Slashdot Mirror
Blogger Subpoenaed for Criticizing Trial Lawyers
Cutie Pi writes "Katherine Seidel, mother of an autistic child and an avid blogger has been subpoenaed for her "family's bank records, tax returns, autism-related medical and educational records, and every communication concerning all of the issues to which [she] has devoted [her] attention and energy in recent years." The lawyer in question is representing a mother who is suing Bayer for $20M with the claim that mercury in their vaccines caused her child's autism. In her blog Seidel has spoken out against lawyers trying to cash in on thimerosal lawsuits, noting that the thimerosal-autism link has been debunked in several studies. But Seidel herself has had no direct involvement in the lawsuit."
...this lawyer sounds like a Scientologist.
*HIDES*
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
These people are angry and want something to take their frustrations out on. The fact that no studies provide any evidence of a link between the vaccines and autism is an minor inconvenience to be ignored!
Scumbag lawyers, shoddy science, willfully ignorant and upset parents - it's a perfect combination.
This is the worst of what our legal system allows. Now this woman is forced to hire an attorney just to defend her right to free speech. It makes me sick!
Except, of course, that there is no evidence that vaccines harm children. Or adults.
What do you think the cost-benefit ratio is for reducing measles, mumps, polio, small pox, diptheria, strep pneumonia, N. meningitis HPV, etc? Between that and no known link between vaccination and autism, I think such a belief against vaccinations is one not based on evidence and one that is not reasonable.
I thought it was Spring! What's that chilling effect in the air I feel?
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Practicing the finest abuses of perceived power man has ever known.
Poor Soul: "Anybody got one...?" Bayer: "Yes sir, that'll be $50.00" Poor Soul: "For a frikken aspirin?!" Bayer: "Yeah, we haven't made a vaccine for headaches yet..."
It's incredible the amount of unsubstantiated credence that some parents of autistic children will give to the thimerosal hypothesis. For example, Jenny McCarthy (who has an autistic child, and I have sympathy for her since it can't be easy) was on Larry King Live the other day, sititng next to someone who was there to debunk the supposed link between autism and thimerosal. His arguments were grounded in science, but she would not be moved, and she was extremely animated and emotional over any suggestion that thimerosal isn't to blame.
I suppose, in some sense, that it's like telling her that her religion is wrong.
Not to mention that "Silent Spring" was shown to be a crock.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value.
Wrong on all counts, but the 1st Amendment does provide protections for free speech not available in many other countries, so I hope we see this particular instance of tort abuse smacked down hard.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
They want to make sure she wasn't being paid to blog by the pharmacutical companies for their impending suit with them. Is it dirty? Yep. Is it wrong? No
The lawyer may be a sick farker, but the judge who allows this, without sanction, is even sicker.
Third party subpoenas should be looked at under a microscope for relevance. This lady didn't manufacture, sell, or administrate the vaccine in question. What does she have to do with the underlying lawsuit?
So it's exactly like "Silent Spring" then.
Unfortunately people are not rational, and when they're child is stricken by such a disorder, rather than simply accepting that in a world full of luck good, bad and indifferent, they want to strike out, to make someone pay. There are plenty of things in the world that cause damage to children, but other than the odd bad batch, vaccines are not among them, at least as far as autism goes.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Well, if Silent Spring was shown to be a crock, and people still bring it up as a bogeyman.... then yes, it's just like the vaccines (shown to be a crock, but with people still bringing it up as a bogeyman...) This just makes the comparison more valid! =)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
No, Silent Spring was shown to be valid, but people thought the the lives saved from reducing mosquitos and therefore malaria infection was worth the decline in bird populations.
I am not a lawyer, but you just wait about six months.
The thing to understand about subpoenas is that in most states, once litigation commences, the lawyers (as officers of the court) for each side have the power to issue subpoenas to anyone who might have information relevant to the lawsuit.
The major limitations on such subpoenas are ethical limitations (attorneys' behavior is governed by a complex but far-from-bright-line set of rules) and the rules against discovery abuse, which can be found at Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(b) and elsewhere. The decision to grant sanctions is up to the discretion of the court, which basically means that an appellate court will go with what the judge decides, unless, for example, the discovery sanction is death.
However, it looks like Ms. Seidel is in good hands lawyer-wise. Her motion to quash the subpoena (the way that one tries to avoid having to comply) hits a lot of different theories and defenses, including the most important one: that the subpoena won't lead to discoverable evidence.
Postscript of Surprise: The plaintiff's attorney filed the suit in the Eastern District of Virginia, a federal court whose nickname is "The Rocket Docket." The consensus among attorneys is that once you file a case there, you should go ahead and say goodbye to your family for a few months. Rather than let litigation drag out for years, the Rocket Docket judges set -extremely- aggressive discovery schedules. Filing any complaint there is ballsy, no less a thimerosal one, since whether thimerosal causes autism is far from crystal-clear. Long discovery would mean more time for the plaintiff to gather evidence (and for new autism studies to come out).
The only thing that would surprise me is if the court _doesn't_ fine the lawyer that produced that thing. "Abuse of process" barely begins to touch the matter.
that is correct.
we recognize the concept of freedom of expression, subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
That's an assinine claim. At the very least you have to be worried about potential
allergen issues with the components of various vaccines. Then there are various
vaccines which have known "infection" rates.
The whole POINT of vaccines is to be somewhat harmlful. That's how they work.
If they were completely inert, they wouldn't do what they are designed for.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Clifford J. Shoemaker is his name. My father would always use the term "He was a shoemaker" for anyone that f'ed a job up. Hired someone to build something for you and it turned out lopsided? "The contractor was probably a shoemaker" he would say. Not that he had anything against a shoemaker.
There's also the issue that if she can't blame someone else the only obvious alternative is to blame herself. Something few people would willingly face the possibility of doing.
I find it difficult to believe that the parent of an autistic child is to be "blamed." At this stage in the game, no one knows what causes autism so it is too early to asses blame.
"Silent Spring" is no more a crock than "Y2K" was. The disaster was averted because America acted.
This has nothing to do with "a broken tort system". This is just corporate propaganda.
This lawyer is abusing "the court system in general".
Ambulance chasing really has squat to do with it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Lawyer Bully stomping around intimidating the other kids. Only recourse? Get a bigger lawyer. I hate that about our society. Forget gravity, relativity, etcetera: There are two fundamental forces in the universe: 1) Lawyers 2) Accountants
It's not legal to use it how we WERE using it -- to get a slightly higher yield from wholly un-diseased agriculture.
wrong, Wrong, WRONG.
"The whole POINT of vaccines is to be somewhat harmlful. That's how they work."
GAHHHHHH! WRONG.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Do you have any proof that these vaccines indeed were the major reason for all of these diseases? Could it not be the fact that the diet of the normal person became more healthy? Here is an interesting picture that illustrates my point.
http://www.healingourchildren.net/Are_Vaccine_Safe/vaccine_side_effects_fall_in_death_rates.jpg
It comes form this book:
Medical Measures and the Decline of Mortality, John B. McKinlay, Sonja M. McKinlay, published in book, The Sociology of Health & Illness: Critical Perspectives, Peter Conrad
A great documentary from 1998 called Vaccination - The Hidden Truth
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6696666502913965744
Please type in vaccines and alzheimer's into google as well.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
My God, man, have you no shame? This is Slashdot; you can't quote the National Review here!!
Silent Spring was a crock in the overreaction that followed the book.
We went from spraying DDT on everything, to nothing.
There are films from the 40s and 50s where trucks would just drive down neighborhoods spraying DDT. They'd do it at public pools. No one thought anything of it. We way over used DDT.
In the wake of the book, people overreacted and moved to basically ban DDT outright. Instead of spraying in a controlled manner (such as, say, only where mosquitoes are a problem), we stopped spraying it altogether despite the fact that it was incredibly effective and cheap.
The book it's self was fine. As I remember Rachel Carson didn't argue to ban DDT but to be much more responsible in it's use. That really isn't what happened. It's that legacy (overreaction causing serious other problems) that people generally mean when they talk about Silent Spring being a crock.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Disclaimer: IANAL
I am the sole proprietor of a number of domain names. All of them are paid for in full by myself, and none of them offer services or goods sold for monetary gain. I don't even collect donations myself, yet my host supports them (offering a means for people to donate directly to the hosting account for purposes of continuing services or upgrading those services.) Point being, were I to own a hypothetical blog in the same position as http://www.neurodiversity.com/ why would donation records need to be subpoenaed in the first place? Should people be in the mind to give to a site they support, shouldn't they be free to do so without having to worry about this? This subpoena seems rather similar to the McCarthy-era Communist witch-hunts in terminology used, such as referring to the turnover of the names of those who have donated.
Also, since when is a blog classed as a taxable entity, and since when are blog owners required to submit tax documents on behalf of their blogs? If this is a necessary thing, it is something I haven't learned during my entire time in the dot-com scene.
Again, IANAL, so tear it up in a respectful manner. I'd like to hear where my shortcomings are.
I mean dupe!
Well, not the article so much as the discussion...We've already discussed vaccinations. This should be about overreaching subpoenas, which in this case goes way too far.
What?
True. After studies where done that showed these effects.
The studies trying to link Autism to Vaccines all clearly show no such link.
On top of that, the rate of increase has stayed the same even after the removal of Themarisol.
