Apr 01 2009
Pockets of Vaccine Noncompliance in California
The LA Times recently published their analysis of data provided them by the state of California and found that there are pockets of high rates of exemption from vaccines among kindergarteners. In the US public schools require that all children receive the recommended vaccines. However, states can allow exemptions for the religious beliefs of the parents.
Over the years anti-vaccine activists have been successful in many states in expanding the rules for exemption. In California, for example, parents may seek excemption if they have “philosophical” objections to vaccines – which means there really isn’t any criteria beyond the parent’s wishes. The anti-vaccine movement has been active not only in pushing for the weakening of vaccine requirements but also in teaching parents how to use the laws to evade vaccination for their children.
The LA Times found that, while state wide the exemption rate was only 2%, exemptions were largely clustered in certain schools. They report:
In all, more than 10,000 kindergartners started school last fall with vaccine exemptions, up from about 8,300 the previous school year. In 1997, when enrollment was higher, the number of exempted kindergartners was 4,318.
and
At Ocean Charter School in Del Rey, near Marina del Rey, 40% of kindergartners entering school last fall and 58% entering the previous year were exempted from vaccines, the highest rates in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Herd Immunity
These numbers are concerning because they threaten herd immunity – when about 90% of the population is vaccinated then there are not enough vulnerable hosts to spread an infection efficiently, so outbreaks are uncommon. When vaccination rates drop significantly below 90% then herd immunity is lost and infectious diseases can spread, resulting in outbreaks.
This is not mere theory – it happens. In the UK fears that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism (even after the original research by Andrew Wakefield was exposed as wrong, subject to undisclosed conflicts of interest, and maybe even fraudulent, and later evidence confidently showed no link between MMR and autism), led to a precipitous drop in the rates of MMR compliance. The UK does not mandate vaccine for entry into public schools, so they lacked the buffer (for what it’s worth) that exists in the US. As a result there was, and continues to be, a resurgence of previously controlled diseases, like measles.
The later scare that the mercury-based preservative thimerosal could be linked to autism has had a similar effect, and such fears rapidly spread to the US. This link too has been shown to be false, and in any case thimerosal was removed from the childhood vaccine schedule by 2002, but the this has not stopped the anti-vaccine movement from spreading unwarranted fear.
The result was not as quick or dramatic as in the UK, probably because of the public school vaccine mandates, but still pockets of low vaccination rates are already leading to measles and mumps outbreaks on this side of the pond.
The loss of herd immunity affects more than just the children whose parents decided not to vaccinate them. No vaccine is 100% effective, and some children have medical contraindications to vaccinations. These children would also be at risk from those who chose not to vaccinate. Also, the public at large pays the price as previously eradicated diseases make their way back into the population.
Skeptical of Mainstream Beliefs
The LA Times reports that the schools with high rates of vaccine exemptions tend to cluster within affluent schools. They report:
At Ocean Charter School in Del Rey, near Marina del Rey, 40% of kindergartners entering school last fall and 58% entering the previous year were exempted from vaccines, the highest rates in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Administrators at the school said the numbers did not surprise them. The nontraditional curriculum, they said, draws well-educated parents who tend to be skeptical of mainstream beliefs.
“They question traditional knowledge and feel empowered to make their own decisions for their families, not deferring to traditional wisdom,” said Assistant Director Kristy Mack-Fett.
There is a great deal of overlap between such attitudes toward vaccines and those of some alternative medicine proponents. Such attitudes do not reflect true skepticism, which is based upon a respect for logic and evidence. Rather it appears to be a countercultural philosophy – the rejection of ideas not because they lack value but because they represent the mainstream.
This is a knee-jerk “tradition = bad, conventional wisdom = worse” reflex which does not serve these parents or their children well. It is also, I should point out, a logical fallacy – a type of ad hominem reasoning that claims that conventional wisdom is wrong simply because it’s conventional.
Mack-Fett also gives the “empowerment” argument, popular among the promoters of so-called alternative medicine. This is a populist fallacy that counsels the rejection of expert consensus regarding the complexities of science and evidence and tells parents to rely instead on their own knowledge. Of course, this is often being counseled by those who are simultaneously giving gross misinformation.
To be clear, I think that adults should have the right to make health decisions for themselves, and they have a limited right to make decisions for their children (until it conflicts with the state’s duty to protect children from abuse and neglect). Freedom is not the issue. The issue is whether or not it is good practice to pay appropriate consideration to the careful and transparent recommendations from experts or instead to rely upon dubious sources or the vagaries of information on the internet.
Affluent parents, and really most parents today, have been lulled into a false sense of security by the successes of the past. Parents today have never known polio or measles outbreaks, so they downplay their significance. The LA Times again:
“As a parent, I’d rather deal with my kid dealing with measles or mumps and sit with them in a hospital . . . than taking your chances on a shot and having irreversible effects,” said Kim Hart, a mother of two in San Clemente.
I have news for Ms Hart – death is irreversible. Measles can sometimes lead to death. It can also cause other serious and irreversible consequences. What Hart and many parents like her demonstrate is profoundly misplaced fear based upon systematic misinformation. The evidence is clear and overwhelming – the risks from vaccines, while non-zero, is statistically tiny, while the risks from the diseases they prevent is significant and well documented.
Conclusion
As others have already pointed out, what this means is that California is the likely location of future outbreaks of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases. We are likely to face at least several years of outbreaks from the damage to the vaccine program that the anti-vaccine movement has already done. If they continue to make inroads into the public consciousness they are likely to do far more damage.
The antivaccine activists deserve unmitigated blame for the death and disease that results from their campaign of fear and misinformation. It is frustrating that as the scientific evidence mounts to show that vaccines are not linked to autism, the antivaccine crowd becomes more and more vociferous. Loudness does not count in science, but it can have an effect in the public arena.
236 Responses to “Pockets of Vaccine Noncompliance in California”
The hubris of the ignorant wealthy knows no bounds. I wonder if these activists can be sued for wrongful death or disability due to having one of these preventable diseases.
Identification and characteristics of vaccine refusers (pdf )March 2009 (US: West Coast and Mid West groups).
It’s an interesting enough study. However, given that so many parents think that they have done their research, I don’t know how amenable they would be to more information associated with sources that they distrust or disdain.
The problem is science education. Most people have very little understanding of the scientific method and even less knowledge of the cognitive shortcomings we all share as human beings, such as confusing correlation with causation, misunderstanding regression to the mean, selective memory (confirmation bias, especially), and the need for control groups.
Personally, as I’ve said before, I think the problem is even worse among the highly educated and affluent because they consider themselves “better” than that and can’t believe that their “personal observations” could possibly mislead them. Oh, sure, those uneducated hicks can be misled by their personal experience, but not them! They’re college-educated! Some of them even have MDs or PhDs! They can figure out anything by themselves if they put their minds to it, particularly with the help of the University of Google. Couple that with a distrust and misunderstanding of science, and you have the arrogance of ignorance writ large. After doing some reading on antivax websites, they think they know as much or more about immunology and vaccines as physicians and researchers who have spent their adult lives studying them and that they’ve come up with astounding observations that no one has ever thought of before. They cherry pick studies that they think support their viewpoint, ignoring the context and all the other studies that don’t support their view.
It’s not just vaccines, either. It’s evolution, “alternative medicine,” 9/11 Truther conspiracies, etc.
By comparison, scientists are the pictures of humility. Indeed, the entire reason for our constructing the edifice that is the scientific method is because we do know that, as human beings, we are very prone to fooling ourselves and letting our biases influence our results. The scientific method is designed to make that as difficult as possible. It’s a guard against self-delusion.
Dr. Gorski,
That can’t be right. I learned from pec that the scientific method is just a formalization of the way people naturally think.
In all seriousness, you’re spot on. It’s not just that such people don’t understand scientific and critical thinking. It’s that they think they do when they clearly don’t.
They have ‘pec syndrome.’
What would happen if someone were to deliberately send a child with measles to these playgrounds?
[...] READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY AT “SCIENCE BASED MEDICINE” Posted in Science Based Medicine. Tags: anti vaccination, Antivaccination lunacy, epidemic, MMR vaccine, vaccinations, vaccine scares, vaccines. [...]
Oregon allows the same nonsense “philosophical” vaccine exemption. My neo-hippie son and daughter-in-law in Portland have not vaccinated my grandchildren and they refuse to discuss it with me – and I’m a health care professional!
daniel, I think deliberately sending a person with one of these diseases to a playground is…so disgusting a thought I can’t adequately describe my reaction to the suggestion. The children are not the ones making these choices, and anyone who would deliberately sicken and kill them to make a point is…a type of person I can’t name without setting off all sorts of obscenity alarms and getting myself permanently removed from the comments section.
The outbreaks and epidemics will spread naturally, and once people get a sense of the real risk:benefit ratio of vaccination, the numbers will go back up again. You only need to hear and see a child with whooping cough once to make up your mind.
I wonder if the parents pick and choose the vaccines they have their children inocculated with and what they base that decision on. For example if they have their child vaccinated against polio, but not measles. That would make me speculate as to where they get their information and why do they make those choices.
I can’t imagine any parent who has seen a child suffer with any of the diseases we vaccinate for not going ahead and vaccinating their other children or even acting as an advocate for vaccination to other parents. If seems that apparant absence of these diseases has created an apathetic contempt for the severity of the disease process.
Maybe California should require a 90% compliance rate for a school to be open. Another possibility would be to require parents to sign a document acknowledging that they are deliberately exposing their children to a known risk, that their fears are without merit and that can be held responsible for any adverse consequences.
I see great opportunities for Darwin awards. Unfortunately the children are the ones that will suffer for the sins of their parents. As Pat Benatar said “Hell is for children.”
I have seen this idea elsewhere on sbm that abstaining from vaccination or selective vaccination equates to child abuse. Do you honestly believe that state legislatures condone an illegal activity? Are the other English-speaking nations (Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand) which do not have compulsory universal vaccination policies promoting child abuse?
In the US all states but 2 allow religious exemptions and 20 states allow philosophical exemptions. Exercising these legal exemption rights does not equate to child abuse.
It is doubtful that religious exemptions will ever be seriously challenged on a nationwide basis in the US. The supreme court has upheld the right of citizens to bear arms (handguns no less, talk about a threat to public health) so it is unlikely it will challenge the religious freedom upon which this country was founded.
In the US, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has paid out almost $2 Billion over 20 years to over 2,000 victims of vaccine injury. The fact is that where there are risks posed by a state mandated medical practice (such as vaccination), there will be legal opt-out procedures. Like it or not.
wales said “The fact is that where there are risks posed by a state mandated medical practice (such as vaccination), there will be legal opt-out procedures. Like it or not.”
What are they compared to the risks of the diseases?
It can’t be much since you noted only 2000 have been compensated for vaccine injury, versus the millions of vaccines administered over the past twenty years. Now if you go to Appendix G of the CDC Pink Book, you will find a list of cases and deaths of selected diseases going back at least fifty years. A quickie perusal shows that there were thousands of cases of mumps and pertussis (the latter is increasing into the tens of thousands per year), with a certain percentage resulting in death (fortunately less than 2000!).
By the way, I just finished reading this book that should help you put the information, especially the statistics, in to proper perspective:
http://www.amazon.com/Lies-Damned-Science-Scientific-Controversies/dp/0137155220/
“The issue is whether or not it is good practice to pay appropriate consideration to the careful and transparent recommendations from experts or instead to rely upon dubious sources or the vagaries of information on the internet.”
Perhaps you could help me with the vagaries of some information I have found on the internet.
The CDC’s Pink Book states that the measles death rate in the pre-vaccine era was about 450 annually (out of 4 million disease cases annually).
I have seen another statistic floating around, in three separate places (albeit from the same source, Dr. Paul Offit) that the pre-vaccine era measles death rate was 3,000 annually. Dr. Offit does not make any reference citations in these 3 sources: New York Times article “Fatal Exemption” January, 2007; the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Vaccine Education Center webstite and Dr. Offit’s book “Vaccines: What You Should Know”
Can anyone tell me where he is getting this 3,000 number? A 600% difference is quite statistically significant.
Oops… I said
It seems I did not go down far enough on this page:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/G/cases&deaths.pdf
It seems that for Hepatitis A the average number of deaths in around a hundrend, and for Hepatitis B it is around a thousand. Plus before the varicella vaccine, chicken pox averaged around a hundred deaths per year.
Also, measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, tetanus and haemophilus influenzae type b can all cause permanent injury at a rate per case higher than their death rates.
That is much more than 2000 in a twenty year span. So I have a feeling that the vaccines are much much much safer than the diseases!
wales said
Have you considered writing Dr. Offit?
Are these ignorant people also refusing tetanus shots for their children (and themselves)?
Great idea, I’ll do that. I just figured that a number at such variance with historical data being bounced around by a vaccine expert would be easy to verify in other sources and known by other infectious disease experts at sbm.
Good question khan, about adults being up to date on their vaccinations. Since vaccine induced immunity wanes over time, right? And not just for tetanus.
Where’s the outrage about all the unvaccinated and undervaccinated parents, grandparents and other adults who are running about undervaccinated?
