Comments on: Why don’t the so-called “vaccine safety” orgs talk about vaccine safety?

By: Science Mom

Science Mom — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:39:04 +0000

Surely you know that there is no need for any of that crud if you take care of yourself naturally…

I never said that they didn’t save lives,
it’s merely the crud they mix it with
THAT’S the problem…

You know transcend, it would help considerably if you would care to actually identify what ‘crud’ is. The naturalistic fallacy is, well, a fallacy.

By: Mike Stanton

Mike Stanton — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:20:10 +0000

I think Mark Blaxill is referring to Nicaragua. Merck have donated the vaccine for a feasibility study there that is proving positive. The last time I looked over 1 million doses had been administered. The plan is to follow up by providing Rotateq at cost to developing countries and recoup their investment with differential pricing in Europe and America.

By: Dawn

Dawn — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:55:53 +0000

@David: Intussusseception is a “telescoping” of the bowel into itself. There are several risk factors, prematurity is one. I don’t think they ever figured out why Rotashield increased the risk. I’ve seen it once. Actually, IIRC (and I haven’t dealt with the subject in nearly 15 years), one treatment is giving an bowel stimulent so that peristalsis can push the telescoped bowel back out. So, yeah, in this case, diarrhea could be helpful.

By: Sullivan

Sullivan — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:52:50 +0000

Tanscend,

the idea that we will all be just fine with natural remedies is just nonsense. Even in the developed world, these diseases are very nasty. Elderberry, vitamin D and the rest are just not going to stop measles or Hib or any of the rest from killing and harming people.

The vaccine proponents are honest about the fact that there is a risk in vaccines. Why can’t the vaccine skeptics be as honest?

By: Transcend

Transcend — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:49:33 +0000

Surely you know that there is no need for any of that crud if you take care of yourself naturally…

I never said that they didn’t save lives,
it’s merely the crud they mix it with
THAT’S the problem…

By: Joseph

Joseph — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:19:48 +0000

@Transcend: You’re not necessarily “crazy,” but you are misinformed and clearly paranoid.

By: Mary Ann

Mary Ann — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:27:24 +0000

Vaccines are among the safest tools of modern medicine and they have saved the lives of thousands and thousands from crippling disease and death. Of course it’s been such a long time since we’ve seen many of the diseases that vaccines protect us from, we don’t realize just how dangerous these diseases really are.

For example in the 1920s there were an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 cases of diphtheria a year in the US, causing 13,000 to 15,000 deaths a year, most of those where children.

If vaccines don’t work, if they are full of crappy ingredients, if they are nothing more then “laboratory made crud” then where did all the diseases go?

By: Transcend

Transcend — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:03:40 +0000

The horn the ‘Anti’ people toot for ‘clean the vaccines’ is a relevant one as injections are full of many crappy ingredients. There are to many stories of people living the nightmare where symptoms were TRIGGERED after injections (autism or anything else), not that they necessarily CAUSED them. There’s truth to both sides so it’s really not worth arguing over. If you think you are ‘protecting’ yourself from a ‘possible’ sickness, then go ahead, inject yourself with some laboratory made crud from some money-machine corporation, no one else will give a flying rip, certainly not the company making them, because they just got your $24.99….
The fact that there is an opposition being openly talked about is GOOD, as all you hear in the mainstream news is the Corporation’s side which is all fear and hoo-rah for how great they all are and how everyone needs them, and if you don’t think so, you’re crazy…

By: storkdok

storkdok — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:03:59 +0000

What they conveniently ignore is the money it costs (as well as time and energy and emotions for the family) to hospitalize a child with rotavirus. As a medical student, we admitted a lot of children for dehydration from rotavirus. It also is devastating in the NICU, as I recall an outbreak that required isolation within the NICU and caused several deaths of premature infants on my rotation in the NICU as a resident. With monitoring for intussusseption for a months after the vaccine, Rotateq makes a huge difference in the lives of children in developing and undeveloped countries.

The vaccine is used in developing countries, don’t know where Blaxill gets his info, but developing countries do have vaccination programs. That was one of our duties in Papua New Guinea when I did a rotation as a medical student. We traveled to villages and administered vaccines.

With the antivaxxer hate-on to Gardasil, my answer is that it will save thousands of lives in developing countries where cervical cancer is the largest gynecologic cancer that kills women, because they have little surveillance.

By: David N. Brown

David N. Brown — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:27:28 +0000

As far as the relative interest of “anti-vax” activism vs. actual vaccine safety, I made a chart a while ago using Google News comparing coverage of MMR and Rotashield from 1998-2005. I came up with 8,153 stories for MMR compared to 337 for Rotashield. Thus, the vaccine that high-pressure lobbyists alleged to be unsafe received more than 20 times the coverage of a vaccine actually proven unsafe (to scientists’ satisfaction) at approximately the same time.
Incidentally, I’m not clear why a rotavirus vaccine would cause intussusspection. is intussusspection a result of internal blockage? If so, I wonder if the people getting it after rotavirus vaccination are those for whom such an obstruction would be “cleared” by diarrea.