It's not so bad for you--but if you passed that to an unvaccinated infant, it could be fatal. Nine babies have died so far this year of an entirely preventable disease. Tragic.

My co-worker's son came down with whooping cough. 6 weeks later, he's still having trouble with horrid coughing.

I've had the flu a couple times. 6 weeks after the flu, I could no longer tell I had been sick.

@UDunnoBro:

You wrote this:

I had the whooping cough about two years ago, you just let it run its course. Not anywhere near as bad as a flu.

It is difficult to determine you age, but the best guess here in the sound isolation studio is that you are not a remarkably bright four year-old who sua sponte became proficient in English before starting kindergarten . . .

Having whooping cough as an adolescent or adult is one thing, and you might be able to get over it with few if any problems, but if you happen to be a baby or a toddler, then the outcome is very different, which is the problem and is the reason that adolescents and adults become disease vectors, where "disease vectors" is a fancy way of explaining the fact that unvaccinated adolescents and adults spread whooping cough to infants and toddlers . . .

You might have had few if any personal problems with whooping cough yourself, but if you had any contact with infants and toddlers, then things probably did not go so well for those little folks, really . . .

Really! :-o

stop spreading lies.....babies are dying

DarkHouse

...babies have died so far this year of an entirely preventable disease.

This is false. Even with a 100% vaccination rate, there would still be infants dying of pertussis; hence, it is not "entirely preventable."

Where is the outrage over the starving children or babies who die because of their mother's medically unnecessary c-sections? I do not need to look up the rates to assure you that its more than 9 infants per year.

Coughing so hard that you can't catch your breath? I find that to be worse than the flu. What's a problem is an infant gets it and then develops secondary issues like pneumonia and then winds up with a collapsed lung. Whooping cough is VERY serious and indeed deadly.

You are a moron. Did you diagnose yourself? If you have ever seen a gasping baby, you would not take this so casually.

Stay off Dr. Wiki and stay awy from babies.

Chicken squared---why don't we go for that 100% vaccination rate as see what happens?

As for starving children or c-sections (without which MY son would have died)---Why not mention Children in Syria or the Congo? Why not mention uncapped wells, or curtain drawstrings? How about lightening strikes, wild animal attacks, or choking on grapes?

ONE SUBJECT Of OUTRAGE AT A TIME!

This forum is about what we all can do to prevent Dickensian era diseases from making a comeback. The arguments of junk science does not stand up against the obvious solution.

Hey Bro, Just how many people did you pass the bacterial infection onto since it passed through contact & air borne, mostly air born, coughing, spitting, & such.

Something to really brag about.

If you want to blame someone blame the person who sold you the vaccines for the failure.

Did you not read the study? It shows that the vaccinations don't fail, it's those that are unvaccinated that hike the risk of infection. Can you read, or do you just not comprehend scientific studies, relying on your ridiculous beliefs alone? Damn the evidence, right Robert?

The major benefit of vaccinations is not to the individual, but to society as a whole with herd immunity. Herd immunity attenuates the reservoir of disease to the point that individual transmission becomes close to moot.

Anti-vaccine trolls kill people.

I think you can blame all the parents who arbitrarily decided not to vaccinate their kids due to the unsubstantiated belief that vaccines caused autism.

We're now reaping the benefits of their erroneous beliefs.

I had the whooping cough about two years ago, you just let it run its course. Not anywhere near as bad as a flu.

You had a minor case, i had it maybe 6 years ago. Would throw up during coughing fits, couldnt sit down my lungs hurt so bad, and couldnt do anything enjoyable because fits would just happen at any time.

So again, you were lucky, and be tahnkful for that.

My co-worker's son came down with whooping cough. 6 weeks later, he's still having trouble with horrid coughing.

I had coughing fits for about 4 months.

People, don't be such suck puppies! More of the cases are in vaccinated people than not. Does that even make sense? They even admit the vaccine is not 100% and you may still get it. Go ahead and blame the smart unvaccinated because that plays right into the pockets of big pharma. Pull your heads out of your collective asses and do some friggen research on your own! Dr. Mendleson's a shot in the Dark is a great place to start! And get over the fact that people are going to die. They do everyday from all sorts of things, since when did it become the right of the government to try and play God??? It's about money you idiots! And if you don't think that the rise in cancers, autism, and the gammit of other illnesses is on the rise because people are not vaccinated you're a fool! More people than not are at the doctors office sucking up all the drugs they can get their hands on!!! We are the most drugged nation on the planet and the most un healthy! Sheep will always follow, but wake up, look around and see some reality! There is no shortage of drugs only a shortgae of common sense!

Hold up a minute, vaccines are a money drain for "Big Pharma" not cash reservoirs, sure vaccines may sell but they suffer from huge lawsuit volumes, drugs may be over-prescribed but vaccines are not drugs, get that into your head... This country never had a 100% vaccination rate and most of the researchers that did studies that proved a casual connection between autism and vaccines have been discredited and their licenses revoked. And there IS a shortage of drugs, at least the the most important ones, you do have a point of the opiate class of pain relievers, there are too many pills of that class being prescribed. Back to the vaccine topic though, the Tdap vaccine does provide some type of protection, it may not be the most effective but it works.

People, don't be such suck puppies! More of the cases are in vaccinated people than not. Does that even make sense? They even admit the vaccine is not 100% and you may still get it. Go ahead and blame the smart unvaccinated because that plays right into the pockets of big pharma. Pull your heads out of your collective asses and do some friggen research on your own!

Finally, some sanity in this discussion. Great post. We who choose not to vaccinate do so for various reasons. We realize WE should have the final say as to what goes in our bodies. Now, if only there was a vaccine for the belligerence of these zealots.

Hot, you anti-vaccine activists are having the final say about what will happen to everyone you come in contact with.

Finally, some sanity in this discussion. Great post. We who choose not to vaccinate do so for various reasons. We realize WE should have the final say as to what goes in our bodies. Now, if only there was a vaccine for the belligerence of these zealots.

Im not for getting a vaccine because my gov says so, but i hope you catch the case of whooping cough i caught so you can understand how insane it is.

Here are the whooping cough cases over the past several decades. Been rising since the 1980's. Can someone(preferably one of you smart people who say its the unvaccinated spreading disease) provide a corresponding vaccine uptake chart. If you are correct then the rise and fall in vaccination will correspond to the rise and fall of cases. But that doesn't hold true. Don't let facts get in the way of vaccine ignorance. Keep blaming your neighbors.

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/G/cases&deaths.pdf

I got myself vaccinated. Feel free to be self-righteous about having the choice of what you put in your bodies if you like, but I refuse to be a baby killer if I can possibly help it. The vaccine reduces transmission and symptoms, and often prevents infection in the first place. That doesn't sound terrible to me.

What's a few seconds of pain and some minor irritation for a day or two balanced against the life of a child?

Imagine the pain on your conscience if you caught whooping cough and gave it to your nice, nephew, grandchild, ect...and they died? Worse than the sting of a shot, I imagine.

Most of the sick are vaccinated because vaccination rates are in the high 90 percents most everywhere you go. You wonder why the high whooping cough rates are in areas of lower vaccination percentages? It's not a conspiracy, it's science. The less people you vaccinate, the more at risk you are. Look at this study from a few years ago:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30930593/ns/health-childrens_health/t/vaccine-refusal-hikes-whooping-cough-risks/

The 99 percent that were vaccinated accounted for only 89 percent of cases, while the 1 percent that were unvaccinated accounted for 11 percent of the cases...hmmm, which is worse? You anti-vaxxers hide behind phony statistics (i.e. most people who contract it are vaccinated, etc.). You have to compare the RELATIVE RATES OF INFECTION. For whooping cough, it was shown that if you are unvaccinated you are 26 TIMES MORE LIKELY to contract it than a vaccinated person. You want to do that to your son or daughter? Don't think so...but if you're a conspiracy theorist, it's worth it, right? I mean, those 9 kids this year were just asking for it, right? OMG! 9 children DIED because of your outlandish ideas. HOW MANY MORE HAVE TO DIE BEFORE YOU GET IT???

This is a clear case of the vaccine's amazing success coming back to bite us.

http://www.ajc.com/health/cdc-whooping-cough-rising-1480942.html

ATLANTA — The U.S. appears headed for its worst year for whooping cough in more than five decades, with the number of cases rising at an epidemic rate that experts say may reflect a problem with the effectiveness of the vaccine.

Stop blaming the educated unvaccinated? I don't. I can't find any to blame.

The vaccine is not 100%. Not many vaccines are. The idea is to make the vast majority of vacinees immune so that a chain of transmission can't be sustained. But the immunity to pertussis is not forever. The reservoir of infection is the adult population which is why the push to immunize adults.

http://www.ajc.com/health/cdc-whooping-cough-rising-1480942.html

Whooping cough has generally been increasing for years, but this year's spike is startling. Health investigators are trying to figure out what's going on, and theories include better detection and reporting of cases, some sort of evolution in the bacteria that cause the illness, or shortcomings in the vaccine.

http://www.ima.org.il/imaj/ar06may-2.pdf

Pertussis is considered an endemic disease, characterized by an epidemic every 2–5 years. This rate of exacerbations has not changed, even after the introduction of mass vaccination – a fact that indicates the efficacy of the vaccine in preventing the disease but not the transmission of the causative agent (B. pertussis) within the population [19].

Robert, to quote the great Inigo Montoya, "I do not think it means what you think it means".

I.e. the quote is stating that because we're not maintaining proper immunization through initial vaccination and subsequent booster shots, we're seeing a huge increase in incidence. To put it another way, you're using a quote to try and bolster your argument which shows the direct opposite of your thinking. It's saying because of anti-vax dummies like you (and others who just forget to get boosters), we're losing our immunity. So you can't use statistics properly, and now you can't use quotes properly. Anything else you can't do?

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/

The whole-cell vaccine for pertussis is protective only against clinical disease, not against infection (15-17). Therefore, even young, recently vaccinated children may serve as reservoirs and potential transmitters of infection.

