sudden infant death syndrome

No, vaccines almost certainly did not kill Elijah Daniel French

oracknows — Mon, 18 May 2015 05:00:51 +0000

No, vaccines almost certainly did not kill Elijah Daniel French

It's been a long time since I bothered to care if readers know where I live or who I am. That's why when a newbie troll shows up in the comments, as newbie trolls periodically do, and castigates me for somehow being a "coward" or "hiding" my identity, I generally get a hardy laugh out of it. My retort is usually that my "real" identity is among the worst kept secrets in the skeptical blogosphere. And so it is. If a reader can't figure out who I am with one or two Google searches, truly he is too dim-witted for me to take seriously. Be that as it may, I now take particular interest in pseudoscience and quackery that take place in my stomping grounds, so to speak, which is why this latest post on a particularly wretched hive of scum and antivaccine quackery that is not Age of Autism or The Thinking Moms' Revolution caught my attention.

I'm referring to a post on VacTruth.org entitled Michigan Baby Dies, Pathologists Confirm Vaccines Responsible. It's a story that takes place in Oakland County, which encompasses suburbs north of Detroit, which places it far closer than I find comfortable. If you want an example of why, whenever antivaccinationists claim it's not about the vaccines, it's about the vaccines, look no further. Let's just say that, contrary to the claim made in the article, the story presented does not in any way demonstrate that vaccines killed Elijah Daniel French, the Michigan baby in the title of the post. As you will see, the story is so unconvincing that even some commenters have a problem believing it. Danny, it turns out, was born on May 4, 2007. The beginning of the story notes that he was always happy and smiling. The story begins with Danny's birth, followed by incidents in which he developed fever after a number of vaccines.

These incidence culminate in this:

On July 1, 2008, Danny received the MMR, Hib, Varicella, and DTaP vaccines. These eight vaccines were given in four injections.

His mother stated,

“That night, Danny was still eating and drinking but was cranky and slept more than usual.

By the next day, he was extremely fatigued, irritable and had a loss of appetite. He did not have a fever at this time. He was red and warm where they injected him. These symptoms only worsened.

By the third day, Danny was unable to stay awake for longer than thirty minutes, he had zero food intake, his fluid intake diminished and he cried excessively.

Seventy-one hours after his doctor visit, Danny developed a fever from the vaccines and was given Children’s Tylenol. His doctor was called but there was no answer from him because it was the July 4th holiday, the office was closed.

He was given Tylenol at 2:00 PM and was laid down on the floor, on a comforter in the living room, near the wall, where he took a nap. I checked on him while my other children played.

I checked on him at 4:00 PM to see if he felt feverish and he was cool to the touch. I thought he was just cold so I covered him up. He was sleeping, I thought. He didn’t look dead.

It was about forty minutes later when I discovered he was unresponsive and had passed away.

911 was called seventy-five hours post vaccination. The EMS sheet stated four shots were given four days prior. It was actually only 3 days prior that he was vaccinated.

A detective came out briefly and my son was taken to the hospital where he was left. Then his autopsy was to be done and I waited for answers.

I was told my baby most likely died within thirty minutes after he was given the Tylenol, at around 2:30 PM. This was based on lividity, rigor onset, and Tylenol levels in his blood.

I was told, “Oh, vaccines couldn’t have done this,” and I had no reason to question them because they were doctors and doctors don’t lie.

Danny died on July 4, 2008, the day he turned 14 months old, less than three days after he was vaccinated.”

It is always tragic when a young child dies unexpectedly. The coroner's report on Danny's autopsy ruled that the cause of death was position/compression asphyxia. Now, Danny was a bit old for this to be sudden infant death syndrome, which is usually defined as taking place in babies under a year old and is most common between two and four months of age. So it's unclear why Danny might have died so suddenly and unexpectedly. It's human nature to do so, and Danny's mother Rachel did the very human thing. Whatever the cause of death parents who endure such a loss naturally seek an explanation. She started looking for something that might have caused this death. That something she found, as is all too frequently the case, turned out to be vaccines.

Not surprisingly, Rachel makes much of the fact that Danny died at age 14 months, which to her means it couldn't possibly be SIDS. However, although the vast majority of SIDS cases are in infants under six months of age SIDS does sometimes occur in children over one year of age, and it's not hard to find examples of cases of children even older than Danny who died of SIDS. Unfortunately, the medical examiner, L.J. Dragovic, was ignorant of this aspect of SIDS and told Rachel that Danny was "too old to die from SIDS." Even worse, because Dragovic chalked the death up to position/compression asphyxia, his lack of clarity in discussing the case with Rachel led her, in essence, to torture herself for a while, wondering if one of her other children had been that "outside force" that asphyxiated Danny. Indeed, Dragovic even suggested as much. No wonder Rachel couldn't accept the cause of death and started looking for something else! Unfortunately, what she "found" was vaccines:

The serum test performed revealed Danny had a level of 5.5 mg/L of acetaminophen in his blood, which would be from the Tylenol given to him just before he died. The vaccines Danny had just received were not on the report.

Each vaccine contains a large number of ingredients. Vaccines are medical drugs that are injected directly into the body and all of them are associated with life-threatening risks. Vaccines contain heavy metals such as mercury and aluminum that can harm the brain. Metals injected into a person can disrupt their nervous system, helping to shut down the respiratory system.

The vaccines Danny had just received are the most plausible cause of his death. These should have been mentioned on his autopsy report, but they were not. Other parents who have lost their child after vaccination, coming forward, are admitting the same thing, that the vaccines are not being listed on the autopsy.

No, as tragic as Danny's death was, vaccines are not the most plausible cause of his death. It's not as though this hasn't been studied before. Vaccines are not linked with SIDS. Indeed, if anything, vaccines might be protective against SIDS, based on several other studies that find no positive relationship between vaccination and SIDS, considered more than sufficient to consider the likelihood of a link between the two to be as close to zero as science can estimate (1, 2, 3). Indeed, there are even enough studies looking at the relationship between vaccines and SIDS that a meta-analysis could be done. Not surprisingly, this meta-analysis of published SIDS studies agrees and found the relative risk of SIDS in vaccinated babies to be 0.54. So, as much as we might feel sympathetic towards Rachel for her profound loss, we should remember that she is almost certainly mistaken in her conclusion that it must have been those evil, toxin-laden vaccines that killed her baby. It might be understandable that she came to believe this, but when she spreads the message throughout the Internet on an antivaccine blog, then that message needs to be countered.

Indeed, one wonders what effects antivaccine propaganda had on Rachel. She herself admits that she didn't think of vaccines as a possible cause until a few years after Danny's death. How did she come to the conclusion that vaccines killed her baby? She saw it in a dream:

I was told the vaccines were safe. I never did realize the vaccines could be responsible for what happened to my son. I was told it couldn’t be the vaccines and I trusted them.

I even continued to vaccinate my other children. I never denied vaccines until 2011 when I denied the HPV vaccine for my daughters and the Hep A vaccine for the son I had just after Danny died. I was seven months pregnant with him when Danny passed away.

This was before I knew about Danny, but these two vaccines didn't sit well with my mommy instinct.

I learned more in 2011. It wasn’t until more than a few years after Danny passed, that I had a weird dream of my son. He came to me in my dream and it is the only dream I know of him being in.

He was just sitting in his bouncy seat and a man’s voice said, "It was the ‘site-o-kin’ storm that killed me.”

I decided to Google the term and found the term cytokine storm. I was shocked at what I had found. This dream, combined with a few other bothersome details, led me to send off his slides and other things I had saved.

Clearly, by this time something had led Rachel to drift to antivaccine views. What it was, who knows? But before she had her dream, she had already started, in a small way, to "deny vaccines" by refusing to give the HPV vaccine to her daughter and the Hepatitis A vaccine to her son. The term "cytokine storm" is not something that would just "come" to someone like Rachel (or anyone without a medical education) in a dream (or anywhere else, for that matter) unless she had heard it before somewhere. My guess is that by this time Rachel had been perusing antivaccine websites and antivaccine "mommy" discussion boards like Mothering.com and had thus come across the term. Also, as she relates later in the story, her a friend of hers had suffered the loss of a child to SIDS. Clearly, the seed of suspicion of vaccines had already been planted.

So what did Rachel do? This next part is a bit unbelievable:

Danny had blood samples taken when he was twelve months old. On the day of Danny’s well-baby visit two months later, just before he passed, the day he was given that last set of shots, they had to take his blood again because of a previous lab mix-up.

I wasn't comfortable with the way things were going so I had requested that the samples be sent to a facility for storing.

I had kept a locket of Danny’s hair after he had passed away, some slides requested after his autopsy, and decided to send some teeth and bone fragments from his ashes to the pathologist, along with the stored blood samples I had requested be saved. I then made arrangements to have the evidence reviewed.

Everything was reviewed by three separate pathologists. All three confirmed the same findings. The pathologists stated vaccine-induced hypercytokinemia as the cause of my son’s asphyxiation.

They were able to determine this in large part to the blood panel taken prior to Danny receiving his vaccines, in contrast with the samples I had stored.

They also agreed encephalopathy was likely responsible, as it’s a cytokine storm syndrome.

Danny’s pathology report stated his cause of death was asphyxiation, secondary to hypercytokinemia, caused by vaccines received approximately 72 hours prior.

Blood samples are rarely stored for very long. Once the tests for which they were drawn are performed, they're usually quickly discarded because most laboratories don't have the facilities to properly store large numbers of blood samples for long periods of time, nor is there usually a reason to do so. If blood samples are drawn as part of a research protocol, they are often stored long term, but, otherwise, it's pretty uncommon. Yet in this one case, apparently they were because for some reason this mother just happened to request it right before her son's death. The coincidence is striking. Then, Rachel managed to find three pathologists to do tests to diagnose "cytokine storm" on a three year old blood sample.

There's also the pesky matter of the autopsy report. If, as Rachel French claims, Danny had suffered from encephalopathy, it likely would have been noted on the autopsy report, because most of the time pathologists doing an autopsy examine the brain, particularly in a case where the baby had exhibited fever and irritability beforehand, as encephalitis might have been the cause of death. Moreover, cytokine storm bad enough to cause death would produce findings on autopsy, such as edema of the lungs and other tissues due to a massive generalized inflammatory reaction. Lacking such findings (and, I'm sure, if there were such findings the coroner would have noted them), it's pretty much impossible to attribute the cause of death to cytokine storm.

Indeed, at least one commenter was not satisfied with this story and wanted more information, as do I. For instance, she asked if VacTruth.org could post the actual pathologists' reports used to conclude that Danny died of hypercytokinemia, noting that "I wouldn't normally ask this except that you've already posted his vaccination records and the medical examiner's report." She also asked for clarification:

Also, I want to make sure I'm understanding your explanation of where the samples came from correctly: the samples in which the pathologists found elevated cytokine levels were taken at the same 14-month well-baby visit at which he received the vaccinations (so within an hour or so after the vaccinations, I presume) - is that correct? And the data they used for comparison was not, if I'm understanding you correctly, the actual sample that was taken at his 12-month well-baby visit, but the results of the blood panel that was performed at that time - is that also correct?

Indeed, timing and circumstances of the blood sample matter. In any case, no satisfactory answer was given. Lowell Hubbs popped into the conversation and explained what sort of findings are expected in cytokine storm, but no one posted any results of Danny's blood work that actually showed results consistent with this. Ultimately, he threw up his hands (metaphorically speaking, given that this is a Disqus discussion thread) and admitted that he didn't know the answers to the questions being asked about the blood samples.

I agree with Reuben, who also discussed this story. As bad as I feel for the mother, she is being manipulated by antivaccine propagandists to believe that vaccines caused the death of her 14 month old son when almost certainly they did not. It's always hard to dissect stories like this because the subject matter is so sensitive. However, it's just as difficult when I dissect cases of "cancer cures" that are not and just as important. Anecdotes are powerful things to human beings, and Rachel French's anecdote is spreading on Facebook and Twitter, bringing fear, uncertainty, and doubt about vaccines with it. However much I might feel sorry for Ms. French's loss, I feel obligated to do my part to point out just how unbelievable and dubious her anecdote is, even as I sympathize with her for her loss. As usual, the real culprits are the antivaccine liars, who have led Ms. French to believe that it was vaccines that killed Danny.

oracknows Mon, 05/18/2015 - 01:00

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Christina England

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sudden infant death syndrome

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This also sounds really implausible to me also. The only part of this I can comment on with any expertise is the storage of the blood samples. In my laboratory, we usually discard samples within 48 hours, sometimes 24, because we don't have space to store them for any longer. The only exceptions are those samples that are required by regulation to be stored longer, usually blood bank specimens, and samples for esoteric tests that are either not done every day or need special handling, say freezing, before being sent to a reference laboratory. If we received a request from a patient to store blood, I do not think we would be able to do it, especially since storing things for more than a few days would probably require freezing the blood. We cannot bank things, and we cannot just throw blood into our -80 freezer with our supplies where it could either get lost or be accidentally discarded. We would probably have to refuse and ask the patient to find another facility to store the tubes.

It would be nice to know what tests were done on the stored blood, how the blood was stored, ie., refrigerated or frozen and at what temperature,mthe length of any delay before freezing, and for how long it was stored. That would be the only way to determine if the blood was handled appropriately, and whether the results of any tests on the stored blood could be considered reliable.

That poor mother.

Reading the chain of events, I think that if my child had exhibited symptoms as bad as that little tyke, we would have been in the ER, even if the pede's office were closed (why didn't they have on-call service, BTW?). She must be second-guessing herself relentlessly, and vaccines are a convenient scapegoat.

In some ways, the lie that vaccines cause SIDS is even more vile than the idea that vaccines cause shaken baby syndrome. People like Rachel are looking for answers and are vulnerable. I have read several stories of SIDS moms having to fend off the anti-vaccinationists trying to convince them that their child's death was not caused by vaccines. If I was evil and tried to think of a way to make these parents feel horrible, I could think of almost nothing better- adding guilt and paranoia to the grief.

The authors of articles like this (one of whom is an MD), which ask if vaccines are behind the "epidmic" of SIDS, should lose their medical license, in my opinion.

http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/epidemic-sudden-infant-deaths-medicall…

Yeah, these stories always puzzle me. If my child seemed to be that off - " Danny was unable to stay awake for longer than thirty minutes, he had zero food intake, his fluid intake diminished and he cried excessively." I would have been in the ER, holiday weekend or no. And what kind of office doesn't have a doctor on call? The story just doesn't make sense.

So, how can a cytokine storm be detected in a sample taken at the time of the vaccination? The kid didn't show signs, according to the narrative, for 48 h, but nevertheless it's in the sample drawn at the time of injection? If anything this story exonerates the vaccines as cause of the reaction.

I sometimes wonder how many additional details get accreted to these stories as they go along. So I am wondering whether a couple of additional items have unconsciously been added to how ill Danny was between the vaccination and his death to shore up the idea that the vaccines were the cause of his death. As the parent of a couple of children who were frequently ill as babies and toddlers as a result of their disability, we would never have allowed a child to get quite as bad as described - even though we were well experienced with losses of appetites and continual crying.

I am no expert in medicine, but I thought cytokines degraded with storage of blood even at -80. I am not sure which, if any, would be left some 3 or more years later to be measured. I also thought it was important to store the blood with particular anti-coagulants to be able to accurately measure cytokines. I am finding this business of requesting a blood sample to be stored without any instructions of what for and then getting it measured some 3 years later for cytokines a bit troubling.

Unless I'm missing something, the stored blood samples were taken during the well-baby visit on the day of vaccination - before any "cytokine storm" would have had a chance to take place.

As to what meaningful results Moe, Larry and the third pathologist thought they were getting for years-stored blood (and what tests were run?), one can only speculate, As a pathologist I am embarassed that any colleagues would issue a cause of death of asphyxia in such circumstances without having examined the body.

Maybe the diagnosis came to them in a dream.

Maybe the diagnosis came to them in a dream.

Or, maybe there are no such reports, or maybe they're from one of those alt-med pseudo-labs, or some such.

None of this makes any sense.

