Posted on 02/04/2015 9:43:28 AM PST by raptor22
ulture: An unlikely issue has entered the infant 2016 presidential campaign: Vaccines and required vaccinations. Let's hope the fact there's no scientific link to autism or anything else isn't lost in the political fray.
Candidates will often look for an edge over their opponents. Thus, both New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky recently suggested that, while vaccinations are good, forcing parents to vaccinate their children might be too much.
We believe vaccines are safe and should be routine, but concern about parents' rights is not unreasonable. What really gripes us, however, is listening to the media make this out to be an issue dreamed up by anti-science, right-wing kooks. Far from it.
The issue has been pushed in recent years almost entirely by the left. Hollywood progressives and others in the media (see editorial, below) have promoted the idea that vaccines have possible nasty effects, such as autism, and that they're reason to keep kids from being vaccinated.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
Perhaps with the genius you clearly are you could put that abstract into laymans terms. Also could you post your credentials so that us layman could understand your superior medical knowledge in this matter with something we could look up and verify. And with your superior medical knowledge, do you see any failings in the methodology of this study. Also, maybe you in your infinite knowledge, could you educate us less fortunate folk, in matters regarding other adverse reactions to vaccines. I would truly feel enlightened if you could dispel all the rumor mongering and bad science around the fact that no adverse reaction has ever been had with a “safe” vaccine.
As far as I know, the Italian court ruling was not a "study", and in fact heavily relied on the fraudulent 1998 Wakefield article as evidence.
Incidentally your artcile written by Emily Willingham does not cite a linked study.
Why would it? It was a news article about the Italian case. If you want evidence that vaccines don't cause autism, I already told you that there have been no scientific studies to date showing a causal link. The findings have been unanimous, and I've already linked to a document from the American Academy of Pediatrics with citations of over 40 studies showing no evidence of an autism/vaccine link. Here, I'll post it again if you didn't take the time to read it the first time:
Vaccine Safety: Examine the Evidence
Do you deny that there are individuals that have been adversely harmed by "safe" vaccines?
This seems to be the same trick that all of you anti-vaxer folks play. You make a wild assumption that has no evidence to back it up, such as "vaccines cause autism", then when presented with evidence to the contrary, you hide behind platitudes like "vaccines are not 100% safe every time and can have side effects", which no one denies.
The risks are well documented and researched, and autism isn't one of them.
How about the fact that your links do not even state what you claim they do?
Please provide evidence of this. I see no reason to believe you've read any of my links at all, seeing as how you missed the link to the actual study in the press release.
Here, I'll link to the full study again since you can't seem keep up:
The entire study is there, with full references and even a couple of graphs. This is the same document I linked to in post #120.
Please try to pay attention.
I also don't see anything in the Constitution requiring compulsory education in a public school, which is not something I'm advocating, and is irrelevant to the topic.
Keep your kids home for all I care.
I didn't cite it because their isn't in the Us Constitution. States however are not bound by the enumerated powers in Article I Section 8. The states powers are "numerous and indefinite", and there is nothing in the Texas Constitution that would in any way prohibit the state from establishing vaccination regulations in public schools. You must not understand Federalism.
All 50 states allow homeschooling, just so next time you are not so ignorant.
You have a serious reading comprehension problem. I never stated that home schooling was not allowed.
If there is not a State funded facility required for all per your post there is not a State requirement for vaccination.
For your information, Texas does have public schools and vaccine mandates, which are constitutional under our state constitution, just so next time you are not so ignorant.
My children attend a government school; and within their rights they have refused vaccines...On the positive side I am glad you have shown yourself for the liberal that you are since you are clearly advocating more power to governments than the law allows and being ignorant of the current state of our laws.
I'm well aware of the religious and philosophical exemptions to vaccination. I'm arguing from a philosophical viewpoint as your kids should not be allowed to attend public school. You yourself even admitted that they are passing on unnecessary risk to other children because you're not responsible enough to vaccinate them against preventable infectious diseases.
Other kids shouldn't be exposed to infectious diseases simply because you believe in pseudoscience.