That not really a surprise considering it's a different type of mercury then that which causes developmental problems.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This does put her free speech at risk. That is not necessarily through a process that would order her to stop. Instead, this is a case of harassment and invasion of privacy as a result of her having exercised her free speech rights. It may well be an attempt by Mr. Shoemaker to discourage her from speaking. She, or someone else considering speaking on these matters, may be discouraged from doing so for fear of the costs and invasion of privacy due to such a subpoena.
If Mr. Shoemaker had believed she had information relevant to the case, he could have simply asked for that. Instead, what he is asking for goes beyond what this case is about. We need to have legal procedures that mandate all subpoenas, even for discovery not carried out in the courtroom, be reviewed by the judge for relevance.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I am going to sue Micro$oft and that will allow me to subpoena CowboyNeal's recored relating to any treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, psychopathology, and substance abuse. Like duh its obvious why his claptastic history would be pertinent.
I see that this is really the media's fault, to a large degree.
We got really flimsy evidence of this link, which they trumpeted (because it was "sexy" and brought in eyeballs). When these studies were basically proven false, they got very little mention.
So now what you see is every once in a while a story is done about these things. They show some doctor saying "that's nonsense, you should be more afraid of scarlet fever." Then you see 4 crying mothers talking about how doctors ruined her kid's life. They are given equal weight.
So people don't get the right picture. They get a skewed one. They glamorize the "poor mothers" who get outpourings of grief. They play on people's fears. They don't deal with the elephant in the room.
The people who do these kinds of suits are either really stupid, or not finished grieving. The people that take it this far (make sites devoted to it, sue everyone involved, etc) are quite probably just in the "anger" stage of grief. They are looking for anyone or anything to blame so that it's not their fault, it's not random, etc. People prefer concrete incorrect answers (it's the mercury) to abstract correct answers (some kids just develop that way).
They don't talk about how these kind of things could be because of grief. They don't talk about how there is basically no evidence. They try to get viewers. The lawyers go for the long shot cash and the good publicity. Both are taking advantage of people operating out of grief.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
"Do you have any proof that these vaccines indeed were the major reason for all of these diseases? "
there are volumes of review literature, yes those diseases have been brought to the brink of extinct do to these vaccines.
You would have to be incredible ignorant, or complete deluded to think otherwise.
That's some nice cherry picked data you have there.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is nothing more than sheer harassment disguised as a blatant fishing expedition.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
A medical review board just agreed that Thimerisol, and specific conditions in a young girl were responsible for causing her Autism.
This one case does not prove all instances -- but it opens the door.
In her case she had a mutation in her mitochondria that caused them to have reduced function. They found that the combination, and multiple immunizations, along with the mercury, overburdened her Immune system. So, it may be a combination effect; the low-level mercury poisoning (and I don't call add mercury to anyone by another name), combined with multiple immunizations, can cause Autism.
Now, the connection with the mutated mitochondria does not mean in itself that this is a freak instance, because underperforming mitochondria appear in about 20% of Autistic people.
I find the whole "debunking" thing these days, to highly favor well paid corporations. Bill Frist got lots of money from Eli Lilly, and he dutifully tried to put an immunity clause for them in 5 different bills. Finally, they got their clause into the Patriot Act II. Then we have to look at the lobbyists turned government oversight bureaucrats in the EPA, FDA and CDC -- oh heck, even NASA. They put a man who had an unhealthy liking for underage boys in charge of Child Endangerment. So, unfortunately, what "debunking" in the US could anyone trust?
Tell me the dollar amount donated by lobbyists on any issue, and I'll tell you the results of how this government will act on it.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
My name is not Kathleen, but check out the I am Kathleen campaign that has resulted from all this.
Here is how Dixy Lee Ray (with Lou Guzzo) described events (Trashing the Planet, page 69) [note: Ray has the timing wrong, the spraying was stopped in 1964, not the late 60s]:
Public health statistics from Sri Lanka testify to the effectiveness of the spraying program. In 1948, before the use of DDT, there were 2.8 million cases of malaria. By 1963, there were only 17. Low levels of infection continued until the late 1960s, when the attacks on DDT in the U.S. convinced officials to suspend spraying. In 1968, there were one million cases of malaria. In 1969, the number reached 2.5 million, back to the pre-DDT levels. Moreover, by 1972, the largely unsubstantiated charges against DDT in the United States had a worldwide effect. In 1970, of two billion people living in malaria regions, 79 percent were protected and the expectation was that malaria would be eradicated. Six years after the United States banned DDT, there were 800 million cases of malaria and 8.2 million deaths per year. Even worse, because eradication programs were halted at a critical time, resistant malaria is now widespread and travelers could take it home.
From: http://info-pollution.com/ddtban.htmThis is a good example why this procedure needs to be changed to require the approval of a judge before any subpoena can be issued to any outside party.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Dear lord, classic self delusion.
"I had measles and mumps, and I'm fine."
your not likely to when you get into your 60's and 70's. Enjoy your shingles.
And besides, your straw man is on fire. The problem isn't the vaccine, it's the thimerisol.
Except the removal of thimerisol(around 99) has had zero impact on Autisim cases.
Bear in mind the definition of what is Autism has been widening for about 15 years or so.
I suggest you try to read up and understand all the logical fallacies in your post, it's staggering.
"The spark was gone from her eyes."
The lies and ignorance you are spreading are hurting people, stop it.
Yes, LIES, you are a deluded liar. If you where any more of a liar your pants would be hotter then the sun.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I first heard about this nonsense in an article about some retarded celebrity going on Oprah or somesuch to make the claim.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Personal anecdotal nonevidence beats reason and statistics every time. This is why humanity will fail.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Actually, how it's often used in Africa is to dump barrels of it in the river or lake, then go out and gather up all the dead fish.
I wouldn't call it grief, but its certainly an intense and lasting stress that most of us here can't understand. I don't think theres a state of "finished". The closest I can get is how it felt taking care of my grandmother for so many years.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard
I think this might be Bad Science, personally, and that perhaps worthy of more study on your part.
The only "link" I have heard of is the fact that autism usually develops around the time vaccines are given and it's more a coincidence in timing.
However, this has nothing to do with the vaccine and is due to the age of the child.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Thiomersal is one of those words that is more misspelled (as "thimerosal") than spelled correctly (according to hit counts from a Google Search). Both the blogger and the lawyer in this case have it wrong. More info is at http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/topics/thiomersal/questions/en/ and http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/topics/thiomersal/en/index.html. Also see http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=516680.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
However, the subpoena is issued by the attorney acting as "an officer of the Court", and the court can enforce it, thereby making it a governmental/Freedom-of-Speech issue.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
It's not a finishing, but an acceptance. When people get into this kind of mode, their progress through the grieving process stops. It's easy to make your whole life about this, and you get stuck in that pain and unhappiness.
Say she wins this. Say she gets a constitutional amendment to ban these kinds of additives forever. Where does that leave her?
She won't have her kid back. She won't have her adopted mission of getting rid of this stuff and making things "right" because she will have done that. She'll either move on (which she could do now, probably with some good counseling), find a new cause (cure autism, and be in the same state forever), or she can be purposeless and become more depressed.
People in these situations don't want to deal with reality (in this case, that her kid is autistic and there is nothing she can do) so she is doing everything she can to focus on something she thinks she can control: this battle.
What she is doing she is either doing out of mental illness (unlikely), or a ton of pain (most probable). It's rather sad. Even more sad is the people taking advantage of her and others like her.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Live vaccines always carry risk. The intention is to bring it down to one in a million. But people did contract polio from the oral vaccine, and there are serious effects from the Rubella vaccine in some people. http://www.vaccineinformation.org/rubella/qandavax.asp
More severe reactions, including allergic reactions, are rare. About one person per million develops inflammation of the brain, which is probably caused by the measles vaccine virus.
If you are the numerator, and there are hundreds per year, it is pretty awful.
That is incorrect. RTFMTQ (...Motion To Quash).
Umm... care to enlighten us all as to how they DO work, then?
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
It would NOT surprise ME if the court did NOT fine the lawyer. Many courts (maybe most) do let lawyers get away with abuse of process like this quite often. We'll have to see how this one turns out.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
GAHHHHHH! WRONG.
While your well-developed argument was initially convincing, I believe you may be wrong. Put simply, a vaccine works by causing the immune system to respond without the need for you to get a full-blown infection/disease. Many, if not most, commonly-used vaccines put a live virus in your body, albeit one that has been grown in a way to ensure they are weaker. Some use a closely-related but less dangerous strain. Regardless, the idea behind a vaccine is to elicit a response from your body's defense system, without causing a major reaction. That sounds a whole lot like what jedidiah said.You're not going to convince ME there was no link. I was there. Show me all the studies showing red is really green you want and I'll be convinced that the researcher is color blind or dishonest.
You're evidently (and self-admittedly) irrational about the subject. I understand your feelings, but feelings don't determine facts. You can rage, ignore, or refuse to let facts influence you, but they will remain facts.
If Autism is ever to be cured or prevented, by the way, it will be by somebody who respects facts. This vaccine controversy is a huge distraction from what we should be doing.
I am sorry for your pain, but your post wasn't anywhere near analytical discourse.
greed and oppression rears it's ugly head. The arrogance of these lawyers shines through - maybe they can get a second job with the RIAA attack dogs. Where would we be without organizations like the EFF and slashdot for that matter.
