WHO

WHO tells us about red meat and processed meat cancer risk?

gregladen — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 08:26:53 +0000

WHO tells us about red meat and processed meat cancer risk?

See what I did there?

As you know, the UN WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer has listed Red Meat as Group 2A (probably carcinogenic to humans) and processed meat at Group 1 (causes cancer).

And everyone is upset. The most common reaction to these listings is to criticize WHO. The least common reaction to these listings is to learn what the listings are, what they mean, what they mean to you, to the meat industry, to cancer research, and all that. Here, I will try to provide some perspective on some of this.

WHO is probably more likely to list something as cancer causing

It is probably true that the WHO IARC is somewhat biased, in that they are more likely to attribute possible carcinogenic effects to things than other similar groups. There are many substances and behaviors listed by WHO as possibly or probably cancer causing that are not similarly identified by, for example, the US EPA. This does not mean that WHO IARC is more likely to be wrong. It just means that your reaction to a possible agent being listed by WHO should be to understand this bias, but not to assume you know what the bias means. If every single cancer-watching agencies was biased in one direction, we'd have a problem. If all cancer-watching agencies always drew the same exact conclusions form the disparate research, we'd have a conspiracy. If the range of cancer-watching agencies produces a reasonable range of decisions, we'd have real life.

Here is something you should keep in mind when comparing across agencies. Many US federal agencies are led and staffed by industry experts. Where do you get industry experts? From the industries these agencies regulate. Where did the industries get them? They got them from PhD schools, where they quite possibly paid for their higher education with grants from the industry and worked in labs paid for in part by those industries, while working on grants from the industry. This is likely more a thing in the US than in other countries that contribute expertise and do research. It is also true that US regulatory agencies are notably biased in the opposite direction of WHO.

US regulatory agencies will be staffed by well meaning well trained people who know a lot about how the industry works. That is a good thing. US regulatory agencies will be staffed by people who owe their careers to the industry, and are likely to have warm fuzzy feelings about the industry. That is likely to lead to some bias.

On the other hand, in other parts of the world, wooish thinking seems to permeate science and governmental agencies more easily. If you look at the research and regulations, related to EMF risks (like power lines and cell phones and such) you'll see a gradient where some areas of Europe have both evidence (from research) suggesting EMF-health risks and regulations related to this, and other areas of Europe where the evidence shows now risk, to the US where we by and large don't regulate EMF using these risks as factors. A sensible view of the research tells us that EMF does not have the alleged health risks.

The reason this is important is that WHO is an international body, so we are going to see a range of industry-fuzzy vs. woo-fuzzy fringes surrounding a hopefully larger and sensible scientifically oriented core. This is also important because of this: if every regulatory or research agency or institution in the world really were funded by the industries they study, and no other research was done by anybody, problems will arise. So go ahead and be annoyed at WHO, but also appreciate this relationship.

It is not about how bad the cancer risk is

As a substance or behavior moves from Group 3, through Group 2B and 2A, to Group 1, this does not mean that it is thought to be increasingly cancer-causing. What it means is that the certainty that the substance or behavior cases cancer, no matter how small the effect, has increased. A given agent may increase the risk of a certain kind of cancer by 50%, which sounds bad, but the original probability of cancer being caused by that agent may be tiny. So, in effect, a tiny risk has been increased to a tiny risk. According to WHO, "The classifications reflect the strength of the scientific evidence as to whether an agent causes cancer in humans but do not reflect how strong the effect is on the risk of developing cancer."

This is not about your bacon

I find it amusing that the Internet Reaction to these listings is so widespread and negative, even angry, and at the same time so poorly informed. This is amusing because we are just coming off a way over the top Bacon Worship phase.

I stopped eating bacon about four months ago. Do you want to know why? Because of all the pictures of bacon, excessive bacon, things made out of bacon, bacon being fetishized and revered like it was a god or something, on Facebook and elsewhere. I got tired of bacon. I was reminded of a friend's comment. He was raised in a Kosher household. He told me, "I don't have any food taboos, I don't keep kosher. But if I walk into a house where someone is cooking ham, I want to throw up."

(OK, I did have a BLT the other day. But it was hard.)

The point is, do think about the nature and cause of your reaction, if you are having a hissy fit about WHO and meats. Are you objecting to the WHO IARC criteria, which you've carefully studied and understand, or are you simply being sensitive about your stupid bacon fetish? Think about it.

Some food research is probably inherently wrong

I just want to throw this in. If you feed human food, especially cooked food, especially food not made of raw grains, to rats and mice, they might get sick, while a human being fed the same things won't. Why? Because humans invented cooking possibly as long as two million years ago, and have adapted to cooked foods which seem to cause nasty problems for some lab animals. And humans and their ancestors have always eaten at least some meat. And we are not rodent granivores. So, I don't know how much animal evidence is being used to change the groups for meat and processed meat, but I personally prefer to disregard rodent data on human diet. It seems to be almost always misleading. Just sayin'

IARC Groups

Just so you know, here are the IARD Groups

Group 1: The agent is carcinogenic to humans. This category is used when there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in humans. In other words, there is convincing evidence that the agent causes cancer. The evaluation is usually based on epidemiological studies showing development of cancer in exposed humans. Agents can also be classified in Group 1 based on sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals supported by strong evidence in exposed humans that the agent has effects that are important for cancer development.

Group 2 This category includes agents with a range of evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and in experimental animals. At one extreme are agents with positive but not conclusive evidence in humans. At the other extreme are agents for which evidence in humans is not available but for which there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals. There are two subcategories, indicating different levels of evidence.

Group 2A: The agent is probably carcinogenic to humans. This category is used when there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals. Limited evidence means that a positive association has been observed between exposure to the agent and cancer but that other explanations for the observations (technically termed chance, bias, or confounding) could not be ruled out.

Group 2B: The agent is possibly carcinogenic to humans. This category is used when there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and less than sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals. It may also be used when the evidence of carcinogenicity in humans does not permit a conclusion to be drawn (referred to as “inadequate” evidence) but there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals.

Group 3: The agent is not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans. This category is used most commonly when the evidence of carcinogenicity is inadequate in humans and inadequate or limited in experimental animals. Limited evidence in experimental animals means that the available information suggests a carcinogenic effect but is not conclusive.

Group 4: The agent is probably not carcinogenic to humans. This category is used when there is evidence suggesting lack of carcinogenicity in humans and in experimental animals.

gregladen Tue, 10/27/2015 - 04:26

Tags

health

cancer

meat

Processed meat

WHO

health

Does this mean I won't need a Hazmat suit to make a BLT?

http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/the-world-health-organisation-say…

I stopped eating bacon about four months ago.

For people bacon is a choice. For the pig it's a commitment.

The most common reaction to these listings is to criticize WHO. The least common reaction to these listings is to learn what the listings are, what they mean, what they mean to you, to the meat industry, to cancer research, and all that.

Indeed, but those distinctions can be made about almost any bit of science that ends up being widely discussed in the press. I have already received about a dozen emails from friends mocking this story, the scientists who did it, and the "foolishness" of basing decisions on statistics and data. Most is in jest, but three were quite serious in their complaints about "lazy researchers writing crap just for the money".

As with all things, the dose makes the poison. Eating small amounts of meat occasionally is, for most people, a reasonable thing that doesn't involve a great deal of risk. (The exceptions are people who, for specific medical or religious reasons, need to avoid meat in their diet.) A diet consisting primarily of red meat and processed meat is almost certainly not a good idea, and not just because of the increased cancer risk.

Indeed: The most common reaction to these climate science findings is to criticize climate science professionals and organizations such as the IPCC. The least common reaction to these findings is to learn what the findings are, what they mean, what they mean to you, to the fossil fuel industry, to protecting and preserving our future, and all that.

Not much difference. And as Dean points out, lots of deniers quite serious in their complaints about “lazy climate researchers writing crap just for the money”.

I heard a TV talking head yesterday (a doctor - if that matters) say that the magnitude of the risk was relatively small.

He was explaining what it meant that processed meat was in the same category as smoking.

If you eat a hot dog everyday for your entire life your risk of getting bowel cancer would rise from 5% to 6%.

The magnitude of risk from smoking is much much higher than the magnitude of risk from eating bacon or hot dogs - but the WHO puts them in the same category.

So like everything else - one has to evaluate the science in context.

Certainly I will still be eating bacon occasionally and having a hot dog occasionally. But as Eric says - moderation in everything.

It would be enlightening to do a study to find out if these observations are caused not by eating red meat/meat products, but instead caused (primarily?) by their consumption displacing the eating of fruits and vegetables -- the consumption of which are already known to reduce the incidence of colo-rectal cancer.

From my observations, most who focus on eating a meat-heavy diet also eschew eating "green things" as in, "That's not food, that's what food eats." Can't be healthy!

But such a study would have to pit those eating a fruit-and-vegetable-heavy diet against those *not* eating sufficient fruits and vegetables, yet also not eating a diet heavy in red meat/meat products -- to discern whether or not the cancers are actually a consequence of not eating lots of fruits and vegetables.

Which, of course, isn't possible...

So, until that's resolved, I'll continue to leaven my judicious red (and non-red) meat eating with plenty of fruits and vegetables. (I already forgo fast food in favor of slow food, which would be the basis of more enlightening studies.)

Are there differences between organic and non-organic meats?

Are there differences between meats that are processed traditionally and meats that are processed industrially?

I think the paleo diet includes meat, fish, fruit and vegetables.

I wonder what difference cooking the meat makes.

I know cooked meat is safer from bacteria and so on - but cooking also introduces carcinogens (I believe).

So that is three variables that could be checked out.

Organic vs non-organic.
Traditionally processed vs. commercial processing.
Raw vs. cooked.

That would be an interesting study.

But such a study would have to pit those eating a fruit-and-vegetable-heavy diet against those *not* eating sufficient fruits and vegetables, yet also not eating a diet heavy in red meat/meat products — to discern whether or not the cancers are actually a consequence of not eating lots of fruits and vegetables.
Which, of course, isn’t possible….

You couldn't do a randomized study, you're correct. A retrospective study could be done, but sussing out dietary habits like this over a lifetime would be (I suspect) more difficult than usual.

Are there differences between organic and non-organic meats?

Presumably, yes: The "organic" ones are not pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics throughout their lives.

Are there differences between meats that are processed traditionally and meats that are processed industrially?

Again, presumably yes: Traditional processing doesn't involve chemical preservatives, additives, fillers, etc.

My philosophy: If it won't rot outside the fridge within a few days, don't eat it!

The "paleo diet" fad has been debunked.

Also, studies (Rachel Carmody, Richard Wrangham; http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cooking-up-bigger-brains/) have shown that cooking makes a big difference for humans: Our large brains' need for energy requires that we cook our food in order to extract enough calories. I.e., if you ate uncooked food only, you would need to eat more than 24 hours a day to extract enough calories.

Carcinogens or no, you must cook to live...

You couldn’t do a randomized study, you’re correct. A retrospective study could be done, but sussing out dietary habits like this over a lifetime would be (I suspect) more difficult than usual.

I think the problem is more fundamental (although you make an excellent point): If your control group doesn't eat primarily fruits and vegetables, and doesn't eat meat, what then *do* they eat? (Perhaps a Japanese-like diet of starch and fish?)

Brainstorms@13:
Even more than your points: roughly, even if you have a large group of people who have been diagnosed with (say) colorectal cancer, obtaining the information on their long-term dietary habits would be very difficult (I'm guessing more difficult than usual) because the evidence would be entirely memory based, with no way to validate the information. Lots of bias comes in immediately.

"Traditional processing" does include such things as salt, brine, mustard and other spices, and smoking. To characterise these as not chemical is a major error. Just as mistaken is to denigrate "fillers and additives" as industrial. They (especially fillers) are usually considered as fibre or ash, a necessary component of a healthy diet.

You are wise in not eating something that appears not to rot when not refrigerated. These items can still be contaminated by a low level of bacterial growth regardless of preservatives and may also be partially oxidized (rancid). Still our ancestors and other animals as well as many living humans did and do quite well on food contaminated past the acceptable levels of wholesomeness dictated by the FDA. Animal digestive systems are amazing in what they can assimilate and reject for good reason.

Jockaira, yes, you are correct, using technical definitions. I was speaking more colloquially, using the connotation that "chemical" implies industrial & non-natural, and that "fillers and additives” are taken to mean similar non-natural industrial additives, chosen for things such as profit, mouth-feel, and shelf-life, rather than a traditional filler.

It's interesting that the traditional Japanese diet is heavy on pickled food and (briny) soy sauces -- and they have a notably high incidence of stomach cancer. Connection?

I'm a big proponent of teaching people about rancidity of oils and processed foods containing food oils. There is a major difference between putridity and rancidity, with most people thinking that "rancid" = "putrid". Often, rancid oils look & taste normal, but the partial oxidation renders them toxic -- they become a powerful free radical that likely is the major player in cardio-vascular disease. (Cholesterol is an innocent bystander that gets oxidized and then becomes involved in CVD, but is not a direct cause. It's the rancid oils that are to blame.)

It's hard to say which is more dangerous—the processed meats that cause cancer or the industry that spins the evidence to get you to eat more of them.

http://gigabiting.com/in-meat-we-trust-but-we-shouldnt/

That pan of bacon looks a little thin. It could do with another 500g or so for my burger

@6. RickA : "But as Eric says – moderation in everything."

As Socrates apparently said (although obviously in ancient Hellenic) "All things in moderation including moderation."

My second fave quote of his behind only his near last words to his follower Apollodorus :

Apollodorus : “O Socrates how it grieves me to see you die so undeservedly.”

Socrates : “My dear Apollodorus, would you rather see me die deservedly?”

Death by bacon and other tasty meats? There are far worse ways to go! (& we all gotta go someday, somehow, anyhow.)

Good calm informative article here, Greg Laden - thanks.

Stevo, there aren't too many worse ways to go than by rectal cancer. Which makes for about the worst way to go.

I think that the main question is: Is there better alternative for the red meat?

The red meat is mostly eaten in countries with high life-expectations, and the colorectal cancer is with geriatric prevalence. So if one do not eat meat he is probably not reaching the age when this cancer type is important. And if we eat the same amount of proteins with another food, then we must add the risk of this new protein source.

And another question: Although the full report is to be published, it is clear that this meta-study is performed mainly on epidemiological basis. Is the the meat or the artificial stuff we add to it in order to produce more meat and to make it edible? We almost always eat the meat not crude so the process is always there and it seems it matters (processed group 1, not processed group 2 ==> the processing is cancerogenous).

Well should be good if the authors of the study are lurking around.

The EPIC long term study of diet and ill health is designed to tease out some of the things thsat are difficult to do in retrospective studies by asking the particpants what they are eating regularly for years.

Brainstorm the reason traditional cured meats are pink is because the curing mix includes saltpetre aka potassium nitrate. If you are being iffy about 'chemicals' I suspect that would count, though I hate the use of chemical in that context so I'm not a good judge of such things. On the other hand I do make a mean cured beef ...

Not really, Jazzlet. When I say "chemicals", I don't use the proper, technical term, but the colloquial take: Think rather an organic compound, often not naturally made, and certainly not part of any mammal's diet, that's added for other-than-nutritional or pragmatic food preparation needs.

E.g., artificial preservatives, artificial colorings, emulsifiers, flow agents, anti-caking agents, "mouth feel" enhancing agents.

However, one can certainly turn this inside-out, and condemn a number of industrial foods for what has been taken out instead: A good example here would be flours & associated products made from industrially-produced flour.

Most people don't realize that "bread" as would be familiar in the Middle Ages was nothing like what passes for "our daily bread" today. "Wonder Bread" is a only a wonder in the breadth of its nutritional abomination. Industry so over-processes wheat today --mainly in attempts to increase storage life of raw materials and shelf life of finished products -- that it's reduced to something that even the bugs won't eat.

