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Autism-Vax Doc Scandal Was Pharma Business Scam
Sockatume writes "In his second report, Brian Deer exposes how MMR-autism prophet Andrew Wakefield aimed to profit from the vaccine scare. Two years before the research that 'discovered' the MMR-autism link, Wakefield began courting interest in a hundred-million-dollar diagnostics firm. The doctor hoped to seed the company with government legal aid money and profit by charging 'premium prices' for new diagnostic tests to be used in vaccine injury lawsuits. By the time Wakefield published, the proposals had expanded into producing new 'safe' vaccines, two businesses to gather legal aid funding, and interest from partners including Wakefield's own hospital. The scheme ultimately disintegrated with the arrival of new leadership at Wakefield's hospital and ongoing scrutiny into his research."
I know it's not the same thing, but this sorta reminds me of that TNG episode where two planets were suffering from a plague, and the cure was on one planet...but the cure was also a narcotic. One planet cured themselves of the addiction, but kept selling it to the other planet under the false pretense they would die if they didn't continue consuming it (their symptoms were withdrawal, not plague death.) I love how at the end of it, Piccard is like "Let's get as far away from this system as we can. Screw these loonies, let them duke it out." Can't remember the name of the episode, but I know it was in the first season.
Living With a Nerd
And he will probably suffer no repercussions.
Dave
Now, I know RISC is cool these days and the VAX was pretty much the embodiment of CISC, but calling it autistic is a bit uncalled for.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
...I don't think that's egg.
Being a new parent right around the height of the Autism/Vaccination scare, this is a Big Deal. This was huge! We had lots of talking heads on TV telling people not to vaccinate their kids. Famously, Jenny McCarthy went on Oprah and told parents not to vaccinate their kids. Many doctors and parents LISTENED! If you read the articles, you'll see that as a result children died of easily preventable childhood diseases because parents were too scared to get the proper vaccinations.
I am frankly amazed that this turned out to be a scam and not just sloppy science research. I just cannot fathom the depths of this man's conscience.
The sad part is, the repercussions will continue to last for years and years. Even after this has all been revealed as malicious, willful fraud, I bet dollars to doughnuts that many parents will still believe it, and won't get their kids vaccinations, putting them at risk.
I'm normally a laid back guy but this one just makes me fired up.
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
"You know what I can't figure out? How is it that all these stupid neanderthal mafia guys can be so good at crime, and smart guys like us can suck so badly at it."
There are so many parents who believed (the media interpretation of) the first study that they kept their kids from getting vaccinated. As a result, it has been more common to see childhood illnesses which had been virtual eradicated with the help of vaccination, particularly measles, as well as some other more dangerous diseases. Lives have been put at risk because this guy gambled (correctly) that new parents are easy to freak out and take advantage of. Now there is the daunting task of convincing those same parents, who aren't going to want to admit they were basically taken in a huge scam and put their kids at risk because they were dumb, which means a large number of people are going to convince themselves the retraction is a scam/conspiracy/etc and that the original study was right.
Is there a degree of felony high enough to cover this?
Maybe, just maybe, so much power over life and death shouldn't be given to for-profit organisations?
Because then you end up with crap like this.
Hi, speaking on behalf of the medical field, we've known a bunch of this for years. Which is why the accusations from the Anti-Vax mob about "Pushing Poison" on behalf of "Big Pharma" was so infuriating. This asshole lied about MMR and other vaccines because he was pushing his own vaccine. He's done incalculable harm, for his OWN profit, and his supporters accused *us* of being immoral profit slaves.
And this includes all you soft-spined assholes who would take the stance of "Well, I'm not saying they're right, but maybe they have something, there are a lot of concerns right? What harm is there to letting the parents decide if they're uncomfortable?"
Hope the truth burns, folks.
This "researcher" is the total blame. Anyone who believed some soft-core porn chick with fake boobs over their physicians kind of had it coming - it's a tragedy that their children paid the price for their stupidity.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, nice fallacy.
There is one issue I have had since the beginning.
Assume it were true.
Assume all the autism is caused by vaccination (it can't be worse than that).
The autism percentage in the US in 2007 was 0.7%.
The chance a kid dies from diseases he could have been vaccinated against is higher, dunno the exact number and am to lazy to look'em up.
So these people think it's worse to have a kid with autism than to lose your child to a disease? Are these people insane?
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
The worst part is that we've known about this for at least 6 years now. Here's an article from 2004:
http://briandeer.com/mmr/st-wakefield-vaccine.htm
It's always good to see that Slashdot is firmly at the cutting edge of science and technology ...
I submit your son's troubles are directly causally related to exposure to you. After all, his condition declines with exposure to you.
Facetious? Yes. At the same time, people are very good at convincing themselves that they understand the "cause" of something even when they don't. This is how superstitions are born. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is called a logical fallacy for a reason, yet for some reason there's a sizable, possibly majority, portion of the population that simply cannot grasp the difference between correlation, causation, and just plain coincidence.
Famously, Jenny McCarthy went on Oprah and told parents not to vaccinate their kids. Many doctors and parents LISTENED! If you read the articles, you'll see that as a result children died of easily preventable childhood diseases because parents were too scared to get the proper vaccinations.
She's STILL DOING IT! She still says the same thing. Article in Huffington Post, dated TWO DAYS AGO:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jenny-mccarthy/vaccine-autism-debate_b_806857.html
I know children regress after vaccination because it happened to my own son. Why aren't there any tests out there on the safety of how vaccines are administered in the real world, six at a time? Why have only 2 of the 36 shots our kids receive been looked at for their relationship to autism? Why hasn't anyone ever studied completely non-vaccinated children to understand their autism rate?
These missing safety studies are causing many parents to approach vaccines with moderation. Why do other first world countries give children so many fewer vaccines than we do? What if a parent used the vaccine schedule of Denmark, Norway, Japan or Finland -- countries that give one-third the shots we do (12 shots vs. 36 in the U.S.)? Vaccines save lives, but might be harming some children -- is moderation such a terrible idea?
This debate won't end because of one dubious reporter's allegations. I have never met stronger women than the moms of children with autism. Last week, this hoopla made us a little stronger, and even more determined to fight for the truth about what's happening to our kids.
Amazing.
Is this actual fraud, or the kind of confirmation bias that goes on in science all the time? In other words, did this guy actually really believe his own results and invest accordingly, or did he fabricate his results in order to profit from the fabrication knowing it was a fabrication? There's a subtle but important difference.
The thrust of arguments seems to be that he intended fraud and a quick buck right from the start, or that he has been slandered and all will come out as he claimed once the dust settles.
But a more likely scenario is that he was convinced of the link between MMR and autism from the very early preliminary studies, so much so that he reached out for financial support and to the lawyers, expecting to not only prevent autism cases, but secondarily to make a buck from the evil pharma in the course of making them pay for their dastardly greedy mistakes. Revenge is all the sweeter when the revengee has to pay you for their mistake.
And in the end, so addicted was he to that end and his premature conclusion, that he deluded himself past the point where he could ever admit he had been wrong. When his data came out incompatible with his preconceived notion, he did not take a deep breath, count to ten, and reconsider his original position. He fudged the data to match his "reality" and passed the point of no return.
Yes, he deserves to be slapped around, but to say he planned this fraud right from the beginning is too facile an argument.
Infuriate left and right
At least no one was hurt. White collar crimes only hurt insurance companies right?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124165229009493675.html
I like the media. Everything is simple in the media. They can side with a certain viewpoint for a few years, implicitly calling everyone who doesn't agree, an idiot, selecting their guests and questions to only maintain the illusion of being neutral, while having a clear bias.
Then suddenly, something happens, new information becomes apparent and an endless stream of "it turns out that..." articles flood the public. Everything we proclaimed bad is now good, everything good, is now bad. Panic, people, for you were caught off guard again. The savior was the devil himself.