I've addressed everything you've said, and debunked all of it, including the Italian court ruling.
You seem to be a two trick pony; you've posted the Italian ruling and mentioning of autism on the CDC's list of reported adverse reactions as evidence with nothing but a cut and paste from some obscure blog and Joe Mercola's site (who is an "osteopath" and quack who peddles homeopathy). Whereas I've provided evidence that the Italian ruling relied on Wakefield's debunked paper and the testimony of one doctor with conflicting interests, and I've explained to you that reported adverse reactions are not evidence of causality.
I've also linked to over 40 studies that show no link between autism, and I gave you a requested link to a study which shows there's no danger in multiple vaccinations with respect to autism risk.
You've provided no evidence whatsoever in kind, and have tried and failed miserably to school me on the Constitution when you don't even have a working knowledge of Federalism.
You claim autism is not one of the risks of autism, but I linked you to a FDA document that listed it as a potential risk. So, evidently, according to your august and undocumented resume were are to believe you but not the FDA. I am not as impressed with you as you are with yourself. Please provide documentation as to why you are more credible that the FDA.
I've already explained this to you, that "reported adverse effects" are not causal side effects; they are things that people reported happened parallel with vaccination. I understand if you're too unsophisticated to understand the difference, but you're royally ignorant if you think that the CDC is actually admitting that vaccines cause autism simply because it was a "reported" adverse reaction.
You just don't understand the difference, and with your limited knowledge on the subject I wouldn't expect you to.
I told you exactly how long(21 pgs) your "study" was. I also ridiculed it as something less than a masters thesis. Perhaps you did not read all 21 pgs of your study enough to comprehend that it did not stand up to scientific scrutiny.
You're bordering on sociopathy here; not only did you NOT mention 21 pages, you offered no critique at all in any previous post that addressed the study.
In fact you didn't even acknowledge the study and focused on the direct link to the CDC schedule in the press release, and accused me of not linking to a study but "an abstract with the CDC vaccine guidelines for 2015". It's easy to see that not only did you not read the whole press release, it's unlikely that you even glanced at the study itself.
You didn't provide any feedback, much less ridicule for the study at all, yet now you're claiming a peer reviewed scientific study in the Journal of Pediatrics "did not stand up to scientific scrutiny." Why, because you counted the page numbers?!
For the record, this particular study consists of an abstract, full text, graphs, and references, and was printed in the August 2013 Volume 163, Issue 2 from pages 561–567, so I'm not sure where you dreamed up 21 pages. Just more evidence you didn't read it, even though you're claiming it "does not stand up to scientific scrutiny".
Here, below you'll find 3 more studies showing the safety and effectiveness of the CDC schedule. Feel free to keep embarrassing yourself:
Immunization Policy Development in the United States: The Role of the
Advisor y Committee on Immunization Practices by Jean C. Smith et al.
Annals of Internal Medicine. Januar y 2009. Vol 150: pages 45-49.
http://www.annals.org/content/150/1/45.full.pdf+html.
Historical Comparisons of Morbidity and Mortality for Vaccine-Preventable
Diseases in the United States by Sandra W. Roush et al. Journal of the
American Medical Association. November 14, 2007. Vol. 298: pages
2155-2163. http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/298/18/2155.
Rota and Pneumococcus Vaccine Success Stories: Pediatric Emergency
Practitioners Wonder “Where Have the Kids Gone?” by M. McKenna.
Annals of Emergency Medicine. April 2009. Vol 53: pages 23A-25A.
http://download.journals.elsevierhealth.com/pdfs/journals/0196-0644/
PIIS0196064409001371.pdf.
I suppose you'll be able to read through these in a few minutes and determine that they "don't pass scientific scrutiny."
Please post your detailed findings, since after reading your highly intricate and revolutionary "texting doesn't cause crashes" example, we're all amazed with your scientific knowledge of biochemistry and biology.
“With money to be made on any new vaccine that becomes mandatory, the nexus between law and money can’t be ignored. I thought about that when they were trying to make the papilloma virus vaccine mandatory.”
