Not sure if this is what you were talking aout, but it’s related. Barry Glassner has a book out called “Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things” talking about our fear of thigs that are statistically unreasonable to be afraid of but that the media plays up and encourages. [url=http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-01/fear.html]HERE[/url is a review of the book in Skeptical Inquirer.
According to the CDC (ASTDR)
The oral minimal risk level (MRL) is 1 mg Al/kg/day; dose divided by an uncertainty factor of 100 (10 for extrapolation from animals to humans and 10 for human variability) and a modifying factor of 0.3
The article http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/112/6/1394 changed the numbers to reflect the following:
By applying uncertainty factors of 3 (for extrapolation to humans) and 10 (for human variability), the ATSDR concluded that the minimum risk level for exposure to aluminum was 2 mg/kg/day.
As well a reference made in the article stated that the half life of aluminum is 24 hrs. According to the CDC the half life of aluminum when injected is 50 years, which is substantially different.
The studies I was referrring to were all the studies on vaccine safety that have shown no link between vaccines and neurologic defecits in humans. Since these vaccines have the exact amount of aluminum you are concerned about, injected in exactly the fashion we are concerned about, at the time you are concerned about in the very humans we are conerned about, they hugely trump a few questionable animal studies.
I disagree with you. Vaccine safety studies are not comparible because they compares one vaccine to another. Side effects are monitored for only several days, no long term studies are done. As well, neurologic defects are not even considered part of the studyand exposure at such a young age (infants) may not show until a later stage of development. Like I said previously, dead infants are not counted as relevant, when they occur during a study, which makes absolutely no sense. To truly know if the vaccine causes increases in deaths of an infants, a safety study should compare one group who receives a vaccine and one group who receives a placebo like sterile water or saline. If the number of dead babies are the same in both groups then yes, vaccines are proven to be safe. However this has NEVER been done.
As well, when you look at the infanrix study, there are a 22,0000 enrolled in the study, but data is obtained from few subjects. (less then 10%)
I would like to put aside the discussion for a moment and have a meta-discussion. There is a major problem with the approach you have taken. Due to multiple clear and unaddressed misinterpretations or references, questionable sources, and quoting out of context, your credibility is shot. Even if you had a link to a smoking gun paper, your readiness to post quotations from sources you haven’t read makes it hard to respect anything you post. It reminds me of the boy who cried wolf, regardless of whether, in this situation, we believe that the wolf will ever come or not.
The approach of making a point and then trying to talk over the voice of the responder is also not convincing. I describe the thread this way due to your repeated mass posting of links while often failing to address the particulars of the response to your previous posts.
I am also curious how many people you personally know who work on vaccines. I was talking to a former CEO of multiple biotech companies whose PhD is in immunology a few months back, and he stated nicely the main problem with big Pharma. The problem is that they will only pursue medicines that will profit them, especially considering the cost of approval and lawsuits. Instead of spending money to find a cure for one disease, it is more profitable to produce drugs that manage the symptoms of another. Don’t be confused—this is not in any way an indictment of the effectiveness of drugs as the people working on it mostly scientists with good intentions—but not every possible drug will be invested in, and perhaps the potentially most beneficial might not be worth the effort financially. This is a fundamental problem with a market economy dealing with such problems. Nevertheless, we as still dealing with scientists whom we have no reason to suspect as being any less or more ethical that the rest of us are on average.
I always find it interesting when one side claims the other is being disingenuous because of vested interests. This accusation is easy to make but hard to prove. We are better off taking people at their word—even if they are deluded, they probably believe what they are saying. It is more productive to look at the science on its own merits
Now you’re in fantasy land. Of course no placebo-controlled prospective study on vaccines is ever going to e done, since it would be unethical to deny vaccines to the placebo group when their benefits are clearly established. The major way that safety is examined is retrospective analyses of populations who have been vaccinated for adverse events. If you want to mke a link to a disease that develops later in life, you can find some control population that has not received the vaccine, but it is more important to establish a pathophysiological relationship between the vaccine ingredient and the disease. Epidemiological correlations, as we all keep pointing out, are not conclusive even if they exist, which for most of your supposed toxins they don’t despite massive vaccination programs throughout the world for three generations.
