Tag: vaccines

Once more, we see that those oh-so-trustworthy scientists appear to have carefully buried the risks in the name of not allowing parents to make informed decisions about what they inject into their children:

The HPV vaccine is heavily pushed to both teen girls and boys. Even though countries such as Japan won’t formally have stated that they don’t want to support it, the United States continues to massively push this vaccine despite all the push back world-wide. The HPV money grab by pharmaceutical companies is blatant and unchecked. Well, now things just got a whole lot worse: The American College Of Pediatricians has announced that the HPV vaccine is “possibly” associated with ovarian cancer. You can view the document here.

     It has recently come to the attention of the College that one of the recommended vaccines could possibly be associated with the very rare but serious condition of premature ovarian failure (POF), also known as premature menopause.

The rest of the press release is a defensive mess, claiming that the studies aren’t proof positive. But here’s the thing, if the ACP is admitting this small amount, imagine how large the actual issue likely is? They are always in a mode of protection when it comes to this vaccine, it creates a lot of revenue, so for them to admit this is a really big deal.

Pharmaceutical companies do not want any negative publications regarding Gardasil. And certainly, they’ve coerced and influenced this organization into not putting out negative claims over the matter. This tells me that this new discovery is huge and creates potential liability for them. It is so big that they actually fear not disclosing it.

It’s amazing that so many scientists insist on continuing to do the one thing that is ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEED to destroy all trust in them, which is point-and-shriek at those who do nothing more than dare to notice all the little anomalies and ask questions about the doubts that are quite naturally raised by their behavior.

Go ahead, shriek some more about Jenny McCarthy killing people. That’s ever-so-convincing to everyone who wonders about your integrity.

The news that anti-vaxxers are whiter, wealthier, and better-educated than those who place blind faith in vaccines won’t surprise anyone who has actually engaged a vaccine enthusiast on the subject. None of them know anything about history, few of them know anything about science, and all of them are prone to simply repeating the usual vaccine scare rhetoric:

The people most likely to refuse to have their children vaccinated tend to be white, well-educated and affluent, researchers report.

A study published in the January issue of the American Journal of Public Health used California state government data on “personal belief exemptions,” or opting out of vaccinations for nonmedical reasons. From 2007 to 2013, the rate of vaccine refusal for personal belief doubled, to 3.06 percent.

The researchers reviewed data among all kindergarten children in the state during that time. More than 17,000 children, attending 6,911 schools, were exempted.

Exemption percentages were generally higher in regions with higher income, higher levels of education, and predominantly white populations. In private schools, 5.43 percent of children were exempt, compared with 2.88 percent in public schools.

In some suburban areas, rates of exemption were near 50 percent, and more than a quarter of California’s schools have measles immunization rates below the 92 to 94 percent required for herd immunity, the level of vaccination necessary to protect people who are not immune.

The very simple fact of the matter is that vaccines are far, far less important in halting the spread of infectious disease than controlling entry and immigration from non-first world countries. This is obvious, since vaccine rates are still very high in the USA and Western Europe, and yet there is a massive rise in various diseases that is the direct result of global travel and large-scale immigration.

The idea that the current vaccine schedule is responsible for the huge decline in deaths from infectious diseases in the 19th century is not merely ahistorical, it requires a combination of ignorance and stupidity. This will become readily apparent before long as most children will continue to be vaccinated but disease rates will continue to rise thanks to the behavior and lifestyles of the New Americans.

You can be reliably certain that a position is wrong if it is inordinately held by magical thinkers or cargo cult scientists. Vaccines aren’t magic, they are merely a medical tool that is useful in some circumstances and useless in others. The simple and science-based fact is that most children don’t need most vaccines.

As I keep pointing out to little avail, to claim that vaccines are either intrinsically safe or intrinsically unsafe is to miss the point entirely:

Mexico’s public health system has suspended infant vaccines after two babies died and 29 were sickened in an impoverished community.