Excellent point.
Bump^
You can as a condition of school attendance and military service. Most states have some sort of exemption, but Mississippi and West Virginia have no exemptions except medical, and there's already bills percolating in various legislatures to repeal religious and philosophical exemptions based on the new measles outbreak.
Hopefully the repeal will be coming to your state soon.
So, in your mind the government can't search me, but they can inject me?
The government is not injecting you (unless you're in the military); it is your doctor. And only a condition of attending a taxpayer funded facility with the goal of not spreading infectious diseases, which, according to 100% of the medical evidence, is not inherently dangerous or unreasonable.
Good luck getting that through judicial review. In case you are unfamiliar with the above passage it is in the U.S. Constitution which trumps even Texas's state constitution. Just thought you should know, I didn't want you to come across as ignorant of the federal system again
There have been no judicial decisions that have struck down vaccine mandates in the various states, so I don't need any "luck". It's already the law.
Your kids are immune to infectious diseases because you vaccinated them. How are unvaccinated children a risk to vaccinated children??? Does someone else need to take a pill so your headache goes away too????
More proof that you don't know much about vaccines. Not only are they not foolproof, outbreaks start at places where unvaccinated people congregate. Unlike you, I'm concerned about all kids vaccinated and unvaccinated and think precautions can be taken to keep them as safe as possible from people like you who obviously don't care, and are admittedly fine with exposing kids to risk of disease.
I think you should be ashamed of yourself, and wonder how you sleep at night. You and your kids certainly wouldn't be allowed near mine.
I've intricately debunked every one of your claims. I've not only proved every one of them false with sourced evidence, but I've also showed you have a problem with the truth, as you were claiming to have said things that you didn't say, such as your supposed critique of the Journal of Pediatrics that you never gave.
You've been so thoroughly defeated and decimated by the cold sting of reality that your only option is to try and get in one last insult. But anyone here who possessing standard reading comprehension sees that it's you who've been proven the idiot.
Answer me this, if it wasn't based on Wakefield's study, what was it based on? There is no other scientific evidence in the field that shows a casual link, so it speaks even less to the Italian court if they guessed, or tried to play scientist themselves (or only listened to the one biased doctor who was selling autism snake oil, which was also the case according to press reports).
I think this can be easily put to rest as Italian courts are notoriously and laughably anti-science, as you've ignored the earlier example where an Italian court convicted seven scientists for not predicting an earthquake:
Italian Court Convicts Scientists For Not Warning of Earthquake
That alone debunks any assertion that "Italian courts" are somehow purveyors of scientific findings.
Perhaps you think science is decided by courts and trial lawyers. You must be a huge fan of Erin Brockovich and John Edwards, who made millions off of malpractice suits, preying on juries' ignorance of medical science. The anti-vax movement is using the same tactics.
You and your friends at DU are probably licking your lips at the thought of trial lawyers making billions off of a phony autism/vaccination link.
Those of us in the real world will stick with the facts.
The Banks case was a situation where the child with diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Delay, which is not an autism spectrum disorder. The court sloppily used PDD and PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specialized) interchangeably at some points. Of course, the anti-vax echo chamber picked up on this and tried again to use a court ruling to make a scientific case, which isn't how science has ever worked.
Your studies about the link between rubella and autism are extremely outdated (and largely not relevant to the topic), and since the early 70s and late 90s, we've seen evidence that the MMR vaccine not only prevents Congenital Rubella Syndrome, but also autism spectrum disorders:
The conclusion of this study?
We estimate that rubella vaccination prevented substantial numbers of CRS and ASD cases in the United States from 2001 through 2010. These findings provide additional incentive to maintain high measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination coverage.
Once again the latest science debunks your claims.
You, however, are incapable of empathizing with anyone for a moment or considering an alternative point of view because you are so worried about being right.You, however, are incapable of empathizing with anyone for a moment or considering an alternative point of view because you are so worried about being right.
