Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates Says Anti-Vaccine Effort Kills Children
Hugh Pickens writes writes "CNN has an interesting interview with Bill Gates who says that unbelievable progress is being made in both inventing new vaccines and making sure they get out to all the children who need them. The improvements could cut the number of children who die every year from about 9 million to half that. But Gates has harsh words for those who engage in anti-vaccine efforts, especially Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who falsified data to 'prove' a fraudulent link between vaccines and autism. 'It's an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids,' says Gates. 'Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn't have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today.'"
Someone mod Bill +1 hero so he gets out of the troll area
I actually *agree* with Bill Gates on something.
I'm scared - hold me...
It's good that most children escaped the consequences of Wakefield's BS because enough were vaccinated to make it pretty hard for disease to spread. But the numbers are there showing that there were hundreds of excess deaths and life-changing disabilities, such as blindness or retardation, from kids not getting measles vaccines.
This just in: people who make knee-jerk reactions out of fear make horrible mistakes.
Everyone, let's take note of that so we don't make that mistake a ridiculous number of times every day for like ten years. Because that would totally suck.
Now, let's all mod me up +1 Funny, for a little while, then really really sad.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Not having your children vaccinated not only leaves your child open to disease, but then they can pass the disease onto others. Not vaccinating seriously harms you and others around you. Therefore, not vaccinating is equivalent to giving your child ciggarettes. QED.
Death and taxes are both inevitable, however, death doesn't get worse year after year.
If you think about it, the way you develop a vaccine is to:
Embrace : copy the original
Extend : modify that version
Extinguish : wipe out the original
Bill Gates is right at home.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo97VouL0ls
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if everybody get a chance to get vaccines, then the only people who are at risk because of not wanting vaccines are the people who have chosen it for themselves, correct? And if there aren't enough vaccines to go around, then just skip over the people who don't want them and give them to the people who do.
People still have the right to smoke and drink, even though those things are dangerous to their personal health and sometimes to the health of those around them. If you're going to enforce your positive world view on one subject on the people are around you, then you need to be consistent and protect them from all of the misinformed decisions they might make in their life.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
fuck you sir.
I agree with Bill Gates. Apparently the winter has been so cold even hell has frozen over. We should hold the instigators of this movement accountable for the lives their lies have cost, and we should make such a harsh example of them that it's remembered for generations to come.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Countries with high child mortality rates have a greater problem with overpopulation. That is, if you know half your kids will die of pertussis, you will have more kids. It is paradoxical, but preventing child mortality actually decreases overpopulation.
Wakefield was not "pursued to extremes". He did research on children without ethical approval in the UK, which is an offence that leads to losing your medical license, and possibly criminal action too. He published research in a field for which he was not qualified, with falsified results. He was also running a company selling single vaccines (his research 'proved' problems for the combined vaccine) and was on the payroll of anti-vaccine lawyers whilst claiming to carry out independent research.
Bill was raised by ethical parents and learned to compete very well. He is a smart man and made his money (mostly?) honestly. I may not agree with all his decisions but I agree with him on this one. Dr. Andrew Wakefield has cause many people to die, and the Dr Wakefield made money from it.
The thing is, most anything that improves the quality of life tends to lower the birth rate. Correlation doesn't equal causation, whatever. But as people get richer, healthier, happier, they are less likely to have a dozen kids in the hopes that some survive.
So, how in the hell could better vaccines and better health care help lower the world population? They can't.
Yes they can, and they do. As parents become more confident that their children will survive, they have fewer of them, and invest more resources in each child. Vaccines, good healthcare, good nutrition, and good education, all reduce population growth.
I think he should get a few movies made about Typhoid Mary targeting different demographics and then start running ads along the lines of "Don't let your kid be the next Typhoid Mary". I would even try to get Jenny McCarthy as one of the actors to dilute her message.
Well, he listens to experts and spends his cash accordingly, while Jenny McCarthy talks out of her arse. See the difference?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
I am all for Mr. Gates philanthropy. However, the World Health Organization reports 164,000 deaths per year from measles (which is the leading cause of death among children), not the millions claimed by Mr. Gates. In addition, WHO reports that 83% of all children are vaccinated against the measles and that those who aren't are mainly poor countries without access.
>how in the hell could better vaccines and better health care help lower the world population?
Populations who have lower rates of disease, and better access to health care, tend to have smaller families because they don't have to have more kids as a hedge against their own death rate.
Smaller families becomes a snowball effect to more wealth, and even better access to healthcare.
Oh, and what's so bad about population control?
What research, exactly?
Sorry to interrupt your "Evil Bill's got a needle" rant but better health means people don't have ten kids in the hope that two will survive past the age of five. A "vaccine" substitute for the pill means you only need one shot a year rather than paying for pills once a month (assuming you can find a reliable source for the pills).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Why does anyone care about Bill Gates' position on vaccines? Because he and his foundation are trying to help children around the world, partly by using vaccines to eradicate childhood diseases. Your anger is misplaced.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
No, that's not correct. Quite a lot of vaccines have efficiencies less than 90%, so even vaccinated people can contract a disease.
However, it's not a problem if everyone is vaccinated because of "herd immunity". I.e. even if someone is infected, the disease won't be able to spread through the population.
The level of vaccinations required to achieve the herd immunity greatly varies by disease. For polio it's about 85%. And for influenza it's not even possible (required level of vaccination is >100%) with the current vaccines.
Hi I'm Bill Gates and I never want to get elected to public office in the United States.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
You totally discount (well, outright ignore) the fact that Bill Gates is the head of the largest foundation on earth that has an aim of vaccinating every child on the planet. He has hundreds, if not thousands, of expert physicians working for him around the globe. When he says something public related to vaccinations he probably knows what he is talking about. Yes, I agree that listening to Jenny McCarthy, et. al about vaccinations was stupid. But that was because they didn't have any knowledge of the problem, just hearsay. But, dismissing Bill Gates for the same reason is exhibiting the same ignorance as the people who listened to the celebrities.
Topical, especially since the US suffers from torrents of anti-vax stupidity, which they're exporting by the ton.
Like that rather horrible, stupid, overweight and unattractive woman, Meryl Dorey, an American who is now living in the Northern Rivers of NSW, Australia, and spreading vile antivax propaganda and lies. Immunisation rates have plummeted in the Northern Rivers, and now, diseases thought gone for 50 years are making a big comeback.
And don't get me started about the stupid Muslims in Nigeria, who won't immunize their kids against polio, because some unwashed imam somewhere claimed in a sermon that the polio vaccine is a plot by teh evil jooooos to sterilize Muslims.
Normally, I wouldn't care about antivaxxers, but their evil, vile lies and willful stupidity -- all done in the name of self-aggrandisment -- is threatening the lives of innocent people who can't make informed decisions of their own.
A recent study shows that Second-hand smoke, when trapped in the same room, does indeed cause harm due to the polluted air.
Rather than types three pages of cites, I'll just link to wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-hand_smoke#Evidence
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I'm sorry to hear your child has autism — I can only imagine the difficulty of coping with something so generalized and poorly understood by modern science. You are also right: extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof; Wakefield has none. He's been stripped of his license. His paper has been retracted. And now it's come out that it was more than lacking in proof, it was a "deliberate fraud," to quote to editor of the BMJ (Dr. Godlee).
Of the 12 children in his study, children who supposedly developed entercolitis and then regressive autism after the MMR vaccination, only one of the 12 had regressive autism. Three didn't have autism at all. Five had developmental problems noted in their records before their MMR vaccine. The development of problems wasn't nearly as sudden as claimed (often months elapsed). Nine of the children's bowel tests were reported as "non-specific colitis" despite testing normal. Many of the children were recruited from lawyers who were hoping to sue the vaccine makers (can we say 'confirmation bias'?).
Most of these latter revelations have just come to light. I can only imagine how hard it must be to be in your position, to want to find an answer for causation. Especially if your child did have entercolitis and then regressive autism. But you should be aware that there isn't a shred of evidence to support this claim. Not a shred.
Also, Dr. Gupta is bordering on irresponsibility (imo) when he says to Gates, "There has been a lot of news about is there a connection with autism, for example. What do you make of all that? Dr. [Andrew] Wakefield wrote a paper about this [in The Lancet in 1998] saying he thought there was a connection." He may be a journalist, but he is a doctor first, and he could have formed his question in a way that more clearly stated what he surely knows to be facts (that Wakefield isn't licensed anymore, that the paper has been retracted and proven to be fraudulent). It's this sort of undue politeness in dancing around the truth that leave doubts in the minds of parents like yourself.