Regarding National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program mentioned above, 2,000 is only the cases awarded compensation. Just under 13,000 cases have been filed. About 7,000 have been adjudicated (2,000+ awarded compensation; 4,000+ dismissed) The remaining 5,000+ are part of the Omnibus Autism Proceedings.
The NVICP only considers cases for certain specific types of injury, hence many cases are dismissed if they don’t fit those parameters.
Also see the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) statistics. As a passive surveillance system, it is widely acknowledged that VAERS is subject to substantial underreporting.
You don’t need to die from the measles to be badly affected by them.
waley,
Just wait a few years and you’ll see what the death rates from measles and other preventable diseases are.
yes, as measles reemerges due to waning immunity and increasing numbers of the population become high-risk susceptibles, (infants and adults), there will be more deaths.
adults, better make sure you’re up to date on your vaccinations.
daniel, the same could be said of vaccines
waley,
You really are stupid. Those that will be disabled and die are the ones in the unvaccinated groups. Those that have waning immunity will have a mild or subclinical form of the disease.
wales said
What are the affects of vaccines? How do they compare to the several thousands of injuries from measles, mumps, rubella, haemophilus influenzae, varicella, hepatitis, pertussis, diphtheria, tetanus and polio over the past twenty years (by the way there was an outbreak of polio in Minnesota less than five years ago)?
You do understand that there is no real evidence that vaccines have anything to do with autism. Right?
I don’t know what peer reviewed journals you’re reading Einstein, but a 2003 Vaccine article states this about measles:
“Antibody titres in vaccinated individuals are subject to substantial waning, which may not only result in typical measles, but also in susceptibility to a milder or subclinical form of infection.”
Typical measles is still a threat to vaccinated individuals experiencing waning immunity. I’ll try to dig up a citation.
BTW, there appears to be an inverse relationship between the number of insults lobbed and IQ on this site.
Also, from reading this: http://www.slate.com/id/2215128/ … it looks like the “treatment” young Colton Snyder got from Bradstreet was worse than any vaccine!
Chris, I am aware of the polio cases in the Amish community in Minnesota. I am also aware that the virus the children were carrying was derived from the oral polio vaccine.
Wow, don’t know anything about chelation, looks pretty bad. VAERS also has some horrifying statistics and symptoms of children becoming very ill from vaccination.
wales said
Which is why there are boosters. The MMR was introduced in 1971, and many adults may be susceptible to measles (like a Pennsylvania man who only had one as a kid, and now he and two of his unvaccinated children have measles).
Why is that bad? Doesn’t that indicate that herd immunity must be maintained with a highly vaccinated population to protect those whose immunity wanes?
waley,
Highly unlikely that a vaccinated person with waning immunity would get typical measles. A forme fruste is the most likely scenario. You obviously know nothing of medicine. I hope you don’t find that insulting and make my IQ drop. Pretty soon I could be on par with an antivaccinationist.
Chris, yes boosters are necessary for adults now. But it is unlikely we will see the high vaccination coverage rates we see in children as there is no enforcement (such as school entry requirements).
Back to the polio for a moment, quite an irony that unvaccinated children acquired polio from vaccinated individuals, huh?
wales said
One of the first things you learn in a basic statistics class is that worst way to get a statistical group is the self-selected survey. VAERS is a self-selected set of data and is not considered as a definite source of vaccine reactions. What it can do is show trends for study, but that is it. Oddly enough one of the trends it showed was that there was an increase of reports after lawyers got involved! See:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/117/2/387
So I would take the statement of “horrifying statistics” on VAERS with a large grain of salt.
What you need to do is get real data from reliable sources. Then you need to do a real risk assessment of the vaccine reactions to the disease. This is why the USA switched from the oral polio vaccine to the IPV.
I believe the authors of the Vaccine article were WHO scientists. Quick, you’d better inform them of your forme fruste theory before they spread more misinformation.
I’ll get their names for you.
Chris, are you saying that the VAERS reports submitted by physicians and nurses are inaccurate?
Taken from the VAERS website:
“The majority of VAERS reports are sent in by vaccine manufacturers (42%) and health care providers (30%). The remaining reports are obtained from state immunization programs (12%), vaccine recipients (or their parent/guardians, 7%) and other sources (9%). Vaccine recipients or their parents or guardians are encouraged to seek the help of their health care professional in filling out the VAERS form. “
The problem with VAERS is that all it shows is that someone reported that something happened after vaccination. It doesn’t show a causal relationship. For that, you have to compare a group of vaccinated to a group of unvaccinated people.
waley,
If they are saying what you think they are saying, then they are full of crap and I don’t care if they are WHO scientists. More likely they are saying what I am saying and you are simply misinterpreting. I have an idea. Why don’t you apply to med school, go through the curriculum and come back and discuss with us and shows us dumb docs the light?
The other problems with VAERS is that anyone can submit to it, and there is very little checking about the accuracy. Indeed, Dr. Laidler, in order to prove a point, once submitted a report that a vaccine turned him into the Incredible Hulk:
http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/14/
Another parent, not even in the U.S., submitted a report that vaccines had turned his daughter into Wonder Woman:
http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/?p=342
It’s also hugely distorted by litigation:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/01/how_vaccine_litigation_distorts_the_vaer.php
The bottom line is that VAERS can’t be used for incidence or prevalence data over time, and it certainly can’t be reliably used to determine correlation, much less causation. It’s not meant for that. It’s meant to be the “canary in the coalmine,” to be very sensitive to possible vaccine reactions but not very specific. Unfortunately, antivaxers take advantage of that and use sheer numbers of reports as “evidence” that there’s a problem. It’s meaningless, as VAERS reports fluctuate with the news and litigation, with lawyers intentionally trying to get parents to file reports and news reports about Jenny McCarthy making parents wonder and report their child’s autism to the database as a “vaccine reaction.”
Lately, they’ve been having a field day abusing VAERS reports for the Gardasil vaccine:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=98
BTW, Are these WHO scientists recommending we stop vaccinating?
I found some interesting VAERS data on the OPV here:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5201a1.htm
I added the bolding.
weing said
Actually, wales could benefit from just a basic statistics course. Checking the online catalog of my local community college, it is offered at night and is a 100 level math course. It just needs basic 9th grade algebra.
Though that may not help wales. He seems to have a set agenda and is cherry picking and highlighting the information that he thinks shows vaccines are dangerous. When shown that it does not come close to supporting his position he shifts and gets even more vague.
A closed mind like wales’ is a fascinating and frustrating thing to come across. But my patience is exhausted, and I shall ignore him from now on.
Umm, wales, I’m an adult who takes great pains to encourage other adults to get their booster shots, and I assure you all of my immunizations are up to date. Where’s the outrage about undervaccinated adults? Oh, there’s plenty. But it’s just all the more tragic when innocent children pay the price of their parents’ ignorance.
So this statement on the VAERS website “The majority of VAERS reports are sent in by vaccine manufacturers (42%) and health care providers (30%). The remaining reports are obtained from state immunization programs (12%), vaccine recipients (or their parent/guardians, 7%) and other sources (9%).” must be inaccurate then? Really just a bunch of lawyers posing as vaccine manufacturers and physicians and public health officials? Hmmm.
By googling parts of the quoted paper, I found it being flouted by an antivax guy who posts here as “just the facts” (just like wales he tended to be very selective of the facts, cherry picking… so I also ignore him). Anyway here it is, cut and pasted from PubMed:
Vaccine. 2003 Nov 7;21(31):4597-603.
Modelling measles re-emergence as a result of waning of immunity in vaccinated populations.Mossong J, Muller CP.
Laboratoire National de Santé, P.O. Box 1102, L-1011 Luxembourg, Luxembourg. joel.mossong@lns.etat.lu
Here is the abstract, I am sure that the academic doctors here can get the full paper:
Hmmm… it looks like weing was correct with the milder form… also note the interesting bits I highlight with bolding.
Also, this was a mathematical model, not an observational study. What they did was use computer tools that simulate disease transmission and put in parameters to explore the possibility of disease transmission. If you read the last paragraph of the abstract, you will see that they need better estimates for the parameters (which are the variables they plug into their computer model).
I was a PICU nurse for almost 20 years in California. During this time I have cared for 2 children who died from Whooping Cough despite care from a world class PICU. I have cared for children with measles pneumonia, and measles encephalopathy. I have also cared for children with chicken pox encephalopathy (one child had it twice!), One of my co-worker’s 5 year old niece died of chicken pox and one of our residents was severely disfigured and needed plastic surgery from the case of chicken pox she caught from a patient. I have stated on this board before that Hib used to be our bread and butter before a vaccination was created. The one thing these children had in common was that they were unvaccinated.
I attended school with a girl who had paralysis from a case of polio she contracted as a child. I thought my generation would be the last with all of the side effects and deaths from these once commonplace diseases. Jenny McCarthy and Jeni Barret are taking us back to1950 and the ‘good old days’ when many children died or became deaf, blind, became physically and/or mentally handicapped from these diseases.
I remember when nurses and residents used to sit around and compare their hepatitis B infections. It was assumed that as a nurse or resident, there was a good chance you would come down with it at some time during your career. Many died. When the vaccination was created it was immediately embraced, until the advent of HIV. A recombinant DNA version was created and I don’t know of many nurses or doctors refuse.
I’m afraid that as doctors and nurses forget about the deaths and disabilities suffered by the generation before mine, they to will be swayed by the idiots like Jenny McCarthy and her ilk, after all, I already have problems convincing them to take a (free) yearly flu vaccination.
BTW all of MY vaccinations (including pertussis) are up to date, AND I get a yearly flu vaccination and make sure my family does the same.
http://www.bayshorepediatricsblog.com/2009/01/pertussis-is-back/
There were 3 cases of whooping cough in this small school district in Wisconsin. Also follow the link to an Hib meningitis death of an unvaccinated child in Minnesota.
I read the 2006 Goodman & Nordin article. I fail to understand how a litigation rate of <1% distorts the VAERS statistics. Since their study only analyzed data through 2003, I conducted a quick and dirty analysis (admittedly hasty, simplistic and without the aid of SAS) of the VAERS data by searching the data from 1990 to 2008, limiting the search to the word “litigation”.
Shown below are the number of times “litigation” appears in the TOTAL annual number of VAERS reports. There is a spike in the 2002-2004 period, but even during that peak period litigation references are well below 1%. (Even Goodman & Nordin’s peak number of 262 for 2002 is less than 1% of the total annual cases reported). Post-2003, the number of litigation cases has not increased in step with the increasing number of VAERS reports but has decreased dramatically.
2008 37 of 30,018 reports
2007 26 of 26,440 reports
2006 36 of 17,440 reports
2005 7 of 15,775 reports
2004 96 of 15,465 reports
2003 107 of 16,851 reports
2002 169 of 27,164 reports
2001 23 of 25,970 reports
2000 5 of 23,250 reports
1999 – 1990 Less than 5 times annually
It’s true, anyone CAN report to VAERS, but who actually DOES report? As stated on the VAERS website and in the Goodman & Nordin report: “The majority of VAERS reports are sent in by vaccine manufacturers (42%) and health care providers (30%). The remaining reports are obtained from state immunization programs (12%), vaccine recipients (or their parent/guardians, 7%) and other sources (9%).”
Chris, regarding the Mossong & Muller paper, yes, that’s the one I referenced. In the body of the paper the authors reveal that they omitted typical measles from their model, while at the same time stating that individuals with waning immunity are susceptible to typical or classical measles. BTW, you didn’t highlight this part of the abstract “Interestingly, in a population with a high proportion of vaccinees, vaccine-modified measles and classical measles would occur essentially in the same age groups.” Talk about cherry-picking. By all means read the paper yourself, it’s very interesting.
Here’s a link to a recent article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about pertussis outbreaks:
http://www.ajc.com/health/content/metro/stories/2009/03/22/whooping_cough_vaccine.html
waley,
You still haven’t answered my question regarding the Mossong paper. Are they recommending that we stop vaccinating?
Another affluent area — Boulder, CO — has had whooping cough problems:
http://www.bouldercounty.org/health/hpe/iz/vaccines/pertussis/outbreak12-05.htm
“A whooping cough outbreak began in the end of 2005 and is still going on. ” (Boulder County Public Health)
Last I heard, Boulder has three Waldorf schools. These schools promote a culture that discourages immunization (as well as science in general).
read it yourself “doc”
Pertussis outbreaks among fully vaccinated children are indeed interesting.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution article (cited above) of March 22 states “Of the 18 students in the recent Cobb cluster, 17 were properly immunized with five doses of DTaP vaccine, which protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, health officials said.”
It further states “Despite the study’s test results, some doctors refused to believe parents when they said that their children had pertussis. “More than one said to the parent: ‘Well, your child couldn’t have had pertussis, your child’s been vaccinated,” Gabel said, adding that the department is working to educate physicians.”
And “Dr. Walter Orenstein, a leading vaccine expert, was surprised to hear that the Cobb cluster involved young students who would have received a pertussis booster as they entered school.
“The real issue is what the rate of vaccine failure is,” said Orenstein, a former CDC official who recently became deputy director for vaccine preventable diseases at the Gates Foundation in Seattle.
It’s possible, Orenstein said, that the sick children were simply among the expected 15 percent of people immunized that the vaccine fails to protect.”
