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Originally posted by Bytemite:
To review and maybe help kick off further discussion, CTS indicated some interest in knowing more about Sig's comments about autism at birth and various causes.

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Well, anyway, such comments are likely to be informative and thought provoking.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Well, um. I don't know that a faith in the medical establishment is necessarily an indication of not giving a crap about parents, or their children.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Well, um. I don't know that a faith in the medical establishment is necessarily an indication of not giving a crap about parents, or their children.

I think Sig cares about the kids. Maybe she's just concerned infants don't get fatal cases of whooping cough or something. Some people will use a hammer to remove a screw, other people might use a Phillips head. Maybe established medicine is more like a bludgeon against a problem than something more subtle with less side effects, but that doesn't mean either side of the debate is for certain wrong or is abusing their children.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:


There's PLENTY of myth and voodoo in modern medicine, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiopathic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptogenic_disease
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnosis_of_exclusion

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
I'm not sure whether your ire is directed at me or not, but you've come across as a bit aggressive in this matter.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
If you ever meet someone who thinks what they believe WILL hurt people, but wants to continue doing it for the greater good, THEN you have a real problem on your hands.

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Measles and Rubella vs. MMR Vaccine

Even one serious adverse event in a million doses of vaccine cannot be justified if there is no benefit from the vaccination. If there were no vaccines, there would be many more cases of disease, and along with the more disease, there would be serious sequelae and more deaths. But looking at risk alone is not enough - you must always look at both risks and benefits. Comparing the risk from disease with the risk from the vaccines can give us an idea of the benefits we get from vaccinating our children.

DISEASE

Measles
Pneumonia: 6 in 100
Encephalitis: 1 in 1,000
Death: 2 in 1,000

Rubella
Congenital Rubella Syndrome: 1 in 4 (if woman becomes infected early in pregnancy)

VACCINES

MMR
Encephalitis or severe allergic reaction:
1 in 1,000,000

Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis vs. DTap Vaccine
DISEASE

Diphtheria
Death: 1 in 20

Tetanus
Death: 2 in 10

Pertussis
Pneumonia: 1 in 8
Encephalitis: 1 in 20
Death: 1 in 1,500

VACCINES

DTaP
Continuous crying, then full recovery: 1 in 1000
Convulsions or shock, then full recovery: 1 in 14,000
Acute encephalopathy: 0-10.5 in 1,000,000
Death: None proven


The fact is that a child is far more likely to be seriously injured by one of these diseases than by any vaccine. While any serious injury or death caused by vaccines is too many, it is also clear that the benefits of vaccination greatly outweigh the slight risk, and that many, many more injuries and deaths would occur without vaccinations. In fact, to have a medical intervention as effective as vaccination in preventing disease and not use it would be unconscionable.

Research is underway by the U.S. Public Health Service to better understand which vaccine adverse events are truly caused by vaccines and how to reduce even further the already low risk of serious vaccine-related injury.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Hmm.. well, for the record, CTS is strawmanning me on the autism issue. Even though most cases of autism are present at birth I never said that autism is not environmental.

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Sig: Autism is present AT BIRTH. Just to make this pellucidly clear, autism is present BEFORE vaccination. Got an explanation for that?
CTS: Possible explanation, if indeed there are both genetic and environmental factors in the etiology of autism. Genetics loads the gun. Environment pulls the trigger.
Sig: Nope. AUTISM is present at birth. Try again.

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I proposed all kinds of possibilities for the increase in autism, from the plethora of chemicals in the modern diet to lack of sunshine or eggs. After all, if you've got 50,000+ industrial chemicals to think about, plus all kinds if dietary and lifestyle changes, why stop at vaccines??? (HINT: prejudice may play a part.)

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What I said was that limiting the scope of inquiry to vaccines is unrealistically restrictive. It is true that autism is a grab-bag of symptoms. Therefore, it is also likely that autism represents a constellation of causes, not just one.

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Each parent has to make a choice... risk the disease, or risk the vaccine?...

There are, alas, no absolutely reliable indicators as to which medication (or vaccine) will be effective for which child, and which child will get a trip to hell.

So when it comes to ANY treatment, you have to ask yourself: what is the risk of doing nothing? What is the risk of doing something?

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Originally posted by SignyM:
In other words, CTS, you balance the risk: If my child has a 1/1000 chance of getting polio there is a 50% serious complication rate. If my child gets the vaccine, there is a 1/100000000 serious complication rate.

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You assume those numbers are valid

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Just as World War II ended, the most severe epidemics hit the nation. Most polio outbreaks began in the summer. Since children were most frequently affected, communities reacted with dread, often closing down public swimming pools and movie theaters. The epidemic peaked in North Carolina and the United States in 1952, when a record 57,628 cases were reported nationally. Some referred to the national state of panic as “polio hysteria.”