I've seen children dying of measles (in Kaduna State, northern Nigeria), and it's a terrible thing to have to see. In the case of Nigeria, it's a rumor about infertility drugs concealed in vaccines that led to a lot of resistance-to-consent amongst certain communities, and there too the damage of such a provably fraudulent statement has been a long time in undoing. I know it's tempting, maybe even easier to just believe whatever some conspiracy theorist says, but it's important to trust in the thousands of scientists who are advancing the science of saving lives, rather than the few psuedo-scientists who are trying to advance their own notoriety and financial positions.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
I didn't have any of those problems, and I still stopped going, especially the bowling, which I was really good at (205 average when I quit). The debate over actual health issues don't even enter into it for me. Coming home smelling like a factory was enough. It's a fucking filthy habit. I always wanted to go over to the smokers and take a pee in their area. If they complained, I'd say, "But it's sterile! It's no threat to you!"
Never did Casino bowling. Is that the one with the randomly placed colored pins?
Exactly. When I saw that claim, I wanted to say [citation needed].
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
"Wakefield was pursued to extremes because big pharma stood to lose their new cash cow."
Wakefield was pursued by ordinary scientists because his bullshit was dangerous, his fraudulent claims were motivated by money. If there were any justice in the world his dishonesty, greed and disregard for the health of others would land him behind bars.
"There is no legal cash limit for drug liability but there are caps on vaccines. This from way back to promote acceptance."
WTF, how does limiting liability "promote acceptance"? Do you routinely shun products with a guarantee in favour of a pig in a poke?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Hurray for Gates, saying what needs to be said. However...
It's not just mothers making these decision, but fathers too. Both parents make these decisions.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
My primary school required a vaccination certificate from your family doctor. No vaccination, no school. Period. Recently, I busted up my nose in an accident on the balcony of my apartment. Nothing serious, but when my doctor heard that I work with some folks from India, he shot me with with a cocktail against Tetanus, Diphtheria and Polio. He told me that Polio is eradicated in Europe (where I live), but not in India.
I don't have any children, but if I did, I'd ask my doctor to give them the whole shebang.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I hate to say it, because I HATE cigarette smoke, but most of the evidence for second hand smoke causing cancer, etc. is tremendously trumped up and in some cases just as falsified as the wakefield BS.
of course second hand smoke:
A. aggravates allergies and people with conditions like asthma
B. smells like absolute shit and sticks to clothing, wood, plastic, damn near everything
C. annoys even healthy people
but the evidence that it causes the big C in other people, which is what the big deal was really truly all about, is pretty slim unfortunately. I'm the first to say that I'd rather the hysteria be true because then we'd be rid of secondhand smoke, but just because I want something to be true doesn't mean it is.
How many children will die since I pirated windows for 15 years?
Vaccines aren't an especially lucrative field. Many of them are old enough to be off patent, some others require re-formulation every year(flu, sometimes more than once..), and the whole point of their use is to reduce the morbidity and mortality of the population. A single dose can ruin one or more potential customers for life!
A few of the newer ones are still kind of pricey(a shot of Guardasil will set you back a bit); but your basic childhood-diseases battery is unexciting. Never mind the R&D for ones that largely affect only dirt-poor people in the tropics, like malaria and yellow fever. Working on those is not exactly a cash cow, compared to cutting edge problems like hair loss, obesity, or limp-dick syndrome...
Drugs do have higher potential liability; but there is so much more cash to be had there...
So what about the suspected link here? An illness that kills less people than the regular flu gets global attention (and HUGE vaccine demand), and a vaccine is then hastily brought to market without proper testing and studies. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/01/flu-shot-narcolepsy-_n_816868.html So let's all just adopt a healthy dose of skepticism, and take a chill pill with those "big scare" illnesses. But I do agree that vaccination against measles and the likes is insanely important.
She: Hey, are you a traitor? Me: No, I'm atheist.
We should listen to Bill Gates because in this instance he's right. And believe it or not, because of his recent philanthropy, Bill is highly admired in non-tech circles. In a recent 2010 Gallup survey, Bill Gates tied for America's "fifth-most admired man."
http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/233324.asp
So the reason we should care and publicize Bill saying this, is because his is a voice that is respected by many that might not take the time to research and be knowledgeable about the topic of vaccines as the readers of Slashdot have.
I agree with your larger philosophical argument, and I'd be much happier if teachers, scientists, and doctors were people's heroes. But in the real world, people listen to celebrities, so let's use them to do good.
Wakefield was doing everything the conspiracy theorists usually ascribe to the immoral, illicit and illegal activities of "Big Pharma". Actually breaking up the MMR into 3 separate individual immunizations would do nothing but increase the profits of big pharma and the administering physicians.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I hope you enjoy your old age, then, because it's gonna suck for you when you break a hip and there's nobody around young enough to lift you off the bathroom floor.
Breakfast served all day!
To be fair, it is a nice ass.
I think someone should fund an international campaign with a ticker that shows a running count of the number of children who have suffered and died as a result of Jenny McCarthy's anti-vaccine campaign. Get it up on billboards in major cities and run some sort of "how many kids did you kill today?" campaign on TV. Shame Jenny and celebrities like her into using their influence to spread the truth to even even wider than they spread their initial lies. Saying "Oops, my bad" and walking away doesn't make up for the carnage.
"It is an affront to our common humanity, five years after the the Millennium Summit, that 30,000 children die each day from easily preventable diseases, or that 100 million people go to bed hungry, or that 100 million children are not receiving a basic education." Bertie Ahern, Taoiseach, speaking to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2005.
Link please?
I'm all for vaccination--let's just get that out of the way up front. Wakefield has been up to no good. But Bill Gates is now on record saying that thousands of children have died as a result of Wakefield's work. I have yet to see any empirical evidence of this. Indeed, the only evidence I've seen at all (that Wakefield has had real impact) is anecdotal and often turns out to be attributable to other forces (e.g. illegal immigrants who don't know they can get free vaccinations, religious parents who refuse vaccinations anyway, that sort of thing).
It bothers me that in an argument about the unempirical, biased work of one scientist, we are trotting out in opposition not truth but different lies. This is a very big problem! And yet we are all so angry at Wakefield that no one appears willing to call Gates on the carpet to explain what he is talking about and where his data is coming from. So have we decided that lies and invented statistics are okay so long as they support something we like? Come on, people. We're better than that.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=measles+outbreak
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
Yes you can. A quick google pulls up plenty links. Try http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Tobacco/ETS
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
I'm completely uncertain of the whether or not any of the following is true but: I was once told that Apple technicians would not fix your Apple product if they smelt ciggarette smoke as they did not want to expose the technicians to "third hand" smoke. To smoke around the product would void the warranty. IMO, I believe that Apple would void the warranty under those conditions quite willingly, whether or not they actually do, I'm not sure, and I'm pretty certain "third hand" smoke can't really be that bad, if it even has any effect at all.
Death and taxes are both inevitable, however, death doesn't get worse year after year.
Where did you get the idea that measles is the leading cause? and when did it change from being Malaria which kills almost a million every year in africa alone.
It doesn't seriously harm others around you on light exposure. Having to walk through a cloud of foul, cloying smoke when entering and exiting buildings just isn't enough to make much of a difference over a lifetime. It's the continuously smoke-filled rooms that are the problem. Especially parents who smoke constantly around infants and young children with developing lungs and laugh off the health dangers as just some crock that some nuts came up with. Standard smokers persecution complex. Everyone is picking on the smokers for no reason. They're not the ones being obnoxious by subjecting everyone else to the side-effects of their addiction, everyone else is being obnoxious by asking them to please smoke somewhere else. My sister was a smoker for years and is currently in her most successful quitting phase yet, I've spent nearly two decades as a first hand witness to the logical convolutions and ridiculous self-deceptions practiced by smokers. Like when she was a teenager and thought that stuffing a towel under her bedroom door could hide the fact that she was smoking in there. I can't imagine what it must have been doing to her sense of smell for her to believe that could possibly work. I also know at least one person with bad asthma and bronchitis. She never smoked, but her father was a heavy smoker. That's anecdotal, of course. But studies have been done pretty firmly establishing this link. Even if you dismiss the studies out of hand, I don't understand how you could possibly conclude that it's a good thing for children's lungs to develop in a constant toxic haze.