Ignore wales, he can’t even understand the stuff he is referencing!
waley,
I did. The question was rhetorical. Your posts have the smell of a sleazebag lawyer with an obvious agenda. Regarding pertussis, Orenstein is correct regarding what the real issue is. And you interpret this to mean we shouldn’t vaccinate? Maybe the homeopaths will come up with a much more powerful homeopathic vaccine, shaken, not stirred. No! Forget I even mentioned that.
Wrong again, weing. Apparently your olfactory sense has been overwhelmed by a more pungent aroma.
Now that HCN has spoken the sbm “ignore” signal has been emitted. Closed mind(s) indeed.
The sbm dismissal repertoire is growing thin. Commentators who don’t agree 100% with compulsory universal vaccination are either 1) laughed at if they supply references to non-mainstream information 2) hectored with insulting remarks and/or accused of cherry-picking if they supply references to peer reviewed journals.
You are all cherry-picking. Everyone has an agenda and uses applicable reference citations to support their agenda.
Hello, “just the facts”.
BTW weing, you kicked off the comments on April 1 with a remark worthy of a true “sleazebag” lawyer.
waley,
I knew it. But BS smells the same. So, based on what you’ve posted and your understanding of the the pertussis outbreaks and the Mossong paper, you are concluding that we should vaccinate? That’s great. You have proven me wrong.
My perspective continues to be that those who wish to vaccinate should do so and that those who do not wish to have the right not to (in most states). There are risks to vaccinating and to not vaccinating.
Here’s one way of looking at the issue, from the Encyclopedia of Bioethics – 3rd Edition by Douglas S. Diekema in the entry entitled “Public Health Issues in Pediatrics”
“Parents who refuse immunization on behalf of their children may have valid and important reasons for doing so. While most mandatory vaccines are effective and safe, a small possibility of adverse reactions exists.
In fact, it has been argued that any successful immunization program will inevitably create a situation, as the disease becomes rare, where the individual parent’s choice is at odds with society’s needs.”
With regard to “BS”, you may characterize my comments in any derogatory manner you like, but your personal opinion does not alter the fact that my comments have been factual.
Here’s another comment with which I concur from a 2000 Editorial by Gregory A. Poland MD and Robert M. Jacobson MD of the Mayo Clinic Vaccine Research Group:
“….our own view is that the role of the government is to inform, educate, recommend, and even provide incentives for immunization—but not to mandate without exclusion acceptance among the civilian population. Informed refusal must remain an acceptable choice in a free democracy, and the culture of informed consent, with both religious and philosophical exemption, must be maintained.”
Quoting Gorski:
“The evidence is clear and overwhelming – the risks from vaccines, while non-zero, are statistically tiny, while the risks from the diseases they prevent are significant and well documented.”
Moreover, the true risks of vaccines have no resemblance to the mythical, fictitious creations of the anti-vaccine lobby. And they don’t include autism.
The future California outbreaks alluded to here, and which are sure to occur, have already started in mild form: (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5708a3.htm).
The problem of this empowerment-at-the-cost-of-reason, so expertly outlined above, is a real phenomenon that I see daily in my pediatric practice in NYC. The pockets of under-vaccination are likely to find their origins in those communities where, ironically, parents are well-educated and resource-rich. We’re already seeing it happen: (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/health/02measles.html?scp=2&sq=measles&st=cse)
nor mandate seatbelts, or helmets or….
take your pick.
But when the shit hits the fan and they are in the hospital me and my colleagues and my hospitals take care of them, and all to often they have insufficient or no funds to cover even a fraction of their health care expenses.
So me and mine get to pay for you and yours.
I am waiting for one, just one, of these, for lack of better better term, libertarians types, to say doc, my choices have lead to this cancer or injury or whatever, and I can’t pay, and I am heading home to suffer of die.
Fine. Do not get a vaccine and do not vaccinate your kids. But have courage of your convictions and stay away when illness hits. If you want freedom from vaccine it should come with the freedom to suffer the consequences.
I know it will never happen. They are all sound and fury.
Vaccination is NOT a healthy choice. The biological and toxicological hazards in vaccines are not synonymous with nutrition. In fact, vaccines are antagonist to good health. Vaccines cause diseases to non-diseased individuals.
Th1Th2
What on earth does vaccination have to do with nutrition?
What diseases do vaccines cause?
Th1,
Where did you ever come up with that nonsense? Do you think all the diseases prevented by vaccines are a healthy choice? How will you protect against them?
Oh, goody. An actual antvaccinationist has arrived to play, spouting the same nonsense that antivaccinationists like to spew.
Indeed. I think at some level they must have some vague inkling that they’re taking advantage of herd immunity and that they’d be totally screwed if vaccination rates did fall to the point where herd immunity breaks down. They also do not care much, if at all, about the rights of the children who depend on herd immunity because they have contraindications to being vaccinated or have various immunodeficiencies. They assert that their children should not be barred from public school on the basis of being unvaccinated but do not consider how their unvaccinated children put others at risk.
The topic has been how affluent individuals (who can surely afford to pay for medical care) are exercising vaccine exemptions, but Dr. Crislip has turned to non-affluent populations and their health care decisions. Aren’t the non-affluent populations generally highly vaccinated in the US?
What about seat belts? Why don’t school buses have seat belts? They do in Europe. Good question. And what about handguns? Surely they are a (legal) threat to public health? My point is that where there is no financial incentive to mandate certain safety policies, they will not be mandated.
But if financial incentive was the be-all, then all these doctors would NOT push vaccines–one can make much more money when the population is suffering from infectious diseases. Why take the back door route and administer vaccines if one wants to make money?
Vaccines are plenty lucrative. Why weaken the productivity of the working population (taking time off for illness) when vaccines are just as if not more lucrative?
Hey guys, what’s up with the lock-up on some of my comments? I know where you’re going with this, go for it!
BTW, I didn’t intend to implicate physicians as the money-grubbers. The vast majority of physicians are hard working and underpaid. Which I’m sure applies to the bloggers at sbm. Vaccines are most lucrative for the manufacturers, and other sundry affiliates.
Well…..I guess comments are closed over at Gorski’s Feb 2 blog. Funny how I just missed the deadline, I was trying to respond to Chris’ comments of April 1. Are quotes from the Pediatrics journal somehow controversial or damaging?
I get the message, skeptics are only welcome here if they agree with the status quo. A two-way dialogue would be more interesting and beneficial rather than what amounts to a monologue via different contributors. I thought that factual dialogue was the intention of this site. Shall I post my Pediatrics response here or will I get locked out again?
Freedom of speech is indeed a rare commodity in some venues.
You would have to be very affulent indeed to be able to absorb the hit of a major medical illness and its aftermath, like measles encephalitis, even with insurance.
from the conclusion of Identification and characteristics of vaccine refusers
BMC Pediatrics 2009, 9:18 doi:10.1186/1471-2431-9-18
Article URL http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2431/9/18
“A previous study found that the consequences of not being immunized can be serious. One retrospective study investigated a cohort of 3 to 18 year old Colorado school children from 1987- 1998[1] to see if individuals and communities experienced adverse events from personal exemption to immunization. The study found that children with personal (non-medical) exemptions to vaccines were 22 times more likely to be infected with measles and 5.9 times more likely to be infected with pertussis. They also found that unvaccinated children in day care, who already have an increased susceptibility to disease, are up to 60 times more likely to acquire the disease than their vaccinated peers. It found that refusers seem to be able to transmit disease to vaccinated individuals when the two groups are mixed in a school or during an outbreak. Similarly, another study that looked comprehensively at the health consequences of religious and philosophical exemption from immunization laws[29] in a cohort of 5-19 year olds nation-wide from 1985-1992 found that refusers were 35 times more likely than vaccinated individuals to contract measles from 1985-1992 in the United States. A third study analyzed the relationship between state-level rates of nonmedical exemptions at school entry and pertussis incidence data for individuals aged 18 years or younger.[30] They found that an increased pertussis incidence was associated with an easier granting of exemptions (incidence rate ratio=1.53; 95% confidence interval, 1.10-2.14) and the availability of personal belief exemptions (incidence rate ratio=1.48; 95% confidence interval, 1.03-2.13).”
Probably my single favorite thing about reading the comments here is when a woo-pusher gets worked up, enters a bunch of comments at once, triggers the spam guards, gets paranoid that they’ve been blocked, accuses the SBM bloggers of censorship, and then refuses to apologize or acknowledge their error when all their comments show up. It’s a wonderful display of their willingness to jump into “OMG CONSPIRACY!!1!” mode.
Still waiting for my comment to show up. I will be happy to acknowledge my misunderstanding if/when they do. We all make mistakes, even skeptics.
If you’re referring to me as a “woo-pusher”, what exactly is the “woo” I’m pushing?
BTW, I am generally not a believer in conspiracy theories. But it is odd that I have entered multiple comments here which are all getting posted, yet the one at Gorski’s Feb 2 blog still hasn’t appeared.
Perhaps the reference citation is being reviewed for rebuttal.
Well, just in the last batch of comments, you’ve suggested that vaccines are lucrative because they make plenty of money yet don’t keep people out of work. So, would that me the military-industrial-medical complex optimizing profit and productivity? Actually, with your paranoia about your delayed comments, I guess that would be the military-industrial-medical-blogging complex. We can’t very well let any old pseudononymous commenter out the grand conspiracy, can we?
Your assumptions about my thought processes are inaccurate. But I still don’t see the “woo” factor. Just an attempt to pigeonhole a skeptic as a paranoid and rabid antivaccinationist, justifying subsequent attack or dismissal.
That’s because I hadn’t gotten around to checking the spam filters, which were probably triggered because you were posting under a different name (“just the facts”) using the same e-mail address. Sorry, wales, but I have a day job. If I hadn’t happened to see your comment, chances are I wouldn’t have checked the spam filters until sometime tonight and you’d be crying “suppression” and insinuating that we are somehow purposely not letting you post.
So, just for everyone’s information, in case you hadn’t figured it out yet: “just the facts” and “wales” are in fact one and the same person.
Yes, I have resorted to a pseudonym. In recent comments to Crislip’s Aug 14, 2008 blog JTF was tarred and feathered by the coterie of usual suspects on this site and inaccurately labeled a “concern troll” (among other things).
One of the consequences of this was that JTF was compelled to assume an alter ego in order to maintain objectivity.
sorry for the dupe, more evidence of my “paranoia” and PC problems.
I sniffed him out with his first post. He’s still using the same technique of self deception where he considers the benefits of vaccination on one side equal to the benefits of non-vaccination on the other. His position is the superior one, right in the middle.
I make no claims to being superior to anyone. Vaccination is a complex issue and a difficult decision for parents. I simply believe they have the right to choose without public vilification.
Well the two are not equivalent. One is a medical approach and the other a legal approach. If you want epidemics controlled by attorneys, fine. That will not stop the disease. The disease will ‘vilify’ the idiots.
my “dupe” comment above refers to my pseudonym comments, still awaiting moderation.
weing, medical and legal are just two aspects of the same issue. They would not be related if vaccines were not compulsory (as they are not in Canada, Australia, UK, New Zealand, Germany, etc.)
You are deluding yourself by making them out to be equivalent. They are not the same as picking the color of a car. The consequences for the individual and society are different.
thanks for removing the spam filters. my apologies for jumping to conclusions.
weing, I didn’t say they were equivalent, but related. I understand that this is a medical site so you’re right in one sense, it’s not really the place to discuss the legal aspects. I got off on the legal tangent because of the references to sueing people for disease outbreaks and for others’ equating vaccine exemption with child abuse.
Gorski said: I think at some level they must have some vague inkling that they’re taking advantage of herd immunity and that they’d be totally screwed if vaccination rates did fall to the point where herd immunity breaks down.
What’s his name (Sears?) of the revised schedule, actually says that. He acknowledges that his fans are free-riding on the herd, and that if too many of them do it, they’re screwed.
But point that out to the parasites on the Motheringdotcom forums and the harpies will rend your liver and cast you out.
As a wild idea, have people opt for EITHER alternative health care OR standard medical care in their health insurance plans, with no crossover. If you want the insurance to pay for the homeopathy and live blood analysis, it won’t pay for antibiotics and standard lab tests. (changing systems allowed once a year, at the annual sign-up).
great idea for a fascist country. you don’t like having choices?
I will expect you defend my choice of plastic instead of paper or a green recycling bag in the grocery store.
in case you’re wondering about the pseudonym matter it was a not too subtle perky skeptic comment that tipped me off
weing, it’s a free country
I promise this is my last comment on the subject of political freedom (unless provoked of course). But how far should we go with coercion and compulsion for public health purposes? Some people believe that homosexuality should be outlawed because HIV is a public health threat.
I don’t own a gun, drive a SUV or smoke cigarettes, but I uphold the right of others to partake of any of those activities. I am very bothered by the gun issue, but what can be done about that constitution of ours?
Wren,
Because vaccines are physiological threat to good health, they induce diseases they supposedly prevent. Vaccines are not placebos, they contain the physiologic evidence of the disease. So what is there to prevent, when the non-diseased has already been injected with the disease?
oh BTW, the other pseudonym tip off was the self-referential citation to the other blog. you could have just referenced the original journal paper.
nice editing of my comment.
oh the goings-on behind the scenes…..unsuspecting mortals are easily duped aren’t they? very shakespearean.
