Quackcast

Don't be ridiculous.

Uhhhh....no, I mean: stay on your side of the fence; everything will be fine. Hey, did you see that football game?

 

I don't think it's just one aspect. Just look at the recent Bachman HPV soundbite. It kept on being perpetuated that she heard from one woman that HPV causes retardation. Whether the media kept on with her hearsay to focus on her beliefs , they certainly did not give any content as far as the subject of the HPV virus. It would be interesting to see a survey of common perceptions of the HPV virus: I don't think most Americans are aware of how common and potentially threatening a virus it is.

There is always going to be a percentage of people who are not going to accept common knowledge. I do think it's a disservice that there is more of a public confusion over vaccines. Polio is one of the most common examples of a pandemic that has seriously been curbed by a vaccine: the benifits of vaccines have shown themselves to be way more beneficial then any side effects.

When I watch the nightly news, though, I'm reminded why the majority of the public could be misinformed. I regularly have seen "reports" of clinical studies "as reported in the New England Journal of Medicine"....the thing they don't ever seem to readily cite is the date of that study. Diet studies as far as carcinogens is a prime example: I've seen nightly news segments of *a NEJM study says*...but it's an article from 3 years ago and is a small study.

 

Is that what happened to Bachman?

 

Mankind did not have consistant thoughts about sanitization until the 19th century. It remained common Western medicine throughout the dark ages and the enlightenment to think that bathing was harmful and that blood letting reduced "humors". It is not known how much of the original "black plague" was from a bubonic plague: but what caused it to cease was that the majority of the populace contracted the disease and remained hosts...those who could not have a natural resistance died. It's amazing how medicine stayed fairly primitive up until 150 years ago: only a few practitioners before actually studied physiology or tried surgical techniques that were not accepted tradition. John Hunter, for example, established himself to be a doctor/surgeon well ahead of his time.

 

At least that's the last time I heard about her in the media...so many weeks ago now

 

A "separation of prescriber from the seller"? Apparently, daniel, you are not aware of the kindly, compassionate oncologist. Oncologists purchase a bottle of chemo for $1000. Expensive, right? Well he gets 10 -20 doses for his patients from the bottle which he then charges the patients /bills the insurance company or Medicare up to $2000 PER SHOT! So, if you do the math, then you can see that this "evidence-based" (that's another story) doctor creates a cash-cow that returns $20,000 to $40,000 from his $1000 investment!

Now you can see why they didn't choose a career in the lucrative financial industry -- not lucrative enough. That is besides the fact that most of the patients don't survive. It is ALL experimental. Every oncologist, hospital, cancer center will give you a different combination of chemo. It even varies by geographic location, IOW the chemo mixture you receive will be dependent on where you live. How's that for science?

 

Read the correct literature!! Both Smallpox and Polio were eliminated entirely by vaccines without everyone on the planet being vaccinated. Are you going to dismiss that? If all it takes is finding someone on the internet (with or without a MD stamped behind their name) that states that is wrong......and you put your entire faith in that...... then you get to go through life misinformed. That is indeed your decision. But I can attest.....bad decisions have bad consequences.

Who claims they are following blindly like a religion? Nobody here made the outlandish claim of vaccinations for everyone for everything. There is a reason massive clinical trials of many stages are performed. That's to find out the strengths and weaknesses of vaccinations. It's fully known that there is no perfect vaccine for anything, so nobody was claiming that. It's also fully known that millions of lives can be saved from many viruses with a "good enough" vaccine. The real issues occur in determining these boundaries, not if vaccines work or don't work.

Good Grief. The core purpose of the field of epidemiology is determining this percentages. Read up on it. They figure these out all the time in real outbreaks. For example, the outbreak of Cholera in Haiti was a recent case where this was applied. Gbee's example of house spacing is an excellent analogy.

If I only vaccinate one person in the world for smallpox, then there is no debate that many would die in an epidemic. If I vaccinate everyone then there should be little debate that an epidemic is not going to happen. Is your claim that there is no middle ground?

 

I'm not sure of your point here. 1/3 of the population is death and devastation beyond comprehension. Just because 2/3 did not die is a very poor justification for questioning vaccinations in general. For example, are you going to improve sanitation in the third world faster than you can distribute a vaccine? No question that sanitation is the best possible solution when possible, but that is not always possible in the third world. For example, I needed to get the plague vaccine for military duty in Asia, but not for duty in the US. That seem to be an easy decision. Apply it where it is needed, not blindly.

 

no worries, mate.

 

I am not sure what it is that you are answering or why you are getting hot under the collar. We were talking about herd immunity and you jump to the defense of vaccines and their role in epidemics.

Herd immunity, it was explained, may not apply to the kind of immunity one gets through vaccinations, but rather through the normal channels. An article was cited as a good explanation for this viewpoint, and you didn't like it. Fine I respect your viewpoint, even though you offer nothing more than your opinion since you didn't provide anything else.