Any word on where these pathologists who tested the blood were from? I wouldn't put something like this past Doctors' Data.

Perhaps Dr. Al-Bayati, although he's not a real pathologist:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/12/30/an-hivaids-skeptic-questio…

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/10/08/using-sbs-as-misdiagnosis-…

He was just sitting in his bouncy seat and a man’s voice said, “It was the ‘site-o-kin’ storm that killed me.”

There are no words to express how unbelievable this is.

Yeah, it reads like a scene from a lesser David Lynch film.

This is a typical re-writing of history to fit the mother's new narrative that vaccinesdidit. I'm glad to see that there are so many holes in this story that even anti-vaxxers are questioning its veracity. I don't suppose any of them would care to question their own creative historical accounts of their children's "vaccine injury".

The mother was on a facebook page called PV vs AV and her story just kept changing. I am not a member of that page and wasn't involved, but I saw a lot of screen shots. She said she was at work and had a baby sitter and the baby sitters boyfriend was the one who put the baby on the blanket. Why would you leave such a sick baby? She said she noticed the baby had passed and then said it was actually one of her other children. I don't think she knows anymore what happened.

Orac saith:

She is being manipulated by the antivaccine propagandists to believe that vaccines caused the death of her 14 month old son...

Sure. I'd guess that alongside their sympathy they offered her support for her unrealistic beliefs. Classy. Go after a possible supporter when she is at her weakest point following her child's death.

They do this as well whilst parents are still reeling over an ASD diagnosis. Woo-meisters like to take advantage of people who are suffering in order to recruit more followers.

Memory is a fallable and *malleable* thing. We do not have tape recorders in our heads; we have simulators, and the simulation is changed by new data. You remember things you couldn't have known at the time. This process can easily be manipulated by the unscrupulous, and I suspect this is what has happened to this poor grieving woman. She has been manipulated. Of course this will be lauded all over the 'net soon as experts having proven that a child with no contraindications was killed by vaccines. And yet as far as I can see, not only is she producing all evidence *except* the actual expert reports "proving" her son was killed by vaccines, as far as I can tell she hasn't even named those experts. For all we know, they don't even exist. Given how much detail she provided on the other stuff, that's more than a little suspicious and I have to wonder if some coaching isn't going on.

And the "it came in a dream" stuff is just plain nuts.

The mother now appears to be asking in the comment boards that vactruth remove her story. In addition, if I’m reading her comments correctly, she is changing the narrative to say that the second blood panel (that was ultimately tested for cytokines) was drawn post-mortem because she suspected something strange had happened, and not that they were drawn again at the 14 month visit because of a prior lab mixup as originally stated in the post.

I saw my grandtwins yesterday, a few days after their second set of vaccinations- not sure what they were- at four months.

They were perfectly fine to me.

This is quite tiresome. Unfortunately vactruth only told parts of the story, embellished other bits, and really added a bunch of propaganda bullshit that is not representative of my views. I didn't realize it until today when I answered ten million questions. I have since requested they remove the article or allow me to rewrite. If they do not I will tell the story in its entirety to you...you seem to be local to the area and I will trust you to retell the story in whatever measure you choose. I don't care...I only ever went public out of fear that three of my kids would lose religious exemptions but an immunology researcher I've talked to several tines feels that there is definitely an underlying genetic issue and we should all qualify for medical exemptions. I no longer need .my story tokd

I would recommend getting screen shots of the story and comments. We'll likely continue seeing revisions of the story crop up from time to time.

I never had an interest in being picked apart by a bunch of people and your accusations are far kinder than mOst. My email is rafrenchspado@Gmail.com

I won't check back on this site

just one last thing....don't make accusations without proof little screenshotting weasel. The story is poste. still on AV vs pv 2. and I had never told it before publicly or in its entirety . I have no anti vaccine agenda though I may have bitched about them on my personal page from time to time I've only ever wanted better understsnding and perhaps a better system in place to prevent cases like my son. the antivax community does nit accept me and the provax only like throwing around the antivaxxing mom with three unvaccinated autistic kids.

Rachel showed up in the comments on my blog. She went to moderation since she was a first-time commenter. But here's something interesting she wrote:

"I will first say this …I requested to rewrite much of this article early on because I felt it was very disjointed and weird….also I didn’t feel as if I were being properly represented. The article became even more disjointed because I insisted she remove certain parts which involved unresolved legal issues regarding mishandling of my sons body, falsifying documents, negligence, and organ theft. I am not comfortable mentioning these things in print until they are resolved legally."

And this:

"I’m not going into alit of details regarding the pathologists…only one was hired by me, the others through certain agencies anD I do not have those two reports. I have not been public with this because it sucks. I only went public because people were screaming for blood, talking about prison and losing parental rights and I got scared. only later did I hook up with an immunology researcher who has Stated several tines that she believes testing Would reveal a genetic condition that would qualif. All of us as medically exempt. Had I known this I would have stayed in my happy little bubble ."

She just showed up here. I approved several of her comments.

Jeff @ #18 -- s/b RV, DTaP, Hib, PCV13, & IPV....easy peasy. Or, as revolutionary soccer moms call it: Rape & Poison!

@Reuben

Interesting. Now I think it's even more imperative to get screen shots, if not for the mere truth of the matter, at least to help support Ms. French in the event people try to twist her story.

The cytokine measurement is just wrong. The blood sample was allegedly taken right after the vaccines. Unless it's a massive reaction, anaphylactic-style, it's not happening that fast, and not without symptoms for three days. If, as #17 comment says, it was actually taken in post-mortem, that changes things. But storage for 3 years ???

I've completely screen-shot the post. She seems to be begging them to take it down as she cannot take the pressure being put on her. Looks like whoever runs vactruth has taken 10% of the story and blown it out of proportion. Still, as others have pointed, who are these mysterious all-knowing pathologists who were able to diagnose a cytokine storm from blood in storage (whose cells release cytokines as a result of storage, by the way), some post-mortem slides, and some bone fragments? We need to nominate them for a Nobel prize because that is some tea leaf reading abilities right there.

I just saved it as an archive and screen shot relevant parts.

From the comments she's posted, she's just beginning to realize she's got a tiger by the tail.

I think we can safely conclude that the story, as presented by VacTruth, is unreliable at best. Rachel herself is taking flack for it from both sides. I think this definitely calls for delicate handling until and unless Rachel tells the full story herself, without any editing by others.

Interesting to note, her three other children are all autistic and were never vaccinated. Nor, apparently, was she herself vaccinated. There's a knock against that guy that says he's never found an unvaccinated autistic child. What his name?

Looks like whoever runs vactruth has taken 10% of the story and blown it out of proportion.

This one doesn't have "Navy rescue swimmer" JeffyJo Aufdertwoof in the byline.

I know this woman from a group. She left out the part where she thought the babysitters boyfriend killed him.

^ More blockquote fail.

@Todd W:

There’s a knock against that guy that says he’s never found an unvaccinated autistic child. What his name?

Tony Bateson.

Has anyone ascertained who the "child death investigator" is? The former traffic cop?

I will start by saying I as big a supporter of vaccines as anybody here,but a big red flag to me,it is possible that giving Elijah Daniel French Tylenol was a big factor in his death.

It is also possible that giving infants and toddlers acetaminophen,as well as exposure in the womb,may be a contributing factor to ADHD and autism,not vaccines.

More and more studies are showing acetaminophen is a fairly dangerous drug to both the developing fetus and to young children.There is increasing evidence linking acetaminophen use by pregnant women to autism and brain abnormalities.You criticize Dr. Mumper here for possible links of prenatal acetaminophen use to autism.

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/preventing-autism-not-so-fast-dr-m…

But the "good evidence" you say isn't there might start with this study.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3673819/

And ADHD as well

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/more-questions-about-acetaminophen…

Article here
http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1833486

Tylenol does not prevent febrile seizures either.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/febrile-seizure/basics/pr…

As for "encephalopathy",brain abnormalities found in epilepsy have also been found in SIDS.

http://ww2.krem.com/story/27477472/brain-abnormality-spotted-in-many-si…

Is SIDS a form of epilepsy?Could acetaminophen be a factor? There is a lot more research that needs to be done,and a lot more dots that need to be connected.

ScienceDaily is reporting that HiB vaccines reduce the risk of leukemia.

Vactruth can bite another lie.

@ Ren

and some bone fragments

At the risk of belaboring the point, some bone fragments which are that remain of an incineration process. I doubt there is much useful organic material left.

To be fair, a charitable way to look at her recounting is that she provided whatever was left of her child to said pathologists, and that they based their diagnostic on the samples which have been properly preserved. Well, accepting such samples exist.

Now, if she was claiming that the final clue about the cytokine storm came from the charred remain of a tooth, I may insist on having some scientifically rigorous background provided on this sort of evidence.

The cytokine levels came from postmortem blood, prepared slides and two tissue samples. The relevance of te first blood draw was in the prevaccination levels.

Propaganda at its finest (worst?). By asserting that three pathologists 'confirmed' it, even though the story doesn't pass the smell test -- to actual medical professionals -- it will stick with lay people who don't know how contrived this actually is.

Now of course, anyone coming in to refute it can be easily portrayed as being 'in on it' and nothing more than a pin-headed shill.

The people behind this should rot in hell for exploiting such a situation, especially considering someone knowingly either falsified data or was outright lying about it...

@rachel

just one last thing….don’t make accusations without proof little screenshotting weasel. The story is poste. still on AV vs pv 2. and I had never told it before publicly or in its entirety . I have no anti vaccine agenda though I may have bitched about them on my personal page from time to time I’ve only ever wanted better understsnding and perhaps a better system in place to prevent cases like my son. the antivax community does nit accept me and the provax only like throwing around the antivaxxing mom with three unvaccinated autistic kids.

I'm sorry for the experience you've been having. The reason I suggested getting a screen shot once it became clear that you raised issues with how it was presented is because, in my experience, anti-vaccine sorts have a tendency to rewrite history to fit their needs. I was not accusing you of anything. If anything, I think it's worth saving it in the event that other anti-vaccine folks (or even pro-vaccine folk) try to misrepresent your story in the future.

I understand the need to correct a false story, but this is a mom who lost a child, and truthfully I believe both stories should be taken down. No mom needs her child used as a battering ram in the vaccine wars. It is better to simply let her grieve in peace. If views are flawed, it is not our job to correct them, it is her doctors. The right thing to do in this situation is remove this story, and have the other story on Vac Truth removed as well.

@Rachel - I'm so sorry you are having all these problems with the other site(s) re-writing your story. You want to tell the truth and they are obviously using your story to promote their own agenda.

And my sympathies about the death of your son.

Sorry but why go to VacTruth to begin with? Others are much more charitable than I but none of this sounds even remotely credible.

My infant son had symptoms like Danny's. After a single refused feed, I brought him in. Eternally grateful I did - it was viral meningitis and he would not have made it through the night without the acute care he received. I can't fathom doing otherwise.

No mom needs her child used as a battering ram in the vaccine wars. It is better to simply let her grieve in peace.

It was the mother who initiated this entire fiasco.

If views are flawed, it is not our job to correct them, it is her doctors.

Not familiar with HIPPA are you? The beauty of anti-vaxx fabrications is that they can craft any story they like and the attending physicians are bound to patient confidentiality.

The right thing to do in this situation is remove this story, and have the other story on Vac Truth removed as well.

No, the right thing to do would be for Ms. French to come clean and not use her tragedy for whatever reason.

The right thing to do in this situation is ... have the other story on Vac Truth removed as well.

I'm sure they'll be right on it.

The right thing to do in this situation is [...] have the other story on Vac Truth removed as well.

World peace and universal prosperity would also be nice. And a pony.

I was trying to get all this shit down before my kid saw it, but too late. I have to go do damage control. I have screenshots proving the reporter lied /omitted . I got a statement from the babysitter with two good witnesses present and it mostly jives with my account...the boyfriend will not talk. since my daughter has already seen this I'm going to offer to let her tell her version if she wants to. I will talk to one person laterr and answer all questions. I had no idea so many people read vactruth ....I also know now that they are beyond unreliable and if I ever see some idiot source these guys they will lose any credibility with me.

@RachelFrench - I do want to say my condolences for your loss.
The problem is the internet is forever, and once out there, its out there for good or ill. If you didn't want your story out there you shouldn't have told it. You certainly shouldn't have given it to the anti-vax crowd to do with as they please. They will use it forever so best of luck getting it taken down. You should not fear vaccines. Bad things happen, SIDS is real, but vaccines don't cause it. You should vaccinate your children and protect them from real illness and death. I am sorry for the hand you were dealt with your son, and wish you nothing but the best.

On a completely unrelated note, TDaP shot taken today for the protection of in utero baby girl. So feeling good. Sore deltoid and all. And it really isn't all that sore.

@Rachel:

I had no idea so many people read vactruth

I haven't had time to go through the comments, but another issue is that it tends to attract types who are so incoherent that they get taken completely apart outside of its echo chamber. Lowell Hubbs, whom Orac mentioned as having seized on this particular post, is a prime example.

Dear Rachel French, I am sorry for your loss. However, I don't think you are helping yourself here.

Most people on commenting on this blog will readily believe that VacTruth has taken a kernel of information from your story and magnified it to reflect their highly-skewed world view.

However, the inconsistent versions that you are placing in your comments in various places are not going to help people accept that the VacTruth version is not correct. All they are doing is muddying the water.

If you do want to place a version as you see it out there, and that may not be the best thing for you to do in the circumstances, you need to write it in a clear chronological order, naming where possible the people who gave you advice and accurately describing what that advice was, who did tests and what the results of the tests were.

If the facts can be checked and found to be correct, people will be more inclined to believe the narrative. Where there are inconsistencies, this will mean that people will be sceptical of the narrative - like I am being now.

Having read all your comments in various places that have used this story, the following impression has been formed in my mind.

You were worried that you would lose your exemption to not vaccinate your children, so you went to VacTruth with this narrative in the mistaken belief that would protect your vaccine exemption. You little realised how intensively people would pick apart your story and criticise you. You now regret having done so and would like to take it all back.

For what it is worth, my advice to you is to let it go. In the absence of their being a clear, coherent and well documented version available, people will believe whatever they want to. Even if you were to provide such a version, some people would still not believe you and say hateful things about you. You have far more important things to do looking after your children than to fight wars on line. I know people on line will continue to say hateful things about you, but this is one of those things best ignored and put down to experience.

As the parent of two disabled children, I wish you the best of luck in the future and may your remaining children provide you with many years of joy.

It won't matter, anyhow. Brian Deer and the British Medical Council abandoned all sense of judgement when they went after Wakefield. Unflustered and unflinching, Wakefield epitomizes the English ideal of persuasiveness; courteous of manner, well-spoken, and well-considered in opinion (or at least 'seemingly', for those opposed). If the claims of fraud and misconduct were to have stuck he would long, long beforehand have disappeared into the shadows of ignominy. But this clearly has not happened. Rather, he is gaining a very wide and appreciative audience indeed. Certain bloggers - such as Orac - have, by their method of attack, not helped their own cause at all, and might have heeded the wisdom noted by such diverse minds as Orwell and Jung: that delivering someone capable a relentless pasting will on occasion create a counteractive effect (the latter thinker coined this phenomenon 'enantiodromia'). Wakefield's bloodshot eyes should have been the telling sign; he's a British bulldog who will 'Never, never give up'.

Mr. Unwind, your comments exposing your undying love of Andrew Wakefield are very much out of place and uncouth on this thread. Please take your fan boi self elsewhere.

Ms. French, you have my deepest sympathies. First for the loss of your child, and for how this whole situation with your story has turned out.

I find it odd to the point of pretty much unbelievable that the doctor's office had no on-call service on the 4th of July. That's pretty much unheard of. That's the first tip-off that something is off kilter here.

I feel very bad for the woman. My poor husband was shocked when he went to share a better known part of his history that was more than ten years old and I already knew it. The internet can be a rather unforgiving place.