Weing,
Vaccines do not prevent diseases. They are designed to induce diseases, obviously. Feed a malnourished kid with good food and the kid will survive. However, if you vaccinate them, the kid will deteriorate and even die.
David,
Nonsense? This is what nonsense is:
“Currently available vaccines have largely been developed
empirically, with little or no understanding on how they
activate the immune system.”http://www.who.int/immunization/documents/Elsevier_Vaccine_immunology.pdf
Now, refute this fact.
Wow,
A real antivaccinationist idiot who thinks nutrition will protect against measles. The arrogance of ignorance is truly amazing.
Empirical Medicine works. What’s to refute? Smallpox is gone because of it.
You have nothing to say that’s why you are throwing invectives instead. Amazing.
I told you that there is nothing to refute as empirical medicine works and has worked despite not knowing how. Smallpox has been wiped off the face of the earth. Unless some bioweapons labs still harbor the virus. How dense are you?
So that is your science-based answer? You better be off to Las Vegas instead and roll the dice. The smallpox vaccine was responsible for the surge of epidemic and case mortality of smallpox in the Philippines FYI. Why? Because the smallpox vaccine, physiologically, causes the disease itself (progressive and generalized vaccinia). If I were you I would never guess.
Thanks for the answer. Very dense indeed. The disease is gone. Get it? Gone. No one said it was a safe vaccine. Believe me, I still have the scars on my arms from my vaccinations as a child. It was still a helluva lot milder than smallpox. It did the job. Sure, I’ll go to Vegas if you make sure I get loaded dice.
Yes, indeed, you’ve gotten the milder form of smallpox, congratulations.
That was the point. Maybe we can send you as a volunteer to the bioweapons lab. Put you in isolation, well fed and expose you to the real virus and observe how you do with your well fed theory protecting you. I think the Russians may be agreeable to test it out for you.
You don’t have to look further. They have been giving biohazards to children a long time ago. Read this:
“Biological hazards (biohazards, biohazardous materials) are exempt from coverage under the HCS if the only hazard they pose is biological. However, if the material also possesses physical or health hazard, then an MSDS is required.
Examples of biohazards include microbes, anthrax, VACCINES, and cell cultures.” http://www.ilpi.com/msds/faq/partb.html
So stop dreaming and educate yourself.
Th1Th2,
Do you even know what an MSDS is? Do you honestly think the quoted passage supports your claim that “they” have been givine biohazards to children?
If so, you’re a dolt. Go back to your natural fallacy Mother Earth counter-culture. Try not to win a Darwin award.
Surprised? Don’t take my word for it. If you have any violent complaints, write them up. Ain’t your mama.
Or better yet, refute that fact than resorting to such childhood behaviour.
Surprised? Don’t take my word for it. If you have any violent complaints, write them up. Ain’t your mama.
Or better yet, refute that fact than resorting to such childish behaviour.
I knew it. You are a broken record. You are too bent on refuting. You should try understanding instead, but that’s obviously beyond your capabilities. Till then you are condemned to wallow in your own ignorance.
I thought this site lives to its name, unfortunately, its overflowing with ad hominem. What a waste.
That is exactly right Th1Th2.
When confronted with something they have no answer for, they resort to the good old ad hom for restitution.
One thing is for sure, they truly love to read themselves on the internet. And so intellectual too.
Yes, it is hard to discuss things with folks who have closed minds, argue by blatant assertion and just make crap up. Even wales/”just the facts” did not understand that the papers he referenced did not say what he inferred.
Still waiting for someone, anyone to post the real actual factual scientific evidence in a journal I can find in my local medical school library that shows that:
1) The MMR is worse than measles, mumps and rubella.
2) The DTaP is worse than diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.
3) The Hib is worse than haemophilus influenzae type b.
Oh, yeah… Th1Th2 (Thing 1 and Thing 2?), what kind of biohazard do the toxins produced by pertussis and tetanus compare to the actual vaccines? Do you think you live in a sterile bubble where you will never encounter a free virus or bacterium? If you do choose to answer, I will ignore all responses that are void of real evidence.
HCN,
Fascinating. You are looking for scientific evidence and yet you don’t even know what Th1 and Th2 stand for? It’s not surprising a lot of people talk about vaccines but lacks the knowledge on basic human immunology. You just gave me a clue. Vaccines are only worth discussing its toxic side-effects and other sequelae. You can check each vaccine package inserts and you will find out what you are looking for.
Huh? The papers I referenced stated that due to vaccine induced immunity replacing naturally acquired immunity (for measles) there are new groups of susceptibles (infants and adults). These new groups of high risk susceptibles are a by-product of universal vaccination practices. The conclusion is that universal vaccination is not as universally beneficial or benign as it is purported to be. What is it that you think I misunderstand?
You don’t even know what an ad hominem attack is. I didn’t say your arguments are idiotic because you are an idiot. That would be an ad hominem. I said that you are moron because your arguments, after analysis are moronic. It is just the obvious conclusion. That is a crucial difference.
wales,
Everything. You start out implying that having acquired immunity by having the disease is preferable to having vaccine induced immunity. That means the disease is preferable to the vaccine. Then you imply that if they didn’t receive the vaccine they would be somehow resistant but because they got the vaccine they have now become susceptible. Again, they would have to have had to have had the disease in order not to be susceptible now. Then you assume that someone with a waning immunity will have as severe an illness as someone with no immunity whatsoever. That’s because you don’t know medicine but it’s still a wrong assumption. Then you draw your false conclusion that whether you immunize or not is simply a preference with no consequences. The more logical conclusion is don’t expect to be rid of measles anytime soon with our current vaccination schedule.
There are 3 things you need to know before you scream like a baby.
1. Ad hominem
2. Character assassination
3. Generalization
4. and your favorite, Rationalization.
Wiki might help. Try it.
Th,
You can call me an idiot too if I say that nicotene gum and patches are worse than smoking because of all the toxic effects noted on the package inserts.
Vaccines and smoking are NOT man’s physiologic needs, kwim? You are just comparing a poison with another poison. Its that the best analogy you can come up with?
You mean diseases like measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox, etc and smoking are not man’s physiologic needs don’t you?
I said clearly, vaccines and smoking are NOT man’s physiologic needs. What is it that you don’t understand?
I don’t understand how anyone could consider the diseases mentioned to be physiologic needs.
You mean vaccine-induced diseases? You tell me.
“Man’s physiologic needs”? Like typing on the Intarwebs?
Zillions of vaccines have been given for decades. The percentage of serious adverse reactions has been tiny. Lightning strikes are more common.
Few things in medicine kick ass like vaccines. Best preventive product to date. We need more of ‘em.
I was thinking (always problematic) about the measles vaccine model’s. Models are entertaining, but like the drake equation, what you decide to plug in as your conditions leads to widely varying results. I have seen a lot of id models over the years, and I can’t say thy have been all that helpful with reality.
At least the climate models can compare to reality and see how close they are.
An Hypothesis
1) infections tend to cull out the most susceptible, but people may be genetically predisposed to die from some infections (pubmed toll, polymorphism, infection to see many example of this interesting, if young, field)
As a result of vaccines there is an increased population of people more likely to die or have complications from vaccine preventable illnesses. 50 years of no culling in the US
2) infections in populations may attenuate their virulence, as probably happened with syphilis after it arrived in europe. If the infections kills people too fast, it cant spread, so organisms have to balance virulence/lethality with infectivity to help maximize spread.
A partially vaccinated population would enhance infectivity and lethality, since opportunity for spread is decreased, the bug has to be more infectious/virulent to perpetuate.
I predict what will happen in California and in the Waldorf schools when there is an outbreak of measles or whooping cough it will
1) have a higher attack rate than historical controls
2) It will have a higher complication rate with more severe illness than historical controls
3) It will have a higher mortality rate than historical controls
someone who is way smarter with numbers than me needs to use these hypothesis to come up with a model of what may happen as vaccine rates decline.
this is of course a very simplified approach to a complicated issue
alternatively, I could just be talking out my butt. that’s the problem with models.
Dr Benway,
How could vaccines be the “best preventive product” when prevention means resistance from diseases? You don’t prevent diseases by injecting the physiologic evidence of the disease in the blood stream of a non-diseased, do you? So what’s the use of prevention when the idea behind vaccination per se is the inoculation of the physiologic evidence of the disease in the blood stream? Vaccines are not designed to prevent diseases but rather to transmit diseases.
Th1Th2
Are you for real? I’m not making a joke or anything. Some of the things you say just seem so contrary it’s almost as if you just enjoying poking a stick at the bee’s nest.
I mean, anyone who’s read about vaccines knows that the idea behind them is indeed injecting a weak or dead version of the virus for the body to fight/get to know. So ya, they do what you say. I suppose it’s like practice fighting to prepare for the real fight. Accidents happen and people get hurt during practice, but the alternative would be going into battle or a fight with no idea how to do it.
Are you actually saying lets not do any more practice?
aalonzo,
Exactly what I am saying. Vaccines are designed to introduce the disease to the immune system, so the body can recognize the vaccine-induced disease in preparation for the “real fight” (natural infection). So what’s your point?
No, proteins aren’t disease. They’re just proteins.
Disease is when you’re sick.
What do you mean they are “just proteins”? I assume you know that they are bacterial and viral antigens from extraneous diseases and these antigens will induce antigen-specific antibodies against the disease. Vaccine-derived immunity is the result of exposure to vaccine-induced diseases. Obviously, you haven’t read any vaccine package inserts that account myriad of post-vaccinal adverse reactions including vaccine-induced diseases.
No, vaccine-derived immunity is the result of exposure to antigens. Antigens are not diseases.
Dolt.
Antigens are the PHYSIOLOGIC evidence of the disease, for example HbsAg is to Hepatitis B, PRP Hib is to Hib disease. Vaccine-induced immunity is immunity against the disease and not the antigen.
What do you think of vaccines, PLACEBOS? Noob.
Not only are you wrong, you clearly don’t even understand the meaning of the words you’re using.
You cannot say anything because you will only contradict yourself. Next time, please educate yourself noob.
I have a PhD in molecular biology. I doubt you can even pronounce “PhD.”
Th1Th2,
If you were to eat a bowl of HBsAg, the acids in your stomach and the protease made by your pancreas would break it down into its constituent amino acids, which your body then would absorb as food. From your body’s point of view, oral HBsAg would look about the same as any other source of protein, such as a thick and delicious steak.
HBsAg isn’t a disease. It’s a protein.
My dear friend Weing: Sorry to interrupt the current dialogue. I confess I am suffering from sbm fatigue, but I have one more comment before I take a break. Your assumptions about my comprehension are inaccurate. And with regard to consequences, of course actions have consequences, some have unintended negative consequences (including mass vaccine induced immunity for measles, for which the remedy will be yet more vaccine boosters).
The proliferation of new vaccines in the past few decades and the burgeoning ACIP schedule ensure that there will be more scrutiny of vaccination by parents and continued resistance from some segments of the public. Not all of these exemptors are “woo pushers”. Rational people may question the justification for compulsory vaccination of millions of children every year with more new vaccines for diseases affecting relatively small percentages of the population. Hib, for example, the annual estimates for pre-vaccine morbidity run to around 20,000 (amounting to ½ of 1% of a birth cohort of 4 million). And HPV, etc.. Other diseases, like Measles had very high pre-vaccine morbidity and very low mortality and complication rates (<1%). Or Polio: “Up to 95% of all polio infections are inapparent or asymptomatic. Estimates of the ratio of inapparent to paralytic illness vary from 50:1 to 1,000:1 (usually 200:1)” [CDC’s Pink Book]. The more vaccines and doses that are added to the schedule, the more questioning will occur.
And many people ARE old enough to remember when measles and chicken pox were routine childhood experiences. My father-in-law also contracted Polio, with no paralysis.
I expect this will generate a spate of comments from others about the tragedies they witnessed with regard to these diseases, just keep in mind the statistical odds of those tragedies. For health care professionals who work in emergency rooms and infectious disease wards these odds take on greater significance. Of course cases of disease complication and mortality are tragic for the affected individuals. But so are the cases of vaccine injury. For those victims the odds of vaccine injury take on greater significance. I know sbm prefers to dismiss VAERS statistics because there is no proof of causation of vaccine injury, but conversely there is no proof that the statistics do NOT represent cases of vaccine injury, thus parents do consult these statistics. If you eliminate the 1% of litigation related cases, focus only on the 84% of cases reported by vaccine manufacturers, health care professionals and public health departments and allow a wide margin for the Incredible Hulk factor by dismissing the 16% of cases reported by parents and other sources (though I don’t believe that is justified) you are left with 24,914 VAERS reports for 2008 alone (more than the annual pre-vaccine cases of Hib of 20,000). Not all VAERS cases are life threatening, but many resulted in ER visits. Of course, this doesn’t take into consideration that VAERS as a passive surveillance system is subject to substantial underreporting. Some estimates state that less than 10% of vaccine injury cases are reported to VAERS.
