suit our purposes in the moment.

As such- there is no point in me conversing with you further as I cannot be assured that the words we exchange will be held to commonly-accepted definitions.

Have fun re-inventing language for the "greater good." I hope it doesn't work out for you.

And nobody in Oregon sees the problem with this?

I highly doubt that nobody in Oregon sees the problem with this, having lived there for a time myself.

Have fun re-inventing language for the “greater good.” I hope it doesn’t work out for you.

LOL. Have fun sticking to your premise that words can only mean one specific thing in all contexts. I'll bet there are some creationists out there who'd love to have your support over the definition of the word "theory".

I have to admit the picture looked so happy I misread this as SB442 passing at first.

A few points:

A. It's especially ironic in my view that NVIC, for example, opposes not just attempts to restrict exemptions but also resolutions and statements to encourage higher vaccination rates (and of course educational requirements). More than anything I think that highlights that it's really about reducing vaccine use, not increasing vaccine choice.

B. We can and should take the language of rights back. The people arguing against restricting exemptions are -
1. As Orac highlighted, preferring their right (specifically their right to reject science) over their children's right to health.

2. Even if we accept that they have a right to choose the bigger risk for their own child - the risk of disease - school immunization requirements aren't about that: they're about their right to impose the result of that choice on other parents and children, by making school environments less safe for those children. People do not have a right to do that.

3. This isn't about forcing people to take medical advice. Absent a court order, a parent still has to consent to a vaccine. But choices have consequences, and it doesn't follow that refusing a vaccine means you get a free pass.

C. It might be good to remember - and highlight - that the general law is the law of school immunization requirements. People requesting exemptions are requiring waiver of the general law applicable to everyone else. They're asking not to be subject to the usual requirements. This means:

i. It's completely fair to condition the waiver on whatever conditions the state wants.

ii. They're asking for a privilege. I think letting them claim the mantle of freedom when they are really asking that reasonable, important laws that apply to everyone else not apply to them is giving a free pass to special treatment. They're not asking for equality or non-discrimination: like people asking for tax exemptions, they want the laws - and the societal burdens - to apply to others, but not to them.

@ Matt

Seriously? Having mandatory vaccination in specific contexts is going to lead to/condone forced incarceration or circumcision?

By your logic, maybe we should disband child protection services. Same stuff. These government agencies are here to enforce policies and laws telling parents what they should do or not do to their children.

Read on the slippery slope fallacy.

No, Matt: that isn't an example of criminalizing the failure to obey one's doctor's orders.

Thats an example of a woman being arrested for willful refusal to abide by the terms of a joint custody agreement in place between herself and the child's father.

I agee that in your second example the judge's order that the woman be required to submit to her physician's care and that they be allowed to physically prevent her from leaving the hospital was a violation of her constitutional rights, but again this doesn't represent an example of a law enacted requiring patients follow their physicians orders or advice. It's a judge, issuing an order from the bench directed at a single individual, and as far as I can tell without any legal basis.

Your second link appears broken.

Air travel now involves mandatory violation of personal rights, specifically, the right to be free from search and seizure without probable cause. You are free to refuse this violation by choosing alternative means of travel. How is making vaccination a requirement for public school admission any different?

Why is Hep B vaccine mandated? It is not a very contagious disease. Moreover, the number of Hep B deaths have actually increased after the introduction of the vaccine in 1990. See fig. 7 here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3290915/

How is making vaccination a requirement for public school admission any different?

I've asked numerous variations of that question over the past months. The answer is always something like "Because [air travel] doesn't involve injecting dangerous toxins and aborted fetuses into my child."

Going by evidence-based science regarding infectious disease, I'd be hard-pressed to say anti-vaxers in the Oregon community "won" anything. But, if portlandians feel like taking themselves out of the gene pool, more power to them.

Matt: You know nothing about public health law and education law. That's why the Oregon State legislature had a "bill" sponsored by an Oregon State Senator. Most States have two legislative bodies (Nebraska is a a unicameral State). Once the bill is passed in States' legislative chambers and is signed into law by the Governor, those bills become laws.

Seriously, get a clue.

@Ren and @Gray Squirrel:
The antis are way more social media-savvy than we are. Just check out all the eye-popping misinfographics they have. We need people who know how to do things like that that people actually share and actually influence people who aren't following ScienceBlogs every day.

@MarkN--
not just Portlandians, lots of folks in Eugene and Southern Oregon as well.

I'm not ok with the idea that anyone should suffer from VPD as a result of this stupidity, but knowing that the suffering won't be restricted to the unvaccinated by choice makes it even harder to bear.

@#33 Well yes, that was a bit of hyperbole on my part, in this case "nobody" should be read as "the clowns who are calling the shots".

By the way, the comments on that Statesman-Journal article linked in the OP are teeming with every antivax conspiracy theory ever conceived. In the interest of spreading the word beyond Scienceblogs, please consider chiming in.

@ Vijay

As usually, the devil is in the detail. Actually, let me quote the abstract of the article you linked to:

An encouraging trend is that the incidence of acute hepatitis B in the United States declined as much as 80% between 1987 and 2004, attributable to effective vaccination programs as well as universal precautions in needle use and in healthcare in general. While encouraging, these decreases in acute infections have not translated into diminished prevalence or burden of chronic HBV infection. The prevalence for HBV in the United States has been estimated to be approximately 0.4%. However, these estiamtes have been based upon surveys conducted in samples in which population groups with high prevalence of HBV infection, namely foreign-born minorities, were underrepresented.

In short, the reason Hep B-related deaths augmented may have something to do with the underestimation of actually sick people and the recent arrival in US of people from regions where hepB is more active.

As to not very contagious... It depends on what you do. As a biologist, I am expected to have to manipulate blood and other bits of human origin and this vaccine was mandatory for me before attending university.

@ Helianthus

Yes, the devil is in the details. Everything has pros and cons. According to this statement from AAPS:

"For most children, the risk of a serious vaccine reaction may be 100 times greater than the risk of hepatitis B."

http://www.aapsonline.org/testimony/hepbcom.htm

Even so, I have nothing against the Hep B vaccine. But you can't mandate anything that YOU believe is good for others.
Can I mandate broccoli for you thrice a week?

Vijay,

Moreover, the number of Hep B deaths have actually increased after the introduction of the vaccine in 1990.

I would hazard a guess that this is a baby boomers phenomenon. There is a mass of people born post-WW2 currently heading into old age, and we will see a rise in death rates from all causes as a result, despite a falling birth rate. Some of those baby boomers will have hepatitis B, which takes decades to cause liver cancer and death, so the effects of vaccination on deaths have not yet had time to become apparent, if you see what I mean.

As for it not being very contagious, I worked with a woman who discovered she had contracted the virus, presumably from working with blood, as she wasn't in a high-risk group. She had cleared it uneventfully, as most people do, and only found out when her antibody titres were checked.

Vijay,
AAPS is not considered a reliable source of information by reputable doctors. They are a bunch of right wing loonies, in my opinion.

But, if portlandians feel like taking themselves out of the gene pool, more power to them.

1. It's Portlanders, not Portlandians.
2. Watch it.

@Krebiozen,
Okay, let us ignore AAPS. Can you go to your trusted sources and fill in the blank in the following sentence:

“For most children, the risk of a serious Hep B vaccine reaction is ____ times the risk of getting a hepatitis B infection.”

What if this spreads to other areas outside of Oregon, like Austin , TX or Boulder, CO? What if the anti-vax movement is nothing mire than the right wing trying to take out the lefties???

Maybe the problem lies with trying an approach using medical science, instead use more of an irrational approach.

If you can convince the anti-vaxxers that really it is a conspiracy as they all feared, that the conservatives are trying the infectious disease approach, getting these liberal communities to reduce voter numbers by not vaccinating. YES, that's how you do it.

If we have to lose a few neonates along the way, well that's certainly a sacrifice the anti-vaxxers are willing to make for everyone.

Hey JP,

bicycle rights!!

I f*cking hate that show.

Mainly because it's not even funny.

I wonder what the antivaxxers will do if other countries pass laws that prohibit entry into their country unless your vaccinations are up-to-date and you can provide proof that they are so?

Krebiozen is not the only scientist who thinks the AAPS (and their now defunct journal), is not a valid source of science-based information:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Sur…

“For most children, the risk of a serious vaccine reaction may be 100 times greater than the risk of hepatitis B.”

http://www.aapsonline.org/testimony/hepbcom.htm

She did some VAERS dumpster-diving to come up with that number rot.

“For most children, the risk of a serious Hep B vaccine reaction is ____ times the risk of getting a hepatitis B infection.”

Orders of magnitude less than.

Vijay,

Okay, let us ignore AAPS. Can you go to your trusted sources and fill in the blank in the following sentence:
“For most children, the risk of a serious Hep B vaccine reaction is ____ times the risk of getting a hepatitis B infection.”

The risk of a serious reaction to the hepatitis B vaccine is in the region of 1 in 1.1 million.

In the US 12 million people have been infected, making the lifetime risk of infection roughly 1 in 30. In children under 19 alone, 3.4 per million are infected.

Based on that I would rearrange your sentence as follows:

For most children, the risk of getting a hepatitis B infection is 3 times the risk of a serious Hep B vaccine reaction.

Following the child into adulthood, it's more like:

For most children, the lifetime risk of getting a hepatitis B infection is 36,000 times the risk of a serious Hep B vaccine reaction.

These are very rough ballpark estimates but I hope they help.

AAPS is not considered a reliable source of information by reputable doctors. They are a bunch of right wing loonies, in my opinion.
Krebiozen is too kind. I go for "The John Birch Society with stethoscopes".

and their now defunct journal
The JAP&S is still extant.

You forgot:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/03/14/journal-of-american-physic…

Basically, if the journal of the AAPS, JPANDS, published that the sky is blue, I'd look outside of my window to confirm before I'd believe it.

BTW, Matt, whoever you are, you come across as someone with an ax to grind. Perhaps I should ask: Which vaccines do you consider effective and safe and why?

Laws are much more difficult to change. As evidenced by the plethora of outdated (and ridiculous) laws on the books. For example, laws forbidding one to swear in front of a lady, or have sex in any position other than missionary.

For someone who is nattering on about the meanings of words, you seem to have an awfully loose grasp on "evidenced."

"For most children, the risk of a serious Hep B vaccine reaction is ____ times the risk of getting a hepatitis B infection.”

FTFY Vijay:

"For ALL children, acquiring Hep B infection/remaining as a lifelong carrier and at risk for fulminant liver disease or hepatocellular cancer, is thousands of times the risk of receiving hepatitis vaccine".

Vijay, hepatitis B is on the list because:

It's a highly contagious disease

It's spread by contact with infectious blood and body fluids and not only through sexual contact or intravenous drug use

Exposure to hep B can result in development of a chronic infection, where one is asymptomatic but has significant circulating elvels of hep B virus, making one a potential vector for new infection

65% of all people who have a chronic hep B infection are completely unaware of the fact that they are infected

The likelihood of developing a chronic he B infection following exposure is inversely related to age at the time of exposure (the younger you are, the greater the risk)

80–90% of infants infected during the first year of life develop chronic infections and 30–50% of children infected before the age of 6 years develop chronic infections.

Overall 30 to 40% of all chronic hep B infections are acquired during childhood

20 to 40% of chronically infected individuals will develop cirrhosis or liver cancer as adults

In the US alone there are roughly 1.3 million chronically infected individuals, and we record between 2000 to 3000 deaths associated with chronic hep B every year

And finally

The hep B vaccine is 95% effective at preventing infection and the development of chronic disease and liver cancer due to hepatitis B

That answer your question?

Matt:

Here’s an example:
Arrest Warrant Issued for Florida Mom Who Refuses to Get Son Circumcised

I hope this is not intended as an example of "attempts springing up to use the force of law to compel people to follow their doctor’s advice", because following the link, it has nothing to do with medicine or doctors.

@Gray Squirrel:
Your first example would make an excellent basis for an infographic that could be socially mediaed. Anyone here have the skills to make it or knows someone who does?

@Krebiozen
"For most children, the risk of getting a hepatitis B infection is 3 times the risk of a serious Hep B vaccine reaction."

But do you know that most cases of childhood infection are caused by mothers who are infected with hep B? So for kids whose mothers are not infected, the risk is much lower--lower than the risk of a serious vaccine reaction.

But you still believe that the hep B vaccine should be mandatory for a one-day old infant whose mother is not infected?

(Teenagers or adults can decide for themselves whether they want a hep B vaccine. It is also safer by then.)

Actually, this study found that about half of infections under 10 were from infected mothers and about half were not. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/108/5/1123.abstract?ijkey…

That anti-vaxxers sure hate the Hep B shot. Perhaps Matt is not aware that one of the main ways babies get Hep B is at birth from their mothers. The birth shot is intended to reduce that risk. Though if the mother is known to be infected at birth the child will get vaccine and immune globulin at birth to further reduce their risk of contracting the infection. Besides, the vaccine is very (very very very very very) safe, so why not give your kid the best shot at not getting a chronic disease that is likely to go on to give them permanent disability or death by getting them vaccinated? I crunched the numbers on Hep B for a class I took and its truly frightening the number of people who are very shortly going to be dying due to liver failure due to Hep B.

Vijay - not all women presenting to deliver their child have a Hep B status that is known. Even if it is known, they can still refuse the shot. Since the risk is highest to get Hep B young (as explained above it significantly increases the risk of chronic infection and subsequent liver damage) then children should get it as soon as possible. Birth is a good time. That way if mom is infected and it isn't known, baby still has a good shot at not contracting. It also protects them during the time period where if infected they have the highest risk of harmful effects from the virus. Plus it is safe to give at birth.

Vijay,

But do you know that most cases of childhood infection are caused by mothers who are infected with hep B? So for kids whose mothers are not infected, the risk is much lower–lower than the risk of a serious vaccine reaction.

Citation? Does horizontal transmission to children only happen in fewer than 1 in 1.1 million children? I don't think so. Horizontal transmission of hepatitis B in children is by no means uncommon:

Children with chronic HBV are more prone than adults to be HBV e antigen positive and to have a high viral load. At the same time, children are more likely to have contact with each other’s body fluids, such as saliva and tears, and therefore have a high risk of horizontal transmission. Horizontal transmission is especially important in children who are at a high risk of acquiring chronic, asymptomatic infection when exposed to HBV. That children often are asymptomatic after infection with HBV lets them enter the large pool of chronic carriers unnoticed.

Why not vaccinate all babies? The risk is tiny, and as far as I know the only severe reaction to hepatitis B vaccine is anaphylaxis, which is easily treated.

But you still believe that the hep B vaccine should be mandatory for a one-day old infant whose mother is not infected?

Yes. I live in the UK where only babies of high risk mothers are vaccinated. I wish it was routine for all babies. This disease has no animal reservoir and could be eliminated if universal vaccination could be achieved. Then no one would need vaccination.

(Teenagers or adults can decide for themselves whether they want a hep B vaccine. It is also safer by then.)

What makes you think it is safer then? Parents can refuse the vaccine if they wish anyway. I don't see the problem.

Jen Phillips: “The LAW already requires that children be vaccinated as a condition of attending school or daycare. “

Uh, no it doesn't. It might be on the books that unvaxxed kids aren't allowed to attend public school or day care, but the actual laws are so watered down- and there's no way to enforce it- that there might as well not be laws at all. Heck, people would be more worked up about random nude people in convenience stores than they ever get about unvaxxed kids.

Dorit Reiss: It might be good to remember – and highlight – that the general law is the law of school immunization requirements.

Again, you are the expert on this, but keep in mind there's no mechanism of enforcement. If there's no enforcement, and lots of ways to get around a requirement, the law may as well not exist.

Frankly, I am so sick of this. Why not just give the parents what they want and take away vaccines, hospitals and medical personnel and give them to areas that actually want all three? We'll see how long anti-vaxx sentiment lasts when the parents have to set their little snowflake's bones, by themselves.

I'm not sure what you mean no mechanism of enforcement. If a child doesn't have an exemption, the child can be barred from school, and several states have - including in recent times - enforced that.

If the parent doesn't vaccinate, doesn't send the child to school and doesn't meet the state's homeschooling requirements they may face penalties for truancy.

@ justthestats:

Agreed about Gray Squirrel. And yes, we do have a graphics person about. A few actually.

For a contrast- go over to Natural News today ( Vaccine Cultural War) to see Mikey's creativity at work ( you may need to go to NN TV, which is linked) : an 8 minute video about vaccines and fascism. Designed for facebook.

AS we say around here: Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

@Krebiozen

I think we could go on arguing about the exact numbers. The point is that there is some risk of hep B vaccine and there are some benefits. Different people disagree about the exact numbers (which is as it always is, and which is as it should be).

But here is a deal. I know that vegetables are good for your kids. So for every vaccine you mandate for my kids, I would like to mandate one veggie for your kids. Deal?

@Kiiri

"That anti-vaxxers sure hate the Hep B shot."

Well, no more than anti-vegetarians hate broccoli. And who are these anti-vegetarians. They are people like you who oppose mandatory vegetarianism.

Frankly, I am so sick of this. Why not just give the parents what they want and take away vaccines, hospitals and medical personnel and give them to areas that actually want all three? We’ll see how long anti-vaxx sentiment lasts when the parents have to set their little snowflake’s bones, by themselves.

You do realize that this is never going to happen, and shouldn't happen, right? For one thing, find me an area where the majority of parents don't vaccinate. Not that even if a majority of parents in an area didn't vaccinate your idea would be ethical. The Biblical G-d was willing to spare Sodom for the sake of ten righteous men - one would think we could show at least as much mercy.

So you're going to say, well, the people in those areas who do want healthcare can move somewhere else - but I've got something to tell you - mass resettlement is a weird freaking Stalinist fantasy. Seriously. So yeah, the whole idea is absurd.

Speaking of awful Russian leaders whose names end in "in," Putin fell off the radar entirely about a week ago, it seems. I'm hoping he's very ill, dying, or dead.

Vijay,

I think we could go on arguing about the exact numbers. The point is that there is some risk of hep B vaccine and there are some benefits. Different people disagree about the exact numbers (which is as it always is, and which is as it should be).

Not really. As someone once wrote, you are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts. Whatever way you look at it, the benefits of hepatitis vaccination vastly outweigh the risks.

But here is a deal. I know that vegetables are good for your kids. So for every vaccine you mandate for my kids, I would like to mandate one veggie for your kids. Deal?

I'm not mandating anything for your kids. I think it is reasonable to ask that parents take all safe and practical measures to prevent their children from contracting and spreading contagious diseases in schools. You don't want to vaccinate? Home school or find a state where you can get an exemption.

How does my child's vegetable consumption have any potential impact in your child's health?

Vijay: Here's a reason to give children the Hep B vaccine: children bite.

Imagine this scenario: one child bites another at the playground. Years later, the bitten child discovers that they have chronic Hep B, which means that they have to be very careful with any sexual partners, probably shouldn't have any biological children, and will probably need a liver transplant.

Dude, the childhood Hep B shot prevents serious liver disease, for which there is no infection-specific treatment (unlike Hep C). The better question is; why wouldn't you want to protect all children?

Doris:

If a child doesn’t have an exemption, the child can be barred from school, and several states have – including in recent times – enforced that.

Not very often, though. I mean, I've got two kids in public school. Fully vaccinated. And do you know how the school knows that they're vaccinated?

They politely asked me.

That is literally the only enforcement there is. No evidence is requested or pursued. No doctor's note, vaccine records, nothing. Just a sheet of paper from the school where they cordially request you enter the approximate date each was given. And thay completely trust you.

The districts got very concerned during a recent chickenpox outbreak here, because though chickenpox vaccination was recommended, it was not mandatory. So they launched a new policy, where if a chickenpox case was observed in a school, all non-vaccinated kids would have to stay home for the duration to keep them safe and limit the spread of the diease. Again, their status as non-vaccinated was based entirely on parent reports.

So the only kids who have been expelled for non-vaccination are the ones whose parents feel strongly enough about anti-vaccination to make an issue of it. The ones who just lie, or who assert that they are doing a catch-up regimen, face no penalty whatsoever. And heck, how would anyone ever find out? If their kid gets a vaccine-preventable disease, it'll just be chalked up to vaccine failure.

The laws do definitely have merit, and they definitely work to encourage widespread vaccination of school-age children. But the enforcement is comically mild.

I would like there to be a law mandating certain vaccinations for air travel. Air travel is unhealthy, I make several international flights each year and every year I I usually get at least one respiratory infection following a flight.

Uh, no it doesn’t. It might be on the books that unvaxxed kids aren’t allowed to attend public school or day care, but the actual laws are so watered down- and there’s no way to enforce it- that there might as well not be laws at all.

Nonsense. In the state of Oregon, schools and childcare facilities are required *by law* to keep vaccination records on each child. They are required for enrollment. Each year at the end of February is the reporting date for vaccine compliance within all facilities statewide. Kids whose records indicate that are not fully compliant with the standard vaccine schedule by that date must either provide proof of vaccination or one of the aforementioned exemptions. To do nothing results in expulsion. This is annually enforced by public health entities across the state.

To follow up on Calli's experience, all the records I've ever provided for my kids had to be signed by a health care provider.

@Krebiozen
"I’m not mandating anything for your kids."

Wow. Thanks for redefining the word "mandate." If you can elaborate on the new definition, I will let the Oxford dictionary folks know.

Wow. Thanks for redefining the word “mandate.” If you can elaborate on the new definition, I will let the Oxford dictionary folks know.

"I'm not [instructing or ordering] anything for your kids."

What part of that doesn't make sense to you, Vijay? The vaccination schedule is a recommendation (with some consequences for non-compliance), not an order that cannot be refused.

"recommendation (with some consequences for non-compliance)"

Is there a single word for this description that is used by ordinary folks who are not linguists.

Vijay, you are the one claiming that 'mandate' was incorrectly used by Krebiozen. I still don't know the basis of that claim. A recommendation with some consequences for non-compliance is not the equivalent of a mandate. As discussed, vaccination is a *requirement* for enrollment in public school or daycare. Medical or personal belief exemptions to this requirement are available to qualified individuals in many states. There is the additional option to *not* enroll your unvaccinated child in public school or daycare. That is a far cry from a blanket mandate.

A general order to the public to be vaccinated doesn't exist anywhere in the US.

I know that vegetables are good for your kids. So for every vaccine you mandate for my kids, I would like to mandate one veggie for your kids. Deal?

The two mandates are not analogous, I'm afraid.

But if you can demonstrate that not eating vegetables in a timely fashion places not only my chidlren but also others at risk, in the same manner that seeking non-medical exemptions from routine childhood vaccinations places my chidlren at increased risk of infection and by comprising herd immunity others at risk of serious harm I'll gladly accept a mandate they eat veggies on a regular and specified schedule--say, daily at lunch and dinner.

Oh, wait:! They already do...

Viajy, is it your belief that "mandate" and "prerequisite" are synonyms?

Wow. Thanks for redefining the word “mandate.” If you can elaborate on the new definition, I will let the Oxford dictionary folks know.

When Krebiozen in South London acquires legal powers over your children, you might have more pressing concerns than notifying the lexicographers.

@Jen,
In the media and elsewhere, the word used is "mandate." If you disagree, then let me know, what word you would use instead. Of course, every word in a language has many shades of meanings.

Talking about the misuse of language, the pro-vax folks are calling people who want a choice as anti-vax instead of pro-choice.

Ultimately, this endless vaccination debate is all about the unsavory consequences for parents who don't comply with these recommendations. If you don't support the unsavory consequences, then I have nothing to disagree with you. But as far as I can tell, everybody who argues in favor of vaccines supports the unsavory consequences for non-compliance. That includes you and Krebiozen.

I'm unaware of any "unsavory consequences" having been discussed here, but if you consider it an unsavory consequence to be excluded from public spaces that are also occupied by medically vulnerable individuals then sure, I'll cop to that.

@JGC
"Vijay, is it your belief that “mandate” and “prerequisite” are synonyms?"

No, it is my belief that the commonly used word for required vaccination is "mandate."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20230978

Talking about the misuse of language, the pro-vax folks are calling people who want a choice as anti-vax instead of pro-choice.

I'd say whining for a special dispensation to, y'know, not vaccinate and be completely free from consequences falls pretty squarely in the former category.

WTF is "unsavory consequences" supposed to even mean? Unless there's a valid medical reason, kids should be vaccinated before they're sent off to hang out in a room all day with a bunch of other kids, some of whom might be particularly vulnerable to disease. If parents are really committed to not vaccinating, they can homeschool, as far as I'm concerned.

I mean, we also don't just let people go grocery shopping in the nude and rub their crotches all over the produce. There might be unsavory consequences.

No, it is my belief that the commonly used word for required vaccination is “mandate.”

In specific situations when vaccination is a *prerequisite* for participating in something (like school or a job), yes. As a general tenet of society, no. No one is MANDATING that you or your child be vaccinated in general. That vaccination is a requirement for inclusion in some circumstances is not the same thing.

I mean, we also don’t just let people go grocery shopping in the nude and rub their crotches all over the produce. There might be unsavory consequences.

But what about my health freeeeddooooommmmmmm? I deserve the right to do my own research on how wearing clothes inhibits my ability to bond with my food. And that produce is too damn sexy for its own good, anyway.

Dude, have you ever seen an eggplant? And let's not even get started on crookneck squash.

@Narad
"I’d say whining for a special dispensation to, y’know, not vaccinate and be completely free from consequences "

Thanks for calling this land of the FREE, a land of the WHINERS. The free folks have won in Oregon for now. And as they say, liberty and freedom can never be taken for granted because medical fascists will always try to take it away.

Dorit: " If a child doesn’t have an exemption, the child can be barred from school, and several states have – including in recent times – enforced that."

They can't enforce it if the child goes to a charter or a private school. Charters are legally protected and don't have to abide by any regulation covering a public school.

JP: I'm a little confused. Why would people be upset about services they never used not being available anymore? Oh, they might be a little embarassed when the former local ped writes about how wonderful her new life in Rwanda or Brazil is, but I doubt they'd be upset. It's just a matter of fiscal prudency- taking services that aren't used to areas where they will be used and appreciated. And it is just a fantasy- I'm not that heartless in real life, but I do think anti-vaxxers need to start paying the price for their convictions.
For my money, he's just lying low until the Nemtsov thing blows over. Very few people are buying the cover story, and he knows it's flimsy. I do hope he dies a flashy, embarrassing, improbable and public death, (meteorite at close quarters,preferably) but we both know rotten people live forever. Anti-vaxxers are living proof of that.

Talking about the misuse of language, the pro-vax folks are calling people who want a choice as anti-vax instead of pro-choice.

Because it's a false choice based on misinformation and willfull misinterpretation of science.

the unsavory consequences

I think I will start lobbying for the right to be exempted of paying the entrance fee when I want to go watch a movie. I believe I should have the choice to decide if I want to pay or not. Being barred from watching the movie is an unsavory consequence and an affront to my freedom.

liberty and freedom can never be taken for granted because medical fascists will always try to take it away.

I didn't realize that George III was a physician.

George III
Another victim of MEDICAL FASCISM.

Thanks for calling this land of the FREE, a land of the WHINERS.

Believe it or not, Francis Scott Key is not actually the foundation of U.S. government. Get back to me when you can figure out the difference between liberty and freedom.

Why would people be upset about services they never used not being available anymore? Oh, they might be a little embarassed when the former local ped writes about how wonderful her new life in Rwanda or Brazil is, but I doubt they’d be upset. It’s just a matter of fiscal prudency- taking services that aren’t used to areas where they will be used and appreciated.

That's the whole thing. There's no "area" where people don't "use and appreciate" health care. Despite MarkN's above stated opinion that Portlanders should "take themselves out of the gene pool," Multnomah County, where Portland is, has vaccination rates for childhood diseases hovering generally between 94 and 95%. That's better than Oregon's average rate. It's a small minority of people there who don't avail themselves of vaccinations, and that's just one piece of health care. Personally, I like children, and I don't want to see them suffer and die needlessly in various awful ways because all the health care in their area was "moved" somewhere where people would "appreciate it" more, even if their parents are stupid.

Re: Putin. He's not the type of guy to "lay low" for any reason at all, as far as I can tell. He didn't bother laying low after invading freaking Ukraine and annexing Crimea, for instance. I suspect I may be disappointed, and I actually don't wish any particular suffering on the man, but I do think his swift death would be a boon for the world, Russia in particular.

From this day, henceforth, I mandate that all infectious diseases must receive permission from parents on whether they can infect kids. Those diseases that have not received such approval will therefore be declared non-gratis and shall be banished from the kingdom.

A. In my son's school too immunization record was required. People can lie or fake records, but they take a risk doing that.

B. In states whose laws I examined, immunization requirements also apply to private schools. The legislature cam
Certainly require it. I came across no state that doesn't, though I haven't looked in detail at all state statutes.

We have to find a message as potent as the invocation of freedom to counter the antivaccine dog whistle

How about a world without measles?

@PGP

They can’t enforce it if the child goes to a charter or a private school. Charters are legally protected and don’t have to abide by any regulation covering a public school.

Uh, yes, they can. Most states include private and charter schools in their vaccine requirement regulations.

Why would people be upset about services they never used not being available anymore?

We've been over your abhorrent recommendations before. Go back and re-read the responses you got the last time you suggested this.

And it is just a fantasy- I’m not that heartless in real life

The way you talk on here suggests otherwise, but it could be you feel more free to say what you really think online than you do IRL. Not exactly reassuring, though.

@Vijay

Perhaps you can explain which vaccines are safe and worth getting as recommended.

The political influence of loud minorities goes nowhere without money. With enough money, it can trump overwhelming popular support. Obvious example: the NRA. There's overwhelming popular support to do SOMETHING about gun violence, but even the most lukewarm policy proposals are anathema to legislators, because the gun nuts are so well-organized, so activist, and have so damned much money they can not only fund all the work of organizing and agitating, but swing the even more important campaign contributions.

So the questions for Steiner Hayward's back-down are:
1) Who were the key legislative leaders who organized their colleagues to tell her they wouldn't support the bill?
2) Which legislators who expressed non-support were folks we might reasonably have expected to be on board? I.e., who got scared, rather than being genuinely ideologically opposed as we'd expect Jeff Kruse and other TeaBaggers to be?
3) What/who scared them? Was there actually enough swing vote in their district that a mobilized anti-vax base could swing an election (that wouldn't be that common, methinks)? Or was it a money issue — i.e. significant anti-vax money would go to an opponent who would campaign effectively on OTHER issues? If so, who/what was the source of the money threat?
4) Was SB442 always a negotiating chip to begin with? Did Steiner Hayward and other pro-public-health legislators know eliminating all non-medical exemptions wouldn't fly, but put it forward as a means to gauge the ground, flush out the opposition, and make a more limited measure seem more palatable? I.e. throw the dogs a fake bone, so they don't bite so hard on the 'compromise' that will follow. E.g., the Obama Administration has been widely criticized by progressives for putting forth the 'compromise' measures to begin with, only to have the partisan forces of the GOP abandon their previous positions and demand even more movement toward their new more-extreme positions, while seeming 'reasonable' in criticizing the Dem's for failing to participate in 'give-and-take'. Thus something like CA AB2109 (minus Brown's de-fanging) could have been the presumed end-game from the get-go.

I'm all for more potent messaging, of course :-), but that may have more effect on actual public sentiment and encouraging truly responsible 'vaccine choice' than in changing legislation.

JP: "It’s a small minority of people there who don’t avail themselves of vaccinations, and that’s just one piece of health care."

I personally see it as a big part of health care, and it disgusts me that anti-vaxxers, who yell about how awful doctors and immunizations are, still want bones mended, tumors taken away and appendixes removed. They shouldn't expect any sort of treatment at all. The only pressure they might respond to is social pressure- if the neighbors won't speak to them because the doctor moved away because of them, that might make anti-vax people reconsider.

Todd W: The way you talk on here suggests otherwise, but it could be you feel more free to say what you really think online than you do IRL. Not exactly reassuring, though.

Isn't that the point of the internet? To say stuff you never would in life? And why isn't that reassuring? The internet is a stage with a costume party on it, not merely a news service/messaging board.

I'm sorry to have to say it, but it's probably going to take the reappearance of one of the REALLY scary diseases, like polio, in America or Europe to get legislators to take action.

I personally see it as a big part of health care, and it disgusts me that anti-vaxxers, who yell about how awful doctors and immunizations are, still want bones mended, tumors taken away and appendixes removed. They shouldn’t expect any sort of treatment at all.

However big a piece of health care, it's just one health part of health care, and I wouldn't deny life-saving care to anybody, even if they're stupid. I especially could never conscience doing that to children. But then, like I said, I like children. I realize some people might be able to think of them as just little "disease vectors," but every job except one that I had before grad school involved working with kids. (The one that didn't was a year I worked providing in-home care for developmentally disabled adults.) Kids are people - particularly vulnerable little people who don't have much control over their own lives.

The only pressure they might respond to is social pressure- if the neighbors won’t speak to them because the doctor moved away because of them, that might make anti-vax people reconsider.

Uh, what? Do you not realize that taking away healthcare from an entire "area" would be an immensely larger evil than a small percentage of people not vaccinating their kids? The whole point of medicine is to help people. I mean, Holy Christ. I don't want to see anybody suffer needlessly, even people who dumb things, but especially not people who just happen to live near those people. But then malice in general is genuinely foreign to my soul.

@DarkScholar82

I would argue that measles is a scarier disease than polio. Much more contagious, much greater risk of serious injury. Diphtheria and Hib probably also rank higher than polio. Not as contagious as measles, but more deadly. Granted, I've actually looked at what these diseases do and hope I have a reasonable ability to assess risk.

Who knows, though, what people would consider to be a "really" scary disease. They might see polio as scarier than measles or pertussis because, well, people are in general pretty poor at assessing risk.

@JP

Don't bother. PGP is a misanthrope. She has very black-and-white thinking, absolutist opinions, and is generally extraordinarily offensive. She also stubbornly refuses to learn from her past gaffes. Nuance and ethics are lost on her.

Here's a sample of the depressing comments on the S-J piece:

My child has a right to a free and appropriate public education, end of story. Anything that infringes on that right is not constitutional, is immoral, and in this case there is no emergency that would come close to justifying the removal of parental rights nor my child's right to an education. In fact this law would have bumped up against federal laws that mandate our school provide my child with speech therapy, and occupational therapy even if home schooled because of her disability. And thanks to my fellow Oregonians my child will continue in school as it should be. There would have been so many devastating consequences of this bill; financially to schools and the state when people moved or removed their children from school, medical care as people would abandon standard caregivers to avoid the harassment and threats and turn even more to alternative caregivers, home birthing, and NO well-baby check ups. That is why this bill is in the dumpster...poorly thought out....poorly planned....poorly researched....and poorly executed. In fact it may have done more to win people to our side than anything I have seen in 20 years. Thanks!

This may answer some of Sadmar's money questions at #114

JP: "However big a piece of health care, it’s just one health part of health care, and I wouldn’t deny life-saving care to anybody, even if they’re stupid."

Well, the whole point of the anti-vax movement is that they're smarter than the doctors, and diseases will recognize their natural superiority and shy away. As far as I'm concerned, the parents deserve to be called on their bluff. I would, however support efforts to uncouple the medical care of minors from their parents, since so many parents are making bad decisions, and quite a lot aren't suited to taking care of disabled youngsters. As far as I'm concerned, being anti-vax should disqualify a parent instantly from being a caretaker of a disabled minor.

@Todd
"Perhaps you can explain which vaccines are safe and worth getting as recommended."

You could try to evaluate each vaccine on its merits. But it is a lot of work and there are many uncertainties.

An alternative that I suggest is to use an older CDC schedule- say the 1985 schedule (before the US law exempting vaccine makers from liability was passed).
Even in 1980s, there weren't any serious large scale epidemics.

If I remember it right, the 1985 schedule included polio, DTP and MMR. If you feel strongly about anything else, like Hib, you could add that as well.

I probably would not add Hep B, chickenpox, HPV, or flu. I haven't looked at the remaining four vaccines in detail.

The older vaccines are also likely to be safer (more time-proven). Your kid would also get fewer shots during any single office visit.

Funny thing about Brian Hooker and his autism study re-analysis. I have not been up to dig up the original data set, and Hooker is not talking, but at one point he lets slip a vital detail: in his chi squared test he says that the bins are redefined from 36+ months to 31+ months so that every cell would have an occupancy of at least five.

While it is good that he followed the recommendations for bare-minimal-acceptability, the strong implication is that his data set is tiny. Every practicing scientist knows that odd things happen sometimes, especially with small populations, so I am perfectly happy to conclude that a minimal significance criterion was met by the specific data set in hand yet it would be unlikely to see the result confirmed by an independent investigation.

Which is actually the function of significance testing, to guard against fooling yourself with spurious data sets, but that important fact has been drowned out by all the shouting from enthusiastic advocates who improperly believe that "p less than 0.05 proves that my theory is true."

@Robert Bell
If you like statistics, you should read this:
Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/

In all likelihood, Hooker learned these statistical tricks from the authors of some pro-vaccination studies.

I'd rather my kids endure shots than the diseases they protect against. If it's a concern about "too many, too soon", there is a very pointed reason they recommend these shots at the age they do. I once asked my friend, a pediatrician working primarily in the NICU, why the shots are scheduled that way - is it b/c they have/encourage frequent well-child visits during the first 2-3 or 4 years of life? She replied with an emphatic "No! We recommend the current schedule b/c children are most vulnerable to VPDs the first few years of life!".

I think (and hope to the heavens) most anti-vax/vax-hesitant parents would protect their kids in the end, if faced with an urgent and tangible threat to their children's health. So I propose we offer, particularly to those who think that these diseases are "no big deal" or "it would be better for them to have the actual disease than the protection from it", this choice (as they are genuinely and primarily concerned with the "choice" than the shot itself): if you want to place your kids in a public setting where their health status could impact that of others, take your choice of a syringe filled with a targeted protection of a disease or a syringe full of the disease itself. Again, I hope to high heaven that at least half would choose the former. A girl can dream, right??

@Jessica
"...take your choice of a syringe filled with a targeted protection of a disease or a syringe full of the disease itself."
Interesting thought, but flawed. CDC had only 7 different vaccines in the late 1980s; now they have 16. And at the rate they are going, they could have dozens more in the near future.
In normal course of life, an unvaccinated kid would only get a few of these diseases , not all.
Exposing a kid to ALL the diseases is insane.

If you like statistics, you should read this:
Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

Vijay, given that you have, of your own FREE Will,* invoked this particular Ioannidis item, please explain – in your own words – the difference between PPV and NPV.

* No, Gordon Liddy's better than that.

@Narad
PPV = TP/(TP+FP)
NPV = TN/(TN+FN)

Anyway, here is a question for you:

The PSA (prostate-specific antigen) test commonly used for prostate cancer screening has a sensitivity of 80% and a specificity of 60%. Based on his age and race, a man has a 1% probability of prostate cancer before the PSA test. What is his probability of cancer after the test if he tests positive?

Anyway, here is a question for you

No. If most positive findings are false in this framework, what are most negative findings?

@Robert L Bell

the strong implication is that his data set is tiny

Indeed, Hooker (1) looked at a very small sample AND (2) truncated that sample--which is remarkable, given that he complains that CDC did not report all the data, Hooker threw out data.

Here's a nice analysis of Hooker's incompetent, brief visit to the land of statistical analysis:

http://www.stats.org/african-american-boys-and-autism/

@Narad
Most negative findings are never published. Either the sponsor of the trial buries them, or the journal finds them uninteresting.

Please read this. (The author RS was the editor of BMJ for 25 year):

Medical Journals Are an Extension of the Marketing Arm of Pharmaceutical Companies
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0…

BTW, only 15% of doctors who order the PSA test can answer my key question about the test correctly.

Most negative findings are never published.

1. Answer the original question. Nobody asked you to blunder into Ioannidis in the first place.

2. What does this say about those that are published? Oh, wait, it's the PAYMASTERS.

The German antivaxxer Stefan Lanka pledged to pay 100.000 Euro to anyone who could prove the existence of the measel virus. Some biologist accepted and sent pictures and more. Of course Lanka wasn't gonna pay so they went to court where he now was ordered to pay.

http://www.spiegel.de/gesundheit/diagnose/existenz-des-masernvirus-stef…

@Narad
"Nobody asked you to blunder into Ioannidis in the first place."

Do you own the copyrights to Ioannidis' paper? Should I have taken your permission before posting a link to his paper?

Of course Lanka wasn’t gonna pay so they went to court where he now was ordered to pay.

Needs more Kary Mullis.

@Narad
“Nobody asked you to blunder into Ioannidis in the first place.”

Do you own the copyrights to Ioannidis’ paper? Should I have taken your permission before posting a link to his paper?

Singular "paper"? "Copyrights?"

Even in 1980s, there weren’t any serious large scale epidemics.

No kidding really?
Hib disease was endemic with ~20,000 children infected annually.
Hepatitis b caused about 26,000 infections annually.
There was a nice little measles outbreak (again primarily amongst unvaccinated) with more than 55,000 cases and more than 150 deaths.

I probably would not add Hep B, chickenpox, HPV, or flu. I haven’t looked at the remaining four vaccines in detail.

But you say you recommend an alternative schedule based on what exactly? The number of jabs? How very scientific.

@Science Mom

Perhaps Vijay was using the following definition of epidemic: more cases than would be expected. I mean, he still fails, but just trying to understand.

@Vijay,

Okay, so you agree that MMR, DTP (as opposed to DTaP), polio and Hib are okay to give on-schedule?

not add Hep B, chickenpox, HPV, or flu

Why not those vaccines? Do you have a scientific basis for your reasoning, or is it just your feeling about them?

And you feel that the older formulations are safer? Based on? What about changes that were made to formulations specifically to make them safer?

It took a little bit of digging around, but I found a copy of the 1985 vaccination schedule in a PKIDS newsletter. Some things to point out to Vijay:

* Whole-cell pertussis vaccine was on the schedule. It is more effective than the current acellular version, but also carries a slightly higher risk of adverse reactions (though still mostly minor).
* The polio vaccine that was on the schedule then was the oral polio vaccine, which is a live attenuated virus vaccine. Again, while more effective then the current IPV, it also carried the risk of VAPP.

So, you're actually advocating for an increase in risks. I find that very interesting.

Even in 1980s, there weren’t any serious large scale epidemics.

Well, sure, if you take the black plagues sweeping whole countries as a reference.

Seriously, anti-vaxers, could we try to implement health policies before situations start spiraling out of control?

Taxes. We use them on tobacco with some effect. I know it's a bit creepy, but in a single payer system with electronic records, when folks want medical treatment you could catch whether their vaccinations are up-to-date, and send them a bill if they aren't. Not helping out by immunizing creates costs that the person is not paying for. We fine people for going too fast on the roads because it endangers others.

rork, not sure if that would be legal. However, I have a Medical Aid (Discovery). They let me get the flu jab for free, and even give me rewards points for doing so. What might work is for Medical Aids to charge higher rates to those who don't vaccinate or give extra benefits to those who do.

Vijay, In the early 1990s--before the addition of varicella vaccine to the recommended childhood immunization schedule--in the United States each year we saw on average 4 million people (mostly children) become infected with chicken pox, 10,500 to 13,000 of whom would require hospitalization and about150 of whom would die due to the disease. .

That's why we vaccinate against it.

Would you like to try explaining the reasons why you wouldn't vacinate against it?

@vijay

I have looked at the paper you have referenced and it seems that you either did not read it or your thinking is a bit muddled, or both. Actually, the answers to your questions are all there for your perusal. You are fearmongering about the vaccine because the frequency of deaths due to HepB increased for some years after the introduction of vaccination and yet you fail to notice that since than the frequency plateaued and started to decline (see fig.7 you cited). Surely you did not expect that the trend would be reversed immediately by vaccination of newborns (it takes some time before the people, who acquired the disease before the start of vaccination, die of it), didn't you?
You would be much more effective troll if you did not cite papers that contradict what you want imply.

Martin

"want to imply ", sorry.

Regarding the hep B vaccination, I recently was evaluated for my fitness to donate a kidney to my brother. My first sets of bloodwork indicated that I was not exposed to hep B. However, later in the process a different test came back positive. After a work up with an immunologist, they still don't know why I tested positive. While I could have had it and it resolved without me knowing it, that appears unlikely since I did not have a significant reaction to the vaccine. But given the risk, I am incredibly glad I had all 4 of my children vaccinated at birth.

I have all the past CDC Recommended Childhood Vaccine Schedules here. Prior to 1995, the CDC did not issue yearly vaccine schedules:

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/past.html

Perhaps Vijay would like to provide us with his/her qualifications to comment about the decisions made by the FDA to license vaccines and the ACIP and the CDC to place those vaccines on the Childhood (and the Adult) Recommended Schedules.

Denice Walker @ 78
I could not get the player to work at Natural News,but the video has just been posted on YouTube this morning.The weapons grade burning stupid is something you might want to see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsQgR_oAolM

JGC@ 93
That gets to the message of the video.Any prerequisite is a forced government mandate that leads to Nazi "death panels".

Jen Phillips @101
Unless I see anything to the contrary,I am convinced these people believe their "freedom of choice" trumps everything.Including herd immunity,protecting medically vulnerable populations.As has been said many times before,generations of vaccine compliance have given antivaxers an unrealistic picture of how serious diseases like measles are.

I don't even think the reemergence of polio is going to change these people's minds,and I do think that is around the corner.

Vijay@131

The comments to this article are especially telling,and worth a read.

@Narad
Thanks for correcting the grammar. With so much stuff going on, the Internet could always use a good grammarian.

By the way, which drug company do you work for?

@ Science Mom
Yes, an epidemic is in the eyes of the beholder. Do you know that over 300,000 Americans die every year from hospital and medical errors, and over 100,000 die from adverse drug reactions. Ten times as many are seriously injured.

But that does not qualify as an epidemic because it is not in the news. Why? Because no newspaper benefits (commercially) by talking about it. Nor is any shill paid to talk about those deaths.

@Todd
"So, you’re actually advocating for an increase in risks. I find that very interesting."

No. You could use the current version of the polio vaccine. I am not saying to use the 1985 versions of the vaccines. But use the 1985 vax schedule (with minor adjustments that make sense for 2015).

And Vijay finally dove into the shill conspiracy.

And actually, plenty of people talk about adverse events in healthcare. It's publicly reportable and CMS takes money AWAY (in the form of reimbursement, as in, that big shill money making enterprise will show they can be safe or they won't get reimbursed) from hospitals that don't meet patient care/safety benchmarks. Several states require public reporting so the public can look. Even hospitals formally exempt (PPS-exempt) due to high patient risk for complications (such as cancer hospitals, research facilities with transplant and burn units) are no longer going to be exempt. So yes, there are plenty of people talking about patient safety. YOU just don't know enough about what you're talking about to look for where it's mentioned. And EVERYONE can look at it. https://data.medicare.gov/data/hospital-compare

Also, you said The older vaccines are also likely to be safer (more time-proven). Your kid would also get fewer shots during any single office visit. indicating that yes, you did want to use the 1985 versions and therefore have no idea what you're talking about.

@Vijay

"Thanks for correcting the grammar. With so much stuff going on, the Internet could always use a good grammarian."

Certainly more than any cluless anti-vaxxer asshats like yourself. You're welcome.

Vijay,

Yes, an epidemic is in the eyes of the beholder. Do you know that over 300,000 Americans die every year from hospital and medical errors, and over 100,000 die from adverse drug reactions. Ten times as many are seriously injured.

Errors happen, and measures are taken to prevent them. Things have improved greatly over the past few decades. When you consider that over 50 million medical procedures are carried out each year in the US, many of them that carry a serious risk, that's a 0.6% fatal error rate, which puts it into perspective.

As I wrote in reply to a similar claim a couple of days ago, even assuming that the claim about fatal drug reactions is true (it isn't), it is meaningless unless we consider the benefits of these drugs as well. How many people's lives are saved by these drugs? How many of these patients would have died anyway, without conventional treatment? How many patients have their quality of life improved by these drugs?

For example, anticoagulant drugs are among the most dangerous prescription drugs; they cause an estimated 2,800 excess major bleeds a year in the UK. They also prevent an estimated 16,100 strokes a year, including 4,400 fatal strokes (PDF) and the NHS estimates that prescribing more of them would prevent an additional 3,500 deaths each year. I'm sure that the figures in the US are very similar.

@Vijay

No. You could use the current version of the polio vaccine. I am not saying to use the 1985 versions of the vaccines.

Frequent Lurker beat me to it, but you definitely stated the following:

The older vaccines are also likely to be safer (more time-proven).

That implies that you think the older formulations were safer than newer formulations. Also, if you want to go by the 1985 vaccines schedule, it clearly has the OPV, not the IPV (which was also available at the time), on it. So whether we go with your argument that the older vaccines are safer or by the 1985 schedule, you are advocating for using vaccines that carry a greater risk than today's schedule/vaccines.

This suggests to me that you really have not properly researched the subject and do not know what you are talking about.

The primary reason the vaccine companies want to take away all vax exemptions is so that no unvaccinated or undervaccinated kids remain around for comparison with fully vaccinated kids.

Because the worst thing for them is a future study which shows that unvaccinated or undervaccinated kids remain healthier and live longer on average than fully vaccinated kids.

Meanwhile, if all vax exemptions are taken away, the least we should do is to change the US national anthem from
"Land of the Free, and Home of the Brave"
to
Land of the Sheep, and Home of the Fascists"

Vijay, any chance you'll answer my question @ 144? I'm curious why you believe returning to an average of 4 million chicken pox infections every year, many of which will require hospitalizatios and some of which will lead to deaths, is something to be embraced.

@Todd
"This suggests to me that you really have not properly researched the subject and do not know what you are talking about."
Thanks for your extremely kind and profound comments.

Thanks to all you guys for an entertaining discussion. It is interesting to see than one pro-choice guy can keep several vaccination-fascists busy for a long time.

@ Roger Kulp:

Oh I know! I saw it via NN's direction to Natural News TV.
Mike's videos compete with Gary Null's films for egregious quotes and un- restrained inappropriate analogies.

But then I would expect that.

Vijay: "If I remember it right, the 1985 schedule included polio, DTP and MMR. If you feel strongly about anything else, like Hib, you could add that as well."

Proof you have no idea what you are spouting off about. Under that schedule I had to deal for month with very sick kids suffering from chicken pox, including a six month old baby. I assume that as a guy, it would be beneath you to attend to an infant in pain all night long. Nor would you care about her pain.

Only a sadistic child hater would want them to suffer with dozens of itchy open wounds (pox) for up to two weeks. I wish the varicella had been available a year or two earlier.

Though before she was born, the oldest child got a disease we now vaccinate for and had seizures, with a trip by ambulance to the hospital. You see, unlike some of the anti-vaccine types like Cia Parker who claims her daughter had encephalitis... I actually did call 911 and took the kid in for medical care. By the way, that seizure may or may not be the reason for his disabilities.

"It is interesting to see than one pro-choice guy can keep several vaccination-fascists busy for a long time."

Actually you are not "pro-choice", you are pro-disease, and do not care one bit about the health of children.

Thanks to all you guys for an entertaining discussion. It is interesting to see than one pro-choice guy can keep several vaccination-fascists busy for a long time.

Don't flatter yourself. Most of the effort that goes into debunking the BS you're spouting isn't for your benefit, but to try and provide resources for those who might be seeking honest, objective answers. So thank YOU for being such an excellent foil.

By the way, which drug company do you work for?

When all else fails, fall back on the pharma shill gambit. Hey, at least it's a switch from "I didn't post what you guys say I posted!"

Indeed. Man, these antivaccine types have an inflated view of their own importance!

@ Vijay

vaccination-fascists

Showing your true colors, eh?

As someone whose grandparents went through true fascists regimes, I'm amused you think yourself of a rebel.

One of my great-uncle, when asked about what he did around the 40's, answered humbly and tongue-in-check that he was working at a railroad station and "I was keeping the doors open".
He was a much more courageous guy, and way much more of a rebel than you will ever dream to be.

Yes, an epidemic is in the eyes of the beholder. Do you know that over 300,000 Americans die every year from hospital and medical errors, and over 100,000 die from adverse drug reactions. Ten times as many are seriously injured.

Just goes to show how much you know about epidemiology and argument fallacies. There are specific criteria for what constitutes an epidemic. Your Tu Quoque fallacy has been noted and slapped down by others.

The primary reason the vaccine companies want to take away all vax exemptions is so that no unvaccinated or undervaccinated kids remain around for comparison with fully vaccinated kids.

Someone's tin foil beanie is too tight. "Vaccine companies" (as if there is even such a thing) have nothing to do with vaccine exemptions; those fall under the purview of state legislatures. You are clearly using the braindead rallying cry of your fellow dimwitted anti-vaxxers re: health freeeedumb!!!11 Even if non-medical exemptions were removed you are still free to keep your spawn unvaccinated, pure and toxin-free.

@Narad
...
By the way, which drug company do you work for?

That's rich.

It is interesting to see than one pro-choice guy can keep several vaccination-fascists busy for a long time.

I wonder what color I should get my jackboots in? I suppose pink would be appropriate, since I'm also a Feminazi, but my lands, I detest pink clothing.

Thanks to all you guys for an entertaining discussion. It is interesting to see than one pro-choice guy can keep several vaccination-fascists busy for a long time.

In what way is that interesting, Vijay?

-btw- AoA is crowing that tighter vaccine exemption laws are being withdrawn in various jurisdictions.

I am glad to see this article, but I confess I did not read through all of the comments as it seemed to be descending into another pro vs. anti argument. As someone who is pro-science, I think it is key for us to recognize that our "we are right because we are the experts" approach to this discussion is failing us. I understand the frustration felt when you spend a large portion of your life studying a subject only to have your expertise dismissed by individuals who have little knowledge on the topic but spread a lot of rhetoric. However, it is key for us to ask ourselves what has happened that public trust has been lost, and how do we change that? We can not expect everyone to know or understand science, just as we do not expect all scientists to know and understand art, literature, poetry, economics, business, humanities etc. So how do we regain our expert status and regain public trust. Scientists solve puzzles. Complex, layered puzzles. So this should be a really fun challenge. I hope we can start to have more productive conversations about how to resolve this issue, because all we are doing now is driving more people away.

-btw- AoA is crowing that tighter vaccine exemption laws are being withdrawn in various jurisdictions.

I don't doubt it. The past few days in Oregon have been frigging unbearable. Because I am a glutton for punishment, I just paid a visit to the page of an .'Alternative' Pediatrician based in Portland. A few weeks ago when SB 442 was alive and kicking, he assured parents on his blog that, should it pass, he would "find a way" to give them a medical exemption so that they could continue not vaccinating their children. Now that the bill is dead, the jubilant 'Health Freedom' stank is potent, indeed.

It is interesting to see than one pro-choice guy can keep several vaccination-fascists busy for a long time.

While your accomplice ransacks the vault? Is that what you mean? What happened while you so cleverly distracted us with your idle chitchat and meaningless banter? ZOMG - we are in the presence of a criminal mastermind!

Everybody count the spoons.

Vivian: " We can not expect everyone to know or understand science, just as we do not expect all scientists to know and understand art, literature, poetry, economics, business, humanities etc. So how do we regain our expert status and regain public trust."

My expertise was only in having children who suffered through the diseases under the 1985 vaccine schedule, because those particular vaccines were not available.

You may note I am not happy with those who think kids should get sick. Especially after taking care of a baby with chicken pox and before that seeing my toddler go into a grand mal seizure, just a day after the doctor said he seemed be getting better.

What kind of special expert does one have to be to not want children to suffer?

As someone who is pro-science, I think it is key for us to recognize that our “we are right because we are the experts” approach to this discussion is failing us.

I haven't been seeing anyone taking that approach, however.

Instead, I'm seeing the approach "The following evidence demonstrates the anti-vax claims you've offered are false".

So it would turn out that the much touted 'measles death' in Germany was a child who had been vaccinated, who also had an underlying heart condition. Two questions, Germany, which has 95% uptake of MMR - herd immunity is obviously a fantasy and why is the pro vaxx unit using this as an appeal to emotion?

The CDC originally said that an unknown women who was probably unvaccinated and may have stayed at Disneyland who may have had measles............... how have you got to the point that you have a point about anti vaxxers?

How sick can you get, selling snake oil MMR on the back of this death. If I was the parent I would be well pissed.

Surely the point is that vaccination is based on the biggest woo. At least it started with Disney.

"You may note I am not happy with those who think kids should get sick" chris

You have to qualify what sick is. When your child had chicken pox did you give them anti pyretics before the seizures?

johnny: "So it would turn out that the much touted ‘measles death’ in Germany was a child who had been vaccinated, who also had an underlying heart condition"

Citation needed.

And who are you to decide if a child should live or die? As a parent of someone who had open heart surgery due to a genetic heart disorder, obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, I find your attitude rather disgusting.

"selling snake oil MMR"

It's been around since 1971. If you have evidence that it causes more harm than measles, then provide the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers.

johnny,

Where are you finding that the child was vaccinated for measles? All official sources have confirmed he WAS NOT vaccinated. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/23/german-health-official-man…

Also, the presence of a heart condition is EXACTLY why vaccination is important, especially since so many indolent conditions exist and only come to light when someone is exposed to a disease that can kill them.

" Now that the bill is dead, the jubilant ‘Health Freedom’ stank is potent, indeed." Jen

You gotta realise Jen that the 'evidence' for vaccine efficacy is not clean at all. Why on earth would you believe CDC dictat on vaccine benefit? Where is the evidence that their predictions of mass disaster with flu for example have been born out in any reality. Last years whooping cough vaccine failure, this years flu and measles vaccine failure. In the Western world mortality rates from wild measles are the same as 50 years ago, so years of vaccination have made no difference. What we do have though is epidemics of atopy and now as reported in the UK hundreds of cases of narcolepsy in kids from flu vaccination. You only have to study the woo of vaccination for a very short periods

Yes, citation please Johnny - and how about examining the actual course of the German epidemic, which started in unvaccinated enclaves.....even if 95% of the people are vaccinated, guess what happens when large numbers of the other 5% live in the same communities together.....

johnny: "You have to qualify what sick is"

Spoken by someone whose children are protected by community immunity.

."When your child had chicken pox did you give them anti pyretics before the seizures?"

Work on your reading comprehension. Different disease, note the words "before that" and the earlier comment #162 I said "Though before she was born, the oldest child got a disease we now vaccinate for and had seizures, with a trip by ambulance to the hospital."

Johnny, why do want kids to get sick? And why do you hate those with genetic disorders?

@Johnny - stop displaying your profound ignorance....mortality and incidence are two completely different things.

Johnny,
As Frequent Lurker has shown, you are a liar.

Thanks for correcting the grammar. With so much stuff going on, the Internet could always use a good grammarian.

The comment itself was nonsensical. Again, it's not my fault that you happened upon the bright idea of invoking something that, to the extent it is apropos of anything, works directly to your detriment.

johnny: "In the Western world mortality rates from wild measles are the same as 50 years ago, so years of vaccination have made no difference. "

Due to improvement in expensive hospital care. Things like artificial respiratory support for one of the more common complications of measles, pneumonia, plus antibiotics for the secondary bacterial infections.

Wow, you really love seeing kids suffer. It must excite you see a child hooked up to tubes to keep them alive by helping them breathe.

So tell us when did mortality decline between the invention of those interventions in the 1950s to when the first vaccines were available. Here is the CDC Pink Book Appendix G data from 1950 to 1975. Point out that year, and don't mention the comparison to 1900, it will only make you look more like an idiot:

Disease: Measles in the USA
Year__Cases___Deaths
1961__423,919_434
1962__481,530_408
1963__385,156_364
(^^ first vaccine licensed)
1964__458,083_421
1965__261,905_276
1966__204,136_261
1967___62,705__81
1968___22,231__24
1969___25,826__41
1970___47,351__89
1971___75,290__90
(^^^ MMR licensed)
1972___32,275__24
1973___26,690__23
1974___22,690__20
1975___24,374__20

Why on earth would you believe CDC dictat on vaccine benefit?

Oh, look, it's Philip Hills, aka "pop sucket," aka "pop socket," aka "Johnny Labile," etc., etc., here to ramble on about the NICE guideline that only he is unable to find.

epidemics of atopy
Ah, it's *that* Johnny. "Cochraine reports" cannot be far away.

Johnny,
As Frequent Lurker has shown, you are a liar.

As did HDB a week ago.

I wish this johnny would choose another 'nym, as we actually have a sane johnny who posts here.

The measles outbreak in Germany has been traced to an unvaccinated Bosnian child. There are significant numbers of refugees from the former Yugoslavia in Germany, many of them unvaccinated -- odd how a little thing like a civil war can throw public health activities like childhood vaccinations completely off track.

As an aside it is clear that Robert Kennedy Jr.'s activities are in fact anti-vaccination in spite of his assertion that he is pro-vax because he and his children were all vaccinated. He leaves out the part that they were all born years before his foray into really bad anti-vaxx pseudoscience. A typical claim by those who wish to avoid the dreaded anti-vaxx label.

You gotta realise Jen [wall of absurd falsehoods]

Pfft. The only thing I 'gotta realize', you incompetent sock-puppet, is that people who believe as you do will return our civilization to the dark ages sooner than ever if we don't figure out an effective way to counter the pig-choking volume of misinformation that you and your misguided brethren are churning out.

“Though before she was born, the oldest child got a disease we now vaccinate for and had seizures, wtf does that mean?

How does anyone get a disease before they were born?

So do you believe in Disney or vaccination?

So the rates of medically induced atopy are not suffering right?

" The only thing I ‘gotta realize’, you incompetent sock-puppet, is that people who believe as you do will return our civilization to the dark ages sooner than ever if we don’t figure out an effective way to counter the pig-choking volume of misinformation that you and your misguided brethren are churning out." Jedi knought

What like the 800+ with narcolepsy after the fictitious swine flu pandemic. Are you a flu woo believer or just a drive by commentator?

"The measles outbreak in Germany has been traced to an unvaccinated Bosnian child. There are significant numbers of refugees from the former Yugoslavia in Germany, many of them unvaccinated — odd how a little thing like a civil war can throw public health activities like childhood vaccinations completely off track." Shay

there is always a convenient excuse for vaccine failure, if Germany has a 95% uptake rate of MMR how come herd immunity failed - again? Was it a dodgy batch, when exactly is the vaccine supposed to work.

Blame it on the foreigners. Why are all the flu's called Beijing, Asian, Spanish etc. Why don't we have Bush flu or whitehouse flu? All this empire crap is rather shallow.

We are waiting. Who traced it - please qualify

Weave us a magic EBM reply please, make it Disney

What like the 800+ with narcolepsy after the fictitious swine flu pandemic.

Which was studied and found not to be linked to the vaccine at all. I wonder what else happened after that global vaccination effort?

Millions of women got their periods! OMG, the flu vaccine contains FEMALE HORMONES!
Millions of children lost teeth! OMG, The flu vaccine is linked to root resorption!!
Should I go on?

Are you a flu woo believer or just a drive by commentator?

Neither. I'm a biologist who's been commenting here since roughly 2007, and I'm done with you.

Johnny, your evidence that routine childhood vaccination is ineffective at reducing the incidence of the infectious diseases targeted, and that last year’s whooping cough, seasonal flu and the current MMR vaccine is ineffective at reducing the incidence of those diseases , would be…what, exactly? Be specific.
I mean, you do have some-right?

In the Western world mortality rates from wild measles are the same as 50 years ago, so years of vaccination have made no difference.

Made no difference, or made no difference in one’s risk of dying once they have contracted the disease? We don’t expect vaccines to make a disease less deadly, only to prevent you from acquiring it. And if you’ll check the incidence rate before and after vaccination was introduced, you’ll find it’s made a very, very large difference.

What we do have though is epidemics of atopy…

Citations needed: your evidence that such epidemics are occurring and that the atopy observed is causally associated with vaccination would be what? Be specific.

…and now as reported in the UK hundreds of cases of narcolepsy in kids from flu vaccination.

Citation needed. To the best of my knowledge narcolepsy was associated only with the 2009 Pandemrix flu vaccine, and there were less than 100 cases observed in total.

It is interesting to see than one pro-choice guy can keep several vaccination-fascists busy for a long time.

I have also seen the proverb worded as
"A fool can ask more questions than seven wise men can answer."

Further to Moon's comment, here's the story on the BBC website.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31864218

Do you know that over 300,000 Americans die every year from hospital and medical errors, and over 100,000 die from adverse drug reactions. Ten times as many are seriously injured.

