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Court Rules Against Vaccine-Autism Claims Again
barnyjr writes "According to a story from Reuters, 'Vaccines that contain a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal cannot cause autism on their own, a special US court ruled on Friday, dealing one more blow to parents seeking to blame vaccines for their children's illness. The special US Court of Federal Claims ruled that vaccines could not have caused the autism of an Oregon boy, William Mead, ending his family's quest for reimbursement. ... While the state court determined the autism was vaccine-related, [Special Master George] Hastings said overwhelming medical evidence showed otherwise. The theory presented by the Meads and experts who testified on their behalf "was biologically implausible and scientifically unsupported," Hasting wrote.'"
Not only that, but why should the parents be entitled to "reimbursement" even if the immunization did cause the autism? Yes, the product should be immediately pulled, but do they have a right to get rich because of some hitherto unknown side-effect of a well intentioned vaccine? I don't think so.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
how is this a matter for the courts, thats retarded.
This won't stop the paranoid from preventing their children from being immunized because some of these same people have interesting theories about how the vaccines are deliberately nefarious in other ways (going as far on out there as mind control, etc). These people and their little theory have done more to damage public health in a short amount of time than a lot of other things...
The use of vaccines is a public health necessity; vaccines are by far the most cost effective tool we have for preventing the spread of communicable diseases.
There have always been controversies about vaccines: there is non-zero risk to individuals from any medical treatment, and significant benefit to the population as a whole. As a single individual, you remove the (very small) risk by not having the vaccine, and you gain most all of the benefits if most everyone else around you has been vaccinated.
Spreading fear and misinformation about the safety of vaccines can cause direct, measurable and irreversible harm. Measuring the connection between a medical treatment and possible harmful effects is something drug companies can do very well, and the FDA approvals process (when it works) keeps the companies honest. We have solid, irrefutable and repeatable scientific evidence that shows vaccines do not cause these diseases, like autism.
The best article covering this was in the Bad Astronomy blog from Discover, aptly titled Antivax Kills.
I can understand these parent's hurt and anger, and why they would seek to find a cause, a reason, someone to blame for their troubles. It's a natural human reaction in such a case, where so little is known of the real causes. And big Pharma has certainly proven, over and over, that it feels no responsibility towards it's customers and will choose 'making a buck' over 'doing the right thing,' pretty much all the time. But this is still ridiculous. At this point, you either have to buy into a full-blown whackadoodle conspiracy theory, or admit that vaccines do not, and never have caused autism.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
...because Jenny McCarthy can't read.
The link between autism and vaccines will never be officially acknowledged even if it truly exists, as the ramifications will be devastating to the established government institutions.
I personally find the abundant anecdotal evidence of such a link quite disturbing, requiring thorough investigation, though this is unlikely to happen due to the above reason.
the amish don't get vaccinated so autism is virtually unknown amongst them
http://www.whale.to/vaccine/olmsted.html
What do they mean by 'the autism was vaccine-related?' Last time I checked, stuff like this aside, the evidence strongly indicated that vaccines don't maybe cause autism or sometimes cause some forms of autism, but that they don't cause autism. Period. At all.
Vaccines aren't as simple as people think.
Many, many vaccines can cause seizures, and not all seizures result in physically obvious symptoms. Once a person experiences a seizure, regardless of the cause, they are significantly more likely to have seizures in the future.
Various vaccines are being promoted by their manufacturers, not because they have actual benefits, but because it's a money making position to have a vaccine that will be forced onto the general population. Look into the HPV vaccines, actual risks. The HPV vaccines may have future benefits, but the promotion by the manufacturer has been mostly to school boards and politicians; not the public. The current commercials are based on fear mongering, not education.
Many vaccines are simply about money, not health.
There is way for them to cope.
If i had an autistic kid, when he hit, say, three, I'd put a deck of cards in his hand and grandually build up to ten decks or so and teach him how to remember and calculate the odds for BlackJack. I would also buy him underwear from K-Mart. Then, in about 15 years when he's old enough to be in a casino, profit!
In a Jim Gaffigan whisper: "He's so insensitive!" He hates handicapped people! Hooooot pockets!"
Those parents are just too short sighted. I mean, just exactly what is a healthy kid? Normal?
That people are so quick to blame pharmaceuticals for everything that may happen post vaccination. I understand that a lot of it comes from people not knowing whats in the vaccination - they don't know what they are putting into their children and they realize "Hey this could be cause" after something harmful happens. Don't get me wrong, I agree that its a problem, I don't ever go and get my flu shot because the local health regional offices won't tell me what's in the vaccine. [tinfoilhat] How do I know they aren't adding some kind of emotional suppressant that makes me less angry about taxes being raised [/tinfoilhat].
