Slashdot Mirror
Famous British Autism Study an 'Elaborate Fraud'
Charliemopps writes "An investigation published by the British medical journal BMJ concludes the study's author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study — and that there was 'no doubt' Wakefield was responsible."
This guy tracked down subjects all the way over in the United States:
Child 11 was among the eight whose parents apparently blamed MMR. The interval between his vaccination and the first "behavioural symptom" was reported as 1 week. This symptom was said to have appeared at age 15 months. But his father, whom I had tracked down, said this was wrong.
"From the information you provided me on our son, who I was shocked to hear had been included in their published study," he wrote to me, after we met again in California, "the data clearly appeared to be distorted."
He backed his concerns with medical records, including a Royal Free discharge summary. Although the family lived 5000 miles from the hospital, in February 1997 the boy (then aged 5) had been flown to London and admitted for Wakefield’s project, the undisclosed goal of which was to help sue the vaccine's manufacturers.
Sadly, CNN couldn't even bother to have a single citation to the actual source text that is uncovering this. Of course they have all sorts of links internal to their site ... gotta keep those page clicks up, don't want eyeballs over at the BMJ.
My work here is dung.
Sadly, there's a lot of money in junk science.
People are still going to ignore all the retractions from the real medical and scientific community in favor of Jenny McCarthy saying on TV that "Vaccines gave my baby autism!"
At least Jenny McCarthy can be thankful her child won't get polio.
This has grown beyond Wakefield now. It's become a self-sustaining conspiracy theory, independant of it's source, and no mere facts are going to even slow it down. Parents want to worry, it's in their instincts to protect their children - if they can find no real dangers, they'll inflate anything that looks remotely threatening regardless of true risk.
Thanks to Jenny McCarthy and others of her ilk some large percentage of the unwashed masses now have it fixed in their brain that vaccination=autism.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
http://www.generationrescure.org/ already has it's rebuttal, including a NEW study which shows a link between Hepatitis-B shots and a 3 times higher risk of autism.
When will they stop?
It's a sad world when some money-grubbing fool can publish a fudged article claiming that a vital, lifesaving tool can cause horrible, debilitating disease, get international attention, and when he's finally disproven all the "concerned parents" of the world ignore him because The Man wants to keep their kids autistic, without sparing a thought to the possiblity that maybe The Other Man just wanted a quick buck.
Sent from my CR-48
I would like to know more about the consequences which the lawyers who wanted Wakefield to produce the falsified study will face. From the article, Wakefield has been stripped of his medical license. So what about the lawyers?
Everyone knows how conspiracy theories work. All the wingnuts will just claim this is a political chop job designed to cover up Big Brother/Big Pharma's Big Evil plan. The BBC could play video next week of Wakefield snorting coke and doing an underage hooker, all the while shouting that he had falsified his results, and it wouldn't matter. At some point they'd probably decide that Wakefield was a deep-cover government plant intended to discredit the movement.
People do realize the number of increased cases of autism has proportionally risen to the acceleration of our population growth...right?
Generally, when the numbers are bigger...
Living With a Nerd
Why is this making the news now? This study has been debunked for a while; I saw a PBS frontline program in May that cast substantial doubt upon the veracity of Wakefield's findings.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/vaccines/view/
As mentioned in the above program, dozens of studies have already failed to duplicate Wakefield's findings. Essentially, he blamed autism on a mercury-base preservative that was found in vaccines administered to babies. Even though there was no proof that this preservative had anything to do with autism, manufacturers ceased to use it in vaccines, but this only caused the anti-vaccine to go hypothesis hunting once more.
I think the concept of vaccines are good however when they stop putting mercury and other toxic additives then that will be another story.
They haven't used Thimerosal in MMR vaccines since 2001(?). There are trace amounts in most flu and hepatitis vaccines.
The anti-vax crowd doesn't usually talk about that, though. Wonder why?
Trolling is a art,
Then you're a fool. And you're also endangering every other child your child comes into contact with.
--- "Maybe you can interface with my ass. By biting it."
OSHA does not say trace amounts of mercury are safe if they do citation please.
Your /. name is Ismellpoop, you didn't vaccinate your kids, and you tried explaining this foolishness. I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Living With a Nerd
Why is this elderly CNN moderator shouting all the time? Or am I too sensitive and its just the normal way they talk at CNN HQ? Just curious...
Part of the reason why this fraudulent BS was accepted was that we don't actually know what causes Autism. No criticism of medical science implied here, there is all kinds of research going on, just no definitive answer. If we could say, "No, Autism is not caused by vaccines, it is caused by ....." the vaccine issue would mostly go away. Right know we are left trying to prove a negative. The saddest part of all this is that children have now died from these entirely preventable diseases.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Here's Brian Deer's publication at the British Medical Journal. Although lengthy (and apparently the first of a series to come), it has a lot of critical details about how this was fixed. It also has 124 citations through the article -- now that's journalism! This guy tracked down subjects all the way over in the United States:
Child 11 was among the eight whose parents apparently blamed MMR. The interval between his vaccination and the first "behavioural symptom" was reported as 1 week. This symptom was said to have appeared at age 15 months. But his father, whom I had tracked down, said this was wrong. "From the information you provided me on our son, who I was shocked to hear had been included in their published study," he wrote to me, after we met again in California, "the data clearly appeared to be distorted." He backed his concerns with medical records, including a Royal Free discharge summary. Although the family lived 5000 miles from the hospital, in February 1997 the boy (then aged 5) had been flown to London and admitted for Wakefield’s project, the undisclosed goal of which was to help sue the vaccine's manufacturers.
Sadly, CNN couldn't even bother to have a single citation to the actual source text that is uncovering this. Of course they have all sorts of links internal to their site ... gotta keep those page clicks up, don't want eyeballs over at the BMJ.
Don Imus' wife has been beating this junk science trashcan lid for years, and making loads of money off of the Wakefield fraud too. If anybody listens to that show I am curious to know if it was mentioned.
Home of The Suki Series
When will they stop?
They won't stop.
The anti-vax kooks have been in this game for so long and have so much time and energy invested in it they cannot back out now.
Even if Wakefield came clean and admitted it was all bogus data, the Age of Autism/Generation Rescue quacks won't believe it.
This is their business!
Trolling is a art,
Ah, the classic "We never claimed that [discredited evidence] supported our position, you must have been imagining things. *hastily edits old articles*" approach.
What really amazes me about this business is the behavior of the mainstream media in relation to the development of this 'story' in the first place.
Wakefields paper was just a collection of 12 anecdotes - meaningless in any clinical sense. He's clearly an idiot and should simply have been struck off and ignored.
You don't need to be an expert to work out that MMR and autism are both fairly common, and to find some cases of kids that have both is not that unusual - certainly not enough to start the newspaper and TV frenzy that occurred. That the media decided not to ignore him and tried instead to promote the scare, is to their great shame.
What is also incredible is the fact that that media deliberately ignored studies that proved no connection at all between MMR and autism.
It's appalling that this effort to boost ratings almost certainly cost the lives of infants and probably still does.
You get more mercury from a tuna sandwich than you do from vaccines.
The amount of environmental mercury is high, especially around places that burn coal.
In any case, it's been known for ages that mercury is a neurotoxin. You're drawing correlations to vaccines and autism where no cause has actually been demonstrated.
Trolling is a art,
When will they stop?
When we slashdot them off of the internet?
Done.
Reason why there is hope for the future generation #364:
"I wish my grass was emo so it could cut itself."
... to see the MMR makers sue Wakefield and, especially, the trial lawyers who paid him.
clicked too fast.
Not OSHA, How about the FDA?. Or are they in on the big conspiracy?
Trolling is a art,
The anti-vax crowd also doesn't explain why, after removing the mercury that they blame for causing autism, the rates of autism continue to climb.
Elemental mercury != mercury compounds. It's basic chemistry.
this jackass goes on to continue to make up lies about autism.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You know your kids are taking in trace amounts of mercury from food they eat every day and the environment around them right? Any of them ever eat any fish, such as tuna? That's a big load of mercury right there.
It is safe to say that sufficiently small amounts of mercury aren't harmful. Probably most of the animals on the planet, and certainly every human, has a non-zero amount of mercury in their body.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Your FUD-slathered comment suggests a cover up.
Do you have a link to any reputable journal to show what you suggest, Anon?
Trolling is a art,
You mean you're just coming to this realization???
I love how they didn't post the full text of the study, just the abstract.
Why does the government contradict itself then? FDA/OSHA
And the FDA has never approved something harmful before have they?
it is hard to quantify, but the amount of idiots of didn't get their kids vaccinated because of this guy's "research" probably resulted in many unnecessary deaths of children. and this includes children who were vaccinated: an effective vaccine relies on "herd immunity". if enough kids are resistant to say, whooping cough, whooping cough can't get a leg up into a given population. but if enough aren't immune, the disease gets a certain amount of circulation in the community, and is able to try to infect many more kids. eventually, it is able to infect kids of parents who dutifully got their kids vaccinated (since for every vaccination, many vaccines don't take), and eventually, it is able to kill many kids
oh, and someone infect jenny mccarthy with whooping cough, that ignorant bitch. let her know what her "advocacy" really means
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yeah, safe.
Far safer for the overall population then not having a vaccinmate population.
Of course the reason for that polio was more completecated then 'they got it from a vaccine'.
Do to cost reasons they used a 'live' vaccine; which is fine. But they didn't finish the vaccination regime because of some religious 'leaders' making up nonsense. With a live vaccine there is a slight risk of mutation if you don't get enough of the population vaccinated.
Of course, in most countries they don't use a live vaccine anymore they this risk is non existent for those groups.
Naturals, nothing is 100% safe. In medicine it's about risks. And the risk of not having a vaccinated population far outweighs the fraction of a percent of people that actually have a problem.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
From another post I made in this same discussion:
People do realize the number of increased cases of autism has proportionally risen to the acceleration of our population growth...right?
Living With a Nerd
It's curious that the US gov is funding a Compensation Program for those injured by vaccines.
Wakefield’s Lancet Paper Vindicated
Um, yeah, this article was already thoroughly debunked and disowned by its original publisher, Lancet, back in 2004. Ten of the twelve original contributing authors made an official statement in Lancet that they'd been deceived by false data created by Wakefield and wanted to get their names erased from that lie. Why is this still news?
Are you suggesting some sort of DDOS attack?
TERRORIST!!!11!
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
The mortality of measles is about 0.3% - 3 kids in 1000 that contract it will die. Your sample size simply means nothing. That's why you leave epidemiology to the experts and don't recklessly endanger not only your kids but everyone they come in contact with by refusing vaccination. In my opinion, it should simply be mandated by law. Parents refusing to vaccinate are clearly unfit for their role, their kids are better off if their asshat parents get thrown into the slammer and the kids set up for adoption.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Thimerosal is not mercury. It is a compound with mercury in it with low bioavailabity.
That's like not eating salt because you're afraid of the chlorine molecule it contains.
There are countless pages out there discussing the dangers of chlorine, that doesn't make salt a hyper-deadly toxin.
