Jabs, autism, viruses and panic

paul says:

09:27am | 18/01/11

Well said Eric. One should not and cannot call opinion writers journalists because they are presenting their biased opinion. Journalists should present the story based on the facts in front of them. I have no problem with reporting Wakefield’s report. What I did have a problem with was the total lack of rebuttal being presented at the same time from the respected scientists in the field.

It is the same now with global warming denialists who present their few scientists as being the only ones worth listening to and then tell us this is the fact. It is not. It is nothing more than someone disagreeing with the majority view and in most cases because they have a political or religious bias against the majoirty view.

They are entitled to hold it and speak it, but we are owed a duty by journalists to present the contrary view as well so we can then form our own opinion.

The other problem is the networks that hold a predisposed postion. Fox News is the best example but there are many more. Currently in the UK there is debate on whether the broadcasters should be allowed to present biased networking, as happened when it was opened up in the US in the 80’s. I hope it fails because the last thing we need is English versions of Beck and Limbaugh and all the other nutters - some on the left as well - that has proliferated in the US.

Ben says:

01:23am | 19/01/11

This is the counterpoint to this all. What happens when the “anti” crowd has a point? Should the media simply dismiss it? What happens when the “mainstream” science is wrong?

For example, I don’t trust the average reporter to be able to determine that a 59 person study showing a 1% drop in lung function betweeen 0 and 60 ppb ozone (Kim, Alexis, et al published last week by the EPA!) actually proves the opposite of the stated conclusion. 1% change is completely insignificant, and several measurements of lung function had no significant effect. While the effects are technically mesasurable, the changes are so insignificant that it clearly demonstrates that 60 ppb ozone ISN’T detrimental to health.

So, should the media report these studies blindly, quash all new research like a bug, or present a counterpoint? It’s not clear-cut. However, it should be clear to all that the media should avoid creating a panic any which way.

TChong says:

07:24am | 18/01/11

Agree Vaunted, but there are / were more than just the Pravda fly in the ointment.
Some of the most shameful partisan rprting can be found today , in any number of publications / sites.
Even the most even handed would probaly see some indication of bias for O’Farrell in the Sydney Morning Liberal, and as for Faux, does anyone serisly not have a bit of a grin at its claim of “Fair and balanced” ?

DG says:

07:35am | 18/01/11

Does your position hold when one side is clearly fraudulent, based on false assumptions or is simply made up?

We should expect journalists to provide facts. The fact is that “X” was observed. The fact that person Y claimed without any substantiation. If a person denies the holocaust should their view that the holocaust didn’t happen be given “equal time” as claims that it did happen?

In my humble opinion, a quality journalist would mention the position of the holocaust denier followed by a phrase (statement of fact) that the opinion is held in direct contradiction with the wealth of evidence supporting the claim that the holocaust did occur.

Equal time gives s disproportionate value to the unsubstantiated claims of fringe groups. By all means, where their claims are substantiated, the claims should be considered in the light of the weight of the supporting evidence.

Consider the Lithgow panther. There are the occasional photo and claims from witnesses, but the reporting tends to be consistent with the weight of the evidence. The fact claimed is that the photos exist, their quality is critiqued and and expert is approached. The reader is invited to make their own conclusions. However this take effort. It’s far easier to uncritically regurgitate the claims of certain groups under the guise of ‘equal time’.

marley says:

07:46am | 18/01/11

The problem with presenting both sides of the argument is that, when it comes to vaccination, one side has science and epidemiology on its side and the other has nothing but anecdote.  The two sides are not equivalent, and reporters should have the scientific background to say so.

KH says:

07:51am | 18/01/11

TChong - ‘sydney morning liberal’??? Ha!  You need to read more carefully - SMH and The Age are left leaning.  I think its the Telegraph and the Hun in Melbourne that are the Liberal papers….something to do with unfolding a broadsheet…......

Eleanor says:

08:13am | 18/01/11

I appreciate what you say, Vaunted, but sometimes this means giving nutjobs like Meryl Dorey airtime. The fact is that most people who refuse vaccinations are parents, not health care professionals. If I found a paediatrician or nurse who thought vaccines were dangerous, I would interview them, because the idea is they’re meant to have a more expert opinion than any mummy warrior who’s been to Google Uni.

Trust me, we try our best to be impartial and unbiased, but it’s a double edged sword.

Ryan says:

08:51am | 18/01/11

@Eleanor: well I can introduce you to a Pharmacologist working in the United States on vaccines, his child is selectively vaccinated, the schedules he used to vaccinate his child were quite different to the governments recommendations and to top it off, he actually obeyed the package insert, unlike our doctors, and vaccinated only when the child had been healthy continuously for two weeks or more. I could tell you what vaccines he didn’t let his child have but that would also start something. Oh and he is my brother.

Macon Paine says:

09:00am | 18/01/11

DG summed it up nicely.
I remember Richard Dawkins was asked a question by a journalist about why he refuses to debate creationists and im paraphrasing here, he basically said it’s because there is no debate, the creationists have no legitimacy, their arguments are child like and they argue against reality. Giving them a debate would give them legitimacy they do not deserve.
This is a very similar situation, the anti vaxxers have NO evidence, they are arguing with reality and denying the evidence provided by decades of research and hundreds of thousands of researchers.
@Eleanor
I agree Meryl Dorey is a wonderfull example of that old adage “give em enough rope and they’ll hang themselves”.
Here is Meryl Dorey at it again, absolutely despicable:
http://www.vaccinetimes.com/how-low-can-meryl-dorey-go/

Vaunted says:

10:01am | 18/01/11

DG and others, my point was meant to question the validity of journalists (other than in articles clearly marked ‘opinion’) taking absolute positions on any topic, rather than merely logically recounting the he-said-she-said facts, duly verified and/or justified of course. While I’m sure even the most obscure Jimmy Olsen dreams of being an earnest moulder of community right-thinking, I’m confident (from Punch and elsewhere) that most of us mere readers are more than capable of fine tuning our own bullshit detectors, and of leaping to our own conclusions.

DG says:

10:57am | 18/01/11

The he-said/she-said “facts” are not evidence of the claims that are made, by reporting on such claims they are given a weight that is unwarranted.

The role of the journalist should not be to act as a mouthpiece for any quack that wants to tell a story - but to critically evaluate the claims and investigate the basis and validity of those claims.

The “absolute’ position of a journalist should be one of reporting the fact that a claim is made in the absence or contrary to the evidence. Part of that duty means filtering out rubbish rather than reporting lies on the same pages as credible, researched reports.

I agree that they should not advocate for one side or the other but they should provide full and frank reporting. When they present both sides, they need to present both the strengths and weaknesses of the claims. (i.e “Person X claims B, however has no evidence to support their claim”, “Person Y claims A, and refereed to research carried out in 2009 which appear to support the claim.” ).

Treating justified and unjustified claims as one and the same is treason against honesty and intellectual integrity. Objectivity does not require that all claims be given equal time, rather that all claims are held to the same standard of evidence. In the absence of evidence the claim should be treated with the highest suspicion (and possibly criticised for it’s lack of corroboration).

Zeta says:

08:54am | 18/01/11

I don’t think that’s a good idea. When bad ideas are finally put to rest, it’s always tempting have a Cadaver Synod for them, but look at what happened at the actual Cadaver Synod:

Pope Formosus was then pulled out of the Tiber by a monk and his body hidden. Then Pope Theodore shows up and he’s all like, ‘actually, Pope Formosus was a bro’ and had all his titles restorted and his body placed in vestments and returned to the Basilica.

Pope John IX goes a step further says, ‘actually, not only is Formosus worthy of bro status, but actually, we’re going to pretend the Cadaver Synod never existed, also, someone find his fingers.’

Then enter Pope Sergius III - the baddest Pope in Bad Town. He had like, 12 illegitimate sons, and gave rise to the term ‘pornocracy’, which does not in fact reference the establishment of a State run by Sasha Grey.

Pope John 9 was all like ‘no more trials of dead people’ and Pope Sergius was all like ‘stfu fool’ and pulled out Pope Formosus’ body, again, put it back on trail, found it guilty, again, and beheaded him. I can’t be certain, because I’m only an armchair legal counsel, but I think that’s actually where we get Double Jeopardy from.

So I know it sounds good in theory, but in practice, you end up with: dead bodies stinking up your Vaticans, rule by harlots, and heaps of people die of ‘gout’ which is Italian code for ‘strangled in sleep’.

And that’s how it really happened.

