I know that a lot of you like John Oliver and watch Last Week Tonight with John Oliver , and I do too. In particular, I love how he devotes 20 minute segments of his show to intelligent long form comedy about all sorts of issues, including scientific and medical issues, including issues that I never would have thought I was interested in. Indeed, there are lots of times when he covers news stories better than the news media. So when he did a segment on vaccines last night—and a segment that was longer than his usual major segments—you know I would be incredibly interested. Here's a video of the segment. I encourage all of you who can to watch it. (I know, I know, it's geofenced, which means many of you outside of the US might not be able to believe it):
Watch it and be amazed. It's so good that any criticisms I might have of it are relatively trivial. There were a number of hilarious lines, like describing vaccines as injecting "science juice" and making fun of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for bragging about how he's spent decades trying to get mercury out of fish and has never been called "anti-fish" and therefore shouldn't be called antivaccine. Sorry, RFK Jr., you are antivaccine as hell, and I laugh derisively every time you describe yourself as "fiercely pro-vaccine."
There's so much win in this piece, from Oliver's discussion of Andrew Wakefield, to his noting that antivaccine views span the political spectrum, to his mockery of Rep. Dan Burton (who about 15-20 years ago routinely held hearings on "vaccine safety" blaming vaccines for autism), to his discussion of the nature of the scientific evidence finding no link between vaccines and autism, to his concluding remarks in which he empathizes with vaccine-hesitant parents, to his evisceration of "Dr. Bob" Sears and his "alternative vaccine schedule," to his explanation of how antivaccine pseudoscience is like Whac-A-Mole in which no matter how much you refute antivaccine misinformation the more misinformation is presented, and his final remarks explaining that if he can overcome his fears and vaccinate his child (who was born prematurely) then everyone can. He even comes up with a fantastic way of explaining the fallacy of the middle ground, which I'll leave you to see for yourself, and of turning antivax arguments back on the people making them. In comparison the things about me that irritated me are minor, such as how Oliver referred to antivaxers as "skeptics" multiple times in the early part of the segment and referring to a "debate." That just grated on me because antivaxers are not skeptics, and this is not a scientific debate. It's a manufactroversy.
But, hell, that's nitpicking. (I can't help it; it's what I do sometimes when it comes to science.) Oliver and his crew are brilliant. Sure, I could have wished for a bit more about Wakefield, such as how his research was paid for by a lawyer looking to sue vaccine companies for "vaccine-induced autism" or a minute or two on the movie VAXXED. (Seriously, can you picture what Oliver could have done with the VAXXED bus segments Polly Tommey and Del Bigtree routinely post to Facebook?) But, hey, choices had to be made, and there's no way you can cover everything in a 25 minute segment.
An excellent indication of just how well Oliver and his team covered the topic comes from the tears of antivaxers. One antivaxer in particular really, really, really didn't like Oliver's vaccine segment. Remember Levi Quackenboss? She's the one who first bragged about how Donald Trump met with Andrew Wakefield in August while campaigning in Florida and what she hoped for from Trump. She also attacked a 12-year-old boy online because he made a video making fun of antivaccine beliefs. She's really, really hilarious (unintentionally so, of course) when she gets upset at campaigns by the government to encourage vaccination.
This time around, she's penned a screed entitled John Oliver, you unfunny schmuck @iamjohnoliver. It is a wonder to behold if you enjoy watching antivaxers get all worked up over being criticized:
So you went on your show yesterday to attack people who either stop vaccinating their children or never vaccinated in the first place. It was a 27-minute angry, condescending, sometimes-loony but never-funny rant.
Someday, John, you’re going to realize that it is not acceptable to attack the parents of children killed or disabled by vaccines, and that is exactly what you did yesterday.
Of course, this is a standard antivax position whenever their pseudoscience is criticized: Poor, poor pitiful me! You meanie! You're making fun of mothers who've suffered! Of course, any fair viewing of Oliver's segment would conclude that that's not what Oliver did at all. He made fun of Wakefield, sure. He made fun of RFK, Jr., definitely. He made fun of Dan Burton, certainly. He made fun of "Dr. Bob" Sears, absolutely. They're all more than fair targets (particularly RFK, Jr.'s "anti-fish" nonsense). But guess who he didn't make fun of? That's right, he didn't make fun of parents who are vaccine-averse. He understands that there's a spectrum of antivaccine beliefs, and he aimed his message at the vaccine-averse. Indeed, at the very end of the segment he went out of his way to relate to them, describing his fears of parenthood, his 19-month-old son who was born prematurely after a difficult pregnancy, and how he's afraid of everything. His final appeal was that if he "can overcome the temptation to listen to the irrational shouting of his terrified lizard brain" then he believes that everyone can. It was pure empathy.
Oliver also noted how he knows that big pharma is not to be trusted, citing a report he did a couple of years ago about how drug companies use highly dubious and unethical methods to market their products to doctors. Indeed, Quackenboss wastes considerable verbiage recounting the conclusions of Oliver's previous report. Since that report was also quite good, I'll include a link to it here. It's worth your time:
And that's the difference between John Oliver or me and someone like Quackenboss. We can criticize big pharma for its depradations and at the same time look at the scientific evidence and understand that the overwhelming body of evidence demonstrates that vaccines do not cause autism or all the other health problems that antivaxers attribute to them. Quackenboss no doubt views me as a hopeless tool of big pharma, but if that's the case, then why doesn't Oliver's previous report bother me at all? Why do I in fact applaud him for that report, just as I applaud him for his segment on vaccines?
Of course, Quackenboss doesn't see it that way. She sees it as rank hypocrisy on Oliver's part:
Last night your tone was one of total trust for these products from the companies you destroyed in 2015. You seemed to be able to perceive some kind of upstanding ethics behind the creation, marketing, and necessity of all vaccines. You were condescending to people who do not want to consume a sacred product made by the very same companies you railed on– the ones who have been fined billions, and whose extremely attractive sales reps make “ungodly sums of money” selling to doctors.
Maybe you’ve been putting too much aluminum in your armpits but the exact companies you tore to shreds two years ago are the companies manufacturing vaccines, heavily influencing the schedule, lobbying for state mandates, and paying none of the compensation when victims of vaccine injury win in court.
No, Oliver was not condescending to parents. He was condescending to RFK, Jr., Dr. Sears, Donald Trump, and Andrew Wakefield, all of whom richly deserved the mockery. When it came to parents, he was anything but condescending. Of course, Quackenboss is one of those whose behavior has made her worthy of little but contempt. Hell, her attacks on Marco Arturo alone earn her my contempt, at least.
Of course, from Quackenboss' perspective, big pharma's coming to get you, and vaccines are its favored weapon:
How do you think Merck handles the fact that only 6 in 10 girls in the US have had even one Gardasil shot? They fight everyday to get their vaccine mandated by state laws. Their product is so wonderful that they need to get legislators to shove it down our kids’ throats. And Gardasil is still a very new vaccine but the damage it’s done is substantial. Just last month a girl was awarded $11.5 million over her lifetime (not paid for by Merck) for the autoimmune disease that’s attacking her optic nerve and spine, which was caused by Gardasil. Do you think the vaccine court concedes an $11.5 M case just to get rid of the plaintiff, and that vaccines aren’t really wrecking lives?
No, the Vaccine Court has a set of "table injuries" for which compensation is basically automatic. Unfortunately, the link Quackenboss provided only describes the award, not the actual case or evidence. This girl was awarded compensation for a condition called neuromyelitis optica, which the complainants attributed to Gardasil and a flu vaccine (Flumist). It wasn't hard to find the actual decision in the case. I read the whole thing. What I found was a case that was not that persuasive other than the seeming timing. Overall, it struck me as the Special Master bending over backwards to give the complainant the benefit of the doubt. Going into the reasons would take a lot of time and verbiage and might be better left for a potential additional post at some future date. Be that as it may, personally, I view the compensation awarded in this case to be evidence that very much argues against the antivaccine caricature of the Vaccine Court as being tilted against providing compensation to complainants who claim injury due to vaccines.
Quackenboss can't help but bring up the Cutter incident:
I noticed that you showed a clip of the 1955 celebrations for Salk’s new polio vaccine but forgot to include the worst pharmaceutical disaster in history that followed immediately after: the Cutter Incident at the lab that produced the vaccine, which caused polio in 40,000 children, paralyzed 56, and killed 5, then further led to 113 new cases of polio and 5 additional deaths.
Guess who wrote the definitive book on the Cutter incident? Take a guess. It was Paul Offit! His book was The Cutter Incident: How America's First Polio Vaccine Led to the Growing Vaccine Crisis. That's right. The man whom Age of Autism loves to refer to as a "biostitute" and "pharma shill" wrote the book on the worst vaccine incident in history. That's how pro-science advocates roll. The man whom the antivaccine movement views as Lord Voldemort, Lord Sauron, and Darth Vader all rolled up into one is the man who wrote a book on the Cutter incident.
Quackenboss also drops a major straw man:
Do you seriously think you are self-educated enough on the topic of thimerosal to tell your 5 million viewers with 100% certainty that the mercury in fish is bad and the mercury in vaccines is good? Do you honestly believe that mercury was removed from most of the childhood vaccines– not because it was a highly unethical experimentation on children– but because there was “intense public concern” so pharmaceutical companies “spent time and energy solving a problem that never existed?”
Actually, yes. That was exactly why it was removed. In 1999, Dr. Neal Halsey was head of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ vaccine advisory committee and instrumental in persuading the CDC to recommend the removal of thimerosal from vaccines even though there wasn’t any real science to show it to be dangerous. Indeed, the CDC committee was initially not at all enthusiastic about Dr. Halsey’s recommendations because they didn’t see any science compelling enough to warrant urgency. However, through force of will during several conference calls Dr. Halsey ultimately won the day. What seems to have happened is that, absent sitting in a room with all the players, members of the CDC got the impression that a “snowball” was growing in favor of doing something. Members later said that they were extremely skeptical but that with Dr. Halsey dominating the conversations and the inability to see the body language of other members of the committee, they didn’t realize that they were not alone in their extreme skepticism about the advisability of “doing something now.”
Unfortunately, banning thimerosal absent compelling evidence that it caused harm was a fantastic example of the “precautionary principle” run amok, in which a ban was recommended “just in case.” After all, parents not unreasonably think, if the CDC and AAP recommended removing thimerosal from vaccines, there must have been a reason. Maybe there was something wrong that is now being hidden! Reassurances by the CDC that the recommendation was “just as a precautionary measure” designed to “make vaccines even safer” were not particularly convincing in comparison. Actions speak louder than words, after all. In other words, although antivaccine advocates were agitating about thimerosal in the late 1990s and likely would have continued to do so, the ultimate magnitude of the thimerosal scare in the U.S. was largely a self-inflicted wound on the part of the CDC and AAP. Quackenboss' little rant shows how that decision continues to provide fodder for antivaxers to use in their fear mongering.
And, of course, there have to be ad hominems:
And John, I can’t even go down the rabbit hole of how ridiculous you look using a clip of Seth Mnookin, a former drug dealer and burglar who once bit a police officer, but if you’d like to know more about your expert witness you can read about him here.
And as for Alison Singer, who appears toward the end of your clip, you do know that she was staunchly vaccines-cause-autism until she was blinded by the cash offered her to publicly switch sides, right? In fact, it was only in 2001 that the New York Post wrote:
“Alison Tepper Singer, a former vice president in NBC’s desktop video division, faulted the ‘ER’ episode for its ‘complete belittling of another viewpoint,’ she told The News. Singer resigned from NBC in 1999 when her older daughter was diagnosed with autism.
“‘It was so irresponsible and so callous and so heartbreaking for parents who are dealing with this issue that I found it sad,’ she said of the ‘ER’ episode.”
Yes, the woman you featured to bolster your stance once said that people like you completely belittle other viewpoints. And you do.
What the hell? Lord knows I've had my problems with Alison Singer in the past, but if there's one thing she didn't do in the John Oliver vaccine segment it was to "completely belittle other viewpoints." Go back and look for yourself if you don't believe me. Her appearance is at around the 16 minute mark. Singer states that she thinks it was worthwhile to examine the question of whether vaccines cause autism, but that at some point there's "just so much evidence" that they don't. That's hardly "completely belittling" another viewpoint. It's basically saying that she doesn't regret examining whether vaccines cause autism but that she's moved on because there was no evidence to support her concept. As for Seth Mnookin, none of what Quackenboss says about Mnookin has anything to do with whether his views on vaccines are correct or not.
Quackenboss then finishes with what I like to refer to as the fantasy of eventual validation:
You were once a thought leader for many people, John. But last night you exposed yourself as being a thought sayer, reading a script. It was shameful and disappointing, and one day you’ll look back and realize you were on the wrong side of history in the most public way possible.
That day is coming soon.
No, it's not. It's really not.
It's at this point, near the end of my post, that I'll reveal a secret that will drive Quackenboss nuts if she actually sees this post. I had input into this segment. One of the researchers for Last Week Tonight contacted me back in April about this segment. We had a conversation that lasted over an hour, and I sent the researcher a bunch of links. Much of what we discussed ended up in the segment. I also referred her to a number of other sources, although I don't know which of these she contacted.
Choke on that, Levi Quackenboss.
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Poor, poor Levi. She can dish out vicious articles, but, like all cockroaches, she turns and run for the hills when someone shines a light upon her beliefs and proves how wrong she is.
