“Truth? You can't handle the truth!”

[The Legendary Shark]

Jim, you make an excellent point - oxygen is great but too much of it can be toxic. Can you concede that vaccinations are great but too many of them might be toxic?

[JayzusB.Christ]

To answer your second question - yes and no. I would employ the minimum number of vaccinations and not allow any at all in my hypothetical infant.

I don't get you.  Would you have your kids vaccinated or not?

[The Legendary Shark]

Interesting link, Rich. The WHO doesn't seem to have read some of the scientific papers I have (and have linked to on this thread).
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I don't disagree with all its 'facts' but some of them are at least misleading. There is evidence that some parts of the vaccination program are dangerous. Does that mean we should scrap the whole thing and give it up as a bad job? Certainly not.
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To cast doubt on part of the program does not invalidate the whole of the program but to deify the whole program leads to the ignorance of legitimate concerns.
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KP - short answer, yes. Long answer, yes but sparingly.

[Richmond Clements]

The WHO doesn't seem to have read some of the scientific papers I have

How do you know?

[Jim_Campbell]

The inference is that over-vaccination is harmful. Sometimes, less really is more.

Refutation: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/05/16/vaccines-and-infant-mortality-rates/

"The first author, Neil Z. Miller, is described as an "independent researcher," and the second author, Gary S. Goldman, is described as an "independent computer scientist." This is not a promising start, as neither of them appear to have any qualifications that would lead a reader to think that they have any special expertise in epidemiology, vaccines, or science."

"I did a bit of Googling, as is my wont whenever I encounter someone whose name I don't recognize, and I found abundant evidence in his Wikipedia entry that Miller has a long history of anti-vaccine activism, having written books with titles like Vaccine Roulette: Gambling With Your Child's Life, Immunization Theory vs Reality: Expose on Vaccinations, and Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective?, among others. But that's not all; he's also the director of the ThinkTwice Global Vaccine Institute and in fact is hosting a copy of this study on his website. Gary S. Goldman is even more interesting. It turns out that he is the President and Founder of Medical Veritas, a rabidly anti-vaccine "journal" that is into HIV/AIDS denialism, having published dubious "reanalyses" of autopsy results of victims of AIDS, such as Eliza Jane Scovill. He also notes at his website that he's written books entitled The Chickenpox Vaccine: A New Epidemic of Disease and Corruption."

"I also note that the authors here seem to have pulled the same trick that J.B. Handley and crew like to pull when trying to convince people that U.S. infants are "overvaccinated" by artificially pumping up the apparent number of vaccine doses by counting multivalent vaccines as more than one. For instance, the MMR and DTaP are counted as three each because each vaccine is trivalent; i.e., containing vaccines against three different diseases. In fact, the authors of this gem do this very thing in spades..."

There follows a long, detailed and well-reasoned examination of the numerous statistical distortions deployed by the authors of the original paper to make the data fit their hypothesis.

Weak sauce, Shark. Odd how eager you are to question evidence that differs from your pre-existing worldview, and accept that which doesn't.

Edit: it took me 90 seconds googling the original paper's title to find the refutation above.

Jim

[JayzusB.Christ]

KP - short answer, yes.

OK,  good. Glad to hear it.

[The Legendary Shark]

I don't know - that's why I wrote "doesn't seem". If the WHO had read them, surely the honest thing to say would be, "there is very little evidence" or even "there is no conclusive evidence" instead of the flat-out incorrect "there is no evidence"? Would that not be the morally correct, not to mention the scientific, thing to say?

[Jim_Campbell]

I don't know - that's why I wrote "doesn't seem". If the WHO had read them, surely the honest thing to say would be, "there is very little evidence" or even "there is no conclusive evidence" instead of the flat-out incorrect "there is no evidence"? Would that not be the morally correct, not to mention the scientific, thing to say?

Because the paper you cited is horseshit, as I have shown above.

It isn't necessary to say "the majority opinion of the shape of planet Earth is that it is an oblate spheroid" simply because there are a number of complete fruitcakes who insist that it's flat.

Jim

[Dandontdare]

I would employ the minimum number of vaccinations and not allow any at all in my hypothetical infant.

Then your hypothetical infant should not be allowed to to go to school, or out in public. You can take stupid risks with your own hypothetical children's health (god help 'em), but I wouldn't want you risking the health of my hypothetical children.

Interesting link, Rich. The WHO doesn't seem to have read some of the scientific papers I have (and have linked to on this thread).

I imagine they have, but seeing as they have a working bullshit filter,which you seem to lack, and y'know actual medical knowledge and expertise,  they have probably dismissed them as bollocks

[IndigoPrime]

Measles is a disease with no known cure except the human immune system and, although unpleasant, in countries like the UK, chances of death from complications brought on by measles is about 1 in 5,000.

So let's take a hypothetical extreme here and say not to vaccinate against measles in the UK. Herd protection would vanish within a generation. After that point, the likelihood of a child catching measles would head rapidly towards 100 per cent. At least 1 in 5000 would die, given that the health service would be overrun by an entirely preventable disease. And the net benefit? A few children who would have had an adverse reaction to the vaccine wouldn't get that.