Does anyone have a citation for this? It sounds rather argumentum ex culo.

<Who traced it – please qualify

The German Ministry of Health.

if Germany has a 95% uptake rate of MMR how come herd immunity failed

You truly don't understand how herd immunity works, do you?

(sigh) Italics fail. C'mon, Wordpress, make with the preview function!

OT: But a child is death by measle in my country, Italy. A four years old, unvaccinated.
:( I fear that it is only a matter of time before more will join the count.

What we do have though is epidemics of atopy and now as reported in the UK hundreds of cases of narcolepsy in kids from flu vaccination.

ORLY, Philip Hills? You seem to have an order-of-magnitude problem. Indeed, given that uptake of all influenza vaccines in the UK was less than 10% of the population (PDF), the upper end of the attributable-risk estimate doesn't even make it to 200 for all age groups.

The child was a vaccinated child and also had a heart condition.
This seems to have become a tenet of faith in the disease-apologist catechism. Meanwhile, according to the hospital and the German authorities,
The child was not vaccinated against measles and had no pre-existing conditions.

I expect Johnny to flounce again......since his lies have been called out.

Do you know that over 300,000 Americans die every year

That's impressive. WIthin 24 hr, 3 different people came on RI and posted something like this.
Except one time it was 100,000 people, next time 200,000, and now 300,000 people.
At least, I hope for their sanity that these are different people.

Now, could our opponents please compare notes and come back with some consensus? It's a bit confusing right now.

@ JGC

We don’t expect vaccines to make a disease less deadly

Nitpicking, but we do.
Well, among the successfully vaccinated anyway. A faster immune reaction should either protect from the disease, or make it last a shorter time.

Among non-vaccinated, you are right. For the disease, it's unfortunately business as usual.

This is the high point of woo. It's soon going to go downhill and fast.

Why? Because Google is going to replace its easily-gamed PageRank system with a system that ranks pages according to how reality-based they are.

And the Usual Suspects are already freaking out.

JGC:
Instead, I’m seeing the approach “The following evidence demonstrates the anti-vax claims you’ve offered are false”.

You are correct. Perhaps the language I chose was too simple or too strong. My point is that using evidence based medicine arguments, while 100% valid and the gold standard for arguing science, it is failing us in trying to win the confidence of the general public. We need to find a way to communicate these messages in a way that builds public confidence rather than losing people to the anti-vax movement.

The UK checks in with 70 total cases (PDF) reported to the European Medicines Agency. There are 68 plaintiffs in the class action. The estimates suggest that around half of those are bona fide.

You lose again, Philip Hills.

My point is that using evidence based medicine arguments, while 100% valid and the gold standard for arguing science, it is failing us in trying to win the confidence of the general public. We need to find a way to communicate these messages in a way that builds public confidence rather than losing people to the anti-vax movement.

TINW.

Because Google is going to replace its easily-gamed PageRank system with a system that ranks pages according to how reality-based they are.

I'm afraid that this remains a hopelessly primitive misunderstanding.

In the Western world mortality rates from wild measles are the same as 50 years ago, so years of vaccination have made no difference.

That may be the most foolish thing I have seen anyone write about vaccines. Measles mortality rates, looking at the entire population, has been reduced by almost 100% in the US since the measles vaccine was introduced. It's like complaining that seat belts are useless because the death rate in people thrown through the windscreen in RTCs is the same as it was before they were introduced.

Vivian: However, it is key for us to ask ourselves what has happened that public trust has been lost, and how do we change that?

Americans got dumber and affluent, it's as simple as that. There are also fewer people who actually suffered those diseases, so people don't grow up listening to horror stories about mumps, measles, and etc. People also don't read anymore- Little House on the Prairie, Little Women and Eight Cousins and the Mirror Crack'd ought to be required reading for new parents, since all mention mumps, measles and rubella and the consequences thereof.

Vivian: "We can not expect everyone to know or understand science, just as we do not expect all scientists to know and understand art, literature, poetry, economics, business, humanities etc. "

I don't know where you're getting this. Every single undergrad student at my college was required to have classes in art, literature, theology, philosophy, at least two writing-heavy courses, sociology, history and math. Granted, that was just one college, but lots of people go to liberal arts colleges for their bachelors. And in the professional world, scientists have to understand politics and economics so they can keep their jobs.

@ Helianthus:

And I've always heard that it was *600 000*.
So I suppose they haven't read 'Death By Medicine".

@Vijay, As for "Herd Immunity why do you believe human beings have to be treated like cattle, after all cattle are not given a choice or given free will, but aren't most free human beings who are not enslaved or imprisoned granted that right by their creator?

@ Phoenix Woman:

I think that Narad is right.

And woo-meisters might use studies as the verifiable/ factual basis and manage to eke by. Right now, they certainly claim that _research_ shows they're right and they have the studies- all cited and quoted to illustrate that.
Altho' I did briefly hear a statement by Mooney about g--gle.

@ PGP:

Most of the relevant background in general science, bio and chemistry should be acquired before students attend universities. Hopefully.

@brian

Thanks for the link to the stats.org article. It was most entertaining.

DW: Of course, high school students should have had some science courses, especially those who chose to go to college. But in the states, science education has become so politicized that most high schools teach only a very watered down version of biology- if they think they can get away with it and not earn the ire of the school board. A lot of districts have probably done away with biology all together.

@Vivian
I want to thank you for your contribution to the conversation.

it is failing us in trying to win the confidence of the general public. We need to find a way to communicate these messages in a way that builds public confidence rather than losing people to the anti-vax movement.

I think that we cannot expect the general public to understand the science to the depth required to refute many of the anti-vax studies. It takes a certain level of knowledge to distinguish between studies that are decent science with a funding bias and pseudo-science. Not every parent was a 'A' student and made good choices in adding to their family.

It comes down to how much they trust the people that are behind the recommendations and push for stricter school requirements. That means more than just having evidence on your side. It means having their trust regarding whether those recommendations are in their best interest. Sadly, the medical industry as a whole is simply no longer as respected as it once was. The pharmaceutical companies have been particularly derelict in their actions and the distrust spills into everything they manufacture, particularly products like vaccines because they are required to attend public schools.

Interesting-
Unaswered Questions from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program: A Review of Compensated Cases of Vaccine-Induced
Brain Injury www.digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1681&context=pe…

Regarding science education in schools- I think it is more fundamental than that. In my opinion, the crux of the matter is that too much focus is being placed on what to think, rather than how to think.

For example, why aren't grade students being taught how to recognize logical fallacies, and avoid them in their own thought processes?

I think that we cannot expect the general public to understand the science to the depth required to refute many of the anti-vax studies.

Beth, you yourself have stubbornly refused to do your own homework regarding MRLs and complained about the quality of others' doing it for you.

@Narad

you yourself have stubbornly refused to do your own homework regarding MRLs and complained about the quality of others’ doing it for you.

Not quite how I would have put it, but I have a solid academic background and I don't have toddlers around to distract me and occupy all my attention. I was able to spend more than an hour reading and trying to understand the two papers you linked. How can you expect the parents of young children to put in the time and effort to understand the science underlying those studies? For every vaccine?

Most young parents will make their choices based on their trust in the system making the recommendations.

Beth: "Most young parents will make their choices based on their trust in the system making the recommendations."

And not understanding the pain and suffering many of these diseases cause. Since they have grown up after measles and mumps was common, and often not seeing younger siblings suffer from chicken pox... they simply do not understand the gravity of the illnesses.

It was twenty five years ago when my oldest as a toddler had a seizure from a now vaccine preventable disease. Which was about the time that another mother I met later had her child die from Hib meningitis. Then later "just" a bit over twenty years ago all the kids had chicken pox including the baby (who turns 21 in two months).

Perhaps this would be useful: Vaccine Preventable Disease - The Forgotten Story

How can you expect the parents of young children to put in the time and effort to understand the science underlying those studies? For every vaccine?

It is unclear to me here the degree to which the idea is to emulate the sales tactics of the antivaccine brigade, but I'm not really seeing a way in which is isn't.

Most young parents will make their choices based on their trust in the system making the recommendations.

"After the crucifixion mania passed, Haines and all his followers had been invited to attend a kind of ecumenical LSD session with the League in Tim’s room on the third floor. Everyone sat in a circle, with Tim at one end and Bill at the other, and this time the implication was that Bill and/or the Ashram in general desperately required some kind of spiritual tranquilization. Tim kept droning 'find your calm center, find your calm center' every few seconds and Carol Ross, who was seated next to him, chanted when he didn’t.

"'I can still hear it,' Haines said. 'It was unbelievable.'

"He widened his eyes, made his mouth into an 'o,' fluttered his hands and assumed a falsetto voice:

"'"Skies of blooooooo, skies of bloooooooo.["] She just kept saying that, over and over. If it wasn’t "find your calm center" it was "skies of blooooooo, skies of bloooooo." I mean, I don’t think I freak out easily, Art, but five minutes more of that and I might have gone out of the window.'

"'How long did it last?' I asked.

"'I don’t know. I guess I took it for about fifteen minutes and then I just stood up, excused myself, and walked out the door.'”

Seriously you expect parent whose children they suspect were seriously damaged by vaccines, to ever trust vaccinations again? Don't bet on it!

I am just now beginning to understand a conversation I had with Kyogen, my old Zen teacher, when I was 21 or maybe 22. I had just told him a very strange story (I'm not going to go into it now) of high synchronicity that I had experienced.

"Oh, yeah, I have some familiarity with that kind of thing."
"You do?"
"I mean, yeah, I went to Berkeley in the 60s. I guess I was ultimately drawn toward something a little more orderly."

Not that there weren't moments at Shasta that might have seemed a little Millbrook to outsiders:

On another evening the senior monks were gathered in that same common room enjoying some camaraderie. We had an old hound dog who would howl whenever he heard a siren. Sometimes if we worked at it, we could imitate siren noises and get him going. The lot of us were at it that evening, Roshi included, when someone heard footsteps in the cloister just outside. It was the lay guests attending an introductory retreat on their way from the Zendo to their evening tea before bed, silently and mindfully making their way while the senior monks and Abbot howled like maniacs in the common room.The alarm was sounded and we all shushed each other, stifling our laughter. I remember Roshi with one hand on top of her head, the other covering her mouth as she sank down in that same chair, tears running down her cheeks, trying so hard to contain herself that she shook. How different things would become.

^ Should have been a blockquote for that last paragraph.

@Helianthus:
You don't understand. It's going up really fast. At the current rate it will be 700,000 by tomorrow afternoon.

@Narad:
If you have better ideas for sales tactics, I'm all ears. But that's just a necessary stopgap. The real value is in fixing the trust problem.

@ ken:

Orac has already dealt with that article : "Another swing at the fences,,,," , May 11, 2011. Place "Mary Holland" in the search box.

@ Beth:

One of the problems is that young parents get information on the internet from *untrustworthy* people who distort the facts and present material to frighten them. Orac has been writing about this= and illustrating it- for years.

One item you mention involves mistrusting medicine because of the pharmaceutical companies. Did you know that this is one of the chief talking points of both the anti-vaccine movement and alternative medicine? Don't some physicians- like Orac and Ben Goldacre- criticise these very companies? Because a company has behaved in an unseemly fashion doesn't mean that medicine as a whole is corrupt and wrong about its research.

The question I have is why do parents place their trust in people who frequently have an agenda fuelled by emotional or monetary factors?They present material about the corporations which may be true in part although it is vastly exaggerated and embellished to suit their needs.
What makes *these* people more trustworthy than the so-called medical establishment? Mike Adams sells supplements and superfoods as well as media; contributors @ AoA are selling a theory and their books which often brings each a measure of celebrity. Don't they have a conflict of interest?

Advocates like these are asking parents to be suspicious of most doctors, scientists, research journals, governmental agencies ( around the world) and the media YET to instead place their trust in supplement salesmen and distraught parents who have little to no education or expertise in the complex science which they blithely discuss. Isn't there something wrong with that?

And exactly on cue, Dan Olmsted has an article @ AoA asking people EXACTLY that- believe him, not the evidence-based consensus.

@Narad - What Justthestats said #230

@Denise

I'll try to answer your questions:

"One item you mention involves mistrusting medicine because of the pharmaceutical companies. Did you know that this is one of the chief talking points of both the anti-vaccine movement and alternative medicine? Don’t some physicians- like Orac and Ben Goldacre- criticise these very companies? Because a company has behaved in an unseemly fashion doesn’t mean that medicine as a whole is corrupt and wrong about its research. "

Yes to all three questions. It's still a powerful point because it's true. And while it doesn't mean that medicine as a whole is corrupt and wrong, it means that most people are justifiably leery about trusting ALL of medicine because it might be corrupt.

The question I have is why do parents place their trust in people who frequently have an agenda fuelled by emotional or monetary factors?
What makes *these* people more trustworthy than the so-called medical establishment?

These I can't answer. People have to choose who to place their trust in and they rarely do it based on rational and evidenced reasons. That's sort of the point I'm trying to make and I think that Vivian was also trying to make. I don't think you can present sufficient evidence to make someone trust you although you can present enough evidence to destroy their trust in someone else.

Once trust is gone, it's hard to recover. Building trust is a long term process. How do you convince someone who doesn't really trust the system that they should for vaccines?

If it helps, it's not just the medical system. Ferguson is now a well-known example of why many blacks don't trust the police. There is no easy fix for relationship problems.

@ Beth:

People may place their trust in these people because they advance stories that present them in a sympathetic or admirable light:
parents may identify with another parent whose child was 'damaged'; people may want to emulate a brave, idealistic scientist/ journalist who is sweeping dirt into public view and airing out the rancid inner sanctum of power.

And you are correct- one of the ways they get others to believe in them is by demolishing trust in institutions. For the past 15 years, I have been monitoring alt media messaging and this is the groundwork for all of their endeavors. Thus, I observe how the material changes and transforms to fit whatever is next on their agenda. ANYTHING that shows imperfect transparency is utilised to create mistrust HOWEVER the presenters themselves keep changing their own stories and re-assembling facts as they dissemble.The same stories are told and re-told and as we know, repetition increases what is remembered. In addition, pointing your finger at others' malfeasance distracts your audience from looking at your own

A few days ago I watched a documentary, Citizen Four, about Edward Snowden in which he compared informers on the internet to the mythological Hydra- if you cut off one head, five more pop up.
Unfortunately, this applies for misinformation purveyors as well.

@Beth

"I don’t think you can present sufficient evidence to make someone trust you although you can present enough evidence to destroy their trust in someone else."

I love it. Thank you Beth. This is the best quote about trust I have seen in a long time. And it applies so well to the vaccination issue.

Here is one way to start building trust. We know that many drug companies have been fined for criminal wrongdoings.

http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/bigpharma

Let us make it MANDATORY that when a drug company is found guilty of such a crime in future, the most senior employee who was aware of the violation MUST go to prison. No exceptions.

It's kind of depressing, but using facts and logic to show people how they're wrong doesn't really work. There are numerous studies about it, and I have all kinds of anecdotal experience that agrees. People don't like to be told they're full of horsesh*t, I guess, even if you try to do it as nicely and calmly as possible.

Building trust doesn't really seem to work all that well either, though. There's a pediatrician I know in Portland - one of my old housemates used to work as his secretary - who is about the nicest, most trustworthy guy you could meet. He runs a pediatric clinic which bills insurance but also runs on small yearly dues. The idea is to provide the kind of personal, attentive care that people seem to be seeking with "alternative" practitioners, but to do so with evidence-based medicine. I mean, he's a nice, hippie doctor who plays guitar and sings goofy songs to the kids - and yet he's got anti-vaxxers bringing down his g--gle scores because he doesn't "respect their choices."

All I can really come up with is that an actual skeptical or scientific worldview is profoundly countercultural, probably because it goes against something pretty deeply ingrained in human nature. "Question everything" is a hard row to hoe, a lot harder than "question the mainstream media" or "question the CDC" or whatever. Constantly being open to the possibility that you yourself could be wrong is not something most people are interested in doing.

@Helianthus

Seriously? Having mandatory vaccination in specific contexts is going to lead to/condone forced incarceration or circumcision?

No, not necessarily. I was asked to provide examples of where people are attempting to use the force of law to compel others to follow doctor's orders. So I did.

By your logic, maybe we should disband child protection services. Same stuff. These government agencies are here to enforce policies and laws telling parents what they should do or not do to their children.

Disbanding might be a little much. But maybe we should strongly consider reigning it in.

Maryland family under investigation for letting their kids walk home alone.

Mom arrested for leaving 9-year-old alone at park

Florida mom arrested after letting 7-year-old walk to the park alone.

Read on the slippery slope fallacy.

Yeah- I know what the slippery slope fallacy is. The problem is when people are using hypotheticals. These aren't hypotheticals.

(sorry, blockquote fail) :(

Slipping down a slope all the while proclaiming, "What slope? There's no slope!" is known as denial.

@JP

All I can really come up with is that an actual skeptical or scientific worldview is profoundly countercultural, probably because it goes against something pretty deeply ingrained in human nature.

Of course it goes against something pretty deeply ingrained in human nature... it goes against every aspect of consciousness that isn't the rational intellect. Emotions, feelings, intuition, insight, inspiration. The list goes on and on.

Rational materialism is obviously important to scientific inquiry. But attempting to elevate rational materialism to a worldview encompassing the whole of human experience is absurdly ludicrous. It doesn't even make rational sense.

I'm not a materialist, Matt.

JP- Never said you were. I was trying to agree with you.

I was asked to provide examples of where people are attempting to use the force of law to compel others to follow doctor’s orders. So I did.

No, you provided a link to a completely irrelevant custody dispute over circumcision and a broken one to this NEJM item, which shows that atavistic state intrusions into prenatal care are rare and fare poorly at the appellate level – indeed, Burton prevailed on appeal.

BTW, Matt, I'm still waiting for the follow-through on this one:

Laws are much more difficult to change. As evidenced by the plethora of outdated (and ridiculous) laws on the books. For example, laws forbidding one to swear in front of a lady, or have sex in any position other than missionary.

Never said you were. I was trying to agree with you.

Ah. Well, I don't think you do, although you might agree with a casual misreading of what I wrote.

Of course it goes against something pretty deeply ingrained in human nature… it goes against every aspect of consciousness that isn’t the rational intellect. Emotions, feelings, intuition, insight, inspiration. The list goes on and on.

First off, what I was referring to as "deeply ingrained in human nature" is not something I find appealing or interesting. It's the tendency to operate blindly on assumptions and biases. It's stupid and boring to base your life on hoary old assumptions that you picked up from your parents, your religious texts, your political party, your culture, your subculture, your own mental narratives, etc., etc.

I find an attitude of questioning to be much more "inspiring" and "insightful," actually. Question your own biases and assumptions. Question what this thing you so blithely call "consciousness" is and whether it exists at all. Question whether "you" really exist at all. Otherwise you're going to go through life missing out on at least 90% of what's right in front of your face.

Curses! Blasphemy, profanity laws still on the books

Since this article was from 2009, I thought I'd follow up on some of the links to the statutes in question. Yup, still on the books. Here is an example:

Michigan Penal Code

750.337 Women and children; improper language in presence.

Sec. 337.

Indecent, etc., language in presence of women or children—Any person who shall use any indecent, immoral, obscene, vulgar or insulting language in the presence or hearing of any woman or child shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.

Sex laws? Here is a reference guide:

The Complete List of Weird Sex Laws in the U.S.A.

@ JP:

No need to get morose because the same system operating in human nature that includes various biases is accompanied by the equally human quality of observing one's self and - possibly, if I do dare say so- self-correcting.

We learn that during adolescence, we develop a capacity to question the rules as well as ourselves- as kids develop abilities in abstraction, they may apply them to critiquing prevalent social conventions, their own identity and political or social norms. Alongside algebra and the scientific method, their 'studies' may include revolution, identity transformation and radical forms of idealism, as surely as integrating metacognition and other executive functions into their repetoire. They may try on different roles as well as embarking upon self- improvement- intellectually as well as physically .It's interesting that philosophies, religions and disciplines ( like meditation, martial arts and yoga) may be part of their itinerary.

So don't give up hope. There's an audience for scepticism as well as an audience for woo.

Beth: "Building trust is a long term process. How do you convince someone who doesn’t really trust the system that they should for vaccines? "

Ask which parts of the system they do trust and why. Point out that a surgery or chemo is a lot riskier than a simple poke.

Alternatively, call the parent's bluff- give them a first aid kit, wish them well, give them a fake phone number and contact their main doctor and say they no longer want medical treatment, ever. If they think they're smarter than the medical system, let them prove it.

Also, make perks dependent on vaccines, like airlines reserve humane treatment for first class travelers. If enough parents vaccinate in a ped's practice, they should have a party thrown for them, and the anti-vaxxers parents get to hear about the perks. Since the typical anti-vaxxer is a high-strung type-a, hearing about other parents (especially people who are doing parenting wrong in their opinion) something like that would bring 'em running.

First off, what I was referring to as “deeply ingrained in human nature” is not something I find appealing or interesting. It’s the tendency to operate blindly on assumptions and biases. It’s stupid and boring to base your life on hoary old assumptions that you picked up from your parents, your religious texts, your political party, your culture, your subculture, your own mental narratives, etc., etc.

@JP

I find an attitude of questioning to be much more “inspiring” and “insightful,” actually.

Have you ever questioned why an "attitude of questioning" has that type of effect on you?

Question your own biases and assumptions. Question what this thing you so blithely call “consciousness” is and whether it exists at all. Question whether “you” really exist at all.

Sure, why not? I agree these are worthy endeavors.

But when it comes to questioning the scientific consensus... is that something we shouldn't do? When it comes to the scientific consensus we should just trust whatever we are told or whatever is written in the textbooks?

And not only that, but we should pass laws compelling people to accept scientific consensus as their worldview and/or punishing people who do not comply? Enlighten me on your views in this respect.

Otherwise you’re going to go through life missing out on at least 90% of what’s right in front of your face.

90%?! Careful throwing out claims like that, or Narad might ask you for conclusive evidence to back up such a claim, thus diverting attention away from the actual conversation at hand. ;-)

Considering the supreme limitations of your physical senses and cognition, I would venture a guess that you can't help but miss out on a whole lot of what's right in front of your face.

And how can you be sure you are not missing out on something important with all the incessant questioning? Maybe there is something really cool you might discover by setting your questioning aside- even for a short time. Have you considered that possibility?

@Beth

Building trust is a long term process. How do you convince someone who doesn’t really trust the system that they should for vaccines?

How about... by making the system trustworthy? By actually addressing and correcting all the serious flaws in our medical system?

90%?! Careful throwing out claims like that, or Narad might ask you for conclusive evidence to back up such a claim, thus diverting attention away from the actual conversation at hand.

Given that I have a very good idea of what JP is talking about, that would be a "no."

But when it comes to questioning the scientific consensus… is that something we shouldn’t do? When it comes to the scientific consensus we should just trust whatever we are told or whatever is written in the textbooks?

Straw man. No one says the scientific consensus shouldn't be questioned. However, if someone questions it without sufficient data and evidence to support his "questioning" he will quite correctly be taken to task for that. In addition, when "questioning" based on pseudoscience and outright misinformation results in a threat to public health (such as antivaccine views) then that being taken to task will be that much more intense.

In other words, you can "question" the scientific consensus about this or that all you like, but if you don't have the science, data, and arguments to back your "questioning" up you will be subject to severe criticism. Freedom of speech does not equal freedom from criticism for your speech.

Since this article was from 2009, I thought I’d follow up on some of the links to the statutes in question. Yup, still on the books. Here is an example:

Michigan Penal Code

Which has been found to be unconstitutionally vague and therefore without effect.

Remember, your assertion was that such examples demonstrate something about laws being difficult to change, not that such laws hang around because they don't do anything and nobody gives a rat's ass.

Sex laws? Here is a reference guide

That's not a "reference guide," it's an unsourced listicle.

@Denice:

No need to get morose because the same system operating in human nature that includes various biases is accompanied by the equally human quality of observing one’s self and – possibly, if I do dare say so- self-correcting.

Oh, I'm not feeling particularly morose today. A little perverse, maybe, but that's pretty much par for the course. I do think it's realistic, though, to recognize that skepticism - even in a broad sense - has a minority appeal. Of course, I'd be open to changing my opinion if there are any good studies on the matter. :)

And, I remember a conversation I had about ten years ago or so about pessimism vs. realism:

"I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist."
"Yeah, you're a very realistic manic-depressive."
"F*ck you, Don."

They may try on different roles as well as embarking upon self- improvement- intellectually as well as physically .It’s interesting that philosophies, religions and disciplines ( like meditation, martial arts and yoga) may be part of their itinerary.

Incidentally, I don't know about other forms of meditation, but Zen is most emphatically not a course of self-improvement. It's also not "spirituality."

Being a good person is a desirable thing, though, which is where the Buddhism part comes in.

So don’t give up hope. There’s an audience for scepticism as well as an audience for woo.

Ahh, don't worry. I plan on being a royal pain in the a** 'till I croak.

Jamie, I used 'self-improvement; for lack if a better catch-all.
Perhaps there is no self.

Be that as it may.
and obviously scepticism will remain a minority view but hopefully it will inform general culture in some manner.
After all, the Enlightenment was not a mass movement but...

Now I have to run ...

@Matt:

Have you ever questioned why an “attitude of questioning” has that type of effect on you?

Of course.

But when it comes to questioning the scientific consensus… is that something we shouldn’t do? When it comes to the scientific consensus we should just trust whatever we are told or whatever is written in the textbooks?

What Orac said at #255. Also, scientific consensus is based on observation and evidence, not on assumptions. And it's constantly being refined and, yes, questioned, unlike, say, vitalism or whatever.

And not only that, but we should pass laws compelling people to accept scientific consensus as their worldview and/or punishing people who do not comply? Enlighten me on your views in this respect.

Another straw man. You can't legislate anybody's worldview, but you can pass laws about certain actions or lack of them, sure. Can you be more specific?

Considering the supreme limitations of your physical senses and cognition, I would venture a guess that you can’t help but miss out on a whole lot of what’s right in front of your face.

Obviously. I can make the best of the limited physical senses I've got, though. I don't know how far you actually want to get into this, but go read a primer on the three poisons, specifically "ignorance," and get back to me.

And how can you be sure you are not missing out on something important with all the incessant questioning? Maybe there is something really cool you might discover by setting your questioning aside- even for a short time. Have you considered that possibility?

A general attitude of questioning or skepticism doesn't mean I'm walking around cogitating all the time. You'd miss out on a lot of things that way, I'd guess, like cherry blossoms, to be cliched about it.

'Building trust is a long term process. How do you convince someone who doesn’t really trust the system that they should for vaccines?'

Matt: "How about… by making the system trustworthy? By actually addressing and correcting all the serious flaws in our medical system?"

You know, even with Medicare abuses, faulty medical devices, pharmaceutical company gouging, research fraud and other problems incompletely addressed, I still would accept antibiotic therapy for a severe infection, get my appendix removed if clinically indicated, or follow the vaccination recommendations that have eradicated or severely curtailed dangerous infectious diseases.

The alternatives aren't very attractive.

@Orac

It's not a strawman. That would mean I was intentionally misstating a view. I was asking for clarification on the view. That's the opposite of portraying that I already know what it is.

I disagree that one needs data in order to question. It's the question that drives the data-seeking. Not the other way around. Besides- not everybody is in a position to go about acquiring such data, or even being able to freely access that data which exists.

In the specific case of antivaccine tropes... yes the same old crusty ones keep getting trotted out again and again. But as you have pointed out, it seems that no amount of taking people to task about it is actually preventing the re-emergence of said tropes.

So what to do? Some people apparently believe it is appropriate to leverage the force of law in order to compel compliance with (what essentially amounts to) a doctor's orders. I happen to think that's a really bad idea.

As for "severe criticism" I believe that is appropriate for people who are actually making false claims. But to criticize for simply questioning? I don't see how that is productive.

Can you clarify what you mean by this?

United States v. Flowers is similarly a dud.

Folks- I've gotta run for now. My pregnant wife is starting to "question" why I am spending so much time chatting with my
"Internet friends" instead of spending time with her this afternoon.

(haha Are we all friends now? If so I'm looking for a craft beer drinking buddy since my wife is out of commission.)

Ciao for now.

But to criticize for simply questioning? I don’t see how that is productive.

As demonstrated in the Seneff comments, your modus operandi is pretty much to throw out specific items, wait for other people to examine them for you, and then resort to increasingly nebulous positions.

There's <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions"a name for this.

Dammit.

I disagree that one needs data in order to question. It’s the question that drives the data-seeking. Not the other way around.

Then you're just JAQ'ing off. How did you arrive at the question that can potentially challenge a consensus?

Besides- not everybody is in a position to go about acquiring such data, or even being able to freely access that data which exists.

Oh so any schmuck with an internet connection is qualified to refute scientific consensus?

Then you’re just JAQ’ing off.

I think there's a case for an alternative classification as sealioning.

How did you arrive at the question that can potentially challenge a consensus?

You don't arrive at the question. You start there.

@Denice:

Jamie, I used ‘self-improvement; for lack if a better catch-all.

I see. I was being cantankerously precise, which is sort of what I do. ;)

Perhaps there is no self.

Yep.

@Matt

How about… by making the system trustworthy? By actually addressing and correcting all the serious flaws in our medical system?

That would be ideal. In the meantime, children are born and parents make a choice for them. That shouldn't change.

@Victor #238

Thank you for the kind words. It means a lot to me. I think your suggestion is excellent, but rather improbable for the U.S. I've heard they do something like that in China. I recall hearing about some Chinese company executive being executed when his companies product turned out to have poisoned babies. It will be interesting to see how that strategy works out for them.

the most senior employee who was aware of the violation MUST go to prison. No exceptions.

One of the perks of seniority is being able to avoid a paper trail.

You don’t arrive at the question. You start there.

Not in Matt's case I'm afraid.

Perhaps there is no self.

Yep.

Attempting to dispense with "the series of acts and mental states as introspectively recognized" does not strike me as a likely candidate for getting much of anything desirable* done.

* Now, that's begging the question. Sort of.

@JP:

Although it's a long story, I do recommend the 1977 Bench Press edition as a reckoning point if you're interested in Millbrook. I picked up a library binding for $5 or so a couple of years back. (I'm also mildly surprised that the price of the hardcover has dropped by an order of magnitude in the meantime.)

Attempting to dispense with “the series of acts and mental states as introspectively recognized” does not strike me as a likely candidate for getting much of anything desirable* done.

I was referring to the doctrine of anattā, to be more clear, not to some vague state of "egolessness." Obviously you need an "ego" to get anything done - the mistake is in believing that it has some sort of essence that's separate from everything else.

I got some good advice from a friend not too long after I'd moved out at 16, which went along the lines of, "You gotta be amphibious, kid. I mean, you have to play the game, or you're going to end up dead in a gutter or something."

@PGP

Ask which parts of the system they do trust and why. Point out that a surgery or chemo is a lot riskier than a simple poke.

*sigh*
Sorry to rain on your parade, but...
Did you miss the part where a lot of people are completely freaked out by chemo? Or surgery, for that matter. Just read the recent threads on the late wellness warrior. Chemo is not a good reference for risk comparison.
I also suspect that there is a lot of overlap between people wary of vaccines and those suspicious of chemo. They will just tell you they trust no part of the system.
Also, telling people poking is less riskier than chemo doesn't answer their question: is the vaccine safe? They don't care if chemo is riskier, they don't consider taking chemo, they consider taking vaccines. And they will also call you on your assertion, if you don't gave them evidence. After all, this little poke is just the Troyan horse for injecting a lot of ZOMG CHemicalz!!!

Beside, people who are sick are willing to take more risks than people who feel healthy. So healthy people are going to say it's not the same risk/benefit assessment. And they will be entirely right.

@ matt

How about… by making the system trustworthy? By actually addressing and correcting all the serious flaws in our medical system?

*re-sigh*
In a recent thread, we just agreed that one "cannot reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into".
Fear could have rational triggers or enforcers, but at its core fear is in no way something rational.
The system could be perfect and there would still be people mistrusting it and other people interested at feeding this mistrust. Just look at all the threads these past 6 months about people refusing chemo for some nonsensical treatment. Even in cases where science can trot out numbers and testimonials of its success.
We have anti-vaxers in US, Canada, UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, Japan... All countries with different medical systems, different healthcare management, and different cultural biases towards science. Seems to me the issue is more generic and widespread than just some local misbehavior.

That's not a reason not to try to improve things. Obviously, if only we scientists were only a little less asocial and a little more better at sharing our knowledge... If only physicians and nurses and all the others had more time and resources to take care of their patients... If we were better at rooting out corruption and incompetence (an issue of will, but also of resources - my country doesn't have that many nurses and doctors to spare, so in a way better have half-competent ones rather than none)...
If the individuals in the society at large were a little less prone to common fallacies and a little less more than ready to follow the first false prophet...

Oh, but what am I saying? People reaping that they sow?
In Florida, you have politicians writing in the law how much the sea level is going to rise, if any. You have states willing to enforce by law the teaching of Creationism in biology classes.
These laws are made because people like you elected these nutjobs in position of leadership.
So take a good look in the mirror and keep your advice on what scientists should do to get trust and respect.

Beside, you are talking about human endeavor and medicine, i.e. biology. I will tell you a little secret: humans, for all their smartiness, are very prone to buggering even the most simple tasks, and biology is very messy (well, since human behavior is just applied biology, no wonder we mishandle things).
It's bell curves all the way down. A few outperforming individuals, a big blob of more-or-less average individuals, and at the low end a few individuals who obviously got the biological short straw.
There will always be outliers who modern medicine wouldn't be able to help, and there will always be people being people and mucking things up.

tl;dr: trust isn't something which will be achieved rationally.
And medicine will never be perfect, and especially never be staffed only by jolly good - and all-knowing - fellows.
That's the reality we have been dealt, and going on "just do it" tangents isn't going to solve anything.

@JP #239
"Building trust doesn’t really seem to work all that well either, though. There’s a pediatrician I know in Portland – one of my old housemates used to work as his secretary – who is about the nicest, most trustworthy guy you could meet"

The distrust about vaccination has nothing to do with trusting/distrusting a pediatrician. It has to do with distrust in the government, in CDC, in pharma companies, and so on. They are the ones who have to repair the distrust.

There was a survey done some time ago (don't have the link) in which Americans were asked this question:

During peace time, a civilian Iranian jetliner has crashed in the Persian Gulf. The Iranian government claims that it was shot down by US military (possibly accidentally). The US government denies it. Which side's claim would you trust?

The majority of surveyed Americans said that they would need some more independent information about the crash before they can decide. In other words, the credibility of the US government was not much different from that of its archenemy Iran.

@Science Mom

First off... I really like your gravatar there. Secondly, don't be a ninny.

I wasn't questioning the scientific consensus on vaccines.

Sheesh.. talk about a strawman! (I'm sorry- does strawmanning get a free pass on this blog as long as the person doing it is on the "right" side of the debate?!)

@Beth #271
"I think your suggestion is excellent, but rather improbable for the U.S. .. I recall hearing about some Chinese company executive being executed when his companies product turned out to have poisoned babies."

Actually I wasn't thinking anything that harsh. A simple prison stay of a couple of years may provide sufficient deterrence to future criminals. Right now the fines in the US provide little or no deterrence. They just become a (small) cost of doing business.

@Narad

... and your modus operandi appears to be to start off with some causal trolling, and then make increasingly intrusive demands for evidence for every little comment that somebody makes once you've targeted them for elimination. (Or whatever it is that you do.)

Fact of the matter is: I've said nothing here that is anti-vaccine, and I've said nothing in the other thread that is anti-GMO.

I just don't happen to agree with some of the tactics that are being employed in order to deal with all the disinformation that is out there.

start off with some causal trolling

I'm having visions of God creating the world ex nihilo with a little causal trolling. I certainly feel trolled much of the time.

once you’ve targeted them for elimination. (Or whatever it is that you do.)

This may be the most entertaining thing I've read all day. Thanks for the break from the monotony of BSing this statement of purpose for a grant application. (I hate writing these things.)

Victor may be confused about actual polling that was done in 1988, after a U.S. military shootdown of an Iranian jetliner that was mistaken for a hostile F-14 (the polls, which were done before the U.S. version of events was substantially challenged, strongly supported the U.S. action):

http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1988/Public-Backed-U-S-in-Downing-of-Irani…

As to who is more believable now, the U.S. government or that of Iran - 93% of Americans in a recent poll said that Iranian development of a nuclear bomb was a critical or important threat to the U.S., which is as strong or stronger a stance than the American government has taken on the issue.

http://www.pollingreport.com/iran.htm

Matt: "Fact of the matter is: I’ve said nothing here that is anti-vaccine, and I’ve said nothing in the other thread that is anti-GMO."

But of course, you are Just Asking Questions, and expressing Concern about the tactics of pro-science advocates which might jeopardize acceptance of the science that you obviously hold in high regard.

Victor: "The distrust about vaccination has nothing to do with trusting/distrusting a pediatrician. It has to do with distrust in the government, in CDC, in pharma companies, and so on."

How does that explain the anti-vaccine movements in Japan, the UK, Germany, etc? Are you assuming the CDC and US government are the center of concern there?

Now, explain to us how Wakefield's fraudulent actions were the fault of the CDC and any pharmaceutical company.

@Dangerous Bacon

But of course, you are Just Asking Questions, and expressing Concern about the tactics of pro-science advocates which might jeopardize acceptance of the science that you obviously hold in high regard.

Yes, that's right. I don't think that shaming, ridiculing, or using the force of law, to get people to accept science is wise or ethical.

Most importantly- I certainly don't think it is effective. And unless you've got some hard data to prove that it is, you're just operating on conjecture. Hardly scientific.

@JP

Happy to be of service!

BSing this statement of purpose for a grant application

Wait wait... are you saying that you actually need to make stuff up in order to get money to perform research?!

Ah yes... the hallowed halls of science. So noble. So pure. (Well if it weren't for all the JAQ-off splatter all over the walls.)

I wasn’t questioning the scientific consensus on vaccines.

I never said you did. What was that again about ninny and strawman?

Ah yes… the hallowed halls of science. So noble. So pure. (Well if it weren’t for all the JAQ-off splatter all over the walls.)

Christ on a cracker; you really don't know how this stuff works do you? Magnets anyone?

@ Narad:

Well, I *could* have gone all David Hume on the subject of the self
BUT I DIDN'T.
I'm sure that all are thankful for that

@Matt:

I'm in the humanities; I'm also a poet. I make sh*t up all the time.

The grant is actually intended to defray the costs of a summer internship in the city government of L'viv. I'm considering a possible career in the Foreign Service, or maybe making connections that could lead to future ex-pat-hood, given the dearth of tenure track jobs in the humanities in general, my field in particular.

@Denice:

Aw, c'mon, it could be fun.

He's not JAQ'ing off...he's a concern troll, Science Mom.

Why don't you provide some suggestions about posting comments which are evidence-based/science-based, with some proof, that do not *antagonize anti-vaxxers, Matt?

* Calling Dr. Jay to tutor us in civility.

Well, I *could* have gone all David Hume on the subject of the self

You say "bundle of sensations", I say "Skandha".

Actually, bimler, most of my familiarity** with Buddhism can be attributed to listening to a bunch ( or bundle?) of psychologists sitting around and talking about the subject. A few of the them were psychotherapists. Go figure.

** other than a course in early Asian history and culture

G-d! I've had an interesting life!
But let's not go there. I wouldn't want to get sued.

A few of the them were psychotherapists. Go figure.

A lot of therapists are into Buddhism of a sort. Most of DBT was taken straight out of Buddhist practice, for instance.

G-d! I’ve had an interesting life!
But let’s not go there. I wouldn’t want to get sued.

so I guess it'll just be me
in the corner bleeding autobiography.

JP, I know so much awful stuff about people - and I exclude clients as a matter of course- just relatives, friends,
paramours and extended contacts through them. It's a veritable horror show**, not good at all. Sex. corruption, malfeasance, greed and incredibly nosey people who have no lives of their own to speak of so they have to mind others' business.

Right now I am trying to intervene for two extremely emotionally vulnerable cousins who are being harassed by distant relations seeking money and probably, entertainment at their distress.

** pun.

@Denice:

Oy. That does not sound fun at all.

Oddly enough, I relate to you quite a bit. I seem to be an unofficial therapist for almost everyone I know IRL, I guess because I really like people and I'm a good listener. I also have a memory like a fly trap. I've sort of been feeling, lately, like a sponge that's been soaked to capacity and is now being squeezed out by some invisible hand, probably ruining that rug forever. It's a bit like being "unstuck in time."

The general effect has also been causing my own stuff to spill out, too, although that's been going on a little bit longer, like a while back when I suddenly spat out to somebody "oh btw there was this rape a couple years back and I was on the wrong end of it and I sort of never said anything about it OOPS."

Good luck helping your cousins.

A lot of therapists are into Buddhism of a sort
Theravada OF COURSE.

I don’t think that shaming, ridiculing, or using the force of law, to get people to accept science is wise or ethical.

People are perfectly free to reject science if they feel like it, and would have been even if the bill had passed.

When we change the meaning of words for reasons of “tactics” or expediency (in other words because we’re too lazy to do it the right way) we undermine the entire fabric of linguistics upon which the whole concept of law is predicated.

The concept of law is not predicated on the fabric of linguistics. That's quite literally nonsense.

That’s quite literally nonsense.

You're talking to someone who thought this made sense in the You Fools Don't Know The MEANINGS Of Words Department: "A policy is different from a law. Policies are set by agencies which are typically authorized by law to create said policies."

Because laws have nothing to do with public policy. Or something.

@Matt
Thank you for your very insightful comments.

Looks like most of the aggressively pro-vax people here (if not all) work for drug companies. They have carefully avoided any comment about the sins of the pharma companies, e.g., the suggestion that pharma executives found guilty of criminal wrongdoing should go to prison.

Of course, they will either ignore this comment or mock it. But if their goal is to win more trust in the vaccines, they are not succeeding.

Helianthus: "Did you miss the part where a lot of people are completely freaked out by chemo? Or surgery, for that matter. Just read the recent threads on the late wellness warrior. Chemo is not a good reference for risk comparison."

Actually it is- anti-vax parents have no life outside of their kids, therefore they will do anything to keep the kids alive, and it isn't just chemo- I imagine that they might be a little more tractable once the pediatrician explains that the parents will have to set any bones kid breaks, and oh, yeah, the ped can't do anything if it heals wrong. Or that emergency surgery/transfusions/stitches are also off the table. Like I said, the parents need to be called on account- if vaccines are off the table, so is everything medical. Ever. Here's the first-aid kit, here are some bandages, there's the door.

"Like I said, the parents need to be called on account- if vaccines are off the table, so is everything medical. Ever. Here’s the first-aid kit, here are some bandages, there’s the door."

The arrogance of the vaccination fascists is beyond belief. They will make you an offer (a la Godfather) you can't refuse.

@ Pgp

Like I said, the parents need to be called on account- if vaccines are off the table, so is everything medical.

A bit harsh, especially since the ones which will suffer are not the ones deciding but rather their children.
But right now, I'm so tired of all this sh!t that I could go for this suggestion.

There is an old adage about the foolishness of ignoring the advice of experts.

Actually it is- anti-vax parents have no life outside of their kids, therefore they will do anything to keep the kids alive, and it isn’t just chemo-

People who would do anything to keep their kids alive? Freaks!

Sadly, though, people who are deep enough into alt med won't do anything to keep their kids alive. (Think of Makayla Sault, for instance.) And then the kids die. Poor kids.

I had a buddhist therapist once. Perfect match for a wasp like me. Feelings just never came up.

That's funny, feelings come up in my Buddhist practice all the time.

alright - they came up but they aren't permanent and don't get attached to them. Mostly it amused me and it was a very good match. Made a great bit in a stand up routine.

@Ann

The concept of law is not predicated on the fabric of linguistics. That’s quite literally nonsense.

Yes- you are right that doesn't really make sense the way I worded it. Good thing I wasn't attempting to draft a law with my post.

@brook:

Fair enough. :)

Of course, they will either ignore this comment or mock it. But if their goal is to win more trust in the vaccines, they are not succeeding.

ZOMG!!11 ZOMG!!!!11 YER ALL PHARMA SHILLZ.

There Victor, how's that.

@Science Lady

You said: How did you arrive at the question that can potentially challenge a consensus?

How did I arrive at the question that can potentially challenge a consensus? I didn't.

@Victor

I'm not on your "team" dude. I'm not on any "team" here.

According to my view- this whole "You're either for us or against us." attitude which seems to pervade just about every topic nowadays is the problem, itself.

You're projecting your view on to my words just like some other supposed "pro-vaxxers" here.

The problem is: Nobody ever really asked me what my view on vaccines was. They just jump to assumptions.

Well here... why don't I just tell you. Especially since I have a baby due in just a few weeks it's particularly relevant for me right now.

My view is: I distrust anybody who claims that vaccines are 100% safe, and that anybody who has a question about them must be an "anti-vax" nutter. I also distrust anybody who claims that vaccines are 100% unsafe, and that anybody who supports the current vaccination schedule is a "Pharma shill."

Why? Well first off, because there are different types of vaccines. Secondly, because each vaccine has a different risk/benefit profile.

So here's what I'm planning to do. I'm planning to vaccinate my kid, and to consult with a pediatrician about exactly which vaccines to give and when.

I'm hoping that the pediatrician can actually formulate a more nuanced opinion than simply, "Vaccines are the BEST THING EVARRR and you should do whatever the CDC says you should do because government agencies are AWESOME, and you should blindly trust whatever they say. And if you DON'T do whatever they say, I will kick you out of my practice, call CPS on you, and hope that you get put in jail."

(I'm exaggerating for effect BTW.)

We'll find out next week. Wish me luck.

At this moment I get an advertisement for Easy Health Options, with a poll about forced vaccinations. One could guess where that leads to.
Though my understanding of English, might be limited, but I think I can see the difference between forced and mandatory.

@lilady

Why don’t you provide some suggestions about posting comments which are evidence-based/science-based, with some proof, that do not *antagonize anti-vaxxers, Matt?

I imagine that "anti-vaxxers" will be antagonized whatever you say. But here are some suggestions for the vast majority* who live somewhere between black and white. (*no I don't have a citation for that)

If somebody rolls in with a "stupid" question or a nonsensical "anti-vax" trope that keeps rearing its ugly head no matter how many times it's been slapped down... first of all don't sit idly by while other members of your "community" (or whatever you want to call it) make troll-ish antagonistic comments about them.

You should have a zero-tolerance policy for trolling, name-calling, and other juvenile behaviors here.

Next up- you should attempt to establish rapport with the person by acknowledging that their concerns (however misguided you feel them to be) are actually coming from a place of love and care.

Assure them that's a good thing. For example: "It seems to me that you must really care about the health and well-being of yourself and your family. That's great! We also care a lot about people's health. We want people to be healthy too, and we applaud your efforts to look out for yourself and your loved ones."

How about starting there... and seeing if the conversation goes in a different direction.

My view is: I distrust anybody who claims that vaccines are 100% safe, and that anybody who has a question about them must be an “anti-vax” nutter.

That's good, because no one here says vaccines are 100% safe. Certainly I never have. What we do say is that the risk of vaccination is incredibly low and that the risk-benefit equation for vaccination comes out very much on the side of vaccination.

That being said, the claims that vaccines cause autism, that they don't work, that they cause SIDS, that they cause autoimmune disorders, that shaken baby syndrome is a misdiagnosis for "vaccine injury," that "shedding" from vaccinated children is really responsible for outbreaks, and a whole number of other demonstrably incorrect claims are based on misinformation, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories. These sorts of views are antivaccine.

I also distrust anybody who claims that vaccines are 100% unsafe, and that anybody who supports the current vaccination schedule is a “Pharma shill.”

Of course, only the most loony antivaxers claim that vaccines are "100% unsafe." Nice false dichotomy ya got there: You don't trust those who claim vaccines are "100% safe" (who don't exist) or those who claim vaccines are "100% unsafe" (who are rare), thus setting yourself up for the logical fallacy known as the appeal to the golden mean or the fallacy of moderation. The problem, of course, is that in science the correct answer doesn't necessarily lie between two extremes like this. There is a correct answer and there is an incorrect answer. The correct answer is that, to the best of science's ability to ascertain, the current vaccination program is safe and effective and does not cause autism, SIDS, autoimmune diseases, diabetes and other chronic diseases, and the like.

As for your disparagement of the CDC-recommended schedule, you seem to act as though the CDC and AAP pulled that schedule out of its nether regions. To co-opt Isaac Asimov's famous observation that "creationists make it sound like a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being out drunk all night," after having read several of your comments I find it hard not to conclude that you make it sound as though the CDC's recommended vaccine schedule is something the panel charged with making vaccine recommendations thought up after an all night bender, rather than a carefully crafted set of recommendations based on science.

Few pediatricians have the requisite background knowledge or familiarity with the scientific literature to formulate their own recommended vaccine schedule. Those who claim they do tend to demonstrate through their reasoning (or, more appropriately, their lack thereof) that they don't understand the issues. ("Dr. Bob" Sears comes to mind.) So it is not a mark of shame or incompetence for a pediatrician to follow the CDC guidelines, nor is it an indication that they unthinkingly believe that government agencies are "awesome" and that vaccines are the "best thing evar" (although from my perspective vaccines do rank high on the list of best things ever, as well they should given the number of lives they've saved).

You should have a zero-tolerance policy for trolling, name-calling, and other juvenile behaviors here.

Next up- you should attempt to establish rapport with the person by acknowledging that their concerns (however misguided you feel them to be) are actually coming from a place of love and care.

And how do you know that my commenters haven't done that in the past or don't do that? You don't. You're a newbie, and this blog has been in existence over ten years, nine years on the same ScienceBlogs.com platform. It has a long history for a blog, and a few of the regular commenters here have even been here since near the beginning, back when this was a teeny tiny little blog with teeny tiny traffic.

Here's the thing. My commenters (and I) have a pretty good nose for commenters who are genuinely puzzled and worried about vaccines compared to antivax trolls who come in to stir up trouble, the latter of whom deserve the comments they get. Is their detection perfect? No, but over the last decade I've observed that it's pretty darned good.

@Science Lady

I apologize for calling you a ninny.

@Matt

Congratulations on the coming baby. You will love it!

I think what you say about vaccines makes a lot of sense. Your approach is similar to what my husband and I did with our kids. It's great if you have the time and ability to research each vaccine a bit to make your decision. You are correct that the cost/benefit equation is a bit different for each vaccine. It certainly made sense to me to evaluate them based on our family history and the risk of each disease in our local area. For example, we decided to skip the Hep B vaccine back in 1999 due to low risk of our newborn becoming infected. On the other hand, measles is so contagious that despite it being essentially non-existent in the US then, I had no qualms about making sure they got that vaccine.

Here's hoping that the pediatrician Matt seeks out for "a more nuanced opinion" on vaccination can provide an evidence-based justification for whatever delayed/partial immunization schedule Matt evidently wants.

This sort of half-assed vaccination program a la Bob Sears has been discussed here on numerous occasions. None of the "more nuanced" supporters of such a schedule have been able to justify it on a scientific basis, other than to make vague and unsupported allusions to things like limiting "toxin" exposure.

Matt needs to do more than chiding those narsty "pro-vaxxers" for their "extremist" attitudes and patting himself on the back for seeking out that oh-so-reasonable middle ground. Using due diligence to find out the consequences of occupying a middle ground between science and quackery would be an excellent idea.

Victor, you failed to answer this question: "Now, explain to us how Wakefield’s fraudulent actions were the fault of the CDC and any pharmaceutical company."

@Orac

Nice false dichotomy ya got there: You don’t trust those who claim vaccines are “100% safe” (who don’t exist) or those who claim vaccines are “100% unsafe” (who are rare), thus setting yourself up for the logical fallacy known as the appeal to the golden mean or the fallacy of moderation.

I know what false dichotomy and the fallacy of moderation are. (No thanks to 12 years of public education or even an undergraduate philosophy degree. I had to learn about logical fallacies on my own.)

I can see where it might seem to you that I am setting one up, but that's not what I was attempting to say. What I'm trying to say is that I am skeptical of anybody who expresses an extreme view on any topic, for or against.

I understand that the truth might not always lay squarely in the middle of two opposing views. What I'm actually trying to say is that I'm exasperated by every hot-button issue being framed in the context of two opposing views, and by others trying to pigeonhole me into one of the "two camps" by projecting into my comments, rather than straight-out asking me for clarification of my views.

The problem, of course, is that in science the correct answer doesn’t necessarily lie between two extremes like this.

Yes, of course. But neither does the correct answer necessarily lie in whatever the "consensus" happens to be at any given moment. That's appeal to the majority.

The correct answer is that, to the best of science’s ability to ascertain, the current vaccination program is safe and effective and does not cause autism, SIDS, autoimmune diseases, diabetes and other chronic diseases, and the like.

I agree that is the correct answer, because you qualified it with "to the best of science's ability to ascertain."

As for your disparagement of the CDC-recommended schedule, you seem to act as though the CDC and AAP pulled that schedule out of its nether regions.

Sorry if it seems that way, but I do actually realize that a lot of careful thought by many different people has gone into making that recommendation. I do also realize how heavily swayed government agencies are by private industries who stand to make boatloads of money based upon their policymaking.

So that's life. I'm willing to accept it. But I don't like it.

after having read several of your comments I find it hard not to conclude that you make it sound as though the CDC’s recommended vaccine schedule is something the panel charged with making vaccine recommendations thought up after an all night bender, rather than a carefully crafted set of recommendations based on science.

I'm not quite sure how you would make that assessment based upon several of my comments, since only a couple of them actually referred to the CDC vaccination schedule.

Remember- I'm not here to argue against vaccines. I'm here to argue against making laws to enforce the scientific consensus about vaccines. (Or any other scientific consensus, for that matter.)

And how do you know that my commenters haven’t done that in the past or don’t do that? You don’t.

You're right; I don't. All I have to go on is my own experience. Thus far, I've encountered several people who have engaged me in a polite and civil manner. I've also encountered several others who are rude and insert disruptive troll-ish comments into conversations I am attempting to have with others.

Sadly, it seems to me that certain individuals are given a "free pass" to be disruptive here on this blog, for reasons that I don't understand.

Here’s the thing. My commenters (and I) have a pretty good nose for commenters who are genuinely puzzled and worried about vaccines compared to antivax trolls who come in to stir up trouble, the latter of whom deserve the comments they get. Is their detection perfect? No, but over the last decade I’ve observed that it’s pretty darned good.

Well, at least you and some of your commenters are trying. As for others, I believe their detection methods need a little more work.

I am not here trying to "stir up trouble." I can assure you of that.

@Science Mom #311

Just as I thought. Mocking comes easy when you don't have anything better to say.

But I still see no takers on the simple suggestion that pharma executives who are guilty of criminal wrongdoing (in relation to drug testing, promotion, etc.) MUST go to prison.

Everybody loves to hate Wakefield. But I think he should probably get a Nobel Prize if only for making people realize the extent of corruption inside the pharma industry and the drug marketing journal (aka medical journals) industry.

http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0…

@Science Lady
I apologize for calling you a ninny.

Thank you and accepted. Though my 'nym is Science Mom or SM if you prefer.

Victor, so Wakefield's actions are forgiven by you because he was being paid by a lawyer while working for the NHS? Do they give Novel prizes for those who lie about their work?

So exactly how did the CDC and pharmaceutical companies cause Wakefield to commit change the data on the several of the dozen kids?

And exactly which of the three MMR vaccines that the UK introduced in 1988 was his research on? And why was there an American kid who got the American MMR vaccine?

Just as I thought. Mocking comes easy when you don’t have anything better to say.

And your "better things to say" include calling us pharma shills because we are muttering the Victor-approved indignation about sleazy pharma practises?

Everybody loves to hate Wakefield. But I think he should probably get a Nobel Prize if only for making people realize the extent of corruption inside the pharma industry and the drug marketing journal (aka medical journals) industry.

I hate to break this to you Victor but pharma misdeeds are pretty transparent. Have you ever even gone to the FDA or EMA websites to peruse the countless documents regarding violations and fines? Has Dr. Ben Goldacre been somehow silenced for his crusade against pharma shenanigans? Also, Wakefield should know about corruption; he falsified data, took a lot of money from the UK Legal Aid Board to do it, abused special needs children, was struck of the GMC for doing so (amongst other gross violations) and started up his own companies to profit off of his fraud. Sure give that man a Nobel prize.

@Chris

Wakefield's ethics do not matter in the bigger picture. The ethics of pharma industry do. Vaccines are made by the pharma industry, not by Wakefiled in his garage.

I don't really care that much if Wakefield goes to prison or gets a Nobel prize. But I do care a lot about the ethics of people who test my vaccines. So what do you think of the suggestion that pharma executives who are guilty of criminal wrongdoing (in relation to drug testing, promotion, etc.) MUST go to prison?

Remember- I’m not here to argue against vaccines. I’m here to argue against making laws to enforce the scientific consensus about vaccines. (Or any other scientific consensus, for that matter.)

Really? Do you think we should go back to allowing the sale of lead paint and lead children's toys? The ban on those things was based on the scientific consensus that lead is an extremely potent neurotoxin, after all.

^aren't FFS.

Really? Do you think we should go back to allowing the sale of lead paint and lead children’s toys? The ban on those things was based on the scientific consensus that lead is an extremely potent neurotoxin, after all.

You beat me to it, and there are many more examples.

For instance, should we allow the sale of leaded fuel again? After all, it's just a scientific consensus that lead in gasoline was a substantial contributor to pollution and potentially neurotoxic? Or perhaps we shouldn't be requiring adults to wear seat belts or babies and young children to be placed in car seats any more? After all, it's just a scientific consensus that people have a much greater chance of survival and of avoiding serious injury in a car crash if they are properly restrained. How dare the state enforce a scientific consensus forcing people to buckle up for greater safety? Or what about indoor smoking bans? After all, how dare the state enforce a scientific consensus that being around secondhand smoke all day at work raises the risk of respiratory and heart disease in workers? Or what about various pollution standards? We can't enforce a scientific consensus that certain pollutants cause harm to the environment and people and therefore should be limited, can we?

Funny how selective Matt seems to be about his dislike of "making laws to enforce the scientific consensus." It seems to be just about vaccines.

Victor: The arrogance of the vaccination fascists is beyond belief. They will make you an offer (a la Godfather) you can’t refuse.

Nope, simple logic. If the parents don't trust a pediatrician to give vaccines, they won't trust the pediatrician to provide other sorts of medical care. And why should the pediatrician have to put up with that? Also, the parents already believe that the education they have is superior to the ped's and therefore, only went to the office to antagonize the doctors. They don't actually want any medical care.

Matt: But here are some suggestions for the vast majority* who live somewhere between black and white.

I pointed out a while ago, that on this issue, there are no fence sitters. Pretending that there are is a flat-out lie.

Matt, again: Next up- you should attempt to establish rapport with the person by acknowledging that their concerns (however misguided you feel them to be) are actually coming from a place of love and care.

Oh, boy, you haven't actually met many anti-vaxxers have you? I dare you to read any ten posts at Age of Autism and Thinking Mom's Revolution. If you still think the parents at those blogs are capable of "love and care" for any one but themselves after reading their posts, I just don't know what to say. And these are the people who bankroll the famous anti-vaxxers, not a bunch of random trolls.
A lot of the other posters here have had more direct engagements with the people at those blogs. Rappaport isn't possible- I'd rather deal with pond scum any day.

Victor: "But I do care a lot about the ethics of people who test my vaccines"

And yet you are a Wakefield fanboi. You go on about how bad "Big Pharma" is, and yet have decided to defend Wakefield and his blatant fraudulent actions. This also includes his worthless lawsuits, and recently making videos where one included recording taking without the person's permission or knowledge.

@Politicalguineapig #331
Looks like the arrogance here is really deep-rooted. You are forgetting that the doctors work for the patients and not the other way around.

Businesses always put up with the whims of their customers even when they seem irrational.

@Chris.

I said I really don't care about Wakefield that much.

BUT WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE SUGGESTION THAT PHARMA EXECUTIVES WHO ARE GUILTY OF CRIMINAL WRONGDOING (IN RELATION TO DRUG TESTING, ETC) MUST GO TO PRISON?

Your silence (and that of others) on the above question is quite deafening.

So what do you think of the suggestion that pharma executives who are guilty of criminal wrongdoing (in relation to drug testing, promotion, etc.) MUST go to prison?

It depends - what are the prescribed punishments for the crimes for which they've been found guilty? If they're guilty of a crime and the law says they must serve prison time, then of course.

Victor: "Businesses always put up with the whims of their customers even when they seem irrational."

Like the ones created by Wakefield? Are you are also a fanboi of his "Autism Media Channel"? Have you donated to his “Defending Academic Integrity and Research”, "Academic Integrity" and “Dr. Wakefield Justice" funds?

I’m here to argue against making laws to enforce the scientific consensus about vaccines. (Or any other scientific consensus, for that matter.)

Rules on vaccination aren't intended to enforce the scientific consensus - they're intended to preserve public health and should be based on the scientific consensus for what will best achieve that goal.

@mob #335
I am suggesting a tightening of the law. So a drug company found guilty of drug testing/safety/promotion related crime cannot get away with it by simply paying a fine (even if the fine is a trillion dollars). They must name the most senior person aware of the violation and offer him for sentencing.

Victor: "I said I really don’t care about Wakefield that much."

Ah really, fanboi? Here are your words: "Everybody loves to hate Wakefield. But I think he should probably get a Nobel Prize if only for making people realize the extent of corruption inside the pharma industry and the drug marketing journal (aka medical journals) industry. "

Oooh, you have become a bit shouty: "BUT WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE SUGGESTION THAT PHARMA EXECUTIVES WHO ARE GUILTY OF CRIMINAL WRONGDOING (IN RELATION TO DRUG TESTING, ETC) MUST GO TO PRISON?"

You have no real evidence that anyone associated with the development, manufacturing, testing and distribution of vaccines have engaged in any illegal activity. If you did you would not have made vague pronouncements.

Do tell us who is guilty and of what crime with real specifics. Just don't mention this one, which is just silly.

Victor: "So a drug company found guilty of drug testing/safety/promotion related crime cannot get away with it by simply paying a fine (even if the fine is a trillion dollars)."

Who did what, and where was it proved? Stick to vaccines and real crimes/

@Chris #334 and #336
You are so obsessed with Wakefield!
May be you are one of the pharma executives that I was referring to in #334.

Matt, you've been squatting here for days and have engaged in blatant concern trolling and tone trolling. You've also brought up archaic State laws, regulations and court cases, that have nothing to do with pending vaccination bills before multiple State legislatures.

You've been called out multiple times for your insulting, devoid of content, citationless comments....yet you still persist.

You've got your colossal nerve to presume to give me advice about how I comment, the content of my comments, the frequency of my comments and how I do or don't indulge thread-derailing tone trolls, concern trolls and other assorted cranks. Unlike you, I do have a real life and I do participate in discussions on many other science blogs, when I am online.

I suggest the next time you post a comment on Respectful Insolence that you refrain from engaging commenters who are actually knowledgeable about childhood vaccines, vaccine-preventable diseases, immunology, bacteriology, epidemiology, Constitutional law and State laws and regulations.

@Chris

http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/bigpharma

I am suggesting a tightening of the law.

Really? Which law?

So what do you think of the suggestion that pharma executives who are guilty of criminal wrongdoing (in relation to drug testing, promotion, etc.) MUST go to prison?

Well first, what crimes have been committed and by whom?

@ JP:

That's one of the risks you take whenever you communicate with others on a more than superficial level. Our memory contravenes by referencing similarities; underlying interconnections may exist of which we are unaware until they hurtle into us at full speed. For example, I find myself stepping around particular words or images with certain people necessitating extremely creative speech at times because I KNOW how they may affected and that it might set them back for a few days. As I just did on the phone an hour ago. Or I see a film with a bombing and feel repercussions because I have a friend who lost a family member long ago to a bombing - who had to identify the widely scattered remains- and I've witnessed her distress whenever present day wartime or other bombings occur in the news so I react as if by proxy.

So what can you do to ameliorate unwanted recall? Perhaps you can turn it into something else- use your current energies in consciousness working at OTHER materials or transforming the outcome into art or fiction. It's very hard to do but possible. Talking about it is always a way of diffusing these bombs because other people have entirely different artillery of their own. And you ARE a poet.