Apparently there are two sides to this coin, and I am sorry, but they both are not yours.

 

BTW, when did normal childhood illnesses like measles, mumps and chicken pox, as they used to be called, become 'deadly diseases' as they are called today? We (older crowd) had them, stayed home from school a few days or a week, then became naturally immune for life. Our siblings got them, our friends got them. Yes we were uncomfortable for a few days or week but got to watch a lot television. Our system did what it was designed and programmed to do, got us well and we have lifetime immunity. No one knows anyone who died, yet everyone had them. Unless a child was a sickly child to begin with, no one died.

Now kids are vaxed from birth so few get these childhood illnesses anymore, but have to be vaxed for life because ‘immunity’ is temporary which is why booster shots are added . So people are at risk of getting them as adults when it is supposed to be worse, since most adults don’t keep up with their shots like they did as a kid because their mother would take them to the pediatrician and now don't. So now kids can't get ill because then they could give it to adults, etc., etc.

Girls who got these childhood illnesses passed protective antibodies onto their kids when they became mothers. Now, protective antibodies are no longer passed onto children by their mothers since they are not getting these normal childhood illnesses anymore.

 

The main point that I was making is that vaccines are not the only way that disease goes away. Since the main problem that we've identified about the 14th century plague is the poor sanitary conditions, the solution was to improve the sanitary conditions.

Assume for a moment that we could time travel back to the 14th century and perform a modern vaccination program for the plague. How differently would things have played out?

The first problem is that we're not sure that it all was one disease. But then make the additional assumption that it was. Does a vaccine cure existing disease? No, so all those who were already sick would progress about the same. Does a vaccine work in people who are immune compromised? Varies, but in the terrible sanitary conditions of the time, I'd guess that the positive response rate would be rather low. So we make a further assumption that the vaccine is significantly valuable in the not-sick-yet community. So assume that the disease we've identified as the plague is severely diminished

But the sanitary conditions are still terrible, and the next strongest disease pops up. And it's probably just as bad as the original one. Just look at what happens with immune compromised people today (and they have the benefit of modern sanitation). Opportunistic diseases pop up when the native immune system isn't up to par. Look at what people die of today when it isn't vascular failure, cancer, or congestive heart failure. It's a disease like pneumonia that finally wins over a worn out immune system.

I agree. Use vaccination when it is the best alternative.

But I find the current practice has gone far beyond a rational choice based on the best health outcomes. Vaccinating 6 year old boys for cervical cancer is really over the top. The adjuvants, mercury, aluminum salts, and stray DNA fragments found in most vaccines are certainly not helping with our health. Getting hit with so many vaccines all at once is suspected of being a major cause of Gulf War Syndrome. Does being born qualify as being as urgent a situation as when going to war? ADHD and Alzheimer's may well be side effects of excessive vaccination.

 

This thread has diverged so far from reality I'm not sure how to get it back. Beam me up, Mr. Scott.

Tom

 

Yeah, that's right, daniel. As long as I survived, I don't care about anyone else. Not really.

Areas of Africa, unfortunately, account for the high death rates you cite, for many things in large part due to malnutrition, no clean water, raw sewage exposure, poor medical care and living conditions, and the stresses of poverty. So the statistics you have cited have no application here. When they get the measles or most other things, they are already operating with a deficient immune system. They don't just rest at home watching TV with mother plying them with chicken soup and tea with honey. If more vaccines is what they need, then let's get it for them. Everything seems to become an epidemic over there.

Here, measles, mumps, chicken pox were always an uncomfortable, but benign illness of childhood. But once over it -- immnunity for life, even if people from other countries travel here.

The vaccines are only good for a few years or less, so more and more booster shots are needed. Most adults don't keep up their lifelong dependency on dozens of vaccines so are susceptible to getting what were once 'normal childhood illnesses'. Result is a vaccine dependent immune response, which many believe is a less desirable situation.

Another factor today is also the parents who don't want to, or can't, stay home and miss work in order to care for sick kids. So preventing everything sounds pretty desirable.

Since children in their first 5-6 years get over 37 injections, I don't think a few will be missed.

 

Measles are not a benign disease of childhood. Measles are bad. Perhaps you are thinking of Rubella, which is often called the German Measles.

Tom

 

Perhaps so.

TY

 

Many may not agree, but here is an interesting paper. Maybe some will like it or not like it, agree with all of it, some of it or none of it. But it is well-written, IMHO, and some food-for-thought

Gary Null, PhD and Nancy Ashley, VMD, MS - DEADLY INJECTION: THE HIDDEN INGREDIENTS IN VACCINES - Health Headlines > - Progressive Radio Network

 

I'm not getting any response either. There must be some kind of interference.

The thread's morphed from a warning about quackcasts, to being one.