She is no expert in the field. The landsha^h^h^h^h^hwyer is just trying to shut her up and wasn't able to find a way to use the DMCA to do a takedown.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Hmmm. How do you think vaccines work then, exactly?
Magic?
Hmm? (hint: no)
Vaccines are dead or otherwise damaged virii. If they're damaged, occasionally they aren't modified properly and they cause an infection, of the type they are trying to prevent.
Do you have a magic vaccine?
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Atheist Mythology??? Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600 by the Roman Catholic inquisition for espousing Copernican Astronomy.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Not enough people really understand how much life can suck. I've seen a nine-year-old kid die, for having shitty luck... and it's just how life goes.
That taught me something important - there's no reason to anything. If something bad happens, it's usually just bad luck and there's no use getting pissed about that.
Parents who grew up ~35 years ago were in a time of constant technological advance, and their parents usually were prosperous to afford them. I don't blame them for being confused and concerned when something bad happens - they aren't used to that concept, the fact that humans can't fix everything
Now, don't get me wrong, some people are dicks and just want to blame for the fun of it. But I truly believe that most parents in this state are forced to accept 'he just got unlucky and was that one in a hundred' - but can't do it. So they blame whatever they can to keep their faith in science and their belief.
Alarmist press doesn't help either - 'is your child being POISONED by STATE MANDATED vaccines? find out at 11!' But they're only playing off this mindset anyways...
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Basically, I'd require justification, and assuming that the person/business being subpeonad isn't a defendant, I'd require the requester to pay reasonable costs for the preperation/presentation of the material.
In the case of an individual like this, their hourly wage would be a good start.
In the case of a defendant, costs for this sort of stuff could be decided in the awards phase if the defendant isn't found liable(IE the plaintiff is forced to pay for hassling the defendant).
I don't read AC A human right
An inquiry started a few weeks ago in which he's being accused of failing to disclose that he was being paid by tort lawyers to conduct the study, as well as of conducting invasive procedures that were not in the interests of the patients involved in the study.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Go to the subpoena. Go to page three, and read the list of names. Some highlights in this legal document: Killer of Sacred Cows; the Misbehavior of Behaviorologist (discussion board), meow meow meow... blah blah blah, and a HYPERLINK written out.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
I'd much rather have a minuscule and totally unproven chance of a few kids getting autism, which is not fatal, than have a virtual certainty of thousands of kids getting fatal and/or permanently disfiguring diseases like pertussis or polio.
So you prefer laws and mandates than liberty? Also there are vaccines available without Thiomersal, mercury.
FalconShould there be a Law?
that cannot be reasonably justified in a free and democratic society
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'm a father of a 2 year old (who has had all the vaccinations), I also spent 7 years working in the area of mercury control, including thimerisol. Hg is nasty in most forms, but typically it takes a period of long exposure and bioaccumulation for someone to be affected. There are the cases where Hg containing substances have a lethal effect, but in these cases the effect is so potent that they would impact every person that came into contact with it, and we know from the statistics that this is not the case with thimerisol.
Think about this statement, my grandmother was perfectly fine and then one day I bought her new alumnium pots, within a week (more than 24 hours) she was diagnosed with Altzhiemers...it must have been my fault!!
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Good job buying into the chemical company propaganda.
As the earlier poster pointed out, DDT is still perfectly legal, and used, for malaria prevention in Africa and elsewhere.
The real kicker is this: It's agricultural use that is banned. And agricultural use dumps much huger amounts of DDT into the environment. And even if you don't care about the damage it does, then perhaps you should consider that using large amounts of DDT also breeds DDT-resistant mosquitoes, thus increasing the occurance of malaria.
Reading between the lines, in issuing the subpoena, Shoemaker seems to be trying to determine whether Seidl is, in fact, being compensated by Bayer to act as an agent for their propaganda.
If she's just an innocent blogger then yeah, this sounds like gigantic invasion of privacy. But if she's really just a shill for Big Pharma...well, then it's a little harder to muster up sympathy.
Small pox is indeed eradicated, except, of course for the stocks kept for bio warfare. Diphtheria is not eradicated. Outbreaks still occur worldwide. Mortality is generally 5-10% but can be as high as 40% in children under 5. Pertussis also still kills children in the US. You would be an idiot not to give your children DPT vaccine. I have two daughters and they have had all of their shots, and will continue to get them.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
>your not likely to when you get into your 60's and 70's. Enjoy your shingles.
Shingles comes from Varicella, chicken pox.Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Under the US system anyway, the idea is supposed to be that one is free to express any sentiment at all. In other words one is free to speak one's mind. However attempting to use speech maliciously to cause harm to other people is not tolerated. That seems reasonable.
In theory I could say "[insert name here] should be taken out back and shot" and that is fine, unless I am saying that attempting to get a mob to do just that. In the latter case that is a real problem. Unfortunately, sometimes it is a bit too hard to tell the difference. especially since the exact words said do not always contain all the information needed to determine if something was acceptable. Bob saying something in passing to a friend, and Joe (leader of a cult) saying the exact same thing in an address to the cult members, is a good example. The first case is almost certainly acceptable (there a a few exceptions such as the case that Bob's friend is part of the Mob and is known for acting on offhand comments), but Joe saying the exact same thing could very well be a crime.
Now some hate speech laws are drafted such that they overstep the bounds, and prohibit things that should be acceptable. There are also other such cases where free speech is impinged upon, but it is important to note that the concept of free speech is not truely incompatible with the concepts of some of these laws, but rather with the implementation or interpretation thereof.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
The problem isn't the vaccine, it's the thimerisol.
We already Burned The Witch.
Didn't make any difference.
Kids keep getting autism.
Just round up another Witch to throw on the fire.
You're not going to convince ME there was no link. I was there. Show me all the studies showing red is really green you want and I'll be convinced that the researcher is color blind or dishonest.
Willfully deaf dumb and blind. Cultist logic.
"Burn The Witch!"
"Burn The Witch!"
"If you say she's not a Witch, then you're a Witch too!"
"Burn All The Witches!"
"Burn All The Witches!"
And the really sad part is that it's all effectively a crusade against legitimate science to find the actual cause(s) of autism. An effectively pro-autism crusade. Don't do any valid work on the cause(s), cure, treatment, or prevention of autism, just throw a Witch into the fire instead.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Is it weird that when I see the words "subpoenaed", "trial", and "lawyers" in a title that I automatically think I'm about to read something involving the RIAA? Not until after finishing the first line did I realize I'd jumped to the wrong conclusion. That, or I isn't reading good.
It's not an obvious reaction - 'something bad happened, I should pour all my hatred of it into someone/something'
The "blame complex" is very much a natural human reaction. When something goes bad people want to blame somebody or something, "God" if nothing else.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Presumably, for you the fact that controlled studies show no difference in the autism rates between children receiving vaccines containing thimerisol and ones without, is a minor inconvenience that ought to be ignored in the interests of pandering to the irrational fear and panic of the ill-informed.
I understand being afraid of potentially causing harm to your child. But a rational look at the facts shows that your kid's at way more risk from the diseases the vaccines prevent, than side-effects from the medications.
Right - because it made the shells of the Peregrine Falcon eggs extra thin, and the birds died.
Except that there is no evidence that DDT caused the thinning, and, in fact, the shells have continued to thin long after DDT use had stopped.
DDT didn't cause the thinning. It's still banned though, because people fear global warming and other such nonsense.
I think a better legacy is Erin Brockovich & Chromium 6. People are idiots and over react. Chemicals suffer.
Poor chemicals.
The problem is that it is entirely possible that the MMR shot did caue the problem in this case. However trying to generalize from a single or even a small number of examples is often highly problematic. The law of Big Numbers does apply here. I mean lets say the vaccine itself was fine. It may be that this was a one in ten million freak case. People find it hard to believe that any specific instance is that 1 in 10 million chance, but keep in mind that for those odds for every 100 million vaccines, we would expect about 10 of them to have that effect. Of course, it also seems entirely reasonable that once again, just due to the odds, she was extremely succeptable to developing autism, and that the vaccine just happened to trigger it. However, in such a case, it is hard to be very confident that something else could have triggered instead if the vaccine had not. Those are just possibilities of course. It may also be that thimerisol was the culprit after all. The point is that it is basically impossible to generalize from one or even a small number of personal anecdotes. Also keep in mind that it is basically guaranteed that every person will experience several extremely unlikely events over the course of their life, some may be so small you would never even notice them. Some may be wonderful, some may be awful. That's the way life is.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
force vs. outlaw You present a false dichotomy, my friend. The obvious and only appropriate policy is vaccines only for those willing to receive them/give them to their children, and private studies at the same time to ensure they are safe and make them more safe.
Shingles?
LOL.
The chicken pox virus causes shingles.
The lawyer who will defend the subpoenaed blogger is also a "trial lawyer".
This blogger didn't get subpoenaed for criticizing "trial lawyers" as some large bloc, just those who they pointed out were dishonest and abusive of the legal system.
So some lawyer who was intimidated by that took some abusive legal action. Who could possibly be shocked by that?
Headlining this story about "trial lawyers" is some kind of BS attack on people's rights to be represented by lawyers when we're going to trial. Sure, lawyers suck, but "trial lawyers" are not just some monolithic roving gang, beating and scaring people around the countryside. Think about that the next time you need a lawyer to fix your outstanding traffic tickets or something.