Ryan says:

08:57am | 18/01/11

@bec: have you listened to yourselves, its bizarre to see supposed adults carrying on like there is a which that needs to be burned. Why is this bec, its not your child in fact it has nothing to do with you.
When an irresponsible parent takes their newborn out in public when there are warnings everywhere warning of pertussis or some other outbreak then feel the need to blame everyone else but their own lack of responsibility is where the problem lies in my opinion.

be says:

09:24am | 18/01/11

I always ignore what happens next because I’m lazy. The papacy used to be so much cooler.

Ryan, ffs, you’re deluded if you think that the decision to not innoculate your own children has no external consequence. Immunisation has other immediate public health benefits, including total eradication of a disease (I haven’t heard you bitching about *not* having smallpox yet), and protection of people with compromised immune systems, including babies too young to be immunised, people with bone marrow transplants, HIV patients, etc.

Your selfishness and immaturity to only consider *your* family without examining the very real external consequences of your behaviour is appalling.

TheRealDave says:

09:52am | 18/01/11

I think I’ve seen that movie Zeta…..

St. Michael says:

10:52am | 18/01/11

@ Zeta: Stop it.  Stop it.  I insist.  You made me spray my coffee all over my keyboard, and my co-worker are looking at me oddly.  Too funny.

Stevejme says:

03:32pm | 18/01/11

@Zeta. Can I have your reply framed and signed please?

AndrewK says:

09:44am | 18/01/11

You can hear the interview between Tracey Spicer and Meryl Dorey here:
http://www.2ue.com.au/blogs/2ue-blog/to-vaccinate-or-not/20110107-19i9a.html

I’ve got to say, I’m very impressed for Tracey Spicer for sticking with it as long as she did, and for being as polite and elloquent as she was. I’m so overwhelmed by the stupidity of Meryl Dorey that I would have abandoned all reason, logic and rational argument, and simply told her “you’re a knob, sod off”

Macca says:

08:27am | 18/01/11

This is after the most recent election where the NewsLtd paper Editorial called for the Victorian Labor Government to be returned? Good one.

Ryan says:

09:01am | 18/01/11

@Rob: What does your rant have to do with the subject may I ask?

A Bob says:

10:49am | 18/01/11

This is a good example of the ‘giving a voice’ principle in action. The moderators permit a zealot to publish a completely OT comment designed only to ferment ill feeling rather than add to the discussion.

To the moderator(s): Please, oh please, can we limit the political slagging to political threads?

Yes, I can ‘just not read it’ but you have to read at least part to know to skip it.

Rob r Charteris says:

06:30pm | 18/01/11

Ryan says:09:01am; Nothing!  : )

A Bob says:10:49am; Moderation on The Punch is about free speech. But I guess the moderator thought the context fit as I had quoted. Happy now! the guts of it is Liberals should be vacinated out of our lives. Especial the crap that been spewing from rAbbott’s mouth.

eddie says:

08:55am | 18/01/11

I think that the govt. may have built said plants because they realised - quite correctly - that we will be in drought again and next time the SEQ population will have grown some more - which will place more strain on our water resources and deplete them more rapidly. It is really a no brainer.

Naomi says:

09:04am | 18/01/11

My son is also diagnosed with mild Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and at almost 5 he’s doing well. Yes, he had his MMR but unlike your boy, he did not have a fit. I can’t say that he changed from that vaccination or not . I have had two of those childhood illnesses, mumps and measles together - nearly cost me my life. I wouldn’t even consider risking my own child going through that. I’ve had chicken pox twice too.
I’m beginning to think that ASD is the new ADD and ADHD. Who knows? Perhaps man is evolving and we are just too blind or unwilling to see it. These people with ASD see the world differently, their brains are actually physically changing, it’s not just psychological. I am learning so much from my boy and I am grateful for that. That doesn’t mean I don’t have days when I just wish he could be less anxious or routine driven.
I’ve seen first hand the effects of not vaccinating and why anyone would risk their child like that through pure choice is beyond me.
Journalists have the responsibility to report and sometimes that means showing that an argument is flawed or non-existant - just like a legal case.

James1 says:

09:12am | 18/01/11

Okay.  But why do you believe this?

DG says:

10:42am | 18/01/11

The original oz -

Your anecdotal evidence is seriously flawed - and I am sure that at an intellectual level you can see the flaws. A good indicator for the lack of a causal relationship is the incidence rate of autism relative to the rate of immunisation.

Secondly, ASD is a fudge. It covers a range of conditions with a variety of causes. It is a description of a common set of broad symptoms relating to behaviour and development.

You are making the same mistake - people are right to criticise and dismiss research that is poorly performed or flawed. That does not mean that the principle was wrong, just that it remains unsupported by the evidence. Without evidence, the claim should be treated as such - an unsubstantiated claim. Where the evidence has shown the absence of a causal relationship (i.e no significant difference between autism rates in immunised and non-immunised children) the claim should be dismisses and it’s proponents should be criticised for their belief in something in the absence of, or contrary to, the evidence.

St. Michael says:

10:58am | 18/01/11

@ The Original Oz: all due respect to your trauma, but when it comes to William McBride you’re linking things together which aren’t related.  McBride’s research on thalidomide was verified.  There was no scientific fraud in his findings then.

It was McBride’s research into another drug entirely, Debenox, where he falsified data and misrepresented results so much that his own co-authors in the study protested its accuracy.  It was proven he was taking the Wakefield route of cobbling together research in the hope of fuelling lawsuits against the drug’s maker.  What made it even more insidious was that he was trading off his reputation from the thalidomide scandal by alleging Debenox caused birth defects.  They struck him off the register for his lies over Debenox, not thalidomide.

And with all due respect, you seem to be making a similar error of conflation when it comes to MMR causing autism spectrum disorders.

papachango says:

02:05pm | 18/01/11

This is a common misconception by parents, and one of the reasons why the MMR myth has been so persistent. It’s given at 18 months, which just happens to be about the same time that parents notice some of the early signs of ASD. That’s just a logical correlation, but is zero evidence of causation.

I have 2 kids with ASD, and the timing as above fitted. The second one was diagnosed BEFORE the MMR shot, which made no difference when it was delivered.

There is absoultely no evidence to support the MMR connection, personally I think it’s bollocks. There are two catregories of people who believe it.

First is parents who are naive or desperate for answers. No disrespect to ‘the original oz’ intended here - I’m as rational a skeptic as they come but we put off No 2’s MMR by six months ‘just in case’, not that it made a jot of difference.

The second most insidious category are the anti-vacc crowd, a loopy bunch of New Age, troother, anti government, anti Big Pharrma conspiracy theorists and snake oil salesmen. I’ve seen how these people infest ASD internet forums like cockroaches and prey on anxious parents, and frankly the comparison is insulting to roaches.

Chase Stevens says:

03:48pm | 18/01/11

What evidence do you have to show that the immunisation had anything whatsoever to do with the fit? It could have been any number of environmental, or biological factors that had nothing to do with the immunisation.

Jayne says:

07:58pm | 18/01/11

You’re making claims based on what you observed. Where’s your actual proof? I’ve read so many comments in these forums, many of which are bordering on defamation and it seems to come from a dislike of big business. That’s no justification for making accusations of this nature. The Original Oz, have you investigated other possible issues such as whether your child has mineral deficiencies, checked whether he has high levels of lead in his blood, an impacted bowel etc? You really do need to do this before deciding for yourself what the cause was. Frankly, when it comes down to it, is it really going to help you with your boy? Don’t get caught in this cycle of blame. It’ll hamper you in your task of raising your boy. I may sound harsh, but I also have a child with ASD and a developmental delay, and trying to work out why this happened to us became so hard to get past. I found it very difficult to get past it. Now, I stop myself from thinking about it and am looking forward. It’s much better for me and my family.

Nora Charles says:

02:22pm | 18/01/11

Journalists should indeed report, but not all reporting is equal.

The fact of the matter is journalists aren’t interested in the ‘truth’, they are interested in the ‘good story’, which usually means negativity, controversy and angst. That’s why there was a lot of press on the MMR/autism link and very little on the subsequent fraud which then leads to the original error being uncorrected.

Here are a couple of more real examples. Media reports last year that ‘scientists are 100% that there is life on a newly discovered planet.’ A week later further research is done that cast doubt on the planet’s existence, let alone certainty of lifeforms, but this fact was not reported in equal measure.

Another example from last week. The media reported that during the flood Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium was on fire. The fact was that the stadium was not on fire, but there was a small fire in one of the transformers at the stadium.

This is the way journalism works. 99.999% of journalists are not skilled nor schooled in anything they’re assigned to report on so if someone tells them a plausible tale that fits their biases, they’ll run with it.

papachango says:

02:15pm | 18/01/11

sorry but I’d draw a distinction between anti-vacc and homeopathy/power bands.