Six of the 29 babies are in grave condition after receiving vaccinations for tuberculosis, rotovirus and Hepatitis B, which are generally administered between 0 and 6 months, according to a national schedule. The cause of the adverse reactions is not known, the Mexican Institute for Social Security said Sunday.

The institute said it stopped vaccines nationwide on Saturday as a precaution.

To even attempt to discuss “vaccine safety” as a single, uniform subject is blitheringly stupid. I am neither an “anti-vaxxer” nor a “pro-vaxxer”, I simply believe that each vaccine, each combination of vaccines, and each vaccine schedule need to be considered separately, and to take the age, size, and risk profile of the recipient into account. People seem to understand that holistic “car safety” is a not a meaningful subject when contemplating the difference between the crash tests of an old Pinto and a modern Humvee, so it’s bizarre that they insist on lumping a single tetanus vaccine for a 200-pound adult in with a series of shots given to a 12-pound infant under the single topic of “vaccine safety”.

Tetyana Obukhanych, PhD, writes an open letter to the California legislature that is foolishly, and unconstitutionally, considering putting an end to all legal vaccine exemptions:

Dear Legislator:

My name is Tetyana Obukhanych. I hold a PhD in Immunology. I am writing this letter in the hope that it will correct several common misperceptions about vaccines in order to help you formulate a fair and balanced understanding that is supported by accepted vaccine theory and new scientific findings.

Do unvaccinated children pose a higher threat to the public than the vaccinated?

It is often stated that those who choose not to vaccinate their children for reasons of conscience endanger the rest of the public, and this is the rationale behind most of the legislation to end vaccine exemptions currently being considered by federal and state legislators country-wide. You should be aware that the nature of protection afforded by many modern vaccines – and that includes most of the vaccines recommended by the CDC for children – is not consistent with such a statement. I have outlined below the recommended vaccines that cannot prevent transmission of disease either because they are not designed to prevent the transmission of infection (rather, they are intended to prevent disease symptoms), or because they are for non-communicable diseases. People who have not received the vaccines mentioned below pose no higher threat to the general public than those who have, implying that discrimination against non-immunized children in a public school setting may not be warranted.

How often do serious vaccine adverse events happen?

It is often stated that vaccination rarely leads to serious adverse
events. Unfortunately, this statement is not supported by science. A
recent study done in Ontario, Canada, established that vaccination
actually leads to an emergency room visit for 1 in 168 children
following their 12-month vaccination appointment and for 1 in 730
children following their 18-month vaccination appointment (see appendix
for a scientific study, Item #5).

When the risk of an adverse event requiring an ER visit after
well-baby vaccinations is demonstrably so high, vaccination must remain a
choice for parents, who may understandably be unwilling to assume this
immediate risk in order to protect their children from diseases that are
generally considered mild or that their children may never be exposed
to.

In summary: 1) due to the properties of modern vaccines,
non-vaccinated individuals pose no greater risk of transmission of
polio, diphtheria, pertussis, and numerous non-type b H. influenzae
strains than vaccinated individuals do, non-vaccinated individuals pose
virtually no danger of transmission of hepatitis B in a school setting,
and tetanus is not transmissible at all; 2) there is a significantly
elevated risk of emergency room visits after childhood vaccination
appointments attesting that vaccination is not risk-free; 3) outbreaks
of measles cannot be entirely prevented even if we had nearly perfect
vaccination compliance; and 4) an effective method of preventing measles
and other viral diseases in vaccine-ineligible infants and the
immunocompromised, immunoglobulin, is available for those who may be
exposed to these diseases.

Taken together, these four facts make it clear that discrimination in
a public school setting against children who are not vaccinated for
reasons of conscience is completely unwarranted as the vaccine status of
conscientious objectors poses no undue public health risk. 

Unlike most vaccine advocates, who invariably point to irrelevant historical statistics that a) preceded the introduction of vaccines and b) involve vaccines that are very different than the vaccines now administered today, most vaccine skeptics pay close attention to the actual vaccines and vaccine schedules that are presently relevant today. If you’re not reasonably up to date on either when the various vaccines were first introduced or the historical and current death rates, I would advise that you get yourself up to speed before leaping in and saying something both stupid and easily disproved.