And that's the more effective whole cell vaccine.

And again, Robert, you misuse quotes. So you're saying a 50-year high in case incidence (and we're only halfway through the year) is "normal" in your 2-5 year spike schedule? Wow, how insane is that?

Robert, I'd love for you to explain what "whole cell vaccine" truly means and why it's not protective against infection.

I'll give you a hint...you get infected with a lot of diseases...your body clears most of them through normal immune system pathways. The problem is with diseases that your body can't clear quickly enough to avoid getting the symptoms (pertussis being one of these). So we all can "catch" pertussis...those of us that are vaccinated already have the antibodies for it and will clear it out much quicker than those that are unvaccinated, so we don't exhibit the symptoms like the cough.

You really are stretching this to unbelievable limits, Robert.

These anti-vaccine nuts do not realize the damage they are causing. Even when a vaccine is not 100% effective it is still of great value. By having everyone vaccinated you greatly reduce the chances of spreading the disease. To spread the disease would require that two people who the vaccine was not effective for to come in contact with each other. This is not a high probability event. However, when someone does not get vaccinated, they are virtually certain to get the disease should they come into contact with an infected person and this is a much higher probability. They then spread the disease to everyone else that they come in contact with that is not vaccinated as well as anyone the vaccine was not effective on. Even when a vaccine is not 100% effective, having it effective for most of the population provides for what is called a herd immunity which prevents the disease from spreading, even when a few people become infected.

Those who still talk about vaccines causing autism and other health problems really need to stop listening to idiots like Jenny McCarthy and her ilk and educate themselves by going to reputable sources for their information. The "studies" showing these links have been debunked and most of those involved have had their licenses to practice medicine revoked. Dr. Wakefield, who was the one to start the whole vaccine - autism nonsense was proven to be a fraud. And for the record it was not really the vaccine but a preservative that was used called Thimerosal that was blamed, and this has been proven false. It was shown that Dr. Wakefield was working in cahoots with and attorney who was trying to win a lawsuit and was paid off to falsify the results. Dr. Wakefield's work has been completely debunked and he was banned from ever practicing medicine again. Another point for all you anti-vaccine nuts out there is that Thimerosal has not been used in vaccines for some time now and even prior to the complete cessation of it's use there were preservative free vaccines available as an option for anyone who still harbored these unfounded concerns. I personally think that anyone who continues to spread the misinformation about vaccines should be charged for their actions, but unfortunately our free speech laws allow them to continue to spread their nonsense to the uneducated and uninformed. The number of people that have died because of their nonsense, many of them children, is staggering but yet they take no responsibility for this.

Just spoke to an aquaintance who mentioned her brother, his wife and their oldest child, all vaccinated, all have whooping cough...the youngest child in the household, that they chose NOT to vaccinate, does NOT have it...go figure.

My oldest siblings were all children prior to the vaccine, and my mother spoke of them all having it, and the horrible cough they would make...yet they are all still alive, with grand, and great grandchildren of their own, despite havign whooping cough as babies, and never being vaccinated.

We all must die of something, some of the shot, some from the disease...but do not fear or panic...and don't make decisions based on fear.

About 15-20 years ago, they relaxed the requirements for vaccinations in the United Kingdom and within 3 years their was a significant outbreak of pertussis. Now the same is happening in this country, not because of a relaxation of requirements, because people thought they they were so smart and that their kids didn't need the vaccine. Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.

Believe me, if you want to have the life scared out of you, do a youtube search for a video of a child with pertussis. Almost nothing will scare you as much as that.

Please people, for everyone else's sake, vaccinate. I, for one, spent too many late nights trying to soothe and comfort my little nephew in the PICU to ever forget. He was only five weeks old--after being about a month premature--when he caught pertussis and we didn't know for sure what was wrong for a week, if I recall correctly. If you'd held him and watched him, listless and miserable, and had to pat him on the back to get him to take another breath and ached to see that IV in him and watched him cry as the respiratory therapist worked on him because someone wasn't vaccinated and transmitted the disease to his sister (who wasn't greatly affected because she was vaccinated yet passed it on to him), you'd realize how needless his 6 weeks in the PICU was.

I gave you the entire link. No quote was used out of context. Anyone can look for themselves. I can't help it that you don't understand science because you work for a pharmceutical company and are biased toward everyone taking medicine.

Excuse me, not a real scientist but a lab cleanup/pill counting scientists for all of the real pharmaceutical scientists.

I had the whooping cough about two years ago

Yeah, good for you, too bad babies don't have immune systems like adults.

It is no surprise that there is an especially bad epidemic in Washington. We have one of the worst vaccination rates in the country. This is not a surprising correlation at all, and I will not be surprised when the Epidemiologists officially prove the link. The pranksters and fear-mongers have accomplished their missions. They have caused otherwise intelligent people to abandon science in favor of intuition and anecdotes. As a scientist, it saddens me that progress can be undone so easily. And that babies are suffering and dying because of it is ironic, since those that are anti-vax are trying to protect children --I guess we do live in a caste based society where there is a perception that some not only deserve better than others, but deserve better at the expense of others.

No one knows where this disease comes from according to Liberal New like CBS and the like but most of this problem is coming in from Illegals mexicans kids since they don't get vaccinated in Mexico. They bring this crap to the U.S. and spread it like wide fire. Blame this government for not taking action against these disease ridden illegals. It is too late to send them back now that they have spread their filth and vile diseases to our kids. Too many a-holes that have to be PC.

The article is misleading in it's information. If you go to the vaccine manufacturer's site and actually READ the data on the vaccine that they themselves put out, you will see that, as Robert posted, while the vaccine can prevent infection it does NOT prevent transmission. While it is less likely that you will be harboring the virus if you are vaccinated, it is entirely possible for you to be a carrier of said virus, not contract it, but continue to spread it. This particular vaccine is not part of "herd immunity" in that it protects the unvaccinated by preventing transmission, merely it lessons the likelihood that a vaccinated person will have it in their system, thus making it less likely they will pass it along. However, if you have been vaccinated, and it hasn't worn off (the only way to know for sure if the vaccine "took" or is still effective is a titer test via a blood draw), and you are around someone who does have the virus or who isn't sick but was around their child who's ill with it, you are still a candidate to bring it home to your infant or where ever.

Vaccinate or not, it's an individual choice but for pete's sake at least take the 5 minutes to read how each vaccination works and understand how they differ and work before you spout off incorrect nonsense and look like a fool!

Thank you Dark horse

vaccines DO fail- im sorry they are not perfect. sometimes they are all we have but they do have an average of a 10% failure rate ( by failure i mean people who are vaccinated for whatever reason do not develop enough anti bodies against the disease vaccinated against to confer immunity) my brother was vaccinated against whooping cough and so were all of us siblings but he still got it, he also caught chicken pox despite being vaccinated against it too and caught it a second time.

hotticket - You may have the right to not put a vaccine in your body - but you don't have the right to put other people at risk.

My 7 year old daughter has had a cough for about 2 months now. She has not been diagnosed with whooping cough yet, but her doctor is very close to doing so. She goes back next week for the final test to determine if she does have pertussis. The first few weeks of her coughing, my husband and I just figured she had a cold, so we brushed it off. Then, a few weeks ago, we thought, "Hey, why is she still coughing? Crap, we better do something." At about the same time as we first took her to the doctor, our 13 year old son starting displaying "cold" symptons. And now, in week 3 of that, he is still coughing. And he NEVER gets sick. In his almost 14 years, he's only been sick a small handful of times. A common cold runs through him in a maximum of three days. The rest of us are in awe of his immune system. But, anyway....

The pediatrician was telling us the exact same as this article. All the parents who are refusing to vaccinate their children are not doing anyone any good. And like a previous poster said, if you've been immunized, you can still be carrying it, etc, and still pass it on. Therefore, he warned us, if she does end up testing positive next week, all five of us will have to be treated to prevent us from spreading it elsewhere.

penquin,

great posts! I may have to use some of your points--very succinct and accurate. Well done

Washington state has one of the highest exemption rates in the nation. But the CDC said that does not appear to be a major factor in the outbreak, since most of the youngsters who got sick had been vaccinated.

If you flood your country with illegals, this is what happens.

Using the idea that "the vaccine does not prevent transmission but protects against infection" as a reason to choose not to vaccinate is so foolish it's beyond belief. Why do you get the whooping cough symptoms and get really sick? INFECTION. Which is what the vaccine prevents. I might have it in me right now, but I don't feel the effects because it didn't infect me as I'm vaccinated. Yes, we can all harbor it from time to time and infect others. THIS IS WHY ALL OF US NEED TO VACCINATE THE YOUTH!!! It's a reason PRO vaccination, not anti. Those that are unvaccinated are more prone to illness and take longer to rid themselves of the disease, thus PROLONGING the risk of transmission to others. Yes, we may all harbor it from time to time, but the vaccinated will get rid of it faster and cause less risk to the young children out there who can get deathly sick.

18 THOUSAND CASES IN LESS THAN 7 MONTHS! How many more people have to get sick before we realize that the vaccine helps stem the spread of disease and decrease the death rate?

Dragoncone

You mention that your 7 year old daughter may have whooping cough. Based on the tone of your post I would assume she has been vaccinated. You then go on to blame those who don't vaccinate. That's pretty typical of zealous vaccinators. Is it possible that she got it from someone who was vaccinated also? Would it even enter your mind that the adverse effects, however small in your mind, might not be worth it for a vaccination that apparently didn't help? Before everyone goes on their tirade calling me unscientific, stupid, unintelligent and all the other adjectives that you love to throw around, I am vaccinated, I did vaccinate my children, I just understand both sides of this issue and do not reflexively throw accusations at those who chose differently than I do.

Is it possible that she got it from someone who was vaccinated also?

