A. Gutland, “Rotavirus vaccine cuts deaths of Mexican babies from diarrhoea by 40%,” BMJ 2010 Jan 28, doi:10.1136/bmj.c511.

H.S. Maranhão, et al., “The epidemiological and clinical characteristics and nutritional development of infants with acute diarrhoea, in north-eastern Brazil,” Ann Trop Med Parasitol, 2008 Jun;102(4):357-65.

The best aspects of OPV are that a) it is about as close to 100% effective as you can get and b) immunity is passed on to others in the household. Those two things are great when you’re looking at regions with high rates of infection and low rates of vaccination. The other aspects you mentioned may also play a not insignificant role in its use, but I think those two are the biggies. Downside is that there is a risk of VAPP from OPV.

IPV is not as effective, only benefits the vaccinee, as you mentioned, but does not carry the risk of VAPP.

It’s a tricky situation you’re in. Unfortunately it’s also hard to give advice in this situation, because we don’t know the exact circumstances. It’s up to you to decide whether their attitude or your relationship to be the more important. Please note I’m not being frivolous about this choice – if your relative has no children, then their attitude may be less likely to adversely affect others, so you can afford to concentrate on the relationship.

However, can I recommend you scan back a few pages for Phil’s article about “Branding Skepticism”, both for the link he provides (http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/814-brand-skeptic.html) and for the comments on the article.

Good luck.

Cheers

Peter

Still, I hate to just let it go – this sort of talk actually convinces some people, and I feel I have a duty to at least help my family member tone down the stridency. I care deeply about this person; any advice you have would be appreciated.

“As an antiseptic, 70 percent of alcohol is prefered to a stonger solution. Pure alcohol coagulates protein on contact. Suppose the pure alcohol is poured over a single celled organism. The alcohol will penetrate the cell wall of the organism in all direction, coagulating the protein just inside the cell wall. The shell of the coagulated protein would then prevent the alcohol from penetrating farther into the cell, and no more coagulation would take place. At this time the cell would become dormant but not dead. Under the proper condition the cell could then begin to function again. If 70 percent of alcohol were poured on to a single-cell organism, the diluted alcohol also coagulates the protein, but at a slower rate, so that it penetrates all the way through the cell before coagulation can block it. then all the cell is coagulated and the organism dies. “

Jake Crosby’s also showed up there, supporting John. He says that a post of his that had a long list of references never got posted. It’s a pity he didn’t provide the title of the post he commented on so readers can verify his claim.

It’s really rather interesting how emotional people like John and Jake can get, and how their anger shades their perspective.

Thought experiment time: suppose you have a lot of experience working on the development of drugs. You learn how the process works from pre-clinical animal studies, through testing in humans all the way to market and post-market. You gain an understanding of the manufacturing process, how data is collected, etc. Then suppose you either lose your job because of layoffs or you just simply want to change how things work in the industry…to have an impact. FDA wants people with backgrounds in science, medicine and drug/medical device development. Amazingly, you have just such a background. What’s more, it gives you an opportunity to make that difference you want to make, since you know how industry operates and how they might try to skirt around the regulations. Not to mention, you need a job, since you now find yourself searching the wanted ads. So, FDA picks you up. You gain a further understanding of how FDA operates, what they expect to see, and the headaches they have to deal with when it comes to industry people that are relatively new to the field and don’t quite know what they should be doing to ensure regulatory compliance. You make that difference you want to make, at least in part, but you think you could do more. Plus, the workload at FDA is huge, so you think you might want to go back to industry, since it pays better and has a slightly lighter load with potentially less traveling and time away from family. With the knowledge you gained at FDA, you can make a bigger impact within the company to ensure that everything is in compliance and that products that really are good, useful and needed, that would otherwise be held up by some incompetent lackwit, actually makes it to market in a timely manner. You are able to ensure that the products that make it to market deserve to be there, and that they get there without undue delays.

No corruption involved. Believe it or not, but there actually are people like that out there who want to make sure that the products that make it to market are safe and effective and that crucial new products aren’t delayed. I, myself, am studying so I can change careers and do just that.

Regarding Kennedy, one thing he seems to miss is the fact that with tobacco, the science community was overwhelmingly pointing out its health risks. With vaccines, the science community is overwhelmingly pointing out its benefits and minimal health risks, along with the risks of not vaccinating.

Regarding the Amish communities, do a bit more digging into that topic. You’ll find that the whole thing was basically manufactured by Dan Olmstead. Good places to start your search would be antiantivax.flurf.net, Science-Based Medicine blog and perhaps Respectful Insolence.

