(I’ll be reviewing “Autism’s False Prophets” by Paul Offit as I go, and this is the first entry. If you think this is too much attention for Offit, rest assured I plan to do this with other significant releases, including Jenny McCarthy’s new book, out later this month.)
For the book reviewer, just as for the author, the first thing you look for is some irony that you can tease for a telling meta-metaphor. It doesn’t take long for the reviewer to find one in Autism’s False Prophets. The author, Paul Offit, in describing the path that took him to medicine, credits the heroic physician he saw as a child. Dr. Milton Markowitz saved young Paul’s life after Paul fell, tore his spleen in half and bled nearly to death.
The irony is that Offit nearly died because of the boneheaded medical malpractice performed by the first doctor who saw him. To thousands of parents who have grown deeply suspicious of their children’s pediatricians, it doesn’t take much to sympathize with the situation: The first doctor sucked, so you go find a second one who doesn’t suck. If enough people do that, we get two parallel fields who don’t really have much to do with each other and whose highly educated opinions don’t resemble each other. The value of the expert becomes nil.
Like it or not, we can see signs of that system developing, and perhaps no modern doctor is more closely aligned with one side than Offit.
He’s the chief of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and more famously the inventor of a vaccine for rotavirus. He is known as a quote machine in defense of vaccines. (Indeed, the first time I called the American Academy of Pediatrics, for a question about vaccine safety, they sent me to Offit.)
And, in a subset of the autism community, he is hated. Here’s how he opens his prologue:
“I get a lot of hate mail. Every week people send letters and e-mails calling me ’stupid,’ ‘callous,’ an ‘SOB,’ or a ‘prostitute.’” He later reveals even more serious correspondence: He’s gotten at least one death threat that was deemed credible, and had armed guards for years.
Offit’s Chapter One is called “The Tinderbox,” and it lays out the landscape that he says makes autism such fertile ground for unproven medicine. He writes of the pessimism in early autism research, and of the despicable optimism of early “cures” from Bruno “refrigerator moms” Bettelheim. He writes of parents facing “unimaginable financial and emotional stress,” “frustrated beyond reason and sanity.” And he writes of two recent treatments — facilitated communication and secretin — that were later revealed to have depended on flawed research.
(Both are still in use; many parents and some doctors believe that the research that discredited them was in fact flawed. And, for many of these treatments, it can be argued that just because they don’t work in labs for some children on the spectrum doesn’t mean they can’t work for others; autism is, after all, many different disorders that may have many different treatments.)
I don’t believe Offit’s book is going to be about him, per se, but his role in the culture is central to the theme in the prologue and first chapter. He’s not writing just about specific “bad science” that he wishes to debunk. He’s really talking about the ways we lose the ability to answer questions. I’m sure he thought that, when he went to college, then to medical school, then into the field, then developed what is generally considered a life-saving vaccine, then opened a center for vaccine education, that his credentials would strengthen his arguments. Yet he shows over and over again in his first chapter that a white lab coat doesn’t make you an expert, and he continually bumps up against people in real life who point to his white lab coat and say the same thing.
Maybe it’s just me, but this uncertainty is sort of depressing.
I have never once heard Dr Offit provide any plausible explanation for what might be causing autism. He seems far more concerned with defending vaccines at any cost than finding out why so many kids are sick.
Wow, comparing him to Hitler? Teresa, do you know anything about Offit? The man has dedicated his life to improving public health, particularly the lives of children. I challenge you to read his book before you make comparisons to a genocidal megalomaniac.
Sam, I just finished this book and am very interested in your take on it. I didn’t get the same impression as you did from the first chapters but I can’t tell if you are more troubled by common parent reactions to information provided by their child’s doctor or by the diversity of opinions among medical professionals.
An anecdote that illustrates my point:
Earlier this year, I went to an osteopathic doctor on the advice of a friend, so that he could examine my shoulder which was giving me pain with overhead movement. He used a small ultrasound device to examine the joint, poked and prodded, moved my arms around, and then finally recommended something called “prolotherapy”- the injection of irritating substances into a joint in order to stimulate the body’s natural repair mechanisms. He wanted to inject cod liver oil into my shoulder joint several times a week for months, and claimed it would resolve the issue, which he claimed was inflammation and swelling.
This treatment was offered as cash-only and not covered by insurance. A striking parallel to the DAN! situation.
For a second opinion, I saw an orthopedic surgeon who immediately did x-rays of my shoulder and found that I was suffering from osteolysis of the distal clavicle: weightlifting had caused many small microfractures in my collarbone, causing the end of it to grow into the acromioclavicular joint and wear it down. He recommended surgery to remove the tip of the clavicle so that my body could reform the joint. I had this surgery done on Tuesday.
Had I listened to the first doctor, eventually my clavicle would have torn through the rotator cuff and possibly necessitated complete shoulder replacement. The published peer-reviewed studies on my condition show extremely high rates of success from the surgery and no benefit from cod liver oil injections into the joint (or prolotherapy in general) has ever been demonstrated.
My point is that not all opinions are of the same value, even if they come from people with similar educations and professions. In some cases, the wrong medical opinion can be very dangerous. You need to dig deeper and examine the evidence behind their opinions, then make an informed decision.
Being a parent of an autistic child is not easy; It comes with comments from friends, family, service providers, and strangers telling you that your childs behaviour “sounds normal”, or “I think we just are diagnosing these kids whereas in the old days they were around but noone thought about it.” Those kind of rationale sure make the friend or stranger feel better but data suggest it is hogwash and I’m tired of the callous behaviour. God bless the gems, those who listen and understand and believe and help! Certainly there are false prophets but we have to navigate as best we can and support one-another.
I have never once heard Dr Offit provide any plausible explanation for what might be causing autism.
I never heard a plausible reason from the one DAN! practitioner I saw. The difference is, the DAN! practitioner purports to know and treat autism based on that knowledge.
Teresa shows the face of autism “advocacy” that needs to be changed. The smear campaigns only make us look like fools. That’s fine, but don’t drag me and my family down with you.
“Teresa shows the face of autism “advocacy” that needs to be changed.”
Sorry, Matt, but I am not changing and you are not included in my “advocacy”. If you are an Offit believer , then good for you. To have someone support vaccines though there is a percent that have been injured and to say 100,000 is a perfectly fine number to give to an infant is insane. Do both you and jason believe him on that? Being a patent holder and money receiver certainly can cloud your judgement–would you not agree? Caring about children does not appear to be an item on Paul Offits menu of infomercials.
Did I meet either of you at a DAN! conference and are you on any yahoo groups?
jason-
Yes. I am very familar with Dr. Offit and feel very confident in my words. Comparing his book to “Mein Kampf” is a literary tool–it is not an exact match BUT there are some common threads ie, tunnel vision, nondiplomacy, obsessive messaging, narcissism, hatred/mistrust-(yes, against those who question his words, his authority,) , manipulation, distortion, fear (yes-you too will die of measles), “dictator”–expert mumbo jumbo.
Where do you get ” improving public health, particularly the lives of children.”? —
Caring for children is a camouflage and only used to shroud the false facts.
Dr. Offit is a multi-millionare because of his promotion of vaccines. That is a very lucrative career for a pediatrician. It is in his own best interest to vehemently deny any link to vaccines and autism. His ego AND livelihood depend on denying the improvements kids on the spectrum are making through alternative treatments. And that means some parents may take his advice and miss important opportunities for their kids. And that really sucks.
I don’t know how much weight can be put on a book written by someone who has not extensively studied Autism. It might make more sense if Offit had an child affected by Autism. I fear that his book will only add to the confusion parents with affected children are already dealing with. The uncertainty is depressing indeed.
Right now it feels like parents are expected to just play roulette with babies futures until a meeting of the minds can occur.
I am also confused by the title of the book, “Autism’s False Prophets”
A Prophet is… One who predicts the future… I don’t hear a lot of prophesying about the rise in Autism numbers.
Doesn’t he constantly predict epidemic outbreaks of multiple childhood diseases?
I wish this book could be part of the solution.
Teresa, why is 100,000 vaccines at once an “insane” number? What would be a good number and what is the basis for your assessments?
Sylvia-
How much money is someone allowed to earn before you lose your trust in them? Should we limit our own successes in life to avoid the perception that we’re “only in it for the money”?
Jason - that would depend on the individual and their circumstances.
But glaring conflicts of interests should be declared so the public can have a more informed opinion on those who pose as experts on a subject, such as vaccine safety.
Please explain Offit’s conflict of interest, then. If it is glaring then I assume the evidence is quite obvious.
Okay, here I am again, violating my “don’t argue with the pro vaccine crowd” rule again. It is only a smear campaign when the information being presented is not true. It is true that Offit profits from vaccines. It is true that Offit helped create the first Rotavirus vaccine that was recalled after it killed and maimed some infants with the same intusseception disorder that the Rotavirus causes. Lets repeat that: Offit makes Rotavirus vaccine, infants killed , vaccine recalled. Fast forward to the NEW and IMPROVED Rotavirus vaccine also with Offits paws in the till and yes, at least one infant died already of intusseception. By the way, know how many deaths there were a year before the vaccine? 20. OFFIT’S ASSOCIATION WITH THE ROTAVIRUS VACCINE, THAT HAS KILLED INFANTS, SHOULD MAKE HIM THE LAST PERSON TO BE WRITING A BOOK TRYING TO DISCREDIT THE PARENTS WHO ARE TRYING TO HELP THEIR CHILD WITH AUTISM. Have you noticed that you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an individual with autism? Why do you think we have the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program? because no one gets injured by their vaccines? Is there a program like that for ANY other medical product? Shouldn’t that make you think twice about the safety of vaccines? Have you REALLY looked at the website for National Vaccine Information Center? Why is it incomprehensible to you that vaccines can cause Autism? And do you really KNOW what Autism is? I’m not talking about the autism where everyone just thinks the person is quirky and socially inept but they go on to be Bill Gates. Thats Faux-tism. Lets discuss AUTISM. No speech, no facial affect, no communication, no toilet training, hands in the diaper spreading feces on their body and on the wall and everywhere in the house, requiring 24/7 attention, tantruming, slamming their head on the hard wood floor, suffering torturous stomach and intestinal pain due to gastro dysfunction, beating smaller helpless siblings, chasing their dad across a street,beating him and then biting the tip of his finger off, kicking the oven door glass out with their bare feet, climbing out on the roof because it looks fun and then falling off to their death, running out of the house and into a lake at age 5 and not understanding the first thing about drowning, parents frantically searching for their 4 year old who ran out the door and hearing the train whistle of the nearby railroad tracks getting closer and closer, parents searching for an hour when their son mysteriously disappears from their house without a trace and then finding him, luckily in time, in a 85 degree day in their attic in clothing trunk whose lid had slammed down while he played in there. AUTISM is no joke, it is not “oh well” so their kid will work at McDonalds instead of Trump tower, it is a nightmare without end, it is post traumatic stress disorder every day, it is not better than measles, mumps or rubella and maybe even not better than polio. If you think it can’t happen to your family, YOU ARE WRONG. If you think vaccine injury of other kind cannot happen to your family, YOU ARE WRONG. Read the package inserts at Johns Hopkins website http://www.vaccinesafety.edu. The injuries are SPELLED OUT right there on the manufacturers package information. Because Paul Offit will not deal with the reality of vaccine injury, seemingly because of the benefit to his financial status, is why the autism advocacy community acts the way it does.
His vaccine research at CHOP is funded by Merck, one of the largest vaccine makers. He markets himself as a vaccine safety spokesman while he is a vaccine patent holder. That is a conflict of interest.
Extremely well said Heidi!
These are the parents that Paul Offit mocks and belittles. These are the parents that had to find out the hard way that people like him are so consumed with their own importance that they will throw these kids to the wolves rather than even concede an inch that vaccines sometimes DO wreck lives rather than save them.
jason Says:
“Teresa, why is 100,000 vaccines at once an “insane” number? What would be a good number and what is the basis for your assessments?”
100,000 vaccines–you’re joking right? It is not my job to prove that they are unsafe–or 10,000 M&M’s or Coca-cola’s etc. It is his (maybe your) job to prove it is safe to us
jason-
you did not answer this question-
” Being a patent holder and money receiver certainly can cloud your judgement–would you not agree? “
Heidi Roger is incorrect.
Dr. Offit had nothing to do with the Rotashield vaccine which, once put into wide use, was determined to be a rare cause of intussusception.
The vaccine that Dr. Offit helped to invent, RotaTeq, is currently in use saving thousands of lives annually. Go ahead and criticize him for that if you like.
Intussusception happens with or without rotavirus vaccine. It is, in fact, less common among children who have received Rotateq. Since you, Heidi, seem fond of repetition, I will restate: Rotateq protects against intussusception.
No one connected with vaccines has ever claimed, or would ever claim, that they are 100% risk-free. Nothing in life is, except maybe a warm hug from your mama. The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program exists because shady lawyers were driving U.S. vaccine manufacturers out of business with tort suits that, while groundless, were expensive to deal with and introduced a level of uncertainty which is incompatible with doing business.
I hope you feel better after throwing your little tantrum about the bad behavior of autistics. Hope your kid never has to find out how you felt about raising him or her.
A note for everyone who is obsessed with money:
I have no idea whether Dr. Offit has made millions from the rotavirus vaccine. I hope he has. I know that if I had millions, I’d gladly pay it to save my child from dying, and his work has prevented thousands of children from dying already. Think about that for a minute. What is the life of one child worth? And don’t even start braying about how your child was lost to autism. You have a live child and it had nothing to do with vaccines.
A note for Sylvia:
If you can substantiate your claim that Dr. Offit’s vaccine research at CHOP is funded by Merck and that he is presently a vaccien patent holder, please do. Otherwise I will feel free to start an internet campaign aimed at informing the world that Sylvia has a big crush on Don Knotts. Just as groundless, but at least my random rumor is a little bit funny. There’s nothing funny about making false accusations.
A note for Teresa:
It is a serious request. I, too, would like to know in what respect you disagree with the calculations that yield 100,000 as a ballpark estimate of the number of vaccines’ worth of antigens that a person’s immune system can easily handle each day.
“Teresa, it was RotaSHIELD, marketed by Wyeth, that caused the bowel obstruction problems. RotaSHIELD was withdrawn and replaced by RotaTEQ, which is Offit’s vaccine”
jason-
you have another fact wrong–I did not discuss this topic-
Teresa, there are trillions of bacteria in the respiratory system of a newborn. These bacteria have thousands of antigen-stimulating components for which the newborn’s body manufactures grams of antibody on a daily basis.
A vaccine is even less than a drop in the bucket compared to what the child’s immune system is being exposed to in the environment. I see no problem with thousands of vaccines at once, or more.
Since you do, I’m curious how you came to your conclusion and what you think a good number is.
Cross-posted with Jason…thanks for the facts, didn’t mean to step on your toes.
Those Merck guys sure sound swell. Oh wait a minute - aren’t they the ones who covered up the information about the dangers of their block buster drug Vioxx?
jason-
I have seen you around. Here you give your opinion and come off as quite the vaccine-Offit advocate. What is your piece in this discussion–why are you here?
I am a parent of a severely autistic daughter. I get tired of wasting my time having these discussions to only find out that the other person has no child with autism and actually has a job or role in vaccine production, administration, or future development.
As far as antibodies and a baby’s immune system, you cannot possibly have evidence of the safety of thousands of vaccines. You are looking at a PERCEIVED ability which is quite different than a REAL ability. Even Offit uses the same wording as there is NO science to back up this ridiculous and reckless OPINION. Stating it over and over does not make it a fact. Here is Offit’s version-
In Baby talk magazine he was quoted as believing that studies, “theoretically show an infant could handle up to 100,000 vaccines at one time …key words are BELIEVING and THEORETICALLY–which is another way to use a bullshit theory and muster it up into a sentence.
Wow jason - you sound Exactly like Paul O. I’ve read word for word the exact same statements from him dozens of times.
So you see no problem with a 100,000 vaccines. Good for you. I don’t want them. I don’t want to be forced to take them or give them to my kids. It doesn’t matter what your opinion on it is. No offense, but why would your opinion trump my rights? Or Paul O’s opinion for that matter? (if you indeed are two different people)
Teresa Conrick,
You haven’t even read Dr. Offit’s book yet, have you?
Dr. Offit isn’t the enemy, the quacks who have suckered you into believing that your daughter can be cured with bizarre stuff like powdered rocks (zeolite) and diet. You have a daughter with OCD and other problems, but she’s not going to become normal from the snake-oils you have been plying her with for years now.
You hate Paul Offit, that is clear, but your thinking is certainly not clear. It’s time to quit obsessing on Paul Offit and try some acceptance of your situation for a change.
To “apparently Teresa never read the book” -
No, and she’s not going to. See her vow in comment #2: “I’m not planning on ever buying his propaganda.”
Because, really, how important is it to actually know what you’re talking about when there’s mud to be slung?
Maybe she’s so smart she doesn’t need to read it in order to know what it says. Wait a minute, wasn’t there a discussion of narcissism earlier in this thread? Who was it that was talking about narcissism?
“it is not better than measles, mumps or rubella and maybe even not better than polio”
What absolute misinformed twaddle. Measles can and has killed people in large numbers. Polio the same. To compare autism to these killer diseases is absolutely risible.
This thread is an absolute perfect example of the sort of self-perpetuating hysteria the autism/vaccine like to whip up. Ludicrous appeals to nazism, silly attacks on science based on no science and big slabs of semi-impenetrable block text frothing with emotion and punctuated with all-caps ranting.
Matt is absolutely right. This is the fact of autism ‘advocacy’ that needs to change. And fast.
I too have read Dr Offit’s book. It is excellent and a justifiable indictment on the gobbledegook and its peddlers that sadly (see above) have fastened onto the autism community to feed.
Teresa says she doesn’t plan on buying the book, so apparently she will show up here and just vent her spleen with her (category 5) raging rants in the hopes that people won’t ever read the book and discover what Offit has assembled; that is the evidence that her heroes are really villains and her villains are really the heroes.
What I found most interesting about Offit’s early childhood was that he spent time in wards with polio victims because he was born with a club foot that required surgery. I hesitate to post that because Teresa and her gang of mean girls will turn it into another reason to mock Dr. Offit. Dr. Offit says he members seeing the other children crippled by polio and that he felt so bad for them he wanted to help them, even years later.
He describes the death of a child from rotavirus and how he and others had fought to find a vein to get some fluid into her finally shoving a needle into her leg bone hoping that enough fluid could get into her system to save her. She died at 9 months of age. Teresa and her seething friends can’t imagine that Dr. Offit’s vaccine could right now be preventing these horrific deaths, and less horrific brushes with death that land someone’s precious baby in a hospital.
To the late night bloggers wh like to gang up on Teresa-
I am hardly a narcissist and don’t plan on reading Offit’s book as I know the theme he paints and it is one that I cannot tolerate. It is the same theme he always pushes, vaccines save lives and vaccines do not cause autism. This is not a full truth–as vaccines can save lives BUT can also harm and kill.
Your side is desperately clinging to the one size fits–and sorry guys but is really does not. Investigating why it doesn’t, who is being harmed and what to do is the mission of many, but sadly, none of you.
Your juvenile attacks on “Teresa and the mean girls” are comical. This should be a discussion yet I have not been answered on -
-” Being a patent holder and money receiver certainly can cloud your judgement–would you not agree? “ and
-What is your piece in this discussion–why are you here?
Your usual ad hominem attacks and avoidance of questions goes from blog to blog. I must add though, “Teresa never read the book’” you are a new character and must be a chap from England as your dramatic flair is quite a hoot–
Phoebe et al -
You guys are very mean, prejudiced, and narrow minded. The fact is, thousands of parents have witnessed their kids reactions to vaccines followed by loss of speech and social skills. The reactions that precipitated the autism are reactions that are well documented as vaccine-related such as fever, seizures, encephalitis.
It is absolutely ridiculous to say, “each infant would have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10,000 vaccines at any one time”, which is what Dr. Paul Offit said.
Many of the reported cases of vaccine-induced autism occurred in babies who received several vaccines at once.
Studies have shown that the DPT and MMR vaccines can cause increased risk of seizures (per study published in the New England Journal of Medicine which used to be cited on the CDC web site). A recent study showed that a vaccine for measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella caused even more seizures than the MMR alone.
Dr. Robert Sears was unable to find any studies to demonstrate what is a safe level of aluminum in vaccines. As many vaccines contain aluminum, more vaccines can mean a high level of aluminum being injected directly into the body, bypassing our usual detox mechanisms.
Don’t ask us what is the safe number of vaccines. We don’t know. Nobody knows. Even the CDC doesn’t know. The pharma companies don’t know. But they keep on adding more and more vaccines anyway, even though they don’t know. There is a lot of evidence indicating that the higher the number of vaccines the more adverse reactions occur.
Apparently Teresa is too stubborn to even try to open her mind up.
Dr. Offit’s bookS not just this one but his other books, too, mention the problems with vaccines. He explains serious problems. The thing is, now get this, that the diseases that vaccines are designed for are worse, cause more death and damage and produce vastly larger amounts of toxins in a child’s body than do vaccines. See. In this way vaccines are better than the diseases. So vaccines are good relative to things like having a baby die unborn from rubella or going deaf from mumps or dead from measles.