Sure it is. But here's a thought: If we got nearly 100% of the people properly vaccinated, the disease would likely die out. Yes, you'd still get transmission of the bug, but hardly any of us would get sick because the vaccine eliminates the infectious aspect of the disease. Just like the common cold: If there were a vaccine to prevent its effects, none of us would be affected by it. There many bacteria, viruses, etc. that are spread from person to person in this world...most are innocuous because they don't do anything to our bodies, which is exactly what this bug would do if we were all properly vaccinated.

It's not a mere coincidence that we have lessened our vaccination rates and this bug pops up again in the worst outbreak in 50+ years. It's called evolution. Much like a terrorist cell looks to exploit the weakest links in our defense, the bug evolves over time to hit us when our public bodily defenses are low.

When you keep an immaculate kitchen and clean/sanitize regularly, no ants show up, right? When you stop this regimen, how long before you have an army of ants invading your pantry and food prep areas? Not too long, right? Same concept here with bacteria and viruses. You let your guard down a little bit because people have never seen or heard about whooping cough, measles, mumps, etc. (e.g. "wasn't that our grandparents' disease?") and the bacteria and viruses don't care -- they keep multiplying and spreading, and you have outbreaks unseen in decades. Bacteria and viruses don't care that you've never seen a case of whooping cough. They see an unguarded defense and invade.

@johnr123

I didn't "blame" anybody. All I wrote was what our pediatrician told us regarding what he, and other doctors around the country have been seeing, pertussis is on the rise. There are several cases that have been severe.

Of course it's possible she could have contracted it from someone that was vaccinated. How she got it, if that is what she does have, really isn't important at this point. Heck, she could have gotten it from me. But, yes, my kids have all been vaccinated.

Let's all take a bit of comfort knowing that the anti-vaccine folks are not administering our health care, nor have any connection to health care system, and are simply ignorant armchair PhD's with a bookmark on Google (not even Google Scholar, or even better PubMed).

There's a commercial out on TV right now that says something to the effect of "Everything posted on the internet is true. It has to be. It says so on the internet." Pretty much sums up why these people think the way they do...

Amen MmmMmmBeer. Unfortunately for our society, though, these anti-vaccine idiots are impacting the spread of disease in this country. Let's hope someone actually wakes up and sees that when we decrease vaccinations, we increase the disease incidence to a 50+ year high. Amazing how people think this isn't connected to vaccine refusal.

The flu and a head cold are caused by a virus ... completely different from whooping cough.

Whooping cough is caused by a bacterial infection that attacks and can destroy part of the lung, if left untreated or is a severe case - which most are. It can mimic pneumonia, which is an inflammation of the lungs and also can be caused by a bacterial infection. Those who've had whooping cough or pneumonia wouldn't wish it on their worst enemy and can suffer residual lung damage and shortness of breath long after the infection has been eliminated, as well as sensitivity to air pollution or seasonal pollen/weather changes, where none previously existed.

A cold virus can migrate into the lungs and result in a pneumonia bacterial infection.

The people who say that vaccines do not prevent transmission and thus are worthless are incredibly stupid. And yes, I include you, @Robert. Vaccines make a person's immune system "aware" of the characteristics of an invading disease so that it already has the "blueprint" for antibodies. Period. There is nothing about a vaccine that is supposed to prevent the transmission of a disease.

I do believe that if a person chooses not to receive a vaccination or makes that choice for their children and then anyone comes in contact with them and catches a disease as a result, that person should be able to be sued for the disease transmission. This would make @Robert's stupid mis-statement kinda true.

And get over the fact that people are going to die. They do everyday from all sorts of things, since when did it become the right of the government to try and play God???

I can't believe that people still have that kind of attitude. OK .. let's stop administering any sort of vaccines. I'm sure that we can all live with outbreaks of polio just like they did for centuries. We can also save a ton of money by not worrying about clean water and sanitation. What's a little bit of cholera now and then? As a side benefit, if we stop playing god, the average lifespan will decline to late 30's / early 40's and we'll have solved the social security problem, too.

Barry-NJ,
Believe it or not, any polio outbreak today would be far more catastrophic than the historical norm without vaccines. What kept polio under control for millenia was exposure between the ages of 12 and 24 months to the live virus. (Children's immune systems are quite remarkable and powerful.)

With the advent of widespread indoor plumbing and sanitation early in the 20th century, toddlers were no longer being exposed to the polio virus that they had previously encountered during toilet training in unsanitary outhouses. They typically became mildly ill with polio, but nothing serious. Very young children just aren't that bothered by the polio virus. Their immune system identifies it as a foreign antigen, builds up an arsenal of antibodies, and very quickly gets rid of it. The immunity that children got from early exposure kept them from catching the disease later in life, when it could potentially kill or cripple them.

Denmark did a huge epidemiological study on vaccines and neurological (including autism) reactions. So did Japan.

Both found no difference in autism rates between vacc and un-vacc populations.

Furthermore, not a single study has been able to duplicate Wakefield's findings.

The science simply isn't there.

Not to mention the fact that Wakefield lost his medical license, was paid to falsify his findings and the fact that he was criticized for not using the proper controlled experiment, no control group, no experimental group and variables. Bad science there.

Denmark did a huge epidemiological study on vaccines and neurological (including autism) reactions. So did Japan.

Both found no difference in autism rates between vacc and un-vacc populations.

what vaccines? What combinations. What was the placebo?

I don't think you even read those studies.

http://www.14studies.org/

Here they are and here's the problem with them.

Not to mention the fact that Wakefield lost his medical license, was paid to falsify his findings and the fact that he was criticized for not using the proper controlled experiment, no control group, no experimental group and variables. Bad science there.

Sounds like you are really confused/ignorant of scientific studies. Don't keep repeating ignorance. His study was a case series report. It's not bad science. It's a preliminary type of study. It happens everyday in medicine. If you read journals you would recognize that. It's not bad science. His conclusion, in the study, was there was not enough evidence to draw a conclusion.

But it has NOTHING to do with whooping cough and the failure of a vaccine.

Robert - Were you vaccinated for Polio? If not, why don't you go to India and tell me about the benefits of Vaccination.

The anti-vaccination crowd are a threat to the rest of society - precisely because we have a short memory about how bad diseases we get vaccinated against really are.

It's sheer Hubris and Ignorance that are now costing people their lives because people are relying on junk science.

Maybe we shouldn't have embarked on the small pox eradication campaign? You know, that fatal disease?

Do you know what acute flaccid paralysis is?

India: Paralysis cases soar after oral polio vaccine introduced

Read more: http://digitaljournal.com/article/323371#ixzz217a2Owc2

Robert- the website you posted has an opinion and agenda, just like everyone else. At the end of the day, we have to decide who makes the most sense. I have made my choice. You, clearly, have made yours.

The difference is that my boy is less likely to infect your children, than your children are to infect an infant. I can live with my decision.

Robert--I'd also like to add that although you criticized CONFUSED WONDER--their posting is correct.

Wakefield has been disgraced and barred from practicing medicine. That's not ignorance , that's fact--whether or not you agree.

Wakefield had his own agenda. Like everyone else.

Buffy, you're mistaken, and I suspect you've been lied to. The FDA is charged with tracking such cases. They just don't exist at higher levels in vaccinated people than in unvaccinated people. There is no difference, therefore, no causal connection.

Robert, you're smart but uneducated in both basic science and public health. If you were educated in science and the evaluation of scientific data, you wouldn't be continually making the same fundamental errors in your posts. Here's one to start with: Correlation is not causation.

All of you worried parents out there should remember that too. If events coincide, or follow closely upon each other, it doesn't mean that one caused the other. Yes, kids get diagnosed with autism and all sorts of neurological problems after being vaccinated. They also lose their teeth after starting kindergarten. Does that mean that starting kindergarten makes kids lose their teeth? Of course it doesn't. Kids who don't go to kindergarten also lose their primary teeth at the same rate. Kids who get vaccinated have one primary difference from kids who don't: They are less likely to get unnecessarily sick, die needlessly, or pass on to another person the disease-causing agents against which they have been vaccinated.

Your kid might be more likely to catch pertussis from someone who's been vaccinated than from someone who hasn't been vaccinated (which makes sense because there are so many more of them, and they tend not to stay home sick with pertussis because they tend not to get sick when infected), but once your kid is infected with pertussis, regardless of how they contracted the infection, your unvaccinated kid is far more likely to die from it, and far more likely to have a seriously debilitating disease caused by the infection than another kid who has been vaccinated.

Robert, you're smart but uneducated in both basic science and public health. If you were educated in science and the evaluation of scientific data, you wouldn't be continually making the same fundamental errors in your posts. Here's one to start with: Correlation is not causation

Correlation is permissive of causation.

your unvaccinated kid is far more likely to die from it, and far more likely to have a seriously debilitating disease caused by the infection than another kid who has been vaccinated.

I don't think you're are "read up" on vaccines, doctor scientist.

I'd like to see this study you claim. Since the vast majority of deaths are infants too young to be vaccinated I doubt there is a control group of infant vaccinated. And if there were a study it would have to be hyoooogggge. because pertussis death is so rare.

Your condescending dismissive talk means nothing to me.

Robert,

Correlation neither indicates nor implies causation. It means one thing: Two events or circumstances in some way coincide, or otherwise have a relation to each other. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.

You've either never taken a basic statistics course, or forgotten some of the most important lessons.

As a previous poster said: Your child loses his baby teeth in preschool. Preschool does not cause your child to lose his teeth.

Children are typically diagnosed with autism at the same age that they get their vaccinations. That does not mean vaccinations cause autism.

In fact, researchers have discovered that there are certain, measurable characteristics in the facial structure of children with autism that differ from those without. Since facial characteristics are settled in the first trimester of pregnancy, this implies a genetic component (which is backed up by family studies - if one child has autism, siblings are much more likely to also have autism), or some sort of environmental issue that pregnant women are exposed to, or both.

Are convulsive febrile seizures after vaccination a coincidence? Does the correlation of that observation lead one into looking at the causation?

