http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-25/immunise-or-lose-benefits-parents-told/3694236

Then you go on to cite whale.to and AoA. Really, is that the extent of your knowledge? If your misinformation wasn’t so dangerous, it would be laughable.

You might like this link: photoninthedarkness DOT com/?p=241

Also, Infinite123Lifer, tylenol/paracetamol/acetaminophen is also toxic. The lethal dose is surprisingly small. Some of the saddest medical blog entries I have read are from emergency room personnel who have dealt with teenagers that have committed suicide by taking too much paracetamol/acetaminophen.

I am also Guessing that tylenol has long since been a solid well understood drug both in its mechanisms and in its side effects for much longer than vaccines.

Actually, paracetamol/acetaminophen’s mechanism of action is rather poorly understood.

No rest for the wicked.

Not even the extremely wicked.

As was mentioned vaccinations because of good science has/is improves with time. How long has it been since Tylenol improved?

Probably it has not.

Long term…20-50 year “herd” studies of vaccines also leave room for questioning.

I’m not sure I agree. We can be certain that the incidence of many communicable diseases has declined dramatically since the introduction of widespread vaccination against each of those diseases.

For example, I don’t know anyone who has had polio, but it was common enough in my parents’ generation that most kids at that time knew or knew of someone who had had polio.

Iam just saying I think we know more about tylenol as a safe drug than vaccinations.

Well, it’s not so much that we know it is a safe drug as that the side effects are very well characterised, which is slightly different.

But there are several different basic types of vaccine (for instance, killed pathogen, attenuated pathogen, pathogen surface protein), with different potentials for side effects and more potential for patient-to-patient variation. Paracetamol is a small molecule that behaves in a relatively predictable way in most people.

After all, they ask a lot of questions when getting vaccinated. Tylenol is basically inflammatory candy, among its other uses.

Heh. It’s nowhere near as good an anti-inflammatory as aspirin or ibuprofen. Paracetamol’s main mode of action is as a peripheral painkiller. Yet all of these NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) act through the inhibition of prostaglandin biosynthesis.

Vaccinations are very complicated immune system territory where tylenol is probably a bit different. But i could be wrong.

Well, you are right insofar as paracetamol is a small molecule and vaccines act through long-term activation of the immune system, but the two are aimed at achieving very different effects.

Nigel. Tylenol is not as safe as a vaccine? A vaccine has certain POTENTIALS for rare cases of people becoming seriously ill…example, a person gets a chicken pox vaccine and they come down with chickenpox. example, there have been bad batches of vaccines.
Yes there have probably been bad batches of tylenol as well and some people might react badly to it; the analogy you have made Iam guessing does not realistically weigh these 2 vastly different medical wonders.

Yeah, I was being very approximate.

My point really was that pretty nearly all the antivax crowd would not think twice before taking a painkiller for a headache, but they’re making a huge fuss about something that is actually safer (paracetamol overdose is, apparently, a very very nasty way to die).

“Yes, as the understanding of medical science has evolved, I guess the advice given by physicians would have changed”

I was talking about the first 2 years(my bad) of his Life in which not much had changed but since 2003 I would agree weve come along way. Perhaps everyday somewhere “we come a long way” agreed.
_________________
“Modern vaccines are as safe as pretty much anything else. Do you ever take paracetamol / acetaminophen / tylenol (same stuff, different names – chemically, it is para-acetamidoyl phenol) for a headache? Modern vaccines are (approximately) that safe.”

Nigel. Tylenol is not as safe as a vaccine? A vaccine has certain POTENTIALS for rare cases of people becoming seriously ill…example, a person gets a chicken pox vaccine and they come down with chickenpox. example, there have been bad batches of vaccines.
Yes there have probably been bad batches of tylenol as well and some people might react badly to it; the analogy you have made Iam guessing does not realistically weigh these 2 vastly different medical wonders.