You don’t have to hate Dr. Offit, Teresa, it will free up energy that you can use to learn to accept that your daughter was born with some genetic thing that made her autistic with OCD. You can take a deep breath and realize that wasn’t vaccines that made her that way. And you can start to detox from all that hate and realize that you’ve been promoting absolute trash like zeolite mulit-level marketing on your hapless fans.
Talk about one size fits all. TD DMPS is supposed to cure everything and it does absolutely nothing but make a kid stink. Zeolite is powdered rock dust that is worthless, but you think it detoxed your daughter. Zeolite is another one size cures all quack medicine. GFCF is another one. GFCF has never cured a kid of autism. Get real. It might help a kid who has problems wtih wheat or dairy but it’s not the panacea that it’s being sold as. And there’s no such thing as a kid acting “yeasty”. You people need to get real.
What is your piece in this discussion other than to vent your extreme hate for Paul Offit. The hate that blinds you to the fact that he invented a good vaccine that is working and saving lives now. Would you prefer that all those kids get diarrheal diseases and land in the hospital?
Teresa? I want to know. Would you prefer that he not have invented a good vaccine that works to save children from suffering? Would you prefer all those parents spend sleepless nights in emergency rooms with listless babies?
You do not a thing but make ad hominem attacks at Dr. Offit, but you can climb on your high horse and whine about my calling you and your mean sisters “mean girls”. It fits. Wear it.
Teresa and the mean girls. Listen. Dr. Offit was writing about the antigens (particles of viruses or bacteria) that a child’s body could easily handle.
A child’s body could easily handle a vastly greater number of antigens than are in vaccines without the immune system being overwhelmed. Your child is being exposed to millions of antigens every day from the gut to the bloodstream, from the nose to the bloodstream, from a cut in the skin to the bloodstream. Vaccines are not the enemy. Rubella virus, polio virus, diphtheria, tetanus, measles, pertussis, rotavirus, mumps. These are the enemy. Vaccines prepare your child to meet these enemies prepared.
Scaring people off of vaccines is a really terrible thing to do. You can kill people that way, and those who survive can pass on disease to others who can die. Attacking Paul Offit because you hate vaccines and wrongly blame your child’s autism on vaccines is just wrong.
Dr. Robert Sears also said that parents who chose not to vaccinate their children should not encourage their neighbors to not vaccinate their children. He knows that if the neighborhood becomes filled with unvaccinated kids it’s more likely for their to be an outbreak, and an outbreak can turn into tragedy.
Dr. Sears writing about aluminium was laughable. He was talking about the amount of aluminum in a solution that very sick infants might be exposed to.
If you want to cry rivers over aluminium, then cry them over the amount of aluminium in soy infant formula.
I am searching but I know Offit was associated with Rota-Shield, I will find it. Death may be better than autism in some cases, that is why I detail out that I am not talking about quirkiness or learning disability type of autism. Nice of “Apparently Teresa…” to not reveal a real name , so brave of you. I know better than to discuss this because there is no value to it. You guys see vaccines as life saving product that should be worshipped and we see them for what they really are. A product that doesn’t work too well since half of the measles outbreak victims this year were vaccinated. You are not seeing the 15 year old girls getting serious vasculitis, dropping dead on the gym floor, becoming paralyzed from the Gardasil reactions, you don’t care that Merck put the same amount of aluminum in the placebo shot as is in the real shot when they tested it, you don’t look at the graphs that show that the disease levels of many “vaccine preventable” diseases were plummeting before the vaccine was introduced, you don’t think it is criminal that the Hep B and HIB shots added to the schedule circa 1989 created a mass poisoning of susceptible kids due to the Thimerosal/Mercury issue, you don[t have a problem with the level of collateral damage occuring then and no one has been held accountable, you don’t care that the oral polio vaccine gave children polio and they waited years to stop using it even when the injectable polio vaccine existed. What if the rise in juvenile diabetes and asthma is related to the over vaccination of our kids? It is not scary to you that 6% of the miniscule sample used in the latest “MMR does not cause autism” study had vaccine strain measles virus in their Irritable Bowel disease intestines? Offit’s conflict of interest is on Rota-Teq but he is the advocate for all vaccines. The bottom line is that vaccines are the only mandated medical product, supposedly in the name of public health, and in the beginning it was only a few vaccines and the Risk/Benefit ratio supported the use. Now that the number of vaccines has tripled the Risk/Benefit ratio needs to be revisited and that is why we are all out here asking these questions. And, Phoebe, you have a lot of nerve stating anything related to my feelings on raising my son. You have no idea how disabled he is or how I raise him. You should realize that my son was fully vaccinated up to age 2 so I did not realize the damage that vaccines can do until too late. I am out here wearing my tin foil hat to save the next generation, not profiting from it as we know Dr Offit is in his campaign. Why was there a movie about the parents of Lorenzo in their fight against ALD but we are all insane?
‘Apparently ’some people are out of their freakin’ minds!
Who are you to say our children didn’t have vaccine reactions? Wow - what arrogance to even begin to think you know what happened to any of our kids.
And what arrogance to think man can manipulate the immune system without there ever being serious repricusions for some.
Our kids are proof that sometimes vaccines go terribly wrong. And that pisses off the pro vaccine crowd something fierce. It is a mulit-billion dollar a year business, and people who try to speak against it are attacked. OK, I get that. But that certainly won’t change the facts:
Vaccines can sometimes damage the brain and the immune system.
Sorry, Matt, but I am not changing and you are not included in my “advocacy”
Teresa, read my statement again, I didn’t say that you need to change. I stated that the face of autism advocacy needs to change.
And, whenever you state “1 in 150″ or “autism community” to support any idea, you are including my family in your “advocacy”.
It’s time for the segments of the autism communities who accept the scientific method to be seen by the public. At some point, the policy-makers have to decide whether it makes sense to people who will appear ready to accept only the answer which supports the positions that they started with.
Statements like this:
To have someone support vaccines though there is a percent that have been injured and to say 100,000 is a perfectly fine number to give to an infant is insane.
are the sort of unfounded assertions that make people outside autism (who unfortunately often see us a s single community) question the ability of autism’s vocal advocates to make reasoned discussion.
Can you explain, in detail using math, science and or citations from the peer-reviewed literature, why Dr. Offit’s statement is incorrect? Can you even note the caveats that went into the calculation he used?
You see, those are the questions that are unspoken but thought by the doctors and researchers who listen to autism’s vocal advocates when they speak in front of groups like the IACC.
When you start invoking the Nazi’s to make strengthen your points, keep in mind that doesn’t reflect well on you, and, by extension, the autism communities. I would ask that you reconsider doing so in public forums. Note, I said “ask” and “reconsider”. You are welcome to exercise your first amendment rights. I am just stating that with rights come responsibilities.
You can try to characterize Dr. Offit as an extremist. It will likely sew doubt in some people’s minds. However, amongst the researchers and policy-makers who are reading this book, people with advanced degrees themselves, your arguments are not likely to be effective.
Matt-
Who are you to command me or anyone else to defend Paul Offit?
You show me the “math, science and or citations from the peer-reviewed literature, why Dr. Offit’s statement is CORRECT”.” (that 100,000 vaccines are safe to inject into an infant)
As the Poling case has shown, there is a susceptible subset of children. How can you assert that Dr. Offit cares about those children and you, yourself, care about that subset when you endorse the concept of 100,000 vaccines?
I asked you 2 questions and you have yet to answer them:
1-Being a patent holder and money receiver certainly can cloud your judgement–would you not agree?
2-What is your piece in this discussion–why are you here?
“Death may be better than autism in some cases, that is why I detail out that I am not talking about quirkiness or learning disability type of autism”
You are madam, quite frankly, scary. The argument you are presenting is sickening in its disregard for life. My child is severely autistic. I would not harm a hair on her head for any reason. I pray to a god I don’t believe in that you feel the same about your children.
By the way, you will search until kingdom come about Paul Offit and Rota-Sheild. You are, again, quite simply wrong.
I want to expand on Matt’s point about characterising Dr Offit as an extremist. It beggars belief that people on this thread who are comparing his book to Main Kampf, who say that it is better to be dead than autistic think that he is the extremist!
Nobody doubts there are side effects to vaccination sometimes. There are to any medical procedure. That is a lot different than stating there is a vaccine triggered epidemic of autism. People like Heidi Roger can carry on babbling away about totally unproven relationships but the bottom line is this: in 10 years since the Wakefield paper was published, there has been no decent science linking autism to vaccines. There has been plenty to refute the hypotheses put forward. That’s the basis of Dr Offit’s book.
You people are the autism communities dinosaurs. You had your chance, you came up empty. Now move over and let something that will help our autistic kids come about.
Phoebe said-
“The truth doesn’t depend on who’s telling it, Teresa.”
Well actually, Phoebe, it does. What school of honesty did you attend?
you also said-
“You’re in denial about the fact that the search for the infamous “small subset” which is extra-super-sensitive to vaccines has proved to be a snipe hunt.
Have you been living in a cave? The subsceptible kids have medical evidence to their inability to handle the vaccine load. We are their parents. I also take offense to referring to vaccine-injured children as “a snipe hunt”.
last one-
“I also think it’s interesting that Teresa is so keen to know who her critics are.”
I could care less that I have critics but I have stated my role here, yet none of your camp has reciprocated though I have asked numerous times. It reveals a lot to know what your purpose is here.
Kev-
your comments are an example of ignorance on many levels and this comment-
“Now move over and let something that will help our autistic kids come about.”
what could it possibly be? The kids have bacteria,(Strep, Clostridia etc) metals–loads of mercury, chronic viruses, hyper/hypo immune systems, mitochondria damage, glutamate and calcium abnormalities, inflammation in their gut and brain….and you want to get help in what…..speech, OT, ABA, genes?
Kev,
We can go back and forth forever–Offit vs Wakefield , Poling vs Shoffner…and you vs me.
I also have a daughter. She is 15. That is why I am here too. Like you, I worry about her future, especially when I am gone. Unlike you, the autism-vaccine journey not only will explain how my daughter and so many others became ill and then received an autism diagnosis, it will hopefully continue to reveal ways to remedy some of the injuries sustained.
I don’ t think you answered this yet-
“Now move over and let something that will help our autistic kids come about.”
what could it possibly be? The kids have bacteria,(Strep, Clostridia etc) metals–loads of mercury, chronic viruses, hyper/hypo immune systems, mitochondria damage, glutamate and calcium abnormalities, inflammation in their gut and brain….and you want to get help in what…..speech, OT, ABA, genes?
“We can go back and forth forever–Offit vs Wakefield , Poling vs Shoffner…and you vs me.”
No, it doesn’t seem we can. It seems like you just refused to answer any of the direct questions I put to you. That is of course, your right.
“don’ t think you answered this yet-”
You’re right. I’ll answer that when you answer the questions I put to you. To recap:
1) Can you refute the science in the Offit Pediatrics paper? If not, why not?
2) Can you link through to the official document that states that Hannah Poling’s autism was caused by vaccines? If not, why not? Is it because it doesn’t exist?
3) Do you think your opinion that the Poling case establishes a vaccine/autism link holds water in the face of the actual medical evidence and the opinion of Jon Poling’s co-author? If so, why?
4) You asked about Paul Offit’s ties to vaccines and money. When I pointed out to you that Andrew Wakefield also has ties to vaccines and money you suddenly don’t want to discuss the issue. Why is that?
Offit makes his living promoting vaccines. He refuses to aknowledge the thousands of children who regressed into autism after their vaccines. That is why so many parents think his book is a complete waste of a tree.
Kev, you seem to pop on every blog daring parents to spar with you about the science. It almost seems like a full time job for you. I, for one don’t have that much time on my hands.
Your questions (dares?) are tiring. The Polings, who are medical professionals in high regard, have stated that Hannah’s case was conceded by the vaccine court to be caused by the 9 vaccines she recieved on one day. Thousands of other parents have reported similar experiences as the Polings when their kids were vaccinated.
All we get from Offit and others like him are studies to “reasure” us that vaccines are safe. Then they call that “compelling science”. We call it B.S. because we know first hand that vaccines can be very unsafe.
So you don’t feel that is the case in your daughters situation. Good. But how can you possibly know what triggered our kids autism?
This thread was about Offit’s new book. I vote that it is B.S. You get your vote, I have mine. But this constant challanging of other posters is getting old. You are trying to dominate this thread with your opinions that you present as facts when they are only your interpretations .
Offit is loathed by thousands of parents of children with autism. Are they all “mean girls”, or does HE have something to do with his reputation as someone who will not admit wrong?
Teresa,
“The truth doesn’t depend on who’s telling it, Teresa.”
Well actually, Phoebe, it does. What school of honesty did you attend?
Sorry, I have to disagree there. If you think the above statement is accurate, it isn’t worth belaboring the point.
Who are you to command me or anyone else to defend Paul Offit?
Statements like that make it difficult to have a civil conversation. A reasonable outside reader to this discussion would easily see that I made no such command. I did request that you provide support for your assertions. Dr. Offit has provided support for his.
1-Being a patent holder and money receiver certainly can cloud your judgement–would you not agree?
Sorry, but the leading language makes it difficult to answer directly. I will state the obvious: Dr. Offit invented a vaccine. He had a conflict of interest. That isn’t news, Dr. Offit stated such at the beginning of all the ACIP meetings he attended.
Having a conflict of interest does not mean he acted improperly. If we are to exclude everyone with a conflict of interest from these discussions, no one with a claim in the Omnibus will be able to speak either.
Note the past tense when discussing Dr. Offit’s Conflicts of Interest. Past tense. He assigned the rights to his patents to CHOP and the Wismar Institute at the time the patents were filed. Those organizations have sold the rights. Dr. Offit’s laboratory is closed. No new research is ongoing, so he won’t be producing any more vaccines. He has no conflicts now. Seriously. Read his recent letter to the NEJM and tell me what it says about conflicts (hint: none).
And, yet, he keeps telling the same story as before. Now he has a book out. The facts being what they are, anyone attempting to defuse the impact of that book with claims of conflicts is either misinformed or attempting to misinform.
As to who I am, I am a stakeholder. I am a parent of a child with autism. The fact that I am a stakeholder should have been clear to anyone who read the fact that the vaccine/autism brand of advocacy hurts my familiy. I made that position clear from the start here.
My purpose here (and elsewhere) is to make a better life for my family. Plain. Simple.
Autism advocacy that alienates researchers and policy-makers works against my goals. Plain. Simple
Wendy, the prologue to Dr. Offit’s book describes a case where a 9 month old baby girl was brought into the hospital where Offit was working. She was dehydrated, they struggled to find a vein, they draped her neck over the edge of the examining table to try to find a vein, they called a surgeon to come open her up and find a deeper vein. Offit describes another doctor making a last ditch attempt to save the baby. That doctor drove a big needle into the girls leg bone in order to infuse liquid into her marrow, hoping that some would make it into her bloodstream. It didn’t work. She died.
This was not in Zimbabwe. This was not in Afghanistan or Papua New Guinea. This was in the United States.
Already, Dr. Offit’s vaccine is saving babies from dangerous bouts of diarrhea and because these babies are not having bouts of diarrhea they are not spreading the rotavirus to other babies, who in turn are not spreading it to other babies. You’ve heard of “day care” haven’t you? So thousands of babies and toddlers didn’t make a trip to the emergency room for IV fluids or other prescription medicines. Dr. Offit helped take money out of the pockets of pharmaceutical companies. So you hate him for this? You hate him for saving all those babies and their parents from a dangerous disease?
Some angry mom said that “man cannot successfully manipulate the immune system,” but your DAN! gawds give IVIG to kids who don’t need it and expose them to possible viral contamination from a product made from pooled blood sold to blood banks by people in need of cash. “Man cannot successfully manipulate the immune system” but your DAN! gawds will recommend a measles or chickenpox party.
Good luck with manipulating the immune system if your infant catches whooping cough or tetanus. Don’t count on antibiotics to save your child from them.
Heidi Roger who has been a long time mercury mom ought to know about the cases where parents murder their autistic children. Her comment about death being better than autism is, in the opinion of people with common decency, truly demented. Time for a detox, Heidi. Time for a good, “cleanse.”
The toxicity in autism is the toxicity of people like Heidi Roger and Teresa Conrick. Teresa, you are totally misled if you think some secret combination of 17 herbs and spices and dozens of multilevel marketing scam products or pharmaceuticals is going to change an obviously autistic and OCD 15 year old into a normal teen. Are you expecting this transformation will be before she turns 18, or do you intend to keep testing her for metals and tweaking that biofilm protocol until she’s 30? Do you honestly think that she’s going to wake up one morning at age 16 and be typical? If I had a friend who thought that I would have to conclude that she was suffering from a delusion or that she had been seriously conned.
Dr. Offit is a good guy. The mean girls are the ones comparing him to Adolph Hitler, saying children are better off dead than being on the autism spectrum, and are totally unable to support their innacurate statements about the imagined horrors of vaccines.
I wish the mean girls would stop mentioning autism in their antivax rants. They can be antivax, it’s their right, but they don’t have the right to smear autism as toxicity. There are too many parents who don’t think that their child is poisoned, aren’t in litigation, don’t think their child would be better off dead, and they are the majority of the parents of autism spectrum kids.
Heidi Roger said, “Death may be better than autism in some cases, that is why I detail out that I am not talking about quirkiness or learning disability type of autism.”
Wow. I expected the psychos searching for black helicopters and conspiracy theories like our friend Red, but that comment you made is just plain disgusting.
Get back to the relationship between bigfoot, vaccines, autism, and Offit. At least that kind of conspiracy twaddle is amusing.
Dear “apparently”,
You referred to me as “some angry mom” and misquoted me.
I said “And what arrogance to think man can manipulate the immune system without there ever being serious repricusions for some.”
IVIG is as mainstream as it gets for immune dysfunction. If you think it is a dangerous product, please contact the manufacturer.
And referring to me as “some angry mom” is such a typical tactic to try to belittle anothers point of view. This thread has me irritated, not angry. And I have wasted enough time on this discussion because no one can disprove that I think Dr. Proffit’s new book will be doo-doo.
Teresa wrote: “what could it possibly be? The kids have bacteria,(Strep, Clostridia etc) metals–loads of mercury, chronic viruses, hyper/hypo immune systems, mitochondria damage, glutamate and calcium abnormalities, inflammation in their gut and brain….”
Teresa. You’ve been played by your DAN! doctor. I’m going to ask you, as a fellow parent of a daughter with autism - please take your child to a mainstream doctor. Find a new one, if you are not happy with your current one. Ask for mainstream testing for all these ailments you think your child has.
Because, you know what? Your “alternative doctor” - the one who is telling you your child has these issues - is the one with the conflict of interest. How much have you paid this doctor for “treatment” of these issues? And how effective has this treatment been? Look yourself in the mirror and ask - “Why is my child not cured after all the money and effort I have spent? How much have I paid my alternative doctor? Is it possible that I’ve been misled?”
Or you can go on paying through the nose to try more and more extreme “treatments”. It’s up to you.
Sarah (a former believer in biomed)
matt said-
“Autism advocacy that alienates researchers and policy-makers works against my goals.”
Kev said-
“Now move over and let something that will help our autistic kids come about.”
and I said-
“what could it possibly be? The kids have bacteria,(Strep, Clostridia etc) metals–loads of mercury, chronic viruses, hyper/hypo immune systems, mitochondria damage, glutamate and calcium abnormalities, inflammation in their gut and brain….and you want to get help in what…..speech, OT, ABA, genes?”
yet neither of you will answer that? What research are you talking about? How can your kids be helped?
Sarah-
I don’t know you or why you are here.
My daughter’s doctor is a brilliant and caring expert. Labs and testing show what is wrong with my daughter’s health. For you to come on a blog and target my daughter for your own personal agenda is wrong. Discuss your own child, if you have one.
apparently Teresa never read the book-
Your comments are borderline bizarre. Again, why do you all focus on children that are not yours? What about your own children?
Caring about vulnerable children, even if they aren’t your own, is called being a decent human being, Teresa.
Teresa, you are the one who came on here first making bizarre and unfounded and untrue claims about Dr. Offit. I am pointing out your history of supporting bizarre and nonsensical therapies for your daughter. Zeolite is classic snakeoil. My children are doing fine without alternative therapies. My arguments stand on their own. I have the same investment in the future of autism advocacy as Matt does.
Even if they can’t give you the name of a gene(s) that made your daughter the way she is, it doesn’t follow that vaccines did it. Vaccines do not cause autism. Dr. Paul Offit didn’t make your daughter autistic or OCD.
Your association with Anju Usman and the “biofilm protocol” ought to make you ashamed of yourself. There is no biofilm that is keeping kids autistic, and your daughter is not going to become normal. You need to love her for who she is now and accept that she is great as she is. Snakeoil hasn’t relieved her physical complaints so far and she’s a teenager, do you really think she’s going to be cured with more of it? OSR? Maybe you are overlooking something that would help her that a quack won’t tell you because the quack doesn’t have the right training.
I seriously think you have a more than borderline problem and it shows because you are bizarrely fixated on hatred for Paul Offit and you childishly act it out on the Internet.
apparently Teresa never read the book
This will most likely be my final comment here as I posted to Sam about my thoughts about Offit’s book and out came the whackosphere.