Media can repeatedly turn 180 on themselves and sell panic non-stop. They can even fabricate an issue where none exists, then as we recover, claim the opposite so we panic again. Really nice for ratings, and really suitable for pushing hidden agendas. Here's my world view: People's motives are complex. People's moral compass has more than two poles. Sometimes, good people becomes self deluded. Sometimes, bad people get things right. Sometimes, good studies fudge data, and sometimes, there is commercial interests behind a genuinely good cause.
Am I saying Andrew Wakefield was "right" and vaccines are "bad"? No. Am I saying get yourself all the vaccine shots, and all the seasonal flu ones, always because they are "good"? No. Because the world is just more complex than that. Some vaccines have helped us rid of serious conditions, and ultimately made and keep making the world a better place, while other are just peddled for profit with little or no scientific support behind them. I'm not going into details, because I'm not trying to sell you a certain viewpoint on this "scandal" as correct.
I'm only trying to bring recognition that in the media cycle we're in now, Wakefield is an evil incarnate who never even believed his own studies, who never ever had a honest thought in his life, and vaccines are as harmless as drinking purified water. You'll see one-sided "fact checks". You'll see journalist display clear dislike of Wakefield while pretending to interview him. You'll see them reiterate how wrong everyone always was.
Until the next cycle.
Did you ever give him steamed carrots? Like, the baby food with carrots in it? Or did you ever cook and mash up your own carrots? Or did your wife ever eat carrots and breastfeed your son? I don't want to cause undue alarm, but you need to search the web TODAY about carrots and developmental abnormalities. Seriously. Do it, and be careful with carrots until your child is at least in its teens.
How many children will die or suffer lifelong complications from preventable diseases because their parents got scared of vaccines by his unethical greed?
I hope this is illegal.
My problem with this sir, is that even it did cause your son to get autism, which it didn't, it would still be worth it. Should we not spare 40% of children from DYING so that 1% doesn't get autism. That is easily worth the trade off.
That's like asking why people believe the earth is round. Big oil is paying billions to convince us that the world is round! We must fight this fraud!
But seriously folks... Dr. Wakefield's conclusion was wrong. His conclusion brought back diseases almost eradicated by vaccinations. Jenny McCarthy uses her "experience" over REAMS and VOLUMES of studies that PROVE NO LINK. I don't care if the BMJ gave Brian Deer a BJ to 'attack' Wakefield. That doesn't make Wakefield right. It doesn't make him more evil. I am so sick of these celebretards getting a bully pulpit to push their horseshit agendas (Oprah, I'm looking at you). STOP listening to famous people who don't know any better than you! (I'm speaking of the royal you in this case, I mean.)
I don't mind a little skepticism... but FFS, why in Jehovah's name are we giving anything like this even a MICROSECOND of our attention when vaccinations are SAFE and WORK? It boggles the mind. Wakefield has poisoned the well... it's going to take DECADES to undo what he and Jenny and Oprah have wrought... All because someone has an autistic kid and reads on the internet that MMR caused it. IT MUST BE TRUE!
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
I'm sorry to hear about your son.
I'm a Doctor (Doctor of Chiropractic). Please get your son in to a Chiropractor for immediate adjustments which can allow the nervous system to heal. If it hasn't been too long, the toxins in vaccines can be removed by chelation therapy. As a Chiropractor, I'm not allowed to make prescriptions but can recommend such treatments.
Remember:
- Proper Nutrition
- Exercise
- Regular Chiropractic treatment
- Don't visit MDs, they are quacks.
Good luck!
Pharmaceutical companies make relatively little money with vaccines. They make far more money on chronic disease and continuous medication.
The world is far better off with vaccines and "big pharma" than without.
Trolling is a art,
Addressed to all the previous respondents to parent, and the mods to same:
Whoosh!
I see there are many people here who still need a sense of humour implant.
I would have thought the comment's title alone would have made it clear it was intended as a joke....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
This is the part of the whole thing I never understood. Even if we accept that vaccines increase the risk of Autism (which they don't), the problem they solve is much more serious. People die or get permanent life altering disabilities from the diseases we vaccinate against. To employ the very over the top rhetoric of the movement itself: "Don't these people understand that they're killing babies?!?!" Sure we don't have a lot of experience with most of these diseases, but that's precisely because we are nearly immune to them as a society. Remove the herd immunity and they go right back to killing people.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
His child is an "it" now? More importantly, it isn't carrots, it's garnets... pesky gems available widely in January. I highly recommend anyone who has to live through a January avoid people born in that month. Garnets are dangerous -- bad combination of minerals and color. Speaking of dangers, we should also note that peas are dangerous too... especially when attached to a pin and stuck into a large Starbucks straw.
As the parent of an autistic child I always thought this one was bullshit. I witnessed my sons development. My family was convinced it was a result of the vaccines. He was normal and suddenly he stopped all the babble. Started staring into space for long periods of time. I think I'm the only one who noticed it happening before the vaccines. Its like no one looked before that. At least now when someone tells me that was the cause I can at least tell them it was a scam.
I talked him into it because I own a bullwhip factory. Now I should start to cash in big time - but I won't because I'm going to give them away.
The fancy and +5 Insightful way to say 'CORRELATION IZ NOT CAUSATIONZ NEWB'
Having a bank account full of money is enough for many people. As long as they are not confronted by their victim, and the victim stays an anonymous number, people will mostly not feel any remorse.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
A chiropractor is a massage therapist that believes in fairy tales.
Oh please. If she even hears about this, she'll just attribute it to a conspiracy against him.
Technoli
why did the BMJ pay Brian Deer to attack Wakefield
Points out that this is nothing new (true, but not widely known which is a good reason for a popularising item). And states "I strongly suspect that if there was enough evidence to make the fraud accusations stick that it would have been brought up at the GMC hearing" -- but as far as I can see that wasn't the subject of the GMC hearing, which was about Wakefield's unauthorised medical experimentation on infants..
Who funded Brian Deer
Doesn't seem to understand how freelancers can get paid if they are not on the staff.
Brian Deer’s Conflict of Interests
Claims that Deer had a conflict of interest and tha the BMJ didn't do proper checking of that, but doesn't say what the conflict of interest was or point to any evidence.
Dr Wakefield's Submission to the UK Press Complaints Commission
Wakefield's complain to the Press Complaints Commision, which the PCC suspended pending the GMC hearing and which Wakefield did not pursue after the GMC struck him off the medical register.
Andrew, is that you?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Can you cite any published studies in peer-reviewed journals that would support your claim?
Yeah, but even then there are different conclusions possible. If you assume autism or death was caused by a vaccine based on this fallacy why jump to the conclusion the vaccine is bad. It could just as well have been any other problem like contamination. This can of course be accidental but I would not even expect mayor manufacturers to destroy entire batches when a few are known to be polluted (after all they even shipped AIDS infected products knowingly so I don't really have their general code of ethics in high regard). So if and when jumping to conclusions based on incomplete evidence and a logical fallacy I would claim a polluted vaccine probably caused it instead of boycotting all vaccines...
Trying saying that to the mother of a son who died from whooping cough because she listened to 'experts' in the media and didn't get her children vaccinated.
I drink water every day. I'm assuming that the 500000000X dilution of adam and eve's piss should be so powerful it cures all illness.
The thing that came out recently was the outright fraud in the research. Previously, the science was assumed to just be not reproducible.
executed. Seriously.
The problem with taking Picard's "solutions" too seriously, is that in his case it was other people's problems, and they were even forbidden to get too involved in them.
Sorta like how if a US battleship lands in the middle of a rapidly escalating trade dispute between the islands of East Bumfuckistand and West Bumfuckistan, the captain isn't supposed to drag the USA into it or do his own gunboat diplomacy. The _correct_ answer there is to get the fuck out as quick as possible, and not end up being the guy who started WW3. Let them sort it out or let the UN and diplomats sort it out, your job as a captain just isn't to do diplomacy.
Star Trek does give its captains a lot more room to, basically, be immature big kids playing soldiers, but that just makes it even less of a model to take in a real life situation.