I believe autism is something a child has before they are even born. It can now be diagnosed in babies.

I am not concerned about vaccines. I am concerned about food additives and pollution being the likely cause of autism as well as ADHD and other neurological disorders.

I have 1 child with autism and I have 1 child who has severe reactions to foods with red food dye, high fructose corn syrup, and preservatives. These ingredients completely change his personality. He is normally a very fun-loving child, but if he has 1 of these ingredients, he becomes very mean, hateful and out of control (threatens people with knives, etc.) until it wears off a few hours later. This is such a severe problem for him because it is so hard to avoid all these ingredients, that he has to go to a school for kids with special needs.

Robert, I did not cite any study, but if you want to evaluate the basis for my statement, you can send your own FOIA request to the FDA. Unfortunately, you won't know how to process the meaningfulness of anything the approval documents contain. You know how to find information on the Internet, and you know how it can be interpreted to support your own argument, but you don't seem to know how to evaluate it for strength or weakness, or how it can be used against your argument, so I have my doubts about what you'd do with a scientific manuscript. All I've seen you cite here is news or opinion pieces about research, not the research itself. (i.e., you say "here's the study," and you give a link to a story about a study. That's very different from actually citing a study.)

When that's where you get your information, you need to know the limitations and potential biases that come with such information, just as you do with original manuscripts, only news reporters and commentors often know less than you do about how to evaluate original research. That adds an extra layer of unreliability to the original information, and it makes the popular press a notoriously unreliable source for scientific information. (It wasn't always the case. News agencies used to employ scientists to report science news, but that ended with the Rupert Murdoch-era budget cuts. You might see an MD here & there, but actual scientists are rarely seen reporting science news in the popular press. Research press releases usually go to air or to press relatively unedited and uncriticized.)

When you say "correlation is permissive," I think you mean that correlation doesn't make a causal link impossible. (Is that what you mean? If so, it's not a very strong statement.) The way a scientist might put it is that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." But in general, vaccine studies have progressed way beyond the "absence of evidence" stage.

If half a million kids are studied prospectively, and there is a representative sample of unvaccanated kids within that study ("representative sample" has a very specific meaning in science), and the rate of autism is no higher in either group, that is actual, meaningful evidence that there is no scientific problem to be investigated. It does constitute evidence of absence, and it is not "permissive" of the hypothesis that the vaccination being studied (in that case, the MMR vaccine) causes autism. A condition that is detectable in roughly 1% of the population was not present at a higher rate when the variable of vaccination was tested in over half a million kids. That is evidence that (in the case of that study) the MMR vaccine isn't causal when it comes to autism. That hypothesis must be rejected, not because of lack of evidence, but because it predicted something that was looked for and found not to be present - a higher rate of autism in people who were vaccinated. If a difference existed, there would be a problem to study, but there is no difference. Correlation is not causation, but in that case, there wasn't even a correlation.

If you think there is a causal link between the pertussis vaccine and some disorder, then it's up to you to show that there's a problem. No one has shown that a problem exists, and scientists have been looking. (Finding a link between a vaccine and a neurological disorder is the kind of discovery that could make a scientist's career!) Here's a 3rd axiom that's popular among scientists: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Claiming that common vaccines cause common neurological (or other) diseases or disorders is an extraordinary claim, but so far there is no empirical evidence (objective and non-anecdotal, which also means case-reports, which are inherently anecdotal) in support of that claim, and a great deal of empirical evidence refuting it. The plain fact of the matter is that no one has shown that any neurological disorder or disease occurs at a higher rate in subjects who have been vaccinated (with any vaccine currently in use - I'm not sure about historical cases) compared with those who haven't. The only claims to the contrary that I'm aware of (and I'm not aware of everything that happens) were not made by scientists in the research literature, but medical doctors in the medical literature, and those claims were rejected when the evidence was closely examined, and many more times since by scientists studying the issue carefully.

If you are studying a vaccine, then the group of subjects assigned to receive the vaccine would not be the control group. They are the treated group. However, the pertussis vaccine has already been tested for safety and efficacy, and it was found to be much safer than not taking it, and effective at reducing the incidence, severity, and communicability of the disease. (Again, that's available by FOIA request from the FDA.) Therefore, in any future study it would be unethical to have a control group, who would receive no vaccination. Standard medical care and preventive care must always be provided to research subjects. The way to conduct studies of the nature you suggest is to use epidemiological methods: Begin by stating your hypothesis, then get approval from your institutional review board, recruit parents of newborns, obtain informed consent (including your hypothesis and the known risks and benefits of the vaccine(s) you're studying), and follow them for a number of years. When you find out who is and is not being vaccinated, revisit the question of representative samples and perform a statistical power analysis (or hire a statistician to do one) to determine if more subjects need to be recruited. Then look at the data you've collected and see if there any differences between subjects who have been vaccinated and those who haven't. There can be no control group, nor is one necessary to provide quality evidence. Quality would be improved with a control group, but the researcher would be responsible for causing every disease case arising in the control group and in the people they come in contact with.

There is so much more to this issue than most people realize, and the sad fact is that few people are educated well enough to understand how much they don't know. It's like the legend of Socrates and the Oracle. Socrates claimed he didn't know anything. The people of Athens were often annoyed at his insistence on questioning everything. One day the Oracle declared that Socrates was the wisest man. Socrates said "But I don't know anything! How can I be the wisest?" The Oracle replied "Because you understand that you know nothing."

I know it's possible that vaccines can cause neurological diseases & disorders, but I've never heard of such a condition that exists at a higher rate in those who have been vaccinated. Can anyone point me to that very basic first step toward finding the link? If you can't make that first, easy step (very easy if it's true), should you be putting your kids at risk of contracting serious diseases? Can you face the limits of what you actually understand, admit you are a vulnerable human, and have courage enough to protect your children instead of trying desperately to find evidence that you're not mistaken? Will you protect your kids instead of protecting your ego? Will you at least consider the possibility that you might be mistaken, and that you don't have a full understanding of the available evidence? Will you be able to live with yourself if your kid dies of something that you should have prevented, something that most rational parents prevent in their children? There's a LOT at stake, and fear of admitting your own ignorance must not be a consideration when it comes to preventing your kid from dying.

"Are convulsive febrile seizures after vaccination a coincidence? Does the correlation of that observation lead one into looking at the causation?"

No Robert, not a coincidence. The causation is known. Febrile seizures are what happens when a person, usually a child, has a fever. Febrile means related to fever. They are scary, but generally harmless.

dcs002

great post!

No Robert, not a coincidence. The causation is known

Vaccine induced febrile seizures. The cause is the vaccine. Subsequent encephalitis. The cause is the vaccine.

Vaccine induced febrile seizures. The cause is the vaccine. Subsequent encephalitis. The cause is the vaccine.

show me your proof

Robert likes generalizations...like vaccines cause disease. Does he show proof? Nope, just general statements saying he's right, science and statistics be damned. Don't feed the troll.

Robert seems to mistake the ideas of correlation and causation. When you have causation, you have correlation. But not all correlations mean causation. Tsk, tsk, Robert.

Increased internet usage in the late 90s and 2000s is correlated to increased autism incidence during that same time period. So they're correlated, Robert, so they must be causative, right? WRONG. Just another bonehead theory by Robert.

DON'T FEED THE TROLL!

Thank you Eric.

Robert, the cause of a febrile seizure, by definition, is fever. If a seizure is caused by anything other than a fever (such as epileptic or electrically induced seizures), it is not febrile.

Fever is caused by an immune response to challenging agents, like viruses, bacteria, and vaccines. The elevated temperature is only detected in areas where the challenging agent is present, such as an infected wound or a vaccine injection site. Cells of the immune system gather there, and some release prostanoids, which are chemicals like interleukins 1 and 6 (and others, as I recall - going by memory from grad school in the 1990s, so the specifics might have been updated since then), which increase energy metabolism in what are known as futile cycles in the mitochondria and possibly elsewhere. Futile cycles convert energy bearing molecules (generally acetate) into their oxidated states, producing heat, and only heat. Other metabolic pathways also produce heat as a byproduct of their normal functions.

However, some of the challenging agent or a small amount of the prostanoids themselves (though they won't survive long) might get into the blood and be spread throughout the body, causing an elevated temperature throughout the body. Many people will notice elevated body temperature following an immune challenge, such as a vaccination, and that is an indicator of normal immune function. (Heat should be generated following vaccination, though it can be hard to detect.) Rarely, these elevations in body temperature can be clinically significant, as is the case when they cause seizures. They (seizures) are clinically significant, but again, while they are scary for the parents to watch, by themselves they are usually harmless. An extremely high fever can cause brain damage, but the seizure itself is usually harmless if the child is protected against traumatic injury resulting from convulsions.

show you proof? it is true what rober said. YOu get a vaccine you have a febrile seizure due to the fever CAUSED by the vaccine. You have a vaccine, you get a fever, your baby screams the cri encephilati, you rush to the hosptial, bam encephalitis. your telling me there is no causation in any of that? give me a break. you hit your thumb with a hammer, it hurts. so basically you are saying that it is even questionable that the hammer did it. its just coincidental. so when you tell me you hit your hand with a hammer it is just anecdotal. how do i believe you? i wasn't there. just like you are not anywhere near the parents who made the decision to vaccinate and their child died, or is forever disabled. don't discredit the parents who trusted they were doing the right thing and they ended up to be that 1 in 1000. we have a choice to deny any medical treament. Vaccines are just another medical treatment that most of us prefer to turn away.

biscuits

there is nothing in that rambling, steaming pile of a post even approaching a coherent thought.

Biscuits, I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

How many people have contracted pertussis this year? 18,000. How many have died? 9 so far.

I doubt you'll find anywhere close to that in terms of vaccine injuries and deaths. So you're saying you'd rather have 9+ die of pertussis than have a very minimal chance of fevers and seizures? My child is having sporadic seizures (unrelated to vaccines), but I'd certainly rather have her alive than dead of a preventable illness.