They’re all complete blollocks of course, but homeopathy is just drinking drops of water, so is not actually harmful provided you don’t use it as a subsititute for proper medical treatment. Likewise wearing a hologram on your wrist in the stupid beleif that it will make you stronger or more coordinated won’t actually do you any harm except perhaps to your ego.

The anti-vax nutcases, on the other hand, deserve singling out for special condemnation, as they are actively encouraging people to put their children’s lives at risk.

bec says:

03:20pm | 18/01/11

I dunno, papachango, I’d say that pushing homeopathy onto cancer patients, or those ridiculous homeopathic malaria treatments, rank up there as being equally dangerous.

papachango says:

04:04pm | 18/01/11

bec I’d agree if they claim it’s an effective substitute, and you’re probably right in the cases you mention. But most homeopathists tend to be harmless hippies rather than obsessive co\nspiracy theorists

DG says:

07:14am | 19/01/11

I’m not talking about the validity of the actual treatments or claims, but the time that the media give to the claims that are made. I appreciate that the consequences are varied, but the point is that by giving equal time, reality is lost in the noise.

When a person in an apparent position of authority (such as a journalist purporting to report on a medical break through or environmental hazard) gives advice they do so under the guise of providing information to the public. With that in mind journalists should base the time and effort that they give to reporting a weighting that is proportional to the evidence supporting the claim.

Of course this would mean that claim of miracle treatments would be reported with qualifications that the claims are unjustified, that there is little to no evidence supporting the claim or that the claimant has not supported their claims with any evidence.

Rather than just regurgitating the claims, a journalist should be reporting on the claims, including any supporting evidence. Only recently an article was published under the heading that phones are not dangerous to use while driving, however the actual study didn’t conclude that at all. The reporting was lazy at best. If the journalist had any integrity, they would have made it quite clear that the study made no such claim, and did not support the hypothesis.

Of course if journalists actually did this sort of in depth analysis and reporting, there would be a product that person would pay for. However, as it is, that is unlikely. The major papers compete on quantity not quality and speed over accuracy.

PD says:

09:22am | 18/01/11

What reports have Gore and Flannery falsified, Jim?

Super D says:

09:47am | 18/01/11

Well Gore did have a dozen factual errors in his eco-snuff-porn film.

The data falsifications was done by Mike Mann and Phil Jones.  Oh and the NZ climate board.  Oh and Nasa GISS.

Ryan says:

10:45am | 18/01/11

@Super D: not to mention the IPCC Himalayan Glacier lies. Busted with their pants down.

Bill Door says:

10:54am | 18/01/11

@Super D

Why do you guys always leave out the bit were the judge said that it didn’t change the fact that man-made climate change is real?

Jim says:

01:08pm | 18/01/11

Don’t forget the rising sea levels off Adelaide…oh wait, that was the ground subsiding under the survey station…

bec says:

09:36am | 18/01/11

I love how the lifestyle supplement in our weekend fishwrap usually focusses on two things: substances that miraculously cure cancer, and substances that inexplicably cause it.

PD says:

11:17am | 18/01/11

Your post might have worked if you’d left climate change out of it. Doesn’t correlation have to be supported by credible potential causation - ie - a mechanism by which one thing may well lead to another? I think it does, which means your pirate analogy is plain silly, while the mechanism by which particles of C02 and other atmospheric substances might affect climate is well established.

marley says:

11:41am | 18/01/11

Actually, I don’t think anyone has done a reputable study showing a correlation between vaccination and autism.  The anti-vax lobby used to claim it was the mercury (thimerosal) in vaccines that caused autism.  When that was disproved pretty comprehensively in a whole series of studies, they switched to a link between the MMR and autism.  No such link exists.  So now they’re claiming it’s the cumulative effect of the increased number of vaccines (even though the immunological load is a lot lower than that in the handful of vaccines available 40 years ago).  When this is debunked, I’ve got no doubt they’ll shift their ground again. 

The believe that vaccines cause autism.  They will look anywhere to find the link.  They will not look at the more probable causes - genetics, environmental pollution, etc.

Carl says:

10:46am | 18/01/11

Yes… but let’s look at the SCIENCE involved in that case.
Hannah Poling had a pre-existing mitochondrial mutation which is believed to have been AGGRAVATED by the vaccine. Not caused. Aggravated. That is like suing the makers of an energy drink because it gave you the required physical stamina to kill people.
Mitochondrial disorders are very rare, only affecting 0.0057 per cent of the population. Coupling this with the fact that autism affects just 1 per cent of children, we’re looking at the potential of… wait for it… a total of 3420 people out of 6000000000. The fact that there are only FOUR other cases known worldwide of the SPECIFIC mutation in this case hi-lights just how absurd using this as an example actually is.

Macon Paine says:

01:26pm | 18/01/11

@ Ryan:
Obvious troll is obvious. You brought this same topic up 11 days ago in this thread: http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/there-is-unfortunately-no-vaccine-against-stupidity/
And it was patiently and articulately explained to you by James1, Doc Scooter, Steely Dan etc. There is no reason for you to keep dredging this up, you are not fooling anyone.

You state “hell if the government would provide a 100% safety guarantee on all vaccines they recommend” which indicates you and others require an impossible standard of evidence. Nobody can offer a 100% guarantee that nothing will ever go wrong (case in point Hannah Poling). Adults understand this (and dont need this explained to them) that in life everything carries a risk. If you walk across the road there is a risk you will get hit by a car, if you eat an egg there is a risk you will contract salmonella poisoning, if you climb a ladder there is a risk you will fall off, if you play cricket even with a hector protector…. ok so you see where this is going, are you going to stop doing these things because you dont have a 100% guarantee of safety?

The point is simple, not vaccinating carries a much higher risk for the child and community at large than vaccinating does. Not only that but vaccination is supported by science with decades of research and real world results. Not vaccinating is supported by proven frauds such as wakefield and a bunch of disingenous, ignorant, kooks like this:
http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/history/2010/1218doreytruth1.pdf
Who habitually lie, use fear of the unknown, manipulate the emotions of parents and have no science and empirical data to back up their claims. READ THE LINK also note it is only part 1.

Ryan says:

04:36pm | 18/01/11

@Macon Paine: well what about this case if that one just does not satisfy you: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1307095/Family-win-18-year-fight-MMR-damage-son—90-000-payout-concerns-vaccine-surfaced.html
As for your link, I opened it and started reading, hardly convincing when its filled to the brim with offensive and vile commentary, nothing more than an opinion piece character assassination on someone I don’t even know by some 62 year old nobody with no manners.

ScottyOfAus says:

11:17am | 19/01/11

What sort of guarantee would you like, if they vaccinated their own children would that be enough?

DG says:

12:23pm | 18/01/11

I concur wholeheartedly.

Quack of Watch City says:

01:07pm | 18/01/11

@St. Michael - Quackwatch? You mean the ‘Psychiatrist’ that testifies as a Psychiatrist even though he is not certified to be (as per medical board certification)?

If this is the best ‘investigative journaling’ you can come up with, you might as well throw fox news in for the same nomination.

bec says:

01:25pm | 18/01/11

Fine then, Quack: what about Dr Ben Goldacre of http://www.badscience.net?

St. Michael says:

01:31pm | 18/01/11

@ Quack of Watch City: citation? PPOR.

St. Michael says:

01:37pm | 18/01/11

also @ Quack of Watch City - might want to check his CV at http://www.quackwatch.org/10Bio/biovitae.html and tell me if any of it’s false.  Looks to me as though he was a psychiatrist for 30 years before retiring in 1991.  Doesn’t appear to have stopped his work in the industry though.

Like most conspiracy theorists, you go for the technicality as if it means something.

marley says:

02:13pm | 18/01/11

@St. Michael - one of my pet peeves is the assignment of journalists to science stories who have nil background in science.  Then you get the “golly gee” kind of reporting which can’t sort the science from the fantasy, the evidence from the anecdote, or the statistically probable from the unlikely but possible.  I don’t think anyone should be writing science articles unless they’ve got some background in science that goes beyond year 10 chemistry.

Another great source, my personal favorite, is:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/

It also has some great links to other science-based and sceptical sites.  Good reading in all of them.

Chase Stevens says:

03:50pm | 18/01/11

How about http://www.propublica.org/ for a good example of good journalism?

St. Michael says:

04:03pm | 18/01/11

@ marley: I don’t necessarily require a science PhD writing the science column in the papers—I’d settle for a journalist who understands that “correlation” =/= “cause”, and big phrases like “statistical significance”, “double blind experiment”, and “reproducible result”.

Elphaba says:

12:01pm | 18/01/11

Yep.

I made all my points the last time this article was posted, so I’ll just say this: people who don’t vaccinate their children are morons.