--
make install -not war
My point is that there are several health precautions and post hoc treatments to prevent death and morbidity, and vaccination is not the sole method for many diseases, but it is an important component, and one that worth the small risks.
Without vaccines, the numerator is much, much higher. And for a lot more things. Measles, mumps, rubella and polio particularly are very serious diseases on a population scale. What's awful is having a healthy kid that gets sick. Blaming a vaccine that is a measured risk and considerably better than the alternative is not the solution. If we could get our act together and vaccinate the world for a few years then we might be able to eradicate some of these and then do away with the vaccines too. I bet there'd still be autism.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
They let the side effects of Vioxx slip because of testing that didn't go to the prescribed length, but Vioxx was a useful drug. The problem is that Merck advertised Vioxx in such a way that it was used "off label" much more widely than it should have been. It was effective in significantly reducing intense chronic pain for certain things, such that the people that could use it were willing to deal with the side-effect risk because life would have been disabling pain without it.
You hit it right on the head here. So long as a person knows the risks involved they should be able to take any drug they want, there should be no need for any prescription. That includes "street drugs".
FalconShould there be a Law?
Mmmm, I'm skeptical about this one. As a lawyer, why would you do such a thing? You'll make your client and yourself very impopular, anyone could tell that in advance. So, he must have got damn good reasons. My guess is he wants to prove that she gets paid by Bayer (and after reading some articles on her blog, she probably does). I have looked into HPV and the massive lobbying that is going worldwide to install mandatory vaccinations and I have seen how, in this case, Merck, has had blogs put up to promote the idea and has paid bloggers to write about the dangers of HPV and the connection with cancer. So, think twice before crying wolf.
There is no law that that says that the Rx companies can't pay somebody to blog on their behalf. Would it be kind of scummy? Sure. Would it be something you could sue somebody else over? No. Not inherently. Now, it would certainly be possible for her blog to contain legally actionable material, but that is a separate matter.
SirWired
damn those griefers
hope there aren't any flying penises
There's also no evidence that this lawyer is using the system as a weapon against an individual, simply because his immorality has been brought into the public view.
Requiem for the American Dream
In theory I could say "[insert name here] should be taken out back and shot" and that is fine
There is 1 person in the US that it is not legal to say they should be shot or otherwise killed, the person who sits in the Oval Office. The Secret Service can come down hard on anyone who threatens the president.
Falcon
PS: SS, er Secret Service, I'm not saying the current occupant should be, I'm just pointing out it's illegal to threaten him.Should there be a Law?
or, at least, lying counts as perjury
I was questioned once in a deposition and I was sworn in under oath.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I've not heard about that.
... companies will stop using it. Still, this is an obnoxious abuse by the lawyer, but then we are talking about a litigator here (the bottom feeders of attorneys). Oh no, now I'll get a subpoena!
Now let's think about that for a moment.
Thimerosol = mercury.
Mercury poisoning can be linked to autism and other health side affects. Why would anyone in their right mind want to have a vaccine with thimerosol in it? Oh, because thimerosol is a stable mercury compound. How stable is it? Is there no way to break down the mercury compound chemically? I don't know, I haven't researched it. I simply told my doctor to use an alternative vaccine that doesn't use thimerosol. Since all vaccines that need to be given come in a form without thimerosol, why would anyone choose one with mercury in any form in it? If enough people choose to use vaccines without thimerosol in it, then guess what
Just because you hate the messenger doesn't mean you should hate the message. Dixie Lee Ray may a complete asshat deserving nothing less then a slow painful death but that doesn't change the FACT that deaths attributed to malaria rose dramatically after people stopped using DDT and that because all that was left were resistant strains those resistant strains are everywhere now.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
Don't get too worked up, this guy is just a professional troll. I kept running into these posts that were wrong and I'd quickly jump to correct them but I started noticing that they were all from sm62704. I have to hand it to him, they got me the first few times, now I keep an eye out when I have mod points so I can mod his posts correctly.
Bah! - no offence to you in particular but that's a crock of shit and something which is repeated again and again without thought. There's no such thing as 'luck'; there's just cause and effect and most of the time you see very little of the causes of the effects you witness.
eg. You get mugged on the way home and put into a coma; that's not luck, it's a chain of causes and effects operating within the life of the person who mugged you; all his experiences shaped him and he responded in a particular way when he saw you based on his current perceived needs and his current state of mind and shaping experiences. cause and effect.
eg2. you 'catch' autism. it's not luck, it's cause and effect where *something* affects the normal development process; whether that be an environmental factor which interferes with the complicated choreography controlled by dna or maybe the dna had degenerated to the point where the instructions were no longer able to specify the necessary steps or maybe something else; either way, it's not a result of randomness or 'the gods laughing at you', it's cause and effect where we don't see the causes.
eg3. you win the lottery; it's cause and effect. the balls fall out of the chute within the lottery machine. because of the many possible minor variations in the way the balls sit within the chute, the minor variations of air pressure and moisture and grease on the balls and dust and (etc.etc.etc) and the speed and timing of the release of the balls etc, which exhibit minor variations themselves despite attempts to control them.. the compound initial conditions which are the n-dimensional coordinates into an n-dimensional problem-space where n is large and each dimension is a causal vector are magnified along repeatable pathways via the laws of physics to lead to some outcome. you chose your winning numbers by a similar process; all your experiences, subtle associations between numbers and things; vague sense of fascination or superstition regarding certain numbers; various mental processes by which you attempt to simulate randomness within your mind to overcome all of the numerological effects you're aware of, your skill at simulating randomness etc.etc.etc - and many more, all lead to a particular outcome; again specified by an vector onto a different set of cause-axes. no randomness or luck played a part, it's just so complicated and immeasurable that we call it luck or randomness.
i could go on but i'm unable to describe coherently what's in my mind; hope you get the gist.
Requiem for the American Dream
Silent Spring was a crock in the overreaction that followed the book.
We went from spraying DDT on everything, to nothing.
Exception that's not actually what happened. DDT wasn't banned in the US until 1972, and yet some developing countries (Sri Lanka is the most widely used example) had already suspended spraying as a Malaria control measure in the 60's, as the mosquitoes had developed resistance to DDT, presumed to be from agricultural spraying. Wikipedia has a reasonable (if short) summary."Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." Albert Einstein
Here's my take:
Drugs don't cure autism.
Guns cure autism.
Thanks, I'll be here all week. Try the veal!
No, but seriously, we don't have a cure, and anyone who tells you they can cure X, Y or Z-uncurable life-ruining disease is:
1. lying
2. greedy
3. unprovable
It's simple: pharmaceutical companies make money whether the cure works or not. They make more money if it doesn't work, because healthy people don't buy (prescription) drugs.
If the same corporations only got paid once their treatment had cured the patient, we'd see a whole lot of common diseases cured overnight. Instead of managing sickness, pharmas would focus on efficiency. This will never happen in the U.S.A., not without a violent revolution against hypercapitalism.
The day someone comes forth with a verified and dependable cure for Autism, I will spread the good word myself. Until then, I think it's all bullshit.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
lolwut?
IOW... If yer kid's defective, it's time to look in yer jeans.
Actually, the immune system does not react to the virus itself, but to the proteins around it. For a vaccine to be effective it's therefore not necessary to contain the virus, but only its protein coat.
However, many (most, all?) vaccines are produced by producing the virus with its coat and then disabling the virus, keeping the coat or at least its proteins intact.
Mercury may be used to disable some viruses in this way, thus ending up with a mercury containing vaccine.
the pun is mightier than the sword
Exception that's not actually what happened. DDT wasn't banned in the US until 1972, and yet some developing countries (Sri Lanka is the most widely used example) had already suspended spraying as a Malaria control measure in the 60's, as the mosquitoes had developed resistance to DDT, presumed to be from agricultural spraying. Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] has a reasonable (if short) summary.
There were two other unforeseen consequences of spraying with DDT: " In the 1950s, the World Health Organization (WTO) dropped DDT on the island of Borneo to control mosquitoes, resulting in two unexpected events. First, homes collapsed under the weight of hornets' nests that died and hardened from the DDT; and second, and more troubling, there was an outbreak of bubonic plague because the DDT affected the island's animal nutrient cycle. Small animals (lizards, insects, etc.) became sluggish, while larger animals such as cats ended up with toxic levels of DDT from consumption of smaller creatures. Eventually, all the cats died, leading to an increase in the rat population and an outbreak of bubonic plague. The WTO's solution--which worked--was to airdrop cats to deal with the rat problem, which, in turn, addressed the bubonic plague problem."
FalconShould there be a Law?
54% of statistics can be made to say anything.
DATABASE WOW WOW
I wouldn't use that as a universal rule. There have been drugs that have been linked to defects in children. Thalidomide, used to ease morning sickness during the 1950s and 1960s, turned out to be a horrific drug that caused substantial developmental defects in fetuses.
But, on the other hand, there are no lack of disorders of a genetic nature. Autism appears to be one of them, though there still is a lot of work to be done to nail down what goes wrong. As you say, people with autistic children appear to need to look in their jeans for the root of the problem.
I suspect that this also plays into the psychology of the vaccine nonsense. It's a lot easier to blame a big impersonal pharmaceutical company than it is to say "I caused this." Humans need to lay blame, but they rarely ever want to lay the blame at their own doorstep.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
DDT didn't cause the thinning. It's still banned though, because people fear global warming and other such nonsense.
