Punter

Dear Punter,
“In order for this to be demonstrated you need to take said germs in vitro and inject them into human/animal tissue and observe the expected pathogenesis.” I’d like you to take a look at
Kłak et al. Tranexamic acid, an inhibitor of plasminogen activation, aggravates staphylococcal septic arthritis and sepsis. Scand J Infect Dis (2010) vol. 42 (5) pp. 351-8
Just one of the thousands of articles that can be found that use a septic arthritis model, whereby they take cultured, pure bacteria, inject them into a joint, and observe for sepsis. No joke, no lie. You’re wrong.
BUT unfortunately your distrust of “authority” leads me to believe that you have a slightly paranoid delusion about the world, and your inability to trust others will force you to find some way of getting around this article as well. Do you drive a car? Do you stick to the speed limit? Do you know how your speedometer works? I know the principles behind it, but not every detail, yet I trust it to tell me the speed. I trust it to keep me from being fined. It’s just part of life that we trust others.
As for my background, I’ve been working in labs most of my life, and I have a degree in epidemiology. May I suggest you take a walk down to your local hospital or university and talk face-to-face with some of the scientists there? You’ll find most of them are quite humble, yet almost excitable when you ask them about their research. If you find an incredibly patient one you might be able to sit down and have them explain the basics of microbiology to you, and have a look for yourself at the bacteria that you think are so benign.
I don’t need you either, Punter, but please educate yourself in some good quality science, and maybe a read a textbook or two.

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.

Scientific fraud in drug studies – take 2 sugar pills and call me in the morning…

Shotinfo has clearly stopped accepting my comments for her blog.  Truth is a bit close to home, eh?  Sadly, the site and the blog is so full of mis-information it's useless.  I just feel sorry for anyone who believes their lies and follows their advice.  I sincerely hope they read the site's disclaimer!

Punter

I just received this from "punter" on the AVN blog about "take two pills".  I'll take a deep breath and address each issue individually.  However, it's a fine example of how just because someone has radical and "new-age" ideas, doesn't mean they're correct.

Michael, I have already been through this with Rob and Tom, but I am happy to go through it again. The bacteria have a role to play in the healing but not in the causation. To borrow someone else’s phrase to say that germs cause disease is like saying that flies cause garbage. As for the diganoses of the disease being referred to is by blood test the problem with that is that it assumes that a) that doctors test everybody with the same symptoms and don’t exclude many (all?) of the people who have been vaccinated; and b) that the blood tests have any meaning whatsoever – ie that there has been an actual isolation of said bacteria/virus in vitro proving its pathogenicity. This has never been done for any ‘germ’. Don’t get me wrong I am not saying antibody tests are meaningless. If your body has been poisoned I am sure there is some sort of immune response, elevating various measures of ‘things’ that doctors can measure with their machines that go ‘bing’. But it doesn’t for a second mean what doctors think it means. Here is a confounding fact for you. With most diseases we are told that if we have the antibodies we are ‘protected’. But with HIV/AIDS, the presence of antibodies are used to show that we are sick. Of course doctors have a concentric circle to explain this but, as usual, they have no actual evidence. They have no more understanding of the way HIV works than they did 20 years ago (when it was predicted that we would all become infected tout de suite). (If you want to understand what I mean by having no predictive power read the thread on “True Colours” with Rob Webb.

And you are right, I am sure that Meryl doesn’t agree with me on many things. Unlike you guys we tend to believe in debate and ideas rather than groupthink. But, you see, we are not putting the positive case. You guys are the ones that need to demonstrate your beliefs that we should inject poisons into our babies. There is no need for us to be in agreement about the exact nature of disease and what vaccinations may or may not do. Suffice to say that we all agree that the benefits of vaccination are often outweighed by the costs and each person should therefore make their own decision. That is what we agree on. We don’t need to be in any more solidarity than that. You guys on the other hand have the harder job. You have to demonstrate that a) germs cause disease; b) the immune system can ‘remember’ how to fight off disease; c) vaccinations are an adequate means to ‘teach’ the immune system such a thing; and d) that vaccinations are not unreasonably dangerous. In addition, because many (most?) of you like to shove your views down ours and everybody else’s throats you have to be able to: e) prove conclusively that vaccinating, in all cases, pose less danger to the individual than not vaccinating. You are a million miles away from demonstrating a); b) and c) are essentially impossible; and as for the last two points, well good luck with that!

You may think this unfair, that you guys need to be consistent but we don’t, but that is how it is when you are demonstrating a negative. You have the rhetorical advantage. If we want we can assume a whole bunch of things that you guys assume in order to show that your theory is incoherent. That is a perfectly acceptable rhetorical technique. On the other hand we can call into question any of your assumptions if they are not self-evident. That is our right. You guys are making the positive case that we should inject poisons into people. Your assumptions have to be irrefutable and your theory has to be completely consistent. The primary assumption that you guys make is that vaccinated people don’t get certain diseases. But this assumption rests on another assumption – ie that doctors don’t predicate their diagnoses, at least partly, on the vaccination status of the patient. But doctors absolutely DO use vaccination status to form their diagnoses, so your primary assumption falls apart.

A mighty disclaimer

The disclaimer on the website makes for a good read.  I quote part of it...

"The publishers, authors and editors of Living Wisdom are not responsible for the results of any actions taken on the basis of information in this publication, nor for any error or omission and they expressly disclaim all and any liability to any person in respect of anything done or omitted to be done by any person in whole or partial reliance upon the whole or any part of the contents of this publication.
If medical advice is required the services of a competent professional should be sought."
I think the final sentence sums it all up, and I added the italics just because I love it so much.  I just wish they'd put this on all their pages, and not just a link!

Doing some shopping...

Browsing around the AVN shop I came across this little number...

"Making a Killing", The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging.

Presented by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights

Just so we're all clear, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights is actually a part of the Church of Scientology, that other great evidence-based institution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Commission_on_Human_Rights

Looking back over the data

Hi again.
Meryl and her colleagues have been at it again.  Well, they've been at it for some time, but it's taken me a little while to get onto it.  They've published several times graphs that show that several diseases were falling in incidence before vaccination programmes came about.  They propose that vaccination programmes had no effect, but just benefited from the natural decline in incidence.  In contrast, I came across the following table :

Soooooo what does it tell us?  Simple.  Before vaccination rates these five diseases were rampant, and deaths common.  Note - this goes back to the 1920's.  Compare the red and the green bars in each column.  Vaccination programmes had a profound effect on death rates.
Come on AVN - you really don't believe that stuff on your website, do you?