Safety and Effectiveness of Herbs and Pharmaceuticals

Agreed, Granny Magda. I tried St. John's wort once and got terrible stomach cramps, and I felt like I was on the planet zog. The problem is that people who have experienced no side effects, read that there are none, and know of no one who has experienced them, end up believing this stuff is 100% safe. SJW is really a mild SSRI.I have, and continue to, use some herbs that have given me great relief from some symptoms (the root cause of which I am still working on sorting out). In the past I used Relora when I had adrenal problems, and currently I use ginkgo biloba and ashwagandha. I've tried various other things too, some of which did not agree with me. (I have also taken pills from herbalists whom I trust.) I use herbs sparingly, give them the respect they deserve, and research what I am doing. I am uncomfortable about claimed-but-not-properly-studied effects of anything; I do not want to set my body up as a lab experiment. Occasionally people have recommended herbs to me that I have discovered are known to cause serious problems, and that's disturbing.While I want to retain my right to buy herbs and use them, I do feel that more clinical studies would help because I want to know what the actual (as opposed to mythical) effects are. I would also like to see more standardisation. If I decided to change my brand of ginkgo, I would have no idea what I'd be getting from another product in comparison; even the same amount can vary by content, purity and processing.

Interestingly, Dr. Mercola has included a lengthy interview with Dr. Wakefield in his recent newsletter. Wakefield's main concern is about giving the three vaccinations together. He has studied the effects of multiple vaccinations in monkeys and he has some concerns about other vaccinations such as the new one for chicken pox. I believe his work has been misrepresented; you are welcome to listen to the interview or read the transcript and make up your own mind.

Well that's the sort of post I'd expect from someone who cites Quackwatch as the defender of common sense and science against woo and wingnuts. I'm not honestly interested in debating this point-by-point with you, especially since I feel sure you never watched the interview with Wakefield nor read the transcript and will not do so. (I have also already debated about vaccines here in the past and am not looking for another time-consuming knock-down drag-out fight right now.) Did the study you cited above use controls who were never vaccinated with MMR? No. Did you read what Dr. Wakefield said in his own defense about the study on monkeys? No. And you are making assumptions about the chicken pox virus without looking into any of the facts either, though I bet you're not past quote mining something from Quackwatch. All I was interested in doing here was providing a link to the other side of the story. It will be interesting to see how many more people here want to join in the general condemnation of Dr. Wakefield while ignoring what he has to say about it. Surely the beginning of a sensible debate, or the formation of an opinion, is an awareness of both sides of the issue.By the way, I use some of Dr. Mercola's supplements. I take krill oil and I've used his probiotic supplement. I guess that either makes me insane or a dupe. And coconut oil is healthy stuff so whatever the "illegal" claims about it are, I can't see anything wrong with promoting it as a health food, which is what it is. But thanks for chiming in and showing us what was clear already about your personal opinion of the alternative health industry. I guess this was a juicier post for you than the one I posted on topic about herbs, which seems to have been lost in the shuffle.Edited by Kitsune, : typosEdited by Kitsune, : No reason given.