"In the 1950s, the World Health Organization (WTO) dropped DDT on the island of Borneo to control mosquitoes, resulting in two unexpected events. First, homes collapsed under the weight of hornets' nests that died and hardened from the DDT; and second, and more troubling, there was an outbreak of bubonic plague because the DDT affected the island's animal nutrient cycle. Small animals (lizards, insects, etc.) became sluggish, while larger animals such as cats ended up with toxic levels of DDT from consumption of smaller creatures. Eventually, all the cats died, leading to an increase in the rat population and an outbreak of bubonic plague. The WTO's solution--which worked--was to airdrop cats to deal with the rat problem, which, in turn, addressed the bubonic plague problem."
FalconShould there be a Law?
"Global warming" is a media/political hot button.
"Global climate change" is a serious issue we need to study. There is NOT a consensus in the scientific community as to whether or not we contribute to it, can do anything about it, or if it's even a bad thing.
For every graph or sound byte that's trotted out, you'll find someone getting dollars or votes behind it. It's NOT being treated scientifically, it's being used as a political bullet point, media scare tactic.
The fear and mania behind such things result in stupid shit. For example, electric and hybrid cars are very bad for the environment, (battery production, electricity generation, battery disposal, etc. make them far worse than a typical modern engine), but if you're not driving a hybrid, you're an eco-terrorist.
The fear behind many chemicals in many industries has caused them to be banned. As a result, we get inferior products. The chemicals are later found to be innocent in many cases, but the fear remains, and the shitty products continue to roll out.
Recycling paper into paper takes more energy and resources than making fresh paper. But hey, let's all user shitty recycled paper!
Resources we DO need to conserve, and that do benefit (in energy cost) from recycling get no attention, and have had active recycling for ages. (Mainly metals, solid wood, hard rubbers, etc.)
I've often wondered if our increase in finding children with autism might be directly related not to any change in the environment, but in our better understanding of the disease. Could it be that we have always had around the same percentage of autistic children, but these children had been misdiagnosed for centuries as just being 'quiet' or 'slow'?
Nope. DDT thins bird shells in trace amounts, and has a measurable effect on humans. Notice how it's not sprayed everywhere anymore?
Yeah, nobody who knows anything about bald eagle populations before and after the ban would say that it was a crock. They had been legally protected for decades, but the populations were still dropping and they became endangered. Then DDT was banned. Populations started to rise. Now the population has risen, they're no longer endangered, and bald eagles are relatively common across the country once again.
As a bird lover (especially of big raptors =D), I'm extremely grateful. If the DDT ban hadn't been passed, I would probably have never been able to actually see a wild bald eagle, and as of today I've seen several. And they are magnificent birds.
The enemies of Democracy are
Except that there is no evidence that DDT caused the thinning, and, in fact, the shells have continued to thin long after DDT use had stopped.
No, they didn't, once you account for the time it takes for the DDT to leave the food chain. Birds of prey consumed DDT by eating other things that had absorbed DDT from the environment, perhaps by themselves eating other things, so until all the DDT is gone from the environment, and every animal up the food chain that had absorbed some was dead, the birds were still being damaged. And very shortly after the ban, the populations of birds that despite being protected had continued to decline rapidly began to recover. The bald eagle is safely off of the list of endangered species because of the DDT ban.
There is tons of evidence that DDT was killing these birds and damaging their eggs and young (many of the young whose shells didn't crack still died due to DDT poisoning).
The enemies of Democracy are
There was a Taiwanese guy who drank several kilos of mercury and not only lived, but showed surprisingly mild symptoms. (Lin JL, Lim PS. 1993. Massive oral ingestion of elemental mercury. J Toxicol Clin Toxicol 31
(3):487-492.)
The interesting part is the total quantity he drank was determined by--uhhhhh--observation of the tail-end processes. They even tracked its progress through his intestine with x-rays. Now, I've had GI problems of a dozen underdeveloped countries' drinking water, but I'll be damned if I can even guess what it's like to feel the T-1000 passing through your sphincter.
(Please excuse me while I register a few domain names...)
And so now, every summer, millions^wthousands^wur, um, dozens ur,um, well, actually nobody in the U.S. dies of maleria. Why were we spraying?
Africa is a different story. They actually have deadly diseases spread by mosquitos there.
As recently as 2002, half of the humans tested STILL had detectable levels of DDT in their blood! Its metabolite is still detectable in milk, meaning it's in the soil of pastures.
Essentially, we over-used it on such an epic scale that 35 years later it's still everywhere. I'm not so sure a ban was a bad idea.
Didn't we just talk about the Monty Hall fallacy yesterday?
If my primary concern is the health of my child and not the world, then the proper question is this: what is my unvaccinated child's chance of getting a disease in a population in which I know nearly every other member has been vaccinated against it? This is a significantly lower chance than the chance of getting the disease in an unvaccinated population.
I then compare that chance against the chance of a disastrous side-effect from the vaccine. It is almost certainly going to be significantly less probable that the child will get the disease than that he will have a disastrous side-effect.
Granted, in a few generations the vaccination system collapses and we have rampant disease again, but, sometimes rational self-interest fucks everyone in the ass.
Remember: greed is good and selfishness is virtuous.
I am fully aware of the advantages of vacines. I am also aware of the limited nature of the data that is collected by Merk and Co. My children will be vacinated, but one can get Thimerosol free versions of most if not all vacines. And, instead of giving up to five vacines in one visit to the pediatrition I limit it to one per three weeks. I'll point out that there is very little data on the effects of multiple vacines admitistered concurrently. Lastly, I made no statement on Autisim, I just find it odd that people are willing to claim the risk is zero.
Google for autism and vaccines large scale studies for all the information you might want. Face it, from a scientific perspective this issue is dead. You might as well argue that evolution is just a theory or global warming is an artifact of the sun getting brighter.
There is no reason to suspect that vaccines cause autism. To put this in perspective, the case for the claim that eating solid foods causes autism is susceptible children (which I just made up) is actually stronger than the case for the vaccine-autism link. Likewise the plastic toy link and the living indoors link.
--MarkusQ
That's scary and abusive.
It costs here a huge amount of money and time to comply, all because some jerkoff lawyer didn't like something she said.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Considering we've got the lawyer's phone number, who votes for slashdotting his office line?
For tetanus, which is found in soil bacteria, this is bad reasoning, as you aren't protected by your neighbor having all her boosters of tetanus toxoid. For pertussis, probably a bad idea as there are significant people's whose immunity has waned and thus can carry it to and infect your children. I think the same applies to measles among college-age kids. For hepatitis B (HBV) there is a prevalence of 1/2% in the USA http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/h/hepatitis_b/prevalence.htm. If your child wants to go into healthcare or is going to be sexually active, they should get it. There is a risk of hepatocellular carcinoma from HBV that probably exceeds the risk of untoward effects from the vaccine. For H. influenzae and S. pneumoniae vaccines, I think most of the population has not had these vaccines. Probably better to get them for your children. Does that mean your child will die if they don't? Probably not, but the odds of mortality or morbidity are much likely lower if they get it than if they don't.
It still is a cost-benefit problem, but the benefit is lowered at constant cost whenever the prevalence decreases, which can happen either through other people being vaccinated or otherwise. Also, just FYI, some of the live-attenuated vaccines may vaccinate your children second hand. They may very well "catch the vaccine" from someone else that was vaccinated. That is one "advantage" of using live-attenuated vaccines. I'm not saying I'm a proponent of live vaccines for this reason, but this argument has been made as to why to use them, though I think it is mostly made for developing nations where not everyone has the opportunity to be vaccinated.
...ane when it does disappear from the soil you will probably see malaria cases start to surface again. Why? Well that would be because the two species of mosquito that are the main culprits in spreading the disease are still around in the united states. if I wasn't so lazy I'd link you to the CDC page that talks about it but, again, I'm lazy. DDT Does a body Good.
Silent Spring was a crock in the overreaction that followed the book.
We went from spraying DDT on everything, to nothing.
There are films from the 40s and 50s where trucks would just drive down neighborhoods spraying DDT. They'd do it at public pools. No one thought anything of it. We way over used DDT.
In the wake of the book, people overreacted and moved to basically ban DDT outright. Instead of spraying in a controlled manner (such as, say, only where mosquitoes are a problem), we stopped spraying it altogether despite the fact that it was incredibly effective and cheap.
The book it's self was fine. As I remember Rachel Carson didn't argue to ban DDT but to be much more responsible in it's use. That really isn't what happened. It's that legacy (overreaction causing serious other problems) that people generally mean when they talk about Silent Spring being a crock.
DDT is still legal throughout most of the world. There's really not much use for it in the US, where there hasn't been a malaria outbreak since 1971 or so. And there are exemptions in place in the US should its need arise. This is a common misconception about DDT - that somehow banning it in the US is responsible for millions of malaria deaths in third world countries. That makes no sense. Malaria plagues poor countries because mosquito eradication programs are expensive and require infrastructure and administration that are too often in short supply. Also, mosquitoes grow resistant to DDT or any other kind of insecticide, all the more reason not to overuse the stuff.And there's no evidence that vaccines cause autism.
How did it come about? Three of the cases are from the same day care facility. The zero index patient was a child that did not have their measles vaccination. The other two were too young for the vaccination. The fourth is an adult and can be considered an outlier.
