You are wrong. There are studies that compare vaccines (modified virus proteins plus adjuvants) against adjuvants.
This is not a true comparison, because if the were negative side effects from vaccines, they could have been caused by the adjuvants and the comparison would see no difference between the two because both groups will show the same frequency of (side) effects.
A proper control would then be vaccines controlled against for instance distilled water, that's why I put emphasize on (true) placebo controlled studies.
...hand washing...
Why am I still debating with you as you clearly show mal intent in your dismissive non-arguments. Again you are falsely equating steadily improved hygienic, nutritional and medical conditions with 'hand washing'.
...smallpox is eradicated...
Do you realise that there was a problem with the varicella vaccines? For instance, debunk this.
And yes, the ruling governments prefer to have the poor people, who live in unhygienic conditions with no access to clean water, proper nutrition nor healthcare, vaccinated.
If you would have paid attention to the thread of this discussion you would have found out that I'm not fighting the claim that vaccines may work, but the claim that in the western world, with the improved hygienic, nutritional and medical conditions, the vaccines are the sole cause of the decline in the infectious diseases. Either you failed to read this properly although I have repeatedly stated this, or you didn't want to understand it.
Brian Deer is an investigative journalist, not a scientist, interested in stirring up as much controversy as possible in order to sell his stories for the highest price.
I really don't understand how this paper could ever be published in the BMJ unless there is some special interest in giving such a scientific peer reviewed status to his paper, like further condemning Dr. Wakefield because he just doesn't give up.
The medical establishment can be very nasty, and I think they are showing this again in their continued witch hunt against Dr. Wakefield, who not even is against vaccinations.
I call malign intent of you by falsely equating 'better hand washing' with all the improvements in hygienic, nutritional and medical conditions had already contributed to a serious decline in the infectious diseases, before the vaccinations campaigns were even started. Or at least you are 'innocent' but somehow just fell prey to a false equivalence fallacy. It is distorting my argument in a demeaning way, trying to dismiss the value of my argument.
Discussion pollution is what I call that.
So, because vaccination was introduced while the decline in infectious diseases had already set in, then how are you going to prove that this was thanks to the vaccination? This is clearly your claim, so one might expect some proof from you.
Points 1. and 2. that you bring up are totally unnecessary as no one was claiming the opposite of neither the one nor the other.
Your point 3. is highly interesting. It mentions an article by Harrison who starts by citing a lot of people, 'anti-vaccinationists' he calls them, which are totally irrelevant and a waste of time but cleverly done because it associates Dr. Wakefield with some unspecified people that he is free to accuse of the most irresponsible, stupid and irrational behaviour, letting the associative powers of the mind do the rest so the reader can already start thinking that, therefore, Wakefield also must be a 'anti-vaccinationist'.
Well, to start with, he isn't. I have spent various hours of my precious time listening to his side of the story, including the famous press conference at which the panel was asked, and Walker-Smith directed the question to Wakefield, well knowing what kind of answer he could expect, what they themselves would do as a parent.
Wakefield's answer was, maybe contrary to your expectations, not to skip vaccination, but that he would try to separate the measles vaccination out of the MMR and delay the administration of it by 6 months.
So let's make us very clear that Wakefield is not at all against vaccination.
The first result of this statement was, as can be expected, that parents started requesting exactly that: individual measle vaccines.
So what did government and healthcare officials do in response?
They played the following trick on those parents: collude with the producer to stop production of the vaccine and bar the importation thereof in Britain.
A disgusting display of disrespect for the choice of parents regarding which type of medical treatment they prefer for their children.
Now, of course one can expect that parents who are concerned about the possible health effects of MMR will do next: They will re-consider the MMR altogether, and that's why there was a down-tick in the number of vaccines administered.
As a result of government meddling with the wishes of the parents, all for financial reasons of course.
Then the author brings the following complaint against Wakefield: That he subjected kids to tests without prior approval.
If you'd have listened to the various interviews of Wakefield you would know that he admitted this. However, this doesn't 'prove' that his results were incorrect.
Just not authorised by the medical ethical board of the hospital.