We would have to look at the number of vaccinations gone awry and the amount of tylenol cases gone awry. I am also Guessing that tylenol has long since been a solid well understood drug both in its mechanisms and in its side effects for much longer than vaccines.

As was mentioned vaccinations because of good science has/is improves with time. How long has it been since Tylenol improved?

Long term…20-50 year “herd” studies of vaccines also leave room for questioning.

Iam just saying I think we know more about tylenol as a safe drug than vaccinations.

After all, they ask a lot of questions when getting vaccinated. Tylenol is basically inflammatory candy, among its other uses. Vaccinations are very complicated immune system territory where tylenol is probably a bit different. But i could be wrong.
(as is my understanding). I think you might of just understated it a bit :/

Perhaps flying in airplanes is as safe as vaccinations.
So your saying taking tylenol is as dangerous as getting vaccines? that they are both not on a whole dangerouso. Which makes sense but to be….picky I don’t think it is a good comparison.
________________
But doesn’t the proper dosage & which vaccinations to get extend further to some fine line in between???
“I don’t quite understand what you’re asking here.”

What I meant was although there is a national recommendation our Dr for instance did not think TB or Hep B shots were imperative for an infant although the federal recommendation was for ALL shots. I was thinking based on my child’s medical history that a full spectrum of shots might not be exactly what the Dr orders. Somewhere in between for each individual.
__________
“To protect him from many communicable diseases against which we had only recently developed effective vaccines. Interestingly, my 6-month-old son has had about 6 or 7 shots so far (some of which were combined vaccines such as MMR) – maybe the 29 shots recommended for your son was all individual vaccines?”

There were I think 5 shots, then 3 shots, then with all the boosters it came to about 29 in the first year or two. It was 8 years ago so iam a little rusty but 29 is the flabberghasting number that his mom and I remember.

_______________

Looks like you have got your hands full here though Whats new ah dude? No rest for the wicked.

post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. temporal association. I ve always been way out of my league around these parts. But I am still at home. Forever forward.

I asked for a TB vaccine at my dr today. He said “well typically we don’t give those around here…it is basically not something to worry about.” I was surprised.

Then you go on to cite whale.to and AoA. Really, is that the extent of your knowledge? If your misinformation wasn’t so dangerous, it would be laughable.

I just noticed that one of your linkys in #149 is to ageofautism. What makes you think that linking to a website published by known liars supports your case? Is it just because they say the same stuff as you do?

If so, why do you think that having more poeple say the same thing adds weight to your argument? This is akin to the logical fallacy known as argument from authority, and it fails for two reasons. First, it demands that both sides of the argument recognise the authority, and, second, it demands that said authority be right every time. And yet even the most authoritative sources have famously been wrong about some stuff (for example: Linus Pauling believed that high doses of vitamin C protected against cancer; Einstein refused to accept an expanding universe or quantum mechanics; and Newton was a believer in alchemy).

Whether your argument is right or not hinges solely on the evidence, not on how many other people say the same thing. And evidence means the reasults of controlled experiments (in the case of a medical intervention, these must be randomised controlled double-blind trials to be valid, and must for preference include many thousands of patients to lend the result statistical power), not a bunch of random anecdotes. Most of the antivax “arguments” rest either on made-up “factoids” (such as the claimed presence of thimerosol in vaccines that never actually contained thimerosol) or on logical fallacies (such as, commonly, the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, in which a causal link is assumed from a temporal association when the data support no such link).

And all the evidence that I have seen indicates that vaccines do work in most people, and that the claims made by the antivax crowd are a crock of bovine faecal matter.

You all are so awash in lies and deception that I cannot keep up.

Projection much?

You have yet to support any of your claims with any evidence at all.

Links to websites where people try to sell me stuff is not evidence.

Also, who the hell are you that to be calling me a liar? I have a PhD in biochemistry and spent three years working in a Virology department funded by the UK’s Medical Research Council, so, although I’m not an expert virologist, I have an understanding of the relevant basics. And the most pertinent fact is that vaccines work, and have repeatedly been proven to do so.

