Autism Vox

105 opinions for A Not So Religious Exemption?

• Julie
  Oct 18, 2007 at 5:47 pm

  It is sad that these families amy be lying about their religous beliefs because of fear that their child may get autism when there is no proof that there is any link. The risks from the diseases are death much worse than autism. I have said before I do not belive that my daughters autism was caused by vaccines because when we look back she showed signs as a newborn even. We did have our chidren not recieve certain vaccines and waited until they were older on others because of family history and close family members having reactions to those specific vaccines but by the time they started school they were all caught up and it was never and issue. We have lived in three different states and our doctors were always willing to work with us because they want the children vaccinated. If there is fear about the child being to young at 18 months than wait until they are older but to not vaccinate because of fear I find to be irresponsible.

• Schwartz
  Oct 18, 2007 at 10:11 pm

  It is sad that our society forces parents to have to lie to avoid an otherwise forced medication on perfectly healthy children.

  If the government, doctors, and manufacturers refuse to take responsibility for the outcome of a vaccination, why should anyone be forced to have one. Remember, only the parents are ultimately responsible for the health of the child, and thus the choice should be theirs.

  Also, my children are not vaccinated, but not out of a fear of Autism. Rather, after rigorously studying the facts provided by both sides of the arguments, (and that meant purchasing studies NOT just reading abstracts — which I found out to be often misleading) to contain a lot of inconclusive and poor science.

  So why risk a medical intervention of non quantifiable risk or benefit?

  Julie,

  It’s good I don’t take it personally, but given the poor state of safety data, your accusation of irresponsibility is insulting.

  I noticed quite clearly, that the doctors and medical community are using fear and anger not science to promote vaccines, and that’s a red flag for me — just like insurance uses fear to sell their products.

  If the science is so overwhelmingly conclusive, why hide it in the small print, or gloss over it with fear mongering… the unfortunate truth is that it isn’t overwhelming at all and the safety aspects are unknown and grossly ignored.

• Cliff
  Oct 18, 2007 at 10:21 pm

  Schwartz,

  Again, articulate this in terms of the data you have studied, please. You have suggested you have throughly studied something; what and the reasoning for your conclusion is left veiled.

  Note Julie does actually support her argument (signs of autism before vaccination, family history, the lethality rates of disease protected by vaccines). Can you provide something similar, or even more specific (after all, you studied the data extensively)?

  Cliff

• Kristina Chew, PhD
  Oct 18, 2007 at 10:24 pm

  It’s a sad statement on our society that claims of religious belief are being used to such ends.

• Kathy
  Oct 19, 2007 at 1:02 am

  Why can’t a parent be allowed to say how they really feel about vaccinations, and to refuse to have their child vaccinated without repercussions.
  Here in Australia, one only has to sign a conscientious objection form, witnessed by a doctor who also provides counselling.(pro vaccine)
  No religious grounds are necessary.

• Cliff
  Oct 19, 2007 at 1:10 am

  Because when you don’t vaccinate, you really increase the possibility that the relevant disease is going to be spread regardless. So it’s not an independent decision, because it may dramatically affect the lives of those around you.

  Cliff

• Kristina Chew, PhD
  Oct 19, 2007 at 1:12 am

  Are there any webpages with the form?

• Schwartz
  Oct 19, 2007 at 1:13 am

  Cliff,

  I studied the safety trials and peer reviewed commentaries for Prevnar, DPT, DPTAeB. I’ve studied the Cochrane report on MMR, I’ve studied the Thimerosal data provided to the IOM in 2004, and I’ve read numerous critical reviews of all of these. I’ve also studied 2 of the recent Thimerosal studies (RhoGam) and the most recent one that studied non-Autistic correlations to Thimerosal exposure. I’ve read all of the transcripts from the recent hearing on the Cedeillo case, and I’ve read the Thimerosal meeting minutes from the CDC (2000?). From reading the latter, I found the lack of general knowledge and awareness of the Vaccinologists (who make all the recommendations) to be shockingly naive and dangerously limited. They had no concept of any of the biological effects of Mercury, and no one ever bothered to even use a calculator to add up the exposure levels they were recommending. You should read it. It was the beginning of my loss of confidence and skepticism about vaccines (one daughter actually got her first shot — off schedule like Julie before I did the appropriate analysis and we changed our minds after that)

  Here is more detail on my findings regarding vaccines, safety, and efficacy.

  A) You can’t get accurate risk assessments on either damage or death from diseases while living in a country with modern healthcare. The statistics given for the diseases by HC and CDC appear to be based on old historical death rates, or on worldwide numbers included very skewed results from the third world. So right off the bat, you can’t accurately judge the risk of harm from these diseases. This alone prevents anyone from making a logical or scientific decision.

  B) Vaccine safety data is derived only from very limited safety trials:

  1) These are not done by independent parties, but funded by parties who directly benefit from positive results of the studies. Conflicts of interest have been studied extensively (many peer reviewed articles and studies) and shown to introduce bias into the outcomes. Prevnar is a perfect example.

  You can also go read some critiques of the CDC and you will find out that many of the members of the decision making committees have declared financial interest in the vaccines they’re approving or recommending. Others have been hired by Big Pharma while investigating vaccine issues for the CDC (Vaerstrateen while investigating Thimerosal/Mercury was the most blatent)

  2) Safety studies on vaccines are not very thorough for the following reasons:

  a) They aren’t compared to placebo for reactions, but typically compared to other experimental vaccines. Rarely is testing ever done against unvaccinated controls. This is outrageous in my opinion.

  b) The followup period is extremely short, usually in the order of days and rarely over 25 days. I think this is one of the biggest gaping holes I have ever heard of. Long Term tracking is virtually non-existent and certainly not part of the protocol. To effectively measure true safety you would have to run a long term study WITH a control group that includes longer term followups. This never happens. That is the only way they find problems in drugs (like the HRT therapy, etc). Instead we get weak epidemiology studies (on both sides of the argument) based on databases with data of questionable accuracy.

  If you don’t want to look up these claims, all you have to do is go read the details in the Cochrane group’s study of MMR vaccine. They concluded after analyzing thousands of studies that the safety data on MMR was severely lacking and inconclusive (2005). Most of the studies were rejected for bias or poor science. What does that tell you when an independent body (despite the lead study author having a severe conflict of interest) concludes that the vast majority of safety studies done on a vaccine available for almost 2 decades (and under suspicion) don’t provide any credible evidence of safety? It sure shook my confidence in the system.

  c) Vaccines are often given to children of ages that they were never tested for. Gardasil is a perfect example of this.

  d) Efficacy is only ever tested based on anti-body production. That does not guarantee immunity because there are many other immune mechanisms that protect the body. Efficacy rates are most often over estimated as a result. This is pretty clearly illustrated when you get outbreaks, most of which occur in vaccinated populations at ratios well above the stated efficacy of the vaccines.

  e) Combining vaccine schedules together in short periods of time are not studied for their safety. (they even state this in their safety sheets) No long term followups are done, and of course they don’t use control groups — they can’t find them.

  The whole approval and tracking system right now is designed such that one can’t reliably measure any long term safety aspects of these vaccines. That’s why we’re all still debating the topic.

  C) If you want to talk about the Flu shot, there is certainly no overwhelming evidence that it is effective or healthy. Nor is there evidence that infants are at risk from the flu. There are several peer reviewed publications debating this topic now. I am personally outraged that my government is spending millions on a program (in Ontario) that is not based on solid science.

  Don’t get me wrong, I have not concluded that vaccines cause Autism, or any number of the other epidemic problems plaguing our modern society. But there is a general lack of safety data, there is definately a lot of money at stake in promoting vaccines (which never guarantees anyone’s health interests), and both sides of the argument are guilty of gross exaggeration on certain occassions. Given this environment, I continue to choose not to medicate in the face of any impending danger and I continue to track the science to see if any conclusive pops out.

  Kristina,

  I’m not sure who you think is sad, but I feel the sad part is that they have to resort to using religious reasons when they should have other avenues available to them. Fortunately, here in Canada we do.

• Schwartz
  Oct 19, 2007 at 1:18 am

  Cliff,

  From what I’ve read, Herd immunity is a theory, and certainly the levels are not well understood. I have yet to find any convincing scientific studies that discuss it — there are several that use very weak words like may, seem to, appears, etc.

  Do you have any evidence?

  And even if you do, you can’t force someone healthy to medicate and still leave them with the responsibility of the outcome. No doctor will sign responsibility for the outcome of a vaccine application. If I hold the responsibility, I certainly have the right to refuse treatment.

  On top of that, the safety data is non-existent, so I certainly have the right to refuse treatment in the face of unproven safety.

• Schwartz
  Oct 19, 2007 at 2:17 am

  Cliff,

  Let’s take a look at a hospital website for examples of FUD.

  http://www.chop.edu/consumer/jsp/division/generic.jsp?id=81553

  “Myth1: Getting so many vaccines will overwhelm my child’s immune system”
  “”Children have an enormous capacity to respond safely to challenges to the immune system from vaccines,” says Dr. Offit. “A baby’s body is bombarded with immunologic challenges - from bacteria in food to the dust they breathe. Compared to what they typically encounter and manage during the day, vaccines are literally a drop in the ocean.” In fact, Dr. Offit’s studies show that in theory, healthy infants could safely get up to 10,000 vaccines at once.”