In this case however it's not someone else's problem. The autism scare scam has caused thousands of deaths and a resurgence in diseases that were previously just about extinct in the western world, and it caused those problems in our own nations. They're not the problem of some other nation (or planet in ST's case), they're _our_ problems. We _are_ the ones who get to sort out the mess in our own backyard.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
(Story)
I got my vaccine last week too. Now all I want to do with my life, ever, is study Heath bars. Did you know that the word for toffee might come from a creole word? Anyway, my Heath bars are all nicely lined up, all 310 of them, because that is the temperature you have to heat molasses at to make toffee.
I am also developing an encoding language based on the 3 dimensional position of the holes in aerated sponge toffee. I believe it has applications to the theory of data storage on 3d hard drives.
Now what was that about the side effects of the vaccine again?
(/Story)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
SARS, DDT, H1N5, CFC, SO2, WMD, CAGW, Y2K, MMR VAX ... the list goes on and on and on.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
Which is why you will never be a very good conspiracy theorist.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
It's kind of an interesting game theory problem - from the perspective of an individual parent, the risk of not vaccinating only their child is relatively low, given that they are assuming everyone else will be vaccinated. if there is even a tiny perceived danger in getting the vaccine (real or not), than the rational choice may really be to not be vaccinated. Unfortunately, this can lead to a Nash equilibrium, in that the outcome for the entire population is worse if everyone were to make this choice, similar to the prisoner's dilemma problem. From the perspective of the entire population, for example a public health official, it obviously makes sense to vaccinate everyone, even if there is some very small risk from the vaccine, as long as that risk is smaller than the risk of getting a disease without the vaccine.
90% of *everything* is crap - I keep on seeing evidence for Sturgeon's point. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_Law)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Should we not spare 40% of children from DYING so that 1% doesn't get autism. That is easily worth the trade off.
Try saying that when it's your child, asshole.
Ok. Saving the lives of 40% of children is worth the risk of giving 1% of them autism including my own child. Easily worth the trade off. Your child isn't any more special than anyone else. Neither are any children of mine.
Some people are just going to be unlucky. Taking stupid risks like not vaccinating because someone hypothesizes (fraudulently as it turns out) that there might be a link between a particular vaccine and autism merely trades a theoretical risk for another well established risk. Don't get vaccinated and you might not get measles or mumps but some percentage of the population absolutely will. It's a roll of the dice. Taking a hypothetical risk over a well proven one is retarded.
Vaccines save lives. This is not in dispute. EVERY vaccine has side effects in at least some portion of the population. So does every medicine and medical treatment known to man. Unproven side effects in a few are not sufficient reason to not use a medication and certainly not reason to not be vaccinated.
I figure celebrities and average Joes are both about as likely to misunderstand things outside their fields of expertise, it's just that celebrities have a larger platform to talk about things they don't understand. Celebrities are people too. :P
I'm thinking more of celebrities' political opinions than autism/vaccine BS or $cientology, but that fit too.
Also different fields of expertise - conversely, doctors shouldn't and don't tell the likes of Oprah how to be an effective entertainer. Of course, some get self-righteous about the importance of their own field, evne with some justification.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Although not specifically mentioned in "The Crackpot Index," the number of exclamation points does indicate zealous nuttery. Instead of -1 Flamebait, it probably deserves a +1 Successful Troll.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Shhhhht, that is what I want *them* to believe. ;)
As a Chiropractor, I'm not allowed to make prescriptions but can recommend such treatments.
- Don't visit MDs, they are quacks.
Good luck!
I think there are very good reasons that you aren't allowed to write prescriptions.
...especially when attached to a pin and stuck into a large Starbucks straw.
Well now I'm going to have to go and get myself thrown out of my favorite coffee house. Thanks a lot.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
You're a Clemson fan, aren't you? Trying to convice people Garnets are dangerous. Hmph!
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
I think you're faking it. Had you really been affected by a vaccine and developed autism, you'd have mentioned Celcius, Fahrenheit or Kelvin. You'd also have memorized that sugar (sucrose) melts at 186C, 367F, 459.15K.
Also, had you really developed autism, you'd definitely fail at spotting a sense of humour and take things literally instead.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Really, no. It's been known for years that the 'science' was utter rubbish. Previously Wakefield was known to be wrong, now he's known to be a fraudster.
Are you sassing me in Eskimo talk?
This isn't Big Pharma. This is little startup pharma, plus lawyers. Read the article.
Yes, IHBT. IHL. IWHAND.
Worse, a chiropractor is a massage therapist that believes in fairy tales that many jurisdictions permit the use of "Doctor" in front of their names, creating the illusion of medical competency that simply does not exist.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I don't want to cause undue alarm, but you need to search the web TODAY about carrots and developmental abnormalities.
No no no no no no!
All of the real research is being done into dihydrogen monoxide, that insidious compound that has been known to be associated with many diseases!
Although I hear that they are finding that hydrogen hydroxide can be useful in dealing with dihydrogen monoxide problems.
Sapere aude!
Or worse, how about the pre-vaccination age babies who died because kids around them hadn't been vaccinated. If it was just the people who didn't get the shot by choice who were dying, then I wouldn't mind this whole thing nearly as much. The problem is that once you fuck up herd immunity, you've fucked it up for everyone, including the very young, the very old, and those with compromised immune systems. And, of course, the really horrible thing is that the people who don't get the shot, may actually survive MMR perfectly well, since by the time they or their parents have made that choice they are a bit older and more able to resist the disease, they've just made it more dangerous for everyone around them.
And (and and and...) of course, as other people have mentioned, they're putting a chunk of the population at risk of death, simply to save themselves from the (as it turns out, rather specious) chance of getting a no doubt life-changing, but absolutely non-fatal disease.
In short, and pardon my directness, but speaking as a parent, fuck those who don't get the shots for themselves and their kids right in their entitled, self-centred, arrogant asses. They and their spawn should be given the choice to get them, and then airdropped on a remote island with all the rest of the assholes who think that the chance of their precious little snowflake having a disability is more important than the life of other people's so they can't screw it up for the rest of us. /rant finished.
- ------- There are ten kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who... Huh?
Eh, no. The whole point of the story was that the profit motive preceded the fraud. The GP is largely correct in his assertion.
May the Maths Be with you!
Just to be clear, I have not attempted this and any results you might have with larger peas from fresh (as opposed to frozen) produce sections should not be related to my above post.
Whoosh.
I got a tiger and put it in my backyard and have yet to be hit by a meteorite. Therefore having a tiger in your yard prevents being hit by meteorites.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
It may be a logical fallacy, but often times in practical use it makes a damn good heuristic.
Oh my.
Well, since I carefully put tags to indicate that it was all a joke, if you only think I'm faking that's a little worrisome! I mostly started doing the tag thing when the mods started missing some of my double-barreled jokes. There's new research though that there are other a-social continuum spreads than autism. I just took a try at a spelling-pedant / rain-man mash-up.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The difference being that chiropractic practices aren't based entirely on something utterly ludicrous. At least mechanical manipulation of the joints and soft tissues can have an effect on some conditions, namely those tied to the joints and tissues in question. That's already a step up from homeopathy, in which the treatment for all conditions is very expensive water, which can only directly treat being thirsty, and even then not very well in the doses provided.
While most other replies to you have been rude, they are nevertheless true. It is *extremely important* that you do not start believing that your son's vaccinations caused any trouble with him and leave that to rigorously controlled scientific studies.
The reason is that the ones making sure the anti-vaccination crowd always have a saying are not themselves, it's the parents with that small doubt. It's the parents thinking "I don't believe there is a link between vaccinations and autism. Although perhaps the idea shouldn't be thrown out the window, our child/the neighbour's child/that guy at works' child has autism and it became prominent just after the vaccinations. Perhaps there is something small to it after all?". That kind of thinking needs to stop *right now*, or more children will die from preventable diseases.
I got a tiger and put it in my backyard and have yet to be hit by a meteorite. Therefore having a tiger in your yard prevents being hit by meteorites.
