Autism Vox

56 opinions for Immunizations, Children, and Lots of Questions

• Hsien Lei
  Aug 10, 2007 at 4:09 am

  I always love hearing your voice!

  One of the key points made in the conversation is that widespread immunization is the reason disease levels are low in the US. So low disease levels should NOT be a reason to NOT vaccinate. It seems like a circular argument but is so important to understand.

• Chuck
  Aug 10, 2007 at 8:08 am

  Are disease levels lower because of better sanitary conditions, better water purity, and better medical expertise or due to immunizations? Giving accurate credit where accurate credit is due is never done.

• Cynthia Samuels
  Aug 10, 2007 at 8:19 am

  Kristina this is such a great summary of the call. It’s wonderful to know that you valued it - I hope others will listen and see what they think too.

• Minnie Matta
  Aug 10, 2007 at 10:34 am

  Thank goodness for vaccines and for all the magic that comes out of the pharmaceutical companies, because as a nation they have made us so much healthier!

  Oh, wait…as a nation we’re sicker then ever…never mind.

• Hsien-Hsien Lei, PhD
  Aug 10, 2007 at 10:35 am

  @Chuck Given that we’re seeing outbreaks in US communities where immunization levels have dropped significantly, I’d have to give vaccines due credit for disease prevention. The issue is addressed in the call as well.

• Club 166
  Aug 10, 2007 at 10:38 am

  Are disease levels lower because of better sanitary conditions, better water purity, and better medical expertise or due to immunizations? …

  Certainly improved sanitary conditions decrease disease. Plague, typhus, and Hepatitis A are examples. But as has been shown in the UK, when vaccination rates go down, diseases that they are supposed to protect against go up.

  Joe

• RAJ
  Aug 10, 2007 at 11:05 am

  Both sides are equally convinced of their position. The argument will never end until the pro-vaccine group concede that vaccines can never be entirely safe for everyone and the other side concedes that vaccines aren’t the cause of all disease. Vaccine safety needs to be improved.

  http://www.ebiologynews.com/2129.html

• Chuck
  Aug 10, 2007 at 11:32 am

  We have also seen outbreaks in US communities of immunizied populations. Give fault where fault is due.
  Raj is correct in saying that vaccine safty and effectiveness is lacking.

• Kristina Chew, PhD
  Aug 10, 2007 at 12:08 pm

  Life in the ancient world was, in the words of Thomas Hobbes, “nasty, brutish, short, and solitary”—-for a reason, as one discovers in studying ancient medicine.

• M'sDad
  Aug 10, 2007 at 2:25 pm

  I’d second RAJ’s observation. Those who claim that vaccines cannot cause neurological or other adverse reactions are ignoring documented cases of severe responses; those who maintain that autism is only about mercury poisoning through thimerosal — and speak of their “normal” children being “made autistic” through “poisoning” are fooling themselves about concepts of “normality”. Vaccines are a Good Thing, overall; even boogeyman Wakefield — as I understand it — maintains that vaccinations against mumps, measles, and rubella are crucial, though of course he is notorious for also claiming that their combined effect can be dangerous for some susceptible children (and he advocates separate “jabs” for the three vaccines). I do think parents are reacting dramatically (”over-reacting”?) by not having their children vaccinated at all. However, I also think this comes from over-suspicion of the medical (pharmaceutical?) community’s blanket denial that there can be — rare, perhaps — down-sides to certain vaccines.

  This brings us back to genetics, I think — I suspect that a few years from now when the dust has cleared a bit, there will be a strong argument (though I suspect not a full consensus) on a correlation between genetic configuration and response to vaccines (or for that matter diet, supplementation, medication, etc). At that point, perhaps, genetic testing will allow individuals (and parents) to make informed choices about the pros and potential cons of specific life choices.

  Until then, as RAJ points out, the two sides will duke it out, each reluctant to acknowledge the “gray” between their black-and-white positions. Let’s hope a time of subtle understanding comes sooner rather than later.

• daedalus2u
  Aug 10, 2007 at 2:45 pm

  RAJ, no one in the “pro-vaccine” group has ever stated that 100.000000000% of vaccines are 100.0000000000000% safe for 100.00000000000% of all people 100.0000000000% of the time.

  The article you linked to was about smallpox vaccination. Smallpox is no longer endemic. The only reason smallpox is no longer endemic is because of vaccination.

  When smallpox was endemic it killed about 30% of unvaccinated individuals.

  http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/smallpox/en/

  The last naturally acquired case of smallpox was in 1977. Since then, over 3 billion people have been born. If there were no smallpox vaccination, about a billion of them would be dead.