Empathy really has no place in science. It doesn't matter whether I empathize with parents of kids with health problems (I do). But it's irrelevant to the facts of the case. Everything you've thrown out is easily debunked and proven false, and shown to be largely a product of anti-vaxer blogs, erroneous and questionable court findings, and disconnected dots and misrepresentations.
You are far more impressed with studies than I am.
This is certainly true, although the word wouldn't be "impressed". I accept that the mechanism of scientific research and its reporting in scientific journals and through the process of peer review as the best method we have for assessing scientific findings. It's basically, "Here's what I did, here are the methods and tools I used, here was my hypothesis and here are my findings. Feel free to double and triple check my work and do the same thing I did and test your findings."
I don't accept things simply because someone wrote them on the Internet, which seems to be the MO of these blogs you keep pointing to.
It's also flabbergasting that you posted the Walker findings, and repeated the falsehood that they vindicated Wakefield's fraudulent hypothesis. I looked through the whole study, and I didn't even see one mention of the MMR vaccine or immunizations. Here, see for yourself:
How exactly does this vindicate Wakefield's claim of autism and vaccination? Please cite specifics.
Then again, maybe you shouldn't bother, because even if I cite from a source you trust (Mercola), we see this:
So, case closed on that. It doesn't do anything to refute the many, many dozens of studies that I've cited to you which show no vaccine/autism link, none of which you seem to have read.
Earlier in this thread someone wrote a very long list of drugs that were studied and deemed safe only to be pulled later when they harmed people.
Right. That's because there is a process for medications being approved and then taken off the market after being found harmful. Vaccines are under the same scrutiny, and the evidence is not there to prove any sort of harm that makes them inherently dangerous. They have side effects just like all medical treatments and procedures. Luckily, we don't live in the age of the smallpox vaccine which had as high as a 1% adverse reaction rate. Vaccines today are safe and effective.
As for showing me to be a liar, you are in error or stretching the meaning of liar. I had written a post, evidently I did not preview and post or post+post before closing my browser. That would be an error
I would give you the benefit of the doubt on this, but...
Much like when you claimed you linked a study, but it was an abstract.
It wasn't either, it was a press release with the study linked at the bottom, a perfectly acceptable citation, and I even linked directly to the study after you were confused about what it was.
Even with in the abstract linked, the cite study was a 21 page document. Not hardly the slam dunk scholarly article you made it out to be.
How many scientific studies have you read? How long do you think they are?
Here's an example you might like; Dr. Wakefield's original study in the Lancet, full text is just under 7 pages printed.
They are often quite brief compared to master's theses. So, once again, you're wrong.
Here is where I will agree with you. I do not take the health of your kids seriously. It is not my responsibility.
It is your responsibility to make sure your actions don't harm others. That's just the way the world works, and if you don't take responsibility for the outcomes of your actions, you don't understand liberty.
I don't desire control over anyone's children, and unlike you, I don't think I can do whatever I want no matter the effect on other people.
Loving freedom sometimes comes at the cost of having to tolerate other people's decisions that you do not like.
It really has nothing to do with "liking" your decisions. Loving freedom also means you take responsibility for what you do. Liberty does not mean doing things that infringe on the liberty of others, like exposing children unnecessarily to infectious diseases.
Well first of all, you're jumping back and forth between the 2012 and 2014 cases. In the matter of the 2012 case, it wasn't clear at all. In fact, other than one physician witness, the court jumps to a conclusion through non sequitur:
"Only on the date 27 \ 06 \ 2008, did the specialist Dr. Niglio attest as to how the reported damages to the minor (child) were attributable to the vaccination carried out, this theory was definitively confirmed on the date 25 \ 07 \ 2009 by the specialist Dr. MONTANARI."
Also, if you had read the 2012 decision more closely, you'd have seen:
As for the ascertainment, on the part of the parents, of the actual knowledge of the cause of disability, it should be noted that in none of the medical records examined was the clinical picture established definitely as post-vaccine, in the sense of, caused by inoculation of the vaccine, and that the causal relationship is indicated for the first time only in the medical report on 27 \ 06 \ 2008 of the specialist Dr. Niglio.