Trolling is a art,
...than science-is-bad Luddites: The cynical snake-oil salesmen who exploit them.
Regards;
Mercury and thimerosal have not been present in the MMR or pretty much any other vaccine since 2001.
Citation: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/93217.php
Any of them ever eat any fish, such as tuna?
My kids don't inject tuna into their bloodstream.
The earlier point was made that there's more mercury in a can of tuna than there used to be in a vaccine. You do realize that anything you eat eventually makes its way into your bloodstream...right?
You actually bred???? Sheesh.
Living With a Nerd
So a completely different vaccine has the same effect: autism! I have another explanation that is much more plausible: people who tend to believe in wild conspiracy theories have a 3 times higher risk of having children with autism.
They do not inject it into the bloodstream, but they do get more of it into their bloodstream through eating tuna than through a vacc. Are you saying that mercury that enters your bloodstream through your mouth is somehow more benign than mercury that enters it through the skin via a syringe? How can that be?
Emphasis mine.
Vaccination acts as a sort of firebreak or firewall in the spread of the disease, slowing or preventing further transmission of the disease to others.[3] Unvaccinated individuals are indirectly protected by vaccinated individuals, as the latter will not contract and transmit the disease between infected and susceptible individuals.[2] Hence, a public health policy of herd immunity may be used to reduce spread of an illness and provide a level of protection to a vulnerable, unvaccinated subgroup. Since only a small fraction of the population (or herd) can be left unvaccinated for this method to be effective, it is considered best left for those who cannot safely receive vaccines because of a medical condition such as an immune disorder or for organ transplant recipients.
The more people who opt out of vaccines, the greater the likelihood of these diseases making a comeback. That's why you've never seen the measles or the mumps.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Herd_immunity
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Your article fails to mention the vaccine in question is the oral polio vaccine (which can cause polio in about 1 in 750,000 vaccinations), which is not used in the US, Canada, or the UK. The injected vaccine does not have that effect.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
You're an idiot who both doesn't know the difference between autism and ADHD and knows nothing about children or medicine. Congratulations!
I've heard the parents of Autistic kids ranting about how vaccines caused their kids' condition. That's fine and we should allow people to raise their children as they see fit but within the moral bounds of society. We also can't legislate morality no matter how hard we try. That means if a kid will get polio because he doesn't have the vaccine or represents a health risk to others by spreading a disease, then that child needs to be quarantined. Anybody remember Leper Colonies?
I'm not trying to be cruel here but we still have people on this planet who believe that the Earth is flat, that man didn't land on the Moon and that Sarah Palin is a worthy political candidate for the Presidency. Why? Because we don't have a vaccine for stupidity yet.
Let the lemmings go off the cliffs because nothing we do or say will change their minds. Jenny McCarthy included.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Just what do you think happens when they digest that tuna?
It gets broken up into components in the stomach, in the intestine anything that can be (including the mercury) gets absorbed into the bloodstream, then any remaining waste gets discarded.
People are still going to ignore all the retractions from the real medical and scientific community in favor of Jenny McCarthy saying on TV that "Vaccines gave my baby autism!"
Fortunately, those people's children will have a greater than average probability of dying young, which will improve average human intelligence in the long run.
I don't want them to stop. Stupid parents not vaccinating their stupid kids can only improve the gene pool in the long term.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Whats the risk? This:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFDA1F3BF933A15751C0A967958260
By not vaccinating you children you put at risk other children too young to get vaccinated.
yeahj, you didn't actually uderstand my post. I'll try again. Please step back an calm down so your comprehension returns to normal.
It's about cost. That country chose to use a live vaccine. There is a slight risk of a mutation IF you stop giving the vaccine.
The tragic polio outbreak happened AFTER the religious leaders came out against it. Invoking "evil plots." AFTER WORDS. after. words.
The risk is slightr, but it's there. However sinve i have a safer, better option for my children, I took that. In fact,. I dont' even know if you can get the live vaccines in the US anymore.
Which brings me to this:
For years millions and millions of Americans where given the live vaccine and there was no outbreeak? why? because they completed the program..
If the live vaccines was the only choice, I would gladly give it to my children. DO you realize how common polio was? and i's nearly gone? in fact it would be completely gone from the world if people would follow a proper vaccination regime.
I'm not saying anything ground breaking here. This is all proven science.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Add in the fact that vaccines aren't effective for 100% of the population and you get a greater chance for a break down in herd immunity when people choose not to get vaccinated at all.
From the article you link to...
The WHO says the outbreak occurred when some of those who had received the oral polio vaccine excreted a mutated form of the virus which infected those who were not immunised.
Emphasis mine.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal
not following your assumed logic. are you suggesting thiomersal does not contain the element Hg? Or that it is not metabolised like regular Hg? Do you have evidence of these claims?
There is a lot of good info here:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=9552
For people that listen to podcast I highly recommend quackcast.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Seriously?
Yes I eat bread (learn to spell).
Bred is the past tense of breed, genius.
You truly are a boy like your name says.
"Pojut" is plural..."Poju" is singular. It's a nickname I got in high school from a friend who said my wide-spread interests (ranging from hiking to cars to gaming to computers to writing to music) made it seem like I was more than one person.
Living With a Nerd
clicked too fast.
Not OSHA, How about the FDA?. Or are they in on the big conspiracy?
The FDA is not a trustworthy organization.
My daughter was in ER the evening after having the MMR, no other reason for her to fall sick. We didn't let her have the booster.
The doctors told me they took no records of correlation with other medical treatments.
There is no evidence.
This man may be a fraud, but we have no way of knowing. The public health authorities don't want to know.
Okay, this guy's obviously trolling, just ignore....
Oh arse
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16322148?ordinalpos=1&itool=PPMCLayout.PPMCAppController.PPMCArticlePage.PPMCPubmedRA&linkpos=3
Though his statement is misleading at best. Out of 9 cases (in a school of over 600), 7 of them were vaccinated (1 with a single dose, 6 with both doses) and 2 were not vaccinated. The 7 vaccinated cases falls within the typical vaccine failure rate.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
they rely on herd mentality, all vaccines do, of every kind of vaccine. no vaccine is 100% effective, ever, nor is that even theoretically possible
if say 90% work, and all kids get the vaccine, that 90% represents a wall, a certain level of impenetrability for the disease into a given population: no vectors or outbreak paths possible
but if say, only half get vaccinated, only 45% of kids are effectively vaccinated, and for the disease, this represents an explosion of possible vectors for further spread in a given population, and to stay and further reinfect
i don't know what this kind of scientific study is called, but someone could, given the vaccination rate, and certain characteristics of a disease (mode of transmission, ease of transmission, infectious period, latency, chronic infection rate, etc), they could calculate a % for effective vaccinations in a given population. where above that %, most kids don't get sick, and below that %, outbreaks become possible. a sort of critical threshold of effective vaccination across which mass infections and deaths become possible
i bet someone could prove, mathematically, and with surveys of parents in areas where measles and mumps outbreaks occurred, what effect this man's lies had on death rates in some parts of the western world where his lies were widespread. charge him, charge jenny mccarthy, charge other prominent loud ignorant voices in this vaccination=autism movement with mass murder. i'm serious, these people are lethal and must be stopped
the great lesson is: vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate. any parent who isn't getting their kid's vaccinated is depending on every other kid to keep their kid healthy. and if enough parents think like that, kids die
and then charge those asshole parents with irresponsible ignorant murder too
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The measles vaccine doesn't stop you getting measles. It primes the immune system so when you do catch it you have a bunch of spots and a mild fever. Without it, measles can be very, very nasty...frequently life threatening.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Sadly that isn't the case. Their kids become petri dishes for the viruses to grow and mutate in. Eventually, a virus that could have been prevented with a vaccine, has now evolved into one that can't.
That's what I was thinking. We could do a zombie movie where the zombies are the product of botched vaccinations.
How about I piss in your cornflakes? What's the problem it's not piss it just has a small amount of piss in it.
If you were to bind the piss with the cornflakes and create a new, safe and tasty molecule then I would try it.
They drink recycled urine on the space station, btw.
Trolling is a art,
If we were in the same country I would call police and social service. You are consciously exposing your children to harm.
You cannot grasp the concept of trace amounts of a given substance and thinks you can outsmart a medical doctor. Please, find yourself help. Talk to known MD and let him explain you what he's talking about. Give proper health care for your children - they shouldn't bear the cost of your own ignorance.
You do realize that the rate of autism, i.e. the number of cases per 1,000 people, is also increasing? In other words, when accounting for increasing in population, there is a rise in the rate of autism.
That is the question people are trying to answer. Personally, I think a large chunk of it is probably explained by higher rates of diagnosis. More kids who wouldn't have been label autistic back in the day are now being labeled. Whether it's really justified or not, is another question.
If you don't understand what he is writing you should refrain from commenting.
LOL
but that would just further the anti-vaccination myth. it would boomerang ...the hero of the movie could kill zombies with a boomerang!
symbolism! we could pepper the movie with references to common social issues in epidemiology!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Ohh I thought they were trying to give us autism. Those autistic soldiers are just great.
They give soldiers the vaccine because there is still a chance it could be used as a biological weapon.
Smallpox still exists in both the US and Russia. Samples are kept at both the CDC and the Vector Institute in Russia (Their version of the CDC)
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Smallpox#Post-eradication
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Before I agree with you could you clarify in what respect are they parallel? In the case of vaccines we have parents that chose to believe the word of fringe scientists and pop celebrities over the word of the scientific and medical establishment. Even thought their premier study has been shown to be a fraud I don't think it will change their minds.
A) don't cross hot topics? seriously no good can come from it.
B) What GW fraud? are you talking about the MADE UP story that was in the press?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why don't you look on pubmed, the largest database of research articles, and take a look? Hint: the pro-science side of the debate actually understands what goes on when you administer a vaccination; vaccination does not mean 100% immunity. Also those outbreaks occur where clusters of people don't get their kids vaccinated, and in those outbreaks the unvaccinated kids are disproportionally overrepresented compared to their proportion of the population at large.
You drink recycled urine on earth too. Probabilistically, ever molecule of water on the planet was at some point in human urine.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
That's why you've never seen the measles or the mumps.
Does the vaccination affect your reading comprehension? I - and everyone I know - has at some point had measles or mumps. If you actually take the time to read what I wrote, you'll see that I said I have never heard of anyone who had died of measles or mumps.
really? hitting kids cures autism?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Measles deaths worldwide fell by 74% between 2000 and 2007, from an estimated 750,000 to 197,000. Do you know anyone who died from malaria (1,000,000/yr), yellow fever (200,000/yr), aids (1,800,000/yr), lukemia (600,000/yr), flu (500,000), rabies (55,000)?
I threw away a few mod points to reply so I hope it sinks in that after a 74% drop in measles deaths it is now as harmless as yellow fever, if it drops by a further 74% it will be as harmless as rabies.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It's hardly a "battle". You get some wee spots and a snotty nose for a day or two. There are even perfectly effective single-vaccine shots for measles, mumps and German measles. Spiking up young children with the massive megadose of pathogens in the MMR vaccine is asking for trouble.