Hi Granny,Sorry, I'm not biting -- I am not getting into a major debate on this topic. Why did I post the link to the interview with Dr. Wakefield? For the reason I originally cited -- I believe that before someone forms a biased view, they should weigh both sides of the argument. Oddly when I discuss topics such as this here, removed from the EvC, I sometimes find some very entrenched one-sided views in people who would never admit it to themselves. I myself do not know the intricate details about Dr. Wakefield's work but I am willing to listen to what he has to say. There are other websites backing this up and giving a different view to the conniving child-torturer you and some aspects of the media want to paint him as. The only way to find the truth (or come close) is to research with an open mind. You probably see me as an apologist for him now because your polarised view is bringing out that aspect in me, and I'm going to try to stop that from continuing. Stephen Barrett is as biased as they come. He knows how to cherry-pick his data so that it reflects whatever he wants it to reflect, and he's lumped legitimate people in with frauds and shysters in order to tar everybody on his hit-list with the same brush. For example, you've fallen hook line and sinker for his jibe at Dr. Mercola. It is US law that supplements such as vitamins and herbs must not print health claims on their labels; this means that even a jar of vitamin C cannot claim that it promotes a healthy immune system. Honest purveyors of such products have long been frustrated by this; sure it guards against falsehoods, but in the same fell swoop it also means you cannot share legitimate information. Take the coconut oil again. It's really, really healthy stuff. It contains lauric acid and has antifungal and antibacterial properties. Whether Dr. Mercola has fallen foul of the technicalities of the law or not, he's not lying about the benefits of using this product. I am not going to defend every single thing he sells but I would quite happily buy any of a number of his products because I know they are high quality. Barrett, on the other hand, would like him to go out of business so that I get ill and give my money to the pharmaceutical industry instead. And that statement speaks volumes. I'm not asking you to watch it so we can debate it, I don't want to debate vaccinations here. I posted the link so that people who are interested in forming balanced opinions can find out what he has to say. Feel free, if you so desire, to ignore all evidence contrary to what you believe. Just don't laugh at creationists when they do the same. It is a fat. The human body needs fat in order to survive. And -- shock, horror -- it needs saturated fat. You perhaps are not aware that there is a lot of misinformation out there about the alleged benefits of the standard low-fat high-carb diet. I'm honestly not trying to wind you up but I suppose the merest hint of this will send you livid, since you're already wound up about my claims that Drs. Wakefield and Mercola are not necessarily lying bastards. The Skinny on Fats
Barrett probably hates Mary Enig and Sally Fallon too, I imagine they're on his hit-list somewhere. And I am endangering children's lives, how? Barrett would have us all steer clear of healthy nutritional supplements and buy into the sickness industry that is allopathic medicine. IMO that would be endangering children's lives. You are a great mouthpiece for him.Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.

I never claimed he was being persecuted. I said I think he has been misrepresented. That is because whenever I look into this fiasco, I find that the charges you listed (which have not been substantiated) are refuted in some quarters. Perhaps you are biased enough to brand anyone who disagrees a quack, but the jury is out with me. If you don't like Mercola, there are lots of other sites where the allegations against Wakefield are disputed. Here is another. Again let me stress that I am not taking sides, I just feel that the truth may be more elusive than many people (seem to want to) think. (Yawn) Purpledawn wrote a good succinct post about this, above. Though in your eyes this no doubt proves that Dr. Mercola is selling snake oil. Curiously my health has been fine while using his products. I found your propaganda links very amusing. Let me make a guess: you read what they told you, complete with the vituperative language, and never bothered to follow the links to the web pages to find out what was actually being said. (I seem to be discerning a pattern here.) Regarding the baking soda one, your propaganda site says that Mercola is telling people to use baking soda to cure swine flu. Here is what his web page says: He is not recommending it himself, he is looking at historical claims made about the substance. But I personally don't have a problem with trying to balance my pH in order to aim for more optimal health, do you?And about the cancer-caused-by-fungus thing . . . this is someone talking about candida. I know people who have had candida overgrowth and who have treated it successfully. Before you guffaw too many more times, maybe you should consider the fact that no one fully understands why cancer forms or grows. Cancer cells form regularly in our bodies but it is normally not a problem because a healthy immune system kills them. I don't see any reason why the effects of candida overgrowth can't contribute to cancer, there are many agents that do. No, coconut oil is not unhealthy for overweight people. I don't know where you're getting this idea that eating fat causes people to be fat, but it suggests that you are in need of education about basic metabolic processes. I gave you a link and again you have not read it. The link cites various studies. If you're not going to read my links then I don't see how we can have a proper debate. A couple of things wrong with this. Firstly, cases have not "boomed," and adverse reactions are far fewer than the number of cases because healthy people's immune systems fight these illnesses off. Secondly, Wakefield advocated that the vaccines be given in separate doses rather than all together; he did not tell people not to vaccinate at all.It's odd how people rail on against "dangerous" supplements sold by health food stores, and people dying from diseases for which there are vaccines. Strangely, the rates of iatrogenic illnesses and the death toll from FDA-approved prescription drugs never make the headlines. Why is that? Accidental death from prescription drugs, even when they are correctly given, is now the fourth leading cause of death in the US. Source Why aren't people like Steven Barrett going after the manufacturers of drugs like Zyprexa (which causes akathisia and diabetes), which instead of being pulled off the market, get a black box warning that you should be "monitored" if you take them? Why is he not leading a campaign to make people aware that they should be supplementing with CoQ10 if they are taking statins -- or better still, not taking statins at all because they are useless? Think about this. What do you think that says about his agenda? I meant that precisely: he would have us steer clear of all healthy nutritional supplements. You think this is crap? Go look at Quackwatch and tell me if there is one single line anywhere on that site where he says that any supplement, vitamin or herb is healthy to take. He won't do it because he wants to stamp out the people who make and sell these things. All you have to do is look at his site with some education about the people he's bashing on there in order to realise this.Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.