I haven't had a chance to watch the segment yet, but I've heard good things about it from other sources. Not that it will convince any of my woo-prone, anti-vax friends.
Oh liberals....... always so damned confused about Pharma. stunning. Strong opinions on over medicating and pills but that multi decade propaganda about vaccines really left a mark. You cant have it both ways. Logic escapes you
You were once a thought leader for many people, John
It appears from context that Quackenboss approves of this division of the world into "thought leaders" and "thought followers".
Singer's story is an interesting one to me. Until 2009, she was the Vice-President for Public Relations at Autism Speaks, which adhered to the Autism-Vaccine causation theories. Then the verdicts for the first three Test Cases in the Omnibus Autism Proceedings (Cedillo, Hazelhurst, Snyder) came in. As we know, the Special Masters ruled against them.
Singer then took a very close look at the evidence and realised that vaccines do not cause autism. But when she approached the Wrights about changing the message of Autism Speaks, there was a falling out. Singer resigned and set up the Autism Science Foundation.
That doesn't strike me as the actions of someone who was bribed. In fact, I find it very difficult to believe that Singer, the parent of an autistic, would be so easily corrupted.
Oh, THEO. Always ready to push your supplements and homeopathic (non) remedies. Logic didn't escape you. You never had it in the first place.
The "you're attacking parents of disabled children״ gambit as a way to deflect criticism of anti vaccine claim really is taken to absurd in this segment, as you do wonderfully demonstrate. While Sears, Wakefield and Kennedy are all parents, none of them, to my knowledge, claim a disabled child (not that it would be relevant, since the segment certainly didn't focus on anyone's position as such a parent).
And as for Alison Singer, who appears toward the end of your clip, you do know that she was staunchly vaccines-cause-autism
"Your so-called 'authority', did you know she used to hold the opposite opinion, until she allowed her mind to be swayed by the evidence?"
Ad-hominem, Levy, you're doing it wrong.
Also, the key word is "was." She was staunchly vaccines-cause-autism. Then she did something. She looked at the evidence, saw that it didn't support that belief, and then did something Quackenboss is incapable of doing: She changed her mind and rejected the vaccine/autism hypothesis as not being supported by the scientific data. Admittedly that's a difficult thing. Most people can't do it. Certainly Quackenboss can't, but then Quackenboss doesn't even try.
I always direct my "regulation=bad" friends to the FDA history pages, where the Cutter incident is discussed.
Also, I found this in a newsletter from CBER from 2002: "Overall, 260 cases of polio were attributed to Cutter vaccine; these included 94 vaccinees and 166 close contacts of vaccinees, with 192 cases being paralytic." Is this contradicting the 40K case number or am I interpreting this wrong? https://www.fda.gov/downloads/aboutfda/whatwedo/history/productregulati…
@silentbob: over 200,000 kids got not inactivated virus, about 40,000 had symptoms of some kind, 200-something were paralyzed, 11 died.
It really was a thorough (and funny) segment; Oliver packed a lot into the 27-ish minutes.
Quackenboss is probably quite a bit jealous because she'll never have that large of an exposure for her rants. She's probably got, what, maybe 1,000 loyal readers, who cheer her on?
Thanks Dorit.
"And John, I can’t even go down the rabbit hole of how ridiculous you look using a clip of Seth Mnookin, a former drug dealer and burglar who once bit a police officer, but if you’d like to know more about your expert witness you can read about him here."
Guess who else pretty much fits that description:
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/17/us/robert-kennedy-jr-faces-charge-of-…
Anti-vaxers in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones.
Thanks for your contributions, Orac. I was impressed with the thoroughness of the piece. He used humor so effectively I am assigning that video to my nursing students when get to the vaccine schedule in the fall semester.
Being on the wrong (northern) side of the border, I went searching for the Oliver segment on Google, found one that looked likely, clicked and got......Sherry Tenpenny! Holy bait-and-switch, Batman! Stupid geofencing.
That was great. After watching I was thinking, "Damn, someone on their writing team has quite a bit of experience in debating anti-vaccers", and lo and behold Orac helped show them the way. Loved it.
In comparison the things about me that irritated me are minor, such as how Oliver referred to antivaxers as “skeptics” multiple times in the early part of the segment and referring to a “debate.” That just grated on me because antivaxers are not skeptics, and this is not a scientific debate.
Isn't this what they call being . . . pedantic?
I really liked the part where he put the 1.31 per million doses risk of anaphylaxis after vaccination in context by explaining that the odds of any given child eventually being convicted of murder and executed by the state was 1 in 119,012.
Quackenboss seems to be surprised at the notion that someone might agree with her on one issue, and disagree with her on anything else. News flash: it's a routine occurrence that people who are allied on one issue disagree about others. Politics is about how we work around such differences of opinion.
As for the claim that only 6 in 10 girls get Gardasil: There is a strong undercurrent of thought in much of this country that vaccinating girls against a sexually transmitted disease implicitly endorses promiscuity of said girls. (It's odd how far fewer people voice similar thoughts about boys.) It's every bit as irrational as the vaccines-cause-autism crowd.
How sweet it is to see such reactions from the loons, especially Levi. So great to hear Orac helped with this, which will only enrage her more! Glorious stuff.
Does she honestly think she can refute facts & science with...antivax propaganda youtube videos?
As the segment now approaches 6 million views (FB & youtube combined) in just over a day it's obvious how jealous & desperate the antivax cult has become. They've spent over a year trying to get Vaxxed seen outside their echo chamber and have utterly failed. In one day Oliver did what they can only dream about.
Maybe they can plan another "March for Children" where 7 people show up again?
The fake outrage for parents with "vaccine injuries" is getting old. She needs a new comeback. This one ain't working.
Even with only 6 of 10 getting it, there has already been a substantial drop in the circulating strains of HPV which cause Cancer....
Jake has weighed in by rerunning one of his old AoA post, but because that wasn't loony enough, he had to change the title to something just a wee bit more offensive.
I used to think he was (unintentionally) funny. Now it's getting really sad.
Saw this segment last night, and it was MAGNIFICENT!
I am amused (though not surprised) at Quackenbush's total lack of self-reflection. It's bad to criticize parents -- but she's fine criticizing parents who don't agree with her, such as John Oliver and Alison Singer. John Oliver is a great "thought leader" until he disagrees with Quackenbush about something, and then he's instantly horrible. Like many anti-vaxxers, she talks about thinking for yourself -- as long as you come to the conclusions she likes.
I think that may be part of why antivaxxers are so angry. They assume we're just like them, and hate anyone who disagrees with us. They don't understand what honest debate means, and perceive it as a personal attack.
I saw the segment. I thought that it would be geofenced for South Africa, but it wasn't.
Very funny, I must say.
Also, I just have to post this in response to Quackenboss (what an appropriate name):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48H34ukFe8g
As to Oliver's 'false balance' example:
I prefer Lifebuoy™ instead of Lava™ when I take the 1/2 way position. No manufactroversy is that gritty.
Well, all of this, including Oliver's pathetic rant, wouldn't be so sad were not the fact that the American public has been brainwashed about vaccines. Of course the recent study showing that unvaccinated children are far healthier than vaccinated children never got much press. I also love the way Oliver's PhD in physical chemistry shown through. He has no idea what Thimerosal does, the form of mercury that represents and why it is still toxic, what an adjuvant is.
He conveniently failed to mention the millions of dollars worth of claims that have been settled silently to vaccine-injured families. Oh, I guess it's just hush money.
And I love the portrayal of measles as a "deadly virus". Does anyone care to cite the number of deaths from measles that have occurred prior to the vaccine era? No, of course not. It's because deaths from measles plummeted long before the MMR vaccine became available. Other factors played a much bigger role.
After mocking Dr. Wakefield for five minutes, he also conveniently failed to include the reversal of the UK General Medical Council’s findings of misconduct against him. How convenient.
Basically, the lemmings who drink the vaccine Kool-Aid are laughable. For all of you in that group, please understand that vaccination most definitely does not = immunization. The most basic immunologist knows this. The drug companies simply are not telling you.
"Surprise! John Oliver’s vaccine segment has given antivaxers a sad."
-Somebody needs to go back to grammar school.
Reality -- oh gosh, that brings back memories. I only got my mouth washed out with soap once for bad language -- and it was Lava soap. Ew.
Remember Jake when you provide advice you need to follow it first.
LOL Jake. So you were too lazy to even write a new blog, instead renaming an old one to make it more anti-semitic! Great job. Your 5 readers will really appreciate that.
Meanwhile John Oliver's video is over 6.2 million views in less than 2 days.
Not a good week for you.
How's the butthurt feel?
http://www.autisminvestigated.com/alison-singer-jewish-ghetto-police/#c…
Your statements are no less anti Semitic, wrong and ugly for that.
Brent is assigning pro-vaccine propaganda by a popular comic to his nursing students--classic! If anyone wants to know how academia easily perpetuates status quo paradigms, just ask Brent! He probably has a handy list of articles to reassure unusually probing students that "vaccines are safe and effective and saved the world" and any contentions to the contrary have been "thoroughly debunked and discredited," too.
Thank goodness students have precious little time to pursue independent reading material. We all known how disruptive dense reading like Dissolving Illusions; or Saying No To Vaccines; or Fear of the Invisible would be for the vaccine pogrom.
As the blog points out, the fact that Ms. Singer could change her views after confronting the evidence is to her credit.
And she's been working for years on research on autism.
Jake, when you make a bigoted post and are called out for it, posting the actual link that proves it is not helping.
This is why your "side" will forever be in the fringes of society.
And NWO "Reporter" can you please tell me what chapter of Dissolving Illusions those morbidity stats are on? I've spent years looking but can't seem to find them. Thanks!
Ralphie from A Christmas Story would disagree with you.
I finally had a look at the John Oliver video.
It's the first time I've ever heard Bob Sears' voice. Boy, does he come off as unconvincing, especially when Chris Hayes called him out on there being no studies supporting his alternative vaccine schedules.
I have to agree with Ms. Singer. Thinking that doctors should look into whether there is a link between vaccines and autism was an understandable view circa 2000. But those studies have been done, and the results uniformly negative, so the only reasonable conclusion is that we should look elsewhere for the causes of autism.
Karl #18 - is that serious? I haven't seen the clip yet (at work, In Australia) but is that for real?? Let me pick my jaw up from the floor.
Callie #23 - everything you said exactly. Their attitude is psychologically infantile, the splitting of all good v all bad, no ability to see anything in between.
The Gnat is doing grammar flames now? Clearly it means he has nothing substantive to say (as usual) and doesn't recognize slang when he sees it. Same as it ever was. Well, clueless is as clueless does, especially when being blatantly antisemitic.
Chris Foley
he also conveniently failed to include the reversal of the UK General Medical Council’s findings of misconduct against him.
If there is a competition running for "Stupidest, most easily-refuted comment of the week", I think we should have all been informed, so we could enter. Otherwise it is not fair.
Chris Foley: "And I love the portrayal of measles as a “deadly virus”. Does anyone care to cite the number of deaths from measles that have occurred prior to the vaccine era? No, of course not. It’s because deaths from measles plummeted long before the MMR vaccine became available."
Do we really have to do this again for Chris Foley's benefit? Apparently so.
"In the decade before 1963 when a vaccine became available, nearly all children got measles by the time they were 15 years of age. It is estimated 3 to 4 million people in the United States were infected each year. Also each year an estimated 400 to 500 people died, 48,000 were hospitalized, and 4,000 suffered encephalitis (swelling of the brain) from measles."
https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html
Yes, "only" 400-500 deaths from measles annually in the U.S. sounds better than the 6,000 or so who were killed every year in the early 20th century (and of course pales in comparison to 2.6 million dead each year from measles worldwide before widespread vaccination campaigns, whereas now there are "only" about 130,000 fatal cases a year).
Antivaxers who snigger at the deaths, misery and permanent complications caused by measles are among the lowest of their breed. And that's a dubious achievement.
Basically, the lemmings who drink the vaccine Kool-Aid are laughable.
In fact lemmings do not drink Kool-Aid. Nor do Sheeple. I believe there was a Mythbusters episode.
Regarding Chris Foley - lemmings are notorious for (supposedly) throwing themselves off cliffs and drowning - not for drinking koolaid.
Rats! Herr Dokter beat me to it.
Theoretically, if suburban mom's visited the Arctic, prepared Koolaid in the jug with the logo, they could experiment if lemmings would drink it. My theory is that the shy and elusive lemming would refuse.
Taking down the parts of Chris Foley's rant that haven't already been refuted.
Please post a link to this study. I notice you didn't link to it in your comment.
Given that payouts in Vaccine Court are a matter of public record and are published in a way that anyone can access them, I'd say you're clueless.
Also, let's perform a simple calculation. How many vaccines were administered over the last five years? How many payouts were awarded?
Chris Foley
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Well, you get the point.
@43: The scene in "White Wilderness" was staged though.
While I agree with science that says vaccines do not cause autism, I felt that this segment ignored some fine points.
Back in the mid-80s, I did tremendous research on vaccines while carrying my first child. By my 8th month, I had decided: no vaccines. My state has a "religious objection" clause, which dovetailed with my religious beliefs. After a beautiful home birth, I waited & dreaded the appointment with the pediatrician. At the 2-month visit, a nurse whipped out the MMR-loaded syringe and gave my baby the shot before I could protest. She screamed and cried for 24 hours. From further research, it was determined that she had a migraine. No more vaccines.