So then we need small pox vaccine so the government doesn't infect us?
Sigh, how did you get this dumb? Did someone hit you over the head with a hammer throughout your childhood? If I inject a teaspoon of salt the amount of salt that gets into my bloodstream is a teaspoon. If you eat a teaspoon of salt, the amount that gets into your bloodstream is significantly less than a teaspoon.
Now, since you are clearly rather slow, I'll try to do this slowly. When you eat tuna the amount of mercury in the tuna is significantly higher than in a vacc. In fact, it is so much higher that eating tuna will put significantly more mercury into your bloodstream than you would get if you take a vaccine.
Was that clear to you? If I was to use your "analogy", it would be more like: I will take an injection of a saline solution and you can eat 100lbs of salt, and let's see who's better off. Amounts here entirely taken out of thin air, just trying to prove a point, not describe the actual difference in mercury levels in fish and a vacc.
Please feel free to answer once the swelling in your brain has subsided.
Great point! ;)
That homeopathic urine does wonders for my stamina!
Trolling is a art,
I'm suggesting that a compound that contains mercury, bound up in a molecule, isn't the same as elemental mercury. It's a basic principle of chemistry. Somebody else in this thread gave a good example in salt. Salt contains chlorine and sodium, and is mostly harmless (except in extreme amounts or too much over long periods of time), but elemental chlorine and elemental sodium would not be something I'd put in my mouth.
Elements != compounds and a compound containing a particular element may have no properties in common with the element by itself.
Another example, elemental phosphorus is nasty stuff. Very toxic, highly reactive. Match girls used to lose their jaws because of exposure to phosphorous while making matches. White phosphorus is used in incendiary weapons because of the horrible burns it causes people that don't heal. Yet, shocker! It's part of the back-bone of your DNA. It's part of the main energy carrying molecule in your metabolism (ATP). It's part of many biologically important molecules. There's phosphoric acid in your soda!
Elemental mercury != mercury compounds. It's basic chemistry.
Then why not just add some lead+arsenic+uranium compounds in as well?
All the water you drink used to be urine - and if you believe in this anti-vaccine crap, maybe you believe in 'water memory' as well, which must make that a very disturbing thought for you.
Sigh. I really think you should try to grow some sort of brain before lashing out against someone who doesn't spell English correctly, particularly considering the fact that a number of people on /. are not English native.
Once you have been able to grow a brain slightly more functional than an HP calculator, and you can write at least five languages without errors, come back and comment.
Anecdotal evidence at its finest. Just because you don't personally know anyone who's gone through it is a good sign. Without vaccines, you'd be fortunate to count on your hands the numbers of deaths you'd know about.
From Wikipedia who cites Perry, Robert T.; Halsey, Neal A. (May 1, 2004). "The Clinical Significance of Measles: A Review". The Journal of Infectious Diseases (Infectious Diseases Society of America) 189 (S1): 1547–1783. doi:10.1086/377712. PMID 15106083. Retrieved January 14, 2009.:
The fatality rate from measles for otherwise healthy people in developed countries is 3 deaths per thousand cases [for measels], or 0.3%
From http://aapredbook.aappublications.org/cgi/content/extract/2003/1/3.80
Death attributable to mumps is rare; the estimated case fatality rate is 1.6 to 3.8 per 10 000.
Lets look at the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS)
http://www.conncoll.edu/offices/envhealth/MSDS/neuroscience/thimerosal.pdf
Section 3 - Hazards Identification
EMERGENCY OVERVIEW
Highly Toxic (USA) Very Toxic (EU).
Very toxic by inhalation, in contact with skin and if swallowed.
Danger of cumulative effects. May cause sensitization by
inhalation and skin contact. Irritating to eyes, respiratory
system and skin.
Calif. Prop. 65 reproductive hazard. Target organ(s): Nerves.
Kidneys.
I found the "R33: Danger of cumulative effects" to be very interesting. The more you're exposed to, the worse off you are, because..of course, mercury is a toxic heavy metal (Arsenic, Lead, Mercury, Cadmium, Iron, Aluminum) and our bodies don't like that stuff.
It's like not eating pocketknives because you're afraid of the blades it contains. Of course, the next argument is that very small pocketknives are ok to eat...because they're so small.
"Lame" - Galaxar
Unfortunately not everyone is able to be vaccinated due to unrelated health issues and other people lacking vaccinations lowers herd immunity to the point were innocent people contract diseases that are 100% preventable.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
I am fully aware of the differences in spelling between "American English" and English elsewhere in the world. That being said, I have never seen "bred", the past tense of breed, spelled as "bread". If you have, please show me, as that would be a first!
Living With a Nerd
You get more mercury from a tuna sandwich than you do from vaccines.
Injecting something in a few seconds is quite different from ingesting and digesting over more than a few minutes.
People don't normally inject tuna sandwiches into their bodies. So even if there are 85 micrograms of mercury in the sandwich it's not the same as 25 micrograms of mercury in a vaccine ( http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability/VaccineSafety/UCM096228 ). And that's assuming a tuna sandwich with 100 grams of tuna at the max mercury levels stated in: http://www.fda.gov/food/foodsafety/product-specificinformation/seafood/foodbornepathogenscontaminants/methylmercury/ucm115644.htm
Note: I'm assuming that a PPM value of 0.118 (the average level) would mean that 100g of tuna will contain 11.8 micrograms of mercury.
The other difference between mass vaccines and most "normal" drugs is, these vaccines are given to very large numbers of people who aren't sick.
So even if the vaccine (whether the preservatives, fillers, active ingredients or contaminants) only harms a tiny proportion of people who somehow don't deal with it well, and so doesn't show up in tests of say 1000 subjects, it can still cause problems when millions get it.
If you inject something into millions of people, why should we be surprised if some people actually have a bad reaction to it, or even deny the possibility of it?
But if the affected are few then it can be considered "collateral damage". It's only not collateral damage if the numbers harmed are greater than the numbers harmed by the disease itself - in which case it becomes a self-inflicted "pandemic".
Basically the safety standards for mass vaccines have to be higher than for "normal" drugs.
"It's hardly a "battle". You get some wee spots and a snotty nose for a day or two. There are even perfectly effective single-vaccine shots for measles, mumps and German measles. Spiking up young children with the massive megadose of pathogens in the MMR vaccine is asking for trouble."
What a fuckin idiot...
There is little good in this. I'm pleased beyond punch that another quack is exposed, and a falsehood exposed. But the damage is so massive, parents will refute this for a generation. Dierdre Imus will NOT give up, and Jenny McCarthy will continue to probe for the coverup and corporate malfeasance. Autism will continue to be overdiagnosed, and the DSM V will only add to the confusion. Many children will grow up so misdiagnosed that it should be considered a crime.
And yet, I cannot be happy that this lie was successful, and that we may now start the witch hunts for other fabrications, good science will be hampered by the additional hurdles of more and more research and checking, and ultimately we may lose faith in science a little bit more.
There is little good in this. Why do lies seem to live longer than the truth? I know, since I don't have an autistic child, I don't understand. And I only understand a little that urge to find a cause, identify the culprit, punish the guily. But my dear friend who does have an autistic daughter has long ago given this up, and now just works to ensure she will be cared for after he is gone. He believes this is all he can really do. And of course visit her and stay involved. I do not envy him, because he will leave this world and leave behind a child dependent on the care of others.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Even if thimerosal were mercury, it has no relevant place in the anti-vaccine argument since there was no correlating decline in autism cases when it was removed from children's vaccines. Autism diagnoses have continued to rise in the wake of the questionable thimerosal ban and the rising numbers of the unvaccinated, which all but confirms that thimerosal was nothing more than a needless distraction.
Anti-vaxxers still bring out the ghost of thimerosal because having an opportunity to name drop "mercury" makes them appear to be more serious and educated than they actually are. The first step in reintroducing rationality and logic to an anti-vaxxer is to nip that particular argument in the bud.
I completely agree with you and I like the salt analogy, but I wouldn't even give them that much leeway.
Aww, someone upset because someone else pointed out you were a fool?
There is a war going on for your mind.
Hey Tea party. We really need your help here. These new events, and stunning piece of journalism has put this media sustained conspiracy in jeopardy. If you guys don't pick this up, this issue may die down. If you need a candidate to rake this up in the congress, I am willing to be your candidate. I will even go on TV and claim that I am not SATAN.
It is also worth noting that Ismellpoop cited the FDA and OSHA in his/her reasons for not giving vaccines to his/her kids, in addition to citing the WHIMIS, which is Canadian.
Even if he/she is from Canada, I have still never seen "bred" spelled "bread".
Living With a Nerd
Don't feed the troll.
Viagra?
It's the same reason they moved from 'mercury poisoning' when vaccine companies stopped using it and autism didn't go down.
This is exactly the same sort of 'science' as 'intelligent design'...it's 'invent a position and desperately scrabble around for any possible reason it could be true, and latch onto it until someone disproves it, and then latch onto something else that proves the same thing.
That is not anywhere near how science works.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Persistant misbehavior by children just wasn't acceptable 25 years ago.
Sure it was. Children in question were just "slow" or "retarded" and stowed into institutions.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Let's do something about that ignorance you have going there: in point of fact, atoms and molecules from actual piss are already in your cornflakes. Shit too. It's fairly certain that many things you are eating today contains atoms and molecules that were at one point excrement of some kind. What do you think corn is made of?
More generally, even if you don't take organic reuse into account, there's only 92 or so naturally occurring elements and they get reused in everything.
Then what's all that brown stuff that comes out the other end?
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
heres the direct link to the FDA page on Thimerosol:
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
Yeah, IAAAA (I am an anonymous astronaut). I drink piss for breakfast, lunch and supper. When I get home from work, there's nothing like a cold alcoholic piss.
We have "scientific studies" that show vaccinating your kids causes autism. We have "scientific studies" that say eating a high-fat, no-carb diet is healthy. We had "scientific studies" that said smoking actually causes rainbows and happy puppies. We also have scientific studies that show dangerous climate change. And the scientists wonder why no one believes them. I'm not saying the association is accurate, rational, or healthy. But it shouldn't be surprising, either.
If I had mod points I'd mod this up.
Why don't you give your kids the live vaccine if it is so safe?
Because the dead vaccine is safer (but more expensive). But something is still better than nothing.
You know when your doctor says "make sure you finish taking all the antibiotics, even if you're feeling better"? That's because stopping mid-way through can make you sicker. And that's what all those religious leaders did - intentionally made their followers sick to make a political point.
As someone who's kids are vaccinated (only against the serious stuff like MMR, etc. Less than 5 vaccines) I can only say you are an ignorant ass.
Given any treatment there are risk reward decisions that need to be made by those responsible for the kids involved. If they make the wrong choice they live with the consequences.
In the US there are 30+ vaccines recommended for kids under 6. The evidence for most is so shoddy it would make Dr Wakefield look like thorough and honest person.
...Made an excellent point on subject in their last episode
I - and everyone I know - has at some point had measles or mumps.