Next the author, very unscientifically, attributes some also totally unproven malign intentions to Wakefield for not pursuing the appeal while just before that he wrote that Wakefield would probably not be supported by his insurance company. With this, to me, author himself (again) shows malign intent and no real objectivity in his analysis of the case.
So, to cut it short, this paper is a hit piece, characteristic for a medical establishment that has a history of this kind of blunders and witch hunts as proven in the cases of Drs. Ignacio Semmelweiss and Barry Marshall.
Wakefield is not an 'anti-vaccinationist', no matter how hard author tries to
...the disease obviously didn't magically spring up overnight and spread like wildfire in the latter half of the twentieth century...
but I totally miss the evidence that would support your 'obviously'. We have seen various diseases spreading like wildfire, like heart disease, obesity, and the likes. So on what do you base the assertion that his is 'obviously impossible' for ADHD (and Autism)?
Now, maybe you are right in asserting that (part of) the rise in autism can be attributed to a development in diagnosing the disease, but when did that 'development' then exactly stop? In autism there is still clearly a rising trend, you know...
No chatting with a psychologist will be able to change this reality.
So I hate to brake it to you, but I'm going to totally ignore your contribution here and classify it as utter nonsense, thank you very much.
If you don't carry out a large trial you'll never know whether you were right or not, so in absence of 'golden standard' proof I'd be a lot more cautious in my approach than starting a witch hunt against people with a slightly different opinion.
On the other hand, there are still millions of unvaccinated people running around this globe, why not use those as a study cohort?
It's well known that religious believes clashing with different believes normally lead to the type of abusive language to which also you choose to resort. Anyway, it doesn't fail to classify the category of people in which you clearly seem to belong.
It is utter nonsense to project 'nurses' as trying deliberately to destroy people's health. That's the most ridiculous claim in this whole discussion.
They are professional health care providers and have something to say and should be allowed to speak out about their experiences and suggestions.
Trying to silence those good willing and warm hearted caring people because you don't like their message makes me think that some people have something to hide and protect, and that it's not the best public health they're after, with this heavy handed witch hunt approach.
I think it's a gotspe to state that the decline in infectious diseases due to improved hygienic, nutritional and medical conditions stopped exactly at the moment that the vaccines were introduced.
So nobody in his right mind can claim that the further decline is uniquely caused by vaccination.
Smallpox was declared to be eradicated because it became clear that many people got the disease from the vaccines. And by the way, smallpox is a relatively benign infection with a low mortality in healthy children, so a massive and population-wide 'immunization'* campaign isn't really indicated. Only vaccinating the not so healthy children would suffice, I reckon.
The suggestion that Wakefield was selling mercury free vaccines is totally ridiculous. Please back this up with a proper reference if you're really convinced that you're telling the truth here.
I will tell you why delaying the measles jab is a bad idea: Money. If the Health Services would have to order separate vaccines the current contracts would have to be cancelled at a high cost, Merck (whose cocktail was already forbidden in Canada by the government exactly due to health concerns) would have lost its million dallars investments in the cocktail, so there was a huge financial incentive to silence Dr. Wakefield, forbid the importation of separate measles vaccines into the UK (yes, they actually did this) hereby leaving the parents the choice either to be 'a nutter because of not vaccinating' or to accept the cocktail.
Disgusting.
I wonder why an experiment with unvaccinated people would be so unethical given the fact that there are still millions of people walking around without being 'immunized'*.
* 'immunization' and 'immunized' in single quotes because it's not a real lifelong immunization. Another indication that vaccination is different from 'the real thing'?
He was 'career-suicided' by the establishment. That's what he was warned against on beforehand and that's what happened.
He didn't have the resources to fight the GMC's (British 'General Medical Counsel') decision (to withdraw his license) in court, but his co-author Prof. John Walker-Smith did have a legal insurance that allowed him this and he won convincingly against the same decision the GMC had submitted him to.
'Ethically'? There are millions of people walking around who are unvaccinated. And are they all dying from infectious diseases? I don't think so.
If you want to study unvaccinated people without 'being unethical', then this is truly a vast cohort to study, won't you think?