Just as industrial processing of foodstuffs adds things that we shouldn't be consuming, it's stripping food of "inconvenient" nutrients. Junk food truly is junk!

Not only are those bastards telling you to stop eating bacon, they're saying you probably have herpes!

wheelism, the WHO wasn't giving people herpes -- they were only reporting the numbers.

"The bastards" are the ones who want to kill the messengers.

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No, Lawrence Solomon, UNICEF and WHO are not trying to sterilize women with tetanus vaccines!

oracknows — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 07:50:13 +0000

No, Lawrence Solomon, UNICEF and WHO are not trying to sterilize women with tetanus vaccines!

There are some antivaccine lies that just never die. Well, actually, most of them are very much like Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and Freddy Krueger in that, just when you think you've killed them at the end of the latest confrontation, they always come back. Always. As an example of this, let's go back four months ago. Remember back in November when I discussed a particularly pernicious antivaccine lie that's been spread by Kenyan Catholic Bishops and the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association? It was the claim that the tetanus vaccine used to prevent neonatal tetanus in young women in Kenya is laced with a "sterilization chemical" that causes miscarriages. As I described in my own inimitable fashion, it's been a particularly dumb conspiracy theory that nonetheless seems to have legs. Similar claims, dating back at least to the 1990s, that there is “something” in vaccines that results in infertility and sterilization, have been unfortunately very effective in frightening people in Third World countries and have played a major role in antivaccine campaigns that have delayed the eradication of polio.

Enter Lawrence Solomon. You remember Lawrence Solomon, don't you? He's what I referred to last summer as a rising star in the antivaccine movement. A conservative columnist for the Financial Post, when first we met him he was complaining about a "conservative 'failure' of skepticism" on vaccines because, apparently, conservatives haven't been antivaccine enough for his liking. (Maybe he's happier with more recent developments.) Indeed, Solomon used some seriously brain dead arguments about herd immunity indistinguishable from the nonsense they regularly spew over at the antivaccine crank blog, that wretched hive of scum and quackery known as Age of Autism. He's also a rather obnoxious Twitter presence, frequently "challenging" people to prove him wrong, apparently not realizing that his arguments are such hoary antivaccine nuggets (of the variety produced out of the hind ends of mice and other rodents) that I and most skeptical bloggers already have numerous times over the years.

Speaking of AoA, it would seem that Solomon decided to get into the antivaccine website/blog business and directly compete with AoA. He's recently launched a site called VaccineFactCheck. It's generally a repository for antivaccine misinformation that, Solomon being the inexperienced pseudoscience activist that he is, makes The Thinking Moms' Revolution look as though they are actually living up to their deluded sense that they are thinking, and that's hard to do. As an example, I present to you Solomon's post Vatican: UNICEF and WHO are sterilizing girls through vaccines.

Brace yourself. Stupid is coming:

Vatican Radio last week charged that United Nations organizations promoting population control are using vaccines to surreptitiously sterilize women in Third World countries. Kenya’s Ministry of Health, along with the UN organizations — World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF — deny the charges, which carry the full weight of the Vatican. Vatican Radio is the official “voice of the Pope and the Church in dialogue with the World.”

“Catholic Bishops in Kenya have been opposed to the nationwide Tetanus Vaccination Campaign targeting 2.3 million Kenyan women and girls of reproductive age between 15-49 years, terming the campaign a secret government plan to sterilize women and control population growth,” reported Vatican Radio, as it took the occasion of the ordination of a Kenyan Bishop, Joseph Obanyi Sagwe, as an opportunity to remind the world of its concern.

Is this the same nonsense that the Kenyan Bishops were spouting in November that I deconstructed in detail? Why yes. Yes it is. Notice how Solomon pointedly describes Vatican Radio as the "voice of the Pope and Church in dialogue with the world," as if to imply that the Vatican actually endorses the position of the Catholic Bishops. In fact, the article cited is a pretty dry, straightforward news report about the ordination as Bishop of Kakamega of Joseph Obanyi Sagwe that mentions the factoid about Kenyan bishops' claims about the tetanus in passing, along with a bunch of other facts about the ordination. It neither endorses nor refutes the Kenyan Bishops' claims about the tetanus vaccine. I also note that Solomon's very headline also tries to make it sound as though the Vatican itself is accusing UNICEF and the WHO of trying to sterilize girls in Kenya using vaccines. The Vatican endorses no such claim.

None of that stops Solomon from continuing to parrot the very pseudoscience and misinformation that surfaced about the tetanus vaccine back in November. I refuted them then, and Dr. Jen Gunter just refuted them yesterday. Doubling down on the misinformation, Solomon even posted a follow up to his original article implying that the Vatican was endorsing the Kenyan Bishops' claim that UNICEF and the WHO are spreading around tetanus vaccines laced with hCG to sterilize their girls with a disingenuous "Q&A" about hCG in a vaccine might cause sterility. One notes that he refers directly to the "Vatican's explosive charge" here. Once again, as the news story makes clear, there is no evidence to indicate that it is the Vatican that is making this charge. It is clearly the Kenyan Bishops who are making this charge. The two are not the same. Bishops do not necessarily speak for the Vatican, and Vatican Radio just reported it as a single paragraph in a straight news story.

In any case, Solomon, ever the clueless antivaccine flack, believes a lot of nonsense in order to believe there's any credibility to the Kenyan Bishop's charges:

Have UNICEF, WHO and the Kenyan government been secretly using HCG-laced tetanus vaccines as a population control measure, as the Vatican and its Kenyan bishops maintain? The bishops sent vials of the tetanus vaccines from the batch reserved for females of reproductive age to four unrelated laboratories inside and outside Kenya. All four showed that the tetanus vaccines were laced with HCG. In contrast, tests performed on 50 vials of tetanus vaccines for general use in the population showed all 50 to be clear of HCG.

I discussed this all in detail before, but I suppose I should do it briefly (for Orac) again.

Before you can understand the why the claim that beta-hCG is in the tetanus vaccine would produce fear that the vaccine is in reality a sterilization agent, you need to know about a previous experimental vaccine. hCG is what is commonly referred to as the “pregnancy hormone.” Pregnancy tests are based on detecting hCG, which can first be detected about 11 days after conception and whose levels rise rapidly thereafter, peaking in the first 8-11 weeks of pregnancy. In the past, attempts have been made to produce a vaccine that targets hCG and thus results in the inability to conceive a child. It is a technique that falls under the category of immunocontraception. It takes little more than a quick trip to Wikipedia (among other sources) to learn that as far back as the 1970s, hCG was conjugated to a protein known as the tetanus toxoid in order to make a vaccine against hCG. The reason is that hCG itself did not provoke enough of an immune response. It’s not necessary to know all the details and history. However, from the 1970s on, there have been clinical trials of such vaccine contraceptives using hCG, and it is possible to prevent pregnancy by this approach, although antibody response against hCG declines with time.

Now here's the problem. As the WHO has already noted, even if the findings of beta-hCG in the vaccine vials were real, hCG is present at far too low a level to be an effective immunocontraceptive, and the blood tests presented by the Kenyan Catholic Doctors Association are actually do not show any evidence of beta-hCG being used to sterilize women:

Additionally, the findings of the laboratory tests purported to be from a woman called St. Michael (explained below) all come out with normal values from the reference values assuming that the woman is not pregnant. The highest level of the β-HCG hormone was found to be 1.12 mIU/ml (and 1.2 mIU/ml for S-Quantitative β-HCG). There was no control used (or presented) and it would have been interesting to see what the result will be with tap water. There is a situation where ant- β-HCG antibodies can be produced by the body and that can act as a contraceptive, however, this requires the administration of at-least 100 to 500 micrograms of HCG bound to tetanus vaccine (about 11,904,000 to 59,520,000 mIU/ml of the same hormone where currently less than 1 mIU-ml has been reported from the lab results.

Also, as Dr. Gunter notes, the Kenyan Catholic Doctors Association didn't actually measure beta-hCG in vaccines, but reported values from the blood of women vaccinated with the tetanus vaccine. She also pointed out:

Tetanus vaccine laced with the beta-hCG hormone wouldn’t do anything anyway. After all women inject themselves with beta-hCG to trigger ovulation in infertility therapy all the time. I hope I don’t have to point out that it would be rather counter productive to use an abortifacient in infertility therapy. Also, hCG doesn’t have a very long half-life, i.e. it clears the system pretty quickly. It is usually undetectable by 7 days after injection, which is why after hCG injections women typically wait at least a week to do a pregnancy test to avoid false positive from the injection. Then there is the basic physiologic/evolutionary concept that a hormone dangerous to pregnancy wouldn’t be produced in pregnancy. And if you believe in intelligent design, no omnipotent intelligent being would design pregnancy that way either!

Finally, Solomon, like the Kenyan Bishops, is about 20 years out of date. The vaccine in which hCG was linked to the tetanus toxoid was tested back in the 1990s more than 20 years ago, which, not coincidentally, is around the time that claims that UNICEF and the WHO are trying to sterilize young women in the Third World with vaccines started popping up in the Philippines. It is possible to prevent pregnancy by this approach, but antibody response to hCG declines with time and the contraceptive activity is not sufficiently durable to be useful as a long-term contraceptive. Moreover, as I discussed last time the original scientist who developed the hCG-tetanus toxoid vaccine to be used as a contraceptive pointed out that a similar hCG vaccine using a different carrier, LTB, is now being tested. He also pointed out that the tetanus toxoid carrier was replaced with LTB to avoid the very misinformation that has been associated with the valuable tetanus vaccination.

Lawrence Solomon likes to claim that he's not antivaccine but that he's just citing facts. However, with launch of his new website, and his parroting long-discredited antivaccine conspiracy theories like the one claiming that the WHO and UNICEF are trying to use the tetanus vaccine to sterilize young women in Third World countries, Solomon has officially entered the territory of Age of Autism, NaturalNews.com, The Thinking Moms' Revolution, and other rabidly antivaccine propaganda websites. That is not a good place to be, and he's not even particularly smart or creative in his regurgitation of antivaccine pseudoscience. Worse, as Jen Gunter points out, neonatal tetanus is deadly. Lawrence Solomon is thus helping to perpetuate misinformation that will lead to the painful deaths of Third World newborns from neonatal tetanus.

Oh, and Mr. Solomon should also realize that even one of the originators of this claim, MaterCare, even issued a press release that basically says, "Oops, we were wrong!" without actually admitting any real error, even saying in one of its numbered points that the "language used and the accusations in Kenya are almost identical to the 1990’s scenarios" and even goes so far as to characterize what's going on in Kenya as "an unfortunate re-cycling of inaccurate information."

Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers are back.

oracknows Mon, 03/23/2015 - 03:50

You'd think that with all the supposed attempts at sterilization through vaccination, that the world population wouldn't be going up so rapidly. Not very impressive attempts, I must say

Not entirely OT as anti-vaccine lunacy, like Spring itself, has sprung...

AoA today:
- Heckenlively writes that he, Mikovits and Hooker will appear at the Commonwealth Club** in SF as 'whistleblowers' and are being compared to Ellsberg and Snowden- the show will go on in a few weeks.

- Ginger Taylor ( who doesn't live in California) discusses Dr/ Senator Pan in a rather strident piece. It seems that anti-vaxxers object to his legislative attempts to curb exemptions as well as blocking their tweets.

Seriously- California is a lovely place and not all of its inhabitants are as loony as Heckenlively and Hooker.

Perhaps some minions might like to tweet sanely at Dr Pan?

** weren't other anti-vaxxers from TMR etc shown the door/ cancelled in the past few years there?
I think that there was to be an event at the Palace of Fine Arts.

@ e canfield
Never let facts mess up a good story.

IIRC, it's not too tricky to get into Commonwealth Club events. I can't see 'em charging much, if anything, to see Heckenlively speak. Who fancies going?

What does Heckenlively have to do with this post?

http://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2015-04-09/american-whistleblowe…

Vatican Radio is the official “voice of the Pope and the Church in dialogue with the World.

"And now, from those wonderful people who brought you Boston's Child Sexual Abuse scandal..."

Was responding to Denuce at #2. If you feel like I'm derailing things, delete as apt and please accept my apologies.:)

Sorry.

No biggie. I only get annoyed when commenters derail things early on in the comment thread, because the earlier in the thread it is, the easier the thread is to derail. Seriously, bringing up off-topic stuff should not happen until there are at least 10 comments in the thread. Every so often, I tend to express my pique if I'm in less than a happy mood, as some regular readers have probably noticed. Think of it this way. If someone does it on the very first comment, there will definitely be an annoyed reaction on my part. The farther into a comment thread we go, the less chance of a reaction, with virtually no chance by around 15 or 20 comments.

The solution? Add on-topic comments to get the thread over 10 or 20, and then go wherever the comment thread evolves. :-)

“And now, from those wonderful people who brought you Boston’s Child Sexual Abuse scandal…”

Except that there's no evidence I could find that the Vatican even endorses the crackpottery of the Kenyan bishops and doctors promoting this nonsense.

I tried commenting on Solomon's anti-vax blog, but he is denser than a black hole. He seems to think hospital medical care did not change the first half of the 20th century.

Have you ever looked at his Twitter feed? :-)

Does anyone know what set Lawrence Solomon off?

Suddenly, he became an anti-vaccine advocate.
Does he have a personal connection to "vaccine damage" or does he just - as a conservative ( libertarian?)- despise governmental interference in people's lives ( or whatever it is they're squawking about now)?
He seems to have come out of nowhere- not that he's not going nowhere.

From Vatican News:

"The joint team of experts appointed by the Catholic Church and the Minister of Health in Nairobi have declared that the vaccine used in the campaign against tetanus in Kenya is safe, even if the three samples contained the Beta HCG sub unit which, according to what the Kenyan Bishops denounced, is a permanent population control tool . This was announced by CISA Catholic agency in Nairobi, according to which the three samples will be subjected to further analysis."
http://www.news.va/en/news/africakenya-tetanus-vaccine-the-first-tests-…

Orac: "Except that there’s no evidence I could find that the Vatican even endorses the crackpottery of the Kenyan bishops and doctors promoting this nonsense."

On the other hand, there's no evidence that the Vatican has told these guys to knock it off. The fact that the Vatican declines to say anything on the matter, and takes no steps to reign the bishops in is rather telling.

Complaint: can we please get a better quality of AV numpties?

I am speaking specifically of Solomon in this instance. Genevieve H (who I believe is a biologist) went into great detail on why the Kenyan bishops were mistaken at The Rational Catholic blog, on November 12, 2014.

Matercare said there's no there there about the Kenya manufactroversy on December 10, 2014.

Why oh why is Solomon (and whatzername Brogan) trying to sell this steaming pile of lies now?

(For some reason, the deal in Kenya made me gibber.)

Orac@11

Except that there’s no evidence I could find that the Vatican even endorses the crackpottery of the Kenyan bishops and doctors promoting this nonsense.

But they aren't doing anything to stop it either. Obviously they are aware of these bishops' views:

Catholic Bishops in Kenya have been opposed to the nationwide Tetanus Vaccination Campaign targeting 2.3 million Kenyan women and girls of reproductive age between 15-49 years, terming the campaign a secret government plan to sterilize women and control population growth.

No mention of how this is dangerous (potentially infant killing) garbage or even an attempt to distance themselves (the Vatican) from it. Not entirely the same but it reminds of the Rush lyrics, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." Personally I think you are giving the Vatican far, far too much credit.

Dang, PGP beat me to it. I'm glad I wasn't the only one who was thinking that.

Does anyone know what set Lawrence Solomon off?

Suddenly, he became an anti-vaccine advocate.

He's been writing antivax stuff for 2 or 3 years as I recall, although nothing like his output in the past year. He has been a denier of anthropogenic climate change for years, touting his, shall we say, unique views that fossil fuels are the BESTEST THING EVAR for the environment.
Now that his stance is more and more busted, he probably needs to cash in on some other wingnuttery. - antivax!
Rumor has it that a book is in the works. What a surprise.