  The argument will never end because anti-vaxers are not interested in understanding the reality of disease, vaccines and the interactions between those two.

  Chuck, “Give fault where fault is due.” So if vaccines are not 100.000000000000% effective we should do nothing and let the diseases run their course?

• Joseph
  Aug 10, 2007 at 3:51 pm

  The argument will never end until the pro-vaccine group concede that vaccines can never be entirely safe for everyone and the other side concedes that vaccines aren’t the cause of all disease.

  The “pro-vaccine group” has conceded that. For example, Quackwatch has posted a table with various risks due to vaccination here. They also address the “better sanitation” myth here.

• daedalus2u
  Aug 10, 2007 at 4:48 pm

  M’s dad, no one with a rudimentary knowledge of vaccines has ever claimed that “vaccines cannot cause neurological or other adverse reactions”.

  Stop being disengenuous and stop pretending that the position of any pro-vaccine group is that “vaccines cannot cause neurological or other adverse reactions “.

  That is a lie and you know it.

  It is well known there can be adverse reactions, that is why the vaccine compensation system was set up, and why claims are paid out.

  Wakefield made his claims to extort money from the pharmaceutical industry. He made his claims knowing they were false.

  There is zero data to support a thimerosal or mercury connection to autism, a lot of data that says there is no connection, and a mountain of physiological theory and understanding to show such a connection makes no sense.

  As someone who has read a great deal about this, the lies have only come from the “mercury causes autism” and the “vaccines cause autism” groups, not the pharmaceutical industry, not the FDA, not the CDC, not the scientific community.

  I have sympathy for individuals who are not technical enough to understand scientific papers and results themselves and so rely on others. It is unfortunate when the people that one relies on for information shamelessly lie so as to defraud trusting individuals so as to donate money and to pay for useless and harmful “treatments”.

• Chuck
  Aug 10, 2007 at 8:49 pm

  Where is the scientific study stating that the neurological or other adverse reactions from vaccine ingredients or other external environmental stimuli does not contribute to the severity of diagnosis criteria currently defining ASD?

• Joseph
  Aug 10, 2007 at 9:26 pm

  Where is the scientific study stating that the neurological or other adverse reactions from vaccine ingredients or other external environmental stimuli does not contribute to the severity of diagnosis criteria currently defining ASD?

  Briefly, from existing epidemiology it’s possible to conclude that at least some of the ingredients don’t have a noticeable effect. Of course, this doesn’t mean that perhaps 1 child in 100,000 (I’m speculating) develops an encephalopathy that presents like autism or considerably exacerbates autism. Either way, chances are any given child is extremely unlikely to have been made autistic by vaccines, and hence irrational to assume so.

• Chuck
  Aug 11, 2007 at 10:17 am

  Any neurological damage that cannot be detected by current medical testing or subsequent epidemiology studies by known neurotoxins can contribute to all neurological disorders and is likely and rational to assume.

• daedalus2u
  Aug 11, 2007 at 10:51 am

  Chuck, every single component of every single vaccine is tested for adverse effects. Individually and collectively.

  Are there adverse effects? Yes, there are. At some dosages. Do those adverse effects include autism? No, they do not.

  There is no understanding of what environmental effects (if any) contribute to the symptoms of ASDs. Why assume that it must be vaccines? The only reason I can come up with is because the pharmaceutical industry has deep pockets.

  What about the adverse effects of chelation? That has been shown to cause adverse neurological effects in animals.

• Chuck
  Aug 11, 2007 at 2:14 pm

  So you categorically say that the effects of ingredients in vaccines past and present cannot adversely effect one or more of the subjective criteria currently used to scientifically define any ASD? Is that your position, yes or no? I am only discussing Immunizations, Children, and Lots of Questions.

• Chuck
  Aug 11, 2007 at 2:26 pm

  Maybe you can answer another question, why did other industrialized countries like the UK, Denmark and others ban the use of Thimerosal in vaccines years before the USA? Is the USA just too stupid to know better?

• Sarah
  Aug 11, 2007 at 4:09 pm

  Yes, the US took longer than other countries to ban thimerosal. That does not, by any stretch, lead to the conclusion that thimerosal might cause autism. In fact, it’s interesting to note that many countries which never used thimerosal in vaccines (or which used much less of it) STILL have autism rates equal to or higher than ours.

