Nature has a go at anti-vacciners

[Idaho]

I have mixed opinions on the MMR programme. It's a programme based on a cold assessment of risk and taking one risk over another. It's not a pure win case.

The evidence of a link to autism doesn't appear credible, that seems certain. However the idea of the triple jab is to maximise people included, and isn't necessarily the best for the vaccinated child.

Also do we really need to vaccinate all children against Ruebella? What was wrong with the programme to vaccinate teenage girls who hadn't had it?

 

[8ball]

I take your point andn think the reason for MMR was the cost-effectiveness of delivering it all in one go.

The NHS has a lot of demands to balance with a limited resource pool. From what I know I'd have taken same decision and gone with MMR as standard.

 

[Poot]

I am positively in favour of all vaccinations and would not stint in getting my little one injected. But another argument that I would like to bring to the floor is simply that vaccines can make your baby ill, and it can be quite traumatic to have your baby subjected to such a harsh treatment when there are no visible benefits.

I would like to make it clear that I am NOT arguing that a dose of polio is better than having a jab, I'm saying that, for example, the MMR vaccine makes a child ill. Prevenar also makes a child ill. They're given together at the same time in my HA. (I insisted on separating them). So many mothers will choose not to do it because they cannot imagine that many of the diseases will affect their child and on a purely emotional level, they don't want to inflict what they see as unnecessary harm.

I don't know what the answer is to that.

 

[axon]

I already commented on that study, in the same way that I commented on many other similar ones. It proves very little. If I recall correctly the problem with that study is the same as all the other ones - there is no proper control group.

Well you recall wrong. Autism rates continue to rise even though mercury has been removed from the vaccines.

The prevalence of pervasive developmental disorder in thimerosal-free birth cohorts was significantly higher than that in thimerosal-exposed cohorts

It's really pretty obvious that if you want to investigate the question of whether vaccines cause autism, then the way to do it to look at the unvaccinated, and see if they get autism.
Failing that, it makes very good sense to investigate an unvaccinated control group that already exists. The Amish are a good example.

No the Amish are possibly the crappest group to look at to answer the question precisely becuase they are so isolated from the average US society. The normal incidence of autism in the Amish is unlikely to be the saem as in the general population. This is shoddy science, except it's not science is it? It's a reporter going around "Just asking questions"

I might add: - emotional arguments (and huge fonts) have no place in scientific discussion.

I have yet to use an emotional argument (unlike the anti-vaccine brigade) but I do have bigger fonts that I could use.

 

[Techno303]

at Axon starting this thread. Were you bored? Too wet for the beach?

 

[Jazzz]

Well you recall wrong. Autism rates continue to rise even though mercury has been removed from the vaccines.

But it seems they don't continue to rise when vaccines are removed from babies. I am not saying 'mercury is the only cause of autism' - that is a straw man.

No the Amish are possibly the crappest group to look at to answer the question precisely becuase they are so isolated from the average US society. The normal incidence of autism in the Amish is unlikely to be the saem as in the general population. This is shoddy science, except it's not science is it? It's a reporter going around "Just asking questions"

I have yet to use an emotional argument (unlike the anti-vaccine brigade) but I do have bigger fonts that I could use.

Are you for real? If you want to investigate heart disease, and it seems the Japanese don't get much heart disease, then it makes perfect sense to ask the question - maybe they're doing something different which means they are safer? It's just bloody obvious. Yet with the Amish and vaccines, no-one seems to care, despite autism now existing at pandemic levels.

Is there a vaccinated group equivalent to the Amish which doesn't get it these days?

 

[axon]

Are you for real? If you want to investigate heart disease, and it seems the Japanese don't get much heart disease, then it makes perfect sense to ask the question - maybe they're doing something different which means they are safer? It's just bloody obvious. Yet with the Amish and vaccines, no-one seems to care, despite autism now existing at record levels.