Orac: "Have you ever looked at his Twitter feed?"

Yep.

I rather suspect that Solomon's impetus to start the VaccineFactCheck website was likely his editors telling him to knock it off using his Financial Post column to spread antivaccine BS.

Hmmm. I wonder if he'd dare show his face in the comments here. :-)

I would love to challenge his CV. Apparently there is not much known about him nor his education. He has been very coy, and most of the stuff is sourced back to himself.

Have you ever looked at his Twitter feed? :-)

What a pest. Solomon puts the "twit" in Twitter.

Solomon posted multiple anti-vaccine articles on the Financial Times, using Dr. Gregory Poland's study of MMR vaccine effectiveness and safety. Solomon chose an article which is behind a pay wall and he engaged in the most blatant forms of cherry picking and quote mining. Links to Solomon's Financial Times articles were provided to AoA readers by Anne Dachel and her flying monkey squad came out in droves to carpet bomb the Financial Times.

I'd like to see Mr Solomon come here to defend his statements about the safety and effectiveness of MMR vaccines and his newest ludicrous statements about the vaccination programs in place in Africa to prevent neonatal tetanus infection.

What a pest. Solomon puts the “twit” in Twitter.

He's also utterly clueless about when his arguments have been utterly dismantled. He's rather like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail that way. After all his arms and legs have been chopped off, metaphorically speaking, he still thinks he can win and that his opponents, by turning their attention elsewhere from him, are fleeing because they are afraid of him.

...likely his editors telling him to knock it off using his Financial Post column to spread antivaccine BS.

Now if they'd only tell him to knock off the anti-climate science BS, we'd be all set. Censorship!

"On the other hand, there’s no evidence that the Vatican has told these guys to knock it off. The fact that the Vatican declines to say anything on the matter, and takes no steps to reign the bishops in is rather telling."

This isn't about the Vatican or the Catholic Church.

Nevertheless, the Pontifical Academy for Life stated clearly that the benefits of vaccines, including those grown on fetal cell cultures, outweigh the risks.
http://www.ncbcenter.org/document.doc?id=7

I think he's a good example of crank magnetism. He was (is?) an environmental columnist, and could be counted upon to ignore the scientific consensus in order to promote some cherry-picked quote-mined single study, or zombie talking point.

His book, The Deniers, is so full of easy to debunk "facts" you'd think he'd be too embarrassed to show his face again; if you ever need examples of logical fallacies for a class to dissect, that book could fill your first few weeks. The critical thinking skills demonstrated in it are so bad you just laugh at loud.

Disclosure: I never read the whole book, but someone brought in a copy to the lab, and we'd take turns reading out loud some of his points. It was good for a laugh....along with a sad sob and multiple face-palms.

I'd wager that within, ohhhh, 3-5 years, he'll have adopted another crank conspiracy, and will milk that for a while next.

The Catholic Church has in generally been pretty much OK with science in general for a long time. They accept evolution (with an escape clause about God being happy about it, or something) and global warming, which to me are the main litmus tests, so to speak. The current Pope (yay!) is causing some consternation among the wingnuts, which is a Good Thing in my book.

I can never figure out the folks who care so deeply about unborn children (those not born because of nefarious contraception plots) and don't seem to care at all about real live children who are apt to die from vaccine preventable disease. It boggles the mind.

"You’d think that with all the supposed attempts at sterilization through vaccination, that the world population wouldn’t be going up so rapidly."

Not to mention the World Depopulation Conspiracy that relies on vaccination (with lesser inputs from chemtrails, fluoride etc.).

I despair at the miserable failure of our evil plans :(

@kdog, that's because underneath it all, it's also about controlling women and keeping them so busy with babies that they don't have time to demand to be treated like human beings with agency rather than chattel.

I think he’s a good example of crank magnetism.

Or, more cynically, Solomon is hoping for crank magnetism to affect his audience. "If I can make people stupid enough, they might shift over to my variety of free-market pro-carbon-industry conservatism!"

From his perspective, every hippy-leaning anti-vaxxer is a potential convert to his cause, only needing to be convinced that glibertarianism is the true intellectual home of anti-vax thought.

Related to the tetanus vaccine:
While some nutjobs are reviling vaccines in any form, other people are working at saving lives with them:

Tetanus Vaccine Boosts Cancer Vaccine In Fighting Brain Tumor

If the article is somewhat accurate, that's a pretty neat approach to treat brain cancer.

Sidenote: For the US history specialists, there is a (obscure?) reference to Paul Revere.
(I only heard of him via David Weber)

I think this is the first Solomon article on vaccine issues I have seen, from January 2014: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/lawrence-solomon/vaccine-skeptics_b_454851…

Helianthus -- In the US, Paul Revere is a near-mythical figure due largely to a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow commemorating his "Midnight Ride" --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Revere%27s_Ride

I gotta admit, it's a catchy poem.

Matthew Rolloson: "This isn’t about the Vatican or the Catholic Church."

Did you not read the headline? The Vatican appoints Catholic bishops. Catholic Bishops in Kenya are telling women not to get the tetanus vaccine, and lobbying against it. So, yes, I'd say that does make it the Vatican's problem.

Palindrome: "The Catholic Church has in generally been pretty much OK with science in general for a long time."

Well, they've had to pretend that in order to wave away the bad PR that followed the trial of Galileo. The vast majority of Catholics probably believe that science and their particular brand of religion can coexist- until they bump up against something that requires them to chose. It's the same thing with the Hippocratic oath and Catholic doctors- at some point, the patient's going to end up losing.

@Dorit Reiss,
Here is a dumb article by Solomon in the Financial Post from 2012:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/06/fps-lawrence-solomon-get-dirty-…

@TBruce: thank you!

until they bump up against something that requires them to chose.

What might force such a choice?

When a religious doctrine is flexible enough, it becomes essentially unfalsifiable. Biblical literalism is almost pathetically falsifiable, for example, but the old-line denominations appear to have long ago retreated from such indefensible positions, and wisely so.

"Did you not read the headline?"

Do you mean this one?

No, Lawrence Solomon, UNICEF and WHO are not trying to sterilize women with tetanus vaccines!

There's no mention of bishops, the Catholic Church, or the Vatican in that headline.

Given the Catholic Church's general pro-vaccine stance, it would be nice to see them step in and tell the Kenyan bishops to knock it off with the fear-mongering. I'm not really sure about the internal workings of the Catholic hierarchy or why that's not happening, though. My main beef with the Church is the proscription of condoms, actually, especially in countries where AIDS is running rampant. That sh*t seriously needs to stop.

The Catholic Church is generally fine with science, though, and the Catholics I've known have all been pretty chill. Most of them don't follow all the rules, either - I mean, most Catholic women use birth control, and I have a very sweet friend in Poland who's about as gay as they come and who still goes to Mass on a fairly regular basis. More power to him, I say.

I’m not really sure about the internal workings of the Catholic hierarchy or why that’s not happening, though.

Africa is an important growth area for the church. But strong competition from the Baptist / Pentecostal dunkers. As long as the branch offices keep recruiting, I can't see the head office over-ruling their authoritarian, socially-conservative, anti-science tendencies, unless they officially adopt human sacrifice.

Matthew Rolloson: Ok, I mixed up the article and headline. But the Catholic Church still needs to tell the bishops and the doctors to knock it off, especially since the doctors are trying to id themselves as Catholic.

Palindrom: There have been cases where Catholic doctors and nurses have let pregnant patients die. The other situations might be if a Catholic researcher ends up working with stem cells- the research simply can't be done by a religious person, or a Catholic who has to step back from climate research or environmental activism (Christianity and environmentalism cannot coexist.)

step back from climate research or environmental activism (Christianity and environmentalism cannot coexist.)

That is an absurd statement. You seem to have lumped all of Christianity in with a certain segment of Evangelicals who see the earth as nothing but a trampoline to paradise, so we might as well use everything up before the rapture.

There are plenty of Christians out there who take the Bible's call to stewardship of the earth very seriously. I know some of them personally.

United Church of Christ Statement on Climate Change
http://www.ucc.org/environmental-ministries_climate-change-and-global
Why Is Global Warming An Issue Of Faith?

{Statement Extract}...People of faith are beginning to realize that global warming and climate change are issues of environmental justice. For humans, those who are poor or unable to adjust will be the first to feel the effects of a warming planet; many will lose their homes to rising seas and be unable to grow food for their families. ...

JP: "You seem to have lumped all of Christianity in with a certain segment of Evangelicals who see the earth as nothing but a trampoline to paradise, so we might as well use everything up before the rapture. There are plenty of Christians out there who take the Bible’s call to stewardship of the earth very seriously. I know some of them personally."

Isn't the whole point of Christianity to denounce all earthly things, and avoid anything that might possibly be pleasurable, aside from finger-wagging? Individual Christians might be involved in the environmental movement, but one or the other of their beliefs will eventually self-destruct. There's a reason you'd never hear a word about the environment spoken at the Vatican, in an Orthodox Church or a Lutheran or Anglican church. It's not just evangelicals who can't stand the Earth.

Sadly familiar with Mr. Solomon. His 'Wind Turbine Syndrome' writings are spammed by the anti-wind crowd in my neck of Ontario. A whole different bucket of FUD for him.

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/11/25/lawrence-solomon-ill-winds…

Isn’t the whole point of Christianity to denounce all earthly things, and avoid anything that might possibly be pleasurable, aside from finger-wagging?

No. There's a strain of that in most varieties of Christianity, certainly. It largely arises from the pernicious influence of certain Manichean and Gnostic ideas on what was, in its early days, essentially a mystical Jewish sect. (Judaism holds the earth itself to be inherently holy, and indulgence in earthly pleasures is hardly looked down upon. Song of Solomon, etc.)

Part of the problem, too, is that people can get confused about the difference between "the world," i.e., Mammon, and "the earth," which you are replicating in your response above. Even the Desert Fathers at their most world-hating and ascetic never cursed the earth.

You actually will hear, depending on various things like who's preaching or what Sunday it is or whatever, quite a few words about environmentalism in churches of the Orthodox or Lutheran or Anglican varieties. Most churches have taken a pro-environmentalism, anti-global-warming stance even officially. Heck, just have a gander at this Whackyweedia page.

There have been cases where Catholic doctors and nurses have let pregnant patients die.

Not too many, I bet.

The other situations might be if a Catholic researcher ends up working with stem cells- the research simply can’t be done by a religious person, or a Catholic who has to step back from climate research or environmental activism (Christianity and environmentalism cannot coexist.)

Uh, no. As JP has so ably said, Christianity is much more doctrinally diverse than this.

And as for the stem cells, as well as birth control, I think that most Catholic scientists would pretty much agree with Earl Butz, Nixon's good-ol-boy secretary of ag. He was eventually kicked out for repeating a really bad racist joke -- which I'm sure most scientists would find egregious -- but before that, one of his controversial witticisms was on target, I thought: When asked about the Pope's attitude toward contraception, he said:

He no play-a the game, he no make-a the rules.
</blockquote

Over 20 posts and not totally off topic, but connected.

These type of lies have gotten people killed. The same type of rumor was going around in one of the West African countries during the height of the Ebola outbreak. People were saying those that were working there, treating people and testing people were actually giving people Ebola.

There were a few groups of aid workers killed by villagers and it was thought they were killed because some had been spreading the rumors they were giving people Ebola when testing them.

These types of rumors can be very dangerous.

PGP,

There’s a reason you’d never hear a word about the environment spoken at the Vatican, in an Orthodox Church or a Lutheran or Anglican church.

I'm not a great fan of religion, but that isn't true. The Vatican, for example, has made several staments about the environment.

The importance of ecology is no longer disputed. We must listen to the language of nature and we must answer accordingly. - Pope Benedict XVI to Reichstag Building, Berlin, 9/22/2011

The Evangelical Church of America states:

Caring for God’s creation is an ever evolving topic in this world, especially with each new natural or human-made disaster. As stewards of this world, we are called to examine our behaviors toward creation. While we need to take from the land for food and sustainability, we also need to be careful that we maintain good stewardship and do not exploit the wonderful things the earth provides.

The Anglican Church is similarly concerned about the environment, as its Shrinking the Footprint campaign reveals.

"The present challenges of environment and economy, of human development and global poverty, can only be faced with extraordinary Christ-liberated courage." - The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby

Well, I'm glad that a few of the regulars and UCC Member point out relevant positions held by various Christian denominations that show that PGP is wrong about- at least some- Christians' stances on the environment. We could probably also find out how individuals in those denominations line up ( or not) with those positions.

BUT we might ask, "How did she come by this impression of such strong Christian opposition?"
I think that there are particularly strident groups ( like anti-vaxxers) who work very hard at representing themselves as the Majority Voice or suchlike. I don't know for sure if they predominate in any particular denomination or if they have political aspirations and manage to get themselves on television ( or if indeed political candidates/ representatives make a show of their own anti-environmentalism and label it as Christian in order to be more acceptable)

PGP: perhaps you could give us examples of which individuals/ groups you mean? ( I have a few guesses)

There are people with an agenda who would benefit from loosened environmental standards and I'm sure that they would use any reason to justify their beliefs to others. Perhaps the position itself might better be called 'political' rather than 'religious'.

@politicalguineapig

I’m a devout atheist, but you are very wrong about mainstream protestantism--including Lutherans:

http://elca.org/News-and-Events/7697

Note: The ELCA is the main branch (synod) of the Lutheran Church and I have to say that there are a few small sects within the Church that are fundamentalist (and ignored by the majority). Michelle Bachmann belonged to one of them and then tried to pass herself off as “just a Lutheran”. Happily, she jumped ship and became a mainstream fundie.

Lutherans are not at all anti-science and it is possible to be an atheist (openly) and still enjoy the fellowship of a Lutheran congregation.

@ Martin:

Really? Oh J-sus! What next!
Well, I KNOW about Anglicans/ Episcopelians tolerating atheists- that's old- but now Pope Frank and Lutherans yet?

I predict we'll soon be in high demand as friends to illustrate tolerance.

About fifteen years ago I was in attendance at a United Methodist bible study group (it's a long story), where they discussed Genesis 1:28 and how it meant stewardship. Per the Methodists, wasting God's resources is a sin, and I imagine other mainstream Protestant denominations feel the same way.

*raises hand* ELCA member here. ;-)

Bachmann started out Wisconsin Synod, not ELCA. This is not a sect of the ELCA, and never has been (and would likely be offended at the suggestion). The non-denominational church she now attends is the same one a friend of mine attends. It started out Baptist, but is now the sort of generically Protestant megachurch that has become so overwhelmingly popular in recent years. Since WELS does not consider the Eucharist of other denomations valid, they probably would officially say she's going to hell.

The WELS (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod) did not follow several other synods which merged to form the ELCA*. WELS is more what folks tend ot think of when they hear the term "evangelical Protestant". It's for folks who though the Missouri Synod was too liberal. They won't even take communion with non-WELS folk. (I'm a heathen according ot their doctrine.)

*And because I'm a little slap-happy from a very trying week at work -- and it's only Tuesday! yippee! -- I'm now thinking "Merge, and combine to form MEGA-LUTHERAN!"

Oh, and I've pointed this out before, but in many parts of the country, including mine, the only hospitals in the jurisdiction are faith-based (in this county, Mennonite and Roman Catholic).

The Catholic hospital chain here is still run by nuns and when I say "run" I mean all of senior management. I was at a healthcare coalition meeting during the height of the Ebola panic in late October, and a number of organizations were contemplating the example of the serious financial damage done to Texas Presbyterian for accepting an Ebola victim. One chain stated flat out that if someone with EVD symptoms showed up in the ED, the ambulance would be given directions to the university medical center "up north" in the big city, and told to keep going.

The bean-counter representing the Order of St Francis stated glumly that "the sisters won't allow that." If someone showed up sick, they would be admitted, Ebola or no Ebola.