Although I still see that Ryan is trumpeting that case in the US with the big payout.  If vaccinations caused autism, you think he’d be quoting some other statistics…

Ryan says:

12:06pm | 18/01/11

@Elphaba: if vaccines are so safe to give to our kids then why doesn’t the government give us a 100% guarantee on its safety. I mean there is no risk right?

Ben81 says:

12:29pm | 18/01/11

No Ryan, like absolutely anything you can put in your body from peanuts to Panadol there’s a miniscule risk.  Vaccinations are way down the lower end, with massive benefits.

Here it is put simply for twits who refuse to listen to reason (NSFW language if that matters)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo

St. Michael says:

12:45pm | 18/01/11

@ Ryan: probably I won’t be the first in line to say this, but your argument is logically fallacious.  And that’s mostly because you dishonestly go for generalisations rather than specifics.

For a start, you haven’t defined what “safety” means.  Does that mean no side effects? No effect on the human body at all? Because if you’re going to insist on 100% safety guarantees from the government on all treatments administered in the public health system, you’re probably going to wind up on an operating table with no pain medication or anaesthetic, since these are all potentially dangerous to the human body and all have reported side effects.  There are even people who have allergens to particular kinds of anaesthetics—it’s a genetic susceptibility; my own mother has it and I’ve been told I need to get it checked out to see if I carry the same gene.

Second thing to mention is that you’re straw-manning vaccination by saying medical science has pronounced vaccination 100% safe.  It never has.  The MMR vaccine has reported a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of encephalitis or a severe allergic reaction.  No death has resulted from MMR that’s been proven.

On the other hand, the odds of encephalitis if you actually contract mumps—which the MMR vaccinates against—is 1 in 300.  For measles, it’s 1 in 2,000.  Measles kills in 1 of every 3,000 cases, too.

How about the DTP vaccine for diptheria, tetanus, and pertussis (whooping cough)? Chance of convulsions or shock then full recovery is about 1 in 1,750.  Diptheria, on the other hand, kills 1 in 20.  Tetanus, 3 in 100.  Pertussis, 1 in 20 for encephalitis or death.

Source for the figures: http://www.quackwatch.org/03HealthPromotion/immu/immu04.html

Luce says:

01:29pm | 18/01/11

Ryan, St. Michael is correct. You seem to be jumping on the band wagon and all too easily accusing medical science of something impossible.

If you do some reading you will realise that the human body is one of the most unbelievably complicated things we can study, and not just that but every body is different, and with our current level of understanding it is impossible to predict every single bad reaction that might happen. That is why we look to the odds of negative outcomes. Yes, there will be bad reactions to vaccines, but no these will not outweigh its benefits. Either 1 in 1,000,000 has a reaction (which rarely, if ever, leads to death), or hundreds die from a preventable disease. There is no competition.

Be careful about rashly firing shots the medical profession and its researchers, as chances are most of us wouldn’t have survived past adolescence without their knowledge. Nothing in life is guaranteed as 100% safe, but they’ve given us a lot more hope then we had even 100 years ago.

Elphaba says:

01:30pm | 18/01/11

I think the cyber gremlins ate my post.

@Ryan, there is no such thing as a 100% guarantee on anything.  That is because life is hazardous.  The point is, you are citing rare examples without considering the wealth of evidence that contradicts you.  If people took the rare statistics of everything and applied it to their every day lives - well, no one would leave their house.

Your argument doesn’t wash.  You can’t take one case of things going wrong and question the whole system.  Bear it in mind, by all means, but you should be absorbing all the facts about the number of deaths these illnesses cause, not how many deaths are caused by the vaccinations against them.  But you refuse to.  You think 1 case invalidates the whole system.

And please don’t cite thalidomide again in your inevitable response, because it’s a crap analogy, and has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Ryan says:

02:41pm | 18/01/11

I like your misleading statistics St. Michael, not every child gets the disease, in fact very few have in the past and do today, but EVERY child gets the vaccine. Perhaps if those statistics you quoted were quoted against recorded cases they wouldn’t be so misleading would they. Once again not doing yourself or your argument a service by being blatantly dishonest.

Elphaba says:

03:08pm | 18/01/11

@Ryan, every child gets the vaccine because that’s how diseases like this are stopped in their tracks.

Plenty of people died from these diseases.  The truth is, you will never know how many, because records are not as meticulous as they are now.  The cases of death are rare now because a disease can’t get a toehold in an environment where all its hosts are immune.

You can’t selectively vaccinate. It violates the purpose of vaccination in the first place.

Your lack of comprehension amazes me.  Are you sure you’ve got apposable thumbs?

Luce says:

03:12pm | 18/01/11

Ryan, “not every child gets the disease, in fact very few have in the past and do today, but EVERY child gets the vaccine.”

Why is it that children DON’T get the disease? Could it be.. the vaccine?

It’s as simple as this: a greater number of children/people would die as a direct result of vaccinating NO ONE, then the number of people/children that would die as a direct result of vaccinating EVERYONE. Please give me evidence to the contrary, because to date, you have done no such thing. Nor has anyone else on this planet.

St. Michael says:

03:57pm | 18/01/11

@ Ryan: Ah, so you’ve decided to go with ad hominem attacks rather than rational argument or competing statistics of your own.  I clearly must be getting you worried.

Read my post once again.  (Of course, Ben81 already asked you to do this.  Apparently you haven’t)

I did not differentiate the statistics between children and adults.  The statistics, taken from the CDC in the United States’ records of diagnoses, diseases, and outcomes, are statements of medical outcomes from the different diseases.  For example, as I said above, in 1 of every 300 cases of mumps, whether in adults or children, encephalitis follows.  As another example, as I said above, statistically in 1 of every 20 cases of diptheria, death follows.

Shall we look at some more statistics, again from the CDC, circa 2005? (Link: http://www.quackwatch.org/03HealthPromotion/immu/immu00.html )

Diphtheria
Cases per year (average) before vaccines: 175,885
Cases in 2003: 1
Decrease in cases per year:  99.9%

Hib (<5 yrs old)
Cases per year (average) before vaccines: 20,000 (estimate)
Cases in 2003: 259
Decrease in cases per year:  98.8%

Measles
Cases per year (average) before vaccines: 503,282
Cases in 2003: 56
Decrease in cases per year:  99.9%

Mumps
Cases per year (average) before vaccines: 152,209
Cases in 2003: 231
Decrease in cases per year:  99.9%

Pertussis (whooping cough)
Cases per year (average) before vaccines: 147,271
Cases in 2003: 11,647
Decrease in cases per year:  92.1%

Polio (paralytic)
Cases per year (average) before vaccines: 16,316
Cases in 2003: 0
Decrease in cases per year:  100.0%

Rubella
Cases per year (average) before vaccines: 47,745
Cases in 2003: 7
Decrease in cases per year:  99.9%

Smallpox
Cases per year (average) before vaccines: 48,164
Cases in 2003: 0
Decrease in cases per year:  100.0%

Tetanus
Cases per year (average) before vaccines: 1,314
Cases in 2003: 20
Decrease in cases per year:  98.5%

Now, since you haven’t jumped to thalidomide yet, I’ll assume your next argument will be along the lines “hygeene is lots better these dayz LOL! no dizeezes coz we all wash hands these days.”

To which I say: link to this address: http://www.quackwatch.org/03HealthPromotion/immu/immu01.html which indicates the reported incidents of measles from 1920 through to today.  You see that part of the graph on the far right, the bit that looks like Jenny McCarthy’s gone to sleep again? That’s the incidence of measles dropping to near-zero, after a vaccine was licenced for it in roughly 1964.  Before that date, you had wild fluctuations of between 200,000 and 900,000 per year.

Now, I don’t think JFK was sleeping on straw with his flea-ridden dogs in the White House bed the night before he got shot, and I seem to remember lots of very nice, very clean houses in the US around the 1950s or so when detergents first turned up.  So it seems to me a ludicrous argument that that sudden drop in measles from hundreds of thousands of people per year down to zero had much to do with anything but the vaccine.

But hey, since statistics are meaningless to you and you persistently refuse to produce any of your own which contradict the Illuminati at the CDC, I guess you won’t have the same view.

Ben81 says:

01:27pm | 18/01/11

Holy crap, just read St. Michael’s post (slowly, and at least 2 times).  What a ridiculous argument.

St. Michael says:

01:40pm | 18/01/11

@ Ben81:

...huh?

St. Michael says:

01:42pm | 18/01/11

@ Ben81: P.S ... oh, wait, I understand what you meant now.  My apologies; fear my comprehension skills.