Yes, it makes perfect sense to say "maybe this group are doing something different". But that's not what the original article was saying. It was saying here is a group that have a completely different lifestyle and atypical genetics, and they have low rates of autism, and they don't get vaccinated THEREFORE vaccination cause autism. It's utter bollocks. He ignores the million other possible reasons for the reduced rates of autism.
And since the issue of mercury being responsible for autism has been raised the question has been investigated scientifically. And it seems that it doesn't.

Jazzz you're not really in a position to critically weigh up evidence; you champion Dan Olmsted, a reporter with a few anecdotes over a study with 27000 children involved, which showed that autism rates continue to rise despite mercury being removed from vaccines.

Maybe Penta water could be used to vaccinate kids instead?

 

[Jazzz]

The fact is, we have no evidence that vaccination is safe with regard to autism or many other disorders. It is no good placing the burden of proof on researchers like Olmsted (who was championed by your side of the debate, axon). The burden of proof lies with the vaccinologists to show their products are safe. This has not been done.

In the absence of rigorous science, I think parents are very well entitled to play safe by trusting the undeniably well documented and successful health regime of good food, good sanitation, and trusting nature's own defences.

 

[Sunray]

The control group for MMR are nothing to do with Autism are they.

In 3rd world countries, the control group are the poor (in both senses) people that didn't get vaccinated and died from preventable diseases?

Say what you like, there are people on this planet now that wouldn't be and it came directly from the result of vaccination.

 

[axon]

The fact is, we have no evidence that vaccination is safe with regard to autism or many other disorders.

Why do you keep spouting the nonsense that their is no evidence? Do you think if you keep saying "No evidence!" it will eventually become true

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/118/1/e139
27000 kids looked at (Scroll back through thread to "remember" about this article)

At turns out the above is not an isolated paper!!! Here's a quick selection of recent papers that I pulled out while me coffee was brewing.

No effect of MMR withdrawal on the incidence of autism: a total population study.
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2005 Jun;46(6):572-9.
“The significance of this finding is that MMR vaccination is most unlikely to be a main cause of ASD, that it cannot explain the rise over time in the incidence of ASD”

Vaccination, seizures and 'vaccine damage'.
Curr Opin Neurol. 2007 Apr;20(2):181-7.
"The weight of epidemiological evidence does not support a relationship between vaccination and childhood epileptic encephalopathies or autism spectrum disorders. "

Immunizations and autism: a review of the literature.
Can J Neurol Sci. 2006 Nov;33(4):341-6.
“some have suggested an association between the Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine and autism. Our literature review found very few studies supporting this theory, with the overwhelming majority showing no causal association between the Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine and autism.”

No evidence of persisting measles virus in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from children with autism spectrum disorder.
Pediatrics. 2006 Oct;118(4):1664-75.

Pervasive developmental disorders in Montreal, Quebec, Canada: prevalence and links with immunizations.
Pediatrics. 2006 Jul;118(1):e139-50.
“The findings ruled out an association between pervasive developmental disorder and either high levels of ethylmercury exposure”

Is there a 'regressive phenotype' of Autism Spectrum Disorder associated with the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine? A CPEA Study.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2006 Apr;36(3):299-316.
“There was no evidence that onset of autistic symptoms or of regression was related to measles-mumps-rubella vaccination.”

Early medical history of children with autism spectrum disorders.
J Dev Behav Pediatr. 2006 Apr;27(2 Suppl):S120-7.
“There were no significant differences between the groups [autistic or not] for the age of vaccination or for number of pediatrician visits.”

Vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella in children.
Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2005 Oct 19;(4):CD004407.
“Exposure to MMR was unlikely to be associated with Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, autism or aseptic meningitis (mumps) (Jeryl-Lynn strain-containing MMR).

 

[Jazzz]

None of those studies are good evidence that vaccinations are safe. It is perfectly possible that vaccines to be the protagonist of virtually all autism, and plenty of other disorders to boot, and those studies to return exactly the results they did.