Everytime I see PGP's rants about Christianity, I have to think of a vicar who I knew something like 35 years ago, who offered a place for drug abusers, transsexuals and tranvestites. He cared for them when lots of people didn't. Progressives and feminists often didn't accept transsexuals and there was a book 'The transexual empire' doing the rounds, which considered transsexuals as an evil plot to put women back under patriarchate.
And yes, I'm still an atheist and still don't see much use for religion, but I don't see religion as the root of all evil and I acknowledge that people can be insprired by religion to help humanity.

PGP may be a nice person in real live, which I am not, but online she can be embarrassing.

Progressives and feminists often didn’t accept transsexuals and there was a book ‘The transexual empire’ doing the rounds, which considered transsexuals as an evil plot to put women back under patriarchate.

I don't know about often, but yeah, there are some radfems out there who are pretty anti-trans. See also the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, unfortunately.

BUT we might ask, “How did she come by this impression of such strong Christian opposition?”

Because she's a bigot, who believes that if some member of a group that doesn't include her has a trait that she doesn't like, then all members of that group have that trait.

For example, there was a video of a racist chant by members of a fraternity at a school in Oklahoma. I expected that at some point, PGP would have posted one of the following statements -

All members of SAE are racist
All frat boys are racist
All OU students are racist
All persons in Oklahoma are racist
All white men are racist
All men are racist
All who chant are racist

I have no opinion on how she came to be a bigot.

@ JP
I don't know how many feminists nowadays are anti-trans, but some 35 years ago, I had a transsexual friend, who had problems in the women-group she was part of. And I know a reviewer of the newspaper I still read, wrote a favorable review of the book. So I have the impression the ideas weren't that uncommon at that time. I think Germaine Greer also had some issues with transsexuals.

But I'm not bashing feminists, nor Christians, because some of them have done or said some nasty things in the past.
It might be a lesson for PGP.

Just to further clarify the position of one church

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/24/climate-change-denia…

Climate denial is immoral, says head of US Episcopal church
Climate change is a moral challenge threatening the rights of the world’s poorest people and those who deny it are not using God’s gift of knowledge, says presiding bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori

@lynn - it makes sense, given the overall negative effects that will be first experienced by the poorest countries.....many of whom are much more "religious" than we are here.

There have been cases where Catholic doctors and nurses have let pregnant patients die.

I know there was a somewhat famous case in Ireland a few years ago when a woman who went to a Catholic hospital suffering from a miscarriage and later died. That was a very complicated, multi-factoral case and not as simple as "the doctors let a pregnant woman die".

If you are referring to other cases, please provide sources for that claim that suggest there is a pattern on Catholic hospitals not doing what they can to save pregnant patients.

I have to say that I am not a fan of the Catholic church's stand on birth control, abortion, or women's rights, but I'm not a Christian either. :)
And I can tell you injecting even a fairly large amount of hCG into your body will not render you infertile. It is the 'trigger shot' for ovulation as Orac points out. And I have had many of them. And through infertility treatment am incubating my second and last pregnancy. Besides, the threshold for detecting pregnancy (if I remember right) is something like >5 (whatever units I am fuzzy now on the details) because women can have trace amounts and not be pregnant. Even more important with fertility treatment, which is why you don't test for a week so you don't get a false positive.
a-non - quibble with your post, from reading media coverage of the Irish case you cite, they seem to have really let this woman die. According to reports she presented miscarrying, but because fetal heartbeat could still be detected they would not do a D&C. By the time the fetus actually died (no heartbeat detected) she had a massive infection and died. If she had had a prompt D&C on presenting with an incomplete miscarriage it is probable she might have lived. So yes, in that case the Catholic ethos against abortion directly led to her death. So I would argue with you on that one. I vehemently disagree with a total ban on abortion in any case, but the prevailing opinion seems to be that the pregnancy was not salvageable no matter what was done so that by denying the D&C while heartbeat still detectable was wrong and contributed to her death. There have been numerous cases that are beginning to come out of non-Catholic women treated at Catholic hospitals wanting to have tubal ligation done after delivering and being denied because the Church prohibits it. Again, I think when you are in the business of providing healthcare you should respect a woman's right to bodily autonomy meaning respecting her right to permanent sterilization if she wishes it. This is an issue in communities where the sole hospital provider is a Catholic run one because it denies you the choice to seek a different provider. I don't think religion should be forced on people and that seems to be the case that is happening here in the US.

All: Point taken. Problem is, there's megaphones on the right and crickets on the left. Rubio and Rick Scott are planning to sell the Everglades, and odds are most of the activists against that won't be affiliated with churches. It's like the anti-vax thing all over again. Most people are going to assume parents aren't likely to vaccinate, because the people who vaccinate have mostly been quiet. The same thing applies to environmentalists- you find ten environmentalists, and odds are all of them are either athiests, Jewish or lapsed Christians.

Shay:Ebola's one thing, pregnancy's quite another. In most doctrines, a woman who is pregnant ceases to be a person for the duration of the pregnancy. If a Catholic doctor or nurse has to chose between the mother and the fetus, they'll usually dither until both are gone, because fetuses rank higher in God's esteem than women do. Treating a man with ebola is different, because a man is always a person.

Johnny: I'm not a bigot, I just find that society makes much more sense when people are sorted into categories, based on beliefs, class, and clubs they belong to. As for the frat boys, well, what can you expect from a bunch of drunk, stupid kids who have never set foot outside their hometown until they went to college?

@PGP - you've just provided a great definition of a bigot....

On a lighter note...
occasionally, stereotyping can be fun!

I just discovered something called 'judgmental maps'
just g--gle "judgmental map" and the name of a locale with which you are familiar...
-btw- New York and London are hilarious- e.g. particular areas labelled as 'small republican hamlet' or just 'wankers'

Perhaps your town is available

AND yes, I know that whoever drew these up is totally beyond forgiveness. And none of it is REALLY true.

There's a reason why people think like this though.

Lawrence: No, bigots sort by race and religion, which are usually things people don't get a choice about- at least, if they happen to be born into a religion like say, Judaism or Islam.

The same thing applies to environmentalists- you find ten environmentalists, and odds are all of them are either athiests, Jewish or lapsed Christians.

In your head, maybe. IRL, we live in a Christian-majority nation, and secular folks are only slightly more likely to be environmentalists than religious folks, according to this actual data I found, so actually, most of your 10 hypothetical environmentalists are going to be some flavor of Christian. (More likely moderate or liberal than traditionalist.)

Treating a man with ebola is different, because a man is always a person.

I think the hypothetical situation involved a person with Ebola, not a man.

I’m not a bigot, I just find that society makes much more sense when people are sorted into categories, based on beliefs, class, and clubs they belong to.

I prefer to relate to people as individuals, but that's just me. (See what I did there?) I mean, sure, if the "club" somebody's in is the freaking KKK or something, I'm pretty comfortable pre-judging them, but that is a fairly extreme example.

No, bigots sort by race and religion, which are usually things people don’t get a choice about-

What about sex/gender? Sexual orientation? Country of origin? Socioeconomic status? Rural/urban? Etc?

which are usually things people don’t get a choice about- at least, if they happen to be born into a religion like say, Judaism or Islam.

Wait a second - you are aware that Jews and Muslims can change their religion, right? (At least outside of places like Saudi Arabia, anyway.) Or that people can, say, convert to Judaism or Islam? Or quite being religious at all? Or... etc. If you decide to judge people based on their religion, whether or not they chose it, you might miss out on some pretty great people. But then, my general philosophy about other people more or less line's up with Ed Wood's: "Why, I never judge anybody! If I did, I wouldn't have any friends!"

I mean, heck, I even have friends who are evangelical atheists, and I even put up with them saying things like, "But you're so smart, how can you not be an atheist*?" without even making retorts like, "But you're such a nice person, how can you be an atheist?" (I don't make that retort because I can see how it's really stupid.)

*It depends on one's definition of the word, I suppose.

^ Bah, typos.

And I can tell you injecting even a fairly large amount of hCG into your body will not render you infertile.

No, wait. The "idea" is supposed to be is that the vaccine induces antibodies to hCG. I can't help but take note of this item from Mr. Lab Coat himself:

"HCG is a chemical developed by the World Health Organization for sterilization purposes."

This is an impressively stupid misreading of the quote that it prefigures:

"'The only time tetanus vaccine has been given in five doses is when it is used as a carrier in fertility regulating vaccines laced with the pregnancy hormone, Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) developed by WHO in 1992.' explained Dr. Ngare."

No, see, the sterilization instrument is what you mean, Mikey. Always consider the possibility that you're quoting something that hinges on commas for semantics.

I'm too tired to actually dig, but if memory serves, the actual hCG vaccines (which were conjugated to a TT carrier) wore off in about a year, with a recommended six-month dosing schedule to maintain the contraceptive effect.

Not finding anything on dosing schedules, but it looks like the main problem with the actual hCG vaccine so far is that it's not quite foolproof enough:

While the proof of concept is largely given by these studies, the shortcoming of the vaccine was that it generated above protective threshold titres in only 60–80% of women. This degree of efficacy is highly satisfactory for vaccines against infectious diseases but a birth control vaccine has to be effective in >90–95% of recipients in order to be acceptable. Further work on product development is required. It would require more potent adjuvants, which are available today from the pharmaceutical industry, instead of the alum employed in the test vaccine. At this time, there is also a need constantly to monitor the vaccinated individuals for the presence/absence of sufficient antibody titres that can block conception.

Incidentally, the fundies will not like it, as it's action is basically the same as that of the famed "Plan B" pill: it prevents an already fertilized egg from implanting, so, for "the men who stare at zygotes," it's technically an abortifacient.

I have known several people who converted to Judaism (one is the son of Presbyterian missionaries, and another used to be an AME Zion minister). Someone else I knew in college was Jewish by parentage and upbringing, and converted to Catholicism.

Plenty of anti-Semites wouldn't bother to ask questions, just count all of those people as Jewish.

Bigots also discriminate by, among other things, class (both class background and current income level), sexual orientation, marital/relationship status, body shape, disability status, level of education, and where people grew up. Some of those are attributes we have some amount of choice about; not all.

JP: "Wait a second – you are aware that Jews and Muslims can change their religion, right? (At least outside of places like Saudi Arabia, anyway.) Or that people can, say, convert to Judaism or Islam? Or quite being religious at all? Or… etc. If you decide to judge people based on their religion, whether or not they chose it, you might miss out on some pretty great people."

Islam and Judaism generally don't attract a lot of converts, though I am aware they exist. I *voted* for a man who converted to Islam, after all. But currently Islam and Judaism are more mixed up with specific cultures than Christianity is. IE, Christianity is basically the Wonder Bread of religion. There are some nice evangelicals that I've run into. I prefer to avoid that sort of person because I end up doing more lying than I'm comfortable with and we have absolutely nothing in common. I end up lying about my job(s) and even my hobbies.

" I end up lying about my job(s) and even my hobbies."

What on earth for?

Well, we could get into the whole question of, "is Judaism a religion, a "race," or a culture? But Islam is definitely a "universal" religion every bit as much as Christianity is. It doesn't attract a lot of converts in the US, sure, but it still has its growth areas. All this is beside the point, though.

There are some nice evangelicals that I’ve run into. I prefer to avoid that sort of person because I end up doing more lying than I’m comfortable with and we have absolutely nothing in common. I end up lying about my job(s) and even my hobbies.

I can't say I have any Evangelical friends that I know of - I am a pretty far-out kind of person, I guess. But Evangelicals are not the same as all Christians, and I do have some friends who are Christians.

Anyway, why bother lying? If you don't end up hitting it off with someone and you have nothing in common, no biggie. But if you do get along well with somebody, I mean, why not just try being honest about yourself? If they run the other way, then f*ck 'em anyway.

But Islam is definitely a “universal” religion every bit as much as Christianity is. It doesn’t attract a lot of converts in the US, sure, but it still has its growth areas.

As you say, it's beside the point, but Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world, which somewhat worries me*, though it isn't clear how many are moderates and how many are potential IS.

* Disclaimer - I have worked with many Muslims, have Muslim friends, have spent time in Muslim countries, own a copy of the Koran and have visited more mosques than I can remember (I was even blessed by an Imam in a run-down backstreet mosque in Cairo, which consisted of a vigorous head massage and a lot of chanting, presumably verses from the Koran).

Yeah, I have to say, it worries me a little bit too. I mean, the thing about Islam is that it isn't just a religion, but a blueprint for a society, one that's supposed to be an Islamic theocracy. And, uh, no thanks on that.

^ Which is not at all to say that I'm one of those right-wing a**holes who's all hot and bothered about "Sharia law" in the US or whatever.

@politicalguineapig, I am an atheist with friends who are evangelical Christians. They are very nice, very generous people. They are interesting people and I am happy to let them talk -- about themselves, about their religion, about their work, about their hobbies. They seem to appreciate a good listener.

I don't talk about religion to them. I don't lie; I just don't bring it up. Why should I?

You might try listening to people instead of prejudging them and despising what you think they would say if you ever allowed them to speak to you. You'd find that people do not actually fall into neat little categories for you to hate.

PGP sounds like one of the worst people I've ever had the opportunity to interact with.

And that's saying something....

I mean, the thing about Islam is that it isn’t just a religion, but a blueprint for a society, one that’s supposed to be an Islamic theocracy.

To any greater extent than Catholicism, Hinduism, judaism, etc. are not also considered by their adherents to be a blueprint for society?

No, bigots sort by race and religion, which are usually things people don’t get a choice about- at least, if they happen to be born into a religion like say, Judaism or Islam.

Of course you get a choice about the religion you adhere to. I was raised as a roman Catholic--first communion, altar boy, confirmation, the whole nine yards--but completed a formal conversion to Judaism about 10 years ago.

JP: But if you do get along well with somebody, I mean, why not just try being honest about yourself?

Because being back-stabbed isn't fun. I am honest, sometimes, but most of the time, it's not worth the effort.

LW: You might try listening to people instead of prejudging them and despising what you think they would say if you ever allowed them to speak to you. You’d find that people do not actually fall into neat little categories for you to hate.

It isn't about hating them, I prejudge people so I can tell them what they want to hear and put on a performance. I do listen, a lot more than I speak, as it's easier.

JGC: "Of course you get a choice about the religion you adhere to. I was raised as a roman Catholic–first communion, altar boy, confirmation, the whole nine yards–but completed a formal conversion to Judaism about 10 years ago."

Point taken, but I was trying to express that Judaism and Islam aren't just religions, they're bound up with a lot of cultural traditions too.

To any greater extent than Catholicism, Hinduism, judaism, etc. are not also considered by their adherents to be a blueprint for society?

With Catholicism you have a point - which is why I'm very glad the Reformation happened, and the subsequent Enlightenment era, etc. If you actually read the Gospels, though, there are no injunctions to go out and build a Christian state or government - quite the opposite, really. Christianity becoming the state religion of Rome was more a perversion of the original idea than anything else, although it's a historical fact, and who knows, things might've worked out worse had some other religion been adopted.

Judaism has mostly not really been a "universal," proselytizing type religion in the way that Islam and Christianity are. (There are some historical exceptions.) It's more bound up with a particular people and place, and I wouldn't have particularly wanted to live in ancient Israel either. I'm not really worried about Judaism establishing a Levant-wide theocracy or anything, though.

"Hinduism" is so broad a category as to be practically meaningless. I mean, "Hinduism" as an umbrella includes everything from monist materialism to Advaita Vedanta to the Hare Krishnas to mainstream Vaishnavism, etc., etc.

@ PGP:

Do you really think that people will reject you if you don't agree with them about everything?

Did you ever imagine that perhaps you have attractive qualities that make you interesting to them?

Look, various commenters are critical of how you express yourself but they don't just toss you away as a worthless waste of time. So they must be seeing something of value.
Maybe you're intriguing as a foil.

Personally I think that you're smart, a strong supporter of SBM, sometimes cleverly sharp tongued with trolls and able to respond to criticism without anger, resentment or aggression. I feel that what comes across as stereotyping and rejection of others may possibly be a mode of self-protection as well as insouciant language choice.