That's a nice story, thanks, and I would be very interested in the link pointing to it, thanks again.
I have asserted in this thread various times that the mortality of infectious disease depends on the hygienic, nutritional and medical conditions. I assume that poor conditions sorts in the Yugoslavian mountains could have contributed to the high mortality, where the mortality in our modern western society under discussion (Australia) could be much and much lower.
Further, my opinion is that in the underdeveloped world, take Pakistan, where economic circumstances don't allow proper education in hygiene and proper measures to increase hygienic, nutritional and medical conditions, the only option to reduce deaths from infectious diseases is indeed to vaccinate, while almost totally disregarding the safety aspects.
However, in the developed western world I think the mortality numbers would be much lower, and might reach a point where it is worth to compare them with the number of vaccine damages in order to make a balanced decision leading to optimal public health.
And as I don't believe in health care professionals who happen to have a dissenting opinion being some kind of evil-doers who wish to eradicate humanity by evangelizing a total absence of vaccination, I think there is some smoke and therefore some fire, indicating there are some aspects in our vaccination procedures that might need some more scrutiny. Not eradication of the hard working, well meaning professionals who express those opinions. They must have a good reason to do so and I would be interested to hear them.
No, you maybe? You state vaccines are (generally) proven effective but and to assert they are safe.
Ok, I should have asked 2 questions:
1. are flu vaccines effective?
2. are HPIV vaccines safe?
What moving goal posts?
Thanks for the interesting link with reference to the original article.
Two questions though remain: what were the ASD boundaries, and why only Yokohama.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, I'm not going with you along this path.
Sorry, but you're on my blacklist due totally inappropriate and abusive language, thank you very much.
Can't make epipen level profits on that!
Now there you mention something unethical!
You're a colossal dumbass.
You are colossally abusive, so that ends the discussion with you.
You are free to do so if you were so inclined.
This is not a true comparison, because if the were negative side effects from vaccines, they could have been caused by the adjuvants and the comparison would see no difference between the two because both groups will show the same frequency of (side) effects.
A proper control would then be vaccines controlled against for instance distilled water, that's why I put emphasize on (true) placebo controlled studies.
...hand washing...
Why am I still debating with you as you clearly show mal intent in your dismissive non-arguments. Again you are falsely equating steadily improved hygienic, nutritional and medical conditions with 'hand washing'.
...smallpox is eradicated...
Do you realise that there was a problem with the varicella vaccines? For instance, debunk this.
And yes, the ruling governments prefer to have the poor people, who live in unhygienic conditions with no access to clean water, proper nutrition nor healthcare, vaccinated.
If you would have paid attention to the thread of this discussion you would have found out that I'm not fighting the claim that vaccines may work, but the claim that in the western world, with the improved hygienic, nutritional and medical conditions, the vaccines are the sole cause of the decline in the infectious diseases. Either you failed to read this properly although I have repeatedly stated this, or you didn't want to understand it.
Brian Deer is an investigative journalist, not a scientist, interested in stirring up as much controversy as possible in order to sell his stories for the highest price.
I really don't understand how this paper could ever be published in the BMJ unless there is some special interest in giving such a scientific peer reviewed status to his paper, like further condemning Dr. Wakefield because he just doesn't give up.
The medical establishment can be very nasty, and I think they are showing this again in their continued witch hunt against Dr. Wakefield, who not even is against vaccinations.
...result of better hand washing...
I call malign intent of you by falsely equating 'better hand washing' with all the improvements in hygienic, nutritional and medical conditions had already contributed to a serious decline in the infectious diseases, before the vaccinations campaigns were even started. Or at least you are 'innocent' but somehow just fell prey to a false equivalence fallacy. It is distorting my argument in a demeaning way, trying to dismiss the value of my argument.
Discussion pollution is what I call that.
So, because vaccination was introduced while the decline in infectious diseases had already set in, then how are you going to prove that this was thanks to the vaccination? This is clearly your claim, so one might expect some proof from you.
Points 1. and 2. that you bring up are totally unnecessary as no one was claiming the opposite of neither the one nor the other.