With regard to MMR, I have explained the three-card trick. Any study which compares MMR-vaccinated children to measles-vaccinated children shows very little.

You also have to understand that, if vaccinations cause autism, the medical industry is quite capable of commissioning huge quantity of weak epidemiological studies which wouldn't show a link and not touching any that might, and then proclaiming 'the weight of evidence does not support a link between such and such' - exactly what it does - this is a very weak claim.

As ever, ONE SINGLE, WELL EXECUTED CLINICAL TRIAL would settle the issue - this is why such trials are considered so important in all other fields. This is what needs be demanded. We don't have it!

Alternatively, an examination of the already-existing true control group - unvaccinated children.

 

[laptop]

huge quantity of weak epistemlogical studies

Well said

Weak epistemology is Jazzz' speciality.

Not knowing the difference between epistemology and epidemiology is an important part of his speciality

 

[Jazzz]

Thank you laptop. Yes, they are weak epidemiological studies.

Perhaps an analogy would be helpful. For years, the tobacco industry denied that there were links between smoking and ill-health, also passive smoking and ill-health, and they were quite capable of commissioning plenty of scientific studies which, surprise surprise, found no link, because they weren't being paid to find one, they were being paid not to find one.

Of course, one knows the disdain in which to treat such studies.

Now if the tobacco industry was running the whole show to the extent that big pharma currently influence medical research, would smoking have ever been found to be harmful?

I doubt it.

Now if vaccines were the ideal product for big pharma - everyone buying them, and their health being damaged from taking them in ways which doesn't kill them but increases their reliance on further medication for all kinds of illnesses, how much financial incentive would there be to influence science and medical opinion?

Why they could pay huge backhanders to everyone in the business, and arrange that the science was about as rigorous as that of the tobacco industry when it sought to investigate smoking.

And guess what happens?

 

[axon]

You seem to have missed the point of me posting those article titles. It was demonstrate that when you imply that there is no research being done into the links into autism and vaccination you are being disingenious. There is.

And then you say that they are all weak epidemiological studies. They are epidemilogical I'll give you that. But somehow for you epidemiology is insufficient when done by scientists using very large subject groups, but is the gold standard when done by a journalist looking for autistic Amish kids
Why not do clinical trials? I don't know. However off the top of my head I could suggest that there might be a problem with infectious diseases if a very large number of children were unvaccinated (you'd need a large number as autism is reasonably uncommon).

And then you come onto the old chestnut of the "Big Pharma" is behind it all. It's amazing how nonchalantly that you accuse everyone involved in those studies of accepting backhanders from drug companies. Despite the fact that at least one of them (I've only checked 1) is not funded whatesover by the drug industry and clearly states so.

You compare this debate to that of smoking and lung cancer. As far as I am aware there is a link between smoking and lung cancer, despite the best efforts of the tobacco industry to suppress this inevitable conclusion. Your logic seems to run that because Big Pharma (who I am no fan of I should add) do science, and want to make money from science, therefore anything they do must be faked. Furthermore any science that doesn't agree with people who who don't like Big Pharma must also be wrong.

I'm not against the idea that mercury in vaccines causes autism. To me it is a reasonably valid idea. However, from the vast amount of research done it appears that this isn't the case. So, why is autism increasing? There must be reasons and it might be constructive to look into these rather than satisfying the demands of a vocal group of society who either don't understand the science or who have simply decided that vaccines are bad.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Why not do clinical trials? I don't know. However off the top of my head I could suggest that there might be a problem with infectious diseases if a very large number of children were unvaccinated (you'd need a large number as autism is reasonably uncommon).

As far as i know it'd be impossible, no ethics committee would let it pass. Too many cries of "Tuskegee", for even better reason than the orriginal.

 

[Miss-Shelf]

When I grew up I saw older kids with callipers on because they'd missed their polio jab and classmates with Scarlet Fever. I wouldn't want to go back to that.

.

there hasn't been to my knowledge a vaccine against scarlet fever