Biscuits, I don't know how to write short posts, so here's the quick version: Your analogy is far off the mark, grieving parents are suffering, and that doesn't make them experts or good scientists, and despite huge financial incentives for researchers to find a connection between vaccines and neurological disorders, no one has been able to do it.

Your hammer & thumb analogy doesn't fit. There is a clear mechanism of action involved and ubiquitous empirical evidence (which means that pretty much everyone has experienced the relationship between blunt trauma and pain) to support the connection. There is a clearly elevated level of thumb pain in people who have just hit their thumb with a hammer when compared to those of us who haven't recently done so.

The relationship in time between blunt trauma and the resulting pain is also well established. It has a rapid onset immediately following impact, quickly reaches its maximum, and depending on the severity of the injury, the body's pain relief system (endogenous opioids) soon reduces the level of pain to something more manageable.

Many children get sick and even die after being vaccinated, but unlike your hammer analogy, there is no consistent course in time or pathology (development and features of the disease).

Encephalitis is caused by viruses, bacteria, and sometimes cancer (or rather the body's response to cancer). If a child dies of encephalitis (as such a tragic number of them do), it's relatively simple to determine what caused the disease, yet no scientist has claimed, let alone provided evidence, that vaccines cause encephalitis. Being a grieving parent does not endow a person with an advanced understanding of neuroscience or immunology. It means they have suffered a truly unimaginable loss, and sometimes it means they are desperate to find some sort of meaning or purpose in the death of their child. It is people in this state of mind who are so very vulnerable to information that appears credible but might really be the product of someone's get-rich-quick scheme. They are not made into experts on vaccines & disease. What's really happened is that the rest of us are afraid to question their judgement (at a time when it's possibly at its weakest) or contradict what they think they have learned from their ordeal. After all, they've suffered enough - they don't need people telling them they're mistaken, and no one wants to make the grieving parent cry. I understand that. But it doesn't follow in any logical way that we should allow preventable diseases to spread and become endemic once again. It doesn't follow that other children should die from preventable diseases because a grieving parent thinks his dead child's encephalitis was caused by a vaccination, yet that's what parents are doing, and it's what you're advocating.

Andrew Wakefield demonstrated the enormous financial incentive for researchers to find connections between vaccines and diseases with his work. Researchers who actually discover such a link stand to make a fortune and secure their careers. Wakefield is still making money off of his work, in which he was found legally to have abused developmentally handicapped children and falsified his data, and his findings could not be replicated, and they collapsed totally upon review. If someone could do such a bad job at pretending to have found a link between a vaccine and a developmental disorder, yet continue to make his living on the outcome of his fraud, how much more successful might a scientist be who actually discovers such a link? (And yes, I have read his paper and many others on the subject. His more outlandish claims weren't in his 1998 paper. He kept that toned down. What struck me was that he was a G.I. surgeon, not a neuroscientist or immunologist. As I recall, his publication history prior to his fraud was limited to development of surgical techniques. He had never published on autism or vaccines before.)

BTW, most of us don't prefer to deny our children life-saving vaccines. Whether you care about it or not, you are a member of a fringe minority.

My child is having sporadic seizures (unrelated to vaccines), but I'd certainly rather have her alive than dead of a preventable illness.

How many vaccines has your child already been given?

ON a side note this a logical fallacy. It's not an either or.

I see you like to use deceptive/dishonest fallacious logic...

It doesn't follow that other children should die from preventable diseases because a grieving parent thinks his dead child's encephalitis was caused by a vaccination, yet that's what parents are doing, and it's what you're advocating.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html

Description of Straw Man

The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:

1. Person A has position X.

2. Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).

3. Person B attacks position Y.

4. Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.

Examples of Straw Man

1. Prof. Jones: "The university just cut our yearly budget by $10,000." Prof. Smith: "What are we going to do?" Prof. Brown: "I think we should eliminate one of the teaching assistant positions. That would take care of it." Prof. Jones: "We could reduce our scheduled raises instead." Prof. Brown: " I can't understand why you want to bleed us dry like that, Jones."

2. "Senator Jones says that we should not fund the attack submarine program. I disagree entirely. I can't understand why he wants to leave us defenseless like that."

3. Bill and Jill are arguing about cleaning out their closets: Jill: "We should clean out the closets. They are getting a bit messy." Bill: "Why, we just went through those closets last year. Do we have to clean them out everyday?" Jill: "I never said anything about cleaning them out every day. You just want too keep all your junk forever, which is just ridiculous."

And rhetoric...

BTW, most of us don't prefer to deny our children life-saving vaccines.

The vast, vast, vast majority of vaccines used are NOT life saving. This is a fact whether you like it or not.

Why do you address everything but the point Robert? Life-saving, life-preserving, death-preventing, take your pick. I understand the nuances between saving lives and preventing deaths, but there have been deaths which were not necessary.

When you dismiss what I say with your cut-&-pasted essay on the straw man (which I don't think applies anyway), you just divert from the subject under discussion. Diversion is a tactic often employed when people don't want to address a particular issue. I don't know if that's what you're trying to do, but that's what it looks like.

straw man is robert's favorite diversion tactic. He says it atleast 3 times on every thread

Robert,

I read over dcs's post and he does not use straw man. His argument is that the vaccine does save lives. You may not agree with it, but that's his position

So when he says:

It doesn't follow that other children should die from preventable diseases because a grieving parent thinks his dead child's encephalitis was caused by a vaccination, yet that's what parents are doing, and it's what you're advocating.

The "children dying from a preventable disease" is not a straw man, that's his position.

Either refute it, or accept it. But copying and pasting logical fallacies is clearly a diversion tactic. And its quite infantile. Everyone on here is aware of logical fallacies. Even if he used one, which he didn't, then point it out and move on. But the fact that you have nothing to further to say speaks volumes more than that cut and paste job

How many vaccines has your child already been given?

Are you REALLY trying to insinuate that my daughter's recent seizures were the result of vaccinations she had months ago? I mean, REALLY? Do you really want to proceed down that path?

It's pathetic that you'd attack my child's health as part of your rant. Having been to our pediatrician numerous times, a neurologist, and a cardiologist, they all agree that it's due to a specific cause (infant breath holding) and NOT any exogenous cause.

If you have nothing to do other than to pick on innocent children, I suggest you remove yourself from this discussion.

The "children dying from a preventable disease" thing isn't straw man, but I'll give Robert his due. It was an ineffective rhetorical device, and he sensed it, though he wasn't able to explain it. (He's not stupid.) Honestly, as a scientist I would prefer to use more neutral language than some of what I have posted here. Resorting to unnecessarily loaded language also distracts from the argument.

If I argued that Robert hates children and wants them dead because he opposes vaccination programs, that would be straw man. I have no reason to believe Robert hates children and wants them dead, so I won't argue that hating or killing children is wrong. What I did was give an argument that only works if the person I'm arguing with agrees with its basis. That's a circularity. Robert is not persuaded by the available evidence that vaccines save lives, which is the very subject under discussion. My description of vaccines as life-saving is obviously meaningless to Robert. It expresses my emotion, not logic. It's difficult to pretend the enormous amount of evidence supporting vaccination safety and effectiveness isn't there just for the sake of being logically sound, but I'll try to keep on my toes.

However, though I might sound like one at times, I'm not a freaking Vulcan! I do have feelings, and like all scientists and all other humans, my feelings can affect my presentation style. In a scientific setting, emotionality is (very weak) evidence that the presenter might not be thinking 100% clearly. It can put people on their guard before a single word is spoken. (Crazy as it sounds, that's how I'm treating this discussion because I've presented myself as a scientist. Saying I'm a scientist could work against anything I say if I don't then act like one.

So, Robert was correct in a small way. Though I didn't use straw man, my logic was weak in that particular statement. I wonder if Robert would like to respond to any of the points I've made? I've made several in my long posts, none of which were cut-&-pasted.

Robert, the facts about vaccination are available, but no one's going to spoon-feed them to you the way they do when they have a conspiracy to sell - especially when you are so ready to dismiss them for unrelated reasons (i.e., there was a circularity in the logic of an afterthought to one of my posts, therefore nothing I say is valid), often with a hostility that makes it clear that you are unwilling to accept new information if it would supplant what you already think you know. You can't learn anything without an open mind. You have to put some effort into it. You're smart enough to benefit from a quality education, but education is only possible through hard work and an open mind. Willingness to accept your own limitations is a necessary step to understanding the bigger picture.

Possibly the most thought out, relatively objective (no one is purely objective, everyone has a bias) rational response I've read.

Saying I'm a scientist could work against anything I say if I don't then act like one.

I have no doubt that you are a scientist. I know that Penguin has presented himself as a scientist and is in fact not one. I have my doubts that Eric really a cardiologist also.

My stance is against government controlled mass vaccination. I think the choice whether to vaccinate is ENTIRELY up to the parents and individual. Risk is not homogenous. Most healthy individuals can take on measles,chicken pox, HPV, diptheria, etc., But everyone is treated like just a number when it comes down to it. The lowest common denominator of society. This is a problem with public health.

I'm not out to eradicate vaccine production the way some are out to ideologically eradicate pathological microbes.

Many/most vaccines are no where near 100% effective and we don't really know how close or far to 100% safe they are. Simply claiming they are is not enough from a scientific standpoint.

I wonder if Robert would like to respond to any of the points I've made?

Which particular points?

I have my doubts that Eric really a cardiologist also.

as Ive said in the past

1) you lack enough information to either confirm or deny this. The fact that you deny it is telling of your bias

2) Your opinion on this matter is meaningless

3) I don't care what you think (see #2)

Given the available facts, your immaturity, and lack of critical thinking sklls, it's possible that you are in undergrad or med school and you wish to become a cardiologist one day.

Robert, your immaturity and lack of knowledge show when you attack our backgrounds rather than the positions themselves.