I surely hope that the parents of the zero index patient are sued to heck and gone for willful negligence and anything else they can make stick.
Sad thing is there isn't a cure.
I wrote my master's thesis on Silent Spring. Carson argued that DDT and other pesticides were being misused and overused. DDT is most effective when it's applied to mosquito netting, or sprayed on walls. There's really not much use for it in the US, certainly not since the last malaria outbreak which was about 35 years ago. But exemptions still exist for use in emergencies. The idea that evil treehuggers are somehow responsible for the deaths of millions of people in third world countries doesn't hold up to scrutiny. It's something that Rush Limbaugh might say, but that's about it.
I have little to no sympathy with Seidel. Thiomerisol, a mercury(!) compound, deals enormous damage
to a child's (and an adult's) brain. Basically it boils down to a needle full of lobotomy.
If she is defending Thiomerisol then either she hasn't done her homework or knowing the facts
she is on their payroll.
We have West Nile Virus and it has killed people. WNV is transmitted by mosquitos.
I am not arguing for or against DDT, but you need to check you facts before making blanket statements. It is true that we do not see malaria in the US, but there are other diseases carried by mosquitos.
Actually you just jerked off, right on my screen. Thanks. You didn't
read the article and give thought to why she is having her financial
data subpoenaed. Hint: She might well be a pharma shill.
This would be a major win for all of us if someone like that got
exposed. A lot of opinion engineering is done by pharma through
channels like an obviously pro-vaccination webpage / blog like
the one Seidel operates.
I get what you're saying. But to you, being mugged, it's immaterial why it's happening...
Did I do something that directly caused me to get mugged? No? Well then life is luck, and it sucks.
It's not luck that the mugger decided to mug somebody because his life sucked, but it sure as hell doesn't have much to do with you (if it does at all, it's only from a 'society should help him' POV)
You have a rather specious argument. I understand the gist - it's never blunt luck, but that piano that landed on you was launched from somewhere - but you're reducing the system of events too far to be meaningful. It's useless to even discuss, as the reason for your being half-a-second later or earlier is blind luck.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
I was diagnosed with high-functioning autism a few years ago. Not even as far down as Asperger's, but autism nonetheless. From my mother's accounts of my childhood, I started out as a probable aspie, but worked my way up a little. But I'm kinda rambling here. The point I mean to make is that I don't blame vaccines. My father is likely in the same boat as me. He was born back in '45. I don't think they had vaccines back then. Autism has an undeniable genetic component, so check your and your wife's family tree for possible cases, even high-functioning ones. You might be surprised. In any case, your rant proves nothing other than the fact that you're unwilling to look at the facts. I don't need to point out more holes in your argument as many others have already done so, just throwing my two cents in.
I'm sorry your daughter is autistic. I really, rally am.
But people like you who hysterically blame vaccines for their predicament in the face of all facts are doing incredible damage to the health of children.
Yes, your daughter cried all day after getting the vaccine, so did mine. Vaccines make you feel ill, it's part and parcel of how they work.
By your illogic we can blame the assassination of JFK on Dr Who, after all, they both happened on the same day!
You may have had measles as a child, I did as well. And a lot of people who get it do end up fine. But a lot don't. The father of an ex-girlfriend was deaf because of the effects of childhood measles. And the odds of serious complications of measles are a lot higher than the rates of autism, so even if there was a link (and all the evidence says that there isn't) you are far better off vaccinating than not.
Childhood mumps isn't as much of a problem as adult mumps, especially in men: sterility, anyone?
Polio still exists in the wild, what if all of the USA has followed your advice and stopped vaccinating? Then, someone with polio arrives on a plane? I'll tell you what happens, a lot of people end up very seriously f*cked up.
Smallpox vaccinations ended decades ago, I didn't get them, I was too young. My parents did, though. That's what eradicated smallpox.
There are vaccines for some strains of meningitis, my daughter has had them. Meningitis kills people, and tends to maim the ones that survive. I'm not taking that risk with my precious, precious, daughter.
Rates of autism have not changed since the elimination of thimerisol, so your straw man is already drifting downwind as thin smoke by this point.
Your other daughter's IQ probably is very high, but mine is higher than my brother's, and we both received the same vaccines. Different people develop differently, and even siblings develop in different environments (my brother was a wonderful teacher to me as a child, which almost certainly contributed to my mental development, and I love him for that).
My daughter has had every vaccine available, I would consider it gross negligence as a parent, bordering on child abuse, to deny her these protections. I would also be endangering the children around her if she were not vaccinated.
The anti-vaccination hysterics like you need to remember one simple fact: correlation does not imply causation. Until you get that through your thick heads, shut the f*ck up and stop endangering the health of our community.
So would a company produce 'a' cheap unreliable vaccine of poor quality in order to maximise short profits, well the history of corporations would tend to indicate that it is likely to happen. Would a corrupt corporation attempt to hide this behaviour to attempt to hide it's bad vaccine behind all the other safe and good vaccines by claiming any attack on their own product is an attack on all vaccines, well history would also tend to show that kind of behaviour will happen.
No one should repeat or spread that error, not all vaccines are the same, you can not compare every vaccine ever made, to one product like DDT, the idea is stupid. So the only question to ask is, can a particular vaccines made by a particular company cause undesirable side affects.
If I were a medical product manufacturer I would take the easy way out and simply prove that junk additives in junk foods cause a whole lot of different and varied problems. Hence it would be virtually impossible to prove than any particular medication from the 20th century caused any particular problem because it would have been near impossible for anybody to avoid all the junk food additives added into the modern western diet.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
You MONSTER!!
=P
I...I'm attacking the darkness!
I am aware of west nile. I'm also aware that we have better ways of dealing with it and the mosquito population including insecticides with a shorter half-life.
I'm also aware that in the scheme of things, we lose more people to the flu every year than West Nile has ever killed in the U.S. That doesn't make it a non issue, it just means we need a balanced approach that doesn't include massive fogging.
We simply don't have the sort of medical emergency situation that calls for throwing caution to the wind.
If DDT in the soil from 35 or more years ago was actually still lethal today that would be enough to justify classifying it as the same hazard level as cobalt 60.
We don't see maleria in the U.S. because it's been eradicated from the region. The mosquitos here don't carry it.
You'll note that I did indicate that spraying is justifiable where there are still significant maleria problems due to mosquitos. That's not here.
We do have West Nile, but it's nothing compared to the maleria problem where it exists. It's also much less significant than the flu.
I got measles (and incredibly sick) from the MMR vaccine supposedly designed to "prevent" the measles. One bad experience pretty much ensured that at least one person on slashdot won't believe the hype around vaccines and their effectiveness.
Another funny thing: the nurses at my school, and my family physician, used this argument to convince me to get more shots - "if you don't get vaccinated, you might infect your friends"
Almost as if they didn't believe in vaccine either...
$
"Silent Spring" is no more a crock than "Y2K" was. The disaster was averted because America acted.
No offense intended, but I hope you've got a better comparison than that. Some of us realized that you might need four digits for the year before 1998 rolled along.
The potential disasterous results of every Windows machine in the world shutting down because of two missing digits was one of the best sales gimmicks I've ever seen. To believe Y2K was a real threat requires that there was a) a potential disaster, and b) that "America acted" to prevent it by buying new software, maybe even completely new hardware to run it. Everyone -- every business in the country, every individual. Just in time, evidently. Installed it all properly, too, because nothing stopped working.
Whew. That was a close one with a Hollywood ending, wasn't it?
There's a sequel coming where the computers you bought to avert the Y2K disaster rise up and unite, creating "The Attack of the Zombie Computers." Homeland Security is already warning about it.
Your next upgrade will be a matter of national security. At least that's what they're going to tell you.
Like for example, if I drop a stone 1 meter above sea level, just outside a beach in plain air, I am 100% sure it will drop down. You won't hear anybody saying "gosh those scientist are speaking in absolute".
In the case of thiomersal, it was studied, and found no link whatsoever. Furthermore, if I am not wrong, it is taken out of many vaccine in the US (except Flu I think).
From wiki : n the U.S., the European Union, and a few other affluent countries, the compound is being phased out from vaccines routinely given to children.[1] Packaging the vaccines in single-dose vials eliminates the need for bacteriostatics such as thiomersal.[2]
Granted, I can only remember my first vaccination when I was roughly in the lowest school class (5-6 years old or maybe 8 who knows my memory start to betray me....) but I remember that we had to go to a pharmacy, get some vaccine in a box, go back to the doctor and get it injected. I don't EVER remmember getting vaccination from anything BUT a single dose vial !
The point I want to say about this, is that even in the palce where thiomersal is not used anymore, autism stay at the same rate ! Unless you come up with a convoluted hypothese where the new process has the same negative effect, to me the combination of those studies AND the non effect after withdrawal of the product, certainly hint that scientist can be 100% sure in this case too !
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It was not because of the thiomersal that the mother of with the autist daughter was awarded, but because the daughter had a rare form of mytochondrial disease, and the subsequent treatment and vaccine given to her worsened her condition. NOTHING to do with thiomersal per see. It pays to read the judgment before accusing other of not being informative.