As the parent of a youngling, I'm genuinely angry at the current situation where primarily middle-class idiots with too much time on their hands are selfishly banging on about their individual rights to not vaccinate while ignoring the protection it brings. (But I'll bet if their kid has some kind of allergy, they'd be the first to scream if you were to bring some good within spitting distance of their kid.) As I noted before, I find it bizarre we don't immunise in this country against chicken pox, and it's clear that has quite a bit to do with people still freaking out about the MMR, along with some decidedly odd reasoning by the NHS itself.

I don't know - that's why I wrote "doesn't seem". If the WHO had read them, surely the honest thing to say would be, "there is very little evidence" or even "there is no conclusive evidence" instead of the flat-out incorrect "there is no evidence"? Would that not be the morally correct, not to mention the scientific, thing to say?

Right now, that there is no evidence, on the basis that there is no evidence. You don't sow the seeds of doubt by giving credence to bullshit papers, like the one you linked to. You may as well say to Wakefield that all is forgiven. And also when you do go for the supposed 'balanced' viewpoint, you're back to the likes of news ensuring that after someone talks patiently about climate change that airtime is also given to some frothing right-wing loon about the same subject.

Sometimes there is no 'balance' to be had between alternate viewpoints.

I would employ the minimum number of vaccinations and not allow any at all in my hypothetical infant.

Then your hypothetical infant should not be allowed to to go to school, or out in public. You can take stupid risks with your own hypothetical children's health (god help 'em), but I wouldn't want you risking the health of my hypothetical children.

Quite. But I fear the school thing just won't happen and things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better—see the absolutely crazy 'measles parties' that are happening in affluent areas of the USA. I wonder how many babies and children will have to die before this ignorance surrounding vaccination finally goes away.

[TordelBack]

I'm reluctant to continue the discussion, because I've said all I have to say already, and it feels like we're dogpiling Sharky, which whatever the reason is unpleasant. So, one last thought:

To cast doubt on part of the program does not invalidate the whole of the program but to deify the whole program leads to the ignorance of legitimate concerns

In this instance casting doubt does invalidate the whole of the programme, because the whole project requires near universal confidence in it to work at all. In undermining the public's confidence by focusing attention on peripheral or non-issues and discredited dissenters we risk losing our species' best protection against diseases that ravaged it in the past. In the 1900s smallpox had a mortality rate of over 30%. That's the risk you should be talking about, not unproven tosh about SIDS.

I agree, far more money should be spent on the unlovely unprofitable low-tech business of sanitation, schools and bicycles. But vaccination in the developing world, which you know full-welll isn't just against measles, has been enormously successful, and once in place is carried by whole populations through wars, disasters and displacements that can take all the rest away.

[Jim_Campbell]

I'm reluctant to continue the discussion, because I've said all I have to say already, and it feels like we're dogpiling Sharky, which whatever the reason is unpleasant.

I would suggest that if Shark doesn't want to get 'dogpiled' he perhaps shouldn't select a hot-button topic for discussion and then under the guise of 'just asking questions' regurgitate the first bullshit paper he hits on Google as if it in any way refutes the well-researched, well-documented position he claims to be 'just questioning'.

You may have declared this not-trolling, but it looks a lot like it from where I'm sitting, particularly coming so hard on the heels of the previous discussion where one needs only to substitute 9/11 for vaccination to see the pattern of 'debate' repeated almost exactly. If Shark was 'just asking questions', then he would do a little more due diligence on the 'papers' he presents in defence of his own position, or be a little more prepared to concede the validity of the counter view.

Jim

[TordelBack]

Perhaps I (mis-)understand 'trolling' as having a core motivation of malicious disruption, whereas I think the Shark genuinely wants to have an informative discussion, even if it seldom seems like he can be convinced by the points (or facts) raised. Plus he restricts his, err, baiting to these specifically designed threads, rather than derailing every other one.

There comes a point where everyone is making essentially the same points to one person over and over, and that person is persisting in standing their ground despite being a position where so many voices are against him that he couldn't reasonably respond to them all even if he had a sound argument, where I start to feel uncomfortable and unsure what the point of continuing is...unless that person is played by Henry Fonda, of course.

But that's just a personal reaction, don't let me discourage you from carrying on.

[Jim_Campbell]

I don't really understand how you can reconcile this:

I think the Shark genuinely wants to have an informative discussion,

With this:

even if it seldom seems like he can be convinced by the points (or facts) raised.

Unless you substitute "informative discussion" for "crackpot soapbox".

I would respectfully suggest that a blog would be a more appropriate forum if informative discussion is not one's primary intent, and we have many, many pages of evidence here and in the political thread that it is not.

Note that it is possible to believe that Shark is an intelligent man, and a decent human being who is kind to animals and bears few, if any, of his fellow men genuine malice, yet still be irritated beyond all reason less by Shark's tinfoil-hattery than his insistence that it is indicative of a spirit of keen-minded enquiry.

Jim

[Richmond Clements]

I think the Shark genuinely wants to have an informative discussion

But he doesn't do this. Time and again he ignores and rejects actual scientific evidence given to him because it contradicts his world view and puts forward links that support it without any need for it to have an evidential basis.