I can't say that this doesn't take a toll on my emotions but for the most part, I'm reliably stable.

may AFFECT THEM.

I am suggesting a tightening of the law. So a drug company found guilty of drug testing/safety/promotion related crime cannot get away with it by simply paying a fine (even if the fine is a trillion dollars). They must name the most senior person aware of the violation and offer him for sentencing.

I personally have no issue with people who work for corporations being held legally liable for the illegal acts they perform on behalf of the company. The devil, as they say, is in the details. The wording above seems to suggest sending one person to jail to punish the group - regardless of that person's actual culpability in the crime. All they had to do was "be aware". I immediately see two issues with that proposal.
1. The most senior person aware may not have been culpable. Say the head of R&D finds that some people in marketing is bribing doctors. Does the head of R&D get sacrificed, despite her efforts to stop the practice?
2. A truly unethical company would budget for this and have designated scapegoats among their senior dead wood.

If the laws can be updated to punish the people actually culpable, I have no issue.

Victor: "http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/bigpharma"

None of those have anything to do with vaccines.

Again what comes have been committed by the vaccine divisions of pharmaceutical companies? How are they worse than Wakefield's fraudulent deeds, and the Geiers chemical castration treatment, Boyd Haley selling an industrial chelator as a supplement and those who promote MMS, a bleach people are giving children in enemas?

You cannot claim unnamed persons need to go to jail for unnamed deeds, yet let the scams perpetrated on desperate be ignored.

@Denice:

I don't know if the recall is entirely unwanted; I've actually gone through a shift of late where the recall actually has emotional content, which doesn't strike me as an entirely bad thing. That is to say, I've always had a fabulous, almost freakish memory for details - to the point where people used to tease me about being a spy - but the facts and details were generally unconnected to any sort of affect.

There's also the fact that I've just got more time on my hands than I ever have before, which is a weird feeling. Even if I may seem to be slightly unraveling, I don't know if that's entire a bad thing either. For most of my life I've been working very hard to keep it together, which has been necessary but also required a certain amount of denial and/or repression on my part. Actually, I'm reminded of a friend, somewhat older than me, who I knew from back at the Zen Center in Portland. Similar history, cruddy family stuff, also moved out at 16, etc. Back about five years ago, she was in her late twenties and finally in a more-or-less stable position, and things sort of started to come apart in a certain way. She ended up quitting her job and went to Columbia to study physics, and is now applying to PhD programs, I think.

Perhaps you can turn it into something else- use your current energies in consciousness working at OTHER materials or transforming the outcome into art or fiction. It’s very hard to do but possible.

Yeah, I've finally been getting back into non-academic writing after an uncomfortably long hiatus. A year ago or so, my Bosnian BFF and I were talking on the balcony at 5 in the morning, as was our wont in that era - the relationship can be a bit Sid and Nancy at times, to be honest - and he said to me, "Seriously, you've gotta write this stuff down." So there's that.

I gotta say, the spring-like weather - though one never knows how long it will stick around - is providing quite a bit of psychic relief at the moment.

Do tell us who is guilty and of what crime with real specifics. Just don’t mention this one, which is just silly.

Actually, Krahling & Wlochowski would be one good place for Victor to start sorting out his now-shrieking thought-blob into something vaguely connected to the actual world.

May be you are one of the pharma executives that I was referring to in #334.

Is everyone who disagrees with you being paid to do so?

the relationship can be a bit Sid and Nancy at times, to be honest

"Mutually assured self-destruction" is a phrase that just occurred to me.

May be you are one of the pharma executives that I was referring to in #334.

Yay Chris got a promotion!! Drinks and monkey kidney hors-d'oeuvres at our weekly shill roundtable are on Chris.

So what do you think of the suggestion that pharma executives who are guilty of criminal wrongdoing (in relation to drug testing, promotion, etc.) MUST go to prison?

If Vijay was right back at #157, vaccination laws are a huge drug-company conspiracy to cover up the fact that vaccines shorten life-spans:

The primary reason the vaccine companies want to take away all vax exemptions is so that no unvaccinated or undervaccinated kids remain around for comparison with fully vaccinated kids.
Because the worst thing for them is a future study which shows that unvaccinated or undervaccinated kids remain healthier and live longer on average than fully vaccinated kids.

If they're that powerful, I'm sure the executives can conceal any evidence of how much they know

Science Mom: "Yay Chris got a promotion!! Drinks and monkey kidney hors-d’oeuvres at our weekly shill roundtable are on Chris."

Yeah, sure I got a raise that multiplied my income several times. But even multiply zero with googol comes out to zero dollars.

I still want to know what crimes were committed by those who work with vaccines. Also why folks like the Geiers, Haley, Rashid Buttar, Tenpenny and others like Roy Kerry who actually strapped a kid to a table and pushed drugs into his little body until his heart stopped are still considered "heroes" to the antivaccine folks.

@MOB #348

1. If a crime is committed by an employee X in marketing, the R&D folks should not have to worry about it. Only Mr. X and the people in the chain of command above X would be potentially liable.

2.Re scapegoating: If a guy is innocent, and does not want to be punished for the misdeeds of others, all he has to do is to notify his boss about any potentially criminal activity in his group through emails. Then his boss will be the one going to prison if he does not act to stop the illegal activity.

Matt: "But neither does the correct answer necessarily lie in whatever the “consensus” happens to be at any given moment. That’s appeal to the majority."

An excellent point. As you may know, there is a substantial, but relatively small element in the alt med community which holds that the germ theory of disease is wrong, that Pasteur recanted it on his deathbed and that infectious diseases are not caused by pathogens, but always result from some defect in the body (there are lots of potions, supplements and cleanses to remedy these defects).

Now the extreme alternate position is that there's excellent evidence including clinical data to show that pathogens do indeed infect healthy people and that antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral agents are often necessary to treat and cure infections. But following your logic, agencies that make recommendations for antibiotic use are heavily swayed by private industries that stand to make a boatload of money from antibiotic sales.

So you should give strong consideration, the next time you are diagnosed with, say, pneumonia or sepsis, casting a highly skeptical eye on the physician(s) who prescribe antibiotics or other measures, and look for a middle ground between these self-interested people and germ theory deniers.

How about an alternate antibiotic schedule? You could take half the recommended dose on alternate days, or maybe skip the antibiotics entirely until you see whether an alternative remedy is working.

Let us know how that turns out.

Victor, what kind of punishment do you think is fair for chemically castrating children?

Also, what about trapping a five year old down to push drugs into them until they died, only because the child was autistic?

Victor: "You are forgetting that the doctors work for the patients and not the other way around. Businesses always put up with the whims of their customers even when they seem irrational."

You don't understand what the medical system is, do you? People go to doctors because the doctors possess knowledge they don't have. Doctors are consultants, not waitresses or baristas who have to fill orders no matter how nonsensical it may seem. In fact, a doctor sometimes has to go against the patient's wishes or suggest a course of action that a patient may not like. For instance, say a patient comes in and wants their hand removed. The hand works perfectly well, but the patient doesn't like it. In your scenario, the doctor would have to sign the patient up for surgery. In the real world, the doctor would lose their job if they did that.

If a guy is innocent, and does not want to be punished for the misdeeds of others, all he has to do is to notify his boss about any potentially criminal activity in his group through emails. Then his boss will be the one going to prison if he does not act to stop the illegal activity.

To go to full on corporate intrigue/conspiracy mode: If I, as that person's boss, had deliberately set that person up as scapegoat, I would ensure I never read those messages and that they were accidentally deleted. Likewise, I'd ensure that the person I was trying to protect sent said messages to my chosen scapegoat at every opportunity - preferably in a way that would be ignored.

2.Re scapegoating: If a guy is innocent, and does not want to be punished for the misdeeds of others, all he has to do is to notify his boss about any potentially criminal activity in his group through emails. Then his boss will be the one going to prison if he does not act to stop the illegal activity.

Uh-huh.

Look, Victor, quit blowing smoke out of your ass and start demonstrating that you have anything vaguely resembling a grip on current law.

@ PGP:

That's a hilarious image: doctor-barista.**
Perhaps the woo-entranced carp about doctors' elitism so much because the latter DON'T cater to their every whim.

** and I'll leave the diverse medicinal uses of coffee aside

@ JP:

I wonder if various methods ( meditation et al) of emptying the mind might be replaced effectively with ways of filling the mind instead with better stuffing. Might be easier to manage.

@lilady

You’ve got your colossal nerve to presume to give me advice about how I comment

Why don’t you provide some suggestions about posting comments which are evidence-based/science-based, with some proof, that do not *antagonize anti-vaxxers, Matt?

*blink*

Here is another question: Mississippi and West Virginia have banned non-medical exemptions for nearly 40 years. What tangible health benefits have they reaped (compared to other 48 states) in terms of, say, infant mortality, life expectancy, physical fitness, health care cost, lost days from work (due to sickness), etc.?

Here is another question

Howsabout you deal with your first incoherent position rather than trying to escape to another dopily ill-posed one?

How about an alternate antibiotic schedule? You could take half the recommended dose on alternate days,

Note to bystanders in case there is any doubt: taking small doses of antibiotics is a good way to promote the happenstance of more antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

So what do you think of the suggestion that pharma executives who are guilty of criminal wrongdoing (in relation to drug testing, promotion, etc.) MUST go to prison?

You imagine that pharma companies cannot be trusted at all, yet you propose that they can be trusted on who they want to throw under the bus when someone does something deemed bad. Uh huh.
OTOH, we know of a famous vaccine developer/researcher who committed blatant fraud against his competition, also accepting Legal Aid funds in the process. Are you suggesting that Wakefield s[pend time in the pokey?

@Orac

Funny how selective Matt seems to be about his dislike of “making laws to enforce the scientific consensus.” It seems to be just about vaccines.

Point taken. I must concede that the argument doesn't hold up in light of those other examples. But no- it isn't just about vaccines.

I don't like some of those other laws you mentioned, either. I will have to reflect more deeply on why they irk me so much. It's not that I disagree with the idea itself- for example I wear my seat belt when I drive. But it irks me that "somebody, somewhere" is watching me to make sure I am wearing my seat belt, and will punish me if I don't.

@Bill
Wakefield is not that important to me. He is not making and testing MY vaccines.

Even if the pharma companies throw a few scapegoats under the bus, it would eventually lead to a less corrupt system. Employees will become smart enough to avoid becoming scapegoats. They may document/record critical conversations with their bosses to protect themselves, or have witnesses (or do whatever works). The current system has no accountability for criminal actions that threaten the health of tens of thousands.

Plenty of people don't trust the drug companies today (including me). And as someone said earlier, you cannot earn trust through bullying, mocking, trivializing, patronizing, and so on. You cannot even earn trust by presenting tons of statistics and scientific evidence. Building trust is a slow process and it requires doing things that seem trustworthy to others.

Howsabout you deal with your first incoherent position rather than trying to escape to another dopily ill-posed one?

Indeed, I would love to see people do that. I am tired of this bahviour; make a statement, people criticize it, and rather than dealing with that, just move on to another point.

@Dangerous Bacon

How about an alternate antibiotic schedule? You could take half the recommended dose on alternate days, or maybe skip the antibiotics entirely until you see whether an alternative remedy is working.

If I have a life-threatening bacterial infection- I will take the antibiotics as prescribed.

However, if for some reason I didn't... I don't think I should be fined or jailed for endangering public health, or have my child taken away for exposing them to dangerous pathogens.

@Matt #370
The seat belt may be annoying, but not many people believe that wearing seat belt is a significant risk to their health or safety.

The ban on lead in gasoline applies to industry, not to individuals.

Most regulations affecting individuals tend to be about prohibiting something: Can't smoke here, can't drink till you are 21, can't build house bigger than this, can't sell this or that. I can't think of any regulation where individuals are required to do something in order to live a normal life, and which even a a small percentage of people think may be risky to their safety or health.

Victor: "Here is another question"

How about you answering our questions on what specific malfeasance has been committed by any employee connected the development, testing, manufacturing and distribution of vaccines?

Plus compare that to the real crimes committed by those who prey on parents of disabled children. What punishment should Dr. Usman after her treating disabled children with unproven and unnecessary methods. By the way, she is the one who ordered Dr. Kerry to perform the treatment that killed a kid.

@Chris #375

I am the customer. I get to ask more questions. You get to answer more.

Why? Because in the best case, you are trying to "sell" me vaccines. In the worst case, you are trying to impose your will on me.

In either case, I get to ask more questions. You can either give me persuasive answers, or try to coerce me. It looks like most pro-vax people on this blog prefer the method of coercion.

I am tired of this bahviour; make a statement, people criticize it, and rather than dealing with that, just move on to another point.

I am tired of being asked questions by one party, and then being jumped on by a third-party when attempting to answer the question.

Or in at least one recent case... being asked a question by one party, and then being jumped on by the SAME party when attempting to answer the question.

Wakefield is not that important to me. He is not making and testing MY vaccines.

So you're only interested in revenge. If it doen't visably affect you, it's not a matter of concern.

Even if the pharma companies throw a few scapegoats under the bus, it would eventually lead to a less corrupt system. Employees will become smart enough to avoid becoming scapegoats. They may document/record critical conversations with their bosses to protect themselves, or have witnesses (or do whatever works). The current system has no accountability for criminal actions that threaten the health of tens of thousands.

Your proposal does not provide for any judicial determination: the company nominates a culprit, who is then jailed. Without the judicial process, you would have the company (and only the company) evaluate the evidence, should they wish to do so. Sounds like a wonderful situaution, for the most adept at corporate politics anyway.

@Denice:

I wonder if various methods ( meditation et al) of emptying the mind might be replaced effectively with ways of filling the mind instead with better stuffing. Might be easier to manage.

Actually, it's a common misconception that meditation means "emptying the mind," at least in regards to zazen. In fact, I was drifting away from the practice over the past couple years, due to being busy and also not in the best place mentally, sort of.

The practice is actually to let whatever comes up come up, without clinging to it or running away from it, which I think is actually psychologically useful. Some people do fall into trying to suppress thought or emotion, which is actually not recommended - it's like trying to climb out of one's humanity, which is impossible, really. In any case, since coming back to a more earnest practice over the past month or so, I have found it to be helpful in a certain way.

^ There's also a very nice Zen Temple here in town, which I was avoiding because of my own hangups about not being a good Buddhist - I particular suck at keeping the 5th precept, for instance, which was particularly apparent during a certain recent era - but that's a reflection of my own f*cked-up-edness, not the community.

@Bill

The company does not merely nominate a scapegoat. The company also allows FDA, DOJ, etc. to investigate individual culpability. It allows access to internal documents and emails. It cannot stonewall.

The judicial process determines the ultimate culprit. But if the FDA determines that there was a criminal violation, they would be required to nail down at least one employee (the senior-most possible). They cannot merely fine the company.

^ particularly, that is. There's also the messed up notion in my head that having emotional crises is something shameful that should be hidden away.

But if the FDA determines that there was a criminal violation, they would be required to nail down at least one employee (the senior-most possible).

At least now you've made it irrefutably clear that you have no fυcking idea how federal criminal prosecutions work.

@Narad #383

Anger is also not very effective at building trust.

@ JP:

I'm somewhat familiar with that from reading, training for working with people ( relaxation techniques etc) Some of the mindfulness ideas may be related.
My own approach is rather to actively *build* whatever one builds in the mind's eye/ ear. More related to direction via inner speech, self-talk, rehearsal, preparation. Writing.
Rather than allowing a stream, directing a stream.

@Denice:

Yeah, "mindfulness" comes straight out of Buddhist practice. I've never been one for guided or directed meditations, although some schools of Buddhism engage in them - Tibetan tong-lan, etc. But I have what basically amounts to a religious faith in zazen/shikantaza practice - in some cases, it can actually make thing worse for some people in the short term, which is why I actually feel sort of ambivalent about therapists who haven't been doing the practice for decades recommending it to patients. Having an experienced teacher is really important at certain stages.

See this article, for instance.

The company does not merely nominate a scapegoat. The company also allows FDA, DOJ, etc. to investigate individual culpability.

So you're changing your proposal again. Why not change it some more? I suspect that if you were to change it enough to pass constitutional muster, it will become indistinguishable from the current process.

Anger is also not very effective at building trust.

I'm not "angry," Victor, I'm pointing out a simple fact.

I will offer a protip, though: Tediously evading the implicit observation that you're full of shіt isn't a great trust-builder, either. Now, perhaps you could go Occupy!1!! your Propublica link instead of treating it like a magic talisman, and get back with the specific causes of action, the specific outcomes, what you would specifically disallow among those, what you augur the effects would be, and how you come to that conclusion.

I suspect that if you were to change it enough to pass constitutional muster, it will become indistinguishable from the current process.

What, you weren't aware that it's, liek, a totes nono to issue subpenes and convene grand juries?

Victor: "Why? Because in the best case, you are trying to “sell” me vaccines. In the worst case, you are trying to impose your will on me. "

Your my customer?

Oh, really? Point out the comment where I tried to sell you any vaccine.

You made a claim, and I am trying to get to prove that claim. You have not clarified what crimes have been made by any vaccine division employee of a pharmaceutical company. You have also not condemned any of the actions made by the Geiers, Roy Kerry, Boyd Haley, Wakefield and the other vultures who prey on parents of disabled kids.

Come on, tell us... do you support selling worthless and sometimes harmful stuff to be used on disabled kids?

To make an analogy, an inexperienced therapist recommending mindfulness meditation to a patient is kind of like telling them, "Hey, here's 500 mics of LSD, go home and take it and tell me how it went when we meet next week." Hyperbolic, sure, and I do think that meditation practice can do a lot of people a lot of good, but it's not without its pitfalls, either.

^That was @Denice.

By the way, Victor, you are not my customer. I sell nothing, I am just a parent who has been a target of a particular kind of critter who wants to make money off my kid's disability. I left a support forum because one of the "mothers" was actually an employee of Bradstreet trying to get more customers.

I left the week before one of their kind executed a little boy just because he had autism.

In the worst case, you are trying to impose your will on me.

It's a little-known fact that Wille zur Macht and Thelema were actually the underpinnings of common law before someone like Julie Christie birthed of The Age Of Impurity.

@ JP:

I don't recommend any of that - it's more about talking and planning- looking at situations from a different perspective. I've used minor suggestions about breathing for people experiencing stressful periods accompanied with verbal instructions ..

Actually, they were teaching various methods of internal control 30 years ago when I studied and trained. So not a spiritual method but a way of self-control .

Yeah, "spiritual method" and "way of self-control" are pretty different things. I just feel a little bit weird, to be honest, about the way that Buddhist meditation has been taken out of its 2500-year-old context and community in order to use it as a therapeutic modality. I mean, there are reasons why these communities and teachers exist.

That said, I do think there's a lot of value in what has been termed "mindfulness" meditation - I just wish that there was more recognition, within the psychotherapeutic community, that's it's not a panacea, and it's not a trivial thing.

I am tired of being asked questions by one party, and then being jumped on by a third-party when attempting to answer the question.

Matt, this is a more-or-less public forum (at Orac's discretion). Thus, the appropriate response to your complaint would seem to be Harry Truman's "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

If you want private conversations, you need to set them up elsewhere.

the way that Buddhist meditation has been taken out of its 2500-year-old context

I'm not so sure that those two noun phrases connect easily.

DW: "Perhaps the woo-entranced carp about doctors’ elitism so much because the latter DON’T cater to their every whim."

That pretty much explains the success Dr. Jay and Dr. Sears have had in the anti-vax movement- they do cater to their patient's every whim.

JP: "There’s also the messed up notion in my head that having emotional crises is something shameful that should be hidden away."

Yup, been there. That's the biggest reason why I'm not a fan of feelings.

@Matt
"If I have a life-threatening bacterial infection- I will take the antibiotics as prescribed.

However, if for some reason I didn’t… I don’t think I should be fined or jailed for endangering public health, or have my child taken away for exposing them to dangerous pathogens"

In the interest of exploring your legal philosophy, should the state take your children if exposing them to the infection risks their life? Let's say that you don't believe HIV causes AIDS or that your spiritual beliefs will clear your Ebola. Are you a caregiver who can be delinquent, an owner who can do what he wills or something else?

@Chris

If you support mandatory vaccination and I don't, then you are (at least indirectly) trying to impose your will on me.

If you support vaccination choice, then I have nothing to discuss with you. I apologize and take back all my comments/questions directed at you.

^ For example, the whole Mahakashyapa thing with the flower was invented out of whole cloth as a matter of Ch'an political jockeying.

Those people opposed to vaccines for their own children are not anti-science. In fact we have yet to see the science that confirms vaccines to be safe or to be effective. Rather is the pro vaccine cabal that are the loonies in this situation because they can't see the forest for the trees. You think we are not going to go down without a fight to let anyone rape our children with toxin containing syringes. We are doing what is best for our children. You might consider doing the same for your instead of believing every thing today's scientist tell you is the truth and seek out the truth for yourselves.

I’m not so sure that those two noun phrases connect easily.

Yeah, okay, I was being very general. There are a lot of different kinds of "meditation," and many different philosophical traditions within Buddhism. But there are certain "freak-outs" that can certainly occur even within the context of what's lately been termed, in a secular sense "mindfulness meditation." If you're really unlucky, for instance, and you don't have anybody around to set you straight, you might become convinced that you're the latest Incarnation of God, or whatever, and become a millionaire guru or something. These things do happen.

For example, the whole Mahakashyapa thing with the flower was invented out of whole cloth as a matter of Ch’an political jockeying.

Yeah, for sure.

Or gassing a Tokyo subway or something, say. I'm fairly sure that Asahara probably had some sort of "awakening" experience, but without any sort of proper context within which to deal with it. Like somebody smacking you upside the head and telling you you're not that freaking special, for instance.

If you support mandatory vaccination and I don’t, then you are (at least indirectly) trying to impose your will on me.

Yes, disagreeing with Victor is to strip him of his rights.

Victor, on the other hand, has no responsibility whatever, for anything, such as lifting a finger to try to lend sense to what he was pretending was his core proposition, now that it's become incovenient.

Victor: "If you support mandatory vaccination and I don’t, then you are (at least indirectly) trying to impose your will on me"

Where did I say that? It is okay dokay if you don't vaccinated your kids. Just make sure you don't whine when they have to stay home during an outbreak. If you are going to get an exception, then follow the rules.

Also thank your responsible neighbors who vaccinate their families, because they are protecting your kids by maintaining community immunity. Except, as we have seen recently, that did not work for several American and Canadian families who caught measles.

I want you to provide the evidence of the crimes of employees of the vaccine divisions of pharmaceutical companies.

Also I want to know why the misdeeds against disabled of Usman, Bradstreet, Buttar, the Geiers, Wakefield, and others are not given the same scrutiny.

Stop changing the subject and answer the questions.

Need better wording:

Also I want to know why the misdeeds against the disabled by Usman, Bradstreet, Buttar, the Geiers, Wakefield, and others are not given the same scrutiny. Why is it okay to torture autistic kids?

Like somebody smacking you upside the head and telling you you’re not that freaking special, for instance.

IIRC, this sort of behavior finds its ground in the Pai-chang/wild fox story, which didn't make its way into the Wu-men kuan without emendation.

@Niche Geek

IIRC, this sort of behavior finds its ground in the Pai-chang/wild fox story, which didn’t make its way into the Wu-men kuan without emendation.

Yeah, it's been around for a while.

^ I think my own personal issue with that story has basically amounted to, "Okay, but why do things still suck?" (In various ways.) Well, because that's how it is, and there's no running away from it, I guess.

[whoops, sorry]

@Niche Geek

In the interest of exploring your legal philosophy, should the state take your children if exposing them to the infection risks their life? Let’s say that you don’t believe HIV causes AIDS or that your spiritual beliefs will clear your Ebola. Are you a caregiver who can be delinquent, an owner who can do what he wills or something else?

In the interest of exploring my philosophy... being ALIVE exposes one to all manner of risks, and the only [apparent] certainty is that we are all going to die one way or another.

I don't believe it is the state's place to swoop in and protect everybody from all the dangers lurking around every corner.

I don't believe I own my [future] children. I believe I am their caretaker, and discharging that duty will surely come with all manner of ethical choices- none of which I believe the state has any business making on my behalf.

What if I allow my kid to play hockey, and they take a puck to the face in a freak accident and die? What if I allow my kid to subsist on cheetoes and happy meals, and they become obese and get diabetes and have their leg amputated?

What if...? What if...? What if...? Where does it end?

Heck- why not sterilize people with a high probability of passing on a fatal genetic disorder to their children? Or why not charge somebody who DOES pass along a fatal genetic disorder to their child with murder?

Why not force everybody to undergo daily cancer screenings under the guise of "preventive care" and then charge those who refuse treatments with crimes?

Why not form a Tooth Brushing Brigade to go up and down the streets every morning and night to issue citations to naughty citizens who don't follow their dentist's advice?

I know. I know... slippery slope fallacy. I get it. But sometimes you just don't know you're on the slope until it's too late.

Philosophically speaking- I want to know what is the principle upon where we draw a line. When do we say "enough" to the government "protecting us from ourselves."

I don't purport to have the answer. I don't know that there is an answer.

But what concerns me is that there appear to be a whole LOT* of people around that seem to have no problem willy-nilly banning "this" and mandating "that" all for the "greater good." (*no I don't have a citation for that.)

It concerns me. And I think you should be concerned too.

I don’t believe it is the state’s place to swoop in and protect everybody from all the dangers lurking around every corner.

What does this have to do with mandating vaccination for school attendance, which is very well settled law?

^ As is civil liability for negligent transmission of infectious disease.

What if I allow my kid to subsist on cheetoes and happy meals, and they become obese and get diabetes and have their leg amputated?

I suppose the child could sue you. Problem?

@Narad

It doesn't have anything to do with mandatory vaccination directly. I was asked to comment on my philosophy.

To your other points... yes if somebody feels they can make a case that an unvaccinated child negligently transmitted measles to their own child, thus resulting in harm, then maybe the parent can be found liable. Sue the parents.

Problem? No problem. I have -no- problem with that. Actually, I think that's a really great idea. Maybe people should try that.

Matt, if you can't see the difference between medical decisions that endanger other people—such as refusing vaccines—and those that don't —like all your other examples—I don't think you're ready for philosophy. Better retake kindergarten.

Matt, you still haven't answered the question about whether the state should allow the sale of lead paint and lead soldiers (among other toys.) Is that a case of "the state swooping in" to prevent children from harm? If it is, is that a bad thing?

Re: seat belts: I used to quite a bit more "libertarian" in my thinking on certain issues. This was partly due to my anarchism (which, in certain ways, I have to admit, I still hold to in my heart of hearts) and partly due to a certain frontier mentality I picked up from my relatives growing up.

I remember, though, a conversation I had with a friend when I was in college. I was sort of arguing the philosophical position that the state shouldn't be dictating safety measures to adults - for kids, okay, but not adults. She made a good point, though:

"Well, your decisions about these things don't affect only you. What about the onlookers who get to witness you flying through your* windshield? What if you fly into somebody else? What about the EMTS who'll have to pry your bloody corpse off of the freeway and deal with that experience, which will only add to the day-to-day trauma they experience? What about your friends and family who care about you?"

*I've never owned a car or had a driver's license, so this conversation was largely hypothetical. I am often enough a passenger in other people's cars, though, I suppose, so the point still stands.

Matt: "It doesn’t have anything to do with mandatory vaccination directly. I was asked to comment on my philosophy."

What is your philosophy about public health in general? Does it include being required to have your septic system inspected and then maintained? Do you think restaurants are over regulated?

Or does your philosophy on public health only extend to vaccines?

@Chris

My legal philosophy is this: If harm is shown to have occurred, then the person(s) responsible for causing the harm should be held liable.

^ But people shouldn't be held liable for what "might" have occurred, or what "could" occur, or any sort of "what if."

If my unvaccinated kid harms your vaccinated kid, then I should be held liable. But not until then.

If a restaurant serves up some funky chicken and people get sick, they should be held liable. But not until then.

If my septic system leaks into your yard and my feces infiltrate your garden, causing you to fall ill, I should be held liable. But not until then.

And so on.

^ But people shouldn’t be held liable for what “might” have occurred, or what “could” occur, or any sort of “what if.”

If my unvaccinated kid harms your vaccinated kid, then I should be held liable. But not until then.

If a restaurant serves up some funky chicken and people get sick, they should be held liable. But not until then.

If my septic system leaks into your yard and my feces infiltrate your garden, causing you to fall ill, I should be held liable. But not until then.

And so on.

Comprehensive bullshit. You reveal yourself as a complete sociopath.

Okay, but should there be laws in place to prevent these unfortunate things from happening?

I mean, should we just let buffets keep chicken salad out all day at any ol' temperature, and rely on people suing them for damages if they get food poisoning and maybe, uh, die from it?

Incidentally, I've had a pretty severe case of food poisoning before that I think was because of a deli sandwich I got from a convenience store. (Grad school, what can I say?) The thing is, I wasn't sure that's where it came from, so it would have been pretty hard to sue 7-11. It was an awfully miserable weekend, though, and happened to come right during paper-writing time, so missing that weekend of writing was a pretty major deal. (I probably should have gone to the doctor about it, but I didn't, because I'm sort of that way.)

Niche Geek: “Are you a caregiver who can be delinquent, an owner who can do what he wills or something else? “

In the US, letting children die for your spiritual beliefs is legal in many states.

Cynthia Maurer: Those people opposed to vaccines for their own children are not anti-science. In fact we have yet to see the science that confirms vaccines to be safe or to be effective. Rather is the pro vaccine cabal that are the loonies in this situation because they can’t see the forest for the trees. You think we are not going to go down without a fight to let anyone rape our children with toxin containing syringes.

1. You people are anti-science. Vaccines have been studied to death, you just stick your fingers in your ears and howl.
2. Comparing vaccines to rape. Really, lady, get some class. Or better yet, go back to Age of Autism with the rest of the scum-sucking amoebas.
3. I hope you get diptheria.

Chris: “Why is it okay to torture autistic kids?”

Short version is that to most anti-vaxxers, autistic kids don't make it into the category of human. Neither do depressed kids, kids with ADD, kids with cancer, or, in short, kids with flaws of any sort.

JP: This is getting eerie. Something like that happened to me.Only, thankfully, it was one evening, and the only lasting damage was a blood spot in my eye. I puked so hard I burst a blood vessel.

If my septic system leaks into your yard and my feces infiltrate your garden, causing you to fall ill, I should be held liable. But not until then *plonk*.

FTFY.

@PGP:

Yeah, it was only maybe a whole 24 hours with my head in the toilet for me. The next day or two, though, I was having a pretty hard time negotiating legs, and I was pretty much lying in bed trying to keep down water and saltines. I caught up on a bunch of episodes of Radiolab, though, to my memory.

If my unvaccinated kid harms your vaccinated kid, then I should be held liable. But not until then.

The legal system is limited in what it can do by way of repairing damages. If it's monetary, you could be ordered to pay, and the person you injured could try to collect. The me! ME! ME! attitude that comes through your writings is a strong hint that collecting monetary damages from you would be a nontrivial task.
But no amount of monetary compensation is enough to make up for the three weeks o downtime from the measles your VPD vector is distributing, much less any permanent damage—or death—your antisocial behavior caused. Yes, your willful failure to vaccinate your kid is definitely antisocial.
An ounce of prevention, as trhe saying goes, is worth a pound of cure; but only when cure is possible. VPDs are not always curable.

@PGP:

I have a certain feeling we are very much alike, in certain ways, actually, although I think we have taken very different roads in reaction to things.

^ But people shouldn’t be held liable for what “might” have occurred, or what “could” occur, or any sort of “what if.”

If my unvaccinated kid harms your vaccinated kid, then I should be held liable. But not until then.

If a restaurant serves up some funky chicken and people get sick, they should be held liable. But not until then.

If my septic system leaks into your yard and my feces infiltrate your garden, causing you to fall ill, I should be held liable. But not until then.

And so on.

Pure Libberish.

@PGP:

To be somewhat more precise, here's more or less how I think our similar paths may have diverged.

We were both weird kids, weird "girls" growing up, yeah? Both smart, etc. We both got along better with guys than with gals, etc.

But something happened when I was 15 or so. It was sort of like an emotional explosion, I guess: a whole bunch of stuff I hadn't been even able to deal with just blew up in my face, and I basically collapsed.

To be absolutely honest, the main thing that occurred to me wasn't "Those bastards, they really f*cked me up!" (Although that though did run through my mind more than once.) The main thing that hit me was: "Man, this really hurts. This sucks. This is like, the worst thing ever..." And then: "Man, all those people who go around getting in fights, and drinking, and doing drugs, and f*cking other people up? I bet this is why. Because it all just hurts so much. And that sucks. Man, I sure wish people didn't have to hurt like this."

And it's after that that I started to have what one might term "spiritual" experiences, for what it's worth. Because what it really comes down to is: None of us really knows what this whole thing is about, and nobody knows why it has to hurt so much. But d*mnit, we can at least try to be kind to each other, can't we? Because we're all there really is in this world to help each other get through this.

"But no amount of monetary compensation is enough to make up for the three weeks o downtime from the measles your VPD vector is distributing, much less any permanent damage—or death—your antisocial behavior caused."

I think a bigger antisocial behavior may be driving cars on roads used by pedestrians.
Thousand of peds are killed or maimed every year. It is easy to prevent it too. Just ban car-driving on roads used by pedestrians.

Matt: "My legal philosophy is this: If harm is shown to have occurred, then the person(s) responsible for causing the harm should be held liable."

So if your child gets measles and infects a child under age one year who later dies of SSPE, you will accept full responsibility. You will gladly accept that as your fault. Right?

Victor, you have not yet answered about the torturing of autistic children by those who chemically castrate them and shove bleach (MMS) up their bums. Why is that?

JP: We were both weird kids, weird “girls” growing up, yeah? Both smart, etc. We both got along better with guys than with gals, etc.

That's true. Though I got the memo that girls don't hang with guys outside of school pretty young. It helped that I ended up in a private school where I was often placed in classes with older kids. And my class was almost all boys, which, thankfully, eliminated much gossiping. Most of my friends are now female, which is less me changing than me being unwilling to navigate the minefield of being friends with dudes, which can get very unfortunately complicated very quickly.
As for emotional stuff, I tend to have a series of small crisises rather than big huge crashes. As far as spiritual things, the only thing I know is that I'm going to see a black rail before I die, if I have to crawl to the marsh. I'm far too high-strung and fidgety for meditation, and any other religion requires giving up too much.

Hey, Matt, I have a question- do you want a kid or a perfect kid? Are you planning to take them to a doctor if they break a bone? Get cancer? Get bit by a dog? And how miserable do you plan to make your child's life if they have ADD or autism?

JP: Oof, the food poisoning sounds rough. Makes sense that you'd be kinda shaky and logy after that. Most of my experiences with food poisoning tended to be nasty but over quickly. I think the worst one I had was on a cruise with my grandparents- couldn't keep anything down at all, and I put my head down around 4, intending to get in a quick nap before dinner. I woke up at seven the next day, feeling fine, but my grandparents almost worried themselves sick.

I see the "Oh you can just sue" argument come up all the time, in many different contexts, and it just seems so hopelessly naive.

Even with the lower standard of evidence in civil cases, it is going to be difficult to show responsibility for many things. Think you have food poisoning? It might be from that restaurant you ate at the day before, maybe, and we often attribute to that, but since it can take days for food poisoning to present itself, it might have been that egg salad sandwich you made for lunch. Unless there was a mass poisoning, it is going to be rather hard to find evidence.

It is also very classist. Lawsuits require resources, if you are poor, you are kind of screwed. Maybe you can find someone who will work on a contingency basis but maybe not. And as others have mentioned, suing someone might result in you getting some money, if you are lucky enough to sue someone with assets, but it is hardly compensation in many cases.

I think a bigger antisocial behavior may be driving cars on roads used by pedestrians.
Thousand of peds are killed or maimed every year. It is easy to prevent it too. Just ban car-driving on roads used by pedestrians.

Most of the roads in this country have rules of social conduct, promulgated and maybe enforced by the owners of the roads. These rules are part of the conditions for permission to use the roads. These rules, such as speed limits and rights of way, set forth the rights and responsibilities of the people allowed to use the roads, whether pedestrian or automobile or carriage drivers.
The (often unwritten) contract between road owner and user usually has a clause that says rather than immediate cancellation of the contract by which you may use this road, the owner may impose monetary fines or incareration as penalties for violation of the conditions of use.
In general, pedestrians have their own pavements, called sidewalks in the US. Automobiles are, by the common rules, required to avoid driving on them. Yes, to drive on a sidewalk would be antisocial behavior, even when it's not a contract violation. (YMMV in other jurisdictions.)

If my septic system leaks into your yard and my feces infiltrate your garden, causing you to fall ill, I should be held liable. But not until then.

So, Matt, if one were to dump a pile of human feces onto your lawn but nobody got sick, 'sall good?

@ Viktor

Just ban car-driving on roads used by pedestrians.

False analogy.
Drivers who maim or kill a pedestrian are held accountable for it. Depending on the place, the case and the prosecutor, it may even be qualified as manslaughter, with related jail time.
In short, there are already laws or rules in place to account for excessive behavior on roads.
Why is it so hard to have rules about vaccination?

You cannot even earn trust by presenting tons of statistics and scientific evidence. Building trust is a slow process and it requires doing things that seem trustworthy to others.

That's because you don't know science. Science is a method where we eliminate a truckload of hypothesis including the one you (or I) prefer in order to have the best hypothesis possible. That's it.

As for you, you have a bias that other have to overcome, i.e. being trustworthy but how can we determine that we got your trust? Post your criteria and definitely don't deviate from them; or at least, tell us so. The onus is on you. Period.

Alain

I am the customer. I get to ask more questions. You get to answer more.

Why? Because in the best case, you are trying to “sell” me vaccines. In the worst case, you are trying to impose your will on me.

Customer? Sell? Are you doing you best to be an id10t or does it come naturally? Public health workers (which I assume to be all of us working in SBM) do want to build sustainable development of the human race and that require a metric ton of work. Same for most scientists working in pharma companies but will you have the f*cking gall to say that all of them (and me) should be condemned because of a few bad apples? If so, you are more id10t that I have thought off.

Alain

Matt: "If my septic system leaks into your yard and my feces infiltrate your garden, causing you to fall ill, I should be held liable. But not until then."

Is your last name Sisley? Because we have one in our city, and he has totally blighted a neighborhood:
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/city-pocket-park-may-…

Matt, you are quite welcome to live as you see fit. Just don't be anywhere near other people. I hear Somalia has the kind of government you would like, and it has (or had) nice beaches.

Chris @ 447:

Cripes! I think my (then) girlfriend lived right next door to that place in 1979-80. It was already a mess then.

@Matt:

But people shouldn’t be held liable for what “might” have occurred, or what “could” occur, or any sort of “what if.”

Matt, you are talking utter horse puckey.
If a person is caught driving drunk, that person is arrested, even if he or she hasn't caused an accident. If a building is not built to code, the authorities can get a demolition order, even before the building collapses and kills someone. The law entitles the authorities to take measures to prevent tragedies, and rightly so. We've had libertarians commenting here before, and we're most unimpressed with your (and their) "I'm fine Jack, toughies for you" attitude.

My legal philosophy is this: If harm is shown to have occurred, then the person(s) responsible for causing the harm should be held liable

Victor, is there a rational reason your focusing on assigning legal liability after that fac rather than preventing harm from occurring in the first place?

Because it seems to me to make a whole lot more sense to require documentation that workers have been trained in safe food handling techniques and to require business pass routine inspections of the kitchens where food is prepared to prevent the resutarant from serving that funky chicken in the first place, than to simply encourage anyone who gets food poisoning to sue.

Ooops-might have confused Matt and Victor...

@ JP:
@ PGP:

I'd glad to see you guys meet- I also discerned that you may have experiences in common.

I was quite fortunate myself because I come from a rather untraditional, far-flung, business-oriented, artistic, liberal-progressive family so my uniqueness was encouraged. There was some money as well- which didn't hurt.

@PGP

If enough parents vaccinate in a ped’s practice, they should have a party thrown for them, and the anti-vaxxers parents get to hear about the perks.

This is actually not a bad idea. I'm reminded of stopped clocks.

The distrust about vaccination has nothing to do with trusting/distrusting a pediatrician. It has to do with distrust in the government, in CDC, in pharma companies, and so on. They are the ones who have to repair the distrust.

Yeah, the antivaxxers I know in real life mistrust the medical system as a whole and aren't specific about the individual parts.

If you have better ideas for sales tactics [than emulating antivaccine cranks], I’m all ears. But that’s just a necessary stopgap. The real value is in fixing the trust problem.

Before I forgot, I had been meaning to say that this strikes me as lying with physicians (as, e.g., here, which I believe Krebiozen first mentioned) rather than positing an amorphous "We" blob to complain about the tone of a blog, but now you've advanced this:

Yeah, the antivaxxers I know in real life mistrust the medical system as a whole and aren’t specific about the individual parts.

But the obvious response – pointing out that antivaccine cranks rely on either lying through their teeth or ignorantly parroting those lies, generally with an gradual accretion of even more distorted versions of the original – puts you right back at square one, which is demonstrating why they're lies.

As for the various bills, I was never sanguine about the odds of getting rid of religious exemptions, and I've argued with both Dorit and Orac (at a not-so-secret other blogs) about the matter. If you want to get rid of those, it seems to me that a more promising approach is to get rid of the philosophical ones first and then make equal protection (discrimination against the nonreligious) and due process (almost necessarily whimsical enforcement) arguments against the latter.

@ Narad:

I would have to agree.
It always seemed to me that the philosophical exemption was just the religious exemption that was conveniently used by the non-religious.
Although if you think about it, perhaps anti-vaccinationism IS religion.

@Narad:
I'm not advocating lying by any means. But I feel like people who care about vaccination rates could do a better job of marketing vaccines.

The great and terrible thing about marketing is that it influences people even though they don't trust the marketers.

Though I got the memo that girls don’t hang with guys outside of school pretty young. It helped that I ended up in a private school where I was often placed in classes with older kids. And my class was almost all boys, which, thankfully, eliminated much gossiping.

Huh - I never got that memo, or if I did, I ignored it. I missed a lot of memos, though, growing up.

I went to public school, and I pretty much hated it it after elementary school, mainly because, let's be honest here, I was too smart for the place. I particularly remember getting in trouble a lot in junior high for reading during class - I mean, hey, it wasn't my fault I'd known how plate tectonics worked since second grade. I had a bit of an attitude, too, I suppose, which is not a welcome thing in a basically rural, working class school.

Most of my friends were guys pretty much just because most of the other weirdos and bad seeds were guys, with one or two exceptions. I actually got more flak for looking like a boy than for hanging out with boys, I think.

As for emotional stuff, I tend to have a series of small crisises rather than big huge crashes

I envy you. I have been cursed with a certain amount of northern reserve, or stoicism, or whatever you want to call it, and I tend to neglect my mental health, or bottle things up or whatever, until the point where I do have a major crisis. Other people have noticed this as well.

I’m far too high-strung and fidgety for meditation, and any other religion requires giving up too much.

It's not my intention to proselytize, but if meditation is something you're interested in, being high-strung and fidgety is not an obstacle; a lot of people get into meditation for that reason. If you have a hard time sitting still, you could start with, say, 5 minutes a day and work up from there. Jumping into an hour long meditation-with-chanting-service kind of thing would probably be a little much, though if you kept going with it, you'd eventually want to find a community to practice with.

Most of my friends are now female, which is less me changing than me being unwilling to navigate the minefield of being friends with dudes, which can get very unfortunately complicated very quickly.

Oh, you do have friend! Good. :) Most of my closest friends are still guys, actually, I have to admit. I mean, yeah, there have been a couple weirdnesses here and there, but that's kind of just the price you pay for having relationships. It's better than the alternative, I think.

JP: "have been cursed with a certain amount of northern reserve, or stoicism, or whatever you want to call it, and I tend to neglect my mental health, or bottle things up or whatever, until the point where I do have a major crisis."

I'm fairly stoic too, I just tend to prefer small controlled detonations where people can't see. Or in some cases, in public areas where screaming, shouting and elbowing people is acceptable.

JP: "went to public school, and I pretty much hated it it after elementary school, mainly because, let’s be honest here, I was too smart for the place. I particularly remember getting in trouble a lot in junior high for reading during class – I mean, hey, it wasn’t my fault I’d known how plate tectonics worked since second grade."

That was second grade for me, and a major reason why I transferred. Since the primary school in the school I transferred into was kind of a jumble, I took sixth grade classes in reading, and as long as I was quiet, and did a reasonable amount of work, no one noticed if I zoned out for a half hour or amused myself by working ahead. High school was okay, though, thankfully I was geographically isolated from the other kids and had a reputation as the tough chick- so, I didn't deal with the other girls outside of school much.
I have friends, yeah, I just don't see them much. I prefer solitude, and kinda fret over misunderstandings. Plus there's the problem of accidentally ruining a dude forever, not a responsibility I want.

Department of That Doesn't Sound Right on Second Thought:

I had been meaning to say that this strikes me as lying something that really happens by virtue of interactions with physicians

I think it was Matt who ventured the result that "approximately 1 in 3" people don't trust their doctors, which trivially proved to be 70% of people not even giving the matter a second thought. I just don't see any promise in the notion of wholly blobular "messaging."

"Where" is the "trust problem"?

There were a few classes where I annoyed the teacher in high school- one persistent mistake I make is pronouncing words as they are read, not as they are said, and I get defensive about mistakes like that. My health teacher was a creep- not an overt one, just having a general air of creepiness, and I disliked the shop teacher, as he took over from a guy I liked.

Plus there’s the problem of accidentally ruining a dude forever, not a responsibility I want.

No offense, but I don't think you're that powerful. People are hard to ruin, let alone to ruin forever, especially accidentally. And any guy worth being friends with in the first place won't be ruined forever because of something romantic happening or not happening, which I'm guessing is what you're concerned about.

I prefer solitude, and kinda fret over misunderstandings.

I like a fair bit of alone time myself - I'm sort of a very gregarious introvert. I don't know where I would be without my friends, though. Probably dead or something.

Misunderstandings happen. Grown-ups hash them out. Boy, I could tell you some stories.

one persistent mistake I make is pronouncing words as they are read, not as they are said, and I get defensive about mistakes like that.

I had a particularly mortifying experience in my first year of grad school when I asked what the word "enjambment" meant, as I had always pronounced it as "en-jam-ment," and I think hadn't ever even heard the Frenchy pronunciation.

Orac, maybe this makes you happier:
http://www.thelocal.de/20150312/doctor-proves-measles-virus
"Measles doubter must pay doctor €100,000"

@Matt

Thanks for the response, but it feels that you are rather muddled in your libertarian views. One of your first examples was a court enforcing a contract. Isn't that *exactly* what you say you want? That the contract is between two parents and concerns medical treatment should be irrelevant if you are following libertarian principles.

As for the issue of vaccination, you seem to be implying that public school is a right without any corresponding responsibilities. It isn't. For example, a child can be excluded from public school as a result of disruptive behaviour. That means we have an implied contract between the school (government) and the students/family. That contract includes rules intended to facilitate community learning. That includes minimizing the risk that children will miss lessons or die or, through their actions, cause other children to miss lessons or die.

I don’t believe it is the state’s place to swoop in and protect everybody from all the dangers lurking around every corner.

This suggests you do believe that it is the state's place to protect some people from some dangers, agreed?

By what rational basis does one pick and chose which dangers the state should "swoop in and protect people from" and which dangers they should not?

On re-reading my last post I feel that I imply that I'm a libertarian. For the record, I'm not a libertarian in any meaningful way.

If I have misunderstood your Matt's position then he is obviously free to clarify it. I recognize that I applied a label (libertarian) that he didn't claim for himself and that is always problematic.

Lastly, there are many libertarians and conservatives that see government regulation as inherently evil. They seem to forget that many of the health and safety regulations and systems that we have in place exist because we tried the alternative and realized that it didn't work (or caused a whole lot of suffering... same thing).

We've had private fire departments that only put out fires when you paid for their services - and we had whole cities burn.

We've had free-form construction where anyone could build anything they wanted - and we had whole cities burn.

We've had private land owners use their land to the fullest extent they want - and we've denuded whole islands resulting in mass starvation and societal collapse.

We've allowed people to sell any medicine they like and make whatever claims they want - and many people died and were disfigured.

A court cannot make you whole. Money does not replace a dead child or spouse. Smart contractors form shell companies and declare bankruptcy before they can be sued for shoddy workmanship (and reopen under a different name) - why wouldn't drug, device and other manufacturers do the same thing?

Why do we only hear about rights and not responsibilities?

Why didn't I proofread that... G'ah.

Niche Geek: "Why do we only hear about rights and not responsibilities?"

Which is why I suggested that Matt try Somalia, as it has a government more in tune to his philosophy. Especially after his comment on how well he would deal with a septic system.

And right on cue, our neighborhood Waldorf-inspired charter school is reporting a Pertussis outbreak. Sigh.
http://www.kmtr.com/news/local/4-cases-of-pertussis-at-Eugene-charter-s…

Notably, this school's vaccine exemption rate is greater than 50%.

Definitely need more gov't regulations-
(Friend just developed nasty intestinal infection after hospital operation)
www.cdc.gov/HAI/organisms/cdiff/Cdiff_infect.html

Take a look at these stats-
www.cdc.gov/HAI/surveillance/index.html

Based on the decrease in these infections, ken, over the past few years, it seems like hospitals are taking the problem seriously and addressing the problems.

l sympathize with libertarian views to a degree, but I also believe there are a certain set of basic rules that all civil societies need to have and a mechanism for their enforcement. And one of those principles? Making sure that while people can screw their own lives up to their hearts content, they don't screw other people's lives up in the process.

So yeah, when you send your kid to school without vaccinations and put my kid at risk for the measles, I think that's a pretty damn large infringement on my kid's right to live their life the way they see fit.

#474
I'm not sure I follow your logic. If your child is vaccinated how can one without vaccinations put your child at risk unless he is immunocompromised. My children were vaccinated-why would I worry?

#470 2 were vaccinated-2 were not out of 4 cases. Is this a 50%failure rate of the vaccine?

If your child is vaccinated how can one without vaccinations put your child at risk unless he is immunocompromised.

1. What do you have against those who are immunocompromised?
2. Vaccines train the immune system to respond to infections, but this is not a 100% guarantee. Some percentage of those vaccinated will not become immune to the disease, just as some percentage of those who catch the disease are not completely immune. If my child were vaccinated but not immune, your unimunized child places my child at risk.

2 were vaccinated-2 were not out of 4 cases. Is this a 50%failure rate of the vaccine?

No.

2 were vaccinated-2 were not out of 4 cases. Is this a 50%failure rate of the vaccine?

Only if the entire vaccinated population consists these two plus two others, for a total population of four people.

2 were vaccinated-2 were not out of 4 cases. Is this a 50%failure rate of the vaccine?

Only if the entire vaccinated population consists these two plus two others, for a total population of four people.

That would be a total population of 6 people (the 2 vaccinated who became infected, the 2 vaccinated who didn't become infected, and the two unvaccinated).

(Friend just developed nasty intestinal infection after hospital operation)

How do the statistics compare for at-home and in-the-field operations?

Also worth noting is that these students tested positive for pertussis; it says nothing about the severity of their symptoms. The pertussis vaccine doesn't always prevent infection, but it stimulates antibodies to the pertussis toxin, thus reducing or eliminating symptoms even if infection occurs. This means that a vaccinated person may be infected but not exhibit symptoms, or at least have much milder symptoms than an infected unvaccinated person. This reduces contagiousness by reducing coughing, which play a major role in spreading the disease.

To add to the refutation of Matt's tired use of a fallacious argument, a baby died from pertussis. He was too young to be vaccinated.

Sorry. Replace "Matt" with "Ken" in my above comment.

Can someone here (including orac) direct me to some collection of definitive studies that prove the claim of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines? Please leave out the ridicule, the arrogance and appeal to authority, the appeal to popularity, the appeal to emotion, the name-calling and general immaturity. What I am looking for is: objective peer-reviewed studies that clearly show the a) the relative safety and the b) effectiveness of any number of vaccines. It would also be helpful to see evidence refuting anti-vax claims. Seriously, I want to see this. I have genuine concerns about vaccines and I don't trust the hype on either side, because that is what it seems like to me, hype. And not just the CDC's site. Where is the sober, unbiased information about this?

Concerned Parent: Well, for a start, you could check the WHO webpage and track how many smallpox outbreaks there have been lately. Get back to us when you find them. (Spoiler alert, there aren't any. And the reason why starts with a v. )

And you know, when you refer to facts as hype, it really, really suggests that you aren't actually interested in the studies. I think you took a wrong turn on the internet.

@Concerned Parent

I appreciate that you want a serious answer, but it would help if you asked a slightly less open-ended question. You ask for evidence that vaccines are effective, in general. Vaccines have been in use for more than a century. In that time there has been a lot of research done by a lot of different people in a lot of different countries (and, to be clear, funded by a lot of different entities). A search on PubMed (an open tool that anyone can use) returns 246,674 publications with the key word vaccine. Of those, 3,038 are systemic reviews. Many of those are in animals, many are for vaccines you likely don't need. Of course that doesn't include the studies that were done in the first 2/3 to 3/4 of the 20th century that aren't online or indexed. I'm not saying this to be a jerk, I'm saying it because you've asked a very broad question. Perhaps if you specified which vaccines concerned you, or even what kind of evidence you'd like to see then you might get a more direct answer. For example, I could point to the eradication of smallpox as evidence that vaccines, at least one of them, work very well and can be, at least in that one case, far far far less harmful then the diseases they treat.

Concerned Parent: "Can someone here (including orac) direct me to some collection of definitive studies that prove the claim of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines?"

Here you go: Vaccine Safety: Examine the Evidence

Now here is a question for you, I am going to list the US Census data on measles incidence for the 20th century. Since you said "prove the claim of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines"... so you now need to tell me why the incidence of measles in the USA dropped 90% between 1960 and 1970. Look at the data, and then give use documented reasons why that happened. Do not mention mortality, any other decade, any other disease nor any other country (despite Mr. Stone and Mr. Miller delusions, England and Wales are not American states):
From http://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/99statab/sec31.pdf
Year.... Rate per 100000 of measles
1912 . . . 310.0
1920 . . . 480.5
1925 . . . 194.3
1930 . . . 340.8
1935 . . . 584.6
1940 . . . 220.7
1945 . . . 110.2
1950 . . . 210.1
1955 . . . 337.9
1960 . . . 245.4
1965 . . . 135.1
1970 . . . . 23.2
1975 . . . . 11.3
1980 . . . . . 5.9
1985 . . . . . 1.2
1990 . . . . .11.2
1991 . . . . . .3.8
1992 . . . . . .0.9
1993 . . . . . .0.1
1994 . . . . . .0.4
1995 . . . . . .0.1
1996 . . . . . .0.2
1997 . . . . . . 0.1

Politicalguineapig #486 "Concerned Parent: Well, for a start, you could check the WHO webpage and track how many smallpox outbreaks there have been lately. Get back to us when you find them. (Spoiler alert, there aren’t any. And the reason why starts with a v. )

And you know, when you refer to facts as hype, it really, really suggests that you aren’t actually interested in the studies. I think you took a wrong turn on the internet."

Thank you for your response. Although it is an interesting starting point to seeking more evidence, the lack of smallpox outbreaks isn't entirely conclusive for me. I'm sure you understand that correlation does not equal causation.

It really does seems to me like there's an awful lot of hype on both sides of this issue. It is very difficult to get through to the actual facts when there is so much posturing and emotion. I don't think I took a wrong turn on the internet. This seems like a good place to get some answers, although it seems to contains its fair share of emotion and hype as well. There seem to be a lot of scientists or otherwise pretty intelligent people here, most on the pro-vaccination side of the issue. So a sober presentation of that side shouldn't be hard to find here.

Niche Geek # 487

Thank you for your response. I realize that my question is broad, but I thought perhaps there is some collection of at least the most conclusive studies. Since, as I mentioned, there is a lot of emotion on both sides here, it is not going to be enough for me to just believe in either side - I need to see the proof itself.

Chris #488 -

Thank you for your response. That link seems to be just what I'm looking for, thank you. It will clearly take me some time to get through it, but I am looking forward to finding evidence there.

As far as the decline in measles, as I mentioned to the 2 other posters about smallpox - it does seem to point to a link, but correlation can't be considered ultimately conclusive. We would have to rule out every other potential reason, with some degree of certainty, then it would be pretty strong circumstantial evidence, but still not hard evidence.

And I get that I may not understand all the factors involved, so feel free to explain things to me (just in a nice, or at least neutral, way - it's hard to read with full attention while being berated). It is true that correlation does not necessarily equal causation, right? Or not?

Concerned Parent:

It is true that correlation does not necessarily equal causation, right?

Correct. The belief that the MMR vaccine causes autism was initially plausible because the MMR is given at a time when the symptoms of autism become very clear. After thorough investigation, it was confirmed that there was no causation.

Concerned Parent, you still have not provided us with any specific concerns you have about vaccinations.

If you are going to use the phrase "Correlation Does Not Imply Causation" you should be aware of the origins and meaning of that phrase as it applies to the scientific method:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

As far as the decline in measles, as I mentioned to the 2 other posters about smallpox

*koff*

– it does seem to point to a link, but correlation can’t be considered ultimately conclusive. We would have to rule out every other potential reason

*KOFF*

with some degree of certainty

"Were those hysterical screamsI could hear in the kitchen?"

then it would be pretty strong circumstantial evidence, but still not hard evidence.

Please define, specifically, (1) whether the "some" in "some degree of certainty" is supposed to mean anything in particular, (2) what the "degree of certainty" that underlies your "concerns" is, and (3) why you bothered to use the foregoing words in the first place if you can't answer Nos. 1 and 2.

You don't have many options, and none is promising other than changing the subject and pretending that nothing happened until you sniff the possibility to circle back around.

So choose. "Vaxxed/unvaxxed study" as 'stealth' payload fails immediately on your own terms. Ever-diminishing slices of "vaccine injury susceptibles" fails on your own terms.

There's something plainly self-consistent left, right?

@Concerned - you seem to be saying that you don't necessarily believe that vaccines work?

The problem with that thought is that we know exactly how and why the biological process works that allows vaccines to confer immunity - hence how we know that a person who has been vaccinated, when exposed to the pathogen, won't get sick.

The anti-vax brigade has yet to provide any biologically-plausible theories as to why vaccines would be harmful.

There is very good, factual information out there regarding the safety and efficacy of vaccines - links have already been provided.

Use a critical eye, but don't be stupid.

Has Concerned Parent seen this?

http://blogs-images.forbes.com/matthewherper/files/2013/03/c6fb5feb7f1e…

Those statistics should be very difficult to wave off as "hype".

Concerned Parent,

I have genuine concerns about vaccines and I don’t trust the hype on either side, because that is what it seems like to me, hype. And not just the CDC’s site. Where is the sober, unbiased information about this?

I don't see any hype on the CDC website, I see sober, unbiased facts supported by peer-reviewed studies. If you don't trust them, the Institute of Medicine (a very eminent non-governmental organization) compiled a comprehensive review of the safety evidence of vaccines a few years ago. You can download it from their website (search for 'institute of medicine vaccine safety').

If you don't trust the IoM, you might look at the WHO information on vaccines, or other countries' websites on the subject, the UK for example. If you really think that all the information about vaccines available from public health organisations globally is hype, I really can't help you.

As for measles vaccine efficacy, we see measles incidence plummet by 99% in every country the vaccine has been introduced routinely, shortly after it is introduced, but not in countries where it is not introduced. We also see outbreaks in countries where it is in routine use when vaccine uptake drops below the herd immunity threshold. The proportion of unvaccinated people who get measles during an outbreak is much higher than the proportion of vaccinated people. Given also the various efficacy studies that were carried out when the vaccine was being developed, I think it is very fair to say that the efficacy and safety of the measles vaccine is beyond reasonable doubt.

You might also look at chicken pox incidence, and see that in the US it is about nine cases per 100,000, and in the UK 1,290 cases per 100,000, with 90% of the population contracting the disease and about 25 people dying of it every year. I struggle to think of any possible reason for this, other than the fact that chicken pox is routinely vaccinated against in the US, but not in the UK.

OT (almost)

One of my current banner ad is about "Should parents be forced to vaccinate their kids", from some EasyHealthOptions dot com group.

I got that ad as well, some time ago. If you look at the questions, you know where it's leading to.

@Concerned Parent: like the others, I do understand you want answers. And thankfully, Chris has posted one excellent site. But, as noted above, if you would be a bit more specific, and list the vaccines and concerns you have, we can point you in the right direction for good information.

As far as smallpox: one really good read is "Inside the Outbreaks", about the history of the CDC and the EIS. One section focuses on how smallpox was eliminated - by vaccination (sometimes forced, to be honest) and mandatory quarantine of infected (and possibly infected) persons. Probably neither would have worked alone as fast as the two together.

As a parent, like many of us, I had my children fully vaccinated with all the vaccines - and on time - that were available when they were infants/children. Unfortunately, my kids had to suffer through chickenpox. It's not fun to be up for days with a crying child who is in so much pain you have to give her narcotics for a "simple childhood disease", who is so covered with pox that she can't eat, drink, sit, or lie down. I'd have given anything for them to have had the vaccine, which came out 2 years later.

A question for Concerned Parent:
what reasons do you have to believe that WHO, the CDC and other governmentally sponsored agencies around the world are not to be trusted?
Who IS to be trusted?

Poor, poor pitiful Andy (Wakefield): Dissed again, this time by the Oregon Senate Committee on Health Care

oracknows — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 05:30:44 +0000

Poor, poor pitiful Andy (Wakefield): Dissed again, this time by the Oregon Senate Committee on Health Care

Poor Andy Wakefield.

Beginning in the late 1990s until around six years ago, Andy was the premiere "vaccine skeptic" in the world. His 1998 case series published in The Lancet linking bowel problems in autistic children to the measles vaccine, the one where in the paper itself he was careful not to blame the MMR vaccine for autism but elsewhere was not so shy, launched a campaign of fear and loathing for the MMR vaccine that continues to this day. In his heyday, Wakefield was quite the figure, showing up on the media everywhere, treated with undeserved respect by much of the tabloid press and downright reverence by the antivaccine movement. (Indeed, Age of Autism founder J.B. Handley once famously referred to Wakefield as our "Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ rolled up into one." Of course, thanks largely to the efforts of Brian Deer, the wheels came off a five years ago. That year, Wakefield lost his license to practice and his (in)famous case series in The Lancet was retracted, as it had been demonstrated rather conclusively that Wakefield had committed scientific fraud in that study. Even the antivaccine quack mill Thoughtful House, where Wakefield had reigned supreme as chief antivaccine autism quack couldn't take it any more, and its board of directors rather unceremoniously gave him the boot.

Of couse, since then, Wakefield has done pretty well for himself, remaining a figurehead adored by credulous antivaccine activists, a veritable hero. He was still flown to antivaccine conferences in nice hotels in places like Jamaica. He still manages to live quite a comfortable lifestyle, in part thanks to the generosity of of the deep pockets behind the antivaccine movement, as reported by CNN, in part thanks to his Strategic Autism Initiative. Another times, he exploited the tragedy of the murder of an autistic boy, Alex Spourdalakis, in a most shameful fashion.

So, two days ago, when I saw this story, I couldn't believe it:

Andrew Wakefield, the British researcher who was made famous by his 1998 study that linked autism to a childhood vaccine, is coming to Salem next month to testify before the Legislature, a health care lobbyist confirmed Tuesday.

The Senate Committee on Health Care is exploring a bill, sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, D-Beaverton, that would ban parents from claiming nonmedical exemptions from their children's school immunizations.

By the time I saw the story, it was too late to blog about it for yesterday; so I put it in the hopper for today. However, two days ago, I did blog about the Oregon bill to which the article refers. The bill, SB442, was originally intended to clarify the procedure for parents to get non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. However, in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak consideration was being given to amending the bill to eliminate non-medical exemptions altogether. As I pointed out, the very fact that a state like Oregon, which is a hotbed of antivaccine activity (J. B. Handley, for instance, lives there) would even consider such a bill, is a sea change in attitude in the wake of continuing measles outbreaks.