AND I don't think that you're so fragile.
Meaningful relationships have disagreements and give-and-take. Why should someone reject you if there is any disagreement? Why perform? ( Altho' everyone does to a degree/ did you ever read Goffman?)
Perhaps your real persona- which you express to a degree here- would be alright with some people. On-line communication can sometimes be a testing ground or rehearsal for everyday life.

If you actually read the Gospels, though, there are no injunctions to go out and build a Christian state or government – quite the opposite, really.

I will grant you that a lot of Christians seem to think there's such an injunction in the Gospels, though, which only goes to show that they have not actually read them or thought about them very much.

"The vaccines were sent to hospital laboratories and tested using pregnancy test kits which are developed for use on serum and urine specimens, and are not appropriate for a vaccine such as TT, which contains a special preservative (merthiolate) and an adjuvant (aluminum salt)"

Putting my Medical Technologist hat on ... there's no way in hell you could get an accurate reading from a test meant for urine or blood if you ran it on something with as few soluble molecules as a vaccine dose. As I recall, you can't even run it on urine if it's too dilute.

" In fact, in a laboratory in Hungary, it was shown that the sterile water supply from the local hospital gave a higher false positive level of hCG than did the TT vaccine. "

“‘The only time tetanus vaccine has been given in five doses is when it is used as a carrier in fertility regulating vaccines laced with the pregnancy hormone, Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) developed by WHO in 1992.’ explained Dr. Ngare.”

What's that, NHS guidelines?
The full course of the tetanus vaccination consists of five doses.
And how Talwar's work at the National Institute of Immunology in India became conflated with WHO is anyone's guess (though WHO = scarier).

Muhame Ngare is a lying low-life ratbag who will spout the mendacious script he's given, but as was covered in the earlier RI episodes on the Kenyan debacle, he is really acting here as a stovepipe, allowing the Kenyan Catholic bishops to tell themselves the lies they wanted to hear. It's not entirely clear why they want to re-medievalise medicine, apart from the prospect of increased influence.

I am still uncertain as to what was tested. Contrary to Dr. Gunter's post, the WHO statement only implies that blood samples were submitted. Tsu, above, quotes something saying that actual vaccine samples were submitted. I recall from the first round of this topic at RI that something supported what Tsu is quoting. But I still don't know for sure. The language used in all of this (i.e. from "original" sources, not Dr. G or Orac) has been sloppy and unclear.
What is clear is that the accusations made against the vaccine are complete nonsense.

I suspect that Solomon may be catching on to the notion that a great many people think he is an irrelevant dolt, and is striving for a new lookatme endeavor.

#95 This is what I found

www.fides.org/en/news/37295-AFRICA_KENYA_Anti_tetanus_vaccine_final_tes…

@PGP:

Because being back-stabbed isn’t fun. I am honest, sometimes, but most of the time, it’s not worth the effort.

Well, nobody likes being back-stabbed. I don't know if that's precisely the right word, but I have had a couple friends let me down or do me wrong in very big ways. I have to admit that we're not friends anymore. And yeah, it hurts like hell - but cutting yourself off from people because you're afraid of getting hurt is worse than, I think, any amount of pain. It might not hurt in the same way, but it's numbing, and an important part of you atrophies. Relationships - of whatever sort - aren't just nice, they're essential. I won't tell you they're safe, though.

And even pain isn't entirely bad. It lets you know you're alive, at least. I like this song which touches on the subject.

By the way, PGP, you should check out Tori Amos in general, if you aren't already familiar with her, which you might me. She does a cover of Joe Jackson's Real Men which I like better than the original.

I also have very strong associations with the album that song is on, Strange Little Girls.

JP, you also own "Strange Little Girls"?
I went to see Amos a few years ago when she came out to South Africa.

I envy you - I've never seen her live. I've owned Strange Little Girl since I was 13, I think. A cousin of mine, whom I love dearly, and who has been very troubled in various ways over the years, mostly involving men, gave it to me way back in the day.

She's doing pretty okay these days, actually. She got rid of the last guy who was a real loser and is concentrating on raising her two sons.

That album is also tied up for me with more recent memories, both good and bad, of a certain ill-advised tryst.f

http://holisticsquid.com/when-to-get-a-tetanus-shot/

Why bother get a tetanus shot guys, there is more research out there showing that even with high levels of antibodies there is still no protection whatsoever. Also levels of tetanus mortality have fallen despite there being a mythical vaccine. Case of not necessary - again

Let's propose an experiment for Johnny - he should get a shot of tetanus toxoid & then treat it holistically....then we'll see what happens.

What's the homeopathic treatment for tetanus?

@Johnny - wait, but if you are pushing "homeopathic vaccines" which mean that you believe that "like cures like" then what is the problem with current vaccines? They actually use that principle...and aren't made 100% water.

Johnny, care to cite those studies showing tetanus vaccine offers "no protection whatsoever"?

Didn't think so.

Ebola: Horror and Hope for a Cure

milhayser — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 13:08:56 +0000

Ebola: Horror and Hope for a Cure

As an unprecedented outbreak of Ebola crosses borders in West Africa, people are asking new questions about the virus and its potential to turn into a global pandemic (hint: it's not gonna happen). Greg Laden writes "The disease is too hot to not burn itself out, and it has no human reservoir. Ebola accidentally broke into the human population earlier this year or late last year." The current numbers from the WHO suggest 1800 confirmed and suspected cases of Ebola so far with a mortality rate edging down toward 55%.

Last week some in the U.S. objected to bringing two American patients back home, but Tara C. Smith writes that Ebola has been there all along, in government labs, while related viruses like Lassa and Marburg have been imported by infected travelers without causing additional cases. The one characteristic of Ebola we can be thankful for is that it is only spread through contact with bodily fluids, not through the air like a cold or flu. Smith concludes, "Ebola is exotic and its symptoms can be terrifying, but also much easier to contain by people who know their stuff." Meanwhile, Greg Laden writes that an extremely rare, untested 'cure' for the illness does exist, and it has also been given to the two infected Americans. He's referring to anti-serum, i.e. blood serum containing natural Ebola antibodies modelled after those generated by infected mice. On Discovering Biology in a Digital World, Sandra Porter shows how the antibodies lock onto viral proteins, and says it is time to focus on mass-producing an effective antiserum for this horrible disease. On ERV, Abbie Smith explains how the manufacturing process works: genetically modifying viruses to contain blueprints for parts of Ebola antibodies, putting the viruses in bacteria as delivery vehicles, and using the bacteria to infect GMO tobacco plants whose cellular machinery will be hijacked to make molecules. Smith writes, "Plants are a pretty cheap way to produce a lot of protein. Blow up the plant cells, purify your protein, and BAM! A ton of anti-Ebola antibodies."

milhayser Thu, 08/14/2014 - 09:08

Tags

One point has not yet been made clear in the coverage of Ebola that I have seen: does infection confer immunity on survivors? If Dr. Brantly chose to return to Africa, would he be safe from reinfection?

If Ebola works like smallpox did, there would be significant implications for controlling the disease; immune survivors would be able to work directly with sick patients without fear of contracting the disease themselves. They could dispense with the personal protective equipment that can frighten patients and deter them from presenting for treatment. Such equipment is a scarce resource in Africa, and survivors with even rudimentary training as caregivers could contribute to the control of the spread of the disease.

Asbestos victims demand North American ban on use and export of asbestos

cmonforton — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:00:00 +0000

Asbestos victims demand North American ban on use and export of asbestos

[Update 12/15/11 below]

It's been 3 1/2 years since Leah Nielsen lost her father from mesothelioma. "I took care of my father as he died an excruciating death. He died too young." This Utah resident wants to protect others from suffering the same kind of horrible death by banning the use and export of asbestos.

Pennsylania resident Barbara Mozuch feels the same way: "My mother died on June 18, 2011 from peritoneal mesothelioma, just seven weeks after being diagnosed!! Something needs to be done."

Heidi von Palleske of Ontario, Canada explains how asbestos ruined the health and took the lives of both her parents. "They died horrible deaths. Please stop the suffering caused by greed."

Yvonne Hall of Kentucky lost her 39 year old son to mesothelioma. "We can only speculate on how he was exposed to asbestos sometime in his youth. Asbestos must be banned!"

These are just of few sentiments from the millions of victims worldwide of asbestos-related disease. They are calling on U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to immediately endorse a North American plan to end asbestos-related diseases. Last week the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) and Canadian Voices of Asbestos Victims issued a Declaration outlining the nine essential steps to eliminate asbestos exposure and thus asbestos-related diseases. These steps include:

Stopping the North American production and use of all types of asbestos;

Ending the North American export of asbestos to the developing world;

Supporting asbestos producing communities and workers in just transition to sustainable alternative industries;

Taking measures to prevent exposure to asbestos still in place and during asbestos removal and disposal; and

Establishing North American registries of exposure locations and of people with past and/or current exposures to asbestos.

The Declaration reminds us of the deadly consequences of exposure to asbestos, but also of the powerful economic interests that insist on its continued use. All forms of asbestos are known human carcinogens and exposure to them also cause irrerversible fibrotic lung disease. The World Health Organization estimates that 107,000 workers die annually from asbestos exposure, and an unknown number develop disease from second-hand exposure (e.g., children exposed from a parent's work clothes.) Neither the U.S. nor Canada have prohibited the use of asbestos in the production of domestic products, and in the first seven months of 2010 the U.S. imported an estimated 820 metric tons of asbestos, with 90% coming from Canada.

"It is truly unbelievable that the United States continues to defy decades of science confirming asbestos is a human carcinogen," said Linda Reinstein, ADAO Co-Founder. "As a mesothelioma widow, I find this unacceptable because numerous safer alternatives to asbestos exist."

ADAO and the Canadian Voices of Asbestos Victims want to gather 10,000 signatures from across the globe on a petition supporting the North American Declaration to Eliminate Asbestos-Related Disease. Add your name to the petition, just like New York resident Antonina Avitabile did. She offered her name in memory of Joe Amento and Patsy Aiello.

[Update 12/15/11: Jim Morris and Chris Hamby with the Center for Public Integrity report today on an Inspector General's (IG) finding that the EPA permitted companies to use unapproved methods to demolish buildings containing asbestos, allowing the cancer-causing mineral fibers to enter the environment and pose a risk to the workers, their families and communities, as well as EPA employees. The rationale?? To save time and money. I'll be in touch with Jim Morris to find out if EPA or the contractors have a plan to identify and contact the affected workers. I'd like to know who will make a promise that 20-30-40 years down the road, if any of them develop asbestos-related disease, their medical care will be paid and lost function compensated.]

cmonforton Tue, 12/13/2011 - 06:00

Tags

asbestos

cancer

Mining

Occupational Health & Safety

Public Health - General

This will go down as the worst man made (cultivated) disaster in history. By the time we get a handle on this hundreds of thousands will die. We need to ban asbestos but the more immediate problem is that people are not aware of its use and the fact that we live with it in our home (not regulated). We need to focus more effort on awareness so future generations are aware. Home remodel and renovation, not to mention normal upkeep and repairs are happening every day. We need to let people know that they are causing the disturbances that release the fibers. We are trained to sample everything except wood and metal because must things used in construction could and have been identified as asbestos containing. I talk to people all the time as a non-profit actually reaching out to train or educate the public. Iâve been doing this for over 7 years and the one thing that is clear is that the public has been miss-lead into thinking that asbestos is a thing of the past. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. We still use asbestos and we are finding it in new products as a result. Education is what we need to work harder on. As you learn pass it on. No one is going to go out and remove the asbestos used throughout history. We would be disturbed it in the process causing more exposures and cancer. Test for it and make sure it is maintained and managed. Wall over walls floor over floorsâ¦

Hi Charles,
I agree with you that education is what we need . Several years ago Asbestos was one of the hazardous problems in our community . Hundreds of workers in factories using asbestos are dangerously exposed to its harmful effects. These workers often have no other means and are not unionized. But now a days Technology changes there are company contractors now that are experienced, knowledgeable that we can assure our families safety. I've heard about http://asbestosremovallosangelesca.com/ they specializes in asbestos removal.

On World Health Day, Confronting the Menace of Antimicrobial Resistance

lborkowski — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 14:30:10 +0000

On World Health Day, Confronting the Menace of Antimicrobial Resistance

Today is World Health Day, and the World Health Organization is using the occasion to draw attention to a serious global health problem: the rapid spread of bacteria resistant to antibiotics. The development and widespread use of antibiotics counts as a public health triumph, as infections that once routinely killed large numbers of people became much easier to treat. That triumph can be undone, though. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan warns, "In the absence of urgent corrective and protective actions, the world is heading towards a post-antibiotic era, in which many common infections will no longer have a cure and, once again, kill unabated."

Those who've become infected with an antibiotic-resistant bacteria probably already know that we have a problem, because their illnesses tend to be longer and more severe. Some of these patients are cured by other antibiotics, which are often more expensive and can bring worse side effects. Some die.

Maryn McKenna - author of the book Superbug and one of the top experts on this issue - runs through some of the disturbing numbers on the diseases that have become resistant to both first-line and last-resort drugs. For an even more unsettling read, check out her recent Scientific American article on two new resistance genes that have been found in bacteria carried by US patients.

Antibiotic resistance would emerge even if antibiotics were used sparingly. With our excessive use of these drugs, though, antibiotics are losing their effectiveness at an alarming rate. Patients want antibiotics from their doctors, even if their diagnosis is a virus that won't respond; many doctors just write the prescriptions rather than try to convince their patients it's a bad idea. And whether the antibiotic is prescribed appropriately or not, some patients will fail to follow the dosage instructions and allow the hardiest of the bacteria they're carrying to survive.

Treating human infections isn't the only use of antibiotics, though. Back in 2001, the Union of Concerned Scientists estimated that 24.6 million pounds of antimicrobials are used in livestock for non-therapeutic purposes each year - that is, food animals are getting dosed for reasons like growth promotion, not to cure specific infections. The FDA recently reported that livestock producers used nearly 29 million pounds of antimicrobials in 2009, so UCS's estimate was probably not far off. Many of these drugs are also used in humans, so their extensive use in livestock is contributing to the problem of bacterial resistance to antibiotics on which we rely.

The FDA is promoting the "judicious use" of antibiotics through voluntary measures, and in March US Representative Louise Slaughter re-introduced the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, which would phase out the non-therapeutic use in livestock of medically important antibiotics. The WHO is also promoting a set of policy solutions to all countries:

develop and implement a comprehensive, financed national plan
strengthen surveillance and laboratory capacity
ensure uninterrupted access to essential medicines of assured quality
regulate and promote rational use of medicines
enhance infection prevention and control
foster innovation and research and development for new tools.

The last one - fostering innovation and R&D for new tools - is important but will likely require some big changes in how drugs are developed. McKenna reports in her Scientific American article that the current pipeline isn't promising:

We might be able to research our way out of this dilemma with yet another new class of antibiotics--at least until the bacteria catch up once again. But with no new medications in the 10-year pipeline capable of dispatching these latest superbugs, we may have to live with the risk of many kinds of untreatable infections for an uncomfortably long time.

"It has been hard to discover new compounds that work against gram-negatives and are not toxic to people," says David Shlaes, a physician and drug-development consultant and author of Antibiotics: The Perfect Storm (Springer, 2010). "When you think about it, what you are trying to do with an antibiotic is trying to kill something within us, without hurting us. It is challenging." The last new antibiotic licensed for gram-negative infections was doripenem, a carbapenem that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2007.

The Economist points out that investing in developing new antibiotics is not financially attractive to drug companies because the drugs will only be taken by a relatively small number of people for relatively short periods of time. Other financial incentives - like tax credits, guaranteed markets, and prizes - might encourage more investment in R&D for antibiotics to treat infections resistant to current treatments.

