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  #576  
Old 05-16-2015, 10:48 PM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

Because we don't stand for that kind of Un-'Murican behavior here in 'Murica. Nationalizing it would certainly be throwing gasoline on the smoldering heap that is the conspiracy nut contingent of anti-vaxxers, in any case.
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  #577  
Old 05-17-2015, 01:37 AM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

I do know what you mean about 'Murican attitudes, though. We gots to continue to line the palms of our betters.
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Old 05-17-2015, 01:30 PM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

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One thing that has to be understood about the VCIP is that it was created in response to fears that vaccine manufacturers would abandon the vaccine business due to liability concerns (a legitimate fear) and that it designed to compensate any injury that could be attributed to vaccines, with a standard of evidence that is a legal, not a scientific standard that’s been likened to “50% and a feather.” These two points are both very important to remember when you hear vaccine opponents trumpeting the Poling case as “proof” of vaccines causing autism.
The Hannah Poling case and the rebranding of autism by antivaccinationists as a mitochondrial disorder « Science-Based Medicine
Thanks. My question in this whole thing is if the pharmaceutical industry reacted in such an irresponsible manner, why was the entire vaccine process not nationalized?
You need to flesh this out, I have no idea what you are asking.

Also you never did answer my repeated question...do you think vaccines do more harm than good?
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Old 05-17-2015, 04:57 PM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

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One thing that has to be understood about the VCIP is that it was created in response to fears that vaccine manufacturers would abandon the vaccine business due to liability concerns (a legitimate fear) and that it designed to compensate any injury that could be attributed to vaccines, with a standard of evidence that is a legal, not a scientific standard that’s been likened to “50% and a feather.” These two points are both very important to remember when you hear vaccine opponents trumpeting the Poling case as “proof” of vaccines causing autism.
The Hannah Poling case and the rebranding of autism by antivaccinationists as a mitochondrial disorder « Science-Based Medicine
Thanks. My question in this whole thing is if the pharmaceutical industry reacted in such an irresponsible manner, why was the entire vaccine process not nationalized?
You need to flesh this out, I have no idea what you are asking.
If the federal government must absolve the manufacturer and those who administer the vaccines of all liability, and that same federal government dictates how those vaccines are developed and distributed and contracts for the production of the vaccines...why not just make it an entirely public process and remove the middleman of the corporation that is required to generate a profit? Make it an entirely non-profit public interest program. In the public interest. It seems to me that it would make access to vaccines a bit more equitable, poverty being a major impediment to vaccination.

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Also you never did answer my repeated question...do you think vaccines do more harm than good?
No, I do not. For the most part, several of them do great good, but still do not entirely lose the possibility of harm, even if it is quite rare. And some that have superlative records at preventing disease have less than stellar safety research records. To inject alien proteins in to your body has inherent risks. When that risk entails potentially immiserating your own child for the remainder of their life and then that risk is multiplied by the proliferation of vaccines not only made available, but mandated, parents become concerned and start asking questions. Rightfully so.

Not all vaccines are equal. I entered this whole wider discussion of 'vaccines' because I came in criticizing the futility and waste of mass vaccination for influenza...I still think that whole program is a waste of resources and readily shows the public health system to be misguided. I think it is feeding the general lack of trust in our public health officials regarding vaccine use.

I think that some vaccines could be designated as higher priority for mandates and intensive coverage, while others could be deferred or ignored. I suspect the current vaccine schedule is unnecessarily rigid and has room to allow for actual choices to be made.

But, hey, vaccines still do not cause autism.
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  #580  
Old 05-17-2015, 10:58 PM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

The government felt that widespread vaccination was important enough to protect it from constant litigation. Basic vaccination is available at little or no cost through federal programs, state and county health systems as well as many school systems, and always has been http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs...-detailed.html
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  #581  
Old 05-17-2015, 11:12 PM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

School vaccine requirements vary from state to state and possibly vary locally. My son is not required to have every shot on the recommended schedule (certainly not flu) So, there is prioritization.
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  #582  
Old 05-18-2015, 06:51 PM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