When parents analyze the data and learn that the risks on both sides of the decision may be statistically insignificant, it’s not surprising that some arrive at a rational decision to abstain from vaccination or choose selective vaccination. When educated parents realize that the 1 to 2 page Vaccine Information Statements are written at a 5th to 7th grade reading level (according to an IOM report) and discover the discrepancies in risk disclosure between the VIS and the vaccine package insert, they become alarmed. There are legitimate reasons to question vaccine safety and to allow for choice rather than coercion.
I expect that you/someone will now attempt to poke holes in my comments and/or deride my intelligence. Have at it. I am not trying to win an argument or prove anything, I am pointing out some of the reasons for the reality of increasing rates of vaccine exemptions.
“I know sbm prefers to dismiss VAERS statistics because there is no proof of causation of vaccine injury, but conversely there is no proof that the statistics do NOT represent cases of vaccine injury, thus parents do consult these statistics.”
What can they truly learn from these statistics? As you say, they no more prove vaccine injury than they prove lack of vaccine injury – in other words they really do not add any information that can tell you anything about the risks of vaccines vs. the risks of disease.
Mark Twain said it best:”There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Dr Benway,
The HbsAg in the vaccine is not designed to be taken per orem nor it is a mucosal vaccine. I am quite amazed you missed that. Just like any parenteral (injectable) vaccines, they are designed to bypass the GI tract to avoid being destroyed by GI enzymes and protease. Instead, they are injected to the blood stream and the antigen, in this case, HbsAg, is taken up and processed by the cells.
FYI, Hepatitis B is a blood-borne disease and the presence of HbsAg is an indicator of Hepatitis B infection. The HbsAg-containing vaccine given to a newborn is the same as giving them the Hepatitis B disease.
Another example, does the presence of HIV antigen in the blood mean to you? Oh, I know, it’s just a protein. Nothing to worry about. Well, good luck with that.
So, if I boil some corn and give it to you to plant, it will grow?
So you are a PhD-turned farmer. Nice shift.
If you inject the boiled corn into your blood stream, then you are insane. It will not grow, but you will die of infection. Large protein molecules, foreign bodies and toxins are immunogenic causing adverse immune reactions.
You could try it so you would know what I am saying.
Why would you inject corn into anyone’s bloodstream? It would be insane to inject it. Would it be insane to expect it to grow if you planted it? I know, I know. It’s a really hard question but I have great faith in you.
Like I said, I am not a farmer. You are talking of organic proteins which are totally different from proteins found in vaccines. The proteins in the vaccines are genetically and chemically modified, stabilized and preserved. They were produced and grown in culture medium. Even though they were killed or inactivated (non-replicating) in the vaccine, the amount of the antigens (proteins) plus the addition of adjuvants are more than significant to induce resultant IMMUNOGENICITY. If you don’t know what that means, it means your immune system will react to the presenting antigen and produce symptoms specific for that antigen. For example, HbsAg will elicit symptoms of Hepatitis B disease because HbsAg is an indicator of Hepatitis B infection.
Now, how much more will it manifest if it were live vaccines?
It’s not a hard question, you just need some common sense and books to read.
To piggyback onto Dr. Crislip bit on computer modeling: I am a structural engineer. Many years ago I was involved in computer modeling for aircraft structures. This involved lots of data, lots of coordination to the various groups who provided the nodes that defined the structure, the mass of the materials, other properties of the material and the forces that would be applied.
After hours of computer time, some back and forth on the tweaks and changes of requirement, test models of the part was then made. It was then subjected to several forms of structural test inside several test rigs. The most spectacular can be found on youtube (look for wing box tests).
I would venture to say that we know more about the parameters used in structural computer modeling, than those that predict the disease outbreaks (for one thing, Young’s Modulus is not as likely to change as much as “vaccine uptake”). I would also venture to say that neither wales nor Th1Th2 would board a new airplane if it had only gone through computer testing and skipped the expensive structural testing.
(oh, and Dr. Crislip’s first entry here is directly tied to that concept: Alternative Flight)
Some recommended reading for anyone with an open mind:
Lies, Damned Lies, and Science
“If you don’t know what that means, it means your immune system will react to the presenting antigen and produce symptoms specific for that antigen. For example, HbsAg will elicit symptoms of Hepatitis B disease because HbsAg is an indicator of Hepatitis B infection.”
Can you explain that? Are you saying you don’t need the live virus to have Hep B disease? Isn’t that analogous to growing corn from boiled seeds.
Yes, you will make antibodies to the HbsAg proteins, that’s the point. But the virus will not be replicating in your liver. HbsAg is a protein and is an indicator of infection only if you have the live virus. The protein, without the live virus, will only elicit an antibody response and not the symptoms of Hep B.
Dacks, Lack of proof of causality for vaccine injury does not render VAERS statistics worthless in decision making. The statistics highlight the fact that there are uncertainties surrounding vaccine safety and adverse reactions.
“Fundamental uncertainty about the future occurrence or nonoccurrence of a given outcome lies at the core of the notion of risk.”
Communicating the Uncertainty of Harms and Benefits of Medical Interventions
Mary C. Politi, Paul K. J. Han and Nananda F. Col, Med Decis Making 2007; 27; 681
http://mdm.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/27/5/681
Chris, the models ARE undergoing “structural testing”. Highlighted by your citation of the 3 recent measles cases in PA, two children and their 33 year old father. If the measles models are accurate, we will see more of this, children and their parents contracting measles together. I have no idea if the models are accurate, but there is supporting evidence of the increased susceptibility of infants of mothers with vaccine induced immunity. Only time will tell. Unfortunately, we didn’t knowingly choose to be part of this particular experiment.
“The protein, without the live virus, will only elicit an antibody response and not the symptoms of Hep B.”
FYI, antibody production is NOT the primary and ultimate function of the immune system. Cell-mediated immunity takes precedence over humoral immunity. And every event of an induced immune response will be externalized into symptoms. An immune response does NOT correlate with antibody production because there is immunity without the antibodies and that is cell-mediated immunity.
Vaccines, prepared with dead or inactivated microorganisms, subunit or virus-like particles (VLPs), are designed to mitigate the symptoms of the disease, that is, vaccines transmute an infectious disease to become non-infectious, by keeping the disease inside the body.
Below, are just some of the adverse reactions to Hepatitis B vaccine and I call these an immune response to the vaccine. Now, tell me if these symptoms are not symptoms of Hepatitis B disease.
ADVERSE REACTIONS
BODY AS A WHOLE
The most frequent systemic complaints include fatigue/weakness; headache; fever (≥100°F); and
malaise.
DIGESTIVE SYSTEM
Nausea; and diarrhea
DIGESTIVE SYSTEM
Vomiting; abdominal pains/cramps; dyspepsia; and diminished appetite
RESPIRATORY SYSTEM
Rhinitis; influenza; and cough
INTEGUMENTARY SYSTEM
Pruritus; rash (non-specified); angioedema; and urticaria
MUSCULOSKELETAL SYSTEM
Arthralgia including monoarticular; myalgia; back pain; neck pain; shoulder pain; and neck stiffness
HEMIC/LYMPHATIC SYSTEM
Lymphadenopathy
DIGESTIVE SYSTEM
Elevation of liver enzymes; constipation
http://www.merck.com/product/usa/pi_circulars/r/recombivax_hb/recombivax_pi.pdf
Sounds scary doesn’t it? Just like my patients reading the package insert on Nicorette were too scared to try it and continued smoking instead. Why not look up what the real Hep B virus causes? Also you didn’t give the incidence rates of these adverse reactions. Why not do that and compare them to the actual Hep B virus effects and their incidence?
Comparing a non-diseased newborn to a smoker is an absolute nonsense. You don’t recommend Nicorette to someone who does not smoke. And also, it is not an auspicious way to start a healthy life of a non-diseased newborn by injecting them the physiologic evidence of disease in their blood stream in the very first place.
Hepatitis B is a self-limiting disease. It only gets worse in the event of sever malnutrition, inappropriate management or when the person becomes a patient in the hospital under allopathic treatment.
“Why not look up what the real Hep B virus causes?”
Vaccines are the number one cause.
“the following guidelines are recommended for
persons who have been exposed to hepatitis B virus such as through (1) percutaneous (needlestick),
ocular, mucous membrane exposure to blood known or presumed to contain HBsAg, (2) human bites by
known or presumed HBsAg carriers, that penetrate the skin, or (3) following intimate sexual contact with
known or presumed HBsAg carriers.”
http://www.merck.com/product/usa/pi_circulars/r/recombivax_hb/recombivax_pi.pdf
Hepatitis B vaccine contains HbsAg.
wales, you left out the risk to pregnant women and their unborn children in your calculation of risk due to wild type infections.
Th1Th2, you totally missed my point about the bowl of ABsAb, which in my hypothetical was a delicious food, not a vaccine. I was simply pointing out that it’s a protein, not a “disease.” Ah, well.
You seem to have a number of misconceptions regarding infection and immunity. Vaccine reactions –e.g., fever, myalgias– aren’t specific to any particular disease.
Here’s something basic regarding infection and immunity that might help get you up to speed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNaAisFiPdU&feature=player_embedded
Th1Th2:
Th1Th2, have you ever heard the expression, “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
Can you explain what that expression means?
“Hepatitis B is a self-limiting disease. It only gets worse in the event of sever malnutrition, inappropriate management or when the person becomes a patient in the hospital under allopathic treatment.”
Your source for that gem is? Care to enlighten us on the appropriate management? Are you saying people are still using leeches, an allopathic treatment, to treat Hep B?
“You seem to have a number of misconceptions regarding infection and immunity. Vaccine reactions –e.g., fever, myalgias– aren’t specific to any particular disease.”
Of course, they are not specific because they are the prodromal symptoms of a disease. Have you ever heard of asymptomatic infection? Even having the pathognomonic signs and symptoms are inconclusive of a particular disease.
“Nonspecific prodrome of malaise, fever, headache, myalgia”
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/Slides/HepB10.ppt
These Hepatitis B symptoms are the same symptoms you get from Hepatitis B vaccine.
“These Hepatitis B symptoms are the same symptoms you get from Hepatitis B vaccine.”
Sources, please.
Hepatitis B is a self-limiting disease.
“Hepatitis B virus infection may either be acute (self-limiting) or chronic (long-standing). Persons with self-limiting infection clear the infection spontaneously within weeks to months” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepatitis_B
“Hepatitis B is usually a self- limiting disease, which means that most patients go through the infection within three to six months.” http://www.advocate.com/print_article_ektid61733.asp
“Infection with hepatitis B virus (HBV) leads to a variety of conditions including an asymptomatic chronic state, acute
self-limiting infection and fulminant hepatitis.” http://www.specialtylabs.com/education/download_PDF/TN_HBV.pdf
“The condition can be self limiting, healing on its own or can progress to scarring of the liver.” http://www.askdrwiki.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Hepatitis
“Most cases are self-limiting.” http://ngc.gov/summary/summary.aspx?view_id=1&doc_id=12806
“Most of the time, hepatitis B is a self-limiting condition. Treatment consists of fluids and bed rest.” http://www.topsurgeons.com/gastroenterology/hepatitis-b.php
From the CDC website:
What are the signs and symptoms of HBV infection?
The presence of signs and symptoms varies by age. Most children under age 5 years and newly infected immunosuppressed adults are asymptomatic, whereas 30%–50% of persons aged ≥5 years have initial signs and symptoms. When present, signs and symptoms can include
* Fever
* Fatigue
* Loss of appetite
* Nausea
* Vomiting
* Abdominal pain
* Dark urine
* Clay-colored bowel movements
* Joint pain
* Jaundice
http://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/HBV/HBVfaq.htm#treatment
Now compare these symptoms from the symptoms of adverse reactions to the Hepatitis B vaccine I quoted earlier here:
http://www.merck.com/product/usa/pi_circulars/r/recombivax_hb/recombivax_pi.pdf
wales said
Actually, this shows you did not understand the conclusions of those models, the news article I posted and what I said.
You must have missed that the father had only one MMR as a child (two is the norm now), and that neither child had even one MMR vaccine. They were all either not vaccinated or under vaccinated. This is completely counter to the your next sentence:
Well, yeah! They are susceptible if they are not vaccinated.
What the two papers with the mathematical models were saying was that high vaccine rates need to be maintained, and that also means that if needed more boosters for things like the MMR may be required. Just like the every ten years booster for tetanus and diphtheria.
Which means that herd immunity must be maintained by having high levels of vaccine uptake. This is not rocket science. Well, of course, I keep forgetting that since I am a rocket scientist (aerospace engineer), this is obvious to me. For you, not so much.
chris, yes I read the PA report and saw that the children were unvaccinated and the father had only one dose of vaccine in childhood (ACIP finally had to recommend another due to the inefficacy of one dose).
you missed my point. whether the father had one or two doses, at 33 he is now susceptible to measles as an adult (which the models predict). The children at the ages of 1 and 5 are not infants. My comment on infants was referring to the Pediatrics article I cited in my response to your comments on Gorski’s Feb. 2 blog, which is evidence of the new susceptible group of infants (which the models predict).
Increased Susceptibility to Measles in Infants in the United States
Mark Papania, MD, MPH et al PEDIATRICS Vol. 104 No. 5 November 1999, p. e59
thanks for reminding us yet again of your cerebral capacity.
Do you just cite references without reading them? Do you mean that between 3,000 and 5,000 people in the US do not die of chronic HBV? Are you saying infants are not most at risk of getting chronic HBV even though they are unlikely to show signs of the acute disease?
