US federal "vaccine court" rejects Autism claims

[photon]

Originally Posted by Lchoy

This is something that we track and monitor and establish correlations. It's not a conspiracy that cases of mumps, measles, whooping cough, are suddenly going up, especially in non vaccinated communities.

Measles is a good one to mention, during a recent outbreak the mortality rate was 1 in 500 cases. People forget how nasty these things are because vaccinations and herd immunity isolates us from the reality.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Lchoy

Well....DEET was also instrumental for reducing malaria
But good point =)

True, except Western governments influenced by bad science decided to stop DDT (not DEET) application in malarial hotspots like West Africa. People are dying from malaria again.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by photon

Measles is a good one to mention, during a recent outbreak the mortality rate was 1 in 500 cases. People forget how nasty these things are because vaccinations and herd immunity isolates us from the reality.

Not only does it isolate us, in the case of diptheria, it also decreases the virulence of the pathogen.

As well, smallpox was virtually wiped out in the West by the vaccination programs that started in the early 1800s.

There is very good evolutionary science behind the application of the vaccine.

[Shazam]

Good hygiene stops polio eh? I guess those polio epidemics in the 50s could've been stopped if your grandparents didn't do ATM.

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by peter12

The problem with your perspective, indeed all conspiracy theorists, is that it assumes someone, somewhere, has total knowledge. The "Queen" as you put it.

I thought we were finished with conspiracy theorists for a while there. Then up pops another one. Whenever someone refers to an imagined sociological relationship as a 'Complex' it's time to add another name to my 'ignore' list.

[Jade]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Exactly! Finally someone is telling it like it is.

Vaccines are one of the biggest conspiracies perpetrated by the medical-industrial complex, and most world goverments are either turning a blind eye or actively assisting the process. And is anyone really surprised by this? How can we trust anything the medical industry has to say? The reason we don't have a cure for diseases like cancer and AIDS is because it's much more profitable to treat the symptoms over many years than it is to permenantly cure the patient.

Of course, that must be why there is no cure yet. It couldn't have anything to do with the complexity of the diseases you mentioned. I'm not going to say there is never anything shady going on within the scientific community, but the conspiracy theory nonsense is getting out of hand.

As for vaccination, there was a study done 5 years ago in Australia that positively showed no link between vaccination and autism. Similar studies in the states have showed the same thing.

Why is it any nutjob can come up with a theory without any proof to support it and get away with it, while the scientific community has to do study after study and people still won't believe them?

[Bagor]

Originally Posted by peter12

True, except Western governments influenced by bad science decided to stop DDT (not DEET) application in malarial hotspots like West Africa. People are dying from malaria again.

Can you elaborate on the "bad science" part?

IMO the science behind DDT is what it is. The best available evidence out there. That it did or did not have a basis for the banning of DDT doesn't IMO justify it being called bad science.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Bagor

Can you elaborate on the "bad science" part?

IMO the science behind DDT is what it is. The best available evidence out there. That it did or did not have a basis for the banning of DDT doesn't IMO justify it being called bad science.

My apologies. I touched on it in my honours thesis a year ago. I think the claims made by Carson and some of the other environmentalists that DDT inversely impacted other ecosystems besides mosquitos were overblown and based on "bad" science. That is, ideological science.

Basically, the number of comprehensive studies were pretty minimal when the government made their decision. It was strictly a political one with a veneer of science plastered on to give it legitimacy. That' what I mean by bad science.

[Bagor]

Originally Posted by peter12

My apologies. I touched on it in my honours thesis a year ago. I think the claims made by Carson and some of the other environmentalists that DDT inversely impacted other ecosystems besides mosquitos were overblown and based on "bad" science. That is, ideological science.

Basically, the number of comprehensive studies were pretty minimal when the government made their decision. It was strictly a political one with a veneer of science plastered on to give it legitimacy. That' what I mean by bad science.

Yeah, but the thing is that Silent Spring was never considered a scientific article to be published in a peer reviewed journal. When the book was written few studies had been done on the cumulative effects of DDT. It was written as a popular book largely based on case reports without support of statistical analysis.

However ...... it also was based on her readings of scientific literature and what many scientists (wildlife biologists) were seeing in their everyday work and reporting in specialist journals. In a way it could be considered a review with a target audience of Joe Public. Hence her particularly strong support from biologists in the scientific community

Her intention wasn't to convince scientific experts but to motivate ordinary citizens.

