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Author | Topic: Childhood Vaccinations – Necessary or Overkill? Sequal Thread | |||||||||||||||||||||||
molbiogirl Member (Idle past 2670 days) Posts: 1909 From: MO Joined: |
BTW the US may be gaining ground with life expectancy, but it still lags behind 40 other nations. Andorra, in the Pyrenees, has a life expectancy of 83.5 years. (More info here). From the story you cited:
Cancer deaths were also up. Cancer deaths are down across the board, and have been dropping for 20 years. Cancer deaths have been dropping by 2.1% every year since 2002.
A turning point came in 2002, scientists conclude Monday in the annual "Report to the Nation" on cancer. Between 2002 and 2004, death rates dropped by an average of 2.1 percent a year.
That may not sound like much, but between 1993 and 2001, deaths rates dropped on average 1.1 percent a year. http://news.bostonherald.com/news/national/general/view.bg
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kongstad Member (Idle past 2898 days) Posts: 175 From: Copenhagen, Denmark Joined: |
LindaLou writes: My own GP says that there are treatments other than evidence-based medicine that work. So if your GP does not have any evidence to base this statement on, why do you believe it, not to mention, why does your GP believe in it? Without knowing any reasons to believe a statement why should anyone believe in it? We sometimes accept statements form authority, because we cannot know everything, but if a GP says, this works, but there is no evidence that it works, then I'm sorry but that's just not an authority I would choose to believe in.
I've done my best to explain some of my concerns about vaccines here and that's all I can do really. I seem to end up saying this at the end of most threads but everyone here seems pretty entrenched in their views. Yes you do seem very entrenched. What I wonder, and I guess many others as well, is what made you so entrenched in your beliefs? Your argument seems to boil down to the fact that we cannot rule out with 100% certainty that there might just maybe be some downside to vaccinations. Well I know for sure that there are downsides to not being vaccinated, and I know there is no indication of any long term ill effects from vaccination. The minute someone shows vaccination is worse than no vaccination, then I'll reconsider.
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purpledawn Member (Idle past 3485 days) Posts: 4453 From: Indiana Joined: |
quote:Agreed quote:Agreed and so do people. quote:Aspirin is not mandatory and is irrelevant to what I said in Message 234. quote:Now that would be a fruitless effort wouldn't it? Either you agree or don't agree that anomalies should be provided for if we don't want vaccines to be withheld from children.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Nobody said that, though the evidence shows that age is a factor in these diseases sicne they take a rather long time to develop. What I said was that people died of things like infectious disease and childbirth before they had a chance to live the thirty more years it takes to develop heart disease and cancer.
quote: Our bodies wear out, LL. If childbirth or an infectious disease doesn't get you first. No comment to the following?
One of the most profound changes wrought by the last hundred years has been a nearly 50% increase in average life expectancy, driven in large measure by the advent of new medical technologies and scientific breakthroughs. A century ago the leading causes of death in the U.S. were tuberculosis, diphtheria and influenza. Thanks to discoveries of antibiotics, vaccines and improved public health measures those top three killers are no longer major threats to Americans.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: You are certainly "entrenched" in your views. What we keep crying for is good quality evidence for those views. You have yet to provide any. I am more than willing to consider any good quality evidence that what you claim is correct, but don't expect me to change my mind without good quality evidence. It may be easy for you to believe in whatever makes you feel good, but I require much more than that.
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molbiogirl Member (Idle past 2670 days) Posts: 1909 From: MO Joined: |
Let's try a new tack.
Child car seats are mandatory. Child car seats have caused deaths. Should child car seats therefore be optional?
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molbiogirl Member (Idle past 2670 days) Posts: 1909 From: MO Joined: |
I just stumbled across a vax blog that has a quiz for Antivax Hysterics.
The Millenium Project – 404 page not found It's like the guy's been eavesdropping on the conversation here!
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molbiogirl Member (Idle past 2670 days) Posts: 1909 From: MO Joined: |
Lindalou, this one's for you.