I haven’t, and I can’t think of anyone I know who has had them. I did have the chicken pox, but that’s mild enough that they don’t vaccinate against it.
Unless you’re trying to say that anyone who was vaccinated for measles has “had measles”, which is ridiculous.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Before the vaccine schedule, the measles were routinely among the top 5 killers in our nation. Before the vaccine, everyone knew kids that had died of measles, and many that had nearly died.
There used to be over 500,000 cases of the measles yearly in the US, killing 5,000+ children every year. Now we sometimes have years where the measles don't kill a single person in the US, and that's on a much, much larger population. Usually the number is in low single digits, but sometimes an outbreak occurs in an un-vaccinated community that ends up killing dozens, or even hundreds.
You can now thank all of the other parents today and from generations ago that decided to vaccinate against this disease, and that it has nearly been eradicated from our population. Just make sure that you don't take your kids to Amish country, or other areas where vaccinations are not common and the disease runs it's course. If they happen to have an outbreak that year, it might turn out badly. At that point they won't be protected by the herd immunity that the rest of us responsible parents are providing them.
Regardless of whether or not it affects the body in the same way as elemental mercury, thiomersal is rated at the maximum toxicity health levels by the USA (Highly Toxic), EU (Very Toxic), and NFPA (blue 3 for health) ratings, and has a cumulative effect.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I guess you've never had shingles or known someone that has it. Measles doesn't have to kill you to mess you up for life.
It's like not eating pocketknives because you're afraid of the blades it contains. Of course, the next argument is that very small pocketknives are ok to eat...because they're so small.
No, it's nothing like that.
I'm sure we could come up with a MSDS for chlorine gas, as well. Still doesn't change the fact that you can eat salt.
Errr.... if your digestive system was not really really good at getting things into your bloodstream, you'd be dead. Your argument makes about as much sense as if I said that I dipped my hand in rubbing alcohol and didn't get hammered, so I don't understand all the fuss about alcoholic beverages.
Like:
Data show the earth isn't warming on average.
The data that show earth to be warming on average is faulty.
The earth is warming but greenhouses gases aren't the cause
The earth is warming because of greenhouse gases of non human origins.
The earth is warming because of athropological greenhouse gases but it's good news.
It's not good news but adapting (increasing the climatization in my office) is cheaper.
In hindsight adapting was not the best solution at the time but it's too late now to do anything.
It's not issued to all soldiers, only ones deployed to Korea or the middle east.
Smallpox not gone, it's just not in the wild. There are still samples of the virus in high security labs, which could potentially be used for biological warfare.
Furthermore, while there has not been a known wild case in over 30 years, there is a chance there may still be unreported cases in isolated parts of the world such as some middle east countries or North Korea.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Sorry, that's chickenpox, not measles.
I haven't, and I can't think of anyone I know who has had them. I did have the chicken pox, but that's mild enough that they don't vaccinate against it.
Maybe you're younger than I am. When I was the kind of age that kids get measles etc. at, pretty much everyone had it at some point over the course of a week or two, and then it was all gone. Thus, herd immunity. There wasn't this big screaming hoo-hah about eleventy billion kids a second dying of measles, and no-one thought it was worth vaccinating against it. Like I mentioned in another post, teenage girls got German measles (that dates me, they call it Rubella now) at school even if they'd had it, because the consequences of getting that while pregnant are pretty horrific.
Probably there are copyright restrictions on printing the whole text.
#1 The growth rate of autism also correlates to a decrease in diagnoses of mental retardation. Special education and allied health therapies have improved in the past few decades such that we can more accurately differentially diagnose various types of developmental disorders. #2. And the increased focus on early intervention means we can now mitigate the severity of developmental disorders so that someone born with autism may not necessarily be severely mentally retarded as they would have been in the 1970s or '80s. #3. Finally, we've become so convinced that there is an "epidemic" that there is more money and services available for autism spectrum disorders relative to other developmental disabilities, so that any kid who displays any autistic-like qualities is likely to be identified as ASD because it opens a lot of doors for getting services that might not be otherwise available.
That's not to say it isn't increasing, but the numbers may not be saying what you think they are saying.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
really? hitting kids cures autism?
*produces case of Bud Light* Aww..here we go!!!
My favorite "science for the cause" was the bogus but widely believed Top Scientist's report that 70's college kids are going blind from looking at the sun after dropping acid (LSD.)
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Hey, I'm not disagreeing either. I think the concept of an "epidemic" is over blown and I worry that a lot of kids that fit within the normal variation of humans are unnecessarily being labeled as autistic and therefore in need of treatment when they really don't. A lot of great scientists and engineers would probably be labeled as autistic by today's standards and it would be a shame if treatment robs us of some of the unique gifts some of these people have.
If there were safe and served a purpose, sure. But you don't put stuff into a vaccine just for the fun of it. Thiomersal is added as a preservative to extend the shelf-life of the vaccine (i.e. make it safer for longer).
As a climate scientist, I thought about this comparison.
But we're not throwing Wakefield to the wolves because he was wrong. Lots of scientists are wrong, it's okay. And it's not because he spoke with bias for a hypothesis he believed in. That's okay too. Wakefield's crimes are 1) deliberately falsifying and modifying data to fit his theory, and 2) doing so for profit without disclosing a conflict of interest.
The East Anglia CRU emails, which I assume are the hotbuttons you're pushing at the moment, show scientists with strong opinions, possibly putting a little spin on their presentations, but there is no evidence that they falsified data or took money under the table for their activities.
TFA specified that the study was:
famous
published by the British medical journal BMJ
performed by Dr. Andrew Wakefield
an 'Elaborate Fraud', and deliberately so
About the only thing it didn’t tell me was that it was the famous study linking autism with vaccines, which was sort of the most important point...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Do you have a point? Your post is all over the place and I can't figure it out. You don't make any sense with your whole injection vs digestion argument. As if injecting something is instantly absorbed throughout your body....and consuming something normally is so slow that something toxic wouldn't damage the system. The rest of your post is just stating random things without a point or a conclusion. Yeah, some very small percentage of people will react badly to vaccines. If the people who react poorly to the vaccine is greater than the people saved by the vaccine then we should probably reevaluate the use of the vaccine. Duh. This isn't the case...so freaking get your kids their vaccines.
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There is a problem with letting mornic parents do there own thing. It can (and does) hurt the children of responsible parents too.
There are two main ways for the children of a responsible parent to come down with one of these childhood diseases:
1) The vaccine just "didn't take". It happens. They aren't perfect. However, if EVERYONE was vaccinated, this wouldn't matter, as the disease would be eradicated (or nearly so), and then you don't have to worry about catching it. Instead, kids where it didn't take pick it up from kids whose parents were morons.
2) A child is too young to be vaccinated. These vaccines are not administered at birth, and some of them require several doses before immunity is achieved. It is quite possible to pick up the disease from the child of a vaccination-refusing parent. To top things off, the older unvaccinated child is more likely to survive the disease, while the newborn is quite vulnerable.
Yes, it is possible for the diseases to be transmitted solely among children with failed vaccines or those that are too young to be vaccinated, but those cases are quite rare. Measles was well on the way to being eradicated in the Western World before this clown came along. Imagine what a disaster it would have been if this guy was peddling his quackery prior to the eradication of smallpox or the near-eradication of polio.
Both measles and rubella can cause severe birth defects and even miscarriage or still birth if caught during pregnancy. For non-pregnant people, it can cause blindness, and is one of the main killers for people with immunodeficiencies, such as HIV sufferers.
My GF had an extreme allergic reaction to the MMR vaccine and so is not immune. She is 100% reliant on herd immunity to keep her safe when we have children. Failure to vaccinate your children put people like her an severe risk.
Are you dumb or just pretending? Nobody is talking about someone proficient in the difference between American English, British English or Australian English spelling.
The person to whom your retarded comment was directed might have been German, Romainan, Chinese, from Uruguay or any number of countries where English is not spoken at all. This person might not know that bread is not spelled "bred" in any version of the English language.
Commenting on peoples spelling on a site that is heavily used by people who may only have a very rudimentary training in English spelling is a sure sign of massive brain malfunction.
I do assume you are somewhat aware that there are other languages in the world and that a lot of people, the majority of the worlds population in fact, has no formal training in English spelling. How's your Cantonese? Finnish? Would I make fun of you if you could not spell bread in Romanian and Urdu?
It's exactly like that. Pocketknives are just as dangerous as the blades they contain. If you remove the blade from the pocketknife, it becomes much more safe.
Using salt as an example is asinine. Salt is safe, while the elemental components of salt are not.
I didn't post an MSDS for Mercury as an element, I posted one for Thimerosal - the compound. If it's so safe, why is it classified as "Highly Toxic"?
The MSDS for chlorine and sodium as elements is radically different from the MSDS for sodium chloride as a compound.
The MSDS for Mercury vs Thimerosal are not that different.
"Lame" - Galaxar
Before the vaccine schedule, the measles were routinely among the top 5 killers in our nation. Before the vaccine, everyone knew kids that had died of measles, and many that had nearly died.
Really? Because the MMR vaccine is a fairly new thing, and when I was child of about the age you'd give it (in the 1970s) no-one was even getting the single vaccine. If 5000 children a year were dying in the US because they weren't vaccinated for measles, then you must have a problem with the way you handle measles. Maybe your healthcare system is lacking something.
Thimerosol (sp?), the trace-murcury-containing preservative you are thinking of, is no longer used in US childhood disease vaccines. Hasn't been for many years. And when it was gone, whadda-know, autism rates didn't drop.
How's your Urdu? French? German? Mandarin? Cantonese?
Laying into someone because of their English spelling in an international forum is massively retarded. That is, of course, unless you feel that your spelling in all of the worlds languages, dead and alive, is perfect.
I point you to my other posted response.
It is also worth noting that Ismellpoop cited the FDA and OSHA in his/her reasons for not giving vaccines to his/her kids, in addition to citing the WHIMIS [slashdot.org], which is Canadian.
Even if he/she is from Canada, I have still never seen "bred" spelled "bread".
Living With a Nerd
Fool, the chlorine in salt is not nearly a dangerous as the ultra deadly sodium it contains!
Just wondering, how many of these people only have one child?
If you put all your eggs in one basket, you might tend to be overprotective of that basket.
That's an even better example, but I didn't want to use it.
Yeah, you can actually figure out how plausible a scientific position is the more the facts change and people (are forced to) accept the new facts, but then still argue the same conclusion.
And it's not really even the same 'conclusion'. It's past the conclusion. It's the same 'So now that we've figured that out, the thing we should do is...'
If I stand there and argue, on a trip, that we should drive down, say, highway 141 to get to Gainesville, and it's pointed out that highway 141 doesn't go to Gainesville, and so I argue that we should drive down 141 to get some Taco Bell, and it's pointed out that there's a Taco Bell on the actual route to Gainesville, and then I argue that Gainesville is a stupid place to go and we should go to Lawrenceville down 141 instead, and it's pointed out while that's technically possible, that's not a very good way to get to Lawrenceville...