I think the ridiculous part of it though is that they only do this with the drugs. People don't think to blame the food, or the beverages, or anything else they are introducing into their system. They heard a smear campaign on the radio saying that a Vaccine might be linked to a disease or syndrome - time and time again these reports turn out to be faked. But for whatever reason, this kind of stuff continues.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is this: Stop trying to push the laws to treat a symptom of the problem. Transparency is the issue here - without having complete ACCURATE transparency, laymen (like myself) have an even tougher time determining what is true and what is false. If I had my way, everything we drink, every menu we read, every swimming pool you enter, anything that we interact with would have a label somewhere telling you -exactly- what goes into it. And don't get me started on current Nutritional labels - those things are a disgrace.
Let me be crystal clear about this, vaccines do not cause autism nor is there any decent study that is statistically and/or scientifically valid which shows such a provable correlation.
And we're running studies of autism here, led by one of my colleagues who has an autistic child herself.
You really need to move on.
The problem is that, for most people, they grasp at straws and try to find some observable "cause" they can link with autism. It's quite possible that it has more to do with environmental and/or emotional stresses on the mother but people try to put the cart before the horse and "prove" that a vaccine - which may have been due to travel (hint - enviro/emo stress) or bad health conditions (same) - was the cause.
Please, move on, you're just embarrassing yourselves.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
From the summary and article:
[blockquote]The theory presented by the Meads and experts who testified on their behalf...[/blockquote]
Who are these "experts"? Are their identities in the public record? I want to know how these fools can possibly considered qualified, expert witnesses when they clearly lack the medical and scientific judgment to critically and objectively evaluate and analyze the facts in front of them. Really. How is it that these people still have jobs?
So Autism is vaccine related?
and Mercury? that cannot be healthy.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
correlation does not imply causation
I agree. The paranoid parents are going to ignore this, not get their kids immunized, and thereby put them at real risk for neurological damage from measles.
Sadly, this won't even balance out the recent discovery that Poul Thorsen, one of many scientists disputing the link between autism and vaccines, was a fraud. Figure one: a random blog post on the subject reheadlined "The vaccine autism link is real".
So one study and one researcher disputing the link has been invalidated, there are many more that remain, and there are plenty of studies claiming a link between vaccines and autism that have been shown false.
It's kind of like those leaked global warming e-mails. They didn't show that global climate change was a fraud, but that's what people wanted to hear, and that's what they remember, not boring things like the facts or court findings.
There were some fascinating correlations about autism rates before and after the mixed injections. And the same data was replicated in England. There was even a piece on 60 minutes about this. Of course, this is only correlation, not proof that the mixture causes autism.
You'd be surprised. There's a lot of people out there with no knowledge on a particular subject area, but who are quick to come up with a 'theory' and pass it off as fact and themselves as 'experts' in that area. Financial advisers, anyone?
I drink to make other people interesting!
Dunno if you know this or not, but there have been radical developments in greed and corruption over the last couple of decades,
People are just as corrupt as they ever have been. If you think people are more corrupt now than in years past you are either very naive or very stupid. Go pick up a history book. The methods (sort of) change but people don't.
It can all be solved and summarized in two simple words; loser pays. That would likely flush out 80% of the crap clogging the system today.
And your evidence for this is what exactly? Because it sounds vaguely logical? Yes loser pays would solve some problems but it would create others. It would reduce some of the more frivolous lawsuits but it would also make some needed lawsuits too risky to attempt. Loser pays strongly tilts the playing field towards those with the most money - even more so than it already is. I don't necessarily have a problem with the general concept of loser pays but please recognize that it isn't something that is going to cure every ill in our legal system.
Frankly if you want to reduce the load on our legal system, stop the ridiculous "war on drugs" - at least the portion related to user and possession charges. The US incarcerates a percentage of the population on minor drug charges that is way out of proportion with other industrialized nations. The war on drugs has FAR more to do with our clogged legal system than frivolous torts.
Smallpox has not been wiped out, as in "no longer exists". There just are no outbreaks in the wild anymore.
There are currently 2 sources of the smallpox virus that need to be monitored.
First is the biological weapons stock piles, they have developed smallpox variants that will kill 90+% of the infected and for which even the current vaccines are useless.
Second is the fact that smallpox can remain viable for decades, all someone would have to do is dig up a well preserved body of a person who died from smallpox and they could harvest viable virus cultures to use on a population that currently has no defense against it, which is most of the world since smallpox vaccinations are not routine anymore.
A side note: an single vaccination with a vaccine using thimerosal would not raise mercury levels to unsafe amounts in a child, it is believed that the multiple injections with a very short time, sometimes all on the same day, would raise the mercury level in the blood to levels that caused damage.
No matter what the court or the pharmacorp sponsored studies may say autism went from 1:10,000 to 1:120 in the span of a decade at the same time that new vaccination protocols where implemented.