• Chuck
  Aug 11, 2007 at 4:27 pm

  I only asked why did they ban Thimerosal and why they did it before the USA did. I would also ask why there wouldn’t be variance in the diagnosis rate given that there are different diagnosis criteria from culture to culture. (Note to Kristina, I am reading Grinker and only agree with a small number of his theories. There are more problems then answers provided by Grinker IMHO)

• Kristina Chew, PhD
  Aug 11, 2007 at 11:22 pm

  Problems are the start of new questions……. Parents who are not convinced by the arguments in Unstrange Minds have tended to favor biomedical theories and treatments for autism, from the exchanges I have had. Our contemporary US culture has something of an interest in biomedical and environmental theories of causation in general.

• Chuck
  Aug 11, 2007 at 11:46 pm

  What if someone is inclined to believe that politics and societal views are influencing or driving the current autism epidemic and that the current DSM criteria is no better then any other DSM?

• Kristina Chew, PhD
  Aug 12, 2007 at 12:28 am

  One issue I often think of is that we place a great deal of value on the DSM, which is a quite recent creation.

• RAJ
  Aug 12, 2007 at 9:35 am

  Joseph
  Aug 10, 2007 at 3:51 pm wrote:

  ” They also address the “better sanitation” myth here”.

  The ‘myth’ of better sanitation? That raises one of my new favorite interests, the history of Leprosy.

  There has never been a vaccine for leprosy, caused by exposure to myobacterium laprae, and a cure (multi-drug therapy) was not discovered until the 1980’s, yet leprosy disappeared in Western Europe in the 20th century.

  Modern sewage treatment and clean water systems appear to have created an environment where the bacteria cannot thrive and may have become extinct. Leprosy is still with us but only in tropical climates and underveloped regions such as the Indian sub-continent, parts of Africa, Brazil and Near East and Caribbean islands.

• daedalus2u
  Aug 12, 2007 at 7:54 pm

  Chuck, my own hypothesis is that low nitric oxide leads to the neurodevelopment that results in greater expression of traits on the autism spectrum. I discuss this on my blog.

  Any immune system stimulation is going to affect nitric oxide physiology. Infants are exposed to hundreds of thousands of antigens from the moment they are born. The number of antigens they are exposed to in vaccines is tiny. There are many orders of magnitude more antigens from the normal environment, which is completely filled with bacteria, viruses, fungi, pollon, dust, dirt, protazoans, dander, spores, and lots of other stuff known and unknown. All of these things elicit an immune response. If they didn’t elicit an immune response then infants would very quickly die.

  Could an antigen in a vaccine have an effect? Sure, but then so could any of the millions of other antigens that a child is exposed to by the time they are 2 years old. Is there any reason to suppose that the antigens in vaccines are somehow “worse”, or “more active”, or “more responsible” for moving children on the autism spectrum? No, there is not. There is in fact good evidence that there is no change in the incidence of ASDs when vaccines are given or not given.

  The only reason that vaccines have been latched upon is because there are “deep pockets” associated with vaccine manufacturors and so vaccine litigation is seen as potentially lucrative. There is not a bit of science to support it, it is all litigation driven by people trying to win the “legal lottery”.

  I think the decline in infectious disease associated with increased bathing had to do with a reduction in basal nitric oxide. NO is one of the things that regulates the immune system. With low NO, the immune system turns on faster and harder. A problem now with many children having asthma and allergies. A more rapid and stronger “turn on” of the immune system would reduce the incidence of some infectious diseases. It also increases the incidence of asthma, allergies and autoimmune diseases.

  People today are exposed to far fewer antigens than they were exposed to 100, or 1,000 years ago.

  Most people in undeveloped regions have a gut full of parasites. What is the immune stimulation effect of that? What is the effect of malaria?

  Vaccines are tiny little trivial immune activations compared to the mega major immune system activations that people experience from the many endemic diseases in undeveloped countries.

• Chuck
  Aug 12, 2007 at 8:37 pm

  So, according to your theory, weakened immune system function or autoimmune disorder should be irrelevant and would not accelerate chemical or neurological reactions to any ingredient in the vaccine. Do you also presume that immune systems cannot be overburdened due to the administration of vaccine to an immature immune system? Is there combination of ingredients in vaccines along with external environmental exposure that could increase the toxicity of the ingredients or the external stimuli to the point of being neurologically toxic?

  “Deep pocteks” is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT in my discussions.

• Chuck
  Aug 12, 2007 at 11:24 pm

  Daedalus2u,

  I had a chance to go back over this thread and I realized that I missed a question from you.
  “So if vaccines are not 100.000000000000% effective we should do nothing and let the diseases run their course?”