Furthermore after 2001 , NO REDUCTION in autism was observed despite lessened to null use of thiomersal. And study were made it has no autism impact. How many more evidence you need ? Finally you are omitting a very important fact from your "ethyl mercury is toxic" meme. 1) how long does it take to metabolise from thiomersal to ethyl mercury 2) how does it relate to ethyl mercury half life in the body 3) how does it relate to the minimal quantity of thiomersal in vaccine ? 4) how is the quantity of ethyl mercury due to vaccine at ANY time in comparison to the dosis at which it starts affecting the body (and yes there are quantity which are perfectly tolerable, and even quantity of Eth-Hg which can be totally ignored). and more importantly 5) how does it relate to parents saying that within 24 hours their kids got autism !!!!
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Are you kidding me?!
My wife and I, after reviewing the stats, decided that it was very unlikely that our son would get a disease that was vaccine preventable, but also very unlikely even within that likelihood that it would be seriously life-affecting or lethal. On the other hand, 1 in 150 children has autism, which is ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE for the families affected! My brother has mental retardation, and that was very difficult on the family growing up. There's no disease, or even combination of diseases, that is/are vaccine-preventable that have that kind of risk. Now, that's not to say that the vaccine causes it, but I have read papers, scientific ones, that argue both sides. At this point we'd prefer to take the very minor risk of him getting a disease like diptheria or mumps, which aren't very likely to be serious or lethal, than him get autism if we can try to prevent it.
Also, please note, the sites I've linked to - they're not crackpot sites. When we did our risk analysis for our son, we used the CDC's own data to evaluate his risk. And since they still haven't figured out autism, we as parents have to make our own decisions. The day they figure out what causes it I will throw a party - regardless of if it's vaccines or mothers drinking milk or the father smoking or whatever. Because then we can prevent it. And if it's not vaccines, I'll happily work with our doctor to bring him current. But until then, I have to make my own decision since the CDC can't tell me how to prevent it (autism).
. Define sqrt(x) as something really evil like (x / rand()), and bury it deep. Watch your coworkers go nuts.
Except, of course, that there is a consensus on these things among scientists, as far as scientists can ever be "in consensus". Only a few nutjobs and industry propagandists disagree.
... and then they built the supercollider.
You're not going to convince ME there was no link.
Thimerosal has been removed from vaccines, and yet autism continues to develop. Really, I have read anecdotes such as yours, and was doubtful. But that fact pretty much cinches it for me--if there was a casual link, autism should have vanished overnight. It didn't.
--
$tar -xvf
It's a long article, but worth a read, IMHO, because it links in a very diverse sample of opinions on the topic of chemical/environmental links to autism. (mercury in particular)
Of interest to me are these anecdotes (direct quotes from the article):
Thought-provoking to say the least. Makes me wonder if there may be a complex genetic propensity that causes only some children to develop autism in response to mercury.
Imagination is more important than knowledge -Einstien
"Screw you and the horse you rode in on.
Sincerely,
Katherine Seidel"
Feel free to use this, Katherine.
Toad-san
I'd tell the lawyer to go fuck himself. I'd refuse to give him jack shit! And I wouldn't even show up for a deposition. I'd tell the lawyer he is risking his livelyhood if he continues.
I did this with a scumbag who rearended me in an accident then tried to sue me. I told his lawyer to go fuck himself. I told the lawyer if he persisted he wouldn't have a practice left to run and told him to tell his "client" that if he persisted his life would relly suck. They started to press me on it, so some things happend where his client's life started to REALLY suck. The client wanted to drop the lawsuit but the lawyer convinced him to continue. So I started to make the lawyers practice suffer. It took 6 months but I never had to hire a lawyer and the two scumbags walked away from the whole thing. You just have to have the balls to fight dirty - they are...
The Truth is a Virus!!!
I absolutely agree. In fact, 100% of everyone who has died has ingested something containing hydroxyl acid, many within 12 hours of their death. Time to ban water! (this of course ignores the fact that 99% of everyone who didn't ingest any water over a period of 5 day died, whereas people who drink water on a regular basis seem to be just fine)
"Y2K" was being talked about before I was in high school. I think I even read a foreward-reaching mention of it. Heck, the programmer at the time knew that it would be an issue. Installed it all properly, too, because nothing stopped working. Actually, there were more than a few local computer networks rendered inoperable on Jan 1 2000. No planes fell from the sky or anything, but to say "nothing stopped working" is just plain wrong.
The poster was not informative. There was no information, just accusation. There is a difference. You have provided information, (albeit, in the form of half-baked and misleading questions), so you might be considered informative after a fashion, (a fashion which the moderators today appear to be willing to reward. Sigh.) But the parent poster offered nothing. I don't really know how to make this any more clear. The fact that so many don't grasp this is a clear illustration of why the world is so screwed up. But I digress. . .
Furthermore after 2001 , NO REDUCTION in autism was observed despite lessened to null use of thiomersal. And study were made it has no autism impact. How many more evidence you need ?
First of all, you're not offering evidence. You're just spouting. Attempts to offer evidence in a post often includes little words with lines underneath them. Look into it. Secondly, you're making the assumption that I think Thiomersal causes autism. I don't recall saying that. Indeed, I am not convinced that there is a correlation, and I do find the OH NO contingent to often be claiming more than is evident. However, this does not mean that swinging just as far in the opposite direction is the right answer. It's not. It's foolish and predictable and just as hysterical as those you are complaining about. Why can't people get a grip on this? Is it really so easy to corral people into such predictable behavior patterns? The world is never going to survive if people don't figure out this really, really basic stuff.
Finally you are omitting a very important fact from your "ethyl mercury is toxic" meme.
Case in point; Ethyl Mercury being toxic is not a "meme". Ethyl Mercury IS toxic. Type, "Ethyl Mercury MSDS" into a Google search bar to read what every university and private company on the planet with a chemistry department dealing with Ethyl Mercury has to say about it.
1) how long does it take to metabolise from thiomersal to ethyl mercury 2) how does it relate to ethyl mercury half life in the body 3) how does it relate to the minimal quantity of thiomersal in vaccine ? 4) how is the quantity of ethyl mercury due to vaccine at ANY time in comparison to the dosis at which it starts affecting the body (and yes there are quantity which are perfectly tolerable, and even quantity of Eth-Hg which can be totally ignored).
More Google for you. --You will find that the claims are not unified on these subjects, that by and large there has not been enough testing to determine conclusively the level of toxicity experienced by the subject. That being said, however, I did find from all the various articles, and you will find this as well upon review, that there IS absolute agreement that Ethyl Mercury, a known poison, IS released in some quantity into the body after a Thiomersal injection.
and more importantly 5) how does it relate to parents saying that within 24 hours their kids got autism !!!!
Not that it really matters since such a claim would probably just be more hysteria, but has anybody actually said that? Source please. --And fewer exclamation points if you can manage it.
This is what I have determined thus far: 1. Thiomersal is a product brought to us by an industry known for sickening and even killing people with improperly tested drugs and then telling lies about it after the fact. 2. Thiomersal is an effective, mercury-based poison; this is why it is used as a preservative.
Upon the finer points of quantity of poison and the length of time before the body expunges it, there remains debate. With this information we can proceed in one of two things:
1. We can trust an industry which has proven countless times to be untrustworthy and march into the doctor's office and roll up our sleeve while quivering with a variety of emotionally-driven verve which is almost indistinguishable from the nati
We didn't have computers when I was in high school. Calculators were new. We used a slide rule and an abacus before that.
the programmer at the time knew that it would be an issue.
But they didn't bother to fix it until the last minute.
Planned obsolescence which is known in advance and takes place right on schedule does not constitute a disaster, although ignoring it until you can induce urgency makes an excellent sales plan.
Not being a user of Microsoft products due to exactly this sort of inherent flaw in their general attitude, I was actually rooting for Y2K. I fully expected a mass malfunction due to the prevalence of their operating system at the time. I was highly disappointed when every Windows machine on the planet did not stop operating as promised, which would have been the best argument ever against Microsoft, which may have been in the midst of an antitrust suit at the time.
I'm biased against Microsoft, which I only say to illustrate a perspective wherein what you think of as a disaster becomes the ultimate "I told you..." moment. MS might have been in the middle of an antitrust suit at the time, maybe even just the beginning of it. Put it all together and that could have been the end of Microsoft and happiness would rule the land.
But it didn't happen. I didn't see anything malfunction. Not even a little bit. And I really, really wanted to.
The American public did not suddenly raise their collective intelligence high enough to thoroughly avert this potential doomsday. That's too much to believe.
i think the anti-smoking people would be quite content if the laws are to make people smoke only in their premises, and only when no other people are present. this will stop MOST incident of smoking...
Only an outright ban on smoking will satisfy some anti-smoking advocates, some want to ban smoking even in private residences. All these bans do is turn otherwise law abiding people into criminals. And the US already has the highest prison population, per capita at least. Yet how many of these people also oppose vehicles? Not many I bet, yet the exhaust from vehicles is much worse than cigarette smoke.
FalconShould there be a Law?
No, you're putting off to the end what needs to happen earlier in the process. Two issues:
- in this case, it appears the subpeona was issued by the plaintiff's lawyer, but never reviewed by a judge. They need to be reviewed by the judge, not just blanket issued. Normal procedure these days is to issue the subpeona, like this, and if someone doesn't like it, they can bitch.
- your proposal puts off sanctions until after the whole trial is over. Pain for misconduct like this needs to occur much, MUCH earlier.