James1 says:

01:44pm | 18/01/11

I struggle to see what point you are making Ryan.  Can you name one single thing in the world that is 100 percent safe?  That carries no risks at all?

The point you seem unable to grasp here is that everything carries a risk to some degree or other.  Statistically, getting vaccinated carries a risk.  Not getting vaccinated carries a far greater risk.  Idiots will ignore this simple reality, and gamble with the lives of their children on a long shot…

Ben81 says:

01:51pm | 18/01/11

@ St. Michael, yes read rhyming with weed not red.  Stupid language ;D

Ryan says:

02:15pm | 18/01/11

@James1: if you were a gambler would you not take the better odds?
The point I am trying to make is this, if you want to win over people with regards to vaccinations then give them some sort of assurance / insurance that if the vaccination caused the damage that it will be taken care of.
So no guarantees but assurance that it is safe, and if it is not, you are not out on your own, broke due to the negligence of drug companies and their mega profits. I am sure the government can get the drug companies to agree to that?

marley says:

02:20pm | 18/01/11

@Ryan - please identify an insurance company which will insure your unvaccinated kids against catching measles, pertussis, mumps, etc.  No? Can’t do it?  then presumably not vaccinating carries risks too.  And they’re a lot higher than vaccinating. 

If you want a 100% guarantee that the vaccination will be both safe and effective, you won’t get it.  No virologist would claim more than a 95% efficacy rate for any vaccine, or a more than 99.9% safety rate.  So its up to you whether you take the tiny risk of vaccine failure or side effect, or the much larger risk of illness, serious side effects, brain damage or death from the disease itself.  That’s what it’s all about - evaluating risk.

St. Michael says:

02:52pm | 18/01/11

@ Ryan: “if you want to win over people with regards to vaccinations then give them some sort of assurance / insurance that if the vaccination caused the damage that it will be taken care of.
So no guarantees but assurance that it is safe, and if it is not, you are not out on your own, broke due to the negligence of drug companies and their mega profits. I am sure the government can get the drug companies to agree to that?”

Economic theory is against you there, sport.  Because the only thing such an assurance will do is bring on a host of spurious or false claims that X vaccine caused Y illness and that the government and/or the drug companies will have to pay for it.  The lure of free money, via government fund or via suing, is extremely strong: Wakefield was brought down because his research was being set up by lawyers eager to sue the makers of the MMR vaccine for autism.

You said to James1: “if you were a gambler would you not take the better odds?”

To which the answer is: vaccines are, almost by definition, the better odds in this scenario.  Consider: your odds of getting encephalitis (or worse) from the MMR vaccine are roughly one in a million.  From taking that risk you have at least an 80-90% chance of the vaccine working on you and thereby being immunised to those diseases.

Your odds of getting measles or mumps are unknowable, since you don’t know who’s carrying the disease or where the organisms are.

But if you *do* get mumps or measles, the odds of encephalitis are higher than with the MMR vaccine: 1 in 300 or 1 in 2,000 respectively.  That is, you are roughly 1,000 or 10,000 times more likely to get encephalitis if you don’t have a vaccine against it.

That being so, an economically rational person would conclude the risk of taking a vaccination is low compared against the massive benefit a successful vaccination entails: 80-90% certainty of elimination of the risk of contracting encephalitis via measles or mumps.

That’s a gamble most punters are already willing to take, given current vaccination rates in Australia.  And ironically the only people who are altering those risks are those who choose not to vaccinate, because they raise the risk for others and for themselves.  Needlessly.

James1 says:

02:54pm | 18/01/11

Ryan,

Negligence?  That is a strong word, and implies that the companies producing the vaccines are responsible for people having an allergic reaction to them and suchlike, which it seems to me they are not. Of course the drug companies are aware of the risks, as are medical researchers.  Its not like they hide them from people.

Am I to take it that your point is you want the government or the drug companies if not both to assure people that if something goes wrong after a vaccination, they will pick up the costs?  Isn’t that what our system of universal health care is for?

I am still struggling to grasp what you want here, and what your position on vaccinations is.

Luce says:

05:02pm | 18/01/11

Ryan, what are trying to achieve here?

And why do not understand the very straightforward concept everyone is trying to put to you? i.e. if no one was vaccinated because of a 1 in 1,000,000 risk of a bad reaction, in a very short time we’d see a return to the days of hundreds of thousands of cases and deaths from diseases that are entirely preventable. How is that any better then the current situation of these diseases being virtually non existent? It would be grossly irresponsible of the government to allow that to happen when they have the power to stop it. What don’t you get about that???

It seems to me you take for granted that we live in such a disease free society. Put yourself back in the 1900s when children everywhere were dying from these very diseases, and your own children would be at a HIGH risk of getting them, you wouldn’t hesitate to vaccinate them, were the option available to you. Stop being so damn ungrateful for everything we have today!

Nothing in life comes with a 100% assurance, but if you’d rather take the gamble of leaving your children susceptible to these diseases (the risk being lower today then it was 100 years ago BECAUSE OF VACCINATIONS, they might just survive because everyone else got vaccinated, meaning you benefit from something you don’t even believe in or have any gratitude for), then all I can say is it’s natural selection at work, you clearly weren’t meant to pass your genes on (although I’m going to take a guess and assert that you don’t believe in evolution and natural selection either?)

JH says:

02:16am | 19/01/11

I have a somewhat unique experience with vaccines.  I ran vaccination clinics in remote tribal areas in South East Asia for 15 years.  On one occasion, we experienced a terrible epidemic.  In those villages where we had vaccinated, there were few problems and no fatalities.  However, in the villages we had not yet reached, the death toll was terrible, particularly amongst children under 12.  In a similar vein, I have witnessed numerous deaths from tetanus in unvaccinated villages.  Yet in the villages where we vaccinated - not one.  I have learnt that the greatest cause of death, is ignorance.

Ben81 says:

01:45pm | 18/01/11

Well done, although I would have loved to hear her try to defend the claims on her website about the examples mentioned being “non threatening illnesses”.  Then again, I may have just ended up banging my head on my desk.

bella starkey says:

01:51pm | 18/01/11

I got a little lady crush for you after I heard this the first time, Tracey. you owned her hard.

Luce says:

02:50pm | 18/01/11

I second bella on the lady crush. That was great Tracey. That woman is infuriating!!

Anne says:

06:52pm | 18/01/11

Great work Tracey, don’t know how you lasted that long against her. Good thing she was on the phone, if she was in the studio, the temptation to knock some sense into her may have been too much! What a tosser…

Jayne says:

08:17pm | 18/01/11

Great work Tracey. Ms Dorey has been given more air time than she should. When you cut her off I was applauding. I hope she is given no such time in the future. I have no time for people who use the threat of a condition as a platform. She and others like her have used autism to scare naive parents. I just hope that my son and other people with autism aren’t looked at with pity or fear as a result of groups like the AVN by people who don’t understand autism. It’s not frightening and it’s also not a tragedy. My son as an example of a person with ASD is funny, wonderful and just as unique and special as any other child on this planet. He just sees the world differently and as a result acts differently.

Quack of Watch City says:

02:46pm | 18/01/11

@James Hunter - Following a mandate, you will have an overwhelming amount of children who will be home educated. Surely these children will still be breathing the same air as the rest of us and be allowed out in public. Mandating for school entrance doesn’t address the issue appropriately. Education, education, education. The best way to have someone happily do something you want them to do, is when you empower them to do so.

You have to understand that most non-immunising parents are plain old bat shit scared of all the presumed risks of immunisation, thanks to the likes of Meryl Dorey. Throw in a dash of conspiracy and a pinch of pharmaceutical recalls and you’ve got one hell of a shit storm to fight through. Regardless of how you feel, calling non-immunising folks callously stupid doesn’t help the cause either - It just makes for a stronger enemy.

James Hunter says:

03:54pm | 18/01/11

Quack of the city, Educationm wont work as they are brain dead for a given, apealing to their concerns for their children falls on deaf ears as they ,with the bliss of ignorance, know that they know more then the health experts, apealing to their civic responsibility is usless as trhey have none. Maybe declar all unvacinated children “wards of the state” to be returned after vfacination ?
Or if an unvacinated child gets sick with a disease it shoulld have been protected against this should be prima faci tyhat the child is a neglercted child and it should then go into foster care??

Idiots should not have children .They put pressures on society for no valid reason atall

Ryan says:

03:58pm | 18/01/11

@marley: yes I have heard about the one in the UK and the US, in Australia I was unaware that the physicians insurer covers it, how exactly are they in a position to make a judgement or is this up to the courts.
The one in the UK is a bit of a farce considering that many parents that have had their children die due to a vaccine before they were two years old do not get any compensation, I wonder if the same kind of insurance scam exists here.

marley says:

05:54pm | 18/01/11

@Ryan - evidence of that claim, please.