None of this matters to you anyway, since you would simply shift ground from any threat conclusively disproven to soemthing not yet disproven just to continue your generic, and ultimately not reason or evidence based campaign against vaccines. dmoreau is correct that you logic and arguments are sloppy and disingenuous because you have an axe to grind and no interest in inconvenient facts. Luckily, most people are more reasonable so vaccination is still widely understood as the sound public health practice it is.
jmoreau
I do not know anyone who makes vaccines, however I know a lot of childeren damaged by vaccines. I spent about one and a half years working with children who were damaged by the vaccines they received as infants. It was beyond heart breaking to see these kids struggling through life. Prior to working with these kids I thought vaccine damage was a “myth” and believed vaccines were truly a miracle of modern medicine. I know that vaccines can cause major harm and unfortunately it happens more often then we are told. Currently one of my patients remains in hospital, in PICU, due to a major adverse reaction to a vaccine. (He’s been there for 2 months already)
jmoreau
I do not know anyone who makes vaccines, however I know a lot of childeren damaged by vaccines. I spent about one and a half years working with children who were damaged by the vaccines they received as infants. It was beyond heart breaking to see these kids struggling through life. Prior to working with these kids I thought vaccine damage was a “myth” and believed vaccines were truly a miracle of modern medicine. I know that vaccines can cause major harm and unfortunately it happens more often then we are told. Currently one of my patients remains in hospital, in PICU, due to a major adverse reaction to a vaccine. (He’s been there for 2 months already)
I am troubled by how after I criticize you for ignoring corrections to clear misrepresentations you have posted, you jump to an emotional appeal.
One of the problems with your approach is that you generalize about all vaccines. This also makes it hard to take you seriously, especially considering the lethal diseases we have eliminated through vaccination. The best way to eliminate a vaccine is to use it to eliminate the disease by using the vaccine first.
It seems like you are so emotionally involved in your position, you can’t even recognize how we have eliminated many devastating diseases through vaccination, such as smallpox and polio, as has been repeated multiple times in this post. This gives the impression that you are willing to ignore facts to maintain a fantasy. Perhaps my impression is wrong, but your discourse definitely makes it seem this way.
The cold hard truth is that there is a trade-off. Instead of thousands of individuals dying from a disease, tens of individuals could, for example, die from the vaccine. Forcing seatbelt usage could save, for example, 1000 lives, but cost 10 lives that wouldn’t have died with a seatbelt. The reason why you sound, to be frank, like a crackpot, is that you are claiming that the vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases, which is a preposterous claim, especially if the appropriate screening is done before administering the vaccine. To say “I know 10 people who got diseases A, B and C yet didn’t die” is just silly since most of us know 1000s of people who all were immunized, yet none of them had any complications. You seem so compelled by statistically insignificant events.
The danger of all of this is the misinformation and poor thinking that you spread and the physical danger you pose to those who responsibly got their vaccines, yet are in the 10%, for example, that are nevertheless not immune and are vulnerable when freeloaders (people who are sheltered by herd immunity but do not help to maintain it) increase the chances of outbreaks.
Mackenzie
Unethical??????????? There are lots of parents who choose to not vaccinate their children. There are willing unvaccinated volunteers who would participate in a study, for obvious reasons. Authorities refuse to study the unvaccinated vs the vaccinated.
I also wonder what disabilities and injuries these children had, and if they were actually caused by vaccines. Of course, all drugs—literally all drugs—have side effects, and there are people of all ages who have had adverse effects from virtually every drug on the market. (There are also people who have died from eating peanut butter). But there are also a lot of bogus claims about vaccination (e.g., that it causes autism). So it might be interesting to know (1) what adverse reactions these children had, (2) whether vaccines were actually responsible for them, and also (3) how you found them.
Unethical??????????? There are lots of parents who choose to not vaccinate their children.
Yes, it is unethical not to vaccinate your children. It is both dangerous to the child, and dangerous to the children’s peers. The reason that nobody is interested in doing a study of vaccinated versus unvaccinated is that the data supporting the effects of vaccination is so overwhelming. That said, see the data provided in my next post.
One placebo-controlled trial of vaccination: Polio.
Any new vaccine introduced into the market has to pass a double-blind, placebo-controlled test. Google searches for double-blind vaccine studies turns up a lot of hits.
Thanks McKenzie I think the Culture of fear was the book I was looking for. I finally got finished with my chores. I decided to do a little experiment. To an outsider looking at this back and forth it could easily look like two equal sides to an argument ( Only if you don’t read the complete posts and explore the validity of the claims of course). So I decided to do a little experiment. Anyone else can do the same experiment. Just go to Pubmed and type in these two words - Vaccine Autism. This will create a very unbiased search for any documents concerning the link between autism and vaccines. Studies supporting a link should be just as likely to come up as those which dispute it. You can then review the results and determine for yourself if both sides have equal merit.
The results were pretty dramatic. There were loads of studies and reports which clearly showed no connection. I read as many as I could in the time I had and will post the links here. I did not come across one significant study that showed any connection. Even if there had been one, the weight of the evidence disputing any link is dramatic.
Here are just a few of the results for weldesgin since she can’t seem to find any of them on her own.
Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination and Autism
Spitzer W. O., Mullins M. E., Wakefield A. J., Noble K. K., Miyasaka K., Madsen K. M., Campion E. W.
Full Text
N Engl J Med 2003; 348:951-954, Mar 6, 2003.
No effect of MMR withdrawal on the incidence of autism: a total population study
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
Volume 46 Issue 6 Page 572-579, June 2005
Abstract
Continuing increases in autism reported to California’s developmental services system: mercury in retrograde.
Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2008 Jan;65(1):15-6.
Abstract
Autism and thimerosal-containing vaccines: lack of consistent evidence for an association.
Am J Prev Med. 2004 Jan;26(1):91; reply 91-2.
Abstract
Thimerosal and the occurrence of autism: negative ecological evidence from Danish population-based data.
Pediatrics. 2003 Sep;112(3 Pt 1):604-6
Abstract
Pervasive developmental disorders in Montreal, Quebec, Canada: prevalence and links with immunizations.
Pediatrics. 2006 Jul;118(1):e139-50
Abstract
MMR vaccination and pervasive developmental disorders: a case-control study.
Lancet. 2004 Sep 11-17;364(9438):963-9
Abstract
Measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and bowel problems or developmental regression in children with autism: population study.
BMJ. 2002 Feb 16;324(7334):393-6
Abstract
Time trends in autism and in MMR immunization coverage in California.
JAMA. 2001 Mar 7;285(9):1183-5
Abstract
MMR vaccine and autism: an update of the scientific evidence.
Expert Rev Vaccines. 2004 Feb;3(1):19-22
Abstract| PDF
One last comment weldesgin. You claim you worked with lots of kids who were injured by vaccines but how do you know they were injured by vaccines. Just because their parents make that claim doesn’t make it true. There are many reasons why a parent may be willing to blame the vaccine for their child’s disability including monetary reasons as well as the innate human need to have someone or something to blame for their tragedy. Just because a child got a vaccine and later developed a problem doesn’t mean the vaccine caused the problem as numerous posters have already tried to explain and multiple studies listed above can attest to.
I appreciate the links you provided regarding FDA approval trials for vaccines. It is true they have to be proven effective to be approved for use. I would just point out that the only study you cite that involved a currently preventable childhood disease was the polio trial from 1953. The others generally involve adults or diseases for which there is not currently a safe and effective vaccine. I only point this out since my original comment about the ethics of a double-blinded, placebo-controlled vaccine study was in response to weldesgin’s ridiculous argument that vaccines could not be shown safe and effective without such a trial and so we should stop using them until one is done. Clearly, as of course I know you already understand, to do this at this point would be unethical because it would require the researchers to deliberately select, by randomization, some children to be denied protection of vaccines already estalished to be effective.
Weldesgin,
The idea that anti-vaccine believers could volunteer to be a control group in such a study shows again that you don’t understand how scientific research works. Such a group would be a self-selected subpopulation, different in many ways from the treatment population selected from the general public. And the volunteers would know which group they were in since they clearly would not choose to receive the vaccine. This is not a placebo control or double blinded study, and such a study will never be done for the reasons I already stated. Of course, this is irrelevant to you since you don’t really feel sch a study is necessary as you already believe vaccines are unsafe and ineffective. It’s just another religious beiever claiming that unless we can prove conclusively their god doesn’t exist that he must actually exist and so they’re right. You will do anything to maintain that vaccines are unsafe, and unless the impossible of 100% perfection can be demonstrated in vaccination you want none of it. As I’ve said before, thank goodness most people are more rational than that.
One last comment weldesgin. You claim you worked with lots of kids who were injured by vaccines but how do you know they were injured by vaccines. Just because their parents make that claim doesn’t make it true. There are many reasons why a parent may be willing to blame the vaccine for their child’s disability including monetary reasons as well as the innate human need to have someone or something to blame for their tragedy. Just because a child got a vaccine and later developed a problem doesn’t mean the vaccine caused the problem as numerous posters have already tried to explain and multiple studies listed above can attest to.
After working as a charge nurse for years (and years and years!) in a university associated, large urban hospital PICU, that cares for children from all over the country (and other countries as well), I wonder how weldsgin manages to see so many children with serious vaccine related illnesses in her PICU, when I have only seen and cared for the results of the decision NOT to immunize. Why is the population where she lives so special that there would be such a high concentration of children with these effects that have not been seen in other major medical centers? I’m not saying that vaccinations do not occasionally cause serious side effects, but if there were so many hanging around in hospitals nationwide, I’m sure I would have seen them in my hospital, or at least heard about them from the conferences I attend around the country, or from the many profession journals that I subscribe to, or from research done at our facility by the Fellows and Attendings .