At some point, people really should realize I obviously have a motive to drive down 141, because every single plan I invent involves driving down 141.
Likewise, at some point people need to realize the climate change deniers have some sort of motive to not do anything about climate change. (What that motive is is rather obvious if you look at the funding sources.)
But even if you knew nothing who was funding that, it's clear there is some motive, because every. single. one. of their conclusions is 'We shouldn't do anything', no matter what facts they've decided to finally accept. It might exist, it might not, it might be us, might be the sun or volcanoes, it might be a good thing, it might be a bad thing, whatever it is, we sure as heck shouldn't demand people change their behavior, ever.
Same with the anti-vaccine crowd. First it was mercury in vaccines, then it was this study, now I'm sure some other bogus thing will come up. But every single solution is 'less vaccines'. Actually, if you look real close, you'll see every single solution is 'traditional medicine bad, alternative medicine good'.
People who sit and argue the same 'problem solution' despite the problem constantly changing are dishonest, and not scientists, and people need to stop listening and call them out on it the very first time they do that.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
What? Shredded?! Virus DNA?! Mercury!?
Who cares about the rate of efficacy over decades and the fact that the supposed link to autism is demonstrably bogus! I'm not putting mercury and shredded virus DNA into my kids!
If only someone had used these loaded words decades ago, they could have saved millions of children from being effectively vaccinated!
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
"Herd Immunity" means "developing immunity from catching it from someone else". If she doesn't catch measles from someone, then she will never develop an immunity.
And if we all believe really hard Santa will show up at Christmas? Yes, Vaccines work. Agreed, they're a good thing. I grew up seeing kids in Iron lungs in hospitals and I certainly don't want to with that on anybody. All my kids are vaccinated. They can't go to school without their shot records and I also have them de-wormed on a regular basis.
But this isn't really about vaccines is it? It's about a fraudulent study of 12 kids that linked vaccinations to autism. There's lots of things wrong here but by in large a reasonable person might question a study with a population group of 12 to begin with. I'll contend that more people get inappropriate touching by the TSA in one hour than were in this study.
Now, you have a group of people, parents of kids with Autism who have latched on to this phony baloney report and said "I'm not getting my kids vaccinated" even after they have been diagnosed with Autism. Cripes! that logic is ridiculous but moreover you have other parents who look at the parents of Autistic kids and say "Hmm, they may be right." WTF?!? Now if that study were over a period of say 20 years and had 10s of thousands of parents and kids and medical histories tied to it, that could be the foundation of some scientific proof on the matter.
It reminds me of the "South Park" episode (http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/153517/martha-stewart-living) when Martha Stewart eats a Turkey with her ass then everybody thinks it's a great idea and starts doing it.
Sure, if a parent wants to be a Luddite, they have the right to be that. More power to them! I also have the right to keep them and their kids, who will also be Luddites, away from me and my family.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Personally, I think a large chunk of it is probably explained by higher rates of diagnosis. More kids who wouldn't have been label autistic back in the day are now being labeled. Whether it's really justified or not, is another question.
Bingo. Not a very popular stance, but I'm guessing it is the closest to the actual truth of the matter. We've expanded the diagnostic criteria of autism spectrum "diseases" to the point of being utterly meaningless. Around 90% of the people I was friends with in the early 90's (before the autism craze) would probably be placed somewhere in the autism spectrum if they were youths today. I, too, would have probably been autistic, or at least "suffering" aspergers. Luckily this was the early 90's and we all just got ADD/ADHD instead.
I am happy that the APA (organizers of the DSM) are planning on removing aspergers from the new addition, in order to force mental health professionals to either diagnose autism or nothing, which might cut down over-diagnosis levels a bit.
When I was first venturing into psychology as a field of study, one of my early professors was very quick to point out that everyone has symptoms of a very large array of listed mental illnesses, but what keeps you from being actually mentally ill is the ability to function normally. If you are capable of having long terms friends, a wife, a steady job, etc.. you probably are not "mentally ill". As "illness" generally (used to be) taken as "an impediment to normal functioning". This isn't saying such modern vogue diseases don't exist, but are VERY overdiagnosed. There are people running around proclaiming aspergers or adult-ADD who have large happy families, well paying jobs with long-term stability, and an active social life, these people are not sick, since they are functioning at a high level.
I'm not sure of all the causes of this largely purely social phenomena; but part of it is the huge pressure pharma exerts on doctors, and the fact that parents want results. If parents, or teachers, aren't happy with little Billy's performance or personality, then they will shop around until someone agrees with them. As a doctor, you might as well diagnose, because if you don't someone else will. My dad this this when I was young (mostly as a political maneuver in a divorce, with a bit of influence from some overworked teachers), he took me to around five doctors until one of them decided I must have ADD, and perhaps some flavor of clinical depression. (without ever actually talking to me).
Another thing is that parents ignore natural variation. Someone I know is trying to get their kid diagnosed with autism because she hasn't spoken by the time she turned 3 years old. While this might be unusual, it isn't unheard of, or even that problematic. It is well within the natural variation of human development.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Not really, deep aquifer groundwater can take tens to hundreds of thousands of years to cycle. The human population at the time, especially in north america was insufficient to have done that much pee.
I know there's some airheaded nutjobs out there saying that vaccinations are evil because there's an infinitesimal chance of getting sick from them, but to the pro-vaccine crowd I say: doesn't the idea of government mandated vaccines bother you just a little bit? People like Dean Edell basically say that parents should be thrown in jail for not vaccinating their kids. Others think that employers should have the right to mandate the injection of a vaccine as a pre-requisite for work. We can agree that vaccines are a Good Thing, but doesn't the final decision of what vaccines to take or not take lie with the individual or parent themselves?
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
For most vaccination requirements, anyone born prior to January 1, 1957, does not need to provide proof of immunity for measles, mumps, and rubella. This date was selected because the majority of people born prior to 1957 developed immunity against measles and mumps from natural infection due to widespread disease.
The modern death rate from measles in under 0.1%, but in poor countries may be as high as 10% ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1712354/ ). This is the rate for people who actually get the disease and is similar to the death rate from seasonal flu. So, the old guy, born before 1957, with all of his friends having had measles, should have lost somewhere around 1% of his childhood friends to measles. I'm not surprised he can't think of anyone who _died_ of measles.
It's also striking that (developed world) people born after 1970 can't generally think of anyone who's even _had_ measles, let alone died from it. What a great change in a decade.
Sigh. So, someone quotes US and Canadian resources, and you conclude that they are either of US or Canadian origin. Your defense of your retarded comment proves that your comment wasn't a moment of unlucky mishap, your retardedness is a permanent condition.
US sources have been quoted by millions of non-native speakers all over the web. That doesn't mean that they know the difference between "bred" and "bread".
Again, your staggering inability to understand that the vast majority of the worlds population is not native English speakers is proof positive that it would have been better for you had your mothers attempt at abortion not failed.
The mortality of measles is about 0.3% - 3 kids in 1000 that contract it will die. Your sample size simply means nothing. That's why you leave epidemiology to the experts and don't recklessly endanger not only your kids but everyone they come in contact with by refusing vaccination. In my opinion, it should simply be mandated by law. Parents refusing to vaccinate are clearly unfit for their role, their kids are better off if their asshat parents get thrown into the slammer and the kids set up for adoption.
Wow, aren't you intimidating waving that big finger at him.
However, he said that he knows more people who died in a car crash than measles. You cite "3 in 1000 kids infected die". Well, 1 in 100 die in a car crash.
So, turns out of we abolish vaccines, which I wouldn't recommend completely, there will be still more people dying in stupid car accidents which no one talks about, than measles. Stats is a funny thing.
Parents refusing to vaccinate are clearly unfit for their role, their kids are better off if their asshat parents get thrown into the slammer and the kids set up for adoption.
Wow, I wish I had your "clear" view of that matter. The parents love their children, and are mislead by poorly constructed evidence aired in media. Solution: make those children orphans and put their parents in jail.
Although that's a false dilemma, I'd still personally prefer to keep my parents and the 0.3% chance of dying than 100% of chance growing up on the street with my parents in jail, thank you very much.
Should the lawyers who 'backed' this charlatan not be disbarred too?
I didn't want to have to say this, because it's far more childish than the conversation I'm having with you: Ismellpoop brought up spelling first...not me. I was simply responding to him/her.
Perhaps you should make sure you're responding to the right person next time?
Living With a Nerd
If it was only their kids at risk, I might agree with you. But when a parent doesn't vaccinate their child, they put OTHER people at risk too. Perhaps a baby is too young for the vaccine or perhaps there's a valid medical reason why the child can't get the vaccine (allergy, immune system issue, etc) or perhaps the person in question is an elderly adult whose immunity has worn off (it does happen). In those cases, the parent not vaccinating their child could cause another baby/child/adult to get sick and even DIE! That's not improving the gene pool, that's randomly firing a gun off into the gene pool and shrugging your shoulders at the result.
Don't think it happens? Tell that to the parents of 4 week old Dana McCaffery who died of whooping cough because immunization rates were too low to provide herd immunity. http://www.danamccaffery.com/
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Science is only as Honest as the scientist researching it is Ethical.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Be prepared. I tried bring up the MSDS ratings in a different part of this article and the whole thing was modded down to troll...presumably to bury any rational arguments. Look up my comments to see the MSDS links. Look for trolls in the comments and you'll find that a significant number of them are rational arguments that were mod silenced.
Nevermind that there are valid and rational arguments against thimerosal. This is a "thimerosal is like cotton candy" article where a bad man gets spanked and everyone who disagrees isn't invited to eat marshmallows and fart butterflies with the unicorns.
"Lame" - Galaxar
Whoa. Woah woah woah. HUGE misunderstanding.
Your original response was to Ismellpoop, not to me...but because of how the responses were stacked, it looked like you were responding to me, which is why I responded to you.
Um...truce? -_-;;
Living With a Nerd
Your point is valid, although you'd have to speak for the individual atoms in water, not the molecules as a whole, as it dissociates and reassociates rather rapidly into H+ and OH-.
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations..." -Winston Churchill
I think it's worth looking at the original Wakefield paper again: http://www.autismresourceconnection.com/documents/Ileal-colonic-lymphoid.pdf
It's a typical science/medical journal article; boring and inconclusive. It explicitly states it hasn't proven a causal or statistical link between MMR and autism or gastrointestinal disease (the primary focus of the study). No one with any scientific background would look at this study of 12 children and some anecdotal stories and believe such a conclusion even if they had made that conclusion. The hysteria associated with the paper came from the media, and not the article.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
So, there isn't any thimerosal in flu shots? Yes, in all but one (even the one labeled preservative free)
http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability/VaccineSafety/UCM096228#t3
Of course, that's not the pediatric list. This is...and it still contains some thimerosal
http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability/VaccineSafety/UCM096228#t1
The salt analogy is bad, look at my other comments to see why.
"Lame" - Galaxar
...except that you can't measure harmfulness by worldwide drops in deaths... measles, mumps and rubella can cause many non-lethal complications that you would not enjoy. Also, deaths worldwide is great, but if you live in an outbreak zone, you aren't going to care much that most other communities in the world are not affected.
