The unanswered questions...

Dear shotinfo,
Before you continue with your condescending tone, please re-read my post. There is an enormous difference between colonisation and infection, and if you don’t understand it, then you’re less informed than I gave you credit for. Yes, I can have it both ways.

“I mean back up what you say with some research.”

I tried to back up my argument with two reports, neither of which you’ve bothered to comment on. Both show that during a recent Australian outbreak of measles, only under- or un-vaccinated people came down with disease. They were reports of outbreaks of 78 and 59. You retorted by providing two small papers on outbreaks of pertussis, 2 cases in a kindergarten and 1 death. I addressed one you referenced, and you obviously didn’t read it properly.

So, to summarise, in order to back up what YOU have to say, you change the topic (measles to pertussis) and refer to some very small case studies. That’s not really backing up your argument with research, is it? How about addressing the two reports I indicated, rather than duck and weave like you are currently doing. I’d respect your opinion more if you did, and I’d respect it even more if you could come up with a plausible explanation.

At the risk of letting the measles reports slip, I’ll describe to you how I read the two case studies you mention. I wont even bother with the website, as I can also prove that television ownership reduces lifespan by playing with numbers like that. Big deal. Essentially, the trouble with pertussis, and it’s vaccine, is that it is a vaccine against the bacteria, but not the toxin it produces. To quote the very paper your referenced, “The whole-cell vaccine for pertussis is protective only against clinical disease, not against infection”, and “A recent study by Yaari et al. showed that infection in a vaccinated person causes milder, nonspecific disease, without the three classical clinical stages”. Why don’t you try and educate yourself, and at least read the papers you’re referencing, rather than just the title or abstract? How does the paper show that vaccination helps? Because 11% of the children surveyed were positive to PCR for B. pertussis, indicating colonisation, yet only one developed symptoms. Not only that, but 55% of the children had rising titres of IgM, indicating recent infection, yet only one developed symptoms. This is all in keeping with the theory that vaccination protects against developing the disease of pertussis, even though you can be a carrier. Remember also that this study was triggered by the death of a 4 month old, who was too young to have received the course of vaccination. I can have it both ways.

Shotinfo, you astound me with your ducking and weaving. There are serious and profound flaws in your understanding of vaccination and of disease. I myself am not a doctor, and neither are you, so let’s go at it. Surely you have an even chance. Here are the outstanding issues you have not addressed, and yes, I’ll make the time to argue it with you:

1. http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/content/cda-cdi3302k.htm
In an outbreak of 25 cases of measles in Qld in Q1 2009, NONE of the cases were vaccinated. Also, referring to another outbreak, “The number of vaccine doses was known for 57 of the 78 cases, of which none had received 2 doses of a MCV, four (7%) had received 1 dose and 53 (93%) had received no doses: the remaining 21 cases were of unknown vaccination status”

2. http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/cda-cdi3301c.htm
During an outbreak in Q2 2006 in NSW, of the 33 children with measles, only 6 had received 1 dose of MMR, and the others none. None of the cases had received two doses

3. Why is acute care “immune” from your criticism, when it uses the same scientific processes that you claim are flawed elsewhere? Why is aspirin a good drug in the acute setting, but flawed according to you elsewhere?

4. Just adding some now. How do we know that putting a “pin and plate” in a person with a fractured hip is a good thing to do, when the placebo trial has never been done? Not only that, what would the placebo be?

Yours, in good faith,

Michael.