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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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
It's not legal to use it how we WERE using it -- to get a slightly higher yield from wholly un-diseased agriculture.
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
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.
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!!!"
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.htmPersonal 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
Many (most?) people would argue that vaccinations for kids need to be mandatory, especially in schools. The potential of a massive epidemic is too high, and too easily preventable, to be ignored.
Vaccines should always be tested, but they have a proven, long track record.
This is a lot like taking seatbelts out of cars because they break ribs - except seatbelts obviously do break ribs, while these vaccines causing autism is a much more foggy link.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
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
lolwut?
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
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?
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
Actually, this is fairly simple. We know that vaccines work - case in point, the smallpox vaccine. Denying that you present a definite health risk to society by not being vaccinated against communicable diseases is illogical and dangerous.
On the other hand, if you're talking about non-communicable diseases - screw up your life however you like, I don't care.
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/
That's not logical in the slightest, hardened hornet's nests should dry out and get lighter, not heavier. Even if DDT somehow manage to double the weight of a hornet nest, if a house had almost enough hornets nests to collapse the roof by weight, the house would be uninhabitable anyway.
The houses really collapsed because DDT killed the parasitic wasps that kept certain thatch eating caterpillars under control. I read about that here.
Firstly, I find it unlikely that the rat population was controlled by domestic housepets, these "cats" do not refer to an indigenous species in the island but Felis Catus which were kept in houses. Secondly DDT isn't like mercury, it doesn't just accumulate in a predator's body and work its way up the food chain, it leaves the body. DDT just isn't all that toxic to mammals, it would take a hell of a lot to kill a cat. Sure, longterm exposure to DDT has effects, like an increase in cancer but nothing that could cause the local extinction of a whole cat population. Anyway, if DDT were killing the cat population, why not other species that eat small lizards and bugs, like rats for example? Finally, DDT stays around in the environment for a long time (one of its main controversial traits) why would these new cats simply not die?
Ecosystems are complex things and killing all the insects is such a huge thing that it's going to have some complex repercussions. Luckily Silent Spring came out a couple of years later and since it is now commonly accepted that DDT kills absolutely everything, they can just pin it on nasty DDT killing the cute fluffy kittens (because it's evil) and be done with it.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Secondly DDT isn't like mercury, it doesn't just accumulate in a predator's body and work its way up the food chain, it leaves the body.
You'd better let the EPA you know more than they do because they have DDT as a Persistent Bioaccumulative and Toxic (PBT) Chemical.
Ecosystems are complex things and killing all the insects is such a huge thing that it's going to have some complex repercussions.
Because of that complexity, to disrupt an ecosystem a chemical doesn't mean needing to kill everything, all it takes is to remove one crucial element to do so, just as removing a Keystone from an arch or dome will bring the whole thing down.
FalconShould there be a Law?
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
What the fuck hyperbole train did you just ride in on?
The amount of ethyl mercury in a dose of vaccine is tiny, and ethylmercury is eliminated so quickly (half-life 18 days or less) that it does not bioaccumulate. You're putting your kid in more danger by feeding them a tuna sandwich once a week than you are by giving them the standard childhood vaccinations, even if you go back in time to 1998 before the US started phasing out thiomersal. Unlike ethylmercury, methylmercury does build up in the body (half-life 44 days), and methylmercury is found in tuna and other large, long-lived ocean fish. (It's also found in large, long-lived land mammals like humans, and babies receive noteworthy amounts of mercury through breast milk.)
The reality is that toxicity depends on dose. Oxygen is a deadly poison at a high enough concentrations: divers at 600m generally use breathing gas that's 98% He and 2% O2, because 21% O2 would kill them more-or-less instantly. Iron, an essential nutrient, is acutely toxic at a dose that's not much larger than a healthy amount: iron overdose is a leading cause of poisoning deaths in young children, and it used to be even worse thanks to the iron in Flintstone's chewables. (I myself had my stomach pumped when I was 4.) Methyl salicylate, better known as Ben-Gay and closely related to aspirin, killed a cross-country runner last year because she didn't know that it's poisonous in large doses.
On top of that, thiomersal has been phased out of the routine childhood vaccines for years now. There was no resulting drop in autism rates; there was no resulting drop in mercury poisonings; there was no resulting increase in cognitive function, or test scores, or any measurable thing whatsoever. All the available evidence shows that removing thiomersal did absolutely nothing.
On top of that, thanks in large part to the autism-vaccine controversy, mumps is making a comeback, and pertussis is now endemic in the area around Boulder, CO, thanks explicitly to unvaccinated children and a failure to reach herd immunity (which for pertussis is 92-94% vaccination).
I mean, hell, at least autism won't kill you.
Range Voting: preference intensity matters
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.
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.
The WTO's solution--which worked--was to airdrop cats...
As God is my witness, I thought cats could fly.