Monday, August 23, 2010

Anti-Vaccine Groups Don't Have Verifiable Facts Supporting Their Fears 

Tags: Anti-vaccine Groups Misinform Fearful Americans in the Same Way Politicians Do, NY Times, Dr. Mercola

Too many well educated and intelligent Americans have a fear of all vaccines, especially the flu vaccines based on misinformed and misinterpreted incidents in their lives. Many of these people are not evil or unintelligent. In one upscale town full of retired professors in Ashland, Oregon, fear of vaccines has led to some tragic deaths from common childhood diseases. Preventing deaths is the purpose and result of vaccines. Some people and children are more susceptible than others to disease and epidemics. Luckily the H1N1 virus has always been in our environment, but we could not wait to see if only a relative few were infected and died.


Take at least 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 with meals. That will give you about 12 days of stored vitamin D3. Take more if you don't get enough sun without sunscreen during the high sun hours. Only 5-10 minutes a day with little clothes is enough. Sunscreen on your face, ears, and neck with a hat for longer exposures is prudent. When you skin starts to burn without being in the water, it is time to get some shade or clothes.


Also the seasonal flu vaccine was the same as it was the last year so fewer people died, especially older people. Children six and below and the elderly have weakened immune systems so the vaccine does not take as easily. The vaccines work by eliciting a body response to the dead or weakened virus. Finally we have a thinking administration who used logic to determine that vaccines did not work as well as necessary for seniors for the above reason. So the dose is double that of the typical flu vaccines which has been found safe.

Most of what they believe is based on emotions and a selective search of the internet to support their fears. The fears are justified when the powerful have a long record of screwing us. So it takes a effort and time to get the truth. Just because someone says it with much emotion and selective facts, follow the Reagan system of Trust but Verify.


The universally “believed” Autism study could not be verified by other researchers, but we seem to always believe what came out first! The autism cure truth may be as simple as mother’s not having enough vitamin D in their blood and skin to support brain and synaptic development in the fetus and baby from breast feeding.


Fear of microwave ovens as far as I have determined is based on no verifiable and repeated research done and published in reputable journals. Obviously we fear that special interests may have fudged the data as we have seen in both the Reagan and Bush administrations and by Big Pharma on medicines such as Vioxx by Merck or Avandia, the Glaxo Welcome Type II diabetes drug.


Even with well proven side effects our dear FDA panel of special interests allowed it to stay on the market recently. Big Pharma pays for the research done by the FDA, something that Bush put into place with disastrous results. It is similar to the Wall Street theft of our investments when the regulator was paid by the company that wanted approval ratings. Another Bush innovation. Don’t want you family member or friend to put back the crooks. Learn and remember the facts by not skimming what you read and tell them the truth.


The baby drugs Autism scare was based on fraudulent reporting of research results and was only recently the fake research report was removed from the prestigious Lancet journal. But people still keep talking about the same study as proof that Autism is caused by this study although no other researcher was able to duplicate the results.


The other fraud rarely reported now is the drugs to stop hot flashes study used by Rumsfeld’s firm in Illinois was also faked and only recently not recommended after many women died from breast cancer. The fake researcher’s wife who used this pill died of breast cancer, but never reported when it mattered.


When many women stopped using the estrogen progestin hot flash cure, the rate of breast cancer started to go down almost immediately instead of up. Not enough has been done by the media publicizing this fact because they depend on ads from Big Pharma. Always ask, what is their record of telling the truth whether Big Pharma, Republican and Democratic politicians and especially the corporate press/media.


Remember when we watch the news, many of us are already tired from overwork, so tend not to think. Ask questions of what you hear when you hear them. People turn off their thinking brain when the watch all television on average. Even the most intelligent people!


Unless it is crucial and much evidence for its safe use, don’t use a new drug for seven years. It takes that long to find out what is happening with our current inadequate reporting system.


One of the criteria of good science is that the experiment is able to be reproduced by an independent researcher. This is not done in test Big Pharma drugs, or political ads on television. Republicans are well versed in propaganda by having scary music when telling us how bad the Democrats are in spite of the evidence that the Republicans are always worse now.


Dr. Mercola, an osteopath, generally does a good job giving us the newest medical findings. However, it is obvious that he does not think scientifically and has fallen into the logic trap of believing the comments of persons such as Barbara Fisher heading an impressive sounding organization. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/08/21/barbara-loe-fisher-on-flu-vaccine-changes.aspx


Dr. Mercola makes the mistake that Fisher reads all the literature that is relevant to her statements. She does not. I read the long article and know a lot more than she does and saw many distortions and mistakes in her article which I will not take the time to delineate. Just read the NY Times article below about Fisher.