I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that he's been on something of an anti-vaccination crusade, especially when it comes to flu shots. He basically is of the position that the whole campaign to inoculate people against H1N1 is in and of itself a conspiracy. He's adamant that you don't need vaccines if you eat right.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Show us figures on what percentage of children in outbreaks of measles, for example, have been 'vaccinated'. Strangely enough, we never get to see those figures.
Let's look at your CDC link, since it has the exact info you want. In that case, all of the persons who developed measles had been vaccinated. So you win a point. Or do you? About fifteen percent of children vaccinated against measles won't develop immunity with the first jab, which is why a second is recommended. (Also, just for reference, the vaccine is most effective after 12 months of age, and not effective at all before six months.) So it's possible, maybe even likely that these students hadn't had their second jab (which would make 85% of the students immune, and 15% vulnerable — "The highest attack rate was 12% (9/74) for the 11th grade students (p 0.02)"). Furthermore, as I am sure you know, your immune system's memory (B-cells) 'forgets' threats over time, which is what creates the need for booster shots. The CDC indirectly notes this, "The attack rate was four times greater for students vaccinated 10 or more years before the outbreak than for students vaccinated more recently (p 0.05)". Lastly, the measles vaccine is very temperamental in its cold storage, with an acceptable range of 8 degrees, and any variance outside this range reduces its efficacy.
You lap up whatever the shills in the media tell you, then lambast anybody intelligent enough to question it...
The real reason I'm replying is that I want to address this comment above. I don't just lap up whatever I'm handed. Do you? When was the last time you were doing epidemiological field work? I just came back from northern Nigeria, where I was observing UNICEF and government health teams vaccinate kids, and independently surveilling measles outbreaks occurring now. Before that I was in Ghana, also working with government health teams to observe the vaccination of children, but I wasn't able to see any outbreaks. Why not? Because Ghana doesn't have outbreaks, because they maintain herd immunity amongst their under-five population. The region (like a state) I was living in for this period has a prevalence of higher than 90% for MMR vaccination, and Ghana hasn't had a measles death since 2003. In Nigeria the prevalence for vaccination in Kaduna State is around 13% for coverage of recommended vaccines, and it gets as low as 0% if you go to Jigawa State. So I'm not just lapping up whatever the "media" tells me (in fact the media is woefully silent on these sorts of matters, because most Westerners care more about Tiger Woods' indiscretions than dying kids in Nigeria), I've been in the thick of it and I've seen kids dying from measles. When was the last time (if ever?) you actually looked into this besides just lapping up what a few outcast theorists have told you to believe?
the real reason for the great reductions in some of the diseases they 'vaccinated' against - huge improvements in SANITATION.
Look, this is just bullshit, too. I've lived in Ghana, where there is sporadic running water (that you cannot drink without boiling) and no electricity and people defecate in the bush. And I've lived in Nigeria where the exact same is true. Yet in Ghana measles isn't a problem, and in Nigeria it is. This is just my anecdote, but if you look at where kids are dying from measles (or whatever disease) and you control for sanitation, you'll see that it isn't a factor. Polio (hep A, tyhpoid, cholera, etc) are spread by feces, so handwashing helps immensly there, and standing water breeds malaria (well, Anopheles mosquitoes that carry it), but there's about the extent of your sanitation argument. Once we get away from diarrheaol diseases and look at measles, sanitation isn't a factor at all (compared to rates of vaccination).
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Inhaling a bunch of carcinogens seems like a pretty good way to increase chances of getting cancer to me.
... when slashdot used to be news for nerds and not just yet another flamewar breeding news website
I'd like to add to my above comment that I am not a smoker. I think smoking is disgusting and don't like being around it, and if I didn't value freedom more than I value my personal sense of comfort, I would definitely be in favor of an outright ban of cigarettes.
But the alleged health risks of exposure to second-hand smoke are blown way out of proportion by the media and the anti-smoking groups that fund studies designed to find such nonsense. You're not going to get cancer by inhaling a little environmental cigarette smoke. The people that get cancer from smoking are people who inhale heavy amounts of smoke from tens of cigarettes day every day for decades.
what's so wrong with being dead?
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
At least in the US, when pneumonia is listed as the cause of death, it is usually bogus. A feeble oldster has a heart attack or stroke, is admitted to a hospital in terrible condition, gets a lung infection and dies. The cause of death is pneumonia?
Most deaths in old age are the result of cumulative damage, and even if the physician puts 6 causes on the death certificate (not uncommon), how many are considered in the statistics?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
However, the World Health Organization reports 164,000 deaths per year from measles (which is the leading cause of death among children), not the millions claimed by Mr. Gates.
Gates was speaking about all preventable diseases in children - and from here it looks like he got his numbers right.
Major Causes of Death in Children Under Five in Developing Countries and the Contribution of Malnutrition [source: WHO and The Lancet, 2005]
Pneumonia 19%
Diarrhea 17%
Malaria 8%
Measles 4%
HIV/AIDS 3%
Although approximately 10.5 million children under 5 years of age still die every year in the world, progress has been made since 1970, when the figure was more than 17 million. ...
Today nearly all child deaths occur in developing countries, almost half of them in Africa. While some African countries have made considerable strides in reducing child mortality, the majority of African children live in countries where the survival gains of the past have been wiped out, largely as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Surviving the first five years of life [2003]
http://www.jennymccarthybodycount.com/Jenny_McCarthy_Body_Count/Home.html
Yes this is a repost, and it's not quite the same as a pre-infection vaccine, but Dr. Goldacre has had to deal with the same BS from Mathias Rath attacking the use of antiretroviral drugs and instead proposing to treat HIV/AIDS with vitamins. There is a lot of crazy going on in the world.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/12/23/some-bad-science-can-make-you-laugh-and-some-kills/
True. But he IS an expert on lying to create Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Which makes him eminently qualified to judge Wakefield.
yes, and Bill Gates worrying about this kind of shit kills Microsoft... little by little
lolwut? Why would anything he does have any impact on Microsoft? Do your actions have much impact on your former employer years after you've left the company?
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
That doesn't make his information wrong. The fact that he's pledged to give away the bulk of his fortune (and is actually in the process doing it) goes a long way towards alleviating concerns that he's saying these things to increase profits.
he was clearly speaking of the fairly strong correlations between low income, poor healthcare, and high rates of reproduction
treat the environment, treat the problem
I agree with you about questioning what Bill Gates has said about the deaths. There's good reason to question those statements even while we can all agree that what his foundation is doing is an overall good thing for the world. Having said that let me also say that I'm not sure I agree with many of the statements being made here. I have heard scientists on both sides of the issue make statements about what causes autism and whether Wakefield is right or not, whether he did anything wrong or not. Enough to know that without actually looking at the reports myself I can't judge the accuracy of any of the complaints. What does seem to come through from Wakefield and other doctors that think vaccines may play a part in causing autism is that you don't have to stay away from vaccines. As I understand it by taking single shot vaccines made without mercury it should be possible to avoid the potential issues (if there really are any) while still getting the advantages of vaccination at the cost of some additional expense, time and perhaps a bit more pain and trepidation for the child who would need more shots. I'm surprised that more of the people who strongly support Wakefield aren't pushing this solution since it seems to address the complaints of both sides of the vaccination/autism issue. It's going to be very hard for anyone to argue that vaccinations don't help prevent disease so it would seem in the best interest of any parent to find a way to safely treat their children if they are worried about autism.
Actually, the "war on vaccines" is really just a battle line in the anti-intellectualism movement. Sadly there is no cure for stupid.
I understand most vaccinations, but I've always been skeptical about the "flu shot". It just seems a bit shady, it doesn't always work, and it makes people ever so slightly sniffly for a few months. Does it even really help?
it should be simple to see if those kids ALSO have the 1% autism rate of the larger population. If they do, vaccines don't cause autism.
If you do a good enough job with vaccinations, you actually can eliminate a disease. Happened with smallpox. However for that to happen, you have to have more or less 100% vaccine coverage. You have to truly eliminate all cases out there so the virus will simply die off.
You're right. It would be much more ethical to have just tossed the aborted fetus (children are young people) in the biological waste bin. Good thinking.