I do not hate anyone. Your googling of me is a bit spooky. I am very optimistic regarding the research on bacteria and toxic metals ie biofilm. The love of our children, their health and future is what is important.
The point about the 100,000 vaccines in one go doctrine (sometimes modestly reduced to 10,000 or 1,000) is that it is course insane - but it is a very good rhetorical ploy if you are in the business of persuading parents to accept 5 or 10 in one go, or upwards of 50 over the course of a childhood.
The doctrine, which is certainly part of official vaccine ideology in the UK, treats all diseases and vaccines as if they are same, even as if vaccines in principle are so inherently safe and benign that they do not even have to be tested.
It is a bit like the well known torture chamber experiment: how many vaccines can parents be persuaded to accept before they protest. 5 seems normal, 10 and you are pushing it, 15….will you give you kid 15, will you press the button (squeeze the hyperdermic).. go on Kev!..It is a dare and an act of faith. And the point is that the pharmaceutical industry is utterly dependent for its future on expanding the schedule, and your belief.
“apparently Teresa never read the book” - you are bubbling over with spite and vitriole. And how can you claim to know anything about someone else’s child?
Autism is referred to as a “spectrum” because it encompasses a broad range of characteristics, from severe profound impairment to intellectually gifted people with impaired social skills. Some people with autism suffer from terrible health conditions such as IBD and are truly miserable; others do not and are not. Autism is defined by deficiencies in communication and social skills and a tendency towards perseverative behaviors. There could be many causes for this, different etiologies — maybe even very different syndromes being grouped together under the “ASD” umbrella. If some cases of autism are not caused by vaccines, that does not prove that no cases of autism are caused by vaccines.
Many, many parents are reporting vaccine reactions accompanied by loss of speech and eye contact and regression into autism. Who are you to contradict these parents? Read the books “Evidence of Harm” and “Unraveling the Mystery of Autism and PDD”. These are credible stories told by intelligent parents, and there are many more similar stories like these. RFK jr. said that he was amazed how after his article about vaccines and autism was published he was contacted by parents around the world who told similar versions of the same story.
Who are you to cavalierly dismiss these accounts? You have not interviewed these parents nor studied their children. If your kids did not seem to react to vaccines, great. This does not change the fact that the tremendous increase in vaccines has paralleled the tremendous increase in autism. Something is very much amiss.
We are not “antivaxers”. We vaccinated our children. But we believe there are serious problems here that are being swept under the rug.
Go to http://www.generationrescue.org for another side of the story.
Regarding biomedical treatments for autism, I know parents of children who have been dramatically transformed by biomedical treatments.
At this time, it is often difficult to match appropriate treatments with a particular child. But there are many treatments which are harmless, relatively low cost, and worth a try, such as the GFCF diet, probiotics, digestive enzymes, and nutritional supplements.
Chelation is controversial because some chelators can remove good metals (iron, zinc) and have other negative effects. A five-year-old boy died because the wrong chelator was accidentally used, which resulted in a fatal depletion of calcium.
But, when carefully supervised by a competent doctor, chelation can be safe and in some cases amazingly effective. I know parents of kids who have lost their autism diagnosis following chelation.
The field of biomedical treatments is new and constantly evolving. The very best DAN! doctors say that some of their patients recover from autism, some do not fully recover but do become happier, healthier, and better able to learn and communicate, but some are very difficult cases. Autism is not monolithic. People with autism suffer from a variety of problems affecting biochemistry, digestion, the immune system, and the nervous system — and thus do not necesarily have the same responses to various treatments.
These treatments deserve a lot more study, not ridicule by prejudiced people who don’t know what they are talking about.
Anyone who embarks on a biomedical journey must consider carefully any expenses and read excellent books such as those by Dr. Jaquelyn McCandless and Dr. Bryan Jepson.
There are so many comments it would be difficult to respond to them all, but here is one:
Phoebe said, “Febrile seizures, while scary to parents, are benign.” The reason why they are benign is because if they are not benign they are reclassified.
- If the baby dies, that is labeled as SIDS. There are accounts of SIDS that start off the same as accounts of vaccine reactions w. autistic regression, except that the baby does not survive.
- If a child goes on to have frequent seizures it is said that they have a seizure disorder.
- If the febrile seizures are followed by loss of language and eye contact etc., the child is labeled as autistic which is said to have genetic causes.
Mind you, I am not saying that fever by itself causes autism. Back in my childhood when everyone came down with fevers from measles, mumps, rubella, flu, chicken pox, etc., we did not become autistic after these common childhood illnesses.
But, in the case of vaccines, fever is a symptom of a problem, which may very well be an unnatural overstimulation of the immune system which for some babies passes without long-term consequences, but in others results in neuroinflammation, encephalitis, autism, severe allergies, and/or auto-immune disorders.
“yet neither of you will answer that? What research are you talking about? How can your kids be helped?”
I’ve told you Teresa, I’ll happily answer your questions when you have the good manners to answer mine. I’ve asked you twice now. This is the third time. I’m beginning to suspect you simply can’t answer them.
“Kev, you seem to pop on every blog daring parents to spar with you about the science. It almost seems like a full time job for you. I, for one don’t have that much time on my hands.”
Every blog? Hardly. Anyway, its OK, my huge cheque from Big Pharma allows me to blog all day and all night.
“Your questions (dares?) are tiring. The Polings, who are medical professionals in high regard, have stated that Hannah’s case was conceded by the vaccine court to be caused by the 9 vaccines she recieved on one day.”
I’m not talking about Hanah’s ‘case’ I’m talking about her autism. I’m sure the questions I’m asking must be very tiring. This is because they are asking you to actually back up the lie that HHS conceded Ms Poling’s vaccines casued her autism.
If the Poling’s (or anyone else) think that HHS have stated that their daughters autism was caused by vaccines then it should be very easy for you or anyone else to provide a link to the document where this is stated. This isn’t a dare, this is me asking you (or anyone else) to back up a claim that was made. I’ll remind you that I didn’t raise the subject of Hannah Poling but there’s no way I’m going to let such massive inaccuracies past without challenging them. I hope that’s not to tiring for you.
I usually tsay out f these things, but with every day that passes I get the idea that maybe I need to get more involved.
I have a son with Autism, and althoug our journey is only 2 years old, I feel that I have become an expert on the subject.
I want to state a our beliefs first, and then expand on those beliefs.
I am an active and passionate member of TACA and a strong advocate of DAN Dr.’s, so when I say this, do not get upset …Vaccines DO NOT cause Autism. They are dirty (per say - lots of bad ingredients) but the vaccines themselves do not casue Autism. We believe what does casue autism is the schedule. There is a difference and it is a significant and important one, so before anyone looses their minds, relax.
Dr. Offit is a nut and if anyone was able to do an in depth investigation into his financials I am sure there is a money trail that leads back to the Pharma ompanies, it always does. Mind you, I have no facts on that claim, yet there is not other explaination as to why the vaccine schedule has increased from 10 vaccines in 1983 to over 38 in 2007. And that is just by the age of 2. Did you know we have a vaccine for Chicken Pox? Why?? Anyone who is 35 or older has had chicken pox. We got sick, we drank some soup, we got better. Now, thanks to vaccines, our childen get a vaccine and they never get the virus. The problem is, their bodies are not allowed to do what it does naturally, develop anti-bodies to the chicken pox virus. Instead, the Pharma industry, with the help of rich Dr.’s (who got that way thanks in part to the generous donations of the Pharma industry) are doing the job for us, they have elivated themselves to a God like role and determined that they are better at strengthining the human imune system. Better life through chemistry right??
What the main stream media, and some parents do not understand is, we want the vaccines cleaned up and the schedule spread out, that’s all. Yes, Themerisol and Mercury have been removed from vaccines (except the flu vaccine). If you still think these are in the vaccines, you have become blinded by your own passion for answers. The plain truth and facts are this.. We do not know what causes Autism, and might never know, BUT!!! What we do know is, our kids are amazing kids, capable of doing anything they put thier minds to, and with help, they can recover and get better. I have seen it other kids, and I am seeing in my own son.
I heard a saying many years ago, that rings true today.
It is more profitable to treat than cure a disease. The entire Pharma industry is corrupt if you ask me, as is most of Washington.
We are still giving vaccines for diseases that have been eliminated or nearly eliminated, why??
I can also offer this interesting fact.
I also have an 18 month old daughter, and although girls are 4 times less likely to get Autism, that margin is lessened considerably when they are a siblinig of a child with Autism. We stopped vaccines on her at 9 mo. She is developing neuro-typically. Funny, fully vaccineated son — we get Autism, unvaccinated daughter and we get typical. I don’t know about any of you, but that speaks volumes to us.
Oh, and byb the way all you lovers of main stream medical .. after 3 years of age, we say vaccinate. By that time, a childs immune system has matured and developed enough to handle and be able to process the vaccines. And please, please do not vaccinate your kids when they are sick. Thier immune systems are busy fighting the cold, or the flu, or whatever to process and manage the vaccines.
Anyway, I will yield my soapbox to the next parent whos child has been harmed by modern medicine and Dr.’s like Dr. Offit.
Thanks for listeming
Shawn
Dakota’s Dad.
I did want to add one more comment.
As I continue t read the responses of parents who have kids with Autism, but continue to take them to main stream medical Dr.’s. I wanted to ask, “What specifically has your Dr. done to help recover your child?”
The only people I see quoting research and data are the parents who have sought out alternative medical practices. Why is that.
I am not talking about Soeech, OT or PT. Even ABA is mainstaream now.
It was not until my son was GFCF that we saw some real results. Why is that? Is GFCF “alternative”?
Are pro-biotics “alternative”? Every Dr. now suggests that we all take a good pro-biotic.
Are multi-vitimins, the B family of vitamins, Calcium, and Cod liver oil “alternative”?
The answer is. Not at all, yet these are the things a DAN Dr. will start with.
And just for the record, it was our peditrician that caused us to loose 12 months of early intervention treatment for our son. We knew something was off at 18 months, yet he passified us with “he not speaking, no worries, my sisters son did not talk until he was 3″. Sound familiar??
It was not until Dakota was 2 1/2 that he finally listened to us and said, “He does seem to have some symptoms of Autism” and we were referred to the Regional Center.
Main stream Dr. do not have a good track record and few are educated as to what Autism is or how to recognise it at an early age, which is critical.
So to parents of kids with Autism that are not doing any “alternative” treatments, I suggest…
Take dairy out of your kids diet, for just 90 days. See what happens, then we can talk.
Shawn
Dakota’s Dad
Teresa said: “Sarah-
I don’t know you or why you are here.
My daughter’s doctor is a brilliant and caring expert. Labs and testing show what is wrong with my daughter’s health. For you to come on a blog and target my daughter for your own personal agenda is wrong. Discuss your own child, if you have one.”
____
OK, lets discuss autistic children treated by biomedical treatments in general. At the time of the book “Let Me Hear Your Voice”, Catherine Maurice came forward with her amazing story of complete recovery from autism, by not just one, but both of her children. But it wasn’t just an anecdote. Her children were the subject of a scientific paper, which was published, describing their initial diagnoses, their treatment plan and their final diagnoses.
Not only you, but thousands of parents have supported the “alternative medicine” industry to the tune of thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars each. Many alternative doctors, likely including your own “brilliant and caring” doctor have gotten very rich on this cash cow of treatments. But where are the children who have recovered with these treatments? Why are they not written up in scientific journals - with a medical diagnosis of autism (not just an educational diagnosis) first established and then removed? Where is the list of all the laboratory testing that was done, the results, and how this impacted the treatment plan?
If biomedical treatment of autism is so well established, surely it would be in everyone’s best interests to share this knowledge. But it hasn’t been shared. Maybe that’s because it doesn’t exist, and the alternative doctors are simply getting rich at your expense.
I’m a member of several yahoo groups, and I’ve seen these discussions over and over for many years. A parent asks: “do you actually know any recovered kids?” and the answers are always “I know someone who recovered, but they only did ABA” or “I know someone who lost their diagnosis, but they didn’t do any treatment” and finally the most common answer “I know lots of kids who have improved, but no one actually losing their diagnosis”.
Think this over, Teresa. You’ve been had.
phoebe Says: September 13th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
“…It is a serious request. I, too, would like to know in what respect you disagree with the calculations that yield 100,000 as a ballpark estimate of the number of vaccines’ worth of antigens that a person’s immune system can easily handle each day”
Surely there is no calculation known to man that can prove that 100,000 antigens can be safe for any child until a child has been demonstrated to have had 100,000 antigens delivered via vaccination, along with all necessary adjuvants, and survived? Perhaps Phoebe can demonstrate a mathematical proof through which Offits claim can be validated despite such vital confirmatory experimental data being non-existent? Without such proof what basis do Offit, Phoebe or anyone have for making what must be unjustly unqualified declarations? Their ‘ballpark’ must be ginormous.
Red is either grotesquely misinformed, or an outright liar. Either way, she is spreading a fundamental falsehood, i.e., that vaccines are so dangerous that they should be avoided. Her actions will result in dead or disabled children. Remember, vaccine preventable diseases also result in disabilities.
Jack Hep,
I once had a very interesting exchange with Dr Salisbury - the head of our vaccine programme - and when I mentioned antigens, he assured me that I had it wrong,: it was vaccines that he an Offit were talking about.
To the person posting as “Apparently Teresa Never Read the Book:
Thank you for presenting a new low for your group of anit-vaccine rights zealots. To try to publicize anything personal about another persons child here is beyond low. Especialy since you are not identifying yourself. But at least now the other posters can see what you are all about.
Your postings here have been attacking and bizarre. Get a grip.
[...] is a shock though is her attitude to human life. In an online debate regarding the book Autism’s False Prophets Rogers made the following astounding [...]
Just to add on to the passage Sarah excerpted, I will note that the current average number of antigens per vaccine is closer to 10, which is why it is now accurate to say the number of average vaccines’ worth of antigen a child could handle is about 100,000 rather than 10,000.
Twyla said: “The Autism Research Institute has gathered information on hundreds if not thousands of kids who have recovered from autism (or made very significant gains) using biomedical treatments, but these stories have been ignored. Why is this? Truly bizarre.”
The stories have been ignored? Are you suggesting that some unknown “powers-that-be” are responsible for ignoring this? What is to stop any one of the doctors treating these children from writing up the case history of any one of these kids and getting it published? The responsibility rests on the doctors, who are making these fantastic claims of recovery, to substantiate these claims. The fact that they have not done so is clear. The reasons why not are not clear, but one could guess that they can’t because there aren’t any such cases that could be documented.
Sylvia wrote:
“Our kids are proof that sometimes vaccines go terribly wrong.”
And there you are dead wrong and the proof of just how wrong is in the testimony laid before the Special Masters of the Vaccine Omnibus proceedings. i have never been so appalled by the shocking way the parents have been effectively diddled by the shoddy experts brought in on their behalf by the Petitioner’s Steering Committee. It’s beyong disgusting. Take Elizabeth Mumper for instance. All those tests she uses to show ‘toxicities’ and we find that she didn’t bother to send them to an accredited laboratory. All those tests for heavy metals and they’re not there unless treated with chelation first. that is provoked, but the reference ranges the lab used are not for provoked samples. Mumper had to admit that before the Special Masters that there was no reference range for these tests.
I feel so sorry for the parents who are going to be left high and dry after these proceedings. The lawyers will win and they will be the only ones.
alyric
I promise you that even if the families win, they will not have won. The real scandal is not the lawyers that walk away - and these lawyers would surely make more money if they worked for the pharmaceutical industry - but the companies, the health officials, and the doctors, whose best and most compassionate response when their products go wrong is to turn on the hapless children and their poor parents, and say: “prove it”!
So many people think that parents are in this fight regarding vaccines for the money. Thousand and thousands of families with children affected by Autism are and will be beyond any statute of limitations for any sort of law suit.
“Death may be better than autism in some cases …”
Heidi seems to have disappeared from this discussion, but i hope that statement of hers follows her wherever she goes. May it serve to symbolize the hysteria, shamelessness and utter disregard for actual human beings that her beliefs represent.
Just curious, Heidi, how do you know which autistic people, exactly, are not worthy of living? Is it based at all on their own subjective quality of life, or just on how much their behavior offends you? Are you prepared to go around to individual families and tell them their children are among these “some cases” you mention — that their kids are better off dead?
Personally, i can’t imagine ever uttering such a thought about my own autistic child. But i guess i’m glad you were honest, because it means i can feel free to disregard everything else you have to say. (Even the stuff in all caps.) No one who can make a such a shameful statement deserves to be part of this argument.
If there is information about Teresa’s daughter that was not already well known to public Internet groups and bulletin boards, placed there by Teresa herself, I’m sorry. I thought it was all well known information. Perhaps if Teresa feels that there is too much information here about her daughter that is common knowledge, she can ask for that information to be deleted by the blog owner.
Nothing I wrote is bizarre. Teresa claiming that she detoxed her daughter with a multi-level marketing scam treatment, Zeolite, which is a powdered aluminum-based rock suspended in water, backed up by bizarre claims of what it can cure. Claiming Zeolite detoxed her daughter is bizarre. Pretending to have medical expertise so that she’s Anju Usman’s research assistant in developing the bizarre “biofilm” cure is ridiculous and pretentious.
Dr. Offit isn’t try to say children should get 10,000 vaccines or 100,000 antigens. His point is that the claim that a few vaccines use up the immune system is unfounded. Unfounded and sometimes dangerous is what DAN! doctors specialize in.
I left out a word in my previous comment — “Perhaps if Teresa feels that there is too much information here about her daughter that is not common knowledge, she can ask for that information to be deleted by the blog owner.”
To those who want to debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, all the while putting your children at risk for real diseases if you leave them unvaccinated. How many antigens is a child exposed to on an average day and how many is his/her body flooded with when infected with chickenpox, measles, or whooping cough? Each individiual virus is composed of many antigens. The number of bacteria that a person’s body is colonized with is about 10 times the number of cells in his body. One bacterium is comprised of proteins (antigens) to the tune of hundreds of thousands. So each person is exposed to billions of antigens ever day, more on a day when an infection has taken hold and flooding the body with mulitplying disease germs. How many micrograms of potent, even deadly neurotoxins is your baby going to be exposed to if he gets a tetanus or whooping cough infection? How many millions of antigens will enter your child through open chickenpox sores?
I see crazy people.
Well, crazy, sad, and ignorant people who are unable to distinguish evidence from lies.
No one has ever demonstrated a causal relationship between MMR vaccination and autism. Ever. Nor is there any reason to believe that such a connection can exist.
How’s that smallpox and polio coming along, vaccination “skeptics”?
Here’s an excellent article in which Julie Obradovic says a lot, and says it much better than I could!
“An Autism Mom’s Open Letter to Dr. Paul Offit”
http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/09/an-autism-moms.html?cid=130848380#comments
apparently Teresa never read the book
So, how many vaccines would you be happy to see your infant have in one go?
gravy
No, you don’t see crazy people. The people who have stuck their necks over this are parents who believed all the arguments, vaccinated their children, and have been ruthlessly let down and marginalised. There is some fundamental dishonesty in the system, if when people say that the product has damaged their children, the strategy is simply to make out that they are mad.
And it is quite possible to produce study after study, which looks in the wrong place and/or the conclusions do not match up with the evidence, which is then brandished before cowering journalists, who have no time to read, and don’t want the flack if they report critically.
John, I don’t doubt (and never have) that HHS conceded the case. I think they were wrong to do so but there you go.
What they have not conceded is that Hannah Poling’s vaccines caused her autism. Unless maybe you know a document that states they have? If so, please post a link to it.
Your question about the number of vaccines is bizarre. Do you want me to pull an arbitrary number out of thin air?
Moving on….Teresa seems to have gone quiet. Is there anyone else who would like to try and answer the questions I put to her? John? How about you? Last time we met you wouldn’t (or couldn’t) so - here’s another chance for you.
apparently Teresa never read the book Says:
September 15th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
“How many micrograms of potent, even deadly neurotoxins is your baby going to be exposed to if he gets a tetanus or whooping cough infection? How many millions of antigens will enter your child through open chickenpox sores?”
No one’s talking about the number of antigens per single virus or vaccine virus. Offit et al’s position is on multi-vaccines, different vaccines, that is multi-attenuated viruses, different attenuated viruses. These are most probably going to cause any body, let alone an infant’s relatively immature immune system, problems unquantifiable but not perhaps not unpredictable, if the prediction were death or total shutdown of its immunity or a cascade of events leading to sever autoimmune disorders.
The problem the body faces is how to deal with 100,000 antigens from multifarious attenuated vaccine viruses delivered en-masse. No one can predict an infant will be unaffected by that maelstrom. No one can predict how any individual will react to that pathogenic assault. What might be expected is that for all the different types of attenuated viruses presented in a single shot, that carry an enormous complexity of antigens, the body has to react protectively yet safely in processing that information which, depending on viruses injected might be of from potentially deadly (measles, meningitis) to more possibly manageable (chickenpox, mumps, rubella) types to produce effective B cells, clones, epitopes etc. Cross reactive epitopes can play havoc with that response leaving some infants open to additional infections or environmental assaults; original antigenic sin effects can cause some infants to have used up an enormous proportion of their innate immunity protecting against the current strains injected that future modified strains are deadlier to those infants than they would have been prior to the 100,000 jab. A single antigen can cause many different B cells to develop, placing greater strain on the production mechanisms, if only one type of antigen (single vaccine virus) only was jabbed, fine but we are talking 100,000 different antigens – how many different B cells per antigen can an infant immune system safely process, and safely avoid the high probability of repercussive attacks on its own endogenous antigens by these myriad “rogue b cells” – does Offit et al know? I don’t think so. Perhaps Theresa knows?