And therefore, my tiger repelling rock (I haven't seen a tiger around me since I acquired it) can be surreptitiously placed in someone's yard to cause them to be hit by meteorites!
The enemies of Democracy are
Sometimes. If a chiropractor tells you they are going to cure your indigestion and improve your vision and align your chakras, then yeah. That person is either crazy or lying. If a chiropractor tells you that they might be able to relieve some spinal issues, that's a different story.
It's not like it killed anyone... oh wait...
I drink water every day. I'm assuming that the 500000000X dilution of adam and eve's piss should be so powerful it cures all illness.
That wouldn't work unless Adam and Eve's piss in undiluted form could cause all illness. You should really talk to a professionally licensed homeopath!
No seriously, homeopathy is even dumber than just "the more diluted the more powerful". It's also "something that causes a symptom, once diluted, cures that symptom, even if it's not what actually caused the symptom in this case." So, you know, inflammation due to the venom of a biting or stinging animal can be cured by diluting some other animal's venom, or probably just any inflammatory substance.
So I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that the diluted solution of Adam and Eve's urine that we're all drinking would cure Original Sin. Boy isn't that one going to throw the Catholic Church for a loop!
The enemies of Democracy are
Actually, you bring up a good point. It, also, points out where the line should be for mandatory vaccines. There was some talk about making Gardasil a mandatory vaccination. The problem with making Gardasil mandatory is that the risk it guards against is relatively low (compared to polio or measles). Additionally the risk is behavior dependant. Therefore, the decision as to whether or not to use Gardasil should be a decision that is made by the parents in consultation with their family doctor after weighing the various risks. I used Gardasil because it was big news in the last few years and I am somewhat familiar with it. I am pretty sure there are other vaccinations out there that would be good examples as well. I am afraid that some of them are mandatory, but I hope I am mistaken.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
So are you saying that the theory that says stupid is contagious is wrong? Every time I see one stupid-infected person, there are other stupid-infected individuals nearby. I've seen instances where one stupid (but buxom) blond walks into a room, and every man and half the women are turned into drooling idiots. The incubation period appears to be less than a second.
That, kind sir, is what is going to be the Apocalypse of 2012. Not a comet crashing into the earth. Not a grand flood. It will be a viral pandemic of stupid.
Just as we've done with vampires and zombies in centuries past, we must eliminate the threat now! Do it quickly, before you become too stupid to act!
What was that you were saying about causality and correlation? Which is better, to prove me wrong, or agree and thin out the scourge of stupid? :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
This "researcher" is the total blame. Anyone who believed some soft-core porn chick with fake boobs over their physicians kind of had it coming - it's a tragedy that their children paid the price for their stupidity.
Yes, that's a tragedy. Children shouldn't (but so often do) pay the consequences for their parent's failings.
But it goes way beyond that. The children of parents who aren't stupid and listened to their doctors over Jenny McMommySense are still paying the price for the ones who were that stupid.
Because they were too young to be vaccinated, because they had an allergy, or simply because vaccines are not and never were intended to be 100% immunity for those who get them. Instead, they're intended to make it difficult for a disease to gain a foothold and spread.
Simply by creating larger pockets of the population in which the disease can get a foothold these idiots are potentially hurting EVERYONE's children. And that is simply not acceptable. Fuck Wakefield who should be in prison, fuck Jenny McIdiot, fuck all the parents who have no idea what horrors they are unleashing on themselves and the non-idiot portion of society.
"Thank you Darwin" some AC says? Darwin is laughing at you -- by idly standing by saying "Thank you Darwin" thinking only those too dumb to vaccinate will be weeded out, you're proving yourself unfit as your children could be affected too. By failing to counter this idiocy long ago, we as a society have been proving ourselves unfit. I can only hope this result will be the first step towards succeeding, but frankly I don't see how this is going to convince any anti-vaxxer. They'll just see it as another smear job and cover-up of THE TRUTH.
The enemies of Democracy are
No it doesn't. All it does is give you a place to start research. If you observe A, and then B happens afterward, the very next thing you should do is come up with a falsifiable experiment that attempts to prove or disprove A caused B.
It's not a heuristic of anything because you can spend all day coming up with fallacies. Here's one. My alarm clock causes the sun to come up. One always happens after the other, right? So it's a heuristic, right? Wrong. It's speculation. Make a falsifiable experiment. Turn the alarm clock off and see if the sun still comes up. Test it. Then you have your heuristic.
Speculation isn't anything but speculation.
Getting back to the original topic, these jackasses who put this scam forward should be held personally responsible for every child that missed their vaccinations from the scare. It always amazes me when businesses will actually put profits ahead of human lives. Why we don't send people like this - or tobacco executives, or people who hide design flaws in cars - to jail for life is beyond me. Killing people for money should be an across-the-board kind of a thing. If someone pays someone else a few thousand to shoot someone it's first degree murder. But if you do it for the stockholders it's somehow okay.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Ah, well played
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
It's the multi-player version of the prisoner's dilemma. It's called the "tragedy of the commons".
Learn something new.
Determining causation for health issues isn't one of those times though.
Nick
to charge him with crimes against humanity - though I doubt anyone has the guts to do it (including the EU). But it just might stop the next snake-oiler clothed in pseudoscience from practicing Death by Lucre.
The argument for mandatory vaccines could just as easily be used as an argument for mandatory kidney harvesting.
A Nash equilibrium occurs when every player knows the equilibrium strategies of the other players and no player can benefit by changing their strategy whilst other players keep theirs unchanged.
In this circumstance, each player can look at the others and ask "are they being vaccinated?". If they are, it makes sense to not get the vaccine and avoid any side effects. If all players choose the alternative strategy of not being vaccinated, it would then be possible for some players to improve their outcome by changing strategy and going for vaccination, thereby swapping the large risk of infection for the small risk of side effects.
Thinking about this quickly, I think this shows that there isn't a stable equilibrium for this problem as whilst there is a majority of people being vaccinated the optimal strategy is to not get vaccinated but when herd immunity has disappeared the optimal strategy is to get the vaccine before being infected.
Nick
Honestly, that is simply stupid. There are certainly a lot of witch doctor chiropractors out there, but claiming that moving a bone that is out of place, back into place has not medical value is just...well...stupid. If you pull your arm out of it's socket, and you go to the emergency room, the doctor will put it back in it's socket. That IS chiropractics. It is chiropractics in it's most crude sense, but it is chiropractics all the same. To claim that chiropractics is a fairy tale is to claim that putting a persons arm bone back in it's socket when it has been pulled out isn't really helping and any precieved improvement is just the patients imagination.
Are you REALLY going to claim that? Really?
I know you're joking, but you could be right! I just ran across a study linking(weakly) lavender to breast growth in prepubescent males. Who the hell would have thought that something like lavender could affect sexual development?
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa064725
The world is probably full of phytochemicals that could have health consequences if consumed in sufficient amounts.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
For *every* *single* I told you so post, I want to know how many had infants at the time of the peak of the hysteria or have infants now. The issue looks a whole lot different as a parent.
In the U.S., there's a complicating factor. Vaccine manufacturers are generally shielded from liability. Where is the manufacturer's disincentive for distributing deadly product?
Not every step forward in medical anything turns out necessarily good. Read up on Pharma's invasion of Psychiatry sometime.
Finally, the choice with my kid was old-fashioned single vaccines. More shots, but essentially the same product that was given to me as a kid. For reasons I really don't get, there was a great deal of resistance to this method by a couple of pediatricians. We just found a pediatrician that had it on hand and did one at a time with time between each one.