Even more obvious: http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=anti-vaccine+deaths&l=1
Then not vaccinating your child is WORSE than giving him cigarettes. That's reinforcing the point of the GP!
If people don't want to vaccinate, then leave them the fuck alone
Fine, but your kid doesn't get to go to public school or daycare, and no public healthcare either.
First, I don't want to deal with your kid dying, because it's going to seriously fuck up nursery school for my kid.
Second, I don't want you infecting any other idiots who didn't get vaccinated and causing a local epidemic.
Third, I don't want any secondary diseases your un-vaccinated kid may wind up with while they're dying of something that could have been prevented. Because those might get my kids sick, and fuck you for subjecting someone to that.
House said it best:
You know another really good business? Teeny tiny baby coffins. You can get them in frog green or fire engine red. Really. The antibodies in yummy mummy only protect the kid for six months, which is why these companies think they can gouge you. They think that you'll spend whatever they ask to keep your kid alive. Want to change things? Prove them wrong. A few hundred parents like you decide they'd rather let their kid die than cough up forty bucks for a vaccination, believe me, prices will drop really fast.
There are valid reasons not to want to get vaccinated, and people have the right to decide for themselves and their children. Am I saying it's the right decision not to vaccinate yourself or kids? No, not generally - but there are times where it may be, and people need to make that decision for themselves.
Vaccines have also been used to spread disease. Is it common - I doubt it, but it has been done and who knows.
Corporations lie, they do things to make money, not to save lives. They skimp on safety, they falsify data (the antivax people aren't the only ones), some of the vaccines given to soldiers may be the cause of or play a part in Gulf War sickness.
If people don't want to vaccinate, then leave them the fuck alone - this talk of laws and forcing people is ridiculous.
Bullshit,
Kids aren't property, and if you're tinfoil hat ignorance gets in the way of their health care, then someone needs to step in.
He was a liar and a scam artist. He fabricated a scientific study. Does it matter who pursued him?
I don't understand you people who want to beatify the guy. What the fuck is wrong with you?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The numbers were audited by the same professional accountants and actuarys who calculated Microsoft's losses from software piracy.
(BTW, the "millions" is from _all_ diseases, most of which are preventable.)
It's good that most children escaped the consequences of Wakefield's BS because enough were vaccinated to make it pretty hard for disease to spread. But the numbers are there showing that there were hundreds of excess deaths and life-changing disabilities, such as blindness or retardation, from kids not getting measles vaccines.
Actually, there is no support for your statement about hundreds of excess deaths and "life-changing disabilities." While it may be true, the data does not support it. There is data to support deaths from measles and the other complications you list, but most of them are from third world countries that the vaccine was not even available and had nothing to do with Wakefield.
The World Health Organization keeps stats on all of this. 83% of all children are vaccinated against measles. That includes those few third world countries were vaccines are not available, so for most places, the rate is much, much, higher. There are 164,000 deaths annually from measles, mainly in the third world and mainly in those same countries.
MMR vaccine has been in use for ages, so if there truly were bad consequences as Wakefield falsified, it would be seen in the population as a whole. MMR is relatively inexpensive and other than certain regimes keeping it out of their country, there is no reason why the West could not produce enough vaccine to ensure everyone gets it.
Also, I love to just throw my coffee cup on the ground when I'm done with it, just so I can show smokers how disgusting it is to leave cigarette butts all over the place.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I disagree. You don't have the right to harm your child. Medical decisions are a bit of a gray area, but not so much with vaccines. There are medical reasons to avoid vaccinations - immunological disorders and so on - but unless the kid has one, they should be vaccinated. Regardless of what the parent thinks.
Your unvaccinated kid won't get anywhere near my kid, particularly if he's immunocompromised for some reason. Even if he's not, he's a lot more likely to get measles - even if he's vaccinated. It's a no-brainer to keep unvaccinated kids out of public schools.
But I say we should go further. While nobody's going to force you to eat food that has the nutrients you need, we'll force you to do it for your kid. Malnourished kids are removed because their parents are actually hurting them. So it is with vaccines. If somebody's proven themselves too stupid to make medical decisions for their kid, they shouldn't be allowed to - and not vaccinating your kids because some Playboy bimbo said it was bad on Oprah is as about as stupid a medical decision as they come.
(note: in the above post, 'you' means 'one' or 'somebody', nothing personal)
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Yeah. That link says 3000 people die each year from second hand smoke. So it kills about 0.001 % of the population, to put it another way, it accounts for 0.15 % of deaths that occur in the united states. While I really can't stand the smell of smoke, and am happy that people can no longer smoke in any public building anymore, I think we have bigger fish to fry. I never realized how bad the smell was until they banned it in most places. Now I can smell it when a smoker has been standing in an elevator on some trip previous to when I was on the elevator.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
It's been done and didn't convince them. It was depressing hearing a radio program where a vaccination expert and a person in charge of a anti-vaccination group put there points to some parents with young babies who then voted on it. The doctor talked about the outcomes of a trial involving two million children in the UK while the other person indulged in character assassination and piles of emotional bullshit. She was playing a manipulative game where truth did not remotely matter while the doctor had to be professional and stick to facts. An unemployed high school dropout with a hobby was putting doubt into everyone's heads about the qualifications of somebody that has been working on infectious diseases for forty years.
Of course lies and emotional bullshit won because parents with a newborn baby were being told they would be bad parents if they exposed their babies to the mercury that isn't even in the vaccine that the program was about. It was depressing and to an extent was a glimpse into how evil some of the people involved are. They should get a different hobby that manipulates people in a more harmless way instead of this dangerous hobby that is convincing parents to put their children in danger.
Don't get baited by the parent, it's a troll post.
Gates citing objective data is a rare event. The problem is not that (this time) he said the truth. The problem is that it should be not him propagating something that makes sense. Because the thinking part of the population would start looking suspicious on something which might have been previously widely accepted. He should just keep his mouth shut! Even if he has the truth in his mind!
xoda.org
He was a real medical practitioner but a very dishonest one that wished to promote one preservative (and make a lot of money) by discrediting another. Among other things he did that by shipping in several know autistic children from many parts of the UK into a small local vaccination clinic to skew the test results in favour of his preservative. Because of that fraud and some cruel and unethical treatment of autistic children he is no longer licensed to practice medicine in the UK and the USA.
He's no pseudo-scientist, merely an outright fraud who among other things failed to disclose a payment of 400,000 pounds sterling (US $644,000) by the lawyers bringing the lawsuit against the vaccine. That sort of bribe buys a lot of time preparing a very convincing argument.
In short, he's untrustworthy slime for sale.
Once, Bill Gates, the Pope, and the Anti-Vaccine Man was on a plane together. As things always goes in jokes, while in-flight the pilot died of heart attack, while at the same time the engines caught on fire.
This lead to the three men having to jump out of the plane, and of course there are only two parachutes. Bill Gates declares that as the smartest man Earth, he must be saved, grabs one of the parachutes, and jumps. The Pope looks at the Anti-Vaccine Man, and says "here, young man, take mine. You still have years in front of you" to which the Anti-Vaccine Man replies "No, it is a known fact that those contraptions can fail at times, so it is better to jump without one" and jumped out of the plane. The Pope shakes his head, jump with the remaining parachute, and after landing safely holds a speech declaring that while God is good, even He can not help retards.
The End.
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
Actually it's not really paradoxical. All living organisms do exactly the same thing. The easier it is for them to survive, the less babies they make (and I'm not just talking about the evolutionary pressure from resource scarcity; many species make adjustments on the fly in "real-time" as it were).
Have you been watching too Much Penn & Teller bullshit again? You know, the one they did about second hand smoke saying it didn't cause cancer, when later they said "We fucked up on that one"? I'd suggest watching The Awful Truth by Michael more. Say what you will about him, but in one episode he brings out the voicebox choir to sing for the tobacco companies on christmas. One of the men had throat cancer and had his larynx removed. And guess what? He never smoked a day in his life. But his wife did.
Economic growth is population control. He also invests in that. In the meantime, children are fucking dying. Only a sociopath would imply that they don't matter.
(bwahaha. I'm not as nerdy as I thought I was. I hadn't even heard of lmgtfy before.)
If "Link, Please" would rather have a personal story of what happens when herd immunity is lost, here's a writer for The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/01/measles-mmr-vaccination.