Time pressures are growing on me again after the Easter holidays but I will stick with this as long as I can. The GMC also readily ousts people who do not strictly play by their rules. I have been ill for 5 1/2 years and mainstream doctors have failed me utterly. Before this I was like you and many others here, I knew little to nothing about alternative medicine and was happy to take whatever my doctor felt necessary to prescribe for me. Now is not the place to go into this but maybe it will help you see where I am coming from. I have experienced various kinds of alt med firsthand and educating myself has helped me more than my doctors did. Though I have also had the valued help of a naturopathic physician in his 70s who was struck off by the GMC about 8 years ago for reasons that many people, including me, feel outraged about. I cannot simply sit back and blindly trust every decision they make. Agreed that Melanie Phillips, now that I have found out who she is, is the last person I'd actually want to be listening to; but the jury is still out with me about Dr. Wakefield. You can guffaw all you want about that, doesn't matter to me. I prefer not to close my mind one way or the other for now. That's certainly your prerogative. I have been reading Dr. Mercola's website and books for some years now and while I like to think I am critical about anything I read, my own research has chimed with much of what he says time and time again. He advocates the way I eat, though I chose my diet before I knew about that. I approve of the supplements I've seen him selling. I'm glad he has the popularity and power that he does because he is a good advocate for alt med, though that is enough for people in some circles to go after him from any angle they can. I daresay you're reading websites affiliated with them. I don't know what kind of product you'd be buying from those shops. There are big differences in sourcing and processing. Virgin coconut oils I've looked at buying in this country are of comparable prices, which is unfortunate because it means I have to use it sparingly. At the moment I buy cold-pressed chemical-free virgin coconut oil from a country that sources from independent growers in the Philippines, and they charge 13.99 for 500ml. I do wish the overall prices would come down. You can make of that what you want. I've seen him mention all sorts of natural things that one can try using. Notice that he never says "use this certified cure" about anything (nor does he say, for that matter, "do not vaccinate your children"); he's offering possibilities for people like me who have found out the hard way that conventional "cures" aren't always all they are cracked up to be either. I haven't tried baking soda for any of the things he recommends but I'm not beyond doing so. Why are you so certain that it's useless for anything other than raising cakes or scrubbing the kitchen counter -- is it just because your "common sense" tells you it's nonsense? How do you know?By the way, what Dr. Mercola does advocate time and time again, which you will see listed at the bottom of many of his web pages, is a healthy lifestyle that includes diet, exercise, proper sleep, relaxation, and so forth. Are you going to argue about that too?About "cancer is a fungus" . . . again, I've studied candida overgrowth and its alleged effects. I've looked into ways of clearing it. I've even gone on a regimen for myself in case that was part of my health problem. I didn't watch the video but I read the article, which says that cancer may be the body's response to candida. Could that be the case at least some of the time? IMO very possibly so. Note that the article also lists the abysmal failure rates of mainstream cancer treatments. Chemotherapy is often the cure that kills the patient. I am very much in favour of finding alternative treatments that work with the body and boost the immune system, and there are very many of these to choose from. I see, this is now a semantic argument. Would it help if I simply said, "Overweight people should eat less food generally"? Though there are some foods they should eat less of than others. High fructose corn syrup should be eliminated as completely as possible, for example, because it is readily metabolised into fat. This is still a miniscule portion of the population. And how many of these cases resulted in complications -- do you have statistics for that? Vaccination has become such an ingrained part of our culture, it is now considered horrific if someone catches one of these diseases, even though a generation ago they were seen as a normal part of childhood. Why do we now need a chicken pox vaccine? It is harmless in almost all cases, unless the person's immune system is already compromised. I do not believe that vaccines are purely harmless and I am concerned about the growing numbers of them that are given to young children nowadays, especially in the US. You're dodging the question. I want to know why you think people like Steven Barrett are so hell-bent on discrediting people who sell nutritional supplements when prescription medications given and taken correctly are killing thousands of people every year and leaving others with horrific side effects. I mentioned Zyprexa; do you know what akathisia is? If it were herbs causing these effects you'd be up in arms. But it's different with prescription meds somehow. And yet, strangely, there were no deaths caused by nutritional supplements in 2008. None. How does that fit in with your arguments here about these dangerous unregulated substances? I don't know for sure that it is. I never said I was sure that it was. I believe it may be a possibility. If that's what you want. It's another mystery that I think you will love; the study was withdrawn from the Journal of Neurotoxicology but no one seems to know the reason. Here is what Wakefield said in the transcript of the video on Mercola's site (apologies for the length but it explains the background well): I would wholeheartedly support such a study. I would expect such studies to be done before I subjected my child to a US-style vaccination schedule. Why is this not happening? Was the paper withdrawn due to the influence of a drug company that manufactures vaccines? Who knows. (Elsevier also owns The Lancet, which withdrew the original paper on MMR and autism. The chairman of Elsevier has a board position at Glaxo SmithKline.) I would like to see more studies of this nature conducted and published. That is the crux of Wakefield's claims about the MMR: studies will claim that each vaccine is OK individually, but the effects when all 3 are given together are not known. This is also the case in polypharmacy, where doctors will prescribe "safe" drugs even though their effects when taken together are not known. How many people are really aware that they have turned into walking lab experiments? As part of a healthy diet, you bet it does. We seem to be actively disagreeing with each other. It might just be nice to keep the topic from continually expanding because having to write very lengthy posts puts me off posting anything at all.Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.