On baby sitters' boyfriends being a danger - I got home from work and was informed that my son had ingested brake fluid. The babysitter's boyfriend has shown up early to pick her up, announced he needed to bleed the brakes (I still can't fathom the why) and, since he couldn't find anything else convenient in the car, bled them into a Big Gulp cup in front of our garage.

If the claims of fraud and misconduct were to have stuck he would long, long beforehand have disappeared into the shadows of ignominy. But this clearly has not happened.

Umm, Wakefield was in fact struck off for fraud and misconduct. He subsequently lost his position at so-called Thoughtful House. Yep, he's doing just great.

I'm sure he's grateful for that slobberjob, though.

most of these stories are full of crap because vaccines don't kill babies. It is something else that parents are to stupid to accept and want to blame it on Vaccines. Last year a father and his mother bought his ex-wife, her current husband and his mother on Dr. Phil to get the truth behind the death of his daughter and adopted son. The mother, current husband and his mother kept blaming it on the vaccines when in fact the new husband and his mother were the cause because all 3 of them wouldn't take a lie detactor test to prove. because of both children death happened less than a month apart and different states the mother current husband and his mother were under the FBI investigation. The girl was between 2- 4 years age and had her vaccines years ago. The boy was either 4-6 and also had his years ago. Vaccines don't kill be careful of the lies out there by lazy ass parents who don't want to pay to get the vaccines to save their children lives.

TBruce - you're right, of course he was...

'If the world condemns some projects or courses of ours, whether they be good or bad, we need do nothing but persevere. After a while, when the subject has become stale, the slanderers will abandon it in order to look for fresh subjects. And the firmer and more imperturbable we show ourselves as we carry on, and scorn what people say, what was in the beginning condemned will be regarded as reasonable and normal. This is because the world, which never believes any wrong if he does not give in, eventually condemns itself, and absolves us.'

G.Leopardi.

Well, that escalated quickly. I didn't realize just how much attention this story had attracted - I just read about it yesterday on The Poxes blog (I don't do Facebook or Twitter.) This morning I noticed that Ms. French had responded to my questions on the VacTruth article, so I started to compose a reply (in Word, b/c I quickly realized it was going to be way too long to finish before class/lab.) I finished it after work this evening only to find that VacTruth has indeed taken the entire post down and that Ms. French had already commented on the Poxes story and here (but I was so not re-writing the entire page-and-a-half comment, so I replied to her in the Poxes comments section and copy-pasted it as written.) I have to admit, I'm surprised that VacTruth took the post down. I'm pretty sure it wasn't out of the goodness of their hearts - Ms. French pretty much flat-out calling the writer (Augustine something, I believe) a liar might have had something to do with it. She also mentioned that she didn't give them permission to put up some of those pics and screen shots - so its a good thing someone got screen grabs. IANAL, but if they put up her son's vaccination records and autopsy report without her express (as in, in writing) permission, I'm guessing that's a pretty serious HIPPA violation. I'd love to see VacTruth get their pants sued off for their despicable behavior.

I almost forgot - there's something I wanted to ask some of the regulars who are pediatricians, etc, about. I asked Ms. French about the position the baby was sleeping in, and she said the babysitter put him face-down, with his face turned to the side, with his knees tucked under him so that his bottom was up in their air. My first thought was "WTF was the babysitter thinking? I don't even have kids and even I've heard of the "back to sleep" campaign." But when I looked it up it seems that the recommendation only applies to children < 1year old. But still, why on earth would you put a baby's knees under him so that his fanny is in the air? Is it supposed to relieve colic or something? I'm a grown woman and I think I'd have trouble breathing in that position. But I didn't want to disparage the babysitter without getting some insight from someone who actually knows something about this sort of thing, especially since I gather from some of Ms. French's comments that the babysitter had been investigated and cleared of any wrongdoing.

Obviously I am missing something somewhere, but I don't understand how posting a story to a message board would have any effect at all on whether Ms. French would lose her 'religious exemption'.

Presumably this was an exemption to vaccination?

Was the exemption already lost and that is why the child received the falsely-contentious vaccinations at the heart of all this? Was the story being told as a kind of warning to others?

This is a bit interesting

But still, why on earth would you put a baby's knees under him so that his fanny is in the air? Is it supposed to relieve colic or something? I'm a grown woman and I think I’d have trouble breathing in that position.

I'm not sure about people placing infants in this position, but I evidently used to end up in this position of my own accord as a baby on the regular.

Obviously I am missing something somewhere, but I don’t understand how posting a story to a message board would have any effect at all on whether Ms. French would lose her ‘religious exemption’.

I very much doubt that it would, other than if it led to a lot of publicity. That doesn't mean that someone can't be convinced that it would help. The anti-vax crowd can be quite adept at realing parents in with promises, particularly if there is some good ammunition to use.

Frankly, we have far too few and too contradictory details to be able to make sense of what happened and why.

I don't know... Reading this post again and then other coverage - I'm starting to get an odd feeling about the entire thing.

Whatever your stance, if even part of the story is true then the tragedy is unbearable. My deepest sympathies for all involved.

Margaret Cole--

Lie detector tests are essentially worthless, at least for what they claim to be doing. At most, they are "is this person feeling stressed?" tests. Some people are naturally calm even when being interrogated and lying; some can learn to fool the tests; and some people are stressed even when telling the truth.

Rachel French--

I know it feels like you have to do damage control in the next ten minutes, but the stuff is out there, and a little longer isn't going to make any real difference. Get a skilled writer/editor to help you tell your story clearly and completely. (This doesn't have to be a freelance professional--do you have a friend whose job tit always gets asked to rewrite their boss's presentations? Someone whose holiday letters you look forward to? You're looking for the person who includes the important bits, where someone else would leave gaps and you'd be thinking "Wait, Jerry? Who's Jerry?" halfway through.

Ms French,

Like others here, I wish to express my deep sympathy for your loss. It is sad when any child dies, but especially when they die so young.

Beyond that, I would second ChrisP at 53.

Story seems to have been scrubbed from Vactruth.

Fortunately, Vactruth apparently has numerous "child killed by vaccine" stories to replace it ... some of which thoughtfully link to GoFundMe type campaigns.

If I were a more cynical person ...

Eddie@61:

In other words, Wakefield is utterly shameless.

Story seems to have been scrubbed from Vactruth.

It appears I was wrong. To err is human,which is a good thing to be sometimes.

I’m sure he’s grateful for that slobberjob, though.

I'd expect Wakefraud to want a gratuity for the privilege.

Rachel French:

I am so, so very sorry for your loss. Please accept my deepest sympathies.

I'm going to echo Vicki's comment #69. I have some experience with internet kerfuffles and untruths being spread--it's happened to me. Vicki is right that the best thing to do right now is step away from it. Don't feel you have to jump in everywhere and correct things or tell your story again or anything. You do not, and it truly is best if you don't. Step away from it. Let it go for the moment. Sit down and get everything you want to say straight in your head, and write it down. Take your time with it. Take a week or two. The opportunity to set the record straight is not going to disappear. Get someone to help you write it in a clear, concise manner, which addresses all of the things you want to address.

Then, when you feel ready, post it somewhere--on a new blog specifically for that post, or by having someone post it for you, or on your Facebook page or whatever--find a place.

Then step away from that. That is your statement. You have no obligation to answer further questions or read the comments or anything else. You make your statement, and you let it go. (You can, if you wish, go to places where your story is being discussed and post a link to your statement, or copy-paste it if it's brief, or whatever.)

Again, I know it's difficult. But it really is the best thing to do. Just tell the truth and let that be the end of it.

And remember, this will pass. Internet kerfuffles always do, and once the truth is out there where anyone looking into it can see it, it will be found and people will move on.* There's a whole big world off the internet, and you'll feel much better engaging with it for a while (not that you don't, I just mean that once you really step away you'll see that this isn't the world-altering thing it feels like it is right now).

Once again, I'm sorry for your loss, and I wish you the best.

*Some people won't, of course, but they never would have anyway, no matter what you said or did.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/measles-vaccines-kill-more-people-than-mea…

This puts your measles rant into perspective. According to the US CDC more people die from measles vaccine than measles. In countries with poor GDP the reason is poverty and poor nutrition.

I suppose this makes a lot of sense, because doctors think that what you eat has no bearing whatsoever on the diseases we get they don't have to think. I kinda get that's why so many of you vaccyloons keep hanging on to the vaccine knob. Keep swinging.
http://www.healthy.net/scr/article.aspx?Id=2749
I think you all need to read something else other than pubmed

Eddie's argument depends entirely on the premise "Someone who is shown beyond the shadow of a doubt to be a fraud will lose all their followers." Anyone from the bunco squad, however, would tell you that this isn't so; con artists who have swindled entire communities out of their hard-earned savings will still have defenders, people still fooled by the "I'm one of *you*" act the conman put up, people who insist against all the evidence that everything was on the level.

Eddie's premise is really just a particularly weaksauce argument from popularity, except instead of arguing "X must be correct, because it has so many people who believe in it!" he's arguing "X must be correct, because even though so many people don't believe in it, a sad rump of disciples still do!"

globalresearch.ca? If anyone needed any more evidence that Philip Hills had bats loose in his belfry, this is it.

Uh... johnny?

You did notice that the authors are attributing deaths to measles vaccination on the basis of reports in VAERS?

And you are familiar with the warning on the VAERS website you must acknowledge you've read and understood to proceed to the database?

And you do therefore understand why therefore the author's conclusion that measles vaccination kills more people that measles infection is invalid?

Right?

Uh… johnny?

You did notice ...

He was reading globalresearch.ca. Mr Hills is beyond noticing.

@JGC

It's possible that johnny's only experience with VAERS is through what anti-vax sites tell him, or via MedAlerts, which strips the requirement to attest to understanding the limits of VAERS. It does provide a link to the disclaimer, but it doesn't require you to acknowledge that you read it. You can just jump right into the VAERS data without ever seeing anything about its limits.

@Orac

If you want to make a screenshot of entire page with all the comments, just use Fireshot for Firefox.

Ms French, I wish you were spared the tragic loss of your child and now this disgusting aftermath.

the writer (Augustine something, I believe)

Could be a coincidence, but we did have a contrarian troll named Augustine, in years past.

Speaking of trolls:

Mr Hills is beyond noticing.

Lilady had a catchphrase in cases like this, to paraphrase: "Don't feed the bad-mouthed troll".

It was good advice then, and I fell it's good advice now.

Re: reports in VAERS

One such report was about someone transforming into the Incredible Hulk after a vaccine jab.

Have any of you stupid, useless eaters ever realized that every generation has a bunch of people affected by some ailment? What do you think it's from? The asshole who wrote this article is a paid shill. Nothing more.

That was Jim Laidler, who pointed out that investigators followed up and asked him to voluntarily remove the report but noted that if he had chosen not to do so the report would have remained in the database indefinitely--the database adminstrators themselves will not remove reports even after follow up investigation indicates the presumed association with vaccination isn't supported by available evidence.

Another report by the author of the Left Brain/ Right Brain blog described vaccination turning his daughter into Wonder Woman.

Mike: "The asshole who wrote this article is a paid shill. Nothing more."

Yawn. Pharma Shill Gambit, don't leave your fact free trolling without it.

Have any of you stupid, useless eaters ever realized that every generation has a bunch of people affected by some ailment? What do you think it’s from?

Depends on what particular ailment is being considered, Mike--surely you don't mean to suggest, without any offering evidence whatsoever it is the case, that all illnesses occur due to a single common cause?

Pardon me if I'm bringing this up for the umptieth time (I haven't really checked on this in previous posts), but there's this little thing called 'statistics'. However few, and unfortunate it may be, little children sometimes die. Little children also get vaccinated. And statistics dictate that there is a certain probability that these two events coincide, without any causality involved.

Now I haven't done the maths with US statistical data, but here in the Netherlands, things are quite clear. Every year, some 500 children die in their 'main vaccination age' (1 month - 14 months). In that time frame of 13 months, they receive a total of 9 vaccinations in 5 sessions -- so roughly one vaccination session every 11 weeks.
This means that of those 500 deaths, one in eleven will occur within one week of receiving a vaccination -- 45 cases in all. One in twenty cases will fall within a few days of a vaccination, still 25 cases a year.
I suppose that US data will show a similar pattern -- just twenty-fold in absolute numbers, according to population size.
This means that in the US, each year at least some 500 children will die within a few days after receiving a vaccination, without any causal link to this vaccination whatsoever.

Yes, I know, this is hard to accept for grieving parents looking for causes and reasons, especially when the cause of death is not entirely clear, but it is how things sometimes happen -- and usually, no-one and nothing is to blame. So please let's not blame it on vaccines either, just because there is nothing else to point to.

@Mike

every generation has a bunch of people affected by some ailment? What do you think it’s from?

Sounds like it's from having generations.

Sounds like it’s from having generations.
Now I have a Who earworm.

Have any of you stupid, useless eaters...

"Eaters"? We have a Breatherian in our midst.

Have any of you stupid, useless eaters ever realized that every generation has a bunch of people affected by some ailment?

You mean we haven't been living in a shining, ailment-free utopia for the past 10,000 years or so? Who knew?

What do you think its from?

Well, at least we can rule out vaccines - they certainly haven't been around long enough to affect every generation. Same goes for synthetic chemicals, high fructose corn syrup, EMF emissions, chemtrails...all the usdual suspects. I give up - is the correct answer "being alive?"

^usual, not usdual

Hello guys. I came back after all. I agree this whole incident was my fault. I had no knowledge of vactruth previously and maybe should have looked into it before talking to them. Augustina approached me in a child loss group . After reading some of the comments I went back through to read our correspondence and though she did ask leading questions my answers were not really affected by it. After several requests to remove the article were denied I contacted an attorney and vactruth responded promptly to the cease and desist order when evidence of libel and defamation of character was presented to them. I may get distracted at times and I might mix small things up from time to time but its been nearly 8 years, I have six kids, and half autistic (one insomniac and all three have night terrors). I'm not dishonest and I can't fathom supporting a cause that has to fabricate in order to have ammunition. There is nothing noble in lying about something as serious as the overall health of our children and future generations. At the attorneys advice I've removed sone postings and he's advised me on what's legally prudent to discuss and not discuss. In regards to the exemptions I was concerned about losing religious exemptions as three o. My four younger kids don't qualify for medical. During the "measles" outbreak there were talks of suing, arresting, losing parental rights, etc and I got scared. I had hoped that I could use NY story to convince people why religious exemptions were also imoortant

Important.
His sleep position....yesterday I talked to the babysitter about that day for the first time and she stated that he was tossing and turning when he was sleeping in the floor, so I assume he got in that position on his own as he always preferred it....which was painful when he was nursinG. You guys have a good night. Thank you

Ms. French: "I have six kids, and half autistic (one insomniac and all three have night terrors). I’m not dishonest and I can’t fathom supporting a cause that has to fabricate in order to have ammunition."

Mixing up and not quite remembering past events perfectly is very common. It has happened to all of us. I know I've done it, I have remembered something so well and then I look back at the records and I had it all wrong.

Out of my three kids the oldest has autism and some other severe medical issues (like open heart surgery), so I have lots of records on him. His are kept in a box twice as big as the one I use for his siblings. Still, they just get thrown in and many times I have trouble finding the one piece of paper I need.

Don't beat yourself up. You are only trying to do your best to find answers, and were taken advantage of by others.

Unfortunately, sometimes there are no answers. My oldest had his first seizures when he was two days old. This was long before the HepB vaccine. No one knows why, even the three neurologists he saw in his first ten years of life.

He has a severe genetic heart disorder that involves a physical and electrical anomaly (reason for open heart surgery). There are no clues in our family history, and the genetic test looking for the then eighteen known sequences came up empty. The rest of the immediate family went to the cardiologist for a "family echocardiogram day" and neither his parents nor siblings had the same issue.

It is just something that happened to him. Though one thing I have learned through this experience is that random terrible things happen to people just due a bad roll of the genetic dice. Apparently genetic heart conditions are quite common, and we were very lucky to find out our son had it by doctor hearing a heart murmur before giving him the fourteen year old tetanus shot before the most common diagnostic reason: "sudden death." (for the curious it is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy)

I am glad you have legal back up. I very sincerely hope for the best for you and your kids. (insomnia and night terrors... ack! ... I mostly had a sleep walker in a younger child, I would find him sleeping in odd places some mornings but he never left the house --- as an adult he lives in a studio apartment, though I am curious how his camping trip went last week)

Have any of you stupid, useless eaters…

“Eaters”? We have a Breatherian in our midst.

