After all, whats the death of a baby from a vaccine preventable illness huh?
The baby was 9 months old, his birth weight was 8 lbs 5 ounces. At six months he weighed just shy of 20 pounds. Today he weighed 15 pounds – he was a skeleton and he was dying.
Mom had brought him in after treatment by his naturopath had failed. Constant coughing had made it impossible for him to take in adequate nutrition and starvation, coupled with a raging bacterial pneumonia were conspiring to shortly end his very short life.
We worked feverishly. Intubation, IV boluses, major antibiotics, vasopressors. All futile.
At 9:03 pm, after 30 minutes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation we pronounced him dead.
This boy had pertussis. His mother choose not to vaccinate him. I won’t enter that debate. Anyone who has ever watched a child die or become permanently disabled from a preventable illness supports vaccination.
A naturopath a mother who elected not to vaccinate and decreasing herd immunity – what could go wrong there? Lets hope there’s no other people as *fucking stupid* as to go around blathering about not vaccinating, using naturopaths instead of doctors and insinuating that vaccine preventable diseases are nothing and vastly preferable to something like…oh I dunno….autism for example.
Left Brain Right Brain 
Anon,
I guess you didn’t read the thread. That was a response to Steve_D and half in jest. But only half.
I guess you didn’t know that car accidents are actually the largest killer by far of children in the USA every year. You should think a little more before dismissing the issue out of hand. Have you ever seen the effects of a car accident on a child who wasn’t properly secured? A good friend of mine is an accident investigator.
As the “blind eye to vaccine issues” people around here are so fond of pointing out: These are dead children we’re talking about, that doesn’t even count the permanently injured ones.
Schwartzy: Why do you care what happens in the USA?! You are Canadian! Much different vaccine schedule!
Then you say: “These are dead children we’re talking about, that doesn’t even count the permanently injured ones.”
And yet, you can’t figure out what is worse, the DTaP or pertussis, tetanus or diphtheria!
Somehow, over 40 dead from pertussis in Japan versus two who MAY have died from the vaccine doesn’t seem to compute in your logic starved pointy little head.
HCN,
Your arrogant assumptions about me are quite entertaining. I was part of the drug approval machine for a while, and I am quite familiar with how it works. You obviously don’t, since attending a meeting in Ottawa is pretty pointless, especially with the current government in place. Knowing someone from BC, I would have expected you to realize that. Of course your blaming Health Canada on the problems you listed illustrate more of your ignorance of the issues at play. Health care funding and execution is a provincial responsibility — though you wouldn’t know it at election time — so the problems you described can be blamed on the provincial health authority, not Health Canada.
It’s funny how your tunnel vision focusses in on a single statistic in Japan. The infant mortality rate in Japan today 2.8/1000 is way less than half of that in the USA (6.3), and close to half that of the UK (4.93) and Canada (5.08). Yet you deride their vaccine policies? Clearly they’re getting something right that the rest of us aren’t.
I find it amusing that you insist the illogical path of asking me to provide evidence that the vaccine is risker than the disease, when I’ve stated several times that no such evidence exists — hence no link. No credible data exists to make any credible risk comparison — that’s how I started into this whole issue, but somehow you illogically think that making personal attacks will prove your point?
I went back to the Canadian Immunization Guide and I learned a couple new things. They actually have a passive reporting system now in Canada — long time coming. But they provide less specific study references in the guide than they used to.
Is there a reference to safety studies on concurrent application of different vaccines? There are a couple of references to odd combinations (flu and pneumococcal). Even the FDA documents state they usually don’t exist pre-licensure, yet the recommendation is clear. I’ve never seen any studies proposed on the safety of changes to the vaccine schedule. It would be easy to run a long term study on that. Like I said… faith.
I notice you dropped your weak arguments about Gardasil as well. I wouldn’t expect you to believe me. How about a member of the research team?
“”Giving it to 11-year-olds is a great big public health experiment,” said Diane M. Harper, who is a scientist, physician, professor and the director of the Gynecologic Cancer Prevention Research Group at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire.
“It is silly to mandate vaccination of 11- to 12-year-old girls There also is not enough evidence gathered on side effects to know that safety is not an issue.””
Schwartzy said “blah blah blah… some quotes without references”
And still no evidence with documentation on the risks of DTaP versus pertussis. Some some random statistic about infant mortality rates in various countries that he may pulled out of his head: because he does not give the source or documentation (by the way, infant mortality rates are measured differently in all of those countries, and contain bias: http://www.ajph.org/cgi/reprint/84/5/850 ).
You keep claiming I am ignorant on the issues… BUT you have not presented any documented evidence! Come on! Educate me, give me data, give me evidence… something with substance.