People with chronic Hepatitis B die of severe malnutrition, iatrogenic events like drug toxicities and immunosuppression from chronic drug treatments, and from unnecessary invasive procedures and surgeries. Hepatitis B carriers can live healthy later in life.
Newborns are born disease-free and are NOT supposed to get any physiologic evidence of diseases from extraneous sources, like vaccines. It’s inhumane and unethical.
What are your sources? Yeah, you get malnourished with chronic HBV but that’s from the cirrhosis and the liver cancers. And what is this “physiologic evidence of diseases from extraneous sources” gobbledygoop? Newborns are healthy until they get infected and they tend to get infected unless they are immunized. No one is supposed to get infected, but they do? You want to condemn them to chronic HBV and have them die from cirrhosis or liver cancer? I don’t.
Maybe you should know that immunity can be acquired naturally (from natural infection/disease) or artificially (from vaccines). So what’s the difference of getting the HbsAg from Hepatitis B and the HbsAg from the Hepatitis B vaccine? Post-vaccinal symptoms are immune responses to inflammation and infection i.e. vaccine-induced hepatitis.
Like I said vaccines do NOT prevent diseases but rather transmit diseases to non-diseased newborns. And vaccinating newborns is the first stage of getting diseased. From IPV to Gardasil, the medical community has been transmitting diseases to non-diseased individuals particularly to newborns where they acquire at least 14 vaccine-induced diseases by the age of 1 year. Absolutely appalling.
Again, sequelae of Hepatitis B (cirrhosis and liver CA) is the result of poor nutrition, improper management, chronic drug toxicity, immunosuppression, secondary infections and invasive procedures.
Vaccination is contamination. Keep that in mind.
Maybe you should know that immunity can be acquired naturally (from natural infection/disease) or artificially (from vaccines). So what’s the difference of getting the HbsAg from Hepatitis B and the HbsAg from the Hepatitis B vaccine? Post-vaccinal symptoms are immune responses to inflammation and infection i.e. vaccine-induced hepatitis.
Like I said vaccines do NOT prevent diseases but rather transmit diseases to non-diseased newborns. And vaccinating newborns is the first stage of getting diseased. From IPV to Gardasil, the medical community has been transmitting diseases to non-diseased individuals particularly to newborns where they acquire at least 14 vaccine-induced diseases by the age of 1 year. Absolutely appalling.
Again, sequelae of Hepatitis B (cirrhosis and liver CA) is the result of poor nutrition, improper management, chronic drug toxicity, immunosuppression, secondary infections and invasive procedures.
Vaccination means biologic contamination. Keep that in mind.
You sound like the people in Idiocracy talking about electrolytes.
Basically your “physiologic evidence of diseases from extraneous sources” is simply a slogan or mantra used to stop thinking. That way you can equate vaccination with HBV with the actual infection, cowpox with smallpox, etc.
Regarding
“Again, sequelae of Hepatitis B (cirrhosis and liver CA) is the result of poor nutrition, improper management, chronic drug toxicity, immunosuppression, secondary infections and invasive procedures.”
Care to back up those statements? Is this based on your vast experience of treating patients? How do you know that the sequelae are not due to say aural sex, reading and believing antivax nonsense, etc?
Th1Th2 provokes in me an urge to do a Mini Mental Status exam.
[...] and concluded that maybe the antivaccine movement is winning, as he similarly rejoiced that the pockets of high levels of vaccine resistance recently reported in Sonoma and Marin counties in California existed in areas where the population [...]
wales posted this paper title without reading it: Increased Susceptibility to Measles in Infants in the United States
Mark Papania, MD, MPH et al PEDIATRICS Vol. 104 No. 5 November 1999, p. e59
Note the conclusing in the abstract:
Here is the full paper (free!):
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/104/5/e59
Check out the last paragraph of the full paper:
So, what I am assuming wales is arguing here is that herd immunity must be maintained by keeping vaccine uptake high. All the papers he has listed have concluded that vaccines are very important.
Thank you, wales… I was thinking you were an anti-vaxxer, when in fact you are arguing for a good vaccine program.
@ Th1Th2on 05 Apr 2009 at 11:46 pm
Maybe you should know that immunity can be acquired naturally (from natural infection/disease) or artificially (from vaccines). So what’s the difference of getting the HbsAg from Hepatitis B and the HbsAg from the Hepatitis B vaccine? Post-vaccinal symptoms are immune responses to inflammation and infection i.e. vaccine-induced hepatitis.
In a horribly distorted way, you are some what correct… in the same way that some people may find Michael Jackson or Donatella Versace attractive.
You are correct in that the body doesn’t care about the actual source of HbsAg. You are also correct that the body mounts an immune response to HbsAg. What you are incorrect about, is equating a vaccine’s ‘infection’ to the actual viral infection. HbsAg in the vaccine is attached to an adjuvant whereas HbsAg in Heb B is attached to the virus. This is a critical difference and is at the heart of how vaccinations work. The body recognizes the foreign antigen and mounts a naive immune response resulting in the production of antibodies against the HbsAg. The difference is that the vaccine does not fight back resulting in an infection whereas the actual Hep B virus fights back and can result in infection. The naive immune system is not able to build the antibodies it needs fast enough to clear Hep B when it is first exposed to it. Upon exposure to the actual Hep B, a vaccinated individual’s immune system will mount a non-naive response and is able to clear the virus without letting it cause a chronic infection.
HbsAg+adjuvant is a…. straw man!
@ # Th1Th2on 05 Apr 2009 at 7:31 pm
Hepatitis B is a self-limiting disease.
Life is also a self-limiting state.
While some people do clear the virus, many people do not. What does that mean in terms of actual numbers? 2 billion people in the world are infected. 350 million people have chronic infections. 500,000 to 1.2 million people die every year from Heb B. If 350 million out of 2,000 million people have chronic infections, then 17.5% of people who are exposed are unable to control the infection and thus it is NOT self-limiting in their case.
Lavanchy D. “Hepatitis B virus epidemiology, disease burden, treatment, and current and emerging prevention and control measures.” J Viral Hepat. 2004 Mar;11(2):97-107.
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a serious global health problem, with 2 billion people infected worldwide, and 350 million suffering from chronic HBV infection. The 10th leading cause of death worldwide, HBV infections result in 500 000 to 1.2 million deaths per year caused by chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma; the last accounts for 320 000 deaths per year. In Western countries, the disease is relatively rare and acquired primarily in adulthood, whereas in Asia and most of Africa, chronic HBV infection is common and usually acquired perinatally or in childhood. More efficacious treatments, mass immunization programs, and safe injection techniques are essential for eliminating HBV infection and reducing global HBV-related morbidity and mortality. Safe and effective vaccines against HBV infection have been available since 1982. The implementation of mass immunization programs, which have been recommended by the World Health Organization since 1991, have dramatically decreased the incidence of HBV infection among infants, children, and adolescents in many countries. However, not all countries have adopted these recommendations and there remains a large number of persons that were infected with HBV prior to the implementation of immunization programs. Antiviral treatment is the only way to reduce morbidity and mortality from chronic HBV infection. Conventional interferon alfa and lamivudine have been the primary treatments to date. Conventional interferon alfa produces a durable response in a moderate proportion of patients but has undesirable side-effects and must be administered subcutaneously three times per week. Lamivudine also produces a response in a modest proportion of patients and causes few side-effects. However, prolonged treatment is often necessary to prevent relapse on cessation of therapy, and continuous treatment can lead to the development of lamivudine resistance. Promising emerging new treatments include adefovir, entecavir and peginterferon alfa-2a (40 kDa).
Chris, you keep missing the point, intentionally or not (perchlorate exposure perhaps). Of course an article published in Pediatrics is going to recommend vaccination and maintaining herd immunity, duh.
My point was that the article gives evidence of the fact that infants are a new group of susceptibles due to vaccine induced herd immunity replacing naturally acquired immunity, which is one of the factors discussed in the measles models.
lol, Dr. Benway!
Hard to believe how much ignorance is out there.
Those infants would not be susceptible if their mothers had had the disease instead of the vaccine? What about after 6 months of age? What if their mothers never had the disease? Would they be considered susceptible because their mothers never had the disease?
This is rather late in the thread, but I couldn’t help but respond to a comment relevant to an incident in my home state (Minnesota). This pertains to polio cases in an Amish community.
Chris, yes boosters are necessary for adults now. But it is unlikely we will see the high vaccination coverage rates we see in children as there is no enforcement (such as school entry requirements).
Back to the polio for a moment, quite an irony that unvaccinated children acquired polio from vaccinated individuals, huh?
This is precisely the reason why the recommended vaccination schedule includes the IPV vaccine instead of the oral one — the oral vaccine uses live virus, and there is a small risk of developing polio, and even of passing it on. It is definitely not as virulent as wild-type polio, but still, most American clinics will only use the inactivated poliovirus (IPV) vaccine. The drawbacks are the use of a hypodermic needle (which has a certain “ouch” factor, of course) and cost — oral vaccine is cheaper. The cost concern is also why the oral vaccine is what’s used in developing countries, despite the fact that IPV is safer. In most of the countries where the oral vaccine is used, polio is endemic, so the risk from the vaccine is still significantly less than the risk from the disease itself.
BTW, regarding why adults are vaccinated less commonly, part of this is the lack of a mandatory program for vaccination of adults. The reason for that is probably equal parts political (adults are voters), practical (what do you deny adults, that is equivalent to denying children entry to public school?), and economic (it’s hard enough now for vaccine manufacturers to keep up with demand). But there is another reason: adults are less prone to spreading the diseases. Children, due to their generally immature hygiene practices, are the primary vectors of disease transmission. It’s the same reason we fight rabies by vaccinating dogs and cats, even though rabies can certainly kill humans (and any mammal, actually). Of all the vectors and reservoirs for the disease, the one we can most easily reach is our household pets. By contrast, human-to-human transmission is vanishingly rare, so there’s no point routinely vaccinating humans against rabies. Instead, we vaccinate the vectors — our pets.
The same strategy is what we use against things like pertussis. Adult immunity definitely wanes. Most adults are protected not by being immune themselves but by most of the vectors (small children) around them being immune. You don’t really need herd immunity in the entire population — just in the subset most likely to harbor and transmit the disease, which in many cases is children.
weing, reading the paper will supply your answers. it’s free.
Harry,
Let me say this again, seroconversion does not correlate to protective immunity and antibody production is NOT the primary and ultimate function of the immune system. There can be immunity without antibody production and that is cell-mediated immunity—this confers true immunity because this is the first line of defense. Cellular immunity takes precedence over humoral immunity because of the presence of killer cells like macrophages, NK, CTLs, etc. where each of these cells can promote destruction, apoptosis and elimination of microorganisms. Antibodies do NOT kill microorganisms, they just identify and bind with the antigen. They are useless without the effector mechanism of CMI and the complement. This is the reason vaccines are worthless, toxic, unsafe, and most of all pathogenic.
FYI, HbsAg, per se is highly immunogenic and pathogenic. The essence of HBV replication in vivo is the same as growing recombinant HbsAg in vitro, that is, to produce more antigens necessary to induce the disease in the body thus causing an immune response. That means, the amount and concentration of antigens in vaccines plus the addition of adjuvants are more than significant regardless the vaccine is prepared with live or attenuated microorganisms. The use of adjuvants in vaccines skews the normal physiology of the immune system. Aluminum-adjuvanted antigens, like the HbsAg in vaccines, are exclusively Th2-promoting causing resultant Th1-inhibition. Instead of the normal pattern of antigen-presentation and destruction at the cellular level, aluminum-adjuvanted HbsAg, are protected from proteolytic desctruction, dilution, rapid degradation and delays elimination by the host causing prolonged but ABNORMAL immune response. This is the reason vaccinees are keeping the vaccine-induced disease that should have been eliminated otherwise as compared to natural infection/disease.
Vaccines are designed to cause the disease of interest. For example, in order for live, attenuated viral vaccines, like MMR, to be effective, they must be capable of REPLICATION after vaccination. In short, without the disease, there will be no immunity. Moreover, vaccines prepared with dead or inactivated microorganisms, are specifically designed to mitigate SYMPTOMS of the disease. For example, Hib vaccine can cause an early-onset Hib disease, and IAIV can cause flu-like symptoms. What’s surprising is that the medical community would favor rejection of causation especially if the person is vaccinated. This really what makes vaccination a myth, the medical community still believes in “ghost” microorganisms. No wonder a lot of diseases are classified idiopathic until they find a new microorganism to blame.
The symptoms of vaccine-induced diseases are abundant in every vaccine package inserts. Name the vaccine and you can identify the disease by perusing each symptoms listed in the adverse reaction section.
Th1Th2, the old saying, “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” means you shouldn’t throw stones because you’ll break the glass, am I right?
“Life is also a self-limiting state.”
That is a lame alibi.
There is a clear distinction between health and sickness. You don’t describe a self-limiting disease by discussing morbid complications. That’s oxymoronic. Likewise, you don’t discuss poisons and biohazards like vaccines with nutrition. It doesn’t make any sense.