A year after the book Kennedy decided that circumstances warranted a review from a science advisory committee whose report endorsed Carson's concerns. They concluded that although the hazards hadn't been proved, demonstrated or certain there was enough evidence there from the available data to show that harms were occurring (basically recommending the precautionary principle).

I guess that's where we're going to have to agree to disagree. i.e. whether or not the application of the precautionary principle can be considered bad science. Personally I feel there was enough evidence out there at the time to warrant it.

I think Carson was best described as not a bad scientist but a great writer. One of the original cases where an individual has managed to communicate concerns to the public in a simplified condensed way that otherwise might have laid dormant for years in obscure journals.

[Tower]

Originally Posted by photon

So by that logic we should not eat salt because it contains a poisonous gas and an explosive metal?

When they start mixing mercury and formaldehyde for a spice I trust you will be first inline to directly inject it into your blood stream....

[Tower]

Originally Posted by Lchoy

Gaahhhh! Wrong again

This is why the 1st vaccinations start at 2 months, against common childhood illness caused by gram + and viruses. The heavier and more complex vaccinations occur later in life

Also, all drugs are required to have a list of ingredients for the public to see. You can go to Merck or any drug company website, and find the drug information data that is required for all drugs to be licensed. This includes Thiomersal. This also includes dosage information. With basic research skills, you can read that the dosage for a child and a 200lb man are different

Found your source

At about six days after birth the serum concentration of specific antibodies rises sharply, and this rise continues until adult levels are achieved by approximately the end of the first year. Maternal immunity gradually disappears during the first six to eight months of life. A concentrated level of antibodies is reached and maintained by seven to eight years of age.

My point is here as well.

http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/135/1/1

GAAAAAH! Not wrong!

Anyway I'm done with this one.... Believe what you will. Tht is what we do best like it or not.

[ernie]

You know drug companies make a lot of money. Correction SOME drug companies make a lot of money. Most don't. Most go out of business. But they also spend a tremendous amount of money and are often completely vulnerable to the failure to generate new intellectual property. To get a drug to even the human trial stages cost tens of millions of dollars if not into the hundreds. For every approved drug that makes it market there were 9 or 10 that failed in the final stages. The upshot is a company can easily spend over a billion dollars developing one drug. These are R&D charges and don't include the costs of actually running the company. When they get that drug to market they have 7 years to collect what they can from that drug before the patent runs out and the drug becomes "generic".

All of this means that drug companies in general aren't money grabbing scum. But it also means that certain people in these organizations can get over-zealous, pressured etc and things CAN fall through the cracks. That is why the government approval agencies are around to guard against these things. It usually works but sometimes like in the case of Vioxx or from the 60s thalidomide (which btw is back on the market to treat other diseases).

I honestly don't think people grasp how expensive it is to do R&D in the chemical industry and pharmaceuticals is by far the most expensive segment of the industry. I've personally had a significant hand in spending over 30 million dollars developing a chemical (not pharmaceutical) through the past 4 years and it is by no means a big project. My team is at the cusp of having some success and you can be darn sure the company is going to be charging what they can for as long as they can before the various companies in China and India start to make the chemical far cheaper than we can. We have to. We have to realize a return on that huge investment and it has to be far more than breaking even because there are projects that failed. Projects that will fail. Investors that want their money back plus. You never know when the gravy train will end so you take advantage of it.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Exactly! Finally someone is telling it like it is.

Vaccines are one of the biggest conspiracies perpetrated by the medical-industrial complex, and most world goverments are either turning a blind eye or actively assisting the process. And is anyone really surprised by this? How can we trust anything the medical industry has to say? The reason we don't have a cure for diseases like cancer and AIDS is because it's much more profitable to treat the symptoms over many years than it is to permenantly cure the patient.

When I originally wrote this post, I thought surely -- SURELY -- it was so over-the-top that nobody would actually believe I was being serious. Everyone (with the exception of possibly Tower and others who believe his crazy conspiracy theories) would take it for the obvious sarcastic comment that it was, even without green text. I mean come on, I actually used the phrase "medical-industrial complex" -- how obvious a giveaway was that?

I guess my faith in internet readers' abilities to detect sarcasm was unfounded. One would think I would know better after 15+ years online.

[photon]

^^

Originally Posted by Tower

When they start mixing mercury and formaldehyde for a spice I trust you will be first inline to directly inject it into your blood stream....

So why do you arbitrarily fine with ingesting a spice made from HIGHLY poisonous chlorine and an explosive metal sodium that reacts with water to create sodium hydroxide which is very caustic, but not so fine with other compounds that happen to have different elements?