I want to know what evidence (NOT your opinion) exists that shows that the DTap is more dangerous than pertussis.
More on infant mortality (found a Canadian source, but only the abstract):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11862950?
Which says “The huge disparities in the ratio of fetal to infant deaths <750 g and in the proportion of live births <750 g among these developed countries probably result from differences in birth and death registration practices. International comparisons and rankings of infant mortality should be interpreted with caution.”
Now please, next time you answer: Use some real evidence.
HCN,
“Schwartzy: Why do you care what happens in the USA?! You are Canadian! Much different vaccine schedule!”
Simple, because Health Canada uses the CDC and FDA studies as reference material.
Let’s see if you can make any sense of this:
“I find it amusing that you insist the illogical path of asking me to provide evidence that the vaccine is risker than the disease, when I’ve stated several times that no such evidence exists—hence no link. No credible data exists to make any credible risk comparison—that’s how I started into this whole issue, but somehow you illogically think that making personal attacks will prove your point?”
“I want to know what evidence (NOT your opinion) exists that shows that the DTap is more dangerous than pertussis.”
No credible evidence of safety, means no ability to measure risk. Pretty simple.
As for the infant mortality stats, they came from the CIA database: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html
The WHO has very similar numbers and they standardize their reporting to account for the issues raised by your linked study, same with Unicef. If you still don’t believe the part about the USA absolute numbers, you’ll note:
“In the late 1960s, die USA and Canada had comparable rates, but the decline was much greater in Canada and in die early 1990s Canada showed a considerably more favourable infant mortality rate (6.7 versus 9.2 per 1,000 live births in the USA).” I suppose that’s because the US and Canadians diverged in their reporting?
Click to access 157.pdf
From studies in Japan:
http://www.cababstractsplus.org/google/abstract.asp?AcNo=20053135737
“Infant mortality rates declined significantly between 1973 and 1998 in all regions.”
And if you want to complain that the reporting is not accurate or consistent, then you’re making my other point really that poor information on all of this abounds. If you want to focus in on a single statistic of 40 deaths while ignoring the bigger picture, then you can enjoy looking at the trees.
Schwartzy said “blah blah blah…”
And absolutely nothing with data that shows the risks of DTaP versus pertussis.
Just a reminder:
Gardisil has nothing to do with the risk comparison between DTaP and pertussis.
International infant mortality comparisons (and your sources would still reflect the biases mentioned in the two articles I cited) has nothing to do with the risk comparison between DTaP and pertussis.
Your attempts to change the subject to your pet anti-vaccine issues have nothing to do with the risk comparison between DTaP and pertussis.
HCN,
“Your attempts to change the subject to your pet anti-vaccine issues have nothing to do with the risk comparison between DTaP and pertussis.”
You’re so funny. You’re the one who drilled in on the Gardasil topic. I just followed. You should drop it though. There is little defense on that topic.
“And absolutely nothing with data that shows the risks of DTaP versus pertussis.”
Oh, there are certainly attempts. But none that accurately represent credible numbers. If you can’t even measure incidence of Pertussis accurately, how will you calculate risk of contraction or suffering damage?
FYI – You need to calculate both of those to determine the risk difference.
Schwartzy said “You’re so funny. You’re the one who drilled in on the Gardasil topic.’
How is putting a response in parentheses as an afterthought “drilling”? It was only in response to your attempts to divert from the subject and main topic of the posting to your own interests. (though I noticed this morning that Kev may have deleted your comment because it was not on subject, and I am sure that is why Autism-News-Beat deleted your postings —- your repeated diversions are very tiresome. Take a hint: stay on topic).
You continue “Oh, there are certainly attempts. But none that accurately represent credible numbers. If you can’t even measure incidence of Pertussis accurately, how will you calculate risk of contraction or suffering damage?”
Well, then you do not have enough information for your pointy little head. But most epidemiologists have noted that with reduction of vaccination for pertussis, pertussis returns. Often with deadly results. This is what happened in Japan, Boulder, CO, and other areas with lower vaccination rates. If you look at the map at the bottom of this report:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5450a3.htm?s_cid=mm5450a3_e … you will see that the highest number of pertussis are in states with lowest vaccination rates (like Colorado).
You still need to show me the evidence you have that the DTaP is more dangerous than pertussis.
Due to the fact that two URL links tend to push comments into moderation… this is a continuation.
Along with the map at the bottom of that CDC report, there is this paper that shows that pertussis is more prevelent where there are more vaccine exemptions:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/296/14/1757
“States with easy procedures for granting exemptions were associated with a 90% higher incidence of pertussis (IRR = 1.90; 95% CI, 1.06-2.28) and states with a medium difficulty for granting exemptions were associated with a 27% higher incidence of pertussis (IRR = 1.27; 95% CI, 1.06-1.51) compared with states with difficult procedures to obtain exemptions.”