As individuals, we can use antibiotics responsibly (when needed for an infection and according to the prescriber's instructions) and try to buy meat, eggs, and dairy products from producers who don't use antibiotics for non-therapeutic reasons. And we should also be aware that the bacteria we encounter day to day - and especially when we're in hospitals or nursing homes - might be resistant to antibiotics. I'm going to go wash my hands now.

lborkowski Thu, 04/07/2011 - 10:30

Tags

food

healthcare

antibiotics

antimicrobial resistance

Are there any reliable ways (short of only buying from farmers you know and trust) to know if non-medical antibiotics have been used in the food chain? In particular, does organic certification allow or prohibit them, and are there any other actual inspected certifications that will cover this?

According to the US regulation on organic labeling, producers of organic livestock operations must not "Sell, label, or represent as organic any animal or edible product derived from any animal treated with antibiotics." So, looking for the USDA organic seal would be a simple way to find products made without antibiotics.

In the UK, Soil Association certification explicitly bans antibiotics used for growth promotion; I can't face fighting the EU website for the statutory definitions.

This is a very important article. Not only shoud the understanding of the threat of antibiotic usage encompass their over usage for treatment of illness, it needs to be more widely recognized that their usage in livestock is subjecting us all to antibiotics whether we are taking them directly or not.

And then there is genetically modified foods in which anti-fungals are used extensively. Fungal induced illnesses are also increasing in humans, plants and animals at an alarming rate.

Our Dangerous Planet

dblum — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:35:42 +0000

Our Dangerous Planet

During the 1970s, international aid agencies came up with a brilliant plan to stem a plague of water-borne illnesses in the Asian country of Bangladesh. They would underwrite the installation of wells in disease-troubled villages, tapping into the cleaner ground water below.

They would use simple, relatively inexpensive tube wells, place thousands of these over-sized drinking straws into the shallow aquifers. And these straws - millions of them - would suck up the cleaner, microorganism free water in healthy abundance.

At first, it seemed to work like a blessing. Infant mortality rates dropped by 50 percent as the rate of dysentery, typhoid and chlolera dropped. But by the mid-1990s, a strange epidemic of other illnesses began to appear - some symptoms rather like cholera (lethargy, severe stomach pain, nausea and diarrhea), but others wickedly their own: such as a roughening and darkening of skin, a corrosion appearance of lesions on hands and feet:

In fact, as a team of increasingly angry researchers from adjacent India concluded in 1995: classic symptoms of arsenic poisoning.

The element arsenic is one of the oldest known naturally-occurring poisons on Earth, found scattered through rocky beds of minerals around the place. It was reportedly identified by the Roman Catholic scholar and alchemist Albertus Magnus (also known as St. Albert the Great) in 1250, while he was heating the mineral orpiment, which turns out to be rich in both arsenic and sulfur. As an ingredient in the complex recipe that makes up the Earth's crust, arsenic is relatively rare - about 1.5 parts per million over all - and usually brought to the surface as a waste byproduct of mining other ores.

Oh, but the problem is that that it's not distributed evenly around the planet. Arsenic-dense mineral deposits cluster unevenly. We find them when illnesses appear, usually, beneath the Ganges River Delta, where Bangladesh and the West Bengal province of India sit, in Thailand, Taiwan, tracked across mainland China, in the Latin American countries of Chile and Argentina, in states of the American West such as New Mexico and Nevada.

And what happened in Bangladesh is that all those well-meaning wells, those nifty technological straws, pulled water, contaminated by the surrounding mineral deposits, right into the homes and lives of millions and millions of people. In fact, last week, the World Health Organization called it "the largest mass poisoning of a population in history."

This followed a rather horrifying study published in the British medical Journal, Lancet, which concluded that some 77 million Bangladeshi had been exposed to toxic levels of arsenic and that such exposure was responsible for more than 20 percent of the deaths in a population study group from the region. "The results of this study have important public health implications for arsenic in drinking water," the authors noted, with some understatement.

If you return to the original idea - finding a source of water uncontaminated by evil pathogens - the original hopes are still obvious. Easy to say, very easy to say, in hindsight, that a good geological analysis might have prevented the grief to come. But it's also true that surface water remains often unsafe and the source of many illnesses in this region. There's an element, at least for now, of being caught between the proverbial rock and hard place, even while we can hope for better answers.

So for the moment, let's consider this a cautionary tale. A reminder that good intentions don't always mean good health. That we live on a dangerous planet, both above ground and below. And that we are almost never as smart as we think we are.

dblum Sun, 06/20/2010 - 11:35

Tags

Who is William A. Sprigg, Ph.D.?

stoat — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:17:48 +0000

Who is William A. Sprigg, Ph.D.?

Well, he is this one. But not this one. In the news, he is Former IPCC Leader Says Climategate Scientists "Manipulated data." and the "head of the International Technical Review Panel for IPCC's first report".

The latter is what interests me. What is it? I am just about old enough to remember IPCC '90, and indeed I have a paper copy, WG I of course, provided free of charge by the nice Hadley folk. I should have got them to autograph it. In it I find no mention of the said panel. There was the WG I core team co-ordination, who were at the Hadley, but what is the panel? A search of www.ipcc.ch finds nothing.

So, any ideas?

stoat Thu, 02/04/2010 - 12:17

Tags

climate people

International Technical Review Panel

The c.v. also has this (just above the Technical Review Panel entry):

Member and Head of Delegation, Working Group II, Impact Assessment, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, The United Nations, 1990;

So maybe it has something to do with WG2 report, not WG1?

P.S. You are mentioned/cited in my latest post on McIntyre and McKitrick. That's two in a row. No doubt the cheque is in the mail.

FWIW, there are 2 1988 mentions of him in Google News Archive, but they're both pay-per-view and the Gore conspiracy forgot to cut me a check this decade (or last, or the one before that, or...), so someone else can buy.

For what it's worth, he's listed as the contact person for this:
(see the end)

Physics News Update
Number 12 (Story #3), December 10, 1990 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein

WORLD CLIMATE CHANGE: Scientists participating in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) summarized some of their findings at the AGU meeting (and in a report distributed there). The IPCC scientists "are certain" that "there is a natural greenhouse effect which already keeps the Earth warmer than it would otherwise be" and that emissions from human activities "will enhance the greenhouse effect, resulting on average in an additional warming of the Earth's surface." The IPCC "calculates with confidence" that "carbon dioxide has been responsible for over half the enhanced greenhouse effect in the past, and is likely to remain so in the future." "Based on current model results," they predict that under a business-as-usual scenario, a "likely increase in global mean temperature of about 1 degree C above the present value by 2025 and 3 degrees C before the end of the next century" will occur, along with a rise of about 20 cm in global mean sea level by 2030. The IPCC report notes, however, that the anticipated greenhouse effects may be of roughly the same size as the natural variability of past temperature patterns and that "unequivocal detection of the enhanced greenhouse effect from observations is not likely for a decade or more. (William Sprigg, NOAA, 202-673-5360.)

He led the US delegation for "'Impact Assessment, WGII" on the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and led the scientific review of the first IPCC Report
Source

"and led the scientific review of the first IPCC Report." - yes, but what does that mean? Is it just CV puffery? Why haven't I, or anyone else, ever heard of it?

> The alternative science panel should be funded and
> administered by non-government, private entities
-- Heartland

Because corporations are people, and, science is a matter of opinion, and we care about theirs:
http://abstrusegoose.com/strips/kickin_ass_n_takin_names.PNG

What I wonder about mostly is all these folks coming out of the woodwork accusing data fudging, based on no more info than the rest of us have -- and counter to the findings of those that have actually read the stolen mails with comprehension.

Seems some folks are in a great hurry to pre-empt the Muir Russell report. First the ICO guy, now this. I wonder why?

Did you try contacting Sprigg directly? His email is on his CV.

I asked someone who was acquainted with Sprigg, and all that person would say is that Sprigg is a nice fellow who would likely be responsive if approached respectfully.

[Hmm, are you mistaking me for a journalist? It didn't really occur to me. Now you mention it, hmm, I doubt I will. Go on, you do it -W]

Fire in the hole: Wolfgang Wodarg and WHO

revere — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:26:49 +0000

Fire in the hole: Wolfgang Wodarg and WHO

The Reveres have written many posts about the World Health Organization in five years. Some just reported on their activities, others, as seemed appropriate, were critical or praised them. WHO operates in a difficult landscape under rules of engagement not well suited to fighting an enemy that recognizes neither national borders nor national sovereignties and one might question this intergovernmental agency's relevance given those constraints. But we have always bridled at accusations WHO acted unethically or incompetently, neither of which is true. WHO does a difficult job with just a fraction of the budget of many national agencies and mostly ithem well. Nasty and mean spirited accusations now being hurled by ignorant and self-aggrandizing members like the head of health of the Council of Europe, Wolfgang Wodarg, who charges WHO with pimping for the drug cartel, are so stupid one wonders why anyone would take him seriously. But apparently some wearers of tin foil hats take him seriously enough that WHO felt it necessary to issue a statement defending its honor:

Additional allegations that WHO created a 'fake' pandemic to bring economic benefit to industry are scientifically wrong and historically incorrect.
Lab analyses showed that this influenza virus was genetically and antigenically very different from other influenza viruses circulating among people

Epidemiological information provided by Mexico, the US and Canada demonstrated person-to-person transmission.

Clinical information, especially from Mexico, indicated this virus also could cause severe disease and death. At the time, those reports did not indicate a pandemic situation, but taken together sent a very strong warning to WHO and other public health authorities to be ready for one.

As the pandemic evolved, clinicians identified a very severe form of primary viral pneumonia, which was rapidly progressive and frequently fatal, that is not part of the disease pattern seen during seasonal influenza. While these cases were relatively rare, they imposed a heavy burden on intensive care units.

Geographical spread was exceptionally rapid.

On 29 April 2009, WHO reported lab confirmed cases in 9 countries.

About 6 weeks later, on 11 June, WHO reported cases in 74 countries and territories in more than two WHO regions. It is this global spread which led WHO to call for increasing phases and finally, to announce that a pandemic was underway.

By 1 July, infections had been confirmed in 120 countries and territories.

The world is going through a real pandemic. The description of it as a fake is wrong and irresponsible. We welcome any legitimate review process that can improve our work. (WHO statement)

Just so. The influenza pandemic appeared in a form that surprised everyone and like just about everyone WHO managed some things well and some things less well. That's the nature of major disease outbreaks and with influenza, one of the most unpredictable diseases of all, nothing is assured. Planning for the worst is the only responsible course of action. But all of this is well known.

WHO is handicapped in many ways, not the least being it must obey certain standards of public and diplomatic decorum. We don't have those constraints so we are free to say what's really on our mind about this and here it is:

Wolfgang Wodarg is a flaming asshole.

revere Thu, 01/28/2010 - 00:26

Tags

Pandemic preparedness

WHO

Wingnut wrongosphere

I'll guess you don't want to read the HUffington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/niko-kyriakou/swine-flu-didnt-fly_b_43878…

Well said.

It seems to me that at this point, the World Health Organization would want to encourage a proactive disclosure of senior management's personal relations with pharmaceutical companies.

Personal relations including: recieving direct renumeration as part time employees of a pharmaceutical companiy while employed by the WHO; spouses and other familly members employed; direct investments; accepting rewards such as dinners and trips etc.

There isnt necessarily a problem with some of these economic relationships, if the individual removes him/herself from decision making regarding the company in question.

...Given 'Oil for Food' with Iraq and other misdemeanors through the years with the United Nations and subordinate agencies, you would think that this would be the #1 issue for incoming 'ethical' WHO leaders at all levels.

Does the World Health Organization have a publicized code of ethics?

If they don't, it says everthing that needs to be said about ethics and integrity.

SARS survivor: This freelance journalist doesn't know the subject area and given what's been written by the tinfoil hat types and those who make a living exploiting public cynicism about the world in general this piece is not surprising. Wodarg may call himself an epidemiologist but my search didn't discover any epi studies he had ever done. He is a publicity hound and he is getting publicity.

Tom: I think when you raised this last time you got a response from Jody about WHO's Conflict of Interest policies and the statement I linked to has further information. But Codes of Ethics are not the real issue. It is a given that people at WHO, CDC and anywhere else are supposed to act ethically. That means very little. The real question is what happened, what was reasonable and plausible, were they unduly influenced by Big Pharma. My view is they were influenced by some of their powerful member states, which is, after all, how the organization operates, and that influence wasn't beneficial to good public health, but that's the system and everyone knows it. Big Pharma was just hanging around like vultures to see if they could pick up some of the carrion from this pandemic and since WHO and CDC and everyone else needed them to make the vaccine it was necessary to work with them and even cater to them. That's not even close to collusion or worse.

"It is a given that people at WHO, CDC and anywhere else are supposed to act ethically."

I'm not sure I would completely agree with this statement.

I think it would be reasonable to assume the outcome of removing speed limits from roads...and I also think it reasonable to assume the outcome of intention without regulation in respect to codes of ethics.

I really don't think the relationships between regulators, researchers and pharmaceutical companies will ever be solved...

...but I do believe that those whose taxes pay the wages of the World Health Organization deserve to know the truth... and that only occurs with independent oversight and full and proactive disclosure of potential conflicts of interest.

Here is the report of the hearing of the Council of Europe's Committee on Social, Health and Family Affairs on Wodarg's allegations (http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/swineflu/news/jan261…), and here is a synthesis (http://assembly.coe.int/ASP/NewsManager/EMB_NewsManagerView.asp?ID=5209…) and finally here'e the video of the hearing (mms://coenews.coe.int/vod/20100126_05_e.wmv).
What struck me were the allegations made by Dr. Ulrich Keil, allegedly a former member of "WHO Collaborating Center for Epidemiology and Prevention of Cardiovascular and Other Chronic Disease at Germany's University of Munster", who accused WHO of hiding the fact that H1N1 was in fact an already well known virus.
And no, Wodarg is no epidemiologist, and reading his websites he appears to have some problems with basic logic too.
Keep up the good work, always enjoying reading your posts

silphion: Thanks for the links. Keil's comments are either willfully misleading or incredibly ignorant of influenza epidemiology. H1N1 is a subtype and of course various strains of this subtype have been known for decades (in fact since we knew flu was a virus, the 1930s; it's not just the subtype that is at issue since both seasonal flu and 1918 flu are H1N1). This is a strain of H1N1 that is novel (the genetic analysis demonstrates that) and the epidemiology proves it by its age distribution. As for comparing deaths from seasonal flu and tabulated deaths in Germany, it sounds like he doesn't care that these numbers are apples and oranges since they are estimated in entirely different ways.

The Kink in the Pandemic Flu Response Plan: making the vaccines. At issue, the first step, once multiple isolates are isolated and identified. "Flu vaccines are usually grown in fertilized chicken eggs. The virus is injected into an egg. It is allowed to multiply in the embryo for several days. Then the egg is opened and the virus is harvested. After being purified and inactivated, it is used to make vaccine."

BUT,

1. There was MORE than 1 isolate in circulation: there were actually two separately circulating strains with different combination of genes.

2. Poultry do NOT show symptoms when infected with relatively high doses of either 2009 S-OIV or the reconstructed 1918 pandemic influenza viruses.

Ooops.

So the virus didn't readily grow well in chicken eggs and this delayed large-scale vaccine production for months. The question is why did it take investigators several years to test avian response to the reconstructed 1918 strain? The result might have given vaccine makers a heads up that vaccine production to an avian-swine-human reassortant might be harder than anticipated.

The Plan was to trot out sufficient vaccine to inoculate most of the susceptible population - children and adults. They delay meant that those of us who should have been vaccinated, weren't before the second wave swept through the region.

Another major issue was the total lack of public health agency coordination in doling out the delayed vaccine and enacting public protection measure (distancing, etc) in a timely manner, especially in the US. This despite millions being spent and years of planning for just such an pandemic event. Public controls were successful in other countries, like Japan. They were nearly absent in others, like the UK, where most adults and children didn't even bother to wash hands to control virus spread.