The following year, Dr. Jonas Salk and his associates developed an injectable polio vaccine made from inactivated virus. Schoolchildren by the thousands were vaccinated, reducing the incidence of polio by almost 90 percent within two years. Later, the Salk vaccine was replaced by the Sabin oral vaccine, which was easier and less expensive to administer.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
The gubmint is not standing over you with a gun, making you vaccinate. They give you a choice: vaccinate if you want to send your child to public school. Or homeschool. The choice is yours. The problem is, you want to be able to make the choice without consequence, especially if you create a risk to others. So you want to send your unvaccinated child to school freely. Well, it doesn't work that way. You're not about to get the bennies for free.

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In Australia, vaccination is not compulsory, but various incentives and reminders aim to promote it. First, payment of the maternity allowance at 18 months and the childcare benefit requires up-to-date vaccination according to the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register (ACIR),5 unless a medical practitioner has notified the ACIR of a contraindication or serologically confirmed immunity, or has discussed conscientious objection with a parent. Second, at school entry, documentation of full vaccination is required in most Australian jurisdictions, with children who do not have such documentation or serological proof of immunity to specific diseases, such as measles, able to be excluded from school attendance if suspected cases occur. Although the United States is often quoted as having laws for mandatory vaccination, the practical effect of these laws is also limited to exclusion of unvaccinated children from school during outbreaks, although preschool attendance for such children can be barred altogether.6 Italy is one of a few countries where there is compulsory vaccination, but only for diphtheria, tetanus, polio and hepatitis B. However, this has not been enforced for many years.7 To find examples of truly compulsory vaccination, it is necessary to go back to the 19th century. In England, the Vaccination Act of 1853 made smallpox vaccination compulsory for all infants in the first three months of life, on pain of fine or imprisonment. Its enactment spawned riots in several towns and an active anti-vaccination movement. In 1898, a new Vaccination Act removed these penalties and introduced the concept of "conscientious objector" into English law.

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These are not myth OR voodoo. The first two are acknowledging that there are some diseases where the cause or root is unknown. The second is the way that diagnosis is determinied. Seems sound to me. Do you have a better idea.

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And I think personal experience contributes a lot to ones world view, even though that is stating the bleeding obvious. By and large I have pretty good experiences with the medical profession. By and large. I have had the experience of being treated like a lump of meat by an arrogant gynocologist and have seen my mother treated condescendingly upon her death bed, which was pretty um.... But largely, medical professionals from ambos to nurses to doctors and specialists have been competent and compassionate, and kept me well informed and my family and I have had good medical treatment. So that is my experience so far. You've got to remember as well that I've only paid minimal dollars for such care. A couple of private treatments, and some gap payments for scans and GP appointments etc and everything else has been free. I've heard people whinge about their treatment at our local (public) hospital, but I really never have had cause for complaint, other than some long waits in casualty but that is to be expected. They triage cases, and if you are low priority, you wait.

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But I think there is a difference is saying some doctors are better than others, or some are incompetent than saying you distrust the whole tenet of modern medical science, or distrust the bulk of medical research, which is what a lot of people who are anti vaccination do.

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It's good to ask questions, to review literature, to not accept everything that is held to be true, but it is kind of nutty to believe that everything is also false. You either believe that medical science is basically sound, but that it has the capacity to be mistaken, and that doctors trained and educated in that science have some expertise, or you believe it is based upon false research and poor science and the whole lot is rotten to the core, in which case medical advances are not to be trusted. And basically we are back to the dark ages.

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Really. Can you cite some reliable sources that confirms that the outbreaks were a result of the vaccine and not because large segments of the population were not immunised? I'd really be interested in seeing some data on this.

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I was asking about homeopathy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy Not herbal or other holistic treatments. And not being able to afford medicine that works is not a reason people should have to turn to quackery.

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A lot of herbal treatments have been tested and found to have properties useful for treatment of various maladies. We appear to agree that many mainstream medicines are also based on herbs and plants or the active properties contained within, although conversely to what you say, it is also rarely ackowledged by the alternative crowd that there forms the origins of our current system and that mainstream medicines are also 'natural'.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
But yanno what CTS? You're very closed-minded....I have no interest in talking with you any further on the topic.

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Also, please read my post previous to CTS where I describe how our daughter was permanently done in neurologically and intellectually by good old-fashioned chicken pox.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Hmm.. well, for the record, CTS is strawmanning me on the autism issue. Even though most cases of autism are present at birth I never said that autism is not environmental. I proposed all kinds of possibilities for the increase in autism, from the plethora of chemicals in the modern diet to lack of sunshine or eggs. After all, if you've got 50,000+ industrial chemicals to think about, plus all kinds if dietary and lifestyle changes, why stop at vaccines??? (HINT: prejudice may play a part.)

Also, the late diagnosis is not because of lazy parents but lazy medicine. Often the parents... moms particularly... are acutely aware than "something is wrong", but no matter how they bring it up to the pediatrician (assuming they even have insurance and a pediatrician to talk to) they are often advised Kids develop and different rates, just give it time

SO.

What I said was that limiting the scope of inquiry to vaccines is unrealistically restrictive. It is true that autism is a grab-bag of symptoms. Therefore, it is also likely that autism represents a constellation of causes, not just one.