I still would like to see what information you have that shows that the DTaP is more dangerous than pertussis.
HCN,
“(though I noticed this morning that Kev may have deleted your comment because it was not on subject, and I am sure that is why Autism-News-Beat deleted your postings——your repeated diversions are very tiresome. Take a hint: stay on topic).”
(Autism-news-beat deleted research links to Cochrane reports on the Flu vaccine in an article about flu vaccines — LOL, I guess you find study references about flu to be off topic for a flu discussion)
(PS: Why don’t you answer the Gardasil argument in parenthesis, since that’s how you initiated the discussion on it?)
“But most epidemiologists…”
I state there is no credible safety data (i.e. can’t calculate risk from vaccination), and yet you immediately discuss epidemiology data of incidence (something you seem obsessed with). So let’s go through the BASIC mathematics:
In order to calculate risk of disease contraction and subsequently risk of damage from disease you need to accurately track yearly incidence in target population, and you need to track the damage due to disease in the population contracting the disease.
Q1: How accurately is incidence actually tracked on Pertussis?
A1: Pretty poorly since many incidence of Pertussis on not distinguishable from a regular cough so it is underreported.
Q2: What does an unquantified underreporting of incidence do to our risk measure for damage based on contraction:
A2: The risk of damage from pertussis is overstated because the actual incidence is higher than reported while incidence of damage is most often accurately reported (due to post mortem analysis).
But that alone isn’t really the problem because despite these problems I’m assuming we could probably come up with some reasonable upper and lower bounds on risk from damage from disease.
Risk analysis requires us to also have a risk of damage from vaccines. Since there are no credible safety studies and since event reporting of historical vaccinations are rife with inaccuracy, we can’t actually quantify the risk from the vaccine. So how exactly do you propose to do a risk comparison given you can’t quantify the second risk factor? Repeating an unanswerable question doesn’t help your case.
Schwartzy said “blah blah blah”… without any credible evidence.
All he can say is that it does not meet his Bizarro World criteria. He seems to find that epidemiologists don’t know what they are doing, yet he is quite unwilling to send in his resume to Health Canada to help them fix all the problems he sees with them.
What evidence does Schwartzy have that the DTaP is more dangerous than pertussis?
HCN doesn’t appear to understand the logical problem. No credible data available to accurately determine risk means no ability to perform a risk comparison.
Schwartzy, so far you have not shown any real logic (the diversions to other vaccines is his best tactic). You have not presented any evidence that the DTaP is more dangerous than pertussis. There is plenty of data, it is available in several studies covering several countries… yet it does not seem to be to your liking. It works fine for epidemiologists, but not for Schwartzy. What kind of special knowledge do you have that they don’t?
Put up or shut up.
HCN,
You illustrate my point about not getting it. You bring up epidemiologists, but epidemiology can’t provide good data on safety, especially when the tracking data is so poor. That would be reserved for well designed RCTs.
But you keep the faith!
You have all the answers to the fact you have no answers, nor any expertise.
Still a bit weird that you think that there is not enough data on a vaccine that has been available since the 1940s, and the newer version (DTaP) has been used for several years in Japan. In almost 70 years of pertussis vaccine use you still can’t find information that tells you if pertussis is more dangerous than the vaccine? Especially when studies like this show that when vaccines go down cases of pertussis go up:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/296/14/1757
Do you still not see why it is not ethical to do a Randomized Control Trial on children for something that they know mostly prevents pertussis and when vaccinated kids do get the disease it is much less severe?
And to think you want to be considered smarter than Health Canada, WHO, CDC, the public health agencies of Japan and all of Europe and all the epidemiologists in the world.
HCN,
Arguments from authority is a logical fallacy. You can wax poetic about authoritative organizations and how they endorse it’s safety, but that doesn’t make a logical argument.
In case you didn’t realize it, calling me names is also flawed logic. If I didn’t know better I would think I was debating a highschool student.
Once again, one can’t provide an accurate risk of vaccination because the adequate safety trials haven’t been done. Even worse, accurate tracking of vaccine problems is extremely inaccurate and flawed. You can skirt around that issue all you want, but without rigorous safety information, you can’t determine an appropriate risk factor. Without a risk factor, you can’t compare risks. That’s pretty basic.
There are unvaccinated populations available — you should know since you continually whine about them. It wouldn’t be unethical to do a long term study on them. It’s certainly easy to identify them.
Given that on this topic, the glass is half empty for you, I’m sure you’ll think of some more roadblocks.
There is really no good excuse for compulsary reporting and followup of all vaccine adverse reactions. Is that an ethical problem too?