Considerations overlooked:
Shots are painful, and can leave children with fear and trauma every time they visit the doctor.
Religious objections, and in some states, philosophical objections are by law required to be respected.
Parents' right to choose overrides all. We really do not want vaccines to become a mandatory law, do we?
Finally, my grandson, who never had any immunizations, was diagnosed autistic around age 3. I remain anti-vaccine.
"Parents' right to choose overrides all"? So you'd support parents who refuse chemotherapy for their child with a highly treatable cancer, even though that choice will result in the death of the child?
Chris Foley, #26, my fellow Minnesotan, our state alone in 1990 saw 3 children die of measles, 2 of them at my Children's hospital. That was out of 460 cases. Don't mock any of us who who call measles deadly who have seen deaths from this vaccine-preventable disease because we have seen it with our own eyes and know what we are talking about.
John Oliver did a great job covering critical points young parents ask about everyday. Thank you Orac for helping him get it right.
I had no idea he was going to use my quote describing the dangers of the measles virus we are currently seeing in Minnesota, but my kids now think 30 years in infectious disease is pretty cool!
@Julian Frost: I suspect the "unvaxxed children are healthier" is a reference to that execrable Mawson et al study that Orac tore apart already. The antivaxxers love that study because it supports their beliefs. I want to know if any of the kids were turned into newts by vaccines, since the results were all self-reported and not validated by the researchers.
@Jennifer: lying is not tolerated on this blog. The MMR has NEVER been given at 2 months, so you are full of BS. At least you admit you are antivaccine, even though your reasons for being so (your "research" and ingenious story) are ridiculous.
Jennifer @ #28:
"At the 2-month visit, a nurse whipped out the MMR-loaded syringe and gave my baby the shot before I could protest."
MMR is given at 12 months.
"From further research, it was determined that she had a migraine. "
How, exactly, could you determine that a 2 month old baby has had a migraine by "research" in the 1980's?
I call B.S. Leaving aside the fact that MMR is not given at 2 months, the rest of your story makes no sense.
a nurse whipped out the MMR-loaded syringe and gave my baby the shot before I could protest.
Lock and load, soldier. Remember, inject at once, without hesitation. A moment's hesitation and it could be too late. Those antivax parents are tricky... damned tricky.
I would just love to see some sort of citation for that claim that the GMC reversed any of their findings against Wakefield...
News flash! He's still struck off the medical register over here and cannot practice medicine.
@Murmur: Walker-Smith, Wakefield. What's the difference? They both start with W so if Dr Walker-Smith was exonerated, that must mean Wakefraud was also. Right? /sarcasm
@Murmur, That 'reversed findings' crap is related to Walker-Smith which the True Believers (tm) are adamant covers Wakefield. It doesn't and he's still struck off as you noted and he's still a fraud.
Might I ask which religion you practice, and where and how often your congregation meet?
THEO: You said "Oh liberals……. always so damned confused about Pharma. stunning. Strong opinions on over medicating and pills but that multi decade propaganda about vaccines really left a mark. You cant have it both ways. Logic escapes you"
...but your claim only works if "[drug company] propaganda about vaccines," rather than "data about vaccines," is an accurate description of reality. Which I guess you think it is, but...
Jennifer said " My state has a 'religious objection' clause"
That's a real shame. People shouldn't be allowed to harm others -- by action or omission -- on the basis of their superstitions.
The lads at AoA must have really not liked the John Oliver piece. The have 2 posts up on how bad they think it is (well, 1 new one and repost of the Quackenboss blog post our host discusses).
I'm surprised it took them this long. I wanted to make fun of AoA too, but there was no post about the Oliver piece up yet when I wrote this post Monday night.
BTW, I'm busily preparing my vaccine talk for NECSS on Friday morning, which is why there isn't a new post today. It's about the politicization of vaccine policy and includes a brief shout-out to John Oliver. :-)
@Jennifer #48
Parents’ right to choose overrides all.
With or without limits. I will say that a parents choice to punish her kids by leaving them in a hot car while going inside for some R&R doesn't over-ride much (recent case in the news, it is a murder case since the kids died).
Yep you can say well obviously in that case it is neglect, but where is that line when withholding medical treatment leads to death. If your kid dies of the chicken pox does it matter if you vaccinated or not? Does it matter if you took the kid to a pox party because natural immunity is your religious belief?
#38 Can't remember my 'nym:
I'm suspect that number is worldwide and thus include some very execution heavy states like China, Iran, etc.
I can dream, can't I?
@Jennifer #48: "Parents’ right to choose overrides all."
I work for a state Department of Family and Child Services. As such, I tend to take a dim view to such attitudes.
Jenifer #48:
"Shots are painful, and can leave children with fear and trauma every time they visit the doctor"
Setting aside the already discussed problems with he veracity of your story...
This is hardly a compelling reason to avoid vaccination. Any pediatrician with a smidgen of ability to interact successfully with children can minimize such trauma. I didn't enjoy getting shots as a child, but I wasn't traumatized by them, and they didn't make me fear going to the doctor. Millions of children are vaccinated every year without being significantly traumatized.
I'm not sure we should let how badly a child cries and screams be the sole basis for what we expose them to. I've spent enough time with children to know that.
"Parents’ right to choose overrides all. We really do not want vaccines to become a mandatory law, do we?"
Children are not property, and parents do not have absolute rights in regards to their children. You can't have sex with your children, you can't sacrifice your children, you can't abuse or neglect your children, etc.
I've not really heard anybody advocating forcibly vaccinating anyone, but I'm all for laws mandating vaccines for access to public education and for people who work in the public health sector, etc. You may decline vaccination, but you then decline access to public education and the ability to work in the public health sector.
“Parents’ right to choose overrides all.” That only works if you think children are property, not people. Your child's rights trump your right to choose if the two are in conflict.
As for the idea that the pain and trauma of vaccines is a reason avoid them, lots of medical care is unpleasant. When I had to have stitches, it was painful (up until the novocaine kicked in) and traumatic. Would have been a stupid reason to avoid them.
Karl@65: If I assume that it's a US number, that would imply about 20k executions over a 70 year lifetime, or around 300 a year. Yes, that's a bit high.
But assuming that it's a global number is also problematic. The numbers are the right order of magnitude, but in that case the precision would be excessive, because (among other reasons) China does not keep an official tally of how many executions it performs.
I see the twerp Crosby has popped up again. Should you be in any doubt about his personality disorder, get the new one he's started up.
Now he's started posting false contributions to his ludicrous blog in my name and then replying abusively to them.
Really sad guy.
That's pretty pathetic behavior.
Not exactly.
The posts are real posts made by the lovely and talented Rebecca Fisher. Jake thinks it's really Deer is posting under her name, so he edits all of her post to ange the name, and, if he let's them thru, he responds abusively.
See http://www.autisminvestigated.com/the-journalist-age-of-autism/#comment…
I used to read his blog for the lulz, now I just shake my head ruefully. I think he's decided that, because (he claims) he has autism, he can say any hateful or offensive thing he likes, then claim "it's the autism's fault" or "it's satire".
So did I. It's gone so far down the rabbit hole now that I don't even get lulz from it. It's become basically just hateful and cringeworthy.
@Brian Deer #71:
So you acknowledge that the avatar of "Rebecca Fisher" isn't representative of a real person but of a fake account.
Good to know, Brian/Rebecca/Jennifer etc.
Young Master Crosby, you are pathetic.
Jake@75 --
Since that is so far removed from what Brian posted, either your reading comprehension sucks or English is not your first language.
Young Master Crosby, here is some reading for you:
https://spectrumnews.org/features/special-reports/the-genetics-of-autis…
"Reading comprehension?"
Those words don't exist in the Gnat's vocabulary.....
John Oliver is total Awesomesauce(tm) in my book. If the language weren't so thoroughly NSFW, I would let my kids watch his show as an example of how to demolish absurd, ignorant people and expose their hypocrisy.
One of the best skills he has, in my opinion, is an ability to simultaneously sympathize with people in difficult situations (in this segment, parents scared by anti-vaccine BS) at the same time as he cuts through the underbrush obfuscating the underlying issues.
Yes, he sometimes oversimplifies a complex argument or glosses over the pedantic fringes of an issue, the show's staff clearly do their homework and shine a light in some of the truly ugly corners of our society. Payday lenders, institutional racism in policing, the hypocrisy of anti-abortion politicians who also want to cut funding for family planning and prenatal care -- Oliver can really make even the most wonky issue seem human and relevant.
Of course, the ridiculous musical numbers help, too. Does anyone remember the Sesame Street segment at the end of the episode on lead?
Damn how I wish Gardisil had been developed when l was younger! Except antivaxxers would lose the satisfaction of saying "I told you so" , the self righteous shites.
MIDawn and MikeMa: thanks, that was what I thought.
That means our esteemed correspondent is doing something that the uncharitable would think is other than telling the truth. Fortunately I am charitable and assume that they are just hard of understanding.
Errr, Jakey @ 75: Rebecca is known to quite a few of us on this side of the Atlantic through several science-y/medical type forums on the internet and we are pretty damn sure she isn't Brian Deer.
You'll be claiming that the likes of Chris Preston and I are really Ben Goldacre next...
I suppose, according to Jennifer we should let children walk, or play outside, because they might fall and cry and thus get traumatised. Don't take them out for shopping as well, because they might start crying if something doesn't go their way.
On the other hand, I wonder how traumatising some vaccine preventable illnesses are. I'm affraid they cause far more pain and trauma than some injections.
'Should', should of course be 'shouldn't'.
Rebecca is known to quite a few of us on this side of the Atlantic ... and we are pretty damn sure she isn’t Brian Deer.
No offence to Brian Deer, but Rebecca's grasp of creative invective is very hard for anyone else to mimic.
Orac writes,
One of the researchers for Last Week Tonight contacted me back in April about this segment. We had a conversation that lasted over an hour, and I sent the researcher a bunch of links. Much of what we discussed ended up in the segment.
MJD says,
Orac and Orac's minions deserve equal credit.
A number joke to soften statistics:
Q. What did the zero say to the number eight.
A. Great belt.
More good stuff for the researchers at Last Week Tonight! :-)
Renate: On the other hand, I wonder how traumatising some vaccine preventable illnesses are. I’m affraid they cause far more pain and trauma than some injections.
When I was a kid, I was a pretty hard core Louisa May Alcott fan. I read all her books. In Eight Cousins, one of the cousins, a bookworm, is hit pretty hard by measles. He can't read for weeks and his eyesight is altered forever. I found that and Mary's blindness (in the Little House books) far more troubling than any shot.
I swear, reading 19th century literature ought to be required by law before parenthood. It might smarten a lot of people right up.
Actually, PGP, Mac in "Eight Cousins" suffered a sunstroke, not any infectious disease. Perhaps you're thinking of Polly in "Th Five Little Peppers and How They Grew." She spent weeks in a darkened room because her eyes were so seriously affected by her bout of measles.
Yeah, PGP. Very true. Read any literature before the 1960s and they feared diseases...polio, measles, smallpox. Sure, as the years progressed from the early 1900s, we were able to *treat* those illnesses to prevent most of the deaths and long-term problems, but we couldn't prevent the disease.
If those people who lived in the 1700s, 1800s, early 1900s could have avoided the diseases that swept through and killed thousands, most of them would have been standing in line for vaccines. (Yes, some were antivaxxers even then because "will of diety" stuff).
Don't forget the depiction of scarlet fever in "The Velveteen Rabbit". Real tear-jerker. And there may soon be a widely available vaccine for that too!
The whole idea of avoiding vaccines because it is "traumatic" to get a shot is concerning to me. There are a great many unpleasant things we ask our kids to put up with, but we would be neglectful if we did not. Dental care comes instantly to mind, and it can be much more painful than vaccines.
Deaths from scarlet fever since 1900 have declined over 99% with no vaccine--with most of the decline occurring even before the widespread use of antibiotics. So naturally, it's the perfect time to come out with a vaccine. There's a long tradition of developing a vaccine after mortality rates have declined to near zero levels, then claiming the vaccine saved us. Or maybe they should just redefine the criteria for diagnosis, like they did with polio. That's sure to create a dramatic reduction in morbidity, even if it is illusory.
BTW, for all the folks fearful of blindness from measles...it's due to vitamin A deficiency. That's been common knowledge for decades, at least since the 1940s.
@88 PGP
Heck, just talking to their grandparents should scare the stuffing out of people my age. By the time you go back two generations in my family tree, a lot of the branches end tragically young. My own grandmother nearly died from scarlet fever; when I think about the six times my son Stinker has had strep throat, I just cringe. Of course, strep has no vaccine, but my grandma also nearly died from mumps as well, and she suffered bad cases of measles as well as rubella. Apparently, she was a sickly child. I have heard antivaxxers say that maybe it would be better for the gene pool if people who would succumb to vaccine-preventable illnesses just die anyway. Gah.
NWO Troll: "Deaths from scarlet fever since 1900 have declined over 99% with no vaccine–with most of the decline occurring even before the widespread use of antibiotics"
So what? It is a strep infection, and it was by changes in the strains. You see, bacteria will have changes in their genetics as they multiply:
http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2011/07/06/scarlet-fever-in-hong-kong/
"BTW, for all the folks fearful of blindness from measles…it’s due to vitamin A deficiency. That’s been common knowledge for decades, at least since the 1940s."