As was discovered by Weston A. Price a century ago. You can go to the Weston A. Price Foundation website and choose from a number of articles that have further researched the healthy diets of native populations: In His Footsteps

Wounded King posted about this as well. Do I think it's good to have a regulatory board? Yes. As long as they allow practitioners some freedom to treat patients in the best ways they see fit. My private doctor has been a naturopath for decades and he is a respected expert in metabolic medicine. What the GMC particularly didn't like was that, as physicians did of old, he takes symptoms seriously and acknowledges that blood tests don't always pick everything up. I could go on about this but given your penchant for demanding citations for everything, I am not starting a witch hunt here by giving his name. I guess that relegates this to the realm of meaningless anecdote for you so I will move on. That's a daft thing to say. I'm a lot better than I was; I can work and look after my child. And I have not exhausted the different angles to this by any means. I am not inclined to pursue the pharmaceutical route any longer though because the 2 drugs I took did lasting damage to me. That doesn't mean I am 100% against all drugs for everything. You did what worked for you, others do what works for them. Coconut oil has greatly helped some people and in the course of looking into it recently, I'm going to be taking regular doses to see if it helps my own condition. No side effects. I am glad, by the way, that you got help when you needed it. If you do have a sizeable knowledge base, you have not yet demonstrated it here. You seem very angry about the subject. I can't at this time, and I didn't say there was one. Does that mean, in your apparently polarised way of thinking, that I have to believe that the MMR is 100% safe? If vaccines were as safe as you seem to believe, then why does the US have a vaccine adverse event reporting system (which the UK does as well)? (Bold emphasis mine) SourceHow does the medical establishment know that the only way to fight cancer is surgery, chemotherapy, or other invasive or harmful procedures? Do they know how it actually occurs or why it grows? Note that Dr. Mercola will not suggest to anyone that they should try any of the approaches he puts on his website exclusively, but he is offering possibilities. (And as the reader you are free to take it or leave it.) Until someone actually pays to do a study of the health effects of baking soda, then it is a harmless substance that I see no problem with trying. That's the great thing about much of alt med: you can try it like that and see if it works; and if it doesn't, no harm will come of it. The same cannot be said of prescription medications. In my experience many of them do not realise how powerfully a person's diet affects them; are not aware of the effects of optimal (versus RDA just-above-deficiency-level) nutrition; do not know what a healthy diet is (and instead recommend the standard low-fat high-carb version); and know more about drugs than natural ways of helping the body heal itself. I would very much like to see this change. Way to turn the tables. When I debated about this before and listed effects of prescription meds, including deaths, I was told that these were "insignificant" because the percentages were small compared to the people who were helped (which was also unsubstantiated). Now any concerns I have about the cocktail of vaccines that children are given nowadays, and the unknown effects, is supposed to be brushed away because it's heartless of me to say that it might sometimes be better not to vaccinate and allow healthy kids to develop natural immunity.Why am I concerned? Because more and more vaccines are added to the immunization program and no one is studying the effects of the combined vaccines. Each vaccine uses an adjuvant such as aluminum, formaldehyde, or squalene which is injected directly into the bloodstream, bypassing all natural