Face it Theresa, the concept of 100,000 different antigens being safe for ANY infant has no factual basis; the human body has, to my knowledge (perhaps you can enlighten me differently) never been expected to react, as Offit et als calculations would have us believe it could, against multiple viruses simultaneously, a body that has stood the survival tests for millennia without developing pandemics of autism, cancers, autoimmune disease until the vaccine era. Let them rewrite the paper covering all those eventualities and maybe it’ll be worth publishing; trouble is they may be as unlikely to do that as they are to carry out primate studies (assuming their labs are not awash with dead primates who already told them what they ought to be telling us).
“You are quite right it is a bizarre question but it is also a reasonable one. We have been given a safety range of 10,000 to 100,000 vaccines, which softens us up for a much smaller number. One of the reasons why MMR is such an article of faith is that the industry has identified its future in more vaccines, and multi-vaccines.”
Well, that’s your opinion, which you’re of course welcome to. I don’t think its a reasonable one at all. Dr Offit has a firm scientific justification for his numbers (or do you disagree? Do you have firm scientific evidence why he is wrong?). You, on the other hand, are asking me to draw a number from a hat from reasons which escape me.
“The point is that no one really thinks you could inject an infant with 10,000 vaccines - this is purely fanciful. So, I am raising the issue how many is really acceptable?”
As many as is medically indicated. I really have no idea what you want me to say here. 12? 54? 3? I can code up a decent random nuber generator if you like.
Its not a question of ‘acceptable’ its a question of ’safe and necessary’. The science shows thousands are safe. Not so many are necessary.
“So, how many do you think is alright - you think the 9 that Hannah Poling had is alright (nothing to do with her crashing), so how about 18? Would that be alright?”
Do you mean the 9 she had which caused vaccine damage? Which I’m well aware they did. They just didn’t cause autism.
“I am not sure what secret information you have regarding the Hannah Poling case, that makes you confident that HHS did the wrong thing in conceding. The inference that most people would draw was that on the contrary they had evidence they did not want to emerge in open court.”
I think the conspiracy theory driven amongst us would think that no matter what.
I have no secret information. I simply think they were wrong to even mention autistic like symptoms. Did vaccines cause her harm? Yes. Did they cause her autism? No. In that strict sense they were absolutely right to concede. However, if as you are alleging, they are claiming vaccines caused her autism then they were wrong in my opinion. The information I base that opinion on is not secret, its contained in the case report, the DSM (IV) and the published opinion of John Shoffner.
Kev Says:
September 16th, 2008 at 5:56 am
“Its not a question of ‘acceptable’ its a question of ’safe and necessary’. The science shows thousands are safe. Not so many are necessary.”
No Kev, science says no such thing.
Offit et al’s maths say it, and their maths a simplistic representation of a large number of antigens, not a large number of multifarious antigens as would be represented by the injection of multifarious attentuated vaccine viruses into each infant and the inevitable complexity of processing their immune systems would have to facilitate to survive.
That glaring fact seems to have eluded Offit et al, and you, and every other proponent of their flawed paper for some reason, why?
Kev
You have lost me: it is one thing to hypothesise that 10,000 or 100,000 vaccines would be safe, but it has not been demonstrated, quite apart from the reasoned objections of Jack Hep - you are citing a theory as hard science. Anyhow, I am glad that we agree that Hannah Poling crashed on a mere 9, but what is the basis of your opinion that those 9 could not in combination have caused neurological damage? (I am aware of minutely shifting the goal posts from autism to NDDs but autism is a non-specific disorder.)
“No Kev, science says no such thing.”
Yes, Jack, science does say that every thing.
The paper is peer reviewed and published in a proper journal. If you have an issue with the science contained in it, then please present your peer reviewed evidence, published in a proper journal, that refutes it.
“You have lost me: it is one thing to hypothesise that 10,000 or 100,000 vaccines would be safe, but it has not been demonstrated, quite apart from the reasoned objections of Jack Hep - you are citing a theory as hard science.”
No, I am saying that one of the hypotheses presented in that paper - that of the theoretical capacity to response - is borne out by the science in the paper. Again, if you feel that is incorrect, please cite the peer reviewed journal published paper that disputes it.
what is the basis of your opinion that those 9 could not in combination have caused neurological damage? (I am aware of minutely shifting the goal posts from autism to NDDs but autism is a non-specific disorder.)
The basis of my opinion is nothing to do with NDD’s but entirely rests on the fact that the symptoms listed by Jon Poling et al as being caused by vaccines do not come close to being enough to lead to a diagnosis of autism. The number of them is irrelevant. It wouldn’t matter if she’d had 1 vaccine or 10,000. What is relevant is - given we can see a list of symptoms that are attributed to vaccine damage, can we match them up to the diagnostic criteria for autism? The answer is clearly ‘no’.
John Stone wrote: “So, let’s make this real: Kev wouldn’t answer, but how many vaccines would you allow your baby to have in one go?”
I’d be willing to let my baby have all those vaccines recommended by my pediatrician, whom I trust. I’d count on those vaccines being thoroughly studied, in concomitant use studies (as is always done) to show that the introduction of a new vaccine, in addition to the existing schedule is both safe and efficacious.
Sarah
“I’d be willing to let my baby have all those vaccines recommended by my pediatrician, whom I trust. I’d count on those vaccines being thoroughly studied, in concomitant use studies (as is always done) to show that the introduction of a new vaccine, in addition to the existing schedule is both safe and efficacious.”
That’s a fairly sensible answer. Hannah Poling had in one go DPT,HiB,MMR, Polio and Varicella, and I doubt whether there are any concomitant studies for all that. But actually, if Offit was right, you wouldn’t even need to do them.
r Stone wrote:
“You have given in regard to Offit’s 10,000 vaccine doctrine a bureaucrat’s answer. Something is fact, not because it is demonstrably true, but because it is officially true - published by a Merck scientist in a journal heavily subsidised the the pharmaceutical industry.”
Do note the appeal to conspiracy at the end there. I suppose because he has nothing else.
The lunacy of Stone’s position is a total failure to deal with rteality and the corresponding insistence that we have immune systems that are woefully inadequate to deal with 100, 000 antigens simultaneously. Get real Mr Stone. Your newborm is coping with much much more than 100, 000 antigensc all day, every day from the barrage of trillions of bacteria every where. That’s why theoretically, it would be no big deal to give the entire vaccine schedule all at once. It would’nt make any sense from a building of immunity sense but it could be quite safely done. Why? because all children by vvirtue of the fact that they are still alive demonstrate that they handles such antigen assaults all day, every day.
Ironically, the same lousy argument is used to try to implicate aluminium as the ‘nasty’ in vaccine adjuvants, which is hilatious since there is already 100 times the vaccine amount already in the newborn. But clowns like Mr Stone insist that you should only look at the miniscule amount added by thr vaccine and ignore the huge amount already there. Very strange thinking processes, these anti-vaxxers.
Jack Hep, you need to point out what specifically is wrong with the study or present at least equally compelling evidence that another, mutually exclusive conclusion is correct. Quoting a couple of people on their general opinions on peer reviewed studies doesn’t do anything to discredit the study Kev has mentioned.
Unless it is your opinion that NO peer-reviewed studies are valid because peer review is a faulty mechanism that always produces false results or produces them so often that any study made available for peer review should be automatically suspected of being false. Of course, you will need to prove this to be true, obviously without using any peer reviewed science.
“You have given in regard to Offit’s 10,000 vaccine doctrine a bureaucrat’s answer. Something is fact, not because it is demonstrably true, but because it is officially true - published by a Merck scientist in a journal heavily subsidised the the pharmaceutical industry.”
I guess thats why its referred to as a demonstrated hypothesis John. If you want to refute it, then please go ahead. At the moment you are demonstrating excellent bureaucratic tendencies yourself by dancing around the issue without addressing the central point. Its, there, it exists. If you don’t like it, refute it. Otherwise, deal with it.
” But Hannah Poling - on your own admission - succumbed from 9 vaccines - so the hypothesis, wretched as it is, has been disproven. You cannot state something is a scientific law when it has exceptions.”
If you think Dr Offit, or I, were suggesting that there are never any bad reactions to vaccines then thats terribly naive of you John. All medical processes have the risk of bad reaction.
“As to your chopping and changing regarding Hannah Poling’s symptoms, this is exhaustively demonstrated here:”
Chopping and changing? I’ve listed exactly what her symptoms were as documented in her own fathers case study. What have I changed from/to?
“and you are plainly wrong. You have been playing semantic games as to whether Hannah is autistic, or has autistic symptoms - but her symptoms are ample to diagnose her as autistic.”
Once again, you miss the point. The point is not ‘is Hannah Poling vaccine injured?’ She clearly was. The point is also not ‘is Hannah Poling autistic’? According to her CARRS results she (just) was/is. No, the point is - ‘did Hannah Poling’s vaccines cause her autism’? And quite clearly when we look at the symptoms listed by Poling et al as those caused by vaccines, they simply can’t. They don’t even come close. This is seconded by Polings co-author John Shoffner.
“Their work is theoretical Kev, it has not proved anything, it cannot prove safety, efficacy or speak to inherent dangers that carrying out an injection of 100,000 antigens of different ‘species’ into even one infant might incur.”
OK, cool, then it should be very very easy for you to disprove their hypothesis using published science. Go right ahead.
alyric & Jason
Of course, it is not a note of conspiracy theory, it is a note of realism. If you can’t even mention funding now, without being labelled a “conspiracy theorist” that in itself is quite telling.
As to the alleged science we are not, of course, talking about everyday environmental exposure, or just 10,000-100,000 antigens, we are talking about 10,000 - 100,000 vaccines (pharmaceutical products) which are supposed to artificially stimulate the immune system. If the immune system is so wonderfully robust, anyway, it is not clear why we would need the vaccines.
We are living in cloud-cuckoo-land if everything published in a peer review journal has now taken on the immutable status of the laws of thermodynamics. This shows we are dealing with high levels dottiness (not mine).
Incidentally, I am just expecting my first listing on Pub Med.
Kev
“If you think Dr Offit, or I, were suggesting that there are never any bad reactions to vaccines then thats terribly naive of you John. All medical processes have the risk of bad reaction.”
So, what’s the point? The more medicines (vaccines) you have the greater the risk that you will have a “bad reaction”? You and Dr Offit cannot go round telling people 10,000 or 100,000 would be safe.
In regard to Hannah Poling you seem to be slipping from one piece of sophistry to another - from ’she isn’t autistic because the symptoms don’t fit’ to ’she was autistic before the vaccine but the symptoms didn’t show’. Let’s be clear, autism is only really defined by the presence of symptoms: no symptoms no autism. Neither argument you have presented is justified, or works.
Kev Says:
September 16th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
“OK, cool, then it should be very very easy for you to disprove their hypothesis using published science. Go right ahead.”
If you made any attempt to read and digest what i wrote above you will see I did.
jason Says:
September 16th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
” you need to point out what specifically is wrong with the study or present at least equally compelling evidence that another, mutually exclusive conclusion is correct. Quoting a couple of people on their general opinions on peer reviewed studies doesn’t do anything to discredit the study Kev has mentioned. ”
You obviously have not read my entries above…it’s all down there.
For clarification and to stop people taliking at cross purposes:
1. Hannah Poling received vaccines for 9 infections containing a total of 114 protein/polysaccharide antigens.
2. Daily exposure to antigens from other environmental and infective sources amounts to a whole lot more than this, almost certainly numbering in the tens of thousands.
3. 30 years ago, the vaccine schedule contained over 3000 antigens.
These facts have a bearing on the “vaccines overwhelm the immune system and cause autism” hypothesis. It is clearly a dead duck and further discussion on the point is meaningless.
However, regarding the question about REACTIONs to vaccines, it is known that
1. Vaccines can provoke reactions - usually local pain, fever, sometimes febrile convulsions (less commonly than febrile convulsions from the illness though) and sometimes live vaccines will cause an illness that is like a mild version of the real thing.
2. A vaccine reaction may have caused Hannah Poling’s underlying mito disorder to worsen. This fact has no bearing on “how many vaccines/antigens she received”
Offit’s calculations regarding 10 or 100 thousand “vaccines” merely confirm what a normal infant immune system could adequately respond to in order to generate immunity. They do not necessarily imply that giving the vaccines would not provoke a reaction, or that anyone would like their child to receive these all at once (since the chance of becoming unwell from a reaction would be much higher)
Dyson Says:
September 17th, 2008 at 6:29 am
“For clarification and to stop people taliking at cross purposes:
1. Hannah Poling received vaccines for 9 infections containing a total of 114 protein/polysaccharide antigens.
2. Daily exposure to antigens from other environmental and infective sources amounts to a whole lot more than this, almost certainly numbering in the tens of thousands.
3. 30 years ago, the vaccine schedule contained over 3000 antigens.
These facts have a bearing on the “vaccines overwhelm the immune system and cause autism” hypothesis. It is clearly a dead duck and further discussion on the point is meaningless.”
Clearly you haven’t been attending to the parallel debate.
When you’ve answered the obvious questions about the 100,000 hypothesis, which is all it is, you can then move towards your “dead duck” theory, until then your duck is far from dead.
Where do Offit et al account for Cross reactivity of epitopes and the resultant effects?
Where do Offit et al account for expectations due to the phenomenon original antigenic sin, which will be exaggerated by the presence of so many multifaceted antigens, in their calculations?
Where do they account for the inevitability of ‘rogue b cells’ attacking endogenous antigens causing autoimmune reactions, especially in such an enormous reactivity one will see when the infant is bombarded unnaturally with an extraordinary number of multifaceted species of virus antigens?
3000 antigens, of a similar virus, is not 100,000 antigens of many different viruses in one shot; and the 3000 antigen system caused immeasurable ( largely because of ADR denial, which still exists today and continues to fail to accurately measure the attrition rate) damage to recipients and we are witnessing enormous collateral damage from vastly reduced numbers of multifaceted antigens (100s only) in the hepta/hexa valent vaccines whose use is
coincident with a not-unexpected rise in automimmune diseases (arthritis, cancers, MS, autism, Parkinsons, Alzheimers, etc.) due to the fact that “original antigenic sin” and other phenomena are being ignored whilst simplistic mathematical models as per Offit et al are favoured by the marketeers.
I see that Jack Hep is one of those who thinks his child or children of “good” mothers live in pristine worlds where the parents are absolutely aware of every single type and number of bacteria and viruses their chidren have enter their bodies through their eyes, open cuts, lungs, and intestines. If your child breathes he will suck viruses and bacteria into his nose, some can cause disease like measles. Have you ever raised a baby or toddler? They put everything in their mouths, and unless you are keeping that baby in a glass bubble he’s going to get a good sampling of germs like leprosy and cytomegalovirus in random assortments every day, whether or not you sterilize the kitchen counter and his highchair and playpen, whether or not you 100% sterilize every surface in your home every day. The idea that a child can not successfully deal with a small number of broken pieces of virus or a weakened live form of a virus when your child has a much largert number of whole virulent viruses and bacteria entering his body and bloodstream every day is ridiculous
A child who can not successfully make antibodies to 9 vaccines can not successfully live outside of bubble. He would be overrun with infections all the time. A child who has a mitochondrial dysfunction is better off in a community of well-vaccinated peers and is better of being exposed to tiny numbers of viral particles and weakened viruses than to be left to a first exposure to the virulent form of all of them. If your child is sick with a case of measles his immune system is temporarily knocked out. He is then more susceptible to opportunistic infections. It’s not like viruses make a deal with the child’s immune system and decide that if the child gets measles he can not also get chickenpox, whooping cough, or flu.
a concerned mother Says:
September 17th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Sorry, my response loaded before i had completed it; remainder below.
There is evidence that viruses are a figment of the imagination of virologists - if that is so then where does that leave the multiple antigen theory, if viruses are actually cellular waste and communication products as some say, by injecting what is actually exogenous irregular unnatural (to the recipient) waste genetic material into a child you are merely increasing the waste load and any antibody responses (said to show the vaccine is working) has nothing to do with disease but disorder generated by the vaccine waste products, disorder that can cause a cascade of events leading to the kinds of epidemic disorders rife in vaccinating countries (diabetes, autoimmune disorders, cancers, SIDS, etc. ).
“The idea that a child can not successfully deal with a small number of broken pieces of virus or a weakened live form of a virus when your child has a much larger number of whole virulent viruses and bacteria entering his body and bloodstream every day is ridiculous”
Only ridiculous if you are completely sold on vaccine theory. Any child ingests/inhales all manner of genetic material as you say, waste products from dietary and environmental animal and plant breakdown; that’s not the same as injecting specific genetic material from “viruses”, whatever they are, known to induce immune cascades that have been named measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox etc. but when attenuated become “emergent diseases” that vaccine theorists excuse as nothing to do with the injecting of attenuated viruses - despite the presence of numerous new serotypes previously unknown emerging out of vaccine culture eg HepB,C,D,E from HepA, Meningitis B,C,W,X,Y out of MenA.
“A child who can not successfully make antibodies to 9 vaccines can not successfully live outside of bubble.”
Who said? Many vaccines “fail” in children and adults, even after repeat injections – do those individuals live in bubbles? No one said that lack of an immune system, or part thereof, does not convey serious problems on some children, but what has that got to do with injecting 100,000 antigens simultaneously of a large number of different species of virus bypassing important levels of a childs immunity?
“A child who has a mitochondrial dysfunction is better off in a community of well-vaccinated peers and is better of being exposed to tiny numbers of viral particles and weakened viruses than to be left to a first exposure to the virulent form of all of them.”
Where is the evidence that children with MtD are better off in vaccinated communities? It seems that it is in well vaccinated communities that high levels (1 in 200) of MtD is found, therefore a child with MtD is probably one in 200 of a population according to a Newcastle study, so are you suggesting vaccination all kids but every 1 in 200 with MtD? A population of kids with 1 in 200 already suffering MtD will probably suffer increasing numbers of MtD from exposure to vaccines’ ethyl mercury, aluminium, phosphates or other ingredients of vaccines known/suspected to cause MtD; how do you know what level of viral particles, or even what type, a child with MtD could survive exposure to?
“It’s not like viruses make a deal with the child’s immune system and decide that if the child gets measles he can not also get chickenpox, whooping cough, or flu.”
How do you know? Has that theory ever been tested? Maybe it’s like the jungle - when the lion has you other predators back off till the lion’s done. Only certain creatures feed together on the carcass, most kill in species not in groups of multiple species. Species of bacteria, mycoplasmas, viruses may each have very different motivations – what does microbiology, immunology or vaccinology know of their motivations in any individual? Parasites have different motivation than non-parasitic organisms. Why should microscopic species be any different in motivation or restricted actions than jungle species?
Jack: I saw no link to any peer reviewed science disproving Offit. Could you post it again maybe?
BTW - every web host has an extensive log file. VAP will have one. Ray could ask his hosts for a log file of activity for time around when the dirty deed was done.
a concerned mother Says:
September 17th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
“Sometimes when children get the measles they die from a secondary infection.”
Secondary or concurrent (to use the 100,000 multifarious antigen theory) and what do you think causes that secondary if not perhaps cascade events due to the phenomena I described as being omitted from Offit et al works? Consequently, might secondaries occur after measles vaccination thro’ the same mechanism – the same phenomena are bound to occur if antibodies are produced?
“If you think viruses aren’t real entities”
I did not say that, I said some scientists now believe that; they are not independent living organisms (they are inert pieces of genetic material that only ‘act’ in a way as described by theory of virology) anyway, but evidence suggests that these pieces of genetic material are products of healthy cells used to communicate intra and intercellulary, and in some cases are merely breakdown products of cells to be disposed of, therefore are mistaken in their effects by virologists. I lean more to that theory than I used to having seen some of the evidence.
“then what exactly are they replicating in chicken or duck eggs?”
Inert bits of genetic material which they then mash up and insert along with numerous drugs, chemicals, mammalian and avian genetic materials into a tube and blast it into an infants tissues causing resultant cascade of effects – the antibody response being the most sought after to ‘prove effectiveness’ - including phenomena I suggest occur more often than reported by vaccinators despite children displaying their consequences (death, debility) during post vaccine phases.
“They are replicating viruses that are living things that need another living thing to replicate.”
Where does it say that viruses are living things – what is your definition of life that one can apply to a virus?
“If you don’t believe in viruses then why are parents taking their kids to chickenpox and measles parties?”
To improve survivability out of “childhood illnesses”, whatever they actually are.
“Why don’t you just go back to miasmas and bodily humors? I think autistic children just need a good bleeding, don’t you?”
You sound like a disgruntled medic.
Ahem. When I say ‘it had turned my daughter’ I of course am referring to vaccines, not VAERS.
Kev
There you go again. By conceding the HHS avoided having to disclose a great deal, and avoided the issue of how Hannah Poling’s autism developed. You have even tried to shift the blame for this on to the Polings, but the answer is that the HHS did not want to talk about it.