Your point 3. is highly interesting. It mentions an article by Harrison who starts by citing a lot of people, 'anti-vaccinationists' he calls them, which are totally irrelevant and a waste of time but cleverly done because it associates Dr. Wakefield with some unspecified people that he is free to accuse of the most irresponsible, stupid and irrational behaviour, letting the associative powers of the mind do the rest so the reader can already start thinking that, therefore, Wakefield also must be a 'anti-vaccinationist'.
Well, to start with, he isn't. I have spent various hours of my precious time listening to his side of the story, including the famous press conference at which the panel was asked, and Walker-Smith directed the question to Wakefield, well knowing what kind of answer he could expect, what they themselves would do as a parent.
Wakefield's answer was, maybe contrary to your expectations, not to skip vaccination, but that he would try to separate the measles vaccination out of the MMR and delay the administration of it by 6 months.
So let's make us very clear that Wakefield is not at all against vaccination.
The first result of this statement was, as can be expected, that parents started requesting exactly that: individual measle vaccines.
So what did government and healthcare officials do in response?
They played the following trick on those parents: collude with the producer to stop production of the vaccine and bar the importation thereof in Britain.
A disgusting display of disrespect for the choice of parents regarding which type of medical treatment they prefer for their children.
Now, of course one can expect that parents who are concerned about the possible health effects of MMR will do next: They will re-consider the MMR altogether, and that's why there was a down-tick in the number of vaccines administered.
As a result of government meddling with the wishes of the parents, all for financial reasons of course.
Then the author brings the following complaint against Wakefield: That he subjected kids to tests without prior approval.
If you'd have listened to the various interviews of Wakefield you would know that he admitted this. However, this doesn't 'prove' that his results were incorrect.
Just not authorised by the medical ethical board of the hospital.
Next the author, very unscientifically, attributes some also totally unproven malign intentions to Wakefield for not pursuing the appeal while just before that he wrote that Wakefield would probably not be supported by his insurance company. With this, to me, author himself (again) shows malign intent and no real objectivity in his analysis of the case.
So, to cut it short, this paper is a hit piece, characteristic for a medical establishment that has a history of this kind of blunders and witch hunts as proven in the cases of Drs. Ignacio Semmelweiss and Barry Marshall.
Wakefield is not an 'anti-vaccinationist', no matter how hard author tries to
...the disease obviously didn't magically spring up overnight and spread like wildfire in the latter half of the twentieth century...
but I totally miss the evidence that would support your 'obviously'. We have seen various diseases spreading like wildfire, like heart disease, obesity, and the likes. So on what do you base the assertion that his is 'obviously impossible' for ADHD (and Autism)?
Now, maybe you are right in asserting that (part of) the rise in autism can be attributed to a development in diagnosing the disease, but when did that 'development' then exactly stop? In autism there is still clearly a rising trend, you know...
No chatting with a psychologist will be able to change this reality.
So I hate to brake it to you, but I'm going to totally ignore your contribution here and classify it as utter nonsense, thank you very much.
Well, if you want to discuss autism in disconnection with vaccines, then I have bad news for you:
Projections are that by 2025 50% of the children may be autistic.
I fail to see any reasonable argument in your reply, so I take it you don't have any.
Please do provide us some credible reference...
If you don't carry out a large trial you'll never know whether you were right or not, so in absence of 'golden standard' proof I'd be a lot more cautious in my approach than starting a witch hunt against people with a slightly different opinion.
On the other hand, there are still millions of unvaccinated people running around this globe, why not use those as a study cohort?
It's well known that religious believes clashing with different believes normally lead to the type of abusive language to which also you choose to resort. Anyway, it doesn't fail to classify the category of people in which you clearly seem to belong.
It is utter nonsense to project 'nurses' as trying deliberately to destroy people's health. That's the most ridiculous claim in this whole discussion.
They are professional health care providers and have something to say and should be allowed to speak out about their experiences and suggestions.
Trying to silence those good willing and warm hearted caring people because you don't like their message makes me think that some people have something to hide and protect, and that it's not the best public health they're after, with this heavy handed witch hunt approach.