Wrong, wrong, wrongety wrong. But you really don't care about exposing us to your willful ignorance over and over and over again.
What a surprise--the disinformation troll who never met a vaccine she didn't love appears instantly with her usual deception.
@NWO, Scarlet fever is controlled by antibiotics. Are those 'big pharma' products on your list of bad things too?
As with an infinite sum of infinitesimals that can sum to a finite value it is perhaps analogous that an infinity of wrongs can sum to a right. Or it may still add up to wrong. But I don't recommend waiting that long to find out. Unless someone knows of an analytical solution to infinitely wrong series.
http://time.com/3911000/the-vaccine-for-type-1-diabetes-is-moving-forwa…
Not entirely recent, but another promising use of vaccines.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170610134818.htm
Some updated info on this too.
@Karl and Eric,
US statistics from 2005 to 2012 show 4.9 murders per 100,000 so maybe it was based on that.
Convictions, of course, are less, and actual executions very rare.
Cool story, NWO. My daughter was hospitalized for 3 days with scarlet fever last summer. It sucked. People still get it, and it can be serious and even fatal. If there was a vaccine, I'd be first in line.
Cool story, Maine-Jen. Good luck with your vaccines! :)
I have previously mentioned that four of my mother's six siblings did not survive to adulthood. This was not in a war zone or third world hellhole, but in South Dakota in the 20th century. Granted, none of them died of infectious diseases, but modern medicine would have been enough to save at least two of them, and a third would have survived had seat belts been available at the time. And there certainly were infectious diseases going around in her world.
I do not wish to return to that world. The good old days were not all that good. But a bunch of libertarians are trying to push us toward that world, and vaccines are one of many fronts on which they are pushing. I'd rather these folks just go Galt and let the rest of us carry on in the real world.
DT35: You sure? I remember the passage pretty well, and he did have to do the darkened room thing and wear glasses. Maybe I should reread it, though I dunno if I can find a copy now. I should read 'Five Little Peppers' which oddly I never have.
MIDawn:True. Anti-vaxxers would also benefit from some history lessons.
"The whole idea of avoiding vaccines because it is “traumatic” to get a shot is concerning to me."
It wouldn't be surprising if much of the "trauma" involved in some childhood vaccinations (where the parent(s) are distrustful of vaccines) stems from the child perceiving his/her parents' anxiety reactions and concluding that Bad Things are happening.
Though I have a childhood memory of running upstairs and hiding under the bed in an attempt to avoid a polio shot being administered by my father, a family doc with excellent technique in minimizing vaccination "trauma".
NWO: So, you're basically saying that until the 1940s, carrots and other vegetables didn't exist? Despite the fact that the US was heavily agrarian until the 1950s? And funny, thing, whoever found this out didn't publicize it so people kept dying for twenty more years? Not buying it, since most humans aren't voids like you.
I have a hard time believing you have never looked into the subject of vitamin A deficiency. Anyone who has will immediately recognize your comment is either woefully clueless or deliberately deceptive.
PGP #104: Quite sure; I got the book for Christmas two years ago. It is still in print.
Yes, in the story, Mac spent most of the summer and fall in a darkened room, had to wear an eye shade and then tinted goggles, was strictly forbidden to read, but it was to treat severe eye strain, not measles. Victorian literature, even children's literature, demonstrates a dramatically different attitude toward common childhood diseases than that espoused by modern anti-vaxxers, but "Eight Cousins" is not useful as an illustration of the serious sequelae of measles.
Nobrain: I'm just pointing out how clueless YOUR comments are. So you are basically saying that no one ate vegetables, ever. Historically speaking, when large scale deficits were noticed, people did things about those. And they were usually pretty obvious; things like rickets and scurvy.
I find it hard to believe that the entire population of the US had deficiencies that weren't noticed for an entire century or more. I mean seriously, that's ridiculous. And again, how do you explain the fact that people were still getting measles, and occasionally dying of it, until the early 60s? Occam's razor, voidbrain.
Total misdirection. The entire population of the US didn't have a vitamin A deficiency--those who did were susceptible to complications. Measles was known as a benign disease by 1950 or so, meaning that full recovery was typical and complications were rare. That's because the role of vitamin A in preventing complications was well known by that time.
Dt35: Ok, I probably got it mixed up with the Little House books, because I read them at about the same time. Glad to hear it's still in print.
NWO Distorter said "I have a hard time believing you have never looked into the subject of vitamin A deficiency."
.
Reminds me of a truism from my youth, modified only slightly for the 21st century:
.
Q: How do you keep a Woonatic uninformed?
A: Take away her internet access.
.
Q: How do you keep a Woonatic misinformed?
A. Give her access to the internet.
.
Ginny, I can't believe that with the wisdom of the world at your fingertips you dove into the internet in search of freshly deposited equine exhaust. Looks like you hit the jackpot in your misguided search, based on your comments here.
Who are you, Opus? Seems like you're flinging insults while hiding behind anonymity. No wonder you're not concerned about accuracy.
What would it matter, except for either (a) an authoritarian who can't have a thought he's not told to have, or (b) someone who'd like to enable a stalker or two to shut up a person who has the temerity to actually disagree with your chosen and profitable Truth™.
Seems like you’re flinging insults while hiding behind anonymity.So you are N. W. O. of the Reporter family, or is NWOReporter your attempt at the anonymity you would deny others?
John Oliver is a great “thought leader” until he disagrees with Quackenbush about something, and then he’s instantly horrible.
I am unsure of the definition of "thought leader", but evidently it is a term of *approval*, so the thoughts being led must be one with which the speaker agrees.
#109 NWO Reporter, June 29, 2017
[citation required]. Oh, I forgot: NWOR is an anti-vax propagandist, and they seem to believe that making a raw, unsupported claim is citation enough.
That's news to us who lived through the 1950's—and to our parents, and to our doctors—who knew measles (and mumps and polio and strep throat/scarlet fever/rheumatic fever and …) were inevitable but to be feared and treated with trepidation.
But with no indication of who was 'typical' and who wasn't, and no way of shifting the 'atypical' into the 'typical' column, until the damage had been done.
Tell that to those of us with complications. Mine were mild, but The Wife's cousin is still disabled.
Known to whom? My parents and my doctor didn't know. Nor did the fictional doctors on the anti-vaxxers' favourite sitcoms from the period.
NWO Troll: "Measles was known as a benign disease by 1950 or so,"
Uh, no: A STATISTICAL STUDY OF MEASLES (1914)
Even older: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/21/7/15-0397_article
Again, you are revealing your very willful ignorance.
Only a disinformation troll would post a 1914 paper as proof that measles was dreaded and feared in 1950. :D Mortality from measles dramatically declined from 1900 to 1950. Here's a paper that actually relevant. Measles: Reports from General Practitioners, British Medical Journal, February 7, 1959.
"In the majority of children the whole episode has been well and truly over in a week, from the prodromal phase to the disappearance of the rash, and many mothers have remarked ‘how much good the attack has done their children’, as they seem so much better after the measles."
"In this practice measles is considered as a relatively mild and inevitable childhood ailment that is best encountered any time from 3 to 7 years of age. Over the past 10 years there have been few serious complications at any age, and all children have made complete recoveries.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1992477/pdf/brmedj02957-01…
NWOdiot previously posted that old BMJ link.
And it was pointed out to her previously that the article dealt with _a particular measles outbreak_ that apparently was milder than usual, In other words, children suffered less than was typical for a measles outbreak.
It was not intended as evidence that the disease could be regarded as inconsequential. And anyone aware of the 400-500 annual deaths in the U.S. in the years leading up to vaccine introduction (and the tens of thousands of annual hospitalizations, plus many cases of permanent sequelae) would never term the disease mild or suggest that kids benefited from it.
Talk about disinformation trolling, NWOdiot deserves special recognition for her efforts.
Right--1959 was a benign anomaly for measles, and all the docs just forgot to mention that. :D
There is literally nothing in the world that will result in zero deaths--nothing. Do you have any idea how many children drown in a bucket each year, or how many die in car accidents? At least it's not like vaccines--no one is trying to hide the numbers of deaths and serious injuries from buckets and cars.
Your actual, credible evidence of this (not just claims from the anti-vax industry) would be just what, exactly?
So nice to learn that measles was a benign disease. Astonishingly enough, I don't remember it that way! But then, I was probably weakened by vitamin A deficiency, and a total lack of personal hygiene, and whatever else the anti-vax "experts" are blaming it on this week.
I don't remember the whole time of illness at all, since I suffered from an extremely high fever and delirium, causing the doctor to stop by twice a day for several days and I never did get that memory back. I do remember the darkened room but hell, I'm probably wrong. After all, I didn't have the benefit of the wisdom of a pet detective, a Playboy bunny, and The Brady Bunch.
Yeah, it's strange--99% of the regulars on this blog have personal stories of tragedy about common illnesses, and 100% of them have zero personal stories of tragedy from common vaccines. It really runs contrary to the experiences of the rest of the population. :D
It would be hard for me to tell stories about having vaccine problems, since I only had two vaccines as a child: polio and smallpox, which I'm sure were also benign diseases, only made worse by no carrots, and playing in the cess pool.
Bring back Fun In An Iron Lung!!! Much better than vaccines which are full of autism, and science.
LOL. You're just a font of trite propaganda, aren't you? At least the satire made it more amusing. :D
Ellie's satire was in direct response to the unsupported claims you made—if there was any "trite propaganda", it's what she was responding to.
Maybe that says something about the people you pay attention to. Selection bias can be a bitch.
I can tell you of a few various injections that had adverse events associated and even caused by the injections. But, as usual, they only lasted a few days.
The local county health department's strategy of choice for preventing a polio outbreak from becoming an epidemic was γ globulin in the hip. My school was 'invited' to such a clinic in two different years. Later, there was the strategy of preventing the outbreak ab initio, which involved a power injection of polio vaccine. For both strategies, I had pain at the injection site for a couple of days. Sure beat appearance as an honoured patient in an iron lung on the Jerry Lewis Telethon.
Of course, you have some studies that show such a prevalence of adverse 'experiences' over a large population, selected without bias, right? I didn't think so.
Nwo-brain: Let's see if you're any good at history. Before the smallpox vaccine, without looking at wikipedia, tell me if you believe that any European royalty (we're including England here) ever contracted smallpox or died from it? According to your hypothesis, royalty should be immortal, since they obviously get the best of the available food.
NWO Troll: "Mortality from measles dramatically declined from 1900 to 1950."
So what? That is just a measure of improvement of medical, especially artificial ventilation to keep from dying when their lungs fill up with fluid from pneumonia, which is very common with measles.
The 1914 paper was to show that at no time in history was measles considered to be benign. It was not considered benign in the 1950s by people who actually knew actual science, and actually used real statistics not random anecdotes from an island country that is a fraction of the size of the USA. From https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/189/Supplement_1/S1/820569/Measles… :
Which is why they spent the 1950s developing vaccines to prevent measles! Even in the UK, the place you cherry pick studies from: Efficacy of measles vaccine
No-brain: So just out of curiosity, what percentage of the US DID have a vitamin a deficiency? What commonalities, if any did the deficient kids have?
Because my strong suspicion is that you're sourcing this stuff from your rectum.
I'm dealing with a small deficiency of my own right now (not vitamin a) and let me tell you, the doctors I've run into do not mess around with those. Again, whenever a population or even a person turns up with something related to a missing nutrient, the local medical personnel like to solve it as quick as they can.
.Now, you with your tiny brain would probably say it's so they can get rich, but I fail to see how my doctor is making any money when I buy on off-the shelf supplement from a store.
And in some cases, like refugee camps, the medics buy supplies with their own money.
Wow! Your incessant name-calling and insults really make you sound knowledgeable and intelligent! I'm sure visitors to this blog will be quite impressed! :D
PGP: Yeah, you should know by now that only NWOR is to be allowed those tactics, even when they're not actually being used.
NWOR: I notice that you have refused to address the actual questions that PGP posed, "what percentage of the US DID have a vitamin a deficiency? What commonalities, if any did the deficient kids have?" (I note this for on-lookers, since you've made it obvious that diversion into ad hom attacks is the way you "address" questions like those.)
blindness from measles…it’s due to vitamin A deficiency. That’s been common knowledge for decades, at least since the 1940s.
Strangely, this common knowledge failed to find its way into any of my ophthalmology textbooks.
That's odd, considering it's all over even the mainstream vax-loving literature. Here's just one from 13 years ago, but there's much more. You must be skimming instead of reading. We can only pray no one with measles was blinded by your advice. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14998696
NWO Distorter said: "Who are you, Opus? Seems like you’re flinging insults while hiding behind anonymity. No wonder you’re not concerned about accuracy."
.
Sorry, Ginny, but you've ran afoul of one of my basic rules for life: I only share personal information with members of the reality-based community.
.
Mayhap you've used the word 'accuracy' in a manner inconsistent with real-world usage? Perhaps a few examples would be illustrative.
You'd think if you expect people to use your screen name, you'd have the courtesy to use theirs. Oops...I forgot where I was for a minute. Never mind that courtesy thing. I guess you have to follow the manual. Anything to intimidate. :)
NWO Reporter: Where there Vitamin A deficiencies in Hawaii when most of the native population died off from measles? Even though they had no shortage of foods rich in the vitamin?