There is no reasonable doubt that Hannah was made ill and suffered neurological damage as a result of her vaccine exposure, and her symptoms tally with DSM (IV). I quite see that John Shoffner did not want to stick his neck out further, but that simply illustrates the present totalitarian scientific order (which is why official science is becoming worthless - as decadent as the Soviet system before it collapsed).
And you are just playing the same three card trick - relentlessly and tediously - like a sharp at a fair. The only purpose is to confuse, and make people’s eyes glaze over.
John, I really don’t know how often we can carry on going around this same mulberry bush before it sinks in for you. Medically, the HHS conceding is irrelevant to the question of autism and/or symptoms. How her autism developed is irrelevant except in one way - was it via vaccines?
Now, it doesn’t matter if HHS want to hush up anything to do with Hannah Poling because we have a totally accessible case study written by her father. In this study, all the symptoms he says are caused by vaccines are listed. I listed them out for you in comment 931 above. Do you understand John? Medically there is nothing else to discuss. And when we look at these symptoms it is clear to anyone with even a passing acquaintance with autism that these symptoms don’t match with the DSM (IV). Even Poling’s co-authors agree!
By the way, your ‘explanation’ of why Shoffner’s comments don’t matter is amusing but we both know they’re not accurate. I don’t pretend science is perfect but describing it as totalitarian and decadent is just paranoid silliness. I also suspect that were some evidence to the contrary produced by Wakefield for example you would suddenly be lauding the scientific process.
My purpose by the way is not to confuse but illustrate the gaps in logic into which people such as yourself are happy to pour your assumptions and badly thought out ideas. I’m really sorry you find it tedious but the answer is simple - drop the insults, drop the rhetoric, produce some evidence. Show everyone here why the case study authored by Poling et al shows that vaccines caused Hannah’s autism.
“. . .but evidence suggests that these pieces of genetic material are products of healthy cells used to communicate intra and intercellulary, and in some cases are merely breakdown products of cells to be disposed of, therefore are mistaken in their effects by virologists. I lean more to that theory than I used to having seen some of the evidence.”
How did we eradicate smallpox? Surely, if the mechanism you claim exists (and the theory you find most compelling) is real, then smallpox “virus” would constantly be produced through normal cellular breakdown.
If your theory is correct, why do our anti-viral drugs work? They are not based off of your model, but rather the generally accepted one that viruses are to some extent, alive, and capable of injecting their DNA into other cells for the purpose of creating more copies of the virus.
Finally…
“Inert bits of genetic material which they then mash up and insert along with numerous drugs, chemicals, mammalian and avian genetic materials into a tube and blast it into an infants tissues causing resultant cascade of effects – the antibody response being the most sought after to ‘prove effectiveness’”
Are you being hyperbolic or is this really how you believe vaccines are developed? Someone just dumps some animal parts onto a slab, works it over with a potato masher, and then draws the resulting product into a syringe and sticks the nearest infant in the butt?
Kev, you seem to be relying on people not having a copy of the Poling study to hand. To quote:
‘Her development was progressing well [at 19 months], with normal receptive and expressive language and use of pre-linguistic gestures, such as pointing for joint attention. Imaginative play and social reciprocity were typical for her age. She used at least 20 words and could point to five body parts on command.
After immunisation:
‘For 3 months, the patient was irritable and increasingly less responsive verbally, after which the family noted clear autistic behaviours, such as spining, gaze avoidance, disrupted sleep/wake cycle, and perseveration on specific television programmes. All expressive language was lost by 22 months….Four months later [?26 months] , an evaluation with the Infant and Toddler’s Early Intervention programme for possible autism was intiated…
‘Evaluation at 23 months showed atopic dermatitis, slow hair growth, generalized mild hypotonia, toe walking, and normal tendon reflexes. The Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) score was 33 (mild autism) and she also met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Mental Disorders-IV criteria for autism…”
None of which you quote or mention in post 931. What you have done is to quote the overview which describes Hannah’s physical and mental decline, while the detailed correspondence to autistic criteria is not discussed in detail in the study, although it is stated that she met them. Moreover, the DSM-IV criteria, while focussing on mental and social dysfunction does not deal specifically with such typical infant traits associated with autism, such as spinning and toe walking, which Hannah exhibited, and which you do not highlight in your list but which are included.
So, it is not the gaps in my logic, but the gaps in your reporting.
*Sigh* once more into the breech….
“Kev, you seem to be relying on people not having a copy of the Poling study to hand”
Don’t be facetious John, I linked to it above.
Hannah Poling’s status before or after vaccination is irrelevant. We all know correlation does not equal causation. Further as I have said above, I am not disputing the existence of her autism. She was/is autistic.
For the umpteenth time, it is the list of symptoms presented as those caused by vaccines that matter. All the symptoms you mention above, I did in fact list above contrary to your statement.
You have the case study? Great. Make your own list. Then please explain to us how this list provides a diagnosis of autism as per the DSM (IV).
That’s all you need to John, look at the medical symptoms reported as being caused by vaccines and tally them to autism. All this quoting things I already agree with is pointless. To refresh:
1) The point is not ‘is Hannah Poling autistic?’ - she was/is (even with her very low CARS score)
2) The point is not ‘how many vaccines did she have?’
3) The point is not ‘was she autistic pre vaccination and was she autistic post vaccination?’
4) The point is - are the symptoms reported as being caused by vaccines agreeing with a DSM (IV) diagnosis of autism?
Seriously John, its not hard to understand. Here’s a list of symptoms, here’s a diagnostic criteria - do they match?
Hey Jack - you are deeply mired in serious denial and conspiracy theory.
Best you keep quiet, huh? -You are giving the “sensible” anitvaccinationists a bad name by posting such drivel.
Dyson Says:
September 19th, 2008 at 5:27 am
“Hey Jack - you are deeply mired in serious denial and conspiracy theory…..Best you keep quiet, huh? -You are giving the “sensible” anitvaccinationists a bad name by posting such drivel.”
Censorship Dyson?! - explain which part of my response you consider conspiracy theory or drivel; seems like the moderator supports your right to make such claims without supoportive evidence - I don’t.
I have made a number of science-based criticisms of Offit et al that you fail to address in your ad hominems, and other science-based comments; i reckon they deserve at least science-based answers.
Put up or shut up.
John Stone Says: September 21st, 2008 at 9:00 am
“You start off with with a behaviouraly and cognitively normal child. Then you have a catastrophic event following vaccination after which a pattern of autistic symptoms (and others) emerge…….Within 48 hours after immunizations to diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis; Haemophilus influenzae B; measles, mumps, and rubella; polio; and varicella (Varivax), the patient developed a fever to 38.9°C, inconsolable crying, irritability, and lethargy and refused to walk. Four days later, the patient was waking up multiple times in the night, having episodes of opistho-tonus, and could no longer normally climb stairs. Instead, she crawled up and down the stairs. Low-grade intermittent fever was noted for the next 12 days. Ten days following immunization, the patient developed a generalized erythematous macular rash beginning in the abdomen. The patient’s pediatrician diagnosed this as due to varicella vaccination. For 3 months, the patient was irritable and increasingly less responsive verbally, after which the patient’s family noted clear autistic behaviors, such as spinning, gaze avoidance, disrupted sleep/wake cycle, and perseveration on specific television programs. All expressive language was lost by 22 months. The patient continued to have chronic yellow watery diarrhea intermittently for 6 months, which was evaluated with negative testing for Clostridium difficile, ova/parasites, and culture. Four months later, an evaluation with the Infant and Toddlers Early Intervention program for possible autism was initiated. Along with the regression, her appetite remained poor for 6 months and her body weight did not increase. This resulted in a decline on a standard growth chart for weight from the 97th to the 75th percentile.”
Following on from my questions of Offit et al penned above, your description of a not untypical descent into the terrible depths of vaccine-damage, and the emergent understanding (albeit for at least two decades already) of cellular vesicles of which a virus is but one, it appears to me that there is a very clear case for government medical scientists to call an immediate halt to vaccination before further untold harm is done to the globe’s children – our future.
We face a grave situation where those who purport to represent public health interests, and are paid in that regard, are almost certainly aware of the latest knowledge on viruses that questions their fundamental policies and practices yet choose to continue their practices despite the clear and present danger in so doing.
The recent scientific discoveries, in relation to viruses, strengthen the probability that any representation of a virus as a cause of any disease may be grossly exaggerated if not wholly inaccurate. Vaccination involving the tenets of virology may be wholly unsound.
This new appreciation that current “virus theory” that underpins vaccination is probably flawed, there should be immediate investigation with open-ended funding in the public interest. Not only do scientifically valid alternative views on the concepts of virus and viral disease require urgent attention as they suggest that current virus vaccination practices could be genocidal, and allowing scientists who must be in denial of those views to monopolise public policy cannot be in the public interest.
In addition to criticisms of Offit et al I raised above that add confounders to their statistical appreciation, I feel there are other questions posed by the alternative view on virus and viral illness: -
1. If a ‘virus’ cannot be readily identified as pathogenic, then how can vaccination be justified?
2. No virus has ever been isolated, including the most investigated such as polio and HIV, in effect they do not exist other than theoretically - this includes those said to represent causes of measles, mumps, rubella etc. – therefore contrary to popular belief one cannot present a pure isolation for vaccine preparation or for testing procedures; then how can such viruses be ‘attenuated’ to create a ‘safe’ version for a vaccine?
3. No virus, attenuated or not, can cause the so-called ‘essential vaccine reaction in any recipient; the ‘antibody’ reaction said to confirm efficacy, unless accompanied by toxins noxious to humans. If a virus is deemed pathogenic then why would the injecting into a human bloodstream or tissue not be sufficient to induce the disease it is said to cause?
4. ‘Viruses’ are now suspected as being misidentified cellular products involved in intra and inter cellular messaging, some may be waste from diseased or dying cells generated through the naturally occurring break up of cellular components into tiny fragments of genetic material for disposal. What would be the results of the reproduction/attenuation of fragments of genetic waste, or of genetic fragments used for inter cellular messaging, then injection into human tissues with toxins?
5. What would be the result of transferreing genetic messaging tools from other species into huimans eg avian DNA in certain vaccines?
6. Aaby et al spent numerous years in Africa studying vaccination. They confirmed that mild measles infection (the kind one finds in a well-nourished, sanitary efficicient, immune normal population) confers survival benefits on children suggesting that the condition referred to as ‘measles disease’ is actually beneficial to such a child. How many other diseases of childhood are actually cell-mediated developmental health and survival enhancing processes designed to promote healthy populations?
7. Aaby et al postulated that measles vaccination must therefore convey similar benefits, that eradication of measles in a population must be considered carefully as it may remove a natural process for health and survival; they might also have questioned whether vaccination might not be as reliable a replacement as wild measles, the latter being part of the evolutionary process as compared to the former which has limited history.
8. Aaby et al also found that the measles vaccine titre could modify the effect on recipients. High titre caused death compared to lower titre, and of more females, therefore one might suspect that the titre of wild ‘measles’ could manipulate population survival and gender. If a ‘measles’ virus is actually a cell-mediated message, and if it contains sufficient power to effect population and gender change, surely more investigation of this potential in cell-derived and vaccine-derived preparations is essential?
9. Respondent Jason, above, stated that a virus has a different genetic origin to a human, and that technology can both recognise and reproduce that – clearly his view is incorrect but it is probably the same view encouraged by vaccinators for the public. As far as I am aware no virus has ever been proven to originate other than in a cell, there is no proven model demonstrating the emergence of a virus extra-cellularly, consequently all ‘viruses’ can be assumed to have been produced by a cell.
10. It is known that 3-5% of our DNA is utilised in coding for bodily functions and maintenance, the remainder was called ‘junk DNA’ as its nature and value was unknown. In the mid-90s this belief came into question when Zipf Law and Claude Shannon tests were applied by Boston University and Harvard Medical School researchers on the 3-5% coding and 95-97% non-coding regions demonstrating that the latter contains an as yet unknown language, whereas the former has no such quality. How does the cell use this linguistic tool and is it’s language the basis of all vesicle (including ‘viral’) intercellular messaging? The probability exists and interference with that essential processing tool must be highly questionable.
12. These facts must bring into serious and immediate question the validity of ‘virus’ vaccines; knowing this, what will be the consequence of mixing virus and bacterial vaccines together?
“This advice has been on an NHS website minimally for more than four years. It is saying you should disregard severe reactions (contrary even to manufacturers advice) and presumably if there are any sequellae they will automatically be regarded as purely coincidental. So, not only is it very bad advice it would automatically (as a clinical principle and as state run policy) skew any evidence base regarding the adverse effects of MMR…….The advice is negligent, subverts normal medical ethics, and ensures that there is a certain non-evidence based, unscientific perception that the vaccine is entirely safe.”
Probably an understatement John
Well there you have it- end all vaccinations, viruses don’t exist, the majority of the world’s best scientists are all wrong, and it’s a huge ploy by Big Pharma to put money in the pockets of millions of health workers who are all in on the conspiracy.
Jason
Yes, the scientists who disregard the patient and their parents are exhibiting overweening arrogance and bias, and they are wrong. Every time they dismiss a report of vaccine damage out of hand they demonstrate their unfitness, and their subversion of elementary medical ethics: hit and run - “It wasn’t me guv, promise!’.
jason Says: September 22nd, 2008 at 10:46 am
“Well there you have it- end all vaccinations, viruses don’t exist, the majority of the world’s best scientists are all wrong, and it’s a huge ploy by Big Pharma to put money in the pockets of millions of health workers who are all in on the conspiracy.”
First, not all vaccinations are virus-based.
Second, it would not be the first time the majority of the World’s ‘best scientists’ are all wrong.
Third, it would probably be a first for all the wrong scientists to admit they are wrong as soon as they realised it.
You don’t start with a conspiracy, you start with scientists following the wrong path for decades - say virology as it stands - to find out they’re wrong after vaccinating billions of people with cell-mediated messages and waste products it misread as pathogens in it’s search for cure.
Real (and yes, the best) scientists admit they are wrong and perform good science to remedy their misunderstandings.
Pseudo (and yes, the worst) scientists do not admit they’re wrong and invent any excuse to support their faulty positions.
Would “Big Pharma put money in the pockets of millions of health workers” to maintain a conspiracy; only Big Pharma and it’s employees know that, but if so maybe that’s what we’re seeing today?
I’d just like to see one shred of real science that supports this “viruses don’t exist” concept you are pushing. So far all I’ve seen posted here is a book by an investigative reporter.
So, is there any published science out there or is this just purely conjecture?
Sorry, Jack. You can claim anything you want but without some real evidence behind it, it may as well be made up.
Even if what you claim is true, you still can’t explain why our present model of combating viruses works to prevent illnesses caused by viruses or why drugs like Tamiflu save lives. Are you really suggesting that your model just so happens to work the same way as the presently accepted model you reject? I’m really trying to understand what the nature of your claim is.
You would have us descend into a world with no vaccines where large swaths of our population dies before reaching puberty, where children end up in iron lungs from polio, deaf from measles, afflicted with Shingles in middle-age due to chicken pox, and so on. All for what, exactly?
No one I have ever heard of, not even Offit, has ever claimed that vaccines are 100% safe. But what is abundantly obvious is that we as a population are much healthier using them than we are not.
You should live in a place like Nigeria, where religious leaders have persuaded many to forgo polio vaccinations, claiming they are a ploy by Westerners to sterilize them. Polio, which was almost eradicated earlier this century, is now exploding in that region.
And you would say they are better off. Madness.
Thanks, John. That is interesting and very recent information about the relationship between shingles and chickenpox. It was my understanding previous to reading this that having chickenpox was the main risk factor for shingles later in life.
A couple of things:
“The modelling suggested that a two dose schedule at the levels of coverage likely to be achieved in the UK would lead to an increase of at least 20% of shingles in the medium term (approximately 15-20 years). This increase could be partially, but not completely, offset by introduction of a vaccination against shingles among those aged 60+.”
So the increased risk is manageable and. . .
“There are still uncertainties in the research and a lot more work needs to be done examining whether vaccination will be a benefit to all of the population. Also further work needs to be done on the cost effectiveness of any potential chickenpox vaccine before any policy conclusions can be reached.”
So the question is still unresolved, but if properly vaccinated against chickenpox and shingles, one can possibly avoid both diseases. Now that, I think, is something everyone agrees would be a good thing. Chickenpox left me with nothing but a small scar on my forehead and a higher risk of shingles later in life.
As for your last link, it only proves one thing and one thing only:
Febrile seizures increase at a statistically significant rate in children given the MMRV vaccine compared to children given the MMR and V separately.
This does not mean “four vaccines is too many”. It means *these four* vaccines should not be given in combination. But you know, I am completely willing to alter my previous thinking when presented with compelling evidence such as this one. Why can’t the anti-vaxers do the same? Why do they believe the CDC when the CDC says something they already agree with but not when they say something contrary?
Maybe it’s just a ploy by Big Pharma to force you to get more shots and pay more money.
“As to what else you have to say, the claim that the diagnosis of autism only came four months later is absurd. You start off with with a behaviouraly and cognitively normal child. Then you have a catastrophic event following vaccination after which a pattern of autistic symptoms (and others) emerge.”
Yeah and four months later she manages to get an autism diagnosis….lol…
Look John, I really don’t know how to make it any simpler for you to grasp. The simple fact is that the symptoms that are listed as those being cause by vaccinations are nowhere near enough to come close to an autism diagnosis.
Does this mean Hannah Poling was/is not autistic? No. It means the vaccines didn’t do it.
If she’d broken her leg during those four months do you think that would’ve been a symptom of vaccine damage? Of course not. So why are you so quick to attribute everything else? Sorry John but you can’t see anything else but vaccine damage.
“I also think that if you are going to dismiss out of hand the possibility that the vaccine was the trigger for these events, that you are demonstrating a high degree of bias.”
Oh man….I’ll say it yet again. I agree that that vaccines caused her damage. The damage listed as symptomatic as being caused by vaccines. However, the single pertinent question is ‘did the vaccines cause her autism?’ and as I’ve shown again and again and again, the answer, based on the symptoms in the case study is ‘no‘.
Seriously John, the mitochondrial expert on the team (John Shoffner) thinks Jon Poling is wrong. The autism expert on the team (Zimmerman) has been gagged by the Polings. Nowhere in the entire case study does it state that Hannah Poling’s autism is caused by vaccines. Nowhere in any HHS ‘concession’ document does it state that Hannah Poling’s autism was caused by vaccines.
And yet you know better? Quite the ego you have there.
jason Says:
September 22nd, 2008 at 1:40 pm
“Even if what you claim is true, you still can’t explain why our present model of combating viruses works to prevent illnesses caused by viruses or why drugs like Tamiflu save lives.”
The model does not work, it merely exchanges one disease for another. Tamiflu does not prevent flu, and what evidence is there that it saves lives?
“I’m really trying to understand what the nature of your claim is. ”
I wonder how you will manage that without reading works of the scientists I mentioned above?
“You would have us descend into a world with no vaccines where large swaths of our population dies before reaching puberty, where children end up in iron lungs from polio, deaf from measles, afflicted with Shingles in middle-age due to chicken pox, and so on. All for what, exactly? ”
I was born into that age……I don’t remeber seeing whole swathes of kids falling foul of the childhood diseases, nor whole swathes of people in iron lungs though such treatments existed for those who developed polio ( for which no virus has ever been isolated, and for which the prevailing scientific opinion was that it was toxin nor virus derived, and epidemics that occurred consequent to mass vaccination campaigns like the diphtheria campaign of the late 40s, a vaccine known to induce a polio/aseptic menigitis-like conditions), nor whole swathes of population dead before 30 other than by war. I now do see whole swathes of population dying before 30 of cancers, leukaemias, so-called AIDS, malnutrition, unsanitary conditions, famines, or suffering life long neurological and neurodegeneratory illnesses like autism, palsies, MS, Alzheimers, Parkinsons, ME/CFS most of which have at some time been scientifically considered as vaccine-induced illnesses. We now know that the smallpox vaccine (used in the 50s) is responsible for whole swathes of people dying of mesothelioma linked cancers due to the presence of monkey ‘virus’ SV-40 contamination of millions of doses of those vaccines. The polio (used in the 50s and beyond) vaccine may be responsible for MS/ME conditions directly or indirectly (by removing competing viruse/s) as well as causing whole swathes of populations to develop polio-like illness seen after mass vaccinae campaigns.
“No one I have ever heard of, not even Offit, has ever claimed that vaccines are 100% safe. But what is abundantly obvious is that we as a population are much healthier using them than we are not. ”
We are healthier (in terms of the old childhood illnesses) due to sanitary measures, nutrition, wealth, better care and more comfortable surroundings that saw enormous reductions in those diseases prior to vaccination introduction. We are certainly not healtheir per se, more children than ever suffer neurological problems, cancers, cognitive problems, ME/CFS, young adults with MS, cancers…despite the obvious benefits of better social and hygience and feeding confirmed by reductions in child illnesses prior to their respective vaccines…so what caused the increases in those ‘new’ illnesses if they occurred ‘despite vaccination’?
“You should live in a place like Nigeria, where religious leaders have persuaded many to forgo polio vaccinations, claiming they are a ploy by Westerners to sterilize them.”