Of course, antivaccine activists weren't going to take this lying down, and they didn't. J.B. Handley, for instance, submitted testimony to the Oregon Senate Committee on Health Care on February 18. Not surprisingly, he pulled out the same old tropes that I've seen him using over the decade that I've been blogging and since I first encountered him: "too many too soon"; argument by package insert; the pharma shill gambit; and, of course, the antivaccine dog whistle that ties vaccine "choice" to parental rights and freedom.

Still, I couldn't understand why on earth anyone would think that tarting up old, discredited Andy Wakefield, flying him up to Oregon, and plopping him in front of the Senate Committee on Health Care would serve the cause of "vaccine choice." I mean, seriously. Is there any "vaccine skeptic" currently more discredited than Andrew Wakefield in the mind of the public? Sure, there are actually more despicable antivaccinationists, but few people have heard of them. Wakefield, on the other hand, is famous, but he's famous because he's a discredited fraud who did antivaccine research for money. Brian Deer showed us that. And there are many victims. I know that Wakefield's visit was arranged by the Oregon Chiropractic Association, but I didn't think that even chiropractors were so deluded to think that a discredited fraud like Wakefield would help their case. In fact, when I first heard of the story, I was almost happy. The more quacks and cranks antivaccinationists trotted in front of the committee, the better. What better way for them to shoot themselves in the foot, to self-immolate? I was even thinking of suggesting more cranks to testify, such as Mark and David Geier or Christopher Shaw. Heck, why not get Sharyl Attkisson?

Oh, wait. I had heard it through the grapevine that others scheduled to testify included Tetyana Obukhanyeh, PhD., and Lucija Tomljenovic, PhD.

Sadly, my anticipation of the spectacle of Andrew Wakefield testifying was not to be. Yesterday, many of you sent my way this story:

Oregon legislators have canceled a meeting to discuss a bill that would eliminate nonmedical exemptions from Oregon's school immunization law, after it became clear that a controversial vaccine researcher who linked the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine with autism was planning to testify.

The Statesman Journal reported Tuesday that Andrew Wakefield, whose 1998 study was retracted from The Lancet and refuted by subsequent studies, was planning a trip to Salem to testify against Senate Bill 442.

He said in a phone interview on Wednesday that he objected to allegations made by Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, the bill's sponsor, that he committed scientific fraud in his research.

Sen. Laurie Monnes Anderson, D-Gresham, chairwoman of the Senate health care committee, said she canceled the March 9 informational meeting because she felt the first public hearing, on Feb. 18, provided enough information.

Poor, poor pitiful Andy! He's so toxic that the very mention of his potentially showing up to testify can shut down a legislative committee informational meeting. I don't believe it for a minute when Anderson claimed:

Monnes Anderson said her decision did not have anything to do with Wakefield's intentions to testify.

The March 9 meeting will only take invited testimony from constitutional law experts who will weigh in on the legality of SB 442, she said. During a work session, committee members can tweak the bill as well as vote on it.

Come on. Does Anderson really think her constituents are that stupid? Maybe she does. In any case, I'm torn by this decision. On the one hand, it would have been grand entertainment to see Andy trotted out in front of the committee to spew his usual brand of antivaccine misinformation, and I bet that he would not have been particularly impressive, old fraudster that Deer showed him to be. In fact, I rather suspect he would have inadvertently helped the cause of eliminating non-medical exemptions in Oregon. After all, what better weapon would those supporting the bill have than to be able to attach the name of someone as disreputable as Andrew Wakefield to opposition to SB442? On the other hand, there would have been a chance that letting him testify would have actually elevated him, made him less disreputable. In any event, my guess is that Anderson saw that letting Wakefield testify would turn her committee's "informational event" into a media circus. No, strike that. It would have turned it into a circus. So she wisely canceled, because Wakefield is just that toxic.

My only consolation in this is that antivaccinationists seem to be their own worst enemies. As I said before, anyone with an ounce of political savvy would have realized that letting someone like Andrew Wakefield testify, someone who is (1) famous, (2) discredited, and (3) highly disreputable, testify is the same thing as putting his face on the opposition. There's no way this could have ended well for antivaccinationists. In fact, the chiropractors and antivaccine "health freedom" types who pushed to get Wakefield on the list of people giving testimony should thank Monnes Anderson profusely for saving themelves from themselves.

They won't, of course, They are just that deluded as to believe that having Wakefield's chance to testify yanked hurt them. But, hey, according to news reports, Wakefield wants to hold a town hall meeting in Portland. Somehow, I doubt that will go very well, either. After all, remember what happened the last time Wakefield tried to have a "town hall" meeting to protest to what he viewed as a pro-vaccine provocation. "Pitiful" doesn't begin to describe it.

oracknows Thu, 02/26/2015 - 00:30

Tags

Antivaccine nonsense

complementary and alternative medicine

Skepticism/Critical Thinking

complementary and alternative medicine

medicine

Science

He was invited by Oregon Chiropractors - just more evidence of how anti-science (and anti-vaccine) they are.

A. Andrew Wakefield can appear reasonable and convincing to those who do not know his record, as long as he doesn't let himself go, as in the Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot video. But he has that record, that's very easy to point to.

B. I hope Oregon legislators remember, nonetheless, that these people were offering, as their main witness, a man found guilty of serious ethical violations with a documented history of less-than-dubious credibility.

I'm actually shocked that J.B. Handley was allowed to testify. This is someone who has no scientific credentials to speak of and has often been laughably wrong about vaccines, And that doesn't even get into his very public bullying (including threats of legal action) against anyone who disagrees with him.

There's nothing in J.B.'s testimony that you couldn't get from spending a half-hour perusing any anti-vax website, and the Oregon Senate, by allowing Handley to address them, elevated him to someone with credibility to speak on the topic. I find that almost as offensive as Andy Wakefield nearly getting to speak in front of them.

A legislative hearing isn't a scientific forum. One of its appropriate goals is to allow affected citizens to voice their point of view. Mr. Handley is an affected citizen, and letting him testify was the right thing.

The committee treating him as a scientific source would be an error, and it's more than fair to point out the problems in his claims, but of all forums, a legislative policy making process is one that should be open and inclusive in hearing views. However extreme and unfounded.

Well, whilst there might be no debate scientifically, there clearly is politically. By not having the various anti-vax proponents testify surely there is the danger of these people asserting that their voice wasn't heard and generally feeding into their persecution complex.

Much better would have been a public detailed examination of Wakkers - unless these legislaors though tthey wern't up to it!

Oregon seems poised to become the go-to state for quackery. I'm interested but not entirely surprised to see chiropractors stirring the pot on this. Does anyone know if there are any national chiro organizations with position statements on vaccines?

Dorit it correct. Legislative hearings serve the function of allowing the public to have a say on matters that affect them. Not all testimony is created equally nor does it have equal impact. Legislators are savvy to those offering testimony with an axe to grind.

There is this collections of positions.
http://www.acatoday.org/level2_css.cfm?T1ID=10&T2ID=117

"Resolved, that the American Chiropractic Association (ACA) recognize and advise the public that:
Since the scientific community acknowledges that the use of vaccines is not without risk, the American Chiropractic Association supports each individual's right to freedom of choice in his/her own health care based on an informed awareness of the benefits and possible adverse effects of vaccination. The ACA is supportive of a conscience clause or waiver in compulsory vaccination laws thereby maintaining an individual's right to freedom of choice in health care matters and providing an alternative elective course of action regarding vaccination. (Ratified by the House of Delegates, July 1993, Revised and Ratified June 1998)."

He said in a phone interview on Wednesday that he objected to allegations made by Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, the bill’s sponsor, that he committed scientific fraud in his research.

Maybe he should threaten a defamation suit instead.

@Narad: he still might.

Narad and Dorit:

Seriously- what else does he have?

I mean other than the estate, the entourage and the legion of adoring acolytes?
Maybe money in the bank, stocks, bonds,..
Poor Andy!

Perhaps Wakefield can establish a new "Center for Legislative Integrity" and use the contributions that he solicits from his adoring fans to pay himself a salary as its director.

Well, he currently doesn't have any outstanding lawsuits to solicit money, and he's been rather unsuccessful in raising funds for his documentaries....I have no idea what he has left up his sleeve.

Seriously- what else does he have?

Well, there's the ORI complaint, which has likely been filed appropriately.

Sen. Laurie Monnes Anderson, D-Gresham, chairwoman of the Senate health care committee, said she canceled the March 9 informational meeting because she felt the first public hearing, on Feb. 18, provided enough information.

Do we know Sen. Anderson's views on the subject? IOW, is she opposed to the bill and thought (likely correctly) that having Wakefield testify would strengthen the pro side? Or does she favor the bill, and suspect that some of her fellow senators might fall for Wakefield's schtik? Gresham is in the Portland area, and IIRC Portland is an anti-vax hotbed, but I don't know if Gresham is one of the suburbs that attracts well-off granola types (as Marin County does in the Bay Area).

Eric, like I said elsewhere, Andy may be our un-intentional ally- at least to the general public's ear- what he says and his presence alone- may strengthen the SB position.

Is it realistic at this point for Wakefield complain about allegations of fraud, as if the fraudulent nature of the Lancet publication had not been demonstrated?

Such sessions are generally open to the public. Were others denied their chance to speak for 3 minutes because this session was cancelled on account of Wakefield? And how much damage could Wakefield have done when lumped in with dozens of other speakers, all getting the same allotted time?

But now...Surely Wakefield and his supporters are going to make a lot of hay about cancelling this session because of him -- it is mana from heaven for the anti-vaxers. Especially in Portland where Wakefield townhall meetings are being planned by the chiros.

Orac. it seems, will never learn...

Do we know Sen. Anderson’s views on the subject?

She's a cosponsor.

I don’t know if Gresham is one of the suburbs that attracts well-off granola types (as Marin County does in the Bay Area).

No. It's basically just a big, bland place with no real distinguishing characteristics at all. The only good thing about it is that it's on a MAX line.

I heard Wakefield speak at a medical postgraduate meeting.

He may be deluded and a fraud; he had been successful because he is a skilled and persuasive rhetoritian. Even if you are very knowledgeable and aware of the falsity off his arguments he'll beat you in a debate unless you're also a skilled debater. Don't underestimate him. He's too dangerous to dismiss lightly.

J.B. Handley, for instance, testified in front of the Oregon Senate Committee on Health Care on February 18.

He appears to have submitted written testimony (PDF, pp. 36–43, although he himself seems to have been unable to put together a PDF, hence the scan).

In repeatedly using the phrase "the free world," he fails to document his claims; I've already posted the Israeli schedule, for example – he changes how he "counts" as convenient.

It's a small committee, and my sense from some brief email communications with several members is that most if not all are favorable to the bill.

I'm not sure where the suggestion to have an additional public input session on vaccine safety information originated, but it seems that they received enough feedback to realize that it was a counterproductive idea. The work session on March 9 will now only deal with constitutionality of the bill, and the only speakers will be the invited contributors with Con Law expertise.

SB 442 not only proposes to end non-medical exemptions, but also seeks to clarify the definition of what medical conditions qualify for exemptions. This last bit is just as important as the first. Right now in Oregon personal exemptions are ridiculously easy to get. One only has to 'watch' a video to obtain an exemption certificate, and by 'watch', I mean, 'let it play in the background, give it an occasional prompt until it finishes, and then print out your certificate'. But, even if this option goes away, there are still many 'vax-choice' docs afoot, some of whom are already declaring that they will "find a way to get you a medical exemption if that's what it comes to".

Thus, it seems particularly important to clarify the kinds of medical conditions that qualify so that these docs can't just substitute one loophole for another.

Calling Andy Wakefield as your expert witness on vaccination policy is akin to calling Bernie Madoff as your expert witness on financial investments.

My only hope when I saw that article was that some of the local Oregonian pro-vaccine advocates would provide the lawmakers with the pertinent information on Wakefield so he could provide an hilarious exhibition of hubris as did Dr. Oz when grilled by Sen. Claire McCaskill.

@Reality--
The lawmakers who co-sponsored the bill are well aware of Wakefield's history--Senator Steiner is the one he's pissed at for calling his work 'fraudulent'. Note also that he was not "called him in to testify". He was summoned by private groups and lobbyists to contribute to continuing public comments for and against the bill during the upcoming Health Committee Work Session. There's no Q&A there--no 'grilling'--just an opportunity to read something into the record.

"Well, he currently doesn’t have any outstanding lawsuits to solicit money, and he’s been rather unsuccessful in raising funds for his documentaries"

Don't be so sure about that. Not all money comes from indigogo (where he failed to raise much money). Recognize any names of wealthy people in this screenshot from "who killed Alex Spourdalakis"?

https://lbrbblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/donors-to-who-killed-alex-…

#4: "A legislative hearing isn’t a scientific forum. One of its appropriate goals is to allow affected citizens to voice their point of view. Mr. Handley is an affected citizen, and letting him testify was the right thing."

So what was Wakefield's standing? How is he affected by an Oregon law? What are his scientific credentials to speak knowledgeably about vaccines?

As an aside, has anyone else seen a questionable ad asking "Should children be forced to vaccinate?" from a place called Easy Health Options? Now I don't know that place from Adam, but it sure sounds susspect. I think Orac needs to look into it and tear it a new one. Anyone else think so?

@Ken--
like a lot of state-level issues, people are using this one to push a national agenda. We went through this even more intensely when we had a GMO labeling initiative on the ballot last November (which failed narrowly). Anti-GMO speakers/debaters from of out of state came on the run for various speaking engagements and debates to support the measure. Even the 'No on 92' campaign was run by an out of state org.

Oh, definitely. When right-to-try came to Michigan, many of those who testified were Goldwater Institute flacks flown in from Arizona.

@lucario#28- I've been clicking the report as inappropriate option on those.

No way I'd let my kids vaccinate. Well, maybe my daughter-at 6, she can already sew and use scissors so she could probably give a flu shot. But the boy, nope, not on your life.

Next step in Oregon-figure out where this new governor is at on immunizations. The yoga practitioner thing already has me a little nervous.

It won't stop him and a plethora of other autism quacks speaking here though: http://www.autismone.org/content/conference-membership-registration

These people need to be shut down

Mark my words: Mr. Handley will probably spin this as, "the other side suppressed Andrew Wakefield's testimony; they were afraid to let him be heard."

"By not having the various anti-vax proponents testify surely there is the danger of these people asserting that their voice wasn’t heard and generally feeding into their persecution complex."

"Mr. Handley will probably spin this as, “the other side suppressed Andrew Wakefield’s testimony; they were afraid to let him be heard.”

This is pretty much what we can expect.

A better committee response would have been to reject Wakefield's appearance, while inviting any non-fraudulent antivax proponent with scientific credentials and published research respected in the medical community to testify.
Then, after an embarrassing period of dead silence, they could get on with their bill.

@ Matt #26

The Dwoskins are friends and major supporters of Bill and Hill. Their influence was probably responsible for Hillary's little nod to the anti-vaxers in '08. But with the GOP all lining up for 'parents rights' 'medical choice' and FREEDUMB, and HRC likening anti-vaxers to flat-earthers on Twitter, the Dwoskins aren't gonna touch Andy Wakefield with a ten-foot pole. I think they'll have to cut their sizable contributions to Generation Rescue too. Al Dwoskin probably gets an ambassadorship if he and Claire play nice, and they get blackballed from Washington parties if they don't.

After the election, the Dwoskins might away with sliding a little cash towards whatever new media-voice RFKJ's dug up, but with Trace Amounts he's already scraping the bottom of the filmmaking barrel.

Andy could still find some wing-nut bazillionaire whale, I suppose, but if wanted to pimp the 'parents rights / vaccine freedom' take a la Rand Paul, I could find scores of better spokespersons than Andy Wakefield.

We're way past 'proving vaccines cause autism'. Vaccines cause everything, because the parents say so. And it doesn't matter if they're wrong. They've got rights, and it's none of Big Guvment's business!. Forget the science frauds. It's all back to parents' individual stories from here on out. New anti-vax films will all feature reasonable-seeming, sympathetic and media-genic parents. They'll have fewer negatives in the Q scores than Jenny McCarthy. If I was working anti-vax PR with funds to buy a new movie, I'd go strictly 'delayed vax is good but it's your choice' on the surface with tons of sub-text dog-whistles. I'd try to enlist Dr. Jay as my 'medical expert', and get someone like Mayim Bialik from his Hollywood connections as the star.

First, Brian Deer,
Have you written any news story other than "Andy Wakefield" in the last 5 years?
Please post examples, so I can believe it is true.

"The Statesman Journal reported Tuesday that Andrew Wakefield, whose 1998 study was retracted from The Lancet..."

Could you please explain why the Lancet published Wakefield in the first place?
I've never heard THAT explanation.

Brian, have you ever considered visiting Denmark?
It is a great opportunity to fill in your "journalism gap".

"The Dwoskins are friends and major supporters of Bill and Hill. Their influence was probably responsible for Hillary’s little nod to the anti-vaxers in ’08."

LOL! Nice try Sadmar. #35

Hillary has bigger fish to fry:
"The Daily News on Tuesday reported that Clinton aides have already scoped out office space in BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, just across the river from Manhattan."
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/231671-can-cool-brooklyn-rub-off-o…

Isn't this near the major ANTI-VAX VOTING BLOC I've been blogging about?
http://www.timesofisrael.com/measles-vaccine-developer-warns-jewish-ant…
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6236a5.htm
http://www.notfortourists.com/Hood.aspx/NewYork/BoroughPark
http://forward.com/articles/199430/jewish-pro-hillary-clinton-group-is-…
Oy vey!

panacea - I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Reinforce their biases, validate their inner narrative, and they will react in ways that makes them look even crazier and further diminishes their credibility.

I deleted this a couple of times, knowing that some of those folks probably lurk here, but in all honesty, they couldn't intentionally moderate their message if their lives depended on it. They are unraveling. Our task now is to pursue an endgame strategy for the eradication of bullshit.

@Dorit
"A. Andrew Wakefield can appear reasonable and convincing to those who do not know his record, as long as he doesn’t let himself go, as in the Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot video. But he has that record, that’s very easy to point to."

Could you please cite the "record" you refer to?
Some of us do not know what A. Andrew Wakefield's record is.

Could you please post a link to the "Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot" video? I can't imagine what that is!

Also there are several unanswered questions addressed to you over on the earlier "Dog whistle" blog.

Expect a "spin" at AoA...but no one cares...except for us lurkers who derive pleasure from the posts and comments at AoA.

The Dwoskin Family Foundation's spokesperson opines....

"Is There a Vaccine Debate Occurring? It Doesn’t Seem Like It."

You bet there's debates occurring in several State legislatures to tighten up/eliminate vaccination exemptions...and more parents are getting involved to support legislators who propose bills to eliminate those exemptions.

http://dwoskinfamilyfoundationvaccinesupport.com/

P.S. Diane Harper is again cited as one of the developers of the HPV vaccine.

@Deer Brian,

Let me entice you. This could be the news scoop OF THE YEAR. It has drama, treachery, theft, and the health of millions of children at stake, and it is in SCENIC DENMARK. Aren't you sick of "Wakefield"? The fair city of ATLANTA (remember Scarlet?) Georgia, would fill the streets shouting HOSANNAH! if you aid in the return to them, their not-so-native son and alleged THIEF of over $1 MILLION CDC $$$$$$$$$. He would stand trial, and be brought to justice, and go to a place where he would know if his vaccines actually work.
YOU CAN GET STARTED RIGHT AWAY!
Here are the details:
http://www.rescuepost.com/files/thorsen-indictment.pdf
“OIG Fugitive: Poul Thorsen
Poul Thorsen
From approximately February 2004 until February 2010, Poul Thorsen executed a scheme to steal grant money awarded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). CDC had awarded grant money to Denmark for research involving infant disabilities, autism, genetic disorders, and fetal alcohol syndrome. CDC awarded the grant to fund studies of the relationship between autism and the exposure to vaccines, the relationship between cerebral palsy and infection during pregnancy, and the relationship between developmental outcomes and fetal alcohol exposure.
Thorsen worked as a visiting scientist at CDC, Division of Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, before the grant was awarded.
The initial grant was awarded to the Danish Medical Research Council. In approximately 2007, a second grant was awarded to the Danish Agency for Science, Technology, and Innovation. Both agencies are governmental agencies in Denmark. The research was done by the Aarhaus University and Odense University Hospital in Denmark.
Thorsen allegedly diverted over $1 MILLION of the CDC grant money to his own personal bank account. Thorsen submitted fraudulent invoices on CDC letterhead to medical facilities assisting in the research for reimbursement of work allegedly covered by the grants. The invoices were addressed to Aarhaus University and Sahlgrenska University Hospital. The fact that the invoices were on CDC letterhead made it appear that CDC was requesting the money from Aarhaus University and Sahlgrenska University Hospital although the bank account listed on the invoices belonged to Thorsen.
In April 2011, Thorsen was indicted on 22 counts of Wire Fraud and Money Laundering.
According to bank account records, Thorsen purchased a home in Atlanta, a Harley Davidson motorcycle, an Audi automobile, and a Honda SUV with funds that he received from the CDC grants.
Thorsen is currently in Denmark and is awaiting extradition to the United States.”
https://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/fugitives/profiles.asp
http://www.naturalnews.com/046644_MMR_vaccine_autism_scientific_fraud.h…

Good luck! I see FRONT PAGE headlines in your future.......

CALLING ALL OREGON ANTI-VAXXERS:
This is all you need:
Google:
client=safari&rls=en&q=WHO+%22Global+Manual+on+Surveillance+of+Adverse+Events+Following+Immunization%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Click on the one with PDF file at top.

and this....

"Statement on RISK vs Benefit of Vaccinations by David Satcher, M.D., PH.D.
Assistant Secretary for Health and Surgeon General
U.S. Public Health Service
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Before the House Committee on Government Reform
August 3, 1999

...Vaccine approval also REQUIRES the provision of adequate PRODUCT LABELING to allow health care providers to understand the vaccine’s proper use, including its POTENTIAL benefits and RISKS, in order TO COMMUNICATE with patients and PARENTS and to SAFELY deliver the vaccine to the public. Vaccines are also subject to lot release testing and protocol review to further ENSURE their quality.

Although extensive studies are REQUIRED for licensure, post-marketing research and surveillance are necessary to identify SAFETY issues which may only arise or be detected FOLLOWING vaccination of a much larger population. Rare events may not come to light before licensure, or, if noted, the evidence may not be adequate to prove that such events were due to a vaccine. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a valuable post-marketing tool for just such safety surveillance. I will describe VAERS later in the testimony. In addition, post-marketing STUDIES of a SPECIFIC vaccine are REQUIRED by FDA in order to obtain additional SAFETY or other data. Also, after licensure, MONITORING of the product and of production activities, including periodic facility inspections, MUST CONTINUE as long as the manufacturer holds a LICENSE for the product.

No system is perfect and NO medicine or VACCINE can EVER be GUARANTEED to be 100 percent FREE OF possible side effects or ADVERSE EVENTS, particularly when administered to millions of people. For these reasons, the Department, its constituent agencies (FDA, CDC, NIH, HRSA), the scientific community, and industry strive for continuous improvements in VACCINE SAFETY. Speaking for the Department and its agencies, we WELCOME all constructive input and CRITICISM in this regard….”
http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/t990803a.html

NOTE: You can't have informed consent AND forced vaccination.
ALL VACCINES CARRY RISK.

"In addition, post-marketing STUDIES of a SPECIFIC vaccine are REQUIRED by FDA in order to obtain additional SAFETY or other data."

Here is what coauthor and WHISTLEBLOWER Dr. William Thompson had to say about one of these studies:

"“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-…

NOTE: NOTHING has been done to investigate this. Thompson has not testified. He sent an estimated 100,000 pages of related CDC documents to Congressman Bill Posey on Sept. 8, 2014. No statement has been made to the public regarding this and the documents have not been made available to the public. Call the House Space, Science, and Technology Committee and demand to know what is in them so you can have informed consent regarding any future vaccinations.

#42 CORRECTION. Google the following:
WHO "Global Manual on Surveillance of Adverse Events Following Immunization"
Click on the one with PDF file at top

Oregon anti-vaxxers:

Take a tip from Angelina Jolie :
Tell them you won't vaccinate until ALL children have "safe" vaccines....
http://www.morganverkamp.com/august-27-2014-press-release-statement-of-…

And don't forget,
NEVER FORGET!
MISSISSIPPI 99.7 % vaccination coverage
http://www.msdh.state.ms.us/msdhsite/_static/23,15969,341.html

MISSISSIPPI 38% African-American population
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_sp…

MISSISSIPPI 1 in 88- AUTISM rate. A 563% RISE in the number of public school children with autism in the past 11 years.
http://www.dmh.ms.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/2013-MAAC-Report-Final…

@ #34 Dangerous Bacon

"while inviting any non-fraudulent antivax proponent with scientific credentials and published research respected in the medical community to testify."

As opposed to pro-vax scientists who said things like this IN 1966?

"All of this has now changed. With the isolation of the measles virus
and extensive field testing of several potent and effective vaccines, the tools are at hand to eradicate the infection.With the general application of these tools during the coming months, eradication can be achieved in this country in the year 1967."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1919891/pdf/pubhealthrepori…

REALLY?

Dear Toto:

Thorsen is working in Denmark. He's not under arrest, and he won't be getting extradited to the US anytime soon. Also, charges against him in Denmark were dismissed.

Currently Dr. Thorsen (and he is still a Doctor - unlike Wakefield, his license to practice medicine hasn't been stripped) is I believe working as a GYN either in Odense or somewhere on Jutland.

@Darwy: I don't think I knew about Thorsen's charges being dismissed in Denmark. Do you have a link please?

Thanks,

Becky.

#46 Thanks for the update Darwy!
Mr. Thorsen is still very much WANTED in Atlanta, Georgia.
The Grand Jury charges have NOT been dropped. Thorsen's DeKalb County house: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2657-Briarlake-Rd-NE-Atlanta-GA-30345… (notice that the 2006 sell date matches the itemized Grand Jury count), cars, and motorcycle have not yet been sold to REPAY the CDC and the citizens of Georgia: The U.S. can put DIPLOMATIC pressure on this case. Thorsen's CDC reports, paid for by U.S. taxpayers, were used to "defend" vaccine safety. http://www.rescuepost.com/files/thorsen-indictment.pdf
His protocols have been formally questioned. Between his unresolved alleged criminal activity and the admitted scientific fraud of CDC senior scientist, William Thompson, and the SUPRESSION of his released estimated 100,000 pages of CDC documents, IT IS NO WONDER THAT CITIZENS QUESTION VACCINE SAFETY!

Brian Deer: We need you do an investigative report on Poul Thorsen.
WE ARE TIRED OF WAKEFIELD! WE ARE TIRED OF CDC CORRUPTION!

@Brian Deer
Perhaps this will get you in the mood to visit Denmark....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFkvF5tx_kg

@Toto

Atlanta can WANT Thorsen all it wants. He's not going to be extradited. So, no matter how much you harp on him, he's not going anywhere.

@Becky Sure.

http://www.bt.dk/danmark/danske-poul-er-most-wanted-i-usa-her-gemmer-ha…

@Becky

Apparently they've brought new charges against him - forgery.

It's not double jeopardy (not that that exists in DK anyhow), but I doubt these charges will go any further, it's been nearly 3 years.

Ah, Toto's found a new thread to run up and down with his underpants on his head. It is a harmless outlet.

...and I have to mention, should Brian Deer come to Copenhagen, I'd be more than happy to give him the 10dkk tour.

"Here we have Statens Serum Institute, Panum Institute..."

Beer included.

@Darwy
So, is his house just going to sit there until it falls down?
Why would an innocent man FLEE THE COUNTRY?
Is any one living in the Atlanta house?
Regardless, HIS REPUTATION IS RUINED.

@Toto

"Flee the country"

Oh, you mean he WENT HOME. That's what people do after they've been on a trip. THEY GO HOME.

I would agree his reputation as a researcher is ruined. That's why he pursued other qualifications, and is now employed with them.

Toto,

The argument you are making seems to be:

Wakefield is a fraud. He is anti-vaccine.
Thorson is a crook. He is pro vaccine.

Therefore..........?

What exactly is your argument?

"Statens Serum Institute"
Looks like the Danish version of the CDC. Is the "good old boys" club surrounding the wagons? U.S. citizens take note!

Interestingly, Denmark is now IPV. Doesn't that conflict with countries using OPV?

Well, NO MORE DANISH COOKIES or Hans Christian Anderson stories for me! And I won't be visiting the very Little Mermaid until it gets below freezing in a very warm place.

DARWY: "Hey Brian! Here's D'Beer!"
I AM SURE THAT HE WOULD NEVER SUCCUMB TO SUCH A CHEAP SHOT.

@Darwy

Excuse me? Our Federal government has listed him as a "fugitive" and put him on a MOST WANTED LIST because he unlawfully left the country (fled) in order to avoid facing trial for the GRAND JURY INDICTMENTS. This is serious stuff.
ANTI-VAXXERS, PLEASE TAKE NOT OF THIS PERSON'S CALLOUS DISREGARD FOR OUR LAWS. WOULD YOU ENTRUST THE SAFETY OF YOUR CHILD WITH SOMEONE SUCH AS HIM??????

"The argument you are making seems to be:
Wakefield is a fraud"

Nope. I know nothing of the case. I AM JUST SICK OF HEARING HIS NAME, WHEN IT IS TOTALLY IRRELEVANT.
If you have a scientific reason to invoke the name "Wakefield", then please follow it with a well reasoned CITED (link) statement.
Your faux "neurolinguistic propaganda" has fallen flat.

THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN
THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN.

Sadmar: We’re way past ‘proving vaccines cause autism’. Vaccines cause everything, because the parents say so. And it doesn’t matter if they’re wrong. They’ve got rights, and it’s none of Big Guvment’s business!.

And this is why no amount of facts will work, even if the parents hadn't slept through high school biology. Taking vaccines away for a few years in places like Marin or instituting a two or three tier system in the doctor's office is much more likely to work. Like for instance, if the family doesn't vaccinate, they have to wait in the waiting room with no toys, or the doctor makes sure to praise other families in their presence.

<\killfile>

If you have a scientific reason to invoke the name “Wakefield”, then please follow it with a well reasoned CITED (link) statement.
Your faux “neurolinguistic propaganda” has fallen flat.

THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN
THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN.

Heh.

I just love the idea that we have a commenter who has given themselves the nickname of a professional wrestler.

It's ok, Toto, I smelll what "The Rock" is cooking.

a-non: I hope Dwayne Johnson sues Toto for slander. Actually, from what I hear, he's intelligent, whereas Toto would lose a game of chess to a mass of algae.

SSI is more or less the Danish counterpart to the CDC, with a few notable distinctions - it does fall directly under the auspices of the Ministry of Health, it is the producer for all the vaccines used on the Danish vaccine schedule, and has an excellent record of research publications and opportunities for PhD scholarships.

As far as Thorsen, he's practicing medicine. That's what doctors do. Unless they've had their license revoked.

Toto, Wakefield is being discussed because, as per the OP, he was invited by some berks to testify to the Oregon legislature...

By the way, you (and anyone else) do realise how difficult it is to actually get struck off by the GMC over here, don't you? You really do have to try hard and screw up most royally. And to be removed from (so I am informed by someone in a position to know) from fellowship of a Royal College...

It is not coincidental that Wakefield hightailed it out of here, as his name is now officially "The disgraced former doctor" Wakefield.

Just wanted to share this with anyone in need of some comic relief - one of the featured videos on YouTube today is a Jimmy Kimmel Live segment: A Message for the Anti-Vaccine Movement.

Hooray for Jimmy Kimmel...and for Sarah A... for providing that videotape.

Praise Jimmy Kimmel - that was beautiful.

http://tinyurl.com/no65ams (w. links to video)
"Freshman congressman Barry Loudermilk, (R - GA) hosted his first town hall meeting last week. On vaccines, he told the crowd:

I believe it’s the parents’ decision whether to immunize or not. – most of our children, we didn’t immunize. They’re healthy. Of course, home schooling, we didn’t have to get the mandatory immunization.

He was responding to a question about whether there's been a cover-up in certain studies about the link between autism and the MMR vaccine. He continued:

The Committees on Energy and Commerce and Government Oversight are already looking into this issue, and we’ve been assured they will continue to investigate the matter fully. We look forward to hearing the findings of both committees.

Loudermilk was recently named to the Science, Space and Technology Committee.

Toto, Wakefield is being discussed because, as per the OP, he was invited by some berks to testify to the Oregon legislature…

You're failing to grasp that Tutu doesn't actually read the posts; all comment threads, by definition, are about Tutu.

@Darwy - thanks for the info. Much appreciated. :-)

I note how Handley miscalculates the number of vaccines given "before" the age of 6 years again, arriving at a total of 37 when some are given only at 6 years (not before) and some can be combined.
He also tells blatant lies about the vaccine schedules for other countries. For example:
Norway is 15 (not 13)
Iceland is 16 (not 11)
Sweden is 15 (not 11)
Denmark is 16 (not 14)
Japan has 21 (not 11)

If he has such a great scientific case against vaccines, why does he need to lie?

Handley also lies about the combination vaccines - he says Merck states that: "Routine administration of DTP and/or oral polio vaccine is not recommended because there is limited data on the simultaneous administration of these vaccines."

Huh?
Is he trying to kid them that we are still back in the 1980s, when we used to give OPV and DTP vaccines? Neither of these is in current use routinely, so why does he even mention them?

...he says Merck states that: “Routine administration of DTP and/or oral polio vaccine is not recommended because there is limited data on the simultaneous administration of these vaccines.”

Strange that neither Handley nor any of the antivaxers reading this seem to draw the obvious inference: that, contrary to what they repeatedly claim, the effects of giving multiple vaccines together are studied and recommendations are based on the outcomes of those studies. To hear them talk you'd think the pediatric vaccine schedule was decided by throwing darts.

To hear them talk you’d think the pediatric vaccine schedule was decided by throwing darts.

I believe that that's what they think.

Narad #70: Ooooops, silly me! ;)

I am highly amused (but not surprised) that the Oregon chiropractors wanted Wakefield to pontificate at the committee. After all chiropractors still hold to a set of ideas that have been surpassed by at least a century. Nothing like living in the past where Andrew Wakefield appeared to be relevant.

Of course Wakefield has no compunction to prostitute himself to whomever will pay the food and drink bills.

Poor, poor pitiful Andy (Wakefield) dissed yet again.

Italian appeal court throws out case alleging that MMR caused autism, denounces Wakefield's work as junk.

http://www.repubblica.it/salute/medicina/2015/03/01/news/autismo_i_giud…

Lots online. Easy for translation. Keywords vaccini rimini

Poor, poor pitiful Mary Holland.

Then again, the whole "analysis" is hopelessly confused anyway:

As in the Milan case, the Ministry of Health’s compensation program had denied compensation to the family, yet after a presentation of medical evidence, a court granted compensation.

No, the question was who had to pay for the compensation. The disability was on the state's tab one way or the other.

How do we reconcile the difference between the U.S. and Italian decisions in similar cases? What’s different about Italy? Well, there may be many differences, but a critical one is that in the U.S., if someone loses in the government vaccine injury compensation program, she cannot sue the government in civil court; she can sue only the manufacturer.

What the hell do you think the Court of Federal Claims is?

^ At least, that's how I remember the Rimini decision.

Reality @ 24;
Calling Andy Wakefield as your expert witness on vaccination policy is akin to calling Bernie Madoff as your expert witness on financial investments.

In fairness that is the same argument 'psychics' et al. use when refusing to be tested by James Randi.
I'd rather have Madoff point out a ponzi scheme than someone from, oh I don't know, let's say HSBC.
But I take your point.

Apologies I forgot the quotation marks in my first paragraph..

So glad I can read Italian a bit.

Just came through on Skeptical Raptor's blog. Our resident law school professor is "on it"...

http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/italian-mmr-auti…

Well, lovely comments here but this got me: I’m actually shocked that J.B. Handley was allowed to testify. This is someone who has no scientific credentials to speak of and has often been laughably wrong about vaccines, And that doesn’t even get into his very public bullying (including threats of legal action) against anyone who disagrees with him.

How will you allow someone w/out a background in health to testify or give health related ideas?

Steve of: http://groomiest.com

I'd post this in the laughing, yawning hyena thread, but Orac has shut it down without a single response, unable to defend his weak position about biological plausibility, even in his impudent style:

VACCINE INJURY: First the Gut, Then the Brain
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/vaccine-injury-first-gut-then-brain?pa…

Meanwhile, you're all behaving as if vaccine injury doesn't exist while the industry does absolutely nothing to improve safety.

The above post could only have been written by someone suffering from either a severe reading comprehension problem or a terminal case of confirmation bias.

Keith Bell writes at Green Med Info.

shay: "The above post could only have been written by someone suffering from either a severe reading comprehension problem..."

Seriously. I don't think there has ever been an article without any comments in the years I have been reading this blog.

Keith Bell writes at Green Med Info.

And apparently doesn't get enough attention, which is why he's taken to spamvertising his dreck here (also Nos. 219, 510, 529, and 537).

He seems to really dislike being ignored, as one can see again here:

I’d post this in the laughing, yawning hyena thread, but Orac has shut it down without a single response, unable to defend his weak position about biological plausibility

Note that it didn't, say, automatically close after three months, it was "shut down" out of cowardice in the face of KEITHBELL.

Time to update the killfile.

What thread is he even talking about? The only thing I can think of is it's a thread that's more than 90 days old. Threads auto-close at 90 days because rarely are there any good comments after that length of time, just spam.

Meanwhile, you’re all behaving as if vaccine injury doesn’t exist while the industry does absolutely nothing to improve safety.

No one is do this, however. what we are doing is we're noting (accurately) that the adverse consequences causaly associated with vaccination are well understood; that those which are common (e.g., soreness at the site of injection, low grade fever) being both minor and transient and those that are serious (e.g., encephalopathy) all but vanishingly rare.

it's also false to claim that the industry is doing nothing to improve safety: wherever safety concerns associated with a vaccine safety have been deminstrated the industry has rapidly taken corrective action, up to and including withdrawing the product from the market (as was done with respect to RotaShield).

By "without a single response", Keith presumably means the umpteen responses in the laughing, yawning hyena thread in which his GreenMedInfo fomites were refuted, and attention was called to his well-rounded ignorance on an impressive range of topics.

Here's another vaccine safety article for anyone interested in safety which is very few of you, if any:
http://www.gutmicrobiotaforhealth.com/gut-microbiota-infant-vaccine-pro…

Good to know posts are closed after 90 days. This is the heinous Orac post I referred to; no response from Orac while Narad had nary a thing to add:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/10/01/antivaccine-cranks-try-to-…

You might regain some lost customers if you concentrated on safety.

@keith

Thanks for the laughs at your ignorance and lack of reading comprehension. I did need a good laugh, and you seem like the perfect fool for a good chuckle.

Please keep on posting, show the world your complete lack of basic scientific knowledge, and we all could use a laugh at your expense.

shay
The above post could only have been written by someone suffering from either a severe reading comprehension problem or a terminal case of confirmation bias.

Denice Walter
Keith Bell writes at Green Med Info.

You two should be in vaudeville.

Keith should be careful. If he annoys me enough, I might just start blogging about some of his spew over at GreenMedInfo. :-)

no response from Orac while Narad had nary a thing to add

Didn't they tell you? 'Narad' is just another of Orac's noms-de-guerre. In fact we all are.
I had a nom-de-beurreonce, which I used for spamming on behalf of the NZ dairy industry.

I'd be honored, Orac. You of all people must realize there's no such thing as bad publicity. Have you done much research into the microbiome and cancer? Some cancer drugs fail without microbes and the same is true of vaccines:
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/21/three-cancer-drugs-d…

http://carcin.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/2/249.full

I'd be impressed if you demonstrated grasp of the constructs. Narad and one other from your gang were the only people demonstrating understanding while others like Skeptiquette went on and on like windbags without really understanding microbial predisposition. I'll admit, she was very sweet though . . . and helpful as opposed to novalox and bimler who are heavy on insolence, low on respect.

Looking forward to even an ounce of substantive response given the US government has already compensated vaccine-injured families $3 billion.

You two should be in vaudeville.

At least we'll never sink to the level of greenmedinfo.

hdb: "Keith presumably means the umpteen responses in the laughing, yawning hyena thread in which his GreenMedInfo fomites were refuted, and attention was called to his well-rounded ignorance on an impressive range of topics."

It seems he is upset that his claims did not elicit a reply by Orac. Though it is quite clear he does not understand the several dozen responses by others.

Though I would love to have him answer one question I had about the MMR vaccine: since it was first introduced in the USA in 1971 (with a slight change of rubella strain in 1978), surely he as documentation dated before 1990 that it caused all those terrible things in the USA during the 1970s and 1980s.

The USA is much larger and had been using it much longer before Wakefield was even aware it existed... so the effects would have been noticed much earlier if they were real.

Oh, and Mr. Bell, I want verifiable documentation dated before 1990... not an Age of Autism article by some financial dude. I can really see why you did not understand the responses if you think 2010 was before 1990.

Chris, how do you respond to the fact Merck quadrupled the amount of mumps virus used in the MMR in 1990 from 5,000 to 20,000 units? This resulted in a huge spike in autism cases.

Are you up to date with your vaccines, btw? I'd bet you need a few boosters, especially MMR. You're a carrier if I ever met one. Hopefully, your immune system reliant on flora balance can handle the vaccine challenge.

Mr. Bell: "Chris, how do you respond to the fact Merck quadrupled the amount of mumps virus used in the MMR in 1990 from 5,000 to 20,000 units? This resulted in a huge spike in autism cases"

Unless you provide some kind of verifiable documentation (not AoA or your website), we will assume you are just making it up. I am not even talking about the 1990s, I am asking about the years between 1971 and 1990. Do try to keep up.

Since I was born after 1956 and no one in my family remembers if I had measles (though I definitely had mumps, twice!) I got an MMR vaccine about a month ago. This was prompted because we are going to travel to California in a couple of months.

So I am not a carrier, and you still need to come up with actual verifiable documentation dated before 1990 that the issues you claim are caused by the MMR vaccine were there in the 1970s and 1980s.

I’d be impressed if you demonstrated grasp of the constructs.

And to what greater heights could anyone aspire, than to impress Keith Bell of GreenMedInfo?

On the contrary, you're definitely a carrier since you were recently vaccinated with MMR. How long do you plan on shedding? Any rashes?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Kp7oUvEYGQ

Thanks for the inspiration to research 1971 to 1990; I'll get back to you if I have any answers. One obvious concern is the difference in the overall protocol. Safe journey.

And, btw, being a carrier isn't such a bad thing if your immune system keeps the problem in check and you don't infect anyone vulnerable. Did you know 95% of all polio cases are asymptomatic? This means millions of people are carriers and don't even know it . . . so how can we improve natural immunity? There are lots of good ways not yet implemented. One is improved sanitation. Another is nutrition.

Mr. Price, why should we accept videos as evidence from Suzanne Humphries? She is only slightly more qualified than you, and that is not a very high bar.

Ooops, I meant "Mr. Bell."

Chris, how do you respond to the fact Merck quadrupled the amount of mumps virus used in the MMR in 1990 from 5,000 to 20,000 units? This resulted in a huge spike in autism cases.

Keith, your evidence factually establishing the existence of a causal association between the MMR vaccine and autism spectrum disorders would be...what, exactly? Be specific.

You do have some, right? Your claim is founded in something other than a post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy?

I know that Dorit Reiss is not paid to post.
Anyone else?
www.ageofautism.com/2013/12/not-paid-to-post-dorit-rubenstein-reiss-uc-…

You cited "Age of Autism"? Seriously Ken?
Also, are you a sockpuppet of Keith Bell?

Lower-case ken has been here much longer, and has a distinctive style of commenting. His revelations are more entertaining if you have the Dramatic Gopher playing in a background window while you read them.

ow do you respond to the fact Merck quadrupled the amount of mumps virus used in the MMR in 1990 from 5,000 to 20,000 units?

This 'fact' seems to have become an article of faith in anti-vax circles, passed from hand to hand in the manner of a well-sucked lollipop, and it would be foreign to its catechistic nature for them to load it down with sources. The nearest thing one can find to evidence is a known bullsh1t artist attributing the claim to "an informal conversation with a Merck scientist."

In some versions of the story. Merck are further accused of perfidiously reducing the number of mumps virions in Varimax, in 2007... but are they given any credit for reducing the incidence of autism?

Since MMR consists of live (attenuated) viruses there is no connection between the number of particles initially injected and the number of particles in one's body while the immune system does its thing, but there you go.

Did you know 95% of all polio cases are asymptomatic? This means millions of people are carriers and don’t even know it

I'm glad that I'm just now getting around to a machine that hasn't had the latest Plonk-O-Matic patch installed yet. This triple-decker failburger is delicious.

Mr. Bell seems to be playing the "thingy-card" - whereas the only people who are "infected" are those who get vaccinated.

Until I got interested in this topic, years ago, I never imagined that there were people as both stupid and crazy, as the likes of Keith Bell.

how do you respond to the fact Merck quadrupled the amount of mumps virus used in the MMR in 1990 from 5,000 to 20,000 units?

Hey, Keith – quick, what's the name for these units?

If Jake Crosby is to be believed, the units are numbers of virions. Each injection of Merck MMR contained precisely 5000 virus particles prior to 1990, and precisely 20,000 afterwards. They are measured out with a very small pipette.
http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2009/09/14/the-national-autism-associa…

However, the story had already passed through several digestive systems before it reached Crosby.

Did you know 95% of all polio cases are asymptomatic? This means millions of people are carriers and don’t even know it . . .

If this clumsy non sequitur is accurate, how is it that polio has been eliminated from India, going from 500-1,000 children being paralyzed every day in the early 90s to zero cases since 2011? It's almost as if Keith is spouting easily refuted nonsense, and there is no asymptomatic carrier state except in immune deficient persons.

Ah yes ken, the pharma shill gambit, a sure sign as of any that you have no coherent argument to speak of and admit that you cannot bring a barely cogent argument to the table.

#112 Mr Price. Chris you appear to be suffering from schizophrenic symptoms, possibly due to your recent MMR vaccination. Or, you've been doing a lot cooking using the Vincent Price cookbook for your husband, Narad, especially fond of the gnotobiotic pig dish. (Denice got a kick out of that re: this incestual group.)

Are you constipated? This leads to serotonin deficiency and glutamate excitotoxicity. Please don't sleep in the face-down prone position to avoid stimulation of the serotonergic sytstem by CO2 and cardiac arrest.
http://www.europeanneuropsychopharmacology.com/article/S0924-977X(14)00…
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163834313001898
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121003111503.htm
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/vaccine-injury-first-gut-then-brain?pa…

Kreb, great to read you. Narad, riotous (I love that guy).

"Up to 95% of all polio infections are inapparent or asymptomatic."
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/polio.pdf

Kreb, you're absurdly behaving as if polio has actually been eliminated in India. Who pulled the wool? Later we can talk about the thousands of people paralyzed by the polio vaccine, but for now you need to understand polio is alive and well, kept in check by intestinal mucosal cells working synergistically with microbes in a body near you. See here:
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/201/10/1535.long

Mr. Bell: "Chris you appear to be suffering from schizophrenic symptoms, possibly due to your recent MMR vaccination."

It was a typo because I was sitting down quickly while making dinner. And I am definitely not constipated, never have been due to a good diet and exercise.

Now, where is any real evidence that the MMR causes the issues you claims it does, and that documentation dated before 1990 that they happened in the 1970s and 1980s.

Oh, and as far as the mumps component in the MMR, there is the Table I in Increasing exposure to antibody-stimulating proteins and polysaccharides in vaccines is not associated with risk of autism.. The MMR only has 24 antigens per dose, so you better find out what Young Master Crosby means by "units."

Thanks for your response, Chris. Glad to hear you're not constipated and wish you the best in mental health. But the fact you've had mumps twice is concerning as it's associated with psychosis later in life. Instead of MMR to prepare for your trip to California, you might have considered boosting innate immunity with probiotic therapy, heavy on bifidobacteria along with things like organ meats for vitamin A. Vitamin D3 and especially zinc may be good supplements for you.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18056223
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3485564/#bb0055

Also, you may consider lowering carbs, dairy and intermittent fasting.

So much crazy packed into a single individual - I do hope Keith hangs around, he's fun to watch....like a slow-motion train wreck.

Chris -- do you really expect a straight answer? He's dodging faster than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

The MMR only has 24 antigens per dose, so you better find out what Young Master Crosby means by “units.”

I know exactly what it means. It's even been handed to you in the replies, but you don't seem to have been able to figure it out.

Yet you are the one who invoked the "fact."

Anyway, the "millions of polio carriers" bit was a knee-slapper, but you're not worth my not updating this box as well.

^ Ah, no coffee. Sorry, Chris.

Keith Bell #98:

"You might regain some lost customers if you concentrated on safety."

Interesting word use. Mr. Bell might be interested to know that unlike greenmedinfo, for example, this website doesn't have a store.

Yeah, shay, I don't expect much from Mr. Bell, a guy who thinks he can diagnose someone due to one typo. Narad, would you accept a diagnosis from Mr. Bell because you mixed up replies?

Especially since he lists actually getting a disease as a precursor to mental illness... but thinks kids would be better with the diseases than with the MMR vaccine. By the way, Brain Trust Bell, every kid got those infections before wide use of vaccines (and Sweden is one of those countries that had low vaccine uptake, see Impact of anti-vaccine movements on pertussis control: the untold story).

Keith,

Kreb, you’re absurdly behaving as if polio has actually been eliminated in India. Who pulled the wool?

It has, and if you believe otherwise you are the one who has had the wool pulled over your eyes. Do you believe that the 27,281 negative stool tests on patients with AFP in India last year were all faked?

Later we can talk about the thousands of people paralyzed by the polio vaccine,

Thousands? There were 35 cases of vaccine-derived polo globally last year, according to the WHO (see link above), not a single one in India. If you mean VAPP, it occurs after 1 in 2.7 million doses of OPV, and is the reason countries where polio has been eliminated move to the IPV.

but for now you need to understand polio is alive and well, kept in check by intestinal mucosal cells working synergistically with microbes in a body near you.

I'm curious, why do you think this asymptomatic infection fails to show up in stool samples? Why do you believe it exists?

See here:

I always enjoy it when antivaxxers present a study they have misunderstood that says the opposite of what they think it does. That study was carried out in 2003–2008, before polio was eliminated in India, on children who had been in contact with suspected polio cases. These were people with asymptomatic active infection, not carriers, and virus was only detected in their stools for a limited period. I very much doubt there are any bodies near me that have been in recent contact with polio sufferers. As the study makes clear, the OPV is somewhat effective at preventing gut infection with polio virus, but is much more effective at preventing the virus from causing paralysis.

#135 AFP is a serious problem -
www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/polio-free-does-not-mean-paralysis-free/a…

Highest NPAFP rate
"Government surveillance data show that while India is set to be tagged as polio-free, it has actually become the nation with the world’s highest rate of NPAFP incidence."
www.livemint.com/Politics/XS6vPor5jFX3vKkaE7Ri6H/India-to-get-poliofree…

@ken - I thought you weren't coming back?

Also, once you start looking for something, you're going to find a lot more of it.....and none of those cases were Polio.

Link-
www.livemint.com/Politics/XS6vPor5jFX3vKkaE7Ri6H/India-to-get-poliofree…

ken,

#135 AFP is a serious problem –

Of course it is. Do you have a point? Did you expect polio vaccination to eliminate other causes of AFP, like snake bites and car accidents? Other enteroviruses are another cause of AFP, which is why drug companies are working on vaccines to prevent them and antiviral drugs to treat them.

#138 Never said it was. You are certainly showing your lack of compassion. So if it's not polio it doesn't matter. That's what's wrong with the narrownwss, snarkiness of this blog. If it doesn't support your gospel it's irrelevant. Empathy impairment- how many Asberger's on this blog?

Narad please exercise your high IQ and search for grammar errors in #141 Thanks really relevant.

Jacob Puliyel, who compiled data from the national polio surveillance project, found a link between the increase in dosage of polio vaccination and the increasing cases of NPAFP.

That's very probably because the places where vaccine coverage is highest are also the areas where active surveillance is greatest.

“Most experts will tell you the cases of NPAFP have increased because of better surveillance. This is bunkum,” said Puliyel. “As per global benchmarks, as polio incidence comes down, the rate of NPAFP should also reduce. Instead, AFP cases have been increasing steadily.”

Why would he expect reducing polio incidence to reduce non-polio AFP? As I wrote above AFP can be caused by car accidents and snake bites, both of which as not uncommon in India, and by other enteroviruses. None of these are prevented by the polio vaccine.

Nice insult against people with Asbergers there ken, such a kind and considerate person.

Things that aren't Polio, aren't Polio - what's your point?

ken,

#138 Never said it was.

You rarely do, you just copy and paste stuff and expect us to divine what it is you think it shows. I can only base what I think you mean on your previous offerings here.

You are certainly showing your lack of compassion. So if it’s not polio it doesn’t matter.

How does me agreeing that AFP is a serious problem show a lack of compassion precisely?

That’s what’s wrong with the narrownwss, snarkiness of this blog. If it doesn’t support your gospel it’s irrelevant. Empathy impairment- how many Asberger’s on this blog?

What was your point in posting that link? The polio eradication program wins an astonishing victory by eliminating polio in India and all you can do is whine about non-polio AFP. Don't you have any compassion for the hundreds of thousands that were crippled by polio in India every year (I met several when I was in India in the late 80s), and the millions that will now have active healthy lives thanks to vaccination?

Kreb, re: asymptomatic polio in India:
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/210/suppl_1/S252.abstract

Why do you think up to 95% of all polio cases are asymptomatic? I think it's about protective gut flora balance. And it seems the same applies to why measles is lethal in some while mild in most.

I came here to share my new article about how the same mechanism may apply to vaccine injury and learn a few things in conversation. It's about vaccine safety, not elimination of vaccination.

Chris, I'm not diagnosing you in the least, don't take it personally. I was merely using you as way of describing how a gut injury leads to brain injury.

Vincent

Keith's "gut" describes how screwed up in the head he is.....

I came here to share my new article about how the same mechanism may apply to vaccine injury and learn a few things in conversation

No, no, you came here to whinge like a WATB about a lack of personal attention from the blogger, and to complain that the lack of fan-service was a kind of censorship. I've seen stuck pigs comport themselves with more dignity.

Mr. Bell: "Chris, I’m not diagnosing you in the least, don’t take it personally. I was merely using you as way of describing how a gut injury leads to brain injury. "

Thoroughly demonstrating you are completely clueless. Which was made abundantly clear when you refused to answer my questions on the other thread, but floundered about by changing the subject.

bimler, let's talk about your specialty: open defecation.

Over 43 million people in Pakistan practice open defecation. Do you really think polio is a vaccination issue?
http://www.dawn.com/news/1168181
http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-6-215001-Over-43-million-people-i…

Meanwhile, less than 2% of Gates Foundation budget goes toward improving sanitation, the lion's share toward vaccination.

@Keith - if everyone is vaccinated for Polio, then yes, it isn't a problem, is it?

Are you really that stupid by nature, or did you get a degree in it?

Let's see - vaccination will prevent the spread of disease quickly and inexpensively in the absence of work on sanitation. Improved sanitation will reduce the spread of some diseases, but will take decades to implement and cost significantly more. And not do anything about diseases that aren't spread by tainted water.

I'm a big fan of providing people safe water and properly treating their wastes. I think much more effort should go to that in those countries that don't have safe water and sanitary sewers. But vaccines for water-borne diseases is a quicker win.

BTW - see http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Development/Reinvent-t… if you want more information on the Gates initiatives on human waste disposal.

bimler, let’s talk about your specialty

Let's not. Why shift to an entirely new topic, when earlier you stated as a fact that "Merck quadrupled the amount of mumps virus used in the MMR in 1990 from 5,000 to 20,000 units"?
You have been invited to buttress that claim with evidence. I hope you're not running away from it.

He’s dodging faster than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
I would have said "dodging faster than a blindfolded clown in a room full of rakes", but Shay's version is also good.

My apologies Kreb-
Another article on AFP which clarifies some points. www.decodedscience.com/enterovirus-update-whats-new-californias-polio-l…

@ken - again, what does that have to do with Polio, which is almost eradicated & we have a vaccine for?

#156 It's Science- not myriad snarky comments.

It’s Science- not myriad snarky comments.

I have read enough and written enough critical reviews to break down Science roughly as follows:
Inspiration: 5%
Lab work: 10%
Writing grant applications: 15%
Writing manuscripts: 10%
Hanging out at conferences: 10%
Snarky comments about other scientists: 50%.

Actually, it is science. Please provide your proof that something that is not Polio is actually Polio.

hdb: "Let’s not. Why shift to an entirely new topic, ..."

Notice how Bell said: "bimler, let’s talk about your specialty:.." to get off the topic, right after my observation of "...but floundered about by changing the subject."

#159 If you had read the article you would not have made such a dumb remark. Something that is not polio is not polio according to the article which has examined the AFP cases in CA. Some people were concerned about this having a possible relationship to the polio vaccine.

Keith Bell,

Why do you think up to 95% of all polio cases are asymptomatic?

Only about 1% of cases lead to paralytic polio because only in 1% of cases does the virus get into the nervous system. In the other 99% of cases it leads to mild influenza-like symptoms at most. As for why that 1% ends up paralyzed, it appears to be down to chance whether or not the virus makes it into the nervous system.

I think it’s about protective gut flora balance.

What makes you think that?

And it seems the same applies to why measles is lethal in some while mild in most.

Do you any particular reason to believe this? Measles is most dangerous in the very young and in adults. Why would these groups be more likely to have gut dysbiosis?

Over 43 million people in Pakistan practice open defecation. Do you really think polio is a vaccination issue?

Even more people practice open defecation in India (I could tell some tales) yet they haven't had a case of polio for 4 years. So, yes, polio is definitely a vaccination issue.

Another article on AFP which clarifies some points.

Like I wrote above, "AFP can be caused by [...] other enteroviruses. Polio was the low-hanging fruit, now we need vaccines or effective treatments for the higher hanging fruit like enterovirus 68.

but for now you need to understand polio is alive and well, kept in check by intestinal mucosal cells working synergistically with microbes in a body near you.

I’m curious, why do you think this asymptomatic infection fails to show up in stool samples? Why do you believe it exists?

The great thing about this is that if Keith weren't so dense, he could have at least reasonably attempted to make a case for invisible persistence in the environment. Not anyplace where OPV is used, mind you, but still.

If IPV induced no mucosal immunity at all,* the virus could simply run its course in the gut** without the infection's being noticed. This isn't an unreasonable concern, and it would require wastewater surveillance in places like, y'know, the U.S..

IPV, however, looks to boost mucosal immunity, preserving the viability a ring strategy – still with wastewater monitoring, I'd say – PMID 19624278 notwithstanding.***

* I've brought all this up before; it was Vincent Racaniello's blog at virology[.]ws that clued me in, but in the names of link parsimony and laziness, I'm just going to fly by the seat of my pants.
** No, it doesn't shack up and get manicured by optimally tuned intestinal flora – and really, this could some sort of specific analogy, e.g., athlete (see Ewry, Ray)? musician? compost pile? Spencer Tunick group photo? – like some sort of goat-feeding operation involving a sod roof.
*** The related articles on this item look quite interesting. Only part of the Philosophical Transactions issue is open-access: h_tp://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/368/1623.toc

^ "viability of"

Yeah, shay, I don’t expect much from Mr. Bell, a guy who thinks he can diagnose someone due to one typo. Narad, would you accept a diagnosis from Mr. Bell because you mixed up replies?

Oh, that's a go-to trip for Keith. Recycling runs deep.

Narad, you’re invited for dinner. We can talk all about the gut-connection. Know anything about photosensitive seizure? And since it appears you weren’t breastfed, we’ll have something with plenty of GOS to feed your reduced or absent bifidobacteria. GOS is a prebiotic, btw.

Meanwhile, less than 2% of Gates Foundation budget goes toward improving sanitation, the lion’s share toward vaccination.

They spent $338,010 on vaccine delivery and $21,760 on vaccine development in 2013,

They had total expenditures of almost $3 million on global health and development for that year,

So the $359,770 for vaccines wasn't the lion's share of it. By any definition.

Jerusalem artichokes are packed full of prebiotics, mostly inulin. This is how I discovered that 'prebiotic' is altmed code for 'flatulence-inducing'. If you are doubled up with abdominal cramps from gas, you know your microbiome is on good shape, apparently. A horrible memory of making fermented cabbage just surfaced, shudder...

Narad: "Recycling runs deep."

Well, Keith is very good at recycling bovine excrement.

@#161 --

I read the article. And I not only didn't see word one about some people being concerned that it had a possible relationship to the polio vaccine. I didn't see word one about any people being concerned that it had a possible relationship to the polio vaccine.

Please elucidate.

They spent $338,010 on vaccine delivery and $21,760 on vaccine development in 2013,

They had total expenditures of almost $3 million on global health and development for that year,

So the $359,770 for vaccines wasn’t the lion’s share of it. By any definition.

Yeah, I mindlessly copied those figures from the website without thinking about anything besides what was or wasn't a lion's share of the total, proportionally speaking.

So I didn't notice that they were way too low. Which they are, because (as they plainly state):

The amounts are in thousands of US dollars.

So add a few zeros.

They have an insane amount of money, I must say.

Jerusalem artichokes are packed full of prebiotics, mostly inulin.

As good as the Steinerite CCA that I subscribed to was in prime season, the massive filler loads of these things in autumn figured heavily into my decision to abandon the project.

They have an insane amount of money, I must say.

<a href="http://corruptico.com/2014/09/30/jewish-bill-gates-crypto-jew-pseudo-ch….

^ Feh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDjCqjzbvJY

So far, it appears no one is interested in the gut-brain mechanism of vaccine injury I describe in my new article. And I doubt Orac will be brave enough to approach the subject, no matter how annoyed.

So now the conversation is reduced to gut flora mechanism in polio; a fine subject. Kreb, I linked you the CDC page above about 95% of polio cases being asymptomatic, surprisingly not common knowledge.

Here's some new knowledge and some old:
http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/journal/v12/n3/full/nrmicro3219.html
http://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/abstract/S1931-3128(13)00437-X?in…
1951 insights:
http://www.mercola.com/article/sugar/polio_sugar.htm

ann, thanks for researching, but $3 million falls out of Bill Gates' nose every hour. Dig deeper and factor BMGF working in concert with major pharmaceuticals. Vaccination dwarfs sanitation.

Chris, I still love you and don't believe you're actually schizophrenic. Narad, open invitation. I meant to say "gut-brain connection". Kreb, your reaction to inulin may actually be a sign of dysbiosis which may also explain your decade of giardia.

Here's one of the 2014 study references from 2011:
"Intestinal microbiota promote enteric virus replication and systemic pathogenesis"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222156/
"We found that poliovirus binds lipopolysaccharide, and exposure of poliovirus to bacteria enhanced host-cell association and infection."

So, it appears an imbalanced gut high in Proteobacteria and Bacteroides, gram-negative LPS-producers overgrown from a high sugar diet and/or toxic environment reducing gram- positive lactic acid bacteria (Bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus), make one more prone to polio symptoms.

I'd bet the same is true of measles. In the unfortunate loss of Roald Dahl's young daughter to measles, it's worth considering what kind of diet she was raised on given her father did more to promote sugar consumption than any person in the history of art and literature. What should have been a mild childhood disease became lethal.

blockquote>In the unfortunate loss of Roald Dahl’s young daughter to measles, it’s worth considering what kind of diet she was raised on given her father did more to promote sugar consumption than any person in the history of art and literature. What should have been a mild childhood disease became lethal.

What a loathsome asshole you are.

Here's Kevin Bell last October, having announced that Einstein's autism was the subject he wanted to talk about, reacting to the skepticism of more knowledgeable people by changing the subject to something completely different:

Plenty of evidence Einstein was autistic. And did you know about John Nash self-medicating as a child?

Is there any argument he hasn't run away from?

ann, thanks for researching, but $3 million falls out of Bill Gates’ nose every hour. Dig deeper and factor BMGF working in concert with major pharmaceuticals. Vaccination dwarfs sanitation.

You're welcome.

I was in error. They spent $3.6 billion in 2013, not $3.6 million.

If you want any digging done that's deeper than their almost 1,000-page Form 990, I'm afraid you'll have to do it yourself.

But FYI: Their investment in pharmaceuticals is dwarfed by their investments in energy, technology, and a number of other industries.

Seriously. There's just no way to read their financials as reflecting a hand-in-glove, related-party-type collaboration with drug companies. They don't have one.