NWO Reporter: You ask us to think for ourselves and not trust people blindly. Why are you shocked when we don't trust you blindly?
No. It's because of damage to the optical nerve and eye tissues. (Source: h_ttps://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/six-ways-measles-can-affect-eyes…)
Vitamin A prevents at a critical point in childhood because it helps in production of a pigment used for seeing in low light and in the epithelial cells of the eye.
If a child gets measles, you can give them a ton of vitamin A and they can still go blind from damage to the nerve and structures. The recommendation to give vitamin A comes from the fact that children with malnutrition die and the best way to get vitamin A is through diet, so you shoot two birds with one stone. It's not because vitamin A is some magical protector of the eye against measles (or similar infections).
Seriously, do you even lift?
Someone says vitamin A helps protect against blindness from measles--something that is well-established in the mainstream literature--and the noxious forces rise up to twist it every which way, and blow it totally out of proportion to make it sound like an outrageous claim. Y'all are hilarious! :D
In that case, you will find it easy to give credible references to the main-stream literature that vit A is specifically protective against blindness from measles as opposed to generally good for eyesight. Right? You can do this, right? Even though supporting your claims seems to violate one or more of the rules you seem to be following?
Apparently you also tend to skim your reading, just like herr doktor. And all you had to do was skim the abstract to see it provided exactly what you are demanding. That's just sad.
Ren, contrary to NWOR's unsupported claims, vitamin A was known as a general nutrient for good eyesight even when I was a kid in the 1940's. The details may well not have been understood, but there was no prevailing contemporary claim that vit A was needed more during a measles episode.
That’s odd, considering it’s all over even the mainstream vax-loving literature. Here’s just one from 13 years ago, but there’s much more.
You are a silly bunny, NWOR; you said "blindness from measles" is "due to vitamin A deficiency". What you have there is evidence that hypovitaminosis A increases the risk of corneal ulceration and keratitis -- but these complications of measles still happen even with full Vitamin A. Did you read the paper you cite?
I hope you are not trying to shift the goalposts!
NWO: I give back the courtesy and respect I receive, and most of the people around here do the same. It's pretty rich that you fling insults all around and then demand that we be polite. Also, once again, you weaseled out of a question. (And could you quit with the emojis? They just make you look dumber.)
Ah, no. I requested you use my screen name, just like you expect yours to be used--a courtesy you extend to everyone who has your back, and none who don't. It's apparently an integral part of the culture here, and the reason is obvious.
Bit late to the party, but Jake Crosby is apparently serious in thinking Becky Fisher is Brian Deer. I think it goes to show just how little Jake gets out.
Some little time ago, Jake rolled up here protesting that he never, ever, um hum not ever altered comments on his blog.
Has happened, but I don't have the hair to carry it off.
NWO Reporter is completely wrong again
"We did not find any trials assessing whether or not vitamin A supplementation in children with measles prevents blindness, as neither study reported blindness or other ocular morbidities as end points."
It must be a day ending in Y.
That segment isn't very convincing. Science is about proving negatives and instead of admitting that he just ratchets up some consoling laughs. Secondly, the mercury being *just* in flu vaccines isn't bound to produce much solace. If it's different than environmental mercury, say how. Most importantly do the studies he suggests exist demonstrate that vaccines don't cause autism in the general population? If they do, that doesn't help much with those susceptible to it. Unless we understand the triggers, mechanisms and vulnerabilities (people, their ages and dispositions together) that produce autism, this question cannot be boldly dismissed.
Se Habla Espol: "Ren, contrary to NWOR’s unsupported claims, vitamin A was known as a general nutrient for good eyesight even when I was a kid in the 1940’s"
That might be part of the "fake news" story that eating lots of carrots helped fighter pilots see better during WWII. It was a way to deflect from military sensitive technology like radar:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propaganda-campaign-p…
By the way, tonight I tried a recipe for a "savory carrot cake" from the NY Times. It is essentially corn bread with carrots, green onions, feta cheese and various Indian cuisine type spices. It was very good.
I am adding that to my list of how to make typically sweet root veggies into savory side dishes. This includes coating sweet potato slices with Marsala spice powder and then frying, which is also very yummy.
Jake is convinced that Rebecca is a Brian Deer sockpuppet because that's the sort of thing that he and his antivaccine buddies do themselves all the time. Can't comprehend that most normal people don't feel the need to be that deceptive. Doesn't understand that an sensitive reader can usually pick up on writing styles and guess who the sockpuppet really is.
To quote Trump "Sad!" God - I hate quoting that jerk.
#133, NWO Reporter, June 29, 2017
The original statement was
You point to a paper from 2004. The abstract doesn't mention any earlier date. I'm not going to spend $36 just to find that the paper doesn't fulfill the claims you made for it. That leaves at least 55 years of gap between your claim and your purported support. I would, however, point to the final sentence of the abstract:
Notice that it does not recommend vit A instead of vaccination.l
NWOR
Right back at you for the 1st part.
For the 2nd part, interesting article, but not wholly supporting your point. Not much supporting it, actually.
The summary main starting point is that "There is a close synergism between measles and vitamin A deficiency".
Last time I checked, in a synergy, both parts are able to achieve the described effect alone. They are just much better at doing it together. It's the cliché equation 1+1 = 3.
So I will give you that: if someone has a vitamin deficiency, vit A or also vit D, they will fare far much worse if getting sick, with measles, or any other pathogen.
But getting rid of the deficiency? You only remove one part of the equation. The virus is still around to infect and damage the victim's tissues.
Unless you could show us that, nowadays in developed countries, some people have vit A deficiencies AND they are also the people getting harmed by measles, at the near-exclusion of everybody else, you don't have a point.
This thread is bizarre. Are the vipers here really claiming that Vitamin A doesn't help prevent blindness, as well as other health complications and death? Granted, it seems strange that the WHO and so many other public health agencies recommend vitamin A supplementation--it seems out of character for them to recommend anything for the Third World that is truly beneficial. But in a way it makes sense, because the real key to good health is being well-nourished in general, not supplementing the undernourished with a single vitamin.
It looks like the research about vitamin A started in earnest back in the 1980s, based on a hypothesis from evidence that had been accumulating for a long time.
"To definitively prove the link between even mild VAD [Vitamin A Deficiency] and pediatric mortality, Sommer and his colleagues ran a number of large-scale, community-based, randomized trials from 1983 through 1992 [in Indonesia]. ...
"Their work showed that ensuring adequate vitamin A intake can mitigate the effects of common diseases such as measles and diarrhea; reduce child mortality in at-risk populations by 23 to 34 percent to avert up to one million deaths a year; and prevent as many as 400,000 cases of childhood blindness each year.
"By 1992 the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and the Convention on the Rights of Children had all declared the control of VAD a global goal." http://www.jhsph.edu/news/stories/2003/sommer-vita.html
Compare to this study, where the researchers supplemented with vitamin A in *well-nourished* children with measles, but couldn't tell whether it made any difference because none of them were affected by blindness or eye problems. Big surprise. :D https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0014587/
The bulk of the studies show that vitamin A supplementation is associated with large reductions in mortality, morbidity, and vision problems. http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d5094
Maybe someday we'll have a medical profession where a focus on all the 90 essential nutrients is of paramount importance. LOL. Just kidding--there's no profit in vibrant health. Bring on more vaccines! :D
Chris P @146
Aaaah, I may have part recalled you mentioning that elsewhere.
I have the quantity of hair, but it isn't curly enough...
I was going to post the final sentence from the Abstract of the article N.W.O. Reporter posted, but Se Habla Espol beat me to it.
Here's a little something you need to learn, N.W.O. Reporter. Around here, if someone posts a link to evidence they claim supports their case, the other commenters will click on the link, read the contents and call them out if they don't.
Original claim:
Later version, piped in from some completely different universe:
Have you ever considered arguing in good faith, NWOR? You might learn stuff, or convince people! You might even enjoy it!
IKR? People are interpreting your comments as if your words meant what they say. People are such monsters.
NWOdiot: "Are the vipers here really claiming that Vitamin A doesn’t help prevent blindness"
NWOdiot: "the disinformation troll who never met a vaccine she didn’t love"
NWOdiot: "Wow! Your incessant name-calling and insults really make you sound knowledgeable and intelligent!"
Self-awareness is an important step in the slow, painful process of attaining critical thinking capacity. Give it a try.
@ NWOR
No, we aren't.
(I actually would love to see fortified stuff like golden rice to become available)
Stop arguing with your computer, the neighbors are getting worried.
So NWO: your point is that in developing countries, where diet is often minimal, Vitamin A deficiency can lead to blindess when the person gets measles. OK. So we'll take that as written for now.
So now, tell us about the first world countries, where kids also need hospitalization and/or die from measles. Are they all suffering from Vitamin A deficiency also? You're saying we all live like those in developing countries?
Try to understand, NWOR, that vitamins are essential substances that are used to prevent issues caused by their absence, but they aren't magical cure-alls.
If you forgot to change the oil in a car, it may cause components to fail. But putting in extra oil will not prevent damage to the transmission caused by running a car too hard.
@ 154 NWO
How bizarre. You are saying the reports are saying something other than what they indicate. They show what should not be a surprise: generally healthy, well fed people with access to good health care suffer less from catching measles than poorly fed ones without such access. Here's another one for you: people who don't know how to swim are more likely to drown than those that do, when dropped into large bodies of water.
One factor that may play into NWO Distorter's inability to keep her 'arguments' straight. She works as an attorney for a private child support collection agency, which is the legal equivalent of a short-order cook in the culinary world. The majority of her work would be cut-n-paste and rubber-stamping documents which require an attorney's signature. Any court appearances would be brief, pro-forma occurrences. She probably never has to interact with other lawyers or judges on an ongoing fact-finding basis - almost all interactions are one-time episodes. She simply is not accustomed to dealing with situations in which the internal consistency of her arguments is assessed for accuracy. And it shows. . .
Getting deeper into your doxing, eh, anonymous Opus? It seems apparent your purpose is to harass, threaten and intimidate. Duly noted.
@hoops:
Those studies do show that vaccination doesn't cause autism in the general population. But they're so large that they're sensitive enough to pick up the signal if there were any link in subpopulations too. The antivaxers are trying to have it both ways: crying that there's a huge autism "epidemic" caused by vaccines (there isn't, and it isn't), and that vaccines only cause autism in some undefined tiny subpopulation, so no study has yet been able to detect the link. Do you see the inconsistency here?
@hoops #149:
Wrong. In fact, you got that exactly backwards. Science can't prove a negative, it can only disprove a positive.
It is in a compound that is converted to ethylmercury, which the body quickly excretes. The mercury compound in fish is methylmercury, which tends to bioaccumulate.
Wrong. This question has been investigated into the ground. There have been enough studies done for a huge metaanalysis with over a million subjects. At that level of sensitivity, if vaccines caused even a small fraction of cases of autism, an affect would have been detected. None was.
Just because we don't completely understand what causes autism doesn't mean we can't exclude candidates. With vaccines, the research has been done and the question answered.
Vaccines do not cause autism.
Crosby is a very disturbed individual and has some kind of obsessive interest in me. It's all part of the darker side of this vaccine thing: it's crank magnet effect.
His obsessions have included him fantasizing that I had stopped him reading my website (as if I have some kind of loon blocker (if only...), going through online copies of The Sunday Times looking for differences with what's on my website (he wouldn't know about the impact of edition changes), becoming so fixated with my various journalism awards that he started giving out journalism awards in the name of his abusive little blog.
I can't believe that anyone would be fooled into thinking that I'd contribute value to his ridiculous rants, much less do it in a pretend name. No, I think he just made it up to give him a pretext of abusing me.
But he needs to be a little careful. If he joins the list with Martin Walker, Carol Stott and David Lewis, he might make quite a nice few paragraphs in something that will stick to him for the rest of his life.
@BD - don't worry, he's already ruined any chances of having a "normal" career with his decision to follow the Milo & alt-rabbit rabbits down their hole.
He had enough working against him, but as other individuals with his condition have proven, it is possible to be very successful and lead what most people would consider a normal life.
Unfortunately, he's too far gone at this point. I can't say we didn't at least try to warn him, years ago....
This is great! In response to the vitamin A information, even the regulars on this blog are admitting that being well-nourished is key in avoiding complications and death from all kinds of illnesses like measles. That makes sense, given the dramatic decline in deaths from common diseases in the industrialized world in the first half of the 20th century, long before the vaccines. Along with things like good sanitation, and generally trying to ensure that children weren't living in squalor and working hard labor.
@NROW, Ooooh, the sanitation crap sneaks in! Well done loon. Try looking up morbidity vs mortality. I won't give away the details for you to twist but suffice it to say vaccines did the heavy lifting, not a sanitary sewer.
Why don't you produce some evidence that vaccination improves *ALL-CAUSE* morbidity and mortality? People have been waiting for it for years, but still, nothing.
Possibly because
(a) "ALL-CAUSE morbidity" is a phrase that makes no sense whatsoever, to anyone who'd try to define it; and
(b) "ALL_CAUSE mortality" is still 100% ("In the long run, we're all dead."), and that's not likely to ever change, as improvement or degradation.
Nice try. It's not complicated. If people get vaccinated and it prevents expression of the symptoms of that disease for 80% of them, but they have higher rates of diabetes, encephalitis, neurological problems, epilepsy, paralysis, SIDS, etc., those factors are considered in a measure of all-cause morbidity and mortality--not just whether or not they had the symptoms of the disease.