The global vaccines industry was valued at $24 billion in 2009 and is expected to reach $52 billion in 2016...
Thanks for looking that up, isn't that also way too high?
Anyway, the trend is definitely going towards 1 in 25 and even 1 in 2 by 2025, if we don't act.
I think it's a gotspe to state that the decline in infectious diseases due to improved hygienic, nutritional and medical conditions stopped exactly at the moment that the vaccines were introduced.
So nobody in his right mind can claim that the further decline is uniquely caused by vaccination.
Smallpox was declared to be eradicated because it became clear that many people got the disease from the vaccines. And by the way, smallpox is a relatively benign infection with a low mortality in healthy children, so a massive and population-wide 'immunization'* campaign isn't really indicated. Only vaccinating the not so healthy children would suffice, I reckon.
The suggestion that Wakefield was selling mercury free vaccines is totally ridiculous. Please back this up with a proper reference if you're really convinced that you're telling the truth here.
I will tell you why delaying the measles jab is a bad idea: Money. If the Health Services would have to order separate vaccines the current contracts would have to be cancelled at a high cost, Merck (whose cocktail was already forbidden in Canada by the government exactly due to health concerns) would have lost its million dallars investments in the cocktail, so there was a huge financial incentive to silence Dr. Wakefield, forbid the importation of separate measles vaccines into the UK (yes, they actually did this) hereby leaving the parents the choice either to be 'a nutter because of not vaccinating' or to accept the cocktail.
Disgusting.
I wonder why an experiment with unvaccinated people would be so unethical given the fact that there are still millions of people walking around without being 'immunized'*.
* 'immunization' and 'immunized' in single quotes because it's not a real lifelong immunization. Another indication that vaccination is different from 'the real thing'?
I'm not offhand aware of vaccines against mild diseases that risk severe diseases, but I could be overlooking one...
Try HPIV vaccines.
This is about nurses expressing their personal opinion on social media. There's nothing like a professional clinical setting about it.
He was 'career-suicided' by the establishment. That's what he was warned against on beforehand and that's what happened.
He didn't have the resources to fight the GMC's (British 'General Medical Counsel') decision (to withdraw his license) in court, but his co-author Prof. John Walker-Smith did have a legal insurance that allowed him this and he won convincingly against the same decision the GMC had submitted him to.
'Ethically'? There are millions of people walking around who are unvaccinated. And are they all dying from infectious diseases? I don't think so.
If you want to study unvaccinated people without 'being unethical', then this is truly a vast cohort to study, won't you think?
That's a nice story, thanks, and I would be very interested in the link pointing to it, thanks again.
I have asserted in this thread various times that the mortality of infectious disease depends on the hygienic, nutritional and medical conditions. I assume that poor conditions sorts in the Yugoslavian mountains could have contributed to the high mortality, where the mortality in our modern western society under discussion (Australia) could be much and much lower.
Further, my opinion is that in the underdeveloped world, take Pakistan, where economic circumstances don't allow proper education in hygiene and proper measures to increase hygienic, nutritional and medical conditions, the only option to reduce deaths from infectious diseases is indeed to vaccinate, while almost totally disregarding the safety aspects.
However, in the developed western world I think the mortality numbers would be much lower, and might reach a point where it is worth to compare them with the number of vaccine damages in order to make a balanced decision leading to optimal public health.
And as I don't believe in health care professionals who happen to have a dissenting opinion being some kind of evil-doers who wish to eradicate humanity by evangelizing a total absence of vaccination, I think there is some smoke and therefore some fire, indicating there are some aspects in our vaccination procedures that might need some more scrutiny. Not eradication of the hard working, well meaning professionals who express those opinions. They must have a good reason to do so and I would be interested to hear them.
Well, I think every individual posting in this thread deserves an answer. Not only you.
No, you maybe? You state vaccines are (generally) proven effective but and to assert they are safe.
Ok, I should have asked 2 questions:
1. are flu vaccines effective?
2. are HPIV vaccines safe?
What moving goal posts?
Thanks for the interesting link with reference to the original article.
Two questions though remain: what were the ASD boundaries, and why only Yokohama.