My wife buys into this stuff regularly, so my position was not immediately accepted. But she got to the point pretty quickly where one at a time was a good compromise.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Nash equilibrium isn't necessarily the most rational solution, given sufficient information. Look at fishing as a tragedy of the commons problem: it makes sense for each player to overfish as much as possible, which eventually degrades the stocks. But if you know everyone's going to do it, then you'd be a fool to stake your livelihood on it for the long term. Same with vaccines, if you can predict that enough other parents won't vaccinate their kids then you'll realize that the risk of measles to your kid will rise significantly. So then it's rational to vaccine your kid. Or you could hedge it and run the probabilities assuming a 50% chance of significant some loss of herd immunity, 25% chance of no change, and 25% chance of enough kids not being vaccinated and the viruses mutating. Part of the definition of Nash equilibrium is that no other player in the game can change their strategy if you change yours. If you model the diseases as players since their effects can be affected by the actions of the other players, then you have a player whose strategy may change if you change yours. So it's not Nash equilibrium in that model.
Actually, I was counting the number of times he put '1' in instead of '!' as an indication of a deliberate joke....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Well, the Mail is well known for its medical recommendations...
http://kill-or-cure.heroku.com/about
Oops - forgot about this one too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTu7GLfrmUI
I'm sure your opinion is well founded in facts, but here are facts which suggest you are wrong.
There are quacks among both MDs and Chiropractors. An MD gave my son and I Hepatitis B, which nearly killed him since he got the first dose of anti-biotic from a glass syringe the doctor "sterilized" between shots. He gave the person he treated before he treated my son an anti-biotic shot to treat that person's case of Hep B. I would never had known the source of our Hep B had not his nurse been a former student of mine and called to tell me of his "practice" of using glass syringes to save money. He lost his medical license as a result. Both of my feet give constant pain while walking after two failed surgeries, by different doctors claiming they could "fix" my severe case of hammer toes. The literature is filled with examples of incompetent doctors doing damage to their patients.
I met a Chiropractor who claimed he could cure the common cold with spinal adjustments. He was suffering from a cold at the time.
My sister was in an automobile accident and had her jaw fractured in several places. She recovered from her injuries but over the next 10 years she suffered severe headaches, and her sight in one eye went from color to black and white, with tunnel vision, before becoming totally blind. She was on high doses of analgesics for years. She grew weak on the same side and eventually was confined to a wheel chair. The vision in her other eye became black and white and started to tunnel. Tons of X-Rays, MRI's and CAT scans over the years didn't show the doctors any reason for her illness, which they attributed to mental causes, but didn't hesitate to add that she probably didn't have long to live if the paralysis continued to spread.
My brother-in-law took her to a home show to get her out and put her mind on something other than her troubles. They happened to stop at a Chiropractor's booth. He briefly examined her and announced, without any prior knowledge, that she had been in an auto accident and it caused a small dislocation of one of her vertebra. Over the next several months of therapy my sister discarded the wheel chair, strength returned to her right arm and leg, and more importantly, color vision returned to her remaining good eye. Unbelievably, within a year full color vision returned to her other eye. While the vertebral displacement could account for the lateral weakness I still don't understand how it could have led to her loss of vision.
She filed a lawsuit against Kaiser HMO (Colorado) and the doctors who treated her and with a court order obtained her original X-rays following the car accident, and on many visits afterwords. They were compared with ones taken by the Chiropractor on her first visit and on her last visit. All of the X-rays showed an approximate 1/8 inch displacement of a vertebra, except the last one taken before the Chiropractor discharged her. The lawsuit was thrown out because of problems getting other doctors in Colorado to testify, and out-of-state doctors being rejected by the court, but Kaiser gave her $15,000, which supposedly was reimbursement for her visits lawyer fees. They got off light.
The next time I saw her, about 5 years after her lawsuit, she was wearing an nasal cannula connected to an Oxygen bottle. Forty years of smoking did what an accident couldn't. She got tired of living her life tethered to an Oxygen bottle and still having breathing become more difficult as the Emphysema progressed. She checked herself into a hospital, took off the nasal cannula, and specifically requested no heroic efforts to save her life. It took her three days to die of suffocation. She was one tough gal, and I miss her.
Personally, I always prefer a Chiropractor to a "Physical Therapist" for problems relating to physical trauma.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Yeah, for fraud. I spent a ton of money on vaccinations hoping to catch autism. Now I guess I'll just have to practice playing the piano and learning how to count cards the old fashioned slow way. :(
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Oh, and in case it wasn't clear from the above note, I did get my son vaccinated, knowing all the risks and possibilities involved on both sides. Even if there was a chance that the vaccination did do everything people said it did, I would have been in there holding him while the doctor jabbed him in the legs.
And if he had become autistic, I would have loved him the same as I do now, but I don't think it would have changed my mind and each and every subsequent kid would have recieved the vaccinations as well.
Why? Because that's the price you pay for living in a civilisation where most of these diseases have been eradicated. It's like taxes and obeying traffic laws - it might suck, but unless you pay the price, you don't have the moral right to recieve the protections they afford you.
- ------- There are ten kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who... Huh?
Homeopathy IS a scam, as anyone with a degree in Chemistry or Biochemistry can tell you. Many DOUBLE BLIND studies have been done testing the claims: Homeopathy's efficacy beyond the placebo effect is unsupported by the collective weight of scientific and clinical evidence.
To maintain their scam proponents make the absurd claim that "water has memory", so even though physiological agents may have been removed by dilution, the water "remembers" what the preparation is "supposed to do".
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
I would say that even "experts" in the field should not be blindly listened to. There is a reason that people should get second and third opinions on major procedures, and in most fields, there are controversies where even the experts are on different sides of the debates.
The problem is that if even experts can be mistaken, what chance does the average person have of being able to tell the correct experts from the incorrect or even more so from the outright frauds who are attempting to profit from misinformation.
One big example I can think of are the mattress ads claiming that your mattresses weight doubles in 7 years from dust and mites. As this is being reported as fact from a firm that specializes in mattresses, an average person may well believe it instead of using their common sense and realizing that the mattress firm would profit from spreading such lies.
Yeah, last year's flu vaccine bonanza world-wide sales due to all that fear marketing only reaped something like 6 billion dollars in sales split between a half dozen small medical companies. Just in time for Christmas bonuses.
But yeah, that IS actually relatively little money by comparison to all other combined drug sales. Amazing.
Though, I don't know about the world being better off with big pharma than without. People are fat and stupid as a direct result of food/drug companies and their policies. As with most things championed by Slashdotters; the idea is great, but the reality and execution are pretty damned corrupt.
-FL
FFS, why in Jehovah's name are we giving anything like this even a MICROSECOND of our attention when vaccinations are SAFE and WORK?
Because that's a blanket statement which isn't true all of the time, and you know it. There is corruption, greed and ineptness in the world, and to pretend that there isn't simply because we like the fundamental IDEA of vaccines, is foolish. Injecting mercury and formaldehyde and other questionable contaminants is a BAD idea even if it does happen to be done in conjunction with the execution of an otherwise GOOD idea.
In a black & white universe, it's easy to make choices. But our universe is filled with colors and shades, and that is why we give this subject our attention. It's how we learn.
People taking one side with great vehemence without considering the other really doesn't help.
-FL
Oh please. If she even hears about this, she'll just attribute it to a conspiracy against him.
She has heard about it and you're not too far off-base with her reaction. Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jenny-mccarthy/vaccine-autism-debate_b_806857.html
But suppose Obama says (not that he does this, but hey) we'll only use "verified" science. That means 2 peer-reviewed publications. Let's see what happens. That means that 1 in 400 (20*20) decisions is flat-out-wrong in the theoretically optimum case.
What's the alternative?
I'm not actually sure what you're objecting to. Are you opposed to the scientific process? Or are you just arguing against government involvement in medicine? Since the same process is used in all fields of science, are you opposed to government involvement in ANY scientific endeavors? And, if we refuse to allow science to sway political decisions, what process do you propose replace it? Blind guesswork?
I don't necessarily disagree with most of what you've said, although the AC already pointed out one of your errors. Much of it is pretty accurate. I'm just not sure what it is that you're proposing.
