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... but the FDA is still finding something to complain about.

This is after preeminent scientists argue that bioethics needs to get out of the way of modern research.

An interesting parallel, by the way, was John Nestor. Here was a guy that intentionally (and even with good intention) drove 55MPH in the fast lane of DC traffic. He was, at best, misguided, since speed differential is more dangeous than speed and his actions were likely safety-reducing. He was also an FDA bureaucrat that never approved a drug and was ultimately fired for his "caution" that probably cost more lives and more lifesaving drugs than it ever saved.

What's makes you think the FDA is a net benefit by regulating medical claims? How many people have to die for lack of FDA approval before you're willing to allow them to make their own decisions about their health? Why don't you want to allow customized medicine for things like cancer by making them prohibitively expensive via the FDA?

You don't have to be a libertarian to be willing to consider the results of empirical studies about what FDA delays cost. Can you at least be a utilitarian and go with the libertarian solution when it's the most effective based on the available evidence?

The FDA delay in approving beta blockers, by the FDA's own numbers, cost about 100,000 lives. Three years of delay on interleukin-2 after it was available in Europe? 3,000 lives. Every year of the approval process, every millions of dollars spent on approval fees to the FDA, equals lives lost and people who could have benefited who don't. Even Thalidomide, the one big claim people always have for the FDA, wasn't blocked by the FDA because of it's impact on embryos. They weren't even investigating that, it took news reports. Total Thalidomide affected children in the U.S.? 17. The rest of the world, 5-10K. Does that help the 10x as many people who died from lack of beta blocker approvals? Does anyone notice that currently Thalidomide is approved by the FDA to treat leprosy and cancer?

Yes, health choices can be risky, but rather than add information and give advice on them, you seem to want to tell adults what they can and can't decide to do, despite them knowing their own situation better than you do and despite their ability to consult with a knowledgeable specialist in the area of their medical issue before making an informed decision. There's no empirical evidence the FDA saves lives, the evidence points to them costing lives overall. But that doesn't seem to be the point of their existence. The point seems to be control and having the power to tell people what they must do. Which is where this conversation started.

You want pre-FDA history? Insulin was invented as a treatment and came to the market to treat diabetes in a couple of years when the FDA wasn't around. If the FDA was around, it would have taken at least 3-5 more years and might even have never made it to the market (or much, much later) because of the expense involved!

The Oregon Petition is an example of the denialist tactics that should embarrass anyone associated with them.

The were faked names: Approved names on the list included fictional characters from the television show M*A*S*H,[21] the movie Star Wars,[20] Spice Girls group member Geri Halliwell, English naturalist Charles Darwin (d. 1882) and prank names such as "I. C. Ewe".[22] When questioned about the pop singer during a telephone interview with Joseph Hubert of the Associated Press, Robinson acknowledged that her endorsement and degree in microbiology was inauthentic, remarking "When we're getting thousands of signatures there's no way of filtering out a fake".

But the telling blow was the outright fraud in the attached paper. It was formatted to look like a publication from PNAS, including a made up volume number and page number from PNAS. The current online version includes a paper published in Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, almost a refutation in itself ... The publish papers refuting the HIV AIDS link, and that find that gay male lifestyle significantly increases the incidence of infectious disease and shortens life expectancy by about 20 years.

The Oregon Petition is an example of the denialist tactics that should embarrass anyone associated with them.

The were faked names: Approved names on the list included fictional characters from the television show M*A*S*H,[21] the movie Star Wars,[20] Spice Girls group member Geri Halliwell, English naturalist Charles Darwin (d. 1882) and prank names such as "I. C. Ewe".[22] When questioned about the pop singer during a telephone interview with Joseph Hubert of the Associated Press, Robinson acknowledged that her endorsement and degree in microbiology was inauthentic, remarking "When we're getting thousands of signatures there's no way of filtering out a fake".

But the telling blow was the outright fraud in the attached paper. It was formatted to look like a publication from PNAS, including a made up volume number and page number from PNAS. The current online version includes a paper published in Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, almost a refutation in itself ... The publish papers refuting the HIV AIDS link, and that find that gay male lifestyle significantly increases the incidence of infectious disease and shortens life expectancy by about 20 years.

There's a link in the other story, to this article, written by Dr. Orient:

http://www.jpands.org/vol17no4/orient.pdf

In it, she outlines what she calls "minimal" benefits (with no studies apparently having been conducted in hospitals yet). She also points out that by making the administration of the vaccine mandatory, it forces the caregivers to forfeit their right to choose what procedures and medications they will allow to be administered to them - rights which are afforded to all recipients of medical care. (And which, I would further add, should not be trampled on lightly - with little or no evidence to support the claim that mandatory influenza vaccinations increase patient safety.)