immune defenses, in order to stimulate the production of antibodies. You will read information that tells you that this is safe in individual vaccines (keeping in mind the fact that adverse events are still reported and compensation is paid out for damage from individual vaccines), but there are no studies that I am aware of that analyse the combined effects of the 24 (and counting) recommended vaccines in the US by age 2. According to you, because the studies aren't there, I'm being a dumb ass by questioning the safety of this. I have not brought up thimerosal at all apart from perhaps to mention that it is in flu shots. I am very glad to see that it is gone from other vaccines. A couple of concerns should come to mind. Firstly, the length of time it is effective varies but tends to be short. Source This means that the age of susceptibility is older. Chickenpox in adults can be an extremely severe disease producing inflammation of the brain, while it tends to be much milder for young children. Secondly, shingles is now occurring in children. It is also occurring in adults because they're not getting the natural reexposure in the community to children who are infected with chickenpox, that natural boosting of immunity over time. SourceBut never mind; anyone questioning the safety or wisdom of any vaccine is a wingnut, right? Purpledawn and I explained the labelling issue to you. If that's the best he can do to discredit Dr. Mercola then it's a pretty lame attack. The best you seem to be able to do is try to ad hom him to death. I don't completely disagree with this. One problem is that almost all herbs and vitamins are not patented, so they will earn miniscule amounts for their manufacturers as opposed to, say, blockbuster drugs; this means that in many cases small-scale manufacturers will not be able to pay for years worth of clinical trials. Nor do I believe clinical trials are necessary for many of these substances. I really would like to see clinical trials establish the effects of some herbs so that they are not just hearsay, but who will pay?You seem to think that pharmaceutical clinical trials catch all side effects, which is not true, otherwise class action lawsuits against drug companies for drug damage would not exist. Many doctors dismiss, or give little weight to, patients' reports of side effects, let alone report them themselves. A good example of this is sexual dysfunction induced by SSRIs. Most manufacturers of these claim that the incidence is low, but the reality is probably rather different, which would in part be due to patients not wanting to divulge this embarrassing information to their doctors. I've seen estimates from 10% to 90%. Who is right? Zyprexa is an antipsychotic medication. These types of medications are known to cause akathisia and other distressing side effects. The diabetes link was not discovered until people already taking the drug after FDA approval contracted the disease. You can read all about this debacle here. This isn't the worst of the lot; you might have heard of Vioxx.So your response to my source that there were no deaths from dietary supplements in 2008 is to cite a single obscure case from Singapore with a herb most people have never heard of, let alone used? You'll need to try harder than that. You have misread. Look again: He was saying that the study had never been done previously and that he was attempting to rectify this. By the way, do you not have any problem whatsoever with the chairman of a company that publishes several major scientific journals, also having a place on the board of a major drug manufacturer? What happens when studies are completed and peer reviewed that put that company's drugs in an unfavourable light? There is a conflict of interest. I am concerned about this. It is a problem in the FDA as well. And yet again, I never claimed that it was. I simply gave a link to Dr. Wakefield's side of the story because I believe in listening to both sides in order to formulate a balanced opinion.