The aim of vaccination is prevention of the disease, not just suppression of overt symptoms. In the case of measles, for example, there's the two-year (or so) compromise of the immune system to consider—a compromise that is absent in the vaccinated folks. This compromise may be independent of the other symptoms.
Except for Influenza, is there a vaccine that is effective for only 80%? The efficacy numbers I've seen run in the high 90's.
Higher rates over what time span? Higher than what?
How about other AoA-reported adversities appearing in VAERS (and the Strine equivalent), like auto accidents and turning into an Incredible Hulk? Is there an inclusive list of those morbidities that count vs those that don't, with objective reasons for inclusion or exclusion?
-btw-
RFK jr is NOT anti-fish: in fact, he led an effort to clean up the Hudson RIver- which benefitted fish
But seriously...
I was glad to run into Oliver's show as a repeat the other day.
( also, I find Jake's continued insistence on Becky/ Brian hilarious. He hasn't the skill to sort people out by their writing as of yet.
To be fair, Jake's chances at a "normal" career were pretty much over when he hooked up with the loons at AoA, long before Milo and the alt-idiots came along. The Internet has a long memory.
I'd agree that it isn't necessary to publish anything pointing out his disturbed behavior. He's like the Westboro Babtist Church and NWOR - the best way to show the world how silly they are is to just let them talk.
It isn't a big mystery why Jake hates Brian Deer. Deer proved "Doctor" Wakefield was a bad man. If Jake can prove Deer is a bad man, the by "Jake's Reflexive Property", "Doctor" Wakefield must be good, and then someday "Doctor" Wakefield might give 2 $hits and a popsicle about Jake, and Jake will be a 'big damn hero'.
Oh, NWO..you are SO pathetic. No one denies that you can more readily resist some diseases and complications with being well nourished. However, it doesn't mean you won't catch them or suffer complications. It doesn't prevent you from catching very spreadable diseases like the measles.
You know what does prevent diseases better? Vaccines. Even people who are poorly nourished and have rotton sanitation can avoid VPDs with vaccines.
Naturally, it is up to each individual to decide whether the risks of vaccination are outweighed by the possible benefits. The problems arise when people try to impose their opinion about that on others by coercion or force.
Fifty-odd years ago, when I was an early card-carrying Libertarian, the objection was to "force or fraud", not just force (which necessarily includes coercion as a proper subset). I find it interesting that so many of you have dropped 'fraud' as being problematic. Perhaps it has to do with the propensity o people using that mantra to substitute unsupported personal opinion for reality in their products.
So, NWO, how do you feel about a strain of rice that was specifically modified to be high in vitamin A, the so-called Golden Rice?
@ Johnny:
Have you ever noticed the wild hatred that alties have for people with legit degrees or careers (like Orac, Brian, various folk we know, many of us)?
I imagine it has something to do with the fact that they - deep down inside- have the realisation that their positions are in fact quite bogus and fictional.
Unless of course, they're totally gone.
NWO Distorter @164
.
I believe you have just proven my point.
.
Commenters have previously pointed out that you are using the term "dox" incorrectly. It certainly does not apply to using Information that a person published about herself to discuss possible causes for her failures in rational discourse.
.
However, since every post begins with a blank slate in your world you can't be expected to remember that.
NWO Distorter @164
.
I believe you have just proven my point.
.
Commenters have previously pointed out that you are using the term "dox" incorrectly. It certainly does not apply to using Information that a person published about herself to discuss possible causes for her failures in rational discourse.
.
However, since every post begins with a blank slate in your world you can't be expected to remember that.
Nice try, but the only thing I have published about myself on this site is my screen name. Wherever else you searched to obtain my real name, my occupation, where I work, and other personal information, it is clearly doxing, and your purpose in doing it clearly to harass, intimidate or threaten me. All the while, hiding like a woos behind your own anonymity.
Doxing violates the terms of service of most legitimate news, information and opinion sites. Apparently, this one isn’t among them. But that doesn't make your actions lawful.
I'm betting it's something you hate, since you like whining as opposed to things that might make life better.
@ Brian Deer
'Crank magnetism' – the premise that anyone who has gone down one crank rabbit-hole will likely go down any crank rabbit hole – is not really a thing, and short-circuits analyses of why people believe what they do. There are many, many, many such rabbit holes, and even a crank like Mr. Crosby stays away from the vast majority of them.
When folks subscribe to multiple crankeries, there's a reason. Crankery has a function, it's a response to some psychological need. Someone might hold to two different and contradictory crankeries to stabilize two different and contradictory psychological conflicts. Or two seemingly different crankeries might work together to address a single source of angst in ways that are non-obvious, figurative, idiosyncratic, etc.
Because we have come to know Crosby's virtual self through his anti-vax sentiments expressed online, we all tend to see "this vaccine thing" as the central, primary, defining and driving element of his persona. But it's not, necessarily. I wouldn't presume to offer anything like a diagnosis of him, but I can imagine a few possible scenarios in which his anti-vax is not cause but symptom – and a secondary one that that – of some deeper core issue. For example, something like a personality disorder rooted in childhood trauma could have been expressing itself as self-inflating paranoid obsessions before he was old enough to understand the details of vaccine-autism conspiracy theory...
One thing I can say with confidence: for any of us, the paths into our psyche are not holes that go down into some single cavern. Follow the rabbit, and you wind up in a amazingly convoluted rabbit warren, or a briar patch...
I wouldn't count on him heeding your warning to be careful. Alas, there probably are other anti-vax cranks who'd imagine you might goad him under the guise of a sock puppet. But, well, they're just a handful of fringers, acting wacko to no significant consequence, and that sort of thing probably comes with the territory for anyone who has a prominent byline in The Sunday Times, yes? Or, to put it in web lingo, Jake's a troll. Trolls are best ignored, as feeding them just makes them troll more (like NWOR, here). I'm thinking Jake might well love being on a list with Walker, Stott and Lewis, and that whatever stuck to him from that would be a badge he'd not just wear proudly but show off at a every opportunity for the rest of his life.
Dude, he got you to acknowledge him here. That was a knock-on on your part, and he just scored a try. But he can't even get the ball if you just stay off the pitch, and the couple dozen of his fans that showed up in the stands to watch him will go home if there's no contest to see, leaving him, as they say, just playing with himself.
Well, the outcomes of the Spanish Flu did put a pretty huge dent into the idea that younger & healthier was a good thing - it was young men and women in their twenties, in good health, who died at rates significantly higher than either children or the elderly.
It does go to show that each disease can be very different - and trying to say that all you have to be is healthy and well-nourished to survive is extremely over-simplistic.
@NWOR (#169)-As MI Dawn pointed out above, nobody was denying that malnourished patients have a higher risk of complications or death from diseases like measles, but if you are unvaccinated and you are exposed to a measles patient, there is a 90% chance that you will contract measles, no matter how well-nourished you are, AND even previously healthy, well-nourished patients in developed countries can die from measles.
About 13 out of every 1,000 measles patients will develop encephalitis, for example, and as there is no specific treatment for measles, nothing more can be done for the patients that develop encephalitis from measles than could be done for them 50 years ago.
I suppose you're talking about measles patients who seek medical care. Prior to the vaccine, only about 1 in 10 did that because it was so mild. Also, to make a meaningful comparison, it's necessary to know how many children who received the MMR vaccine will develop encephalitis from it--or any other serious adverse event, for that matter.
One of the staples of the anti-vax religion is that a couple of sitcoms "prove" that measles was not thought of as serious. In those sitcoms, however, 100% of the seven measles cases received medical attention while under quarantine. One was quarantined in the doctor's home to keep from being recognized at the hospital; the other six were quarantined in their own home and the doctors made house calls. Are you in a mood to contradict that portion of your propaganda?
I had medical attention for my measles, too, quarantined at home. I guess that makes me another one of your ten-percenters.
Yeah, good point. Medical care was sought in only 10% of measles cases, but even among those 10% of cases, many were not particularly serious nor were there complications. The parents just preferred to consult a doctor. :)
Your support for this claim would be exactly what? Maybe it's just like all the rest of the unsupportable claims made by the anti-vax industry.
@PGP (#177)-Yes, there is a lot of overlap (in my experience) between anti-vaxxers and those who are convinced that GMO food is dangerous. Those types of people feel that anything that is not "natural" must automatically be harmful.
There's no evidence that vaccines have improved *ALL-CAUSE* morbidity or mortality at all. The new pilot study comparing the overall health of fully vaccinated and fully unvaccinated children gives a good indication that vaccines have been much more destructive than helpful. But that really isn't surprising.
What study might that be? The "study" that AoA recruited anti-vaxxers for so as to bias pre-determine the results?
@NWOR-Also, you should look at the dramatic decline in cases of severe disease caused by haemophilus influenzae type b (HIB). A vaccine against HIB came out about 25 years ago, and almost immediately the incidence of severe illness caused by HIB dropped sharply-if I recall correctly cases of meningitis caused by HIB had declined by at least 95% within 10 years of the introduction of the vaccine.
HIB used to be the most common cause of bacterial meningitis in children, prior to the introduction of the vaccine in the late 80s or early 90s (my uncle had bacterial meningitis as a child in the mid 1970s, and has been deaf ever since-most likely HIB was responsible for his illness). Now meningitis caused by HIB is very rare in the U.S..
How are you going to explain that away? Are you going to try to make the ludicrous claim that nutrition and sanitation has improved markedly since 1990?
@NWOR (#171)-How about this?
Aaby, Peter, et al. "Non-specific beneficial effect of measles immunisation: analysis of mortality studies from developing countries." Bmj 311.7003 (1995): 481-485.
@ Denice
I'm not anti-Phish, but I do think infants can be harmed by receiving too much jamming all at once, and jam band injections ought to be given in smaller doses, spaced out over time, preferably ending at graduation from college.
@NWOR (#180)-Even an uncomplicated case of measles is not mild-it's 1-2 weeks of misery, and unless the patient/patient's family was unable to afford medical care, or lived in a remote area where medical care was difficult to access, I would imagine that, even when it was "normal" for children to get measles, a doctor would have been notified.
Also, I believe that measles was a notifiable disease even before the vaccine was introduced in 1963, so whenever a doctor saw a measles patient, they'd be required to report it.
But let's just look at more recent measles outbreaks, where there isn't any risk of under-reporting.
Between 1989 and 1991, 55,000 cases of measles occurred in the U.S., and more than 11,000 of those patients required hospitalization. Of the 55,000 who contracted measles, at least 123 died, including a number of previously healthy children in Philadelphia who were unvaccinated because their parents belonged to a fundamentalist Christian church that rejected vaccination. If I recall correctly, 9 children in Philadelphia died of measles in 1991-with 5 of them dying in a 10 day period.
In 2011, a measles outbreak occurred in Minnesota's Somali community. 21 patients contracted measles in that outbreak (which was far smaller than the most recent outbreak in MN, which has infected 78), and of the 21 patients infected in 2011, 14 (67%) required hospitalization.
Yeah, interesting. Before the vaccine, there were an estimated 3.5 million cases of measles every year in the US. Only 1 in 10 of those cases was ever reported, because most cases were so mild they didn't require medical care, and deaths and serious complications were rare.
Now, decades after the vaccine has been in widespread use, there's a panic over 21 cases of measles, and we hear that more than half of them require hospitalization. Has the vaccine caused the natural measles virus to get more virulent? Are people that much weaker? Are we being lied to? Or are there perhaps hundred or thousands more cases of measles that are so mild they don't require medical care at all, just like it used to be? It would be good to have an answer for that.
It's obvious, Johnny. In the anti-vax religion, if it's a vaccine-preventable disease, it's by definition not serious. A "serious disease" is one that doesn't interfere with or contradict the anti-vaxxers' beliefs.
@NWOR (#173)-But there is absolutely no evidence that vaccinations increase the risk of any of the conditions you mentioned.
In fact, vaccination decreases the risk of SIDS, and having had the HIB vaccine has been shown, in at least one study, to decrease the risk of childhood leukemia (the latter is a spurious finding, perhaps, but at the very least is proof that it doesn't increase the risk of leukemia).
[Homer Simpson Voice]
D'oh!
[/HSV]
Jonas: "Also, I believe that measles was a notifiable disease even before the vaccine was introduced in 1963, so whenever a doctor saw a measles patient, they’d be required to report it."
Yes, it was. Which is why I can post a table of measles incidence starting in 1912:
From http://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/99statab/sec31.pdf
It is one reason for the existance of the 1914 measles statistics paper I posted (A STATISTICAL STUDY OF MEASLES (1914)). Apparently the statisticians had a better handle of the danger from measles than practicing medical doctors. Read the frustration the author of that paper has about some doctors on the last page.
According to the CDC: "Before measles vaccine was licensed in 1963, an average of 400,000 measles cases were reported each year in the United States. However, because virtually all children acquired measles, the number of cases probably approached 3.5 million per year." https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00053391.htm
Only about 1 in 10 cases was ever reported, because in 9 out of 10 cases, no medical care was required. :)
FTFY. Up until the 1960's or so, the hospital was considered to be where you were taken to die, not to get better. Nobody wanted to be taken o the hospital, nor to have their kids taken there.