Far from conclusive - Dr. Orient wrote the article, and is the one saying "they shouldn't be forced to," but I think it's certainly something that needs serious further study; In general, I like the idea of "if you want to work as a healthcare professional, you have to do these things which are proven to improve the health of your patients." However... it doesn't sound like there's a lot of evidence to support the idea that this particular measure will result in much of a difference in overall health of patients.

http://www.kff.org/uninsured/upload/7651.pdf

Small percentage of the uninsured.

http://www.jpands.org/vol10no1/cosman.pdf

Takes a guess, gets lucky, comes up with the same small percentage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act

You do realize that says that the federal government is paying for anything not covered by insurance for illegal aliens, right? Which means that any ER that has those costs can file a form to the feds and get their money back, right? Which means that I was wrong. Illegals are not a tolerably small portion of the costs of an ER. They are zero cost to the ER, and the way hospitals are run by grifters they are possibly a huge profit center for ERs. Clinic vists cost very little, and the ER can bill the government their usual profit-bloated price.

So I was right. No ER has ever closed down because of illegal aliens using them as clinics, because no ER should be losing money on them.

http://www.jpands.org/vol10no1/cosman.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act
http://www.kff.org/uninsured/upload/7651.pdf

As I noted several times, I never said they were the sole reason, but one of the factors. And I also never said that denying them care was the right reaction. The contrary I diagnosed the issue as being their lack of access to other forms of health care.

Treaties are really awful, they are the big loophole in the constitution by which tyranny can be introduced.

http://www.jpands.org/hacienda/article4.html

Article VI, paragraph 2 actually stipulates on the issue: "...all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution [of any State] or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. [Emphasis added.]"

Obama is nothing like Bush. This is a transparent government that doesn't hide anything or plan on passing any bills that would take away rights and freedoms like Net Neutrality or a Secret Copyright Treaty that would screw over consumers and competitors.

We would hope for change that BushObama, er ah George W. Obama, er ah Barrack W. Bush, er ah President Obama is not becoming a Black Bush and finish off George W. Bush's third term as a Closet Republican Neocon in a Liberal Democrat suit. :)

Health Care will be universal, and we can ignore that 30% hidden tax in the bill to pay for it, as your employer would get a 30% tax on your salary as well, as that would never happen in the USA as it did in Sweden. Oh now Obama is going to do it with Congress for free, with more TARP and stimulus money for banks, GM, and other organizations that lobbied money to Congress and his administration, but ignore that, as it is the cost of Free Health Care, just Free as in Speech not as in Beer. :)

H2O can be lethal in high enough concentrations too.

I understand the point you're trying to make, but citing death-by-water doesn't jive with me as that sort of lethality is more of the physical kind than chemical/toxilogical. It's like saying lead bullets are poisonous because when they tear through your torso you may die. You gotta be right for the right reason, and I get your intended point, I just think you could have picked a better argument there. But it's not a big deal I guess.

It is my understanding that the developing world stopped using thimerosal in most childhood vaccines about 10 years ago.

Technically any vaccines on shelves that had thimerosal in it were still okay'd for use, but they just didn't want any more to be made. But yeah, close enough.

If it was a significant contributing factor in autism, wouldn't we have seen a statistically significant drop in the autism rates by now? Oh shit -- we have seen a drop.

First off, the study is new to me, and after finding the original research cited by the website you linked I went straight to the end of the literature. Right before the "References" section there's a section saying:

"Potential conflict of interest: David Geier has been a consultant in vaccine/biologic cases before the no-fault National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) and in civil litigation. Dr. Mark Geier has been an expert witness and a consultant in vaccine/biologic cases before the no-fault NVICP and in civil litigation"

Now this in of itself doesn't discount their research. I'm not suggesting that. But please realize that a "potential conflict of interest" isn't worth ignoring either. It would certainly help your point if you could find more research along the same lines.

With regard to the actual research itself, well, I don't study medicine or human anatomy (not my field), so I'm less certain than I'd like to be in judging whether their statistical significance is legit. At a glance it looks like to me like the last scatter plots should plateau rather than sharply going downward (as his linear regression is plotted), but maybe its legit. His charts are incidents of autism against time. While that thing that looks like a peak two years after they discontinued the thimerosal seems to make his case, does the upslope support it as well? Does the thimerosal-vaccination rate increases in a way that correlates to incidents of autism? (I don't see that in the study). Surely if what they suggest is the case, there would be evidence in a vaccination-rate versus incidents of autism comparison. I feel like these guys had blinders on by only comparing things with respect to time.