Given the available facts,

such as?

your immaturity

Shall I be more like you and call people names and insult them as you have done to penguin and I? By your logic, that makes you a 2 year old who just wet her diaper

lack of critical thinking sklls,

Disagreeing with you is not a "lack of critical thinking". That seems to be your main criterion. IF you could provide an example of where I OBJECTIVELY failed at critical thinking, that would be great. Im not holding my breath though

Realize also that your thinking skills have brought you to a conclusion that is directly opposite to what every respected scientist and doctor on earth thinks right now. Its you and jenny mcarthy.

I wouldn't trust those "skills" of yours, seeing as how far astray they led you

it's possible that you are in undergrad or med school and you wish to become a cardiologist one day.

Once you start going along that route, I know I have you beat. Its the mark of a desperate man in an argument. You can't touch me on logic, or on the evidence, so you resort to personal attacks (calling me a liar) or attacking my credentials, which are essentially irrelevant anyway

I'll tell you what. You give me your email address, and I'll send you a picture of my diploma, or medical badge.

Robert, your immaturity and lack of knowledge show when you attack our backgrounds rather than the positions themselves.

Agreed. It reeks of desperation and is the ploy of someone who has run out of useful things to say

I'll tell you what. You give me your email address, and I'll send you a picture of my diploma, or medical badge

Goes for me too, Robert. Give me your email address and I'll send you my resume, work history, business cards, undergrad diploma in biochemistry, MBA diploma, and published papers from my collegiate and professional careers. If you have nothing to debate other than our credentials, through which you decide to attempt to discredit us and convince others that our opinions are therefore null and void, there is no debate, Eric & I have already won.

NOTHING is 100% safe or effective, as we all have different DNA, allergies, immune systems, etc...repeating that talking point to discredit vaccines is tiresome. Got anything new to add, or will you just attack our backgrounds again?

Well we seem to have a place to start:

"My stance is against government controlled mass vaccination. I think the choice whether to vaccinate is ENTIRELY up to the parents and individual. Risk is not homogenous. Most healthy individuals can take on measles,chicken pox, HPV, diptheria, etc.,"

I'm an American. (I don't know if you are too, so I won't assume.) My country's constitution states clearly, right at the top, the legitimate functions of the government it then goes on to define. One of those functions is to promote the general welfare. I personally agree with that as a legitimate function of a government of, by, and for the people, but if you disagree with me on that point, all the rest is moot.

In any case, my government has the authority to promote the general welfare, but here it gets tricky: do public health initiatives such as universal vaccination promote the general welfare? I've read a lot of papers on vaccines and adverse reactions (including long-term studies that some people think haven't been done), and I've studied (and taught) a great deal about how the human body works and how diseases are transferred among people, and I have never heard of any evidence to contradict the medical consensus that vaccinating children not only benefits them personally but also benefits the general welfare.

You point out that risk is not homogenous. Of course that's true, but I have 2 responses. First, parents have no way of predicting how any disease would affect their own children. Most healthy people can "take on" a lot of those diseases, but what makes you think your child, or any child in particular, is among that group? Second, even if parents could predict how their kids would handle a measles infection, that would be an entirely self-serving reason not to vaccinate a child. It does not consider the risk the unvaccinated child poses to other children. In other words, it is not consistent with the interests of the public - the general welfare. It is a matter in the public interest. Requiring individuals to take steps to minimize the risk we pose to others is a legitimate function of our American government and the governments of the states. No one has the right to drive a car while intoxicated, even if they themselves are pretty good at it. It's ok to require sobriety of people who drive. At one time here in Minnesota it was also illegal to send your kids to school unless they had been vaccinated. That wasn't done for the good of the individual kid, is was done for the good of all the other kids he or she comes in contact with when they're in a public place that they're legally required to be (unless home schooling has been arranged).

Though my expertise isn't in the field of law, I have read our constitution several times (as opposed to listening to politicians & pundits describe it in their own self-serving ways), and I regard myself as a passionate defender of it. Our constitution clearly requires the government to promote the general welfare. It's one of the reasons for having a federal government. And it's a requirement for action. Our constitution does not say that the government should leave the general welfare in the hands of individuals. It is not a statement about individual rights, but a required function of government that cannot be accomplished by letting people do what they want willy-nilly.

No individual rights supersede the function of our government. Case-by-case exceptions can be made for individuals, but no matter what an individual's beliefs are (for example), we the people have not only the right, but the duty to provide for the common defense. You might be excused from participating in our nation's defense on religious grounds, but the government must still perform that function. That's the starting point; it's a duty that you may be excused from if it conflicts with your personal rights. It is also the duty of the government to promote the general welfare. (And in the US, we are the government, so it is our duty as citizens.) You can argue that you as an individual are exempt from participating in that governmental function, but the default value is that it's your duty.

That's how our government derives its public health duties, and the justification for the 7th branch of uniformed service, the Public Health Service (in addition to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and NOAA), in which the Surgeon General holds rank.

So it all comes back to whether vaccination programs promote the general welfare. I have argued that they do. Do you disagree? If not, and if you're also an American, you have the constitution to answer to. Are you making sure that your government is doing a good job of promoting the general welfare? If not, are you working on a campaign to amend the constitution so it no longer requires that function of the government? If neither, then you'd just be blowing hot air.

And, go!

Well put, dcs. I've asked Robert several times why he thinks his progeny could "handle" these diseases should they come along, but he hasn't given an answer. He just believes it to be true, that his kids are more well-equipped to handle disease because they aren't vaccinated. It's the old "it won't happen to me" theory. He's stated several times that he wouldn't visit doctors, hospitals, take any drugs (not even something for a headache). I questioned whether that would change should he get really sick or in a car accident, etc. He denied it would, but it's up to us whether or not to believe his contrived notions (I don't, not for a second). If his child got really sick, he'd be the first in line at the doctor's. I'm sure he had his kids at a hospital "just in case" something went awry. He's stated that his wife works in the pharma industry, so he has no problem taking money from the industry he so vehemently objects to. Funny, in that hypocrisy has no bounds! Best to just ignore him, since he won't be answering any of the questions you brought up, except to deny (yet again) that the gov't should mandate vaccinations. We've used the seatbelt analogy (i.e. some may get hurt from seatbelts, but mostly they are life-saving), but to no avail. He's thick-headed, and will just deny, deny, deny, no matter the evidence. As you said, it's just blowing hot air. Can't wait to hear his views on Obamacare, since he'll be required to get health insurance (even though he supposedly doesn't believe in our healthcare initiatives).

Ooh! I don't know about Robert, but I get seriously worked up about that issue. (I'm talking as a citizen now, not as a scientist.)

I don't like to call it "Obamacare" because IMO the bill that finally made it through Congress is a far cry from what Obama originally wanted. It upset a lot of us liberals to see it gutted of its fundamental principles, one right after another. We lost any sort of universal coverage, the government option, competition across state lines, cheaper meds from other countries (even NAFTA countries!), and somehow the insurance companies persuaded congress to mandate that Americans pay them (huge and private corporations that so often disgust me, who are so often the problem with American health care) directly for their so-called service, and our gutless Supreme Court justices let them get away with it! I couldn't believe it when that happened, because so many of my fellow liberals, who were just as upset as I was when the bill was being gutted, are now somehow proud of the law, and Obama and his campaign are actually bragging about it! Ugh! He's still by far my favorite president during my lifetime (dating back to Johnson), but I'm hugely disappointed with that act. For the first time in my life, I can now sit at home doing nothing and be in violation of federal law - because I didn't buy something expensive from a corporation which I find contemptible. I'm glad I'm on Medicare now. It's way better than any private insurance I've ever had.

I'd probably side with Robert on the "Obamacare" thing... That's the problem with dividing ourselves into categories like liberal & conservative. I think it makes it easier for us as individuals to lose sight of what we value. People now see the liberal position as supporting that act, but I see it as a right-wing act, little more than corporate welfare, and an "un-funded mandate" on the people to support huge corporations which some of us despise. I say take the insurance companies out of the equation and pay for our own health care as Americans, in keeping with our constitutional mandate to promote the general welfare. If we socialize the whole thing, we stop losing extraordinary amounts of money to an insurance industry whose mandate is not the general welfare, but their own profitability and their share values. It's in their best interest to deny paying for anything, using any excuse possible. The best interest of "we-the-people" is excellent health care.

The best interest of "we-the-people" is excellent health care.

Although I agree with you there, I don't like "Obamacare" for other reasons, more from a pragmatic side. I'll just say this generally, and of course there are exceptions to everything, but I don't think that this is going to convince the 30 million or so that didn't have healthcare coverage to change their minds. Of course we'd all love to have our healthcare paid for, but that's not what this is...for those that are too poor to afford the basics, they'll still won't go to the doctor etc. because it's not completely free...it's just insurance, with a copay, etc. Secondly, as you stated, there's already Medicare, etc. that was already eating up about half our national budget. I'd love for them to start over with that, reduce the rampant fraud in that system, before heading on to another bureaucracy.

Being in my early-30s, I know many friends that go without because they're struggling to pay off student loans, housing, etc...no reason to require them to get with the program or pay a fee. It's like Bloomberg's "no soda bigger than 16 oz" law attempt...you can try to persuade people, but to mandate something is ridiculous. So either they go into more debt to pay for healthcare or more debt to pay the tax/penalty (regardless of what it's termed, it's still money out of your pocket).

I think another terrible issue is, as you said, the many concessions that were made to pass it. Nebraska doesn't have to pay for it, Congress has their own Cadillac plan, etc. I prefer no gov't option, because frankly, when has our gov't been able to run anything efficiently (and that's not just a snide comment, it's Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, etc.). You'll eliminate any incentive for doctors, health providers, medical device companies, drug companies, hospitals, etc. to get better or churn out new items...same reason we don't have price controls on meds...they're not seeing any financial incentive for innovation. Doctors leave the field, companies stop producing new items/drugs, and not to be the O'Reilly doomsday guy, but we have poorer healthcare as a result.

