Tag: vaccines

It is increasingly obvious that the hysterical scaremongers among the pro-vaccinists are either pharma propagandists or probability-challenged:

Inquisitive Mind ‏@livebeef
Your decision to not vaccinate your children puts my children’s health at risk. You are the worst kind of person.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
Your decision to drive your children in your car puts their health at much greater risk. You are an even worse person.

Vox Day @voxday
Deaths from measles in last 10 years = 0. Automobile deaths in last 10 years = 383,542

Vox Day @voxday
Deaths from measles in last 10 years = 0. Deaths from bicycles = 6,770. ONLY A MONSTER WOULD LET KIDS RIDE BIKES!

Inquisitive Mind ‏@livebeef
What the hell is WRONG with you people? (Posts scary propaganda cartoon.)

Vox Day ‏@voxday
We’re just not idiots like you who embrace totalitarian government because someone said BOO! Measles deaths in 2014 = 0

Inquisitive Mind ‏@livebeef
Do you not understand what the concept of “almost eradicated” means? Look up the death count it used to have.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
I have. And most of the deaths stopped long BEFORE widespread vaccine availability. You are misinformed.

Inquisitive Mind ‏@livebeef
Prove it.

Vox Day ‏@voxday now
Measles deaths dropped 91.5 percent by 1960, 2 years BEFORE vaccinations. You are misinformed.

 In the unlikely event that anyone is interested in the actual historical facts of the matter:

In 1962, immediately preceding the licensure of the first measles vaccines in the United States, when measles was a nearly universal disease, Alexander Langmuir described the medical importance of measles to the country and put forth the challenge of measles eradication. Although most patients recovered without permanent sequelae, the high number of cases each year made measles a significant cause of serious morbidity and mortality Langmuir showed that >90% of Americans were infected with the measles virus by age 15 years. This equated to roughly 1 birth cohort (4 million people) infected with measles each year. Not all cases were reported to the public health system; from 1956 to 1960, an average of 542,000 cases were reported annually. By the late 1950s, even before the introduction of measles vaccine, measles-related deaths and case fatality rates in the United States had decreased markedly, presumably as a result of improvement in health care and nutrition. From 1956 to 1960, an average of 450 measles-related deaths were reported each year (∼1 death/ 1000 reported cases), compared with an average of 5300 measles-related deaths during 1912–1916 (26 deaths/ 1000 reported cases).

Note that even in the ABSOLUTE WORST CASE, which is 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 better to ban bicycles, as they would save three times more lives per year.

The pro-vaccine propaganda is just more creeping totalitarianism, albeit one of bizarre appeal to the supposedly conservative and libertarian right. But it cannot be rationally defended on any material grounds, nor balanced against its infringements on personal liberties and human rights.

UPDATE: Sweet Salk, but the pro-vaxxers are stupid.

Utes Byfive ‏@Utesbyfive
Natural immunity produces carriers: Typhoid Mary, Someone vaxxed can’t be infected. CANT FUCKING CARRY

Dr. Bernard Dalbergue, a former pharmaceutical industry physician with Gardasil manufacturer Merck, declares that Gardasil has “has absolutely no effect on cervical cancer”:

The full extent of the Gardasil scandal needs to be assessed: everyone knew when this vaccine was released on the American market that it would prove to be worthless!  Diane Harper, a major opinion leader in the United States, was one of the first to blow the whistle, pointing out the fraud and scam of it all.

Gardasil is useless and costs a fortune!  In addition, decision-makers at all levels are aware of it!

Cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, paralysis of the lower limbs, vaccine-induced MS and vaccine-induced encephalitis can be found, whatever the vaccine.

I predict that Gardasil will become the greatest medical scandal of all times because at some point in time, the evidence will add up to prove that this vaccine, technical and scientific feat that it may be, has absolutely no effect on cervical cancer and that all the very many adverse effects which destroy lives and even kill, serve no other purpose than to generate profit for the manufacturers.

Gardasil appears to be literally worse than useless, because it has demonstrably harmed many girls and young women without any reduction of cervical cancer rates. Gardasil was introduced in 2006. As of 8 September 2013 there have been
more than 57 million doses distributed in the United States. The result with the latest available data from the CDC:

2003: 11,745 women in the United States were diagnosed with cervical cancer
2011: 12,109 women in the United States were diagnosed with cervical cancer

Needless to say, the pro-vaxxers are already attempting to destroy Dr. Dalbergue’s reputation.