Dr. Benway,
Argumentum ad hominem is something I do not apply let alone character assassination. If ever I did say something unfavorable, it is for the sake of the argument because I will stand with my position about vaccination.
So, now we have true immunity and not so true immunity? So my reaction to poison ivy is true immunity and my antibody levels to HBS are the not so true immunity and have not really protected me all these years?
wales,
Only you can give me your understanding of it. I want to know what conclusions you got out of the paper.
Th,
You mean you stand in your way?
The word “protection” is the most common mistake used by many vaccine apologists. Protection is to safeguard the host from any opportunistic microorganisms and antigens from entering the body causing disease, for example, HbsAg. Vaccination defeats that purpose instead causes the host, not only to become susceptible, but infected as well.
HbsAg is an indicator of hepatitis B infection regardless of anti-Hbs.
And you see nothing wrong with that circular logic? Amazing. You really do expect to grow corn from cooked seeds.
Th1Th2,
You’d say that an apple and an orange are similar, in that they’re both things to eat, am I right?
“And you see nothing wrong with that circular logic? Amazing. You really do expect to grow corn from cooked seeds.”
Antigens are pathogenic regardless whether the vaccine is prepared with live, attenuated or killed (inactivated) microorganisms. There are several factors that influence the degree of antigen pathogenicity.
1. Replication of the microorganism in the body causing increased production of antigens. Ex. MMR vaccine.
2. By increasing antigen quantification in the vaccine. This is the reason why inactivated (dead) vaccines are also pathogenic.
3. Use of adjuvants.
These are necessary to induce and enhance an immune response. Without the disease, there will be no immunity.
You still see nothing wrong with your definition of disease? You are also using the term pathogenic instead of immunogenic. Intentional? If you were a med student you would flunk basic immunology. Whoever taught you that taught you wrong. Maybe they teach that kind of silliness in ND schools. You gotta get back to the books kid, if you want to make any sense to others.
Let me guide you on how you developed your anti-Hbs, shall we?
In chronological order:
1. Exposure (via natural infection or VACCINES)
2. Disease process (pathogenicity)
3. Immunogenicity
I am not surprised, the magical world of vaccination rests on fantasy and superstitious belief.
Wrong. You clearly don’t understand basic immunology. Go back to the books and learn.
Get an actual immunology book not some alternate world immunology text.
Why you can’t accept the fact that you were once exposed intentionally to Hepatitis B (HbsAg) by way of vaccination? Remember, there will be no anti-Hbs without the HbsAg. And having the HbsAg is an indicator of Hepatitis B infection regardless whether it was acquired naturally or artificially (vaccines).
Until then.
Let’s see if I can make it simple enough for you. It works as if the vaccine fools your immune system into thinking you have an infection. It sees no difference between the antigen on the vaccine and an actual virus. It produces an antibody response, which is what we want. The HBsAg from the vaccine does not replicate in your body, just like boiled corn will not grow if you plant it. Normally HBsAg would be an indicator of infection, just like freshly picked corn would be expected to grow if you planted it, but not in this case.
Wow, wales… you really are hard core. I highlighted the parts of the papers that basically said that a high vaccine uptake must be maintained to keep up herd immunity in at least two of the studies, and you say I don’t get the point. Man, are you clueless.
Here is something interesting: measles is a disease that is only vectored in humans. Unlike tetanus and influenza that can be spread by other animals (or spores in dirt in the case of tetanus), measles only causes illness in humans (with about 1 in 1000 getting serious physical impacts like blindness, deafness, paralysis, permanent mental impairment, and even death). With a high enough vaccine uptake measles cannot spread.
In fact, the US, UK and many other countries measles was down to a very low count due to effective immunization programs. It was only after Wakefield’s scaremongering (without real data) did the vaccine rates go down, and measles returned. With the deaths of several children in Europe (http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=18837).
Measles is a disease that can be wiped off the face of this planet. It can go the way of smallpox. If you read the papers you listed (and I cannot understand why you don’t post the links like I do, are you thinking we will not find them and read them?), they all encourage high vaccine coverage. And if the vaccine coverage is high enough, we would no longer have to vaccinate for measles.
I have a scar from several smallpox innoculations, my children do not. Do you know why?
I personally believe that if measles vaccination uptake is high enough to ensure herd immunity, that my grandchildren would never need to worry about the vaccine or the disease. But Wakefield’s greed and ego has made sure that will not happen for a long time.
(oh by the noodly appendage of the flying spaghetti monster… Th1Th2 — the HepB vaccine is only a small bit of the virus, it cannot transmit the disease! I have been ignoring you, but I am sure that this has been told to you)
Comparing microbial/viral antigens to boiled or fresh corns is absolutely illogical and deceiving. First of all, the presence of antigens (corns) in the host (soil), which is BAD, is something that should be checked, destroyed and eliminated in order not to induce infection. On the contrary, spreading freshly picked corns in the soil in order for them to grow is beneficial to the host as a food source, which is GOOD. And planting boiled corns in the soil is insane. Now, did you see the fallacy of your analogy? I wouldn’t use that again as an example if I were you.
Again, the significance of viral/microbial replication (natural infection or live vaccines) in the body is to produce more antigens to cause the disease and immunogenicity. Likewise, killed vaccines, which obviously are incapable of replication in the body, compensates by increasing antigen quantification in the vaccine and the addition of adjuvants that will promote both pathogenicity and immunogenicity. Vaccines cannot fool the body.
Vaccine-induced infection, like natural infection, is necessary to induce immunogenicity.
“VACCINE-INDUCED or natural upper respiratory tract INFECTION in humans may not engender an optimally protective memory Tc-cell population because of insufficient number or composition. However, a large number of memory T cells may also result in immunopathologic manifestations (14,18), which tend to be associated with excessive inflammatory responses in acute infections. Thus, a universal vaccine based on the induction of a strong memory-Tc response might necessitate a difficult balancing act between protection and immunopathologic changes. Unless one can identify a particularly protective memory Tc-cell population that is poorly induced by natural or VACCINE-INDUCED INFECTION, the nondiscriminatory enhancement of memory T-cell populations may not be a promising approach for a universal influenza vaccine.”
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol12no04/05-1020.htm
“Hepatitis B vaccine can induce transient hepatitis B surface antigen positivity not only in adult hemodialysis patients but also in normal adults and children. The frequency of its occurrence is largely unknown but its duration does not exceed 28 days.”
http://www.hepatitisbannual.org/article.asp?issn=0972-9747;year=2007;volume=4;issue=1;spage=55;epage=60;aulast=Singh
“Live mumps virus vaccine** is prepared in chick-embryo cell culture. From its introduction in December 1967, through 1981, more than 55 million doses have been distributed in the United States. The vaccine produces a subclinical, non-communicable infection with very few side effects.”
http://aepo-xdv-www.epo.cdc.gov/wonder/PrevGuid/p0000210/p0000210.asp
2) Bogger-Goren S. “Antibody Response to Varicella-Zoster Virus after Natural or Vaccine-Induced Infection,” The Journal of Infectious Diseases Vol. 146 8/82 p. 260.
It is just as insane to define disease by the transient HBsAg presence in the blood despite the source. It is not a live vaccine. Your reasoning about what constitutes a a disease is wrong and just as insane. Go back to school.
Th1Th2, how does the HBsAg differ from the Hepatitis B virus?
Dr. Benway,
HbsAg is the virulence factor of HBV. Similarly, the virulence factor for Hib is the polysaccharide capsule. It is like the venom of a rattlesnake. The venom is the HbsAg whereas the snake is the HBV. Producing more rattlesnake will increase the venom supply (replication). If you don’t want the rattlesnake to stay in your body, you can just increase the collection of the venom (antigen quantification), preserve it (adjuvants) and kill the snake (killed vaccine). Either way, they both exhibit a lethal effect to the host.
This is the reason vaccines are poison to the body. Vaccine is NOT a placebo not to cause disease.
The LA Times has set up a blog on the topic of vaccine exemption. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/03/rising-vaccine.html
Here’s a gem:
“There is a difference between the mercury found in fish and the mercury once found in routine childhood vaccines. The version found in fish is known as methylmercury, which can accumulate in fish and humans. The kind that was used in vaccines is known as ethylmercury, which does not accumulate in the body and is actively excreted via the gut, according to the World Health Organization.
The distinction is not trivial, wrote Dr. Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who wrote about the issue in his book, “Autism’s False Prophets,” published in 2008.
“An analogy can can be made between ethylalcohol, contained in wine and beer, and methylalcohol, contained in wood alcohol,” Offit wrote. “Wine and beer can cause headaches and hangovers; wood alcohol causes blindness.”
The various alcohols mentioned would be ingested orally. How can parenterally administered ethylmercury be excreted via the gut? Vaccines are administered parenterally precisely to avoid the gut, right?
The medical community will call it transient HbsAg positivity just to comfort the patient, but in reality, the patient just got infected with acute Hepatitis B (vaccine-induced hepatitis). Without this knowledge of the patient, the resultant antibody production will prod the doctor to declare that the patient has gained immunity to Hepatitis B. What the patient didn’t know is that vaccine-induced immunity will protect (although not guaranteed) him/her from FUTURE exposure to Hepatitis B because the INITIAL exposure has already taken place with the vaccination itself. This is how they play the game.
You can’t even read the refs you give correctly. You do exactly what the authors warn about. You mistake the presence of the Ag to be an indicator of an infection.
Th1Th2, I think it might be to your advantage if you steer clear of the analogies yourself. And parentheses (rattlesnakes).
It is not a mistake. The medical community is just playing games with innocent patients by distorting the facts deliberately. What the author didn’t realize is that the presence of HbsAg in the blood is a significant indicator of acute hepatitis B infection regardless whether the patient is symptomatic or not. The author did not include pregnant mothers, intentionally, to avoid contradiction and criticism.
“Vaccination with RECOMBIVAX HB is recommended for:
1) Infants including those born to HBsAg positive mothers (high-risk infants).”
http://www.merck.com/product/usa/pi_circulars/r/recombivax_hb/recombivax_pi.pdf
If vaccine-induced HbsAg in the blood doesn’t sound risky to you or to the infant, then what is?
That’s because you don’t know anything about medicine. Don’t feel bad. Not everyone is capable of learning.
Let me quote this one more time:
“Currently available vaccines have largely been developed
empirically, with little or no understanding on how they
activate the immune system.”
http://www.who.int/immunization/documents/Elsevier_Vaccine_immunology.pdf
Don’t worry. There is actually no science behind vaccination so there is nothing to argue about its wonders (black magic). Vaccines are only worth discussing its pathogenic nature and toxic side-effects to humans.
hatch,
In order to induce immunogenicity, there should be a significant amount of antigen load in the blood. There are several factors to make it happen:
1. Viral/microbial replication in vivo. (live vaccines like MMR)
2. Increasing antigen quantification in vitro. (killed vaccines)
3. Use of adjuvants.
Sort of; they’re administered intramuscularly in order to provoke the desire immune response with a minimum of side effects.
The analogy, though, has nothing to do with excretion but rather is an illustration of the fact that different but similar compounds can behave quite differently. I think he picked those two because ethanol and methanol are indeed extremely similar chemically, but have quite different effects on the body. He could also have discussed sodium chloride, a compound formed from two very poisonous elements which is nevertheless so safe (in moderation) that it is the most popular seasoning in history.
Mercury can probably be excreted through the gut, though. I’m not an expert on mercury itself, but I know the body does excrete a lot of stuff in bile. Anything the liver cleans out ends up in the bile, and that indeed leaves the body via the gut.
Chris, we seem to each be emphasizing different facets of the referenced paper. Again, I realize the paper recommends vaccination and maintaining herd immunity.
The facet I was referring to was the evidence contained in the paper for increased susceptibility of infants to measles due to mass vaccine induced immunity. Prior to mass measles vaccination, infants of mothers with natural immunity to measles were protected by maternal antibodies for a much longer period of time than infants of mothers with vaccine induced immunity to measles. Thus, mass vaccination policies have resulted in increased infant susceptibility.
Increased Susceptibility to Measles in Infants in the United States
Mark Papania, MD, MPH et al PEDIATRICS Vol. 104 No. 5 November 1999, p. e59
I really don’t think we need belabor the point any longer. I see both facets of the article, you see only one.
Th1Th2,
The Hepatitis B surface antigen is merely a lipoprotein on the surface of the Hepatitis B virus. The virus itself is made up of a lot more stuff.
The surface antigen doesn’t cause disease. The virus causes disease by invading and damaging cells.
Analogy: A child goes missing. Parents give an item of clothing to the police, who let the bloodhounds sniff it to learn the child’s scent.
The child’s scent is analogous to the surface antigen.
The bloodhounds are analogous to the immune system.
And the child is analogous to the virus.
We teach the immune system about one of the antigens on the surface of the Hepatitis B virus so that it can recognize and respond to the actual virus more quickly and effectively.
Yes, vaccines were developed years ago without much understanding of immunity. We’ve learned a lot since then.
wales,
What you’re saying is, women should have their titres checked before getting pregnant and should be re-vaccinated if the titers are too low. That way, the mother’s immunity can protect the child via breast feeding.
Dr. Benway,
Nothing has changed regarding the principles of vaccination thus far. Its putative practice still lies in a spot outside of science.