And it is important to be up to speed before trying to discuss the subject, because as Dr. Obukhanych observes, the vaccines that are being given today are not the same vaccines that helped wipe out the last vestiges of the various communicable diseases that had already declined dramatically as a result of improved sewage and health care systems.

Furthermore, there is very good reason to doubt the linear efficacy of vaccines that is commonly assumed due to the presence of the 5 percent of the population who are low-vaccine responders. If one factors in the additional percent of the population that is vaccine-sensitive, which is presently unknown but is unlikely to be any smaller than the low-vaccine responder population, somewhere between 5 and 15 percent of the population are simply never going to fit the “one size fits all approach”, which means that any law that would impose such a draconian vaccine regime on the general population is unconscionable, guaranteed to cause more harm than it prevents, and certain to fail in its stated objectives.

But even if one sets aside the science and the history of vaccines, one doesn’t need to be against vaccines or even to question the idea of their unmitigated beneficence in order to strongly oppose the idea of the government universally and forcibly dictating the injection of substances for which there is no legal liability by people for whom there is no legal accountability, without consent or even parental consent, into every single infant in the nation.

And the fact is that vaccines are not an unmitigated good. Like most things, they come with costs and benefits. It is foolish, even criminal, to attempt to set public policy without taking the downside aspects into account as well as the upside ones.

Furthermore, the scare tactics of vaccine advocates are based on absolute and utter absurdities that require complete ignorance of the historical facts to take seriously. Even in a completely
unvaccinated scenario with 90 percent infection rates that assumes
absolutely no improvement in health care in 55 years, we’re talking
about 450 deaths per year.  Realistically, we’re probably talking around
200, given the advancements in medical technology. THAT is what all the
pro-vaccine scaremongers are going on about. Americans would do far better
to ban bicycles, as they would save three times more lives per year.

383,542: Automobile deaths in last 10 years
6,770: Bicycle deaths in last 10 years
0: Measles deaths in last 10 years

As it happens, since 2003, 108 more Americans have died from reactions to the measles vaccine than have died from measles. Vaccine apologists like to claim that anti-vaxxers “have blood on their hands” due to hypothetical deaths that could theoretically occur as a result of imagined transmissions of communicable diseases that haven’t actually taken place, but the fact is that they have real blood from actual deaths on their own.

Because they are totally “tested”. By scientists doing science:

Merck, the pharmaceutical giant, is facing a slew of controversies over its Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine following numerous allegations of wrongdoing from different parties in the medical field, including two former Merck scientists-turned-whistleblowers. A third whistleblower, this one a scientist at the Centers for Disease Control, also promises to bring Merck grief following his confession of misconduct involving the same MMR vaccine.

The controversies will find Merck defending itself and its vaccine in at least two federal court cases after a U.S. District judge earlier this month threw out Merck’s attempts at dismissal. Merck now faces federal charges of fraud from the whistleblowers, a vaccine competitor and doctors in New Jersey and New York. Merck could also need to defend itself in Congress: The staff of representative Bill Posey (R-Fla) — a longstanding critic of the CDC interested in an alleged link between vaccines and autism — is now reviewing some 1,000 documents that the CDC whistleblower turned over to them.

The first court case, United States v. Merck & Co., stems from claims by two former Merck scientists that Merck “fraudulently misled the government and omitted, concealed, and adulterated material information regarding the efficacy of its mumps vaccine in violation of the FCA [False Claims Act].”