They were convinced, and there is evidence to support their conviction, that the WHO provided contaminated vaccines - the WHO was previoudly accused of contaminating vaccines in other areas of the third World - notably India and the Phllipines - with anti-fertility products again for which evidence was presented by a Catholic Women’s group if i remember correctly. Why would the WHO contaminate vaccines without public knowledge or authority in those countries?
“Polio, which was almost eradicated earlier this century, is now exploding in that region.”
….and if polio is indeed a feature of environmental toxin/s as explained by Roberts in her book why not Nigeria?
Jack, I’m sorry, but I can no longer respond to claims you make without evidence. If you do find evidence for the things you claim are true I will be glad to take another look.
You are making extraordinary claims. This requires extraordinary evidence. If you don’t have that evidence then perhaps it is time to question why you believe those things.
jason Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:46 am
“Jack, I’m sorry, but I can no longer respond to claims you make without evidence. If you do find evidence for the things you claim are true I will be glad to take another look. ……You are making extraordinary claims. This requires extraordinary evidence. If you don’t have that evidence then perhaps it is time to question why you believe those things.”
Two things
1. As this is not the BMJ or Lancet I don’t feel obliged to provide you with references that don’t work through this site nor concern theories and facts that are difficult to locate considering the noted scientists inviolved and
2. If you do not even know of these views, that the well respected researchers have used excellent scientific method to present, why are you bothering to question them?
I note your responses are devoid of any kind of reference or evidence that could form a refutation of my information.
Jack Hep Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 12:16 am
my error
in
“1. As this is not the BMJ or Lancet I don’t feel obliged to provide you with references that don’t work through this site nor concern theories and facts that are difficult to locate considering the noted scientists inviolved and…..!
‘difficult to locate’ should of course read ‘NOT difficult to locate’…
“I think the discussion has become hopelessly broad, which is little of my doing.”
Scroll up! I was just following along.
“I also think it is rather one sided, if you don’t think you have to provide evidence for your beliefs - such as Tamiflu saves lives.”
Well, I used your own source to show you that it does save lives. If you don’t trust your own source or don’t want someone else to use it, then it is best to avoid using it.
As for the Nigerian issue, I take Ronald Reagan’s advice: Trust, but verify. Which is more convincing? Some guy saying he found contaminants in a vaccine, or hard data from multiple, independent labs showing specifically what contaminants exist and in what amounts?
jason Says:
September 25th, 2008 at 9:36 am
“Unless there is evidence presented for your claims in your next post, we’re done here”
My sentiments exactly ….once again all you have provided is a rather garbled account from “the amazing Randi” s site devoid of data and alternative evidence.
” Look, if you disagree with the Offit on this, that’s fine, but if you are going to use these criteria as the basis of your disagreement then you need to explain why and/or give examples.”
The explanation is in the concepts identified - if Offit et al have ignored obvious mathematical confounders, which are scientific fundamentals according to current understanding of immunity and genetics, and you are ignoring that premise, either you have to agree with me or you have no idea of what I speak therefore are not entitled to an opinion until you become better informed. It is not u to me to educate you.
” I do not believe that the work of an investigative journalist is evidence that viruses do not exist. Typically, such discoveries are submitted to medical journals for peer review, so other scientists can study the methodology and results so an effort at duplicating them can be made. If the results can be duplicated by multiple, independent sources then the claim gains a lot of credibility. ”
Neither do I and I said so more than once.
“If anyone were able to prove that viruses do not exist, it would shake the very foundation of microbiology, and win the Nobel Prize.”
Who was it said it takes 50 years for new science to become accepted - you wait for old scientists whose careers and pensions, and in this case perhaps accusations of genocide, global injury and damage, fade away before te new science is celebrated.
“Of course, you have yet to explain why the present model of virology and your proposed model happen to produce the exact same end results.”
They don’t as i have also said. The present model probably causes much of the globes post vaccination suffering, death and debility, if it is true.
” Smallpox just so happened to disappear because of some sort of natural cycle (something you haven’t proven) and it did so right at the time when we happened to be giving vaccinations. ”
It was already disppearing by the mid 1800s before vaccination; jenners vaccine caused significant increases such that it was intially for several years banned; reintrocduction coincided increases in epidemics except eventually in towns like Leicester that moved away from vaccination after seeing terrible epidemics despite >90% of its citizens vaccinated and then saw enormous reductions in the disease subsequent to avoidance of the vaccine.
“Care to make a guess when smallpox might return? ”
It’s very unlikely to return in the same form and with the same virulence due to the fact that we now have in our cities environments and health systems that Leicester produced that created a protective ‘barrier’ to the disease, measures stated in those days to ensure avoidance of a disease associated with overcrowding, insanitary conditions and poverty.
” Viruses are identified in several ways, you just happen to reject every single one on some basis I cannot identify.”
Name one method that isolates, therefore accurately identifies without any co-existing contaminants or toxins that carry their own potential to cause disease, any virus thereby demonsdtrating that virus as the definitive cause of a disease.
” As for polio, I don’t see any evidence that it is linked to pertussis.”
Read side effects of the vaccine and disease c 1940s.
“Your model also fails to explain the transmission of polio in a population”
Polio is believed to be caused by numerous pathogens, perhaps multiple toxins as suggested by Roberts; there are various types. Each victim, and any related group, should be individually assessed in any population or epidemic situation. That’s my model.
” why present day vaccination against pertussis and diptheria does not cause polio or polio symptoms. ”
They probably do, they’re called aseptic meningitis, neurological disorders (eg. stroke), MS, MN, ME…
Jack, you don’t have a clue, do you…..? Have you ever seen a case of polio, or read the clinical description of a case? Confusion with stroke, MS or ME is the very last thing that would happen. Are you just plucking random neurological terms out your backside, hoping no-one will notice where they have come from?
Jack, at least you do acknowledge that in paralytic polio the anterior horn cells of the spinal cord are infected, and the resulting signs will be of a lower motor neurone type in the affected limb. This will cause very specific and diagnostic clinical signs. The difference between polio and the spinal muscular atrophies is that these are symmetrical in distribution (never mind all their other differentiating features). Other lesions you say mimic polio could never be confused with the typical flaccid paralysis, wasting, areflexia and fasciculation confined to usually one limb that is characteristic of paralytic polio. MS and strokes cause unilateral signs, but are of upper motor neurone type - that means hyper-reflexia, increased tone and eventually spasticity.
I don’t want this to become a squabble comparing car sizes, but since you ask, I’m a doctor in clinical hospital practice, and just about every day I treat cases of stroke, MS or ME, and in my younger days I too saw cases of polio. So I’ve seen them, treated them and know easily how to tell the difference. Perhaps you are just not very good at clinical medicine? I mean, it stands to reason that someone who cannot distinguish between a stroke and ME is unlikely to succeed in practice for very long…. “Mrs Jones, I think you have had an anterior cerebral artery infarction resulting in a stroke…er, no hang on, …maybe you are feeling a bit tired and just have ME, …um perhaps its actually demyelination and you have multiple sclerosis…Oh hell, I dunno!”.
Yeah, right.
1. Dyson Says:
September 26th, 2008 at 1:27 am
“Jack, at least you do acknowledge that in paralytic polio the anterior horn cells of the spinal cord are infected, and the resulting signs will be of a lower motor neurone type in the affected limb. This will cause very specific and diagnostic clinical signs……..”
What has your text book definition of paralytic polio got to do with my comment about the relationship between vaccination side effects and those disorders polio, MS,MN,CFS/ME with their multifarious presentations?
“I’m a doctor in clinical hospital practice, and just about every day I treat cases of stroke, MS or ME, and in my younger days I too saw cases of polio.”
Then you should be alarmed at the consequences of vaccine damage injury – or do you never diagnose this in hospitals nowadays?
You should be further alarmed that Offit et al are presenting injections of100, 000 multifarious antigens as a safe procedure whilst omitting known confounders from their statistical assessment.
“Perhaps you are just not very good at clinical medicine? I mean, it stands to reason that someone who cannot distinguish between a stroke and ME is unlikely to succeed in practice for very long…. “
Ad hominems seem to be popular with those who have lost the argument as John Stone says above.
“Mrs Jones, I think you have had an anterior cerebral artery infarction resulting in a stroke…er, no hang on, …maybe you are feeling a bit tired and just have ME, …um perhaps its actually demyelination and you have multiple sclerosis…Oh hell, I dunno!”.
Sounds par for the course, according to so many Mrs Jones’ experiences in hospital A&E and GP surgeries nowadays. It’s not surprising that modern medicine has such an extraordinary bad record, from diagnostics to outcomes, according to published statistics.
Jack, in case you have forgotten, it was you who equated “polio” with being the result of pertussis vaccination. It was you who claimed that the side effects of vaccination (MS/ME/stroke etc) were being labelled as “polio”. So my textbook definition of what polio actually is has everything to do with your spurious claims.
Dyson Says:
September 29th, 2008 at 4:04 am
“it was you who equated “polio” with being the result of pertussis vaccination. It was you who claimed that the side effects of vaccination (MS/ME/stroke etc) were being labelled as “polio”. So my textbook definition of what polio actually is has everything to do with your spurious claims.”
I’m not sure what your point is, your definition applied only to paralytic polio yet I referred to polio in its many guises and gave you several references illutsrating that; but I can see you’re avoiding the real issues I’ve presented in accordance with the subject of this blog - how Offit et al appear to have misrepresented the probabilities of an infant surviving an assault of 100,000 multifarious antigens in their simplistic statistical analysis thereby misleading global media services that tend to repeat what “scientists” say whether it makes sense or not.
You declare a medical interest in conditions such as polio, MS, ME so I asked if you diagnose vaccine damage in hospital nowadays - be it MMR, DTP, IPV, OPV etc. as they are known to result in neurological damage in some recipients, and also as some cases of MS (Hep B) , ME (DT, DTP) and polio (OPV) could be found to be associated with recent vaccinations (examples in brackets) as potential causes. Surely you have some experience of vaccine damage? Have you never associated MS with vaccination or ME or polio or CFS, or even a stroke? Anti-tetanus vaccination was associated with ME in a UK study some years ago( when Doris Jones found that 12% of 220 Uni students had been vaccinated for tetanus within a month prior to developing ME ); I’ve seen numerous ME and CFS sufferers who had been vaccinated with T vaccine within a week of their first presentation of illness that developed unremitting such that at the 6 months stage (when ME can be diagnosed) ME was diagnosed. Influenza and Hep B jabs I have also found strong association in patients developing ME. Adjuvants mercury and aluminium are suspected, amongst others, i know.
Polio/aseptic menigitis - call it what you will - the condition has been diagnosed according to the principle “if you had a polio jab we’ll diagnose aseptic meningitis, if you have not we’ll call it polio” according to various medical observers since the vaccines were first introduced, and confirmed by annual statistics for those conditions.
The epidemic of polio that followed hard on the heels of the pertussis vaccination campaign in 46-47 was unsurprising surely to any medic? Polio symptoms expectedly occured after multiple injections, and after pertussis/vaccination so why not after one million kids receive the pertussis vaccination? There must be an expected fallout - but as with the MMR autism issues, the vaccinations in 46-47 that probably caused the ‘polio’ epidemic thence justifying Salks terrible vaccine (brought through private funding not government) to conveniently follow have been ignored by medics as most probable cause of the polio epidemic.
Until medics declare an interest in protecting patients from iatrogenic harm - as in the days when the Hippocratic Oath was sworn (even though it appears to have been more gimmic than principle to many) - vaccine damage will continue unabated.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘0 which is not a hashcash value.
Jack, you spout out too many untruths to counter in one go. Do I diagnose vaccine reactions in hospital? - Yes, it has been the case. But the majority of vaccine reactions are so mild they never get near a hospital. Do I go looking for “reasons” to label medical illnesses as “vaccine reactions”? I could do if I were not objective. I could ask parents of toddlers who are injured during a fall as they try out their new walking legs: “Has Johnny had a vaccine in the last 3 months?” I guarantee the hit rate would be in the order of 80% - quite clear post hoc proof that vaccines cause infants to fall down. I don’t bother looking for false and disproven associations.
Perhaps I should ask my MS patients if they have been vaccinated against Hepatitis B? After all, you say there is an association, but is there? The French certainly thought there might be, when there were reports of MS that seemed to follow vaccination.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=1682594&ordinalpos=3&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
These 2 possible cases (yes, that’s right - I said TWO cases) caused a media storm and prompted the French Government to suspend routine school-based vaccination for hepatitis B in 1998.
However, at least 8 subsequent scientific studies failed to show a statistically significant temporal or causal association between hepatitis B vaccination and multiple sclerosis. Here they are, with other commentaries also:
Postmarketing surveillance for neurologic adverse events reported after hepatitis B vaccination. Experience of the first three years.
Shaw FE Jr; Graham DJ; Guess HA; Milstien JB; Johnson JM; Schatz GC; Hadler SC; Kuritsky JN; Hiner EE; Bregman DJ; et al.
Am J Epidemiol 1988 Feb;127(2):337-52.
Frequency of adverse reactions to hepatitis B vaccine in 43,618 persons.
McMahon BJ; Helminiak C; Wainwright RB; Bulkow L; Trimble BA; Wainwright K
Am J Med 1992 Mar;92(3):254-6.
Recombinant hepatitis B vaccination of neonates and infants: emerging safety data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.
Niu MT; Davis DM; Ellenberg S
Pediatr Infect Dis J 1996 Sep;15(9):771-6.
Hepatitis B vaccination and the risk of multiple sclerosis.
Ascherio A; Zhang SM; Hernan MA; Olek MJ; Coplan PM; Brodovicz K; Walker AM
N Engl J Med 2001 Feb 1;344(5):327-32.
Hepatitis B Vaccination and the Risk of Childhood-Onset Multiple Sclerosis.
Mikaeloff, Y., Caridade, G., Rossier, M., Suissa, S., Tardieu, M.
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 2007 161: 1176-1182
Multiple sclerosis and hepatitis B vaccine?
Hall A; Kane M; Roure C; Meheus A
Vaccine 1999 Jun 4;17(20-21):2473-5.
Vaccinations and the risk of relapse in multiple sclerosis.
Confavreux, C, Suissa, S, Saddier, P, et al.
Vaccines in Multiple Sclerosis Study Group.
N Engl J Med 2001; 344:31.
Does the hepatitis B vaccine cause multiple sclerosis?
Naismith, R. T., Cross, A. H.
Neurology 2004. 63: 772-773
Recombinant hepatitis B vaccine and the risk of multiple sclerosis: A prospective study.
Hernan, M. A., Jick, S. S., Olek, M. J., Jick, H.
Neurology 2004, 63: 838-842
Association between hepatitis B vaccine and multiple sclerosis: a case-control study. Fourrier A, Touze E, Alperovitch A, Begaud B.
Pharmacoepidemiology & Drug Safety 1999;8:S140–141.
Vaccinations, demyelination, and multiple sclerosis study (VDAMS). Sturkenboom MCJM, Abenhaim L, Wolfson C, Roulet E, Heinzelf O, Gout O.
Pharmacoepidemiology & Drug Safety 1999;8:S170–171.
No increase in demyelinating diseases after hepatitis B vaccination.
Zipp F, Weil JG, Einhaupl KM.
Nature Medicine 1999;5(9):964–965.
School-based hepatitis B vaccination programme and adolescent multiple sclerosis.
Sadovnik AD, Scheifele DW.
Lancet 2000;355(9203):549–550.
To put your mind at rest about my capacity to look for vaccine reactions, I will do one thing. It appears that hair loss may be associated with Hepatitis B vaccination, so I intend to ask the next 50 bald men I see whether they have had Hep B vaccine. I’ll get back to you to tell you how I get on.
Some of my posts seem to have disappeared from this blog, touching on the issue of Tamiflu, which Jason had raised. Without retracing the Tamiflu question (which is evidently too sensitive), I would simply like to re-instate a couple of points that I made in a removed post.
1) The Offit doctrine of 10,000 vaccines is simply disproved by the CDC removal MMRV from the schedule - an instance where 4 vaccines in combination was too much.
2) According to the UK Health Protection Agency chicken pox vaccine, as used in the US (but not yet in the UK), exposes the population to an increased risk of shingles:
http://www.hpa.org.uk/webw/HPAweb&HPAwebStandard/HPAweb_C/1221638180451?p=1204186170287
John, the Offit “doctrine” of 10 thousand vaccines refers to the body’s ability to adequately respond to an immune challenge without becoming “overwhelmed” as the antivaccinationists constantly bang on about.
I know you know this, since you will have read this in Offit’s book. It has nothing to do with the issue of whether there might be an adverse reaction to any component of a vaccine.
The removal of Varicella from MMRV relates to the higher than acceptable incidence of febrile reactions than with MMR alone.
Regarding the need for varicella vaccine in the UK at present, I think there is little compelling evidence and I would favour the status quo for now until there is more information about the overall benefit or risk.
Dyson
You are talking diversionary nonsense. The “anti-vaccinationists” are people who vaccinated their children, most of whom just want safer medical practices. I don’t know whether anyone ever stated the argument against multivaccines in those terms, but it is patently absurd to go round claiming that the infant immune system can withstand the challenge of 10,000 vaccines when 4 or 1, might in certain circumstance be enough to harm them, or that the risk does not go up with exposure to more vaccines.
The question is when the doctrine is cited (and, mind you, as hard science), what exactly are people being told. You are now turning round and saying “well, we didn’t mean that”. We are not talking about “the capacity to meet challenge” or whatever, but the risk of harm - that’s what people are concerned about. And it looks as if this is just a semantic game to divert people.
John, I use the term antivaccinationist to mean those who are against vaccination and seek to dissuade others from protecting their children through vaccination. Someone who wishes vaccines to be safer, but still appreciates the need for them, understands that vaccination is still better than catching the disease, and who does not actively seek to dissuade others from vaccinating their children would not be called an “antivaccinationist” by me.
It is untrue of you to say “don’t know whether anyone ever stated the argument against multivaccines in those terms [immune overload]“, unless you happen to be a different John Stone to the John Stone who inhabits internet forums such as JABS, where “immune overload” is part of the prevailing dogma.
Regarding “immune overload”, vaccine proponents have tried to be very specific that the concept does not get conflated with the issue of vaccine reactions. Dr David Salisbury himself said this, as you well know since you have quoted his words many times in the past. Here they are again, and I refer you to his last sentence inparticular:
“I was speaking very specifically about the infant immune system’s ability to respond, in the context of the ridiculous suggestion that the new vaccine combination, containing far fewer antigens than the one it will replace, would overload the immune system. My words were: “The immune system of a baby has got huge spare capacity to deal with challenge. If we didn’t, the human race wouldn’t survive. But let’s look specifically at vaccine. This has been studied carefully. A baby’s immune system could actually tolerate perfectly well 1,000 vaccines”. At no point did I suggest that 1,000 vaccines would not increase the probability of adverse reactions - a quite different matter.”
So you are quite well aware that claims about the capacity of an infants immune system to respond to the challenge of vaccine antigens is quite disconnected from the issue of whether an infant may come to harm from a reaction to combination vaccines. Stop pretending that in medical terms the two things are one and the same. If anyone is guilty of semantic games to divert people it is you, by deliberately trying to sow seeds of confusion around this issue.
John, I use the term antivaccinationist to mean those who are against vaccination and seek to dissuade others from protecting their children through vaccination. Someone who wishes vaccines to be safer, but still appreciates the need for them, understands that vaccination is still better than catching the disease, and who does not actively seek to dissuade others from vaccinating their children would not be called an “antivaccinationist” by me.
It is untrue of you to say “don’t know whether anyone ever stated the argument against multivaccines in those terms [immune overload]“, unless you happen to be a different John Stone to the John Stone who inhabits internet forums such as JABS, where “immune overload” is part of the prevailing dogma.
Regarding “immune overload”, vaccine proponents have tried to be very specific that the concept does not get conflated with the issue of vaccine reactions. Dr David Salisbury himself said this, as you well know since you have quoted his words many times in the past. Here they are again, and I refer you to his last sentence inparticular:
“I was speaking very specifically about the infant immune system’s ability to respond, in the context of the ridiculous suggestion that the new vaccine combination, containing far fewer antigens than the one it will replace, would overload the immune system. My words were: “The immune system of a baby has got huge spare capacity to deal with challenge. If we didn’t, the human race wouldn’t survive. But let’s look specifically at vaccine. This has been studied carefully. A baby’s immune system could actually tolerate perfectly well 1,000 vaccines”. At no point did I suggest that 1,000 vaccines would not increase the probability of adverse reactions - a quite different matter.”
This is also covered in Dr Offit’s book -which you have read it, I presume?
So you are quite well aware that claims about the capacity of an infants immune system to respond to the challenge of vaccine antigens is quite disconnected from the issue of whether an infant may come to harm from a reaction to combination vaccines. Stop pretending that in medical terms the two things are one and the same. If anyone is guilty of semantic games to divert people it is you, by deliberately trying to sow seeds of confusion around this issue.
Dyson Says:
September 30th, 2008 at 10:32 am
“Do I go looking for “reasons” to label medical illnesses as “vaccine reactions”? I could do if I were not objective. I could ask parents of toddlers who are injured during a fall as they try out their new walking legs: “Has Johnny had a vaccine in the last 3 months?” I guarantee the hit rate would be in the order of 80% - quite clear post hoc proof that vaccines cause infants to fall down. I don’t bother looking for false and disproven associations.”