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The government felt that widespread vaccination was important enough to protect it from constant litigation. Basic vaccination is available at little or no cost through federal programs, state and county health systems as well as many school systems, and always has been CDC - VFC Detailed Questions and Answers for Parents - Vaccines for Children Program
No, not 'always'. Attempts to reach the underserved populations of the urban poor with blanket no cost or affordable vaccination came in to being with the Vaccination Assistance Act of 1962 and by 1967, there was still a struggle to meet the needs of urban ghetto populations. Elena Comis in her history of the American experience with vaccinations, Vaccine Nation, (on pp 50-1) notes that,

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Within just a few years of the first measles vaccine hitting the market, 20 million doses had been administered to American children. The number of measles cases declined, but the disease's national morbidity rate - the amount of total illness and disability it caused - didn't budge nearly as much. In large part, that was because of who was getting the vaccine and who wasn't. From 1963 through 1965, most of the measles vaccine in the country had been administered by physicians in private practice, noted the CDC. Little was given to children living in poverty, and the consequence was a new pattern of disease. In Los Angeles, for example, measles declined in predominantly white, "middle class and upper socioeconomic areas" and "increased in areas with large populations of the lower socioeconomic group," a UCLA epidemiology professor noted. As a result, "measles became...a disease of the Negro population and the population with Spanish surnames." Across the country, measles-susceptible children were now concentrated "in a central core, lower socioeconomic area of the city," said CDC epidemiologist Robert Warren. As with polio, the new vaccine had shifted the disease's epidemiology. If the country was going to eradicate measles, noted Warren, it would have to ensure the vaccine was used more "homogenously" in the future.
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  #583  
Old 05-19-2015, 12:47 AM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

So, were you just scoring a point or can you tie this 50 year old problem with vaccine access to the current conversation?
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  #584  
Old 05-20-2015, 03:57 AM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

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  #585  
Old 05-20-2015, 01:06 PM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

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Originally Posted by godfry n. glad View Post
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The government felt that widespread vaccination was important enough to protect it from constant litigation. Basic vaccination is available at little or no cost through federal programs, state and county health systems as well as many school systems, and always has been CDC - VFC Detailed Questions and Answers for Parents - Vaccines for Children Program
No, not 'always'. Attempts to reach the underserved populations of the urban poor with blanket no cost or affordable vaccination came in to being with the Vaccination Assistance Act of 1962 and by 1967, there was still a struggle to meet the needs of urban ghetto populations. Elena Comis in her history of the American experience with vaccinations, Vaccine Nation, (on pp 50-1) notes that,
Fair enough. I change my statement to:

The government felt that widespread vaccination was important enough to protect it from constant litigation. Basic vaccination is available at little or no cost through federal programs, state and county health systems as well as many school systems, and has been for many years. Today with the ACA, which eliminates co pays for vaccines, and the Vaccines for Children program (in place for over 20 years now) for those who are uninsured or underinsured, there is near universal access.

So, can you support your statement that poverty is a major impediment to vaccination (I concede that it was)?

Also, FTR I would like to see this statement of yours "why not just make it an entirely public process and remove the middleman of the corporation that is required to generate a profit?" applied to all medical care. I want universal public health care in the US and an elimination of health insurance. It won't be happening anytime soon though.
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  #586  
Old 05-20-2015, 05:00 PM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

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The government felt that widespread vaccination was important enough to protect it from constant litigation. Basic vaccination is available at little or no cost through federal programs, state and county health systems as well as many school systems, and always has been CDC - VFC Detailed Questions and Answers for Parents - Vaccines for Children Program
No, not 'always'. Attempts to reach the underserved populations of the urban poor with blanket no cost or affordable vaccination came in to being with the Vaccination Assistance Act of 1962 and by 1967, there was still a struggle to meet the needs of urban ghetto populations. Elena Comis in her history of the American experience with vaccinations, Vaccine Nation, (on pp 50-1) notes that,
Fair enough. I change my statement to:

The government felt that widespread vaccination was important enough to protect it from constant litigation. Basic vaccination is available at little or no cost through federal programs, state and county health systems as well as many school systems, and has been for many years. Today with the ACA, which eliminates co pays for vaccines, and the Vaccines for Children program (in place for over 20 years now) for those who are uninsured or underinsured, there is near universal access.
My understanding is that to get the VCIP, the pharmaceuticals basically held the gun to the head of the government and told them that they needed to be protected from ruinous lawsuits over vaccines or they'd stop making them. The government complied.