  The study was not referenced and I can’t find one so he has little to no data to back this up. Additionally, it is stated as fact, and I highly doubt they tried it, so the claim is outrageous, yet stated as fact. Add to this that Dr. Offit holds a patent on a vaccine, and is a consultant to Merck while sitting on vaccine recommendation committees.

  “Myth 2: As long as other children are getting vaccinated, mine don’t need to be.”
  This myth goes on to discuss the great Herd immunity theory. Surprise, no references given. Although I don’t outright discount the theory, I would like to see credible scientific evidence to back up claims of people in conflict of interest since history has shown they clearly don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt and do make unsubstantiated statements of fact.

  “Myth 3: Now that major illnesses have largely disappeared, we really don’t need vaccines anymore.”
  Now they talk about the childhood illnesses having disappeared due to vaccines. (They don’t provide any references of course). Fortunately, I have seen this data myself, and it is the only compelling data that vaccine proponents have that is credible. However, I also know it is presented in a misleading format (i.e. not showing that the incidence and death from most of the illnesses had mostly dropped off well before the introduction of vaccines). Unfortunately, that fact alone does not allow us to conclude anything for sure either. What really caused the reduction in disease incidence or damage? Clearly it wasn’t just vaccines, but how much did they really contribute? I have not seen vaccine proponents argue this case thoroughly (I would like to because I believe in some efficacy).

  “Don’t bet on it. Despite our relatively high vaccination rates in the U.S., many American communities still have outbreaks of diseases like measles and pertussis, a respiratory illness characterized by spasms of coughing that can last for weeks or even months. In 2003, 13 children died of the infection.”

  No details or references to the deaths. What did they die of? Were they receiving medical care? Did they have other pre-existing conditions? If you look at any of the studies around thimerosal and PDD issues or ticks, you’ll see massive numbers of exclusionary criteria from pre-existing conditions (like sleeplesness etc). If you did a study on many of these disease deaths quoted in the press and on medical sites like this, I’ll bet most of them would never have passed the study acceptance criteria (health children with no pre-existing conditions, under supervised medical care).

  WHERE IS THE CREDIBLE DATA to back up the claim?

  “Myth 4: Vaccines cause autism and other disorders.”
  Here they trot out Dr. Offit again.
  “”Not only is there no evidence that it causes autism, there’s evidence that it doesn’t cause autism,” Dr. Offit says.” In fact, there have been 14 studies that show your risk of getting autism isn’t any different if you got the MMR vaccine or if you didn’t.”"
  Although there are many studies on the topic, there are NOT 14 credible ones. In fact, I have read only 2 that have some credibility but they were hardly a slam dunk in conclusivity.

  Additionally, the mechanism proposed by Dr. Wakefield has not been disproven. His study was discredited officially by an unstated conflict of interest. There are several studies still investigating the mechansim, so Dr. Offit is misleading at best.

  “Myth 5: My baby might get the disease it’s supposed to prevent.”

  I love this one because I see it all the time: “”But the illness is much less severe than if a child naturally contracted measles or chicken pox.”"
  I have never seen this statement ever backed up by references.

  Evidence please…

  “Myth 6: Vaccines can contain preservatives that are dangerous.”

  This one is difficult of course:
  “Yet it’s become clearer since then that ethylmercury does not pose the same health hazard as its cousin, methylmercury, a metal found in the environment that’s known to accumulate in the body and cause harm to developing children. “The body is able to eliminate ethylmercury much more quickly than it can eliminate methylmercury,” says Dr. Offit. ”
  I know of this study (even though no reference is provided). There are known Variations in people’s ability to excrete mercury, and this study only looked a the blood mercury level of the children (and they didn’t measure it during peak period). They patently ignored the deposits within fatty areas (like the brain and muscles). They don’t really know the health hazard it poses, and the single study he refers to can’t back up the statements he makes with certainty.

  I’m getting tired now. I can continue tomorrow…

• Kathy
  Oct 19, 2007 at 2:23 am

  Come on Cliff, highly emotive language there.The fact is, around 90% of children up to 2 years of age were fully vaccinated here in Oz in 2005. Do not have current figures.

  It is highly unlikey that there will be any outbreak of disease due to some parents choosing not to vaccinate. If these parents have genuine concerns, and are fearful of an adverse reaction in their child, they should have the choice to refuse vaccination.

  And I’ll say this once again *sigh* I have had my daughter fully vaccinated.(she is not autistic)

  My son(who is autistic) is partially vaccinated.(read my previous post on another thread)
  I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM.
  I do believe that some children DO have severe reactions to vaccines.

  I do believe that it is possible that some autistic children will have severe adverse effects, and in some cases regress.I have already mentioned this in a previous post.

  Oh, and Schwartz is right. My doctor could not guarantee that my son would not suffer any adverse effects from vaccines.(He already had a diagnosis of autism at that time)

  Hence my caution.

  The form is only available from GP’s here in Oz.(There are no web pages mentioned just phone fax and address)

  Here is what is on the declaration that I signed.

  “I have discussed the benefits and risks of immunisation with the provider named above and have considered the information given. I have also been given the opportunity to discuss any concerns about immunisation with the provider.
  I have a personal, philosophical, religious or medical belief involving a conviction that vaccination under the National Immunisation Program should not take place. On this basis, I choose not to have my child immunised.”

  It is my democratic right as a parent not to vaccinate, if I have serious concerns about said vaccinations.

  The government of Australia recognizes and supports this right!

• sick o' the antivaxers
  Oct 19, 2007 at 3:18 am

  “Is seeking a religious exemption from vaccination for a child out of fear of autism doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons?”

  Kristina, you have to ask?

  There will be children and adults who for health reasons should not be vaccinated. The reality is that if vaccination rates fall to below safe numbers there will be outbreaks, and hopefully not too many will die. Then there will be an upsurge in vaccinating, or more and more will die.

  In order to avoid the dying part, a goverment might enforce vaccinations (it’s been done before). I think that would be a bad thing, but probably not as bad as having dozens of babies of stupid parents dying of vaccine preventable diseases.

  Right now there are people who refuse vaccines for themselves and their children for very stupid reasons, reasons they “learned” on the Internet, just like Jenny. They refuse to take the very small risk of a vaccine and prefer to ride for free on the herd immunity. I think that’s immoral and inhumane. But then I think that unborn babies dying or becoming deaf or blind or deformed because of rubella exposure is a bad idea, even if rubella doesn’t do anything serious to the already born. I think the idea of a two month old baby dying of whooping cough is also a bad idea. Not keen on Hemophilus Influenza, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis A, flu, pneumonia, measles, tetanus or diptheria or polio, either.

  Hey! they just found out that they have a vaccine for malaria! How cool is that? Antivaxers would rather see Sub Saharan African babies die of a good old natural disease than be saved with a vaccine.

  http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Malaria_vaccine_kindles_hope/articleshow/2472303.cms

• Cliff
  Oct 19, 2007 at 5:58 am

  Thank you. There’s much more to work with here.

  A) Well, yes, for the presence of a highly vaccinated populace, you aren’t going to find current statistical data without that presence. But I do not think it follows by any means that you can’t make logical inferences from previous data; though you’d have to look carefully at some areas of potential error, the trend would still be largely observable. It would breach ethics really to try and replicate that with the danger involved, though.
  B) In detail to the points specifically:
  1) I would agree that, in some cases, there may be a degree of issue regarding conflict of interest. But I don’t think that’s a universal or even that potent. There have been several studies that did not announce conflict of interest, and I’m sure you’ve come across those. Anyway, I remember Verstraeten (spelling?) and the Simpsonwood conference. The one detail was of conflict, that he had joined a major pharmaceutical company. The exact details of that were unclear, but as far as I understood, from the actual events, he had finished his work with the study, had gotten the job at the pharmaceutical company in question, and was related only in terms of advisory capacity. That’s not a clear conflict of interest in any way, and if it has any merit at all calling it the most blatant still would imply that the conflict of interests are dubious at best. And the “cover-up” was a screening study, right?
  Another thing is that these conflicts of interests, in the vague sense in which they exist, are to be expected; people work in the areas they are knowledgeable about. Someone who is a vaccines is probably going to be working in that regard, not at K-Mart. There’s, of course, a notable exception in those who specifically work against the field they are trained in.
  2) And in regards to safety:
  a. There are issues with this statement. One, it’s actually ethical breech to deny per se the vaccines, so it can be difficult to find a non-vaccinated control. But that doesn’t mean you can’t control for the substances involved, and all of the toxic substances themselves have had that control. If you have a control on the problem substances there’s no need to breach ethics and deny a (usually considered) valuable thing from kids. Even so, I recall a placebo study, though I won’t swear to it because I don’t remember the actual name of the study.
  b. The follow-up you are suggesting almost never happens. Why? Because you need to start dealing quickly with things like full random assignment, and the time that would be needed to accomplish all of those relevant factors that makes for the kind of science we are talking about over that long period of time would be tremendous. And considering both the toxicology regarding mercury (if it did have an effect, it wouldn’t be three months later) and the ability to screen within that period of time (well possible), we can draw conclusions without having that kind of support.
  c. True, as happens with many medications.
  d. Efficacy is often established in terms of statistical critical threshold levels, so exactly why the mechanism, which doesn’t play into the statistics themselves, is an influencing factor is not clear, if not a non sequitur.
  e. That’s true, though people have observed the components of the vaccines to see if they would conflict in some way with other vaccines, so the theoretical nature of this issue is dubious, at best.
  In terms of herd theory, it is debated, but the general mechanisms are grounded in statistical data and are mathematically shown as a general pattern so that the general theory, basically indirect protection, itself usually isn’t debated, though mechanisms are. The best review, I think, is this; Fine, P. E. M. (1993). “Herd Immunity; History, Theory, Practice.” Epidemiologic Reviews 15:265–302.