It appears you are not interested in what would be more serious ADRs to vaccines in children or you would always, as would I, ask of any toddler who has fallen (“on his new walking legs”) what, if any, vaccination has he/she had recently. Each child deserves to be treated as an individual, whether or not one of your 80%, or 20% outside the ‘hit rate’, how else would you be able to quickly identify the possibility that the fall may be a result of a vaccine reaction (eg a brief seizure or other neurological reaction to a vaccine?). Of your 80%, especially those for whom a neurological implication is more probable, a significant percentage will have been vaccinated within hours/days of the fall or will have had a vaccine known to incur a rate of neurological complications eg MMR or DTP. Perhaps fewer parents would now be in jail had their child’s GP asked the appropriate question about recent falls and recent vaccinations before he/she succumbed to the eventual most damaging fall that, through that omission, would later be claimed a result of ‘shaken baby syndrome’ rather than series of falls “on new legs” induced by vaccine rather than normal boisterous toddler activity.
“Perhaps I should ask my MS patients if they have been vaccinated against Hepatitis B?”
Of course you should, and any other recent vaccination, along with other possibilities like having experienced later onset wild measles infection etc. The Merck Hepatitis B vaccine material recognises the possibility so it would be remiss of you not to consider this would it not?
http://www.merck.com/product/usa/pi_circulars/r/recombivax_hb/recombivax_pi.pdf
“To put your mind at rest about my capacity to look for vaccine reactions, I will do one thing. It appears that hair loss may be associated with Hepatitis B vaccination, so I intend to ask the next 50 bald men I see whether they have had Hep B vaccine. I’ll get back to you to tell you how I get on.”
And why not?
Dyson
I am quite well aware that you are using the same casuistical argument as Dr Salisbury. As far as I am concerned the only issue is the risk of harm - I have no idea where the the theory of immune overload said to be addressed in the Offit doctrine occurs. I am said to adhere to it, but I will have to take your word for that. My point is that does this tell you - given the propaganda use of the Offit doctrine - that having many vaccines is necessarily safe? As far as I can see both you and Dr Salisbury are being misleading (on your own account).
Many people who have had bad experiences with vaccine have taken the line that they are completely opposed to it, but others are simply concerned with whether due care is being taken, and their experience is that it is not - this is apparently all one and the same to you, and we are all anti-vaccinationists (irrespective of history or belief). My view is that the culture is presently flawed and unreliable, and your cavalier attitude exemplifies this.
Most of us have been sold in our time the intellectual proposition that it is always safer to vaccinate than not to vaccinate, but presently I don’t know what evidence base you would cite for that - there have been too many cut corners. I question whether it is as safe as it should be, and I question the high handed dismissal (scientifically prejudicial) of so many people who are unhappy with consequences? If this is how families are treated when it goes wrong, are governments and the medical profession entitled to ask them to take the risk, and doesn’t this further compromise the evidence base?
John Stone Says:
October 1st, 2008 at 4:18 am
“Dyson…it is patently absurd to go round claiming that the infant immune system can withstand the challenge of 10,000 vaccines when 4 or 1, might in certain circumstance be enough to harm them, or that the risk does not go up with exposure to more vaccines…….The question is when the doctrine is cited (and, mind you, as hard science), what exactly are people being told. You are now turning round and saying “well, we didn’t mean that”. We are not talking about “the capacity to meet challenge” or whatever, but the risk of harm - that’s what people are concerned about. And it looks as if this is just a semantic game to divert people.”
Well said; that is exactly what Dyson is doing, changing the rules to suit. Either an infant can safely process 100,000 multifarious antigens or it cannot. There is no known vaccine devoid of side effects, some extremely of which are reported as extremely serious to death. Therefore every child must be informed, and then assessed, on such reactions or lawful scientific medicine is not being practised.
I think the rather blasé attitude that appears to dominate the application of modern medicine, in all clinical areas, leaves much to be desired and probably contributes greatly to its well publicised dangers posed to society as the first and foremost killer and maimer currently known to man.
For Offit et al to be widely published, and were it as Dyson says in ignorance of the adverse reaction probabilities, having excluded considerations that both immunology and vaccinology are poorly understood therefore their statistics evolved out of that situation, it is evident that the global media either has no interest in reality as far as infants and vaccines are concerned or has so little scientific acumen as to be an extremely dangerous source of information for the general public. I think it’s a mixture of both.
The more existing vaccines directed against toxins, encapsulated bacteria and many viruses are combined, in the absence of immunological understanding as well as the actual mechanism of each vaccine, the greater recipes for disaster. The problem is vaccinators have no idea what they are really doing so cannot explain how or when things go wrong, and the obvious fall-out is covered up by studies like Offit et al and the enormous mumbo jumbo epidemiology that has been so widely discredited by very credible research scientists. Occam’s razor would suggest that, in the absence of provable efficacy, safety and mechanisms of action – coincident with the dramatic increases in incidence of diseases and disorders – vaccination should be suspected as causing or contributing to the incidences of those diseases and disorders.
Combining vaccines has clear benefits for vaccinators, it’s cheaper therefore higher profitability, and it makes it even more difficult to identify a single vaccine cause of a disease and disorder, especially when physicians like Dyson are happy to avoid questions of probability of serious vaccination adverse effects.
Incidentally, I am not a spokesperson for JABS but there is nothing “anti-vaccinationist” in its policy statement, and nothing about “immune overload”:
http://www.jabs.org.uk/pages/about.asp
You have made the whole thing up.
My last remark addressed to Dyson.
There are NO clinical long term studies of safety and tolerability for vaccines
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/studies.html
The pharmaceutical industry has no interest in doing these studies (which are quite common) because it’s not beneficial to them.
Also, a large majority of people still don’t know that immunizations are NOT mandated in the state of CA. The law allows parents to choose an exemption from immunization requirements based on their personal beliefs, etc. Please remember that. Would you give your child an unknow pill that you pick up from the streets? Of course, not. You’d want to findout what it is and what it does. Too many people just take the doctors’ word for granted. Please do extensive research on all drug before giving it to your kids (And not just vaccines).
Jack, I think you need a refresher on what is meant by Occam’s razor.
Regarding the unsubstantiated link between Hep B vaccine and multiple sclerosis, I see you make no reference to the overwhelming weight of medical research and surveillance studies I cited that demonstrate the link is spurious, instead preferring to say: “The Merck Hepatitis B vaccine material recognises the possibility “. In fact, looking at the Merck literature, they do not “recognise the possibility [of a causative link]” at all. It is not given even under “rare adverse reactions”.
They list it under the “Marketed Experience” section where they say “The following additional adverse reactions have been reported with use of the marketed vaccine. In many instances, the relationship to the vaccine was unclear.” All they are doing is what I am sure you would like vaccine manufacturers to do - give full disclosure of every reaction that has been recorded as having any link to the vaccine. You should be giving them credit for being completely honest. However, we all know, thanks to the substantial and definitive body of research done on this putative association, that there is no evidence for a causative link. Get over it.
John, I never claimed the immune overload idea was an integral part of JABS “policy statement”. I actually said that: “on internet forums such as JABS, “immune overload” is part of the prevailing dogma”. A quick search through the JABS forum confirms this to be the case, since there are many references to this hypothesis by JABS forum members. I know you do not represent JABS, but for the record, perhaps you could say whether you think the infant immune system can be “overwhelmed” by too many simultaneous antigenic challenges (purely immunologically speaking, that is). Yes or No?
(By the way, I take your point about the question about vaccine safety and whether it is as good as safe as it should be, and the high-handed treatment of those who have questioned its adverse consequences)
Please don’t give Merk, or any other pharma company, “credit” for being COMPLETELY honest….
http://www.loveforlife.com.au/node/2658
http://assaultonblacksanity.blogspot.com/2007/12/merk-drug-company-vaccines-developer.html
Also, John, you say your “only issue is the risk of harm” Strange as it may seem, I agree with you. As to how many vaccines are “safe”? Well, if we are talking about the real (but small) risk of an adverse reaction, getting just one vaccine is safer than getting 2, which is safer than getting 3, and so on.
Regarding immune overload - this theory is a load of tosh and as perhaps we can agree, actually has nothing to do with the risk of vaccine reactions. You say you have no idea where the the theory of immune overload said to be addressed in the Offit doctrine occurs. By this I presume you mean Offit’s book, in which he adresses the immune overload issue. You have read it, presumably?
“Either an infant can safely process 100,000 multifarious antigens or it cannot.”
An infant processes many, many more antigens than that on a daily basis. So the answer to your question is a resounding yes, but with a rather obvious caveat.
Dyson’s point, which I have a hard time believing you can’t discern, is that the types of antigens are a lot more important than the number.
For example, if you said an infant could handle 10 antigens a day but that one of the antigens was the ebola virus then obviously you would be wrong. But if the 10 antigens were things like rhinoviruses then there would be little to worry about. Similarly, some vaccines work fine together and some do not.
Vaccines are specifically tested for this. Do a google search on “concomitant vaccine” and you will see thousands of studies on how different vaccines interact with one another when given in combination.
“Would you give your child an unknow pill that you pick up from the streets?”
Right, because this is a GREAT analogy for vaccines and other drugs. You lose all credibility when you say things like that.
Jason, just as credible as your response. That is actually the right analogy. You go to your MD, he prescribes you something, you take it. Even as simple as an antibiotic. A large number of drugs that received full approval by the FDA were later take off or had to be restributed with the BLACK BOX warning because either the pharma company omitted pertinant info, or the studies were not conducted properly.
Vioxx, Fen-phen, Redux, Rezulin, Celebrex, Zypexa. I could go on and on.
Dyson
Thank you for you conciliatory note. My problem is that I am not sure who enunciated the the theory of immunological overload, and if they did whether they necessarily meant what Offit had in mind. That’s one reason why I am not sure of its relevance to anyone’s real concerns.
I also don’t know that risks are by now mathematically trivial (never trivial, of course, whent it happens to your child) with our vastly expanding schedule, or that we understand them all. I would go along with Bernardine Healy on this.
Dyson Says:
October 1st, 2008 at 9:58 am
“Regarding the unsubstantiated link between Hep B vaccine and multiple sclerosis, I see you make no reference to the overwhelming weight of medical research and surveillance studies I cited that demonstrate the link is spurious, instead preferring to say: “The Merck Hepatitis B vaccine material recognises the possibility…………they do not “recognise the possibility [of a causative link]…
They list it under the “Marketed Experience” section where they say “The following additional adverse reactions have been reported with use of the marketed vaccine. In many instances, the relationship to the vaccine was unclear.”
Notice it says, “was unclear” not “was no evidence” as you state.
Public marketing experience is an excellent test for medical products; it is probably the only definitive testing as it accounts for all random shapes, sizes, weights, ages, races, constitutions, genders, multifaceted degrees of and types of concurrent illness, varied usage, conditions of normal lifestyles and stresses, socio-economics, etc. – a sampling process impossible for any research team to muster together no matter how it tries to reduce confounding.
Unfortunately your attitude that an individual patient’s vaccine status should be generally ignored in favour of generlisations about statistics, and if you take the same stance with other medical interventions that could suggest iatrogenic causation, makes a mockery of marketing experience and fails the public and patients.
Were medical research not replete with corrupted publications, as so many studies have evidenced, your sole reliance on medical publications rather than public experience might make more sense but who better to listen to than those who had the experiences Merck describe?
How will the extent of OPV, Hep B, or MV induction of MS, or Hib induction of diabetes, or DTP of polio, or Flu jabs of Alzheimers and ME, become known if medics like you ignore the possibility because a pharmaceutical publication is not echoed in a medical journal?
Not long ago I visited a geriatric ward in a local hospital; 8 ladies were present and 3 said they believed their acute admission was caused by a severe reaction to a flu jab. Not one of the 3 was listened to by their consultant who merely diagnosed acute respiratory distress. Another two elderly ladies - who were close friends and lived in the same old folks care home - were admitted soon after their flu and pneumonia jabs, diagnosed as suffering from acute pneumonia; one died within the week the other within a fortnight. They were both healthy prior to their jabs. I asked a district nurse who performs local flu and pneumonia jabs if she noticed a high attrition rate amongst her jab recipients. She said she had never considered the jabs as dangerous, but experienced that quite a number of her elderly charges would be dead by the time she returned a month later, she had always put this down to natural events.
jason Says:
October 1st, 2008 at 10:18 am
“Either an infant can safely process 100,000 multifarious antigens or it cannot.”
This statement I made was in the context of the ADR issue taken up by John Stone with Dyson. If the 100,000-antigen jab caused an autoimmune response in an infant, an ADR to the vaccine, that infant cannot safely process the jab whether or no Offit et al’s statistical appreciation speaks of ADRs. An ADR is an important consideration with respect to safety, and therefore ability to process safely.
“An infant processes many, many more antigens than that on a daily basis. So the answer to your question is a resounding yes, but with a rather obvious caveat.”
Where is the evidence that an infant safely processes “many many more antigens than 100,000 on a daily basis” I have asked for this before and it has not been provided?
“Dyson’s point, which I have a hard time believing you can’t discern, is that the types of antigens are a lot more important than the number.”
I made the point that Offit et al speak of 100,000 antigens of different viruses, and thereby complicate the issue much more than they would have had they been discussing 100,000 of the same virus antigen type. As Offit et al fail to consider the complex actions and reactions known, suspected, and expectedly unknown, to be involved in processing of multifarious virus antigens it is impossible for you, Dyson or anyone to state with any degree of surety that type of antigen is more important than number when that number of different antigens of different types is so high.
Perhaps you can point to a single study that demonstrates how an infant was injected with 100,000 antigens – of any description - and survived?
“Similarly, some vaccines work fine together and some do not…..Vaccines are specifically tested for this. Do a google search on “concomitant vaccine” and you will see thousands of studies on how different vaccines interact with one another when given in combination.”
Perhaps you can point me to a single study that demonstrates how different vaccines, concomitantly, ‘worked fine together’ inducing immune responses as referred to by Offit et al, that identified epitope presentation without harmful cross reactivity, B–cell proliferation and cloning without harmful endogenous antibody destruction, adequate antibody and memory production, and no possibility of ‘original antigenic sin’ effects when later exposed to the same, or varied type, viruses in a group of infants who were confirmed to have safely processed those vaccines?
Jack, you ask: “Perhaps you can point me to a single study that demonstrates how different vaccines, concomitantly, ‘worked fine together’… ”
Here is a link to 103 studies on the immunogenicity and safety of combined vaccines. Happy reading.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&DbFrom=pubmed&Cmd=Link&LinkName=pubmed_pubmed&LinkReadableName=Related%20Articles&IdsFromResult=18502545&ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&log$=relatedarticles&logdbfrom=pubmed
Regarding the number of antigens children are exposed to, I should remind you that antigens are either proteins (or peptides - protein fragments) or polysaccharides.
Your request for a “study” on how more than 100 000 antigens could be processed is quite meaningless. I doubt anyone has quantified the number of different antigens anyone is exposed to in an average day - it would be a pointless exercise. Breathing in air will expose you to hundreds, eating will expose you to hundreds of thousands, and every skin breach will entail thousands of different antigens getting directly into the tissues. The human body has billions of bacteria, inside and out, each having dozens or hundreds of different antigens.
Perhaps you could provide us with a reference to a paper that demonstrates how it is that a human can possible survive, considering that hundreds of thousands of times a day we run the risks of “epitope presentation with harmful cross reactivity, B–cell proliferation and cloning with harmful endogenous antibody destruction, inadequate antibody and memory production, and the possibility of ‘original antigenic sin’ ”
Regarding reactions to vaccines such as influenza, there is considerable recall bias and confirmation bias, not only in anecdotal observations like yours, but in proper studies. I don’t suggest doctors ignore possible vaccine reactions - I think they should be properly investigated, but as I tried to explain with my earlier analogy, there are some associations that can be dismissed easily on the basis that there is absolutely no plausible mechanism (eg asking girls who started menstruating whether they had recieved gardasil in the preceding 6 months, and concluding uterine bleeding is a side effect of HPV vaccination when most of them say yes), or there is little point in pursuing the association (eg the incidence of Guillan Barre syndrome following MMR vaccination is no different to the expected background incidence)
Dyson Says:
October 2nd, 2008 at 2:12 am
Interesting opt outs yet again from you
I asked
“Perhaps you can point to a single study that demonstrates how an infant was injected with 100,000 antigens – of any description - and survived?”
That’s a specific question requesting, a single study, involving an infant, who was injected, with 100,000 various antigens, and who survived. Natural exposure to different organisms per day is not relevant nor is your assumption that “exposure” necessarily involves processing as opposed to remaining unaffected by/aloof of those organisms.
Perhaps I can make it easier, and in the context of your obvious assumption that we live amongst organisms that interact concurrently en mass with us and in such a way as to require us to process their enormous number of various antigens. In order to make that assumption you must have scientific evidence. Can you therefore provide me with a single study that evaluated, thence demonstrated, for an infant who was exposed to an average day’s organisms, that the infant’s immune system did engage all those organisms’ concurrently, and subsequently their respective antigens, and in so doing survived?
My second question you have also moved out of context. I asked, referring to Jason’s point above,
“Perhaps you can point me to a single study that demonstrates how different vaccines, concomitantly, ‘worked fine together’ inducing immune responses as referred to by Offit et al, that identified epitope presentation without harmful cross reactivity, B–cell proliferation and cloning without harmful endogenous antibody destruction, adequate antibody and memory production, and no possibility of ‘original antigenic sin’ effects when later exposed to the same, or varied type, viruses in a group of infants who were confirmed to have safely processed those vaccines?”
Which of the 103 studies you cite fulfil those essential criteria?
I agree that recall bias and confirmation bias exist, however they are irrelevant in the real world of real patients who experience real ADRs; they are only of relevance in research. A physician is expected by a patient to investigate that patient’s individual circumstance, not in ignorance of theoretical probabilities but despite those. You say that for a toddler who falls it is not worth exploring vaccination status because many toddlers fall who are vaccinated, yet for the sake of a few simple questions you will fail to identify toddlers whose fall was a result of vaccine ADR.
If MMR caused GBS in your patient, how would you know? If gardasil caused the bleed in your patient how would you know? How would ‘market experience’ then judge MMR and gardasil if physicians chose to avoid those simple questions, which can lead to more specific clinical testing, and improved suspected ADR reporting?
“Natural exposure to different organisms per day is not relevant nor is your assumption that “exposure” necessarily involves processing as opposed to remaining unaffected by/aloof of those organisms.”
You cannot claim something is irrelevant without explaining why. You’re trying to dismiss the claim without answering it. Stop obfuscating and answer Dyson’s points, or stop demanding that anyone else do the same.
So please explain why natural exposure to billions of antigens per day without incident is not relevant to a discussion about how many antigens one can theoretically tolerate at one time.
And since you think Offit’s number is too high, then why don’t you also tell us what number you think is accurate (tolerable) and how you arrived at that number.
jason Says: October 2nd, 2008 at 5:58 pm
“You cannot claim something is irrelevant without explaining why.”
I explained very well. To assume (as Dyson obviously does from his rhetoric) that INJECTING (in capitals case you and Dyson continue to evade the issue) antigens, especially vaccine virus antigens that do not have the required (by vaccinology) antibody effect without being accompanied by appropriate adjuvant/s, is the same as exposure to naturally occurring wild organisms in the daily environment, Dyson has to evidence scientifically that the same processes are involved. Scientifically wild pathogens existing in the vicinity are not the same as vaccine-borne pathogens, injecting is not the same existing near or ingesting or breathing, and if they were then vaccinology – which requires adjuvants to induce the required response from any vaccine, suggests that ‘wild adjuvants’ are required to activate similar responses from ‘wild pathogens’. None of this has been demonstrated by Dyson, therefore I asked for the scientific papers that evidence his assumption because, scientifically, injecting killed and attenuated lives pathogens is different from living amongst wild pathogens. Where is the science that shows that there is no scientific difference? If you cannot provide it then Dyson’s assumptions, and yours, and possibly (If Offit et al make the same unscientific jump in conclusion) they are wrong.
“So please explain why natural exposure to billions of antigens per day without incident is not relevant to a discussion about how many antigens one can theoretically tolerate at one time. “
I just did. You explain what you mean by ‘natural exposure’, and then explain how that equates scientifically to injecting vaccine virus antigens plus essential adjuvants.
“And since you think Offit’s number is too high, then why don’t you also tell us what number you think is accurate (tolerable) and how you arrived at that number.
I think the number, based on current lack of understanding of the immune processes involved, the effects of individual recipient, environment, physical state, maternal antibody status, age of child and health status, types of vaccine virus, types of adjuvants essential for processing of those vaccine viruses, etc. etc. is impossible to deduce. There are so many confounders and potential confounders per infant. Offit et al have used a naïve model, then generalised, on which to base mathematical calculations.
But you don’t believe viruses exist, as you have previously mentioned in this very thread. You believe that they are actually components of cells that have been ejected from the cell into the body. So, are these antigens? If so, why do they not affect the cell when they are inside it? When do these “antigens” become dangerous and how? Please understand I am not looking for your opinion so much as actual, peer-reviewed science as you requested from Dyson.