Let's also talk about the overall infectiousness of measles - without vaccines, we would be assured of hundreds of thousands of cases (at minimum) per year, means even at 10% hospitalizations, that's tens of thousands of additional people (kids) needing treatment.
And where will those beds come from? We're already seeing gaps in hospital coverage....not to mention the fact that these kids would be quarantined, and the attendant economic dislocations which would occur.
There are a number of reasons why vaccines were first developed - almost none of them revolved around the idea of someone getting rich.
Jonas, as far as the 1990 measles epidemic goes, it really had an impact in California, especially for their Medicaid program:
Pediatric hospital admissions for measles. Lessons from the 1990 epidemic.
"Only about 1 in 10 cases was ever reported, because in 9 out of 10 cases, no medical care was required"
Do you have a cite to back that claim about criteria for reporting measles, or is it pulled out of your posterior like virtually everything else you tell us?
And guess who'd benefit, significantly from all of those new cases of disease?
Big Pharma, who'd be selling drugs and supplies to these hospitals and doctors in an attempt to treat all of these cases....not to mention the huge rise in the use of antibiotics to deal with secondary infections and cases of pneumonia which would naturally occur as a result of widespread measles infections.
NWOR,
Did you know that in a generalized way you are consuming a vaccinated product everyday? All most all public drinking water within the US (even bottled water) has at some point been chlorinated. In some cases the chlorine maybe removed (that is why some bottled water costs so much). Chlorine is used for one purpose; to kill off pathogens. There are some health issues with chlorine by-products such that you may see an increase of 1 stomach cancer per million people per lifetime (70 years). When you compare this to when the City of Detroit did not chlorinate its drinking water (early 1900's) to when they began chlorinating the water supply: Cholera deaths dropped from over 10,000 per year to under a 1000. Which odds appear better death from cholera or 1 in a million per 70 years increased chance of stomach cancer. The same can be said for vaccines that we use directly in our bodies: yes there is some small risk but the benefits far out weigh the risks not only for an individual but also for society,
So, you're saying that ingesting water that has been sterilized with chlorine is essentially the same as injecting (for example) tissue culture infectious doses of measles, mumps and rubella virus, sorbitol, sodium phosphate, sucrose, sodium chloride, hydrolyzed gelatin, recombinant human albumin, fetal bovine serum and neomycin into my muscle tissues?
I sure hope your comment was a joke, because I'm ROTFL. :D
Quick, someone give kids with measles some cake! You'll need:
4 eggs
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
2 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 cups grated carrots
1 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup butter, softened
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
4 cups confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped pecans
Then do this:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan.
In a large bowl, beat together eggs, oil, white sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla.
Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir in carrots. Fold in pecans. Pour into prepared pan.
Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.
To Make Frosting: In a medium bowl, combine butter, cream cheese, confectioners' sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Stir in chopped pecans. Frost the cooled cake.
When you made clear on your web site our host's 'nym, real name, places of employment, and (some) sources of funding, was that doxing?
What about when you included a photo of Dorit?
Dammit... HTML fail.
I have the sads now.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It happens to me all the time - see 201 & 204
Can a brother get a 'preview' button up in this place?
Jonas: Yeah, GMO paranoia and anti-vax ideas do tend to go together. Also racism, though it tends to be divided between white saviorism and out and out auditioning for the Klan.
Injecting sodium chloride, sucrose and albumin into human beings is against the Geneva Convention - and against the nonexistent social contract!
Won't someone stop this evil, or at least post it to their Facebook page?
In fact a lot of information about you can be easily gleaned from your own website. Which you advertise here. If you didn't want people to know this information, you should have chosen a nym that didn't advertise your website.
I doubt you have been the subject of real harassment, of having people call your home phone and leave threatening messages for your family to pick up. Because this has happened to me, I don't accept your crocodile tears. Grow up.
Since Ginny doesn't understand doxing let me help. THIS is doxing: a picture of Ginny and her BFFs.
.
https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/19554138_1606491136048865…
Jake has decided to weigh in on the John Oliver piece. Of course, being Jake, it's really a lightweight response.
One other thing I've noticed.
The AoA article on the Quackenboss blog post has a malformed link at the end. The link 'Read the rest at Levi's site here' doesn't work in a most spectacular way.
We know the anti-vaxers won't read citations we give them, but they don't even read the links from their own sites, otherwise somebody would have reported it.
Jake's title for his rant: "John Oliver Proves He Knows Vaccine Injury Like He Does Islamic Terrorism"
So John Oliver does Islamic Terrorism? "...Like He Knows Islamic Terrorism." Fixed that for you, Jake.
When he tried vlogging, I suggested to Jake that he get himself a nice 4k camera and a microphone. Now that he continues to try writing, maybe we should start a Go Fund Me page to buy him a writing course? It'll come in handy for his doctoral dissertation.
What a great segment. To bad he didn't point out that Bob Sears's waiting room is a great place to get measles because of the lack of herd immunity there.
The herd immunity theory was based on observations in the early 20th century that infectious disease seemed to lose its capacity to infect and spread after more than half the people in a community had been infected and developed life-long immunity to the disease.
Isn't it true that vaccination immunity is often temporary, doc? Don't vaccines sometimes fail to provide immunity at all, or allow people to be silent carriers? How do you know when someone in your waiting room has strayed from the herd and lost their immunity?
FTFY, correcting some misstatements of fact.
<i?[I'll offer a response that MadisonMD, using his knowledge and medical judgement, might or might not choose to endorse.] Once in a great while, particular people might not respond to a particular vaccination by showing immunity to the target VPD. These people are taken into account in herd immunity calculations; in particular, how many vaccinations for each VPD should be given to provide herd immunity for that disease.
Again, that is taken into account in the calculations showing how many people need to be vaccinated for each VPD to achieve herd immunity for that disease.
The likelihood, small though it may be, for the Typhoid Mary phenomenon is taken into account in the herd immunity calculations.
You don't know, because there's no need to know, as long as the community has reached herd immunity.
Caveat: if you are Bob Sears, or someone of his ilk, you have taught your patients to "hide in the herd". Thus, the waiting rooms of these clowns is likely to not provide herd immunity protection for his patients, having a large concentration of unvaccinated people. MadisonMD would not encourage his patients to so endanger themselves and each other.
Burying unpleasant realities with word salad is obviously your gig. The more unpleasant the reality, the bigger the word salad.
I admit that my writing style is oriented towards adults; it's also useful for literate people who aren't yet adults. Perhaps I should apologize for overestimating your literacy.
I will offer to explain any words and sentences that you perceive as word salad. Maybe I can get it down to whatever semi-literate level you need. Just ask.
Yes, I'm trying to reduce the unpleasantness you may feel by confronting you with reality cushioned by massive explanation. Should I not be concerned with how you might accept reality—perhaps because you're not willing to accept it anyway?
In todays article " John Oliver Proves He Knows Vaccine Injury Like He Does Islamic Terrorism", Jake provides a link to a previous article of his from New Years Eve 2016, .........." Happy New Year: the Lancet Acknowledges Dr Andrew Wakefield is Exonerated", where he stated that The Lancet Ombudsman, Dr Malcolm Moyneux "did acknowledge that the UK General Medical Council's findings of misconduct against Dr Wakefield had been overturned".
I wrote to Dr Molneux for clarification of this and received the following as a response...........
"There are no grounds for Mr Crosby's claim that The Lancet or its Ombudsman 'acknowledge that the UK General Medical Council's findings of misconduct against Dr Wakefield had been overturned'. I assume that Mr Crosby may have confused the court ruling in favour of Professor Walker-Smith with a vindication of Dr Wakefield. The court ruling was only about Prof Walker-Smith and was irrelevant both to the issue of retraction of Dr Wakefield's paper, and to the issue of the GMC's findings in Dr Wakefield's case."
Wendy, others have noted similar examples Crosby's behavior:
http://blogs.plos.org/thepanicvirus/2013/07/25/crosbys-labyrinth-or-why…
There's no reason to drag out the Winston soleicism.
I agree that Jake could do with a writing course. A critical thinking course might be more useful. However, Jake won't be writing a dissertation anytime soon, so a writing course would be wasted for that.
I was thinking an ethics course might be useful for you, Chris...but I suppose it would be wasted on you.
Just like a basic arithmetic course would be wasted on one who is already numerate, a basic English course would be wasted on someone already literate, or a basic civics course would be wasted on one who's been there (or someone like you who denies the basis of civilization), so too an ethics course would be wasted on someone who, unlike you, has demonstrated understanding and use of ethics and behaves in an ethical fashion.
A question please, Virginia Stone -
If I wanted to understand the difference between the (according to you) illegal 'doxing' that, according to you, you were the subject of on this very blog, and the (what I can only assume are legal) facts you disclosed both on your site and YouTube about our host and Dorit, which courses should I take?
See http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2017/06/27/surprise-john-olivers-vacc…
We'll get back to the difference between mild and serious diseases later.
I am afraid NWO Troll is unaware of how much of her personal information she has provided freely on teh internets.
My middle kid was stalked via Facebook over ten years ago. Helped a bit by their uncommon last name. Youngest kid learned from this and used another more common family name, but then quit Facebook when their security protocols changed enough to let them be exposed to those other than their actual factual friends.
Ms. Virginia Stone needs to work harder to hide.
There is no mistaking this as a threat. You are truly despicable. You hide because you are corrupt, not because you are afraid.
Using the obvious antecedent of "this", then "this" is obviously a threat to Chris's middle kid. Did you misspeak such that "this" should have been written to have some other meaning?
Yes, of course it's despicable to protect your children from internet stalking. Uh huh.
What evidence do you present that Chris is, in any way, corrupt? "Despicable" is but an opinion, so all one can do is ignore it with it's lack of grounding; "corrupt" is a fact claim, for which an honest person would have and provide evidentiary support.
It's somehow wrong for Chris to be afraid of internet stalking of the children she's responsible to protect? How bizarre that you would claim this. What evidence do you have to support this fact claim?
You can't make a big enough word salad to bury this whopper, Espol. But at least you gave it a shot.
So you find the reality too unpleasant to handle, despite the "word salad" I use to cushion you from it? I'll keep explaining reality to you as long as I find it enjoyable, even though I know how you resist it.
Ms. Stone, what have you done to protect yourself? The fact people know who your are, where you live and where you work indicates you have been very very sloppy.
I am not the threat, I am just a warning. I personally know as a parent what happens when a child is being stalked. I answered those phone calls. I even answered the door bell... yes, they got that close. It was scary.
The internet is not a safe place, and you need to guard your privacy. Telling you that this is a very real does not make me "corrupt." In fact, I am actually worried about you and your family.
What do you expect me to do, Chrisscumbag-- thank you for refusing to use my screen name? You use everyone else's screen name--except anyone who speaks out about the dangers and inefficacy of vaccines. You do it to intimidate and threaten. You're a schoolyard bully of the most despicable kind.
Oh dear Ginny, you just asploded my irony meter.
It does not surprise me that your irony meter is out of sync. You probably read the Vaccine Injury Compensation data for entertainment.
A JD from the University of Nebraska? Ginny, you previously had my curiosity but you definitely now have my attention.
I don't give a flying fυck how you refer to me. Shіt, given the number of moronic attempts to come up with a name-based insult that I've seen, the combinatorial problem is more interesting.
Protip, asshοle: One is unlikely to find Dick Alpert bitching and moaning about not being addressed by his fυcking trademark. They covered that in law school, right?
The irony, it burns.
Tish, tosh. We are (tinw) the New World Order, and you enlisted when you signed up for your Texas Bar serial number, Jezebel. Expect to be addressed with it.
NWOR (Ginny) - shouldn't be throwing stones....glass houses & all that.
Aw, the poor NWO Troll is upset and having a temper tantrum. Poor thing. For some reason she does not understand that her bizarre videos that include insulting speculations on those who comment on this blog pretty much make her a target for the same kind of treatment.
I guess I had to explain Lawrence reference to "glass houses."
Five'll get you ten that she's resorted to coaching from Rappoport more than once in this debacle.
all you had to do was skim the abstract to see it provided exactly what you are demanding
Contrary to popular opinion, "reading the whole paper" is more likely to provide an understanding of its contents and implications than "skimming the abstract". Assuming, of course, that an understanding of the paper is the objective.
Says the doctor who claims the importance of vitamin A in preventing blindness "failed to find its way into any of my ophthalmology textbooks." LOL. :D
Unlike the questions that have been asked of you, these questions have been taken care of. Maybe if I were to put it in legalistic terms of art: "asked and answered".
Does some loon here deny that vaccines induce herd immunity because each injection only produces immunity in 90 to 95% of individuals?
How bizarre.
No, MadisonMD--you should read more carefully. You made the bizarre claim that the waiting room of one of your colleagues was contaminated with measles, but yours was not. The questions posed to you were:
Isn’t it true that vaccination immunity is often temporary, doc? Don’t vaccines sometimes fail to provide immunity at all, or allow people to be silent carriers? How do you know when someone in your waiting room has strayed from the herd and lost their immunity?
Somehow, my reply to this got put under an earlier NWOR comment, so I'll repeat it here:
Unlike the questions that have been asked of you, these questions have been taken care of. Maybe if I were to put it in legalistic terms of art: “asked and answered”.
You seem to enjoy inserting yourself as a (poor) mouthpiece for others. The question was not asked of you.
That's why I offered my reply, subject to correction by MadisonMD.