You need the consensus of the scientific/medical community to prove thimerosal is harmful. The Institute of Medicine has officially concluded that there wasn't enough evidence to warrant blaming thimerosal for the autism incidents. That doesn't help, but I'm curious. How much peer-reviewed scientific literature can you dig up that corroborates this research?

I can't object to the part where they state

additional research should be undertaken concerning the effects of mercury exposure, particularly from TCVs

. More research certainly doesn't hurt (kinda goes without saying).

The autism-vaccine link has been thoroughly disproven many times now.

It has not been disproven. Studies have been done that show an epidemiologic link. Other studies have been done that claim there is no link whatsoever. The authors of the latter studies were often found to have close links with the pharmaceutical industry. The statistics employed in these "nothing to see here, please move a long" studies are often highly questionable.

As to David Ayoub, as opposed to what you suggest, he is a qualified and well-informed MD. If you doubt that, read this paper http://www.jpands.org/vol11no2/ayoub.pdf he co-authored. People without qualifications do not get published in medical journals.

I suggest you inform yourself better. A good place to start with plenty of source references is the following book http://astore.amazon.com/medical-bookstore-20/detail/1881217302. Moreover, I would refrain, in the future, from claiming that medical studies can "prove" anything. You can show correlations and do statistics that offer relative certainty as to causation. But that is a far cry from proof given the complexity of biology.

Well, you can take your own arguments as sufficient to leave the subject rest. Or you can reserve judgment and take in further data. As to your first point: the book I directed you to is anything but sketchy, it is very well-referenced. If you don't trust the book, you can still trace the source material it references. If you don't care to invest money in it, here is a freely downloadable article that covers part of the topic, and it is well-referenced too: http://www.jpands.org/vol11no2/ayoub.pdf

As to autism and vaccines, quite a few informed and qualified people are of the opinion that there is in fact such a link. You say the correlations are just not there. I am aware that there are quite a few (typically industry sponsored) studies that purport to show through statistics there is nothing to it. But then, let me point out the title of this thread. For an alternate opinion, download and watch the following video: http://www.mininova.org/tor/1113910

As to conspiracies, well they do happen. Seeing well-funded and well-coordinated denial of realities obviously present in raw data pretty much implies conspiracy, But it leaves the question of why. Digging a little deeper, though, does allow a good case for an answer to the question "why?" to be made. The latter part of the following talk does just that: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6890106663412840646

You need to read my comment closer. I said "Now that it is SCIENTIFICALLY proven that Abortions INCREASE the risk of cancer". People having abortions are indeed at higher risk for cancer. It doesn't prove causality, but that it is likely to be a contributing factor at minimum.

Actually, it was a new study released this last week, if you cared to read the article.

Actually, the universe works weirder than that.

On one hand you can assassinate your political dissidents with microscopic amounts of polonium 210, and on the other hand you have this: http://www.jpands.org/vol9no1/chen.pdf

Any joy on pointing us to those sources? I can't see any details of this guy posting in any medical journals.

Here is a paper by David Ayoub http://www.jpands.org/vol11no2/ayoub.pdf in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. I suggest you trace the references therein. For a good general overview of vaccine issues with many detailed source references, I can recommend this book http://astore.amazon.com/medical-bookstore-20/detail/1881217302.

Also there was a medical study that indicated some links between the vaccin and autism some time ago. The claim was largely retracted, but it was scary enough that some families didn't have their children vaccinated.

I have to admit that I find quite a bit of credence with the autism-vaccination link after doing some reading. Just some little tidbits to think about:

1) The linkage is based on the use of Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, in childhood vaccines.
2) No safety studies on Thimerosal were done, as far as I can tell.
3) The first diagnosed case of autism was just a few years after we began giving kids Thimerosal containing vaccines. Severe autism is pretty noticable. It's not the kind of thing which just wouldn't have been noticed. It's definitely a new disease.
4) The symptoms of autism are similar to those of mercury poisoning
5) Autism rates rose in parallel with increasing numbers of vaccines given to kids. From 1989 to 1999, the number of vaccines given to kids increased from 3 to 22, many of which contained mercury.
6) In 2001 they stopped putting Thimerosal in vaccines given to kids under the age of six. California tracks autism cases more closely than any other state. The rate of autism slowed it's growth in 2002 and began dropping in 2003. And it's been dropping ever since. This is now showing up in academic papers

I think in ten or twenty years, we will collectively look back and think what the f*** were we thinking injecting babies with mercury.

A little radiation is not really a hazard. In fact, some radiation is benefical. You may not be familiar with hormesis.

I suggest you read this:

this
and this
and this.