The Anti-Immunization Activists: A Pattern of Deception
Dr. Friedlander has taken it upon himself to show in nauseating detail how Antivax Hysterics misuse scientific literature. You will note he is sympathetic to "alternative" medicine. So he should have some street cred in your book.
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
purpledawn responds to me:
quote: What makes you think they aren't? Medicine is on the lookout for those who have adverse reactions to vaccine from simple irritation at the injection site to things like going into anaphylactic shock. I just got my flu shot for the year and my doc spent a couple minutes massaging my shoulder so that the vaccine would get worked in and I would have a reduced risk of soreness at the injection site.
quote: And where on earth does anybody think people dying from vaccine due to any cause is "acceptable"? Why do you think the Sabin vaccine for polio has been abandoned for the Salk vaccine in the United States? Because the Sabin vaccine sometimes actually caused polio! There are a lot of factors involved in why certain vaccine formulations are used but one of them is whether or not it's safe.
quote: But that's just it: The studies ARE conclusive. It's just that people don't like the outcomes. If you're absolutely certain that your kid's autism was caused by his MMR vaccine, are you really going to be swayed by actual evidence that it wasn't? There is autism. There are vaccinations. For some people, there's no way to ever disconnect the two. It seems that the only way they could ever be convinced that there isn't any connection is if we were to suddenly stop vaccinating everybody and the incidence of autism were to vanish.
quote: "Pushed aside"? Where are they pushed aside? Sometimes people are wrong. We have this idea that somehow we need to be "fair and balanced" and "respect other people's opinions" as if simply because somebody has a contrary thought means he is just as justified and rational. Some claims are simply wrong and to treat them as legitimate or if there is any controversy over it is to lie to people and make the problem worse. It isn't that you cannot question the status quo. It's that you have to have evidence in order for it to be taken seriously. There are dumb questions.
quote: And that's understandable...but still wrong. How do you convince someone that their child's autism isn't from the vaccination? What would be sufficient evidence for them to say that they were wrong?
quote: See, you just did it! "Dangerous for even one child"? What on earth does that mean? Are there complications from vaccination? Yes. But autism? No. There isn't any evidence of vaccination causing autism. What does it take for it to be convincing that vaccination doesn't cause autism? Would the only sufficient evidence be complete abandonment of vaccination for two generations and see if autism vanishes? Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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Kitsune Member (Idle past 4328 days) Posts: 788 From: Leicester, UK Joined: |
I looked at the two recent links you provided here, and then decided I'd see if I could verify the information I gave here concerning the smallpox vaccine which you dismissed as BS. If this information were not available from any other source then it would be telling, but I found it again on a mainstream web encyclopedia site. This is a straightforward information site, not an anti-vac or an alt med one.
Smallpox vaccine: does it work? This article repeats much of the information from the other one, and more. It also gives evidence that syphilis in children was spread by the smallpox vaccine, and that leprosy was also spread by it. Leprosy was unknown in Hawaii, there was no word in the language for it, until European vaccinations were introduced there. In attempting to think the way I used to think, when I allowed vaccinations for myself and my daughter without question, I believe this article would have raised some concerns and caused me to do more research.
