Posted on 02/15/2015 8:24:47 AM PST by azkathy
My nephew was seriously brain-damaged from his DPT shots, as well. He’s 31, and functions at about a three year old level, with no verbal skills at all. I’m so sick of hearing about how unimportant the “few” children who will be injured or killed by vaccines are.
They can test the *mom* for these things. There is NO justification to vaccinate every infant at birth for an STD.
“Why do we sit through beaucoup TV commercials - lasting long enough to take a nap - of all the GREAT, BAD SIDE EFFECTS that can happen if you take the drug being advertised BUT no one wants to name the bad side effects of vaccines.”
Believe it or not, but you just nailed the reason that my family is now backing out of vaccines all together as adults and my daughter is only having *her* daughter vaccinated against the ‘big bads’.
Every time we get vaccinated, we get sick. My son gets really, really sick. And it doesn’t matter what it is - even the flu shot.
But every single time we try to talk to the medical professionals about those side effects, they tell us that ‘that’s not possible’. (Alright. ONE nurse affirmed our symptoms and gave a plausible explanation.)
This total denial of reality has fed our mistrust more than anything.
“Doctor, every time I get the flu shot, I get flu symptoms for a week or two and then go through a couple of months of muscle aches, low-grade fevers, and malaise.”
“That’s impossible. It’s a dead virus and can’t make you sick.”
But we do get sick. And it’s a loooong lingering sickness that we cannot shake.
When my kids were young, we were advised to give them tylenol before we brought them in for their shots and to expect them to have a fever and be ‘fussy’ for a few days after. They acknowledge that there are some side effects.
But when they do a turn around and flat-out deny that we are having issues, it makes my hair stand up on end. If you don’t trust me, then why should I trust you?
After last year’s fiasco, we’re done. Last year we got the nasal spray, hoping that it would be different than the shots. My son got sicker than ever. For six freaking weeks that young man was sick as hell. Fevers up to 102. Couldn’t get out of bed. Diarrhea that wouldn’t end. The drs gave him antibiotics (because it couldn’t be from the vaccine, don’t cha know. He had to have a weird infection that they couldn’t figure out. Even though his symptoms started within hours of taking the spray...)
Turns out that he NEVER should’ve had that vaccine! He has an immunodeficiency and it is counter-indicated for his condition! WE BROUGHT IT UP TO THE DR AND NURSE BEFORE HAND. They poo-pooed us and still gave him the damn spray.
If they were *honest* with us - instead of trying to manipulate us and calm us down by dismissing our concerns, instead of addressing those concerns - we’d be a little more open minded.
Now, the entire medical profession has killed our family’s trust with their ‘calm down’ attitude.
Don’t these people know that you NEVER tell a woman to ‘calm down’ and dismiss her concerns? That’s Marriage 101.
You are a low information, name calling, Cretan (Toad). You have not read any of the studies from high ranking doctors mentioned by the previous posters. CINO’s like you trying to force parents into questionable medical practices (and OBAMACARE) for our children are EXACTLY why we are fighting!!!
this article blaming climate change for more infectious disease has this little tidbit in it. While I was reading this I was thinking of the Viruses, such as SV40 used in Polio vaccine.
http://phys.org/news/2015-02-infectious-diseases-emerging-climate.html
“But for more than 100 years, scientists have assumed parasites don’t quickly jump from one species to another because of the way parasites and hosts co-evolve.
Brooks calls it the “parasite paradox.” Over time, hosts and pathogens become more tightly adapted to one another. According to previous theories, this should make emerging diseases rare, because they have to wait for the right random mutation to occur.
However, such jumps happen more quickly than anticipated. Even pathogens that are highly adapted to one host are able to shift to new ones under the right circumstances.
Brooks and Hoberg call for a “fundamental conceptual shift” recognizing that pathogens retain ancestral genetic capabilities allowing them to acquire new hosts quickly.
It is unfortunate that there is a low risk of adverse side effects from any vaccine. However, the risk of death from the disease is far higher.
The components of vaccines that cause the side effects are the pieces of pathogens that are meant to activate the immune system. Unfortunately, if your child reacts that strongly to a non-infectious part of a pathogen, the reaction if your child were to catch the disease would be quite severe.