NY Times Jennifer Steinhauer Swine Flu Shots Revive a Debate About Vaccines October 15, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/health/16vaccine.html?_r=1 . Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center, an advocacy group that questions the safety of vaccines, said the swine flu has “breathed new life” into the cause. “People who have never asked questions before about vaccines are looking at this one,” Ms. Fisher said.

The increased interest is frustrating to health officials, who are struggling to persuade an already wary public to line up for shots and prevent the spread of the pandemic. According to a CBS News poll conducted last week, only 46 percent said they were likely to get the vaccine. The nationwide poll, which has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points, found that while 6 in 10 parents were likely to have their children vaccinated, less than half said they were “very likely to.”

“I wonder if the people disseminating this false information about this vaccine realize that what they are doing could result in some people losing their lives,” said Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding, the director of the Department of Public Health for Los Angeles County. The comments of vaccine dissenters, which he said “politically come from the left and the right,” were frequently “not just counterproductive,” he said, “but downright disgraceful.”

Web sites, Twitter feeds, talk radio and even elevator chatter are awash with skeptics criticizing the vaccine, largely with no factual or scientific basis. The most common complaint is that the vaccine has been newly formed and quickly distributed without the benefit of clinical trials; in fact, the swine flu vaccine was made using the same techniques as seasonal flu shots over the last two decades, and a small number of clinical trials were conducted this year to determine the adequate dose.

There are also claims that the vaccine contains adjuvants — sometimes added to make vaccines more effective — although they have not been used in this one. In addition, there is fear that the vaccine could lead to Guillain-Barré syndrome, as was suspected the last time a swine flu vaccine was distributed, in 1976; flu vaccines are now much purer than they were, minimizing the risk, and Guillain-Barré is far rarer.

In measuring the risk of the vaccine, there is general consensus among doctors that serious adverse reactions are rare and that pregnant women and young people, in particular, are better off with the vaccine than without it. While most people who get H1N1 experience mild symptoms, a recent New England Journal of Medicine study showed that among Americans hospitalized with swine flu last spring, one in four ended up in intensive care and 7 percent of them died.

The illness, unlike other flu strains, has been particularly tough on children and young adults and appears to have a disproportionately high fatality rate in pregnant women.

Health care officials are concerned that some groups, especially pregnant women, are potentially swayed by the large-scale efforts of vaccine opponents.

“One of the things they are focusing on now is immunization and pregnancy,” said Saad B. Omer, assistant professor of global health at Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, “and their perceptions of the vaccine in use of pregnant women. It is not a benign perception in this case, and could have serious impacts, because pregnant women have high risk of complication if they get the swine flu.”

The anti-vaccine movement, largely comprising activists and a handful of doctors and researchers who connect a variety of health problems — particularly autism spectrum disorders — to vaccines, has failed to find large-scale traction in the United States, where more than 90 percent of children are vaccinated.

But at a conference this month of National Vaccine Information Center, Ms. Fisher said, there were 675 people, more than double the number at the group’s last conference, and half said they were there to discuss swine flu. Unlike most people associated with the center, who have longstanding objections to vaccines or have a connection to the issue because of an autistic child, the newcomers were not traditional skeptics, Ms. Fisher said. “They came not knowing much,” she said, “and left galvanized.”

Further, vitamin vendors — who in some cases operate blogs, with postings by people who claim to be doctors finding fault with vaccines — are reporting an increase in sales related to swine flu. Michael Angelo, chief research and information officer for eVitamins.com, said sales in September for flu-related products had tripled from last September. The company, he said, has sold 17,565 vitamins that it says protects against the H1N1 virus.

Some anti-vaccine groups are also highly organized and quick to respond to openings to promote their message. For instance, this week, an 8-year-old boy from Long Island died roughly a week after receiving a seasonal flu vaccine, though officials from the New York State Department of Health denied a connection.

Almost instantly, on a memorial page on Newsday’s Web site for the boy, Sean Weisse, a message from an anti-vaccine advocacy group appeared: “We are so sorry to hear about Sean. My understanding, and forgive me if I’m wrong, is that this was a vaccine-related injury. If so, we would like to help you. Best regards, Stan Kurtz, Generation Rescue, Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy’s Organization.”...

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