Now that thimerosal is being replaced it will be interesting to see if the autism rate changes.
When someone says something like this, I don't know whether to giggle or be scared.
its a retarded argument!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
If it's "proven" they're harmless and do more good than evil, why is it obligatory to take them? Why not treat people like people, and not animals "for their own good"?
Make it voluntary, and the conspiracies halt. Till then, I'll side with those in doubt.
That goes for things beyond vaccination too.
we had evidence based medicine. Now we have court based medicine?
Remind me exactly when were politicians, judges and lawyers given a license to practice medicine again?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
What you do with baby goats is pretty much unregulated, barring cruelty. You can eat them, for instance. and, in fact, you can't generally send them to schools by themselves (all those animal control regulations)
But with respect to children: At least in California, you don't have to "send them to school", but they must be schooled none-the-less. You're not required to send them to public school, but you could send them to private school or home school. In all cases, there are some requirements on the "school" to prevent gaming the system (why yes, my "school" consists of improving the manual dexterity of the children by having them assemble tiny things for long hours.)
Shoulda known better that the research into Amish autism rates had already been done...
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
The Lancet didn't retract that ridiculous paper from 1998 until last month and it pretty much started all this ridiculous BS. It's absolutely unconscionable that they didn't retract it sooner. Ten of the original 13 authors retracted back in 2004. That should have been a hint.
The problem with vaccines is that being vaccinated as an individual isn't what makes you safe. It's the vaccination of the herd that protects. That is, for a particular disease that you might be vaccinated against, let's say measles, it's safer to be the only person in a crowd who isn't vaccinated than to be the one person in the crowd who is vaccinated. Vaccines aren't 100% effective and what makes them truly effective, is having everyone take them.
Back in 2006, some girl in Indiana got measles on a trip to Romania. She came back and shared that gift with the people in her church, simply by showing up. Roughly 10% of the 500 people present weren't vaccinated and 32% of those people developed the measles. One person who got the vaccine also got the measles, but 94% of the cases were unvaccinated people.
The problem these days is that people don't bother to learn history. Anyone who's been to an old cemetery (I live in Arkansas, and we have tons of them) pretty much can't miss the fact that there are tons of kids aged 10 and under buried. Why? In the early 1800s, infant mortality was about 20%. Think about that. One in five infants (1 year old and younger) died. A lot more died before the age of 5. Not all of that is vaccines, but a lot of it is! Before the vaccine, smallpox alone was killing 400,000 Europeans a year.
Personally, I think vaccines ought to be required by law because they're a public safety issue and people who won't do it should go to jail.
2010:
"It's absolutely impossible that a few children may have an allergic reaction to MERCURY or multiple-series of IMMUNE SYSTEM MANIPULATION proteins being injected into them."
2005:
"It's absolutely impossible that a soldier inhaled the smoke from the BURN PITS in Area 51 or Iraq or Afghanistan may develop health problems!"
2001:
"It's absolutely impossible that anyone exposed to the carcinogens in the air at GROUND ZERO may develop lung cancer!"
1998:
"It's absolutely impossible for a teenager on PSYCHOTROPIC drugs to develop depression or go on a psychotic killing spree!"
1995:
"It's absolutely impossible that soldiers or civilians who inhaled the DUST of URANIUM shells used in Iraq may develop cancer or reproductive problems!"
1970:
"It's absolutely impossible that soldiers exposed to AGENT ORANGE may develop cancer."
1960:
"It's absolutely impossible to develop lung cancer from SMOKING cigarettes."
1959:
"It's absolutely impossible that anyone would have an allergic reaction to FOOD DYE and die!"
1950:
"It's absolutely impossible that a soldier may develop cancer as a reaction to RADIATION in nuclear testing."
Has anybody actually done any research to figure out what causes autism other than vaccines? Has the whole epidemiological process been derailed by the vaccine connection controversy? This is a serious question that now seems to be have become one of these taboo science topics that nobody wants to investigate because its history has been so controversial.
Perhaps widespread vaccination increases autism rates because the diseases vaccination prevents cause fever in children, and fever in children fights autism symptoms. Or perhaps the children more prone to autism were also more prone to dying from childhood infections, and now, due to vaccination programs, more of them are surviving long enough to be diagnosed with autism.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
(ng anymore.) [Stupid short subject lines!]
If that “medical evidence” came from Elsevier, or Monsanto, etc, it’s worth shit.
Medicine has no credibility anymore. Because the whole system is based on only rewarding them who keep people sick for the longest time. You get money for treating people. For selling meds. But not for healing them. You even get punished for it, since they won’t need to come back and pay more.