Think of it this way:
US Population: 307,006,550 - Jul 2009
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division
For comparison, Metro Mexico City has a population of 21,163,226
So even if ALL of the US stopped vaccinating their children, all it would really take to counteract this value worldwide would be for immunization/health programs to be started/improved in a few major cities.
I think the reason you're seeing measles deaths worldwide diminishing is that the WHO and other groups are successfully targeting a number of locales worldwide known to be incubators. So areas that had massive measles issues are now approaching a point where they are able to prevent *death* by measles at almost the same rates as the USA.
And while you don't know anyone who died from Malaria, Yellow Fever or AIDS, I knew a few -- and if you went to many places in Africa, you'd likely not be able to find many people who haven't lost someone they know to one of those diseases. For comparison, Africa has over three times the population of the US.
I'm not an expert on chemical interactions, so flame away. However, how are drugs ever able to cure anything? You can take drugs to modify a physical trait while you are on it.
In the case of antibiotics, they kill the bacteria..period. They don't change your physiology.
Other drugs--blood thinning, cholesterol control--are only going to work when they are begin taken. They don't change your physiology.
Do we really think the pill that bones gives the person on dialysis in Star Trek IV will ever exist? (for those not in the know...the person grows a kidney)
I had a transplant and will be on immuno-suppresents for ever. There's never going to be some magical pill that changes my body's ability to create antibodies
I think it is disingenuous to think chemical compounds are going to ever CURE a disease that isn't caused by some virus or bug.
"Herd Immunity" means "developing immunity from catching it from someone else".
No, it doesn't. Herd immunity means that if enough of a population is immune, those who aren't immune (e.g. people who have compromised immune systems or who can't be vaccinated for various reasons) are unlikely to be infected as there won't be any vector for them to acquire it from.
e.g. If everyone around you is immune to measles, you won't be able to catch measles as there's no one who can transmit it to you.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Thiomersal is added as a preservative ... i.e. make it safer for longer
That is not what a preservative does. Formaldehyde is a very effective preservative but that does not make it safe for human consumption.
Preservatives are chemical stabilizers and/or toxins intended to prevent biological activity. To preserve things intended to go in the human body, you have to use a preservative that is non-toxic to humans in that concentration, and that doesn’t build up gradually to toxic levels.
E.g. salt is toxic in high concentrations but is safely used as a preservative. Suppose a 28 gram portion of cooked sausage contains 183 mg sodium; that is a concentration of over 6,500 PPM. However it is perfectly safe when it dilutes in the human body, and since salt is extremely water-soluble it normally flushes out of the human body long before it could build up to a toxic level.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Intestinal bacteria and metabolic waste products.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
you are safe as long as you don't threaten the money maker like vaccines. what the hell was he thinking?
make up some shit that will make everybody rich, like antioxidant keeps human young, then you are safe forever, even after your study got busted.
Ewww.. they would atleast have to be frosted piss flakes to get my attention.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
If I stand there and argue, on a trip, that we should drive down, say, highway 141 to get to Gainesville, and it's pointed out that highway 141 doesn't go to Gainesville, and so I argue that we should drive down 141 to get some Taco Bell, and it's pointed out that there's a Taco Bell on the actual route to Gainesville, and then I argue that Gainesville is a stupid place to go and we should go to Lawrenceville down 141 instead, and it's pointed out while that's technically possible, that's not a very good way to get to Lawrenceville...
With my friends, I then know that there's a tittie bar on 141 that they'd like to accidentally drop in on.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Keep in mind that Dr. Wakefield has several vaccine patents that have potential for large financial returns if the current vaccines are discredited. One is a measles vaccine that is a direct competitor to the MMR. He files the patents in 1997 and begins to do that very thing - discredit the MMR in early 1998. Coincidence? Now everyone's children are at a slightly greater risk because of the decreased utilization of the MMR and the greatly increased incidents of measles outbreaks.
Sadly, there's even bigger money in Big Pharma.
Okay. Let's look at this clearly: Big Pharma is a mixed bag of positive and negative. They have undeniably provided products of great benefit to human health. And there is also undeniably many cases of them providing unnecessary vanity products, unintentionally harmful products, and products they knew were harmful or useless which they skewed data to get approved. I have lots of problems with Big Pfizer^H^H^H^H^Hharma.
Junk science is not a mixed bag. At best it causes people to get ripped off buying placebos, and at worst causes significant harm by making people not seek real medical treatment when they need it, or not vaccinate their kids so you get outbreaks of measels or whooping cough that affect not just their children, but the children of people who didn't buy into the junk science.
Please let us not talk about these things as if they are equal. There should be lots of money in legitimate pharmaceutical research and manufacturing, but we should also push to solve the problems with it. The problem with junk science, homeopathy, anti-vaccination movements, etc is the junk science itself.
The enemies of Democracy are
But what about warmers whose only answer is either to return us to the standard of living of the cavemen, or to impose a new tax regime an draconian controls. When the temperatures go up, it is due to man caused global warming, "scientist" need more funding for studies, and the government needs more regulatory control. When the temperatures go down, it is men causing global warming, "scientist" need more funding for studies, and the government needs more regulatory control. When it is pointed out that the records have been manipulated, it is brushed away as "scientific debate", the "scientist" need more funding for studies, and the government needs more regulatory control. When it is pointed out that the measurement instruments have been recording bad data due to local heating sources, the "scientist" claim to have added "correction factors", then claim they need more funding for studies, and the government needs more regulatory control.
It's clear there is some motive, because every. single. one. of their conclusions is 'We need more funding for studies and move regulatory control', no matter what facts they've decided to finally accept or dismiss.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
So in your example, we should obviously question the motives of the people who don't want to drive down 141, right?
http://www.generationrescure.org/ already has it's rebuttal, including a NEW study which shows a link between Hepatitis-B shots and a 3 times higher risk of autism.
When will they stop?
Do they actually vaccinate small children against Hep-B?
Don't split hairs. It preserves the vaccine so the vaccine remains safe. Anyone with half a brain can see that's what I meant.
Vaccines will make you autistic to the point where you'll believe anything! Like the first sentence in this post.
There is no -1 Disagree.
The WHO said that? How exactly did they conduct this research, given that Pete Townshend isn't allowed within 50 yards of children anymore?
In this months Wired there is an article called 'Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness' that references the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that is currently undergoing revision to version 5. The definition of autism has changed through the first 4 versions to create a broader definition of autism hence the higher rates of diagnosis. The article is at http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_dsmv/all/1
Vaccinations aren't 100% effective. Much of their effect comes from the herd immunity that develops because the disease can't spread within its lifespan. If enough people don't vaccinate, everyone's risk goes up.
As an aside, no one eats pocketknives, blades or no. Ridiculous analogy is ridiculous.
Ultimately, we're talking about vaccines, which is what the salt is an analogue to. Not standalone Thisemerol. Its analogue in this little story is chlorine.
As an aside, eat enough salt and it'll kill you.
The point, is that there are plenty of things we ingest that, taken as raw components in enough quantity, will kill us. You clearly understand that. It boggles my mind that you fail to take the extra step to understand that some things can be made safer, as are done in vaccines - and salt.
So, no, it's not like pocketknives. At all.
I imagine you mean every mouthful of water contains a molecule that was at some point in human urine, not that every individual molecule has at some point been in human urine. From a quick Google search there are maybe 1.4 * 10^21 liters of water on earth. A human might output 1.5 liters of urine per day. A human living for 70 years would output around 25,000 liters. Another Google search gives a guesstimate that about 100 billion people have ever been born. Total species urine output over all of time would then be (much less than) 25,000 * 100 billion liters = 2.5 * 10^15 liters, which is itself far less than the amount of water on earth.
he didn't say whose gene pool was being improved :)
That is why study comparisons are very important. Unfortunately, they are far from trivial to do properly.
But it also serves to help keep the people who would be reading this stuff ignorant as to the methods used, possible flaws in the studies, etc.
Just have the pharmacies research what is causing the current epidemic of autism and come out with a cure and the whole issue goes away. And no, it is not a matter of more people being diagnosed with autism, there actually is an epidemic.
Of course, you won't address that thimerosal is highly toxic as represented by its material safety data sheet, you fall back to talking about practically benign salt.
Anyone using the salt analogy should be slapped until they gain some sense.
Oxygen is highly reactive and promotes combustion
Hydrogen is highly combustible
As a compound, however, h2o (water) is not flammable.
Sodium reacts violently to water
living tissue reacts violently to chlorine
As a compound, however, salt makes things tasty.
Mercury is highly toxic - nobody disputes this
Thimerasol - the compound containing mercury - is also highly toxic (per its MSDS)
Much different than salt, both the individual element (mercury) AND the resultant compound (thimerasol) are both highly toxic.
"Lame" - Galaxar
Sadly that isn't the case. Their kids become petri dishes for the viruses to grow and mutate in. Eventually, a virus that could have been prevented with a vaccine, has now evolved into one that can't.
Do you have any specific examples of this?
The exactly same argument applies to those that insist we must always do something about the environment. CFC in cups destroys it. Oh, wait, no, Freon does. Oh wait, car emissions do. No, no, it's emissions from ships. Nahhh, really, this time its the garbage dumps doing it.
Both sides have the same damn vested interest and it pisses me off when I explain that, NO, replacing your old 20 mpg car with a 31 mpg car is probably actually worse for the environment due to what goes into making it (even worse if it's a hybrid due to batteries), and I explain that NO using solar cells actually damages the environment from the toxic chemicals leeched into tonnes of water for them, and I show how sending your used electronics off to be recycled kills people in the countries that do it, people assume I'm on one side or the other.
BOTH SIDES ARE WRONG. The right side considers both sides and comes to the correct argument (generally one that doesn't involve either of their solutions). But nobody likes to admit that not only are the oil industries wrong, but Greenpeace is too. Because there's not a lot of mouthpieces for moderation, I suppose.
Actually, in the specific case that you mentioned they were ALL culprits, admittedly to lesser degrees. Freon is a CFC. It was the "low hanging fruit" banning (almost) CFCs reduced the threat to the ionosphere. It didn't eliminate it, because CFCs are persistent, but it stopped the increase, and they do break down over time. (Though I forget the average half-life.)
Garbage dumps are a source of methane. This is a stronger IR blocker than CO2, but less persistent. Reducing methane emissions has quicker results than reducing CO2 emissions by the same amount. And ships *do* emit lots of CO2 in a manner that's essentially uncontrolled.
That said, the argument against hybrids due to pollution from their batteries is reasonable, and I don't know any answer, except to keep working on supercapacitors. For now we're still driving a 1990's station wagon that still gets more than 25 mpg. Not great, but as you point out the pollution created by buying a new car is an immense amount to write-off.
As for solar cells...sorry, but you're wrong there. Yes, making anything damages the environment, but solar power is less damaging over time than fossil fuels. (Don't know if this was always true, or is true no matter who builds your particular cells. But I suspect that currently it's true for all solar cells. Waste is expensive, and I think all manufacturers of modern ICs realize this. Yes, it still happens, but they try to minimize it. [This doesn't mean that workers aren't being poisoned in many plants, but that's a separate issue. And it will change as robots get cheaper.])