I'm in the midst of Ms. Conis' history (my present reading places me at the beginning of the Clinton administration) and the way she paints it, new Democratic presidential administrations usher in new initiatives to reach more American children with vaccines. It seems that the intervening Republican presidential administrations tend to defund, or underfund, or just basically de-emphasize public health initiatives, including immunizatons, and it has been the inner cities which had consequently suffered. It is also my understanding the the current access is as you state.

Quote:
So, can you support your statement that poverty is a major impediment to vaccination (I concede that it was)?
I don't think I stated that it is, largely because my understanding of the present situation is that the lower income and lower educational attainment portions of the US population are now more compliant and more thoroughly immunized than many upwardly mobile households with higher educational attainment. Vaccine resistance and undervaccination has moved upscale. The present situation seems to be a reverse of the historically typical situation.

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Also, FTR I would like to see this statement of yours "why not just make it an entirely public process and remove the middleman of the corporation that is required to generate a profit?" applied to all medical care. I want universal public health care in the US and an elimination of health insurance. It won't be happening anytime soon though.
I'm with you there. I concur wholeheartedly.
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  #587  
Old 05-21-2015, 02:54 PM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

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I don't think I stated that it is
This statement sounded to me like you were talking about the current situation
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Originally Posted by godfry
Make it an entirely non-profit public interest program. In the public interest. It seems to me that it would make access to vaccines a bit more equitable, poverty being a major impediment to vaccination.
Quote:
Originally Posted by godfry
the lower income and lower educational attainment portions of the US population are now more compliant and more thoroughly immunized than many upwardly mobile households with higher educational attainment.
Yes, many of my fellow insured, middle class (mostly) white parents are choosing to not immunize.
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  #588  
Old 05-21-2015, 05:10 PM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

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I don't think I stated that it is
This statement sounded to me like you were talking about the current situation
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Originally Posted by godfry
Make it an entirely non-profit public interest program. In the public interest. It seems to me that it would make access to vaccines a bit more equitable, poverty being a major impediment to vaccination.
Yes, I can see that. And, I think it still stands, given that when austerity measures are put in to place (and which, of course, never touch 'defense' spending) the first casualty seems to be vaccination amongst the economic marginals. Every time the Republicans de-emphasize public health measures, it is the populations in urban cores which seem to suffer.

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Quote:
Originally Posted by godfry
the lower income and lower educational attainment portions of the US population are now more compliant and more thoroughly immunized than many upwardly mobile households with higher educational attainment.
Yes, many of my fellow insured, middle class (mostly) white parents are choosing to not immunize.
And why do you think that is?
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Old 05-21-2015, 05:13 PM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

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My understanding is that to get the VCIP, the pharmaceuticals basically held the gun to the head of the government and told them that they needed to be protected from ruinous lawsuits over vaccines or they'd stop making them. The government complied.
Also yes, back in the 80's after some large lawsuits, manufactures planned to stop making the DTaP. I have known doctors to stop practicing in high lawsuit risk specialties like obstetrics when their malpractice insurance pulled out of a market for the same reason.

If there is a bad medical outcome of any kind, people naturally look for the cause. If there is even a possibility that a doctor or drug directly caused the outcome, then they have someone to blame and seek compensation from. Medical lawsuits carry consequences of all kinds, some consequences benefit us all by identifying dangerous drugs and quacks, and some don't benefit us due to the loss of goods and services.

If the risk is too high then manufacturers and providers may leave that market. That's a possible consequence. Some people felt that losing access to various vaccines was not a public benefit and so created a way to compensate those harmed while keeping the vaccines available.

Have you been following the drug companies' refusal to make execution drugs? What do you think of them doing that?
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Old 05-21-2015, 05:20 PM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

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Quote:
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the lower income and lower educational attainment portions of the US population are now more compliant and more thoroughly immunized than many upwardly mobile households with higher educational attainment.
Yes, many of my fellow insured, middle class (mostly) white parents are choosing to not immunize.
And why do you think that is?
Because we do not know the risk and toll of those diseases first hand, but we have seen autism and ADHD etc. so can speculate and be concerned about the vaccines possibly being contributory.

We have a different risk vs. benefit analysis due to the past success of vaccinations.