However. If you think it would be more globally philanthropic to put more money into sanitation than into vaccines, you're free to start your own $40 billion private foundation.

That's how liberty works.

Keith Bell,

So far, it appears no one is interested in the gut-brain mechanism of vaccine injury I describe pull out of my ass in my new article.

FTFY

And I doubt Orac will be brave enough to approach the subject, no matter how annoyed.

I doubt it's keeping him awake at night.

So now the conversation is reduced to gut flora mechanism in polio; a fine subject. Kreb, I linked you the CDC page above about 95% of polio cases being asymptomatic, surprisingly not common knowledge.

What makes you think that? It has been discussed here many times before. A person with asymptomatic polio will clear the disease and is not a carrier, as you claim. The CDC page you linked to clearly states this:

There is no asymptomatic carrier state except in immune deficient persons.

I suppose the CDC is a reliable source of information only when it supports your mistaken ideas. This asymptomatic carrier state is very rare even in immune deficient people so your claim that "millions of people are carriers and don’t even know it" is wrong.

Here’s some new knowledge and some old: [snip] 1951 insights:

I can see how a pathogenic gut infection might increase the chances of polio virus invading the nervous system, but the studies you cited don't appear to support your claims. Immune deficient mice with their gut bacteria reduced a million-fold by antibiotic treatment are less susceptible to polio than those not treated with antibiotics:

Despite the well-known beneficial effects of intestinal microbes, we discovered that they augment enteric virus pathogenesis by enhancing viral replication.

This supports your claims how? Benjamin P. Sandler was crank who has his own pages on whale.to and whose theories about polio being caused by sugar were discredited decades ago - he claimed that the increase in polio cases in the summer was because children consumed more sugary sodas and ice cream then.

Kreb, your reaction to inulin may actually be a sign of dysbiosis which may also explain your decade of giardia.

Given my excellent GI health before I contracted giardia and after successful treatment with an anti-protozoal drug (over 15 years ago now), I somewhat doubt that. I love the way any altmed treatment is working if it makes you feel better and if it makes you feel worse that means it's working too.

@#172/#173

I didn't mean anything nearly so ZOG.

I was really just thinking that they must have a little bit of a hard time coming up with enough worthy endeavors to meet the 5% minimum requirement some years.

That's a lot of money.

This 2014 paper states 2.4% of healthy people were shedding wild poliovirus in their stool. You don't have to be immune compromised to be a carrier.
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/210/suppl_1/S252.abstract

The sugar in question is a component of the cell wall of microbes where viruses have a preference for certain microbes. In fact, viral infection is known to temporarily improve the ASD condition.

Kreb, you're not factoring microbial predisposition and how people are different in this way. It makes perfect sense antibiotics would lead to reduced chance of polio infection.

There are over 1.25 billion people in India with plenty of healthy people shedding polio.
http://globalhealth.thelancet.com/2014/03/19/taps-and-toilets-essential…

"Since 2000, the Gates Foundation has committed a total of more than $4 billion to GAVI."
http://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/gates-foundation-pledges-1.55-bi…

In contrast, their paltry, unviable Reinvent the Toilet campaign is a publicity stunt hiding their true agenda. But they have made the issue somewhat of a priority, however backward, educated the public and also doing some great work in fecal sludge removal/management.

Unfortunately, Bill Gates is still promoting the mixing of human waste with water:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2015/01/10/janicki-omniprocess…

Keith Bell,

This 2014 paper states 2.4% of healthy people were shedding wild poliovirus in their stool. You don’t have to be immune compromised to be a carrier.

This was in India before polio was eliminated and the title is 'Prevalence of Asymptomatic Poliovirus Infection in Older Children and Adults in Northern India'. These are "healthy contacts of case patients with polio" i.e. people with asymptomatic infections, not carriers.

Kreb, you’re not factoring microbial predisposition and how people are different in this way. It makes perfect sense antibiotics would lead to reduced chance of polio infection.

So antibiotic use leads to gut dysbiosis except when it doesn't?

There are over 1.25 billion people in India with plenty of healthy people shedding polio.

That article says no such thing. It says India had been polio free since 2011. How can people be contacts of case patients with polio if there are no cases of polio?

What a loathsome asshοle you are.

Oh, G-d, I can't resist looking.

Here’s one of the 2014 study references from 2011: ...
“We found that poliovirus binds lipopolysaccharide, and exposure of poliovirus to bacteria enhanced host-cell association and infection.”

One might note the preceding sentence:

"Exposure to bacteria or their N-acetylglucosamine-containing surface polysaccharides, including lipopolysaccharide and peptidoglycan, enhanced poliovirus infectivity."

So, it appears an imbalanced gut high in Proteobacteria and Bacteroides, gram-negative LPS-producers overgrown from a high sugar diet and/or toxic environment reducing gram- positive lactic acid bacteria (Bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus), make one more prone to polio symptoms.

Didn't look too closely at Figure 4, did you? (Guess who makes 10 times as much PG.)

Hey, I wonder whether Kuss et al. have been cited by anybody.

"We determined that exposure to bacteria increased infectivity of poliovirus virions. After exposure to Gram-positive or Gram-negative bacteria, we recovered up to 5-fold more plaque forming units (PFU) than we started with. Since only ~1 of every 200 picornavirus particles are infectious, these data suggest that exposure to bacteria 'resurrects' infectivity for some particles, reducing the particle:PFU ratio.... [V]iral stabilization required an acetylated GlcNAc-containing polysaccharide longer than 6 units."

One more to come.

I’d bet the same is true of measles.

Because, of course, measles is actually transmitted by the fecal-oral route.

In the unfortunate loss of Roald Dahl’s young daughter to measles, it’s worth considering what kind of diet she was raised on given her father did more to promote sugar consumption than any person in the history of art and literature.

I'm sure Keith Bellend's elaboration of the basis for this will be fascinating.

What should have been a mild childhood disease became lethal.

Hey, Keith, what's your mailing address?

So far, it appears no one is interested in the gut-brain mechanism of vaccine injury I describe in my new article.

Dawn breaks over Marblehead.

Keith:

In the unfortunate loss of Roald Dahl’s young daughter to measles, it’s worth considering what kind of diet she was raised on given her father did more to promote sugar consumption than any person in the history of art and literature.

How did Roald Dahl "promote sugar consumption"?
You are a noxious, poisonous, hateful, vile individual.
GFY, FOADIAF and then GTH.

Julian Frost: "How did Roald Dahl “promote sugar consumption”?"

Apparently by writing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Which if you read his one of his autobiographies was inspired by his boarding school being near Cadbury's, which tested new treats on the students.

And if Bell had bothered to actually learn about Roald Dahl, he would know that he was an avid vegetable gardener:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/6156852/Roald-Dahls-garden-reveale…

After his daughter's death he created a special memorial garden for her.

OTOH, "George's Marvellous Medicine" was clearly written to promote alt-health and probiotic supplements.

You know, I am really glad that Mr Dahl is dead so he can't see the absolutely loathsome comment by Keith. Or, alternatively, I wish he were still alive so he could punch Keith in the face for that comment. If I ever had any interest in reading what Keith wrote (which I don't), it would have been completely destroyed by that comment.

OTOH, “George’s Marvellous Medicine” was clearly written to promote alt-health and probiotic supplements.

And James and the Giant Peach of course, is a paean to an all-raw vegan diet.

I guess composers and lyricists don't figure into "art and literature."

Since 2000, the Gates Foundation has committed a total of more than $4 billion to GAVI.”
http://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/gates-foundation-pledges-1.55-bi…

In contrast, their paltry, unviable Reinvent the Toilet campaign is a publicity stunt hiding their true agenda.

Well.

OBVIOUSLY, if you compare 14 years of spending to one, relatively recent campaign, the former will be larger.

In fact, they do spend more on vaccines than on water/hygiene/sanitation.

But the amount they spend on vaccines is (ahem) dwarfed by the amount they spend on other things.

If we're talking about spending since 2000 (minus the grants to GAVI) that sum would be approximately $29 billion.

I mean, Keith Bell.

Are you suggesting that they sit around at the Gates Foundation, saying to themselves:

"Hey, I know! Let's spend $29 billion on stuff we don't care about at all -- such as agricultural development and HIV/AIDS treatment and scholarships -- in order to disguise our true agenda, vaccines!"

That doesn't make much sense.

In fact, they do spend more on vaccines than on water/hygiene/sanitation.

In this context, it is worth recalling how Bellend began his recent, dismally failed, dalliance with poliovirus:

This means millions of people are carriers and don’t even know it . . . so how can we improve natural immunity? There are lots of good ways not yet implemented. One is improved sanitation.

It is a testament to his idiocy that he fails to realize that it was precisely the improvement of sanitation that led to the creation of ever-worsening epidemics of poliomyelitis in the U.S. in the first place. Yet, if one were to accept his (risible) premise of endemic, occult circulation, this is exactly what his proposal would encourage.

@Julian Frost

Well what else would you expect from someone so morally challenged and intellectually deficient as keith?

You think you won't be surprised at how low the depths anti-vax posters will go but but they always seem to impress how far they'll dig themselves under.

I'm not surprised by the cowardice of this group (given its blog owner), unable to discuss the mechanism behind a young girl's death by measles for sake of future generations.

The mechanism as described and cited is strongly associated with sugar. The candy man, Dahl, also wrote "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar" but Willie Wonka is a classic. Didn't know he was a vegetable gardener. Do you think it's possible he condoned a high sugar diet, skewing flora balance? This would make a child more vulnerable to viral infection.

@keith

Again, thanks for proving my point, that you are an reprehensible individual and glory in the utterly preventable death of a young girl.

You are your ilk deserve all of the scorn and disgust you deserve.

@ ann

“Hey, I know! Let’s spend $29 billion on stuff we don’t care about at all — such as agricultural development and HIV/AIDS treatment and scholarships — in order to disguise our true agenda, vaccines!”

I met a scientist who was working on agriculture sustainability; Because he got negative results with his preliminary studies, he was afraid of not being funded and let pass the deadline for applying to the BMGF.

He was contacted by a representative of the Foundation and encouraged to re-apply anyway, even if the deadline was passed. Last I heard, the new project he put together was convincing enough and is likely to be funded.

First time I heard of a funding agency contacting a scientist. They really wanted these lines of inquiry to be explored.

As you said, if they only cared about vaccines, that doesn't make much sense.

@ Keith Bell

Do you think it’s possible he condoned a high sugar diet, skewing flora balance? This would make a child more vulnerable to viral infection.

Running around making baseless assumptions over dead people is a sure way for you to lose the debate. You know that they say about people assuming things.

Also, nice job at missing that it's LPS and freeling peptidoglycan which could be catching viruses. Like, the most ubiquitous bacterial component.

Oh, and Mr Bell? That Julian Frost said.

Keith Bell,

Do you think it’s possible he condoned a high sugar diet, skewing flora balance? This would make a child more vulnerable to viral infection.

I always wondered how a high sugar diet is supposed to be capable of "skewing flora balance", or feeding candida in the gut (the probably imaginary 'fungal-type dysbiosis'). Sugar is rapidly hydrolyzed and absorbed in the duodenum, so it never makes it to the parts of the GI tract where the vast majority of bacteria live, and in non-diabetics it doesn't elevate blood glucose enough to feed 'bad' (or good) bacteria in the colon (even if gut bacteria had access to blood glucose which as far as I know they do not).

Low glycemic index foods, conversely, make it further down the GI tract before being broken down to monosaccharides and absorbed. It seems likely that it is low GI carbohydrate intake that encourages dysbiosis rather than high GI sugar intake.

I'm not aware of any evidence that a high sugar diet leads to vulnerability to viral infections like measles, but do provide some if you have any. As far as I know the only problems that excessive sugar causes are obesity and tooth decay. I'm not convinced that sugar causes insulin resistance except by leading to obesity, though sugar consumption is an efficient way of consuming a lot of calories.

Keith Bell:

The candy man, Dahl, also wrote “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”

Are you off your rocker?!?! I have read “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”. It's about a wealthy layabout and gambler who teaches himself a method to see through the back of cards to win at gambling because he's greedy, but the self-discipline he acquires learning the technique leads him to become a Robin Hood, taking casinos for fortunes and giving it to charity. And you think that the name led to increased sugar consumption?!?!

Here Kreb:
"Regardless of the genetic backgrounds the mice, fecal analysis revealed that the high-fat, high-sugar diet increased the abundance of members of the Firmicutes phylum and decreased the abundance of members of the Bacteroidetes phylum."
http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/12/122151/mix-bacteria-gut-may-depend-mor…

Perhaps one of the members of raised Firmicutes is Bacillus cereus, a gram-positive organism (hat tip, Narad):
"Exposure to B. cereus increased poliovirus infectivity over 500%. Enhancement of poliovirus infectivity did not require live bacteria"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222156/

Refined grains may be more a culprit in duodenal microbial overgrowth than even refined sugar. The duodenum is last place you want overgrowth, the beginning of the end. Thanks for input, Kreb.

Anyone wanna talk about measles virus found in the guts of autistic children being vaccine strains? What causes it to become a chronic infection?

Perhaps origin of measles brain infection is intestinal as studies report a large percentage of autistic children carry measles in their intestines:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10759242

http://www.wakehealth.edu/News-Releases/2006/Wake_Forest_Researcher_War…

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-388051/Scientists-fear-MMR-link…

"Now a team from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina are examining 275 children with regressive autism and bowel disease - and of the 82 tested so far, 70 prove positive for the measles virus.

Last night the team's leader, Dr Stephen Walker, said: 'Of the handful of results we have in so far, all are vaccine strain and none are wild measles."

I suppose listening to Sugar, sugar is also increasing sugar consumption.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9nE2spOw_o

Willie Wonka is a classic.

For encouraging sugar consumption?
If I recall correctly, the boy who is responsible, parsimonious and respectful was rewarded, while the kid mashing chewing-gum non-stop and the other kid stuffing himself senselessly with chocolate-laden sweets both got punished for their sins.

Do you think it’s possible he condoned a high sugar diet

I think it's far more possible that Bell has never read any of the Dahl books he's citing.

And...he still hasn't answered Chris's question.

studies report a large percentage of autistic children carry measles in their intestines:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10759242

A claim from proven fraudster Andy Wakefield is at least appropriate for this thread.

# 206 @ bimler

The Kawashima paper has been repudiated by Kawashima himself, and Wakefield admitted in an expert report years ago that he could not rely on it.

http://briandeer.com/wakefield/hisashi-kawashima.htm

The work of Nick Chadwick showed that Kawashima's results were the result of contamination. Kawashima acknowledges that the purported strains he thought he'd found were not in vaccines.

Why the paper hasn't been formally retracted is just another of the abuses by medical publishers, who simply can't be assed.

Speaking of assed, Brian, have you flushed your toilet today? What viruses are you shedding?

Are you loaded with Proteobacteria feeding your virome? And how might this microbial predisposition affect how you react to your next MMR booster? Who's living in your Peyer's patches regulating antibody response leading to autoimmune disease, beginning in the gut leading to brain damage?

Children born with imbalanced intestinal microbiota (poor microbial predisposition) are vaccinated within 12 hours of birth, insult to injury.

The issue is overstimulation of an already compromised immune system based on flora imbalance. The actual adjuvant or vaccine strain is not relevant.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/03/29/vaccine-a…
"Important testimony was delivered by one doctor who had treated over 20 cases of MS after Gardasil vaccination. Pharmaceutical representatives were trying to say that such side effects are psychogenic, but how can a psychogenic disorder cause MS lesions in a person’s brain—and in a girl who was perfectly healthy prior to vaccination? “They didn’t have an answer to that,” she says."

Vaccine injury (and MS) begins in the gut where 70% of the body's immune system resides based on flora balance. Then the brain is attacked:
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/vaccine-injury-first-gut-then-brain

So, what is the vaccine industry doing to make their products safer?

Mr. Bell, do tell us why we would think that the fevered blathering from Mercola or yourself would be given any kind of consideration, other than for comic relief.

Also, where is any real evidence that the MMR causes the issues you claims it does, and that verifiable documentation dated before 1990 that they happened in the 1970s and 1980s. Note: links to Mercola, Natural News, greenmedinfo and other nonsense are not acceptable.

Mercola??? A reference to Mercola?

Let Willie Wonka have the last word:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5QGkOGZubQ

Mercola??? A reference to Mercola?

Seizing upon Pubmed keyword searches didn't work out all that well for him, after all.

Keith Bell #202 that Daily Mail article you linked to was from 2006. In addition, the study lead was Stephen Walker.
That name sounded familiar, so I googled it. Ping!

In 2006 Dr Stephen Walker presented a poster at the Montreal IMFAR meeting claiming to have identified measles virus in intestinal biopsies of children with autism. These preliminary, provisional, unconfirmed, non-peer-reviewed findings in an uncontrolled study (which does not mention MMR) were widely reported – and enthusiastically acclaimed by Dr Andrew Wakefield.

But...

In a subsequent statement issued by Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina, Walker denied that he had shown any link between measles virus and autism.
The Walker study has never been published.

Furthermore:

The Walker study was dismissed as evidence in the 2009 Omnibus Autism Proceedings in the USA after a detailed critique by expert witnesses.
Though reports claimed that the Walker study had ‘replicated’ the work of Wakefield’s Dublin collaborator John O’Leary published in 2002, this work has been thoroughly discredited, most comprehensively by Professor Stephen Bustin.

The Daily Fail is not a reliable source for autism news, as far as I'm concerned. It reported on the Court Case in Italy where a Lower Court in Rimini found that the MMR caused autism, but typed not a single word when that verdict was overturned by the Higher Court.

“Now a team from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina are examining 275 children with regressive autism and bowel disease – and of the 82 tested so far, 70 prove positive for the measles virus.
Last night the team’s leader, Dr Stephen Walker, said: ‘Of the handful of results we have in so far, all are vaccine strain and none are wild measles.”

Skipping past the Daily Fail, that would be this study:
PERSISTENT ILEAL MEASLES VIRUS IN A LARGE COHORT OF REGRESSIVE AUTISTIC CHILDREN WITH ILEOCOLITIS AND LYMPHONODULAR HYPERPLASIA:
REVISITATION OF AN EARLIER STUDY
Steve Walker, Karin Hepner, Jeffrey Segal, Arthur Krigsman,
Wake Forest University School of Medicine

It later emerged the last author there, Krigsman, responsible for the biopsies and the lab-work, is a dishonest incompetent with a track-record of lying about his qualifications. He is also Wakefield's BFF.

It emerged that he left New York following disciplinary action at his former hospital and was fined $5,000 on arrival in Texas for misrepresenting his registration status.

@ K Bell

Children born with imbalanced intestinal microbiota (poor microbial predisposition) are vaccinated within 12 hours of birth

Let me see if I got it straight.

- Newborns could have an "imbalanced intestinal microbiota".
I guess that may be true for about 100% of newborns, if you define "imbalanced intestinal microbiota" as "none".
Unless something went wrong during the pregnancy, newborns fresh out of the womb don't have bacteria in their guts - yet.

- an injected vaccine is going to sneak around its injection site in muscle tissues to slither up to the baby's guts, where the absence of the right bacteria will cause the vaccine to head for the brain, passing through about every organ of the baby during this unexpected journey.

Right.

Maybe you should stop watching the TV series Stargate. You are seeing Goa'uld everywhere.

Keith Bell,

Here Kreb:
“Regardless of the genetic backgrounds the mice, fecal analysis revealed that the high-fat, high-sugar diet increased the abundance of members of the Firmicutes phylum and decreased the abundance of members of the Bacteroidetes phylum.”

A high fat high sugar diet affected the microbiome of mice - interesting, but where's the evidence that a high sugar diet increases susceptibility to viral infections in humans? I'm not disputing the fact that obesity is a bad thing, and that consuming lots of sugar is a good way of becoming obese, especially when combined with fats, but I'm not convinced that sugar is any worse than consuming excess calories in another form.

Perhaps one of the members of raised Firmicutes is Bacillus cereus, a gram-positive organism (hat tip, Narad):
“Exposure to B. cereus increased poliovirus infectivity over 500%. Enhancement of poliovirus infectivity did not require live bacteria”

But B. cereus is a probiotic (some strains, anyway) - are you saying that probiotic bacteria make us more susceptible to polio? That study suggests that killing our entire microbiome would protect us from polio - this doesn't strike me as a very good idea.

Refined grains may be more a culprit in duodenal microbial overgrowth than even refined sugar. The duodenum is last place you want overgrowth, the beginning of the end. Thanks for input, Kreb.

Why do you think refined grains, or sugar for that matter, preferentially feed bad bacteria and not probiotic bacteria?

Anyone wanna talk about measles virus found in the guts of autistic children being vaccine strains? What causes it to become a chronic infection?

Measles virus hasn't been found in the guts of autistic children; as others have pointed out this was either a mistake or in some cases (i.e. Wakefield and Krigsman) fraud.

Helianthus stated:
"Unless something went wrong during the pregnancy, newborns fresh out of the womb don’t have bacteria in their guts – yet."

That's the biggest fallacy without evidence in 20th century "science." It's where science meets religion. Evidence is accumulating showing babies are not born sterile and that the fetal GI tract is teeming with life. Meconium should be tested for every newborn pre-vaccination and stool before one year of age.

Kreb said:
"Why do you think refined grains, or sugar for that matter, preferentially feed bad bacteria and not probiotic bacteria?"

There are hundreds of studies about how diet shifts flora.
http://gut.bmj.com/content/63/1/116.abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3448089/
"Refined sugars mediate the overgrowth of opportunistic bacteria like C. difficile and C. perfringens . . . "

Keith, the native Hawaiian had a diet rich in vitamins, no refined sugars and fats, and hygiene equivalent or better than the Europeans at the time. Why did measles nearly drive them to extinction?

Well, what would you expect Keith to say, Krebiozen?

The micro-biome/ autism connection is all the rage:
if you scan presentations at Autism One 2015, you'll notice that many of the 'experts' discuss this along with other GI and dietary issues .Teresa Conrick perseverates at AoA.

Andy apparently left his mark with thought leaders.

I will leave out the obligatory STB reference.
Oooops!.

Keith Bell,

There are hundreds of studies about how diet shifts flora.

I'm aware of that, but are there any in humans that show that refined carbohydrates cause gut dysbiosis? I know its part of the altmed litany, but is there any actual evidence in humans? All the studies you cited are, or themselves cite studies, on mice.

Oddly your second reference states:

Refined sugars, on the other hand, mediate the overgrowth of opportunistic bacteria like C. difficile [54] and C. perfringens by increasing bile output [55].

Yet reference 54 is 'Clostridium difficile infection in the inflammatory bowel disease patient; I don't have access to the full-text, but I can't find anything to suggest that C. diff overgrowth is caused by refined carbohydrates in IBD patients or anyone else. Reference 55 is 'Bile salt hydrolase activity in probiotics' and does not mention either sugar or refined carbohydrates. How would refined carbohydrates increase bile output anyway? I thought it was fats that did that.

That's SFB reference
( sometimes I can't see this keyboard as It is black - and I am not a 100% touch typer)

Gray, that's a fascinating question. Are Hawaiians truly more susceptible to measles than other populations?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19633516

Maybe the answer is the staple starchy diet which also translates to the fact that 8 of the top 10 most obese nations on Earth are in the Pacific Islands:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_Pacific

I also question sanitation and drinking water on closed island systems.

Keith: Sorry, that failed to answer the question at all. First of all, you have nothing showing that obesity isn't a recent issue, not a historical one. And sanitation in Europe was just as bad.

There is a far simpler, more parsimonious explanation that doesn't require any speculation on our parts: That the native Hawaiians immune systems simply wasn't adapted to the disease. Simple as that.

Keith, seriously.
The native population of Alta California ate a diet consisting primarily of acorns, fish and game - unlike Pacific Islanders- and didn't live on 'closed island systems' but still succumbed to epidemics when living amongst Europeans in the 19th Century. ( see wikip--- California Indians)

There is evidence that island obesity is not a recent phenomenon. But there's also the genetic component of the immune system based on host glycans which are carbs/sugar feeding our microbes:
Glycan Engagement by Viruses: Receptor Switches and Specificity
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-virology-031413-0…

Keith: None of which answered my specific question. I don't need speculation.

"That the native Hawaiians immune systems simply wasn’t adapted to the disease. Simple as that."

Now that's what I call science. What about the immune system's reciprocal relationship between genes and microbes regulated by diet and environment?

Keith: That fails to explain why so many American Indian tribes died from disease. At all.

To be specific, most American Indians had much better nutrition than the European invaders, and they still died off in droves from European disease. Why is that?

But there’s also the genetic component of the immune system based on host glycans which are carbs/sugar feeding our microbes

Sweet Jesus. I see that Keith promptly took to G—ling after the peptidoglycan debacle, with predictable results.

American Indians are the only group known to have 100% secretor status. This affects gut flora balance as the genes regulate host glycans making them susceptible to diabetes, but also viral-glycan interaction as posted above.

See 1950 chart here:
http://www.drpeterjdadamo.com/wiki/wiki.pl/Secretor_Status

And? They aren't dying like flies now. Genetics doesn't work as an explanation.

Keith, let me explain your situation to you clearly. You are the prosecutor accusing someone of being a murderer. I am the one with the alleged victim on the witness stand. The evidence is simply too strong for you to contend with.

The US government has already compensated vaccine-injured families $3 billion and counting. The case is closed, I'm only trying to describe mechanisms of injury via the gut-brain.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-18/vaccine-court-s-tough…

See 1950 chart here

How was I able to guess in advance that this was going to involve the comically stupid "Blood Type Diet"?

There is evidence that island obesity is not a recent phenomenon.

Something tells me that Keith is not going to provide any of that evidence. Making stuff up is easier.
Against this nebulous unspecified "evidence", there are descriptions of the Hawaii'ans from Captain Cook and his officers, impressed by their health and physical perfection. But who to believe? Eye-witness accounts, or "evidence" freshly invoked to shore up a failed hypothjesis?

Mr. Bell: "The US government has already compensated vaccine-injured families $3 billion and counting. The case is closed, I’m only trying to describe mechanisms of injury via the gut-brain."

No, you are showing you don't understand basic math. Looking at the data from 2006 to the present we see that 2,236,678,735 doses were given between 2006 to 2013, or about 319525534 doses per year. So the total is with 2014 added about 2556204269 doses.

Looking a few columns over on that first graph that 1,672 claims were compensated. So that is one claim per 1528830 doses. So that is one claim in over a million doses.

Since most of them were of the "settlement" type of compensation where the vaccine causing the injury was not actually proved.

Any chance, Mr. Bell, that you will provide actual PubMed indexed studies showing the MMR vaccine causes more harm than measles, mumps and rubella... and that it had been documented happening in the USA prior to 1990?

The case is closed, I’m only trying to describe mechanisms of injury via the gut-brain.
h[]tp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-18/vaccine-court-s-tough-standa…

This one-off link was an extremely poor choice, but one of course understands that you likely stopped at the hed.

You really don't want to add law to the list of subjects you enthusiastically embarrass yourself with.

I also question sanitation and drinking water on closed island systems.

Pre-European Hawaiian sanitation was a lot better than their European contemporaries. with strong tabus about separating sh1t from the rest of life. They favoured long-drop toilets, I recall.
If saving a hypothesis required me to dream up a whole series of secondary hypotheses, which all ran up against reality and proved to be wrong, I would think about abandoning the original hypothesis.

Evidence is accumulating showing babies are not born sterile and that the fetal GI tract is teeming with life.

Ah? Fine. Any citation for me to be less stupid at the end of the day?
Since you are at it, any evidence of this "imbalance" you talk about happening in newborns?

You know, it's how science, religion or not, works. It's fine to rewrite the holy texts every so often, but if you forget to pass me the new missal, don't blame me for singing out of turn.

@ Bell

But there’s also the genetic component of the immune system based on host glycans which are carbs/sugar feeding our microbes:

No, wait.
Did you just picked up five different sentences from three different books and mashed them together?
I simply just cannot parse this word salad.
And the article you linked to is completely irrelevant, unless you just wanted to remind us that viruses dock on glycoproteins. That's nice, but most of us already knew it.

Please elaborate. With citations.

We seem to have gone from "Vaccine-preventable diseases are only a risk to people with poor diets or poor santitation" to "Vaccine-preventable diseases are only a risk to people with a particular common gut-enzyme blood antigen (and also Polynesians, because reasons)

We seem to have gone from “Vaccine-preventable diseases are only a risk to people with poor diets or poor santitation” to “Vaccine-preventable diseases are only a risk to people with a particular common gut-enzyme blood antigen (and also Polynesians, because reasons)

Yeah. Don;t forget people whose parents write books that have the word "chocolate" in the title, though.

I mean, that evidently puts you at such high risk that it can kill you two years before it even happens.

Pitiful Roald Dahl had a rough life and apparently put his children through a lot of pain. He was obsessed with candy and medicine. I wouldn't doubt he was feeding sweets to his daughter as she was battling measles. Of course, he was also a well-known bigot. And I wonder what kind of medicine his poor wife was taking as possible cause of her strokes. After all, so-called medicine is the 4th leading cause of death in the USA. Vaccines are also known to cause stroke, cerebral microbleeds possibly due to high levels of uric acid and low levels of serotonin (gut origin).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2186961/Tessa-Dahl-Roald-Dahl…

Speaking of OCD, it's associated with mumps and schizophrenia.
http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/28/prevalence-autism-past-may…
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2967113/

Pitiful Roald Dahl had a rough life

[Citation required], and the Daily Fail does not qualify as a reputable or credible source.

and apparently put his children through a lot of pain.

[citation required.]

He was obsessed with candy and medicine.

[citation required.]

I wouldn’t doubt he was feeding sweets to his daughter as she was battling measles.

No citation is needed for your self-described conjecture.

Of course, he was also a well-known bigot.

[citation required.]

And I wonder what kind of medicine his poor wife was taking as possible cause of her strokes.

No citation needed for this self-describeed conjecture.

After all, so-called medicine is the 4th leading cause of death in the USA.

[citation required.]

Vaccines are also known to cause stroke, cerebral microbleeds possibly due to high levels of uric acid and low levels of serotonin (gut origin).

[citations required.]

@keith

Thanks for saying that you are a bigot. Guess that you cannot proving your assertions, you have to rely on defaming people's character with your own shortcomings to boost yourself.

You are just a pitiable individual, and I truly feel sorry for your children, if you do have any, who have to be raised by such a vile individual.

From The Jewish Chronicle- Roald Dahl: proudly antisemitic
www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/54747/childrens-favourite-roald-dahl-proudly…

I wouldn’t doubt
We have noticed. I imagine it simplifies life immensely.

Vaccines are also known to cause stroke, cerebral microbleeds possibly due to high levels of uric acid and low levels of serotonin (gut origin).

Oh, goody, Keith Bellend is trying to hook his moron caboose to Moulden's idiot train.

From The Jewish Chronicle- Roald Dahl: proudly antisemitic

Ah, yes, when all else fails, the classic irrelevant ad hom.

I simply just cannot parse this word salad.

The funny thing is that he almost has an "out" for part of it, but he's never going to figure that out by himself.

@#242 --

Even if you take that article at its word, it doesn't accuse him of anything worse than being unable to sustain a series of sudden, unexpected traumatic losses that devastated his family without being negatively affected by them. As just about anyone would be.

I mean, did you read it?

I want to make one thing clear. My parents did their best. My father drove me to day school every single morning. Then, he wrote to me every day at boarding school – first at Roedean, which I hated, and Downe House near Newbury, Berkshire, which I loved. It was just day-to-day things – what the dogs were doing, funny things at home. He always managed to turn them into stories.

Even though he was present for me physically, he was not emotionally. bad luck, that I had been present both for my brother’s accident and my mother’s strokes. That my older sister Olivia had been the love of Daddy’s life. That both of us contracted measles, but that she had died.

I think he gave me drugs because he knew no other way to communicate with me to calm me down.

I had seen three different occasions when ambulances came and took away my beloved family never to return them – or to return them as very different people.

These days we know what post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is. I had it.

She doesn't even say that he was the cause of her pain. And she certainly doesn't say he was obsessed with sweets, or fed his children sugar, or anything of the kind.

He didn't write that book until two years after the death of his daughter. And now you're holding him responsible for his wife's strokes? All else aside, she was an independently functioning adult.

Seriously. Have a heart.

@#245 --

Even if those things had been said by someone who was not born in 1916 and raised in an era during which worse sentiments than that were more the rule than they were the exception, I'm not sure I would conclude that he or she was truly an antisemite simply for having said them.

I mean, they're more antisemitic than political condemnation of Israel needs to be. But he's mostly condemning Israeli conduct, not Jews.

Antisemitism doesn't cause measles anyway, however. So moot point.

ann, I'm only using the story of Roald Dahl to bring attention to the dietary/microbial mechanisms of disease. We all have our demons and I'm sure he could also be a great person and loving human being.

I doubt anyone here has ever factored sugar of the microbial cell wall in viral infection and how imbalanced flora makes one more prone to injury. This includes vaccine injury which is more common than anyone here is willing to admit. Most of you can't even acknowledge vaccine injury including death exists. Lives are being shattered.

Even the mighty Mayo Clinic doesn't acknowledge differences in people based on flora regarding why Somali people react to rubella vaccination with twice the antibodies when it's known Bacteroides dramatically induce high IgA production:
http://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-discovers-afri…
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1271/bbb.80612?url_ver=Z39.88-200…

Mr. Bell, what documentation dated before 1990 shows the MMR caused the issues you claim in the USA during the 1970s and 1980s?

Chris, did you miss my OCD dig at you at #242?
http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/28/prevalence-autism-past-may…

I'm still working on answering your question. I'm not a vaccine historian, but can assume the vastly increased vaccine schedule has a lot to do with it, i.e., administering MMR along with other vaccines, as previously stated. What were the differences in measuring autism? Age-based? What was coverage in the early days of MMR?

What about generational differences (microbial predisposition) due to environmental factors such as heavy use of glyphosate? We receive our flora from our mothers, so successive generations may become more vulnerable to vaccine injury.

Denmark associates MMR with autism with historical perspective beginning 1987:
http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/goldman.pdf

And as previously stated, a change in the MMR is strongly associated with dramatic increases in autism in the 1990s.

#251 Interesting study- Effects of Vitamin A Supplementation on Immune Responses and Correlation with Clinical Outcomes
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1195969/
WHO recommends Vit A supplementation for measles-All children in developing countries diagnosed with measles should receive two doses of vitamin A supplements, given 24 hours apart. This treatment restores low vitamin A levels during measles that occur even in well-nourished children and can help prevent eye damage and blindness. Vitamin A supplements have been shown to reduce the number of deaths from measles by 50%.
www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs286/en/

Keith Bell:

I’m not a vaccine historian

Gee, really? I'd never have guessed.

but can assume the vastly increased vaccine schedule has a lot to do with it

And you'd be wrong. "Too many, too soon" has been looked at and disproven.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/04/01/the-death-of-too-many-too-…

We receive our flora from our mothers, so successive generations may become more vulnerable to vaccine injury.
Supporting evidence definitely needed.

Denmark associates MMR with autism

False. In fact, horse droppings. A study performed in Denmark looked at every child born over several years. The sample size was over half a million. No difference between the autism rates of the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

And as previously stated, a change in the MMR is strongly associated with dramatic increases in autism in the 1990s.

The DSM-V changed the process for diagnosing autism. Also, citation needed for the "change in the MMR.

#251 "Many children in developing countries have a disordered gut, which contributes to their poor response to oral vaccines, Kang said. They suffer from a complex syndrome that involves gut inflammation, altered gut microbiome, intestinal infections with several putative pathogens, impaired nutrition, and impaired growth, according to Chris Wilson, director of discovery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But understanding the underlying causes for this syndrome and why vaccines don’t work in this environment isn’t easy, he said.Malnutrition seems to cause the gut to fail to maintain its immune and barrier function from pathogens, causing diarrhea and infections. This causes further gut damage and affects the gut’s ability to absorb nutrients, which makes the malnutrition worse, Kang said."
www.iavireport.org/Back-Issues/Pages/IAVI-Report-15(6)-AGutResponsetoVa…

www.iavireport.org/Back-Issues/Pages/IAVI-Report-15(6)-AGutResponsetoVa…

And as previously stated, a change in the MMR is strongly associated with dramatic increases in autism in the 1990s.

I take it you missed the part where regurgitating D'Ohlmsted didn't pan out so well.

I’m only using the story of Roald Dahl

All this digging up of corpses, you seem to have confused Respectful Insolence with Necrophiliacs Anonymous.

Narad, have you been breastfed yet? Better late than never.

Getcher bifidobacteria while you can, strongly associated with centenarians. They cross-feed butryate-producing clostridia. I suspect low bifidobacteria means higher risk of vaccine injury.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930426/
Impact of diet in shaping gut microbiota revealed by a comparative study in children from Europe and rural Africa
We can hypothesize that the reduction in richness we observe in EU compared with BF children, could indicate how the consumption of sugar, animal fat, and calorie-dense foods in industrialized countries is rapidly limiting the adaptive potential of the microbiota.

Narad, have you been breastfed yet? Better late than never.

In other words, you concede that you have no evidence whatever that the actual formulation was changed at any time, something that would require explicit regulatory approval, yet you just keep repeating the same thing anyway.

Are you going to get around to "host glycans ... are carbs/sugar feeding our microbes"? Given that this is your avowed specialty, the level of rank ignorance that you display on basic matters is astonishing.

Mr. Bell: "Chris, did you miss my OCD dig at you at #242?"

Not the data I seek, especially since a BMJ rapid response is not verifiable documentation. The MMR was the preferred vaccine for the 1978 Measles Elimination Program. Now get to it.

Also, what is the ratio of the compensated NVICP claims to the total number of vaccines doses given in the USA since 2006? How big a number is it?

Also, the Midlands is in the UK, where there was not MMR vaccine being used until 1988. So that letter basically backs up that autism rates have not changed, it is just that they are being diagnosed now. Just like my son, who has just been recently diagnosed with autism, even though I was assured in 1991 he was not autistic. Apparently the criteria changed.

Also, Goldman and Yazbak are not qualified nor reputable. Goldman has a PhD in computer science from a diploma mill, and Yazbak defended a child murderer.

ken, that's great stuff. Regarding vitamin A and measles, beta carotene is converted to vitamin A in the presence of bile acid. Quality of bile acid is regulated by flora, especially the BSH of B. longum. So there's a root cause of vitamin A deficiency due to flora imbalance, especially when organ meats like liver are not part of the diet.

Narad, here ya go:
http://glycob.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/9/1038
http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/journal/v10/n5/execsumm/nrmicro2746.html

It's how genes play a role in regulating microbial balance. Bifidobacteria are known to be low in some groups based on genes regulating secretor status:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0020113
So non-secretors found high in African Americans would be reduced in bifidobacteria, potentially at greater risk of vaccine injury. It's possible males have lower amounts of bifidobacteria than females, never studied.

I’m only using the story of Roald Dahl to bring attention to the dietary/microbial mechanisms of disease.

No, you're now just trying to wriggle away from again proving that when you find yourself hemmed in by your own stupidity, you're left with nothing but your genuine nature, i.e., thoroughgoing asshοle, to fall back on.

Here you started with the comically brain-dead misreading of Kuss et al., which led you to say something stupid about poliovirus, and extended it with "I’d bet the same is true of measles," which – on top of the failed premise – makes no fυcking sense whatever.

Naturally, the thing to do is start babbling with gems such as "of course, he was also a well-known bigot" and Andrew Freaking Moulden: "Vaccines are also known to cause stroke, cerebral microbleeds possibly due to high levels of uric acid and low levels of serotonin (gut origin)."

This further demonstrates, by the way, that you're so g-ddamned stupid that you think 5-HT appears in brain by virtue of transport from the gut.

Chris, I'm very sorry to learn about your son. I would bet there's much that can be done for him to reverse symptoms. Let me know if you'd like to talk about it directly. My email address is on my recent article. And thank you for the education in general.

Narad, do me the favor of reading my two page article where I briefly discuss the origin of serotonin in the brain. I'm sure you'll have a field day.

Does anyone here know 95% of our serotonin is in the gut, not the brain? What about precursor tryptophan entering the brain from the gut dependent on flora?

Regarding stroke and vaccination:
http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/78/1_MeetingAbstr…
http://www.singhealthacademy.edu.sg/Documents/Publications/Vol21No42012…

I would deduce that Dan Olmsted fabricated his “informal conversation with a Merck scientist”, who he claims gave him information that we now know is provably wrong: there was no change in the potency of the mumps vaccine.

This doesn't surprise me: when the father of one of the children in the Wakefield 98 fraud wrote to Olmsted and told him that Wakefield's claims regarding the child were an "outright fabrication", Olmsted lied on his website, omitting this information and pretending that the father criticised me.

Here is the letter:

http://briandeer.com/solved/dan-olmsted-child-11.pdf

Narad, do me the favor of reading my two page article

No, you're free to spell it out here.

Gee you mean there was a reason that in the 1990s and 2000s there was all kinds of drug development for GI problems that were compounds that fit into serotonin receptors?

Who knew?

Mr. Bell: "I would bet there’s much that can be done for him to reverse symptoms."

You are an idiot. He is twenty six years old, and he was not diagnosed as a child because while he could not speak he had the audacity to smile like any other three year old when he was diagnosed in 1991 under the DSM III.

You seriously don't get that more forms of autism are covered under both the DSM IV and DSM V. The biggest difference between the two latest DSMs is that Aspergers and PDD-NOS are now both under the full autism spectrum umbrella. My son was disappointed that he did not "just" have Asperger's, which he would never had been diagnosed with because of his lack of speech at age three.

If you don't know this bit of basic information, why would anyone believe anything you say.

Plenty of geniuses have had delayed speech including Einstein. Does your son have any GI symptoms? Has he ever had a PCR stool test? Recent article talks about up to 40% of those with autism also suffer epilepsy:
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/mar/29/autism-ill-health-l…

Narad, where's Science Mom when you need her? I'd also recommend Bimuno out of the UK (Kreb, I think you'll also like this product), a GOS prebiotic to feed bifidobacteria.

Popular myth of Einstein speech delay: Unsupported by reality.

When he was between two and three, [Einstein] formed the ambition to speak in whole sentences... Then, when it seemed all right, he would say it out loud.

(Pais, 1982, p.36)

There is an Einstein family story from two well referenced biographies, The Private Lives of Albert Einstein by Roger Highfield and Paul Carter, 1993 and Albert Einstein by Albrecht Folsing, 1997, translated from German by Ewald Osers. That story describes Albert’s comment when he was told he had a new baby sister to play with. He said “But where are the wheels?” AND he was 2 years and 8 months old when he said that. At that age my son had a dozen poorly enunciated single syllable approximations.

I learned to hate the lie about Einstein over twenty years ago. Just as I hated being told to read Thomas Sowell's Late-Talking Children.

Mr. Bell, when you have dug as big as a hole you as you have, it is time to put away the shovel.

Did your son receive MMR? I thought the Danish autism study analyzing MMR beginning 1987 was quite good Have you ever considered microbial predisposition since you've had mumps twice? I maintain there's much that can be done for your son you may not have considered. Plenty of people have reversed autism and associated epilepsy.

@ Bell

when it’s known Bacteroides dramatically induce high IgA production:

You will have to make up your mind at some point.

First, way upthread, you tell us that gram-neg bacteria are promoting virus infection and a gut flora with these bacteria is "unbalanced".

Now, you quote an article about freeling gram-neg Bacteroides enhancing IgA production.
(interesting article, BTW. Thanks, I learned something.
See? Was it that hard to substantiate your claims?)

So, which is it? Should we have gram-neg bacteria in our guts, or not?

Narad, where’s Science Mom when you need her? I’d also recommend Bimuno out of the UK (Kreb, I think you’ll also like this product), a GOS prebiotic to feed bifidobacteria.

Your continued evasions are duly noted, Bellend.

Narad, see #265.

Heli, of course you need gram-negative bacteria, but in balance. You can have too much of a good thing, including overactive immune response. And here are a couple articles per your previous request:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/science/human-microbiome-may-be-seede…
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/pr5011857
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0078257

ann, I’m only using the story of Roald Dahl to bring attention to the dietary/microbial mechanisms of disease.

Well.

Unless it's your contention that the words a parent writes on a page have the power to affect the dietary/microbial mechanisms of a disease that killed his daughter two years earlier:

There's nothing you know about his story that does that.

reversed autism
Related to the Reverse Vampires, I dare say.

Mr. Bell: "Did your son receive MMR?"

This is amazing. You just keep digging. How, pray tell, does a vaccine given after a child is a year old cause neonatal seizures?

So, again, where is that verifiable documentation dated before 1990 that the MMR caused the issues you claim in the USA (do make sure you get the country right) during the 1970s and 1980s?

Serotonin imbalance of gut origin leads to glutamate excitotoxicity which in the prone sleeping position leads to SIDS when CO2 stimulates the serotonergic system. And also associated sugar imbalances leading to hypoglycemic seizure. And other ways such as clostridial toxin breach of BBB. Does your son have epilepsy? MMR in 1989?
http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/goldman.pdf

Amplified insulin secretion via alcohols produced by overgrown gammaproteobacteria and/or fungi lead to reactive hypoglycemic seizure. Was he preterm?

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Do you even know what neonatal seizures are? How does a vaccine only given after age one cause SIDS, which by definition means death of an infant of unknown reason under age one year? And how does breast milk cause sugar imbalances?

And why would I care about a paper published on an anti-reality political screed by a guy who bought his computer science PhD and another who helped get a baby killer out of jail?

Since you keep digging, you have a new task: provide the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that the American MMR causes more seizures than measles.

Did your son suffer Infantile Spasm currently treated from the neck up? You've misconstrued what I stated about SIDS and breast milk. The pertussis and pneumococcal vaccines are infamously associated with causing seizure.

Ever try a low carb diet with him?

What do you recommend to reverse an intractable-to-treatment seizure disorder for those who have Lennox Gastaut seizures, Keith Bell.

(hint) low carb diets do not reverse seizures of any type; strictly adhered to ketogenic diets only "work" for a small percentage of people.

Narad, see #265.

I only have a moment for this, but there's one part that's such a howler I can't let it pass. The first link in #265 is

h[]tp://glycob.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/9/1038

Hearken back, it you will, to #230:

American Indians are the only group known to have 100% secretor status. This affects gut flora balance as the genes regulate host glycans making them susceptible to diabetes, but also viral-glycan interaction as posted above.

For this assertion, Keith refers the reader to "Blood Type Diet" D'Adamo. Now, let's grab a quick passage from Marcobal et al. (citations omitted):

"FUT2, known as the secretor locus in humans, encodes a polymorphic α1-2-fucosyltransferase. Non-secretors, which are homozygous for non-functional alleles and lack α1-2-fucose residues in secretory tissues and on mucus, are at increased risk for several diseases including Crohn's disease and celiac disease and have gut communities that are distinct from secretors, who possess the functional fucosyltransferase."

Now, let us visit D'Adamo's definition of the term:

"A 'Non-secretor' is someone, who through their own genetics, carries a gene which inhibits them from secreting their ABO blood type in their secretions. By secretions we mean saliva, semen, etc. Eighty-five percent of the population are secretors, so non-secretors are in a minority. If you are a secretor, you express more of your blood type in your body.

G—le is not your friend, Keith.

Mr. Bell: "The pertussis and pneumococcal vaccines are infamously associated with causing seizure"

Even before a kid got their first vaccine? That is remarkable. Especially years before one of those vaccines was available, and since due to the neonatal seizures the first pertussis containing vaccine he got was almost twenty years later. Wow. You are very stupid.

You really need to put that shovel away, dude.

Narad: "G—le is not your friend, Keith"

That is very true.

Bellend's #224 also immediately collapses as a consequence of this gaffe:

There is evidence that island obesity is not a recent phenomenon. But there’s also the genetic component [D'Amado] of the immune system based on host glycans which are carbs/sugar [which mucin is not, but he stopped with the first sentence of the W—pedia 'glycan' entry] feeding our microbes [Marcobal et al.]: [completely irrelevant reference]

This is a classic.

@Bell

Heli, of course you need gram-negative bacteria, but in balance.

The answer I expected.
And, pray tell, how do you know what this "balance" is?

For all we know, we may need a level of gram-neg bugs to have the positive effect on the immune system as described in the article in #251, which will turn out to be higher than the minimal level at which these bacteria will be helping virus infection, if your hypothesized mechanism turns out to be true.
Before listening to you and grafting myself some bifido, I think I will just keep eating my greens and regular yoghurt and let my gut flora sorts itself out.

On the other hand, thanks for the links. Again, interesting readings.
I noticed, in the second study, the authors claimed they didn't found much difference between bacteria population following normal birth versus c-section. It's funny, a few months ago someone published a book on the microbiome differences between children born one way or another (albeit after normal pregnancies, not ones complicated by diabetes), and one of his major finding was that there were differences. Although the same author noted that the microbiomes between the two groups converged after one year or such.
I would agree that there is plenty of things we don't know about our microbiomes, and it's a much worthy area of research, but I cannot help feeling we are still in the preliminary stages of discovery. It's more buzz than science, right now. Well, I'm no expert, so my judgement is of limited value.

Apparently, Narad has never heard of mucin oligosaccharides. Makes one wonder what else he doesn't know. He's too proud to acknowledge he didn't know our microbes consume host glycans, instead taking us of on yet another meaningless tangent about the source of a 1950 secretor status chart.. I'm still a fan, however condescendingly trenchant.

Chris, last I heard the CDC and AAP base their cruel vaccine protocol on the work of an criminal fugitive:
http://sharylattkisson.com/researcher-who-dispelled-vaccine-autism-link…
So, your son suffered seizures before any vaccination. Sorry to hear that. That's what I call microbial predisposition. Dravet syndrome accounts for only 2.5% of seizures post vaccination, btw. I'd bet he's suffered gastrointestinal symptoms his entire life. There's a lot you can do for him and, hopefully, he'll take matters into his own hands sooner than later. Anticonvulsants only mask the problem and don't work half the time, often exacerbating seizure disorders. Did he suffer any negative reaction to the pertussis vaccine he received possibly leading to this recent autism diagnosis? Any regression?

Heli, you're a refreshing person on this page. Ever hear of PCR stool testing? Organic acid urine testing for microbial metabolites?

lilady, LGS Foundation has yet to receive a funding request to study gut origin of seizure. But they're interested; I spoke with them about it last week. I don't believe mechanism of the ketogenic diet is really about ketones, but flora shift. Plenty of evidence. "A more recent report demonstrated a significant rate of seizure freedom (30%) after 12 months in patients with LGS (Kang et al., 2005):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2676569/#R13

Keith Bell:

Chris, last I heard the CDC and AAP base their cruel vaccine protocol on the work of an criminal fugitive.

You heard wrong.

Young Julian Frost of small head. Last we communicated you were flying out of the womb wearing a cape, hitting the nearest wall. I apologize for hurting your feelings and destroying your childhood image of Roald Dahl, the bigoted sugar monster.

And the fool refuses to put away the shovel and stop digging.

If my son had been born a few years earlier, he would have been institutionalized for not being able to speak as a three year old. Instead he got lots of speech therapy and a diagnosis of a speech disorder. He has normal intelligence but other deficits, and diagnoses have changed over the years, and still more with DSM V.

Please clarify, Chris, did he receive HepB vaccination at birth or before age 3?

While the antivax crowd continues bleating "THORSEN THORSEN THORSEN" at any mention of Andrew Wakefield's transgressions, one wonders why they haven't dropped poor old Poul in favor of the CDC employee(s) who were charged in an alleged child molestation/bestiality case (starting back in 2011).

That should have been so much juicier a case to harp on (though last I heard, one suspect had been cleared and the other was a long way from being convicted):

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/lawyer-for-cdc-official-accused-of-m…

And I bet there is someone at Orac's workplace (maybe in the laundry department, or more likely Administration) who has a prior criminal record, a stack of unpaid parking tickets or who once lived in Indiana. Can't Olmsted, Attkisson or another ace reporter come up with such evidence and discredit this blog once and for all?

Mr. Bell: "Please clarify, Chris, did he receive HepB vaccination at birth or before age 3?"

I gave you his age, it is up to you to figure it out. Then no more prying into anyone else's medical history. You have demonstrated you are totally incompetent.

#297 Excuse me? What country were you living in? Institutionalized for not being able to speak? This, I don't believe.

Keith Bell, where did I mention that my "son" has Lennox-Gastaut seizures and where did I mention that the individual who has L-G seizures has Dravet Syndrome...or autism? Could it be that you heard about Dravet Syndrome being diagnosed as the real cause of L-G seizures following vaccination with the whole cell pertussis vaccine? The individual's L-G seizures started after birth before any vaccines were administered and are caused by being born with zero platelets which caused a brain bleed and the development of a porencephalitic cyst which covers a large portion of the left hemisphere of his brain.

A real doctor would never make assumptions, about the etiology of seizures of any type and not attempt to tie his bullsh!t advice into his pet theory about gut flora.

No one believes you just happened to discuss L-G seizures with someone at the L-G Syndrome Foundation last week.

Keith Bell:

I apologize for hurting your feelings and destroying your childhood image of Roald Dahl, the bigoted sugar monster.

The only thing you have destroyed is your credibility.

@ Bell

I thank you for your kind words, but giving you a chance to elaborate on your assertions was just the right thing to do.
That doesn't mean I'll give you a pass when you keep bullsh!ting us. An activity I strongly suspect you are doing right now.

Apparently, Narad has never heard of mucin oligosaccharides. Makes one wonder what else he doesn’t know. He’s too proud to acknowledge he didn’t know our microbes consume host glycans,

What does the freel this has to do with anything?

To some extend, you are right, most people here don't know much about glycoproteins. I will tell you why: not only it's a very specialized area of research, but it's also a freakishly complicated one.
The regulars could make fun of people ignoring basic chemistry, like sodium chloride being the name for table salt, but they don't mock people for ignoring highly arcane science. You are showing the very arrogance and religious fervor you were claiming is ours.

So, since you claim to have some insight, unpack.
What's all this furor about host glycans and bacteria?

#297 I have to admit they are pathologizing too many children.
It's sad that your son has to think of himself as autistic, rather then someone with some limitations who is able to fine meaningful activities that he enjoys. If he is not seriously depressed what's the point of that diagnosis. It is helpful if it makes him eligible for enriched programs for whatever limitations he has.

#301 What country do you live in that never at any point in history warehoused the developmentally disabled in institutions?

I think at least here part of the "OMG where did all these disabled people come from they didn't exist before" is that they stopped putting them all in homes for the disabled and started providing community-based services where kids could live at home as long as possible.

I mean maybe one country or two could gave gone from locking them in the attic or letting them starve on an ice flow to fully modern community-base care in one big leap but I thought most at least for some time did the institution thing.

I know a lot has changed but it really wasn't that long ago when it was pretty routine to institutionalize kids pretty early on if they had issues.

ken: "What country were you living in? Institutionalized for not being able to speak? This, I don’t believe."

Look up the Willowbrook School for starters (there was a news documentary on it in the late 1960s). Then look up the "Education for All Handicapped Children Act" of 1975:
http://commons.trincoll.edu/edreform/2012/05/the-education-for-all-hand…

There are stories of deaf kids and intellectually normal kids in wheel chairs being refused access to public schools. It was very common to warehouse children in schools for the deaf, blind and "feeble minded." Just go watch the movie "Mr. Holland's Opus" to see how recent that option was presented.

ken, your lack of historical knowledge is quite telling. The point is that things have changed greatly in even the last ten years on autism diagnoses, which is why my son and many of his special ed. preschool classmates are only recently getting an autism diagnosis.

ken: "It’s sad that your son has to think of himself as autistic, rather then someone with some limitations who is able to fine meaningful activities that he enjoys"

Ken, you are continuing to show your ignorance. While his IEP gave him the services he needed in high school, it was not complete, especially for the social communication aspect. In order to get supported housing, it turns out "autism" is the magic word for social services, plus the detailed evaluation.

Krebiozen: "I know a lot has changed but it really wasn’t that long ago when it was pretty routine to institutionalize kids pretty early on if they had issues."

The playwright Arthur Miller had a son with Down's Syndrome who was put into an institution as a one week old infant. Gene Tierney's Daria had Congenital Rubella Syndrome and was institutionalized at age four.

Ooops, the quote "I know a lot has changed but it really wasn’t that long ago when it was pretty routine to institutionalize kids pretty early on if they had issues" was from Kaymarie.

I guess I just saw the first initial.

#307 Parents yes parents put their kids away. I had an aunt with a braindamaged child born in 1960 (NJ) who would never consider this. My friend taught in a school for the deaf 1970 NYC, another worked in south NJ at an institution. I was a caseworker in NYC 1969 ,had some child abuses cases reported, but no one forcibly took someones child away.

"but no one forcibly took someones child away."

Who said that happened? What the schools did was just refuse admitting a child, and then strongly suggest a "suitable" institution. Any child who could not do something as "simple as talking" could be considered “uneducable.” See The Legislative and Litigation History of Special Education.

lilady, reread my post as what I said about a "son", etc. was clearly directed at Chris, not you. What do you think causes Thrombocytopenia (low platelets)? Infection. Provide your email address and I'll forward my conversation with LGSF.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22443637
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1059131114001691
You say the problem began before vaccination? I don't buy it considering protocol begins within hours of birth. It's barbaric here in the USA. Europe doesn't suffer such madness.

Heli, I'm sure you're capable of answering that question. I've already unpacked enough here. Good day all. And thanks to Chris for being so forthcoming. And thanks to nobody here for reading my new article:
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/vaccine-injury-first-gut-then-brain

p.s.- Kreb, your views on sugar consumption are primitive. Here's an article published today:
http://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/is-sugar-the-new-tobacco/Content?oid=…

#307 You seem to be of superior intelligence. Why didn't you tutor him? Or are you just railing about the unfairness of it all?

ken, are you really that clueless? One thing I learned about having a child with multiple issues is how little I do know.

Something you seem to not understand, since you are completely clueless that you are completely clueless.

@Chris #310 happy to own Kaymaries's quote ;-)

#297 You said "If my son had been born a few years earlier, he would have been institutionalized for not being able to speak as a three year old. Instead he got lots of speech therapy and a..........." This was your statement. So you would have instutionalized you child?

#314 You said he is of normal intelligence. What issues would have institutionalized him? Not speaking? WTF are you talking about.?

Ken, howsabout you f*ck off already?

@ Kaymarie

I know a lot has changed but it really wasn’t that long ago when it was pretty routine to institutionalize kids pretty early on if they had issues.

A French actress once reported in an interview about her family life on how, a few decades ago, as she was walking with her disabled son, they met the old lady next door who, upon seeing her son, primly told her:

"When one has a child like this, madam, one hides it!"

She was quite glad that our western societies have evolved and became more inclusive.

@ken - given the lack of social services for those individuals back in that time, being institutionalized was perhaps the only option available to many families...especially ones that lacked financial resources.

Before making a bunch of stupid assumptions, why don't you read about the Institutional system that used to exist in this country?

Ken, have you ever considered not being an asshole?

In the early 80s my son was born with severe spina bifida and hydrocephalus. The hospital staff put him on clear fluids only, told us to leave him at the hospital and "pretend you never had a baby" as he wouldn't survive. Instead we took him home. He is now 34 years old and living independently.

Shortly afterwards his mother got talking to an old lady in the street. She said she used to be a nurse and added, with a disparaging look at my son, "in my day we would just drop them in a bucket". Attitudes have, thankfully, changed.

Thank God for services. They are sorely needed.
www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/developmentaldisabilities/features/birthdefects-dd-k…

#322 Good God! Sorry to hear this! In my hometown (nj) they were more compassionate. Growing up in the 50's I remember the sweet little girl with the very large head. No one would say anything like that. In my HS we had a girl with severe scaling psoriasis that left her skin bright red. She also had an odor but we were all kind to her.

Jeebustapdancingchrist. . . are there any successful treatments for f**faceitis?

#319 No.

Chris, last I heard the CDC and AAP base their cruel vaccine protocol on the work of an criminal fugitive:

Meanwhile in the factual (non-Attkisson) world, Thorsen is not a criminal, is employed in Denmark in a non-fugitive capacity, and the papers in which he was a minor author were not the bases for anyone's vaccine protocol. Kevin has struck a trifecta of misinformed stupidity.
He seems to be a bit needy for attention.

I'm actually amazed by ken.

Hey, ken, I was born in the 1960's. We still had the "retard" room (sorry for the term, all, but that's what we called it back then) where all children who didn't fit into a regular classroom setting were kept. We had no interaction with them except to pass by the door and stare at them like they were monkeys in the zoo. They didn't eat with us, they didn't have playground time with us. They basically arrived at the school, were locked into their room, and let out back onto their special bus at the end of the day. We didn't even know a single name of a child in there - OR even the teacher's name.

Kids who probably now would be considered mildly autistic (I had one classmate who would throw violent temper tantrums when stressed) but who could talk, walk, and hear, were put into regular classrooms. They rarely thrived there, and often ended up being expelled. (The local Catholic schools had a thriving business taking in the kids the public schools kicked out as impossible discipline problems. I don't know if the families paid - which, with all the blue-collar families might have been a financial problem - or if the school district had a special arrangement with them and paid part or all of the cost.)

But we never had "different" kids in our classes - not even kids who had ambulatory issues only (a broken limb was different). Everyone was either dumped into the "retard" room or not in the public school.

ken: "So you would have instutionalized you child?"

How would I know? I was never given the option because of a law enacted eighteen years before his birth. It was at that time that I asked the preschool teacher what happened to kids like him, and she said most likely only allowed in an institution. This was just after autism became part of the disabilities served under IDEA in 1990, it took a few years to become policy.

From ken's CDC link: "The prevalence of any DD in 1997–2008 was 13.87% "

Anyone with a modicum of statistical knowledge will know this is actually less than the percentage of the normal distribution below the first standard deviation.

From clueless ken: "Sorry to hear this! In my hometown (nj) they were more compassionate. "

You really don't know that, since you were a child. No one knew about Arthur Miller's child until shortly before is death. The 1950s was the time of "family secrets", some of which only get uncovered years later. It took some digging to find out what happened to one of Henrietta Lacks' children.

The fact remains that there were places like Willowbrook and others like Belchertown. Your anecdotes do not wipe out all of history, it just shows you are a clueless jerk.

#312 There were gains prior to 1975-
"In 1963, Kennedy established the Division of Handicapped Children and Youth and revitalized the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped. He sent missions to study international programs for disabled children and pushed for greater rights for the disabled, especially those with mental disabilities. Grassroots movements were instrumental in creating awareness of the inequalities facing the disabled but the movement also benefited greatly by having someone of Kennedy’s stature behind it."
www.commons.trincoll.edu/edreform/2012/05/the-education-for-all-handica…

#330
Yes, you have superior anecdotes. You supply insufficient info then attack when someone questions exactly what you mean.
I really feel sorry that you all have to shore up your egos by nasty remarks.

ken: "Yes, you have superior anecdotes."

The blue words are links, click on them. The link you gave was a more formal paper of the one you just posted.

Mr. Bell: "What do you think causes Thrombocytopenia (low platelets)? Infection"

Yes, mostly from measles, which is one reason we try to prevent it by the MMR.

"Provide your email address"

You are obviously too stupid to understand why I will not do that.

Keith Bell. What kind of doctor are you? You never even inquired about the individual's age. He is 39 years old...born in 1975 before the implementation of the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine and born seven years before the development and licensing of the first hepatitis vaccine. You're a health care professional wannabe, a poseur and a liar.

http://www.immunize.org/catg.d/p4205.pdf

Ken, do you realize you are commenting on a thread with people who have developmentally disabled children and who are far more educated about the federal and state laws enacted to educate those children and to provide funding for the development of alternative living arrangements outside of those large institutions?

I should perhaps point out that my experiences were in the UK, but from what I have read things were much the same in the rest of the (so-called) developed world. I remember reading in Stephen Jay Gould's books about the horrific way the disabled were treated relatively recently (very recently in some countries). Eugenics was popular among many otherwise great people - Marie Stopes and George Bernard Shaw spring to mind, but there were many others. For some reason eugenics went out of fashion when Nazi Germany slid right the way down its slippery slope.