P.S.: If you think that fossil fuels are clean, go look at a working coal mine or oil well.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I'd guess that you are allergic to horse serum, or possibly to eggs.
As for the mercury, you're being silly. Not only is the quantity of mercury that was in the vaccines too small to be significant against other environmental sources (e.g. fish), but they stopped using it over a decade ago.
OTOH, if you are allergic to horse serum, it may be quite likely your kids are too. So even though you made the decision for a totally silly reason, it might be the right decision. (But have them checked by an allergist. If they are sensitive, and they ever need to go to an emergency room or have an operation, this could be very important.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1929880&cid=34773824 where I see you have committed felonious acts against others here clone (or should I say, Stephen Alongi?)
What enraged me the most about the initial round of this here in the US was the fact that a preservative in vaccines was, in fact, giving children an unsafe level of lead (lets forget about any link to autism for now). It was an unsafe level of lead.....and the organization that was supposed to protect the people decided to keep this information "embargoed" rather than be up front and clear about it. Regardless of the flaws in the study it DID uncover an unsafe practice and goverment did not do anyone any favors by not being up front about it.
Jenny McCarthy's son is an anecdote. (Obviously not in human terms or anything, but in terms of "evidential quality" if you like.)
Even if you accept the premise that her son is actually better from whatever JM is doing/not doing (rather than incorrect/biased perception by JM, placebo effect, whatnot), a single data point is not very convincing in statistical terms.
That's why people who care about efficacy, safety, etc. carry out double-blind controlled trials. Once JM does that she can start talking about how "treatment X" helps against "malady Y". Until then she can fuck off.
HAND.
Well, for one thing if a post-pubescent male catches mumps it's not only likely to be extremely painful, it's also quite possible that he will be sterile from that point on.
It's much less serious if you are pre-puberty. This doesn't make it safe.
And, yes, I grew up before there were vaccines for those diseases. When I caught the mumps I had so high a fever I was wrapped in wet blankets, and I was blessedly unconscious for most of over a day. (The parts I remember are NOT pleasant.)
OTOH, I was vaccinated against whooping cough. But my father still shared a little rhyme with me:
A-way down yonder not so very far off
A blue jay died of the whooping cough
He whooped and he whooped with the whooping cough
'till he whooped his head and his tail right off.
You might want to thing about why that rhyme was created.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1929880&cid=34773824 where I see you have committed felonious acts against others here clone (or should I say, Stephen Alongi?)
Vaccination programs have been one of the most important public health leaps of the modern age. Ignoring them even after some con-artist is outed is a sign of unimaginable stupidity. I don't advocate separating children from stupid parents, but it does have to be said that these people are indeed contemptable morons.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
there's urine in my poop?
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
As a teacher of mine once said: If all the other kids piss in their pants, should you?
Maybe not, but some day it might be possible to clone your own organs and eliminate the rejection issues rather than use donor organs. That could certainly be a medical coup.
Also - google "netiquette" (and in case you wondered, pointing out to morons that they are morons may be bad etiquette, but it is not bad netiquette).
There are no general (legal) standards for what consistutes a "study". A study can mean anything from "we gave people carefully worded questionnaires designed to weed out intentional/unintentional bias for every week over several years" to "I thought about it for 5 minutes."
So, that's why you should never just trust anyone backing up their claims with "a study".
HAND.
Urine has saved lives.
Initially penicillin was so hard to produce doctors resorted to recovering it from the urine of patients and reusing it.
Thousands of heart attacks have been prevented by IV administration of purified nun's urine (Urokinase)
Molecules are molecules, the source of many in everyday use would shock you.
WTF does OSHA have to do with this? This is a medical issue not a work place safety issue. however see below*
Here are some fact. I know your so lock into your stupidity you wan't understand them, but may some other reader will.
a) It's the dose that makes the poison
B) There are different kinds of mercury
C) the mercury used in vaccines is not detectable in the human body after about 24 hours. Your body expunges it. Ethylmercury is not a bioaccumalate.
*http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/healthguidelines/mercuryvapor/recognition.html
look for exposure limits
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No it is not. That is patently false. also, here is a mind blower:
People with high rate of MMR vaccine uptake have LESS AUTISM. granted the studies where this data came to light show on about a 2% difference, so it's within the margin of error. as a side note, if ti was 2% the other way these people would be going ape shit, even though it would still be within the margin of error.
The definition of autism has widen, that is why a person who is clueless just looking at the number would think there is an increase.
There is no increase.
You even say that so I don't know why you even brought it up. And what you think has been proven to be the reason.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You seem to miss the point. without the vaccines people die NEEDLESSLY. It's preventable.
Death in car crashes is trending downward. Why? seat belts and airbags.
I'm curios on where you got you 1 in a 100 number.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"I even knew someone who died of meningitis, but no-one who ever died of measles or mumps."
nothing like a person anectdote. Duid you stop to cinsider thatw as becasue they where vaccinated and are part odf a large vaccination program?
and the post you are replying to is absolutely correct.
You are an asshole, and a son of a bitch who would jeopardize their children needlessly. Quite frankly, you should be removed from society and your children should be taken away.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually, that's how natural selection works. It's mostly random, but only after a bunch of generations, the law of averages kick in, and even a small benefit can gradually take over a population (or in this case, a small detriment can be eliminated). In the process, killing off other people with issue vaccine (allergy, immune system issue, etc) is also applying selection pressure to the population. Hey, nature is cruel, but that's how evolution works.
"Herd Immunity" means "developing immunity from catching it from someone else"..
Wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity
How did this get +5 informative? The CRU emails very conclusively showed several scientists were cherry-picking the data involved to distort the findings, and attempting to cover up the fact they were.
I strongly suspect most people never stopped to read them...
Then perhaps you can point out those parts of the emails that support your claim of conspiracy, because the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, the independent Science Assessment Panel, and the Independent Climate Change Email Review all found no evidence of that which you claim.
Perhaps they simply missed something that your keen eyes and studious investigation picked up on...
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
That said, the argument against hybrids due to pollution from their batteries is reasonable, and I don't know any answer, except to keep working on supercapacitors.
No, it's not really a 'reasonable' argument.
Even if they produce as much 'bad stuff', it would appear to be much better to have some random pollution that only possibly screws up a small area of the earth, vs., oh, blowing up the climate.
Not all problems are equal, and certain forms of pollution are worse than others, especially as we're near the tipping point of CO2.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I was born in 1970, and I had both, measles and mumps.
It's funny how you try to claim that both sides are manipulating facts, but in actuality all the environmental facts you list are true. No one has changed their minds about CFCs, or Freon, or car emissions, or ships, or garbage dumps.
All of those are harmful, all of those need(ed) to be worried about. (Some of those have been fixed so, um, we don't worry anymore.)
replacing your old 20 mpg car with a 31 mpg car is probably actually worse for the environment due to what goes into making it
The 'replacing car' argument is stupid. All cars that were ever made are going to be operated until they die, at which point they will be dismantled and put into other cars, etc.
No one's taking their car and throwing it away. There are a finite amount of cars on the road, and any car you own will be part of that until it stops working. This has nothing to do with whether you own it or not. You car continues to exist, and will be used for transportation.
Someone purchasing a new car vs. someone else purchasing one, simple changes what cars exist on the road. For every environmental friendly one purchased new, that's a non-environmentally friendly one that doesn't get made.
If there are 100 cars and car owners on the road, and one of them breaks, there will very soon be 100 cars back on the road. Either an idiot with an SUV sold him the SUV and then bought a Hummer, or someone environmentally conscious sold him the 20 mpg car and bought a 31 mpg car. In one universe, the average pollution went up, in the other, it went down.
If only new car purchasers, and no else, cared about good mileage, car mileage would much higher than it is now. Likewise, if only used car buyers, and not new ones, cared about mileage, it would be much lower. New car purchases entirely decide what cars exist on the road, and, as such, entirely decided how environmental everyone else is.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I imagine the point is, though, that vaccines are not toxic. Even though thimerasol and mercury are. It's all about amounts.
the whole thing was modded down to troll...presumably to bury any rational arguments
The ridiculous analogies and rhetorical questions didn’t help. Just saying.
I swear to God the GOP, the Chamber of Commerce, or just Exxon has paid shills on slashdot.
You don't make any sense with your whole injection vs digestion argument
If you still think there is no difference between eating something and injecting it, then you're either stupid or ignorant.
Don't blame me if you can't understand simple stuff. The last I checked it says "news for nerds" not "news for retards".
Maybe you've been exposed to too much mercury and are now suffering a neurological deficit.
p.s. in case your feeble mind can't keep track: you started the hostility first.
wheres your scientific proof of this?
By your definition asia should be oozing out 1000 viruss daily killing millions.
Not the case.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Ask him/her about vertebral subluxation, then ask him how Simon Singh is going. A Chiroquackter is the last person you should be asking about peer reviewed, double blind, substantial number of client, research! The media got hold of this and pushed it for all it was worth. 12 people is not a large enough sample set to change practices - it might be enough for investment in further research, but it is not enough to change practices. It is just bad science
Parents refusing to vaccinate are clearly unfit for their role, their kids are better off if their asshat parents get thrown into the slammer and the kids set up for adoption.
Adoption rates are simply too low in this country as is to enact this plan. I propose a rider amendment that allows gays to adopt these children on an expedited schedule. Problems solved!
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Get over it moron.
Most of the reason why humans got less sick and healthy in the 30-40s were due to being cleaner and washing more.
I just happens that vaccines were used not long after that as well.
Now on a side note, throwing people in prison for refusing a matrix style nazi injection is just evil. Your the retard sovient erra monster. Your're the stupid prick that belongs to the new world order of nazis. Your're the one who believes everything the government says, like "pot is bad" and "taxes are legal" .
Recently the aussie govt stopped all vaccines for children under 5s as the new super vaccines had too many in them at once, overwhealming the young human system. TOO MUCH RNA.
So stop being a lame ass pussy, harden up. Stop being such a protectionist.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/vit-D-theory-autism.shtml
MIght be of interest...
See also: http://www.amazon.com/Disease-Proof-Your-Child-Feeding-Right/dp/0312338058
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I dunno about the US, but Hep-B is typically given at 2 months (and again at 4 and 6 months) up here in Canada, unless the mother is a carrier, then it's done immediately at birth, then at 2 and 4 months. Or alternatively, sometime between 7 and 17 years on the same staggering schedule.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
It most certainly is: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/vaccine/thimerosal.htm Most specifically in untested seasonal flu vaccine
vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism, and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe or its toxins A vaccine is by definition the shredded / weakened dna of a microorganism. It's long term affects are unevaluated because of the ability of viruses to mutate. Although it is true that on average it is safer to vaccinate a population that may not be specifically or tragically true for your children.
Why would he stop wearing it?