Epidemiologically, about 1 in 500 measles cases result in death, 1 in 500 result in major brain damage, and so on. Young kids are the most susceptible. The rates of complications from the vaccine are on the order of one in millions, and do NOT include death, retardation, blindness. The math isn't that hard to do if you want to see what that means for unnecessary suffering due to reduced vaccination.
"It is an affront to our common humanity, five years after the the Millennium Summit, that 30,000 children die each day from easily preventable diseases, or that 100 million people go to bed hungry, or that 100 million children are not receiving a basic education." Bertie Ahern, Taoiseach, speaking to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2005.
I agree whole heartedly. However, their deaths are not caused by the lack of the MMR vaccine. To quote Robert Kennedy "I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil."
The article references the measles vaccine and the WHO claims it is the leading cause of death among children.
Just business deals and a way to hide about 3 billion in capital from taxes, which I think is the real aim of the Gates Foundation.
Don't forget that you can't get vaccinations unless you provide assurances to big pharma that you won't make these medications yourself later even if your people will die in droves otherwise. This enables a scenario where you either produce vaccines to save your people affordably or receive economic sanctions for violating IP treaties you've signed on to in order to get these vaccinations. The real goal is to make the third world beholden to big pharma.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes, anything you breath into your lungs that isn't air is bad for you.
That being said, the crap that pours out of the back of your car is 10 times worse than any second hand smoke you would be exposed to. Anyone that drives, or uses services made possible by driving is being a hypocrite complaining about second hand smoke.
Yes, technically second hand smoke is bad for you, but in practice, it's ill effects are just noise compared to all the other crap we all breath in every day. Thus, claims like the TV ad that says you will kill a baby three doors down if you smoke a cigarette in your apartment, are a crock.
Lengthy critical opinion on gates work in education that i don't agree with on most parts but that i found nonetheless interesting: http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781
There are valid reasons not to want to get vaccinated, and people have the right to decide for themselves and their children. Am I saying it's the right decision not to vaccinate yourself or kids? No, not generally - but there are times where it may be, and people need to make that decision for themselves.
I'm sorry, but no. Vaccination is not effective if it's not sufficiently widely used. So arguing for arbitrary opt-out is arguing to be allowed to let other people die. You may think that that makes you a worthy person, but the rest of us will disrespectfully disagree.
David Gay
I am neither ignoring nor disagreeing with that fact. My criticism isn't of Bill Gates, it's of the press he's getting on vaccines and autism (as compared to say, giving the headline to something actually about eradicating polio), and the way the (CNN in TFA) present it. If they want a headline about the (lack of a) link between autism and vaccines, have an interview with someone who actually did the research. If they want a headline about what the Gates foundation is doing to fight polio (or HIV, or family planning etc.)... interview Bill Gates.
They've intentionally presented it as though there is some valid point about vaccines and autism, and then throw him a softball question, which is fine... but then his answer to this softball question doesn't justify the press it's getting. Everything he says on the topic is perfectly correct, and I have the utmost respect for the fact that he is both employing and listening to experts in this field. But even the /. story is about "Bill Gates says anti vaccine effort kills children" presents it as though this is some revelation from Bill Gates, it is no more, or no less investigated by the journalists than the claims by Jenny McCarthy, which is my problem with it, credibility for celebrity doesn't make sense. The same principle applied to Steve Jobs is why Apple gets away with having a basically draconian app store policy, but Steve says it's good, so it must be good!
What Bill Gates says specifically on the issue
"Well, Dr. Wakefield has been shown to have used absolutely fraudulent data. He had a financial interest in some lawsuits, he created a fake paper, the journal allowed it to run. All the other studies were done, showed no connection whatsoever again and again and again. So it's an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids. Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn't have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today. And so the people who go and engage in those anti-vaccine efforts -- you know, they, they kill children. It's a very sad thing, because these vaccines are important."
He doesn't actually say it's hampering efforts against polio, in fact nothing in that blurb seems to be based on work his foundation actually does. Again, not that it isn't correct, Bill Gates is (for all of the MS related criticism of him) a smart guy who seems to actually listen to evidence. But he says some very interesting stuff about how health impacts security, about rich helping poor and how much time there is between vaccines for the rich and vaccines for the poor.
The part that offends me is the lead in question (from Dr Gupta) is intentionally soft, and the fact that this part gets a headline and not... you know, his solutions to problems he's actually trying to (and succeeding at) solving.
"There has been a lot of scrutiny of vaccines recently -- specifically childhood vaccines. There has been a lot of news about is there a connection with autism, for example. What do you make of all that? Dr. [Andrew] Wakefield wrote a paper about this [in The Lancet in 1998] saying he thought there was a connection. And there were lower vaccination rates over a period of time as a result in Britain, then the United States. What are your thoughts?"
Bill Gates is absolutely correct. I applaud him for the public statement. I was hoping somebody influential would say something about this Wakefield kook/crook. (All the same, I'll keep using my questionable copy of Office.)
(||) Nehmo (||)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, the insides computers that are in the homes of heavy smokers (who smoke inside) can be covered by a layer of whatever stuff there is in the smoke. At least dust can be cleaned easily and does not stink. The particles from smoke stick and stink. Here is a picture of a computer from a smoker. I am quite sure that if the dust is disturbed, the resulting smell would stay in the room quite long.
Second hand smoke does not have much of an effect when the exposure is short (at a bar or wherever, unlike, say, working 8 hours every day with someone who constantly smokes inside the office, or the bartender who works at a bar that is foggy from smoke), however, the particles inside the computer result from years of smoking, so the dose is fairly high, not just a couple of cigarettes.
.. this is one time we've got to stand up and salute this guy, here on Slashdot.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Parents have the right to subject their children to the risks they want for the payoffs they want. If you have something difference voices trying to inform/misinform them, things like fast-food advertisements for McDonalds should be taken off the air. Who knows, maybe they want their child to be [low blow hit warning] an Autistic Sumo Wrestler?
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
You're not going to get cancer by inhaling a little environmental cigarette smoke.
If I go to a bar once in a while, I won't get cancer from the smoke, even if the smoke is so thick it's more like a fog.
I don't envy the bartender who has to be there the whole day.
What if I am sharing an office with a coworker who does likes to smoke inside? What if I am allergic to some chemical inside the smoke?
Outside (and in your home, provided you live alone or everyone is OK with it and you do not have children living with you), sure, smoke as much as you want, it won't affect me.
At Ted he made his argument that improving vaccines will help 'reduce' the population. ?? Nobody winced. Of course this was with the assumption that we need to reduce population. Sure. Volunteers go line up against that wall.
The higher incidence of asthma of children with smoking parents is well known, except by you apparently.
WHO most definitely does not state that, WHO lists measles well below Malaria, TB, pneumonia and Diarrhea just to name a few.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs286/en/
The BMJ, the Lancet, Neurotoxicology, The American Journal of Gastroenterology, The UK General Medical Council. How many peers do you need?
I don't know how the algebra of media exposition to human awareness works, but in my personal estimation, in regards to aspects of reality and science, Bill Gates is at least 10 times the worth of Jenny McCarthy; let's hope that magnification propagates to all parents and re-assures them that vaccinating their children is the right thing to do.
For so many reasons.
Now there is another problem. In poorer countries people are unable to afford medication because of patents. Gates is and has always been a strong proponent of patents.
I've seen where editors of those have thrown in their opinion, not a peer review note as aside, I don't believe there is any link to autism, all my children are vaccinated. I suspect other factors in growing number of immune system disorders and autism than vaccinations.
You've picked the weak one out of the mix instead of tuberculosis, polio, tetanus, rubella or even measles - why is that? Even if you rig the game that way chicken pox is worse than you think and the chance of catching it is obviously reduced as less people around you are susceptable (which renders your 20x risk statement above a bad guess or deliberately misleading).
Is it just the first example you can think of or have you been conned into rigging the game as well?
I'll take your word for it that the linked above example is over the top emotional bullshit because advertisers and PR people are paid to do such manipulative shit. You and I are not paid to do so and have no such excuse. We should not assume that all vaccination has problems because of an anecdote about advertising hype.
What yellowcake did they find?
Do you mean the yellowcake that was on a UN weapons inspectors manifest since 2001 (so we knew exactly where it was, not like it was lost or anything).
Also worth noting that the natural uranium (yellowcake) in question was nowhere near suitable for nuclear weapons production or even use in a dirty bomb. In fact it wasn't even fissile enough to be used in a reactor. What your post doesn't say is that no centrifuges that could have been used to enrich the inert material were found.