I do agree that we need competition across state lines, etc. but the cheaper meds from other countries? It makes no sense to me to import drugs from God-knows-where when you don't know what's in those shipments. You think we have a problem now with fraudulent imports, just wait until our drug and food supply is tainted forever because we wanted some medications 20 bucks cheaper. I don't want my dad, mom, daughter, wife, grandmother, etc. to die because we opened up our borders to unscrupulous importers who will ultimately choose cheaper knock-off imports rather than full-price real stuff. I want stuff from Merck, Pfizer, etc., not Morck, Fpizer, etc. The slightly cheaper reward does not outweigh the huge risk involved.

I think we both agree that the bill sucks, for many reasons. To be fair, I've worked in research & quality for several pharma companies for over a decade. I know from experience that there are people out there who will short-change our drug supply with fraudulent medication so they can turn a profit. Trucks are stolen every day in order to sell on the black market and introduce expired/fraudulent medication.

We all need better healthcare...I think everyone agrees that this bill didn't do that for one reason or another. You see the tax rates that Canada, Sweden, etc. pay? That's all because of socialized programs. We would not only have to pay for the coverage, but also for the gov't bureaucracy behind it. That to me isn't progress.

Back to the original point -- vaccinations are in the public interest, however, we do have the freedom in this country to not vaccinate. Robert seems to forget that he already DOES have that right. Whether it's in the public's interest to continue to do so? Well, this year's rates of whooping cough show that it is better to vaccinate than not. He doesn't care about your kid...he only cares about himself and his point of view...until his children get sick, then he'll silently cross the line over to our side to get help. But he'll never admit it. His wife works for pharma...he's already shown that he's willing to benefit from drug companies while publicly deriding them on this site.

In any case, my government has the authority to promote the general welfare, but here it gets tricky: do public health initiatives such as universal vaccination promote the general welfare? I've read a lot of papers on vaccines and adverse reactions (including long-term studies that some people think haven't been done), and I've studied (and taught) a great deal about how the human body works and how diseases are transferred among people, and I have never heard of any evidence to contradict the medical consensus that vaccinating children not only benefits them personally but also benefits the general welfare.

I was taught that for something to be ethical that it can benefit the whole but it must not harm the individual. If you vaccinate(note that i didn't say immunize) healthy people and that some are killed or permanently injured then this is not ethical and therefore not the role of the government to partake in.

I'm all for private industry selling their products but governments should be OUT of this business. It kills some of their healthy citizens. No matter how many you argue even one is too many.

but here it gets tricky: do public health initiatives such as universal vaccination promote the general welfare?

This is a vague statement to the individual. Clearly it isn't always necessary and clearly it doesn't promote " general welfare in all citizens". Have you ever seen what was given as original small pox vaccine? Do you think that "promotes general welfare?"

First, parents have no way of predicting how any disease would affect their own children.

Neither does the government, its nurses, it's doctors, or it's represenatives. Therefore the ultimate decision should be left to parents not agents of the state which have defacto become pediatricians.

Most healthy people can "take on" a lot of those diseases, but what makes you think your child, or any child in particular, is among that group?

what make you think YOU know. You don't. that is a fact! You don't. Nor do any 'statistics" know. Actually, statistically speaking my children can take on most viruses/bacteria without any sequelae. Those are the facts. there is no arguing that.

Second, even if parents could predict how their kids would handle a measles infection, that would be an entirely self-serving reason not to vaccinate a child.

why? Oh, Now I'm supposed to vaccinate for the theoretical welfare of others? Which can't even be proven? Just for that aguments sake, what happens if I vaccinate for that purpose but the theoretical public person dies from a cold virus a some other disease? Do you have peer reviewed RCTS that show decreased all cause deaths as a result from vaccination?

It does not consider the risk the unvaccinated child poses to other children. In other words, it is not consistent with the interests of the public - the general welfare. It is a matter in the public interest.

Aren't those kids vaccinated? Doesn't the vaccine work? If not is that ethical that you tell me i have/need to vaccinate and assume risk for someone else. Even if benefit isn't even proven?

So it all comes back to whether vaccination programs promote the general welfare. I have argued that they do.

You can only argue in the context that they extiguish some and are not necessary for most.

Well put, dcs. I've asked Robert several times why he thinks his progeny could "handle" these diseases should they come along, but he hasn't given an answer. He just believes it to be true, that his kids are more well-equipped to handle disease because they aren't vaccinated. It's the old "it won't happen to me" theory.

Penquin is a republican socialist. Just one more area that he is mixed up in.

He claims that he is republican yet his views are socialist. If you are a socialist then say you are a socialist. At least I know what I'm dealing with.

I was taught that for something to be ethical that it can benefit the whole but it must not harm the individual.

Not completely correct. One good example is seatbelts. Definitely benefit most people, but has contributed to death in certain situations. Still the law to buckle up, and rightly so

A particular drug or treatment, or anything for that matter, does not have to be pefect to benefit the whole. It just has to show clear benefit with very minimal harm--which is what vaccines do

You keep talking about vaccine harm,but have yet to show one shred of credible evidence of it.

. Clearly it isn't always necessary and clearly it doesn't promote " general welfare in all citizens".

it does. See above

Neither does the government, its nurses, it's doctors, or it's represenatives

Sure they do. Its called clinical trials. If hundreds of thousands of people are tested, and you see patterns form, then you can make a very educated assumption about the result of a particular individual

Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Is it better than blind guessing or assumptions as you propose? Definitely

Actually, statistically speaking my children can take on most viruses/bacteria without any sequelae.

That most certainly depends on the bacteria, and age of the child. Regardless, while you might be willing to sacrifice 5% of children to disease in exchange for saving 0.001% from vaccine related serious injury, the rest of the population that can do math does not

why? Oh, Now I'm supposed to vaccinate for the theoretical welfare of others?

theres nothing theoretical about it. I posted a cochrane review which you conveniently did not respond to, though I suspect you read it

Which can't even be proven?

It can and it has. Look at any of my posts

Just for that aguments sake, what happens if I vaccinate for that purpose but the theoretical public person dies from a cold virus a some other disease? Do you have peer reviewed RCTS that show decreased all cause deaths as a result from vaccination?

Thats ridiculous. Going back to seat belts--if someone always buckles up, but then dies from an infection, is that an argument against seat belts?

Really robert?

Penquin is a republican socialist.

Huh? Does this even make sense? If I'm a socialist, why am I against all socialized programs? Off the deep end, again, Robert.

If you are a socialist then say you are a socialist.

Saying I'm pro-vaccination does not make me a proponent of socialism. Having been to the former USSR and other socialist countries, being well-read in world history, I know it doesn't work. What makes me a socialist? My anti-universal healthcare views? My capitalist economic views? Oh yeah, it's your catch-all for "anyone who doesn't agree with me must be a socialist". Puhleez. Libertarians would make fun of your views too...and they aren't even close to socialist.

You keep talking about vaccine harm,but have yet to show one shred of credible evidence of it.

Eric, he does make mention (actually all the time) of vaccine injuries. HOWEVER, he completely fails to recognize or acknowledge that they help more than they hurt. For instance, he gives Banks & Poling as examples, but NEVER makes mention of the fact that the vaccines could possibly have saved more lives than they've injured. If one child gets hurt from a vaccine, it's no good in Robert's eyes, even if the result of no vaccines is tens of thousands injured via just one disease (whooping cough, in this instance). Robert's whole utopia is that if someone died, at least it wasn't caused by a vaccine. It is a completely narrow-minded, short-sighted viewpoint.

He'll never admit that medicine helps prevent a disease (after all, for him, the prevention of disease can't be "proven", right? OMG). Until his kids or he himself face a disease that his "perfect immune system" can't ward off, he won't admit he needs medicine. He'll surely go to the hospital to get antibiotics, but he won't admit it, because it would counter his ridiculous viewpoint. He hates the seatbelt example because he can't disprove it. Seatbelts are preventive measures that save lives, just like vaccines. No denying from Robert can make that untrue.

Not completely correct. One good example is seatbelts. Definitely benefit most people, but has contributed to death in certain situations. Still the law to buckle up, and rightly so.

Not so fast there. Any "side effect" of a seatbelt would happen in the occurence of an accident. Vaccines do their side effect damage before any chance of infection occurs.

If seatbelts were to cause convulsive febrile seizures to people's children or themselves just by clicking them on in the driveway before an accident, you can bet that it would NOT be a mandatory law and a lot of people would be opting out of seatbelts.

You keep talking about vaccine harm,but have yet to show one shred of credible evidence of it.

No amount of proof is credible to a vaccine injury denier. Especially a medical doctor who thinks he is god.

http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/data.html

Since the first Vaccine Injury Compensation claims were made in 1989, 2,948 compensation payments have been made, $2,312,503,462.42 disbursed to petitioners and $90,225,842.32 paid to cover attorney’s fees and other legal costs.

Family to Receive $1.5M+ in First-Ever Vaccine-Autism Court Award

Huh? Does this even make sense?

You don't make sense. That's the point. You don't know which way you're going. Left or right. Up or down. I suspect you have many contradictions.

Allow me to use some of your logic on you. Penquin, why do you hate individual liberty so much?

Not so fast there. Any "side effect" of a seatbelt would happen in the occurence of an accident. Vaccines do their side effect damage before any chance of infection occurs.

Irrelevant. The point is that seatbelts result in harm that is far outweighed by the good. Same with vaccines. When the harm occurs is irrelevant to the point.

But if you don't like the seatbelt example, virtually any other medical procedure could be substituted for vaccines in the analogy. All can cause harm from the get-go, but if a physician does not recommend the procedure, they can get in trouble (with lawyers especially, which seems to be your gold standard for some strange reason) if not doing the procedure is contrary to standard medical practice

No amount of proof is credible to a vaccine injury denier. Especially a medical doctor who thinks he is god.