And no, that does not mean I’m saying anything about the statements being right or wrong. I‘m saying that the source is not trustworthy either way. Unless some big time proof of trustworthiness appears.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Thimerosal was removed from vaccines years ago after the hysterical anti-vaccination claims. It had no effect on the autism diagnosis rates which continued to rise gradually due to ongoing improved medical awareness. this proved conclusively that Thimerosal was NOT a cause of Autism. If it was, even if traces remained in a few vaccines, we would still have seen a dramatic reduction in autism. The anti-vaccination crown still go on about vaccines as a cause and about Thimerosal though. It is idiotic, having made up their mind they will not listen to reason.
You may not know that there has never, ever been a study comparing fully vaccinated to completely unvaccinated children.
This seems like an obvious study to do, at least to me. I am guessing you are aware we currently inject antigens and immune stimulating adjuvants into muscle tissue. It just so happens there are no antigen presenting cells there, they have to summoned. New technology delivers antigens directly to the antigen presenting cells (APCs). The immune system does not have to be hyped up.
I think we always have to look at all ideas, until proven wrong. The link between autism and vaccines has never been proven wrong, and never proven right. To do this, you must compare fully vaccinated to completely unvaccinated children.
You may also not be aware the the autism rate for boys is now 2%.
You may also not know that U.S. Congresswoman Carol Maloney from NY introduced bill to conduct study to compare fully vaccinated to completely unvaccinated children.
There was tremendous opposition to study from CDC and elsewhere. So, instead of about at $30 Million study, they authorized $1,000 Million to treat autistic children.
To see discussion of this important issue, please see here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/10/5/235958/855
PEACE
I think it wouldn't be this way if much (all?) of the pharmaceutical oversight wasn't government controlled. The pharmaceuticals do have an incentive to do things right, but when the public has no recourse against any drugs that the FDA has approved already, then they are shielded from any retaliation, and can indeed put out crappy products as long as their lobbyists are in place.
If it's more cost effective to put out crap+lobby than good meds+no lobby, then they go for the former. The more corrupt the regulating agency is, the cheaper it is to lobby, also. The article for me ended where it said that the vaccine makers can't be sued for damage. If they can't be sued.. certainly they will do a crappier job than if they could, at least marginally.
So... down with the FDA and whatever other agencies are involved.
'Vaccines that contain a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal cannot cause autism on their own, a special US court ruled on Friday'
While I tend to agree with the statement, the idea that a court can somehow "rule" on whether or not something is true seems a bit strange. What happens next Friday? Will they rule that the value of Pi is precisely 3.14 and not a penny more? Physical reality doesn't care about court rulings. Courts rule on matters of human law, not physical law.
Yeah, about that "perfectly safe" mercury amalgam ... check out what Colgate has to say: http://www.colgate.com/app/Colgate/US/OC/Information/OralHealthBasics/CheckupsDentProc/Fillings/DentalAmalgamAHealthRisk.cvsp#part8
Mercury, like nuclear radiation, is safe under certain conditions where those conditions include low-dose exposure and only small numbers of exposure to those low doses. Some people have argued that the rapid-fire barrage of low-dose exposure to mercury that accompanied the vaccination protocol (i.e. not single vaccinations) is what can lead to temporary toxic levels of mercury in the bloodstream. While likely to be rare, there's no reason it should be impossible.
Similarly, there's something stent implant patients injected with to help the surgeon see what he's working on that is "perfectly safe" except that if surgeon can't finish everything while the dose they give you before the surgery is still active then they have to schedule a second surgery a day or so later because giving you a second dose that soon would be cause harmful toxicity within your kidneys.
Or to put it in fark/slashdot terms: one beer is perfectly safe ... 42 "one beer"s are also perfectly safe ... but 42 "one beers" within a single hour will kill you.
It is idiotic, having made up their mind they will not listen to reason.
Doesn't do any good for your cause calling the other side idiotic and not listening to reason... we all have different sets of evidence we know, that leads us to believe one thing or another. You yourself could have made your mind as well.
Could you please elaborate when where and how was thimerosal removed? Why is it illogical to think that after so many years (at least a few decades? idk) of using this preservative, the vaccine makers wouldn't continue using it anyway? Has there been a government mandate, with tough enforcement preventing them from doing so? Were people able to sue them if they found it in the vaccines?
I don't know much about this, am only coming at it deductively, but I'd like to know what you know.
"overwhelming medical evidence showed otherwise...was biologically implausible and scientifically unsupported," Hasting wrote.'"
Lack of evidence for != Overwhelming evidence against.
Just a small correction but it bugs me when people forget this distinction.
Right: There is absolutely no evidence apart from circumstantial isolated cases that suggests that vaccines cause autism.
Wrong: There is overwhelming evidence showing that vaccines don't cause autism.
The problem is that, for most people, they grasp at straws and try to find some observable "cause" they can link with autism. It's quite possible that it has more to do with environmental and/or emotional stresses on the mother but people try to put the cart before the horse and "prove" that a vaccine - which may have been due to travel (hint - enviro/emo stress) or bad health conditions (same) - was the cause.