So to correct your post, in 2008 the US completed removal of a known source of natural uranium. So no weapons of mass destruction found.
Please review this material before posting this again. In fact I strongly recommend you fact check before posting again, Thank you.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Malaria has already been successfully eradicated following a test on Moheli Island off the east coast of Africa, where the disease was endemic, by a Chinese team who used nothing but artemisinin combined with another drug as a mass treatment to 40,000 people.
-- Next Generation Web Hosting
http://1001webs.info
I know this will cost me, but hell, just throwing it out.
For all the people we save with vaccines (I believe; my kids are full of em) are we setting ourselves up as a planet for creating a bigger dinner party in the future? Of course we have to save as many of people as we can and sort out the issues in the future. But where is the follow up after we save millions of lives? Are those lives sustained? Are the means to support them sustainable? Just hope we can conjure arable land and water as easily as we have conjured magic potions.
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
The "9 million saved lives" figure he is touting is the prediction of how many future lives will be saved once the malaria vaccines etc. complete their development, pass their clinical trials, and become widespread.
Well, with that "doctor" being vocally anti-vaccine they can defend their stupid position with "But that doctor said so! And he is a doctor"
That you were modded informative (while no one has modded me at all) suggests that I'm right about this.
Do explain how that works.
You're just continuing to act as though certain things were patently obvious even when, on actual reflection, they''re not.
The impact of measles is life-changing. As is that of rubella, whooping cough and polio. Furthermore, people do die from these diseases. Those are patently obvious. The only thing that remains is how many people have suffered from these diseases because their parents refused to vaccinate them. Since vaccination is a % game, there is no guarantee - but you can still derive expected values from statistics. And the links in the lmgtfy site will tell you more about that. So even that is patently obvious.
Participate in the discussion, or don't.
It's difficult to have a discussion if one side refuses to listen.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Then not vaccinating your child is WORSE than giving him cigarettes.
I'll agree to that.
If the "worst parent award" came down to one guy who doesn't vaccinate his kids and another guy who gives his children booze and cigarettes, the anti-vaccine guy wins hands-down.
Not getting vaccinated harms not only your children, but the whole community. Anti-vaccine "people" are a real and serious threat to civilization.
Required reading for internet skeptics
You're arguing against childhood vaccinations and you'd like to see evidence of retardation?
I can help you. First, find a mirror...
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
I am a father and don't know who Dr Wakefield is and still decided not to vaccinate my son for pertussis and rota virus. I just don't think
FTFY.
Only complete and total morons don't vaccinate their children.
I find it disgusting that someone as idiotic as you is raising a child. I can only hope that you don't completely destroy his potential by filling his mind full of pseudo-scientific and superstitious nonsense. He may end up and incompetent as you.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Putting Penn & Teller in the same category as Oprah and Rush Limbaugh just shows how badly broken your bullshit detector is. (I don't know enough about David Rockefeller to say whether he falls into the "Penn & Teller truth camp" or the "Oprah full of shit camp".)
Considering that Oprah has hosted Jenny McCarthy and her anti-vax views, I'd say that Oprah is just as responsible as Andrew Wakefield for the death of any child that died as a result of the drop in the use of vaccines.
For kids that are too young to be vaccinated, herd immunity is an important factor in NOT being infected with whooping cough (pertussis), measles, or any of the other childhood diseases which vaccines prevent. The deaths of this children could have been prevented.
Andrew Wakefield, Jenny McCarthy et al, have blood on their hands.
One of the universal rules of happiness is always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual
What does seem to come through from Wakefield and other doctors
Wakefield was struck off. He was payrolled to create FUD about the MMR vaccine and stood to profit from a single shot alternative. He's a complete fraud. The only ones who disagree with this are the anti-vax movement, and they're ideologically opposed to vaccines and have shown that they couldn't give a damn about what the data says if it contradicts them.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
As a response to a post that contained this:
A metaphor for what I'm saying in the previous post is really just "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" and that vaccines have value even if there is some propaganda about one vaccine I really know nothing about. It looks like we are agreed with that and I understand now that you chose chicken pox vaccine as an example of itself and not vaccination in general. I misunderstood earlier so asked the question - why chicken pox as an example? Thank you for your answer and I'm sorry I accused you of "rigging the game". I was under the mistaken impression that chicken pox was being used as the strawman to question all vaccines.
I agree fully with your argument. You are not part of a sustainable future, please kill yourself. The world will be grateful.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I used to filled with moral outrage about the stupidity of people like McCarthy, but over time I've come to accept their stupidity as both inevitable and self-limiting. After all, if they and their minions are dumb enough to let their kids die of a preventable illness, their dimwitted bloodlines come to a screeching halt, which is a good thing for the species in the long run.
I think one thing that gets overlooked in the race to "think of the children" is that the children are simply little bundles of more of the same DNA that started the mess in the first place.
Natural selection is not a gentle process, but it beats a planet overpopulated with idiots.
But one has to admit Bill Gates has enormous moral backbone in all areas not related to open source and IP law.
Unlike, say, Rupert Murdoch, who combines his paywall and copyright evil with standard everyday evil.
What I wish to underline is, of course the contents of a vaccine is somehow a shock to your organism. Indeed, that's even the purpose. And yes, among the various additives in it, some may bring additional wrongs as side-effects.
Now, all the purpose of the physician decision, like for ALL medicine, is that the good this vaccination will do is obviously, vastly larger than the side-effect harm.
My worry is that by painting a vaccine as full perfect -which it is not, we give an argument to the anti-vaccine guys. Of course anyone can find some guy catching a fever because of an injection of vaccine X. So what? Again, like for all medicine, the issue is a balance between strong good cure PLUS minor side effects.
(of course, the lie on this autism thing is to present autism as an unexpected 'not-side' effect)
Herve S.
You can't prove a negative
http://departments.bloomu.edu/philosophy/pages/content/hales/articles/proveanegative.html
1 year Geek membership suspension + 6 months probation!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
No matter what Bill says, you should have choice, forced Vaccines are not right now matter what, Bills not a Doc nor am I, but if there are harmful chemicals in Vaccines, that needs to be addressed, having a nation "Dumbed Down" with Mercury is not really a good solution to the flew, there are also alternatives like bumping up th immune system so the body can fight these diseases naturally. The Choices should be made known and the right to Choose given to all.
The "9 million saved lives" figure he is touting is the prediction of how many future lives will be saved once the malaria vaccines etc. complete their development, pass their clinical trials, and become widespread.
Actually, he makes the statement, as you quoted, that there are 9 million deaths a year and that we could cut that in half. Unfortunately, those 9 million are not all from infectious diseases that could be eradicated with a vaccine. For children under 5, the most vulnerable, according to the WHO, the top two would be malaria and measles. Together, these comprise 450,000 deaths. Also according to the WHO, the largest killer is malnutrition. This amounts to approximately 1 million deaths in that age group and can not be cured with a vaccine.
Mr.Gates should be commended for his work, but the numbers he uses are not realistic. I imagine what he has done is mixed figures for children and adults, but then why refer to saving children, alone?
And none of what he is doing/saying addresses the issue of corrupt regimes who receive the funding to purchase the vaccinations but use it for other things.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
nonconformity at work
So, what part of saving kids from disease causes population control? Gates specifically says that "Population Control" is a primary goal - does that mean that birth control will be a component of vaccinations? I am still quite skeptical that there is not a vaccine or pesticide link to ADHD and other issues. Case in point, there are NO occurrences of ADHD among strict Mennonite and Amish populations. Aside from eating primarily organics foods, they do not vaccinate. There should be some studies into this very localized aberration as it should help find the real cause. For most of the populations suffering from disease and famine, the real problem is government corruption and war. Example, Somalia used to be one of the leading civilizations in the Egyptian era (2500 years ago). The weather hasn't changed, nor the soil - only the government and war lords. Afghanistan had virtually eradicated poppy production until the Afghan war. Now, after only 8 years they produce 95% of the world's opium. Score one for the US. I am reminded of the scene in Fifth Element where Zorg explains how the world works. All of the possessions do nothing. Chaos and destruction create jobs and a means for all of the workers to make more little workers to keep the process going. Very insightful.