  My answer:
  When vaccines are not 100.000000000000% effective the medical establishment does nothing except CYA and lets the diseases run their course. Six different documented cases of vaccine failure causing pain suffering, hospitalization, long term medical complications, some complications are still inadequately addressed by medical professionals more then a decade after onset. This happened to all members of my family including my wife who is not blood or genetically related. The only thing that every medical professional provided to us was denial, denial, and denial.

• daedalus2u
  Aug 13, 2007 at 11:39 am

  Chuck, what is it that you think the medical establishment should do if a vaccine is not 100.0000000% effective?

• Chuck
  Aug 13, 2007 at 1:21 pm

  Declare it as experimental until it is 100% effective. CDC should be required to give full access to vaccines (by manufacturer) failure rate in numbers and percent failed of total vaccinated and give total number vaccinated. If failure rate is above 5% (or lower) then that vaccine and manufacturer loose all coverage under NVICP. Failure rate will also include second hand exposure from vaccinated to other individual when the other individual is diagnosed with vaccine preventable illness. Vaccines with higher probably of second hand exposure, like Flumist, that use live viruses, will be required to have a lower threshold for failure rate. CDC should be required to give an accurate count of all vaccine related illness that are diagnosed and the percent of those diagnosed that had been vaccinated.

• daedalus2u
  Aug 13, 2007 at 2:14 pm

  How does one determine if a vaccine is 100% effective?

• Chuck
  Aug 13, 2007 at 2:45 pm

  No one diagnosed with the vaccine preventable illness has been vaccinated.

• daedalus2u
  Aug 13, 2007 at 6:15 pm

  So according to the criteria you suggest, the smallpox vaccine should never have been approved because it never reached those standards?

  From the link on smallpox I posted above,

  “One study of smallpox following the importation of cases into Europe and Canada (1950–1971) showed that mortality was 52% in unvaccinated persons, 1.4% in those vaccinated up to 10 years before exposure, and only 11% in those vaccinated over 20 years before exposure. For the age group of 10–49 years, the mortality rate was 49% in the unvaccinated and 4.3% in those vaccinated 20 years earlier.”

  Smallpox vaccine was only 98.6% effective after 10 years, 89% effective after 20 years.

  Far lower than the 100% effectiveness that you require for a vaccine to become non-experimental.

  There are several billion people alive now that would not have been if the smallpox vaccine had not been deployed because it was unacceptable according to your standards.

  Maybe you should rethink your vaccine acceptance criteria?

• Chuck
  Aug 13, 2007 at 10:59 pm

  There is no need for me to rethink my vaccine criteria, you just need to re-read my post.
  I only defined data collection and requirements for NVICP coverage. Approval for new manufacturers or new vaccines was not addressed. You have created whatever subjective criteria for “acceptable”, “unacceptable”, and “approved”. You can do whatever you want with those words, but they were never presented in my model.

  Assuming the 5% failure rate then:

  “Smallpox vaccine was only 98.6% effective after 10 years” would still be covered by NVICP

  “89% effective after 20 years” If they didn’t state the length of effective coverage and actively seek out those previously vaccinated and offered boosters before coverage ended then they better have a dam good legal team because NVICP will not be covering their behinds for anything.

  98.6% still has room for improvement and is therefore still experimental.

  Nothing in my criteria would have stopped the smallpox vaccine from being administered.

  The industry and companies would be required to EARN protection from the US government, it would not be given to them like a blank check.

  An addendum to my criteria:
  All vaccines are voluntary.
  All NVICP claims must be processed and decided within 60 days of submission to the NVICP and legal costs incurred by the government can not be more then 40% of the stated settlement.

  Since I didn’t address the approval procedure, what thresholds do you believe must be required before a vaccine is “approved” for use on the general population? Or are you OK witht the status quo? Wheterver that might be.

• Chuck
  Aug 13, 2007 at 11:14 pm

  Your smallpox example does fail to meet my data collection criteria. It is unknown the total number of deaths attributed to small pox and if the deaths were regionally specific or globally uniform. For all I know your “billions saved” may be exponentially wrong.

• daedalus2u
  Aug 14, 2007 at 8:44 am

  Chuck, the World Health Organization fact sheet on smallpox says the death rate for unvaccinated individuals is 49%. That is an observed death rate when unvaccinated individuals contract smallpox.

  There have been over 3 billion individuals born since smallpox was eliminated. The only reason that the incidence of smallpox was low in the developed world before 1977 was because of vaccination. You are engaging in denialism of the value of vaccines.