I am in shock that I read someone above saying that we should ignore a book from 1920 because it’s “almost a century old” and also ignore one from 1957.

Why does this shock you?

Does the invention of television shock you?

Does the invention of the electronic computer shock you?

Why are you shocked that vaccine technology has also moved on, to the extent that books published in 1920 and 1957 are no longer relevant?

That has to take-the-cake for the most ignorant statement I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

No, it makes sense, when you consider the fact that technology (including vaccine technology) changes.

What is ignorant is every single comment you have made claiming that vaccines do the opposite of what they are supposed to do.

Sorry, but smallpox, polio, measles, diphtheria, etc, were NOT eradicated by the vaccines.

As has been pointed out, this is wrong.

Smallpox has indeed been eradicated and the eradication was achieved by vaccination. This is a matter of recorded history.

In fact, about 20 years ago there was a debate about whether or not we humans had the right to render smallpox extinct by destroying the last frozen research samples.

In the case with smallpox, the vaccine made the situation worse.

This is just so, so wrong.

First, smallpox vaccine was originally based on cowpox (I don’t know what the more modern ones were based on, because I can’t be bothered to look it up, but maybe you could do some of your own legwork for a change), and the effects of smallpox were always either death or disfigurement, so it’s hard to envisage any vaccine making things worse. Cowpox was always temporary (which is why milkmaids were so reputedly pretty – they caught cowpox from milking the cows, which cleared up as they developed immunity to it, and this immunity protected them from the closely-related smallpox, which meant they never got pox-scarred).

Second, smallpox is extremely virulent – i.e. very easily transmissible and almost always causes disease (so you don’t get asymptomatic carriers as you might with some viruses).

Third, smallpox symptoms show up very quickly after infection, which makes it easy to target vaccination to the right areas. Some infections only show up symptoms in the later stages, and the host is almost always infectious for some time before they even know they have an infection. Flu is like this – by the time you get symptoms, you’ve almost finished being infectious.

Here are two history books and another link to show those who actually are students of uncensored, non-book-burned history the truth of the matter:

Yeah, that’s uncensored fiction, mate.

If you’d rather believe that than the evidence, you go ahead. Just keep it to yourself.

I am in shock that I read someone above saying that we should ignore a book from 1920 because it’s “almost a century old” and also ignore one from 1957.

That has to take-the-cake for the most ignorant statement I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

Sorry, but smallpox, polio, measles, diphtheria, etc, were NOT eradicated by the vaccines.

Eh? Smallpox was eradicated. It took 5 seconds of googling to find that it was declared eradicated in 1979. Without vaccines this would not have been possible.

Sidenote: It’s interesting that one of your sources is a paper from 1920. You might want to look up something that is not almost a century old. Another from 1957.

Oh yes, the “proper” labeling, packaging, shipping, licensing, and manufacture of enormously dangerous bio-weapons/pathogens makes me SO much more comfortable.

Actually, you should distinguish between a bioweapon and a pathogen. Pathogen samples are sent between labs routinely for a variety of perfectly valid reasons, and it is possible to do this in such a way that it is safer than crossing a street.

Bioweapons are a different kettle of fish altogether, being banned by the Geneva Convention.

AFAICT, no western nation is developing any bioweapons (although many of them are working or have been working on countermeasures). If you have evidence to the contrary, please do share it.

Just leave it to the “experts”. They have it all under control – JUST like they did in Fukushima. (That nuke plant was properly licensed, etc.)

Yes, but they weren’t trying to send Fukushima through the mail were they?

As it turns out, the operators of Fukushima were inadequately prepared for the earthquake and tsunami – but was anyone expecting them to be ready for a magnitude 9 earthquake and the ensuing 30-metre tsunami? It’s all too easy to be critical with hindsight. Were you concerned about the ability of nuclear power stations to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis on the same day before the 11th of March? If not, you can shut the hell up about it.