@Kreb - and we are still talking about compensating victims of the American Eugenics program, where those of "feeble-mind" were routinely sterilized....

ken: “It’s sad that your son has to think of himself as autistic, rather then someone with some limitations who is able to fine meaningful activities that he enjoys”

Ken, you are continuing to show your ignorance. While his IEP gave him the services he needed in high school, it was not complete, especially for the social communication aspect. In order to get supported housing, it turns out “autism” is the magic word for social services, plus the detailed evaluation.

No kidding. ken would probably say that it's sad that I have to think of myself as disabled --that VA check every month takes away the sting, though.

@Lawrence
Not so long ago they were still finding old ladies, tucked out of sight in institutions, who had been forcibly sterilized and institutionalized for getting pregnant out of wedlock when they were girls. Maybe it still happens. IIRC Scandinavia was particularly bad in this regard.

Keith Bell isn't a doctor. According to greenmedinfo.com he's a veteran of the recycling industry and is about as qualified to speak on medical issues as your local sanitation worker.

@Kreb - it was a "not-so-little" secret, especially across the American South - particularly in Virginia, North Carolina and Mississippi, where active programs victimized thousands, if not tens of thousands - most of whom are no longer alive to testify to the horrors they were subjected to, of course, completely against their will.

Once you scratch the surface, you really begin to see exactly how many people disappeared into the "Institutional" system, and those who were carefully hidden away by their families.

@lilady 335 re: “What kind of doctor are you?”
I’ll join a-non in answering for him. He is not a doctor.

http://www.orientalmedicinespecialists.com/what-we-treat/

Wow....what a woo-tastic craptacular....

@#331 --

Meanwhile, his sister Rosemary was hidden away in an institution, which he used to explain by saying she was reclusive, back when he was Senator Kennedy.

It’s sad that your son has to think of himself as autistic, rather then someone with some limitations who is able to fine meaningful activities that he enjoys

What an absolutely awful thing to say. I mean, talk about bigotry.

It's not an either/or, ken.

@ann - which is why it pisses me off when anti-vaxers try to claim that these people didn't exist in the past.....they were always there, hidden out of sight and certainly not discussed in "polite company."

@CTGeneGuy #342

So the oriental medicine guy is also the veteran of the recycling industry? Or are they two different people with the same wacky views, which would be a stunning coincidence...

As I have noted, Mr. Bell is very good at recycling bovine excrement.

#344 You completely took this out of context. This is what Chris said #273 "He is twenty six years old, and he was not diagnosed as a child because while he could not speak he had the audacity to smile like any other three year old when he was diagnosed in 1991 under the DSM III.
You seriously don’t get that more forms of autism are covered under both the DSM IV and DSM V. The biggest difference between the two latest DSMs is that Aspergers and PDD-NOS are now both under the full autism spectrum umbrella. My son was disappointed that he did not “just” have Asperger’s, which he would never had been diagnosed with because of his lack of speech at age three."
I suffered from depression- I would not like to have my identity
known and broadcasted as a depressive. I sometimes relapse.
My point-"labels"- good only for increased services for that diagnostic category. Not an "identity" as in he's an "OCD" etc.
even though labels explain atypical behaviors.

It’s sad that your son has to think of himself as autistic, rather then someone with some limitations who is able to fine meaningful activities that he enjoys

You completely took this out of context.

Well, can you clarify, ken, how - instead of as "someone with some limitations who is able to fine meaningful activities that he enjoys" - will someone diagnosed with autism have to think of themselves?

a-non: Wow, it is a coincidence! I googled Keith Bell and just assumed the deep woo acupuncturist that popped up was our Keith (for obvious reasons). But you're right - the greenmedinfo bio is clearly the recycling guy.

Sorry Virginia acupuncturist guy, for confusing you with someone who is deep into pseudoscience and...wait...

Ken seems to think that life for the disabled back in the "day" was nothing but wine and roses it seems......what arrogance and stupidity combined.

#351 Wow this is such a dumb remark with no basis in reality I can only assume you like to bait people with outrageous statements. I think you are the arrogant and stupid one. I worked in social services in NYC for 10 years in the 70's and was well aware of problems of the disaabled having WWII vets,children with sickle cell anemia,schizophenics, mentally retarded, alcoholics etc on my caseload who had to depend on Public Assistance.

Then you've just proven that your statements before are completely off-base and stupid.

If you do have that experience, then you should know better - your remarks up to this point have been nothing but trollish and vile.

I think the Kennedy's kept Rosemary in some of the finer institutions after her royally botched lobotomy, but for most I'll bet it was grim as hell.

aaarrgghh. . . an apostrophe gnome assaulted my post. ㋡

I suffered from depression- I would not like to have my identity
known and broadcasted as a depressive. I sometimes relapse.
My point-“labels”- good only for increased services for that diagnostic category. Not an “identity” as in he’s an “OCD” etc.
even though labels explain atypical behaviors.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. I'm a depressive myself, and I don't exactly want that "identity" broadcasted, I suppose, but I am open to a reasonable degree IRL about the fact that I have/have had mental health issues. I think it's important, actually, to be more open about these things, because making them into closet skeletons only adds to the general feeling of shame and stigma a lot of people feel about them, feelings that lead a lot of people not to get help when they need it, and subsequently to extra pain and suffering, possibly death, etc. I have to admit that I am not open with most people IRL about things like past suicide attempts, hospital stays, etc., since the stigma around those things is still pretty damaging, actually. It's apparently still funny to make jokes about "crazy" people being locked up, etc., after all.

I mean, labels can be useful sometimes. All that language even is is a collection of labels, and it's how we communicate with each other. Is "depressive" an "identity"? I don't know, but it's a word that references a thing I experience, maybe partially as a consequence of the way I am generally wired.

In any case, you've repeatedly failed to show any sort of sensitivity, intelligence, nuance, or actual compassion here, particularly in regards to the way you've treated Chris, so I'm not sure who I'm actually saying this to, but whatever.

@#348 --

I second the request for clarification. Because I saw the context. And I still can't see another way to read that sentence.

If you wouldn't say "It’s sad that your son has to think of himself as diabetic, rather then someone with some limitations who is able to find meaningful activities that he enjoys," why would you say it about autism?

It's stigmatizing, bordering on dehumanizing.

ken @ 52: If you really worked in social services in NYC during the 1970s, then you must be aware of the deplorable conditions that existed in the Willowbrook institution located in the borough of Staten Island, which required Federal Court intervention and the signing of the Willowbrook Consent Decree:

http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/archives/consent.htm

Senator Robert Kennedy (Dem-NY) visited Willowbrook during 1965 and appropriately described it as "a snake pit". Geraldo Rivera, a local TV reporter gained entrance into Willowbrook, as the "Willowbrook Class" had just filed suit in Federal Court. Surely you must remember the film that showed the deplorable conditions that existed at Willowbrook that was shown on New York television, ken:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWDt5IE8RPI

JP: "particularly in regards to the way you’ve treated Chris"

Thank you. That sentiment is quite appreciated.

ann; "I second the request for clarification. Because I saw the context. And I still can’t see another way to read that sentence.":

Thanks to you also. Tomorrow I need to call a mail order pharmacy because they will not fill his heart meds due to outdated insurance information (despite my efforts to update it). I will introduce myself as his authorized representative, but because I have not signed the paperwork to that effect specifically to them... I will force dear son to give it to them himself. It will both give him some experience in self-advocacy and illustrate how the system works for those with speech/language disabilities.

@Chris --

You're welcome.

@ken --

First, and most importantly:

I'm not saying you're a bad person, or trying to make you feel bad. Please take my word for that. It's just that if you were responding to this...

My son was disappointed that he did not “just” have Asperger’s, which he would never had been diagnosed with because of his lack of speech at age three.

...you make the situation worse not better by endorsing the stigma.

Secondly, by way of illustrating the point:

I suffered from depression- I would not like to have my identity
known and broadcasted as a depressive. I sometimes relapse.

I'm sorry that you suffer from depression, and glad to hear that you were able to avail yourself of an effective treatment.

But if you grew up in the '50s, it should be well within your living memory how vanishingly slight the chances of that would have been a very short time ago. Because until very recently, depression was popularly regarded as a character defect and/or sign of weakness, due to stigma. Especially in a woman. (Hysterical, neurotic, etc.)

I mean, ineffective as antidepressants are for many people (and overprescribed as they are, too), they're a workable option for some. And forty years ago, it would have been even more definitively unavailable than CBT. At least that existed.

That's progress of a kind.

So there you have it. Calling things what they are without prejudice is not a cure-all. Obviously. But it's a start.

Apparently, Narad has never heard of mucin oligosaccharides. Makes one wonder what else he doesn’t know. He’s too proud to acknowledge he didn’t know our microbes consume host glycans, instead taking us of on yet another meaningless tangent about the source of a 1950 secretor status chart..

There's so much comedic posturing in here that it's going to take hours, which I didn't have yesterday and probably won't have tonight. I'll start with the easy one.

Bellend tosses out out "secretor status" for no discernible reason in #230, citing D'Amado citing Genetics and the Races of Man citing "Matson, G. A., and C. L. Piper, A. 1. P. A., 5, 357-368 (1947)."

Add competence in citation to the list of talents that D'Amado the Lesser, naturopath, does not possess.

"A. 1. P. A." turns out to be the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, with 1947 being – as W—pedia informs me – still within the tenure of its founding editor, who forbade standard deviations. It's DOI 10.1002/ajpa.1330050307, but I'll save you the trouble.

This is clearly embedded in D'Amado's boneheaded worldview in which O is the first blood type, etc., time to make up diets! This is far dumber than the competing pseudo-evolutionary claims of both vegetarian and "paleo" True Believoroonies.

And now, even the easy part necessitates a break. It will pick up with Keith's previously spamvertised "Part 2."

* "It should be mentioned also that A₂ is lacking or extremely rare among native Hawaiians (Nigg, '30) in which the distribution of the 4 blood groups resembles that of the Blackfeet Indians.... It seems that the incidence of A₂ is low or absent in the more primitive and isolated races."

(and also Polynesians, because reasons)

“It should be mentioned also that A₂ is lacking or extremely rare among native Hawaiians (Nigg, ’30) in which the distribution of the 4 blood groups resembles that of the Blackfeet Indians…. It seems that the incidence of A₂ is low or absent in the more primitive and isolated races.”

Eeeew.

Eeeew.

I thought the title of the journal and the year would suffice as a tip-off to the nature of the literature. You know what the WAPF logo is supposed to signify, right?

You know what the WAPF logo is supposed to signify, right?

I did not, but now I do. Bleh.

@ ann

Calling things what they are without prejudice is not a cure-all. Obviously. But it’s a start.

Precisely.
I had the feeling that two issues were conflated in the conversation.
On one hand, there is the accuracy of the diagnostic done for one's issues.
On the other hand, there is the level of "broadcasting" of said diagnostic.

The latter may lead to social stigma and peer pressure, including "you have to think of yourself as broken" issues. One can hope it can also lead to getting support and help from friends.

The former is about knowing that ails you or yours. If one wants to "take control of your own health", to use an alt-med motto, getting a proper diagnostic is the mandatory start. Pussyfooting around frightening words is not helping.

What both Narad and Bellend are neglecting in this disscussion is the effect of the macrobiome.

XKCD for the win. ;-) Thank you for that chuckle, MA.

#360 "My son was disappointed that he did not “just” have Asperger’s, which he would never had been diagnosed with because of his lack of speech at age three."
Ann said…you make the situation worse not better by endorsing the stigma.
My point was that it says very little about the person. This blog villifies Jake Crosby who happens to have Asperger's.

I second Calli, Militant Agnostic!!!

I had just been discussing the putative benefits of yogurt with my wife before I came to the computer and read your link.
It got my day off to a good start.

@Ken: We don't "vilify" Jake Crosby because he has Asperger's. We simply expose him as the liar and horrible human being he is.

http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2013/06/597-jake-crosby.html

My point was that it says very little about the person. This blog villifies Jake Crosby who happens to have Asperger’s.

Maybe, but it's not because Crosby has Asperger's - it's because of his actions and general cluelessness. A person with autism or a mental illness or whatever can still be a dummy or lack a moral compass or do awful things - just like a "normal" person can. The whole point is not to conflate having some condition or other with being a crappy person.

Wow he sure hates someone....Is this true?
Perhaps Orac’s simplistically dismissive answer can best be explained by the 30,000-euro grant he received directly from Bayer – a pharmaceutical company that not only used thimerosal in its Rh-immunoglobulins, but also produces GMO seeds.
www.ageofautism.com/2013/04/watch-david-gorski-squirm.html#more

#370 #371 Obviously.

I don't think enough has been said about parents like mine,and like the others here,who went against the conventional wisdom of the day to keep their children out of homes an institutions back in the day.

I know I have told this before,but I am probably about the same age as MI Dawn.I had many serious developmental delays,learning disabilities,and behavioral issues.I was diagnosed with autism in 1971,when the DSM-II was in use.I was diagnosed right after my second major regression,when a severe head banging meltdown in gym class triggered an evaluation that led to my autism diagnosis.My diagnosis was such,that the psychiatrists and psychologists that did the evaluation thought I was severe enough to be put in the infamous Rosewood State Hospital,which was just down the road from where we lived at the time.

http://www.asylumprojects.org/index.php?title=Rosewood_State_Hospital

Rosewood itself has an interesting connection to Leo Kanner and the history of autism.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/…

My mother was so appalled and scared by this,that we went to court to keep me out.I spent a couple of years in and out of the special education "retard rooms" of the time,so I know all to well what these classrooms were like.Children with intellectual disabilities were thrown in with kids who were simply trouble makers,who would no doubt spend the rest of their lives in trouble with the law.It was chaos,and no one learned anything.

It was about this time I also developed my many serious medical problems,that would remain undiagnosed until my late 40s and 50s.Cerebral folate deficiency,inborn errors of metabolism,and mitochondrial disease.It was only because I lived with my mother until she died,that I was able to survive to where medical science could identify my problems,but I nearly died several times along the way.

One big problem with the anti vaccine movement is they are completely ignorant,one might say willfully so,of the way disabled people were treated,warehoused,and ignored by society not that long ago in our history.This is one reason why the likes of Anne Daschel,and the rest flying monkeys at AoA can get away with saying what they do.Daschel and AoA are definitely some of the worst,but Safe Minds and the rest are not that far behind.They completely gloss over the fact there are those like liladay and Krebiozen here who were fighting in the trenches long before anybody knew who Andrew Wakefield was.

Ken- You are in no position to talk about conflict of interest. Ever.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/

@ken:
Care to explain how much of that money would he personally see as opposed to, say, paying for equipment and for running the lights and water and for supplies and for research assistants and for sweeping the floors and for lots of other researchy things?

#370 #371 Obviously.

Well, it sure didn't seem like it was obvious to you, ken. You were apparently objecting any sort of criticism of Jake Crosby because he "happens to have Asperger's."

Actually, like many cranks, you seem to have difficulty understanding causal relationships in general; I have remarked before that a lot of cranks and quacks and what-have-you may, on occasion, even have their facts relatively straight, but they seem to have problems with the understanding and correct usage of the words "thus" and "therefore."

For instance, in the several-years-old bizarre conspiracy theorizing of Crosby's that you linked to, he is correct that Orac once received a 30,000 euro grant from Bayer. However, he then somehow leaps to the conclusion that he is therefore a PHARMA SHILL and also, since Bayer has some tangential relationship to to GMOs and Orac received a grant through Bayer for breast cancer research, Orac is also therefore a GMO shill or something. If you can't see the flaws in logic and thinking there, I don't know what to tell you.

#377 I find extreme bias on both this blog and AOA.

Yes, anti-vax cranks both here and at AoA show extreme bias.

Roger @374: I thought the name Rosewood sounded familiar. My brother's elementary school was right next door, so we occasionally drove through the grounds. When I saw it (in the mid to late 90's) most of the buildings were boarded up.

At one point they housed a few mentally ill patients with criminal records, but one escaped and attacked a rabbi, so they stopped that program. (My brother's school had to go on lockdown.)

It always struck me as a weird and creepy place.

#101 Orac the cowardly putz unable to defend his view or even address me directly after 300 posts on his heinous blog. HIs hands are shaking too much to even type the word 'microbiota':
http://www.gutmicrobiotaforhealth.com/gut-microbiota-infant-vaccine-pro…

April is Autism Awareness Month and there's plenty of biological plausibility behind vaccine-induced autism, unbeknownst to Orac.

A mouse may startle a cat, but a tiger will not care.

By which I mean: Why would Orac need to address you directly? You've already been proven wrong on every possible level.

#377 He has defended GMOs. You don't bite the hand that fed you. He is grateful in that respect. However the history of Bayer is dubious at best.
www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/05/catching-my-reading-ahead-pest…

#377 www.globalresearch.ca/monsanto-syngenta-and-bayer-cropscience-the-gmo-b…

@ ken

Perhaps Orac’s simplistically dismissive answer can best be explained by the 30,000-euro grant he received directly from Bayer

Money which he has to spend to buy stuff for his lab, pay the electric and phone bills and provide a stipend to the occasional student.

You have no idea how little € 30,000 is, for a biological or chemical lab. And you have no idea how stiff private companies could be when entertaining the idea of having an academic doing a bit of scientific research for them.
Not enough to buy our everlasting loyalty, that's for sure.

Give me public or NGO funding any day.

The Pharma shill gambit. How cliché.

Well, I was entertaining some doubts about our current visitors, but they went out of their way to show their true colors in their last posts.

@ Keith Bell

Do you want a glass of water?

Keith Bell - I read your article and clicked on the links. I'm not impressed, to be honest. The first article simply wondered if oral vaccines were impacted by an infant's gut flora, and they looked at both oral and parenteral vaccines. However, at least in the abstract, they didn't give enough information to me about the results (and I can't check the full article).

Not all mothers can breastfeed. Not all infants can be fed at birth for various reasons. Most premature infants are vaccinated on a modified schedule until they have "caught up" with their birth cohorts.

Your article seems to me like it's simply a lure for people to buy your items. Again, not impressed.

#377#386 You can't connect the dots. It is obvious to me your thought processes are not objective nor unbiased.

I am sure that Orac is a skilled and highly competent breast surgeon and dedicated to providing the best possible care to his patients.

Ken, let's connect the dots. Which would bring a greater profit: Prevention of diseases, or treatment? How do we know you're not being paid to make sure diseases like measles and mumps come back and bring in new profits for the hospital supply companies?

@ken:

So what? I'll happily "defend" GMOs as well - I think they're products of great technology and have the potential to be very beneficial from both an ecological and human welfare standpoints. I'm not getting paid to say that, either, but I kinda wish I were. It'd be a nice supplement to my grad student pittance. (My U takes unusually good care of us, actually, so I shouldn't complain too much.)

I'm often a fan of Mother Jones, actually, but that article you linked to is crap. Neonics are not responsible for colony collapse disorder. This has been established for a while now. And that other link you provided, to that screed on some crank conspiracy website? Puh-lease. Gimme a break.

Honestly, I was willing to give you at least some kind of benefit of the doubt, ken, but you have repeatedly demonstrated the intelligence of somebody who's been brained with a f*cking two-by-four, and been an a**hole to boot.

@Helianthus:

You have no idea how little € 30,000 is, for a biological or chemical lab.

I have no doubt that he's diligently looking up what the expense breakdown on a typical grant of that amount is. After all, that's the intellectually honest thing to do.

#377#386 You can’t connect the dots. It is obvious to me your thought processes are not objective nor unbiased.

The reason I can't "connect the dots," deary, is that I actually have some functioning gray matter between my ears.

"Connecting the dots" can be fun when you're stoned or writing poetry or whatever, but it's not exactly a great way to understand cause-and-effect relationships. I'd suggest you get your thinking straight if you can, which I'm beginning to seriously doubt.

#391#393 Citations please for your endorsement of GMOs. I like to hear both sides of the story without stooping so low as to insult .

Well, ken, despite the fact that GMOs are apropos of nothing here, maybe you'd like to take a look at this review of 1,783 studies concerning the safety of GMOs for a start.

And I don't want to hear any sort of whining from you about "stooping so low" after the way you have comported yourself here.

@ken - perhaps because once you get past the "anti-Monsanto / anti-GMO" scare-tactics, you realize that there is quite a bit of actual real information on the safety profile of GMOs.....and that very little, if any of the science that shows they might "not" be safe is factual.

XKCD for the win. ;-) Thank you for that chuckle, MA.

Swallowing flies and spiders is the start of a slippery slope.

@ken:
Have you found that breakdown of grant spending yet? That seems like an important part of connecting the dots.

#395 I see nothing here about the human consumption of GMOs

Thank you, Mr. Kulp, for telling us your story. Your mother sounds like a wonderful person.

By the way, biggest difference between Young Master Crosby and my son, my son is actually a nice polite young man who would never ever stalk anyone (well, he is too shy, and has anxiety).

#395 I see nothing here about the human consumption of GMOs

I am shocked - SHOCKED! - at your utter lack of reading comprehension. Try looking under the heading nteraction of GE crops with humans and animals, sugar.

^ Interaction. Grumble.

#395 I see nothing here about the human consumption of GMOs

I suggest reading down as far as the second page of JP's linked review article:
Interaction of GE crops with humans and animals (GE food & feed) ...................770 ................... 43.2

@ Chris:

Speaking of Jake, his blog has gone nowhere quickly.

Similarly, Stagliano writes at an actual newspaper about April being the cruellest month or something ( see AoA).

#101 Orac the cowardly putz unable to defend his view or even address me directly after 300 posts on his heinous blog.

Kevin is coming across as a bit needy. Someone give him a hug.

http://thebestyoumagazine.co/is-it-time-for-a-hug/

:-)

#395 and BTW this was not a debate about deplorable conditions in institutions which I was more than aware of having heard of the horrors of Greystone in my state of NJ. I didn't know what Chris was talking about. I assumed she would never ever consider placing her child of normal intelligence in an institution for not being able to speak by the age of 3. She was not clear on what she meant. Yes parents
were advised to do this. My aunt in 1960 had a brain damaged child(lack of oxygen at birth) who she loved dearly and would never ever consider this.

My point was that it says very little about the person.

If that was your point, I agree with you.

But what you said was:

It’s sad that your son has to think of himself as autistic, rather then someone with some limitations who is able to fine meaningful activities that he enjoys

And by characterizing autism as "sad" and incompatible with enjoying meaningful activities, that makes the opposite point.

This blog villifies Jake Crosby who happens to have Asperger’s.

This blog doesn't treat Jake Crosby any differently than it does anyone else who expresses the same or similar views.

@ken:

Well, look who's the Mayor of Excusesville. When you ask somebody, sweetheart, point blank if "[they] would institutionalize their child," you are insinuating that yes, they would. If you can't see or cop to that, you are either dishonest or exceptionally intellectually and linguistically challenged. I suspect both.

You are also an a**hole when you say things like that, because you are making assumptions about and passing judgment on someone about whose situation you know nothing, and you are deliberately trying to cause guilt, self-doubt, and emotional pain. If you can't understand what's wrong with that, then you are severely morally challenged, and I suggest you go crawl back into whatever swampy, stagnant pool you emerged from and stay there.

^ There should be square brackets around "their," as well.

This blog villifies Jake Crosby who happens to have Asperger’s.

We seem to agree that Crosby's neurotypicality or atypicality is not relevant to his intellectual dishonesty.

#408 You cannot grasp rhetorical questions?

#408 You cannot grasp rhetorical questions?

Yes, scuzzbucket, I can. That's the whole f*cking point.

#408 "disappointed" was the operative word in the statement he made.
This is what Chris said "My son was disappointed that he did not “just” have Asperger’s, which he would never had been diagnosed with because of his lack of speech at age three.”
Please explain what he meant.

Are you aware of what reported speech is, ken?

JP: "You are also an a**hole when you say things like that, because you are making assumptions about and passing judgment on someone about whose situation you know nothing, and you are deliberately trying to cause guilt, self-doubt, and emotional pain."

That is how these guys work, JP. It is part of the anti-vax autism hate playbook. Since I have been dealing with these folks for around fifteen years, I have cast iron backbone and generally ignore the crass heartless idiocy.

It was quite common on a listserv I was on for my son's disability to have folks lay on all sorts of guilt trips if someone did not do the latest quackery. A little over ten years ago it was chelation, and I researched it, posted an email titled "Bad Idea" and got lots of nasty-grams posted to my email directly (avoiding the listserv moderator).

One of the "parents" turned out to be an employee of Jeffrey Bradstreet. She was trolling the listserv to get more victims to his quackery. After I found out, I quit that listserv.

Then a week later a little boy was killed by chelation. He was executed just because he had autism.

It is people like that little boy's executioners that ken celebrates as heroes.

@Chris:

I'm sorry that you've had to put up with that kind of crap; it bothers me that you do, and I'm glad you don't let it get to you.

I do feel it worthwhile, at least the moment, to explain all of ken's failings to in exquisite detail and simple, easy-to-comprehend language. For the sake of her own edification.

@JP:
She still hasn't figured out how little a €30,000 grant will get you. It's almost like she's afraid of the answer.

$32, 685 (in USD) is barely going to pay the salary of the department's administrative assistant for one year.

#416 disappointed” was the operative word in the statement he made.
“My son was disappointed that he did not “just” have Asperger’s, which he would never had been diagnosed with because of his lack of speech at age three.”
Please explain what he meant.

#406 Best advice yet.

Did you notice that "just" was in scare quotes, ken?

#415 I was using direct speech.

Mg G-d, but you're a moron. I am neither Chris nor her son, but please allow me spell out for you, O Stupid One, what I am quite sure her statement meant:

Asperger's is perceived as a less socially, and otherwise, stigmatizing diagnostic label than autism is. So her son was disappointed that he did not "just" have Asperger's.

#424 Writers are encouraged to be cautious when using scare quotes, because they can be an evasive way of expression that will distance the writer, and leave the reader wondering if the author means what he or she is saying
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes

Ha. Haha. HahahahahaHAHAHAHA!

Look everybody, ken discovered W---pedia!

#403 Thank you

JP @#391
www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/epa-calls-halt-use-pesticides-suspe…

Neonics are insecticides, so it makes sense that they could be deadly to bees at certain levels of exposure; I highly doubt that they are the sole cause of colony collapse disorder, which is indeed a worrying problem, although one that I feel has been the source of a needless amount of Chicken-Little-ism lately. There's some evidence that it's a cyclical phenomenon to an extent; I might try to find that article. It's definitely a good idea to look into the possible effects of neonics, which is being done.

The EPA ban seems to me to have more to do with politics than it does with science, much like the EU ban on GMOs. I'm not totally certain about that, though.

In any case, I was sitting here scratching my head and trying to imagine what you could possibly think this or your link has to do with anything, and it came to me: Oh, right. Bayer. You somehow think that because Orac received a 30,000 euro grant for breast cancer research, he's somehow also involved in neonicontinois, GMOs, the Illuminati and the New World Order or whatever, because Bayer. Uh-hunh.

I don't know if I am surprised or not that ken has not yet thought about the origin of the name of Bayer and "done some research" to help "connect the dots" in a Godwin-type way.

JP, I'd be careful mentioning the Illuminati around here.
The comment section is infiltrated, you know.

Jake's bizarre ideas about people being bought by Big Pharma always make me laugh. I have actually been wined and dined at Bayer's expense, albeit the diagnostics division, some years ago. They were trying to persuade me and my colleagues to lease a big expensive machine, but it didn't work. In the discussions we had about choosing which machine to choose the quality of the food provided by the various companies' reps did not figure at all, it was all about the price of the lease and the reagent kits, whether we could use home-brewed reagents and what assays the machine was capable of doing. The idea that I would support Bayer's products because of this is ludicrous.

I remember, with a pleasant glow, the free bar at a bash thrown by another diagnostics company in Glasgow, again some years ago. They were a Finnish company so we were offered a literal smörgåsbord too (pickled herring goes great with beer). That bought them nothing at all, since we were already using their system and had no plans to change, but it was a hell of a night, and I found myself dancing wildly with a biochemistry professor at one point. The free fizzy vitamin C tablets at the Roche stand at the biomedical sciences conference the next day did nothing for my hangover, as I recall, nor did they buy any loyalty from me.

Based on some of the stories my father used to tell about his student days -- never drink with Finns.

OK, so now that the kenkillfile is reenabled with Keith Bell commented out, I should return to my previous task. It's not going to reach "part 2," but that can wait, given that his most recent entry was simply a return to form:

Orac the cowardly putz unable to defend his view or even address me directly after 300 posts on his heinous blog.[*]

Anyway, I screwed up in #361, to wit:

Bellend tosses out out “secretor status” for no discernible reason in #230

There was indeed a stimulus, which I suppose is close enough to "a reason" in this case. But it started with #217 and culminated with the hopelessly diversionary response to GF's comments 227&ndash228, in short, why did New World aboriginal populations succumb so readily to Old World disease importations?

American Indians are the only group known to have 100% secretor status.

It is an impressive feat to generalize to a continent from an N = 79 result among (a convenience sample of Utah) members of the Ute tribe.

At this rate, I'm never going to get to vaccines causing "excitotoxicity" causing "strokes" etc.

* I seem to recall that Keith had a loose grasp of the difference between F—ook, SBM, and here, but maybe that was someone else who was bitching for personal attention.

American Indians are the only group known to have 100% secretor status.
It is an impressive feat to generalize to a continent from an N = 79 result among (a convenience sample of Utah) members of the Ute tribe.
It's a long time since I had any physical-anthropology classes, but IIRC the secretor status varies widely between Native American groups.
D’Adamo is simply equating O-group with Secretor because accuracy about the finicky details of the Lewis antigen system are not relevant to his purpose of selling books & merchandise. Keith Bell is passing on that simple-minded equation, because (1) Keith Bell, and (2) the details are equally irrelevant to *his* purpose of sheltering some ad-hoc hypothesis from a hostile world of facts.

It’s a long time since I had any physical-anthropology classes, but IIRC the secretor status varies widely between Native American groups.

I don't imagine much of "substance" is going to be coming from KEITHBELL any time soon, but I'm sure the $6-and-change Microbiotanic Man* would have a quite a comprehensive tale to tell about the treponematoses were he only afforded the respect he deserves.

* Not a deliberate Venus and Mars reference, but whatever.

never drink with Finns.
Never get involved in a land war in Asia, and never try to out-drink Finns. They are professionals.

@ JP

Neonics are insecticides, so it makes sense that they could be deadly to bees at certain levels of exposure;

Neonics are already more or less banned in my part of Europa. We still have a few bee colony collapsing.

@ Narad

It is an impressive feat to generalize to a continent from an N = 79 result among (a convenience sample of Utah) members of the Ute tribe.

WTF?

*beat*

Sorry, I was busy having hysterics. And these wannabe "doctors" want to be taken seriously?
My old teacher in population biology would have had a fit.
Anyone with a passing knowledge in population dynamics - taught in the 2nd year in French universities - would expect populations organized in a constellation of tribes to follow the archipelago model: due to limited exchanges between distant "islands", each island will tend to have a homogeneous population, and there will be big differences between islands, the more distant the higher the differences.

tl;dr: a sample size this low is bad enough with a well-mixed population, it's beyond incompetence to use it on one restricted group of people among many populations segregated in tribes.

Neonics are already more or less banned in my part of Europa. We still have a few bee colony collapsing.

The other funny thing is that they are (I think still) used quite widely in Australia, and Australia's never had a CCD problem. I won't say they couldn't be part of the problem, but it seems more likely to me that it has to do with parasites/viruses. Most likely it's complicated and involves a lot of things, in any case.

Meantime, U.S. bee populations seem to be recovering despite continued use of neonics, and researchers in a recently published study presented evidence suggesting neonics did not drive CCD.

"The scientists—all independent and working in a cooperative agreement with the USDA-ARS Bee Research Laboratory—found that many past researchers often based their experiments on extremely high amounts of pesticides—far more than a bee would normally encounter in its life. They looked instead at field realistic doses of pesticides, although always testing at the high end of what bees might actually experience."

"They deliberately fed honeybee colonies the neonic pesticide imidacloprid in a dose-response experiment based on real-world pesticide levels: 5 and 20 µg/kg doses are in the reported high range of residues present in pollen and nectar in seed-treated crops. They also included a 100 µg/kg dose as a worst-case exposure level, representing imacloprid applied to flowering crops. (That level caused a large kill of bumblebees in a 2013 Oregon incident.) Bee exposure occurred over nearly three weeks, longer than bees are usually exposed to neonics, so they they could not be accused of under-dosing them."

"What did they find? Even at the highest dose of pesticide exposure, the researchers found no difference in the performance of the treated and untreated hives. They found no evidence that imidacloprid affected foraging activity during and after exposure in their experiments."

"Directly contradicting claims by advocacy groups whose complaints prompted the forming of the White House task force, the longer the time period the less pesticides were found. “Bee Death Study Clears Bayer’s Insecticide as Sole Cause [of CCD],” concluded Bloomberg in its summary analysis. “A widely used insecticide developed by Bayer AG and tied to deaths of honeybees isn’t the main cause of the fatalities, University of Maryland researchers said in a study that may weaken arguments used by environmentalists seeking to ban the chemical.”

http://geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/03/usda-study-concludes-neonics-……

Mr. Bacon, the link is broken, although it seems to be on the website's end.

Bees have gut flora, too, where microbial diversity is shifted due to toxic chemicals. There are lethal and sublethal effects. Chemicals like fipronil and imidacloprid cause a kind of "bee autism" including seizure activity:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/etc.2889/abstract
http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1…
There are many papers about bee gut flora. Reduced or absent lactic acid bacteria in bees make them (and humans) more susceptible to gut injury leading to brain injury.
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/vaccine-injury-first-gut-then-brain

It's not a simple matter of vaccines directly causing brain damage, but about susceptibility to intestinal injury based on flora balance which is different across individuals and races.

Bees have gut flora, too, where microbial diversity is shifted due to toxic chemicals. There are lethal and sublethal effects. Chemicals like fipronil and imidacloprid cause a kind of “bee autism” including seizure activity

It's great how Keith throws out two unrelated papers – one of which he assuredly hasn't read – as though they connect together to demonstrate his thesis and then just tacks on imidacloprid out of the blue for the hell of it.

Narad didn't know bees have gut flora because he lives in a sterile world disconnected from the web of life. I sincerely doubt a single person here has ever considered the gut flora of bees. Certainly not Orac.

And there are still no studies about how any of the childhood vaccines affect flora balance or how microbial predisposition affects vaccine safety. Helianthus was still under the false impression the fetal gastrointestinal tract is sterile. What a joke.

If vaccine scientists are LUCKY, new probiotic adjuvants in development to improve vaccine response will also reduce risk of injury.

Fipronil, imidacloprid reduce honeybee mitochondrial activity:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140806154013.htm

Sounds like mitochondrial damage: immunoexcitotoxicity which can be induced by vaccination where serotonin imbalances of the gut lead to glutamate toxicity of the brain.

Here is the article on bees and neonicotinoids that Dangerous Bacon tried to link to.

https://youtu.be/RG4LZDCHAiU?t=11m54s

I sincerely doubt a single person here has ever considered the gut flora of bees.

Consider the gut flora of the bees, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin...

#441 DB Thanks for the article- "Mother"Jones is not always right.

#447 KB Thanks for the article.

never try to out-drink Finns.

Amen. Sounds like the voice of experience.

And yet another article-which concludes-"It is ... concerning that the same data set can be interpreted in such wildly contrasting ways by different scientists, for this is likely to undermine confidence amongst the general public in the scientific process.”
UK drew wrong conclusion from its neonicotinoids study, scientist says
www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/26/uk-drew-wrong-conclusion-fr…

In humble homage-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QV1RGMLUKE

Fipronil, imidacloprid reduce honeybee mitochondrial activity

It's like clockwork. When it's pointed out that he has added two things to his original citation (that it had anything to do with imidacloprid and that the two insecticides are "like" each other), KEITHBELL frantically G—les for a word association, and to top it all off, stops with a press release for an in vitro paper that is wholly unrelated to the first one, simply lifting the word "immunoexcitotoxicity" from Russell Freaking Blaylock and tacking on some word salad to try to hold the mess together.

All the while ignoring the withering criticisms of Chengsheng Lu's work, because all he knows how to do is take two conclusions ("something bad!" + "gut flora!") and pretend to connect them regardless of whether Something Bad! is real or not.

Let us not forget that the whole "secretor" subject-change to a new area of ignorance originally metastatised from Kevin Bell's claims about common illnesses -- that vaccination is unnecessary because only unfit and unworthy people die from measles.
He addressed contrary evidence by ignoring it and shuffling to a new position, that only people with the "secretor" phenotype are endangered by measles.
IOW, about 75% of Europeans.

bimler, that's not at all what I've said. Moreover, that's not even my name. What I've talked about is vaccine safety, not elimination. And I brought up secretor status only related to the discussion about vulnerability of Native Americans/Hawaiians to disease. In fact, it's the non-secretors known to have reduced levels of bifidobacteria making them potentially vulnerable to vaccine injury (which is not the same thing as death by contagious disease, as you've confused the issues). African Americans apparently have the highest rate of non-secretors according to the 1950 chart. This may be consistent with CDC fraud as admitted by William Thompson.

Keith: Then why aren't African-Americans dying left and right to measles? It's a contradiction that blows your absurd hypothesis out of the water.

Gray, read the paragraph I just wrote again and get back to me. The issue is African American males being more prone to autism by MMR per CDC. There are several reasons males are more vulnerable outlined in my latest article, but why African American males? My theory is reduced or absent protective bacteria such as Bifidobacteria, a matter of poor microbial predisposition. Moreover, they may also naturally have higher levels of Bacteroides known to increase antibody response compared to Lactobacillus.

@ K Bell

I sincerely doubt a single person here has ever considered the gut flora of bees.

Funny you should mention it. Wanna bet?

Funny you should mention it. Wanna bet?

"Veteran of the recycling industry" KEITHBELL has perhaps forgotten that he's recycling this as well.

Heli, perhaps because I brought it up last October, #372 here:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/10/01/antivaccine-cranks-try-to-…

Keith, you brought that up in response to the question as to why American Indians were dying of measles. If that logic applies to one race, it applies to all of them.

African Americans apparently have the highest rate of non-secretors according to the 1950 chart.

I take it that direct replies are a bit much for you to figure out.

JP @450 -- In physics lectures about Atwood machines, idealized systems of pulleys and ropes that are used to demonstrate how to use coupled equations to solve problems, I often say:

Consider the pulleys. They do not toil, but they do spin.

The students look even more confused.

Note to Orac: I hope you're paying Narad well, he's worth every cent.

And, interestingly, American Indians were found to be the only group of 100% secretors, directly opposite of African Americans.

Most people would think genetic predisposition explains "Why 7 Deadly Diseases Strike Blacks Most"
http://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/features/why-7-de…
(some studies show Whites suffer far more Parkinson's than Blacks; lower levels of neuromelanin?)

But what about microbial predisposition?

And yet, vaccination is still vastly more effective.

I wish I could pay Narad to post comments on the many blogs where I have to contend with the relentless drivel from the AoA denizens.

Keith Bell, you never replied to my comment about Lennox-Gastaut seizures. Your copy pasta from the Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome website is a spectacular display of your ignorance:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/02/26/poor-poor-pitiful-andy-wak…

disconnected from the web of life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj9xsSuczes.

Heli, perhaps because I brought it up last October, #372 here

Once again, a demonstration that nobody understands anything about the meanings of words or their combinations until KEITHBELL G—le-mines them for co-occurence.

Which does not "collapse the wavefunction" under any circumstances.

^ Ah, screw it, it'd take forever to do this systematically.

KEITHBELL: Why, precisely, do you think that microbial consumption of the intestinal mucosal barrier is a Good Thing?

Take care not to try to get away with the attachment/real-estate charade again.

Keith Bell@446

I sincerely doubt a single person here has ever considered the gut flora of bees.
Certainly not Orac.

Certainly not me. And I think rightly so. The problems with translating animal models to humans are well known. Even more so across classes. Still more so considering intestinal flora aren't homogenous amongst our own species. And even still more so for complicated interactions between systems. Especially when we don't are only beginning to understand of one of those systems.

All that is irrelevant though, because it makes no sense to be searching for a why when a there's so much quality data showing a lack of even correlation.

@467

Note to Orac: I hope you’re paying Narad well, he’s worth every cent.

Everyone knows Orac doesn't personally pay anyone. They're both paid by Big Pharma.

Narad@465

I take it that direct replies are a bit much for you to figure out.

It's like playing whack-a-mole. Except even when you get one it doesn't give you the points. And the moles aren't quite as intelligent.

@palindrom:

I would like to sit in on your classes. :)

@ K Bell

Heli, perhaps because I brought it up last October

Actually, no. Pretty sure the honeybee scientist I was discussing with doesn't even know you exist.

It is impossible to appropriately respond to Keith's posts without knowing the precise constituents of his intestinal flora (and percentages thereof).

Maybe his comments are influenced by a raging case of Candida overgrowth.

lilady, I certainly did answer your question and suggested focus on the gut in LGS. What do you think LGS really is? It's just an umbrella term for describing seizures largely of unknown cause.
https://www.facebook.com/lgsfoundation1/photos/a.819161508167946.107374…

I suggested LGSF add vaccine injury to their broad list of causes (30% unknown). Both LGSF and CURE have yet to receive a funding request to study gut origin of seizure while mechanism of the highly effective ketogenic diet is still up for debate.

Perhaps they'll be some answers from a new project, the Rare Epilepsy Network (REN), including vaccine injury and gut connections.

#472, Narad, it's not just about consumption as microbes play a huge role in the creation and maintenance of our first line of defense, stimulating mucin release from goblet cells. We feed them and they feed us including required vitamins and amino acids, a reciprocal relationship.
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/73/6/1131S.long
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1471992/
http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/v8/n11/full/ismej201464a.html

How's your dog Keith? Still having seizures?

#472, Narad, it’s not just about consumption as microbes play a huge role in the creation and maintenance of our first line of defense, stimulating mucin release from goblet cells it is my gigantic pile of errors that counts, not any specific one.

FTFY, Keith.

Keith Bell@477

lilady, I certainly did answer your question and suggested focus on the gut in LGS.

Lilady is absolutely correct given that the study you linked to in #294 makes no mention of an effect on the microbiome as a mechanism for the ketogenic diet.

[Ketogenic diet's] utility in a variety of different epilepsies suggests that it might have multiple mechanisms of action.

"Multiple mechanisms of action" is not free license to insert your preferred nonsense as one.

What do you think LGS really is? It’s just an umbrella term for describing seizures largely of unknown cause.

Nope. That's epilepsy you're thinking of.

From the LGS Foundation website:

Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS) is a rare and often debilitating form of childhood-onset epilepsy. The syndrome is characterized by a triad of signs including multiple seizure types, moderate to severe cognitive impairment, and an abnormal EEG with slow spike-wave complexes. This triad of mixed seizures, abnormal EEG and intellectual impairment represents one of the most difficult forms of epilepsy to treat. LGS is also a physically dangerous epilepsy syndrome of childhood because of the frequent falls, injuries, and cognitive impairment that can severely limit quality of life.

How can you possibly torture that into the conclusion that LGS is an umbrella term for all idiopathic seizures?

I suggested LGSF add vaccine injury to their broad list of causes (30% unknown).

And why would they do that? Where is your evidence?

I do so love Keith calling us all Pharma Shills when all he's trying to do is get us to buy the stuff off his website to balance our guts...

Pot, meet Kettle.

palindrom #466, consider the moments of inertia of a frictionless cat pinned to inverse, non-venting, lossless buttered toast...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8yW5cyXXRc

capnkrunch

It’s like playing whack-a-mole.

More like whack-a-sealion.

To be fair though, Narad has not addressed the effect of the gut macrobiome.

Militant Agnostic@483

To be fair though, Narad has not addressed the effect of the gut macrobiome.

To be fair to Narad though, Keith has not made it easy. Have you taken a look at his article? It's incredibly link dense and he never seems directly to a study so you need to get the name from of it from whatever site (ScienceDaily, etc.) he links to and put it into PubMed. And he makes a lot of claims so it's incredibily work intensive.

The way I see it Keith's arguments boil down to:
-Vaccines can cause injury to the microbiome
-Injuries to the microbiome can affect neurotransmitter levels, particularly serotonin
-These changes can have a neurotoxic effect that manifests as autism, epilepsy, etc.
-Probiotics*, particularly bifidobacterium, has an antinflammatory effect on the gut which translates to also being neuroprotective

But that premise and its relevant citations are mixed with a large amount of irrelevant (at least for the purposes of mounting a counterargument) talk of micriobiodiversity and other such. If Keith would be so kind as to provide the references for those base claims on which his platform rests without any hand waving I'd imagine Narad would have a much easier time.

*Which you can convienently buy directly from the same site the article is, GreenMedInfo. Only $42.95 for 60! What a steal!

Militant Agnostic is referring back to #366.

A "salty" (as the aussies call them) might be a more appropriate treatment for Keith's gut macrobiome than the marcoprobiotic suggested by Randall Munroe.

Injuries to the microbiome can affect neurotransmitter levels, particularly serotonin

I haven't even gotten to reading that mess. KEITHBELL seems, on the surface, to have (1) asserted that excitotoxicty causes strokes, rather than the other way around, and (2) failed to take note of the fact that the brain makes its own serotonin and glutamate. I can scarcely imagine the horror if he tries to claim that the endogenous surplus can't be handled as usual because something something Goaʾuld something.

Ah, totally just read microbiome there. That's much more funny. I can see the GreenMedInfo listing now:

Canus lupus Suppository
Safe, natural, and effective!
Promotes healthy and diverse intestinal fauna[1]!
[1] http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/keystone-species-…

They better get on that before Mercola corners the market.

Should this be Canis lupus? If so, would it be C. lupus lupus or C. lupus familiaris? Or might it just be a screwball, but existent reference to any C. lupus individual of color canus (grey)?

In any case, I have some C. lupus familiaris (um) material on the poopy pad downstairs, that I haven't cleaned up yet.. I'm not about to use it as a suppository, so if anyone wants some...

Bill Price@489
It should indeed be Canis lupus. C. l. irremotus is the most natural and therefore best but due to government regulations they can only offer C. l. occidentalis. There's also a blend of C. l. occidentalis and C. l familiaris that is a more gentle preparation.

Not everyone may be aware of the movie treatment of the macrobiome thesis:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2274570/

Compulsive sea-lion syndrome is probably best treated with something more aquatic such as a salty.

Thou shalt not mess with the sea lion.

http://abc30.com/pets/sea-lion-attacks-man-in-san-diego/631606/

#485, capnkrunch, thanks so much for reading and that's a decent summation (and the most relevant feedback I've yet to receive anywhere) other than omitting the most important message: microbial predisposition. It's not a simple matter of vaccines damaging flora balance, but what's present at time of vaccination potentially dysregulating immune response. Btw, within all the article links are also links to the actual papers. Of course, there are also several direct links to papers.

Regarding LGS, may as well add ASD to causes as up to 40% of those with autism also suffer epilepsy. LGS is definitely a very broad umbrella.

Dawn, that's not my website and I'm selling nothing, though I'd like to . . . lots of bills to pay and worlds to change.

Adam, she passed Sept. 2012 from a photosensitive seizure-related accident.

Narad, I'm not in disregard of the brain manufacturing serotonin and glutamate, but factoring the gut in this process. The brain is also known to make its own insulin, i.e., type 3 diabetes (Alzheimer's). All the major neurodegenerative diseases including MS, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's are now thought to begin in the gut.

Gut-brain is new territory for everyone, most especially the vaccine industry while Orac doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. No wonder he refuses to participate in this conversation given four (4) opportunities thus far since he has an entire company here willing to display barbaric oblivion:
http://www.brainfacts.org/across-the-lifespan/diet-and-exercise/article…

"I can scarcely imagine the horror if he tries to claim that the endogenous surplus can’t be handled as usual . . . "

I'm more concerned about serotonin deficiency than surplus since it's correlated with SIDS and constipation.

Better to be a little behind than a big ass, Orac.

Btw, within all the article links are also links to the actual papers.

And, as you've already demonstrated here, you're completely incompetent at reading the parts that you can see and almost too G-ddamned lazy to get copies of the ones that are paywalled.

Here, for example, is Keith's incisive "analysis" of neurotoxicity. It's no surprise that he ignored a request to summarize it here, because it's word salad – a disjointed set of assertions with nothing more than links to random papers.

Check this out:

It's stated boldly in many papers that serotonin doesn't cross blood-brain barrier (BBB) as if gut-derived serotonin doesn't enter the brain, yet papers show serotonin penetrates BBB.

The "studies" is this rarely cited 1967 entry, which is essentially impossible to evaluate without the whole thing, something I'm not doing for KEITHBELL today.

It's not even clear why he includes it, but such is the nature of a blizzard of shіt. It's a monument to his word-association modus operandi. Oh, and sure enough, Russell Freaking Blaylock.

This is a person who demonstrably can't think and is really, really impressed by the "talent."

Narad: "Russell Freaking Blaylock."

This weekend I listened to one of Dr. Crislip's podcasts. This one included jokes on how to hide a five dollar from certain medical specialists. Apparently you can hide cash from a surgeon by putting it in a text book.

Hey, I'm still learning about how the gut affects brain serotonin levels and gave a brief overview, including how serotonin crosses BBB into circulation and how tryptophan of gut microbial origin crosses BBB as precursor for serotonin production in the brain.

But in your small, compartmentalized world, Narad, it's all about the brain. I've got news for you: your BBB is a joke. You can't even acknowledge role of the gut in serotonin deficiency associated with SIDS (including vaccine-induced SIDS).

Keith, do you understand the concept of "evidence"?

Gray, do you understand the concept of hypothesis? Who else is talking about gut origin of vaccine injury and epilepsy? You think it's not a worthwhile avenue of study?

Not all hypotheses have equal standing.

Gray, do you understand the concept of hypothesis?

It's pretty apparent that KEITHBELL doesn't, given the fact that he phrases his random connections as facts and is singularly uninterested in coming up with ways of falsifying them rather than simply churning out more.

Who else is talking about gut origin of vaccine injury and epilepsy?

Now, there's a notable lacuna in Keith's otherwise, ah, "remarkable" dot-connecting skills.

Speaking of sea-lions:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11388068

It’s not a simple matter of vaccines damaging flora balance, but what’s present at time of vaccination potentially dysregulating immune response.

Ah ha! I was so busy digging through the trees I didn't see the forest. The microbiome is actually the least important thing here since you're not claiming it as a mechanism. Here's a revised list of my points of contention:
-Vaccines cause inflammatory intestinal injury
-The resultant elevated blood serotonin levels lead to neurological damage that manifests as autism, epilepsy, etc

Btw, within all the article links are also links to the actual papers. Of course, there are also several direct links to papers.

Not the Alzheimer one which was the first I tried. After that I just grabbed the title and Pubmed'd instead of searching for the link. It's generally good practice to link either directly to the study or to the Pubmed entry when you are referencing studies.

Regarding LGS, may as well add ASD to causes as up to 40% of those with autism also suffer epilepsy.

Ah, I see what's going on. You're confusing correlation with causation. Don't worry about it. All quacks make that mistake.

LGS is definitely a very broad umbrella.

I can't figure out where you are getting that from. As I quoted from the LGS Foundation before, it is a very specific type of childhood onset epilepsy and by no means a wastebasket diagnosis for seizures of unknown etiology.

Dawn, that’s not my website and I’m selling nothing, though I’d like to . . . lots of bills to pay and worlds to change.

Sure but that's your article endorsing bifidobacterium on a website that happens to sell it. Sure seems like far more of a COI than Orac has ever had.

As states try to crack down on non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, antivaccinationists lose it (yellow Star of David edition)

oracknows — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 05:00:28 +0000

As states try to crack down on non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, antivaccinationists lose it (yellow Star of David edition)

With the Disneyland measles outbreak still going strong and striking far more unvaccinated than vaccinated, it's not surprising that a discussion has begun in some states about lax policies that permit religious and/or philosophical exemptions. In Oregon, for example, the legislature is considering SB442, a bill apparently originally intended to provide a technical fix to the process for obtaining philosophical exemptions to vaccine mandates by giving parents deadlines to submit the required documentation for non-medical exemptions, but the antivaccine troops became totally riled up when the Senate Health Committee heard testimony on an amendment that would eliminate non-medical exemptions. That Oregon, a state with one of the laxest policies on non-medical exemptions would even consider such a law, even though it probably has a snowball's chance in hell of passing, is truly amazing. Not surprisingly, the antivaccine crank blog is going absolutely crazy about it, given that it's in founder J.B. Handley's home state.

Similarly, in California, Senators Richard Pan and Ben Allen recently introduced Senate Bill 227, which would repeal the personal belief exemption to school vaccine mandates in California. That, too, is amazing. Consider, this is the land of Dr. Jay Gordon, Robert "Dr. Bob" Sears, and more woo-loving antivaccine naturopaths, pediatricians, and other health care providers than you can shake a stick at, and the legislature is actually considering a bill to eliminate personal belief exemptions. Not knowing the political situation in California that well, I don't know what its chances are for passage. (Probably not good.) Of course, before the Disneyland measles outbreak, there was no chance that such a bill would even have been introduced for debate.

In response to initiatives such as these, unfortunately, we have stories such as this one entitled Anti-vaccine moms speak out amid fierce backlash:

One is a businesswoman and an MBA graduate. Another is a corporate vice president. The third is a registered nurse.

These three mothers - all of them educated, middle-class professionals - are among the vaccine skeptics who have been widely ridiculed since more than 100 people fell ill in a measles outbreak traced to Disneyland. Critics question their intelligence, their parenting, even their sanity. Some have been called criminals for foregoing shots for their children that are overwhelmingly shown to be safe and effective.

"Contrary to the common sentiment, we are not anti-science," said Michelle Moore, a businesswoman who lives in the affluent Portland suburb of Lake Oswego with her 2.5-year-old twin girls. "I'm not opposed to medicine, and I think vaccines have a place. We think it's a medical choice, and it should be researched carefully."

Unfortunately, where you and I see the arrogance of ignorance, this article is yet another exercise in false balance, in which these antivaccine mothers are presented as being persecuted and not all that ignorant. One thing the article does get right is this:

Anti-vaccination parents include a mix of views - from religious communities to families practicing alternative medicine and libertarians who shun government interference.

Measles and myths: Medical expert addresses skepticism over vaccine
But many are Americans with college degrees living in liberal communities such as Santa Monica or Marin County in California and Portland, said Gary Freed, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan.

We also hear, what we've heard so many times before, the "health freedom" trope so beloved of antivaccinationists:

"I have the right to decide what to put into my child's body," said Heather Dillard, a mom in Springfield, Missouri, who is also a registered nurse. "Nobody has the right to put toxic chemicals into my son's bloodstream. That's taking my rights away, and it's very scary to me."

But what about her son's rights to good medical care and simple preventative measures that will protect him from infectious disease? As was the case with Rand Paul and all the others arguing "parental rights," the thought that the child might be an independent entity who is not the property of his parents never enters Dillard's mind. It's all about her, her, her, as opposed to about her son, and her comment about putting "toxic chemicals into his bloodstream" just shows how little she knows, in addition to this:

Dillard and others say they are not worried about measles because their children have strong immune systems. They cite statistics: Out of the 1,000-plus measles cases in the past decade, there was not a single death.

Not in the US—yet. There was just a death in Germany. An 18-month-old boy who was not vaccinated against the measles developed complications from the measles and died. Germany, it turns out, has been having its own measles outbreak, with 574 cases reported since October and this being the first fatality. Germany is just as developed a country as the US, in some ways more so (universal health care, for instance). Do Dillard and others think that this child didn't have a strong immune system? If antivaccinationists keep it up, we could soon be reporting our own measles deaths right here in the good ol' USA.

Meanwhile, in California, a group called Californians against SB 277 has gone beyond the antivaccine dog whistle of equating "forced vaccination" with an attack on freedom and has gone full Godwin (original post removed; but fortunately the text was saved here):

Post by Refutations to Anti-Vaccine Memes.

Yes, that picture you see is a photo of someone named Heather Barajas juxtaposed with Jews in Hitler's Germany wearing the yellow Star of David that Nazis made Jews wear in public in order to make them immediately identifiable with a picture of herself and her daughter with badges consisting of a syringe with a slash through it. Persecution complex much? I mean, seriously, it takes an enormous martyr complex coupled with delusions of grandeur to equate a requirement that children be vaccinated before going to places where there are a lot of other children who can spread disease (you know, like schools, day care facilities, and the like) with the yellow Star of David that Nazis required Jews to wear to make them easier to target for persecution and, ultimately, extermination.

Does Barajas realize how utterly ridiculous she looks? Does she realize how deeply offensive it is to compare her not being able to send her kids to school without getting them vaccinated with the Holocaust?

Barajas concludes thusly:

This is no longer about pro-vax vs. non-vax. This is about freedom of choice for medical procedures. Our bodies belong to us, not the government. Measles is not a deadly disease. It is not sweeping the nation, killing thousands, as the media hysteria seems to have some believing. It's being used as a scare tactic. It's being used to turn people against each other.

If SB 277 passes, it will be very bad. Not even homeschooling will be safe, since in CA it's considered private school. Everyone will be forced to vaccinate, adults as well. They have many new vaccines in the making that you will be forced to get.

I promise you, if you send the message that the government owns your body, you will regret it. What happens if they decide anyone with any kind of mental illness must be force medicated with whatever they deem as best? What if they start making medication that people with certain disabilities must take, whether they want to or not?

Of course, no one is "forcing" anyone to get vaccinated, least of all adults. The state is simply saying that if you want your child to be able to use certain public services, your child has to be vaccinated. As for the "slippery slope" argument, laws are already in place against medical neglect of children (and, make no mistake, not providing appropriate medication and medical treatment for a condition requiring them is medical neglect). The issue is that such laws are all too frequently not enforced properly. So much deference is given to "parental rights" that parents have to let two of their children die of pneumonia under nearly identical circumstances, failing to get them treated, before the state will actually consider throwing them in jail and taking the rest of their children away.

Sadly, the comments after Barajas' post are enough to make the Baby Jesus cry. You can see why Dr. Bob likes to blow his antivaccine dog whistle so much. He knows what his people like to hear. He just likes to present himself as the "reasonable" face of the antivaccine movement, not like those nuts likening vaccine mandates to the Holocaust or human trafficking.

Barajas, however, is just the beginning. I realize that I've covered Nazi & Holocaust analogies in which antivaccinationists portray themselves as the Jews and the CDC, state, and other health authorities as the Nazis, but more keep popping up all the time. With the measles outbreak being in the news, the pace seems to be accelerating. For example:

Anne Dachel: Unvaccinated today….Jews 1940 Budapest. In this lovely little ditty, the "media editor" of the antivaccine crank blog known as Age of Autism likens suggestions that the names of nonvaccinating families be made public to...the Jews of Budapest under Nazi rule. Because, you know, what antivaccinationists face today is just like what the Jews of Budapest and elsewhere in the Third Reich faced.
The Healthy Home Economist: WIC Threatening Unvaccinated Kids with Starvation. In this post, the HHE likens 2015 America to—you guessed it!—1935 Germany, asking, "Will the unvaccinated be forced to wear the modern equivalent of a yellow Star of David at some point in the near future?"
Mike Adams: When MEDICINE becomes MURDER: America's vaccine narrative now mirrors Nazi eugenics propaganda. It's Mike Adams. 'Nuff said. Well, not quite. This one is strained even by Adams' standards. It features a 1938 German propaganda poster of the "ideal Aryan family," all blond-haired and blue-eyed sitting on the beach in the perfection of health and compares it to a Pennsylvania poster that shows people showing off their vaccine bandages and reads "Earn your stripe!" It goes downhill from there, likening a poster from today stating that "Flu shots save lives" to a Nazi advertisement lamenting how much a "congenitally diseased or handicapped person" costs the state.

Actually, I must admit that Adams has outdone himself in despicableness, referring to "brain damaged victims of vaccines," complete with photos.

I can somewhat understand why some parents might resent school vaccine mandates. However, that understanding is tempered by an understanding that children are not the property of the parents and when parents fail in their duty to protect them sometimes the state has to prod them with measures like school vaccine mandates, which don't prevent the truly committed antivaccinationists from not vaccinating but will usually give fence sitters or those not ideologically committed against vaccinations a push to vaccinate. These measures are not, however, incipient fascism, the overblown analogies to the Holocaust of Mike Adams, Anne Dachel, and Heather Barajas notwithstanding. They just aren't. The appeal to "health freedom" is an antivaccine dog whistle, and the conflation of vaccine mandates with an intolerable affront to freedom is intentional. After all, who doesn't value freedom? Even those who are pro-vaccine might be sympathetic to such arguments when they come from someone like Rand Paul or even Dr. Bob Sears. In a perverse way, I almost have to thank Mike Adams and his ilk for taking this dog whistle, cranking the volume up to the point where even humans start to be able to hear its lower frequencies, and inadvertently reducing the "health freedom" argument to its on reductio ad absurdum.

ADDENDUM: It would appear that Heather Barajas and/or Californians Against SB 277 took down the post I was mocking. Fortunately, I saved the photo. Unfortunately, I didn't save the entirety of the text. (I really should know better. I did save the text of Dr. Bob Sears' posts that I wrote about.) In any case, here's the photo, for those who were curious:

Heather Barajas, in her extreme hubris coupled with a persecution complex, comparing herself to Jews marked with a yellow Star of David.

oracknows Tue, 02/24/2015 - 00:00

Shorter anti-vax: "My right to swing my fist ends at the back of your skull."

Measles is not a deadly disease. It is not sweeping the nation, killing thousands,

And vaccination against measles has nothing to do with this happy state of affairs.

"Killing thousands". With this type of threshold, even the recent outbreak of Ebola would barely qualify as a serious disease. And anyway, it's because Africans have vit D deficiency. Not enough sun exposure, you know.

As the cases in Germany's latest outbreak rise to around 600, the tragic inevitability has occurred - a wee unvaccinated 18 month old has died from measles.
According to official statments the child was unvaccinated (and was old enough to have been) and suffered no chronic conditions http://www.berlin.de/sen/gessoz/presse/pressemitteilungen/2015/pressemi…
Google translate of the above article tells us "
One and a half year old child died of measles: Press Release
Press release of 23/02/2015
The Senate Department for Health and Social Affairs was informed about a difficult runny measles disease with fatal outcome in a one and a half year old boy.

The child fell ill in the Reinickendorf district on 12 February with fever and cough developed in the course and the texture typical rash. Then worsened the condition of the child, so it had to be hospitalized on 14 February. The boy died in hospital on 18 February. The child was not vaccinated against measles. It had no chronic pre-existing conditions.

The competent health authority has initiated immediately in accordance with the Infection Protection Act in the relevant daycare all necessary measures. The announcement was made to the appropriate Regional Office for Health and Social Affairs on Monday, 23 February, after it was secured that measles were the actual cause of death.

The only protection against measles is vaccination. Therefore, all should check whether they have a Masernimpfschutz. Who is not sure whether he already had measles or been vaccinated, should consult their GP and get vaccinated. Blood tests are not necessary for this."

And guess what does kill thousands - Influenza.....

Yet they don't like that vaccine either.

Well said Orac. Children do have the right to proper care just as parents have the responsibility to ensure their children receive it.
The longer the antivaccine crowd rants the less rational they sound.

A few other examples:

Anne Dachel:

http://annedachel.com/2015/02/12/20003/?utm_content=buffer1f6c8&utm_med…

Sarah Pope (Healthy Home Economist)

http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/wic-threatening-unvaccinated-kid…

Sayer Ji of Greenmedinfo

https://www.facebook.com/sayerjigmi/photos/a.217389921755973.1073741828…

Let's not forget Mike Adams, who just yesterday produced a gem of argumentum ad Nazium beyond even his past efforts, comparing vaccination programs to the Nazi euthanasia program. I've added some text to "honor" his efforts and include a few more vaccine/Nazi/Holocaust analogies.

As these bills come forth in their legislatures, this beyond hyperbolic hype will only worsen. I hope parents who do vaccinate will see through this nonsense and recognize it for what it is--a sign of just how uneducated and unbalanced anti-vaccinators really are.

Lawrence #4 makes a very good point - I was just on the CDC website the other day and was surprised to see there have been 86 pediatric deaths from flu since September 28, 2014. I don't know how that number compares to previous years, but it is a very frightening and sobering statistic. Are numbers like this brought up when people debate the flu vaccine? I wonder if that number is actually higher since not everyone will have their child tested for the flu.

The first post beat me to the punch, so to speak, on the analogy of swinging one's fist in the air.