OK - as a parent of a six-year old with "primary" autism (e.g. low-functioning), I'd like to clear the air on a few points:
Please, move on, you're just embarrassing yourselves.
I have met a number of other parents of autistic kids. Those that are desperate enough to by into these theories are (often) otherwise rational, intelligent people. They are desperate for hope, and feel they owe it to their child to attempt some kind of cure. Whether this is due to denial (of the permanent disability) or unrelenting hope and a moral code that says "anything is better than nothing", I don't know. I do know I can relate to this, to a point, and was frustrated at the limited medical treatments available for my own son. Please have some sympathy for these misguided parents, as the real culprits are the alt-medicine charlatans who claimed to have found the cure, and the DAN doctors who really ought to know better.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo. -- James Klass
Both sides in this are ignorant. The "experts" are totally clueless as to what even causes Autisim. Mankind currently knows jack schitt about biology despite the massive world wide investments being made in the area.
Parents see their kids getting sick or worse after getting their shots and refuse to see anything else.
The vaccination adverse reaction reports in the US at least are public knowledge anyone interested can download the raw datasets and do their own analysis. At the end of the day even if some kids are getting sick or dead as a direct result of the vaccines statistically their still MUCH better off taking them.
We know for a fact mercury makes people retarded so injecting it in any amount into a few day old baby is also retarded. Sometimes captin obvious really needs to fly in and save us all from our own rank nonsense.
The correlation between autisim and vaccination is like the correlation between cancer and insert arbitrary substance here. With 1/5th of the worlds population dieing of cancer there is just too much noise in the signal to make any definitive conclusions. Especially when there is huge potential for disruptive negative consequences be it the cell phone industry or people not getting vaccinated. The signal if it exists will simply be ignored.
This should **NOT** give industries and people a license to act stupidly and lack conservative approach WRT things mankind is currently just too clueless to fully understand.
Use of mercury is stupid. The massive scope creep of vaccinations from must have life saving to the recent laundry lists of nonsense in the current schedules in many areas is also stupid.
Taking a few pictures of myself with an x-ray camera is a safe bet.. It is very unlikely to give me cancer and is great fun for halloween. but if I repeat the process say use an orbting high power satellite to take an x-ray picture of every living person then there is a good chance that some of those people will get cancer and die as a direct result. Statistically you'll never see it so don't sue me, you can't prove it you'll loose in court.
That its even possible for lawsuits against people who are in good faith trying (and succeding by any measure) to help people is the real problem here. People are both stupid and greedy and they get what they deserve for making no effort to rid themselves of such attributes.
It's very frustrating for parents of autistic children. And not surprising that people might latch onto limited observations they can make, even if their conclusions have no scientific or statistical value.
Some of the diseases we do research on have very long gestation periods - people incorrectly think they "did" something recently to cause the disease to occur, and frequently the parents beat themselves up over "causes" they imagine to exist, but which are very very unlikely to have anything to do with what caused the disease.
Of course, nowadays, the Internet gives people an equal voice, which sometimes lets those spreading theories a louder voice than those who actually study the problems scientifically.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It would increase demand...
Some but I think probably not as much as you fear. People who want illegal drugs can get them now. It's not exactly a secret that only a small percentage of the drugs are ever caught by the authorities and the rest obviously get sold. Jail hasn't proven to be a strong enough deterrent and it certainly has a huge opportunity cost.
People who aren't interested in drugs pretty much aren't going to use them no matter what the price. I'm certainly capable of legally buying a cigarette which contains the addictive drug nicotine but I never will. I think anyone who does smoke or uses recreational drugs is utterly retarded but I recognize the futility of trying to stop people from seeking to get high. The only question is how to shape policy so it does the least damage possible.
If you want to bring economics into the argument, the demand curve for illegal drugs is highly inelastic. Changes in price have relatively small effects on demand. Those who are interested will remain so, those who aren't will mostly remain so.
Societal pressures are generally much more effective than legal ones to shape behavior. Cigarettes and those who smoke them have been steadily ostracized in the US and the number of smokers has steadily declined for many years now.
...but the only way to get the drugs would be through organized crime networks.
That is no different than right now. Depending on what changes one makes to the laws though this does not have to remain the case. See my argument below.
The only thing to do is make it completely legal.
Legal or freely available? Very different things. There are some drugs and chemicals that never can be made freely available - they simply are too dangerous. There is a reason Lipitor is legal but restricted. However it is quite possible to make substitutes for recreational drugs available.