Ryan says:

03:21pm | 19/01/11

@marley: here you go, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1979/17/data.pdf section 2.1(c) so in effect limiting any payout on vaccines due to damages that occur during the time children are supposed to be vaccinated.
Nice huh!

marley says:

04:20pm | 20/01/11

@Ryan - the scheme says you have to wait until the child is two years old to make a claim. But if the child is injured at 6 months, you still have the right to make a claim, you just (unfortunately) have to wait until he turns two.  Not ideal, but I wouldn’t call it a scam.

I do agree that it’s unfair to have no compensation if your child dies before the age of two.

marley says:

08:14pm | 18/01/11

It’s not hard at all.  Go to PubMed and do a search on vaccine safety.  You’ll find 30 or 40 years of research.

Andrew says:

01:31am | 19/01/11

Agree totally with marley - it might be hard to find articles which show concrete findings if you do your ‘research’ using newspapers, Today Tonight and the gossip at your hairdressing salon, but if you do even the tiniest bit of research in peer-reviewed, reknowned medical journals the weight of evidence is staggering.  Vaccines in general have been shown to be amazingly safe and effective.  Yes, some of the earlier vaccines had harmful side effects, and even today there are adverse reactions in some people (people with allergies or suppressed immune systems generally), but the benefits far far outweigh these very very unlikely side effects.  Yes, it’s tragic when a child gets sick, dies, or suffers pain as a result of vaccination, and just like ANY medical procedure there is a risk involved.  However the risk is orders of magnitude lower than the risk of serious illness or death from contracting the diseases these vaccines prevent.  The remarkable thing about this entire debate is that it wasn’t happening 100 years ago, when vaccines WERE more dangerous.  Why?  Simple - people saw first hand what the effects of smallpox, polio, whooping cough and other ‘common’ diseases were, and then saw the almost overnight effect that vaccination had on these diseases.  Today, some people have a sense of complacency brought about by the very vaccines they are campaigning against.  These diseases don’t appear to be doing any harm anymore (since everybody is vaccinated) so why do we need vaccination anymore?  A very stupid, circular argument if there ever was one.

DG says:

07:29am | 19/01/11

Strangely, the tend to provide the side that is backed up by evidence rather than the side that is not.

Certainly, those articles will note the risk of negative consequences of immunisation (such as allergic reactions or infection) including the statistical significance of those events. However, with the actual evidence so heavily on one side,it may appear that the author is biased.

So if “shows both sides” means discloses the positive and negative consequences then yes, the information is out there. If you mean “makes them sound equal”, then the information will be far more difficult to find because it is simply not supported by the evidence.

rb says:

10:14am | 19/01/11

I’m aware that the info is out there, I’ve done the reading myself. But this article is about what part the media plays in the vaccs debate. So I will repeat “It is hard to find a article that shows both sides”.

I also think that the discussion about the diseases is not balanced. Some can be very dangerous. For some the chance of serious complications is similar to vaccs. And natural immunity can last a life time unlike vaccs that only last 7 - 10yrs. This now leaves the entire adult population unprotected and more likely to pass on things like whooping cough.

DG says:

10:20am | 19/01/11

@RB - please confirm what you mean by “shows both sides”.

rb says:

10:44am | 19/01/11

Both sides? To show that some diseases are more serious than others and that they don’t all kill you. That some vaccs have more side effects than others.
I think parents should be helped to see what risks there are for individual diseaes and indivivual vaccs.

The common side effects for rotavirus are fever, diarrhoea and vomiting.
The common side effects of rotavirus vacc are fever, diarrhoea and vomiting, and rarely anaphylaxis.
Not so black and white.

St. Michael says:

12:21pm | 19/01/11

@ rb: I smell an anti-vaxer trying to disguise him/herself as an innocent seeker of knowledge.

Again, statistics, which you haven’t provided, so I did a little searching on the Net myself.  Let’s start with rotavirus.  You talk about the “common” side effects of the drug.  Shall we talk about the side effects of rotavirus first? Prior to the availability of rotavirus vaccine, rotavirus infection was responsible for more than 400,000 doctor visits, more than 200,000 emergency room visits, 55,000-70,000 hospitalizations, and 20-60 deaths in the U.S. on an annual basis. In the first five years of life, four of five children in the United States were expected to develop rotavirus gastroenteritis, one in seven would require a clinic or emergency room visit, one in 70 would be hospitalized, and one in 200,000 would die from this disease.  Source: http://www.vaccineinformation.org/rotavirus/qandadis.asp

The CDC’s report on adverse events following administration of the vaccine: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/vaers/rotateq.htm

You are also being misleading on the side effects of rotavirus including anaphylaxis.  On the CDC’s research, vaccinated infants are slightly (1%-3%) more likely to be irritable or to have mild, temporary diarrhea or vomiting after getting a dose of vaccine than infants who did not get the vaccine. Moderate or severe reactions have not been associated with the vaccine.  Any child who has had a severe (life-threatening) allergic reaction to a previous dose of rotavirus vaccine should not get another dose. A child with a severe (life-threatening) allergy to any component of rotavirus vaccine should not get the vaccine. Because the oral applicator for Rotarix contains latex rubber, infants with a severe (anaphylactic) allergy to latex should not be given Rotarix; the RotaTeq dosing tube is latex-free. Rotavirus vaccine is contraindicated in infants diagnosed with the rare genetic disorder severe combined immune deficiency (SCID). Although this vaccine has not been associated with intussusception, as a precaution it is suggested that the risks for and the benefits of vaccination should be considered when vaccinating infants with a previous episode of intussusception.

Source: http://www.vaccineinformation.org/rotavirus/qandavax.asp

Which diseases do we immunise against that don’t kill, rb? Rotavirus does.  As do diptheria, tetanus, mumps, measles, rubella, and a whole host of others.  And again, what’s your information on the risks of the vaccines in question? In pretty well every single case, the odds of adverse events are astronomically low compared to the risk of death or serious results if you don’t vaccinate.

You’re also misleading saying that “vaccines only last 7-10 years”.  The pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine does need boosters every 10 years or so.  I think, without going to check it, Hepatitis B also requires a booster later in life.  But the vast majority confer total immunity in 85-90% of subjects to the diseases they guard against.

Also, all due respect, but you saying in one post, implicitly, that “natural immunity” is better than vaccines really is space cadet stuff.  Before the measles vaccine came along, a good 200,000 - 900,000 PER YEAR did not have natural immunity to the disease.  Measles has a mortality rate of roughly 1 in 3,000, which equates to between 60 and 300 people dying every year for no good reason when a vaccine, on the odds, would have saved them.

There is no other side to the story with vaccines.  They work.  They save lives.  The risk of having one is literally tens of thousands of times less risky than the risk of frigging dying or getting encephalitis or any other condition from one of these diseases.

I mean Good God, are you seriously saying you’d rather risk a 1 in 3,000 chance of death from measles than a 1 in a million chance of an adverse reaction to the vaccine? If so, I’d love to sit down and play a hand of poker with you, because I can be confident I’ll have cleaned you out on pairs and threes while you’re waiting around for that royal flush.

marley says:

02:11pm | 19/01/11

@rb - you claim that “For some [diseases] the chance of serious complications is similar to vaccs.”  I would like you to indicate which disease has a complication rate comparable to the complication rate from vaccines.  I can’t think of a single vaccine in which the chances of a complication from the disease are not magnitudes higher than the chances of side-effect from the vaccine.

Oh, and you say that getting the disease guarantees a lifetime of immunity.  Well. No.  People who’ve had pertussis can definitely get it again, especially as the get older.  And I personally had measles twice (rare, I know, but not impossible).  And let us not forget the delights of shingles, which anyone who’s had chickenpox risks getting in later life.

Ryan says:

04:07pm | 19/01/11

@St. Michael: and why is Hep B vaccine required.. especially to a baby only minutes after birth. A newborn does not yet have a mature immune system and is often unable to mount an effective immune response yet we inject them with a vaccination that requires an effective immune response in order to build up antibodies, and which of these high risk groups does a newborn fall into. Is it any wonder there is skepticism on their motives. Oh and since the mother is tested for HepB during pregnancy, would it not be obvious that only these newborns would require it.