It's not a perfect analogy. Swinging my fist in the air, as long as it doesn't intersect another person, is harmless. Letting your special snowflakes go unvaccinated for other than valid medical reasons is not. But actions that endanger only your own kids are one thing. Actions which endanger other people's kids--and that is what the anti-vaxers are doing, even if they don't want to admit it--are that much more reprehensible. Keep your little Petri dishes away from other people's kids. If that means you have to quit your day job to home school them, and your lifestyle is a little less comfortable because of that, then that's the consequence of your actions.

In NM, the largest school district is finally at least enforcing their own rules. Despite three weeks notice, there were still 250 kids caught without either shots or exemptions. http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S3714737.shtml?cat=500

Aother great chestnut from Barajas' rant: "I'm not being dramatic. I'm not over-exaggerating. I'm being very serious & trying to get a message across as bluntly as possible. Keeping our rights to our bodies is a must. I shouldn't have to live in fear in a supposed free country. But I do. I shouldn't feel anxiety every time I hear a police car, helicopter, or plane pass by. But I do. I shouldn't fear taking my daughter to the doctor. But I do. I shouldn't have to wonder if/how my family will suffer, be hurt, or even tortured because we make a medical decision that's different. But unfortunately, I do, every day."

But, no, she's neither dramatic nor over-exaggerating, not at all. I'm not sure those words mean what she thinks they do, because I'm fairly sure she's a textbook definition of both. This woman truly, truly believes her persecution totally equals what the Jews went through? Someone's privilege is showing.

That should read "persecution" with intended quotes in comment #12. Hyperbole is catching.

Ms. Barajas is not entirely correct regarding the whole home school thing. It might be considered a private school, but not necessarily. They need to meet certain requirements and file an affidavit to be considered a private school.

Why is it that so many RNs seem to be so anti-vax?

I shouldn't have to live in fear in a supposed free country. But I do. I shouldn't feel anxiety every time I hear a police car, helicopter, or plane pass by. But I do. I shouldn't fear taking my daughter to the doctor. But I do. I shouldn't have to wonder if/how my family will suffer, be hurt, or even tortured because we make a medical decision that's different. But unfortunately, I do, every day.

^^That's very distressing.

...

I mean, I too don't think the state should be empowered to make (let's say) CBT for paranoia mandatory. That kind of thing tends to be prone to abuse. But she needs help.

Just to expand on my previous comment, from what I could find, parents are exempted from enrolling their children in school or even registering their home as a school if the child is taught by a certified tutor. This would exempt them from any and all immunization requirements, as I understand it. The relevant code is Education Code 48224:

48224. Instruction by tutor

(Exemption by certificated tutor)

Children not attending a private, full-time, day school and who are being instructed in study and recitation for at least three hours a day for 175 days each calendar year by a private tutor or other person in the several branches of study required to be taught in the public schools of this state and in the English language shall be exempted. The tutor or other person shall hold a valid state credential for the grade taught. The instruction shall be offered between the hours of 8 o'clock a.m. and 4 o'clock p.m.

The Home School Association of California also notes that this manner of education is exempt from immunization requirements.

So, yeah. Ms. Barajas is full of it.

I suppose those people never have read any books about Germany under Hitler?
It's strange, in the US one gets some reactions comparing vaccination regulations with things happening to the Jews in WW2 and in the Netherlands some anti-vaccinionists are anti-semitic and holocaust deniers.

Dillard and others say they are not worried about measles because their children have strong immune systems. They cite statistics: Out of the 1,000-plus measles cases in the past decade, there was not a single death.

Which is false. There have been four measles deaths and several deaths from SSPE which is a separate registry.

When I checked what immunizations needed updating when I was in my mid twenties I noticed that there was no measles or mumps vaccination on my record. I did get the rubella shot with all the other girls in my year in third grade.

So I got the MMR shot, in addition to my DTaP and FSME booster.

I get the flu vaccine every year.

Do I like having a sore arm for a week after the DTaP? No. I like being alive though.

My grandmother lost a child to diphtheria. She would have gone ape shit crazy if she found out one of her grandkids wasn't vaccinated.

@ScienceMom - I was shocked to see the deaths from SSPE...I hadn't realized that they had happened here (in recent memory).

Is there a way to get more details about the cases?

“I have the right to decide what to put into my child’s body,” said Heather Dillard, a mom in Springfield, Missouri, who is also a registered nurse.

Taking that to its (il)logical conclusion, Dillard has the "right" to deny her child food and water. After all, *she* gets to decide what goes in her kid's body, right?

When Orac says that these parents are treating their children like property and not autonomous human beings, he absolutely nails it. Never have I seen such a sense of entitlement from a group of people as I do from the anti-vaxers, who honestly believe that they are exempt from the responsibilities of living in a shared society.

I made a comment on another thread that it's not crass to make an economic case for a treatment. That rather chilling graphic at the start is a stark reminder of the importance of the broader context.

I'm sure a fantastic case could be made economically for eugenics, forced euthanasia, selective abortion etc. but no just no.

Surely one of the measures of a civilised society is to protect and defend the most vulnerable members not to destroy them. This is one of the things the anti vax crowd are missing. This is in large part surely what herd immunity provides and why it's so important and why to be part of that civilised society asking folk to get vaccinated is perfectly commendable.

Out of the 1,000-plus measles cases in the past decade, there was not a single death.

There's been either 2 or 10, depending on whose figures you want to cite. It would be nice to get this number nailed down.

@Shay - see below:

http://pastebin.com/FaDfAGhU
http://pastebin.com/aLf5C1DV

barajas is right, of course. Measles isn't a deadly disease.

I mean, yes: it did kill 145,700 people worldwide in 2013 (that works out to roughly 400 deaths a day).

But that's hardly a reason to go throwing around loaded terms like 'deadly'. Right?

[toggle sarcasm off]

I was surprised about the measles and SSPE deaths too. They haven't been well publicized. Lot more than I thought.
http://pediatrics.about.com/od/measles/a/measles-timeline.html

the thought that the child might be an independent entity who is not the property of his parents never enters Dillard’s mind. It’s all about her, her, her, as opposed to about her son

The more I deal with anti-vaxers, the more convinced I become that the core of their philosophy is nothing but good old fashioned narcissism.

- They believe they know better than anyone else
- They believe others do not put in the same efforts that they do, whether in raising their children, or in doing "research"
- They are unwilling to assume any risk on behalf of others
- They don't even value their own children as much as themselves

The last one is really where it becomes obvious. If they were actually doing all this in the name of protecting their children, their motivations would at least be honorable, if misguided. But they aren't; it is all about not being willing to risk "damaging" their children through vaccination, because that would be something THEY did. Whereas if their child suffers or dies from the actual disease, they can rationalize it as being "dumb luck" or "God's will". They wouldn't like it, but at least they wouldn't feel guilty.

To the anti-vaxers, the risk that some direct action of theirs would lead to a bad outcome for their child is the worst thing possible, even if that action actually reduces the overall risk. It's an astonishing abrogation of parental responsibility. Of course, that also reflects badly on them, so they construct these elaborate fantasies to hide their narcissism from the world and even from themselves. The lengths that they will go to to maintain this self-deception are incredible.

@Still Shaking Mama

Oh yes, the death stats are brought up.

Not that it seems to matter much.

Two factors in that.

1) Humans are just bad a risk assessment so if I or anyone I know survived the flu it feels less dangerous than it is. So sometimes the numbers just don't have the impact one would tend to expect.

2 The tendency of some antivaxxers (particularly the more strident) to blame the deaths on the dead or the dead's parents. You let that kid have a sip of Coca-Cola once, well that is why your kid got the illness or why they didn't survive the illness. If only you were a pure as they claim they are then you would have been safe and alive.

But as we well know the diseases don't test your purity before infecting you and don't reassess your purity before marking you for death. In their world it seems that diseases cannot possibly kill you on their own. They only kill you if you've done something wrong (or someone did something wrong to you).

@15 > Why is it that so many RNs seem to be so anti-vax?

Nothing like a sweeping generalization but it seems that RNs are routinely taught to "rely on their instincts" and that turns to relying on their anecdotes. Not enough critical thinking. There are many, many exceptions to this rule though. I have met numerous RNs of excellence also.

Correction to post #1:

“My right to swing my fist ends when my arm gets tired.”

@Phlebas

That rather chilling graphic at the start is a stark reminder of the importance of the broader context.

Actually, I have no trouble differentiating your economic-based argument from the NSDAP's one.

You are arguing about return on investment: by spending now a bit to get most people vaccinated, we save a lot of money later-on by avoiding a more-or-less big number of sick people - money saved on treatments, infrastructure (eh, no more hospital yards for people in iron lungs), and avoided sick days. The same economics-driven logic could be applied to any medical treatment: is the return greater than the cost of it?

Fascists and their ilks are just arguing about not spending money on sick people in the first place. Let the people in iron lungs die.

I would also add that, if antivaxers want to talk about eugenics enabling, they should take a hard look at the typical rhetorical content of their leaders. It's all about their children having a superior immune system and disabled children having a fate worse than death.

@Heli - you are correct....there has always been an undercurrent in ant-vax rhetoric that people who get sick and / or die from VPDs "deserved it" because their immune systems weren't good enough.

Of course, now those statements are being made in public forums, directly - that children who die of VPDs are better off being removed from the population, because of their "faulty genes."

The comparisons to language that was used in the past to justify Eugenics is eerily similar...and the connotative-dissonance is surreal.

So the government is full of jack-booted Nazis who strike terror into your heart every time you hear a helicopter or police car and yet, you want them to education your children? Shouldn't you be homeschooling already? Problem solved.

@ Lawrence:

re influenza deaths
Woo-meisters often dispute that. They propose that these figures rely upon trickery by adding pneumonia deaths which have ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with influenza. Right.

Indeed. At AoA, Blaxill uses figures in other ways.

Last night I almost wept at a local news segment. A man in Liberty, MO just received more than seven million from the vaccine injury compensation fund. He and his wife traveled the globe and regularly received all kinds of vaccines. One set they got left her severely brain injured.

In the interview, he calmly stated the real risks vs benefits of vaccines, urged people to be vaccinated and said the biggest tragedy that could come of this is that people would use this anecdotal evidence of his wife's very rare reaction to further scare monger and argue against vaccination.

@Helianthus
Thanks, that's a relief.

Your last point is well made. We keep seeing variants of "healthy kids don't die from disease" or "we're safe here in the west" in anti vax propaganda.

I wonder how many of those anti-vax parents would support another parent's right to send their kid to school with an untreated louse infestation.
"After all, no one dies from lice and Big Brother can't make me put toxic chemicals all over my child's skin."

@Lawrence

Did you get those results from the National Vital Statistics System via WONDER?

The question that Shay is raising is that the MMWR only notes 2 deaths in 2003, but doesn't mention the other deaths, while NVSS lists quite a few more (10 from 2000-2013, not counting SSPE).

My classmate died from vaccination at the age of 11. While such complications are rare they do happen (please, check VAERS database). Should the parents of the dead child have a right to reject vaccine to their other child? How would they feel if California unconditionally mandates vaccination when they see their child dying from one? Does the friends of these parents have the right to review vaccination schedule for their children when they see a child of their friends died from vaccine? Please, let me remind you that the people in California are humans, not cattle.

@Todd - Dorit provided those links a few days ago.

I'll ask her.

@ Todd and Lawrence, these would be good numbers and cases to track down. Yet another anti-vaxx trope to smack down.

Just note, though, that if the data is coming out of WONDER, it cannot be used to identify the individuals, per the user agreement. So use the data for reporting, but do not track down and disclose the identities of the individuals.

TMR newbie, Epiphany** declares " We Are Not Your Enemy"
in an effort to present her partisan sisters as being truly human to vaccination advocates, not a pestilence to be stamped out heartlessly..
She stresses similarities rather than differences - both love their children, want what is best for them, would do anything for them, including giving their own lives .

Surely the only real difference is that one believes in 'choice' and the other is the hapless victim of meticulously programmed brainwashing by the government. the media and the "medical fear mongering machine"

By disregarding and not supporting the opposition's freedom of choice, their own choices will be limited eventually as well. I'm surprised she didn't dredge up the ' first they came for the Jews, but I wasn't one so I didn't act...' meme.

By protecting vaccination choice, vaccinators also protect themselves somehow. She ends with the traditional argumentum ad pharma lucrium.

** a law student and 'Amazon warrior' from AUS who purports that her vaccinated children have a full range of vaccine injuries whilst her unvaccinated ones are bursting with health- perhaps the latter will follow in her warrior path.

As was the case with Rand Paul and all the others arguing “parental rights,” the thought that the child might be an independent entity who is not the property of his parents never enters Dillard’s mind.

Indeed.

There's been a few recent stories concerning a new sex education curriculum being implemented in Ontario.

As might be expected, some parents aren't keen on this, making remarks like "I do not want my children taught things that go against my beliefs."

I pointed out that Canada has signed and ratified the "UN Convention on the Rights of the Child", which treats children as individual beings rather than extensions of the parent or property of the parent.

http://www.everychild.ca/uncrc

This didn't go over well with some however, it still remains the fact.

We think it’s a medical choice, and it should be researched carefully.”

At this point, whoever wrote the article should have asked specific questions concerning the "research" this gaggle of of airheads had actually done.

From what I've seen to date, on most occasions that an anti-vaxer is asked specific questions re: their "research", they clam right up.

Also, as there are numerous examples of well educated cranks and crackpots, MSM "appeals to authority" like "all of them educated, middle-class professionals" are irrelevant.

Actually, I must admit that Adams has outdone himself in despicableness, referring to “brain damaged victims of vaccines,” complete with photos.

Assuming that Mike doesn't have any real evidence to support the above-mentioned claim, I wish some government agency would take him to task i.e., prove that these are "brain damaged victims of vaccines" or face a charge for disseminating information he knows, or should have known, is false ... which pretty much sums up his entire distasteful article.

The guy is a public menace.

I almost have to thank Mike Adams and his ilk for taking this dog whistle, cranking the volume up to the point where even humans start to be able to hear its lower frequencies, and inadvertently reducing the “health freedom” argument to its on reductio ad absurdum.

I agree.

I tend to think many anti-vaxers have picked up their info from FB groups or mommy forums and as such, may not be aware of the level of craziness seen on Mike's site and sites like InfoWars.

And I'm sure most families that vaccinate are not aware of the craziness that bubbles away on these sites ... or perhaps even aware there was an "anti-vax movement" before the recent outbreaks.

Having the "crazy" flow in comment threads on vaccine stories and sites like Mike's ... along with the insane "vaccine holocaust" ravings ... likely benefits the vaccine supporter side.

But, I still view Adams as a public menace.

Of course, if agencies like the FDA and similar organizations could get the same powers for "herbal supplements" and "natural remedies" industry that they have for prescription drugs and started cracking down on "unvalidated claims" made for these products, guys like Adams might drift of into oblivion.

History, like science, has never been one of their strong points. The ultimate history of the world is, in some sense, the history of children dying. Before vaccines, that is what happened. Children died. It wasn't a rare tragedy like it is in most of the developed world. It was something that happened pretty much every single day of the year even to the rich and well off.

They died and there was nothing a parent could do about it. You couldn't stop diphtheria at all. You couldn't pray away a child's pertussis cough. You couldn't end measles with a poultice.

All you did was to sit back and watch. If the universe was kind, the child survived. If the universe wasn't the child died. Or maybe it was blind from smallpox or deaf from measles or sterile from mumps.

They remember none of that.

"Why is it that so many RNs seem to be so anti-vax?"

I'd be curious to know what percentage of them are anti-vax compared to other careers. My step-daughter is an RN who posts numerous pro-vaccination on her facebook page, and counters the idiocy of some of her anti-vax friends (none of them RNs fortunately). Of all her classmates and people she's worked with she says she has only met one person who was anti-vax (anecdotal evidence alert though).

As an aside, she's going for an interview next week for admission to medical school. Fingers crossed!

a law student and ‘Amazon warrior’

I swear to Crom, the next person who identifies herself as a "mommy warrior" I'm gonna ask to see her DD-214.

You got no discharge papers, you ain't no "warrior."

#44 - Children died

Yes but, a parent's inalienable right to let their child die must be preserved, otherwise society could crumble into anarchy.

Re: "History, like science, has never been one of their strong points. "

The only strong point I've seen from anti-vaxers is "dunning-kruger".

Most seem appallingly ignorant and/or have an understanding of history, science, "individual rights", etc. that is restricted to whatever they've picked up from conspiracy and medical crackpot sites.

Then they have the audacity to yammer on about "critical thinking" when it's obvious they've never questioned any of the nonsense they've picked up from the crackpot sites they frequent.

@ DGR:

Agreed, Adams is a public menace.

Looking over his posts of the past few days, I notice that he- like the other prevaricator @ PRN- presents himself as an educator, a scientist and ultimately, a humanitarian.

" Your entire reality is an elaborate manipulation", "Who needs facts?" ( both, yesterday) and his Food Rising campaign ( Sunday) sidle up cozily with the venom Orac cites above. He enlightens, educates and charitably gives away hydroponics kits to children ( that other people paid for). so, he doesn't present provocation in a vacuum: he manoeuvres his audience into admiring his revelations and charity, producing a veneer of sanctity, insulating him from criticism.

OBVIOUSLY these guys want to distract their followers from understanding their OWN method of indoctrination and control of others' money as well as their own gross earnings.

Look as I may, I haven't been able to find out how much money Mike makes from his various companies because he registers them in Taiwan. As a comparison, the other woo-meister earns between 10-12 million USD over the past several years - most of it during a recession- ( from sources like spoke.com) whilst owning a few companies and 'charities' registered in Mineola Texas recently. Five at last count.

I think that the more financial information we can discuss about these charlatans the better.
How much do they earn? How much do their homes cost? How much is each product marked up? How much do they pay employees? How much do they earn from advertisement or other fees? Do they consult as medical advisors for profit?

There's a wealth of dirt for someone who wants to dig.

To clarify:
10-12 million USD *per annum*

You got no discharge papers, you ain’t no “warrior.”

Discharge papers are a necessary but insufficient condition for warriorhood, in my opinion.

@TBruce

In the artsy-fartsy New Age-y town I used to live in, many people would NOT use any “allopathic” lice treatments. Or so they said (until their kids got REALLY infested for lack of treatment). There were also a LOT of homeschooled kids (very loose and unenforced laws on that as well--State of Washington) who were not vaxed. There were also regular deaths from cancer in people who had chosen wheat grass over chemo. When this was pointed out, the response, “oh, she didn’t start the wheat grass soon enough”.

@BA

Yes, it’s a generalization, but I too run into a good many RN’s who are devotees of Mike Adams or his ilk. They get furious when required to have a vaccination for continued employment in a clinic or hospital. I blame the educational system--certain basic facts need to be drummed in during training, along with more emphasis on critical thinking.

William Wordsworth, in a letter to a friend in December 1812 about the death of Wordsworth's 6-year-old son, Thomas:

"Symptoms of the measles appeared upon my Son Thomas last Thursday; he was most favorable held till Tuesday, between ten and eleven at that hour was particularly lightsome and comfortable; without any assignable cause a sudden change took place, an inflammation had commenced on the lungs which it was impossible to check and the sweet Innocent yielded up his soul to God before six in the evening. He did not appear to suffer much in body, but I fear something in mind as he was of an age to have thought much upon death a subject to which his mind was daily led by the grave of his Sister."

We should have more nostalgia for the olden days. True, lots of children died, but it resulted in moving prose.

15: A lot of RNs went to diploma mills, plus they don't like doctors and seize on any excuse to snub them outside of work.

38: Best treatment we ever did for lice was tea tree oil. May be natural, but ho-ee is it strong.

Barajaras: "I shouldn’t fear taking my daughter to the doctor."

Uh, why would an anti-vaxxer do that anyway? Just to make sure that a doc's day is as unpleasant as possible?

Moore: “I’m not opposed to medicine, and I think vaccines have a place. We think it’s a medical choice, and it should be researched carefully.”

Wow, that's some primo weaseling. If you're anti-vax, you're against medicine full-stop.

” Your entire reality is an elaborate manipulation”, “Who needs facts?”

So when Mike isn't resorting to argumentum ad Hitleram, he's spewing postmodernist tripe?

Back in 1996, Alan Sokal had the perfect reply to that kind of nonsense: "[A]nyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.)" It's harder to come up with a comparable point for basic biology, but the point still stands. There are such things as objective facts, and anyone who ignores this, as Adams does, does so at his peril.

@15

Dunno about your side of the Atlantic but over here nurse training (I am a former senior nurse with many years of supervising student nurses), despite improvements over the years, is still not good enough on the critical thinking and assessment of evidence part: the number of times I heard "Research shows..." when the research was nothing of the sort - as in just because it's in a book doesn't make it research - or did not show what was claimed beggared belief.

Mind, I could say the same about some medics of my acquaintance.

@ Eric Lund:

Mike isn't quite post-modern. His position is that there IS Truth- which he has- whilst what is presented as 'true' by the powers-that-be is merely illusion produced in order to control the populace. Right. He is the only one to believe.

Unfortunately, this is the type of tripe I read everyday as well as listening to more from other idiot- a victim of hacking. His Truth is too powerful for the Man to allow unimpeded. Sure

But I am immune. And someone has to do it, so why not me?
( It seems that I inherited the ability to tolerate vast oceans of nonsense and surface, unscathed)

@ Review portal #40

While such complications are rare they do happen (please, check VAERS database).

Yes, serious complications happen.
Not at the rates some antivax leaders would like us to believe, but it happen, about 1 per million cases.
The Smallpox vaccine had the reputation of being nastier, but eh, it's not on the schedule anymore!

Should the parents of the dead child have a right to reject vaccine to their other child?

I would prefer they look for advice with their physician (or three of them) rather than with a stranger on the internet, but apart from this, yes, they have ground to be cautious.

How would they feel if California unconditionally mandates vaccination when they see their child dying from one?

"unconditionally"? Stop blathering like the sheep you are.
Prove us it's going to be the gestapo storming in and sticking you with needles, or for Pete sake's shut your gap.

No-one here wants this. Anyone who has a valid medical reason not to vaccinate - like, at random, a previous nasty reaction in the family - is perfectly in his/her right to skip the needles.

All we are for is mandatory vaccination for attendance to public schools and working in public places, like hospitals. Non-vaccinating people have plenty of other resources.

Does the friends of these parents have the right to review vaccination schedule for their children when they see a child of their friends died from vaccine?

Only if they have evidence that delaying the schedule is not increasing the risks of catching the illness and/or having side-reactions. Turns out, it is: delaying vaccinations increase the risk the illness it's protecting against and doesn't reduce the risk of seizure.

Correct me if I'm wrong but most RN programs back in my day had watered down science pre-requisites, isn’t that still the norm? I escaped that by also attaining a BS in Biology! IMHO, the worst RNs I've encountered with anti-vax sentiments are the MSNs where most programs appear to be somewhat ethereal in nature – not focused on clinical expertise or management. All feel-good “Healing” ideologies are emphasized – Are you all familiar with the ludicrous and actually feuding “Healing Touch” & “Therapeutic Touch” movements? As others have mentioned, many higher level RNs seek to distance themselves from MDs because they consider themselves “Healers”, not clinicians.

@Eric Lund#57:

So when Mike isn’t resorting to argumentum ad Hitleram, he’s spewing postmodernist tripe?

Now you've done it! Sadmar is going to be pissed!

@ RobRN:

Unfortunately, I know of a few woo-centric nurses:

-Vicki Saputo has a show on Natural News Radio, Prescriptions for Health, with her husband, a doctor
- Ellen Kamhi has the 'Natural Nurse' show on PRN
- Luanne Pennisi is Null's enabler in various modes, including providing access to woo-therapeutics ( her company, Metropolitan Wellness)

- there's a group- I'm at loss for the name now- in the US that opposes vaccination for health care workers
- a few turn up on anti-vax websites as well..

I look at Dr. Sears, Dr. Gordon, Dr. OZ etc and wonder why so many MDs are anti-vax.

NH Primary Care asked,

Why is it that so many RNs seem to be so anti-vax?

Denise wrote,

there’s a group- I’m at loss for the name now- in the US that opposes vaccination for health care workers

Denise is thinking of "Nurses Against Mandatory Vaccinations". They tried for a massive, multi-site protest last year. As I recall, there were three or four protests with a handful of protesters at each site.

As an antidote, there is Nurses Who Vaccinate, which has a much more robust membership. If you are an RN, do join!

@Denice: Vicki Saputo used to be an actress in B-movies. She actually appears in a "Mystery Science Theater 3000" episode (incidentally the last one ever aired) riffing on "Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders." She plays the dad's girlfriend in the story about the toy monkey.

In fact, this is the part of the movie where she appears: http://youtu.be/p8Q-RuAx4V4?t=53m1s

I would hazard a guess, regarding RNs being anti-vax, that it only seems that way in reading news reports on antivaxers. Since there are a significantly larger number of nurses than doctors, as well as a larger number of mommy nurses than mommy doctors, it's easier to find an anti-vax one to interview. Also, more than 50% of RNs were not trained at the baccalaureate level, and it is my understanding that a research component of the curriculum is one of the differences between the ASN and BSN tracks to RN certification.

Anecdotally, the research analysis/ evidence based medicine focus of my BSN degree helped tremendously in allowing me to critically examine the claims of my woo-steeped upbringing and move into the world of real medical knowledge. I also don't know any anti-vax nurses myself. (Unless you count a couple of Nurse Midwives, and not the majority of them are anti-vax either.) I also was never told to just go with my intuition unless it involved calling in someone with more education than me if a patient just seemed off but the vital signs hadn't dropped yet.

Back on the topic of the post- I wonder how the vaccine-refusing Jewish Orthodox communities feel about the comparison between Nazi Eugenics and American Public Health standards.

Tangentially related, as in remarkably counterfactual* things AVers say

This little gem was written a Colorado anti-vaccine advocate who writes lots of different blogs under several pseudonyms. The title of the post is, "20 Things I Wish Vaccine Junkies Would Admit"

True herd immunity is based on animals that naturally acquired viral disease. Oftentimes immunity comes from eating the herd members that died from the disease or putting their diarrhea into feed. Farmers know that herd immunity isn’t based on vaccination.

*Of the author of this little gem, one of my pals wrote, "the cheese has completely slid of the cracker."

A little girl died of SSPE near the town where I live:

http://www.eveningsun.com/ci_17547430

When I brought it up to an antivaxxer, their reply was that the little girl was a "foreigner", so it wasn't that bad of a thing.

These people disgust me.

@Jan

"As the cases in Germany’s latest outbreak rise to around 600, the tragic inevitability has occurred – a wee unvaccinated 18 month old has died from measles.
According to official statments the child was unvaccinated (and was old enough to have been) and suffered no chronic conditions."

Anti-vaxers are now spreading this article around with apparent glee http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2015/02/24/toddler-dies-of-me…

"An autopsy on the child, who wasn't inoculated against measles, showed that he had an unspecified other disease as well but that wouldn't have led to his death without the measles infection, the Charite hospital said."

So of course, measles is still a harmless rash. It was only because this boy had some other condition that he died.

/sarcasm off

Something funny about Anne Dachel: after a lot of news sites like Raw Story picked up the story of parents giving their kids bleach enemas (full disclosure: given to them by my online Aspie group), Dachel and AoA have scarcely come to the defense of Kerri Rivera and MMS. We know J.B. Handley has no problem with MMS, but is there a limit to what even Dachel can reasonably defend?

Still Shaking Mama #9:

there have been 86 pediatric deaths from flu since September 28, 2014. I don’t know how that number compares to previous years, but it is a very frightening and sobering statistic. Are numbers like this brought up when people debate the flu vaccine? I wonder if that number is actually higher since not everyone will have their child tested for the flu.

Someone on another forum told me that laws against drunk driving are ok because driving drunk is so dangerous, but not laws mandating vaccination because there's little immediate risk.
However, the flu kills thousands of people a year in the USA. In an average year, the vaccine is 60% effective at preventing doctor visits due to the flu. If everybody got their flu shot, it should prevent more than 60% of those deaths - since if more people are vaccinated against a disease, it not only reduces their vulnerability to the disease, but reduces their likelihood of being exposed to the disease as well. Disease propagation is non-linear.
About 50% of people in the USA get the flu shot. If 160 million more did, it would save thousands of lives. Which means the risk of causing death by not getting the flu shot is roughly 1/50,000.
As for drunk driving - there are an estimated 112 million episodes of driving while impaired by alcohol in the USA. There are about 10,000 deaths in car accidents where an alcohol-impaired driver was involved. So, the death rate alcohol-impaired driving is about 1/10,000 deaths per episode.
The cost in lives with not getting a flu shot is not so different really from the cost in lives associated with drunk driving.
Even though we have a very different impression of the relative dangerousness.
Stats from the CDC.

True herd immunity is based on animals that naturally acquired viral disease. Oftentimes immunity comes from eating the herd members that died from the disease or putting their diarrhea into feed.

I guess that's one way of avoiding measles & polio & flu.

Could we just knock it off now, dissing nurses?

Most nurses do not have the autonomy I had when I worked as a public health nurse, to recommend as well as administer, every vaccine that was part of the Recommended Childhood Vaccine Schedule.

Then, you have the "vaccine friendly doctors", such as Dr. Bob Sears and Dr. Jay Gordon, who come out against following the CDC/AAP Recommended Childhood Vaccine Schedule, who also readily admit that they have no evidence-based information.They rely on parent intuition and the sh!t testimonials that they read on Age of Autism, the NVIC and every other anti-vaccine, anti-science blog.

The use of Holocaust analogies is inappropriate for another reason: measles and other diseases that are now vaccine-preventable were major killers in the ghettos that the Nazis forced Eastern European Jews into. Antivax World will argue that malnutrition weakened their immunity, and I'm sure that's true, but that turns back on them; after all the vaccination of those who can safely receive it protects those among us whose immune status puts them at high risk.

Lilady: I have the utmost respect for nurses, but at the same time I think some things need to be acknowledged- like the fact that not all nursing schools are equal. Also, nurses tend to be stressed, and stressed women are easy prey for woomeisters.

Jews 1940 Budapest. In this lovely little ditty, the “media editor” of the antivaccine crank blog known as Age of Autism likens suggestions that the names of nonvaccinating families be made public to…the Jews of Budapest under Nazi rule.

Imma pretty sure that in 1940 Hungary had its own nationalist right-wing government with Pál Teleki as PM and Admiral Horthy as head of state. Hungary was separate from the Third Reich until 1944 when the Germans invaded and installed a puppet state with home-grown Nazis in charge.
It's a good thing I'm not pedantic.

I wonder how the vaccine-refusing Jewish Orthodox communities feel about the comparison between Nazi Eugenics and American Public Health standards.

Perhaps someone should ask the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, or a similar organization, for their thoughts on the matter.

If I was Jewish, I'd be pretty pissed about Mike's comparison.

Hungary was separate from the Third Reich until 1944 when the Germans invaded and installed a puppet state with home-grown Nazis in charge.

Aye, and the Jews of Hungary and Budapest in particular were largely left alone until the Arrow Cross took over in 1944, when they were shipped en masse to mainly Auschwitz.

Fun fact: one can still see a lot of bullet holes in various locales throughout Budapest, in particular the walls around Varhegy, where the fascists held out against the Red Army for some time.

PGP has finally managed to piss me off.

Nurses put up with more hospital BS than I care to even imagine - denigrating them as a group is both uncalled for & a vile statement in general.

Just go the f@ck away.

Heh. Looks like Heather removed her post (or Californians against SB277 did). Good thing I kept a copy of the picture. :-)

On the other hand, I should have reposted all the text, the way I've done with Dr. Bob Facebook posts. :-(

Also, I'm also getting a little fed up with the nurse bashing going on in this thread. My wife's was an RN and now is an APRN, and I think it's starting to go a bit too far, enough to tick me off. Too bad I was in the operating room all day until now and didn't see this developing in time to nip it in the bud.

Imma pretty sure that in 1940 Hungary had its own nationalist right-wing government with Pál Teleki as PM and Admiral Horthy as head of state. Hungary was separate from the Third Reich until 1944 when the Germans invaded and installed a puppet state with home-grown Nazis in charge.

D'oh! I knew that and forgot about it. There's no excuse for me not to have noticed that, given my longstanding interest in WWII history. Except other than its having been a bit late when I finished this post last night.

a poster from today stating that “Flu shots save lives” to a Nazi advertisement lamenting how much a “congenitally diseased or handicapped person” costs the state.

Of course there are people espousing a philosophy akin to the Aktion-T4 idea, that the human race would be better-off without weaklings and poor immune systems, so VPDs are just improving the species. Except those people are not the ones advocating vaccination.

"Also, nurses tend to be stressed, and stressed women are easy prey for woomeisters."

Did you seriously just say that? I'm with Lawrence...

Lawrence: WTF. All I did was state two facts: a stressed population IS more vulnerable to woo, and nurses are very stressed, since, as you mentioned, hospitals tend to pile on the BS, Also, not all nursing programs are created equal- that's not an attack either. So should I just pretend all nurses are saints, were perfectly educated and have their lives all straightened out and perfect?
I probably won't be back. I used to think you were a nice person. I guess my perception was way off.

PGP: Please, take a deep breath, settle down, and go back and look at what you wrote. If you can't see why it comes across as sexist and condescending and therefore might rile people up, I'm not sure I can help you figure it out, but I, too, saw the remark that way and cringed as I read it.

To be frank, no one is immune to anti-vax fever:
doctors, nurses, *psychologists*, social workers, chemists, biologists, teachers, engineers, business people as well as certified woo-meisters and new age gurus.
If you peruse AoA and TMR as well as other dedicated sites, you can run into most anyone. I haven't done a survey but I doubt that nurses are any worse than the above.

Oooops! I left out journalists, senators, television show hosts, comics and actresses.

Oh. And LAWYERS. How could I miss that?

Did you get those results from the National Vital Statistics System via WONDER?

The tail ends make it pretty clear.

The question that Shay is raising is that the MMWR only notes 2 deaths in 2003, but doesn’t mention the other deaths

The 2012 Summary of Notifiable Diseases has one in 2005 and two each in 2009 and 2010.

AoA is doubling (tripling?) down on the routine, with Neil Z. Miller being the latest entrant. (He also seems to be quite invested in the claim that measles prevents Hodgkin's lymphoma, while carefully omitting some less chipper results.)

As far as vaccines during the Nazi era goes, there's a really good book by Arthur Allen called The Fantastic Library of Dr. Weigl How Two Doctors Battled Typhus and Sabotaged The Nazis. He gets into subjects such as how vaccines were made during that time frame as well as how people thought about medicine. I highly recommend it.

And princes.

Sorry, that last in reply to Denise @#90. Didn't post fast enough to beat Narad and Stacy.

@TBruce #62

I won't claim to have ever been devoid of all of the various meanings of "pissed" in reaction to skeptics' mis-use of 'pomo' descriptors. Mainly, it makes me sad.

#51 Denice cites phrases used by Mikey in article titles on NN, so RI readers will know which posts match Orac's OP without her having to provide links.

#57 Eric reads those phrases out of context, makes an incorrect assumption about Adams means them, and incorrectly ID's that assumption Adams doesn't actually have as "postmodernist".

#59 Denice explains briefly how Adams was using the phrase, and perhaps to remain agnostic on the use of 'pomo' vocabulary merely avers "Mike isn’t quite post-modern."

So, basically Eric just whooped up a load of conformation bias, didn't check the facts about what Adams actually said, and made a completely invalid point about Adams to reafiirm his straw-man "evil postmodernist" fantasy and give a shout-out to Asshat Sokol.

Actual postmodernists do not assert "the laws of physics are mere social conventions." They tend to be quite aware of the objective facts of biology and physics as applied to life and death — though jumping out a high window voluntarily probably wouldn't be their chosen exemplar. For Lyotard and Baudrillard – who grew up in occupied France, and were first and foremost anti-Fascists – that would more likely be being pushed in front of a Nazi firing squad.

The "postmodernist" label has been applied to scads of totally different things, so there's no True Scotsman to claim so-and-so isn't. But the core of the stuff asserts that at some point between 1950 and 1990 Western culture passed a tipping point and a new sensibility – a new way of looking at the world, of defining reality even – became common in everyday life. And the postmodernists don't agree with any of various takes this new culture has on 'reality'. They're just trying to understand what's going on in the culture, why it's going on, and what it means for issues of justice, equality and so forth.

To the matter at hand: a lot of 'pomo' culture theory and critique would be quite useful in analyzing anti-vax hysteria, explaining why Barrajas, Adams and their ilk are able to get any traction at all with truly loopy conspiracy theories – or how Adams and his fan base can arrive at a TRUTH that an Oregon State legislator seeking to tighten exemption requirements is a NAZI! Basically, Fred Jameson predicted much of our current weirdness back in '84, so a big chunk of pomo theory has now stood the test of time quite well.

Thus, what makes me is sad is the blanket rejection, on utterly false premises, of ideas that could help inform an effective push-back against anti-science loonies who are threatening objectively real human beings with objectively real infectious diseases – and leading objectively real patients with objectively real cancers away from objectively real treatments in ways that lead those objectively real folks to premature objectively real death for the sake of objectively real profit.

I'm curious how you've come to the conclusion that a stressed population is inherently more vulnerable to woo than an unstressed population, pgp. Seems to me that if that were the case, we'd see far more firefighters, corporate executives, air traffic controllers, emergency responders, etc., extolling the wonders of essential oils and wheat grass enema's than is the case.

I don't think nurses embrace woo any more frequently than people in other professions. it's just taht we notice when a nurse does so more than we do when it's a hair stylist or zumba teacher, because of it's incongruity (""But she's a nurse! She's had to complete advanced course work in health and human physiology--shouldn't she know better?")

@PGP - I am a good person, which I why I took great offense (finally, given the other stuff you've written in the past) to get very, very angry at you.

In the future, think before you type - you'll be a much better person for it.

In other news, a single amino acid change makes measles neurotropic. Yay?

Oh how could we miss this:
cia parker ( @ AoA/ Blaxill's post):
" I am definitely in favor of letting natural measles come back".

( sadmar, I wasn't being agnostic but deliberately and coyly understating that he isn't pomo. He knows the absolute Truth about everything. Including g0d, the universe and gardening).

That "yellow star" = "anti-vax" post was copied to the RtAVM page. Many comments on it, of a different sort :)

Cynthia "cia" Parker is a notorious loon. She's on all the message boards telling us how much she hates her poor autistic child and how the hep b shot obviously caused her MS. She's been at me for years, calling me names, insulting my girls and telling us how much we need to have measles back. She needs help.

In other news, a single amino acid change makes measles neurotropic. Yay?

"An interesting question is whether these neurotropic measles viruses can be transmitted by aerosol between hosts – a rather unsettling scenario."

Well, that's potentially terrifying.

Stacy Herlihy: "... there’s a really good book by Arthur Allen called The Fantastic Library of Dr. Weigl How Two Doctors Battled Typhus and Sabotaged The Nazis. .... I highly recommend it."

I also highly recommend it. It is a really good read.

Chris,

Here's an interview I did with the author a few months ago.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-fantastic-library-of-dr-weigl-an-int…

They tend to be quite aware of the objective facts of biology and physics as applied to life and death

You are a newbie at this, aren't you? I believe you when you say that most postmodernists don't apply pomo to physics, but I think you are unaware of just how much postmodernism has crept into medicine along with CAM/integrative medicine. I can provide examples, some pretty darned outrageous.

Unless, of course, you'll claim "no true Scotsman." :-)

@ Stacy Herlihy:

Oh we know all about her Lilady especially.Heh.

The Fantastic Laboratory not library darn it.

Heather dear...

Get off your f*cking cross, someone else needs the wood.

Stacy Herlihy: "Here’s an interview I did with the author a few months ago."

Thanks!

(we are also in agreement with Cia Parker)

No no no. Its clearly about the choice to vax or not. If I don't feel it necessary to vax my child than that is my business. The fact is that we are trying to tell you pro vax mafia freaks that my decision not to vaccinate is NOT putting your children at risk because after all, you're vaccinated, right? Seems like an idiotic statement to fear an unvaccinated individual when you belive so much that vaccines are efficient. And BTW, the herd immunity theory has been destroyed. The risk of some form of neurological injury due to vaccines is significantly higher than the diseases themselves which were well on their way to down by 90% well before vaccines were introduced. Independent studies show the risk yet no one does their due diligence to investigate. Instead, you jump on the junk science bandwagon with false implications that vaccines do not cause injuries to a vast amount of infants and children and ridicule those who have enough balls to question it to protect their own. So all we want is for you to stop worrying about what I decide for my children when it DOESN'T impact you for a second.

1. Vaccine injuries account for 1 in 6
2. They contain numerous neurotoxins
3. Vaccines have failed efficacy

I've done my research. Weighed my options. Made the best decision based on due diligence. Period. Get over it!

Mike P, is that a Poe, because I think you hit every square on the Anti-Vax BINGO card.

@Mike P

As a mother, I put my parenting decisions above all else. Nobody knows my son better than me, and the choices I make about how to care for him are no one’s business but my own. So, when other people tell me how they think I should be raising my child, I simply can’t tolerate it. Regardless of what anyone else thinks, I fully stand behind my choices as a mom, including my choice not to vaccinate my son, because it is my fundamental right as a parent to decide which eradicated diseases come roaring back.
The decision to cause a full-blown, multi-state pandemic of a virus that was effectively eliminated from the national population generations ago is my choice alone, and regardless of your personal convictions, that right should never be taken away from a child’s parent. Never.
Say what you will about me, but I’ve read the information out there and weighed every option, so I am confident in my choice to revive a debilitating illness that was long ago declared dead and let it spread like wildfire from school to school, town to town, and state to state, until it reaches every corner of the country. Leaving such a momentous decision to someone you haven’t even met and who doesn’t care about your child personally—now that’s absurd! Maybe I choose to bring back the mumps. Or maybe it’s diphtheria. Or maybe it’s some other potentially fatal disease that can easily pass among those too young or too medically unfit to be vaccinated themselves. But whichever highly communicable and formerly wiped-out disease that I opt to resurrect with a vengeance, it is a highly personal decision that only I and my family have the liberty to make.
The bottom line is that I’m this child’s mother, and I know what’s best. End of story. Politicians, pharmaceutical companies—they don’t know the specific circumstances that made me decide to breathe new life into a viral infection that scientists and the nation at large celebrated stamping out roughly a century ago. It seems like all they care about is following unexamined old rules, injecting chemicals into our kids, preventing ghastly illnesses that used to ravage millions and have since been erased from storming back and wreaking mass havoc on a national scale, and making a buck. Should we really be listening to them and not our own hearts?
I am by no means telling mothers and fathers out there what to do; I’m simply standing up for every parent’s right to make his or her own decision. You may choose to follow the government-recommended immunization schedule for your child, and that’s your decision as a parent. And I might choose to unleash rubella on thousands upon thousands of helpless people, and that’s my decision as a parent.
It’s simple: You don’t tell me how to raise my kids to avoid reviving a horrific illness that hasn’t been seen on our shores since our grandparents were children, and I won’t tell you how to raise yours.
Look, I’ve done the research on these issues, I’ve read the statistics, and I’ve carefully considered the costs and benefits, and there’s simply no question in my mind that inciting a nationwide health emergency by unleashing a disease that can kill 20 percent or more of its victims is the right one for my child.
People need to respect that and move on.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-dont-vaccinate-my-child-because-its-…

@40 Review Portal
". . . (please, check VAERS database) . . ."

Yes, please do. If you had read the information at http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Activities/vaers.html, you might have noticed such things as ". . . Anyone can file a VAERS report, . . ." and ". . . VAERS reports may provide incomplete information. Specifically, judgments about whether the vaccine was truly responsible for an adverse event cannot be made from VAERS reports." and ". . . The report of an adverse event to VAERS is not documentation that vaccine caused the event. . . "

In short, even you could file a report about having heard of a co-worker's aunt's third cousin twice removed neighbor having heard about some kid who was injured by a vaccine. Citing the VAERS as a source is not going to gain you much credibility.

Did someone mention Ms. Parker? She herself (if you believe her any of her claims), has been diagnosed with an ASD..and is on record as hoping her autistic child is exposed to, and contracts, measles. She also claims that a Td booster vaccine which she received ~ 35 years in college, caused her Multiple Sclerosis.

I'll take credit for going after her for her outrageous comments which detail her baby's "encephalitic cry" and her not taking her newborn immediately to a hospital emergency room for an evaluation to rule out this life threatening encephalitis. She also claims (in spite of being an attorney) that she was unaware that she should have filed a claim before the Vaccine Court...and in spite of the fact she was provided with the VIS for the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine given to her baby.

Other commenters got her to admit that her baby was born following a traumatic birth, via emergency C-section due to a "true knot" in the umbilical cord.

The little letter writer (Dachel's Deputy), has been busy again.
Scroll down to see the last comment. :-)

http://chronicle.augusta.com/opinion/letters/2015-02-22/vaccines-are-un…

Maybe a cartoon will get through to clowns like Mike P:

http://www.salon.com/2015/02/24/this_is_what_the_measles_virus_actually…

History fail on my part earlier in the thread, BTW. The mass deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz started in the spring of 1944, before the Arrow Cross took power. There was a stay, though, on deportations in the summer - the Arrow Cross restarted deportations after taking power. Budapest's Jews, for whatever reason, had not been deported before the stay, though tens of thousands were murdered under the Arrow Cross. (They still had a better chance, it seems, of surviving than did Jews in the Hungarian countryside; I have a close friend from college who's more or less a confirmed ex-pat living in Budapest, and his girlfriend is Jewish. She said that her ancestors managed to survive the Shoah mainly by virtue of being fortunate enough to live in Budapest.)

If I don’t feel it necessary to vax my child than that is my business.

Sure. And if public-health law dictates that you get to homeschool as a result, that is your problem.

The mass deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz started in the spring of 1944, before the Arrow Cross took power
And despite the independence of Hungary when Horthy was in charge, they had happily passed Nuremberg laws in 1938.

They still had a better chance, it seems, of surviving than did Jews in the Hungarian countryside
I'd like to think that Raoul Wallenberg contributed to that.

On nurses being anti-immunization: to paint the entire nursing profession as undereducated or emotionally motivated is unfair (and I don't think was the original poster's intent). That said, ANA did dip their toes in the thimerosal kiddie pool at a really inopportune time:

http://nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/Policy-Advocacy/Positions-an…

I don't think they've retracted it in light of newer evidence; they should. They also put out a pocket guide for consumers on mercury with an environmental group that was super misleading and badly done. Around the same time, there was a labor group representing publicly employed nurses who were opposing workplace vaccination policies and using anti-immunization kook code in their talking points; I get the impression that was one person's individual axe grinding, and haven't heard anything like it for quite some time.

Some level of criticism is warranted, but some of the best, most vocal, and effective advocates for immunizations also happen to be RNs. Save your anger for the snake oil salesmen.

I’d like to think that Raoul Wallenberg contributed to that.

And his reward was death in f*cking Lubyanka.

That building still stands in Moscow. It is an evil sight.

In somewhat more recent and amusing "news" (if you hadn't heard about it) of anti-Semitism in Hungary, a leader of Hungary's blatantly anti-Semitic far-right part Jobbik (the name of which is extremely funny if one is familiar with Slavic languages) found out that he's actually Jewish.

As JP's link is broken, here's the Haaretz follow-up.

Chabad he could maybe do without.

JGC: I’m curious how you’ve come to the conclusion that a stressed population is inherently more vulnerable to woo than an unstressed population, pgp. Seems to me that if that were the case, we’d see far more firefighters, corporate executives, air traffic controllers, emergency responders, etc., extolling the wonders of essential oils and wheat grass enema’s than is the case.

Well, Sid is a firefighter (assuming he's not lying, which he probably is). Steve Jobs was a corporate exec, and we all know what happened to him. Dunno about the others; air traffic people and emergency responders tend to be more of a practical turn of mind. Firefighters might be more vulnerable because of back pain.
I think so many actors and actresses turn to woo because they can't distinguish between reality and on screen life after a few years, and they were never very pragmatic in the first place. Be interesting to take a poll of the stunt men and women though.

Orac: I can see that what I said seems a bit sexist. I should've expressed it better.

Basically, what I meant is that men and women cope with stress very differently. Women look for groups that will talk about stress, find placebos, hypnosis or practice yoga. They prefer quick fixes, since working women still have to go home after their shift and often get stuck with the heavy-lifting. No one thinks twice if a man goes out for the evening to drink, but that's not an option available to women with families. (At least, not until the kids turn 18.)
Men overwhelmingly prefer to self-medicate. The first path tends to lead overwhelmingly towards woo, since most meds available for stress aren't really that great, and yoga is basically a gateway drug. Men can and do get snared by woo, but it seems to me that it's like five women to every man in wooville. I tend to come down harder on the women, as many are very bright, and it's sad to watch them waste their lives and squander every other woman's credibility. The guys, at least, aren't dragging every other man down with them.

A few links I found on Facebook today.
The antivaccine movement...from 1890-1920.Except for the autism angle,it's all there.The toxins,the forced vaccination, profiteering vaccine makers.

Oh and they had their own songs too.

http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/blog/anti-vaccination-society-…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/02/05/meet-the-cru…

Nothing new under the sun.

More on what measles can do,years later.

http://www.vaccinestoday.eu/vaccines/how-measles-can-change-a-life/

Did you know measles was unknown before it was brought to Earth by a Dalek space probe 1000 years ago? It's true!

http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/happy-birthday-daleks.html

@PGP

Stop. Just stop. First, you cherry pick examples to confirm your biases. Then you make an insulting stereotype about actors/actresses. And you finish off with more insulting, sexist stereotypes about men and women.

As has been pointed out to you countless times before, stop using such broad fucking brushstrokes. The world is a lot more nuanced than you seem to grasp.

@ PGP:

You're trying. Which is progress.

Sometimes it's hard to put EXACTLY what we mean into words- we take shortcuts that others misunderstand because we assume they already know what we mean. This is especially hard on the 'net without direct interpersonal feedback. Also hyperbole is expressive.

Perhaps rather than saying, "Men do X and women do Y" - which sounds like "ALL men" and "ALL women" with no overlap, it might be better to say, "Men are more likely than women to do X" or "More men than women do X".

Believe it or not, there is research about sexual differences in attitude and activities. Unfortunately, this area is fraught with difficulties. But still, you might want to have a look.

It's good to remember that even if a sexual difference is found to be significant, it doesn't mean that there is no overlap- if women are better than men at doing Y, some women can be worse and some men can be better- some men and women may be equal. Imagine two overlapping bell curves...
Oh no, I'd better not go all SDT on you... you know what I mean.

Well, at least THAT was certainly easier than pomo.

On the Jews of Budapest, another rescuer was an Italian cattle broker (Can't recall his name.). On business to buy animals, he befriended the Spanish consul just before the consulate was closed. The consul left him the keys and his car to serve as caretaker. He posed as the consul, drove around in the consular car with the Spanish flag on it, and "granted" Spanish citizenship to any Jew with any imaginable connection to Spain. Like Wallenberg, he rented housing and made the buildings "consular" property. The number he saved was in the low thousands, if memory serves.
As good an illustration of chutzpah as any I know of.

@Narad

I figured they were WONDER data from the info at the ends, but just wanted to confirm. Thanks for the additional link to the 2012 summary.

As JP’s link is broken, here’s the Haaretz follow-up.

Oh, thanks, Narad. The Haaretz article is better than the one I'd linked to, anyway.

Apparently I can't blockquote today either. I blame Kierkegaard.

Though, rapped up in this is *according to schedule*. So; one size fits all -- If I may borrow a sadmarism, "Tim's J.C. Whitney Theory of Imprecise Universality".

It is still playing statistics and some are going to get burned. Maybe even some cheerleaders here.

“No man survives when freedom fails, the best men rot in filthy jails, And those who cry ‘appease, appease’ Are hanged by those they tried to please.”

-- Hiram Mann
If there were not risk, then why a minimum age for 'the schedule'? It implies some minimization of risk.

Nobody can say there is not problems with vaccines. Some may have discernment to realize when it is a bad idea for their particular 'speshul snowflake' and be correct; But parental right/insight is removed. Some portfolios may be heavy in Merc, et al. and chose to stay on this ill-gotten bandwagon. But now will be a bureaucratic mandate so that 'it wasn't really your fault'.

It is sooo easy for Statists to get along with themselves when there is nothing more to reality than Boltzmann.

I think what many of those who feel so hostile toward parents who don't vaccinate, is that many of us DID vaccinate, for YEARS...but had to stop when our children were seriously injured by vaccines.

My husband and I have two vaccine-injured children. Their injuries included: encephalitis, permanent and dramatic cognitive and behavioral changes, development of autistic-like behaviors, sensory processing disorder, Failure to Thrive, muscle degeneration, multiple episodes of apnea so severe we thought they had ALREADY died of SIDS, and at one point, my oldest LOST THE USE OF BOTH OF HER LEGS 16 hours after her Kindergarten boosters. Thankfully, she regained the use of her legs, but not before doctors assured us we were very lucky that she "wasn't left permanently paralyzed in both legs".

Our son was never the same child again after his 4 month shots. The damage he incurred that day will affect every day of the rest of his life. And the changes he suffered after his MMR have complicated his life even more.

We were told by a doctor that our subsequent children would likely be vulnerable to vaccine-injury. So, we eventually made the choice to stop vaccinating.

My children have a familial history of epilepsy, they all have the same autoimmune disorder, they have allergies, and obviously - a familial history of severe adverse reactions to vaccines.

These used to be things which the top minds in the field identified as contraindications to vaccines. It was that way for DECADES. It only changed recently, and evidently suddenly.

That means, whereas we likely could have obtained a medical exemption for them a decade ago, we almost certainly won't find a doctor to give them one now. Even though NOTHING has changed in re: to the fact that the odds are stacked against them for walking away from a vaccination uninjured.

So now, my two youngest children, who are unvaccinated (and very healthy), who would have been considered not good candidates for vaccination not that long ago, suddenly have no guidelines in place to protect them from the same fate (or worse) as their older siblings.

PLEASE KNOW that many, many families who refuse to vaccinate have ALREADY watched one or more of their children suffer, regress, and even die from vaccines. And THAT'S when they stopped. They trusted the system UNTIL then.

Nobody is going to take ANY responsibility for injuries my clearly vulnerable children may sustain as a result of forced vaccination (if it passes). They will be considered (as my oldest two are) as collateral damage in the quest to nurture the Greater Good.

You know what? My children are not "collateral damage". They are living, breathing, amazing, loving human beings who have a lot to offer this world - they don't deserve to be treated as subhuman and irrelevant. And they sure as hell don't deserve to have their health and/or cognitive function mutilated just because they were unfortunate enough to be born into a body that can't tolerate vaccines as well as most other people.

Imagine it is YOUR child in my children's position. What would you do then?

I blame Kierkegaard.

The football is a demipolytetrahedron.

Severn Darden will always be Dr. Gene Meredith to me.

in today's Guardian, Oliver Burkeman has one of those essays warning liberals not to get too self-righteous about the coservative science deniers since "Nobody is immune from resisting science they wish weren’t true."

Duh. Of course Burkeman persists in his false equivalence / 'false balance' despite revealing various contrary pieces of evidence. But the whole 'liberals do it too' take is supported b the famiiar canard that "The anti-vaccine movement seems to be a largely left-wing phenomenon."

But what has me face-palming is the link he puts on that text as evidence of his assertion. http://tinyurl.com/pkpzd3e
This 'argumnet' is such ridiculously BAD SCIENCE Burkeman should lose his job at the guardian for foisting it under the banner of legitimate research. It was published in a right-wing.propaganda 'pro-science' blog (as opposed to the prevailing conservative ant-science sites) operated by Forbes.

#81
is this the text from Barajas?
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1032081286805962&id=3…

also at https://www.facebook.com/RtAVM/posts/862907977112546

and she seems to be premed
https://thepoxesblog.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/to-the-vermont-coalition-…

Todd W: The world is a lot more nuanced than you seem to grasp.

No, it's really not.

DW: At least you sort of get my point. Men have a lot more socially sanctioned escape routes that don't lead into woo. Women tend to gradually fall into it, and then rapidly double down on the woo to keep their friends and prestige.

Roger Kulp: Thanks for the history lesson, but I think you took a wrong turn on the intertubes. Or did you do this on a dare for your "friends" at Age of Autism? (Tip: they aren't really, you know. I wonder why you keep punishing yourself by commenting there?)

Brandy: At this point, I hate to say it, but your choices are rapidly narrowing into 'keep the kids home forever and never let them hang out with any other children.' If you're telling the truth, the kids have had some pretty scary reactions, and the diseases would probably be even worse. It's not us you should be mad at, it's the parents who are falsely obtaining medical exemptions or getting the philosophical exemptions, and the doctors who hand out those exemptions like candy.

You’re trying. Which is progress.

"I'm a guide, not a sheep-dog."

Politicalguineapig:

Todd W: The world is a lot more nuanced than you seem to grasp.

No, it’s really not.

Yes it really is.
Politicalguineapig, you're a hypocrite. You are as prejudiced, biased and narrowminded as the people you claim to be fighting against. You don't realise that your sweeping generalisations are sweeping generalisations, that a lot of people in the groups you attack are not like your generalisations, and that they would be justifiably annoyed by them. I get very irate when ignorami generalise about me.
On an earlier post, someone mentioned the axiom "If you run into one jerk, you've run into one jerk. If you're constantly running into jerks, maybe you're the jerk."
In your comments, you come across as both extremely abrasive and very antagonistic, Politicalguineapig. Maybe you should engage in significant introspection.

Bandy: "My husband and I have two vaccine-injured children."

How well did you fare with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program? Those injuries sound so profound, you must have had compensation for table injuries.

I have a kid injured by an actual disease, there is no "National Disease Injury Compensation Program." So I keep wondering what has the greater risk of injury, the vaccine or the actual disease. Do you have an answer to the relative risk?

This ‘argumnet’ is such ridiculously BAD SCIENCE Burkeman should lose his job at the guardian for foisting it under the banner of legitimate research. It was published in a right-wing.propaganda ‘pro-science’ blog

You get the impression that Oliver Burkeman decided he needed an example of a specifically left-leaning manifestation of reality-denial, and went hunting around the interlattice in search of a study which supported his thesis. Immediately after reminding his readers of the dangerous allure of motivated reasoning and cherry-picked evidence.

He did not do himself any favours by citing Jonathon Haidt, either.

We were told by a doctor that our subsequent children would likely be vulnerable to vaccine-injury.

I'm going with hit and run.

Brandy, why didn't your doctor(s) who diagnosed vaccine-induced encephalitis in two of your children, make reports on the VAERS system?

I don't think that medical contraindications against receiving certain vaccines have changed. Could you provide links to CDC websites to verify your statement? I'm always willing to learn.

Daniel Welch @ 28 nails it utterly: narcissism with the details spelled out. America has a pandemic of personality disorders, sociopathy in high places and narcissism throughout. IMHO the big public freak-out about autism has become an "identified patient" syndrome to avoid dealing with that, or perhaps even a deliberate distraction.

The item "dumb luck / God's will harmed my kid" vs. "I harmed my kid," is interesting. There's an odd fluke in human cognition whereby people seem to believe that the harm caused by a deliberate failure to take an action, is less of an act of will, and less morally culpable, than the harm caused by deliberately taking an action.

Contrast to the Taoist idea that "not-doing is doing," whereby both have equal standing, including equal degrees of personal responsibility, from which we can derive that both have equal moral standing as well.

My children have a familial history of epilepsy... These used to be things which the top minds in the field identified as contraindications to vaccines. It was that way for DECADES.

I am intrigued. When was a family history of epilepsy ever regarded as a contraindication against vaccination?

it’s like five women to every man in wooville.

Women are somewhat more likely than men to believe in some kinds of pseudoscience, and have less science literacy on average. http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/public-perspective/ppscan/125/125024.p…
Although where I live, it's more a cultural thing. There are plenty of very irrational males around, too.

Pgp - did you read Roger Kulp's links? (Hint - he would be banned from AoA in a heartbeat.)

To me it seems that the most important point in this post was only briefly mentioned- that nobody is suggesting people will be forced to vaccinate. Even if all of these bills passed, vaccination would still be optional. It's not like it will be a crime to be unvaccinated, and the vaccination police will hold kids down and stick needles in them.
Reading through some of these comment-feuds, this point seems to be completely lost. All of these arguments defect back to heated comments about science, data, social responsibility etc.
This shouldn't even be an issue. Those people can choose not to vaccinate all they want, but they will have to accept certain trade-offs in what privileges they have.

Brandy writes:

My husband and I have two vaccine-injured children. Their injuries included: encephalitis, permanent and dramatic cognitive and behavioral changes, development of autistic-like behaviors, sensory processing disorder, Failure to Thrive, muscle degeneration, multiple episodes of apnea so severe we thought they had ALREADY died of SIDS, and at one point, my oldest LOST THE USE OF BOTH OF HER LEGS 16 hours after her Kindergarten boosters. Thankfully, she regained the use of her legs, but not before doctors assured us we were very lucky that she “wasn’t left permanently paralyzed in both legs”.
Our son was never the same child again after his 4 month shots. The damage he incurred that day will affect every day of the rest of his life. And the changes he suffered after his MMR have complicated his life even more.

What makes you think all this was caused by vaccines?
Maybe your children have these problems for some other reason.

@Laura

Someone on another forum told me that laws against drunk driving are ok because driving drunk is so dangerous, but not laws mandating vaccination because there’s little immediate risk.

But antivaxers think drink driving is "healthful". It certainly isn't as harmful as driving whilst sober.

Why do they think that?
Because 85% of the fatalities occur in drivers who are sober.
Well, they don't really think that (I hope), but to be consistent they should do, using their "Most kids who get measles/pertussis are vaxed" logic.

@Herr Doctor B

When was a family history of epilepsy ever regarded as a contraindication against vaccination?

Trying to recall my med student days in the 1970s, I think that was indeed the received wisdom regarding pertussis vaccine anyhow.

(Someone also told me that the reason you should avoid pertussis vaccination in a child with a family history of epilepsy was because if that child subsequently developed epilepsy, then the parents would not be able to (wrongly) blame the vaccine. I could be misremembering though)

When was a family history of epilepsy ever regarded as a contraindication against vaccination?

I'm not sure when exactly the change in recommendation happened, but here's what the CDC had to say about it in 1987, the year I was born:

The risk of neurologic events after DTP vaccination is very small. Most neurologic events (primarily febrile seizures, but including nonfebrile seizures, encephalopathy, or other neurologic symptoms) that occasionally follow DTP vaccination occur in children without known risk factors. However, recent studies suggest that infants and children with a history of convulsions in first-degree family members (i.e., siblings and parents) have a 3.2-fold increased risk for neurologic events compared with those without such histories (CDC, unpublished data). Nevertheless, these children are still at very low risk for serious neurologic events following DTP vaccination. Convulsions within 3 days of DTP vaccination may be unrelated to vaccination, induced by vaccine components, or initiated by vaccine-associated fever in those children prone to febrile convulsions. Although children with a family history of seizures have an increased risk for developing idiopathic epilepsy, febrile seizures (including those following vaccinations) do not themselves increase the probability of epilepsy or other neurologic disorders (2,3).

After careful deliberation, the ACIP has concluded that a family history of convulsions in parents and siblings is not a contraindication to pertussis vaccination and that children with such family histories should receive pertussis vaccine according to the recommended schedule (1,4). The committee reached this decision after considering 1) the risks of pertussis disease, 2) the large number of children (5%-7%) with a family history of convulsions, 3) the clustering of these children within families, and 4) the low risk of convulsions following pertussis vaccination (1-3,5).

I was sort of curious because I do have a family history of epilepsy on my mom's side, but not in any first degree relatives - so it looks like that wouldn't have been considered a contraindication even before the recommendations changed.

I noticed another objection of, "What right does he have to propose a law like that?"
Not realizing that section 8 of the US Constitution requires our leaders to promote the welfare of the United States and hence, the populace.
The preamble:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Section 8;
"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"

So, there isn't a "right", but a responsibility to promote the welfare of the nation and her populace.

And there is the Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 1905 decision, which basically said the exact same thing.

So, your belief that stressed populatons are more vulnerable to woo is based on observing a 'population' with an n of 2, Robert Schecter and Steve Jobs?

Really?