  Humans are the only organism that gets smallpox. How would you propose that a manufacturor of a smallpox vaccine test the effectiveness of their vaccine over time? Deliberatly expose people to smallpox? How can the effectiveness of any vaccine be tested? Deliberatly expose people to the illness? Measure antibiody titers? At what cost? Who pays that cost? Ultimately the consumer must pay that cost because products that cost more to produce than they can be sold for are not produced.

  A one in 100,000 adverse reaction means that 99.999% of individuals have no adverse reactions. How can a 1 in 100,000 adverse reaction be measured?

  The outcome of your proposal would be to destroy the vaccine industry. 100% effectiveness is not achievable. For you to suggest that anything less is unacceptable is either hopelessly naive or deliberately malevolent. You want manufacturors to assume unlimited liability without compensation. Vaccines are not high profit items. If the profit associated with the sale of a vaccine is insufficient to cover the liability, they simply will not be produced.

  Smallpox was only eliminated becuse the vaccine was made cheaply and was given away by the millions of doses. The last cases were in the most impoverished regions of the world.

  The reason the NVICP was put in place was because manufacturors were going to stop producing vaccines. With insufficient profit to cover libilities, they have no choice. Realizing that no vaccines meant a return to endemic diseases, the NVICP was put in place.

  The criteria you have put forward are not achievable. If unachievable criteria are the requirement for liability limitation, then vaccines will not be produced.

• Chuck
  Aug 14, 2007 at 11:11 am

  You keep putting your very biased beliefs forward and keep failing to read and/or understand my posts.

  You keep arguing about everyone that has been born since the advent of this wonderful new vaccine is nothing more then a false dichotomy argument because you assume that every single one of them would have been exposed to the virus and die if the vaccine did not exist. Your argument that vaccine production would cease is a reduction ad absurdum argument because vaccine is manufactured and distributed outside the protection of NVICP today and the manufacturers have sufficient funds and profits to offset any liability issues.

  I don’t care about the data you provided about smallpox. It is not a normally distributed vaccine in this country. Give me the same cataclysmic stats covering MMR, DTaP, Chickenpox, HPV, or influenza.

  You also fail to provide adequate data to support your argument. 49% of those who contract smallpox die. One thousand people are exposed to it, 100 actually contract smallpox, and 49 die. That would be a 1% death rate and there is no way to determine that this is not true given the limited data provided. This is not denialism, it is nothing more then your obfuscation of the underlying facts you are presenting.

  “A one in 100,000 adverse reaction means that 99.999% of individuals
  have no adverse reactions. How can a 1 in 100,000 adverse reaction be
  measured?”

  In my model that would be a 1/1000 of 1% failure rate and well below the 5.00% threshold I established and would be covered by NVICP.

  If a vaccine is not 100% effective then those that receive that vaccine should be given the most up to date effective rate as part of informed consent and should be able to deny the vaccine if the failure rate cannot be explained.

• daedalus2u
  Aug 14, 2007 at 12:19 pm

  Smallpox has been eliminated in the general population. That is the ONLY reason that the smallpox vaccine is no longer given.

  If smallpox were endemic, and there was no vaccine, the DEATH RATE, yes, DEATH RATE from smallpox would be on the order of 30 to 50%, as was OBSERVED when smallpox was endemic.

  A citation from the World Health Organization on smallpox isn’t “adequate data”? Why don’t you read it?

  http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/smallpox/en/

  It is denialism to reject (with absolutely no basis) the data that the WHO puts out on smallpox. You are practicing denialism. If you have no immunity, and smallpox is endemic, when ever in your life you contract it you will have a 30-50% chance of dying.

  Even in your bogus example, 1000 people exposed, 100 contract it, 49 die, that is a 5% fatality rate, not 1%.

  You have absolutely no idea what it takes to make a vaccine, what it takes to test a vaccine, what it is possible to know about a vaccine before it is given.

  Smallpox is extremely contageous. If there was no vacine it would spread like wildfire though a susceptible population.

  In the US, when 14 million people were vaccinated, 9 of them died from complications from the vaccine.

• Shannon Yee » Blog Archive » Immunizations?
  Aug 14, 2007 at 2:04 pm

  […] a lot about the supposed link between vaccines and autism.  For a blog about that info, see AutismVox.  I also worried about the possibility of problems with too many diseases being introduced into […]

• Chuck
  Aug 15, 2007 at 6:24 pm

  I read the WHO report MANY times. I have never said their data was incorrect. I have repeatedly pointed out to you that the WHO was factually INCOMPLETE.