High Risk Groups
  * Health care workers and emergency personnel
  * Infants born to mothers who are infected at the time of delivery
  * Partners or individuals living in close household contact with an infected person
  * Individuals with multiple sex partners, past or present
  * Individuals who have been diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease
  * Illicit drug users (injecting, inhaling, snorting, popping pills)
  * Men who have sex with men
  * Individuals who received a blood transfusion prior to 1992
  * Individuals who get tattoos or body piercing
  * Individuals who travel to countries where hepatitis B is common (Asia, Africa, South America, the Pacific Islands, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East)
  * Individuals emigrating from countries where hepatitis B is common, or born to parents who emigrated from these countries
  * Families adopting children from countries where hepatitis B is common
  * Individuals with early kidney disease or undergoing kidney dialysis
  * Individuals who use blood products for medical conditions (i.e.hemophilia)
  * Residents and staff of correctional facilities and group homes

St. Michael says:

06:23pm | 19/01/11

@ Ryan: for the love of Christ, Buddha, Peewee Herman or any other appropriate deity, do some reading on how viruses work or at least provide your sources for the crap you spout.  Congratulations, by the way; your silly trolling has finally gotten a rise out of me.

You do know how a vaccine works, don’t you? If not, go to Wikipedia and type in the word “vaccine”.  Or, if you don’t trust the Illuminati who run it, go to an encylopaedia.  Or any doctor.  Or just about anyone with a Year 10 education in Australia.

A vaccine *is* *not* *the* *full* *strength* *version* *of* *the* *disease*.  In some cases it’s the *dead* version of the disease.

Do you know why it’s a weakened version, or dead? Please, have a think about it.  Have a guess.

No? Then let me spell it out: because the infant body’s immune system might not be able to cope with a full strength raging Hep B infection, but it *can* deal with a weakened version of the disease.  The process being: the body’s immune system encounters the weakened version of the disease and builds a response to that disease.  Because it then has the antibodies, when it encounters the *fullstrength* or *live* version of the disease, it shifts to defeat the infection automatically.

Why Hep B vaccinations for newborn infants?
Well, gosh, you really got me that a newborn kid probably isn’t going to be sharing needles with anybody, but one posibility I can think of is because they’re born in a hospital environment.  You already said that health care workers and emergency personnell are in the high-risk category for infection.

More generally, the reason they vaccinate against Hep B is because it is communicable among children.  In the early 80s and 90s, HALF of all indigenous schoolchildren had the serological markers of Hep B infection.  Source: http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/content/cda-cdi2903h.htm .  Vaccination brings those rates down through herd immunity.

Jesus Christ, boy.  Do five minutes’ research on the Net before talking such crap.  Hep B’s spread by bodily fluid secretions, be it blood or whatever.  Kids get bloody and get cuts.  They might not share needles but the communicability rate for Hep B is a hell of a lot higher than bloody HIV.

Ryan says:

08:19pm | 19/01/11

@St. Michael: and still you are attacking a almost non-existant immune system with a vaccine expecting an immune response, do show what clinical trials have shown any immuno-response from newborns.. oh right, there AREN’T ANY because just like most vaccines given to children there are little to NO clinical trials.
As for the hospital - HepB connection, so you are telling me that hospital workers couldn’t give a toss about HepB and even as being in the high risk group are not tested / vaccinated against it?
“The vaccination series should be started at birth, preferably before the newborn is discharged from the hospital. Infants born to women who are HBsAg positive or who have not had prenatal HBsAg testing should receive the first fose of hepatitis B vaccine within 12 hours of birth ” from the CDC who you love so much… In Australia every mother would have had prenatal HBsAg testing, again just vaccinating away for the sake of vaccinating and filling the massive bank accounts of the big pharma.

St. Michael says:

10:44pm | 21/01/11

@ Ryan: Nice to see you’ve finally come out and admitted you’re a conspiracy theorist against Big Pharma, Ryan.

As for “In Australia every mother would have had prenatal HBsAg testing” and thus eliminating the need to vaccinate the kids ... fail on logic, boy.  Just because Mummy gets tested for Hep B early in the pregnancy doesn’t keep Mummy from getting it later on in the pregnancy.  And Mummy not having Hep B does not immunise the kid against contracting it in early childhood, as half of indigenous schoolchildren did in the 80s and 90s.

“do show what clinical trials have shown any immuno-response from newborns.. oh right, there AREN’T ANY”

Fail.
http://www.jimmunol.org/content/163/4/2249.abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190523/pdf/440.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1577556/

Here’s the Google search for scholarly articles regarding the immune response of newborns, in case you want to access the other 81,000 results in that category: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1577556/

“...because just like most vaccines given to children there are little to NO clinical trials.”

Fail.
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00393523  <—This one might interest you.  It’s the clinical trial for Hep B vaccines admistered to kids.
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00475033
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=MMR+vaccine+clinical+trial  <—Here’s the link to the 42 clinical trials associated with a search for “MMR vaccine clinical trial”.
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=DPT+vaccine+clinical+trial  <—And here’s the link to the 15 clinical trials associated with the DPT vaccine clinical trial.

Are all of them corrupted, Ryan?

Lastly: “As for the hospital - HepB connection, so you are telling me that hospital workers couldn’t give a toss about HepB and even as being in the high risk group are not tested / vaccinated against it?”

Straw man, dear boy.  And also irrelevant.  Although I think most hospital workers would be chuckling at your ignorance rather than appreciating the attempt at White Knighting them.  Hep B doesn’t care how many precautions the carrier took.  All the precautions in the world don’t prevent a disease spreading if the carrier’s forgotten something or made a mistake.  Hep B spreads through blood products.  It’s called being thorough and making sure, with the added bonus that the Hep B vaccine protects for years, not just the brief period of time in the hospital.

May I invite you to now slink off into the wilds of the Net without replying, as you’ve done with most of the other responses made to your crackpot theories?

rb says:

10:22am | 19/01/11

There are many reasons that some diseases are no longer considered to be as dangerous. In the developed world we are lucky enough to have access to healthy diets and clean drinking water. And if the situation becomes more serious we have a great medical system. Those in third world countries are often weak from poor and inadequate diet, have no access to clean drinking water and no access to medical help if needed. This is why I support vaccs in third world countries.

marley says:

02:04pm | 19/01/11

@rb - well, I dunno.  When I was a kid, back in the dark ages, we had healthy food, a clean environment,  safe water, and by golly we even had indoor plumbing.  But everyone got measles and some of us got really, really sick. 

The chances of getting the measles in a clean environment are no less than your chances of getting it in a bad one - that’s why anyone born before the advent of measles vaccines is presumed to be immune - because everyone got the measles.  Everyone.  And it’s not a mild disease in any environment.  Look it up.  It’s described everywhere as a serious disease, one that can have nasty side effects, some of them (deafness, brain damage) permanent.  And of course death is very permanent.

marley says:

10:15am | 19/01/11

Contrary to your understanding, immunization is indeed a “natural interaction for the human immune system.”  Immunization is specifically designed to use the entirely normal reaction of the immune system to a pathogen.  It exposes the system to a whiff of the bacteria or virus, causing the immune system to kick into gear and develop the antibodies which will protect the body in future.  The immune system reaction to the vaccine is an entirely natural process - one which has the advantage that the individual doesn’t actually have to become ill in order to achieve that protection. 

And if you think it’s a good thing to let kids get measles, bear in mind there’s a 1 in 10 chance of serious complications and a 1 in 1000 chance of death.  Do you really think those are good odds?

DG says:

10:18am | 19/01/11

Are you saying that you want your child to get measles so that your child’s immune system will learn to fight against measles? What else will your child’s immune system learn from your child contracting measles?

The MMR vaccine actually contains the measles virus (albeit modified to a less dangerous state). The choice is between a manageable version of the condition, as opposed to the risk of the more dangerous version (and permitting your child to be responsible for infecting another person). The child’s immune system will learn nothing more from the more dangerous version.

James1 says:

10:28am | 19/01/11

They would only get measles once anyway.  Why not immunise them against it so they can avoid that unpleasant experience?  Wouldn’t that be more fair on your children?

Also, what marley said.

JS says:

10:49am | 19/01/11

That’s a big risk to take Clancy of Sydney. But then again, it’s yours to take I suppose. The only thing I would say to you is never ever underestimate something like the measles or even chickenpox. The problem with these are that they’re such a common part of our vocabulary that many think they’re minor illnesses associated with childhood. They can be fatal. The problem is you’ll never know how your child will react to the illness until they get it. Just something to think about, if your child has a reaction to the vaccine, then what would happen if they caught the real thing without any protection? You won’t know for sure until it happens. Not a risk I would be taking.

rb says:

10:59am | 19/01/11

@JS, you are right in that you don’t know how sick one might get until it happens. But that applies to vaccs a well. Will your child be one of the rare cases of anaphylaxis.
I just don’t think it is as easy a choice as some make it out to be.