For whatever reason we allow tobacco and alcohol but prohibit most other recreational drugs. Perhaps a big part of the problem could be eliminated by permitting restricted access to a few new relatively benign recreational substances. It remains stupid to use any of them but then you don't have to throw people in jail for possession most of the time. Spend our resources on something other than jails. This is of course not a cure all answer, but it might be a start. Never will fly politically though I'm sure.
I think this http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/Campbell-Smith%20Mead%20Autism%20Decision.pdf is the right one, the court of claims website has several http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/node/5026/ The principal evidence against the parents are several large studies (> 100,000 children) where they compared autism in groups with and witout mercury vaccines (thimerosol). There was no difference. further, the scandinavians have looked at autism rates before and after useage of thimerosol; no difference. This is probably the best data we can hope to get showing htat mercury in vaccines doesn't cause autims. to get around this, the parents argued that thimerosol causes a special, rare kind of autism (regressive autism), and that studies on large numbers of children are meaningless because they don't have the statistical power to see a change in a small percent of the population (if you have 100,000 kids with thimerosol, and 100K without, and the general autism rate is 1% and the regressive autism rate is 0.1%, you won't have statistically sign numbers for the rare form of the disiease. the master dismissed this argument concluding that there was no evidence for a distinct disease called regressive autism. there was a lot of stuff about how mercury enters the brain and what it does; sort of inconclusive; the parents didn't really have any good data to support their theorys, eg although distinct, measurable changes occcur ain humans and animals at levels of mercury much higher then what childrne are exposed to, the parents argued that their children have a genetic makeup that makes them hypersensitive to mercury; the problem with this is that they dind't have any data to support this theory, which is perfectly plausible; the parents brought up wilson's disease, which is hypersensitivity to copper. aused the childs autism; he said that there was no plausible theory or data after reading the pdf
That's easily shown to be nowhere near as major a factor as you think it is.
Think back and consider the 1970s. Nutrition and sanitation were effectively the same in developed countries as it is now. Measles was a disease that nearly everyone caught at some time. Now it is rare. Go back a bit further and there's still pretty good nutrition and sanitation but there were also a lot of children with polio.
Talk to someone old enough and they will be able to tell you about someone they knew with polio, it was common enough that everyone I've met in their 70s knew someone with polio. Then ask that older person what they think about vaccination. You'll get a better perspective on what you are writing about and realise that you are advocating a lot of suffering and premature death.
If that “medical evidence” came from Elsevier, or Monsanto, etc, it’s worth shit.
Huh? Apples and oranges, as far as I know; they're two entirely different companies.
Elsevier, AFAIK, is just a publishing company which owns a number of academic journals; those journals are peer-reviewed in the usual manner (by academics -- who, if not always competent, are at least basically independent in my (limited?) experience). It's not a pharmeceutical company or anything. So while there might be a lot wrong with the academic publishing system, I don't see any reason to look at a journal that happens to be owned by Elsevier any differently from any other. Unless you really know something I don't.
Monsanto on the other hand is a giant chemical/agriculture/pharmaceutical corporation, and I'd be inclined not to trust anything with their name on it (or money funding it) -- in large part because, IIRC, they've been caught committing various kinds of fraud in the past...
when the public has no recourse against any drugs that the FDA has approved already
I'm confused; what do you mean? In what way does FDA approval shield a company from liability? And, if such a regulatory structure did not exist, what recourse would patients have? The civil courts?
I'm really not seeing your argument...
When the FDA approves a product the product also becomes a liability of the FDA, since they were the responsible people at testing it. The companies knowing that basically offset those testing costs to it, and lobby it like I said before.
If the FDA approves a product I think it makes it impossible to sue the company for it, in a governmental court, because it would be akin to discrediting the FDA on its job, a governmental agency. The chances of government prosecuting government in any major way is very unlikely, even more so if its corrupt.
There's nothing special about medication or food that makes it warrant a governmental regulatory body to oversight it. What recourse do you have against a bad shoe-maker? Against a fraudulent car dealer? Do we need oversight agencies for those as well? Maybe we already do have them, idk.
does not say "the vaccine did not cause autism" rather it said "there is no evidence that it caused autism" (paraphrasing is mine). So does it? Well we still don't know. This sounds like a victory for the scientific method to me. Oh, hang on was there any chicken guts in the research? No? Then throw out all the research and find someone to blame. Did I have my children vaccinated? Yes, because the risks of not dong so far outweigh the risks from the vaccines.
Amazing. Mercury, a known neurotoxin, can't be what caused neurological damage. Next, they'll probably say carbon dioxide is bad even though it's used in photosynthesis to generate the oxygen we breathe.
Oh, wait, they've done that. Well, at least the pharma industry will be happy with all this.
You mean like CURING SMALLPOX AND POLIO, you shit-faced cunt? Get FUCKED!