Quite the contrary. It is someone who has actually slipped up and publicly used the New World Order language that was revealed to Rima Laibow back in 2002. Remember, it's still almost time for the Great Culling to begin.

[Wakefield]'s a British bulldog who will ‘Never, never give up’

And yet he was savaged into silence by a Chow.

Others may have already pointed out that allthough the story's been scrubbed from VacTruth, it appears to have legs on other florid CT sites, such as this one.

My condolences to the mother & family. May Danny's memory be a blessing to you, and may you find joy in your remaining children.

[Wakefield]’s a British bulldog

I would have pegged him as poodle calling itself "Big Fido".

'Important.
His sleep position….yesterday I talked to the babysitter about that day for the first time and she stated that he was tossing and turning when he was sleeping in the floor, so I assume he got in that position on his own as he always preferred it….which was painful when he was nursinG. You guys have a good night. Thank you"

Rachel, a question if you come back. Are you saying that you've never spoken to the babysitter about the day Danny died until yesterday?

I'm sorry for the loss of your son.

My four younger kids don’t qualify for medical. During the “measles” outbreak there were talks of suing, arresting, losing parental rights, etc and I got scared. I had hoped that I could use NY story to convince people why religious exemptions were also imoortant

Where on Earth did you get this idea and how could your story possibly have anything to do with this zany notion? Even just using your direct quotes and comments, your account of events and findings are inconsistent and suspect (to be kind) and have nothing to do with religious exemptions. By the by since when should religious exemptions be substitutes for medical exemptions?

Rachel,

My condolences as well on the loss of your son. My sympathies, too, on the way VacTruth used his death in furtherance of their own agenda. I am glad you have legal help.

I do hope you don't worry overmuch about losing your medical exemption. No one, not even the most ardent pro-vaccine advocate, would ever support doing away with such a thing. In fact, eliminating philosophical exemptions is all the more important in order to protect your children and others from a VPD, if they can't have a vaccine.

I do hope you come back to RI. I mostly lurk here, and only occasionally comment. But I lurk almost daily. Learn something new all the time, in ways that help in my regular job. Not only that, it's great fun, and often funny. Furthermore, the community that has sprung up around RI consists of many commenters who are also the parents of children with complex needs, and some commenters also have medical conditions themselves. You may find a new idea, a place to ask questions, or expressions of support that can be of help (or at least bring you a quick smile). My observations of the group norms here are that people who are nasty, completely and stubbornly ridiculous, or who troll, may get dogpiled, but people who ask genuine questions, offer interesting ideas, and are open to learning new things are very much welcomed, even if people disagree.

Good luck to you and yours.

[Wakefield]’s a British bulldog who will ‘Never, never give up’

We used to own bulldogs. A lot of trouble keeping up, and very gassy. I'd say the description fits.

<blockquote.[Wakefield]’s a British bulldog who will ‘Never, never give up’

Persistance isn't always and of itself a good thing.

And persistance in the face of a very large body of evidence you've gotten everything completely wrong...well, we all know what Einstein is rumored to have said about the definition of insanity, don't we?

@ Rachel, don't blame yourself - even most of the other students in my graduate program (in biomedical sciences, no less) know very little about the ant-vaccine movement: they've heard of it, but they probably wouldn't recognize the names of the organizations or people that we talk about all the time here. Antivaxxers have become pros at putting up a reasonable front to "outsiders:" giving their organizations deceptively innocuous names, claiming they "just want answers," and that no one is listening to them (while ignoring tons of research that's been conducted specifically to answer the questions they're asking,) etc. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions over on VacTruth (I saw your replies just before they took the page down), and I'm sorry if they opened up any old wounds. At the time, I didn't realize that some of that info was put up without your permission (good on you for sticking it to them, BTW.) I wrote an absurdly long reply, but by the time I finished it they'd taken the page down, so I left it over on The Poxes blog. I'm not sure what else to say except good luck, I hope this whole situation resolves itself quickly and you're able to find some peace.

well, we all know what Einstein is rumored to have said about the definition of insanity, don’t we?

It's a misattribution, BTW; actual credit goes to Narcotics Anonymous.

Aw, and here i was thinking it was Vaas in Far Cry 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBDi0iM2kcU

I have to add my condolences to Rachel.
I also have to gently remind Rachel that on the internet there is a thing called the Streisand effect -- to wit : the more one tries to suppress or remove a thing posted on the internet, the more people will post copies of it just to get your goat.

I have to add that while I sympathize with anyone who lost a child, I have to question the story here. It just doesn't sound right. I also would not be too quick to dismiss positional asphyxia as a cause. I'm not accusing anyone, I'm just suggesting that it not be ruled out.

Ok.

The exemptions ...currently of my four youngest children only one is medically exempt and for the rest I have religious. My concern with losing them stems from the mandating of vaccines that's being discussed. I has thought that by sharing my story I could demonstrate that folks like me need these exemptions. However, I've heard from a physician and immunologist that it sounds like we all would qualify with genetic and/or immunological testing....which alleviates those fears.

I know the story sounds ridiculous as it stands but I'm going to issue one complete statement and I still haven't even started it.

I really appreciate your condolences and patience. I especially appreciate the lack of douchebaggery. I'm furious that the antivax movement used my story in such s way and made me look like a dumbshit....I've been pretty mercilessly destroying them on Facebook and dusqus which makes me sad. Their cause is not without merit but their idiocy and lack of feasible solutions is killing me.

Not all of those "direct quotes" are actual quotes

Rachel, hearing of elevated cytokines can sound bad, when you've learned of cytokine storms, but there are many, many different types of cytokines.
My father had cytokine injections while he was under dialysis, as he was becoming anemic and not replacing red blood cells due to his end stage renal disease.
Other cytokines help remodel bone, with one used in treating a disease where hollow bones become full bones, displacing the marrow.
Now, a cytokine storm is bad, it can be fatal, especially when it is not appropriately treated.
But, the signs and symptoms are significant. Severe swelling in an area with elevated cytokines, lungs heavy and full of fluid, if the lungs are the site with elevated cytokines (all, severely elevated). The brain would be compressed from the fluid and white cells violating the brain's immune privileged areas. Extremely high fever would be present.
There is one other thing that can cause cells to release cytokines; death. The heart stops pumping, the cells begin experiencing damage from hypoxia and release cytokines during their death throes.
Meanwhile, abuse shows signs of their own, especially intentional asphyxiation, signs that are pretty much forensic pathology 101.
Accidental asphyxiation isn't unheard of, especially in babies, where they haven't develop the ability to move out of a potentially airway occluding position. Babies airways are far different from an adult as well. I learned quite a bit about pediatric airways during specialized military medical training, where we set up clinics in remote villages in areas where we were deployed and operating in.
One reason I vehemently support vaccination is simple, responding to a dual measles and polio epidemic. Many children in that outbreak died and still haunts my dreams.
My own men restrained me from harming a village mullah who issued a fatwa against immunizing anyone. I eventually overcame him by receiving the same vaccines we were to immunize the villagers and especially the children.
In every village that occurred, the fatwa was rescinded, save one. In that last village, the mullah ended up being murdered and one of our teams were invited to vaccinate the children of that village.
I've frequently joked that polio should become extinct in any village I enter, due to the number of times I took a dose of oral polio vaccine.
The truth was actually simpler, I was actively shedding OPV attenuated virus while I was in those villages and I touched a *lot* of things others would handle.
For, one other thing is true.
Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.

@ Wzrd1

You had quite a life.
And, contrary to a few people here I could name, you and your medical team seem to have done plenty to help other human beings.

Re. "...saw (my departed loved one) in a dream..."

This is actually VERY common and not at all crazy.

Those who believe in deities and immortal souls may consider such dreams as communication from the departed in the hereafter. Those who do not believe in deities and immortal souls may consider them as the product of memories of the departed.

Since propositions about souls are empirically untestable, neither position can claim exclusive and privileged truth. In particular I find attempts to use the death of someone else's loved one as the basis for proselytizing (whether religious or, in the present case, anti-religious e.g. "that's just nuts") highly offensive. Common courtesy as well as compassion and empathy, call for respecting the right of others to whatever beliefs they might have about the hypothetical hereafter when they are grappling with the death of a loved one.

It appears that this case has complications that will take some time to sort out, including the presence of others such as the babysitter etc. and what they saw and heard. The parts that are relevant to our purposes here, are a) that a baby's death occurred in proximity to vaccination, and b) anti-vaxers took obscenely unfair advantage of that coincidence in their manipulative treatment of the baby's mother, and c) that some of the other aspects such as the storage of blood samples and diagnosis of cytokine storm raise additional issues that need to be addressed. Rachel French deserves our moral support regardless of whatever beliefs she has about the soul.

"No, as tragic as Danny’s death was, vaccines are not the most plausible cause of his death. It’s not as though this hasn’t been studied before. Vaccines are not linked with SIDS."

You'd be wrong in that assertion. On at least one occasion they HAVE been linked with SIDS in the US:

http://www.epi.hss.state.ak.us/bulletins/docs/b1979_06.htm

S.S. you are the one who is wrong.

Today at the request of the Food and Drug Administration, Wyeth Laboratories has voluntarily agreed to withdraw all unused doses of this lot of vaccine from use while Tennessee Health officials, the Center for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration continue the investigation of those events.

"These actions were taken out of an abundance of caution because it is far from clear the analysis of available data by CDC and FDA that there is any cause-and-effect relationship between this lot of DTP vaccine and the cluster of sudden infant deaths in Tennessee."

I'll highlight the crucial bit.
"These actions were taken out of an abundance of caution because it is far from clear...that there is any cause-and-effect relationship between this lot of DTP vaccine and the cluster of sudden infant deaths in Tennessee."
In other words, the lots were withdrawn as a precaution. Te vaccines did not cause the SIDS.

S.S., what happened in 1979 is not exactly current.

http://www.chadhayesmd.com/dear-anti-vax-parents-were-not-mad-at-you/

Comment #65 links us to the above page where this comment was posted:

rachel french says:
January 29, 2015 at 4:40 am

Dear Doctor,
But we are mad at you. Let us set aside the pharma and kickback talk…let us set aside the government theories and gmo’s and even autism. Let us only talk about you, me, and my child.
You do not love my children. I have never once run into you cribside during any one of my 53 nightly breathing checks. You would never recognize their voices, laughter, or cries. You cannot understand the questions in their eyes. You cannot, even with your stethoscope, recognize the subtle shifts in their breathing that precedes internal catastrophe. I never ran into you casketside as I said goodbye to the boy who walked into your office healthy and full of potential less than a week before.
You do not love my children. You never mentioned he may die. You never tested him or checked him or quit vaccinating him despite prolonged episodes of high fevers and difficulty breathing after his shots. You lied and called it asthma. When i was hysterical and telling you that he couldnt breathe two of you dismissed it….you could not hear what i could. For three days you blamed his declining condition on shots and i believed you because no one said hypercytokinemia has the same side effects as the shots. Then when he died you insisted that it couldnt have been shots.
But it was.
Remember when you tricked me into authorizing shots for my other son and for nearly two years you immunized him without telling me? Remember when both my girls, fully vaccinated became sick with chicken pox? Remember trying to forcefully admit my seventh child after you found out about her not getting the hep b shot? Remember your veiled threats to call DSS? Remember when three of my kids (one vaccinated) had measles and it was no big deal at all…..AT ALL? Do you remember the horrific and irreversible damage done to Jaes daughter from the hpv vaccine? Do you remember when you told my husband, disoriented and bleeding from a head wound, that you were giving him a shot without telling him it was tdap?
You are all of those Doctors. You are the doctor and nurse who mocked me when the twins were born and thought i was ignorant. You are the doctor who said my kids would have more ear infections without shots. You are every doctor that refuses to treat my three autistic children who cannot receive much needed therapies without your orders on a pad.
You may not lie, but full disclosure is another thing you do not do.

I'm very sure we don't have all of the details involved in this tragedy, but something seems very fishy with all of the backpedalling that has been happening.

So Ms. French was saying something different a few months ago before VaxTruth tried to "report" it. It happens, let it go and leave her alone.

Why nobody considers the fact, that acetaminophen was found in the blood? Like no children died before from overdose of Tylenol.

Regarding my earlier post:

'Tennessee cluster' stirs inquiries

In Fresno County, Coroner Dr. David Hadden researched records from an unusual cluster of crib deaths in 1981. He said the question about DPT vaccination was not routinely asked of parents. Hadden…said he will add such a question about DPT from now on.

Within 8days of their DPT inoculation, 11 infants died in Tennessee. Nine of the 11 had received DPT vaccine from Wyeth Laboratories lot 64201. Four of the 11 were dead in 24 hours.

All the deaths, which coroners classified as crib deaths (technically, sudden infant death syndrome), occurred between August 1978 and March 1979.

Nothing
of this magnitude had occurred before.

The Tennessee Department of Health notified the national Centers for Disease Control, and the CDC assigned Dr. Roger H. Bernier to investigate. On April 26, 1979, the U.S. surgeon general called a meeting of top DPT researchers, officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, and representatives of drug manufacturers to discuss Bernier’s findings.

Outside consultants came from the University of Colorado, Denver; Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C., University of Rochester, N.Y., University of Washington, Seattle; Boston City Hospital; Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland; National Center for Health Statistics, Hyattsville, Md. When the daylong session was over, there were still questions.

Every one of the seven consultants asked for additional information to determine whether there was any connection between DPT and crib deaths: more details, medical histories, data from other states that used lot 64201, further testing on the lot.

Dr. David Brandling-Bennett of the CDC reported on a survey of states that had received 7,500 or more doses of lot 64201. "All said they could identify sudden infant death cases," which are called crib deaths.

The survey also produced a list of 14 more infant deaths — half within 24 hours of a DPT shot. All were classified as crib deaths. However, the children had received vaccine from other lots.

In September 1982, 3% years after the 1979 surgeon general’s meeting, the first major article about the so-called Tennessee cluster appeared in the Journal of Pediatrics.

In the article, Bernier said the panel could not find a causal relationship between lot 64201 and crib death although it could not exclude one, either.

Dr. Kevin C. Geraghty of Bay Area Physicians for the Study of Pertussis Vaccines, said Bernier "failed to give physicians the information he had.

"He didn’t say the batch was double strength. He didn’t say so many of these babies are dying on the first shot, which points to an age vulnerability. He didn’t point out that they had no histories on these children. The consultants all said the same thing. ‘We would love to have histories on these kids."

Dr. John Robbins was the FDA biologics director at the time of the Tennessee cluster and attended the surgeon general’s meeting. "Tennessee has an excellent public health system," he said. "That year, they really pushed and immunized everyone they could.

"They had a terrific record, maybe 95 percent of the children were immunized. And that year, in the winter, the SIDS [crib deaths] occurred."

Although it was not certain five years. ago, today it is generally accepted among DPT experts that pertussis vaccine does not cause the kind of death typical of crib death.

Several studies, including a large one by the National institute of Child Health and Human Development, have shown only a coincidental relationship with DPT vaccinations.

Dr. Mortimer B. Lipsett, director of the institute, has written that it’s inevitable that health problems that occur early in life occasionally will occur near DPT vaccination because the vaccine is given several times in the first year of life. Thus, he said, a few crib deaths will appear to be associated with the vaccine.

Dr. Kenneth J. Bart, chief of the surveillance investigation research branch of CDC,.sajd that each year, "It’s expected that 55 SIDS [crib deaths] will occur within

-24 hours of DPT just by chance alone."

Some people and groups, including Physicians for the Study of Pertussis Vaccines, suggest that some crib deaths might not be crib deaths at all. There are parents like Janet Ciotoll of Endicott, N.Y., who have disputed a coroner’s report of crib death.