  (The number of deaths associated with Smallpox)/(The number of cases of smallpox) =49%

  Give me the numbers for the numerator and denominator because it is not in the WHO report!

  I do want to thank you for point out my typo for the 1%. I meant to type in 10000 exposed and be liberal with the death rate.

  “You have absolutely no idea what it takes to make a vaccine, what it takes to test a vaccine, what it is possible to know about a vaccine before it is given.”

  I have read about the policies, procedures, and political review associated with vaccine approval in the CDC and FDA. Unless you hold a patent for a vaccine, have sat on a review board for approval, or done testing in the CDC or FDA, I would be comfortable in saying our limited knowledge in the actual approval procedure is comparable.

  Please stop using your denialism defense, it is rather old, rather weak, and not applicable to the conversation at hand. I really don’t like ad hominem attacks.

• daedalus2u
  Aug 16, 2007 at 11:04 am

  If you read the WHO piece on smallpox, did you “skip” where it said

  “As late as the 18th century, smallpox killed every 10th child born in Sweden and France. During the same century, every 7th child born in Russia died from smallpox.”

  They don’t actually give the numerator and denominator of those ratios, but if 10% and 14% of all children born died of smallpox, that is a large number. Children died of other things too. 18th century Sweden and Russia were not known for their excellent epidemiological reporting, so the numbers might be off by some.

  You are using classic denialist argument techniques, reject valid data because you consider it “incomplete” by some standard which you refuse to state. You make up a “hypothetical” example with numbers you simply pull out of the air, with no basis what so ever. You want me to stop calling you on your denialist techniques because you don’t have any non-denialist arguments.

  Smallpox is extremely contageous. The notion that 10,000 susceptible people could be exposed and only 100 of them contract smallpox is delusional. If you can cite something credible that supports a 1% incidence following exposure I will withdraw the delusional comment. People who were vaccinated had a higher than 1% incidence.

  “One study of smallpox following the importation of cases into Europe and Canada (1950–1971) showed that mortality was 52% in unvaccinated persons, 1.4% in those vaccinated up to 10 years before exposure, and only 11% in those vaccinated over 20 years before exposure. For the age group of 10–49 years, the mortality rate was 49% in the unvaccinated and 4.3% in those vaccinated 20 years earlier.”

  Why don’t you read the WHO piece on smallpox again. You seem to have missed a number of different statements they make, or simply dispute them while providing no evidence that they are wrong. I consider the denial of well-supported and credible facts with no basis to be classic denialism.

  “In the absence of immunity induced by vaccination, human beings appear to be universally susceptible to infection with the smallpox virus.” [What this means is that if you have not been vaccinated and are exposed to “enough” virus, you will contract smallpox.]

  “During the eradication campaign, investigations of outbreaks caused by importations of cases into industrialized countries in temperate areas showed that, in a closed environment, airborne virus could sometimes spread within buildings via the ventilation system and infect persons in other rooms or on other floors in distant and apparently unconnected spaces. ” [What this means is that smallpox is extremely contageous and it takes only tiny quantities of virus to cause infection.]

  “The disease, for which no effective treatment was ever developed, killed as many as 30% of those infected. Between 65–80% of survivors were marked with deep pitted scars (pockmarks), most prominent on the face.” [What this means, is if you get smallpox, you have a 30% chance of dying from it.]

  “Unfortunately, historical data are available only from periods with substantial population immunity either from vaccination or from having survived natural infection. In the absence of natural disease and vaccination, the global population is significantly more susceptible. ”

  “Vaccine administered up to 4 days after exposure to the virus, and before the rash appears, provides protective immunity and can prevent infection or ameliorate the severity of the disease.”

  “No effective treatment, other than the management of symptoms, is currently available.”

  “It is particularly important to understand that when vaccinated persons nonetheless contracted smallpox, the illness was usually considerably milder than that seen in unvaccinated persons. We know from experiences in early 19th century Europe, when natural smallpox was still widespread, that when the disease appeared in adults who had been vaccinated as children, the mortality rate was much lower and the symptoms were different and milder than in unvaccinated persons. ”

  I know where my understanding of vaccination comes from. From reading and understanding the scientific literature. I have no idea where your “understanding” comes from, but it isn’t from reading and understanding the scientific literature.

  Your “proposal” requiring 100% effectiveness is either hoplessly naive or deliberately malevolent. A manufacturor is supposed to guarentee in perpetuity that a vaccine will provide 100% immunity? Huh?