Could you please elaborate when where and how was thimerosal removed? Why is it illogical to think that after so many years (at least a few decades? idk) of using this preservative, the vaccine makers wouldn't continue using it anyway? Has there been a government mandate, with tough enforcement preventing them from doing so? Were people able to sue them if they found it in the vaccines?
I'm not the person that you're replying to, but just thought I'd share this link:
Thimerosal in Vaccines. If you look at the table of contents, there is a table there that shows a list of vaccines and the amounts of Thimerosal in them. The majority of them are free of it. It also shows the date as to when the non-Thimerosal version was approved by the FDA.
The section "Recent and Future FDA Action" also discusses what the FDA has done to remove or limit the amounts of Thimerosal in vaccines.
I'm not going to copy and paste from the article, because I think the article should be read in its entirety. My take on it is that the FDA has not found any strong links between Thimerosal and neurological disorders, but there still needs to be research done into it, so they erred on the side of caution and asked manufacturers to remove it completely, or limit it to trace amounts.
Best "String" Ever!
I'm so glad the courts came to the conclusion that mercury-based preservatives in vaccines do not cause autism. I guess they should teach scientists a few things about the scientific method? Just make a declaration and the facts will follow!
(FWIW, I don't think it does since the mercury levels are so minute. How many of our parents played with mercury as young children and are just fine (well, as healthy as the American diet of the time allowed ;))?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Vaccines work. They have stuff in them that is bad. They are overused. They make their companies alot of money.
But they have saved many lives. And hurt others.
This is the worst post I've ever read on slashdot; what happened to the moderators? Personally, I've only ever taken my recommended dosage of vaccinations, so I can't say I "overuse" them. Nor can I say I've spent more on vaccinations in my life than I have on OTC cold medicine and vitamins.
Medical history is filled with cases where the treatment actually caused harm...
Scientific method: testing a hypothesis. And retesting, and making perturbations and retesting more. Mistakes are made and assumptions are disproved; it is part of the learning process.
Damn chemicals...non-medically-proven
The chemicals prevent secondary infections and are medically proven to not harm the patient.
Fundamentally, a vaccine allows the immune system to create antibodies to an infection. Stopping the spread is a secondary effect to preventing a fatality.
Who the hell said anything about mercury? When I was like 1 or 2 or something, I got a vaccine shot, had an allergic reaction to it, and now I have mild aspergers (and mad programming skills! woohoo). Every other article I've read about this said it was bad reactions to t he vaccines, not some stealthy ingredient that could affect anyway without you knowing it. Plus, I just saw a documentary proving that mercury only makes Johnny Depp crazy. Kudos to anyone who actually gets that joke.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Absoloute bollocks. Anyone who understands about thimerosal and autism knows that it only happens in genetically sensitive people, in particular, thimerosal inhibits PI3-Kinase, which stimulates methionine synthase production. Thus, in those whose methionine synthase production is already low due to genetic mutation(s), thimerosal pushes it over the edge, and the child does not synthesize dopamine, serotonin, taurine, nitric oxide, cysteine and glutathione properly due to reduced methylation. If you pool everybody together, like these autism studies have done, you dilute the effect, and it looks like there is no effect.
Try injecting a tin can of tuna .... There might be complications. I prefer the vaccination thankyouverymuch.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Despite the haze of spittle and rhetoric (or vice-versa?), one can still depend on logic, similarity, correlation and extrapolation. And etc. :)
I am forced - even as a mere as a boorish, uncultured, undiploma'd sodbound peasant of an individual - to concede the validity of the court's lofty and lengthily pondered argument.
And infer that, in identical manner, neither do bullets kill or harm anyone or anything all on their own. They need shells, primers, propellants, and guns with firing mechanisms (pin / flintlock / ... ), an aiming and triggering system or individual.
Indeed, as the death squad members used to say around here ( in the "bad old days" ) : "I don't kill. God does. I just make the teensy little hole."
It isn't anyone's fault if environmental conditions later concur to a slight level of acceptable collateral bugsplat. Right ?
I took care of some Amish people a few years ago. They generally don't see doctors a lot. THey also have some pretty severe untreated illnesses. Much of the purported increase in Autism is from over diagnosis.
The Amish also don't use plastic much (less exposure to oily plasticizers in their food after microwaving), don't use Teflon coated pans, don't drink bottled water, don't use caffeine, don't use Tide detergetnt, don't watch TV, etc
And since vaccines haven't contained Hg in them since 1999-2000 , why hasn't the rate dropped?
..........FULL STOP.
See this nih.gov article:
Acetaminophen (paracetamol) use, measles-mumps-rubella vaccination, and autistic disorder: the results of a parent survey
The theory is that after they started giving children Tylenol with their vaccinations instead of aspirin due to the Reye's Syndrome scare in the 1980's, that caused the autism rate to spike. Tylenol impairs the liver's ability to purge the additives in vaccines (not just the minuscule amount of mercury but some aluminum-based ones designed to boost immune response so that they can use less vaccine), increasing the risk of side effects. The child will probably run a mild fever if you don't use a med such as aspirin or Tylenol. I'm not clear on whether the fever reducer is simply for the child's comfort or if it's medically necessary.