AFA the cure (vaccines) being worse than the disease... has anyone looked at the complication rate of measles? Pertussis? Polio? Smallpox? Each parent has to make a choice... risk the disease, or risk the vaccine? In most cases, the disease is worse. Our daughter, who was neurocompromised at birth, got chicken pox the old-fashioned way... from other kids. Chicken pox, not the vaccine, chicken pox, sent her into a 1-hour seizure from which she NEVER recovered. Her seizures were "kindled"... that is exactly how it sounds... and from there she went into seizure after seizure, and from there into a regression which left her lost in her own house, mute, and trembling. THAT was the death of our bright but seizure-prone little girl.

There is a risk to doing nothing, as well as risk to doing something. Some parents are so frozen by the fear of treatment that their children suffer far far worse consequences. I have spoken with parents whose children were having 10-20 seizures per day, the kids constantly gorked out postictally, but mom or dad was paralyzed by the thought of medication side effects (?!?!?). The treatment of seizures is complex, multiple medications are not more effective than one, but no medication at all is usually much worse than one.

There are, alas, no absolutely reliable indicators as to which medication (or vaccine) will be effective for which child, and which child will get a trip to hell.

So when it comes to ANY treatment, you have to ask yourself: what is the risk of doing nothing? What is the risk of doing something?

For Gardasil, I have to ask: what is the consequence of doing nothing? The consequence is that child will become infected with HPV and possibly develop cervical cancer (for which there is already good screening and treatment). What is the risk of the vaccine? It seems more than the risk of the disease.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
That's still not quite what I mean... Risk is something different than for absolute certain people being harmed and dying.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
The gubmint is not standing over you with a gun, making you vaccinate. They give you a choice: vaccinate if you want to send your child to public school. Or homeschool. The choice is yours. The problem is, you want to be able to make the choice without consequence, especially if you create a risk to others. So you want to send your unvaccinated child to school freely. Well, it doesn't work that way. You're not about to get the bennies for free.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
I think, regarding autism-spectrum disorders, the keypoint of all of it is really simple: WE NEED MORE DATA.... but WHILE we do that, we really need to buckle down and start freaking diggin, right ?

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
That's a liars choice - a magicians hand fake....

In Maryannes case it came as a result of her reaching the limit of her ability to homeschool her child and resorting to public school for lack of choice, either educationally neglect her child, or take the risk - wasn't a lot of CHOICE involved there, and the results have been apallingly tragic.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
And I can't say I can understand WHY there would be a vaccine panel at Dragon-Con. Bizarre.

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If the risk is 1 in a million, and you vaccinate 30 million people, guess how many kids are getting hurt? The "risk" part is simply not knowing WHO exactly would be hurt. The hurt part is a statistical certainty.

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
I wonder if a study has been conducted on the people who have experienced negative side effects from vaccines.

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They would likely fear a public hysteria that would cause all vaccines to be feared.

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For group A, vaccinating is best. But for group B, avoiding vaccination is better.

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Recently, Shoenfeld and Agmon-Levin described a potential new syndrome, namely ASIA - autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants, that comprises four medical conditions: siliconosis, the Gulf war syndrome, the macrophagic myofasciitis syndrome and post-vaccination phenomena, characterized by hyperactive immune responses accompanied by a similar complex of signs and symptoms. Most relevantly, these conditions share a linkage represented by adjuvants. This common soil may possibly induce autoimmune or auto-inflammatory diseases in humans as it was demonstrated in different animal models. Reconsidering under a unified umbrella this apparently detached condition is not only intriguing, but also provocative, and may help in unraveling novel pathogenetic mechanisms, preventive measures, and therapeutic targets.

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Vaccination is very similar to the global warming issue, in that a sense of "collective duty" is at stake here. There is an urgency that we have to ALL pitch in or it won't work. There is resentment towards those who do not wish to participate; there is fear that any amount of acknowledgement of doubt would break the collective spirit and disperse the effort. These emotions and politics cloud the science. Then there is the emotions and politics from the backlash against being pressured or forced to participate.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
So FWIW vaccination sequelae may not all be due to mercury or other adjuvants but to the reaction of the immune system itself, spilling into the brain and wreaking havoc where it doesn't belong. After all, is does that with the natural disease, so why not expect it would do that with the vaccine as well?

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I would not be surprised if neurological damage resulting from both disease and vaccine share some common mechanisms.

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Now in the case of GWS and Autism, over-vaccination is a factor-of-interest in both.

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I don't believe myself that loss of life is something that can be balanced.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
If you were to assess the complications due to measles, chicken pox, pertussis, smallpox, polio, tetanus, etc versus the complications due to the relevant vaccinations, both for the individual and for the population, what would you find?

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
So I can only hold someone accountable if there's clear indication of wrongdoing. If they knew better, if they falsified data to hide the danger, if they ignored or covered-up signs of something wrong, if they continued to push something dangerous because they were receiving kick-backs.

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Most medical professionals I honestly just don't think question the sacred cows of the field. So they fall into the don't know any better category.

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