Anyone who's been following the debacle has known for years that it was outright fraud. It's just that now we have an "official finding" that we can point to. But I get what you're saying; I guess for most people this might be big news, but my first reaction was "wow, yeah, and the sky is blue, too".
Ah yes, some anecdotal stories... it's always the same for those trying to promote the lies of pseudomedicine.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Do we get to persecute you if your child falls off a bicycle, is injured playing high school football, or is hit by a car crossing the street? All of these have proven to harm and even kill children. In fact in the case of the chicken pox vaccine, a child that is allowed to play high school football is MORE likely to be killed by it than a child that has not been immunized for chicken pox.
I have seen many an abusive parent. From psychological abuse, to neglect, to drugging them up for medical conditions that don't exist, to literally pimping them out in the sex trade. Not one of those people refused vaccinations. The only people that I have ever seen refuse vaccinations were people who have looked at the information, and made a consiouse decision to not get the vaccines based off that information. One can argue whether the information they got was good or bad, and one can argue whether the parents interpreted the information they got well, or poorly. Claiming that they were neglectful is intellectually dishonest, and it is encouraging parent NOT to look at the available information, but to just do what everyone else is doing. Mobs have many heads but no brains.
I am normally against death penalty, but in cases like this (endangering millions for profit) I think it might not be harsh enough.
So you're saying we should have no control over our own bodies, because you know so well what is good for everyone? That we shouldn't be allowed to weigh the benefits and risks on our own, because your highness already has? That you support the government grabbing adults and children alike and injecting them with substances against their will?
Quite thankfully, that's why you aren't in a position to enforce your will upon the world. Unfortunately, some people will never learn that their opinions aren't gospel truth. You're one of them.
I am not against vaccines, but people like you are exactly why we're quickly losing our freedoms. Same fucking argument as "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear," except dressed up differently. You make me sick.
Great Intellect...
When I read this : the business was to be launched off the back of the vaccine scare, diagnosing a purported—and still unsubstantiated—“new syndrome.” , I thought that approach to research sounded familiar.
Then it hit me. While browsing through the CRU FOIA files I recalled reading the "EURO4M_DoW_v2.doc" which outlined a set of "deliverables and milestones" for climate data (Figure B.1.3b. GANTT diagram for Deliverables and Milestones, on page 35, from:
Project acronym: EURO4M
Project full title: European Reanalysis and Observations for Monitoring
Grant agreement no.: 242093
Date of preparation of Annex I (latest version): 9 November 2009).
The document discussed in advance who would get how much of the grant money.
The autism scam worked the same way. In advance of their "theory" becoming practice, the autism scammers had already worked out how the pie would be sliced: Wakefield would get 37%, and the father of child 10 22.2%. The venture capitalist would get 18%, Pounder 11.7%, and O’Leary 11.1%.
In the CRU EURO4M document the "List of Beneficiaries" (their words, not mine) include:
* Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
* Met Office
* University Rovira i Virgili
* National Meteorological Administration
* Meteo Swiss
* Deutscher Wetterdienst
* Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute
*University of East Anglia (Climatic Research Unit)
*Météo France
One such set of CRU "Deliverables", out of around 50 areas of categorized "research", were:
"
* gridded high-resolution daily precipitation dataset for the Alpine region and analysis of daily to decadal precipitation variations (D1.1, M1.1, D1.2);
* European window of the GPCC dataset available for the EURO4M (D1.3);
* extended and updated ENSEMBLES gridded daily dataset for Europe (D1.4, M1.2, D1.5);
* new UEA/CRU data products for Potential Evapotranspiration (PET) and PDSI (D1.6);
* new satellite-based gridded datasets based on MVIRI (D1.7, M1.3, D1.8), MSG (D1.9, D1.10), Land-SAF (D1.11);
* datasets for the Mediterranean (D1.12, D1.13, M1.4);
* proposal for additional data rescue activities required (D1.14)."
Now, as a retired programmer I can understand how one can write a proposal for creating software and give specific "deliverables" and milestone dates for product delivery and sign-off. But, having done research in anti-Cancer metabolites in graduate school, I found it amazing that someone could write a grant proposal for Global Warming (a.k.a Climate Change) and promise a delivery date for data which would support the AGW hypothesis. Nature is NOT so pliable.
The comparisons between this scam and the AGW scam go even farther. Knowing the unethical, if not illegal, nature of their plans, the parties agreed to keep the relevant information secret, even from Freedom Of Information Actions. Except in the autism case, ... when Richard Thomas, at the time the UK’s information commissioner, traveled to the college’s offices and later served a formal notice, did they release the documents into my hands. . When Phil Jones got a FOIA request from Steve McIntyre, the UK Information Office went to the CRU and conspired with Jones to keep the AGW data secret. Of course, one has to ask that if the data did support the theory of AGW why would they want to keep it secret? McIntyre has proven to be a much better statistician than anyone at the CRU. IF the data showed what the CRU was claiming it showed, McIntyre could only punctuate their claims. Instead, McIntyre punctured their claims by showing how they fudged the data and, as the "HARRY_README.TXT" file revealed, created some temperature data sets for the 1960-2000 range Ex nihilo, a truly remarkable creation!
Contrary to the autism or CRU publications, for at least two centuries the standard protocol when publishing in science journals is that the scientist ALSO includes the exa
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
How about I'm arguing for government to stay out of every decision it can reasonably stay out of ?
Which would of course mean that people choose for themselves which docter they believe - and NOT that the government decides for them.
The problem with that is that if you make government pay for healthcare, while giving people these options, you're heading into disaster. Unlimited spending "tends to go wrong". But no problem ! If government does not have anything to do with paying for it, the problem goes away.
And if you wish to provide healthcare for the poor, how about you ... go out and do that ! Or donate money. Or ... But how about you do not force others to do it in your stead, them start balking about how "moral" this is supposed to be.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/government-concedes-vacci_b_88323.html http://www.911truth.ch/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2012 Secondly, no "correlative study" is needed. This is physiology. There is a direct pathway by which mercury and aluminum damage the brain.
Bullshit:
"All of the whooping cough-related deaths in California occurred in babies too young to be fully immunized against the illness, which is why parents and caretakers are being urged to get booster shots. Typically, babies are given a series of vaccinations, then receive booster shots between ages 4 and 6 and again after age 10.
Many parents forgo vaccines for their children because of concerns about autism, typically fueled by misinformation on the Internet, said Dr. Mark Sawyer, a University of California-San Diego professor and fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics."
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2010/09/17/9-infant-deaths-in-california-whooping-cough-outbreak/
- ------- There are ten kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who... Huh?
If you read my comment, you'll see that I have no problem with people deciding for themselves what they should or shouldn't do.
However, as the old saying goes, your freedoms end where mine begin, and since their freedom to not vaccinate clearly infringes on the rest of the world's desire to not die, society has the right and to a certain extent responsibility to exclude those who endanger it by their choice of inaction.
Do I really think people should be airdropped on an island? No. I was engaging in a certain amount of rhetorical exageration.
I do think that any daycare or school that I send my son to must have a policy of vaccinations for everyone who attends, and I think that hospitals should have a policy of not allowing those who are vaccinated to visit, and if a hopsital needs to admit someone who hasn't done what they should, they should put them in a different wing than those who have until they've been proven not to be carriers.
I am not alone in wanting to restrict behaviour that endangers the society we live in. Try building a breeder reactor in your backyard and see how fast your freedoms get curtailed. Spray Agent Orange to get rid of your weeds, run your waste water pipe out to the street into the storm drain, shout fire in a crowded theatre or play Justin Beiber at concert levels in the middle of the night, and then tell me how far your liberty goes. How about you punch out a cop, shoot a bank teller or shit on the sidewalk? What, you wouldn't be allowed to do any of those? Better break out the blue wode and claymore! Your FREEDOMS have been curtailed!
Get my point yet? For a society to function healthily, reasonable restrictions and patterns of behaviour have to be put on people. If you really don't want to be a part of that, and play by the rules, you should find a place where you don't have to, but be aware that you don't get to receive the benefits of the rules either.