It's a THEORY. It looks promising. But if we simply shout down people who make logical observations and use "correlation is not causation" as an excuse for not thinking we won't get anywhere. An observation can still be correct even if the reasoning is wrong. Meanwhile, using ibuprofen or naproxen with vaccines, if any fever reducer at all (aspirin allergy is nontrivial), and spreading out vaccinations over time to the maximum recommended extent seems prudent. It does appear likely that immune system dysfunction is key to understanding autism. That's likely why changing diet sometimes helps: most of your immune system is in your gut. Antibiotic overuse could be a factor. Which particular set of problems is affecting a given autistic individual will vary but the immune system appears to be the common theme.
The theory presented by the Meads and experts who testified on their behalf "was biologically implausible and scientifically unsupported," Hasting wrote.'" So they didn't present a theory at all.
Not that I'm too concerned with thimerosal, but actually it's just that the US stopped adding it to the MMR vaccine given to children in 1999. It's still used in other vaccines in the US, and continued to be administered to children for many years after 1999, because it was in the stockpiled batches.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
Huh? Apples and oranges, as far as I know; they're two entirely different companies.
No shit, Sherlock? How could you possibly thing I would mean that they are the same??
As the rest of your “comment” is based on that misunderstanding, there’s no need to answer it.
They were examples for criminal global companies, that walk over dead bodies like nothing, for their own profit.
Elsevier with publishing lies in fake magazines, as if they were scientific evidence, and using that, to get doctors to prescribe drugs (the addictive but not healing kind) to patients, to hook them on a life-long addiction that won’t heal anything but just hide the symptoms of the disease that now only gets worse faster.
And Monsanto for thinks like genetically altered crops that only survive when you buy Roundup Ready. So the farmers have to buy it. Like extortion. And if they don’t, Monsanto sues them to 10 years in jail for “copyright infringement”. Yeah, you read that right! Because they have a “copyright” on those seeds. And if the wind blows them over to a non-licensed field, you gonna get sued! Also the crops can’t reproduce. So you have to buy new seeds! And the worst of all: Roundup Ready is one of the worst toxic substances on planet earth. If you spray it on your fields, and let goose run trough it, weeks later, they will die nearly instantly. And that is just one of their crimes. The toxic Aspartame, that was once designed as a substance for biochemical war, and then found to be sweet in smaller (but still very dangerous) doses, is another one. It causes cancer and a multitude of other diseases. And the list goes on endlessly.
Of course there are many other companies. But those are the two that are most prominent for creating fake medical “facts”, and killing people with it. They are literally mass-murdering for money. On the Hitler scale.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Right, but the parent was discussing mandatory vaccination because you must get vaccinated to go to school. But since you don't have to go to mandatory vaccination school, you do have options.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
because the author hasn't drawn any distinction between injecting mercury into the bloodstream and swallowing it.
If there's any uncertainty about the difference involved, remember that the human digestive system can easily process and disable any number of virii, that if directly injected into the bloodstream would cause patient disease and/or death in short shrift.
What's more the cumulative mercury injected into American children is vastly higher than other countries, and can amount to 150 recommended maximum dosage. I'm not anti-vaccine, but I'm sure anti-mercury injections. The only reason they use mercury is to reduce costs due to spoiling. Don't fund the pharamceutical companies' shareholder funds - make the fuckers pay for riding the coattails of "modern medicine". How the hell anyone thinks privatised profits in medicine is still a good idea, beats the hell out of me. It's directly motivating the greedy to profit from the poor health of the populace.
1) Anyone who thinks that the constitution grants rights, does not know what the constitution was written for. The people maintain all rights, it is government who has limited powers which the constitution was written to list. The constitution does not need to grant the privilege of homeschooling, but for govt to claim you must use public school, the constitution must grant government that power and authority. The Bill Of Rights is not something that grants rights, but is a sort of alarm system that is plain enough for even children to know and look out for violations of.
2) If you use a product (the vaccine) and you sign an agreement to waive all medical costs and damages associated with a potential negative outcome, then whats done is done. However, if you do not sign such an agreement, you are free to seek damages. Government has no power to FORCE anyone to take vaccinations in the constitution, and as far as I know, no state constitution grants local governments that power either. If a constitution did grant government such power (federal or local), then the individuals harmed could seek damages no matter what agreement the state made with the company providing the vaccine - since the individual did not sign the agreement, and government cant sign in their name.
3) The supreme court and law means very little. It changes with the wind. Law is not always lawful, or constitutional.