The questions were asked of a public comment section of a blog. So, yes, it was asked of MMD, of me and of anyone else who might wish to reply. The questions themselves were asked in public because, from their phrasing, they were designed to be a public embarrassment to MMD, unless MMD were to be very careful in answering them.
Original claim:
blindness from measles…it’s due to vitamin A deficiency
Goalpost-shifted version:
the doctor who claims the importance of vitamin A in preventing blindness “failed to find its way into any of my ophthalmology textbooks.”
A squid-cloud of mendacity about what NWOR and other people wrote is clearly not going to fool anyone, so what is the point of it?
Bob Sears' waiting room is almost certainly a veritable disease swarm, given that he openly admitted in a 2014 LA Times article that only 50% of his patients are vaccinated (http://www.latimes.com/local/orangecounty/la-me-adv-vaccines-doctor-bob…):
While the vast majority of physicians are troubled by the anti-vaccination movement, Sears, 45, lends a sympathetic ear. About half his patients forgo vaccines altogether. To others, he offers "Dr. Bob's" alternative and selective vaccination schedules, which delay or eliminate certain immunizations.
At a conference this year in Rancho Mirage, Sears told a roomful of pregnant women, new mothers and healthcare professionals that vaccines work well and are responsible for the nation's low disease rate, something parents who don't want to immunize can take advantage of.
"I do think the disease danger is low enough where I think you can safely raise an unvaccinated child in today's society," he said. "It may not be good for the public health. But … for your individual child, I think it is a safe enough choice."
Sears is despicable. As a pediatrician I state (as I have often) that Sears deserves to lose his license for what he has done to public health in Orange County (and across the USA with his scummy books). Sears also should have been expelled from the AAP years ago but the AAP is too cowardly to take a stand against him. It is no surprise that Orange County had not just one measles outbreak (the "Disneyland" one everyone knows of) but also had an earlier outbreak of 21 cases in March of 2014, just 9 months before the "Disneyland" outbreak. Pin the blame for both those outbreaks squarely on Sears. If there were any justice, all the profits he's made off his "Vaccine Books" would have been seized by the OC Health Department and used to offset the millions they spent battling those measles outbreaks.
Has this already been taken care of, or do I need to "walk to the corner" (where I do have legitimate credentials)?
I think that NWOR has taken care of any and all suspicion that she might actually have found a citation that means what she claims it to mean. If you wish to check it out for your own amusement—and ours—I suggest you feel free.
Jesus Fυcking Christ, you're neither Peckinpah nor Huston, Gindo. But, but . . . "questions," you say? Would you like to play a game? It may or may not involve Mr. Matrix, diatomaceous earth, and the word "rim," but let's begin at the beginning.
@NWOR: you're silly. You left enough information all over various comments that pulling it all together - especially from your own website - is child's play.
Your claim that 9 out of 10 cases of measles were "mild" prior to vaccination because they didn't call the doctor or go to the hospital is really funny. Maybe because you're a lawyer, you don't understand the economics of those days: doctors and hospitals cost a lot of money, and health insurance in those days wasn't as robust as it is now.
So, you didn't call the doctor unless the children were really sick. You called the neighborhood public health nurse (a lot more common in most areas), or a neighbor who used to be a nurse, or one who was currently a nurse. Or you called a friend who was a nurse. All less expensive forms of seeking help.
Example: My father, in the 1960s, brought home about $200/month. Out of that money, he had a mortgage, car payment, and a family of 5 to feed, cloth and keep warm. Paying $10 for a house call or $25 for an office visit put a huge dent in the budget. Forget hospitalization - the insurance (some of the best for the era) - covered only 60% of a daily charge, leaving the family to pay the remaining 40%.
So no, people didn't call the doctor or go to the hospital unless it was life or death. They coped and hoped for the best most of the time. It was pure economics. And yes, it led to underreporting of cases (if the doctor or nurse didn't know, then it wasn't reported).
I thought you were about my age, since you mention grandchildren. Obviously, you are much younger, or lived in a much more affluent area instead of my middle class one. From my age group of baby boomers, we remember.
And here we see the tactic known as JAQing Off.
@Julian Frost: and the simple answer to her JAQing off is "if they are sick with a VPD, then you know they have lost their immunity, dummy. Whether they had it from the disease or vaccine and it waned, or never developed it from a vaccine, or were never vaccinated at all is rather irrelevant at that point". As far as being a "silent carrier"...typhoid can be silently carried. Most vaccines don't lead to a shedding state (OPV being an exception). Other illnesses aren't quite so silent - pertussis as an example. While you might not know it's pertussis in the beginning, you're still sick and coughing.
But NWOR doesn't have the mental capacity to figure out these basic things, I guess.
MIDawn: health insurance in those days wasn’t as robust as it is now.
I realize you're a nurse, so you're fully insured, but for a lot of people, health insurance is a joke. I barely use mine. I've been lying about my ADD and depression on the medical update forms they give you so I won't be kicked off. I had to pay, on my own for the stitches I got when I cut my thumb, and I'm honestly scared of what happens if I get anything more serious. I'm lucky they pay for shots! (And I'll probably be kicked out anyway.)
Basically, health insurance is like quantum physics, purely theory and doesn't work on the ground.
The only bright side of the insurance was that I was able to get my shots before my nieph arrived. I had a friend who had pertussis in college, and I'm not inflicting that misery on anyone, especially not my family.
@PGP: I am aware it's still not good for many, many people. Mine is good, but not as good as it was 12 years ago. I really wish we had universal healthcare like most enlightened first world countries.
@ sadmar:
" Jam band injections" ha ha ha ha
-btw- I just returned from your neck of the ( non) woods
re Jake on John Oliver
He calls JO 'sad'...
I wonder where he got that adjective?
Yes, I'm sure he does. Frequently.
MIDawn: I doubt I'll see it in my generation. God's against universal health care, after all. (Things he's also against: old people and kids not starving to death, women not dying in childbirth, science, clean air and water, trees and well, basically everything.)
@PGP...strange how God's against that only in the US...
John Oliver says,
Wakefield is the Lance Armstrong of doctors.
MJD says,
Others would say Wakefield is the Floyd Landis of doctors.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2017/07/03/lance-armstrong-wants-…
Q. What do bicycle tires and vaccines have in common.
A. They can have opposite spins.
@MI Dawn,
Clearly those other people are Godless foreigners. <ducks quickly>
@MOB: snorfle. I guess I'm a Godless (I keep typing Goldless...they're both accurate, anyway...) foreigner, then. Must be the fault of my Canadian side of the family.
God IS is not just an American, not just a red-blooded patriotic American, not just a red-blooded patriotic American conservative Republican, not just a red-blooded patriotic American conservative Republican evangelical, but a commie and towelhead and faggot and liberal multi-culti hating red-blooded patriotic American conservative Republican. And He doesn't have much use for the French, either, though that's redundant since I already noted He hates fags.
I don't like God very much...
Hasa diga Eebowai
MIDawn: Europe's just given up listening to HIM, same with most South and Central American countries, and Canada.
Sadmar: Pretty much, yeah. I've given up on even dinnertime grace, and while I've considered joining a church, it's less about faith and more about 'if I want to get into politics' and networking.
sadmar - God also eats apple pie with a slice of cheddar cheese for breakfast.
Hey O'Brien, you've reminded me how good that pie is with cheese.
Too bad God doesn't exist or eat pie.
Jane, are you sure that non-existent gods don't eat yummyyummy apple pie with cheese (or maybe à la mode)?
@ Narad:
Of course, he says *sad*- just like his head bro/ honcho/ el Presidente .
MOB, so god is a Vermonter? That ... doesn't explain as much as I would hope.
Justatech: He can't be. Vermont's too liberal.
The gods of the valley are not the gods of the hills.
Perhaps the reference was too obscure. See "I want a bud who can come live with me during storm season."
A wee bit off topic, but I'm catching up on older e-mails and ran into an interesting CDC's Emerging Infectious Disease vector borne disease report from 24 June.
Live cell therapy related Q fever. Again. International. Again.
Because injecting fetal cells to prolong one's life doesn't make one sheeple of a diseased sort or something. ;)
Profit over testing one's donor animals. But then, woo peddlers aren't really big on protecting their "patients".
BTW, how did they finally resolve the difficulties in killing the polio virus reliably after the Cutter incident and other producers found similar problems (which didn't pass muster and get distributed)?
Don't mind me, took a couple of weeks off and am having a bit of insomnia, secondary to neurological pain in my index finger. About 3 weeks or so ago, I was cutting open a plastic jacketed electronic device to extract the battery and literally sliced my index finger at the end of the proximal phalax, across the joint, down to the bone, which severed/damaged whatever nerve it is that provides sensation for nearly half of the upper and lateral side of that digit. While the wound has pretty much fully healed, the nerve is extremely angry tonight.
Abducting the digit seriously aggravates things, not that I'll not challenge it.
I am fortunate in one way, I do heal faster than normal from various, occasionally, truly serious injuries. But, I've forgotten how much fun neural regeneration of peripheral nerves isn't!
As for antivaxer big sads, good for their sad. Dead babies give me a big sad.
I have a candidate for all-time dumbest antivax t-shirt. Amaze your friends.
https://www.amazon.com/unisex-child-Children-Anti-Vaccine-T-Shirt-Aware…
Sorry. All of this is incredibly ignorant. You must at least wa5ch with intellectual honesty:
Traced Amounts
Vaxxed
The Greater Good.
This is all the time i have for your lot. If only you really knew.
Um. I've actually watched two out of those three movies. They are pure bullshit. See:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/11/18/anti-vaccine-propaganda-la…
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2016/07/18/in-which-andrew-wakefield-…
@Orac, #25—Ur obviously doin it rong. The instructions were to watch their bullshit movies "with intellectual honesty". To anyone from the anti-vax religion, "with intellectual honesty" doesn't mean what it means in English: instead it means "with extreme gullibility".
I love John Oliver but due to the sacred cow status of vaccines, EVEN HE got this one wrong. It is extremely important to thoroughly investigate the most educated detractors on a subject before deciding that they are wrong. Obviously, he did not do this. I believe that he is open minded enough to have put himself firmly on the OTHER SIDE of this argument, had he made sure to at least listen to the world experts on the other side. I teach this in my classes every year and give students both sides to investigate. I even have a section of video presentation on my web site for people open minded enough to examine both sides. Maybe in the future, he will learn how much of what he said during this episode WAS WRONG
"WAS WRONG"
Such as? One example will do. With a credible citation.
"I believe that he is open minded enough to have put himself firmly on the OTHER SIDE of this argument, had he made sure to at least listen to the world experts on the other side."
OKay, Mr. Getoff, tell us about that "OTHER SIDE." Be sure to support your statements with PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers.
Oh, wow!
Oh jeez, Getoff is a just a naturopath.
He promotes all kinds of garbage, including coffee enemas to cure cancer. His website is a treasure trove of nonsense, lies and first-rate quackery.
I think we can safely disregard anything he says.
For example, here's his "I can cure your cancer with diet" page:
http://www.naturopath4you.com/IfYouHaveCancer.htm
The link embedded in my "wow" is to a $400 DVD set where he is listed as both the actor and director. This amusing:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-getoff-a4656833/
Since he has claims about diet, I think he mixed up John Oliver with Jamie Oliver. They are two completely different people.
And he post four and five hour-long YouTube videos. He's a certified nut job.
Getoff's website has a page devoted to the defence of his quackery, Tim Bolen and the DR. Stephen Barrett case, so you know where his freaky little head is at.
At least his last name is appropriate.
"Hi, I'm a naturopath and I can cure anything with my supplements, enemas, reiki and energy healing."
"Get off..."
As soon as I saw the mysterious letters after his name, I figured we were in for a doozy. CCN and FAAIM, hmmm.....
Counterintuitive Clueless Naturopath and Fellow of the American Academy of Ignorant Mindlessness are possilibities. Too bad he's not a FAAP as well.
You'd think Getoff capable of revealing just one Oliver error that "world experts on the other side" could have kept him from making. But no, we're obliged to listen to endless youtube videos to get the punchline. :(
The real acronyms aren't much better than your creative versions:
CCN=Certified Clinical Nutritionist
FAAIM=Fellow of the American Association of Integrative Medicine
@David Getoff:
Ha ha ha ha ha!
Oh wait, you're serious.
Let me laugh even harder!
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Clearly he doesn't listen very well.
And to credibly investigate "the other side" you have to have enough background in science to understand what you are investigating. As in reading peer reviewed literature. Or at least a basic textbook on biology, medicine, or even nursing.
But really, there's only ONE side. There's real medicine, and then there's total bullshit.
A blog proves something wrong? Lol. Choke on this Orac Del rips Ollies tirade to shreds using truth with proof.
https://youtu.be/igx83myg4WY
So a video proves something? It mostly proves Del Bigtree is a blowhard.
You think a YouTube video with a "doctor" and a stupid, probably unintentional rhyme would make a difference, especially on a months-old post?
Hilarious.
Del Bigtree is a television producer, not a doctor. He did work on some daytime TV program that showcased quacky doctors. He is one of the nasty pieces of work pushing the Vaxxed "documentary."
Ah, pardon. So he's basically just one of those infomercial people except he's peddling antivax lies.
Exactly. Orac has written quite a bit about him.
Yeah, now that you mention it I do remember reading about him and that pile of garbage "documentary."
It sickens me to think of how many people have been hurt by his snake oil shtick.