Despite the vaccine makers thinking they had put the Wakefield controversy safely behind them, another researcher has uncovered an apparent link between the MMR vaccine and autism, and from the CDC’s own data:

Background
A significant number of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder suffer a loss of previously-acquired skills, suggesting neurodegeneration or a type of progressive encephalopathy with an etiological basis occurring after birth. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectof the age at which children got their first Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine on autism incidence. This is a reanalysis of the data set, obtained from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC), used for the Destefano et al. 2004 publication on the timing of the first MMR vaccine and autism diagnoses.

Methods
The author embarked on the present study to evaluate whether a relationship exists between child age when the first MMR vaccine was administered among cases diagnosed with autism and controls born between 1986 through 1993 among school children in metropolitan Atlanta. The Pearson’s chi-squared method was used to assess relative risks of receiving an autism diagnosis within the total cohort as well as among different race and gender categories.

Results
When comparing cases and controls receiving their first MMR vaccine before and after 36 months of age, there was a statistically significant increase in autism cases specifically among African American males who received the first MMR prior to 36 months of age. Relative risks for males in general and African American males were 1.69 (p=0.0138) and 3.36 (p=0.0019), respectively. Additionally, African American males showed an odds ratio of 1.73 (p=0.0200) for autism cases in children receiving their first MMR vaccine prior to 24 months of age versus 24 months of age and thereafter.

The troubling thing here is that the author of the paper, “Measles-mumps-rubella vaccination timing and autism among young african american boys: a reanalysis of CDC data” reached his conclusions by examining CDC data that reached the opposite conclusion and served as the basis for a CDC doctor’s testimony before Congress. Bill Sardi writes on Lew Rockwell:

There is evidence of an intentional cover-up as it is alleged that data
from children who did not have birth certificates (not a pertinent
factor) was removed from the study to reduce the statistical power of
the study and claim there was no significant association between autism
and the MMR vaccine…. Dr. Hooker notes that the CDC used children under the age of 3 for a
comparison (control) group, which is an intentional way of skewing
results of its studies involving any alleged link between vaccines and
autism.  Symptoms of autism generally don’t emanate among children till
after age 3 and the control group was too young to have received a
diagnosis of autism, he notes.

Not only does this “reanalysis of CDC data” reopen the possible MMR-autism link, but it calls into question the integrity of the entire field of vaccine research. If Hooker is correct and CDC doctors such as Dr. Colleen Boyle have engaged in vaccine fraud, it will entirely explode the basic assumption that vaccines are safe because it will render all of the CDC’s data and assurances suspect.

I always find it amazing how vaxx-propagandists get worked up over American parents who don’t get their infants vaccinated against sexually transmitted diseases, then blithely turn a blind eye to mass immigration from countries with diseases for which there are not even any vaccinations:

Hundreds of West Africans could be carrying the deadly Ebola virus and not know it, potentially infecting hundreds more, as cash-strapped governments and overwhelmed aid agencies struggle to contain the virus’s spread.

At least 1,500 people have not yet been traced who are known to have come into contact with others confirmed or suspected to be infected with the haemorrhagic fever, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) told The Telegraph.

Many more could be moving freely in the three countries battling the virus, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, but fear of the illness and mistrust of Western medicine means they refuse to come forward to speak to doctors.

The current outbreak is the worst ever. So far 467 people have died and health staff have identified at least 292 other suspected or confirmed cases.

There were already serious concerns that Ebola had come to Italy with a boatload of illegal immigrants, which fortunately turned out to be a false alarm. Considering how Americans in Texas and Arizona are already catching tuberculosis and other diseases from the Border Intifada, it should be fascinating to see how Americans will react if one of those West Africans turns out to have hopped a plane to New York City… especially if it was in order to see Jenny McCarthy on The View.

The testing of vaccines is nowhere nearly as extensive as most people erroneously believe it to be:

Mick and Kirsten Button’s daughter Saba was just 11 months old when she received the Fluvax shot in April 2010. The then toddler suffered a hypoxic brain injury, kidney, liver and bone marrow failure. She can now no longer walk and talk and needs round-the-clock care. Three days after Saba was admitted at Princess Margaret Hospital, Fluvax was recalled. It is now banned for children under five….