  The population outbreaks you describe are definitely the exception, not the rule. And in terms of liability, either way you run a potential risk, and so as the condition of the argument stands by the nature of the argument you are liable for something in one way or another. At some level, the responsibility you are talking about, the need to blame, is just harmful without direct correlation.

  Again, the safety numbers that you are looking for don’t exist with much of anything in long-term studies. Nor is the pharmacology really known about most of the medicines taken, but observed by outside effects in case studies, which is really the best balance of functionality and practicality that can be achieved at this time. There are some substances that do have those effects, but that’s the rarity.

  Finally, “the system”, as you have termed it, does not exist in the fashion you describe. There is no one who is honestly going to go around poisoning people just to line their pockets. A government is not a single entity with a single plan, and the CDC is not a single entity with a single plan. Even if a group did go to that, even another investigative panel in that government from, say, a Representative, is not going share that. There are other ways to line pockets without causing epidemics, and to think that not one person but an entire group of people, all from different backgrounds and with different motivations, are out to make money by poisoning children is unlikely.

  Kathy, a few things.

  One, around 90% isn’t far from dangerous effects. And if the numbers have anything of a serious drop (serious being maybe a few points), there’s an issue of passing threshold level. It’s a very real possibility, especially given the possibility of a continuous downward trend through media coverage. It’s not just an empty threat.
  Second, I don’t care if you think vaccines cause autism in this discussion. I really don’t. The post was about, in the end, the issue of people withdrawing from vaccination.
  And of course the doctors can’t verify, given the number of lawsuits. The doctor would continuously run the risk of asserting the science, having the person end up with the autistic kid, and facing a lengthy and expensive lawsuit, something that can’t be afforded.
  And that’s fine. Follow the governmental rights of your choice. But know that you are running the risk of killing someone when you do, how that is directly understood, and understand what you are really acting on. That’s your responsibility, as dictated under that law.

• Kathy
  Oct 19, 2007 at 6:25 am

  “Follow the governmental rights of your choice. But know that you are running the risk of killing someone when you do”

  Utter, unsubstantiated, emotive piffle, Cliff. If vaccines were completely safe the Australian Government would not be giving parents a choice.
  I am 49 years old. When I was a child I got the measles . My brother got the mumps. Countless other kids got these childhood diseases.
  Not one person I know died from these diseases. It is rare for people to die from these diseases in developed countries.

  ” Running the risk of killing someone.”?????

  Truly, I am shaking my head here!

• Club 166
  Oct 19, 2007 at 9:30 am

  I think that people should have the right to refuse vaccination.

  Just as long as society then has a right to relocate them all to a desert in the middle of Nevada, so their outbreaks won’t infect the rest of us.

  Joe

• Kathy
  Oct 19, 2007 at 10:01 am

  Hello!

  Anybody listening??

  People don’t usually die from these common childhood diseases. In fact their immunity is strengthened by them.

  Name one severe outbreak in the U.S. where people have died Joe? Thanks in advance.

  My son is turning seven soon, and I am not aware of any outbreak so far in Oz.

  Smart arse unsubstantiated comments are certainly unhelpful to the debate.

• Julie
  Oct 19, 2007 at 10:03 am

  I said I do not believe that every child should recieve every vaccine no matter what. My children did not always do that because I and other members of my family have have mild to severe reactions from certain vaccines so those were the vaccines that we were cautious about giving and when they got them. We had for all three of our children a very individual schedule which all of our doctors have been very happy to do for us. The issue I have is the unfounded fear that seems to be preading and how that could effect the health of children who do need to wait or can not recieve a vaccine because of family history. If more and more parents continue to not vaccinate I do believe that we could end up with an outbreak of something that is deadly. My doctors never hid from me the risks of vaccinating but explained the chances of those things happening with the risk of the disease as well as looking at how members of our family have responded to those vaccines. I did not intend to offend but I am offended at times when parents say that they would rather risk a deadly illness than have a child like mine. That to me and my daughter is offensive.

• Kathy
  Oct 19, 2007 at 10:17 am

  Julie, measles is not a deadly disease.

  In developing countries with poor medical facilities, where children are malnourished and have compromised immunity, sure.

  Not in developed countries like yours and mine though!

• Julie
  Oct 19, 2007 at 10:31 am

  Will everyone that gets the measles die of course not but can you? absolutely even in a country with great medical care like ours children can and have died from measles and chicken pox and other diseases that people consider minor. the risk may be small but why is that risk better than the small risk that your child could develop autism? I have said before if you believe strongly because of medical reasons or family history that your child should not recieve a vaccine I support that. My oldest son was born with Spinal menengitis and did not recieve many of his vaccines until he was older because of a comprimised immune system and the risk of a reaction. None of my children recieved the pertussus vaccine until it was no longer a live vaccine because of family history and people have reactions to that vaccine. But these diseases that we are trying to protect our children from can be deadly. My daughter has asthma and the respitory flu could most certainly be deadly to her one year she had pnemonia 4 times one winter so she recieves the flu vaccine. I do not give it to my sons because they are healthy and my doctor does not feel it is necessary. even the most minor disease can be deadly.

• Kathy
  Oct 19, 2007 at 10:47 am

  Julie I never said that I thought vaccines were a potential cause of autism.

  I do believe that every parent should be able to assess their own situations, and make their own decisions about vaccinating their children.

  I reiterate, the chance of dying from measles chicken pox etc is rare. Can it happen? Of course. But not in normal healthy children. And that’s a fact. Factors such as low immunity , malnourishment, and poor medical facilities are contributing factors to death.
  You have more chance of dieing in a car accident than from measles.

• HCN
  Oct 19, 2007 at 11:33 am

  Kathy said “I reiterate, the chance of dying from measles chicken pox etc is rare. Can it happen? Of course. But not in normal healthy children. ”

  Wrong.

  Look up what happened to Roald Dahl’s oldest daughter.

  Read the last few paragraphs of this article:
  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1055533.ece?token=null&offset=36 where it says “Naomi Pop, just 14 months old, was among the victims. Her mother, Maria, 20, was not unduly worried when Naomi contracted measles just four weeks before she was due to have the triple jab. She said: “I thought to myself, ‘Measles, so what?’ I mean, how bad could that be?”

  Within a few days Naomi had developed acute pneumonia. It took a year for her to die. She suffered several infections and progressive brain damage and finally died on March 14, 2001.”

  (are you under the impression that Ireland is a 3rd world country?)

  Go to Orac’s blog and read the comments from Catherina about an outbreak in Germany. Here is part of the webpage: eurosurveillance.org/em/v11n04/1104-225.asp

  One 14 year old child died.

  Is Germany a 3rd world country?

  Japan has closed many college campuses last spring due to a measles epidemic (I can find some news report numbers that they usually get about 50 measles deaths per year, but nothing official, and it was left blank in the WHO.int pages… and I’m at my two link maximum). Is Japan a 3rd world country?

  Between 1989 and 1991 there was an upsurge of measles in the United States, with over 120 deaths (you can read this in the CDC Pink Book chapter on measles). One of those deaths in my state was a nurse working in a hospital. Not exactly health compromised. Is the USA a 3rd world country?

  While you are correct in that MOST of the deaths are in developing countries, measles is still a dangerous disease even in Europe, Japan and USA. There usually about 1 to 2 deaths per 1000 cases.

  Mumps is milder, but not necesarily without complications. Last summer there was a mumps outbreak in the USA:
  cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm55d518a1.htm … there were a bit over 2000 cases with “However, complications have included 27 reports of orchitis, 11 meningitis, four encephalitis, four deafness, and one each of oophoritis, mastitis, pancreatitis, and unspecified complications. “

• Julie
  Oct 19, 2007 at 11:38 am

  Kathy,

  you may not feel that vaccines cause autism but I do believe that a lot of the parents who are choosing not to vaccinate are doing so because of that fear. These diseases are always going to be more deadly in developing countries where health care is not as good but it still happens here and in other countries that have excellent healthcare. It may not be the disease itself that is the cause but comlications because of the disease.

