Limits of epidemiology

[Deborah]

A lot of the vaccination arguments end up with nose to nose debates over toxicology versus epidemiology. Thimerosal, for example, has been found to be extremely toxic in numerous studies (the skull and crossbones on the package is a clue to this), but various epidemiological studies have exonerated it (supposedly) from being harmful in vaccines. [These same non-harmful thimerosal containing vaccines have to be disposed of as toxic waste]

So, I thought it would be interesting to look at some of the studies of the limits of epidemiology. The first one I turned up is this:

http://www.ippnw.org/MGS/V1N2Wing.html

This study discusses the problems of epidemiology when it looks at diseases caused by environmental insults rather than diseases spread by infectious organisms.

Everyone feel free to contribute their favorite study or studies.

And I would love an explanation of how an extremely toxic substance can be "cleared" of doing harm, based only on epidemiological studies. I don't find this believable, sorry.

[mamakay]

Here's the fulltext:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl...f+Epidemiology

[mamakay]

Let's take a look at the "evidence based medicine" pyramid:

http://phpartners.org/tutorial/04-eb...pts/4.2.7.html

So, retrospective epidemiology doesn't even show up.

[Deborah]

http://genetik.charite.de/eumedis/st...demiology.html

I found this basic overview of what epidemiology is and how it is supposed to work.