It is undeniable that vaccination with vaccinia virus (originally from cowpox) produces antibodies to vaccinia. Over 95% of those receiving vaccine for the first time will develop antibodies at a titer of 1:10 or greater. However, authorities are uncertain what level of antibodies are necessary to protect against smallpox infection (CDC, 1991). In fact, it has never been proven that the vaccine is effective against smallpox at all. Some smallpox experts have admitted that vaccination will modify the disease and prevent deaths, but not prevent the disease. Donald A. Henderson, MD, the world's leading authority on smallpox, has lamented the paucity of smallpox vaccine studies. "Reliable data are surprisingly sparse as to the efficacy and durability of protection afforded by vaccination" (Henderson, 1988). Despite the lack of efficacy studies, vaccine promoters have consistently made claims that the smallpox vaccine works incredibly well. In his book about the defeat of smallpox, Joel Shurkin, a science reporter, makes the bold assertion that, "Vaccination with cowpox virus does confer immunity to smallpox and does so safely and easily and with almost 100% effectiveness" (Shurkin, 1979). These types of sweeping and grandiose claims remained unquestioned despite the absence of corroborating scientific studies. The World Health Organization declared in 1979 that smallpox was eliminated from the world through its intense vaccination campaign begun in 1967. However, these campaigners conducted few studies of vaccine efficacy. They merely documented the decrease in smallpox disease. Other diseases have also disappeared from the world. The bubonic plague (or Black Death) killed 25 million people in Europe during the years 1347 to 1352, one third of Europe's population. Yet the plague has faded into distant memory without the aid of vaccines. Typhoid and yellow fever disappeared from North America as a result of modern sanitation measures prior to vaccine development for these diseases. Smallpox may have disappeared for the same reason. Remember, this is not an anti-vac site. I would ask everyone here to have a look because I think it does pose some interesting questions. It also mentions that the diagnosis of an illness can be changed, and this can have an impact on statistics. I'd like to shift the focus to polio here for this. I've seen a number of sites talk about how the diagnosis of polio changed pre- and post- vaccination. I have again attempted to find one that is not exclusively anti-vac or alt med. This site goes into more detail.
Thus, before the Salk vaccine began in 1955, cases that described a wide spectrum of symptoms of the disease were combined under one name: polio. That made it look like there was an epidemic. But after the vaccine was introduced, the reverse procedure was required to demonstrate that there were fewer cases and that the vaccine was successful. That procedure was to fractionate all those cases into several smaller classifications. This method of hiding paralytic cases under names other than "polio" was discussed in 1960, during a panel discussion on The Present Status of Polio Vaccine (reported in the Aug.&Sept./1960 issues of the Illinois Medical Journal). One of the speakers at this panel discussion was Dr. Bernard G. Greenberg, Ph.D., head of the Department of Biostatistics of the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, and former Chairman of the Commission of Evaluation and Standards of the American Public Health Association. Greenberg pointed out that after 1955, "Coxsackie virus infection and septic meningitis [socalled 'polio twins'] have been distinguished from paralytic poliomyelitis. Prior to 1954, large numbers of these cases undoubtedly were mislabeled as paralytic polio." Dr. Greenberg mentioned only two polio twins. But Dr. Ralph R. Scobey, President of the Poliomyelitis Research Institute, Syracuse, N.Y., in the Archives of Pediatrics, January, 1950, listed 170 diseases of "polio-like" symptoms and effects but with different names such as "spinal meningitis, inhibitory palsy, epidemic cholera, cholera morbus, ergotism, famine fever, billious remittent fever, spinal apoplexy, scurvy, berri-berri, pellagra, acidosis, etc." In fact, symptoms from nutritional and toxicological factors overlap much of the "various forms" of polio. Ernest B. Zeisler, M.D., in his article, The Great Salk Vaccine Fiasco, (Herald of Health, December, 1960) pointed out that there are over a dozen illnesses that are identical to paralytic polio. In addition, he presents a clear picture of medical guesswork that renders all polio statistics wholly unworthy of confidence: "No attempt was made to eliminate personal bias in making the diagnosis of poliomyelitis. There are more than a dozen illnesses due to viruses other than those of poliomyelitis, which may be 'indistinguishable from paralytic polio' except by special virus studies. A physician seeing a patient with such paralytic illness at once inquires whether or not the patient has been vaccinated with the Salk vaccine, and his diagnosis is very likely to be influenced by his reply. Inasmuch as physicians have been convinced that triple vaccination is highly effective, they will make a diagnosis of poliomyelitis if there is no history of vaccination and will make a diagnosis of one of the other diseases if there is a history of triple vaccination." Back to the question I asked recently: How likely is a doctor to diagnose the presence of a disease for which a person has been vaccinated, especially if it is a mild form? This exctract, along with the smallpox history, puts a question mark over the official disease statistics and their interpretations. You may still choose to disagree with me, but I hope this shows that the concerns I have are not baseless, unsubstantiated paranoia. Upon re-checking the smallpox citation from the encyclopedia site, I see it was written by a source you probably would not accept, as he is an alt med practitioner. Here is a link to an article in JSTOR that originally appeared in the Journal of Contemporary History titled "The History of Smallpox Vaccination in Germany: A First Step in the Medicalization of the General Public. I do not have access to it, though I would be very interested in reading it. Perhaps you do, and could present a few of its salient points? This is one of the places that had high smallpox vaccination rates in 1871 but also high incidences of cases and deaths. Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given. Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.