Another surprise was that the much feared Fall Wave was not nearly as broadly lethal nor protracted as expected, based on case reports from the First (Spring) Wave in the Americas and Northern Europe and later in Asia. It caused severe complications in select patients, but was relatively mild in most patients. The second wave peaked and waned relatively more abruptly than anticipated, too.

Another surprise was the relatively limited acquisition of antiviral drug resistance, despite the widespread mutations in the seasonal flu of just one year earlier.

Dr Chan, Director General of WHO, maintains that "we were exceptionally lucky and dodged a bullet'.

She is correct, but WHO and CDC don't realize just how close we came, why the pandemic arose in 2009 with early lethality in many healthy adults and children, why it appeared simultaneously in Mexico and the US, and why the second wave petered out rather quickly, despite coincidental timing with seasonal holidays a situation that normally amplifies infectious outbreaks.

It had very little to do with delayed public vaccination.

The real story behind the 2009 Pandemic remains to be told.

Dr. Chan is also correct on one last point: we are not out of the woods yet.

About the following:

"My view is they were influenced by some of their powerful member states, which is, after all, how the organization operates, and that influence wasn't beneficial to good public health, but that's the system and everyone knows it. Big Pharma was just hanging around like vultures to see if they could pick up some of the carrion from this pandemic and since WHO and CDC and everyone else needed them to make the vaccine it was necessary to work with them and even cater to them. That's not even close to collusion or worse."

1) How and to what extent were they influenced by member states?

2) "but that's the system and everyone knows it." And therefore, making a mistake would be justified?

3) "it was necessary to work with them and even cater to them." What kind of catering was done exactly? And what were the consequences of this catering?

4) "That's not even close to collusion or worse." If catering to them in any way, without disclosure of the WHO management's personal relations with the pharmaceutical industry, is not collusion, then what would be collusion?

revere,
What do you/"y'all" make of Peter Sandman's analysis of the situation?

http://www.psandman.com/col/schnirring3.htm

> Wolfgang Wodarg is a flaming asshole.

sorry, but that puts you a bit towards the same category.
Attack the argument, not the arguer.

WHO made it enough clear that their declaring of a pandemic had nothing to do with virulence.
Despite Chan's "..including virulence..." after the protest from Japan and Britain. Then they had a 1-2 week
"preparing period" before the pandemic was declared
(phase 6)

However, you may ask, how useful the pandemic phases are then for preparation
guidelines and pandemic plans ?
So, WHO should IMO issue other,separated guidelines which also consider virulence.

Alex: Here is where WHO fits in the international system:
http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2009/08/world_health_organization…

We discussed here several times how the UK, China and Japan influenced the delay in calling the pandemic and added to confusion. Use the WHO category on the sidebar. The main point is that the international system requires that WHO be influenced by their member states. That was why I question their relevance for this problem.

The catering is a consequence of the fact that the world is entirely dependent on them. We have argument over many years this is bad, that there should be regional vaccine institutes (look at the ""vaccine" category on the sidebar to find some of the many posts) that don't depend on the market system.

There were no secret arrangements. Everyone could see what was happening and the relationship of the WHO to the vaccine industry has been going on in the open for 50 years through the surveillance system.

passerby: Our view is not the problem was the vaccine -- the progeny of the H1N1 vaccine have been grown in eggs since the beginning of flu viral culture in the 1930s; PR8 H1N1 is the routine lab flu virus -- but failure of national gov'ts to strengthen their public health and social service infrastructures. Growing the virus in eggs is old technology but the drug industry never bothered to put the new technologies through the regulatory process because it wasn't profitable so we were stuck (in the US) with eggs.

anon: The single line you object to comes at the end of a post full of arguments against Wodarg's absurd accusations. More to the point, we have been posting on this for 5 years, as you know so it isn't as if we don't have arguments aplenty.

There was no secret about the definition of a pandemic. It did not include virulence. It only included it when powerful member nations objected. Your point about the usefulness of the guides is well taken and goes to our observation that their relevance for this is questionable, given the nature of the international system.

Jupe: Writing a grant so haven't had a chance to read it. Will take a look as soon as I can.

> anon: The single line you object to comes at the end of a post full of arguments against
> Wodarg's absurd accusations.

not just that line. Spare me to do further quotes. What about your headlines ?

> More to the point, we have been posting on this for 5 years, as you know so it isn't as if we
> don't have arguments aplenty.

same holds for Siegel,Fumento,Tenpenny,...

> There was no secret about the definition of a pandemic. It did not include virulence.

yes. Even a non-virulent pandemic is important with longterm effects since it may replace old strains
and/or reassort with them. (why didn't you use that as an argument ?)

> It only included it when powerful member nations objected. Your point about the
> usefulness of the guides is well taken and goes to our observation that their relevance
> for this is questionable, given the nature of the international system.

IMO the real critics should be addressed to PCAST who spoke of 30000-90000 deaths in August
when evidence from the NY-city wave, from Mexico and incoming data from Australia,NZ
already suggested a lower CFR.

I don't understand how was this allowed to get so far. Wodarg has absolutely no proof for his claims.

anon: We don't know what the CFR is/was yet. That will await some analysis and may take years. I don't know what point you are making about Siegel and Fumento.

We're never going to know the "true" CFR, here. The waters have been muddied by common testing procedures that -- unavoidably -- introduced huge numbers of false negatives. Along with that, we have (to date) been "cushioned" by the advent of very efficacious anti-virals, and state-of-the-art ICU's. We may be in store for an emerging third wave, with this virus (the second wave, in the US at least, has clearly bottomed-out, now); if this is the case, it is almost certain that the third wave will not be ushered in by a "pure" iteration of the strain that served as the "seed virus" for the first two waves; that strain has largely been subdued by a combination of initial infections and vaccinations that have conferred a robust herd immunity on the general population, effectively reducing the number of possible host prospects to the point where that strain is essentially no longer viable. It has managed, in the course of the last year, to nearly eliminate the reservoir of potential hosts. That's to be expected, of course. The successor progeny that can probably deal with this environment most successfully will likely be one that can take advantage of the successes of its very infectious predecessor, while at the same time avoiding such a close identification with it that the current version of pandemic vaccine can effectively contend with it. The "third wave" virus will have to be one that has managed to mutate away from the current vaccine, if it is to be successful (we'll know that when large numbers of previously infected people, or those who have been vaccinated, begin to be infected). I think there's a strong possibility that a strain of that potential is now out there. And I would also think that we will know if this is actually the case within the next several weeks. The pandemic has either run aground, or we will witness the next iteration in the near term, as I see it. YMMV.

This is what I would suggest, at this point: Watch Mexico; Southern Mexico (and the Southern US, where the second wave began to radiate outward from) is still very much the canary in the coal mine, here, in my opinion.

Revere,

thanks for all the information. Is there anything that can be done to create regional vaccine institutes, independent of Big Pharma?

Alex: I have heard scuttlebutt that there are discussions of regional vaccine institutes now, although I don't know any details or even it it's true or if it is, how far it has gone. Two US states, Massachusetts and Michigan, used to make vaccines but that stopped in the Reagan years. It's not unprecedented and the world is topsy turvy so who knows what will emerge from this period of transition.

Just for the record:
Wolfgang Wodarg has been Chairman of a Health Subcommittee of the Council of Europe Parliament Assembly (PACE) only up to 2004.
In addition, he has not been re-elected by his German voters (there is still hope about common sense of citizens all over the world...) and lost his post as Member of PACE recently.
In fact, this week, with all the fuss over the WHO questioning, he is not technically a member of PACE, and only attends the hearing sessions "by invitation".
And yes, he had not prove anything.
Farewell, Wolfgang.

Revere the WHO is an organization that is political in nature at the least and lately, in the max. I really dont like closed door decisions being made. Thats where this one went south back a couple of years ago when Pharma, Auntie Margaret and the rest of the boys and girls all went behind the medical iron curtain to make decisions about an H5N1 pandemic that never showed. Why? It was a world issue and OMG transparency there is just like the Obama adminstration. Back door deals, bunker'd and hunker'd we are going to ram this down your throat because we cant say ram it up your ass on TV. Was there a big chance of H5N1 breaking? Sure, but H1N1 took its place and thats where everything you say above becomes very credible. But we still have this problem and that is that the whores are sleeping with the whores.

My mom who was in both politics and PR for 50 years would have first said silence the crowd and they didnt. Was there a pandemic looming? You betcha ! There were two of course, a pandemic of bullshit that consumed the world more quickly than the bug itself, and the question mark bug. Which version? Which strain? But everyone kept making seasonal vax too now didnt they? They wanted the world to fund their R&D and then...they would sell us questionable vaccines using our money.

There was no question that there COULD have been a major problem and frankly it was a pretty big one when H1N1 turned up, H5N1 turned out and the WHO spent one shitload of money and we got what? Richer Pharma... and we spent how much money on a vax and a questionable vax at that. It was 1976 all over again..at 40 million vax's there were about the same number of reactions....And Pharma people got richer. They would have ither way but to have a pandemic was a money maker for the ailing Pharma industry. There really werent any negotiations on this at all. They made several countries responsible for adverse reactions and not the manufacturers. Yep, the US was responsible if anything happened. France and a couple of others too. Mega-bucks with a backstop. We pay for the liabilities, we pay for the free vax, then we get sued after the fact. Nice .

So how did we get here? There was that thing with Baxter and he wrong stuff being sent to the Czechs... How messy and unprofessional and how infectious? How many cases like that do we not know about? Hey its a little yellowish liquid and there are varying degrees of yellow and danger with them. Dont worry about BSL labs, we have Baxter.

Wolfie does make some valid points that no one wants or will answer. Time for doctors to be doctors at WHO and get the hell out of bed with Pharma. But they cant. Its like cancer treatment. Those guys dont make money off of anything but the drugs they are making.or in the case of the WHO, the control of world health. Probably didnt hear about their latest funding scheme have you? Too many positions of authority hold seats of power at drug manufacturers- WHO =Pharma.

Kind of like ADD medication. Who comes up with the criteria for use of medication? Pharma. W.H.O. comes up with the criteria for the declaration and production of vaccines? Who comes up with the fix? Pharma.

Way too cozy. But who is a bigger asshole?

People that kicked out several hundred billions of dollars of world taxes and saying that it was good for the people or the WHO that pissed off the next biggest asshole on the planet Supari? It gave her the out to say we were making bioweps? It was like giving a star in the East to Jerry Falwell. She had a valid point but only in the media.

The first chunk of money was stolen in Indonesia big time and she admitted it. It built great little dacha's up in Phuket Thailand, but then she wanted more-extortion in fact. She wanted to be in on the gravy train but in a world that was looking at how money was spent at the time, well memories are short. You excoriated Rumsfeld, lets excoriate the WHO too and its because when that curtain got drawn, Ed Hammond who I disagreed with personally about most things was excluded along with the entire media...It gave rise to the conspiracy and its not a theory. Its a fact because the curtain WAS drawn by WHO.

There ARE a lot of unanswered questions and only because of their actions, not Wolfies. Let them properly answer the questions posed and everything will ease up and make Wolfie the asshole you say he is. Until then Wolfie is right and only because of his position, not because of his message. Let them disprove it by points, not by some press release. You are right about what you have posted, but he isnt wrong because you say he is. Pandemic is here but its very mild and I havent seen them spend 750 billion dollars on seasonal flu....Yet.

Sorry for the length...The BS is deep and you have use a long shovel to get it out.

@Revere: The faster they can get those regional vaccine institutes going, the faster the anti-vaccers lose the "It's a huge conspiracy by the government" argument and possibly other retarded arguments.

@Kruger: I'd like to see some references for all of this. Without them, the post is just another rant. I hope that by "the whores are sleeping with the whores.", you're not trying to challenge Wodarg's recently acquired position as flaming asshole, as Revere put it.

On a separate note, it's always fun to look at anti-vax websites. Infowars, which is not just an anti-vax website but also the epicenter of Quantum Conspiracy Theory development, always makes me laugh. They claim that Orwell's 1984 came 25 years late (2009) in the form of H1N1 vaccination, mandated by governments and the WHO and that it will be similar to eugenics programs in the 1920s. Big Brother is vaccinating you.

Alex...Please to refer to the posts here from two and three years ago. They are there. But to cut to the chase...Ed Hammond of the Sunshine Project ended up at the conference and was like a stealth weapon. Ed and I hardly ever agreed on anything but the one goddamn thing that we did was that everything should be out in the open. They went into "executive session" on more than one occasion talking about H5N1. Executive committees, you know the ones we pay all of our tax money so we can send it to corrupt corporations like the WHO, or a Pelosi/Reid two step insurance company buy-off we are seeing now.

Ed was excluded from some of the meetings but he was able to slip in, get info and it was incredible stuff. It had all of the stench of a cover-up and well, now unless you have someone in there you can come up with all sorts of things.

Conspiracy-The thing about conspiracies that are properly done is that they are properly done. Never can quite get to the end of them. Too well insulated. We are in a pandemic now, there is no question of it. The true question is whether people were or are making serious money off of it.

Alex-Do go back into the archives and bring yourself up to speed on this. 750 billion goes in and jack shit comes out from the vax program. Really the whole way on the edge of not being worth crap. Wodang's assertions may be a bit off base but not totally. A LOT of people got rich I can definitely say that for sure. We end up with regional vax institutes? Hardly, it would take years to get them going. Frankly they are dangerous as hell and are terrorist targets.

@Kruger: Which posts from 2-3 years ago exactly? Can you give a link?

I know nothing about Ed Hammond but don't have time now to look that up. Sorry. I'll check later.

Now, about the following:

"corrupt corporations like the WHO"
>>The influence Big Pharma has on WHO should be looked at. Revere says that those at the WHO were very competent and did the best they could with what they had. I tend to be more skeptical. But calling them corrupt is a gross exaggeration. And besides, the WHO is not even a corporation.

"The true question is whether people were or are making serious money off of it."
>>That was already addressed by Revere in the reply above. "Big Pharma was just hanging around like vultures to see if they could pick up some of the carrion from this pandemic and since WHO and CDC and everyone else needed them to make the vaccine it was necessary to work with them and even cater to them."

"750 billion goes in and jack shit comes out from the vax program. Really the whole way on the edge of not being worth crap."
>>Not sure how much goes into it but a lot has come out of it. The eradication of smallpox is one of the greatest successes of vaccination.

"Wodang's assertions may be a bit off base but not totally."
>>Yes, totally. I don't have time to write a full answer to this but Wodarg seems to have gone full metal jacket on the WHO, for no serious reason. Wodarg was a very controversial figure even before attacking the WHO. Read up on him.

"A LOT of people got rich I can definitely say that for sure."
>>Which proves nothing. A lot of people got rich from selling portable computers in the 70-80s. That doesn't make it a conspiracy against the public. And besides, if you want to use the conspiratorial tone, you should say that a few got rich from this. A LOT getting rich from something sounds like a collective project, not a conspiracy.

"We end up with regional vax institutes? Hardly, it would take years to get them going."
>>But they would be much better than having Big Pharma with their fat fingers on the buttons. I don't see why you're against reg vax institutes if you're against people making money off vaccinations.

"Frankly they are dangerous as hell and are terrorist targets."
>>They're not dangerous, they're just vax institutes. And Middle East terrorists usually direct their attacks towards large phallic symbols, such as the WTC. It has something to do with how easy it is to fly a plane into a tall building, as opposed to flying it into a small clinic. And I'm not sure what message they would send by attacking a vax institute: "We have struck deep into the heart of infidel medicine"?

WHO prepares to don a hair shirt

revere — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 05:58:01 +0000

WHO prepares to don a hair shirt

The finger pointing and the told-you-so-ers are out in force these days and WHO seems to be one of their targets. In the face of wealthy European countries cutting their swine flu vaccine orders because of limited demand, critics are claiming that WHO exaggerated the threat in league with or under the influence of Big Pharma vaccine makers out to make a killing. This is really two issues. One, did WHO appropriately appraise the risk; and two, were they unduly influenced by greedy drug makers. I think the answer to these questions are "Yes" and "No."