When you catch an infectious disease, the pathogen grows uncontrollably in your body, using your body as food. If the pathogen is a bacteria, it pumps out toxins that can travel all over the body and have serious effects. Viruses literally destroy flesh. It takes 1 to 2 weeks for the humoral immune system to start making disease specific antibodies; by this time, a lot of tissue damage can occur.
No, there is a lot of scientist in me. I work in public health; I look at morbidity and mortality data all the time. Vaccination and protecting the population from infectious disease is a public health issue, which should not be politicized.
The experts you speak of can tolerate a .5% death rate as acceptable.
The FDA would never approve a vaccine with a death rate that high. That death rate is associated with infectious disease--like measles or pertussis.
Keep in mind that the anti-vax movement is fundamentally leftist. It comes from the same leftists who push radical environmentalism and who say that there are too many people. Their ultimate goal is to drastically decrease the number of people, and many of them want the human race to be exterminated. If they can convince the scientifically illiterate that vaccines (which have some adverse effects, most minor) are more dangerous than diseases that kill, then they've achieved what they want--more kids dying. I do not know why so many so-called conservatives want to spread the radical anti-human leftist message, but doing so makes conservatives look bad.
One of the vaccines listed is designed to provoke the immune system to fight pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer right now is a death sentence--Michael Landon, Steve Jobs and Patrick Swayze all died of it. Most people die within 5 years of diagnosis. Why would a vaccine that prevents certain death from pancreatic cancer be a bad thing?
Well, I guess you could say it's bad if your motivation for spreading anti-vax propaganda is the same as that of activists like Barbara Loe Fisher and her ilk, who want as many people as possible to die because it furthers their goal of making humans extinct. If you hate humanity, then anything that enables people to live longer, healthier lives is bad.
Let's see--giving that vaccine at birth prevents that child from ever developing a disease that can cause severe liver injury, liver failure, liver cancer, and cirrhosis. The younger a person is when they get hepatitis b disease, the more likely they are to have those severe, lifelong, and potentially fatal consequences from it.
Nope, I'm having a hard time seeing the down side here.
Do you think this Expert understands the issue? “There is a great deal of evidence to prove that immunization of children does more harm than good.” “The manufacturers of these vaccines know they are worthless but they go on selling them anyway.” - Dr J Anthony Morris, PhD (Former Chief Vaccine Control Officer and Research Virologist, US FDA)
No, he seems to have been a disgruntled employee who had some severe issues. Despite a PhD in microbiology, he seems to have been unable to see the nuances that are characteristic of science. He saw problems (which were correlative, without a causative mechanism ever being definitively identified) with the swine flu vaccine, and assumed that those problems are the same with every other vaccine. That is an invalid assumption. You cannot say anything about vaccine B, if all your evidence is about vaccine A.
The fact is that vaccines and antibiotics are the two main factors in increasing the average life span to almost 80 years.
Oops, I missed this one. I read through her whole wikipedia article, and did not see any credentials qualifying her in vaccinology, immunology, microbiology, biochemistry, or in any other field that would qualify her to be considered a vaccine expert.
All I see is that you quoted one statement that she said, out of any context.
One thing you have to be careful of is that anti-vax sites often love to quote people who have no expertise in the science of vaccines. They'll point out that those people have PhDs or MDs, as if the degree itself and not the subject studied for the degree is important. They gloss over the fact that those "experts" actually have no experience in vaccine research. Some people go to school and get legitimate MD or PhD degrees and yet remain pseudoscience aficionados. If a person is presented as an expert, but they are saying things that are not documented within the medical literature, that should be a huge red flag. Anyone who is an expert can point to research that supports their statements, and anyone can verify that the research does, in fact, say what the expert says it does.
I have not read that the severe allergy part of the vaccine was “pathogen caused”. If you have the link, I’d like to read your link.
Japan switched over to a vaccine with LESS SEVERE side effects. I had read about this after my oldest had the TWO increasingly BAD reactions. Hence, the third of the DPT series was switched. Not all the REACTIONS can be classified as to ‘just the pathogen’.