In the claim the Buttons alleged Fluvax was defective after testing conducted by the company prior to April 2010 identified fever as a serious side effect of the 2010 batch. However the company denied liability then filed a cross-claim against the State of WA and the Health Minister. In return the State of WA filed a defence to the cross claim denying any liability. Settlement was reached between CSL, the State of WA and the family during recent mediation….

After Saba was admitted to hospital in 2010, it emerged there had
been more than 100 adverse reaction presentations to the vaccination at
PMH that flu season. But this information wasn’t passed on to the general public until after Saba was in the intensive-care unit.

The fact, the undeniable fact, is that vaccine companies have tremendous financial incentive to cut corners on safety, since they are not legally liable for their products in the USA. And what little information on the dangers exists is not, for the most part, available to the public. This combination of limited liability and limited information is bound to result in undesirable consequences.

If you are an advocate of mass vaccination who wonders why more and more people simply don’t trust those who are pushing vaccines on everyone, these two quotes from a vaccine debate on Reason should suffice to illustrate why:

PRO: A 2007 article in the Journal of the American Medical
Association compared the annual average number of cases and
resulting deaths of various diseases before the advent of vaccines
to those occurring in 2006. Before an effective diphtheria vaccine
was developed in the 1930s, for example, the disease infected about
21,000 people in the United States each year, killing 1,800. By
2006 both numbers were zero. Polio, too, went from deadly (16,000
cases, 1,900 deaths) to non-existent after vaccines were rolled out
in the 1950s and 1960s. Chickenpox used to infect 4 million kids a
year, hospitalize 11,000, and kill 105; within a decade of a
vaccine being rolled out in the mid-1990s, infections had dropped
to 600,000, resulting in 1,276 hospitalizations and 19 deaths.
Similar dramatic results can be found with whooping cough, measles,
rubella, and more.

CON: Judging from what one reads and hears in the popular media, it is easy to conclude that the science is settled, that the benefits of each vaccine clearly outweigh the risks, and that vaccinations have played the critical role in the decline of deaths due to infectious diseases such as measles, whooping cough, and diphtheria, all of which claimed many lives in the past.

However even a cursory look at the available data quickly reveals that the mortality from almost all infectious disease was in steep decline well before the introduction of vaccination or antibiotics. Diphtheria mortality had fallen 60 percent by the time vaccination was introduced in the 1920s, deaths from pertussis/whooping cough had declined by 98 percent before vaccination was introduced in the late 1940s, measles mortality had dropped 98 percent from its peak in the U.S. by the time measles inoculation was introduced in 1963-and by an impressive 99.96 percent in England when measles vaccination was introduced in 1968. In 1960 there were 380 deaths from measles among a U.S. population of 180,671,000, a rate of 0.24 deaths per 100,000.

The takeaway here is that vaccination played a very minor role in the steep decline in mortality due to infectious disease during the late 19th century and early to mid- 20th century. Improved living standards, better nutrition, sanitary sewage disposal, clean water, and less crowded living conditions all played crucial roles.

Again and again and again, we see the pro-vaccine side playing very fast and loose with the truth. They intentionally try to claim statistical benefits for mass vaccination that cannot possibly be attributed to it, even as the pharmaceutical companies disavow any responsibility for the products that they are lobbying to have legally imposed upon children who cannot possibly consent to having foreign substances injected into their bodies.

The vaccine lobby is a corrupt big government abomination that would vaccinate for oxygen if it could get away with it and no one who describes himself as a libertarian or even a conservative should support it in any way, shape, or form, regardless of his belief in the efficacy of vaccination. There is absolutely no libertarian case for mandatory vaccination and anyone who claims there is identifies himself as an ideological fraud.

The faster they talk, the more readily apparent it is that they are lying:

Vaccines are doing their jobs preventing disease and death, and even bringing down societal costs, according to a new study in Pediatrics. But another study, published in the same journal issue, found that public health campaigns touting vaccines’ effectiveness and debunking the links between autism and other health risks might actually be backfiring, and convincing parents to skip the shots for their kids.

“Corrections of misperceptions about controversial issues like vaccines
may be counterproductive in some populations,” wrote the researchers
behind one of the studies, led by Dr. Brendan Nyhan, a health care
researcher at Dartmouth College in Hanover N.H. “The best response to
false beliefs is not necessarily providing correct information.”

It would help if the “corrections of misperceptions” weren’t so easily demonstrated to be false by anyone who is paying even a moderate amount of attention.