The justice system here doesnt work well.
yet, when i see the extent that the justice system in us can be exploited for foul means, even i get appalled.
Read radical news here
well the days where there are so much CO and particulates from the cars are well, almost, over nowadays at least for my city
And how about Shanghai or Beijing? What of the new cities in the desert in the west? There's talk the athletes may need to wear masks during the Olympics.
I live in Hong Kong
How do you like it? I wanted to go not to just Hong Kong but China. Years ago I was taking a class in Mandarin, well spoken. For writing we used both the Chinese ideograms and Pin Yin romanization.
FalconShould there be a Law?
They need to be reviewed by the judge, not just blanket issued. Normal procedure
Thus, the 'they need justification' deal.
ur proposal puts off sanctions until after the whole trial is over. Pain for misconduct like this needs to occur much, MUCH earlier.
For stuff they request from the defendant. Who's presumably involved and has lawyers of their own to control this stuff.
For parties that aren't directly involved in the case(IE they aren't suing or being sued), standard billing practices apply. COD makes sense to me.
I don't read AC A human right
OK, IANAL, but from what I understood, production of third party documents can be ordered but only after a judge assesses arguments about the relevance.
From what I read from the responses (the few that are on-topic - eyeroll), this has not happened. And from reading the article, the blogger has filed a counter-motion to quash, (and, I would hope file a further motion for costs arising from improper conduct).
So, how does this all work in the US - can a lawyer really just demand any third party documents and judicial review only occurs if the third-party complains???
And what sanctions, if any, could be imposed for such an obviously frivolous request???
It wasn't meant to be anaylitical discourse. It was meant to be testemony.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Autism is usually characterized by decreased communication skills and decreased socialization
This perfectly describes Leila, especially when she was young.
It should also be noted that for autism to be diagnosed, the symptoms have to start by three years of age, I believe
She had the MMR shot at age two, wich is when these symptoms started. At the time (she'll be 23 this year) I'd never heard of autisim.
So you are saying you will ignore any evidence and all reason?
No, but I will discount any evidence that obviously doesn't fit the facts. How many scientists does Bush have who will swear before Congress that Global Warming doesn't exist or isn't man made? Clearly, researchers all make mistakes, and many are dishonest. They're not gods, they're not infallable.
Polio is still found in some of India
Then vaccinate the Indians and don't let any Indians who haven't been vaccinated enter the country.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Have you checked the complications rates for something like measles? Death, corneal ulceration, scarring, encephalitis? Not being vaccinated against the childhood diseases almost invites you to catch them one after the other as there is still sufficient wild strains running around. As for autism making a families life hell, please. I have autism, I am quite certain it didn't make my families life hell. As for preventing it - it's not a disease it is a state of being - you might as well try to prevent black skin, or blue eyes, or blond hair for all the good you think it will do.
Measles can kill, blind, and cause serious birth defects in uteroif the mother becomes infected while pregnant
They vaccinate you for measles when you're two (MMR). How many three year olds do you see giving birth? Wouldn't it make more sense to vaccinate girls and only gorls, and only at puberty?
Mumps is relatively benign except for that nasty little bit about 25% of males becoming sterile if you catch it as an adult.
So why are they vaccinating two ywar olds?
Polio may be eradicated in the US, but it is not eradicated on the planet.
Then don't let anyone in the country unless they've been vaccinated.
One place it is still endemic is Afghanistan, and last I heard the were Americans there who were at least planning on returning to the US.
Then vaccinate the soldiers before they go there.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Of course, it also seems entirely reasonable that once again, just due to the odds, she was extremely succeptable to developing autism, and that the vaccine just happened to trigger it
This seems likely to me, just as some people ar prone to schitzophrenia and don't get it without some trigger.
It may also be that thimerisol was the culprit after all.
Yes, and I'll accept that thimerisol may not be the cause; I don't know. I do know that we need to research autism so other kids don't have the problems mine has.
Also keep in mind that it is basically guaranteed that every person will experience several extremely unlikely events over the course of their life, some may be so small you would never even notice them. Some may be wonderful, some may be awful. That's the way life is.
That's true, the results of my CrystaLens implant were far better than the norm. Then I had a detached retina in the same eye. You take the good with the bad.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The issue that alot of people seem to over look is that the claims are not against the vaccines themselves. The claims are against the mercury that holds them together that is the issue. No one is saying do not give anyone vaccines. They are saying I have this concern can I get my kids vaccines that are not all combined. The drug manufactures are saying nope.. you have to have it this way, even though there might be a chance that in some cases it can bring out disabilities.. The question then becomes if you are willing to pay the higher price for individual vaccines why are they not available.
love the taste, hate the texture
No, I am willing to look at the facts. I suspect that I may have a touch of ass burgers myself. But with Leila it was like a light switch, she was fine until the day of the MMR. As another commenter said, there may be kids that are predisposed to autism but need a trigger. The MMR shot (or something in it, maybe thimerisol and maybe not) was pretty obviously the trigger. I don't think it's such a great idea to give a small child like that three vaccines at once at any rate.
Schitzophrenia runs in families but sometimes needs a trigger. I knew a kid when I was in the Air Force stationed with me in Thailand. Now, at the time there was any kind of drug you wanted there, with the exception of LSD and cocaine. Well, this kid (farm boy, kind of slow but ok) was sold some "acid" in town by some locals, and took some and passed it around. I did some, it wasn't LSD (I think it was baby laxative, but as the wrapper was written in Thai I have no idea).
Well, he was convinced it was LSD and that triggered schitzophrenia, he was talking to ants the next day, convinced he was the ant god (I shit you not). They medevaced him out of there, for all I know he;s in some mental institution now (or more likely homeless and strung out on crack since Reagan threw all the nuts out of the asylums).
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
>They vaccinate you for measles when you're two (MMR). How many three year olds do you see giving birth? Wouldn't it make more sense to vaccinate girls and only gorls, and only at puberty?
Well, the kill thing seems to not be gender specific, and the same goes for the blind thing. The measles vaccine does not give lifetime immunity. You need periodic boosters.
>Then don't let anyone in the country unless they've been vaccinated.
I'll have INS add that to the Border Patrol checklist immediately.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
What constitutes evidence here? If a whole boatload of children go from being normal to starting to show symptoms right after getting shots, how long can you continue to yell "correlation != causation" with a straight face?
Yup, and that calculus becomes less effective ever time someone makes it, like the villager who wants to "cheat" the commons by sneaking in one more cow than he's allowed to. You end up needing to perform a differential or difference equation to do the risk assessment, and that is about the level of mathematics where human instinct and intuition stop working very well, in general.
All's true that is mistrusted
It doesn't matter how long you can yell "correlation != causation", because the interesting logical rule to know here is that lack of correlation implies lack of causation.
A "boatload of children go from being normal to starting to show symptoms" at the same age and at the same rate amongst groups that get the vaccines or not.
It's not just that there is no evidence vaccines cause autism; there is extremely strong evidence that they definitely do not cause autism. If they did, kids who got the vaccines would show increased rates of autism vs. those who did not, and that is not the case.
Kids who do not get vaccines get autism at the same rate, and other nasty things for which we have perfectly good vaccines at much higher rates.
"Do you have any proof that these vaccines indeed were the major reason for all of these diseases?"
Yes, absolutely. We compare the rates of the disease amongst people who get the vaccine and those who didn't. We also collect data about their diets, exercise habits, etc, to control for those factors. The case is not subtle. Those who do not get the vaccine are radically more likely to get the disease than those who don't. QED
I too am sorry about your daughter, but I still think you're wrong and doing a disservice to the cause of figuring out what causes Autism.
Rates of Autism are the same between people who get the MMR vaccine and those who don't.
We can argue mechanisms or timing until we're blue in the face, but the simple fact is people who don't get the MMR vaccine still develop Autism just as frequently as those who do, and therefore it is just not possible that MMR causes Autism.
It's really important that everybody else's kids get vaccinated for the major communicable diseases, because that radically reduces the risk of your kids getting those diseases. But once that's happened, you've got the moral and practical dilemma of how risky it is to your kids and other people's kids to skip vaccination - it's usually not too risky, unless lots of other people do it, at which point it's risky again. Measles seems to reach that stage occasionally.
There are a couple of special cases - tetanus and flu. Tetanus isn't something where vaccinating other kids will protect yours; it's driven by how often kids run into rusty nails and other puncture wounds. And of course flu vaccines are a guess every year - but having the flu sucks enough that I usually get the vaccine.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm really late to reply to this and I doubt it's going to make a difference, but if you're going to copy and paste this story a million times, at least go to the trouble of making sure it's correct. WTO is the World Trade Organization. The World Health Organization is WHO.
I didn't spell it myself, I put it in quotes because I copied and pasted it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Interestingly, I worked for the US Forest Service from the late eighties to late nineties. At the time, much of the research on DDT was stored at our office. One of the guys who had been around at the time, told me that the research really heated up after the initial media coverage and the book "Silent Spring". What they learned was that the chemical DDT itself, was safer than expected and did not cause the bird eggs to have thin shells. The actual danger came from additives and impurities from its manufacture. Now I'm not saying we should start using DDT again in the US - fixing the formulation does not change the fact that the chemical itself is very long lasting - another issue. But it is worth noting that after the true cause was determined several years later, it was no longer news and few people ever heard about it. I suppose that's one reason that Africa embraced it seeing the formulation was now better.