In our view WHO was caught between a rock and a hard place. It is true that a great deal of effort was expended envisioning and preparing for a pandemic that didn't happen, the bird flu or H5N1 pandemic. That one is still "out there" (along with other plausible pandemic subtypes like H7 and H9) but the one that actually materialized and did produce a genuine pandemic started in a different place, spread faster and had the virulence of seasonal flu rather than bird flu. That meant that the criteria for "calling a pandemic" were not quite right for what really happened. If there was anyone who saw that coming, I don't know who they were. Yes, there were "bird flu skeptics" (I would call them bird flu deniers, but that's another argument) but anyone who predicts what influenza A will or won't do is a fool. No one knows. The best you can do is prepare for what is reasonably plausible and hope for the best. We should be happy that we got one of the better scenarios for a pandemic, because some of what was and remains reasonably plausible is too terrible to contemplate and we weren't anywhere near prepared for it.

WHO, taken by surprise and being pressured by powerful member states like the UK and China looked, and was, indecisive. All their stated criteria for a pandemic were fulfilled weeks ahead of the actual call but the situation was sufficiently unclear that they hesitated with their finger on the button. In hindsight it's being claimed they should never have pushed the button. Our view is they should have pushed it sooner. When this virus poked its head above water last spring its future evolution was pregnant with possibilities. Instead of recriminations we should be grateful that -- so far -- it hasn't fulfilled reasonable fears, because the recriminations could easily be going in the other direction: why weren't we better prepared and why didn't WHO act sooner?

WHO is not the world's health department. It has essentially no authority beyond what is granted to it by its member states, acting individually and often selfishly. Nor is pandemic flu its main preoccupation. On a pitiful budget it does a powerful amount of good with a vast range of diseases that afflict the world, often in places many of us cannot pronounce. But for global infectious disease, like influenza, its effectiveness is severely hampered by the current international legal framework. It could be argued that in some spheres -- and influenza may be one of them -- WHO is becoming irrelevant.

The influence of drug companies is more of an example than a condemnation. Yes, big vaccine makers have influence with WHO (and CDC and the EU) because they are the only game in town. But that influence was mainly passive. They weren't going to do anything significant unless someone guaranteed they could make a buck on vaccines. Their view is that they had a duty to their stockholders to maximize return on dollars invested. Investments in impotence or cholesterol drugs are vastly more profitable than vaccines. Practically this means WHO has to get governments to guarantee their market to the extent there is no risk and hopefully the promise of significant profit. One reason we have had to rely on old egg technology is that Big Pharma didn't invest much in proving the new technologies that could have made vaccines more quickly and more cheaply. When the time came when we needed them, these technologies hadn't progressed far enough to allow governmental regulators to recommend their use on hundreds of millions of people.

I'm not letting WHO, big national governments (like the US) or the drug makers off the hook. The former shouldn't be relying on private companies and a market system that doesn't work for this purpose; and the drug makers acted only for their private purposes, not the public good (not at all surprising or unexpected). For flu vaccines the market is always too late. We should have had an international system for flu vaccine production that doesn't have to make obscene profits before it acts, can afford to be inefficient in production, is geographically distribuâ ed for the sake of equity and uses the latest technologies it develops under a public license. But we've been beating that drum for years and so far we have nothing. Hope springs eternal.

Meanwhile when the pandemic is over WHO says it will examine how it could have done better:

The Council of Europe is planning an investigation, to begin later this month, into whether pharmaceutical companies influenced public health officials to spend money unnecessarily.

In Geneva, a WHO spokeswoman acknowledged there were questions to be answered.

She said the the review of its management of the pandemic would be conducted with independent experts, and the results would be made public. (Imogen Foulkes, BBC)

I think WHO could have done better but not easily within the present international framework which almost guarantees a distorted outcome. I think CDC got it just about right. Yes, here and there you can point to things that might have been done better. But overall, impressively competent under great pressure. It could have been much better still if we, as a society, had not foolishly decided to disinvest in public health.

Would WHO or CDC or anyone have done things differently if they could see the future? It's a stupid question but it's being asked by a lot of stupid people.

revere Wed, 01/13/2010 - 00:58

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Pandemic preparedness

swine flu

WHO

Revere

In your opinion, should World Health Organization employees be required to disclose conflicts of interests?

For example, being employed by pharmaceutical etc. companies at the same time they are employed by the WHO...immediate familly members, spouses or children employed by pharmaceutical companies...investments in pharmaceutical etc. companies.

Tom: Absolutely. I assume (but don't know) there is an existing disclosure or prohibition policy for the employee. Don't know about family members. But we here at the university must disclose and must disclose for NIH all the info you requested. I think this is entirely reasonable.

The Who?

Here is a link to one version of the WHO conflict of interest form for outside experts.

http://tinyurl.com/ygazlvl

Regarding family members' potential conflicts of interest, the form states:

Any financial or other interests that could constitute a real, potential or apparent conflict of interest should be declared (1) with respect to yourself or partner, as well as (2) with respect to the administrative unit with which you have an employment relationship.

In my case, I have always interpreted "partner" to mean "spouse."

The version above starts with a discussion of who might or might not have to fill out this form, and includes with the form itself.

There are variations on this form for when one is hired as short-term staff, but I can't find one at the moment. I don't know what the terms are for full-time staff.

Excellent points, revere. WHO and CDC can't be blamed, in my opinion, if individuals choose not to receive H1N1 vaccinations. Last time I checked, WHO reported more than 12,000 H1N1 deaths to date worldwide. I believe both organizations made the right call.

Remember folks what I said before about plausible deniability. The buyers for the government were in it up to their necks with stock options all bought and well before the outbreak of swiney. And, remember it was the same for H5N1 and the H3N2 treatment for it in poultry. Could they have not known by lab tests and iterations by generations that chickens would spread it ? Thats a big question that needs to be answered.

Now we have this burned lung version... The samples for which were stolen from the back of a DHL truck on the way to Switzerland and Mill Hill for sequencing. Yep the gooey bloody tissue that would have be loaded with the shit and it just disappears...

Uh-huh... I have a load of real estate to sell you in Port au Prince too.

You know also Jerry if you have been following for a while that one of the contributors went to the WHO meetings for H5N1 and was shut out of the "closed door" sessions along with the media. Nice work if you can get around it. Transparency? Forget it. The very idea of mandatory vaccinations tips the hand on this. I was already with ACP ammo and a pre-written injunction for the state court here to prevent any vaccinations for anyone who didnt want it.

Swine flu? I got a headache for about 4 hrs. Both kids got it, one bad, one cleared it in four days. Lets rush down to use untested vaccine that has had about as many adverse reactions at 40 million doses as 1976 Swine vax.

I think we can all safely say that we dont trust our government.... at all.

Randy: Have any evidence for anything you are saying here?

Swine Flu Blood Samples Stolen in Bulgaria's Razgrad
Crime | November 10, 2009, Tuesday Novinite
Two packages with blood samples intended for A(H1N1) testing have been stolen from a van of a freight forwarding company in the northeast Bulgarian city of Razgrad...

Same thing happened in Ukraine two weeks later... Wonder what the burned lung vax will look like and how long before it becomes the new fun and games bug we have to spend money on.

I dont float an opinion on it but flu is the easiest thing in the world to weaponize and doesnt need much of a push to get it going. Hundreds of billions of dollars for vax of questionable efficacy? Go back two months before the meetings and hit the insider tradings list - MarketWatch.com. Lots of recognizable names there Bubba.

Pharma was making seasonal and making no money at it, then suddenly H1N1 kicked loose. Drop what you are doing, make new vax (untested at that) have no liability and then jam it into people with a known...It might make you susceptible later to the next problem. Are they generating bugs to make money Revere? If they did then it would bring this country and a bunch of the others down.

Storming of the Bastille kind of thing.

Remember the Baxter error?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aTo3LbhcA75I

Now to me there is beginning to be a pattern but do lets continue. But also remind yourself that I am all for companies making money legally. So far there isnt any proof that they havent. If they went out and spilled some bio-tinkertoy to make money then I would find them, try them and then execute them one by one. I would be elected President the next day by general accord.
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CDC and St. Jude's: worse than Indonesia?

Category: Bird flu â¢ CDC â¢ Intellectual property â¢ Surveillance â¢ Vaccines
Posted on: August 27, 2008 7:09 AM, by revere

Recall Ed's trip to the WHO meetings when Big Pharma was put into a room and next thing we know we have swine flu and not H5N1?

I am not much of a consipracist Revere... The who thing has a 750 billion world dollar stink to it. Were the Swine Flu cases more virulent than normal seasonal? You would know more than I would about it and now we have all this neat shit floating around in our bloodstreams of questionable usefulness. Does it make you susceptible to other diseases... And then there was that mandatory "participation" thing. Well, they would be carrying needles to a gun fight around here.

Did it help anything? So far I have seen that a lot of people got sick, they still got sick with Swiney after vaccination and I question whether it kept anyone alive. Hey look, they can say anything and you are the first to say that about them. Vax spin? I dont know. It costs too much to prove it to be shit. They know that... You and I know it. So you have to have a whistleblower if it is. Can you say Tobacco ?

If it had been H5N1...then I would be asking the same questions and yes, I would have taken that vax if I had seen them keeling over in high numbers here.

BTW, I am still waiting for those three suppressed papers from Canada that said that taking the seasonal for the last three years made you more susceptible to swine. Haven heard a word since.
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You'll like this one Revere.

http://cecaust.com.au/pubs/pdfs/20-23_3621.pdf

Revere,

How could he? If he forms ideas and theories with any similarity to penning them, he is simply chasing his tail.

While not a true skeptic of the possibility of a severe global pandemic, I was (and remain) a skeptic of many of the folks that were ready to call a Pandemic (of H5N1 even!) long, long ago.

I have always admired the Revere's calm and calculated approach to culling through flu information and coming to reasonable conclusions. Most times it seemed, the Revere's simply took a step back and took a "wait and see" approach analyzing FACTS as they came to light and making reasonable assumptions, as well as forming reasonable possibilities.

When flubogia was screaming "Outbreak!" I came here to often be calmed and become more informed. When I heard the flu community condemn the WHO for not declaring a Pandemic soon enough, I saw The Revere's defend the WHO position on occasion (and rightly so).

Personally, I owe a debt of thanks to the Revere's in understanding the WHO better. Perhaps they didn't have full faith and confidence in the WHO, but understood their mission well enough to give them (and their actions and ideas) careful thought. I'm happy to see the Reveres continue to offer some type of support to an organization that seems to be the scape goat of our larger world health care problem.

And I'm not surprised to see some condemn the WHO for "over-reacting" when they were condeming them for "under-reacting" a short time ago.

Flu vaccine safety

revere — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 05:30:30 +0000

Flu vaccine safety

Any concerns about the current swine flu vaccine inevitably bring up the swine flu episode of 1976. This is not 1976. For starters, this year we have a bona fide pandemic and in 1976 the virus never got out of Fort Dix, NJ. That in itself is a game changer. If there are any risks from a vaccine (and there are usually some risks, even though they are much safer than most over the counter drugs) and they are for a disease no one is at risk for, the risk - benefit equation has nothing on one side and if there is anything, no matter how rare, on the other, it makes it unfavorable for the vaccine. But this year people are getting seriously ill by the tens of thousands and dying by the thousands from the virus and even if the vaccine were only 50% effective (and it is likely better than that), there is no contest. Vaccination wins.

Pandemic aside, 2009 does not seem to be like 1976 in the side effects area, either. The big issue in 1976 was the rare neurological problem, Guillain-BarrÃ© Syndrome (GBS):

Named after two French physicians who described it in 1916, Guillain-BarrÃ© syndrome causes weakness and tingling that starts in the legs, but over weeks can affect most of the body's muscles. The symptoms occur because the insulation on the outside of nerve fibers breaks down, damaging the normal conduction of impulses.
In normal times, GBS occurs at a rate of roughly 2 cases per 100,000 people per year. Although only about 5 percent die, up to a third spend time in an intensive care unit on a ventilator before they get better. Nearly a third still have some weakness three years later.

After the 1976 vaccination campaign was halted on Dec. 16 of that year, much work went into figuring out whether the increase in GBS cases was real, or just a random upward blip.

Careful counting in defined populations -- most important, the entire states of Minnesota and Michigan -- proved beyond doubt that it was real: The risk of developing the condition rose four- to seven-fold in the six weeks after getting the swine flu shot. The number of cases attributable to the vaccine ranged from 5 to 12 per million people vaccinated. (David Brown, Blue Cross Blue Shield Newsletter)

Any disease that strikes on the order of 10 in a million is too rare for any pre-deployment testing (think about how big a clinical trial that would take). So the idea that the current vaccine is indeed safe is based on two main arguments. First, it is made by the same process and same manufacturers as the seasonal vaccine, which years of experience has shown to have an acceptable safety record. That process and the quality control for vaccines has changed since 1976. It's better. And as for that routine seasonal vaccine, the swine flu version amounts to the kind of strain change we have seen many times as the seasonal vaccine is adjusted each year or two to account for the antigenic drift this virus undergoes routinely. There are no adjuvants or other changes that make this vaccine different.

The second argument is that current surveillance for adverse events suggests there is no unusual spike in serious adverse events in comparison to seasonal vaccines:

To assess the safety profile of H1N1 vaccines in the United States, CDC reviewed vaccine safety results for the H1N1 vaccines from 3,783 reports received through the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and electronic data from 438,376 persons vaccinated in managed-care organizations in the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), a large, population-based database with administrative and diagnostic data, in the first 2 months of reporting (as of November 24). VAERS data indicated 82 adverse event reports per 1 million H1N1 vaccine doses distributed, compared with 47 reports per 1 million seasonal influenza vaccine doses distributed. However, no substantial differences between H1N1 and seasonal influenza vaccines were noted in the proportion or types of serious adverse events reported. No increase in any adverse events under surveillance has been seen in VSD data. (CDC, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports)

We are neither reassured or alarmed. There is insufficient data at the moment to make any judgement about rare events. If we saw something now it would have to be a very strong signal, the epidemiological equivalent to being whacked over the head with a two-by-four. The risks of the virus itself are two-by-four in size, so if you believe, as we do, that this vaccine works, even partially (and the evidence from trials is that the match is good and antibody response is robust), the risk - benefit equation is a no-brainer.

Having said that, we still don't really know about adverse events. We have a pretty primitive reporting system that almost certainly under reports serious adverse events. It can take many weeks for GBS to show up post vaccination and we are just getting people vaccinated now, so it may be well after the campaign is over that we have a decent answer to this question -- if then. We know so little about what causes GBS, which usually comes after some infection, that figuring out whether there still might be something different about a strain that comes from pigs that makes GBS more likely is a question that remains to be answered.

I do have another concern, which I voice with reluctance. I am looking very hard at whatever evidence and data are available, but it isn't much. However the reassuring noises coming from CDC and WHO don't make me feel any better. For too long there has been a cozy relationship between vaccine makers and both agencies and I sometimes worry that they are so deeply invested in the success of flu vaccines (not in the monetary sense but in the unshakeable belief sense) that it colors the way they report things.

I don't automatically discount what they say because of this. Both CDC and WHO remain some of the best and most reliable sources of information on the vaccine program and the vaccines themselves. But I don't automatically and uncritically accept everything they say about flu vaccines either. Right now we don't know about the true rate of adverse events. I do feel confident -- quite confident, in fact -- that getting vaccinated for influenza makes rational sense for anyone. The imbalance of risks for the vaccine and the virus is so great -- huge, in fact -- that nothing else seems like rational behavior.

But I wish I had more confidence there's no spinning going on. Given the facts, there's no need to spin. Distancing themselves from the vaccine companies wouldn't hurt. In fact it would help. A lot.

revere Mon, 12/07/2009 - 00:30

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