I make you sick? Huh. Must be catching.
- ------- There are ten kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who... Huh?
OK, here goes (can't decide whether you're trolling so I'll bite)
One question is ... why is this a "pharma business scam" ? This guy was a government employee when he committed his scam.
He was involved in a number of companies selling vaccines, and had pending patents on single vaccines, and was apparently involved in companies to sell those single vaccines. He was also on the payroll of a group set up to litigate in the context of multiple (MMR) vaccines. So it wasn't "big pharma", but definitely he was involve in pharma.
This guy had all the titles on could possibly ask for.
Wakefield was an [adult] gastroenterologist doing research in paediatrics and autism, both fields in which he had no titles.
The fraudulent research, for 12 years(1993-2005) , was about as evidence-based as you can get. It had been researched, published, peer-reviewed, re-published.
Very few people took Wakefield's evidence seriously at the time, it was always contentious. Subsequent studies were not done to replicate Wakefield's findings, they were done to lend weight to the mainstream, orthodox view that his research was bunkum.
How many children will die or suffer lifelong complications from preventable diseases because their parents got scared of vaccines by his unethical greed?
Probably very few if not none.
...especially when attached to a pin and stuck into a large Starbucks straw.
Well now I'm going to have to go and get myself thrown out of my favorite coffee house. Thanks a lot.
I get myself thrown out of Starbucks all the time, but usually it's because I'm shooting peas out of a straw at fellow customers, the servers, etc.
Oh, am I supposed to know about that series? AFAIK, it doesn't get aired here in Spain ;)
Correction, it _is_ aired. I have never watched Big Bang Theory though.
... whether fraudulent or not, was based on 12 subjects. The innumerate media and public share some of the blame for not being highly skeptical about a study involving a 75% of the blame, but our government schools are not doing their job either.
If humans are mostly water, and beer is mostly water, then humans must be mostly beer.
You are mistaken. He states that his son was alright, was vaccinated, and after vaccination his son started having problems. In this context he is implying there is a cause (vaccination) and effect (problems) without providing any more information. As such, it's a post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy (sassing in Eskimo talk aside).
How about I'm arguing for government to stay out of every decision it can reasonably stay out of ?
Sure, I'd buy that, but I don't see how you get to that point by criticizing the best method of discovery which we have. Essentially, your argument boils down to "the government is going to make mistakes no matter what, so let's keep them out of it so that people can make even more mistakes". I'm not sure that this is a logical argument :)
You could make the point that while individuals on their own will tend to make worse decisions, at least those decisions won't affect everyone. That could be a valid argument. But, again, attacking the scientific publication and review process doesn't really get you there.
Also, I've put together this custom bag of supplements you can buy for $50, and, oh here is this pamphlet showing how simple and logical the cause of and solution to your medical problem is...for only 15 bucks. Also, I'll need your email address so I can follow up on you... You'll probably want to receive my monthly newsletter, its only $5 a month. And hey can you fill out this questionnaire really quick...
Oh I see this in almost all my patients. You have a sub-clinical (fungal, bacterial, oxygen) deficiency or subclinical (fungal, bacterial, acid) excess. Taking this medication for 4 months at a sub-clinical dosage will care of that, I can sell you all you'll ever need for $250. So remember to watch your diet and stress levels, don't forget to spit into a clear glass of water every morning to see if your spit sinks to the bottom. If that ever happens it'd be best for you to come back for a second visit before you get toxic, the problem is my treatment worked too well and we need to replace the (fungus, bacteria, acid) using this second package. Most of my patients never return to me though so you probably won't have to worry about it.
Carrots have significant amounts of dihydrousmonoxide.
testing out my trending skills
True, though those are separate issues from nonexperts speaking on a topic.
Yes, there's potential conflict of interest when those most knowledgeable about the industry have a personal stake in it
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
... The problem is that once you fuck up herd immunity, you've fucked it up for everyone, including the very young, the very old, and those with compromised immune systems. ... In short, and pardon my directness, but speaking as a parent, fuck those who don't get the shots for themselves and their kids right in their entitled, self-centred, arrogant asses. They and their spawn should be given the choice to get them, and then airdropped on a remote island with all the rest of the assholes who think that the chance of their precious little snowflake having a disability is more important than the life of other people's so they can't screw it up for the rest of us.
In short, and pardon my directness, but speaking as a parent, what about those who don't breastfeed their children for at least two years and beyond (WHO advised), and who don't get enough vitamin D, and who don't read about nutrition and "disease proof" their children?
http://www.amazon.com/Disease-Proof-Your-Child-Feeding-Right/dp/0312338058
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/infantfeeding_recommendation/en/index.html
And what about all those parents who spread disease by sending their children to day prisons so they can work, rather than homeschooling?
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/734486
Not to mention the socio-psychological fallout:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue.htm
Should they and their "spawn" be airdropped on a remote island with all the rest of the "assholes" who think that the habit of feeding their precious little snowflake junkfood or putting them in school for convenience is more important than the life of other people's so they can't screw it up for the rest of us?
How many people would that leave in the USA? 1%?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html
Not to raise false hopes, but from there: "The causes of mitochondrial dysfunction are well known, specifically as it relates to metabolism and the brain, and I have documented them in my books "UtraMetabolism" and "The UltraMind Solution." They include environmental toxins (iv) -- mercury, lead and persistent organic pollutants(v) -- latent infections, gluten and allergens (which trigger inflammation) sugar and processed foods,(vi) a nutrient-depleted diet(vii) and nutritional deficiencies.(viii) These are all potentially treatable and reversible causes of mitochondrial dysfunction that have been clearly documented. I found all these problems in Jackson, and over a period of two years we slowly unraveled and treated the underlying causes of his energy loss which included gut inflammation, mercury, and nutrient deficiencies. Over time, the tests for his mitochondrial function and oxidative stress (as well as levels of inflammation and nutrient status) all normalized. When they became normal, so did Jackson. He went from full-blown regressive autism to a normal, bright beautiful six-year-old boy."
If you do only one thing, check vitamin D:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/vit-D-theory-autism.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/another-autism-case-report.shtml
Vaccines may still be involved in a couple of different ways, for kids who are having problems dealing with various heavy metals, where they may be struggling before, but the hevay metals or other issues with the vaccines pushed them over the edge (especially in a vitamin D deficient child, since vitamin D is used in creating glutathione, the brain's master antioxidant). One doctor being discredited doesn't prove that some vaccines can't have side effects in some especially sensitive individuals.
A new way of eating that in six weeks your family would like as much as how you eat now:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://www.amazon.com/Disease-Proof-Your-Child-Feeding-Right/dp/0312338058
At the very least, you'll probably live longer on that plan to help your kid longer.
We try to eat more that way, and take our vitamin D, and so on...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/vit-D-theory-autism.shtml
Look into iodine deficiency too:
http://theiodineproject.webs.com/addadhdautism.htm
http://www.coffetoday.com/child-autism-associated-with-iodine-deficiency/903216/
A comprehensive approach to nutrition:
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.