• Cliff
  Oct 19, 2007 at 1:55 pm

  Kathy,

  Yes, as other people pointed out, people die from childhood diseases. Vaccines themselves are in this regard partially responsible for allowing the higher levels of human population that we see today. That’s not empty, either.

  Cliff

• Chuck
  Oct 19, 2007 at 6:41 pm

  HCN,

  How many people have life long complications or die from vaccine failures/adverse reactions? I am quite sure that number is vastly larger then the number of deaths from measles and chickenpox.

• Cliff
  Oct 19, 2007 at 6:52 pm

  Not really. The number is very insignificant, in the realm of exception, where the diseases themselves can significantly population numbers with a lack of vaccines.

  Cliff

• HCN
  Oct 19, 2007 at 7:30 pm

  Chuck, can you please provide the vaccine damage data? Can you show us the study that shows that the MMR is more dangerous than measles, mumps or rubella?

  The MMR vaccine has been used in the USA since 1971. There have been some payouts to the rare reactions, but very very few. Certainly much less than the persons disabled and injured by measles in the last 30 years, and definitely less than the 120 people who died in the USA from measles between 1989-1991.

  Why did it seem to only become a problem when it was introduced in the UK almost two decades later?

  Anyway, here is one report on those who did report adverse reactions:
  http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/110/6/e71

• Kristina Chew, PhD
  Oct 19, 2007 at 8:24 pm

  sick o’ the antivaxers,

  Definitely had to ask as I’ve seen too many people to do it!

• Schwartz
  Oct 19, 2007 at 8:58 pm

  HCN,

  A journalist’s report hardly qualifies as a medical analysis, and these ones don’t provide enough information to make any judgements at all. One of the first clues, is that the parents admitted they did not treat the measles seriously. Mistake #1. I’m certainly not advocating measles is harmless. If any of my children contracted measles, I would be very quick to provide support
  for them and I would actively intervene to support their health immediately — like I do with any illness that appears serious. I wonder if these parents did. Given their comments, I suspect not.

  Pneumonia is also the one of the most common causes of childhood deaths in the world and significant numbers of deaths still occur in the developed world (10% of over 2 million according to WHO). Given that measles trigger probably less than the fingers on my hand, is it really the measles that caused the death?

  I find it interesting that if a child suffers a reaction to a vaccine, and then subsequently develops complications and dies (or remains damaged — i.e. ongoing siezures), people require extensive proof before they believe that the vaccine CAUSED the death.

  Yet, when a child dies from Pnuemonia after contracting measles, it is assumed that the measles was the primary cause of death. The medical community propagates that crap.

  So HCN, you’ll have to provide some credible evidence before you can claim that these diseases are as deadly as you claim. If treated seriously, the vast majority of incidences of these diseases are very mangeable in the developed world.

  As for the Germany outbreak, your link didn’t work, but what I can find gives no details of the actual cause of death, nor any information about the previous health of the children affected. Again, hardly enough data to prove anything. Are you really satisfied with so little information?

  The mumps outbreak has the same problem, in addition to the fact that > 50% of the people involved were actually vaccinated and it is likely a very small percentage were unvaccinated.

  In fact, this example tells me a few important things:
  1) The MMR vaccine is not very effective against the mumps for the age groups affected
  2) Older children were really at risk for mumps, so why vaccinate infants of

• Schwartz
  Oct 19, 2007 at 9:00 pm

  In fact, this example tells me a few important things:
  1) The MMR vaccine is not very effective against the mumps for the age groups affected
  2) Older children were really at risk for mumps, so why vaccinate infants of

• Schwartz
  Oct 19, 2007 at 9:00 pm

  Cliff

  “Not really. The number is very insignificant, in the realm of exception, where the diseases themselves can significantly population numbers with a lack of vaccines.”

  Data please? You can’t state that because you don’t really know. The appropriate tracking mechanisms are not in place.

  “Yes, as other people pointed out, people die from childhood diseases. Vaccines themselves are in this regard partially responsible for allowing the higher levels of human population that we see today. That’s not empty, either.”

  Evidence please?

  ———————————

  Deciding not to vaccinate does not mean one can ignore the risks of any disease. One must always be very aware and treat seriously any disease (even if you’re vaccinated because the vaccines don’t always work) your children contract.

• Schwartz
  Oct 19, 2007 at 9:06 pm

  “Chuck, can you please provide the vaccine damage data? Can you show us the study that shows that the MMR is more dangerous than measles, mumps or rubella?”

  HCN,

  You’ve got it backwards. You are asking people to pay for a procedure known to have potentially dangerous side effects, yet has a lack of safety data (and efficacy data as well) to CHOOSE to vaccinate their children and take responsibility for it.

  Therefore, it is incumbent on YOU to prove that the risk of damage from the disease combined with the risk of contracting the disease is higher than the risk of damage from the vaccine. Since you can’t properly quantify any of those items factually, you can’t make your case scientifically.

  For some reason the orgnanisations promoting vaccines do not seem interested in really addressing any of those problems, because it would require changes to the regulatory and reporting systems. No excuse IMO. They should focus on tracking and reporting on the safety of the vaccines instead of using fear to force it down the throat of people who actually bother to investigate and find that the data is severely lacking.

• Schwartz
  Oct 19, 2007 at 9:09 pm

  HCN,

  The study on MMR that you referenced was not deemed credible by the extensive Cochrane report in 2005.

  You need to provide credible data, not studies rejected by subsequent analysis.

• HCN
  Oct 19, 2007 at 9:22 pm

  I provided the eurekaalert, and the MMWR report on the mumps, and yet you attack the newspaper article. The mumps outbreak in the American Midwest was mostly college students.

  Infants are NOT given MMR, it is only done for children over 1 year old.

  The information you want can be found at the CDC Pink Book chapters of mumps and measles, with cross referencing. If you do not like the CDC, then provide links to resources that you find acceptible.

  Also, it seems that the deaths in the USA were underestimated:
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=15106092
  …. and “Preexisting conditions related to immune deficiency were reported for 16% of deaths in the NCHS system and 14% in the NIP; the most common was human immunodeficiency virus infection. ” So more than 80% were healthy before contracting measles.

  Not only are you moving goalposts, I find it interesting that I have given resources and articles found on PubMed, and yet none of you have offered information on how the MMR is more dangerous than the diseases.

  Where does it say that measles and mumps are harmless diseases? What documentation do you have that only health impaired people suffer with measles or mumps?

• Chuck
  Oct 19, 2007 at 9:34 pm

  HCN,

  You only answered HALF of my question with your supplied report. How many MMR vaccines have FAILED since 1971 and how many associated complication and deaths can be attributed to those FAILURES?

• HCN
  Oct 19, 2007 at 10:15 pm

  Sure, Chuck… but first you have to answer this question: Which is more dangerous, the MMR vaccine or the actual diseases it provides an 80 to 90% protection for, mumps, measles and rubella.

  Remember to provide documention to show that the MMR adverse reactions were worse than the diseases. Show the link to the study that shows getting measles is better than getting the MMR.

• Schwartz
  Oct 19, 2007 at 10:23 pm

  Cliff

  A) So you admit now that we’ve left the realm of evidence and are entering the realm of theory. I don’t see how it would breech any ethics given that you’ve basically admitted you can’t adequately provide factual data to make an evidence based decision. I would argue it is unethical to treat vast numbers of children to a large experiment. Even more unethical is to run such an experiment without rigorously monitoring for problems over the long term.

  B1) See my other post regarding evidence showing both the prevelance and effect of COI in medical studies.

  I don’t think I spoke of a “cover-up” so I’m not sure what that one is about.

  As for Verstraeten, his initial results discussed at the conference in 2000 were subsequently changed and published a couple years later. Immediately after publishing the final modified results, he left the CDC to work for big Pharma. Given the immediacy of his move, he was clearly in discussions with big Pharma during his study and this was not stated as a COI. I make no further allegations of wrongdoing, just of failing to note a conflict of interest.

  It is one thing to work in a related field and switch jobs. It is quite another to hold a direct financial interest in the outcome of a committee you are serving on.

  2) I never advocate that anyone be denied vaccines. It is unethical to withold treatment from anyone that has been proven to be safe and effective. Until the vaccine is proven to be safe and effective, it is perfectly ethical to conduct a study with controls just like every other type of drug trial around. Additionally, it is also perfectly ethical to study long term differences in health between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations after the introduction of the vaccine. They do this for other drugs, and lo, have discovered problems in some cases. Why not vaccines?