Though, rapped up in this is *according to schedule*. So; one size fits all — If I may borrow a sadmarism, “Tim’s J.C. Whitney Theory of Imprecise Universality”

.
Tim, your evidence that with resepct to routine childhood vaccination one size does not fit all--that individuals vary significantly that personalizing vaccination schedules would reduce risk the risks associated with vaccines sufficiently to justify leaving individuals vulnerable to infection for extended periods of time--would be what, exactly? Be specific.

If there were not risk, then why a minimum age for ‘the schedule’? It implies some minimization of risk.

How does it imply risk? Improved safety is hardly the only reason why one would establish minimum age ranges for specific vaccinations, after all. For example, with respect to MMR the minimum age recommendation reflects teh fact that prior to this the presence of circulating maternal antibodies may interfere with the child developing an adequate immune response to the vaccine strain measles and generating a protective titer.

Nobody can say there is not problems with vaccines.

And nobaody has: what has been said (accurately) is that the risks associated with vaccines are well undertood: those that are common are both transient and minor (low grade fever, soreness at the site of injection) while those that are serious (encphalitis) are all but vanishingly rare, such that the known risks associated with being vaccinated are far, far lower (by orders of magnitude) than the known risks associated with reamining vulnerable to infection.

Brandy, how have you factually established that the injuries you're attributing to vaccination actually were caused by the vaccines they received? Your list includes a lot of conditions that, as far as I'ma ware anyway, are not known to be causally associated with vaccination.

I like how anti-vax people call it a "one-size fits all" schedule, when you look at it & see that there is a huge amount of leeway in when those various shots are given (i.e. there are ranges of "months").

I think there's another side to the "Dumb luck" versus "I harmed my kid" dichotomy.

If it's the vaccines, I choose not to have my kids vaccinated and avoid having a 'vaccine injured' child. I'll will be in control, and I can stop it from happening to me.

If it's dumb luck of god's will, on the other hand, I have no control. It might happen to my kids, and there's nothing I can do about it..

So I simply haveto believe it's the vaccines. That's the only way I'll ever feel like I'm in control and I can stop it from happenong to me.

dingo199 #150
That would be an excellent question to ask in response to "most of the people who got X were vaccinated against it", e.g. "Most of the fatalities in drunk driving accidents weren't actually drunk drivers, does that mean that driving drunk is OK?"
Get them to think about it :)

Indeed, Lawrence. We just got our midterm report cards for our kids, and the one for our eldest included a reminder that vaccinations are important in light of the ongoing measles concerns and a few cases of pertussis in the community. They helpfully included a photocopy of the state's recommendations. The date of each vaccine is given as a very wide bar spanning many years; they just recommend you get it somewhere in that time period. And they don't care what brand vaccines you use or how they get grouped or anything like that; they just wantw to make sure that you have, at some point, gotten vaccinated against diseases X, Y, and Z. They also provide a catch-up schedule if your child isn't vaccinated adequately yet, and they'll let you keep your kid in school as long as you submit an affidavit that you're doing catch-up vaccines.

Spacing out vaccines to far beyond the CDC's recommendations is totally allowed. It's just not advised. Somehow this is interpreted as jackbooted thugs marching into your home to forcibly inject your child. I don't think it's really a persecution complex, though; I think it's just another piece of the justification web as non-vaccinating parents try to shore up the logical walls around their decision.

@Calli - although both of my kids are fully vaxed, we needed to re-jigger the actual schedule / time of some of the vaccines due to a couple of times the boys being sick for that particular visit....working with our pediatrician was simple.

I don't think anti-vaxers actually speak to their doctors (perhaps they just lecture them).....

Brook: I did read Roger Kulp's comment, and I have seen him several times on Age of Autism.

Julian: Why do you even care about anti-vaxxers? Considering how often people like Sid go off on you, you're being surprisingly charitable.

JGC: It's not just them. See: all the nurses we were talking about, military wives, and former businesswomen who unwisely plunged into homemaking. All these people are stressed and end up deeply immersed in woo.

Random question: Does anyone have a source for how many babies (under 2) died from measles in the US pre vaccine?

I see the 400-500 death statistic for overall deaths posted a lot but haven't been able to find it broken down any more than that.

I'm not Julian, but I care about anti-vaxxers because even if you consider aggressive ignorance a sin, their children are innocent victims. Also because reducing human suffering is a good thing, whether or not the sufferers are "worthy" according to some standard or other.

I agree that it's not just them, pgp, but I don't agree that all people who are stressed will liekly end up deeply immersed in woo. The number of nurse who embrace woo are after all a small percentage of the total number of RN's, just is as thepercentage of doctors. military wives, etc, who do so despite all experiencing stress. Steve Jobs may have embraced woo; clearly Bill Gates does not.

I think it is again a perception bias: we notice a nurse or doctor who embraces woo because doing so is incongruous behavior. We notice the celebrities who do because they make for good press. And because we notice these, but fail to notice the shoe salesmen, cosmeticians, HVAC installers, accountants, middle school teachers, etc., who do so we falsely presume people embracing woo must be over-expressed in these professions.

@Vicki
Yes, and it's a good idea to remember that everyone has their biases and is vulnerable to irrational convictions to some extent.
People who are friendly and sociable and don't take an us vs. them attitude will have more success in talking to anti-vaxxers and getting them to question their beliefs.
Although some very friendly, caring people get demonized anyway, just for being on the other side of the fence. Paul Offit (pro-vaccine advocate) for example, seems to me a very caring doctor - but he gets demonized a great deal by anti-vaxxers. I guess demonizing and endless name-calling is something that anyone who bravely wades into that sea of irrationality, has to put up with. "Source derogation" is one way that people defend irrational beliefs - derogatory ideas about the people who contradict their belief.
I'm careful to not attack or insult in discussions about people's irrational convictions. Usually people reciprocate to some extent and are fairly civil, but I get attacked sometimes anyway.

Nurses have some medical knowledge, and may have a sense of being a health expert. So when they're attracted to anti-vaccination beliefs, they can use this sense of expertise to support those beliefs.
Same thing would apply to doctors as well, only more so.

@PGP

You may have read Roger Kulp's post and links, but you clearly didn't understand it, if you think that he is "friends" with people at AoA. His post is pretty clearly pro-vaccine.

As to sweeping generalizations, you pretty regularly complain about how others you disagree with make sweeping generalizations and discriminate against people like yourself, yet you do exactly the same thing. You'd think that one of these times when the rest of us point this out to you for the umpteenth time, you'd get it. But you don't. You just keep making the same kind of black-and-white, ignorant and insulting comments.

As to why we care about anti-vaxxers, in addition to what Vicki said, even though we may disagree with them, there's always the chance that we might be able to bring them around to reality. They are human beings just like the rest of us, prone to the same foibles. At the risk of Godwinning the thread, if you dehumanize them, you risk going down the same path that countless despots have gone before. That makes it easier and easier to do sh**ty things to them.

Doesn't it mean anything to you that the majority of people that are on the same side of the vaccine/woo issue as you are telling you to cool it?

Most measles stats I've seen by age tend to be under 5 not under 2. Usually the under fives and the over twenties have higher complication risk and I assume one of those is death.

Haven't seen any older data broken down, just more recent.

Gray Squirrel #144, R. Mutt #148, Wzrd1 #153, JGC #159:
Yes, yes, yes, yes!

A problem in thinking how to counter woo is separating the effects of hard-wired human tendencies from what we might consider 'pathological deviance'. I'm not sure placing more weight on action than inaction is a 'fluke'. It would seem likely to have evolutionary advantages, and thus be hard-wired-ish. And it's something most people do.

The narcissistic tendencies, however, seem to be a minority phenomenon, and (lay person that I am) I don't see how they'd be hard-wired. Not to say they're inconsistent with 'human nature' just not of its essence.

Wzrd observes social responsibility is written into the U.S. Constitution, which is interesting in that the framers were classical liberals, e.g libertarians (small 'l'). This suggests they'd thought things through enough to conclude that individual liberty could only be maximized if combined with some sort of collective action which amounted, to some degree, to everyone looking out for everyone else.

So we coud consider anti-vax as the influence of narcissism on the tension between individual rights and social responsibility, tipping the delicate balance to what amounts to criminal behavior: MY right to send MY kid out into the community as a disease vector.

With Big Issues riding behind this controversy, it's not that surprising that the very simple and limited terms of the proposal Mutt notes get glossed over. R.'s right, of course, that the proposal just attached reasonable limits on privilege in the wake of certain choices. Any policy proposal, no matter how narrow and modest, simply IS going to pull out those Big Issues. However, I take Mutt's point to be that the proposal in question has already considered and balanced these philosophical questions to a degree we should able to set them aside as policy issues, and re-focusing on the pragmatic and specific 'choice limits privilege' equation here could cut through a lot of the noise. So, yeah, we could and probably should bring that more to the front of the discussion.

Imho, JGC's observation on 'control' really cuts to the heart of the deeper dynamic here. While narcissistic tendencies no doubt exacerbate the quest for illusions of control, that's pretty obviously a more general and long-standing thing. There's a big difference between 'dumb luck' and 'God's will' though. If there are supernatural forces making judgements, we can have a measure of control by learning their desires and conforming behavior to their will. There IS something "I can do about it." Humans do seem to be hard-wired against fully accepting 'sh!t happens' as a working hypothesis.

Still, there's something beyond 'the way things have always been' in the particular quest for control of "it must be the vaccines!" For one thing, as a conspiracy theory, it articulates a narrative of the individual re-acquiring control that has been usurped by other human agents, and specifically not agents acting as individuals, but in social forms: Big Government and/or Big Pharma.

Now, it seems to me that one of the lessons of science is that things don't happen for no reason. Mass doesn't move unless a significant amount of force is applied to it, etc. So, it won't do to think the quest for control in anti-vax is just stupidity, cluelessness, lunacy, etc. In truth, none of us are ever in control, but we manage the illusion that we're in control enough to get by. The question then becomes 'how/why did the anti-vaxers lose that sense of control?'

If only to somewhat reduce the tl:dr obstacle of really long comment blocks, I'll put my thoughts on an answer in a separate comment.

Brook & PGP,
I used to post a lot of comments ay AoA,mostly in threads that dealt with autism itself,not vaccines,but I no longer go there,those people have gone off the deep end as far as vaccines are concerned.

For a number of years,I thought I might find something in common with the antivaxers,because they seemed to be the only ones who acknowledged there were serious medical problems that go along with autism,and as seemed to offer an alternative to the neurodiverse view of autism.I now see both sides are dead wrong,but for very different reasons.There is a desperate need for a "third way" autism movement.

I have an autism diagnosis that was originally very low functioning,but with no problems in speech or language.I have had two autism evaluations,one as a child,one as an adult.Both times,the conclusion was I was so low functioning,with so many behavioral issues,I needed to be put in an institution or group home,under full time supervision.

I have a ridiculous number of medical problems,and have had many regressions.I now have multiple metabolic diagnoses.The ones described in the research of Richard Frye.As a result of treating my cerebral folate deficiency,I have improved dramatically.I am as close as possible to saying I am recovered from autism as long as I continue treatment,but I still have a lot of medical issues.Treating my CFD has given me a much more realistic perspective on all sections of the autism community.

My posting at AoA a few years ago got me in touch with a doctor who shares a lot of AoA's belief on vaccines,but who was the only one willing to do any metabolic and genetic tests on me as an autistic adult.Tests that allowed me to get in to see the top metabolic and mitochondrial specialists in the country as far as autism is concerned,and for that I am grateful beyond words.But I don't think that could happen today,given the current climate at AoA.

I can't believe this is happening. I knew the antivax parents in Oregon were well organized, and that AoA has been putting up the batshit signal to rally opposition to SB 442, but I never in a million years imagined that Andrew mother***king Wakefield would come to testify. Holy Crap, we are so far down the rabbit hole.
http://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/health/2015/02/24/andrew-wak…

Politicalguineapig, I wasn't referring to antivaxxers. I was referring to your comment @ 56 where you said:

A lot of RNs went to diploma mills, plus they don’t like doctors and seize on any excuse to snub them outside of work.

And at 76, where you said:

nurses tend to be stressed, and stressed women are easy prey for woomeisters

which is a sweeping generalisation.
Orac @ 87 said it best.

If you can’t see why it comes across as sexist and condescending and therefore might rile people up, I’m not sure I can help you figure it out, but I, too, saw the remark that way and cringed as I read it.

Then in #123 you made a lot of sweeping generalisations about large groups of people. I don't know if you know this, but actresses Amanda Peet, Jennifer Garner, Jennifer Lopez, Sarah Michelle Prinze and Kristen Bell all actively advocate for vaccines, and that's just off the top of my head. Also if you can't see why

I tend to come down harder on the women, as many are very bright, and it’s sad to watch them waste their lives and squander every other woman’s credibility. The guys, at least, aren’t dragging every other man down with them.

is both appallingly sexist and inaccurate, you lack self-awareness.
As for:

Why do you even care about anti-vaxxers?

I was actually calling you out for unfairly maligning other groups.

@Chris

Mike P, is that a Poe, because I think you hit every square on the Anti-Vax BINGO card.

Aren't Poes supposed to be funny?

Not necessarily, just unhinged. Mike P's evidence free rant qualified.

post-modernism
I think sadmar's trying to say that it's not pomo to think that everything is just an opinion. It's pomo to think that lots of other people think that practically everything is just an opinion.

JTS #177
...more or less, yes.

Lots of people thinking everything is just an opinion could be considered part of 'the postmodern condition' if that's taken to be more prevalent lately than in earlier eras. Phliosophical relativism is quintessentially modern thought, but it could be taken to have been amplified, spread, and spilled over all bounds of reason in the last 50 years or so.

What 'pomo' scholars do is try to observe changes in the culture, figure out why they've occurred, and make educated guesses about the consequences. Some of them venture an opinion that these things may be positive, negative or more often some measure of both. Others just stop at observing/explaining/extrapolating and leave any questions of normative evaluation open. There's no consensus in the 'field' about any of this — either what exactly is different now, or what to make of any of the major contending factual hypotheses should they 'prove' to be correct. So the conferences, journals, books that deal with 'pomo' are filled with arguments about these things.

The debates break down, then, into a fair number of different camps with quite different perspectives. One significant camp is folks who find 'postmodern culture' to be a definite Thing, a fairly thorough and extreme Thing, and have a lot of worries about the consequences of that Thing for democracy, social justice and so forth. That's the camp I'm in. And to the list of our worries, you can add 'proper respect for and good use of scientific knowledge.' Fwiw.

Re: Postmodernism

I think part of the reason pomo evokes such a visceral response among many scientists is that early postmodernists, those who defined postmodernism to a large degree, really were involved in some pretty egregious ridiculousness when it came to commenting upon science. Lyotard, for instance, admitted later in life that when he wrote about science he was literally just making sh*t up.

I personally don't find pomo to be a satisfying stance even within the humanities; the poets I dig are (sometimes self-consciously) not postmodern, despite the era in which they wrote. As a reaction to the horrors of the twentieth century, I find humanism in the classical sense provides better ground to stand on, personally.

I can see why people are into pomo, though, and even how it has its utility at times. Thing is, it really should stick to narratives, political or otherwise. In science, you really do need to sit down with your #2 pencil and get to the right answer. When it comes to political/nationalist narratives, though, fixating on the right answer can have disastrous consequences. Ethnic nationalism, for instance, comes about because of a certain narrative about, say, the Volk, and how it was once great and is now humiliated, and arrives at a certain right answer about how to "remedy" the situation. Disrupting narratives like these is a worthwhile goal.

Re: Epilepsy

The mention of epilepsy this morning jogged my memory about a certain sci-fi novella, titled Press Enter, which I read in middle school. It was published in 1984, actually - I first read it in a "Best of" anthology, I think. (I had a friend in middle school whose dad had a whole basement full of old science fiction books, and he used to send me home with paper sacks full of paperbacks.)

I looked it up after Ukrainian today and reread it; it's still an oddly enjoyable read. There is a bit at the end involving a microwave oven that will possibly become seared in your consciousness as it was in mine, lo those years ago. PDF here.

This ‘argumnet’ is such ridiculously BAD SCIENCE Burkeman should lose his job at the guardian for foisting it under the banner of legitimate research. It was published in a right-wing.propaganda ‘pro-science’ blog (as opposed to the prevailing conservative ant-science sites) operated by Forbes.This ‘argumnet’ is such ridiculously BAD SCIENCE Burkeman should lose his job at the guardian for foisting it under the banner of legitimate research. It was published in a right-wing.propaganda ‘pro-science’ blog (as opposed to the prevailing conservative ant-science sites) operated by Forbes.

Of course it's bad science. It's Alex Berezow, a right wing hack who, in response to the "Republican War on Science" rhetoric co-wrote a giggle-inducing book entitled Science Left Behind: Feel-Good Fallacies and the Rise of the Anti-Scientific Left in 2012, just in time for the Presidential campaign.

He was discussed extensively in the comments by a well-known "friend" of this blog in this post:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/progressive-mythology/

Berezow's arguments, it would appear, have not improved in two and a half years.

In The Daily Beast today:

They Don’t Want an Autism Cure
Neurodiversity advocates argue that people with autism shouldn’t be forced to fit into society, but that society should change to include and accept them.

I suppose it would be mind-blowing to anti-vaxers to consider 'vaccine injury' may not be injury to their kids, just injury to their self-image, social status, pocketbook, etc.

While [a study] shows that people with autism have mixed feelings about their disorder, a large majority feels neutral to positive about the concept of neurodiversity.

http://tinyurl.com/okfcafm

@NH Primary Care Doctor-I am an RN and I can't really answer your question (why are so many nurses opposed to immunizations), but I have some ideas.

Most hospital nurses have only an associate degree in nursing, with little science background. They usually work in tertiary care units in hospitals, not in community health. They don't usually see kids, and the adults they see don't usually have communicable diseases. Community health nurses, e.g. those who work in public health and doctor's offices, are pro-vaccine. It both cracks me up and makes me angry at the same time when someone tells me that their spouse (brother, sister, aunt, uncle, sister-in-law, etc) works in CCU and doesn't think measles vaccine, for example, is necessary.

"To be frank, no one is immune to anti-vax fever:
doctors, nurses, *psychologists*, social workers, chemists, biologists, teachers, engineers, business people as well as certified woo-meisters and new age gurus."

Too True! Maybe because there are a lot of engineers in my neck of the woods, but I sure know a lot who are anti-immunization. They do all these crazy calculations such as you read on these boards and decide that their personal chance of getting a disease is practically nil. They don't understand that maybe a 10% chance (or whatever) of getting the flu in a given winter is actually a fairly high chance, not a remote one.

It's amazing just how many "anti-vax" haters I've encountered that think it's OK for them not to keep up with the vaccine schedule because they "were vaccinated as children and/or have been exposed to some of these illnesses". I guess they only take the CDC's advice when it applies to OTHER people. The fact remains that adults are extremely undervaccinated compared to children - and they have been responsible for many recent outbreaks, yet there will NEVER be forced vaccination of ADULTS in the US (for many reasons) and I think that's just a bit hypocritical - especially since I've talked with many "anti-vax" haters that openly admit they've only had their childhood vaccinations (like many other adults).

Facts:
"Adult vaccination rates are EXTREMELY low."
"Most adults are NOT aware that they need vaccines."
"There are many missed opportunities for vaccination because many healthcare professionals are not routinely assessing adult vaccination status."
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/patient-ed/adults/for-practice/standard…

Katerina Witt...There's no need to defend Registered Nurses who work in public health . I refer you to my comment, here, where I mentioned the unique autonomy I had to administer vaccines to children (and adults) without a physician's order. I damn well know the parameters of public health nursing, when I "advised" physicians about vaccines, immunoglobulins, blood tests, cultures and prescribing antimicrobials for treatments of V-P-Ds and the ~ 60 other CDC notifiable diseases that I investigated during my tenure as a public health nurse clinician-epidemiologist. Most registered nurses do not have that autonomy. They may only vaccinate patients with a doctor's order; many hospitals have "standing orders" in place to offer pneumonia vaccines and seasonal influenza vaccines before patients leave the hospital and some hospitals have "standing orders" to offer the Dtap booster, influenza vaccine and to maternity patients prior to their release...if they refused those vaccines during pregnancy.

pgp:

Where are those diploma mills which award R.N. degrees to permit a graduate to sit for registered nursing boards?

Why do you reduce every registered nurse to a stereotype of your own devising?

pgp: I'm in a rare mood right now and I'm taking the gloves off...so reply at your own risk.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/02/24/as-states-try-to-crack-dow…

Correcting my arkward post...

^ They may only vaccinate patients with a doctor’s order; many hospitals have “standing orders” in place to offer pneumonia vaccines and seasonal influenza vaccines before patients leave the hospital and some hospitals have “standing orders” to offer the Tdap booster and influenza vaccine and to maternity patients prior to their release…if they refused those vaccines during pregnancy.

@ PGP:

Well, I'm glad that you recognise what I'm trying to say. I hope you listen to what others say in criticism. If you attempt to say EXACTLY what you mean, without assuming that others will automatically understand, you'll be ahead of the game. More careful speech is important. I think that your heart is in the right place and that you have strong feelings which you express via hyperbole which people may mis- interpret.

About people's attitudes regarding sex roles, woo, SBM at al:.
There are polls and surveys that can be useful. Psychologists study stereotypes - with many articles and theories available. I especially am fond of the idea that perhaps - on some level- stereotyping may be as aspect of how human memory works, reducing informational load, relying upon a prototype, employing cognitive 'miserliness'-
HOWEVER ( big HOWEVER) although it may be a human characteristic to seek out patterns to the detriment of using new information,
it is also human to develop new, higher cognitive processes, such as those which self-critique performance, regard the perspective of other people, understand how memory works and can be a biasing factor, tailor communications to a selected audience, see our own weak points, manage emotional response and attempt self-regulation and improvement.

AND I understand how infuriating these TMs can be. We have to remember though we see only a SELF-selected - not a representative - sample. The loudest and most attention-seeking.

-btw- I learned that Kim S has a new book coming out- it focuses upon young women with ASDs. Her AoA facebook announcement of this was accompanied by a photo of uh... cleansing products best left to the imagination.
I feel sorry for her daughters if they read about themselves ( courtesy of her writing).

Speaking of AoA, Adriana's got part 2 of her "weaponized analogies" series up. I've just barely skimmed it so far, but my eyes have landed on references to Camus, gay rights, Israel, the Argentine junta, and peanut allergies. Which will apparently cause the downfall of our nation, or something.

Oh, and the KKK. I think this installment may top the first.

One thing I never get is why nurses appear so vulnerable to anti medicine views. Granted, the existence of Dr Sears shows that it isn't unique but embracing some woo like essential oils, homeopathy is one thing, being actively against science backed medicine is the other. The former is merely embracing intergrative medicine lies, rejecting vaccines is being actively against medicine.

Oops...not sure why the second part of the paragraph was deleted.

I was wondering whether the concept of lies to patients might play a role. Telling a patient allopurinol is removing toxins from cancer cells is technically true when used in prophlactic tumour lysis syndrome, but it appeals to a different cultural context entirely, all in the name of treatment compliance.

Perhaps, in the inner subconscious, this might be a lash back against the possibility of being lied to for compliance purposes and that the true story is more complex. Insert a modicum of Dunning Krueger effect and well....

I feel sorry for her daughters if they read about themselves

Indeed.

I love this quote from a review for her "House of Cards" endeavor.

"#186 - I hate to complain so much since this book was a free offer"

The "free offer" just cracked me up.

Maybe I'm just a mean person.

my eyes have landed on references to Camus, gay rights, Israel, the Argentine junta, and peanut allergies

Cynthia Parker also gazillions down on the peanut delusion:*

"The Hib vaccine is the most implicated in causing peanut allergy (according to Fraser), both because it is adjuvanted with peanut oil and doesn't have to put it on the package, and because the Hib molecular structure resembles that of peanut protein, so injecting it often sensitizes the immune system to anything resembling the Hib molecular structure (cross-reactivity)."

* Sorry, but I'm calling a spade a spade.

^ In the comments.

Oh, and the KKK. I think this installment may top the first.

You are perhaps unfamiliar with Gamondes' finest moment.

The since–memory-holed item* is preserved here and there.

* They seem to have figured out how to Occupy! use the Wayback Machine's deletion mechanism.

Yeow..... Didn't realise the comments had RN bashing in it.... Should had read the comments before posting.

I'm a RN for six years working in haematology, and over the years, I seen a small number of nurses express both woo friendly comments, vaccine fears and lack of faith in chemotherapy.

The last is easy to see why. Inpatient nurses don't get to see the successes. the hospital policy of advising us not to befriend former patients on Facebook makes that much harder to see former patients now fishing, diving, and the Lucky sonnofagun having an amazing vacation in Bali.....

My HOD even recognised that, roping in transplant nurses to participate in the Hope book,where we documentated the life stories of transplant patients in recognisation of our 100th successful BMT, so that all of us, doctors,nurses get to see how our efforts have made a difference. It was a welcome change... Instead of seeing a patient requesting to be let home so he can visit his grandson wedding despite beingn critically ill... Of another saying I don't want to go on because I'm suffering, even if its curative, I'm so old that it won't make a difference.....

The second is only human. My context was mostly to do with flu vaccines. And pregnant mothers. You....can't shake that fear away. Especially when working near drugs that cause birth defects from antibiotics like grancyclovir onwards, or how steroids are labelled with the symbol poison... Its why I ask whether the concept of lies to patients might play a role.

The first is Perhaps the only negative aspect I can cast upon them. But .... Such woo is part of the milieu of health culture, something that training is suppose to erraducate but humanity has the most amazing powers of holding incompatible ideas simultaneously...

Gamondes' true hilarity, though, lies in the fact that her pseudo-philosophical word salad reduces her to trying to hold the operation together with ever more psychically closeted propaganda imagery.

@ JP #179
'Lyotard's 'The Postmodern Condition' is primarily concerned with propositions of fact, and only secondarily with propositions of value. The central fact claim is 'the postmodern condition is characterized by incredulity to the meta-narratives of inexorable technological progress and inexorable progress towards human liberation.' One can agree that's happening, and still find it really disturbing (if one is, say, Jurgen Habermas). Lyotard's actually fairly vague regarding how he evaluates the developments he sees, but overall he seems fairly cheery about them, perhaps indiscriminately along the lines you suggest.

As with most influential thinkers, Lyotard's ideas were taken up, extended, amplified, exaggerated etc. by other people. These 'Lyotardians' are often way more celebratory of the fraying of this modernist narrative or that than ol' J. F. was himself, and they can take exactly the evaluative position you did (science fraying bad, Volk fraying good) or (yuchh) the opposite thesis. In any case, I call this "Happy Postmodernism."

All the major pomo stuff was first published in English around the same time: '83-'84. Jameson and Baudrillard were just as influential as Lyotard, but their propositions of fact were much more extreme than 'people don't believe in progress anymore, and have retreated into little sub-groups that can't talk to one another even if they want to.' They both say we're losing the ability to communicate at all, to make any kind of sense at all. Baudrillard doesn't deny an objective reality; he insists on it. He just claims the culture in general has lost the ability to tell the fake from the real thing, and in practice the fake has become a 'hyper-real' with more reality-effect than the real-real. Of course, that sounds insane, but exemplars are a dime-a-dozen if you stop and think for a minute using that frame. Where outside of hyper-reality can Ronald Reagan become president? (c.f. Michael Rogin, Ronald Reagan: The Movie UC Press, 1987). I call this Apocalyptic Postmodernism. None of it had anything to do with science, at least not directly.

If there's any connection at all between the cacophonous arguments within actual 'postmodernism' and the ridiculous univocal caricature lodged in the head of so many sciency types, it might be that no form of pomo is particularly optimistic about the social project of advancing scientific rationality. Today, in his post on Brian Clement, Orac wrote:

There are times when it really does feel as though we’re fighting a hopeless battle for rationality and science against unreason and harmful quackery.

To which Lyotard and Baudrillard nod quietly and soberly from their graves. Back in 1984, the theorists of postmodern culture not only saw the battle for rationality faring badly, they predicted things were going to get worse for the rationalists. A lot worse.

And where are we? Anti-vax hysteria is unleashing waves of preventable infectious disease. The political party that denies AGW and evolution — chalking them up to insidious anti-American and anti-Christian conspiracies – holds both Houses of the federal legislature. Their reality-disconnect on science is exceeded by their reality-disconnect on economics, history, guns — you name it, they've got it wrong on matters that ought to considered objective fact. And their partisans are ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED of their rectitude. In the 60s and 70s we called these folks the lunatic fringe. Today we call them Congressmen. And their gang has filled their bubble with their own set of 'facts' on all of these things, incontrovertible evidence from which they cannot and will not be disuaded.

Think postmodern culture isn't a Thing? I give you the Republican party and Fox News: pomo incarnate.

So maybe you'd think philosophers who predicted our current trajectory over 30 years ago, and tried to explain it in terms of historical developments in the culture, might have been onto something? And maybe if we understood the weirdness better, we'd have a better idea how to deal with it?

But then we'd have to know what those different folks have actually said in those arguments they've been having over in their corner for the last 30 years. Instead the same ludicrous, completely false stereotype gets reproduced over and over in massive Dunning-Kruger by people who can't cite even ONE primary source on the subject accurately. Talk about stupid...

Narad: Age of Autism really "did jump the shark", by publishing Gamondes not-so-clever illustration:

Here, complete with Kim Stagliano's remarks:

http://www.examiner.com/article/did-age-of-autism-jump-the-shark

Narad: Age of Autism really “did jump the shark”, by publishing Gamondes not-so-clever illustration:

Here, complete with Kim Stagliano’s remarks:

http://www.examiner.com/article/did-age-of-autism-jump-the-shark

"For the truly masochistic, use them to play the Age of Autism Drinking Game where you drink every time an article hurls baseless insults at those that don’t agree with them. Drink twice if they compare their critics to Nazis."

Some friends and I once devised a drinking game based on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, in which one was required to fix a drink every time the characters did. I suspect the AoA drinking game would be as difficult as ours.

But then we’d have to know what those different folks have actually said in those arguments they’ve been having over in their corner for the last 30 years. Instead the same ludicrous, completely false stereotype gets reproduced over and over in massive Dunning-Kruger by people who can’t cite even ONE primary source on the subject accurately. Talk about stupid…

Careful there. I suspect it has nothing to do with stupidity, but rather with a refusal to wade through mountains of abominable and seemingly deliberately obfuscatory prose, a position which I can grok quite well indeed. A lot of the postmodernists make Bakhtin and even Lukács seem easy to follow. Okay, maybe not Lukács, although he is more readable in the original German.

@ JP:

AoA presents Gamondes' entire opera/ oeuvre ( see contributors) - I just scrolled thru' and Yiiiiiiiiiiii! there's enough word salad to feed a vegan army!

Be that as it may, I occasionally regard proselytisers like Gamondes as our inadvertent allies:
becauseif most people look at her ideas would wonder why anyone would take her seriously for ANY reason.

Similarly, alt media woo-meisters like Adams and Null: when they are held up as paragons of thoughtfulness, perception and virtue, we can point out the ridiculous advice and predictions they have made based upon their vaunted expertise in diverse subjects across the board.
e.g. 2009 - take your money out of the stock market, it'll never recover; there will be gangs taking over suburbia and a solar storm that will wipe out electrical power for a decade, 2010, 2011, 2012 etc.

AND most of their nonsense still exists - buried under the mire of more recent detritus, true- on their websites.
Thanks, loonies!

@ PainRack:

Quackwatch includes an older essay about why health professionals might succumb to woo. It's worth viewing as well as their other more general musings upon why woo sells.

More recently, there have been studies about why particular cognitive styles and personalities might be more vulnerable to conspiracy theories, etc. IIRC *lack*of cognitive complexity and a general paranoid style. This is relatively easy to find altho' I don't have my finger on it presently.

I think it's interesting to read James Laidler's account ( see Autism Watch) about how the 'scales fell from his eyes' concerning autism dietary woo. His medical degree didn't hurt this enlightenment either surely.

Just read an account of an Italian study that confirmed conspiracy theorists there only consult supportive web sites. Big surprise.

Many nurses here are anti-vax, I think. I've had several disturbing conversations with nurses about this over the years. It may be due to the libertarian and highly religious nature of this very conservative community. Few of them have BSNs because the local nursing labor force is very largely ASN, so there is an absence of training in research methodology or critical thinking skills, it seems. I've met many nurses here who drop hints about their ongoing conflicts with physicians and resentment of how little respect they earn from the medical infrastructure. Also have gotten much uninformed advice about reasons to try alternative/complementary treatments first before trusting the recommendations of those demeaning conventional doctors--no kidding. It's unethical and largely goes unmonitored here.

And here's the latest atrocity from California -

http://www.kcra.com/news/swastika-display-at-river-park-home-angers-nei…

These people are, in fact, crazy.

And I will say, it hasn't been confirmed that this has anything to do with vaccines - it may just be a crazy anti-Semite.

it may just be a crazy anti-Semite.

May? Um, I don't see any indication anywhere that this has anything to do with vaccines, actually, let alone any kind of confirmation of said association.

Sara, so your little study (n=several) conducted "over the years" leads you to believe that Registered Nurses, no matter what degree they have attained, are anti-vaccine and heavily into woo?

How about Dr. Bob and Dr. Jay...the poster boys for the anti-vaccine movement? Does that make all doctors anti-vaccine and heavily into woo?

Really?

I had never heard of Gamondes, but when JP mentioned that something on AoA referenced "Camus, gay rights, Israel, the Argentine junta, and peanut allergies" I got too curious, and I had to take a look. I wound up on 'Weaponized Analogies, pt. 1" and read all of that before realizing it wasn't the piece JP had mentioned, at which point I went back, found pt. 2 and made it about halfway through before losing mental function.

Damn you, JP :-)
I need a brain detox!
I'm only a wee bit consoled that compared to Gamondes, I'm a paragon of brevity.

Totally concur with Denice #202. What strikes me is how Gamondes posts individually formally reflect the collective 'voice' of AoA. My first thought at Weaponized pt. 1 was, 'didn't Gamondes get the memo on Rand Paul?' It's a far-left-wing rant that somehow winds up with 'vaccine choice freedom' and, uh, that does not work. Pt. 1 is less a word salad than an idea salad, cobbled together out of an assortment of leftist critiques of corporate capitalism. Many of these critiques are reasonable in and of themselves, but not related to the question of vaccine safety or even to each other. When Gamondes tries to draw it all together, the collage is just unintentional Dada.

So I was wondering, 'why would AoA publish something with so many leftist pieces at a moment it's practical politics is all with the conservatives?' Something for everyone? No. It's too contradictory. My conclusion: contradictions don't matter in anti-vax world. Like Gamondes post, the entirety of AoA is a tautology. "Vaccines injured my child" is both the first principle, and the conclusion. Round and round we go, and neither the direction of the circling nor the design of the vehicle matter. Just the beginning/end.

Before ultimately rendering my head into mind-salad, pt. 2 opens with a lengthy 'argument' attempting to implicate Seth Mnookin in corporate corruption via the fact his great-granduncle founded the company that decades later was guilty of the negligence that caused the Challenger to explode. Gamondes' thesis appears to be that Seth somehow feels compelled to cover corporate malfeasance in defense of... misdeeds his forebears weren't responsible for. Or something. Hallucinogenic mind-f**k that this is, it lays bare the premise of the Pharma Shill Gambit: 'making false claims for personal profit is unconscionable'. Yet, in the comments below, we find:

Even when the Pharma shills from the UK family branch did an overkill job on Wakefield the man is still standing. Truth wins, always guys. Thanks Adriana superb as always. MMR RIP. [punctuation corrected for comprehension]

The commenter sees no contradiction at all here, and neither does Gamondes, apparently. And Dan Olmsted (or whoever is keeping the AoA gate) sees no contradiction between Gamondes ripping on ALEC, and AoA's endorsements of ALEC's favorite politicians.

The vaccines injured your child because the vaccines injured your child because the vaccines injured your child. Period. Got it.

Kind of OT but this is an interesting article about the unvaccinated family from Arizona who ended up exposing the little girl named Maggie with cancer to measles.

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2015/02/26/kearny-mom…

@ sadmar:

I've been reading Gamondes' ... uh.. er... *material* for nearly 3 years and she seems even worse than she was previously ( you can see her collected works @ 'contributors'/ AoA)

There's something called 'far associations' wherein the writer doesn't utilise frequent associations or metaphors but reaches really far OUT - apparently in dis-regard of the audience's ability to fathom or de-cipher whatever it is she's referencing.
This tells me that either she has no concept of how others think or that she is trying to show off her ( feigned) erudition.

Pretense and posturing is common in woo-topia: how often a barely literate woo-meister discusses Montaigne or Voltaire. Or quotes Spinoza or Kant- usually for no reason at all but to impress the marks.
Hilariously, he may mispronounce the author's name. No, I'm not joking.

When Gamondes tries to draw it all together, the collage is just unintentional Dada.

Perhaps that is why I find it so fascinating.

JP had only said Gamondes' pt.2 tops pt. 1, so that doesn't conflict with Narad's assertion that the baby-cannibalism graphic represents Gamondes' "finest moment". It's hard to beat baby-cannibalism for gross, so by that standard I think Narad's assesment stands w/o challenge. But I'm going to take "finest" as 'most far-out-trippy and strange', and by that measure baby-cannibalism doesn't even come close to pt. 2.

I did a historical survey of war propaganda visuals for a teaching assignment in grad school. Baby-slaughter and cannibalism are standard figures going back as far as your find reproductions. Cliches, if you will. Once the Holocaust and the killing fields have been evoked, the dead-baby-consumption smack is just routine. Anybody could come up with it. The prevalence of ‘far associations’ on AoA notwithstanding, it takes a very special perverse talent to come up with the specific WTF of pt. 2.

But if there are finer examples of that on AoA, please don't let me know. My mental health coverage isn't that good.

[adriana gamondes] - As an artist I understand the impulse to reach for answers beyond our tiny rational minds. Rationalism is very important but it's limited. I'm not a fan of organized religion but I don't scorn spiritual people or that impulse. Plus I'm sick of the radical fundamentalist atheist movement which, if you dig around, has clearly become a creepy Islamophobic PR front for Monsanto, the biotech industry, the security industry and military industrial. That group is an embarrassment to mainstream atheists and agnostics and tries to blame every atrocity in history on religion when in fact 20th century totalitarianism was, by definition, founded on various cults of science that cost more human lives than all anthropogenic atrocities and disasters in history combined. That "scientism" evangelism, which Noam Chomsky calls a "state religion," really differs very little from violent religious movements when all is said and done-- just has a bigger body count. So I say people should believe what they want to believe as long as they don't kill or enslave anyone over it.

Denial of the link between the meds and certain mass shootings leaves consumers unwarned that a percentage who take them could end up bath salts zombies and also wrongly leaves the "onus" for violence on vulnerable populations who ironically will face more court-ordered medicating as a result. The politicians are deaf to the growing risk data, the FDA is fully bought and sold, so consumers have to inform themselves.

Emphasis added. Pharmacology isn't her strong suit.

@ Narad:

Neither is art nor writing.

Baby-slaughter and cannibalism are standard figures going back as far as your find reproductions.

Farther, even. Blood libel, etc.

That group is an embarrassment to mainstream atheists and agnostics and tries to blame every atrocity in history on religion when in fact 20th century totalitarianism was, by definition, founded on various cults of science that cost more human lives than all anthropogenic atrocities and disasters in history combined.

Cults of science? Try cults of ideology, Gamondes. See Lysenkoism.

Denial of the link between the meds and certain mass shootings leaves consumers unwarned that a percentage who take them could end up bath salts zombies and also wrongly leaves the “onus” for violence on vulnerable populations who ironically will face more court-ordered medicating as a result.

Ugggghh. Gag me with a spoon. I've had this conversation before, on social media, with a circle of gun-nut* acquaintances through my tattoo artist back in Portland. "The shooter was on psychiatric meds! It's the meds that did it!"

*Sigh.* First of all, people with psych. disorders are much more likely to be victims of violent crime, not perpetrators. Second, meds help at least some people some of the time. Yeah, psychiatry has a bad history of overmedication for the wrong reasons. But it's not the GD 1950s anymore, and hey, maybe if my family members had had more access to psychiatric/psychological help in our little rural backwater, my father wouldn't have shot himself when I was 11 years old, and I wouldn't be as f*cked up as I indubitably am.**

*Look, I'll admit it, guns are fun. I grew up shooting pop cans out on the flats and all. But fer Pete's sake, oh - I'm not even going to get started... (In any case, I personally have no business owning a firearm, and I think I'm probably not allowed to anyway, which by and large is probably a good thing.)

** In lieu of "MDD, recurrent, severe" and "PTSD," I feel like my own psych chart should probably just say something along the lines of "Patient is pretty generally f*cked up."

In any case, I personally have no business owning a firearm

For the sake of my own safety, just to be clear, though I would hope that would be pretty clear anyway.

One might also note that Gamondes is conspicuously silent about the male money-hegemony of "Big" Antivax.

Has the word "deranged" landed on the List of Bad Words That Are OK If Seemingly Cutesy UK Euphemisms yet?

Oh FFS, say whatever you want, just try not to be an a**hole about it.

From Gamondes (via Narad #214)

tries to blame every atrocity in history on religion when in fact 20th century totalitarianism was, by definition, founded on various cults of science

Which is why Stalin had a portrait of an Erlen-Meyer flask installed in every Russian church.
My mistake, it was his portrait. Flasks don't have moustaches.

that cost more human lives than all anthropogenic atrocities and disasters in history combined.

Genghis Khan and his Golden Horde would like to visit you and compare body counts.
Although I would have to agree improvements in technologies made wholesome slaughter easier.

radical fundamentalist atheist movement which, if you dig around, has clearly become a creepy Islamophobic PR front for Monsanto, the biotech industry, the security industry and military industrial.

Wait, what?
You forgot the Elders of Sion and the Freemasons.

how often a barely literate woo-meister discusses Montaigne or Voltaire. Or quotes Spinoza or Kant- usually for no reason at all but to impress the marks.

Case in point:
That “scientism” evangelism, which Noam Chomsky calls a “state religion,”
Precisely where Chomsky describes "scientism" as a "state religion" lies outside the reach of the Internet Google. Elsewhere Gamondes tells us that it's *skepticism* that is the state religion according to Chomsky, again without a citation.

various cults of science that cost more human lives than all anthropogenic atrocities and disasters in history combined.

If "cults of science" were not anthropogenic, then I have to ask, what in the name of feck were they? The work of great Chthulhu?

Oh FFS, say whatever you want, just try not to be an a**hole about it.

I use "deranged" in an entirely plain, literal sense. I may as well have asked whether "crazy bonkers" was a suitable softening of "crazy" or, in the alternative, what its "distance" was from "oh man, that new Pho place on Division is crazy good," a locution that never would have occurred to me in the first place.

The only question is the where the implicit subject–object dialectic veers into Komsomol territory.

@ hdb

If “cults of science” were not anthropogenic, then I have to ask, what in the name of feck were they? The work of great Chthulhu?

Close enough. It's populism and anti-elitism at its finest.

The great masses - the ordinary people - are just an amorphous blob. Little better than animals, they cannot help themselves mulling around like a big cattle herd ("sheeples"). Hence "anthropogenic".
The enemies are also an amorphous blob: it's Monsanto, biotechs, and the militaro-security-industrial-oedipian complex all rolled in one. And being the great villains, and maybe lizards from outer space, they are not needed, and as such are not part of the "normal" human life. Thus, they are inhumans, or at least un-natural.

And between and above these two blobs, you have the enlightened ones. The wise ones who have seen beyond the lies and, in a perfect world, shall be the ones telling benevolently the great masses what to do.

Actually, shorter explanation: the misuse of "anthopogenic" is just another strike for the "barely literate woo-meister discusses Montaigne or Voltaire" theory pointed before.
It's also a half-clever way to whitewash the role of religion - and culture clashes - in historical atrocities. Religion was not a motivation for the war, it was just another instance of "anthropogenic atrocities".
In a sense, there is a grain of true. Religion, at the social level, is just a tool like any other for motivating people to go a certain way. And another tool could be science. Propaganda is made of whatever it can put its hands on.
But to dismiss religions' role in the 20th-century events is going a bit too far.
As a Indian friend once told me, France is a catholic country who likes to pretend it is not. That's true for many countries, especially those with a less stringent separation between church and state (almost everybody else, I would smugly say). Cultural biases inherited from the past and all that.

a percentage who take them could end up bath salts zombies

The synthetic-cathinone moral panic didn't last very long, did it?

@Annie 210 - thanks for that article. Hope other on the fence folk read it and change their minds.

what its “distance” was from “oh man, that new Pho place on Division is crazy good,” a locution that never would have occurred to me in the first place.

It was just an example, Narad. I suppose it is a twenty-something's perfectly barbaric West-Coast-ese. There are similar such modifiers, like "stupid," as in "It's stupid cold outside." To be honest, though, I usually just go for some variation of "f*cking," and never, ever "hella," but then I am Not From California.

The only question is the where the implicit subject–object dialectic veers into Komsomol territory.

Well, I'm not sure which dialectic you mean, so I'm going to have a hard time answering this, but here goes:

First of all, you may have noticed that in my reply to Denice to which you refer, I was describing the way I use language, not making universal recommendations. I generally prefer not to speak for any sort of "we," imaginary or otherwise - it's kind of (excuse the term) fascist, and oddly enough, "I" is usually more humble.

Actually, this is why I wish English had retained a singular and plural in the 2nd person. Polish, in fact, has the best 2nd person set-up I have yet come across, as the 2nd person plural only ever means plural - formality is achieved in a different way from most "t/v distinction lanugages," by using "Sir" or "Lady" instead of a pronoun and conjugating verbs in the 3rd person singular. "Czy Pani chce szklankę wody?" "Would the lady like a glass of water?"

What I was saying is just, hey, maybe a person could try not to be an a**hole, or to go around lumping certain people together in certain ways. I also don't think "mentally ill" should really be used as an insult, any more than I think "gay" should be, for instance.

Which brings me to the second dialectic. I have pretty serious doubts, Narad, that the contents of your head could be held up as some sort of Platonic ideal of "normality" or "sanity," any more than the contents of mine could. I just happen (as far as I know) to be in significantly more distress in certain ways than you are, although at the moment I am actually in what is for me an unusually good mood, and I am hoping it lasts for a while, since I'm heading to Chicago for a while on Monday and I have hopes of actually enjoying myself.

But in any case, if you are actually asking about the word "deranged," I personally don't have a problem with it, and yes, one needs some kind of word to describe people like Gamondes, or their brain droppings, in any case.

@JP #219 -- You exhibit far more self-awareness and responsibility than many people who end up owning guns.

@ Helianthus:

re the " blobs" and the "enlightened ones".

That is precisely what I see on a regular basis:
the alties set themselves up as "leaders" who tell their flocks what to do to remedy whatsoever evil exists. They need to convince followers of their own vast superiority over the masses including leaders and experts.

Usually, their deep thoughts are alarmingly pedestrian. I would venture that for the most part, their audience may be at least their intellectual equal when considering ability - sans the pretension, of course. Yet these are the same prevaricators who endlessly warn audiences about how the powers-that-be want to control their thoughts, activities and purchases.

@ JP:

Believe it or not, I have had exposure to a bit of Russian etc and find that I can nearly decipher what you wrote.

Occasionally Eastern European ladies attend my dance class which is quite interesting as our Latina instructor tries very hard to conduct the class in English.

re Narad:
At one point I was convinced that he might have been the baby that I aban... *misplaced* in Victoria Station** in 1983 but alas! he's too old.

** in a hangbag

That should be HANDBAG

Is his name Ernest?

Occasionally Eastern European ladies attend my dance class

They are very elegant, aren't they?

And yes, I was wondering for a moment what a "hangbag" was. :)

@ JP:

They ARE elegant with fabulous manners and good posture.
Unfortunately, I would be more intrigued if one of the younger ones emulated women in P-ssy Riot more during the class.

But it is great fun especially because I can (somewhat) understand bits and pieces of what both they and the Latinas are saying.

A hangbag is a handbag that hangs too much.

@Denice:

Ah, in that case you're looking for people more like my friends, most of whom I would hardly describe as ladies, though that's not a bad thing. You are unlikely to find them in a dance class.

I had a chance to meet two former* members of Pussy Riot recently, as a matter of fact. It wasn't much, just a brief chat at a champagne toast backstage after a very well-attended talk they gave here in town.

Funny thing: I find that I actually come off as significantly classier and more refined in foreign languages. I was visiting, a couple summers ago, one of my Polish friends who certainly is a lady, and a true native Varsovian - her family's been in Warsaw for generations, her grandfather owned a toy shop there. Sunday morning she said something along the lines of "I don't suppose you'd like to go to Mass with me," to which I replied "My dear, I'm afraid I haven't anything to wear." She laughed and remarked on how I'm always so classy, at which I have to admit I was rather taken aback.

* Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alekhina - they're busy now with Zona Prava, a non-profit human rights organization that provides legal representation among other things.

At one point I was convinced that he might have been the baby that I aban… *misplaced* in Victoria Station** in 1983 but alas! he’s too old.

Are you sure that baby wasn't conceived in the ticket queue at Fenchurch Street Station?

@ Mephistopheles O'Brien:

The 'baby' is merely an excuse** to refer to my beloved avatar, Oscar, in hopes that an uninitiated youngster will discover him much as I did.
AND I swear it was not my gay uncle who left his plays lying about for me to read- more likely my father.

Indeed, the idea of yours truly having an actual baby is a bit of a stretch... I mean JOKE.
Yiiii

** but not a Bunbury

Do your research. Don't just believe what you were told. Measles cases and deaths had severely declined 25 years before a vaccination was created, same with whooping cough. There are still outbreaks from time to time even in populations with a 99% vaccination rate but thanks to proper medical care and proper hygiene, there is rarely a fatality. Of course there have been 108+ proven deaths from the MMR vaccine in the last decade. Those are just the ones reported. Also, there is currently a case from a Merck whistleblower regarding the mumps portion of the vaccine being botched. Want to bring up the flu? More people die in car accidents each year than the flu, should we stop driving? Or is that something you rather overlook for your own convenience? Don't forget they botched that lovely vaccine this year as well. Oh and don't forget people can have an adverse reaction to that as well. A family member was paralyzed after receiving her flu shot. Personally, I rather take my chances with the flu. There is no clear cut answer because there are risks on both sides. As long as there is a risk, there has to be a choice.

Tad Roy: " Measles cases and deaths had severely declined 25 years before a vaccination was created, same with whooping cough."

Really? Here is US Census data on measles incidence, can you tell when that sparkling decline in cases happened? Because the 1960 rate of incidence it much higher than the 1940 rate, as is the 1955 rate.

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

"Of course there have been 108+ proven deaths from the MMR vaccine in the last decade."

Please provide the documentation that the VAERS reports were actually proven. Because when someone looked into it the reality was not as you stated.

@Denice Walter - Ah, a literary channeling then. Perhaps you took a walk on the Wilde side. Whereas I must be content with hitchhiking.

Linky, linky, linky...to the website, where you did your research, Tad Roy?

Heather Barajas is back! She is now "Serenity Ann" on Facebook. She is still posting antivax trollery and has no remorse for her reprehensible little graphic.

Excellent research? Don't forget to mention that vaccination started in 1968, when measles decreased to 25 people per year. The same number will die from total vaccination each year.

Whale271, the first measles vaccines were introduced in the USA in 1963. Better ones were introduced in 1968, and hte first MMR was introduced in 1971. As you can see the measles incidence in 1970 was still around 23.2 cases per 100000 persons.

In 1970, the USA had 200 million persons. So divide that by 100000, to get 2000. Then multiple by 23.2, and you get 46400 cases of measles in the USA in 1970. The CDC Pink Book Appendix G shows there were 47,351 cases of measles in 1970.

"The same number will die from total vaccination each year."

I assume that we will get a mathematically accurate of that claim from you now.

Do your research. Don’t just believe what you were told.

Okay, I will.

Measles cases and deaths had severely declined 25 years before a vaccination was created, same with whooping cough.

See? This is exactly why one needs to do their own research! I mean, you’re telling me this, but what you’re telling me is a lie.

Of course there have been 108+ proven deaths from the MMR vaccine in the last decade.

Another lie.
Also, there is currently a case from a Merck whistleblower regarding the mumps portion of the vaccine being botched.
That wouldn’t be the case that the US Department of Justice investigated for two years, and elected not to pursue further, would it? Surely you don't believe that just the fact that they are bringing suit is sufficient to demonstrate the former employees accusations are likely true.

More people die in car accidents each year than the flu, should we stop driving?

More people die in car accidents than in fires or every year too—I guess we can tell people they’re wasting their money on smoke detectors (and save a whole lot of taxpayers’ money we’re spending to fund municipal fire companies).

Don’t forget they botched that lovely vaccine this year as well.

For some idiosyncractic definition of the word botched perhaps—one which means “extremely effective against two of the three major strains currently circulating, and reducing your risk of infection by the third by more than 30%”.

Oh and don’t forget people can have an adverse reaction to that as well.

What adverse reactions, with what incidence? Be specific, and explain how this demosntrates the risks associated with being vaccinated are greater than the risks of remaining vulnerable to influenza infection.

A family member was paralyzed after receiving her flu shot. Personally, I rather take my chances with the flu.

After, or because of? You do understand that’s a significant difference?
There is no clear cut answer because there are risks on both sides.

The risks on both sides aren’t equivalent, however.

As long as there is a risk, there has to be a choice.

And as long as there is a choice there will had to be consequences deriving from specific choices. If you choose not to vaccinate, that’s fine—but you may not be eligible for employment in some fields (like health care provision) and if you choose not to vaccinate your children they may not be eligible for enrollment in public schools.
I trust you have no problem with that?

Forgive the blockquote fail

Funny thing: I find that I actually come off as significantly classier and more refined in foreign languages.

Me, too, but that's because I have to stop and think before I open my mouth. With English, any ol' thing comes out.

@JP and @shay, what I find particularly amusing is that I speak different languages at different pitch levels. If I speak French, which I studied from ages 12-18, it's in what should be my natural high soprano range. If I speak German, which I started learning at 18, it's in that in-between range from my college years. And grad school pushed my English down to my current low-mezzo speaking range. For the sake of my long-term vocal health/singing voice, I really need to pull it back up, but it's so hard to be taken seriously.

Merck is still currently under investigation for fraudulently manipulating the MMR II vaccine test results in order to claim a higher efficacy rate, hiding research that proved otherwise, in order to be the sole manufacturer of the MMR vaccine in the U.S. Still trust you have "immunity"? http://www.newseveryday.com/articles/7078/20150126/http-www-naturalnews…

what I find particularly amusing is that I speak different languages at different pitch levels.

Huh. That's funny. I have a deep voice in general - a tenor if not a baritone. (Somebody was overexposed to androgens in the womb, or something.) It's maybe even a little lower in Russian, probably because of the way the vowels are pronounced far back in the mouth, but other than that it's pretty much the same across all the languages I speak.

Me, too, but that’s because I have to stop and think before I open my mouth. With English, any ol’ thing comes out.

Yeah, that's definitely part of it, although I don't have to think much (grammatically speaking) about what I say in most of my languages anymore. Another part, I suspect, is that I of course exit from my rather low-class native idiom/accent. Funny thing, though: I have been told by several people that in Polish I have a distinct Lublin accent. One of them was even like, "No, my parents are from Lublin, you sound exactly like my parents." I have never been to Lublin. (I have joked before about past lives in Eastern Europe, I suppose...)

Merck is still currently under investigation
Who is investigating them, jj? The article you cite mentions no investigation. Isn't that a bit silly?

John Stone finally plays his trump card on the "no measles deaths" front:

I have seen government statements in private correspondence agreeing that there have been no deaths confirmed since 2003.

@ jj

Still trust you have “immunity”?

Well, I repeat myself, but during the recent measles outbreaks, the majority of sick people were non-vaccinated.
Since they are a minority in the general population, something must be protecting the other people around them...

Comparing vaccinated to unvaccinated infected only tells a small part of the story....thousands of people were exposed to measles, both at Disneyland & elsewhere, yet only a very small fraction have gotten sick.

Given the infectious nature of measles (that 70 - 80% exposed would normally get infected), this, above all else, shows exactly how effective the vaccine really is.

I wonder, if you did the math, based on the 90%+ vaccinated vs. the small number of unvaccinated, what the real statistics would look like to compare risk....because logically, it should show that unvaccinated have an incredibly high risk of infection vs. the overall vaccinated population.

But then again, how dare I use logic and reason to make that comparison or hypothesis....

So your answer to everything is medical tyranny.

Welcome to the new AmeriKa where tyranny reigns and individual rights have been sacrificed for the greater good of the state and the big pharmaceutical companies who know exactly what toxic cocktails are best for our children.

AK, do not use the word "tyranny" so casually. You do not know what tyranny is.

In deciding the morality of mandatory vaccinations, we must first ask a central question: Who owns the right to decide what happens to one’s body (or that of one’s child)? Is it the individual or another person, or government entity? Some might say that “society” or “government” has the right to make this determination, which is another way of saying that everyone has the right to own a share of everyone else. But, as economist and libertarian philosopher Murray Rothbard contended in his book, “For a New Liberty,” “this ideal rests on an absurdity: proclaiming that every man is entitled to own a part of everyone else, yet is not entitled to own himself.”

Given the benefits of vaccination, though, why might one choose to exercise a right not to be vaccinated? It is important to preserve this freedom not because of today’s vaccines, which have proven to be very safe and successful, but because of what unchecked government power might do if that freedom were eliminated.

Without the ability to say “No,” people might be subject to future vaccines or medical tests that could have serious negative side effects. And if government can require one to get a vaccine in the interest of public safety, what is to prevent it from using a “public health” justification, whether real or fabricated, to require people to be implanted with microchips? Indeed, microchips have already been touted as a way to improve child safety by embedding them with GPS tracking. Only under individual self-ownership are all people free to draw that line and decide what may be done with their own bodies – and those of their children.

The anti-vaxxers may be wrong on vaccinations for the measles, but we would not want to live in a world where anti-vaxxers are effectively banned by government edict, and where we could not control what happens to our own bodies. Let us not forget, freedom is not only for us, but also “for the children.”

I know a wee bit about Murray Rothbard's opinions about women, civil rights and children and I don't agree with his opinions...or the opinions of his acolyte Lew Rockwell.

http://mykeystrokes.com/2015/02/06/parents-own-the-children-libertarian…

@ak

My family has hosted refugees who had experienced tyranny through despots and tyrants. They know what tyranny is like, not like you, who can type his/her/its idiocy freely for the world to see.

Murray Rothbard’s opinions about women, civil rights and children

He argues that it shouldn't illegal to starve an infant to death, as long as the door is unlocked so that the infant can crawl out onto the street and participate in the open cuteness-for-food market. Even Dean Swift would be hard-pressed to satirise Rothbard.

@Jessica

Who owns the right to decide what happens to one’s body (or that of one’s child)?

A big part of the issue is right here, in how you frame the question.

It's one thing to fight to keep as much freedom for yourself as possible. I may not like it, but I can accept that someone else doesn't want to do what I think he/she should be doing. Throwing stones in a glass house and all that.

It's another debate to claim that you have the unquestionable right to decide what you children should have.
Actually, the two questions are antithetic. You cannot claim full freedom for yourself, and then in the same breath claim full ownership of your child.

Indeed, microchips have already been touted as a way to improve child safety by embedding them with GPS tracking.

Guess what? I'm more afraid of private citizens deciding to tag their children out of their own volition than of men in black breaking my door to tag everyone against their will.

Some might say that “society” or “government” has the right to make this determination, which is another way of saying that everyone has the right to own a share of everyone else.

No, this is just a shockingly stupid gloss of parens patriae.

Indeed, microchips have already been touted as a way to improve child safety by embedding them with GPS tracking.

How do you change the batteries on the receiver?

Seriously, do you even bother to examine the content of what you're saying rather than the wrapping?

I'm not seeing the slippery slope from Vaccines to Imaginary GPS Tracking, which would be such an evil invasive technology that only parents should be allowed to impose it on their possessions children.

And...some of the usual suspects at AoA (who are collectively feeling the heat for their unreasonable belief that vaccines are the cause of the onset of autism...and every other implausible disease and disorder)...are now claiming that unfettered government interference in imposing mandates for entry into public schools, will, inevitablly, of course, lead directly to mandating HPV vaccines for five year old children.

One member of the AoA brain trust "did the reseach" and found there is ongoing research into 300 types of vaccines, which automatically triggered responses that every one of those 300 types of vaccines will be successfully developed and will shortly be placed on the CDC/AAP Recommended Childhood Vaccine Schedule. Such is the nature of the AoA critters.

Yes, you might say that for health care workers, a prospective employer does own a piece of your body...the parts of your body which develop the immune response against the particular vaccine-preventable-diseases once you are fully immunized.

Just consider those vaccines as part of infection control policy and procedures...similar to aseptic and sterile procedures. You don't want to comply with these conditions of employment/continued employment? You don't get the job or you lose your job.

@Jessica

Still dissecting your slippery slope arguments.

Without the ability to say “No,” people might be subject to future vaccines or medical tests that could have serious negative side effects.

Yes, because requiring people to get some preventing treatment which has been tested is the same as press-ganging people to test it.

And if government can require one to get a vaccine in the interest of public safety, what is to prevent it from using a “public health” justification, whether real or fabricated, to require people to be implanted with microchips?

Yes, because a tyrannical government really needs to first implement mandatory vaccination before it can act on restricting liberties. No way it can just send its goons arresting or killing people left and right. It wouldn't dare.
I don't remember the Patriot Act mentioning vaccines.

@lilady - perhaps if the FDA was as corrupt as the people at AoA believe it is, all of those vaccines would be approved.....but in the real world, those companies will be lucky if 5 - 10 of those vaccines make it through R&D and the FDA clinical trials.

It is precisely the difficulty in getting even a single vaccine to market that requires that so many be in the research pipeline...which is something the folks at AoA will never understand.

Lawrence, many of those vaccines in various stages of development are vaccines against various types of (non transmissible) cancers, including melanomas. Others are being developed with the "same old antigens" contained in the present vaccines, but with new types (non injectable) methods of administering them, such as needle-free compressed air injections and patches.

@lilady - absolutely. AoA will never examine the actual science or understand the approval process.

I’m not seeing the slippery slope from Vaccines to Imaginary GPS Tracking

That's because it's frequency-masked by the pineal glands of all the aborted fetuses used to make the vaccines.

Same reason it's slippery.

Jessica no-one has the right to make decisions for children. What we all have is the responsibility to make decisions for children.

The parents have the greatest responsibility, but the beautiful thing is that responsibility can be shared and multiplied. The government also has a responsibility to care for its citizens, and we all have a responsibility to look after fellow human in danger. This is what a society is.

I wonder...what most of those who have posted on this article would tell a mom like me? I have 2 vaccine-injured children (those injuries ranged from encephalitis, to temporary paralysis of both legs, to permanent brain changes...). We vaccinated dutifully for 7 years, despite ongoing problems after vaccines. For many decades, there were many things listed as contraindications to vaccines...among them, autoimmune disorder, familial history of seizure disorder, AND familial history of severe adverse reaction to a vaccine. In fact, it wasn't all that long ago that doctors were still telling people that the younger siblings of vaccine-injured children were more prone to injury themselves. How do I know that? Because WE were told that as recently as the year 2000 (in fact, hearing that from our doctor contributed to our subsequent decision to stop vaccinating). However, quite recently, nearly EVERY contraindication has been quietly removed from the list, so that our children are no longer considered candidates for medical exemption. Not just our youngest two, who are entirely unvaccinated...but also our 17 year old son, who was the most severely and permanently injured. There are MANY families just like mine, in fact I'd venture to say the majority of people who oppose vaccine mandates are families with one or more vaccine-injured children, who don't want their younger children to suffer the same fate. Not that long ago, we could have obtained medical exemptions - suddenly, we're tossed aside and told, "Oh, well". Ya know...my children are not collateral damage, and they deserve to be protected from harm every bit as much as YOUR children do. I don't understand how people can be so obtuse as to refuse to acknowledge that protecting every child to the best of our abilities sometimes means doing different things for different children, based on their specific bodies. Perhaps many people don't quite understand that there are a lot of families in the same exact position as mine is. But, now you do. So, what about us?

Not that long ago, we could have obtained medical exemptions

You omitted the part where you ever had. It might help if you could provide concrete examples of the silent evisceration of "the list," as well.

permanent brain changes
That's a bit vague. My brain changes when I learn a new language, though the permanence remains to be seen.