Kanai K. Japan’s experience in pertussis epidemiology and vaccination in the past thirty years. Jpn J Med Sci Biol. 1980 Jun;33(3):107-43.
It is best to be informed, science is not settled and vaccine makers have made mistakes. SV40 (polio) ALV (measles), and rushing vaccine to market without adequate study (GARDASIL), Swine Flu vax.
Before I go into a really long, involved explanation of immunity and how the immune system functions, let me ask: are you genuinely interested in the answer? Because your question is really involved to answer, and I don't want to waste my time if you are not genuinely interested in the science behind the statement that I made.
The thing is, I do have a PhD; I have over 20 years experience in medical research, much of it in vaccine research. This means that I synthesize information--that is, I compile the facts and derive conclusions from them that are not necessarily published in a nice article. (Haha, I should be publishing them... maybe after I retire.)
Remember that, despite what anti-vax sites tell you, expecting the very first iteration of a vaccine to be completely safe and effective is setting an impossibly high standard. Often, the goal is just to get something that works and is reasonably safe out to protect people; refining it takes years or decades.
Now, are you genuinely interested in a lesson on biochemistry/immunology?
You don’t need to use the “elite” talk with me. I understand and have studied more than you think. In addition to being educated, I have four children whom have been vaccinated. I understand “Immunity”. Don’t talk down to people who have a VALID concern and experience with VACCINES. In Japan, they switched the shot. Their shot was safer. Your PhD does not make my education nor my experience INVALID. I don’t need your lesson, I am well versed already, although SCIENCE IS ALMOST NEVER SETTLED.
Your question indicated that you do not understand immunology. Your answer tells me you aren’t really interested, either. Somehow, I am not surprised.
Your way of phrasing indicates you think everyone but yourself is ill informed and stupid.
Somehow, since you work in that industry, I am not surprised.
PS I have degrees three of them.
Yep, and believe me, guess who has special privileges in today’s society? The people that really, quite likely have the blood borne diseases, who commit risky behavior for spreading Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C in large quantities.
I don't intend this a negative, but this statement explains your bias.
As a scientist, then, you know the difficulty in performing studies including establishment of control groups, comparison baselines, identifying correlation vs. causation, taking account all the factors that need to be considered to arrive at high confidence conclusions.
Questions need to be answered such as are study participants providing accurate information, keeping to the rules of the study, and how many ways you can ask a question to get a valid piece of information, let alone maintaining the integrity of daily lab practices.
Results are leveraged and extrapolated across larger groups based on the principals of statistics.
That's tough work. A drug makes it to production, are manufacturing controls, stable ingredient potency, and purity maintained, etc.- the details are endless.
So, how many times has a study been completed, and the team realizes they should have put more weight on the control of X, or that Y should have been broken out from Z. But the funding is out, you've made progress, but there's always more questions.
Keep in mind that the anti-vax movement is fundamentally leftist.
As the worn out saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Don't expect me to be able to explain the reasoning of leftists, I'm still waiting on an explaination of what occupy wall street was all about, what the problem is, and what solution is needed to resolve it. Ask any of the protesters, you'll get answers inconstant with the next activist.
Most of the occupy movement are on the left. Conservatives have the same concerns for the most part about the economy, and can point to the true cause and solutions in line with the principles of free enterprise and the Republic.
Is it really about anti-vax, or a rebellion because something just isn't right, and they feel fear? Are vaccinations another agent orange where the truth is well known decades later. Maybe they or their family, their baby, had bad experiences. Maybe they woke up to realize that doctors are often fat and keel over dead early, or they at one time promoted cigarettes on television. Actors, real doctors, they're all the same to the left.
I can tell you this, there are plenty of holistic doctors who left AMA practices, they left the medicine machine. They weren't able to do what they sacrificed for to become a doctor, and that is to help individuals. There's a multitude of such doctors, and even AMA doctors that refuse inoculation for their kids.
They are exercising their choice, as do individuals whom take ownership of their own health. The opposition is to government mandated vaccinations, not a blanket anti-vac position. To conservatives, one size does not fit all, we are people not a herd of animals.