Ciotoli, a licensed practical nurse, said her 2-month.old son, Richard, died of irreversible shock after his first DPT shot a year and a half ago.

Shocklike deaths following DPT shots were reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1933 and 1946.

Geraghty independently researched the 10 crib deaths in Contra Costa County in the first half of 1983. Three of them showed "disturbing clinical histories not typical of crib deaths," but typical of shock, he said.

"The UCLA study showed one in 600 kids have shock like episodes. That is not controversial," Geraghty said. "My position is that an occasional one of those must result in death.

"There are 9,000 crib deaths a year. If even one in 100 [shock like deaths] were mistakenly called crib death, that would be 90 babies a year.

"There’s 3.5 million children born annually, so we’re talking about 1 in 35,000 babies die from this reaction.

"Let’s drop fills nonsense about crib deaths," Geraghty said. "We don’t think they are crib deaths. We think they are shock like deaths that out of incompetency the Centers for Disease Control began to call crib deaths with no proof and the coroners innocently have followed along with this practice.

In Fresno County, Coroner Dr. David Hadden researched records from an unusual cluster of crib deaths in 1981. He said the question about DPT vaccination was not routinely asked of parents. Hadden was shown Geraghty’s study and said he• will add such a question about DPT from now on.

Based on a British study, the U.S. government says that one in 100,000 children (or one in 310,000 injections) will experience permanent brain damage, usually with profound retardation and hard-to-control seizures. Government statistics do not attribute any deaths to DPT vaccine, except when an occasional brain-damaged child has a vigorous reaction and dies from it or complications.

Dr. James D. Cherry one of the UCLA researchers, was asked if some instances of crib deaths could, instead, be shock like deaths. They could be, he said, "but my guess is that a particular parent is involved in a lawsuit and Is trying to get some money from a drug company."

[Vaccination] [Fresno Bee report]

I wonder if this might have had something to do with the reformulation of the pertussis vaccine - from DTP to DTaP(that admittedly has reduced vaccine efficacy but is considered to be more safe).

s.s. I'd like to see the source for your quote, please.

S.S., you seem to be stuck in the wrong century.

"Based on a British study,"

Is that one by Gordon Stewart who mucked up some testimony by mistaking a study on rats to be one on children, and who is not an HIV/AIDS denier?

A good history on that kind of debacle was related in Dr. Paul Offit's book Deadly Choices, especially page 35.

S.S., when you comment next you need to bring up PubMed indexed studies that are less than twenty years old from reputable qualified researchers (not Gordon Stewart, the Geiers, Wakefield, etc) that either the DTaP or the Tdap are more dangerous than pertussis.

So Ms. French was saying something different a few months ago before VaxTruth tried to “report” it. It happens, let it go and leave her alone.

Why? This is unusual coming from you. Ms. French has holes in her story you can drive a truck through and someone found a comment from her which doesn't exactly refute what VaxTruth wrote. Ms. French opened this Pandora's box, not Brenda.

I don't see how my angry doctor rant contradicts what hsooebed with my child or the vactruth article. I have always said that I have personal trust issues with doctors and I have my own personal fears in that regard. I'm not sure if anyone here knows what its like when your child dies but its followed by a pretty incredible range of emotions. Even now, thinking about that doctors blog pisses me off....but its a personal issue...its my issue. I have not ever publicly advocated for or against vaccination (with the exception of the occasional emotional tirade similar to the one you just dug up) and most of those are in mY personal pages. I have always always pushed for making the vaccination program a safer one, slight changes in the healthcare aspect, and a more comprehensive dialogue between parents and physicians. I really don't see how pulling up an emotional outburst that was very cathartic for me at that time is relevant ...unless you're regetting to my opening statement which was likely reflective of other comments on that blog. In any event your shocking revelation does nothing to alter my story.

Furthermore, if i had previously sounded like an antivax whacko I have not denied being influenced to some degree. I have even recently issued the following statement publicly to a new friend

" (name withheld) ,I have an embarrassing confession and apology. I was going to pm this but fuck it...ill tell everyone.
In the early avpv days I may have been influenced by the AV idealists to a degree and was easily convinced of your "duplicity" once.the great "medical fraud" incident occurred and I left the group.
So when this group started I believed that, as agents of the pharmaceutical industry, your objective was to damage my credibility and hurt my family to achieve your goals. Jesus, what an idiot.right? So during our whole convo in admin chat I was thinking you were 'after me' and I was way confused when it dawned on me what your actual thought process was. I had briefly even.been convinced that maybe you werent being truthful about your past, but i felt shitty pretty quickly and i apologize now for that. Then (name withheld) said you guys were implying SBS was my sons cause of death and that's when I snapped out of the antivaxxer fog fully. Because I was faced with a dilemma...I felt grateful suddenly to (name)for eliminating the brain....I never could have shaken my baby or any baby but I felt such tremendous guilt and failure when he died that I would have welcomed punishment. I've always felt guilty for not keeping him alive....like any idiot can do it except me.
Then vactruth printed that ridiculous article and I did skim through it but I was pretty shocked seeing it. When I finally read the shit and saw how distorted they made his story I was furious. Any group that goes to such lengths not only has a shit agenda but they can't be right .....and they can't be trusted.
So I'm sorry ....I've been an idiot, but ultimately I've always respected You, I like you and (your name)memes, and I'd like your chili recipe.
I'm not going to represent AV anymore. I'm going to go with Unvaxxer because it sounds like a superhero or villian name. and my legion of minions will be the unvaccinated."

I always admit when I'm wrong. I have been influenced by others in the past but not in regards to my son and I would gladly discuss with any professional or group of professionals some of the surrounding circumstances and give you a more complete set of data.

Some one asked about the babysitter...
After my son died I never went back there. My things were collected by someone else, I spoke with her briefly at the funeral, and she was gone two days later. I have harbored alot of feelings towards her, nit the least of which was resentment. The last time i saw my child he was screaming on the porch as I rode away. the last five or six hours of his life were spent with her. I have hated her as much as I seemed to hate the doctor in the blog post. Its irrational and misplaced but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

You guys can find me on Facebook if you like ...I hang out in a few vax groups....The Vaccine Wars is my favorite

In response to Julian:

http://www.whale.to/vaccines/fresno3.html

Taken from an article in the Fresno Bee:

"The Fresno Bee is the daily newspaper serving Fresno, California and surrounding counties in that U.S. state's San Joaquin Valley. It is owned by The McClatchy Company and ranks fourth in circulation among the company's newspapers."

Chris:

"A good history on that kind of debacle was related in Dr. Paul Offit’s book Deadly Choices, especially page 35."

Oh, you mean the Paul Offit whose rotavirus vaccine has made him millions, while causing intussusception in children?

Hey Crhis, you mean this guy, right?

http://prn.fm/offit-vaccine-under-review-in-france-after-baby-deaths/

Whale.to? Really?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
I hereby invoke Scopie's Law: "In any debate about science or medicine, citing whale.to as a credible source loses you the argument immediately, and gets you laughed out of the room."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
As for Paul Offitt, Rotateq was used AFTER another vaccine was withdrawn after an increased rate of intussusception. You can't even get basic facts right.

And his link about Dr Offit goes to Gary Null. Now I need a shower because I didn't recognize PRN and clicked on it. Considering that Rotarix has been OFF the market for many years, I think Null is behind the times.

Julian - Whale Toe?

Really? How about the NEWSPAPER the Fresno Bee and the investigative reporting done in search of answers?

I notice you don't mention that.

Are you that threatened by fact, that you attempt to laugh off Whale Toe even when all it does is quote the article from the source?

Hey Dawn...

Is this one better for you?

http://23on.com/the-ministry-of-health-calls-for-vigilance/

"It is up to doctors to decide “case by case” if the baby vaccine against gastroenteritis, which caused the death of two infants, is “useful” said on Wednesday 1 er April the minister of health, Marisol Touraine. “Please be careful, extremely careful, (but) not overly concerned parents today” she said on Radio Classique-LCI.

The Minister recalled that the vaccine injected “more than one million children” since its placing on the market “is the subject of very special attention, Like all vaccines, from health agencies “. “Investigations are ongoing” and “depth studies will be conducted. (…) This is a vaccine that exists at European level, so there was trade between the European health agencies “ she assured.

Two vaccines, Rotarix (GlaxoSmithKline laboratories / GSK) and RotaTeq (Sanofi Pasteur MSD), to prevent infections due to a virus causes diarrhea in babies, lead to a number “concern” [1999010 ] of serious side effects and caused two deaths, according to a balance sheet at the end of 2014 returned to the Agence française de sécurité sanitaire des produits de santé (MSNA). Prescribed to children from the age of six weeks, they are allowed in Europe and marketed in France since 2006.

"No merit to recommend the widespread use of the vaccine"

The technical committee of pharmacovigilance, which analyzed the national and international follow-up data on these oral vaccines “questioned the appropriateness of recommending (are) widespread in France” in a report dated February 2015 and transmitted to the General Directorate of Health and the National Authority for Health.

This vaccination for the prevention of gastroenteritis caused by rotavirus in infants under 6 months was recommended in November 2013 by the High Council for Public Health. The latter “scheduled to be reviewed in the coming days its recommendations” about this, said Tuesday the MSNA.

A letter was sent Tuesday to 160 000 health professionals to educate families about the signs (abdominal pain, repeated and unusual crying child, vomiting, blood in stools, abdominal bloating and / or high fever) occurring in the months after vaccination, to consult promptly because early treatment helps cure the baby, according to the MSNA."

At least France is beginning to get it.

How about this one, Dawn?

http://www.thelocal.fr/20150401/two-babies-die-in-france-after-vaccinat…

"Health authorities in France are reviewing whether a common vaccine to prevent stomach illnesses should be given to babies, after it emerged this week that two newborns died following the inoculations.

A report has been submitted to France’s Directorate General of Health that raises a number of concerns about adverse effects after the vaccination for gastroenteritis, which is given to newborns.

It comes after the national drugs agency MSNA reported that two babies had died following the vaccination back in 2012 and 2014, revealed on Tuesday by French newspaper La Canard Enchaîné.

According to the report the babies died of an “intussusception” – a serious intestinal condition that sees one portion of the bowel slide into another.

It added that the vaccines Rotarix and RotaTeq, used to prevent infections in babies, have caused a number of worrying side effects, including the two deaths.

The two vaccinations, which are given orally, have been administered to babies since May 2006 and January 2007 respectively.

Since then 508 confirmed reports of adverse effects have been made, including 201 that were logged as “serious”.

The authors of the report from the Technical Committee of “Pharmacovigilance” have questioned whether all babies need to receive the vaccination.

Health authorities are expected to review the findings of the report in the coming days."

s.s.: "Oh, you mean the Paul Offit whose rotavirus vaccine has made him millions, while causing intussusception in children?"

So what part of "when you comment next you need to bring up PubMed indexed studies that are less than twenty years old from reputable qualified researchers" did you fail to understand? You must have severe reading comprehension issues. He had nothing to do with the first rotavirus vaccine.

Plus, news articles are not PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers. So your French connection is not adequate, since it is just pure speculation.

No, Chris. There is no speculation about Offit's concoction (as well as the other one) causing intussusception.

That is a fact. The French connection comes in April of this year. Rotateq and Rotarix are causally linked to intussusception.

I'm sorry, it ruined your beautiful hypothesis.

And the French are not the only ones to have found this link.

They're just the first ones to do anything about it.

From 2014:

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/54066619/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/…

"Infants who receive the rotavirus vaccine, which protects against a severe diarrheal disease, may have a very small risk of developing a serious intestinal disorder called intussusception, a new study finds...."

"He (Offit) had nothing to do with the first rotavirus vaccine."

You're right. He didn't. The first rotavirus vaccine was called RotaShield. It caused intussusception issues as well.

"A previous version of the rotavirus vaccine, called RotaShield, was withdrawn from the market in 1999 after it was linked with an increased risk of intussusception (about one to two cases per 10,000 people vaccinated)...."

"...The researchers found that during the three weeks after vaccination, the RotaTeq vaccine was linked with about 15 extra cases of intussusception per 1 million vaccinated infants, or one case per 65,000 doses given, the study found...."

Yeah, that's your boy's vaccine, Chris.

One extra case in 65,000 doses?

That's your problem? Wow, you have a drastically difference sense of what constitutes a real problem than the rest of humanity.

You also are aware that Offit has had nothing to do with the vaccine once the patent was sold, right?

He sure took the cash they offered him for it, didn't he?

And now kids are injured and/or dying from it.

So tell me about the purity of his science,and his claims of vaccine safety, again?

Pretty please?

From 2014:

h[]tp://www.nbcnews.com/id/54066619/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/rotavir…

Your difficulties with finding original sources are rather amusing. Did it ever occur to you to read the actual paper?

I'm sorry.

Did they lie?

And how many children suffer and die from Rotavirus every year & how many have been saved by the vaccine (last I saw was something like 500,000 children per year are alive because of the vaccine) vs. one extra case of interssusception per 65,000 doses?

Again, your concept of "safety" seems to be far outside the norm.

And Offit was just one of several researchers involved - and his payment was in recognition of decades worth of work on the vaccine itself.

HAHAHAHAHHA.

And how many of those deaths happened in countries outside the undeveloped world?

Estimates have put annual US infant deaths prior to this vaccine at the horrifying amount of... 20.

More US children experience injury/death from this vaccine than from the disease itself.

"Yih said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reviewed the latest research and determined that the benefits of the rotavirus vaccine still outweigh the risks. A 2011 study found the rotavirus vaccine prevented 65,000 U.S. children from being hospitalized with rotavirus since 2006."

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/rotavirus/unprotected-story.htm

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/rotavirus/vac-faqs.htm

Though I'm sure you don't care about the actual science, since you seem to be part of the tin-foil hat brigade....

And let's see - 65,000 cases per year prevented in the US, which would have resulted in tens of millions of dollars (or more) paid in hospitalization costs....certainly appears that prevention is much cheaper than paying to care for all of those sick kids.

...and put 15 in the hospital with intussusception.

Which can be treated merely by keeping infants hydrated.

But wait SS - I thought anti-vaxers believed that vaccines aren't tracked for safety, yet you link to information that shows, definitely, that they are....how do you reconcile that?

What's the matter, Lawrence?

Are the facts once again upsetting a beautiful hypothesis? Getting in the way of your "pure" science?

Offit is not a purveyor of that. Those who know fact, know this.

What's the matter, Lawrence?

Are the facts once again upsetting a beautiful hypothesis? Getting in the way of your "pure" science?

Offit is not a purveyor of that. Those who know fact, know this.

I’m sorry.

Did they lie?

Do you think barfing up news blurbs from the popular press – and you're apparently so clue-impaired that you have trouble finding the originals of those on your own – are an adequate substitute for actually understanding what you're attempting to talk about?

It doesn't seem to be working out so well, given embarrassments such as this.

No, Chris. There is no speculation about Offit’s concoction (as well as the other one) causing intussusception.

That is a fact.

Oh look, the CDC already ran the numbers, and even if that intussusception risk is real, rotavirus vaccines prevent 70 times more deaths than they cause and prevent 1000 times as many hospitalizations than they cause. It's almost like you forgot that rotavirus is dangerous and the CDC takes it's job seriously.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22929172

I make no apologies for reading the news, N.

How many articles have I cited here?

If you find that they've misquoted or misrepresented the facts of the studies they speak of, then please, enlighten me.

The CDC recognizes and publicizes recognition of the link between rotavirus vaccine and intussusception. The French government has actually gone an extra step to investigate whether this risk to their infants is worth the small benefit the vaccine gives.

Offit is not the dispassionate voice of Science and reason in this debate. He's made millions from the vaccine industry.

Well, J. One has to wonder if the assumptions made in this study, performed in 2013, use the updated information we have about rotavirus vaccine obtained from the studies performed in 2014.

Well, J. One has to wonder if the assumptions made in this study from 2013, use the updated information we have about rotavirus vaccine obtained in the studies mentioned in the news from 2014 (that I previously cited).

I make no apologies for reading the news, N.