  I believe you are right on the placebo study, but I can’t remember which one. However, the vast majority are not compared to placebo, certainly not the ones I looked at.

  b) I would argue, that you can’t reliably draw firm conclusions without the proper data. MOst of the studies to date have not been able to find good data on which to base quality studies. Additionally, with the proper mandate, these things can and have been done in the past. (HRT therapy comes to mind again…)

  d) The efficacy I need to have in order to make a scientific decision is based on the odds that the vaccine application will actually protect my child from disease X. This data is not reliably available (again, read the Cochrane report for MMR). It is not a non sequitur at all.

  e) It is well known that hazardous drug interactions are only found after the analysis of adverse events. Most clinical trials study patients over the period of an extended protocol, not a mere 20 days. They can actually detect adverse events that way. Again, with the admitedly poor tracking and analysis of vaccine ADRs, this is not happening, so I don’t accept your opinion on the matter. I would like to see evidence.

  I guess I’ll actually have to buy that damn textbook because it is the one always quoted as a reference. I sure hope it backs up the theory with data.

  Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think the vast majority of the people are purposefully lining their pockets at the expense of the health of the population. But I do know that the health of the population most certainly takes a lower priority to the operation of Big Pharma than do profits. This is pretty evident.

  However, your arguments still have not provided me any data that I need to make a logical/scientific decision. It only contains reasons/excuses as to why the data is impractical to get. At best, this is unacceptable, because better data can be gathered if the government wanted to mandate it. However, if you claim that the a decision to not vaccinate is not based on evidence the exact same statement applies to those who chose to vaccinate since you’ve basically admitted the data doesn’t exist to do a proper risk assessment.

  PS: I used to work for Big Pharma in the area of study data collection and analysis so I am quite familiar with how much of the process works.

• Schwartz
  Oct 19, 2007 at 10:30 pm

  HCN,

  You continue to ignore the evidence. Please read the Cochrane report:

  “The design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies, both pre- and post-marketing, are largely inadequate. The evidence of adverse events following immunisation with MMR cannot be separated from its role in preventing the target diseases.”

  Again, the burden of proof is on you to prove safety, not the other way around.

• Schwartz
  Oct 19, 2007 at 11:56 pm

  B 1) RE: Conflict of Interest “But I don’t think that’s a universal or even that potent.”

  Please read the following studies, then present your evidence to back up your statement. The evidence would suggest that the problem of conflict of

  interest is far greater than you propose.

  “Drug Company Payments to Doctors Often Exceed Recommended Limits; Data Widely Unavailable to the Public”

  “Pharmaceutical Company Payments to Physicians”

  “Conclusions The Vermont and Minnesota laws requiring disclosure of payments do not provide easy access to payment information for the public and are

  of limited quality once accessed. However, substantial numbers of payments of $100 or more were made to physicians by pharmaceutical companies.”

  “Ghost Authorship in Industry-Initiated Randomised Trials”

  “We conclude that ghost authorship in industry-initiated randomised trials is very common, and we believe that this practice serves commercial purposes

  . Its prevalence could be considerably reduced if existing guidelines were followed; in particular, journals should list the contributions of all

  authors . In addition, journals could ask for the name and affiliation of the statistician who analysed the data, if this information is not clear.”

  “The association between funding by commercial interests and study outcome in randomized controlled drug trials”

  “Conclusion: An association was found between the source of study support and the published outcome. Though the reason for this association cannot be

  determined from the data collected, future studies may clarify the importance of this finding for readers concerned with the relationship of funding

  bodies to the publication of research outcomes.”

  “An analysis of the effect of funding source in randomized clinical trials of second generation antipsychotics for the treatment of schizophrenia”

  “CONCLUSIONS: While the retrospective design of the study limits the strength of the findings, the data suggest that industry bias may occur in

  randomized controlled trials in schizophrenia. There appears to be several sources by which bias may enter clinical research, including trial design,

  control of data analysis and multiplicity/redundancy of trials.”

  “Industry Sponsorship and Financial Conflict of Interest in the Reporting of Clinical Trials in Psychiatry”

  “… In sum, our results suggest that financial conflict of interest is at least as prevalent in psychiatry as in other specialties in medicine.

  Industry sponsorship and author conflict of interest are prevalent and do appear to affect study outcomes.”

  “Association of funding and conclusions in randomized drug trials: a reflection of treatment effect or adverse events?”

  “CONCLUSIONS: Conclusions in trials funded by for-profit organizations may be more positive due to biased interpretation of trial results. Readers

  should carefully evaluate whether conclusions in randomized trials are supported by data.”

  “Industry Sponsorship and Authorship of Clinical Trials Over 20 Years”

  “Pharmaceutical industry–sponsored and mixed-funding clinical trials are common, and the relative incidence of published trials with these declared

  funding sources in the 5 journals reviewed has increased. Industry employees are appearing as coauthors of clinical trial publications with increasing

  frequency.”

  “Prevalence of articles with honorary authors and ghost authors in peer-reviewed medical journals.”

  “CONCLUSION: A substantial proportion of articles in peer-reviewed medical journals demonstrate evidence of honorary authors or ghost authors.”

  And this story is a real kicker:
  “http://www.slate.com/id/2133061/”

  “Why did Sheffield, a top-flight research university, try to silence and get rid of Blumsohn? The answer appears to lie in the complex and increasingly

  compromised relationships that have grown up between some research universities and the pharmaceutical industry. In 2001, the editors of nearly a dozen

  prominent medical journals warned that growing industry interference with academic research (from study design to data analysis and publication) was

  threatening the objectivity and trustworthiness of medical research. The editors issued new guidelines requiring all authors publishing in the journals

  to verify that they “had full access to all of the data” related to their studies and that they took “complete responsibility” for “the accuracy of the

  data analysis.”

  But in the years since, universities with medical schools have become dependent on drug companies for an ever-larger share of their research

  budgets—roughly 80 percent of clinical research is now privately funded. And drug companies, in turn, have pressed for greater control over the research

  process, making it easier for them to obscure or delete negative results from published academic papers. Earlier this month, the New England Journal of

  Medicine accused Merck of failing to report three patient deaths in the trial that led to FDA approval of the painkiller Vioxx, which was pulled from

  the market last year because of its association with heart attacks and strokes. The careful record Blumsohn kept of his dealings with Procter & Gamble

  and Sheffield suggests that P&G didn’t control academic research on its own. It needed Sheffield University to permit incursions on scholarly

  independence.”

• Schwartz
  Oct 19, 2007 at 11:57 pm

  Sorry about the bad formatting. I tried to post links, but it kept ignoring them. sigh.

• Club 166
  Oct 20, 2007 at 12:29 am

  …Smart arse unsubstantiated comments are certainly unhelpful to the debate.

  Well, Kathy, there are two well accepted methods of preventing large outbreaks of disease, vaccination and quarantine. I merely suggested that if people chose not to get vaccinated, then society collectively (for its own protection) should reserve the right to quarantine all those who would not vaccinate, allowing them to live in a remote location by themselves. Cuba, which has no money for expensive antiviral medicines, has used quarantine effectively to keep the rate of HIV infection on the island much lower than its neighbors. I don’t think that this is the ideal way to treat people, but it works.

  Others have already pointed out that measles can and does kill, even healthy individuals. As far as Australia goes, as recently as the period between 1988 and 1998 there were over 16,000 cases of measles in Australia. By raising the vaccination rate to about 93.6% measles has been mostly eliminated from Australia. In 2007 there were only 11 cases in the first half of the year, while over 1000 cases had been reported in Japan over the same time period (Source).

  The only way (in a world where there are travelers to and from everywhere) to keep large outbreaks from occurring is to keep the immunization rates very high, especially for highly communicable diseases like measles and pertussis. People like to say that its a personal choice, but its a choice that has consequences for others in the community, as was illustrated when the MMR rates of immunization in Great Britain fell with the autism anti-jab scare, and measles cases started occurring again.

  So you may think me flip, but I don’t believe in putting the very young and those who are immuno-compromised and can’t receive vaccines at risk just because of the “gut feelings” of certain individuals that don’t want to vaccinate. As I said, I support that decision as long as they don’t live in my community.

  Joe

• Schwartz
  Oct 20, 2007 at 12:43 am

  club166,

  The previous examples of measles deaths were not shown to have occured in healthy individuals. The actual detailed data is lacking, unless you have access to something that wasn’t published.

  Perhaps we should also quarantine all people who live unhealthy lifestyles (bad diet, overweight, etc), because they are more likely to contract and transmit dangerous diseases to my children.

  Give the rhetoric a break.

  Provide credible evidence, and maybe you can convince some of us. At least provide credible evidence of safety. That is really what I’m looking for. You accuse people of going with “gut feelings” despite the clearly laid out reasons posted above. Applying labels to people is a pretty poor way to argue any position, let alone a logical one.