Some of us have second hand info through our parents, but in my case, I am much older than most of my son's peers parents.
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Old 05-21-2015, 05:31 PM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

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My understanding is that to get the VCIP, the pharmaceuticals basically held the gun to the head of the government and told them that they needed to be protected from ruinous lawsuits over vaccines or they'd stop making them. The government complied.
Also yes, back in the 80's after some large lawsuits, manufactures planned to stop making the DTaP. I have known doctors to stop practicing in high lawsuit risk specialties like obstetrics when their malpractice insurance pulled out of a market for the same reason.

If there is a bad medical outcome of any kind, people naturally look for the cause. If there is even a possibility that a doctor or drug directly caused the outcome, then they have someone to blame and seek compensation from. Medical lawsuits carry consequences of all kinds, some consequences benefit us all by identifying dangerous drugs and quacks, and some don't benefit us due to the loss of goods and services.

If the risk is too high then manufacturers and providers may leave that market. That's a possible consequence. Some people felt that losing access to various vaccines was not a public benefit and so created a way to compensate those harmed while keeping the vaccines available.
I had not been aware of the DTaP problems until I read about it in the Conis narrative. Additionally, at the same time a series of polio infections caused by the vaccine (vaccinations thereby becoming the ONLY source of polio infections) actually forced several smaller pharmaceuticals out of business.

It seems to me that these are all additional reasons to go to universal health care. Not that it will provide 'better' health care, but that it will provide equitable and more accessible health care. Risk will still be a problem, but the pubic will not be held hostage by profit-seekers who don't like their deep pockets targeted.

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Have you been following the drug companies' refusal to make execution drugs? What do you think of them doing that?
No, I have not. I've heard snippets in passing, mostly about how European pharmaceutical firms are now refusing to ship such to the US, suspecting that they will be used for capital punishment. My understanding is that it was also interfering with emerging US 'death with dignity' provisions.
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Old 05-21-2015, 06:24 PM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

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the lower income and lower educational attainment portions of the US population are now more compliant and more thoroughly immunized than many upwardly mobile households with higher educational attainment.
Yes, many of my fellow insured, middle class (mostly) white parents are choosing to not immunize.
And why do you think that is?
Because we do not know the risk and toll of those diseases first hand, but we have seen autism and ADHD etc. so can speculate and be concerned about the vaccines possibly being contributory.

We have a different risk vs. benefit analysis due to the past success of vaccinations.

Some of us have second hand info through our parents, but in my case, I am much older than most of my son's peers parents.
I'm not too sure what you mean with the latter, but I'm agreeable with your first two statements. I also think there is also an ongoing complicity of the public health officials and pharmaceuticals developers in their overstatement of efficacy of vaccines, understatement of risks of the same, and the tendency to engage in fear-mongering in order to advance vaccines with dubious benefits. With a series of immunization faux pas and associated public initiatives, informed members of the public have had their trust in the pronouncements of health officials eroded.

Comis places the core of the inception of the present vaccine resistance movement in the 'health feminism' and 'environmentalism' movements which in the 1970s began pushing back against what they saw as 'paternalistic medicine' and equipping themselves with the language and concepts of pollution and toxic risks. Science is not always enlightened or benevolent and critics could readily point to circumstances which made that clear (DDT, thalidomide, Tuskegee syphilis study) even within the medical vaccination paradigm (the 1976 influenza vaccine, SV-40, DTaP brain injuries, and the vaccine generated polio). During this time, the CDC advised vaccine schedule was expanding at an unprecedented rate with things like a hepatitis B vaccine. Add to those the suspicions raised by the Gulf War Syndrome and the AIDS debacle and you get a lot of very skeptical members of the public and they tend to be well-educated and fairly aware of emergent situations with vaccines.

Also, these faux pas in the past could have readily been papered over and minimized, but the advent of new and more effective communications sources (the internet) has made it easier for critics to build their own informational communities and find and repeatedly publicize the faux pas and their deleterious effects upon the public, as well as access rafts of inaccurate information.