It's a dangerous path when the good of the many overrides the free will of the individual. Government mandated vaccinations are inconsistent with our free will and free market competition.
Freedom isn't pretty sometimes, it isn't orderly and neat always, sometimes it takes messy blood and guts to maintain it.
Government cannot solve all of our problems, like the billions spent on the war on poverty, you can't force fix the human condition.
I hardly consider basing an opinion on the results of the most up-to-date high quality research a "bias."
As a scientist, then, you know the difficulty in performing studies including establishment of control groups, comparison baselines, identifying correlation vs. causation, taking account all the factors that need to be considered to arrive at high confidence conclusions. [Remaining paragraphs in the same vein omitted.]
That reminds me of some of the material that anti-science advocates (including but not limited to anti-vax kooks) post on their sites. The implication is supposed to be that the subject is just so complicated, and that scientists routinely overlook important factors that really should be considered before anyone can say a particular drug is safe.
Let me clarify that by "drug", I also include vaccines because they are a type of drug and undergo the same clinical trial process as any other drug.
The reality, however, is that a statement trying to list everything that scientists must consider (while implying that they routinely overlook items) is terribly naive. The reality of basic research, and then of clinical trials through the various phases and then after the drug has been approved is a heck of a lot more complicated than you seem to realize. This is why clinical trials require the work of a lot of people from many different specialties, because they each bring an expertise to the table so that together, they build a holistic picture of the problem being studied. You seem to be under the impression that drugs are approved with only a few inadequate tests to support approval--but in reality, it takes many clinical studies over the course of several years to build a good statistical foundation for drug approval. The first set of human studies, phase 1, involves dozens to a couple of hundred subjects. These are safety studies, done on just a few subjects. If the drug passes phase 1, it moves on to phase 2, the dose-finding phase. This may involve several hundred patients. The last phase, phase 3, is the study of how well the drug works. This typically involves a few thousand to over 10,000 patients, and requires careful record keeping and heavy-duty statistical analysis of the results.
I'm not even talking about study design (which has to be specific to the drug being tested), the ethical considerations of a study, or the involvement of the FDA at each step. These are complicated topics, and it would take a lot of time and space to discuss each one in any kind of detail.
Suffice it to say that the reason it takes 10-15 years (or longer) and $1 billion dollars (or more) to bring a drug from early development to approval is because the clinical trial process is so complicated. The FDA will not approve a drug unless a company has extensive safety and efficacy data to support its claim that its drug should be approved, and a company that cannot satisfy the FDA that its product is safe and effective basically loses all of its development costs. For a small company, that's a death blow.
Keep in mind that the anti-vax movement is fundamentally leftist.
As the worn out saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
The anti-vax movement isn't right even once. Frankly, they are pushing a dangerous level of complacency that has the potential to result in death and disability that does not have to happen. Actually, I think that some of the masterminds behind anti-vax kookery intend this result. They are leftists. A favorite leftist meme is that there are so many humans that we are irreversibly damaging the earth. Many leftists want a drastic (and violent) reduction in the numbers of human beings. Therefore, anything that has the potential to cause humans to die is something they support. Of course, they won't reveal their true intentions of wanting people to die young and needlessly--which is completely consistent with their propensity to lie about their motives. They know no one would support their ideas if they were honest.
Is it really about anti-vax, or a rebellion because something just isn't right, and they feel fear? Are vaccinations another agent orange where the truth is well known decades later.
I think that the proponents of the various anti-sciences (including anti-vax) pick their target audience for very specific characteristics. From what I've seen, anti-vax followers are scientifically and mathematically illiterate. They are truly incapable of discerning whether someone is describing real science, or is fabricating nonsense full of big sciency sounding words. They have no concept of relative risk (is a tender inflammation at the injection site really more serious than a disease that can kill a child?) I also get the impression that the anti-vax followers are genuinely upset that experts who spend years at university and more years during their career studying a subject actually do know more about that subject than someone whose knowledge is limited to typing words in a search box (what we disparagingly call "University of Google"). I have a feeling that this is because of self-esteem training in school--where, instead of praising students who do well, the teachers praise everyone, regardless, so that no one "feels bad", then these kids who all but failed school get into the real world and find out the real world cares about what you know, not your self-esteem. And suddenly, their self-esteem falls into the ditch.