JS says:

11:53am | 19/01/11

@rb There’s a risk with everything unfortunately. You weigh up those risks with every choice made. In this case as you say anaphylaxis is rare. Yes, I would still vaccinate every time. Just like I would still give permission for my child to undergo any surgery required even with a possible reaction to the anaesthetic. Like I said, you never know with anything. For me, the choice to vaccinate was easy. I went in aware of the possible side effects and weighed this up against the possible reactions to the likes of measles and it was no contest.

DG says:

01:10pm | 19/01/11

@JS - Clancy’s choice runs the risk of my child, or someone else’s child being exposed to the disease for no good reason - while taking the benefit that is provided by the herd immunity. Clancy’s ignorance and fear could kill a child who is genuinely allergic to those injections. It’s not so simple as “a choice”.

It is grossly irresponsible and negligent to fail to have the appropriate vaccines without good reason. Irrational or unjustified fear is not a good reason.

There are precautions that can be taken if there is a reason (rather than an irrational or unjustified fear) that the child is at risk of complications if there is any reason to expect that such a reaction is likely.

I seem to recall reading that you are more likely to be injured in a car accident on the way to or from the Dr, than suffer serious side effects from the vaccination.

@rb - please note that you are talking about comparing a person suffering anaphylaxis in the presence of a Dr who is trained to treat a patient suffering those (incredibly rare) consequences, to the far more likely consequences of a complication from contracting a disease. Unless of course, you are allowing for the risk that every other child takes so that your child will be safe.

I think you, and others who reject the fact that vaccinations save lives, owe a great debt of gratitude to all of those people who do take the risk so that you can live in that lovely bubble where the risks of the disease are so reduced that it appears that the choice is balanced.

The facts are clear, the risk of death or disability from the relevant diseases far exceeds the risk of complications from vaccination. The holds true so long as we work to keep diseases from spreading (consider small pox).

So long as herd immunity is maintained we will not see the mortality rates that are found in Africa. How do they reduce morality rates from these diseases in Africa? Vaccination.

Coincidence?

marley says:

12:43pm | 19/01/11

rb - I think that depends on the vaccination.  So far as I’m aware, if you have two shots plus a booster of the MMR, you’re good to go.  I think the Hep A and B shots give very long-term protection as well.  On the other hand, the pertussis shot (which is part of a combination with tetanus and diphtheria) starts to lose efficacy after 4 or 5 years. Tetanus is good for 10 years.  So it’s probably a good idea to get a booster if you haven’t had one in 10 years.

I’ve worked abroad a lot, where the risks are a lot higher than in Australia, so I’ve always kept my vaccinations up to date.  I suspect most people don’t, though.

St. Michael says:

03:24pm | 19/01/11

Except that most vaccines will stop you getting the disease that kills you at all, and, to play your game of selectively picking vaccines, there’s not one death attributed to MMR or DPT.  Enjoy the fence.  Just mind out for the rusty nails, since you probably don’t have a tetanus shot.

And the public hygiene thing? Doesn’t mean a hell of a lot.  For measles, it was the vaccine that more or less eliminated the disease in the West, not good hygiene.  Consider the graph at this address, particularly with reference to the X axis indicating year, and how things went after the vaccine was introduced: http://www.quackwatch.org/03HealthPromotion/immu/immu01.html

marley says:

06:09pm | 19/01/11

@rb - you’re right, the pertussis vaccination doesn’t last forever.  But the immunity from actually getting pertussis doesn’t last forever either.  So while older people who’ve had measles as kids don’t need to be vaccinated, those who’ve had whooping cough do.

Oh, and the stats aren’t unclear at all about how many develop immunity from vaccinations.  It’s quite easy to vaccinate a test group, and then check their antibody levels later.  Some vaccines are 95%, others 80% - cholera vaccine used to be notorious for being 50% or lower (though I think there’s a better one out now).  All you need to do is check some of the actual research, and you will find the figures you say are unclear. 

Oh, and yes, diseases can kill, and so can vaccines.  The chance of dying from measles is 1 in 2000; the chance of dying from the vaccine is 1 in 1 million.  Not sure what fence you’re sitting on, but it’s not very stable.

Ryan says:

02:44pm | 20/01/11

@St. Michael: just like the taser manufacturers claim there have been no deaths attributable to the taser, they instead manufactured a condition “excited delirium” not accepted in the medical community and attributed it to that. What is clear is that you can frig with any statistics any way you like but the hundreds of thousands of parents own accounts of their children dying within hours of a vaccine are proof enough.
Its like saying if I shot you that it wasn’t the bullet or the gun, it was the severing of the vital organs within your body which cannot be conclusively ruled as having been caused by the bullet alone.
Its a joke the dishonesty that we see these days to manipulate people, you seem to be one of those sucked in hook like and sinker.

St. Michael says:

09:57pm | 21/01/11

@ Ryan:

(1) For about the fifth time during this debate, I will yet again ask you to explicitly cite your sources by website and/or by journal, study, or experiment when you say “hundreds of thousands of parents own accounts of their children dying within hours of a vaccine is proof enough?”  Specifically because of sourceless trollers like yourself, I’ve been citing in just about every post the sources of the assertions I make.  Where? When? How many hours? What other conditions? Who conducted the study - was it Andrew Wakefield?

I don’t hold out much hope that you will, because to date the only stat you’ve come up with is one provision of a single piece of UK legislation.

I suspect the reason you’re not putting up your sources is because they’re all from antivaxxer websites.  So I’ll tell you what posters of my generation always said: PPOR.  Look it up.  It means Post Proof Or Retract your comments because they’re irresponsible and not true.

(2) “What is clear is that you can frig with any statistics any way you like…” You mean like Andrew Wakefield did? If you can point to an error in the statistics, do so.  If not, you haven’t got a logical or legitimate basis to impugn the numbers.  You are simply crying wolf.

And here’s the error in your presumptions: Wakefield’s study was impugned because the numbers did not add up.  And it only took them 13 years to uncover that, too.  Every significant study on vaccine effectiveness and safety has been endlessly replicated across the world.  Smallpox and polio vaccines have been around for the better part of a century, and there hasn’t been one idiot out there who’s put any credible dent in the numbers at all.  Same goes for MMR, DTP, and the rest.

(3) “just like the taser manufacturers claim there have been no deaths attributable to the taser, they instead manufactured a condition “excited delirium” not accepted in the medical community and attributed it to that.”

...Um, and the relevance to the vaccine debate is what, exactly? Would you like to set out how you say the medical community has been manufacturing conditions to explain vaccine deaths? And, for the sixth time, would you like to cite your sources explicitly instead of talking unverifiable crap?

P.S. Trying to get unanswered responses in so people who come across these articles a few weeks down the track think you scored a point isn’t going to work, Ryan.  Transparent and stupid, boy.  I plan to be watching these articles for a long, long time, so I hope you’ve got a lot of free time to spare making yourself look sillier than you already have.

rb says:

07:27am | 22/01/11

@ST M, funny you should mention polio. Anyone over 30yrs would have been given a live oral dose. Live doses are considered to be more effective. But it has been changed because the % of people getting polio from the vacc was to high.

Were parents told that the polio vacc could stop your child getting polio and it could also give polio to your child.

Successful clinical trials do not made vaccs or meds safe. It is only a short term study and the public is the long term study. It’s not uncommon for meds to be taking off the shelf when negative side effects are discovered. The problem is I don’t see any other way to do it. Somebody has to be the guinea pig.

St. Michael says:

11:34am | 22/01/11

@ rb: Got a source for that? Out of interest, more than anything else.

Failing that, did you have a precise percentage for the number of people getting polio from the vaccine?

rb says:

03:01pm | 22/01/11

@ St M. I have no idea what the % are. When I was discussing the vacc schedule with a doctor I said I felt better with oral vaccs as I felt that the immune response in the mouth was part of the normal defence vs putting it straight into the body. It was the doctor that told me that polio was no longer given orally and why.

marley says:

09:45pm | 19/01/11

Then you haven’t been looking.  Why the heck do you think Wakefield was such a disaster - because the media covered his paper, and gave publicity to the supposed risk of vaccination, and Brits by the thousands decided not to have their kids vaccinated.  And guess what?  Measles is now endemic in the UK.  No doctor will say that there is zero risk to vaccines, nor will any government website about vaccines.  But they will put the risk into context.  And that’s available at the click of a mouse.

JS says:

10:39am | 20/01/11

Well rb, if parents think that then they aren’t reading the information that’s widely and readily available with the medical clinics willingly providing this information. If they can’t read this, then all they have to do is ask. With every medication given, there are information sheets that come with them or can be printed off either by a doctor or a pharmacist when it’s dispensed. If people are unwilling to do this, then they’re expecting to be spoon fed this information.