I really need to get this discussion more focused on a few key issues if it is to continue; it's been time-consuming and I would have left the topic by now if you had not continued to write factual errors in your posts.You are demanding that I take the opposite polarised view to you and vigorously support Dr. Wakefield and all "vaccine deniers." I have stated several times that I simply do not maintain such an ideologically opposite stance. Of course I am aware that this is a debate site and I have been arguing the view that there are sensible questions that can be asked about vaccines, and I am not as quick as some others to put my complete trust in what the establishment claims when they still do not answer those sensible questions. I will look at 2 questions/issues about vaccines in this post.Dr. Wakefield said, quite rightly, that no studies had been done to assess the effects of the full vaccination schedule up to age 2. Remember I said that it's one thing to assess the safety of an individual vaccine, and another to look at them in tandem, in babies and toddlers, because that's who is receiving 24 vaccines by age 1 and 36 by age 2 in the US. I compared this to polypharmacy, where doctors prescribe one or more drugs together though no studies exist to confirm the safety of such a practice (curiously, your only comment on the latter was another guffaw).You are in error that the HepB vaccine is given 6 weeks after birth; the CDC says it should be administered at birth. As far as including thimerosal in the vaccinations in the monkey study, I see no problem with this since this is what indeed happened until recently; any person older than age 9 will have had it in their jab. I think it is reasonable to be concerned that there was a conflict of interest with one of the study administrators, and there are no doubt improvements that could be made to the study (though why the publishers decided not to go ahead with the paper is not something you or I can know, and it is speculation to say that it is because the study was rubbish). My own criticism is that what the monkeys were given was not anything close to the 36 vaccines administered over 2 years, nor was the study done over a long enough time span. What you cannot do is reject this study and subsequently claim that it is safe for everybody to receive all of those vaccines before age 2. The study you cited of 4 vaccines being administered to 11-25 year olds does not come close to addressing this issue either.Another question I have is the issue of trust; namely, how can I trust what the CDC says? Here is a case in point. For years they insisted that thimerosal was a safe additive to vaccines. Then they removed it from all childhood vaccines. Why? But it's still in flu shots. And the CDC recommend flu shots to pregnant women, which means foetuses at all stages of development will be exposed to thimerosal. If thimerosal was (once?) safe in vaccines, who is to say that it's OK for a 4-week-old foetus? Where are the studies?Furthermore, there is little evidence that flu shots actually do what they are supposed to do. The Lancet
The BMJ
So according to the CDC, I am supposed to ignore the above, believe their stories about the saving graces of flu vaccines, and inject mercury into my unborn child. My words for this are unprintable. I will stick with my vitamin C and omega-3 oil -- oh, and coconut oil -- all of which are positively healthy and beneficial for mother and baby.To end this portion of the post about vaccines, I would like to give a link to a paper by Russell Blaylock. I've been thinking for 2 days about how to present some of the info from it and am not sure what to do. It is quite technical, and I've checked out a number of the references on Pub Med and read the abstracts; from what I can see, they are sound. You can read the paper here (it's on Dr. Mercola's site again but you will find that this article, unlike others you have mentioned, is well referenced to studies from peer reviewed journals). The main focus is on possible links between vaccination and autism, in particular looking at ways that vaccines can cause a prolonged and exaggerated immune response and how this affects the nervous system. Autism, at least for some, could be an autoimmune disease. Allergies and eczema, other autoimmune problems, are of course on the rise as well. Alt med is not a "system"; it's an umbrella term for non-mainstream health and medicine. Herbs and vitamins are classed as dietary supplements, so your question really amounts to, how do you report adverse effects from food or drink? Changing this system is a concern because, as I said, many companies would go out of business because they would be unable to afford years worth of clinical trials. My solution? Clear the FDA of people who are in the pockets of drug manufacturers and make it the truly independent watchdog that it was supposed to be in the first place. Then make a division in charge of overseeing the effects and the safety of dietary supplements.If you believe that I have, for the sake of brevity, omitted to address any important points in your previous post, feel free to let me know.Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.