It does not help that public health officials push an vaccination initiative which evidence-based medicine has adjudged marginally effective but entirely inefficient. Leading epidemiologists and respiratory infections specialists continue to point this out, yet the nation's leading vaccine proponent, the CDC, still relies upon discredited research to justify attempting to force the public to accept a fraudulent program and those who administer it march lock step to push this pointless program without even discussing it. They are lying to the public and the public knows it. It makes the whole thing look corrupt and unreliable, something most folks don't like with people who are injecting alien proteins in to our bodies. Stuff like this just makes it more difficult to assure that the suspicious and skeptical get vaccines which really might make a difference. Health officials are shooting themselves in the foot with crap like this.
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  #593  
Old 05-21-2015, 10:57 PM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

So...In addition to the Comis title, I just received a borrowed copy of James Colgrove's State of Immunity: The Politics of Vaccination in Twentieth-Century America. I shall be interested to see what he has to say about the creation of VICP and VEARS.
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Old 05-21-2015, 11:06 PM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

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the lower income and lower educational attainment portions of the US population are now more compliant and more thoroughly immunized than many upwardly mobile households with higher educational attainment.
Yes, many of my fellow insured, middle class (mostly) white parents are choosing to not immunize.
And why do you think that is?
Because we do not know the risk and toll of those diseases first hand, but we have seen autism and ADHD etc. so can speculate and be concerned about the vaccines possibly being contributory.

We have a different risk vs. benefit analysis due to the past success of vaccinations.

Some of us have second hand info through our parents, but in my case, I am much older than most of my son's peers parents.
I'm not too sure what you mean with the latter, but I'm agreeable with your first two statements.
I mean that my uncle has some lifelong complications from childhood mumps, and my parents were children during the worst polio epidemics in the 1950's and so remember the fear and heartache. My son's peers parents are an extra generation removed, so those stories are less relevant to them.
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Old 05-22-2015, 12:12 AM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

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the lower income and lower educational attainment portions of the US population are now more compliant and more thoroughly immunized than many upwardly mobile households with higher educational attainment.
Yes, many of my fellow insured, middle class (mostly) white parents are choosing to not immunize.
And why do you think that is?
Because we do not know the risk and toll of those diseases first hand, but we have seen autism and ADHD etc. so can speculate and be concerned about the vaccines possibly being contributory.

We have a different risk vs. benefit analysis due to the past success of vaccinations.

Some of us have second hand info through our parents, but in my case, I am much older than most of my son's peers parents.
I'm not too sure what you mean with the latter, but I'm agreeable with your first two statements.
I mean that my uncle has some lifelong complications from childhood mumps, and my parents were children during the worst polio epidemics in the 1950's and so remember the fear and heartache. My son's peers parents are an extra generation removed, so those stories are less relevant to them.
Ah...okay. That would have made you far more sympathetic to mumps vaccination. Conis notes that there was a great deal of discussion early after the mumps vaccine development as to whether it was even worth vaccinating against it. I was born in the early 1950 and was infected with the standard fare of 'childhood diseases' for that time. I remember the high level of fear regarding polio and having the sugar cubes of the Sabin vaccine. I do not remember any of the flap about SV-40 or the vaccine-induced polio infections. I also remember the relative lack of enthusiasm of adults with the announcement of the measles vaccine in the mid-1960s.

Your cohorts would probably be more likely to have relatives or friends who have been affected by autism or some immune system dysfunction, as there seems to have been a marked increase in the afflicted during their young lives, while vaccination rates for most of those infectious 'childhood diseases' have been quite high and infection rates consequently quite low.
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Old 05-22-2015, 12:18 AM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

Whoa...I just finished Conis' chapter on Gardasil. What a clusterfuck that is. That kind of shit just reinforces the distrust which the public has developed of public health initiatives, particularly if the PhARMA perps are heavily involved, as Merck was in this debacle.
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Old 05-22-2015, 02:03 AM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

Most of the clusterfuck I saw about Gardisil came from the religious right not wanting to protect against STD s as it would encourage sex.

HPV I have firsthand knowledge of as a large percentage of people my age have been infected and it has led to 10s of thousands of cases of cancer.

http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skept...king-gardasil/

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Dingfod (05-22-2015), Nullifidian (05-25-2015)
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Old 05-25-2015, 11:55 PM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

Interesting. The situation described in Comis' narrative is considerably different.

She notes that the June 2006 introduction of Gardasil followed a priority FDA review at Merck's request, in order to obtain the sell approval with an expedited process. They were very bullish on the vaccine and the regulators seemed to agree, as ACIP recommended that the vaccine be administered to girls 11-12 and females then ages 13-16 as 'catch-up' inoculations. The drug was made available through the Vaccines for Children programs to make it accessible to the under-served.