  Suppose 1,000,000 people are vaccinated. What does it cost to “follow up” to ensure that the vaccination was effective? Review their medical records every year for 20 years? At 10 minutes per year, over 20 years that is 200 miinutes or a little over 3 hours. At $50/hour that is $150. Who pays for that? If you say it is the manufacturor, then they have to put that cost into the initial cost of the vaccine. If the costs for “vaccine failure” have to be included too, direct and indirect “vaccine failure”, the cost becomes prohibitive.

• Chuck
  Aug 16, 2007 at 12:31 pm

  You seem to be set in your ways in your smallpox/denialism argument. I fully concede. The smallpox vaccine was effective and necessary and saved lives.

  Now that we have moved on from that one example that is currently no longer in question and given the fact that we live in a modern society where data collection is much better and cheaper and in my example I have never required 100% effectiveness for coverage by NVICP, give me a source that proves that the Chickenpox, influenza, and HPV are effective and save lives. Give me both the numerator and denominator for the effective rate and do not give me science-fiction “about” numbers, that is my recurring argument that you just don’t seem to understand.

  Example of the problem you keep pushing in front of me:

  For lunch I ate 49% of a pizza. Are you screaming in fear from that statement?

  If the pizza had a 9 inch diameter you would probably yawn. If the pizza had a ten foot diameter you would probably ask what species I am.

  Knowing the infection rate, known cases, geographic/demographic location of the outbreak, transmission of the infections, are just as important or MORE important then knowing the “DEATH RATE”. The CDC has never given either the numerator or denominator for effective rate for any vaccine. Why can’t they? Why shouldn’t they? I expect a fully transparent infrastructure if it “claims” to be in my best interest to follow their direction and forces me to use vaccines that I have observed on multiple occasions to be utterly worthless and detrimental to my family’s health and well-being.

• daedalus2u
  Aug 16, 2007 at 3:06 pm

  Chuck, that information is readily available if you want to look for it. Try looking at quackwatch, linked to earlier.

  http://www.quackwatch.com/03HealthPromotion/immu/immu04.html

  What is it about this graph that doesn’t provide you with sufficient information to evaluate the effectiveness of the measles vaccine?

  http://www.quackwatch.com/03HealthPromotion/immu/immu01.html

  I really don’t understand what the problem with understanding the data is other than you don’t want to believe it. That is the essence of denialism.

  Why don’t you come back and tell me why the data on quackwatch is unacceptable.

• Chuck
  Aug 16, 2007 at 4:42 pm

  I don’t need to go to Quackwatch. They do not have access to all the information, nor are they responsible for the effectiveness of any government mandated vaccines. They are not legally responsible for the safety of vaccines and cannot force anyone to take them.

  Why don’t you go into your “denialist” mode again and tell me why the mandated department of the government responsible for vaccines cannot provide the number of cases diagnosed and the number of diagnosed that have been vaccinated?

  Why don’t you go to Department of Interior for vaccine data? That is the same logical flaw you are using when you ask me to go to Quackwatch.

• Chuck
  Aug 16, 2007 at 4:56 pm

  On which web page of Quackwatch can I read about the 6 medically documented vaccine failures that effected every member of my family and the subsequent complication for all of them?

• daedalus2u
  Aug 16, 2007 at 6:26 pm

  I see.

  If there is something idiosyncratic about your family that vaccines that work for just about everyone else don’t work for you, I don’t know what to tell you.

  You don’t like the data at quackwatch because

  “They do not have access to all the information, nor are they responsible for the effectiveness of any government mandated vaccines. They are not legally responsible for the safety of vaccines and cannot force anyone to take them.”

  All things that have absolutely nothing to do with the accuracy and the validity of the data.

  You don’t want “data”, you just want to rant about how everything about vaccines are not 100.0000000000000000% “perfect”.

• Chuck
  Aug 16, 2007 at 11:01 pm

  I will concede that Quackwatch is correct when you can provide me with the exact same confirming data from the CDC web site, the government department responsible to the taxpayers of the USA that is the repository for vaccine related information. As long as you are there, try to figure out if last year’s influenza vaccine was better then placebo and how many people ACTUALLY, not about, ACTUALLY died from influenza. I would think that that would be a scientifically defined objective statistic, don’t you?

  I would also like your opinion on the quackwatch web site that you provided. Do you think that Measles, Mumps, or Rubella may be an adverse reaction to the MMR vaccine, because they are not listed on the web site.