Just wait until we have a major natural or man-made disaster (accidental or planned) which releases the pathogens at numerous bio-weapons labs.

Here’s a search link to a now-removed article from the New Scientist publication:

” Plague of bioweapons accidents afflicts the US

[URL omitted]

If I recall from reading those articles in the print edition at the time, they all arose through people failing to follow the correct procedures. There is no indication that the procedures themselves are inadequate, just that the compliance to those procedures is inadequate.

Also, (again, IIRC, because it was roughly a couple of years ago that those articles came out) although those accidents involved pathogens that might be used as bioweapons, they were not actually “weaponised” forms of the pathogens.

Oh, and why is it “legal” for vaccinated military fathers to come home and infect their kids and wives with smallpox?

From Reuters:

Toddler survives smallpox vaccine reaction:

reuters.com/article/2007/05/18/us-smallpox-boy-idUSN1744524120070518

Excerpt:

(Reuters) – A two-year-old boy who developed a serious reaction to his father’s smallpox vaccination has recovered but disease detectives found infectious virus all over his house, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Thursday.

The Indiana toddler developed a rare rash known as eczema vaccinatum after playing with his father, a soldier vaccinated for deployment in Iraq, reported Dr. John Marcinak of the University of Chicago and CDC experts.

I do not consider Reuters to be a reliable source of data.

Who, for example, is Dr Marcinak? What is his area of expertise, and how relevant is it?

Who are the “CDC experts”?

Have you ever heard of the term “due diligence”? It certainly seems that the Reuters agency has not. Before you go posting sensationalistic headlines on a science blog, maybe you could do a little background research to find out if what you’re posting is actually right. Did you ever think of doing that?

Think pox shipping and pox parties are bad? Well who gave the vaccine-makers the RIGHT to turn-on and turn-off our genes?

Out of The New Scientist:

(Excerpt): “vaccine trials now use microarrays of DNA sequences to track which genes get turned on or off in response to a vaccine.”

Erm, we all did.

You should ask instead, who gave food manufacturers the right to turn our genes on and off (gene expression can be altered by diet)?

Or, who gave power station operators the right to turn our genes on and off (gene expression alters in response to the presence of pollutants in the air)?

Or, who gave farmers the right to turn out genes on and off (gene expression alters in response to pollutants in the water we drink)?

Etc.

Have you ever yelled at a total stranger? Who gave you the right to turn that person’s genes on or off? (Yes, gene expression alters in response to emotional stress).

At least they are trying to understand how people’s bodies respond to vaccines, now that the technology is available to do so.

Assuming that report is accurate (it says it was reported in The Lancet, but your excerpt had no reference), we’d all better avoid going to India for our vaccinations.

Oh, wait, that’s not exactly going to be difficult. So, how is this relevant to the antivax movement in the US, Australia and the UK?

“Proof That Vaccines Didn’t Save Us”
http://genesgreenbook.com/content/proof-vaccines-didnt-save-us

“THE POISONED NEEDLE
Suppressed Facts About Vaccination”
By Eleanor McBean 1957
http://www.whale.to/a/mcbean.html#CHAPTER%20II

“HORRORS OF VACCINATION EXPOSED AND ILLUSTRATED”
BY CHAS. M. HIGGINS 1920
http://www.whale.to/vaccine/higgins_b.html

“The Age of Polio: How an Old Virus and New Toxins Triggered a Man-Made Epidemic”
http://www.ageofautism.com/mark_blaxill/

“The polio vaccine: a critical assessment of its arcane history, efficacy,
and long-term health-related consequences”
Neil Z. Miller
http://www.thinktwice.com/Polio.pdf

“Polio: The Virus and The Vaccine”
Author:Janine Roberts
http://reducetheburden.org/?p=2778

Some people claim that these events occurred because of things like improved hygiene. If that’s so, how is it that some diseases have been eradicated or nearly so, while others still kill tens of thousands?