• Cliff
  Oct 20, 2007 at 12:44 am

  I’m going to get to the FUD site in just a bit when I have a little more time, so I’m not ignoring it.
  a) This is asking into the conceptual realm of data which don’t need to be answered in so far as you are suggesting. The Pope can make this argument, using your standard; “We don’t have any accessible recent data regarding how often condoms stop pregnancy. Therefore, it is unethical to use condoms and thus people are not responsible when a pregnancy occurs.”
  Plus, the age of the data does not invalidate said data entirely. So long as you understand the mistakes, you can use where there wasn’t a mistake.
  B1) The “cover-up” would be “introducing bias into the outcomes”, in so far as the actual data when performed isn’t going to change by simple will of character but by adjusting the pool. This can’t really be done with success prior, so it’s implied.
  And your statement of Verstraeten is not correct, in so far as I can tell. He announced the conflict of interest prior to the conference, and was an adviser and didn’t actually work on the project prior to the final release.
  2) You’re missing the point, slightly. You’d have to do a random sampling, without COI, and get a population from time of vaccination. To do this in effective terms, you’d have to deny many of the people in the study from vaccinating their kids. Thus, a cross on the ethical line.
  B) If you create a subjective bar on “reliable”, you can always find something that the study didn’t find, or say that it has to go back further. “Reliable” data, in the sense you are talking about, exists for only for a very select number of drugs, perhaps of the Prozac class. But usually you can determine safety well enough to use the drug well before hand. If you want to be honest, and universal, you’d have to deny virtually all medication that wasn’t proved almost certainly true (and that’s giving you the benefit of the doubt; if you are looking for certainly true, it’s not happening in this world).
  d) Yes, but it’s still a non sequitur because the objection is mechanism. Mechanism plays no role in statistical data.
  e) I won’t say it’s not happening for vaccines, but I will say that it’s actually not common in any real sense for something of the type. Plus, the threshold where the damage would have been done is well detectable in a short period of time, on the basis of the general toxicology of mercury. That’s done longer for some drugs where the toxicology is more subtle and drawn-out, and even they don’t face some of the issues regarding full random assignment and the like which affects some clinical medicine.
  The one I mentioned was a review, with data from a variety of other sources.
  And, yes, I can’t give ultimate evidence to a complete skeptic. Just as I can’t really prove the sky is blue, the grass is green, an apple red. There’s a point where you go over”reasonable” in a world where you can always look for an objection if you want it, and I think we’ve passed that point. We don’t need clinical studies that do nothing but raise the time past when we could already establish no effect, and we don’t need to prove that someone might, in some indirect way or another, benefited, so long as the logic behind the study is good.
  Similarly, in regards to whether vaccinations are really responsible for a significant decrease in population numbers, it’s a widely recognized fact, so much so that I didn’t think I needed to. I’m going to direct you to a book that has a general overview on the field of of immunocology, because I don’t I want to review the entire precepts; Goldsby RA, Kindt TK, Osborne BA and Kuby J (2003) Immunology, 5th Edition, W.H. Freeman and Company, New York, New York, ISBN 0-7167-4947-5. It’s simplistic, yes, but it should generalize what you need to know and have the references you probably want.
  And you have the burden of proof wrong. It’s been sufficiently established in terms of the scientific community (supposing you don’t want to go after the general scientific community) that vaccination is a safe practice. The burden lies with those who wish to disprove that. In fact, there’s now entire fields of science dedicated to that, so you need to pretty much disprove immunology along the way.

  Cliff

• Cliff
  Oct 20, 2007 at 12:47 am

  Sorry for some really bad typing there.

  Cliff

• Cliff
  Oct 20, 2007 at 1:25 am

  I just saw the second post regarding conflict of interest, but I need to reformat that post before I can really read it.

  Cliff

• Schwartz
  Oct 20, 2007 at 1:51 am

  Cliff,

  NP with the typing. These blogs are not well suited to long discussions.

  a) In terms of the data being quoted for these diseases, significant contributing conditions are quite different since the statistics were originally collected and thus the argument here is much more pertinent than the analogy you provided.

  1b) Taken from a letter from DAve Wheldon MD of the House of Representatives:

  “Furthermore, the lead author of the article, Dr. Thomas Verstraeten, worked for the CDC until he left over two years ago to work in Belgium for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a vaccine manufacturer facing liability over TCVs. In violation of their own standards of conduct, Pediatrics failed to disclose that Dr. Verstraeten is employed by GSK and incorrectly identifies him as an employee of the CDC. This revelation undermines this study further.”

  2) Maybe I’m still missing the point, but since you haven’t yet proved safety (or efficacy), you’re not denying a known beneficial treatment yet. Additionally, people enter studies of their own choice, just like they choose to vaccinate or not to vaccinate.

  B) I agree that these things are difficult. But the FDA often requests post-acceptance tracking and followup. A study done Last year showed that less than 3% of these requests were ever fulfilled. There is a regulatory mechanism to deal with this, but it’s being ignored. I’m not demanding absolute truth, because I’m well accustomed to shades of grey, but the level of rigour today wrt to vaccines appears to be on the level of wreckless IMO.

  I think when dealing with mass medication, it is incumbent to do a decent amount of safety testing. Even worse in these cases, the immune system is not that well understood by medicine, and so I feel that a lot more caution is merited. I also think it’s really stupid to take these experimental risks on children at such a young age when the risk of disease at that particular age is not very substantial in most of the cases.

  I also think that it would be not be that difficult, if we were tracking the results more carefully (even without doing control group studies) to identify at-risk children BEFORE giving them the shots. But in general none of this is occurring.

  d) I think we might be crossing points on this one. My position is that they are measuring efficacy by testing anti-body production, not actual immunity to disease. The assumption here is that anti-body production = immunity and I am positing that this is not always true. Therefore using efficacy data on anti-body production can’t be stated as efficacy of immunity to the disease.

  e) This one is going to remain a theoretical argument I suppose, but one point I will make is that I’m not necessarily focussed on Mercury but the general unknowns of combining so many differing things at the same time. Since it is unnecessary, it also appears to be an unneccessary risk.

  I will get the book, because I am interested in reading some counter arguments to the overall history of vaccine efficacy.

  However, we will differ on opinion of the threshold. My skepticism of the system is well rooted given the pervasiveness of conflict of interest. I just read two new articles today on related topics:

  Drug Companies’ Ties to Schools Common (JAMA)

  “But Dr. Jerome Kassirer, a former New England Journal of Medicine editor and frequent critic of industry influence over doctors, called the study eye-opening.

  “I was appalled by the results,” Kassirer said. “No one knew that so many chairs of medicine and psychiatry were paid speakers. We’ve never had that data before.”

  So yes, I am extremely skeptical of the system as it stands today. I am also convinced that the health of the vaccine program itself takes a higher priority than the health of the children it’s trying to protect. This trend is pervasive throughout the CDC transcript.

  I don’t think my position at this time is unreasonable given the current state of available data and the state of the system in general.

  As for the burden of proof, we will have to disagree here as well. There are numerous instances where general scientific community have been wrong — it will almost always self correct, but that takes time. I think that our recent history is showing us the combined problem of industry influence into every aspect of the medical community, will result in more instances of errors in the “general medical establishment”. I still go back to the HRT therapy which was a real shocker to most of the community. I think the cough medicine fiasco announced today borders on criminal. That would be another instance of general failure.

  For the record, I’m not completely skeptical of the efficacy of every vaccine either. However, I believe that the schedule (young age), and number of recommended vaccines is questionable and unnecessarily risky.

• Cliff
  Oct 20, 2007 at 5:24 am

  Ok, managed to fix that post adequately. Looked at the individual articles. By the way, are you pretty much only getting JAMA? All of the articles that I could tell were from there.

  Anyway, onwards.
  a) No, the conditions haven’t changed in that regard. They may have temporarily for the vaccinated population, but the general precept holds and the analogy stands.
  (1b) I’ll look at his letter, but I don’t think the Representative is right. At the Simpsonwood Conference, in 2001 or so, I thought that he had announced conflict, but not during the study. Up until 2003, then, he didn’t actually work on the study. Here’s the Senate release on the Verstraeten case, which has no reason to hide evidence; http://help.senate.gov/Min_press/autism.pdf
  2) Vaccines are considered to have been found reasonably efficient by the scientific community (I would point to the immunicology book, because it will have better references that I will). Regardless of the truth value, to deny something commonly known to be potentially life saving is a cross. Also, people enter clinical trials, but the sampling needs to be random in regards to that control group.
  B) The FDA usually asks that when there is a delayed effect, like perhaps like a new SSRI that potentially affects brain states over time. The effect in regard to themerisol, which is at issue here, doesn’t have that effect. Mercury is in and out of the system in a few days, and the effects are seeable at that point. So the long-term you are looking for doesn’t exist for things of that kind of sort, and because of the nature of vaccination, the follow-up for random assignment is difficult, at best. Also, the risks aren’t low for childhood diseases; in 1964, CRS alone claimed 1% of the population of the United States.
  D) My point is that the mechanism is not parlayed at all. The resistance is shown based on statistical data regarding the resistance of those; I.E it’s an effectiveness measure, and the effectiveness measure cares nothing for whether it’s caused by antibodies or angry green gremlins.
  E) Scientists would argue that the combined schedule is necessary to make sure that all of the protection that children need goes into place.
  And I won’t say that corruption is absent in the scientific field. But, at a high numbers, it’s maybe at 20%. Thus, you need to disprove the other 80% to state that the position is because of corruption in and of itself.
  And I do think the standard of “innocent until proven guilty” applies here very heavily. Let’s be honest, there have been a lot of investigations into this. Independent ones, those of the government, those of the companies themselves. Nothing has been found. You’d have to make an assertion that not only did pharmecutical companies decide to actively hide a major health crime, risking what they would know to be equivalent to war crimes, but that the Senate and various independents have also an active interest in substantiating a major health crisis. And the money just isn’t that great. It may be significant, but not that significant.
  There’s nothing to suggest negatively of the vaccination schedule. That’s not just in casual observance, but in the observance of conflicting compounds that would have to exist to make such a practice an issue.
  Finally, the JAMA studies. They were interesting, and I don’t doubt that there is something there. But it was exaggerated, most definitely in some cases. One of the studies qualified a ghost writer as someone “who had made a contribution not listed”. That qualifies virtually everything. A disclosure of a friend giving you an idea after you’ve been talking about it gives a ghost writer right there. Also, the over 100$ payments tend to be exaggerated in all fields, not just in medicine. The claims tend to exaggerate influence, in that if someone does the social right of say paying for dinner, that creates an outlandish manipulation of an official.