• daedalus2u
  Aug 17, 2007 at 6:52 am

  I don’t understand your question:

  “I would also like your opinion on the quackwatch web site that you provided. Do you think that Measles, Mumps, or Rubella may be an adverse reaction to the MMR vaccine, because they are not listed on the web site.”

  Are you now claiming that vaccines cause these diseases?

  You are simply playing games. You don’t like the data on quackwatch, so you want me to find the same data on another site. The quackwatch data is from peer reviewed journals. They provide citations. They even link to quack sites. How many quack sites link to quackwatch?

  If you think the data on quackwath is wrong, why don’t you find the right data and tell them. I am sure they would be happy to be corrected, and would put up the correct information.

  That is the difference between denialism and science. A scientist wants the right answer no matter what it is, the denialist has their belief no matter what the data is.

  This page

  http://www.quackwatch.com/03HealthPromotion/immu/immu01.html

  Has been up for nearly 10 years. If it is wrong, where are the anti-vax web pages showing how and where it is wrong and linking to the correct data?

  There aren’t any, and you know there aren’t any because the data is correct.

• Chuck
  Aug 17, 2007 at 9:50 am

  You would be an excellent politician. You keep ducking the simplest question because you don’t understand and you keep pointing to your sources that cannot be verified elsewhere.

  “Are you now claiming that vaccines cause these diseases?”

  Flu mist was proven to cause the flu, but otherwise that is a lie and you know it.

  When vaccines fail you get the illness they are supposed to prevent. It does happen and you know it. That is not reported on quackwatch and you know that also.

  Tell me why the correct source for vaccine information should be anything other then the CDC? Tell me why the same peer reviewed data in quackwatch would be any different then data provided by the CDC.

  It is a little ironic that you don’t trust the president, according to your blog, but you are willing to trust a government agency controlled by his administration with your health.

• Chuck
  Aug 17, 2007 at 12:48 pm

  If Quackwatch is so intellectually and scientifically superior, why haven’t they put NVIC
  http://www.909shot.com/About.htm

  out of business their first couple of years? They were up and running 15 years before Quackwatch. Quackwatch obviously isn’t as impressive or influential as you try to make it out to be.

• daedalus2u
  Aug 17, 2007 at 2:45 pm

  Chuck, What you are showing is that you haven’t read what is on quackwatch.

  You say:

  “When vaccines fail you get the illness they are supposed to prevent. It does happen and you know it. That is not reported on quackwatch and you know that also.”

  When in reality quackwatch does report that

  “First, no vaccine is 100% effective. To make vaccines safer than the disease, the bacteria or virus is killed or weakened (attenuated). For reasons related to the individual, not all vaccinated persons develop immunity. Most routine childhood vaccines are effective for 85% to 95% of recipients. ”

  http://www.quackwatch.com/03HealthPromotion/immu/immu02.html

  All you are showing us by your repeated denials of what is plainly written on quackwatch is that you haven’t read it. Why haven’t you read it? I presume because you can’t handle the truth.

  Why is NVIC still in business?

  As P. T. Barnum once said, “There is a fool born every minute”.

• Chuck
  Aug 17, 2007 at 2:51 pm

  Why is Quackwatch still in business?

  As P. T. Barnum once said, “There is a fool born every minute”.

  All we can do is agree to disagree at this point.

• daedalus2u
  Aug 17, 2007 at 3:35 pm

  It is denialist of you to claim that quackwatch says one thing, then when shown that quackwatch says the opposite, still claim that the fault lies with quackwatch. That no matter what quackwatch says you will disagree with it.

  I have looked at the material on the NVIC site. I only disagree with those parts of it that are factually incorrect. You haven’t looked at the quackwatch site, so you have no idea what is on there to agree or disagree with.

• Chuck
  Aug 17, 2007 at 10:40 pm

  Please stop trolling

• daedalus2u
  Aug 18, 2007 at 8:28 am

  “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.”

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan

  You want your own “facts”, not the facts that correspond with reality, not the same facts that everyone else uses. That is the essence of denialism.

  When you are able to use the same facts as everyone else, we can discuss what those facts mean, what conclusions can be drawn from them, and how those facts and conclusions should inform policy.

  Until then, you are the one who is trolling.

• Measles Cases Up, Vaccinations Down
  Aug 31, 2007 at 6:58 am

  […] a consultant epidemiologist for the Health Protection Agency (HPA), advises parents to include vaccinations for their children along with other back-to-school preparations such as buying school uniforms: […]

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