I disagree about it being depressing... It's things like this that keep me sane as a member of the species. Every day I witness untold acts of utter stupidity and I long for the days when natural selection would take care of people to dumb to manage basic tasks. Fortunately natural selection isn't gone, just changed. These parents who are too stupid to care for their children will end up with dead children (don't let emotion get in the way here, yes dead children are horrible but it's the way evolution works). Things like the anti-vaccine crap are keeping the level of stupidity in our species in check. As terrible as it is that these children die through no fault of their own; be glad that the parents' genes are now (indirectly) out of the gene pool. That's a cold hearted sentiment, but sometimes you have to let idiots remove themselves from the gene pool for the good of mankind. That's what the Darwin Awards is all about.
I agree, but unfortunately it's an opinion that can't be expressed without being construed as inflammatory. Parents don't like to hear that having children contributes to the world's demise. But money can be spent to encourage population control: promote adoption, condoms, birth control, and (gasp) abortion. Some people refuse to acknowledge that there are no population controls in our current society --- wars don't take out the percentages they used to, reproduction is outpacing the effectiveness of disease, and to top it all off people are living longer -- maybe this is because it conflicts with their "life is sacred" beliefs, maybe because it won't be a problem until after their dead, but very few people care. Regardless, lowering the population is much more important than keeping everyone alive. The issue just presents a moral dilemma most are uncomfortable addressing.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Is the cost to our society smaller to let the "weak and frail" die so that only "the strong" breed? We would get even a "better" result to close down the whole medical industry with that type of logic.
And don't get me started with prescription glasses....
"...playing a manipulative game where truth did not remotely matter..."
politics as usual:-(
& off urself;-\
I made the quoted statement because of the previous post where you claimed that the pro-vaccine groups had to stick to the fact, which isn't true. They are just as guilty as the anti-vaccine group.
A big problem with the debate is that people are grouping everything into vaccination in general. It makes the discussion non-productive. It would be like a debate on whether eating is good for you. One side will show how not eating will kill you, and the other side will show how eating will kill you by pointing out how deadly arsenic is, or point to reports on heart disease.
As a concept, vaccines are very very good, but just like eating, that doesn't mean that you want to just start throwing just anything into your body. It also means that you should not just look at what this is going to do to you today, but what it is going to do to you in 20 years, as well as what your options are.
If the pro-vaccine group would stop calling the anti-vaccine group murders, and calling for imprisonment, and start discussing each vaccine as a separate medical procedure, they would gain a lot more traction. The Autism scare was over a 'study' on the MMR vaccine. How many parents didn't get the polio vaccine because when they heard the debate on Autism and and avoided ALL vaccines because nobody made it clear to them that it was only the MMR vaccine in question, and then it was only the combo version at that?
Funny you should mention the mercury based preservative business. I've been waiting to hear the conspiracy theories blossom over this one http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/101203-homosexual-birds-mercury-science/
What I don't understand is why researchers waste all that time with properly controlled and blinded vaccine trials when we have your wonderful personal anecdotes, which obviously supersede the mountains of objective data that clearly establishes the value-risk proposition of vaccines. I also really appreciated your poisoning the well of Bill Gates, as if it invalidates his position on vaccines.
So here's to you, Mr. Youtube-quality-slashdot-commenter.
The root issue is not whether vaccines are, on balance, "good" or "bad".
The root issue is whether physical force will be applied to those who disagree with your assessment of vaccines.
Part of the Second American Revolution!
First effective anti-virus product Microsoft's made.
That's debatable.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
No newborn needs a HepB shot either, since newborns are usually not sexually active nor needle abusers.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
OK. So, we can safely rule out Autism, but keep some perspective people. There ARE some risks associated with vaccines. Some people have alergic reactions to them. Some people die from taking the vaccine.
These risks were communicated to us when our son was vaccinated a few years back.
Ironically, in a world where 99% of the population is vaccinated, the risk of a vaccine-related-complication is higher than the risk of the disease. In a world where 50% of the population is NOT vaccinated, the risk of the disease is far worse. I'd like to see a study that demonstrates where the cross-over point is.
In the meantime, we had our son vaccinated because we did not want him to suffer vaccine-related-discrimination at school.
"Given that autism has spiked all around the world, and it's unlikely to be solely due to just increased detection, the logical question is to ask what caused it."
Vitamin D defiency as well as some broader metabolic problems related to the modern diet and environmental exposure to toxins?
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/vit-D-theory-autism.shtml
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
You wrote:
"Gates spends the money on the root of the problem, population control, then you won't have so many babies to die from disease, seriously there are 7 billion people on the planet and we aren't addressing population control but rather keeping more of them alive. We are in need of a 4 or 5 billion deaths from a super virus."
One can make arguments for an "occupancy limit" for the Earth based on aesthetics or some other issues, but the carrying capacity of the solar system is easily in the quadrillions of humans living in space habitats, and we have the general technology to do that (see Gerry O'Neill's work, for a start).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_K._O'Neill#Space_colonization
See also this Wikipedia page to see how the sun shines more power on the Earth each day also than all those reserves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)
PV power is expected to reach widespread grid parity real soon now, even with all the negative externalities of fossil fuels (pollution, war, sickenss) being ignored.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity
(A recent earthquake in Indonesia released more power than all the planet's known fossil fuel and uranium reserves combined also, but we don't know how to harness that power yet. :-)
The empowered human imagination is the ultimate resource.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource
Would you be around, using a computer, and posting on slashdot if people a couple of centuries ago has said that we should keep the Earth's population at a hundred million to make sure we did not run out of wood for cooking fires and to avoid the problems posed by Peak Whale Oil? Or if ten thousand years before that, people had said we should keep the Earth's population at around a million indefinitely to avoid using up the readily available flint supplies too soon?
I'm not saying limits do not exist at any given time based on our knowledge and infrastructure. But, we are no where near those limits as fare as the solar system. I just did a calculation that the recend SN 2011b supernova released enough energy in a month to power a trillion trillion human intellects for 10 billion years. There are 100 billion such stars in a typical galaxy, and a 100 billion or more such galaxies in the visible universe. That's a lot of energy, even if we can harness only a tiny fraction of it someday.
We could easily support tens of billions of humans on Earth, with plenty of room for wildlife, if we used solar power and ate a healthier diet with a lot less animal products.
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
Ask yourself, who might be making money off of selling you despair leading to your advocating for supergerms and a massive die-off of humanity?
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
While I am no big fan of M$, I have become a big fan of Bill. He is simply awesome! I am currently battling with a bucch of homeopathic peope in an anti-vaccine forum. And, to be honest, those people are idiots. They have no idea of statistics or even biology. I rape them with wikipedia knowledge. Still, these idiots rech a lot of people. And try to convince them with celebrities which are on their side (*cough* Scientology *cough*). So: Go, Bill, go!!
You make some good points. Please also look into these links for approaches to improving autism situations to build on the dietary interventions you are already doing:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/vit-D-theory-autism.shtml
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
No it was over a fraud by Dr Wakefield who was attempting to patent a rival vaccine and also accepting money from lawyers bringing a suit against the MMR vaccine manufacturers to the value of 400,000 pounds sterling. That was no "study". That was a scam. The damage has been done in that you have been conned into thinking it was a study around a decade after the fraud was revealed.
It may seem like nitpicking but that fraud is the foundation of the arguments the anti-vaccine lobby get rich on.
You have a gazillion bucks in the bank, people are reading stories on /. about exactly what time you felt the need to go for a crap and what sort of toilet paper you used to wipe with....when you have that much pull in society, do something important with that power. Use your massive amounts of money (instead of just giving it away like the billionaires club Zuckman is in) to actually set up info centers to help people all over the world be more informed, so you do not need to actually send out the help and step on political toes, but you can set up centers to help inform people, and having access to computers for these centers at really cheap prices (M$ could have shares in this program or something) ....yyy etc...
you would get some help from governments also as you are trying to help school their population in what to do if...xxx...or
Use your power for good Bill, don't use it to just complain about the state of affairs all the time...we know this from the news channels already
So yeah, it's not that big issue for lung cancer, but a stunningly large for heart disease.