  And I’m not sure how to address Blumsohn, despite some research into it, because there’s no evidence either way. The claims are from Blumsohn’s personal letters (e-mails, actually), which are dubious as any personal letters. And many of his actual requests were made, just he didn’t interpret the things he saw the same way. As far as I can tell, it’s a media representation of two opinions stacked against one another. So I’m not really sure how to address that in an objective manner.

  Cliff

• Chuck
  Oct 20, 2007 at 9:27 am

  HCN,

  The MMR vaccine is as dangerous for the 10%-20% of the people who are vaccinated. Please provide the source for each disease that substantiates your failure rates.

• Amanda
  Oct 20, 2007 at 10:54 am

  There’s an incredibly disturbing undercurrent to some of these comments, which is that it doesn’t matter if people who are not healthy already die. So, those of us who are asthmatic, immunosuppressed, whatever, protecting us doesn’t count for anything? Since “healthy” people supposedly don’t die of these diseases (something that isn’t even true in itself), it’s okay to let “unhealthy” people die?

• Kristina Chew, PhD
  Oct 20, 2007 at 12:19 pm

  A question hovering at the edges of thie discussion might be, is someone with autism healthy? (This being a question that relates to questions of whether autism is a “disease” or “disorder.”)

• Matt
  Oct 20, 2007 at 12:19 pm

  Trying to claim that vaccines don’t work is a (small) step short of trying to claim that the tide won’t come in tomorrow.

  Probably the coolest news of the last week is the success of the pase II trial of the malaria vaccine. It isn’t 100% effective, but, dang, a vaccine against malaria? I thought Gates was nuts to ask his foundation to try to tackle it.

  Should it work, the question is whether the nominations will be strongest for the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Peace.

  The fact that a few (note few) more people are deciding to forgoe vaccinating their kids only makes me more steadfast in getting my kids vaccinated. Having my kid die of something like measles (or pass it on to someone else who dies) would be like letting him die of appendicitis because I don’t believe in surgery. People have tried religious exemptions for that as well.

• Matt
  Oct 20, 2007 at 12:32 pm

  Geez, Are people still debating Simpsonwood?

  http://www.autismspeaks.org/government_affairs/help_thimerosal_report.php

  People can and do complain that the HELP committee is “corrupt” as well. That only serves to demonstrate the lengths of conspiracy theory that are needed to support the supposed link.

  Take a look at what they say about Vaerstaeten. Looks to me like he was a post-doc (or had a similar appointment) at CDC. The great things about post-docs is that they bring really tallented people into the US and we get to keep many of them.

  Wouldn’t it have been nice to get another autism researcher into the US? I mean, rather than scaring him (and probably many others) away?

  So he went back to Europe. Can you blame him? He held a temporary position at CDC. People twisted his words, misinterpreted his preliminary findings, plagarized his work…

  The whole Simsonwood witch hunt has given the US autism community a big black eye.

• Julie
  Oct 20, 2007 at 12:41 pm

  Healthy people can get and die from these diseases. Sick people diserve to be protected from them the same. I am not upset by Jenny speaking about all of the things that she has tried with her son. Our daughter has been dairy free for some time and is able to communicate better when she is. The problem that I have is that she says things like I would never vaccinate another child and she does not discuss the therapies that helped him as well as the bio med treatments and although my daughter is doing much better I wuld not say that she is cured or that she does not have autism at this point. On Oprah she started out saying that he will always have autism and by the time she got to Larry King He did not. That has been my problem with her all along I think it is good to share our experiences so that parents can have hope but her experience seems to carry more weight and she is look at as an expert on Autism when she is as all parents are just an expert on her son.

• Cliff
  Oct 20, 2007 at 12:44 pm

  Amanda, you are right regarding health and worth. I chose to ignore it to try and keep a tone of civility overall, but it’s right to be disgusted.

  Cliff

• Matt
  Oct 20, 2007 at 1:07 pm

  “I also think it’s really stupid to take these experimental risks on children at such a young age when the risk of disease at that particular age is not very substantial in most of the cases.”

  Tell me that doesn’t say what I think it says. Please.

  It strikes me that it is difficult to ding medical researchers who spend their lives studying the immune system as no having a good understanding when you appear to be basing your discussions on a clearly fatal flaw in reasoning.

  People who forget the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them. When it comes to public health, they are doomed to take others with them.

• Schwartz
  Oct 20, 2007 at 1:33 pm

  Cliff,

  a) Do you really think the risk of damage from measles is the same for a child in a third world country as it would be for an unvaccinated population in North America?

  The death rates (and I believe incident rates) for measles were dropping long before vaccines were introduced. That previous reduction was brought about by factors not related to vaccines so clearly other factors can drastically affect the rates of outcomes from the disease or the incidence. I will check your book to see if it appropriately addresses these things. But I am not yet convinced that . I will certainly agree that it is very probable that the extremely low risk in our currently vaccinated population would change if the vaccination wan’t done, but I am not at all convinced the rates would be as serious as people are theorizing.

  1b) The complaint in the letter appears to be an accusation of violation of the rules of the COI guidelines for the journal which published the study. However, based on that document you provided and the letter referenced inside, he does appear clean. However, that document you provided did substantiate other instances of COI within that IOM commitee member… sigh.

  2) Don’t get me wrong. I am not totally anti-vaccination, just like I’m not anti-medication either. I think that each vaccine needs to be analyzed for it’s own merit, just like any drug. Anti-biotics are also generally accepted as being effective and helpful, but each specific case must be analyzed and specific anti-biotics are very dangerous to specific individuals. I believe the same applies to vaccines, yet no investigation is done to determine which individuals are succeptible. Instead huge amounts of funding are pored into pressuring people to just get it done without a second thought.

  You better check that CRS number. In 1969 65K cases of RUBELLA were logged — and for non-pregnant women, it is a completely benign disease. The largest number of CRS cases in a single year was ~ 69 in 1970. Where did you get your outrageous number from? If I really believed those numbers to be true, I would be worried too.

  I would also be interested in what you think the rate of CRS incidence is amoung women infected with rubella during pregnancy.

  This is actually a good case example where one can avoid mass medication, and only vaccinate those at risk since it is such a small percentage.

  D) So, let me ask this then: Can you scientifically quantify how effective the vaccine will be in preventing me from contracting said disease? My impression is that you can only guage the effectiveness of producing anti-bodies in the individual vaccinated. You would then need to determine in what percentage of cases, anti-bodies alone provide adequate protection against said disease.

  E) I think if you want to FORCE mass medication upon a population it is incumbent to prove safety first, not assume innocence. Again, every case is specific. Just because vaccine X works, does not mean that vaccine Y will. There are many failed vaccines.

  Taking a very targeted study group, and then applying the results to a whole non-homogenous population is also known to be fraught with problems — we’ve seen this with the cough medicine, we’ve seen it with Vioxx. Given that people want to mandate vaccination for everyone, even a small percentage of problems for certain types of people still impacts a significant number of people.

  Additionally, small numbers of affected people won’t show up in an epidemiology study — which is the type of study that is favoured by the CDC etc. Again, you state that lots of analysis has been done, but I urge you to read the Cochrane report, which basically concluded that there was no credible evidence to determine the safety or efficacy of the MMR vaccine. And they looked at thousands of studies. Now they concluded as you do that “General Scientific Consensus” states that it is safe. The irony is that none of the Analysis done to date in the form of studies was deemed credible.

  So that brings us back to the same place. The general medical community’s consensus is that they are safe and effective, but we lack credible evidence of safety and efficacy, and in certain instances, the risk rates quoted are inflated or at a minimum debated.

  Again, if you intent to force or mandate mass medication it is incumbent to prove safety for the individuals. When someone experiences death or damage after a vaccine is given today, it is rarely followed up and often the association is immediately disregarded.

