Boston Globe Propaganda Piece

[dingogirl]

By Dr. Darshak Sanghavi

The Secret Truth Parents used to accept routine vaccinations
for their children without a second thought. But as more parents
weigh the benefits of vaccination against the possible risks, some
are hesitating, even resisting, those shots, as doctors struggle to
persuade them of their safety. At stake is the health of a
nation...

"Perhaps that is why it's better that our public health policies
require childhood vaccination and discourage individuals from making
the choice themselves. In the final analysis, the secret truth about
vaccines may be that, sometimes, personal freedom can be a dangerous
thing".

http://tinyurl.com/9o6fv

Yikes.

[mamakay]

Omg!

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

On some level, the Hansens' methods are understandable, since there are no larger clinical trials involving, for example, elimination diets and vitamins. Before the 20th century, all medical research resembled the Hansens' experiments. But in spite of their intuitive appeal, personal anecdotes are also a crucible of quackery. Even hundreds of them don't add up to reliable data. The Hansens thus committed an ancient error by using their personal experience to link vaccines with their sons' autism. They transmuted a likely coincidence into truth.

In that case, so did Jenner, since Phelps, the boy upon which he based his claim to fame, died after the shot of TB.

He can't have it both ways.

LAST YEAR, MIT PROFESSOR Josh Tenenbaum told Psychology Today: "Coincidences drive so many of the inferences our minds make. Our neural circuitry is set up to notice these anomalies and use them to drive new learning. There is an old saying that neurons that fire together wire together. So you could say that coincidence operates at the level of the synapse, whenever neurons fire at the same time."

Well, equally, perhaps its coincidence when someone gets anaphylaxis after the shot, and when they do a re-challenge and it happens again, that's coincidence too.

So, do I now need to wait for a 400,000 double blind randomised trial to tell me that my life-threatening allergy to antibiotics is actually for real, or a product of my imagination?

When is a reaction, a reaction?

Only when it suits?

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

What this means is that no clinical trial, no matter how well-funded or well-designed, can ever prove a negative - it can only show that a possible cause-effect association is very, very unlikely. That is why it will always be impossible to eliminate the perceived link between thimerosal and autism.

He's wrong here too. Because if you took a group of TOTALLY unvaccinated children with the same confounding variables as the COMPLETELY vaccinated children, with autism now having a strike rate of about 1 per 60 or thereabouts, if there is any truth in the claim that vaccines cause autism, you would have your answer within five years.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

In 1987, Japan allowed parents to decide whether their children should be vaccinated against several diseases, including measles. Many opted out, and now more than 100,000 cases of measles occur each year, with an estimated 50 to 100 deaths.

Japan still allows parents to decide. What is his problem?

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

The Hansens, like most people, want the best health for children. "Vaccines are one of the great successes of medicine," Jared says. He doesn't want to stop vaccination, but rather allow parents to weigh the pros and cons. When I explain that leaving the choice to parents can harm herd immunity, as in Japan and Britain, he expresses genuine concern. "That's a very good point," he says.

Which again exposes the fallacy.

If vaccines work, then the only people at risk are the unvaccinated.

So again, what is his problem?

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Besides which Nature was forced to print a retraction recently that the decline in the use of MMR in UK, hasn't lead to one death attributable to non-vaccination.

Oh.... and in japan, they still don't use the MMR.

[aira]

What's this business about pro-vaxers always bungling the idea of proving a negative? It's really getting absurd.

I get really tired of people claiming that they positively without a doubt know a negative statement to be true (like our fav ped's list on her site) when it suits them, but when it's obvious that something can be proven, such as a link between vaxes and damage they cause, those same people frame it in a negative statement and then yap about how it isn't provable.

And they all seem to have their noses in the air that they alone can understand logic, correlation and causality. Not only do I understand logical thinking, but I can even see through semantical games used to obfuscate logic. Wow, and I'm not even a doctor or anything!

And may I ask about this business about anecdotes not adding up to data? I mean, when a clinical trial is done, do they not for example, give a bunch of people a drug and write down observations about what happens? When enough observations coinside, it becomes a pattern, trend, and then data.

So enough anecdotes involving vaxed kids and unvaxed kids showing consistent patterns and trends in reactions, events, and symptoms (or lack), might merit notice, no? It certainly doesn't merit being poopooed as *looks down nose* mere anecdote. If so, wouldn't the very method of conducting medical experiments fall short of this standard. Not that vaxes have even gotten that level of testing...

Doublespeak!!!