Oh, the reason I quoted the sentence about agent orange is because it amused me. That happens to be the topic of my PhD work. I have not studied agent orange since I left graduate school, but it will always hold a special place in my heart.
I can tell you this, there are plenty of holistic doctors who left AMA practices, they left the medicine machine. They weren't able to do what they sacrificed for to become a doctor, and that is to help individuals. There's a multitude of such doctors, and even AMA doctors that refuse inoculation for their kids.
Oh, I am well aware that a small minority of doctors turn against their training and the Hippocratic oath to offer "alternative medicine." They do it for the money. They know that there are people who are desperate, and who don't want to hear that there is no known cure for their condition--and they are willing to take those people's money in return for promises they can't keep. Or they will sell all kinds of useless "cures" and "natural remedies" to people who are not sick, but have bought into new age mysticism and so forth. Etc. There are many ways that the unscrupulous sell quackery, and it is unfortunate that some individuals who legitimately earned the MD decide to become quacks. (They were probably marginal physicians to begin with.)
In closing, I will say this: there is a fundamental difference between refusing to vaccinate your children and choosing to fork over money to a quack instead of seeking legitimate evidence-based care. Vaccination is a public health issue. To protect the members of our society who cannot be vaccinated or whose immune systems respond inadequately to some or all vaccines, a certain percentage of the population has to be vaccinated. We call the level at which the vulnerable members are protected "herd immunity." Anti-vaxxers count on there being enough other children to prevent their unvaccinated children from being exposed, but they don't care a whit for other people's children who are exposed when their unvaccinated kids do pick up one of those dangerous diseases.
OTOH, when you decide to go to a quack for new-age faddish "treatment" of your serious disease, you are the only one whose life you are endangering by that decision. (You do not, btw, have an absolute right to take your seriously ill kid to a quack--you have to take your kid to a legitimate doctor to receive evidence-based medical care.)
I am well aware that a small minority of doctors turn against their training and the Hippocratic oath to offer "alternative medicine."
Training is for zoo animals, not thinking individuals. Many of these doctors leave the AMA not for the money, it's harder to make money outside of the machine, but to keep their Hippocratic oath. These are respectable professionals.
You seem to need to wear your supposed PhD on your sleeve, and you impress me as someone educated beyond your intelligence; you are a follower, and you want demand that others follow you and your AMA god flashing that PhD gold star on your forehead. Your career probably consists of clerical tasks, or at best a technical writing role.
Why is there an alternate medicine market? - a big part of the patient base have tried AMA medicine and had no results or became worse. Then they sought out free-market holistic medicine and medical practices, and had results, and retuned to those providers again.
You do not, btw, have an absolute right to take your seriously ill kid to a quack-
This is where I call you a Dem again. Get out and stay out of my family, you don't belong there. Take your herd with you, you keep ignoring that the vaccinated often get the disease too.
Take your herd theories and pack them back into that shallow mind of yours; admit that you're a control freak fascist, in the true sense, and a dem. You're a do gooder willing to invade my family because you think you know better, and everyone else is a kook...but you.
The funny thing is, there are some vaccinations that are acceptable, and there are AMA treatments and medicine that works. But my choice, not yours.
Statistics is a very powerful tool, which exists because of the impossibility of testing on everyone. Furthermore, since human beings are 99.9% genetically similar, you don't need to test a lot of people to determine safety. Typically, the safety tests are carried out on fewer than 100 patients.
Most efficacy studies are carried out on larger groups (usually 1 to 3 thousand); the sample size is determined on factors such as the expected magnitude of the effect from the drug. It takes more patients to determine if a drug is 2% effective than if a drug is 25% effective. With vaccines, since they are expected to be over 90% effective, the sample size needed to measure that can actually be fairly small. Determining sample size is another use of statistics.
Training is for zoo animals, not thinking individuals. Many of these doctors leave the AMA not for the money, it's harder to make money outside of the machine, but to keep their Hippocratic oath. These are respectable professionals.