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1932134&cid=34740048
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1932134&cid=34740098
Also, from:
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14401
"Merck spokesperson Amy Rose refused say how many trials Merck contracted to CROs or what percentage of the Gardasil subjects these contractors recruited in the Third World. She also refused to specify how, or even if, the company oversees CROs. Many consumers assume that the FDA carefully monitors CROs. But the agency hobbled by under-funding, politicization, and dependence on industry fees has few resources to assess foreign trials and relies on drug companies. "
On the point in your sig, and maybe a way to get better research by less conflict-of-interest in funding:
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/#comment-392
On keeping people healthy for cheap:
http://www.amazon.com/Disease-Proof-Your-Child-Feeding-Right/dp/0312338058
http://lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi111.html
http://www.iodine4health.com/
http://www.ravediet.com/preview.html
http://www.bluezones.com/
But that's the problem -- there are no enormous profits in natural wellness; the only big profits are in palliation and treatment for sickness or random attempts at "magic bullet" wellness through phrama stuff.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Please see my other posts to this article, including these links and others:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html
http://www.amazon.com/Disease-Proof-Your-Child-Feeding-Right/dp/0312338058
http://www.ravediet.com/preview.html
http://www.iodine4health.com/
The first link suggests that pretty much all autism is related to various issues like you discovered in time (there are just a bunch of them from vitamin D deficiency, to iodine defiency, to lack of omega-3s, to dairy, to toxins of various sorts in processed foods or, presumably, vaccines). From there: "Most neurodevelopmental disorders have common roots. But looking at only one aspect of such conditions will not solve the problem of autism. Current autism research is based on an outdated approach -- one that is something like blind men examining the proverbial elephant. Each researcher works in his or her own silo examining different factors and coming to different conclusions. Research that integrates, synthesizes and examines all the data on causes and potential treatments is practically non-existent. The mitochondrial dysfunction identified in the JAMA study I've been talking about is ultimately only one downstream symptom of many upstream causes. Other researchers have found systemic inflammation,(ix) brain inflammation,(x) gut inflammation,(xi) elevated levels of toxins and metals, gluten and casein antibodies,(xii) nutrient deficiencies including omega-3 fats,(xiii) vitamin D,(xiv) zinc, and magnesium, and collections of metabolic dysfunction related to quirky genes that make it difficult to perform chemical reactions essential for health in the body such as methylation and sulfation.(xv)"
The second and third links show why excessive dairy is pretty harmful for most people (even ignoring how most of the world is lactose intolerant). The fourth is something I'm just learning about at the moment (iodine deficiency, where dairy is often a primary source of iodine, so watch out for it without dairy or eating seaweed or supplementing).
Your son is lucky to have you as his Dad. You might want to still monitor for the other health issues and take pro-active steps to "disease-proof" your family on a diet of mostly vegetables, fruits, and beans (and some nuts, seeds, and whole grains).
As a four year old, my wife had surgeons open up her belly and take her guts out (and put them back) because they refused to listen to her mother who suggested she had a millk allergy (from an article she read) -- and it turned out, after all the trauma, yes it was an allergy to milk and lactose. Doctors (especially surgeons) seem to be trained to sound very confident even when they don't have a clue (especially about nutrition). Part of how it got that way, starting around 1910:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexner_Report
For down the road:
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
http://www.holtgws.com/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Thanks! I'll check it out.
http://www.talkaboutcuringautism.org/medical/studies-about-vaccine-autism-link.htm
Mentioned here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/hxwhite/no-link-found-between-vac_n_715090_61080424.html
Although, as in my other comments, the issue may be a much broader one about dealing with toxins, dealing with immune system issues from vitamin D deficiency, and so on, where the extra heavy metal toxic load or allergic reaction from some vaccines is just one of many issues...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Why don;t we just call it as we see it;
What Wakefield and other charlatan espousing the imaginary dangers of vaccinations need to feel the full weight of the law in this matter. Not everybody can be vaccinated and people who can be and aren't due to superstitions suggested by these charlatans for personal gain pose a danger who can't.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
so I don't really have their general code of ethics in high regard
But yet you trust them? Wow you were the bright one of the litter weren't you?!
Whoever modded this up: Shame on you! Of course arguments for mandatory vaccinations can be used for mandatory *everything*, including both positive and negative things as long as they have a net benefit for society, that doesn't mean they have anything in common with each other.
To be fair, the parent talked about a chiropractor moving a vertebra, thus fixing a spinal problem. While I agree with you generally, it seems that in this case, patient first encountered a bunch of incompetent MDs that missed an obvious problem and the chiropractor fixed the obvious spinal cord problem.
Now chiropractice is of course pseudomedicine, but in this case, moving vertebra could fix problems with a dislocated vertebra.
They are both medical procedures that carry risk. Seems like they have a LOT to do with each other. If you can't see the connection between two medical procedures where it is suggested that they be mandatory for the benefit of OTHER people, your just not looking hard enough.
You are twisting logic to fit your cynicism. There are frauds in the public sector, but there are even more frauds in the private sector. And I'm talking about real frauds, those that cheat people out of their money by fraudulent misrepresentation, not just the dishonest market-power leveraging industries such as finance.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
I trust science in general, and when there have been billions of vaccinations given without too many side effects (all of which are well documented) but there is still the possibility that something else goes wrong. When something does (after all children *have* died directly after vaccination) the cause is either a mass coverup of faulty vaccines or another simpler problem. I don't trust medical company's, like any company can't be trusted by their nature, but it i'll believe the logical simplest explanation.
I thought that was more or less my point. Chiropractic is "fairy tales" in some ways, but it's still a step up from small amounts of very expensive water (which can itself only actually treat thirst, and even then not well in the quantities provided) which is all homeopathy is, as mechanical manipulation of the joints and soft tissues can at least treat mechanical issues that deal with those same joints and tissues.
http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/01/breaking-news-statement-from-dr-andrew-wakefield-no-fraud-no-hoax-no-profit-motive.html
http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/05/peer-reviewed-papers-support-findings.html
I'm not saying who to believe there; I'm just linking to his defense vs. Deer's accusations
See also for alternatives to prevent/cure/mitigate ASD:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/vit-D-theory-autism.shtml
In general, for good health through better nutrition:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
And discussion comments here (pro and con):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jenny-mccarthy/vaccine-autism-debate_b_806857.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Well my counterargument will be :
1) I refuse to believe that any collection of docters and politicians, no matter how skilled they may be, are going to take decisions from 5000 km distance, about theoretical "classes" of patients that will outperform what a doctor, patient in front of him, lots of medical history available, will decide about a living, breathing human being in front of him. The govt. healthcare will be like mcDonalds : strong, central bureaucracy, resulting in -at the very best- bad, but edible food, or healthcare. Our current system is like the restaurants in cities - lots of quality differences - some good, some bad. One in a hundred is even worse than mcdonalds. On average, however, they are *much* better than the forced central bureaucracy.
(In Europe, this happens, one of the results is that doctors are forced to use certain approved medicines (at most 1 or 2 per disease), even when it has been established before that that patient is unresponsive -or worse- allergic. Thank God that in Belgium, you *are* allowed to violate the govt's prescriptions as a doctor, but it's very, very costly. So while people may get prescribed the other alternative medicine, this takes self-sacrifice from doctors. And in general, the older doctors do this without thinking, most younger ones don't often do this)
2) any mistakes by this central obama bureaucracy will affect everyone. A bad doctor, worst case, will affect a few dozen patients. A bad apple on the "death panels" will kill thousands.
3) People that make their own decisions, based on a realistic assesment of their own situation, can take responsability for what they do. If a patient dies (or simply does not do well) due to medical error under national healthcare, it's Obama's fault. It's not the patient's responsability since he could not possibly have done anything to improve it. A different doctor, using the same central bureaucracy's categories will take the same - potentially wrong - decision.
Now if a patient does bad, because of something that could be prevented, it is likely that going to several doctors could have prevented the calamity. Furthermore, the patient is presented with all choices, and then has to make his own decision, factoring in everything that matters : money, moral implications, chances of recovery, ...
All these factors will still exist in Obama's "death panels", they will simply make a -potentially bad*- choice and force it on eveyone, and then in true government fashion, refuse to admit they made some mistakes when patients start doing bad, or even dying. This will happen, regardless of the fact that many doctors will in fact know better.
* you cannot make a one-size-fits-all decision in healthcare. Of course the whole point of Obama's system is that he does do that. People with types of diseases that are not well-known or in some way strange (the majority of serious diseases), will get suboptimal decisions forced upon them.
** the decisions of the "death panels" will be -partly- based on wrong science, so there's no question what will happen. Meanwhile the people in these panels never see a living patient, never mind that they see real patients for all the categories they decide about. Do you honestly believe they'll prefer reality over what their papers say ? We've established theory and practice could be very different in quite large classes of patients.