Antigens are pathogenic, the same way allergens are allergenic. Both can stimulate an immune response which are manifested and externalized into symptoms. The degree of the immunogenicity and symptomatology depend on the amount of the antigen and allergen being introduced in the body. The mere presence of HbsAg alone in the blood would promote symptoms of Hepatitis B likewise a trace amount of peanut powder would elicit allergic reactions/atopy. Vaccination and sensitization are one and the same.Vaccines are so designed to attenuate (sounds familiar?) the SYMPTOMS of the disease by deliberate genetic transmutation of an infectious disease to become non-infectious. It does not rule out the disease because the disease itself is necessary to establish immunity. This is equivalent to the desensitization therapy in peanut allergy.
Just look at the diagnostic similarities of Hepatitis B vaccine reactions against an acute Hepatitis B infection. Their common denominator is the presence of HbsAg in the blood.
Hepatitis B vaccine http://www.merck.com/product/usa/pi_circulars/r/recombivax_hb/recombivax_pi.pdf
ADVERSE REACTIONS
BODY AS A WHOLE
The most frequent systemic complaints include fatigue/weakness; headache; fever (≥100°F); and malaise.
DIGESTIVE SYSTEM
Nausea; and diarrhea
DIGESTIVE SYSTEM
Vomiting; abdominal pains/cramps; dyspepsia; and diminished appetite
INTEGUMENTARY SYSTEM
Pruritus; rash (non-specified); angioedema; and urticaria
DIGESTIVE SYSTEM
Elevation of liver enzymes; constipation
From the CDC website: http://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/HBV/HBVfaq.htm#treatment
What are the signs and symptoms of HBV infection?
The presence of signs and symptoms varies by age. Most children under age 5 years and newly infected immunosuppressed adults are asymptomatic, whereas 30%–50% of persons aged ≥5 years have initial signs and symptoms. When present, signs and symptoms can include
* Fever
* Fatigue
* Loss of appetite
* Nausea
* Vomiting
* Abdominal pain
* Dark urine
* Clay-colored bowel movements
* Joint pain
* Jaundice
The HBV can be destroyed and eliminated by TH1 cells and the complement even without the presence of antibodies (cell-mediated immunity). This is the true immunity.
Dr. Benway, I don’t make health care recommendations. Your recommendations are necessitated by the loss of natural immunity due to vaccine induced immunity. I understand that as a physician, you are focused on a solution to the dilemma of infant susceptibles. I am looking back to the cause of the dilemma.
We don’t yet know if the measles models are accurate, but they are predicated upon the existence of two new groups of susceptibles (infants and adults) caused by vaccine induced immunity.
Th1Th2,
I received the Hep B vaccination series without any side effects. Didn’t get sick; didn’t miss work. Certainly didn’t get hepatitis.
Our bodies are bombarded with foreign antigens every day. We make antibodies to these antigens. We don’t necessarily get sick in the process of making those antibodies.
wales, there’s no natural immunity without suffering measles. Thanks, but no thanks.
Dr. Benway, just at a glance I believe wales/”just the facts” believes that the only way one should become immune to measles is by actual exposure, and to just skip the MMR. The only reason I can fathom is that he must believe only those who survive measles deserve to live. A type of eugenics.
Just another reason to ignore him.
Dr. Benway,
“I received the Hep B vaccination series without any side effects. Didn’t get sick; didn’t miss work. Certainly didn’t get hepatitis.”
It is because 30-50% of older children, adolescents and adults have asymptomatic infections. It is also common in children <10 years of age. Your Hepatitis B series is actually your initial exposure to Hepatitis B and the antibodies you developed protected you from the vaccine-induced HbsAg and will further protect you, although not guaranteed, from future exposure.
You certainly acquired an acute and asymptomatic case of Hepatitis B (vaccine-induced HbsAg positivity) but the good thing is, your body was able to eliminate the antigen with concomitant seroconversion. This only proves that a natural Hepatitis B infection is self-limiting even with or without antibody production.
“Our bodies are bombarded with foreign antigens every day. We make antibodies to these antigens. We don’t necessarily get sick in the process of making those antibodies.”
Yes, exogenous antigens are abundant and we are exposed everyday. But protection does not always require antibody production because these antigens including those etiologic agents of common childhood diseases, naturally, are mediated and eliminated at the cellular level (CMI and complement). So why vaccinate? On the other hand, vaccination skews this normal pattern instead triggers hyperactivation of the humoral arm of immunity (antibody production) which causes inhibition of cellular immunity. So what happens next is, instead of the antigenic toxins being eliminated out of the body, the host retains them inside for a prolonged period of time.
HCN, yet another insulting label (straight out of the concern troll playbook, again). Can’t the readers decide for themselves who to ignore? Or must you dictate to them?
Labeling proponents of vaccine choice as “child abusers” or “pro-disease” “pro-eugenics” or “anti-science” is just a juvenile schoolyard tactic. In fact when I see these labels being tossed about by scientists, I question their ability to think and communicate rationally.
If I may quote sbm blogger Harriet Hall here on the subject of insulting comments “I treasure comments like those as evidence that my critics are so bankrupt of real arguments that they have to dip into the insult pouch for ammunition.” (Harriet Hall 10/21/08 blog on Acupuncture) Though we may disagree on some things and I know Harriet probably objects to the use of her quote in this context, I honestly love that quote.
wales:
Natural immunity wanes too, believe it or not. (I’ve had chickenpox twice, for instance. Never been vaccinated against it.) And there would be more infants catching measles if it was endemic, which is what measles would be if we didn’t routinely vaccinate against measles.
In the course of any vaccine campaign, there will come a time when the disease is nearly extirpated. During this time, outbreaks will be rare to nonexistent, with only isolated cases usually associated with somebody traveling abroad to a country where it remains endemic. Infants without measles antibodies will be at particular risk if they encounter someone carrying measles. But that would be very rare, since most infants don’t encounter people who’ve been exposed to a disease that is virtually extirpated from their homeland.
That’s why the “babies are more vulnerable with vaccination” argument doesn’t hold up. While it’s true that a baby whose mother didn’t catch measles or get recently vaccinated will have less protection than a baby whose mother had measles as a child, it’s also true that if we routinely vaccinate against measles, the odds of the child ever encountering the disease are very nearly zero. And since maternal antibodies, even from the real disease, are not a 100% protection, and since not everybody will contract measles in their lifetime even if its endemic, the child in the country without measles vaccination is at much higher risk of getting measles than the child in the country with 95% measles vaccine compliance.
Or, to put it more simply, measles herd immunity is a more effective defense than maternal measles antibodies.
BTW, wales, I appreciate your remaining calm in the face of insults. I hope that you continue to do so. A lot of folks here have become very tired of combating closed-minded anti-vaccinationists, many of whom are quite abusive, and that is what fuels such responses. You don’t seem to be a troll; you seem to be a reasonable person, and it is a breath of fresh air to hear vaccine concerns from someone who is not out to promote a pseudoscientific agenda but rather someone who appears to be truly open-minded, even to the possibility of being wrong.
I think you will find that the people who have insulted you here are *not* bankrupt of real arguments. They’ve just become tired of repeating themselves to people with closed minds. (I’ve seen the same thing happen on space-related forums when someone brings up the Face on Mars or Apollo hoax arguments.) Hopefully they will realize that you are *not* closed minded, and that there is value in putting forth their arguments once again.
Th1Th2, my entire medical school got the Hep B series at about the same time. As far as I know, not a single person became sick.
Exposure to an antigen does not equal infection with a virus.
I find your difficulty distinguishing part of a virus from the whole virus strange. It’s as though you’d mistake my hat for me.
No false modesty here: my cock is huge compared to my hat’s cock.
Calli, I don’t consider myself an anti-vaccinationist, which is just another convenient label, derived from subjective opinion. One could make the argument that the practice of labeling others is a prime example of a closed mind. Though I understand that scientists are often preoccupied with taxonomy, it is too often used on this site and others to dismiss legitimate arguments.
I don’t deny, and never have, that vaccines can work, albeit at varying rates of efficacy, for varying lengths of time, with varying rates of adverse side effects. I also don’t think it’s a matter of being right or wrong, of course I am not infallible, nor is anyone else.
I simply support vaccine exemption rights. I don’t try to convince anyone that they shouldn’t vaccinate, I support their right to choose, without public vilification. Some may think that it is irrational to admit that vaccines can be effective yet still advocate for choice. So be it, you are entitled to your opinions.
Was Dr. Benway’s choice of comparison organ and vulgar terminology rational? Or intended to shock? I can imagine the uproarious laughter it generated from colleagues, but not all readers are impressed or amused. A new low, skeptics indulging in locker room humor.
BTW, yes chicken pox has been known to occur more than once. However, the subject was measles.
wales,
That’s why I specifically chose to describe you as someone with vaccine concerns, as opposed to the closed-minded pseudoscientific anti-vaccinationists who have sparred with various commenters here. While I normally avoid labels, there are a few for whom that term actually does fit (and who would proudly wear it), and there has been an anti-vaccination movement for as long as there have been vaccines.
I would describe that as a libertarian approach. (I don’t mean that in a pejorative way; my late grandfather was probably the biggest libertarian I know, and I had tremendous respect for him.) I can respect that.
However, if you are arguing that people should have the right to refuse vaccinations on whim (rather than due to medical necessity or religious concerns), then I have to disagree. When it comes to diseases like measles, the vaccines work best if almost everyone (90% or better is the usual target) is vaccinated. So if we are serious about wiping out certain diseases, we have to require that everyone get vaccinated unless there is a good reason not to in their specific case.
This is the main reason why I do not think “personal choice” exemptions should be allowed for the “public health” vaccines (those administered as part of a nationwide campaign to extirpate the pathogen). HPV? Skip it, fine. That’s totally up to the individual, because that vaccine is only administered to protect the patient, personally. (And future sexual partners, but one would assume that to be a very limited list.)
There is another reason I object to the “just ‘cuz” exemptions. People who choose not to vaccinate without a good medical reason are generally doing so because they don’t understand the risk/benefit analysis. If there is no reason to think your child could have one of the extremely rare conditions that has problems with vaccines, then you really should vaccinate them. The risk of them having an adverse reaction is much less than the risk of them getting the diseases, unless you plan on raising them in a bubble.
(And folks can call me a prude, but I agree with you about Dr Benway’s “cock” line. I have enormous respect for Dr Benway, but I really didn’t like that line. Maybe it’s just because I’m a woman, I don’t know.)
Envy?
I never advocated a “just cuz” attitude. I have stated elsewhere that parents can make a rational risk/benefit analysis and conclude to abstain from or selectively vaccinate. I don’t advocate a “just cuz” attitude about anything.
For what it’s worth, I have never considered myself to be a libertarian. Though I have no objection to those who are proud of the label.
I was just about to suggest that perhaps Dr. Benway’s comments reveal his own psychological predispositions, when my friend weing has chimed in with his own. No, I don’t think being exasperated by puerile humor is a gender specific trait.
Thanks for your level-headed approach, Calli.
I disagree. People rarely make rational decisions. They may only think they do.
That’s often true (hey weing, we almost agree on something). That could apply to the decision to vaccinate or not, as well.
Dr. Benway,
“Th1Th2, my entire medical school got the Hep B series at about the same time. As far as I know, not a single person became sick.
Exposure to an antigen does not equal infection with a virus.”
Unfortunately for you, it does. You had been exposed and had developed an acute and asymptomatic case of Hepatitis B infection (vaccine-induced HbsAg) that eventually resolved.
Exposure to HbsAg is equivalent to HBV exposure. HBV exposure doe not always lead to infection, it depends on the viral and antigen load. Like I said, HbsAg is the virulent factor for HBV.
“Available data show that vaccine-induced hepatitis B antibody levels do decline with time. Nevertheless, immune memory remains intact for at least 15 years following immunization, and both adults and children with declining antibody levels are still protected against significant hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection (e.g., clinical disease, HBsAg antigenemia, or significant elevation of liver enzymes). Exposure to HBV results in an anamnestic anti-HBs response that prevents clinically significant HBV infection. Chronic HBV infection has only rarely been documented among vaccine responders.”
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac%5Chepb%5Cfaqs-nipinfo-hepb.htm
HBsAg antigenemia and significant elevation of liver enzymes can occur after vaccination and still considered a significant “syndrome” of Hepatitis B infection in addition to clinical disease.
“Hepatitis B vaccine induced HBsAg positivity”
http://www.hepatitisbannual.org/article.asp?issn=0972-9747;year=2007;volume=4;issue=1;spage=55;epage=60;aulast=Singh
Adverse Reactions to Hepatitis B vaccine.
Digestive System
Elevation of liver enzymes; constipation
Gastrointestinal System: Abnormal liver function tests; dyspepsia.
http://www.merck.com/product/usa/pi_circulars/r/recombivax_hb/recombivax_pi.pdf
http://us.gsk.com/products/assets/us_engerixb.pdf
“I find your difficulty distinguishing part of a virus from the whole virus strange. It’s as though you’d mistake my hat for me.”
Isn’t that exactly how vaccine apologists explain the idea behind vaccination, to trick the immune system as it was the “real” disease? HbsAg is not just a lipoprotein, it is the viral marker of Hepatitis B. Just like you, being the owner of the hat.
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