Copying and pasting stuff from the Flying Dolphin isn't even "reading the news." You had go scurrying off to G—le after the fact.

If you find that they’ve misquoted or misrepresented the facts of the studies they speak of, then please, enlighten me.

What did "they" tell you about the methodology employed? What does this imply? Did "they" get around to it?

That goddamned news media. They keep giving... INFORMATION to the great unwashed!

What..the...hell. LOL.

Get over yourself.

In other words, you can't disprove a single claim in the sources I've posted.

In other words, you can’t disprove a single claim in the sources I’ve posted.

You don't understand what the claim is.

Sure do.

A causal link between rotavirus vaccine and intussusception, one proven enough that the CDC recognizes it and the French government has reconsidered use of it in their population, after weighing its risks vs. its benefits.

Of course, I figured it out for myself that Offit is not the dispassionate voice of Reason and Science (being financially linked TO the vaccine industry and inventor of the vaccine that has injured/killed recipients).

But he has made lotsa additional money from his books pushing his spiel to Believers like you guys! Yay for him!

Sure do.

A causal link between rotavirus vaccine and intussusception

You lose.

one proven enough

Twice.

that the CDC recognizes it

Three times.

"Some, but not all, studies suggest that RotaTeq and Rotarix vaccines may possibly cause a small increase in the risk of intussusception. It is possible that an estimated 1 to 3 U.S. infants out of 100,000 might develop intussusception within 7 days of getting their first dose of rotavirus vaccine. That means 40 to 120 vaccinated U.S. infants might develop intussusception each year."

The fact that this bounced right off your head further demonstrates that you don't have the mental tools necessary to understand this statement:

The primary analysis used a self-controlled risk-interval design that included only vaccinated children.

More specifically, this one:

For the offset term, we used age-specific background rates extracted by Tate et al.[25] from the U.S. hospital-discharge data of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) for 11 years during which no rotavirus vaccine was used....

"The fact that this bounced right off your head further demonstrates that you don’t have the mental tools necessary to understand this statement...."

The fact that THIS was a 2014 "letter to the editor" written by French researchers, is rather trumped by the April 2015 decision by the French government to begin weighing the risks vs. the benefits of the rotavirus vaccine, rather than just routinely vaccinating everybody as status quo.

The fact that THIS was a 2014 “letter to the editor” written by French researchers, is rather trumped by the April 2015 decision by the French government to begin weighing the risks vs. the benefits of the rotavirus vaccine, rather than just routinely vaccinating everybody as status quo.

No, you're simply too dense to understand it, either the actual point or the fact that it also contradicts the bonus error that you just added.

I'm so sorry, N.

It's always so awkward when reality steps on your "pure" science, isn't it?

LOL.

It’s always so awkward when reality steps on your “pure” science, isn’t it?

Project much? The French government's cost-effectiveness experiment has nothing to do with your demonstration that you have no understanding whatever of the paper that you very likely haven't even managed to find on your own yet.

^ "LOL," indeed.

@s.s. Aside from the fact that I had a great-aunt who died as in infant from Rotavirus...

I don't remember anyone ever claiming that vaccines of any type carry absolutely no risk, ever. Every time my children received a vaccine, I was given an information sheet about it. And doesn't the fact that governments and pharmaceutical companies continue doing safety studies indicate that they actually do care about safety? If they just wanted to laugh all the way to the bank, stepping over dead bodies as they went and high-fiving each other about how they've fooled the world, wouldn't they, I dunno, not continue spending money to test products? Wouldn't they especially not spend the money to recall said products if there was a problem?

Also, your posts kind of bring to mind a conversation I recently had with my ten-year-old about a friend of hers at school. This friend brought in a page from one of the larger local papers here, which had a story about a ghost in a local hospital. Yes...a *ghost*. The friend was eager to go to the hospital and spend a night there, in order to see said ghost.

When my daughter told her that ghosts weren't real, she rolled her eyes and said, "Of course it's real. It's in the newspaper."

@janerella 108 Far Cry 3 is the best game ever!!! (Well, we haven't played 4 yet [we're getting it this week]...but FC3 is amazing, the most fun game we've ever played.)

Actually even the wingnut brigade has its lieutenants who realize that they lose on the vaccine safety issue, whihc is part of the reason they are going off onto the "medical freedom" angle....because they know that the RFK/AJW pseudoscience rots. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=510079625924&set=gm.16140490255…

Dorothy:

"I don't remember anyone ever claiming that vaccines of any type carry absolutely no risk, ever."

Well, since the title of this blog is "No, vaccines almost certainly did not kill Elijah Daniel French", yeah, someone DID kind of claim just exactly that, didn't they?

As well as erroneously claiming that there's never been ANY link suspected between SIDS and vaccines, by anyone, ever (wrong again, as I pointed out).

Sometimes "that risk" you mention translates into "reality".

“I don’t remember anyone ever claiming that vaccines of any type carry absolutely no risk, ever.”

Well, since the title of this blog is “No, vaccines almost certainly did not kill Elijah Daniel French”, yeah, someone DID kind of claim just exactly that, didn’t they?

No, they didn't make that claim. There is a major difference between "this particular case" and "every case". However, the pro-vpd and quack-med crowds insist that a single anecdote is conclusive, global proof of whatever nonsense they're peddling, so one can hardly expect reality and honesty to be a part of s,s,'s repertoire, can one.

s.s.: "Sometimes “that risk” you mention translates into “reality”."

Except, residents of Htrae like yourself have no concept of reality, or reading comprehension.

As well as erroneously claiming that there’s never been ANY link suspected between SIDS and vaccines, by anyone, ever (wrong again, as I pointed out).

And you suddenly arrived at this reading of the post how, exactly?

“I don’t remember anyone ever claiming that vaccines of any type carry absolutely no risk, ever.”

Well, since the title of this blog is “No, vaccines almost certainly did not kill Elijah Daniel French”, yeah, someone DID kind of claim just exactly that, didn’t they?

One of these things is not the same as the other.

Well, since the title of this blog is “No, vaccines almost certainly did not kill Elijah Daniel French”, yeah, someone DID kind of claim just exactly that, didn’t they?

...you're joking, right?

I'd ask if your ability to properly read and interpret text is really that bad, but considering that you posted an "article" above that looks like it was run through Babelfish three or four times and expected us to understand that, perhaps I don't have to.

I guess in your world, "I didn't steal that car," is equivalent to "No cars ever get stolen."

s.s. you have nothing.
What is being said is that the rotavirus vaccines might cause intussusception, not that it does. There is a difference between "causes" and "may cause". Come back when you have something harder.

Yeah?

"respectful insolence"

https://www.federalregister.gov/regulations/0906-AB00/vaccine-injury-ta…

Tell it to the government, Julian.

Yeah?

“respectful insolence”

https://www.federalregister.gov/regulations/0906-AB00/vaccine-injury-ta…

Tell it to the government, Julian.

Here, Julian. For you:

https://www.federalregister.gov/regulations/0906-AB00/vaccine-injury-ta…

That was for Rotashield, o ignorant one. Paul Offit co-created RotaTeq, a different vaccine.
From Wikipedia:

Premarketing studies found that RotaTeq was effective and safe, with an incidence of adverse events comparable to placebo.

RotaTeq has not been implicated in intussusception. Incidentally, the table has been revised and table injuries removed when new research has exonerated the vaccines.

Quit lying, Julian. Both rotavirus vaccines have been implicated in the intussusception problem.

The Vaccine Injury Table was updated in Fall of 2014. RotaShield hasn't been in use since the 1990s.

Rotarix and RotaTeq are the rotavirus vaccines currently in use, as I've cited again and again. They are the latest vaccines causing the intussusception problems.

You're making yourself look stupid now.

"From Wikipedia:

Premarketing studies found that RotaTeq was effective and safe, with an incidence of adverse events comparable to placebo."

Really. You want to dismiss my sources, and then you cite "premarketing studies" mentioned in WIkipedia?

What a joke.

Your boy Offit has made millions from a vaccine that causes infant injury, while making millions pushing books about the "stupidity" of anti-vaxxers and the "safety" of vaccination.

And you're eating it up with a spoon, aren't you.

"...Profitability of vaccines is, however, open to much discussion. Offit himself is best known for his work in the 1980s that led to the development of a rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq®, licensed to Merck in 1992 by CHOP and The Wistar Institute. In 2008, CHOP sold their worldwide rights to royalties from the vaccine for $182 million. Offit’s personal or laboratory share has never been disclosed publicly, but typical intellectual property agreements in academic research allow for the inventors to share in up to 25% of institutional income..."

From the document s.s. linked to:

Because of this, the final rule limited the Table injury of intussusception to live, oral, rhesus-based rotavirus vaccines administered on or before the effective date of the final rule (August 26, 2002). Individuals who sought compensation for injuries related to such a vaccine administered after the effective date of the final rule were not entitled to the presumption of a Table injury for intussusception, but such individuals could still file claims under the Table's general category for rotavirus vaccines.

In other words, Rotashield, not RotaTeq, was implicated in intussusception.

The prelicensure clinical trials for RotaTeq examined 70,000 infants, and did not identify an increased risk of intussusception in the 1-42 days post immunization.

RotaTeq does not increase the rate of intussusception.

There was no increase from the expected cases after dose two of RotaTeq, and actually a decrease from expected cases after dose three.

s.s. you are wrong that I was lying and wrong that I was making myself look stupid. I'm guessing you didn't even read what you linked to, you just linked to it believing (incorrectly) that it supported you. You're the one looking stupid.

Lying again.

You're trying to cite an earlier proclamation (from 2013), instead of the one I listed from fall of 2014.

You're a liar. Plain and simple.

"This final rule adds intussusception to the Vaccine Injury Table under the category of rotavirus vaccines. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program allows a family of a child, a person, or their estate to receive monetary compensation if they experience a vaccine-related injury or death after receiving a covered vaccine. Currently, no adverse event is listed on the Vaccine Injury Table for rotavirus vaccines. However, recent data point to a small risk of intussusception, and the rule amends the Vaccine Injury Table to provide for this adverse event."

Vaccines. Rotavirus vaccines. Any rotavirus vaccine currently in use.

s.s., using the link that you supplied, and the link contained on the linked page, I found the Federal Register entry about the proposed and publicly discussed change to the VCIP injury table. I read it. Julian is correct.
Perhaps you would like to apologize to him.

s.s. I clicked on your link.
I told the truth.
Find a fire and die in it.

Julian is correct about what, Bill?

Please give me the direct link so I view it for myself. I'd like to see the date.

I hope we're not talking about information from 2011:

"A 2011 post-marketing study of RotaTeq published in “Vaccine,” from the Australian National Immunization Program, suggests an association between RotaTeq and intussusception. Approximately 295,000 doses of RotaTeq were given in two states. In 1-3 month old infants, the expected number of intussusception cases was exceeded for the 1-7 and 1-21 day periods following the first dose of RotaTeq. In the 1-7 days following the first dose, three cases were found, compared to an expected 0.57 cases (relative risk of 5.26 [confidence interval (CI), 1.1-15.4]). (Relative risk is the ratio of the chance of a disease developing among members of a population exposed to a factor compared with a similar population not exposed to the factor.) [Confidence Intervals are a measure of estimation that represents the possible range of values in a population estimated from a given sample drawn from that population (in this case ranging from a relative risk value of 1.1 to 15.4)]."

https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/07/24/2013-17786/national…

Yes, Lawnrence?

Any questions, please see post #190.

s.s., #193:

Julian is correct about what, Bill?
Please give me the direct link so I view it for myself. I’d like to see the date.

As I said, it's your link from your #181, #182, and #183 For example, #181, quoted in full:

Yeah?
“respectful insolence”
https://www.federalregister.gov/regulations/0906-AB00/vaccine-injury-ta…

Tell it to the government, Julian.

#182 is identical to #181. #183 differs just a little:

Here, Julian. For you:
[same URL, elided to save Orac from needing to approve an abundance of links]

If you claim to need to see the date now, you thereby admit that your original multiposting was something you didn't check ahead of time. In turn, that means you owe us all, especially Julian and Orac, an apology for firing blind and wasting our time..

My multiposting came from not entering my e-mail address correctly, Bill. It kept sending my posts to "awaiting moderation". For the sake of keeping the conversation going I reposted with the correct e-mail information.

I make no apologies to people who refuse the reality of current scientific discovery, while claiming to be scientifically superior to the anti-vax crowd. All too willing to blindly follow a scientific "acolyte" instead of the facts in front of them.

" make no apologies to people who refuse the reality of current scientific discovery"

Oh, the irony.

s.s.:

I make no apologies to people who refuse the reality of current scientific discovery, while claiming to be scientifically superior to the anti-vax crowd. All too willing to blindly follow a scientific “acolyte” instead of the facts in front of them.

No one is asking you to apologize to yourself, or any of the other pro-VPD/antivax crowd whom you describe. You falsely called Julian a liar (your #189:"You’re a liar. Plain and simple."). That false accusation is what deserves an apology to Julian from you. An apology is needed, of course, only if you wish to consider yourself an honorable person.
Proper protocol for a screwup like you claim with your email addy is to acknowledge it and apologize in the first available opportunity, rather than making excuses for it later.

s.s., #189:

The Vaccine Injury Table was updated in Fall of 2014.

Do you have a reference for that update? The update you gave the URL for was proposed in fall, 2014, possibly to be effective (if approved after public comment) in July 2015.
Or are you spouting off about that which you know naught of?

Unless s.s. is psychic, no final rules have been released, per his very own link.

I make no apologies to people who refuse the reality of current scientific discovery, while claiming to be scientifically superior to the anti-vax crowd. All too willing to blindly follow a scientific “acolyte” instead of the facts in front of them.

Speaking of things put right in front of people, you seem to be ignoring the glaring one that was pointed out in #156.

I'm sure you'll have no problem working from the assumed RR for comparison with the signal reported in the NEJM paper once you find it.

This latter item would also provide you with the opportunity to explain why or why not the stability of the background offset in the modeling is relevant.

The pharma shill gambit is highly fun and all (I say dryly) but I wonder if it's ever occured to s.s. that people other than Offit study and test rotavirus vaccines. It couldn't possibly be that they think that if Offit falls, so do the rest of the house of cards?

Unless s.s. is psychic, no final rules have been released, per his very own link.

It scarcely matters, as the only thing demonstrated is that the VICP's response to marginal signals is to err on the side of caution and not make people demonstrate causation in fact.

What a Table amendment most certainly does not show is that HHS has stated that there is causation; rather, there is a possibility of causation.

@Narad - that is correct. Adding Table Injuries merely means that there is biologically-plausibility that an effect could have been caused by the vaccine, not that it did...another way for the NVICP to be plaintiff-friendly and easier to use than Civil Court.

Adding Table Injuries merely means that there is biologically-plausibility that an effect could have been caused by the vaccine, not that it did…

No, it's stronger than that; biological plausibility is an element of demonstrating causation in fact. An addition indicates that it's de facto plausible enough at the moment to simply grant the presumption of causation.

Again, an abundance of caution that favors claimants.

"No one is asking you to apologize to yourself, or any of the other pro-VPD/antivax crowd whom you describe. You falsely called Julian a liar (your #189:”You’re a liar. Plain and simple.”). That false accusation is what deserves an apology to Julian from you. An apology is needed, of course, only if you wish to consider yourself an honorable person."

Julian - "RotaTeq has not been implicated in intussusception. Incidentally, the table has been revised and table injuries removed when new research has exonerated the vaccines."

False. New research has NOT exonerated Rotateq. It remains under suspicion for its link to intussusception. The CDC recognizes and publicizes this fact. The French government recognizes this.

Julian - "That was for Rotashield, o ignorant one. Paul Offit co-created RotaTeq, a different vaccine.
From Wikipedia:

Premarketing studies found that RotaTeq was effective and safe, with an incidence of adverse events comparable to placebo.

RotaTeq has not been implicated in intussusception. Incidentally, the table has been revised and table injuries removed when new research has exonerated the vaccines."

False. Julian chooses to cite YEARS-old PREmarketing studies listed in Wikipedia, to counter my argument with the latest information available regarding this vaccine.