Do you really need peer-reviewed science to tell you there are billions of bacteria on and in your body, when you can clearly see them with a microscope?
If we go by your theory of what viruses really are, then exposure to them is daily at levels in the millions, possibly billions, all over the body. There is no way a vaccine injection could compete with that sort of distribution. A drop in the bucket wouldn’t even be close to how diluted the vaccine antigens would be inside the body compared to the body’s inherent “antigen” level.
For someone who demands “scientific papers”, you have presented absolutely none of your own. I can only assume you are trolling this board, attempting to confuse the issue of autism by throwing out wild, unsupported theories, demanding absurd levels of proof from everyone else for their own opinions (in fact you have not conceded a single point in this thread, even when faced with peer reviewed science and doctors working in clinical practice that clearly oppose your claims).
I do not know what your motivation is, but it is clear you are not interested in a discussion, but rather a pulpit from which you can regurgitate conspiracy theories and science I’d expect to find in a comic book.
OK, Jack, let’s forget for a moment you think viruses don’t exist, and that the millions of antigens we are exposed to daily through “ingestion”. How about the ones we get through every skin scrape, or the ones that invade our blood streams directly each time we chew or brush our teeth?
You may like to go around pretending that the exposure of (say) a single antigen (Hep B vaccine) through intramuscular injection somehow throws the entire human immune system into disarray and precipitates a catastrophic immunological collapse, but getting exposed to hundreds of antigens through skin scrapes and blood stream seeding on a daily basis does nothing.
Pretend away. I have provided plenty of references where the immunological effects of various vaccines has been studied in depth, but apparently not in sufficient depth for your liking. Perhaps it’s now your turn to try and get some references - Let’s see some that show how antigen exposure through skin scrapes destroys someone’s immune system, or triggers autism can we?
Alternatively, let’s have a new hypothesis for what causes autism in children. I propose that when children start to lose their milk teeth, each event is associated with a massive antigenic load directly into the bloodstream. Research tells us that bacteremia commonly occurs with teeth brushing or any dental problems such as losing a tooth. Clearly this overloads the immune system, and serves as a trigger for autism in a subgroup of susceptible children.
Can you “disprove” my hypothesis please? Epidemiological studies cannot disprove it (you know how “unreliable” they are). The rise in autism diagnoses may be entirely due to better recognition and expansion of the DSM criteria, so pointing this out won’t help disprove it either. I think my hypothesis is a good one - do you agree?
jason Says:
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:08 am
“But you don’t believe viruses exist, as you have previously mentioned in this very thread. You believe that they are actually components of cells that have been ejected from the cell into the body. So, are these antigens? If so, why do they not affect the cell when they are inside it? When do these “antigens” become dangerous and how? Please understand I am not looking for your opinion so much as actual, peer-reviewed science as you requested from Dyson. “
I already, days ago, gave you details of several scientists who work on that concept. Read their works.
I did not say viruses don’t exist I said I tend to believe that the evidence drawn from those scientist’s works suggests that ‘viruses’ are not exogenous pathogens but are just different forms of vesicles, produced by cells from their own genetic components for intra and inter cellular messaging, some are probably detritus from cellular breakdown which, in the unhealthy, are slow to be expelled thence are observed as ‘pathogens’ instead of cellular detritus.
The effects of injecting cellular detritus, cellular messaging materials (including interspecies) would be what vaccination practices really are. With the enormous amount of potential vaccine damage we see today, hidden by rhetoric and faulty research as already explained, the ‘virus vesicles’ theory makes much sense.
They may not ‘affect’ the cell when they are inside it as they are borne of the cell, for the cell, by the cell other than if they are designed by the cell to perform a specific intracellular function; those seen moving between cells are part of the natural messaging systems. What has dangerous antigens got to do with that?
Dangerous antigens would be observed from exogenously derived pathogens, not endogenously derived vesicles (‘viruses’), or vesicles from one human or species that enter another distributing genetic messages that were ‘unnecessary’ to its’ cells, or in a ‘different format’ from those of the recipient. Vaccination performs exactly the latter.
“Do you really need peer-reviewed science to tell you there are billions of bacteria on and in your body, when you can clearly see them with a microscope? “
The body is a composite of billions of bacteria, generally a healthy mix but which can become unhealthy by alteration in the natural endogenous or exogenous environments, or by other stressors physical, emotional, mental etc., trauma, intake of exogenous pathogenic including parasitic organisms etc.
“If we go by your theory of what viruses really are, then exposure to them is daily at levels in the millions, possibly billions, all over the body. There is no way a vaccine injection could compete with that sort of distribution. A drop in the bucket wouldn’t even be close to how diluted the vaccine antigens would be inside the body compared to the body’s inherent “antigen” level.”
“My theory” as you refer to it does not recognise vesicles (‘viruses’) as essentially pathogenic; so antigens has nothing to do with that system, antigens are to do with exogenous pathogens, not endogenous vesicles (‘viruses’). Avian vesicles, as indeed many different species of inherent messaging systems, naturally excluded (historically not cross-infecting humans) are now seen as having the capability – like simian HIV (SIV) vesicles – as contaminating humans (HIV/AIDS theory); how did that come about?
If you believe virology it was ‘man eats monkey and gets affected’ but man’s eaten monkey and not been infected for generations, until coincident with vaccine research that performs cross-species transfer of vesicles; then suddenly man is infected by monkey viruses. Occam would say man caused cross-species vesicle ‘infections’ by the unnatural splicing of animal messaging systems into humans and other animals, not by eating them.
Why would the phenomenon AIDS have occurred subsequent to so much cross-species splicing of messages (inter-species RNA transference)?
“in fact you have not conceded a single point in this thread, even when faced with peer reviewed science and doctors working in clinical practice that clearly oppose your claims.”
What peer reviewed science, and what claims have been scientifically refuted by Dyson who admits to evading the issue of vaccine damage amongst his needy charges?
“I do not know what your motivation is, but it is clear you are not interested in a discussion, but rather a pulpit from which you can regurgitate conspiracy theories and science I’d expect to find in a comic book.”
My motive is simple. I suggest that Offit et al is unscientific and unsound for reasons I gave above many times, in that it ignores important confounders (set aside the virus/vesicle theories which are not essential to refute their conclusion); I wish to have a rebuttal for my arguments set above.
As you and Dyson lead the charge to refute (but seem to have forgotten your horses) I await either you or Dyson’s refutation of the specific confounders I mentioned - 100,000 antigens of multifarious viruses (vesicles) INJECTED into infants has never been demonstrated to be safe or efficacious, or effective, their deployment requires adjuvants according to what is currently known in vaccinology, increasing the load on the immune system increases the probability of errors in B and T cell production and related processes, thereby increasing the probability of injurious cascade events for each infant.
Every infant is unique, and in that uniqueness are endogenous and exogenous factors that add to confounding when one tries to generalise (as Offit et al do) to all infants, making their generalisations unsound.
Using a theoretical base – that we live with billions of potentially harmful pathogens but don’t always get sick therefore our immunity (as per Offit et al) must be dealing with it – is theoretical until proven or evidenced through data (and you have not referenced any); the simple fact that a vaccine virus requires an adjuvant to work ought to sink the study as it immediately destroys the theoretical base for billions of ‘nasties’ invading us without adjuvant assistance, in the same way Offit et al requires for their 100,000 vaccine virus antigens theory to work with adjuvants.
Dyson Says:
October 4th, 2008 at 5:08 am
“How about the viruses we get through every skin scrape, or the ones that invade our blood streams directly each time we chew or brush our teeth?”
According to the vesicle/virus theory I expect that in the main we would not get vesicles/viruses that way, we make them; we get other pathogens that way, eg bacteria and parasites.
“You may like to go around pretending that the exposure of (say) a single antigen (Hep B vaccine) through intramuscular injection somehow throws the entire human immune system into disarray and precipitates a catastrophic immunological collapse, but getting exposed to hundreds of antigens through skin scrapes and blood stream seeding on a daily basis does nothing.”
Unless they are man-made Hep B vaccine ‘viruses/vesicles’ then infants can develop all manner of autoimmune malfunctions as the Merck data shows and their battle begins with a system in industry-protective denial.
“Let’s see some that show how antigen exposure through skin scrapes destroys someone’s immune system, or triggers autism can we? “
Are you equating ‘skin scrape’ with injection now Dyson – you’re running out of analogies; why not just say injection, then there are many studies not least Wakefield et als, Singh et als, or Geier et als recent studies where one goes from injecting MMR antigens along to evidence of autoimmune disease in the autistic recipients of said injections?
“Alternatively, let’s have a new hypothesis for what causes autism in children. I propose that when children start to lose their milk teeth, each event is associated with a massive antigenic load directly into the bloodstream. Research tells us that bacteraemia commonly occurs with teeth brushing or any dental problems such as losing a tooth. Clearly this overloads the immune system, and serves as a trigger for autism in a subgroup of susceptible children.”
Add mercury and/or aluminium into the immediate mix and you may be on to something…
“The rise in autism diagnoses may be entirely due to better recognition and expansion of the DSM criteria, so pointing this out won’t help disprove it either.”
That old mantra was disproved long ago; you only have to measure effects in schools and classrooms let along compare rate of autism now with a search for a similar rate of adult autistics with similar degrees of severity – the older category numbers don’t exist with respect to the explosion of cases so an obvious explosion of autism is upon us.
“I think my hypothesis is a good one - do you agree?”
Perhaps if you add mercury and/or aluminium.
Kids have brushed their teeth for generations without the enormous increases in autism rate we are currently experiencing, increases coincident with the increased use of mercury and aluminium adjuvants.
Jack, may I ask what your background is? (You know mine) The reason is that while you are able to throw out quotes that make it appear to other readers that you are familiar with some aspects of immunity, you are woefully short of knowledge in other medical areas. Are you in any medical/health/research occupation?
Regarding autoimmunity, I think you will find it is generally accepted that infections and interaction with microbial antigens can trigger autoimmune events. One mystery is why it does not happen more often, but the immune response has actually evolved a number of regulatory mechanisms to avert this “collateral damage”, as it were.
There has been much research into autoimmune phenomena that may be associated with vaccine triggers. There are good historical examples of this happening. The swine flu vaccine in 1976/7 was associated with Guillan Barre syndrome (GBS) at a rate of 1 in 100 000 vaccinations. However, with subsequent vaccines there has been no reported increase in incidence of GBS. I must point out here that many cases of GBS are provoked by natural infections anyway.
Another example does actually occur with MMR - the incidence of autoimmune thrombocytopenia is about 1 in 30 000 vaccinations. Please to note, however, the rate of this phenomenon is 1 in 3000 after natural rubella and 1 in 6000 after natural measles!
This brings me to my second point about vaccine-induced autoimmunity;- It may happen, but seems to occur at a lower rate than with the natural infections. It makes perfect sense, therefore, to proactively vaccinate populations since this will DECREASE the incidence of these phenomena overall.
As regards my Tooth-Fairy-Autism hypothesis, the only argument you can come up with against it seems to be that autism is “commoner” now than previously (and kids have always been losing their teeth). First point is that whether there has been a true rise in autism incidence, as opposed to diagnosis, is still very much an ongoing debate and I am waiting for a clearer consensus to emerge on this point (I think it will not). There is very good evidence to suggest that diagnoses have risen, not ASD itself, as given in the book “Unstrange Minds”, which I recommend you read to check the references and arguments for yourself.
Second point is that 40 years ago, kids mouths were largely left to their own devices - over recent decades we have seen a push for regular dental checks, more orthodontic work, regular hygienist appointments, tooth scaling and encouragement of children to brush and floss their delicate little milk teeth. There are even special milk teeth brushes and toothpastes to encourage our kids along. All of these things will provoke a release of “toxic” microbes into the blood stream, with hundreds of “toxic” antigens which can then overwhelm the immune system, leading to autism. This increase in dental and orthodontic activity correlates well with the supposed increase in cases of autism over the last 2 or 3 decades.
Dyson Says: October 7th, 2008 at 10:31 am
“ may I ask what your background is? (You know mine)”
Background - doctorate, science, medicine, the law.
“while you are able to throw out quotes that make it appear to other readers that you are familiar with some aspects of immunity, you are woefully short of knowledge in other medical areas.”
Such as?
“Regarding autoimmunity, I think you will find it is generally accepted that infections and interaction with microbial antigens can trigger autoimmune events.”
Agreed.
“One mystery is why it does not happen more often, but the immune response has actually evolved a number of regulatory mechanisms to avert this “collateral damage”, as it were.”
I think the evidence shows it happens far more than your “mystery” would have the general public believe. The dramatic increase in “autoimmune diseases” may be a response to vaccination – so many adverse events are drawn against recent vaccination anecdotally and via VAERS records etc. Unfortunately one has to go to court to get an admission of such damage against established opinion underpinned by protectionism as opposed to scientific integrity.
I would also dispute the description “autoimmune” in many instances as I believe many apparent ‘autoimmune’ reactions are reactions against unseen (ie ignored, unobservable by current scientific techniques, disputed etc.) stressors/pathogens. For example blastocytis hominis was suspected, after enhanced microscopy, to cause ulcerative colitis – known as an autoimmune disease – but as enhanced microscopy is not used generally the myth continues that UC cannot be cured by the application of specific antimicrobials and manufacturers of extortionately priced immune suppressant medications reap the rewards; perhaps in 10 years most IBS will be cured, as ‘stomach ulcers’, by antimicrobials.
Various environmental chemicals and other pollutants, not least electromagnetic radiation, are causing what are diagnosed as ‘autoimmune reactions’ that recover when the pollutant is removed for a sufficiently lengthy period. Ethyl and methyl mercuries, the former vaccine-borne the latter dietary and environmental, are no doubt causing untold amount of ‘autoimmune’ conditions, therefore the industries causing those diseases gain market share in treating (not curing) them.
“There are good historical examples of this happening. The swine flu vaccine in 1976/7 was associated with Guillan Barre syndrome (GBS) at a rate of 1 in 100 000 vaccinations. However, with subsequent vaccines there has been no reported increase in incidence of GBS. I must point out here that many cases of GBS are provoked by natural infections anyway. “
You are forgetting autism, for which Singh et als numerous studies, and others, point directly to measles virus thence measles vaccine virus via MMR (which they specifically tested) as a vaccine-induced “autoimmune disease” involving myelin basic protein; not dissimilar from the myelin problems seen in MS whose sufferers show a strong link with measles virus.
“This brings me to my second point about vaccine-induced autoimmunity;- It may happen, but seems to occur at a lower rate than with the natural infections. It makes perfect sense, therefore, to proactively vaccinate populations since this will DECREASE the incidence of these phenomena overall.”
And it will remain so as long as the true implications of those vaccinations, and their statistics, are denied the public in favour of so many not representing reality.
One reality is of autism spectrum disorders, Singh et als studies implicate MMR, and measles vaccine virus especially (in 83% of autistic children and not controls in one study - 2003 ‘Elevated levels of measles antibodies in children with autism’).
If as many as 1 in 75 children now suffer autism, about 13 in 1000 kids, there may be as many as 10 in every 1000 kids developing autism from their MMR vaccination – quite a bit more than wild measles induced autoimmune dysfunction!
“First point is that whether there has been a true rise in autism incidence, as opposed to diagnosis, is still very much an ongoing debate and I am waiting for a clearer consensus to emerge on this point (I think it will not).”
I think you will find the arguments against do not hold water, they are stalling for time; no-one has yet identified the same or even near same rate of dysfunctional disorders, or the immense population (up to 1 in 50), in the adult population who would have to exist now if there are merely been a change in diagnosis of a similar range of symptoms. Does anyone know of a population where 1 in 50 adults already suffer comparable ranges of ASDs?
“Second point is that 40 years ago, kids mouths were largely left to their own devices - over recent decades we have seen a push for regular dental checks, more orthodontic work, regular hygienist appointments, tooth scaling and encouragement of children to brush and floss their delicate little milk teeth. There are even special milk teeth brushes and toothpastes to encourage our kids along. All of these things will provoke a release of “toxic” microbes into the blood stream, with hundreds of “toxic” antigens which can then overwhelm the immune system, leading to autism.”
First you have to provide evidence that those antigens, as opposed to measles vaccine virus (83% of autistic kids) antigens, relate to autism.
Sorry Jack, you talk about measles vaccine virus, but you tell us earlier that viruses don’t exist? Forgive me for being confused, and for questioning your science and medical credentials. I just hope you never get a serious viral infection in your lifetime.
Is one uncorroborated and unverified study about this (Singh) all you have to offer? With a little digging, you will find a lot of reasons why this paper is worth less than the paper it was written on, namely:
1. There is a lack of consistency between this paper and previously published papers from this group.
2. The controls are not randomly selected and do not appear to be age-matched.
3. The viral serology results presented are confusing and inconsistent.
4. Use of MMR vaccine as an antigen is not a validated technique. There is no information on quantity of MMR used or how this test was validated.
5. The assays used are said to be developed in-house which raises questions about reproducibility and makes it difficult to confirm independently.
6. If all children (autistic and controls) have been immunised with MMR one would expect to see evidence of the mumps and rubella components.
7. The immunoblot patterns are not consistent with natural measles virology.
8. No results with known positive or negative control samples to all or any of the viruses contained in the vaccine were provided. You cannot, therefore, exclude cross-contamination.
9. Natural measles infection produces six virus proteins. It is, therefore, unusual that the autistic children had antibodies to only one of the two proteins measured and even more unusual that the control and other disease children did not have antibodies to either protein.
10. Antibodies to MBP are not specific to autism as they have been found in other diseases such as multiple sclerosis where measles virus is known not to play a role.
11. When you inject MBP into an animal it causes an allergic encephalomyelitis disease, which has some resemblance to multiple sclerosis but not to autism.
And just to add to the mix, I thought Singh was of the view that Human Herpes Virus type 6 (HHV-6, another imaginary virus??) was associated with autism.
Perhaps pharma companies have been deliberately contaminating vaccines with HHV-6?
Dyson Says: October 9th, 2008 at 1:14 am
“Sorry Jack, you talk about measles vaccine virus, but you tell us earlier that viruses don’t exist? Forgive me for being confused……”
Read again; I said there is growing evidence for that which I tend to favour, I do not remember at any time saying viruses do not exist. They certainly exist in the minds of virologists, and theory of virology, although they may be misinterpreting the value and effects of viruses.
“Is one uncorroborated and unverified study about this (Singh) all you have to offer?”
Nope, it’s one of many studies that are parts of the whole, but was one that nicely evidenced the concept. Singh has done some remarkable work throughout the 90s and this millennium.
For example, a couple more from Singh and two others with excellent simple summaries:-
Singh VK, Lin SX et al, 2002 “Abnormal measles-mumps-rubella antibodies and CNS autoimmunity in children with autism” having 125 cases and 92 controls.
Singh VK and Jensen RL, 2004 “Elevated levels of measles antibodies in children with autism” demonstrating measles not mumps or rubella antibody significance.
Singh VK, Lin SX and Yang VC 1998 “Serological association of measles virus and human herpesvirus-6 with brain autoantibodies in autism” reports of an association between virus serology and brain autoantobody in autism, and supports the hypothesis of for a virus-induced autoimmune response.
Libbey JE, Sweeten TL, et al 2005 “Autistic disorder and viral infections” summarise well including the HHV concepts.
Cohly HH and Panja A 2005 “ Immunological findings in autism” also summarises well current understanding.
“1. There is a lack of consistency between this paper and previously published papers from this group.”
How?
“2. The controls are not randomly selected and do not appear to be age-matched.”
‘Do not appear’ or are not?
”3. The viral serology results presented are confusing and inconsistent.”
How?
”4. Use of MMR vaccine as an antigen is not a validated technique. There is no information on quantity of MMR used or how this test was validated.”
So why published?
”5. The assays used are said to be developed in-house which raises questions about reproducibility and makes it difficult to confirm independently.”
What questions?
“6. If all children (autistic and controls) have been immunised with MMR one would expect to see evidence of the mumps and rubella components.”
Where and why?
“7. The immunoblot patterns are not consistent with natural measles virology.”
Therefore?
”8. No results with known positive or negative control samples to all or any of the viruses contained in the vaccine were provided. You cannot, therefore, exclude cross-contamination.”
At what cost to the results?
”9. Natural measles infection produces six virus proteins. It is, therefore, unusual that the autistic children had antibodies to only one of the two proteins measured and even more unusual that the control and other disease children did not have antibodies to either protein.”
Why unusual for autistic children and ‘other disease children’?
”10. Antibodies to MBP are not specific to autism as they have been found in other diseases such as multiple sclerosis where measles virus is known not to play a role.”
Measles virus is known to play a role in much MS.
”11. When you inject MBP into an animal it causes an allergic encephalomyelitis disease, which has some resemblance to multiple sclerosis but not to autism.”
So? What has that got to do with injecting MMR into children that become autistic and are found to have the MBP problem?
Dyson Says: October 9th, 2008 at 1:18 am
“And just to add to the mix, I thought Singh was of the view that Human Herpes Virus type 6 (HHV-6, another imaginary virus??) was associated with autism. “
See reference above on HHV-6 and Singh
“Perhaps pharma companies have been deliberately contaminating vaccines with HHV-6?”
I hope not.