According to the whistleblowers’ court documents, Merck’s misconduct was far-ranging: It “failed to disclose that its mumps vaccine was not as effective as Merck represented, (ii) used improper testing techniques, (iii) manipulated testing methodology, (iv) abandoned undesirable test results, (v) falsified test data, (vi) failed to adequately investigate and report the diminished efficacy of its mumps vaccine, (vii) falsely verified that each manufacturing lot of mumps vaccine would be as effective as identified in the labeling, (viii) falsely certified the accuracy of applications filed with the FDA, (ix) falsely certified compliance with the terms of the CDC purchase contract, (x) engaged in the fraud and concealment describe herein for the purpose of illegally monopolizing the U.S. market for mumps vaccine, (xi) mislabeled, misbranded, and falsely certified its mumps vaccine, and (xii) engaged in the other acts described herein to conceal the diminished efficacy of the vaccine the government was purchasing.”

These fraudulent activities, say the whistleblowers, were designed to produce test results that would meet the FDA’s requirement that the mumps vaccine was 95 per cent effective. To the whistleblowers’ delight, the judge dismissed Merck’s objections to the case proceeding, finding the whistleblowers had plausible grounds on all of the claims lodged against Merck.

Vaccine advocates, are you starting to find even a glimmering of understanding why some intelligent and well-informed people just might harbor the occasional doubt about the safety and efficacity of vaccines? If not yet, what more will it take? And do you not understand that once this level of fraud is established, it casts at least a modicum of doubt on EVERY SINGLE CLAIM that has been made about vaccine safety in the past?

Perhaps you’ll even be able to understand why doctors have been hesitant to come forward with their doubts about vaccines if you consider the sort of response they can be expected to encounter from the vaccine manufacturers, who are legally protected against being held liable for the deficiencies of their products:

Merck made a “hit list” of doctors who criticized Vioxx, according to testimony in a Vioxx class action case in Australia. The list, emailed between Merck employees, contained doctors’ names with the labels “neutralise,” “neutralised” or “discredit” next to them. 

Do you find that confidence-inspiring?

The US goverment reports more killed by measles vaccinations than by measles in the USA:

While those opposing mandatory vaccination for measles are widely portrayed as ignorant and even dangerous by some officials, pundits and even news media accounts, Centers for Disease Control records reveal a startling truth – while no one has died of measles in the U.S. in the last 12 years, 108 have died as a result of the adverse effects of the vaccine in that same time period.

The death statistics are recorded by Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, which captures only a small percentage of the actual number of deaths and other adverse reactions to the vaccine. In addition, 96 of the 108 deaths in that 12-year time period were a result of the MMR vaccine, now the preferred shot for measles immunization.

Now, it’s important not to exaggerate the relative risks involved. Nine deaths per year is still considerably less than the 248 per year I estimate would result from a completely unvaccinated situation. However, given the fact that some countries, such as the UK, have historically seen LOWER rates of measles incidence at moderate levels of vaccine coverage, it is entirely possible that the optimal risk-minimization level of vaccination for measles is considerably below 100 percent.

This may sound counter-intuitive, but a vaccination regime that prioritized testing for vaccine susceptibility and excluded those children deemed likely to experience an adverse reaction would almost certainly meet considerably less virulent opposition than the present one, let alone the more oppressive regime envisioned by some of the more rabid pro-vaxxers. Providing an alternative delayed schedule and stretching it out would almost surely help in this regard as well. The fact is that if you’re genuinely concerned about the falling vaccine uptake, the very last thing you should support is doubling-down on the public pressure and propaganda approach. It not only isn’t working, it is observably backfiring.

No amount of propaganda is going to convince anyone who has seen, with their own eyes, an adverse reaction, or had one described to them. And adverse reactions most certainly do happen. That’s a fact, and the sooner the pro-vaccine community accepts it and stops trying to hide it, the sooner a more effective solution can be found.

Nothing creates more fear, uncertainty, and doubt than shaded truths and a blanket refusal to answer obvious questions. Rhetoric is no answer for serious doubts, be they reasonable or unreasonable. And as for increasing the pressure via legal means, it shouldn’t take a vast amount of foresight to anticipate what sort of adverse reactions are going to occur if doctors begin forcibly administering vaccines to children without parental consent and a child subsequently experiences a fatal adverse reaction.

One unanticipated outcome of forced vaccinations could well be the complete refusal of medical professionals to administer them.