To refute my point, please provide links to peer reviewed studies contradicting the study I linked, no older than 5 years, otherwise I have to say that your statement "tremendously trumped up and in some cases just as falsified as the wakefield BS" seems like astroturfing propaganda from some of those PR companies working for the tobacco industry.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
It is pretty well known that Mr. Gates is on the spectrum, which makes his condemnation of this particular bit of lunacy even more powerful.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
The reason I put the word "study" in quotes is because that is what it was called when it was presented, yet it was not properly done. Useing quotes around words that have described something, when the discription isn't really valid is common in the English language, and I believe you are well aware of this. Fraud in "studies" is common fare, as is committing the fraud for lots of money.
The pro-vaccine groups are causing as much damage, if not more than the anti-vaccine groups. They are also as confused. You say in your very own post that Wakefield did not say that "Vaccines are bad". In fact, you claim that Wakefield was pro-vaccine. Yet you somehow come to the conclusion that his is to blame for the whole mess.
Clearly his position was misrepresented, as he clearly wanted kids to get vaccinations. He just wanted them to get HIS vaccination. So, while the anti-vaccine folks have misrepresented what he said, causing a great deal of harm, you too are guilty of misrepresenting what he said, and contributing to that harm.
He was then when he thought he could make money that way but now a decade after being caught he's leading the charge for the anti-vaccine groups because he's making lost of money there instead (and keeps pulling out the "they mistreated Galileo for tellinng the truth" line like many scam artists). How's that for a fine illustration of anti-vaccination being a rigged game for sociopaths?
So on one side we've got people pretending a criminal fraud was reality and on the other we've got advertising hype over a chicken pox vaccine. While both are bad they are not remotely the same thing and IMHO are of such different degree that they can't be seriously compared with each other. While elements of the US health care industry at times act like organised crime there is still a wide gulf between that and real crime.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/autism-information.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/cancerMain.shtml
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/07/22/pregnant-women-advised-to-get-more-vitamin-d.aspx
http://www.iodine4health.com/
Both are involved with immune function in different ways. Adequate vitamin D is needed to make the brain's master antioxidant, glutathione. Adequate iodine helps excrete heavy metals. Both are involved with zapping cancer cells (it's said the average adult gets one cancer cell a day, but a good immune system deals with it). Vitamin D is essential to preventing pregnancy complications, including C-sections.
The US RDA for iodine may be way too low, especially considering how much bromine and fluorine kids are exposed to. The vitamin D RDA is also too low, even with being recently revised upward.
Eating fruits and vegetables also helps preventing lots of disease and is essential to good health.
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-the-food-pyramid-of-the-insane.html
One can tease out a lot of the individual nutritional and environmental causes in some cases of autism:
"Autism Research: Breakthrough Discovery on the Causes of Autism"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html
Let's get that all right before arguing too much over other stuff and what the true risk/reward assessment is for otherwise healthy kids and vaccines. A focus on magic bullets may be leading us to miss the big picture here about optimal health, which is earned by eating right and a lot of good lifestyle choices.
If pediatricians educated parents more about nutrition, we'd probably have a lot healthier population, even without vaccines.
"Disease-Proof Your Child: Feeding Kids Right"
http://www.amazon.com/Disease-Proof-Your-Child-Feeding-Right/dp/0312338058
"A groundbreaking book that explains the connection between nutrition and disease prevention-showing parents how to keep their children healthy by feeding them right. Bombarded by the media with stories about childhood obesity and dangerous hormones, pesticides and additives in foods, and told that allergies, asthma, and ear infections are on the rise, parents have never been more concerned about what to feed children. In this invaluable resource, featuring easy-to prepare, tasty recipes, Dr. Joel Fuhrman explains how cutting edge nutritional science can be brought to the family table with amazing results. "
See also for how to break out of the junk food pleasure trap:
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
No, there is not a wide gulf between them. Parents are being told by the government, and health care industry that they will be murdering their children if they don't get a medical procedure that INCREASES their chance of dying. How you consider that better than one man faking a study over a decade ago is astounding. Tens of thousands of kids every year are being subjected to an unnecessary medical procedure that increases their chances of dying of the disease the medical procedure is claiming to protect them from. How you can not call that criminal fraud, is beyond me.
I'm not going to defend Wakefield, but the only fraud I have seen from concerning him was concerning a faked study to discredit a single vaccine. This loses much of it's "evil" points due to the fact that there are other vaccine formulations to vaccinate against the same diseases that were not part of the discrediting attempt.
Whereas the chicken pox vaccine is being is being widely injected into most of the US's children. For the subset of the population that is leery of vaccines in general, the chicken pox vaccine being universally recommended is at least as damaging as the Wakefield 'study'.
Your argument implies that fraud by an individual is worse than fraud by an entire industry.
It most definitely does not unless you pretend that I also believe some vast conspiracy theory about "fraud by an entire industry". After your earlier posts I expected a far more mature attitude. Were you drunk when you wrote this one or merely playing some childish game?
Are you really taking the position that "fraud by entire industries" doesn't happen, or is even unusual? Really? Did you not see the fraud in the housing bubble? Do you not see the fraud that happens as SOP in real estate now? Do you think that the accounting practices in the Movie industry is on the up and up? How about how the ratings are assigned? The music? You don't see fraud as SOP there? Throwing out the 'C' word doesn't make your right. Conspiracies happen all the time. You know that. I know that. The legal system that convicts people of it knows it. Or do you think that the legal system charging people with conspiracy is just some conspiracy to make people believe that there really are conspiracies when they don't really exist?
You clearly understand how the chicken pox vaccine increases risk to individuals, yet it is almost universally recommended. To believe that the chicken pox vaccine increases risk to individuals, while it being universally recommended requires that you believe there is industry wide conspiracy, or the industry wide incompetence in the medical industry.
Look - you can argue with your flawed cardboard cutout version of who you think I am in your own head on your own all night without any input from me.
I disagree strongly with your premise so there is no point extrapolating that any furthur. Fraud and massive conspiracy by the entire health care industry with no manifestation apart from using advertising techniques to sell more chicken pox vaccines? I really do not think I can say anything about you pretending that I believe that which can be phrased politely.
You are being insulting and childish just to pretend you've won some sort of argument. Continue it in your own head if you are going to twist what I write to the exact opposite. Feel free to bring in irrelevant bullshit from everywhere like the housing bubble.
I'm sorry, but there is a link between nutrition and many chronic diseases. And it's not just about "boosting" the immune system, but also about having a "smarter" immune system that knows better when to turn itself on and off in different situations.
Other sources on curing type-2 diabetes with diet in a matter of days in most cases:
http://www.rawfor30days.com/index4.html
http://www.ravediet.com/preview.html
If you study the science, you will see why. The combination of removal of refined carbohydrates, plus significant eventual weight loss, puts the body back into a range where it can produce enough insulin on its own (with less insulin resistance due to less fat) that the body can manage itself again (in most cases of type-2).
Dr. Fuhrman is not a "questionable source". He is a board certified family practice doctor, author of numerous books, has a published study to show his successes, and has been on numerous media shows, and so on. His work is probably the best scientifically footnoted recommendation of anyone in the field of health and nutrition.
His advice is easier to follow when you also read this:
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
As for Lupus or Herpes, I can only point to what he says:
http://drfuhrman.com/disease/Other.aspx
"As long as you are still breathing, it is still possible to improve your health with improvements in lifestyle and nutrition. It is typical for people to see a variety of great changes when they adopt the high, nutrient diet-style which I recommend. Besides reaching an ideal weight and lowering blood pressure and cholesterol, other problems are resolved too. For example, it is common for those with attacks of recurrent herpes to stop experiencing attacks. Those with indigestion and reflux don’t need their acid-suppression therapy anymore. People stop getting hemmorhoids. Their body odor improves. They have better stamina and think more clearly, and their skin tone and color improves."
If you don't want to explore that, well, that's certainly your choice. There is a lot of misinformation and conflict of interest out there and it is hard to wade through it. And no one can guarantee results.
But the logic is there -- immune system health is effected by things like vitamin D status and vegetable and fruit consumption (and probiotics and good sleep and humor and so on). That fact is undeniable based on the overwhelming scientific evidence, even with most scientific money going in to prove magic bullet drugs and ignoring basic nutrition.
Nutrition matters. Other things matter as well, of course.
If you do even the tiniest bit of research yourself, you will see the connection.
http://www.google.com/search?q=immune+system+nutrition
As I've said before, unfortunately, a focus on magic bullets often distracts us from the basics. And the meat, dairy, processed corn, and big pharma companies are in no hurry to tell us any different (even though each can sometimes be part of a healthy life etc.).
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.