  There is certainly no clear cut answer IMO. It is clear if you place blind trust in the general medical community. My experience with this is that the general medical community does not merit blind trust. Specific doctors, and treatments certainly do. The data (and the doctors I trust) have not been able to convince me with the evidence available today that the vaccines are safe for my children at their current age (very young) and they have not convinced me that the risks of not vaccinating are larger.

  I find the situation very frustrating as well.

  As for the Ghost writing, the study results are almost definitely underestimating the problem because the disclosure for the study was voluntary. Additionally, the danish study (where many of the Thimerosal epidemiology come from) found that most often it was the statistician who was the ghost writer donated by the funding party. We all know that the statistician ultimately provides the data that will determine the outcome of those types of studies.

• Schwartz
  Oct 20, 2007 at 1:38 pm

  Matt,

  Why don’t you stick to Analogies that actually apply. It’s outrageous statements like yours that chip away at the other credible statements you might actually make.

  “Having my kid die of something like measles (or pass it on to someone else who dies) would be like letting him die of appendicitis because I don’t believe in surgery. People have tried religious exemptions for that as well.”

  Let’s examine the starting point here:

  Case 1: Healthy Child

  Case 2: Child with Terminal Illness

  Hmm, we’re off to a bad start already.

  Case 1:
  * Unquantified risk of medical intervention
  * unquantifiable efficacy of medical intervention
  * Unquantified risk to health of non-intervention

  Case 2:
  * Quantifiable risk to health (near 100% terminal)
  * Quantifiable risk of medical intervention (low)
  * Quantifiable effectiveness of intervention( very high)

  Boy, that’s a tough one. Stick to the facts.

• Schwartz
  Oct 20, 2007 at 1:51 pm

  Amanda,

  Unfortunately, a completely logical decision boils down to risks. You can’t quantify the risk to my healthy child of this medical intervention. Even worse, the system isn’t properly tracking the safety to determine the risk.

  I’m going to assume for this discussion you have a child with a known health problem like asthma. (just for discussion purposes)

  People with known health problems face risks from all illnesses, but you also can’t quantify the risk my unvaccinated child posses to your unhealthy child.

  Let’s look at some more logic. The death rates and acquisition rates of some of these diseases are very low and the effects on different people vary quite a lot. I think it is fair to say if you are healthier, than your odds of contracting and/or suffering damage are reduced.

  So it is in your best interest that I keep my child as healthy as possible so that your child will be exposed to far fewer problems. I pay a lot of attention to my child’s diet, exposure when sick, exercise etc, so there are a lot more factors involved in health than vaccination status. In fact, I would even be bold enough to state, that your child would likely be much safer spending time with mine than with many of the other kids, because she is in fact above average health.

  Philosophically, I think you bring up an interesting issue as well. HUGE amounts of money are being invested to eliminate all diseases in order to protect a growing number of vulernable people in our modern populations. I think that this is a flawed approach since there is no evidence at all that all threatening infectious diseases could ever be effectively eliminated. Yet you and others advocate an approach that requires putting healthy individuals at risk for such an intervention even though they don’t need it.

  Why not spend the money on helping determine why your child is actually at risk, and possibly addressing the health problem directly without putting healthy people at risk?

• Schwartz
  Oct 20, 2007 at 1:55 pm

  Matt,

  “Tell me that doesn’t say what I think it says. Please.

  It strikes me that it is difficult to ding medical researchers who spend their lives studying the immune system as no having a good understanding when you appear to be basing your discussions on a clearly fatal flaw in reasoning.

  People who forget the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them. When it comes to public health, they are doomed to take others with them.”

  Please stick to facts. Publish your numbers and we can debate something. Otherwise your comments are pure rhetoric.

  But just for fun: What is the risk to my 2 month old of Hepititus B? How about the Flu? How about Rubella? How about Tetanus?

  Give me a break.

• Schwartz
  Oct 20, 2007 at 2:00 pm

  Matt,

  Did you ever read the simpsonwood transcripts through? After you’ve read them through, come back and we’ll have a frank discussion about the quality of CDC decision making.

  You’ll also note, my allegations were only of conflict of interest, not of misconduct of fraudulant behaviour. I have conceeded with Cliff, that Vaerstaaten was probably not in conflict of interest in this case. However, my other comments on the conference still stand.

  Don’t go finding rhetoric posted by others and attribute them to me.

• Cliff
  Oct 20, 2007 at 2:15 pm

  Can you provide a link to the proceedings, please?

  Cliff

• HCN
  Oct 20, 2007 at 3:51 pm

  Apparently I am not allowed to participate. One of my comments is still awaiting moderation.

  So be it.

  Still no one has given any real scientific documentation that measles and mumps are typically mild. Those of who think they are mild feel and that those children who die from vaccine preventable diseases deserve their fate smacks of eugenics. “Let only the strong survive.”

• nym-d out
  Oct 20, 2007 at 4:06 pm

  “But just for fun: What is the risk to my 2 month old of Hepititus B? How about the Flu? How about Rubella? How about Tetanus”

  Before that could even begin to be assessed we’d need to determine in what location/s your two month-old is living/visiting.

• Amanda
  Oct 20, 2007 at 4:40 pm

  Schwartz, I have asthma, as do my brothers and parents. I have been on Prednisone for asthma, which depresses the immune system (just finally got off of it). I have a friend who is on Prednisone for something else, permanently. She got whooping cough from someone’s unvaccinated child. It came close to killing her and she dislocated five ribs coughing (she also has Ehlers-Danlos, a connective tissue condition that causes easy dislocations), and had a number of seizures because of dehydration from the coughing.

  The risk to people like her or me is death. The supposed risk most people are talking about with vaccinations is autism. If someone has a documented severe reaction to vaccines, they shouldn’t take them, and I’ve never heard anyone argue with that (I actually get warnings about that whenever I get a vaccination, they tell me what to watch out for and where to go and what to do about it). But yes I can quantify that autism is not worse than death and that even if vaccines caused autism (which they don’t) it would be easily worth not spreading diseases that kill people.

  I continue to find the idea that people like me and my friends can simply be written off because we’re in poor health (I’ve been in and out of emergency rooms all year for reactions to things like the common cold, which are much less serious than many of the diseases vaccinated against) incredibly offensive.

• Cliff
  Oct 20, 2007 at 5:23 pm

  I’m going to respond a little of the thing you said in regards to Amanda’s post.

  In the terms you are asking for, you can’t quantify much of any medical research. The data in specifics to the observance of effects on kids does exist, but not in the long-term, ultimate status you are asking for, as I noted above.

  Yes, you can quantify it in statistical terms, but again not in any ultimate state. But you can’t do it the other way either. Thus, we have to rely on the admittedly vague and non-ultimate “reasonable conclusion”, and in the realm of childhood diseases we have enough data for that (again, I’ll reference the review).

  I’d counter that “The death rates and acquisition rates are low for some of these diseases” with “The death rates and acquisition rates are high for some of these diseases”, because it actually follows reasonably from the statement prior. That’s logic from your statement in a very direct sense.

  And now I’m going to bring full attention to the point protecting “a growing number of people”. I’m going to leave aside that this growing number of people who can catch these diseases are a majority. Let’s look at the assumptions themselves, and the full application of that logic.

  Ok, so the statement basically is that money should not be spent to prevent diseases from harming a minority, because it draws away fund that could be used to help the majority. It makes the assumption of the value being placed on the general contentment of the entire majority, because the money is not such that giving the relevant amount to the minority actually harms the entire majority and perhaps creates a smaller risk for a few (autism is not worse than death) than that facing the minority, over the clear safety of the minority. That puts the value of life with the majority over the minority; I.E people with diseases are less valuable than healthy ones. They have less to contribute, are not as good of people, and can be worked away if needed.

  Following that, all cancer research must be halted. That’s a ton of money being given to a minority that could be used for the majority. And we might never be able to find a cure for all cancers. Therefore, cancer treatment should receive no money.

  Also, in a broader context, money shouldn’t used in ways to aid the poor in an effective way. After all, we might not be able to make all people not poor, and the poor are not a majority. Therefore, no money should be given to the poor.

  This could go onto to largely any social issue. Most situations involve a minority of some kind. Frankly, we all have aspects of ourselves that make us minorities in that regard. And those issues, as stated through that logic, aren’t to addressed. Only things that fall strictly above 50% can be given funding.

  I’m not going to attack the truth value of these statements, because in doing so I would be stating a personal moral belief. But do the following implications really fit in with your morality?

  Cliff

• Kristina Chew, PhD
  Oct 20, 2007 at 7:39 pm

  HCN, sorry about your comment not going through—if you include a lot of links, the comments sometimes end up needing moderation and I was out all afternoon. Please let me know if that happens again and I apologize for the delay.

• Schwartz
  Oct 20, 2007 at 8:13 pm

  Cliff,

  I appreciate the frank and patient discussion. Using text alone it is sometimes difficult to convey the appropriate ideas.

  I read yours and Amanda’s post, and I guess I’m surprised on how you see my point of view from your perspective.

  I’ll try to address this first from the high level:

  1) Although I certainly feel a strong mandate to help othe