As to the increase in the schedule and the “kids weren’t dying” comment, death is not the only thing to consider when dealing with communicable diseases. Many of these diseases have non-fatal, but nonetheless serious, consequences. Let’s look at measles, as an example. Measles can cause ear infections, bronchitis, deafness, blindness, pneumonia, encephalitis (which can cause permanent brain damage), miscarriage or premature birth in pregnant women and decreased platelet count (i.e., your blood won’t clot as easily, so if you bleed, you are more likely to bleed for a longer time and lose more blood). Then there’s chicken pox. A harmless disease, right? Well, it can lead to pneumonia and encephalitis as well, not to mention that the patient is then at risk of shingles later in life. Shingles can cause permanent nerve damage and pain, blindness, encephalitis, hearing/balance problems, facial paralysis and, for both chicken pox and shingles, if the blisters aren’t treated, secondary skin infections are rather likely.

That’s just two diseases, each with a lot of rather serious complications possible. The risks of those may be somewhat rare (e.g., measles encephalitis is about 1 per 1,000 people infected), but they are significantly more likely to occur than an injury from a vaccine (e.g., encephalitis or serious allergic reaction from measles vaccine: 1 per 1,000,000).

Lots of reasons, therefore, why more vaccines were added without greed ever playing a role. These diseases are not benign. Furthermore, the profit margin for vaccines is pretty low. Before the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was established, vaccine manufacturers were leaving the field because it just wasn’t worth it.

What are the names of these people? Do you have any evidence of corruption?

“also one should youtube, googlevideo Kennedy on vaccines he says things like ‘tobacco science’ ‘they know’. one could also look up the amish in relation to this subject, they have next to no autism in their populace.”

Can you provide evidence of this? Is it simply because they don’t go to doctors who could diagnose such conditions?

“jenn mcarthy – paraphrase ‘in 80’s it was 10 vac’s. then in 90(?) for no reason, kids weren’t dying of some outbreak, we went to 25+ vac’s. WHY? greed!’”

Why? Because it saves lives. Have a look at how much the infant mortality rate has fallen, even since the 1980s. Have a read of this article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1615523/pdf/amjph00445-0063.pdf

also one should youtube, googlevideo Kennedy on vaccines he says things like ‘tobacco science’ ‘they know’. one could also look up the amish in relation to this subject, they have next to no autism in their populace.

jenn mcarthy – paraphrase ‘in 80′s it was 10 vac’s. then in 90(?) for no reason, kids weren’t dying of some outbreak, we went to 25+ vac’s. WHY? greed!’

… Or better yet, give them a disease and say “well, you could have this vaccine to heal you, but since you don’t believe in vaccines…”

He’s coming around, folks! He’s going to be OK, and ready to play Symptom Six of “Beat The Reaper”!

Last week, our Patient successfully survived the common cold, measles, pneumonia, dengue fever, and the yaws.
And now, the Big Question! Are you ready to Go On?

J/P=?

After reading the book, I have chosen to have my child fully vaccinated and am very comfortable, just am choosing a modified schedule to get it done and minimize risk of complications. But I’m also an engineer and I tend to like facts and data to support my choices

T-shirt idea!

Close. It evaporates SLOWER which increases contact time.

So, let’s take your attempt at sophistry in another direction. If you observe my son with your own eyes, that can hardly be called an anecdote, can it? Would it be an anecdote if I shoot thimerosal into one of your pregnant relatives and they miscarry ten minutes later?

I’m not Todd, but I’ll answer anyway: yes, and yes. You need to do more than just say “a then b”. You need to show an actual connection between the two. One way to do that is by experimentation, and you have proposed such an experiment. But science isn’t about solitary experiments. A crucial element is that it has to be repeatable. Women miscarry anyway (1 in 5 pregnancies spontaneously miscarry); how do you know that the thimerosal was responsible in any way? (Incidentally, this is the first time I’ve seen you make that claim, which is rather more dramatic than your usual autism claim. But perhaps I simply haven’t read enough of your posts.) In order to be certain, you would need to perform the same trial on many pregnant women — or, determine the mechanism by which thimerosal could do such a thing, or perform a similar study using pregnant rats or another animal.

Otherwise, yes, it is still just an anecdote that a happened, then b happened.

*I don’t mean politically liberal. I mean they give a lot of latitude.

I wondered how quickly he would put a post up about his banning. A while back he posted on one of the BA’s vaccine posts with the same vitriol and insulting manner. As I said, I’m done with him. Would’ve been nice to have a calm, rational, civil conversation with him, but he’s so full of anger and self-righteousness that even the slightest disagreement with him makes one either a Pharma shill or tool of Pharma (though he puts it oh, so much more eloquently). He’s demonstrated that he has no interest in a truly honest conversation.

Phil, we all understand why you shut him down. His comments do make some exciting reading, however.

P.S. Went to his link from the comments above, and the anger he shows is just plain blinding. He called everyone here out to come to his site and argue further.