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Kitsune Member (Idle past 4328 days) Posts: 788 From: Leicester, UK Joined: |
Har har indeed. He's repeating things he's heard from people who oppose vaccinations, purely without comment. If he thinks the claims are ludicrous to the point of being laugh-out-loud funny, then I'd like to see him sagely explain why he's right and we are wrong. It's also a favourite tactic of creationists like Kent Hovind to present evolutionist claims and poke fun at them without any substantiation.
Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.
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purpledawn Member (Idle past 3485 days) Posts: 4453 From: Indiana Joined: |
My comments were very generic. Not an all or nothing issue.
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purpledawn Member (Idle past 3485 days) Posts: 4453 From: Indiana Joined: |
I am sorry that I apparently am unable to write so that you can understand my point.
In the posts you recently replied, I did not imply that vaccines should be optional.
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AdminPD Inactive Administrator |
Only 16 posts left until End of Thread.
It is a good time to start winding down and presenting summaries, conclusions, or final comments. Thanks for debating, carry on. Edited by AdminPD, : Better Version
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Kitsune Member (Idle past 4328 days) Posts: 788 From: Leicester, UK Joined: |
I've had a look at what this doctor credits as plausible re. alt med. I would call him a skeptic to a large degree. I think my own GP, who has some faith in traditional Chinese medicine, is more open to alt med, though no one would class him as an ND.
This is also reflected in his comments about the vaccination sites. I'm not familiar with the sites he's listed, but he obviously has a point about people being sloppy and sometimes deceitful when they are propagandising. He's also got a point about some sites making assertions or claiming "a study shows", without citing the study. And I think an intelligent person is right to be dubious about this kind of information. What it would do, for me, is to lead me to do more research and look for claims that actually are backed up by more credible evidence. Having said that, then I am also not willing to take mainstream studies and statistics at face value. This doctor is not someone I'd trust to interpret that kind of evidence for me because he is clearly convinced that vaccines are overwhelmingly beneficial. It's a little like Stephen Barrett and his crusade to discredit alt med. A few of his claims:
The author correctly notes today's mysterious, ongoing increase in the prevalence of childhood diabetes mellitus. But if immunization were the cause, we would have seen a spectacular increase in the late 1950's and early 1960's, when widespread immunization became the norm. We didn't. Children back then were also not receiving upwards of 30 jabs. He mentions later on, in critiquing a paper:
It is also common knowledge that scarlet fever affects primarily poorly-nourished children who live in crowded environments. It is no surprise that the rate dropped as the United States became more prosperous. Mortality became essentially zero in the late 1940's with the introduction of penicilllin. It is also puzzling that the author mentions scarlet fever, since there is no scarlet fever vaccine. Good sanitation (i.e., not having to get your drinking water from a river that people upstream use as a toilet) was the cause of the drop in typhoid cases. Again, no one claims this was due to a vaccine. Typhus was controlled by people being cleaner and not having lice. Again, it is surprising that this was emphasized by the author, since there is no typhus vaccine. There's no puzzle here. The point the paper was making was that these diseases became less prevalent through good preventative measures and not through vaccines. If a vaccine had been available for the black death, then I would be surprised if the vaccine weren't heralded as the miracle cure for the disease. It, too, disappeared without. I thought this article raised some interesting points, but I thought the articles I cited earlier here raised some too, especially the smallpox history. When claims seem to run counter to each other, and both use statistics, it can be a difficult job trying to tease out the truth. I still think that there are many questions about vaccines that need answering, and that the number of vaccines given to children today -- especially in the US -- is cause for concern.
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