By September of that year the Michigan legislature was considering mandating the vaccine for all sixth-grade girls. Texas governor Rick Perry issued an executive order mandating vaccination. Through 2007, over two dozen states would consider mandatory vaccination of sixth grade girls for HPV, but ultimately the Texas legislature would revolt against Perry, and only Virginia and DC would succeed in mandating Gardasil vaccination. She cites accusations of promoting liberal sexual mores, encroaching on parental rights, being swayed by corporate dollars, and placing the health of young girls in jeopardy as the impediments to legislative mandates.

Yes, she does mention the flap over 'encouraging sexuality' and the social conservative opposition, but that, to her, is a side squabble to the main event, as were the proponents of 'informed consent' and civil liberties.

But the main event, from pp 232-4:

Quote:
Of course, relatively few critics explicitly rejected the HPV vaccine as a civic duty of children. Instead, debate over the proposed mandates focused largely on how safe the vaccine was, how necessary it was, and how to weigh its potential risks against the risks of HPV and cervical cancer. Safety concerns loomed large, which was not surprising given the cultural prominence of drug-safety worries in the mid-2000s. Since the turn of the millennium, Americans had show a rapidly escalating loss of trust in the pharmaceutical industry. The "Big Pharma" backlash was part of a large backlash against transnational corporations; the anti-globalization movement of the early 2000s had charge corporations with ignoring environmental, worker, and consumer safety in their quest of ever-larger profits. Merck seemed to exemplify the trend when, in 2004, its widely prescribed arthritis drug, Vioxx, was found to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke only after it had been on the market for five years. The news about Vioxx came on the tail of reports that hormone replacement therapy, used for decades to treat the symptoms of menopause in women, also increased the risk of heart attacks, strokes, and certain types of cancer.

These scares and others inflamed popular cynicism toward the profit-hungry pharmaceutical industry, which in the mid-2000s was suddenly skewered everywhere from Hollywood to the nation's most venerable medical journals....Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, authored an expose that lambasted the industry for its undue influence over government regulators and relentless pursuit of profits. Her book, The Truth About the Drug Companies, belonged to a wave of popular books by physicians and investigative journalists that took on Big Pharma in the mid-2000s. One reviewer writing on the trend noted that there was no shortage of material to draw on; in a single week in the summer of 2004, one drug company stood accused of cheating Medicaid, six others were being sued by the city of new York for "inflating costs and defrauding taxpayers," another was paying out billions in settlements to consumers injured by a widely prescribed diet drug, and still another had covered up potentially fatal side effect of a drug for schizophrenia.

Throughout 2004 and 2005, medicine and the media conveyed the message that consumer safety was largely an afterthought for the drug industry. And vaccines, of course, were under their own attack at the time. In fact, as lawmakers debated mandatory HPV vaccines for girls, Jenny McCarthy's Louder Than Words, with its pleas for more cautious government vaccination policies, shot to the top of the nation's best-seller lists. Worries that Gardasil might not be safe bubbled up from the mix of existing misgivings about drug company greed, vaccine side effects, and the speed with which Gardasil was approved for use and being mandated for girls. Asked one critic of HPV vaccine mandates: "What if 90% of all ...girls are vaccinated within the next five years and then ten or twenty years from now it is discovered that the vaccine made them sterile or....caused them to get a different type of cancer...?" Safety worries were all the more prominent because the vaccine had been recommended not for adults but for children. Barbara Loe Fisher, amongst others, warned that clinical trials had tested the vaccine mostly in older women, who were "biologically different" from young girls. Furthermore, said Fisher, Merck's own product insert disclosed that Gardasil had not been studied for its long-term "ability to affect female fertility, cause other kinds of cancer or be toxic to the genes."

Safety concerns were amplified by the perception that HPV infection wasn't a risk worth taking other risks to avoid. As one mother put it in a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, a disease that killed less than 4,000 women a year (cervical cancer caused an estimated 3,700 deaths in 2006) didn't seem a big enough problem to warrant vaccinating millions of girls.....Moreover, noted critics, Gardasil addressed just one cause of cervical cancer; it did nothing to prevent cervical cancers caused by smoking, DES, and other exposures. And relatively few forms of HPV had a link to cancer; the vast majority of HPV infections are harmless and clear up of their own accord.

The gulf between the fact that safe and effective means of preventing cervical cancer -- the Pap smear -- already existed. To critics of HPV mandates, the Pap smear was proof that the vaccine and its risks were unwarranted....