Even the court admitted that the medical documents didn't clearly show that the symptoms were exclusively post-vaccine.
So here again, we have a theory that is completely dismantled in all scientific inquiry being used in a questionable court by one questionable physician witness, Dr. Montanari, who's already been confirmed to be an unreliable source by his selling of an autism "cure".
End of story on that one.
As far as the 2014 case, you didn't even mention that this case dealt with the hexavalent vaccine, not MMR. It does appear that the GlaxoSmithKline report was one of the main reasons for the questionable decision. But again, a brief review of this report shows that the court made the same mistake you did earlier by confusing "reported reactions" with causality.
If you had bothered to glance at the GlaxoSmithKline report, you'd see that they're pulling autism reports from a section entitled:
"APPENDIX 4E : Cumulative tabulation of all unlisted events from serious unlisted spontaneous reports and all serious unlisted reactions from clinical trial cases reported since launch"
This means that the list (that runs from page 592 to 645) is listing everything that was reported, no matter how absurd, not things that were confirmed causally.
Hell, the report is actually kind of funny.
If you look on page 614 alone you'll see "Forearm fracture", "joint dislocation", and "skull fracture" as reported side effects to the hexavalent vaccine. Also, my favorite "arthropod bite"!
Do you honestly think that this report is evidence that the hexavalent causes broken bones and spider bites?!
Lastly on the 2014 case, there was considerable backlash from the Italian scientific community, and "the Italian Society of Hygiene, Preventive Medicine and Public Health (Società Italiana di Igiene, Medicina Preventiva e Sanità Pubblica (SItI)); the Italian Federation of Pediatricians (Federazione Italiana Medici Pediatri (FIMP)); the Italian Society of Pediatrics (Società Italiana di Pediatria (SIP)); the Cultural Association of Pediatricians (Associazione Culturale Pediatri (ACP)); and the Italian Federation of Doctors of General Medicine (Federazione Italiana Medici di Medicina Generale (FIMMG)) issued a press release to reiterate that there is no link between hexavalent vaccine and autism, or between autism and the vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella.
So once again, science on one side, courts on the other. Considering the court's decision on the earthquake case, and the evidence that shows they didn't understand the GSK report, case closed on that one as well.
The one I linked was 1271 pgs.
That wasn't a scientific study published in a scientific journal, that was a confidential bridging report send to European pharmaceutical regulatory authorities.
Even the actual scientific studies that you linked to were were around a dozen pages, so for some reason you're under the false assumption that the length of peer-reviewed scientific studies rival long novels. Likewise the GSK report is not a peer-reviewed scientific study, so this is just more evidence that you don't have any experience reading scientific journals.
Whether Banks suffered an autistic spectrum disorder or some other ill effect does not matter to me
Well, here we go. You see that you're arguments have been thoroughly debunked and defeated, so you're changing the goalposts and your arguments. Maybe you shouldn't have wasted all of your time trying to futilely prove an autism link, only to admit that an autism/vaccine link wasn't what you were arguing.
You are opposed to me citing court case about vaccines...
I'm not opposed to it at all. In fact I hope you keep it up, since they're so easily debunked when you try to use them as scientific evidence instead of actual scientific journals and publications. Please, keep citing court cases as evidence of whatever it is you're trying to argue, which becomes less clear with every response.
There is little reason to continue with you since you are all about consensus science and can not handle any decent(eerily similar to the Climate Change crowd).
I agree there's little reason for you to continue considering your track record here of failing to check your sources. This is one of the main drawbacks of relying on quack sites like Age of Autism, who list "Jenny McCarthy" as one of their main contributors.
And with that I am done with you. Feel free to post away and thump your chest and claim a victory.
Don't need to chest thump, as all I needed to make clear is that your assertions are not well-defined, are not well-sourced or researched, and have no merit. I've provided the review and documentation to show such, so whether you continue to keep being proven wrong is up to you. Or perhaps you'll consider that in light of being under such vast misapprehensions, you'll actually take a look at the evidence and not let anti-science blogs do your thinking for you.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.