Seriously? Human beings are trained all the time. In fact, I get emails at work all the time reminding me that I have to attend some kind of training. As a laboratory professional, I need to have safety training, environmental training, HIPAA training, ethics training, etc. etc. I probably attend over 100 hours of training every year.
Now, as for MD trained individuals who throw away their Hippocratic oath to peddle "alternative medicine"--they are scum. It's obvious they do it for the money--their websites are full of ads for bogus books and snake oil remedies. I'll bet "Dr. Oz" makes a lot more money going on TV to sell his scams than he ever made in a legitimate practice.
You seem to need to wear your supposed PhD on your sleeve, and you impress me as someone educated beyond your intelligence; you are a follower, and you want demand that others follow you and your AMA god flashing that PhD gold star on your forehead. Your career probably consists of clerical tasks, or at best a technical writing role.
I bring up the PhD only when someone is obstinate about insisting that they know more than they really know. Usually, I don't mention it because the knowledge speaks for itself; most people can actually recognize when an expert discusses a topic. Even at that, most of the people who believe in "alternative medicine" do recognize that I know my subject--they usually disparage me as a shill of "big pharma" or something, but in the very act of calling me a "shill" of an organization known to employ highly educated technical people, they acknowledge that I have the credentials I say I have.
BTW, don't disparage the people who do the clerical work for scientists. They often are very knowledgeable about our work--perhaps they can't devise a research plan to develop and test new antibiotics, but they sure as heck can help us navigate the regulatory and grant proposal processes we need to be able to do that work.
Why is there an alternate medicine market? - a big part of the patient base have tried AMA medicine and had no results or became worse. Then they sought out free-market holistic medicine and medical practices, and had results, and retuned to those providers again.
People turn to "alternative medicine" because a legitimate physician will tell them their disease can't be cured, and then offer palliative measures, while "alternative medicine" quacks are all too happy to make claims to be able to cure everything. I understand the role of desperation--no one likes being told that they have a terrible disease, and that their best hope for fighting it is to be radiated or take drugs that make them feel bad and cause their hair to fall out. But that is the best that science has to offer right now. No snake oil salesman in the world has some magic cure up his sleeve.
You need to apply a bit of critical thinking when it comes to "alternative medicine." Above, you criticized a sample size of 10,000 as being small (it is actually unusually large for a study), but what is the sample size used to "prove" that snake oils do anything? Where is the "alternative medicine" clinical data? Why do you trust someone who has absolutely NO evidence to back up his claim of being able to cure you? If you are not sick, and you're swallowing expensive snake oils because you believe they will keep you healthy--why? Why do you want to ingest substances of unknown safety into your body if you aren't sick?
You do not, btw, have an absolute right to take your seriously ill kid to a quack-
This is where I call you a Dem again. Get out and stay out of my family, you don't belong there. Take your herd with you, you keep ignoring that the vaccinated often get the disease too.
Actually, I was not telling you my opinion there. That happens to be the law. A judge can order you to provide evidence-based medicine to your kids and remove your kids from your home if you do not comply. The same is true if you want to feed your kids some whacky alternative diet (like vegan, fruitarian, etc.) You can legally educate your child in any way you want, but you cannot legally endanger his or her health.
Oh--of course I know that sometimes vaccinated people get the disease. However, since vaccination is extremely effective--better than 97%, in the case of receiving both doses of measles vaccine--the chance of getting the disease after vaccination is very low when compared to getting the disease if unvaccinated. Furthermore, since even if someone does not fully respond to a vaccine, they are likely to have developed at least partial immunity, so that even if they do get the disease, it will be less severe, less likely to land them in the hospital, and less likely to kill them.
In the case of measles, the chance of getting measles after exposure is usually about 20 times greater for the unvaccinated than for the vaccinated, although in some outbreaks, that has been measured as up to 200 times more likely.
BTW, the fact that vaccinations are not 100% effective is a ridiculous excuse to not use them. Nothing is 100% effective. Do you remove the seat belts and air bags from your car because they are not 100% effective at preventing you from dying in an accident? Or do you leave them in place because 50% (or whatever) protection is better than none?
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.