Health experts who spoke out against mandates further fanned the flames of controversy. "I'm not against vaccines, but in Canada and the US, women are not dying in the streets of cervical cancer," a health policy professor told the press. "Most deaths from cervical cancer in this country are in women who are not adequately screened (with a simple Pap smear)....Unfortunately, there is no lobby for the Pap smear," wrote an obstetrics professor in the New York Times. Dartmouth physician Diane Harper, who had tested the HPV vaccine in clinical trials for Merck, told reporters that the vaccine hadn't been tested in girls as young as those targeted by mandates, that there was no proof the vaccine's protection would last into girls' sexually active years, and that it might give young women a false sense of security, prompting them to skip Pap smears even though the tests were still necessary to catch cervical cancers not prevented by the vaccine. "To mandate now is to Merck's benefit, and only to Merck's benefit," she said. "We don't need mandatory vaccinations for little girls."
Comis' narrative goes on to malign Merck and its machinations leading up to the Gradasil release and after...and it's not pretty. It basically strongly reinforces the lack of trust anybody should have in Merck. She then covers the role of the vaccine target populace had in the discussion, thanks to social media, about which she is far more enthusiastic than I. She seems to approve of the broadening franchise of discussants in the social experiment of vaccine protection, particularly when the discussion seeks to 'disengender' the discussions, or, at minimum broaden the inclusivity of participants.

I think the problem which is generating the vaccine resistance in US society is lack of trust. I also think there is ample reason for that lack of trust.
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Old 05-26-2015, 01:38 AM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

Yes lack of trust fuels most movements in this country, and it is often reasonable to be skeptical. In my opinion, the Gardisil issue was almost entirely due to the fact that it protects against cancer caused by a sexually transmitted virus and is meant to mostly protect women. Yes, I think there is some gender discrimination involved. In 2011 over 4000 women died of cervical cancer...the vast majority of those cancers are caused by HPV. If we can prevent a large portion of those deaths, shouldn't we? Are 4000 lives per year not worth trying to save? Why or why not?

Quote:
Originally Posted by excerpt
"Most deaths from cervical cancer in this country are in women who are not adequately screened (with a simple Pap smear)....Unfortunately, there is no lobby for the Pap smear,"
Quote:
Originally Posted by excerpt
The gulf between the fact that safe and effective means of preventing cervical cancer -- the Pap smear -- already existed
Um, this is a bit misleading? Yes, it can detect precancerous cells for early treatment before cancer takes hold, but it doesn't prevent the problem from occurring in the first place. Cervical dysplasia treatment is painful and invasive, and inaccessible without medical insurance...isn't prevention a better idea?

Prostrate cancer kills over 20k men a year. It is highly treatable if caught early during screenings, are there lobbies for that? Do you think if they found a vaccine that was effective if administered during adolescence, there would be the same level of backlash? Why or why not?

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Old 05-26-2015, 03:12 AM
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Default Re: This Just in! Vaccines STILL Do Not Cause Autism

It is my understanding that the 4000 deaths per annum in the US are attributable to HPV.

However, the vaccine does not treat all HPV which are linked to the cancer which causes death. Pap smears are still required to determine if cancers which are not treated by the vaccine might be occurring. The vaccine does not obviate the Pap smear, but health officials fear that many will assume it does.

Vaccinating millions to maybe prevent a portion of 4000 deaths a year, when the results have been jiggered by the pharmaceutical company making it and the they don't have any evidence for the effects on the target population and they don't have any evidence of potential long-term adverse effects. The vaccine itself is excessively overpriced and the manufacturer is making a brazillion bucks on the newly patented vaccine, even with dubious safety evidence.

It seems to me that limited public health funds might be better used for other public health initiatives than rushing to mandate this particular vaccine. I think it would be adequate to make it available to those who wish to obtain it for their vaccination, with informed consent, as a matter of choice, rather than to mandate it for all. They can undertake the heightened risk of a newly introduced pharmaceutical which was rushed to market. Public health funds might be better utilized to make Pap smears available to those who might be afflicted because they did not get a timely Pap smear.

Prostate cancer screening has been implicated as one of the more glaring generators of unnecessary surgeries in traditional medicine. Overtreatment.

I'm more interested in seeing how the 'lung cancer vaccine' from Cuba pans out.
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