Julian - "RotaTeq does not increase the rate of intussusception."

False. A definite statment made by Julian that flies in the face of the latest information available regarding Rotateq and Rotarix.

I will not apologize for calling a spade a spade. Julian deliberately tried to mislead by citing old, unreliable sources and repeating the same lies over and over.

New research has NOT exonerated Rotateq. It remains under suspicion for its link to intussusception.

I had a look at the sources. All they say is that RotaTeq MIGHT increase the risk of intussusception, not that it does.
The fact that you can't understand that "may cause an increased risk of X" is not the same as "actually causes an increased risk of X" doesn't make me a liar.

“RotaTeq does not increase the rate of intussusception.”

That statement from you says it all, doesn't it, Julian.

The fact that you think it makes me a liar also says it all.

The fact that you've tried to discount my assertions and my sources by using old, outdated information as "proof" of Rotateq's "safety" and your public declaration of my "ignorance" in the matter makes me call you a liar.

@s.s. - but your links didn't say what you said they did....no formal decision has been announced.

How about your OWN sources, s.s.
From http://www.nbcnews.com/id/54066619/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/…

Infants who receive the rotavirus vaccine, which protects against a severe diarrheal disease, may have a very small risk of developing a serious intestinal disorder called intussusception.

Operative word MAY. What you don't seem to realise is that treatments have been linked to side effects, only for later research to confirm that it was sheer coincidence.
As for those links to the french stories, did you see the date they was published? April 1.

Show me your evidence that any recent research has confirmed intussusception after rotavirus vaccination is "sheer coincidence".

The CDC has publicized a suspected causal link. That is on their informational site even as we speak. The French story thing is from April of this year.

This is not the old misinfornation that you like to post. This is current.

s.s.
<blockquote.Show me your evidence that any recent research has confirmed intussusception after rotavirus vaccination is “sheer coincidence”.
That's not how it works. In science, you can't prove a negative. You have to prove that this is more than just coincidence.

The French story thing is from April of this year.

April 1st. April Fool's Day. A lot of newspapers publish false stories on April 1st. That's why I'd take it with a pinch of salt.

LOL.

Okay, I think I understand what I'm dealing with in you, Julian.

No more from me. I made the point I meant to make. You obviously are not about facts or proof.

But everyone make sure you continue to read your Paul Offit. He obviously needs the cash and is unmistakably the One True Voice of vaccination "truth" and "reason."

Give to the cause!

A few years ago, the Johannesburg daily I sometimes read had an April Fool's story about a prisoner who had escaped from custody. Said prisoner had just been recaptured after a lengthy period as a fugitive. A lot of people fell for it because it sounded plausible. I now treat every story I read on April 1 as a possible joke.

You obviously are not about facts or proof.

No, just not about the type of evidence that you consider proof.

@s.s. - you are aware that Dr. Offit donates all of the profits from his books to both autism & vaccine research, right?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2015/06/09/vaccine-kicked-rotavi…

Lawence...

"...The first vaccine, RotaTeq by Merck , was introduced in 2006, followed by Rotarix by GlaxoSmithKline in 2008, so there were not exactly major changes to sanitation or a sudden improvement in medical care during that time of the vaccines’ introduction. In fact, the decline in rotavirus cases may be underestimated because so few of the gastrointestinal hospitalizations included testing for it, meaning many cases were likely missed...."

No, the FIRST vaccine was RotaShield, and it had to be withdrawn from the market in the 90s because of SEVERE intussusception problems.

She doesn't mention that though, does she.

"Severe" problems?

If I recall correctly, it was over 1 more case per 10,000 doses that caused the recall.

And guess what, the system worked - yet anti-vaxers claim that the FDA / CDC always bend to the will of the companies.

You really are a broken record, aren't you?

That's the fun of being an "alternative" person - you just make claims that sound plausible then plug your ears when people explain facts to you... ;-)

Funnily enough, I often bring up the RotaShield vaccine as an example of how a) post-marketing surveillance can identify even extremely rare and non-obvious side effects, and b) pharmaceutical companies are not going to knowingly market a product that can harm people and lead to them getting their @$$es sued off (RotaShield was withdrawn by the manufacturer, in spite of the fact that it saved far more lives than it endangered in developing nations.)

Yes Sarah, an example of how post-vaccine surveillance did find a very small effect in a large population....funny, because even all this time, no studies have been able to suss out a connection between autism and any vaccine (or all of them).

Julian – “RotaTeq does not increase the rate of intussusception.”

False. A definite statment made by Julian that flies in the face of the latest information available regarding Rotateq and Rotarix.

I will not apologize for calling a spade a spade. Julian deliberately tried to mislead by citing old, unreliable sources and repeating the same lies over and over.

Perhaps this might be of interest: "Among US infants aged 4 to 34 weeks who received [Rotateq], the risk of intussusception was not increased compared with infants who did not receive the rotavirus vaccine." [JAMA. 2012;307(6):598-604.]

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1104957

@brian

So s.s was lying the entire time. Color me surprised

But then again, it speaks volumes towards the intelligence and morality of s.s.

No more from me. I made the point I meant to make

The flounce did not last long.

It seems obvious to me the vaccines and the Tylenol, both of which are highly toxic and should never be given to children, caused this child's death.

I agree that vaccines don't cause SIDS or SBS, but deaths of infants are often conveniently MISDIAGNOSED as SIDS or SBS.

As far as I am concerned, it is not surprising that some babies die as a result of vaccination, but surprising that so many of them survive the systematic and repeated poisoning in accordance with the government-recommended vaccine child poisoning schedule.

Oh, look it is Erwin Alber, the worst person in the world. He also thinks a badly made up fake graph is real.

Not the brightest bulb, so we can ignore him.

ERRWYN! How White of you pop by.

It seems obvious to me the vaccines and the Tylenol, both of which are highly toxic and should never be given to children, caused this child’s death.

Once upon a time it was obvious to people that witchcraft was the cause of tragedies, and thousands if not millions of innocent people were put to death for it.
Citation needed for your claims of toxicity. But I won't hold my breath.

It seems obvious to me
The Argumentum ad Evidentiam-Erwinī-Alberī?

Quoth Vox Day: Vaccines are killing babies! Retorts Orac: Vox's arguments are killing neurons!

oracknows — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 02:00:27 +0000

Quoth Vox Day: Vaccines are killing babies! Retorts Orac: Vox's arguments are killing neurons!

Remember Vox Day?

Newer converts to the glory that is Orac (or at least to the ego that is Orac) might not know who Vox is because it's been a while since I've discussed his antiscience attitudes. By and large, this is probably a good thing, given that Vox denies evolution, has been antivaccine from way back, and apparently thinks nothing of suggesting that the U.S. emulate Hitler's methods of ejecting Jews from Germany to take care of our illegal immigrant problem. Truly, Vox is an example of crank magnetism at work. Particularly amusing is the way that he trumpets his membership in Mensa and then proceeds immediately to demonstrate that high IQ doesn't protect against belief in pseudoscience. Of course, what's even more amusing is that Vox is an example, every bit as much as Jenny McCarthy, of the arrogance of ignorance.

And—wouldn't you know?—he's done it again.

I'm referring to an article by Vox that several of you have sent me. It's appeared in WorldNetDaily and is entitled Sudden Infant Vaccine Death. Even more ominously, it's got a blurb that says, "Exclusive: Vox Day pinpoints age when immunization shots are most dangerous." Yes, Vox tries to prove that vaccines cause sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and fails miserably.

Upon reading Vox's article, all I can say is...wow. It's been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time since I've seen such a concentrated mass of burning stupid in such a small volume of verbiage. Truly, Vox has a talent for inundating his ideological opponents with bile mixed with napalm-grade burning idiocy. Anyone who knows anything about vaccines will come away from this article fearing that he has lost many, many neurons. Orac, having delved into such nonsense over the last seven years, has neurons made of tougher stuff, but even they were hard-pressed to fight the intelligence-sapping power of Vox's ignorance. I'll show you what I mean, first by showing you his attitude, which is, as typical, pure antiscience:

Vaccine advocates – although propagandists would be a more accurate term – often correctly claim that there is no scientific evidence proving that vaccines have ever killed anyone or caused autism. Therefore, they claim vaccines can be considered the cause of nothing but a cure for cancer, an end to war and the elimination of all human disease except that caused by dirty, unvaccinated children who are homeschooled by religious bigots. To even consider the mere possibility of questioning the intrinsic and perfect goodness of vaccines, any vaccine given for any reason, is to be not only anti-science, but personally responsible for murdering anyone who died of a disease that would have been prevented by vaccination.

I lost track of the number of straw men set on fire at the part of vaccines being and "end to war." I realize Vox is being sarcastic; so I consider it only appropriate to answer sarcasm with sarcasm. In fact, I consider the nature of his sarcasm to be very revealing. He intentionally misinterprets science-based assessments of vaccine efficacy and utility, painting advocates of science-based medicine (SBM) defending vaccines as anti-religious zealots who believe that vaccines are the solution to all of humanity's problems. Actually, it's not exactly subtle that Vox tries to paint his opponents as simultaneously anti-religion but with a religious fervor, apparently in which vaccines replace God as the object of worship. In doing this, Vox tries to portray himself as not only being pro-science, but in actuality the true representative of science.

He ain't.

One amusing aspect of this article that I'll touch on briefly is that Vox appears to be really, really perturbed about the Jenny McCarthy Body Count website. He really seems peeved that anyone would say such nasty things about Jenny McCarthy. Never mind that the site, which is, by the way, excellent, is very clear about what it is doing and how it is making estimates. Also never mind that, contrary to what Vox says, namely that the website claims that Jenny McCarthy is responsible for all the deaths listed on the site, the Jenny McCarthy Body Count site is very careful not to say that. In fact, what the JMBC site says in response to a question asking whether Jenny McCarthy is directly responsible for every vaccine-preventable illness and death listed, "No." Rather, the claim is that, by promoting antivaccine views, Jenny McCarthy is arguably responsible for some of these illnesses, a far less radical claim.

Score another straw man for Vox.

Let's get to the heart of Vox's accusation against "vaccine propagandists." Once again, Vox demonstrates his utter lack of understanding of clinical research ethics by ranting against the current state of evidence regarding vaccine safety because it isn't the result of randomized clinical trials looking at vaccinated versus unvaccinated children. It's a recurrent theme that pops up again and again in his article and on his blog; so I'll quote it:

The reason that the vaccine propagandist claim is correct is because there is also no scientific evidence that vaccines have not killed anyone or caused autism, because there is absolutely no valid scientific evidence on the matter. Most of the “science” in the studies that are widely cited by those who insist that vaccines are safe are simply statistical reviews, which involve as much use of actual science as polling former Playboy models. In the very few cases where an actual scientific experiment has been performed, the populations compared have not been between a vaccinated group and an unvaccinated control group, but rather two different groups that are both vaccinated to varying degrees.

The vaccine propagandists defend the failure of scientists to gather scientific evidence by begging the question. They insist that it would be unethical to permit a control group of children to go without vaccination, due to their assumption that the risks of vaccination are significantly outweighed by the dangers of the diseases vaccinated against. Thus, they perpetuate ignorance on the actual safety or danger of the current U.S. vaccine schedule.

Notice how Vox denigrates large scale epidemiological studies that have failed to find even a whiff of a hint of a correlation between vaccines and autism or any of the other conditions that Vox is about to blame on them, in this case SIDS. To him they're dismissed as "statistical reviews" and disparagingly compared to polling former Playboy models, thus combining anti-science with typical Vox Day misogyny in a single sentence. Vox needs a lesson in clinical trial ethics. Again. Sadly, it will probably fall on the proverbial deaf ears, but I'll give it a try again, starting with two words: Clinical equipoise.

Stated briefly, for purposes of clinical trials, clinical equipoise demands that there be a state of genuine scientific uncertainty in the medical community over which of the drugs or treatments being tested is more efficacious and safer or whether a drug being tested with placebo is better or worse than doing nothing. Without that genuine scientific uncertainty over which option being tested in a clinical trial is better (or at least less harmful), the trial cannot be ethical because investigators would be knowingly assigning one group of subjects to a treatment known to be inferior, or at least strongly suspected to be. One reason (among many) why a prospective randomized, clinical trial that intentionally leaves one group unvaccinated to determine whether vaccines cause autism (or whatever condition or disease the investigator suspects to be associated with vaccines) would be completely unethical is that it egregiously violates the principle of clinical equipoise, regardless of the hand waving Vox does to try to argue that it's acceptable from an ethical standpoint. The unvaccinated group would be left unprotected against potentially life-threatening vaccine-preventable diseases, and that is completely unacceptable from an ethical perspective. Consequently, when it comes to studies of this type, we have had to rely on less rigorous trial designs to ask the question of whether vaccines cause various problems. While each individual trial of such types is less powerful and convincing than randomized clinical trials, the accumulated weight of such evidence can (and is) often enough. In the case of vaccines, it's more than enough.

Vox, for all his self-proclaimed Mensa awesomeness, seems totally unable to understand that for some questions that is the best we can do because scientific rigor sometimes conflicts with human subjects research ethics. If we know (or have good scientific reason to suspect) that one treatment is better than another, it is unethical to randomize patients to the arm that receives what is, based on what is known at the time of the trial, likely to be an inferior treatment. We know that withholding vaccines is associated with a much higher risk of unvaccinated children contracting vaccine-preventable diseases, and we do not have good scientific reason to suspect, from a plausibility standpoint or from the standpoint of existing clinical evidence, that vaccines cause autism or any of the other conditions attributed to them. Let's put it this way: We know that smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, and a whole host of ailments not from randomized clinical trials in which one group is prescribed one or two packs a day of cigarettes for 20 years and the other isn't. We figured out that tobacco smoke causes cancer from epidemiological studies. If Vox accepts that smoking causes lung cancer, then it's disingenuous of him not to accept that vaccines don't cause autism and sudden infant death syndrome because the studies that say so are epidemiological in nature.

Of course, what's really hilarious is that, to prove his point that vaccines cause SIDS, Vox combats good epidemiology with bad epidemiology. The bad epidemiology is dumpster diving in the VAERS database. The VAERS database is the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System. This is a time-"honored" technique of cranks, to dumpster dive in VAERS looking for correlations. Mark and David Geier used to do it regularly. The VAERS wasn't designed to look for correlations as what Vox is using it to look for, as it's designed only as an early warning system for reporting adverse events thought to be due to vaccines. One reason is that anyone can make entries into it, not just medical professionals, and the results are only checked in the most perfunctory way. For example, as Jim Laidler described before, it takes entering something like a claim that a vaccine turned one into The Incredible Hulk in order to get the staff there to question the entry. In another incident, Kevin Leitch reported to VAERS that a vaccine turned his daughter into Wonder Woman, and the report was accepted even with the ridiculous nature of the report and despite the fact that he was reporting from a U.K. IP address.

Truly, Vox doesn't understand the nature of the database upon which he is relying.

Worse, as I described before, the database has been corrupted by litigation, with a dramatic increase of entries linked to litigation claiming that thimerosal caused the plaintiff’s child’s autism. As for appropriate uses of the VAERS database, here’s what it says right on the Advisory Guide to the Interpretation of VAERS Data:

VAERS data are derived from a passive surveillance system and represent unverified [emphasis mine] reports of health events, both minor and serious, that occur after vaccination.

And:

While some events reported to VAERS are truly caused by vaccines, others may be related to an underlying disease or condition, to drugs being taken concurrently, or may occur by chance shortly after a vaccine was administered.

And:

Therefore, VAERS collects data on any adverse event following vaccination, be it coincidental or truly caused by a vaccine. The report of an adverse event to VAERS is not documentation that a vaccine caused the event.

In other words, VAERS reports are not evidence of causation, nor are a group of VAERS reports.

So what does Vox find in VAERS that convinces him that vaccines cause SIDS? He creates a graph purporting to show that there is a peak of VAERS reports in which death is the reported complication at age 2-3 months:

These fatal adverse events are happening to children of a very specific age. More than one-third of all reported vaccine-related deaths, nearly 40 percent, occurred between the ages of two and four months, which just happens to be precisely when the vaccine schedule calls for children to receive no less than 10 shots, including 2xRV, 2xDTaP, 2xHib, 2xPCV and 2xIPV. They may also receive an 11th shot, for Hepatitis B, as well.