I don't think it was as clear-cut as this.From Wiki: I think it is highly unlikely that no one in the CDC or any of the other groups involved in the removal would not have anticipated this. Such a backlash, including lawsuits, is possibly a reason why the US will not ban mercury from dental fillings. No one wants to have to pay out billions in compensation. So why were they willing to open the can of worms here?According to Wiki, this was a "precautionary measure": Very sensible. If the CDC were as convinced as you are that thimerosal poses no danger whatsoever, then they would have seen no need to "exercise caution." Keep in mind that in the US, the home of the CDC, vaccinations are mandatory apart from some rare exemptions, and in 2 states there are no exemptions at all. I don't believe they would have worried about people not getting vaccinated. Curiously the flu vaccines still have thimerosal, and people are allowed to use their personal discretion in deciding whether or not to get those.Most interesting is the statement from the FDA, CDC and 4 other bodies: (bold emphasis mine)So it was possible for an infant to be exposed to mercury levels that were higher than established safety limits. Not good.Reducing exposure to mercury from all sources: much better.I notice that you did not address my question about how much thimerosal is safe for a foetus of any age, when its mother gets the flu jab recommended by the CDC.(ABE) Seven US states have banned the use of thimerosal-containing vaccines in children and pregnant women: California, Delaware, lllinois, Missouri, New York and Washington.Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.

Dr. Blaylock's paper, which I linked to a few posts ago, explains this in more detail. (By the way you will notice that this is supported by information from peer reviewed journals, as is Purpledawn's quote about cytokine types above, though I suspect once it is known that her citation is from the Whale site people will dismiss it out of hand.) Blaylock talks for some time about the effects of this kind of immunosuppression. As far as I am aware, studies that claim vaccines are safe do not follow up on the long-term general health of the study participants; what they want to see is that no one has any immediate adverse reactions that can obviously be linked to the vaccine. IMO this is very simplistic.I particularly wanted to address this comment though, which stands out from the content of the rest of Purpledawn's post: Erm . . . no. "Survival of the fittest" does not mean that we let the weakest humans die. Surely it is our moral duty to look after each other in the best way possible. My argument here is that vaccines may sometimes do more harm than good. This has got nothing to do with evolution.Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.

Hi Wounded King,You've got an advantage in that you are able to access these papers to read. From the abstract all I can see is that they concluded that babies naturally have different immune responses, which for me does not directly address the issue of how a vaccine affects their immune response. Do you know if there is any way that I can access the full paper on the internet?Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.

I'm curious about one thing, if anyone would like to answer.My main concern is that we don't actually know a lot about what vaccines and the ingredients in them do to the body. Common sense tells me, for example, that injecting poisons such as mercury or aluminium (in any amount) into the body is not a desirable thing. Then there's the fact that many vaccines are cultured from non-human cells, and again those are being injected into the body.The number of vaccines that US children receive has more than tripled over the past few decades. The incidences of autism, autoimmune diseases, and ADHD have soared, though I don't doubt that the causes for this are complex. But I am not satisfied that anyone has proved that vaccines have no part to play in this at all.People here who believe that vaccines are perfectly safe and who would not be worried about putting your children through recommended vaccine schedules -- a question for you. How many vaccines are you willing to inject? Should we allow the recommended schedule to continue to add more vaccines as they are developed? Look here for some possible future vaccine targets. More than 30 more vaccines -- would that be OK with you? Vaccines for obesity, smoking, diabetes and addictions too? Should we keep adding them indefinitely with the goal of eradicating all illnesses (as well as issues clearly linked to lifestyle and genetics)?Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.

Whether the immune system is being over-stimulated. This is a crucial factor in autoimmune disease. I've read a number of sources that say vaccines encourage levels of Th2 when it is the Th1 response that should be developing as a child grows. The real handicap is that when I look up studies, usually I only have access to abstracts, and to be honest I don't have the time or the inclination to hunt down the physical journals to look through. But if someone is talking bollocks by saying a study says something when really it doesn't, I am open to that possibility. I don't like being lied to.

About what happens when you inject mercury and aluminium into the body? Did you not ever think that they could conceivably, sometimes, find their way to the nervous system and the brain? These compounds accumulate in the brain. That is an issue as well, though a red herring at the moment. People like to claim that about autism, though there's no proof that it's all a scare because doctors have got better at diagnosing. Also, it's pretty common knowledge (I thought) that ADHD and allergies are on the rise. It is now routine for children in schools to carry epipens, and there are so many serious cases of nut allergies in my daughter's school that the children are banned from bringing nuts there. This is not what was happening in schools a generation ago. Try looking at the link I posted. These are real vaccines under development.You didn't answer the question by the way. What is your vaccination limit? Or do you think they are so safe that the number of injections can be increased indefinitely?Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.