"...except that you can't measure harmfulness by worldwide drops in deaths... measles, mumps and rubella can cause many non-lethal complications that you would not enjoy."
I can define "harm" anyway I like. Death is obviously "harm" and using it as an indicator does not exclude other forms of "harm".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
3) Doing invasive procedures on children who did not require those.
This got him banned from practicing medicine in the UK.
gewg_
I'm aware of all this. I was sarcastically mocking your scare-mongering use of the words, as if the many decades during which vaccines have proven to be effective and massively beneficial counted for nothing because they contain OMFG VIRUS DNA!
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
It's long term affects are unevaluated because of the ability of viruses to mutate.
I wanted to add: This is patent nonsense.
First, most vaccines contained killed virus, which can't mutate because it's dead.
Second, live virus vaccines are, as you observe, weakened. They trigger a fast and effective response from your immune system that wipes them out easily, so they don't get a chance to mutate. There have been no recorded cases of mutated viruses originating from vaccination.
Third, for most vaccines we have literally decades of experience and millions upon millions of people who've received them by which to evaluate their long-term effects, which have proven to be none except for the elimination of a lot diseases.
BTW, Thiomersal was never demonstrated to be harmful. It's not mercury, it's a mercury compound that has been demonstrated repeatedly to have no effect on the human body. It's eliminated from your system within weeks and does not add to the body's accumulated mercury. It was largely discontinued as a precautionary measure due to Wakefield's now totally discredited paper and irrational public hysteria. Thanks to anti-vaxxers we've now lost a quite effective preservative and antiseptic, though.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
This work is finally done and this study published in 2011, after this study, consisting of all of twelve (12) alleged cases, was published in 1998, twelve (12) years ago, years after the original journal withdrew its sponsorship, after court proceedings based upon and challenging this study were long over, and after countless studies failed to reproduce the results and otherwise called this into question. We have seen some newer studies into the cause or causes of autism but, as of now, still don't know what causes it, how to prevent it, etc. I'm 72. This is said to affect a lot of individuals, I've seen figures from one in 158 to one in 142, and I know people with it, and others who have studied it, in recent years, but never saw or heard of anyone with these symptoms when I was in school. If they redefine it in the DSM-V, we'll never decipher the results. It's not the only terrifying medical problem, back to polio in the early fifties. for the cause or transmission of which I have seen people fervently committed to theories. This isn't in my expertise, though evidence is, and I don't know.
Time Cube?
I've had shingles. That was some bad shit. I wanted to die, and lost around 14kgs in a fortnight.
Duid you stop to cinsider thatw as becasue they where vaccinated and are part odf a large vaccination program?
No-one was vaccinated for measles or mumps then. I guess if your spelling is that poor, your reading comprehension can't be much better.
Again, with the poor reading comprehension.
I've already pointed out that vaccines are a Good Thing. But, the MMR vaccine is about as safe as stabbing your child with a rusty pitchfork. It's a huge amount of very very nasty stuff to inject directly into a very frail little creature, before they've had much of a chance to develop any immune system at all.
The MMR triple-jab is a dangerous experiment, but a profitable one. Don't buy into it.
Herd immunity means that if enough of a population is immune
Wonder how they develop immunity? Oh, by actually having measles. Makes sense I suppose.
You're fully of crap. The proportion of people who are diagnosed with autism has increased. That is absolutely, demonstrably true. That the increase might be entirely explained by an expanded definition and increased awareness (and I tend to think it probably is) is neither here nor there. It doesn't change the fact that the proportion of people, who have been clinically diagnosed and labeled as autistic, has increased. Whether or not those people are fairly labeled or are actually "sick" isn't the issue. My post was in reply to the clearly wrong assertion by parent that this was only an increase in absolute number of cases rather than proportion and the nonsensical idea that he was the only one to realize this.
I have no idea what the reason might be. AFAIK nothing has been convincingly proven so I don't know why you think that I do. Perhaps your reading comprehension is the problem along with your desire to pretend you know what I think. I won't tolerate somebody posting a clearly misleading falsehood just because it conforms to my personal world-view without challenging it.
If you read my post, you will see that I specifically said the preservative was no longer used in CHILDHOOD disease vaccines. As in, MMR, Polio, Chickenpox, Whooping Cough, Tetanus, etc. Your link confirms this. I know it is still present in some forms of the seasonal flu vaccine.
And the seasonal flu vaccine is not "untested." It most certainly is tested before being released to the public every year.
When will they stop?
Sadly, when enough dead babies parents start gathering together and sue Jenny McCarthy and Dr. Andrew Wakefield out of existence.
The poster said that "stupid parents" not vaccinating their "stupid kids" would improve the gene pool. The implication here is that the improvements would be made by removing the "stupid kids" from the gene pool. I was pointing out that many of the victims of the anti-vaccination movement aren't kids of non-vaccinating parents but babies/children/elderly who just happen to pass within disease transmission range of these kids.
Non-vaccinated child sticks his hand in his mouth and wipes it on his shirt. Then he picks up a box in the store which the parent puts back. You come along ten minutes later (never having seen them) and pick up the box. As you put it in your cart, your child touches it. Congratulations! They've been exposed and might now die! All because Wakefield faked a study and a playboy bunny said vaccines are bad for you.
This isn't natural selection at work. This is parents inflating the risk of a very safe medical procedure and deflating the risk of a very dangerous disease and then putting the results of that bad risk assessment on other peoples' kids.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Responding directly to your post, and ignoring for now any safety concerns, side-effects, and links to any disease / disorder...
The MMR vaccine is made using aborted fetal tissue, which should render it completely unacceptable to any major religious group. To mandate it's use is not only Orwellian, but unconstitutional. It would perhaps be more worthwhile to explore new formulations and have them undergo studies with an actual unvaccinated control group, like the Dutch study. That would address both concerns.
You might want to reflect on your position and leave Orwellian dictatorships to China.
This is why I love Slashdot.
Actually, that appears to not be true: http://www.rxlist.com/acthib-drug.htm
When ActHIB® is combined with AvP DTP vaccine by reconstitution, each single dose (0.5 mL) is formulated to contain 10 g of purified capsular polysaccharide conjugated to 24 g of inactivated tetanus toxoid 8.5% of sucrose 6.7 Lf of diphtheria toxoid, 5 Lf of tetanus toxoid, and an estimate of 4 protective units of pertussis vaccine. Thimerosal (mercury derivative) 1:10,000 is added as a preservative to AvP DTP vaccine. (Refer to product insert for AvP whole-cell DTP.)
So a completely different vaccine has the same effect: autism!
I wonder, if that's such a big deal in US, maybe you guys should just start using a different word instead of "vaccine"? Kinda like NMRI was quietly renamed to MRI? It's painful to contemplate bowing down to this idiocy, but if it actually means more kids getting immunized and staying healthy, perhaps it is worth it?
You've pointed out your belief that "the MMR vaccine is about as safe as stabbing your child with a rusty pitchfork.". Expecting others to believe it just because you do is silly. I have not seen any creditable evidence that there is *any* valid reason for such a belief.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I was referring to the fact that the dna for the vaccine changes every year because of the rapid mutation of the flu virus it is meant to vaccinate against. There is no chance to do long term testing of what effects injecting people with dead virus dna has on there system since this dna changes every few months. Not everyone is comfortable with this. I would rather fight off an actual living flu virus than get the vaccine since I have a healthy immune system.
What an interesting argument.
Let's look at that for a second...
Global cooling is going to kill us all! We're about to go into an ice age, crops will die, cities destroyed, disease, famine, pestulence, the end of the world is nigh! We must DOOOOO something, RIGHT NOW! Our models are perfect and can't be wrong.
Global warming is going to kill us all! Crops will die, cities destroyed, disease, famine, pestulence, the end of the world is nigh! We must DOOOOO something, RIGHT NOW! Our models are perfect and can't be wrong.
Global climate change is going to kill us all! crops will die, cities destroyed, disease, famine, pestulence, the end of the world is nigh! We must DOOOOO something, RIGHT NOW! Our models are perfect and can't be wrong.
At some point people need to realize climate disaster whackos have some sort of motive to do somethinb RIGHT NOW about the apocolypse that'll happen tomorrow. (What that motive is is rather obvious if you look at the funding sources)
But even if you knew nothing who was funding that, it's clear there is some motive, because every. single. one. of their conclusions is 'We must do something RIGHT NOW, and who gives a flip if it's effective, necessary, or what the consequences are!', no matter what beliefs and religious myths they've decided to finally accept. It might exist, it might not, it might be us, might be the sun or volcanoes, it might be a good thing, it might be a bad thing, whatever it is, we sure as heck can't make sure we're right this time and doing the right thing, and not making things worse, no we have to act RIGHT NOW!
People who sit and argue the same 'problem solution' despite the problem constantly changing are dishonest, and not scientists, and people need to stop listening and call them out on it the very first time they do that.
Oh, wait, there ARE people doing that... Those pesky skeptics who want science, not politics and eco-religion in the discussion.
Yes, it is still in the seasonal flu shot, but the article being discussed is regarding MMR and autism. According to the link you so helpfully provide, MMR (and the vast majority of pediatric vaccinations) are completely free of thimerosal. This suggests that a child's exposure to thimerosal today is substantially less than what it was 20 years ago. In my opinon and based on my reading of the available research, this greatly diminishes the likelihood that thimerosal has anything to do with the development of autism.
I'm certain the anti-vaccination crowd shuns the flu shot, but as far as I know there is no over-hyped, falsified research touting a link between seasonal flu shots and autism. So sure, it's there... but not nearly as relevant.
SISSy... I love it!
so where is this fantasy world you live in? I'd like to go visit. The vaccination-causes-autism claim is bs. Well and good. But viruses grow and mutate regardless of vaccinations. In point of fact, vaccination can reasonably be expected to increase the variations of a disease due to it making the current strain less fit for survival compared to mutations.
Maybe in your fantasy world the over usage of penicillin has had no effect and vaccinating against any and every disease is a useless hope to somehow rid the world of all disease can be successful. But in the real world this simply isn't the case.
For some diseases, such as polio, vaccination makes a lot of sense. For the flu, where an AMA study established that those with the vaccine had a 2% chance of contracting the flu vs a whopping 3% for those who didn't, it really doesn't make any sense. Influenza is a constantly mutating disease and each year the vaccine is a pot-puris of guesswork as to what it might be like -- it really isn't a good case for vaccination. But the military requires it of every member.
Probably the nut jobs will simply take this as another "proof" of the conspiracy. I believe that the only solution is ridiculing these people and better education. The scary thing is that these things are contagious - soon these nut jobs will be hear in every country.
Remember: mockery is fun. Mockery works!
Wakefield is personally and quite directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of children who weren't vaccinated. He did this for money. He knew this would lead to deaths of children. How is this not considered a crime for which he is either incarcerated until the Sun burns out, or outright executed? Why is he walking free?
But by conflating harm with death, you're falling prey to the "all crows are black" fallacy. It can be used as an indicator, but not as a general indicator of harm. Death is an unqualified subset of possible harm, and the degree of representation will differ significantly based on geographical location and other variables.