From which he concludes:

One needn't be a rabid opponent of vaccines to find this death spike at 3 months to be troubling and indicative of a need to rethink the current vaccine schedule. And everyone, pro- and anti-vaccine, should be concerned about the shameless vaccine safety propaganda that is so easily shown to be false. Laws are passed and governments engage in ad campaigns to help reduce the 200 children's bicycle deaths each year, so clearly it is worthwhile to look more closely and scientifically into the issue of vaccine safety when an estimated 1,060 children are dying between 2 and 4 months of age each year from the vaccines being injected into them.

Confuse correlation and causation much, Vox? The obvious interpretation of this finding is that the reason most reported deaths occur between two and four months is because that's the peak incidence of SIDS. This has been known for decades and hasn't changed, even with changing vaccine schedules. Moreover, although Vox tries to dismiss "one study" that shows no correlation between vaccines and SIDS, in fact there are at least nine, some of which are summarized here. I'm not sure which study Vox is lambasting. I suspect it was this case-control study that actually found that the SIDS babies tended to receive fewer vaccines. From this the authors concluded:

The age distribution of SIDS cases in Germany shows a peak at the age of 3 months. This is the time when the first immunisations are given. If immunisation increased the risk of SIDS one would expect a higher immunisation rate among the SIDS cases compared to the control infants. In the GeSID the opposite was the case. More controls were immunised and the control infants started their immunisation schedule earlier. Even when the data were restricted to the 14 days prior to death/interview, there was no increase risk for SIDS from immunisation.

There are also several other such studies that find no positive relationship between vaccination and SIDS, considered more than sufficient to consider the likelihood of a link between the two to be as close to zero as science can estimate. In fact, if there is any correlation at all, it is a negative correlation, with vaccines being protective against SIDS. Vox can dismiss the studies all he wants, but he's doing so not based on science. He says he read the studies, but he has no idea why he dismisses them. If he does, certainly he can't explain what the defects in these studies (1, 2, 3) are that are so bad as to be fatal to the studies' conclusions that at the very least immunizations don't increase the risk of SIDS and at the the very most they might lower the risk. Indeed, there are even enough studies looking at the relationship between vaccines and SIDS that a meta-analysis could be done. Not surprisingly, this meta-analysis of published SIDS studies agrees and found the relative risk of SIDS in vaccinated babies to be 0.54.

Vox is just plain wrong about this (as usual).

Being wrong, of course, doesn't stop Vox. Based on his wrongness, he even proposes a breathtakingly unethical study:

So, how can the lethality of the vaccine schedule be at least partially tested without requiring an unvaccinated control group? The answer is based on the charts above. By simply dividing the vaccinated children into four groups and then shifting the entire vaccine schedule back three months, six months and one year, then observing if the two 2-4 month SIDS and VAERS death spikes either shift back in parallel with each group or disappear, we would obtain valuable information concerning the danger of the current vaccine schedule.

If the death spikes shift back in parallel with the delayed administration, we would be able to conclude that the vaccines being given are simply too lethal when combined according to the current schedule. If the death spikes subside with increased age, as I suspect would be the case, we would be able to conclude that the problem stems from the combined vaccines overwhelming some of the smaller bodies and weaker constitutions of the children between two and four months. If this is the case, simply moving the vaccine schedule back a few months, perhaps even as much as a year, would save the lives of between 1,000 and 10,000 American children every single year, to say nothing of the non-lethal adverse effects it would also mitigate, if not necessarily eliminate entirely.

Two words again: Clinical equipoise. We have not just one but several studies that are quite clear that vaccines do not cause SIDS and even suggest that vaccines are probably protective against SIDS. Contrary to Vox's brain dead attempt at dumpster diving in the VAERS database, we have no good reason any more to suspect that vaccines increase the risk of SIDS, if we ever did. On the other hand, we do know that vaccines protect children from vaccine-preventable diseases. If, as Vox suggests, we were to delay the vaccination schedule by up to a year, there would be some very predictable consequences, specifically that there would be more young children, vaccines delayed, developing diseases those vaccines are designed to prevent. Again, in his ignorance of clinical trial ethics, Vox proposes a trial in which there is no reason to suspect that any subject would benefit and many reasons to conclude that there would certainly be subjects who will be harmed. Somehow Vox's Mensa brain can't comprehend this very simple aspect of clinical trial ethics.

Vox's error would be hilarious if it weren't so sad how eager he is to demonize vaccines. He takes a look at the spike in infant deaths between the ages of 2-4 months, which has been well known as the peak incidence of SIDS for decades. He then notes that infants start to get vaccines around then, apparently ignoring or dismissing the fact that scientists asked this very same question a long time ago (whether vaccines at that time are associated with SIDS), did the studies, and found that the answer is no. Instead, he acts as though he's made a major discovery that scientists have never thought of or ignored when he looked at VAERS and found that there is a spike in reports of infant deaths between 2 and 4 months when that's something that's well known and has been for a long time. He then notes that SIDS deaths decreased after 1994 and, while mentioning what is almost certainly the actual cause of this decline, twists facts, logic, and reason to find a way to blame vaccines anyway:

The 2-4 month death spike appears consistently even if one goes all the way back to 1990, the earliest date available. The situation appears to have improved considerably, as the worst years were 1991 through 1994, so it would be informative to learn if there was a change in the vaccine schedule between 1994 and 1995. It is also interesting to note that SIDS deaths are reported to have declined from 1993 to 2004, and by a proportion similar to the decline in VAERS-reported deaths. Of course, it's also theoretically possible that the anti-SIDS sleep campaign which began in 1994 is responsible for decline in vaccine deaths, as perhaps stomach sleeping somehow exacerbates the problem of receiving a vaccine overload.

Pathetic. It was very likely that anti-SIDS sleep campaign that resulted in the decline SIDS deaths; yet Vox can't admit that simple conclusion. He still calls them vaccine deaths and wonders whether stomach sleeping worsens the effects of "vaccine overload." Hilariously, one of his own commenters points out that the spike in infant deaths between the ages of two and four months was known more than 120 years ago, with 60% of infant deaths occurring between those ages and 62% occurring between October and March, all consistent with what we know about SIDS now and consistent with what Vox is so amazed to find in the VAERS database now. Of course, back in 1889, which is when these numbers were reported, infants didn't get vaccines that young. Vox, clueless as ever, fails to see the significance of this observation and blithely dismisses it as "out of date."

Vox is easy to laugh at because he is so arrogant and utterly without self-awareness when it comes to his own weaknesses in understanding how science works. Unfortunately, he is also an excellent example of motivated reasoning, which is a term that explains how people have the tendency to use reason not so much to find the truth but to develop arguments to support ideas that they already believe. According to this principle, the smarter a person is, the better he or she is at selecting evidence and developing arguments to defend his or her beliefs, and this is one major reason why highly educated people tend to seem to be more prone to crank beliefs, such as antivaccinationism. The problem with the idea of motivated reasoning with respect to Vox Day is that, although he's a perfect example of crank magnetism, unlike what his Mensa-ness would suggest, he's just so damned bad at motivated reasoning. He tries, but his arguments are risible.

Oh, well. There are always outliers in any theoretical construct.

oracknows Tue, 06/05/2012 - 22:00

Inside the Outbreaks

mpendergrast — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:03:59 +0000

Inside the Outbreaks

Mark Pendergrast writes: To kick off this book club discussion of Inside the Outbreaks, I thought I would explain briefly how I came to write the book and then suggest some possible topics for discussion.

The origin of the book goes back to an email I got in 2004 from my old high school and college friend, Andy Vernon, who wrote that I should consider writing the history of the EIS. I emailed back to say that I was honored, but what was the EIS? I had never heard of it. I knew Andy worked on tuberculosis at the CDC, but I didn't know that he had been a state-based EIS officer from 1978 to 1980 in Oklahoma.

When he explained that EIS stood for the Epidemic Intelligence Service, I was intrigued. Was there really an outfit with a name like that? As I learned more, I realized that I had the opportunity to write the first history of an organization that has had a profound impact on the way public health is practiced not only here in the United States, but across the globe.

This book took me nearly twice as long as any previous book, even though it covers a shorter time period than my other histories. (For info on all my books, see www.markpendergrast.com.) I could not have survived on the advance from the publisher, so I am extremely grateful to the CDC Foundation and the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation for the grants that made the book possible.

The project took so long because it involved so many characters and investigations, making it a challenge to write. I considered organizing it by disease or theme, with a chapter each on polio, cholera, chronic diseases, environmental health, or violence, for instance. But such an approach would have meant jumping around in time, and readers would have lost the historical context. Instead, I wrote the book chronologically, from Alexander Langmuir's creation of the EIS in 1951 to the present. That meant that most chapters contain a smorgasbord of investigations.

Thus, for example, Chapter 5, "New Discoveries and Mysteries in the Early Sixties," begins with the 1961 hepatitis A outbreaks traced to oysters in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and to clams in Raritan Bay, New Jersey, and then to intentional urination in potato salad at the officers' mess at Cecil Field Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida. Then it shifts to hepatitis B traced to blood transfusions as well as to a New Jersey osteopath-psychiatrist who put IV drips into depressed patients to deliver tranquilizers, vitamins, and "energizers," cross-contaminating with hepatitis B by reusing the same tubing. Then the chapter jumps to salmonellosis due to raw eggs in cake mixes, which led back to chickenfeed made from contaminated fishmeal. Then I wrote about Salmonella hospital infections traced to nutritional drinks made with raw eggs. Onward from there to a remote Bolivian village to retrieve a particularly virulent plague bacillus for the Fort Detrick biological warfare scientists, followed by an apparent outbreak of lethal encephalitis among Guatemalan Mayans that stemmed from mercury fungicide on wheat seeds that the starving Indians had eaten. From there to leukemia clusters in Niles, Illinois, cholera in the Philippines, Reye syndrome in North Carolina, and finally, a section focusing on Alexander Langmuir in his prime. And that's all just one chapter!

Despite the book's disparate contents, there are narrative threads that weave throughout the book, some of which I will introduce here.

Alexander Langmuir himself provides one such thread. The founder of the Epidemic Intelligence Service was a visionary leader who put his personal stamp on the institution. "We'll get EIS officers on an epidemic as fast as we can," he said. "Throw them overboard. See if they can swim, and if they can't, throw them a life ring, pull them out and throw them in again."

The rituals and institutions that Langmuir established have proven to be remarkably hardy. The annual April conference is a case in point, a wonderful springtime introduction to Atlanta for new EIS recruits who can marvel at the amazing presentations - talk about a smorgasbord! - while being wooed and assessed (and simultaneously wooing and assessing) in this EIS version of a fraternity/sorority rush. They then return to Atlanta in the sweltering July heat for intense training, during which EIS officers make friends that often last a lifetime.

Diseases provide other narrative threads. Polio, for instance, is a major focus from the beginning, when EIS officers studied possible fly transmission, then put the EIS on the map during the 1955 Cutter Incident, when virulent live virus survived in some polio vaccines, thus paralyzing some recipients. I wrote about the 1962 decision to switch from the Salk killed injected vaccine to the Sabin oral live attenuated polio vaccine, the subsequent surveillance that revealed how children and their parents sometimes contracted polio as a result of the oral vaccine, the eventual decision to switch back to the killed vaccine in the United States, and the current pursuit of polio eradication that is tantalizingly close to success but is still frustratingly difficult.

Similarly, readers can follow threads throughout the book about malaria, Reye syndrome, Salmonella, diarrhea, smallpox, natural disasters, refugees and war, psychosomatic illnesses, problematical alternative medicines, E. coli O157:H7 and other foodborne pathogens, injuries, AIDS, Ebola, and many other health problems.

Another thread traces the evolution of more complex epidemiological methods, from simple description epi and cohort studies to case control studies, random sampling, and multivariate analysis.

Another is the impact of politics and global events on EIS investigations, from the Cold War fear of biological warfare that helped create the Epidemic Intelligence Service, to the Reagan administration's shameful neglect of AIDS, to the Bush and now Obama years. And on another level, there are the politics of the CDC and the Public Health Service. For years the CDC flew under most governmental radar, hiding out in Atlanta, but that ended with Legionnaire's disease and the national vaccination campaign against the swine flu epidemic that failed to materialize in 1976, which I covered in a chapter called "The Year of Living Dangerously." That year also introduced Ebola and Legionnaires' disease.

Unsolved mysteries provide another thread. EIS officers don't always break every case, at least not right away.

Yet another theme is the growing diversity of EIS officers. In the 1950s, most were white male physicians. Today over half are women, around a third are members of minority/ethnic groups, and a substantial number of officers arrive from other countries. Many are non-physicians.
Another thread in the book is how businesses sometimes put profits ahead of public health, as in the case of Reye syndrome and the aspirin industry or toxic shock syndrome and Procter & Gamble, which made the Rely tampon.

Other themes that thread throughout the book are: increasing microbial drug resistance to antibiotics, emerging infections, and the broadening EIS/CDC involvement in chronic diseases and behavioral factors such as smoking, drinking, suicide, and violence - and now looking at the public health impact of climate change.

Another theme that emerges throughout the book is that a disproportionate number of health problems afflict the underprivileged, the poor, the oppressed.

Yet another thread is the lesson that individuals, with their own particular interests and personalities, can make such a difference. There are many instances in which curious EIS officers or alums took on a problem and just wouldn't let it go.

In summary, let me quote from the book's epilogue, "The EIS Legacy," about the nature and importance of the EIS:

EIS alum Patrick Moore observed: "Most EIS recruits are not run-of-the-mill people. They aren't doing it to make lots of money. We really felt we were putting ourselves at risk, selflessly facing down bad diseases to help other people."

In the early years, most physicians joined the EIS to avoid the draft, but many remained in public health once they realized that they could have such a powerful impact on thousands of lives. That same realization occurred to latter-day officers such as Scott Harper, who observed: "Working as an EIS officer in public health was exciting, important, and satisfying. Whether investigating an outbreak or writing policy for vaccines, I had the opportunity to affect many more people's lives than a clinician seeing 30 people a day." Kay Kreiss recalled thinking, "This is the best job I'm ever going to have, with infinite backup and no administrative responsibility."

Scott Holmberg added: "Being dropped into an outbreak, given the authority to investigate it and do the detective work, then apply that knowledge to curbing the current outbreak and preventing future ones - there's no better work in the world. Wherever you go, everybody wants the same two things - peace and prosperity. It doesn't matter whether their lips are stretched and they are dyed blue, or whether they sit in front of a computer. They are worried about family, friends, tribe, nation."

I then went on to provide a quick summary of illustrious EIS alums and how they have influenced public health. I also wrote about EIS clones, the Field Epidemiology Training Programs around the world. And I concluded the book with these two paragraphs:

In 1951, Alexander Langmuir seized a Cold War opportunity to fund a small training program for young epidemiologists who would keep an eye out for biological warfare while responding promptly to unintentional epidemics. Today these EIS officers are the world's premier front-line disease detectives.

For an obscure government program, the Epidemic Intelligence Service has produced remarkable results. Perhaps it has done so in part by remaining relatively small, nimble, and flexible. One of the lessons of the EIS history is the impact that one person can have. Put creative, intelligent, well-trained, motivated individuals into the right environment, and the outcome can save lives and lead to vital careers. EIS officers and alums have had an impact far beyond their original numbers. Today, with global public health bedeviled by substantial threats, the life-saving work performed around the world by these shoeleather epidemiologists is more essential than ever. The EIS program and its offspring have, in short, influenced and defined how field epidemiology and public health are practiced on our planet.

So there's a somewhat scattered introduction to this book club discussion of Inside the Outbreaks. I look forward to hearing from readers and I anticipate an interesting, fruitful exchange.

Here is the only photo someone took of me in a village in Niger when I was following EIS officers there:

mpendergrast Mon, 06/21/2010 - 07:03