My point being that elements by themselves and elements in molecules have totally different properties, but that doesn't fit in an alarmist style argument... Understanding that things can be helpful in small amounts but harmful in larger doses doesn't fit in an alarmist style argument.

Originally Posted by Tower

Tht is what we do best like it or not.

What is what we do best? Die in large numbers without vaccinations?

[looooob]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

When I originally wrote this post, I thought surely -- SURELY -- it was so over-the-top that nobody would actually believe I was being serious. Everyone (with the exception of possibly Tower and others who believe his crazy conspiracy theories) would take it for the obvious sarcastic comment that it was, even without green text. I mean come on, I actually used the phrase "medical-industrial complex" -- how obvious a giveaway was that?

I guess my faith in internet readers' abilities to detect sarcasm was unfounded. One would think I would know better after 15+ years online.

my bad I guess, normally I'm pretty stable at catching sarcasm, but to be honest, I've heard the same arguments you were making above in jest here on these and other boards with some regularity. obviously a minority opinion, but one that's held

[troutman]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

When I originally wrote this post, I thought surely -- SURELY -- it was so over-the-top that nobody would actually believe I was being serious. Everyone (with the exception of possibly Tower and others who believe his crazy conspiracy theories) would take it for the obvious sarcastic comment that it was, even without green text. I mean come on, I actually used the phrase "medical-industrial complex" -- how obvious a giveaway was that?

I guess my faith in internet readers' abilities to detect sarcasm was unfounded. One would think I would know better after 15+ years online.

Is Tower pulling my leg too? What a wonderful Darwin Day prank.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by troutman

Is Tower pulling my leg too? What a wonderful Darwin Day prank.

If he's pulling your leg, then he got me too.

That's some pretty dedicated trolling if he isn't being sincere, though. I was able to summon the effort for a one-off sarcastic post, but he's been keeping it up all day, both in this thread and the Zeitgeist one.

[ResAlien]

Originally Posted by Tower

When they start mixing mercury and formaldehyde for a spice I trust you will be first inline to directly inject it into your blood stream....

That actually sounds awesome. You know where I can score some?

And yes, my daughter gets vaccinations, as did I. I guess I'm just a sucker for "facts" and "science", "logic" and "proof".

edit: I'd go back through this thread and thank every one of Photon's posts, but I'm lazy. I suck at making points. I'm only halfway decent at giving smart arse responses.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Bagor

Yeah, but the thing is that Silent Spring was never considered a scientific article to be published in a peer reviewed journal. When the book was written few studies had been done on the cumulative effects of DDT. It was written as a popular book largely based on case reports without support of statistical analysis.

However ...... it also was based on her readings of scientific literature and what many scientists (wildlife biologists) were seeing in their everyday work and reporting in specialist journals. In a way it could be considered a review with a target audience of Joe Public. Hence her particularly strong support from biologists in the scientific community

Her intention wasn't to convince scientific experts but to motivate ordinary citizens.

A year after the book Kennedy decided that circumstances warranted a review from a science advisory committee whose report endorsed Carson's concerns. They concluded that although the hazards hadn't been proved, demonstrated or certain there was enough evidence there from the available data to show that harms were occurring (basically recommending the precautionary principle).

I guess that's where we're going to have to agree to disagree. i.e. whether or not the application of the precautionary principle can be considered bad science. Personally I feel there was enough evidence out there at the time to warrant it.

I think Carson was best described as not a bad scientist but a great writer. One of the original cases where an individual has managed to communicate concerns to the public in a simplified condensed way that otherwise might have laid dormant for years in obscure journals.

I think the precautionary principle is great, but it assumes some sort of policy foresight. The DDT ban has almost certainly caused a huge amount of human lives to be lost in Africa due to a lack of formal inquiry (from the beginning) and the lack of a reversal in the policy.

By the way, I totally agree. Silent Springs is a great book. The spirit of it is up there with other great environmental classics like Walden.

[Tower]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

When I originally wrote this post, I thought surely -- SURELY -- it was so over-the-top that nobody would actually believe I was being serious. Everyone (with the exception of possibly Tower and others who believe his crazy conspiracy theories) would take it for the obvious sarcastic comment that it was, even without green text. I mean come on, I actually used the phrase "medical-industrial complex" -- how obvious a giveaway was that?

I guess my faith in internet readers' abilities to detect sarcasm was unfounded. One would think I would know better after 15+ years online.

Actually I ignored your comment. But keep putting those words in my mouth.