Ha, classic robert. If you are up against a wall, with no proof, just start the personal insults. Robert, its so transparent at this point, the only person you are fooling is yourself, and I have doubts if even youre dumb enough to fall for it. We'll see I guess...

Just put up or shut up

amily to Receive $1.5M+ in First-Ever Vaccine-Autism Court Award

legal cases are NOT scientific evidence. Two different standards. I could care less what some yokel jury decided, or some activist judge.

Show me DATA!

Show me DATA!

Show me a vaccinated vs unvaccinated health study. There isn't one. NO DATA!

Show me a long term controlled safety study. NO DATA.

Show me an RCT that studies the safety of combining all of the vaccines on the schedule. NO DATA.

And don't bother with a gish gallop. None of links would qualify for the above requests. NO DATA

legal cases are NOT scientific evidence. Two different standards. I could care less what some yokel jury decided, or some activist judge.

That's because you're a vaccine injury denier and should be watched with caution by any patients. Ask around to your colleagues. "Do you think vaccines have seriously injured anyone?' Do you think they still do"

You will find that you are in an irrational cult minority. And this is dangerous to your patients.

Show me a vaccinated vs unvaccinated health study. There isn't one. NO DATA!

Show me a long term controlled safety study. NO DATA.

Show me an RCT that studies the safety of combining all of the vaccines on the schedule. NO DATA.

And don't bother with a gish gallop. None of links would qualify for the above requests. NO DATA

I already showed them to you. You choosing not to read them is no excuse

That's because you're a vaccine injury denier and should be watched with caution by any patients. Ask around to your colleagues. "Do you think vaccines have seriously injured anyone?' Do you think they still do"

No, its because court cases aren't science. If you were smart, youd know that

You will find that you are in an irrational cult minority

You would know

And this is dangerous to your patients.

when you get a medical degree, you can talk about how to practice medicine. Until then, STFU

I already showed them to you. You choosing not to read them is no excuse

No. You didn't. Those studies don't exist. If you knew this issue, you'd know that. But you don't.

In other news:

http://tacanowblog.com/2012/07/30/what-is-causing-the-pertussis-epidemic-unvaccinated-kids-or-an-ineffective-vaccine/

“Better diagnosis and reporting of whooping cough may be contributing to the increased numbers, along with the fact that the disease tends to peak and wane in cycles. It does not appear that anti-vaccination sentiment among parents has contributed to either the national rise in cases or the Washington state epidemic.” (3)

-CDC

i did. Why don't you respond to my post elsewhere on this thread

...the tacanowblog--clearly the gold standard...ha...I already posted direct from the CDC in another post you chose to ignore

Look at how fluoride has destroyed everything when we put it in the water, just like it was predicted. Oh, that's right, we all had better dental check ups and none of the other things.

I always follow doctors advice from McCarthy. Who wouldn't take medical advice from a person that makes their living by taking off her clothes or living off of others more successful.

She is hot and thats where it ends.

I'd like you to talk with the parent's of Aiden Smith who just lost their 7 week old and then see what you have to say.

(dot)com/50ForAiden

Even the vaccinated can give babies the germ. herd immunity does not work the way you think it does in this vaccine. The vaccine is for the toxin.

Which is why EVERYONE should get it, Robert. If you deny your baby the vaccine, anyone can give them pertussis. If they're vaccinated, there's a far less chance they'll develop the disease. Are you kidding with this logic? "Oh, it can be transmitted by anyone, so don't get the vaccine"...really? How 'bout that study I keep pointing out to you that says the relative rate of infection is 26 TIMES WORSE for those unvaccinated than for us vaccinated folks. You really don't comprehend statistics, do you?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30930593/ns/health-childrens_health/t/vaccine-refusal-hikes-whooping-cough-risks/

When you don't understand how vaccines work, you end up looking foolish, Robert.

The majority of deaths are in babies who are too young to get the vaccine. 3 mos. The vaccinated can still infect a little baby.

A recent study shows that doctors will call for testing in the vaccinated 3x more often in the vaccinated. The vaccinated can still have the bacteria. It's diagnostic error.

Why? What would be the sense in "harming our kids?" Future tax-payers. Civil servants. Contributors to society? What sense is there in creating invalids who can't pay their medical bills and rely on said governments to support them. It makes no sense!

The majority of deaths are in babies who are too young to get the vaccine. 3 mos.

And where did they catch their infection from? Adults. How lame is your post? An unvaccinated adult would take longer to clear the infection (and therefore has a longer time period in which to pass the infection to an infant) than a vaccinated adult. That's fact. The fact that you can't comprehend that is not my problem, it's yours. And you call yourself educated. Just because you can spew scientific jargon out-of-context does not make you "educated". Misinformed, yes, but not educated.

An unvaccinated adult would take longer to clear the infection (and therefore has a longer time period in which to pass the infection to an infant) than a vaccinated adult. That's fact.

Scientific citation please. Or I'll have to assume that you just talking out of your !@S. Perhaps you just meant less coughing symptoms instead of clearing the infection.

Robert, if you knew anything at all about immunology, you'd know this fact. I, as a vaccinated person, have the antibodies to pertussis. My body (printing press) only has to start churning out this antibody (newspaper) off of it's antibody template in my body. An unvaccinated person has to CREATE this template first, THEN start printing papers (pumping out antibodies), if you use the analogy. I can therefore rid the disease quicker than an unvaccinated person. To quote Good Day NY's Greg Kelly, "Science". I know it, you know it. Unfortunately you'd rather spurt out inaccuracies to try to manufacture some stupid idea.

I, as a vaccinated person, have the antibodies to pertussis

According to this article you most likely don't. You "need" to get revaccinated over and over and over again for the rest of you pharmaceutical controlled lifespan.

..No need for your analogy a scientific paper would suffice. You know a relevant peer reviewed article that showed your claim that a vaccinated clears the germ faster than unvaccinated. I'm not sure if this has been studied. But you know everything about immunology so you should know this. With citations of course?

You do have that dont' you? Citations for your claim?

According to this article you most likely don't

Amazing how by reading an online article you know my medical history.

No need for your analogy a scientific paper would suffice

Oh, like the documentation required by the FDA to prove a vaccine's safety and efficacy? You have no idea what mountains of documentation they require to approve drugs and vaccines. I do, as I work for a major pharma company. So paint me as "evil" if you will, or keep labeling me as a QC lab tech or something (incorrect)...I'm much more knowledgeable on the subject of clinical trials and FDA approval than you are.

You know a relevant peer reviewed article that showed your claim that a vaccinated clears the germ faster than unvaccinated. I'm not sure if this has been studied.

So let me get this straight - your theory is that an unvaccinated person, with no antibodies present, could develop the antibody response, work up that initial antibody response to the whole body, and rid the disease faster than a vaccinated person who already has the first step completed? This is basic immunology, Robert -- If I have the antibody, I don't have to take the extra time to create it. Must be nice living in Fantasyland -- go ride Dumbo and report back when you get a clue.

Robert-1126350

You keep yelling out that the vaccine is only active against the toxins. This is untrue.

It's a glorified cough suppresant. But it either doesn't work as good as advertised or it wanes faster than previously advertised. The vaccinated are the main cases of pertussis.

Hey Robert,

"You know a relevant peer reviewed article that showed your claim that a vaccinated clears the germ faster than unvaccinated."

Journal articles are not the only source for quality evidence. You ignored my reference. I don't know what makes you think you'd understand a peer-reviewed research article anyway. (What you've cited so far are stories about articles, not the actual articles.) I've published a few of them myself, and I've reviewed others. I've presented at research conferences. Had you attended even a single research conference, you'd at least have some grasp of how foolishly you're presenting yourself. Though in the anti-scientific, willfully ignorant area of conspiracy theory, that may pass for knowledge, but to anyone with a background in scientific research, you present yourself as another nut who just didn't want to do the work it takes to get a decent education. You're not to be taken seriously, you're to be pitied. That's how you present yourself. (I think I present myself as an insufferable know-it-all. It's best that we know these things and at least acknowledge them.)

Believe it or not, science is about more than convincing people you're right. You lack the most basic understanding of scientific principles. It's not a matter of finding an article that agrees with you. It's about understanding the big picture as well, and understanding the strengths & weaknesses of different types of evidence. You're not very good at that.

"It's a glorified cough suppresant. But it either doesn't work as good as advertised or it wanes faster than previously advertised. The vaccinated are the main cases of pertussis."

It might not work as well as you wish it did, but it's far better than nothing at all. (If anything, it would more likely induce coughs than suppress them.) Using your own strange logic, try to explain why "the vaccinated" aren't the ones dying from pertussis? Do you understand the difference between carrying the pathogen and suffering from the disease? No more than you understand the folly of using raw numerical data to support an argument of proportional risk. And more kids continue to get sick and die because, like you, so many people refuse to acknowledge the limits of their own understanding.

"You know a relevant peer reviewed article that showed your claim that a vaccinated clears the germ faster than unvaccinated."

You're a scientist, DCS002, can you help this fellow scientist out?Is he correct?

I'm curious because penquin usually talks out of his @$$ with non scientific claims. Many of his claims are hard for other scientists to back up. Psst. He's not really a scientist. He just claims to be one.

Using your own strange logic, try to explain why "the vaccinated" aren't the ones dying from pertussis?

I did. And it's not strange logic. It's logic. You need to explain why people are blaming the non-vaccinated for this "epidemic".

Again Robert-1126350 vaccinated control of Pertussis aids the body in killing the bacterium before it reaches numbers where it can be passed on thus preventing infection of others.

Again Robert-1126350 vaccinated control of Pertussis aids the body in killing the bacterium before it reaches numbers where it can be passed on thus preventing infection of others.

All I'm asking for is a citation by scientists. Aren't you guys the experts? Could you help us out with a little epistemology? I'm guessing you don't have said citation and have come to believe something without actual proof. That's called faith.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3381681/

This describes the efficiency of the vaccine.

My main comment addressed your concerned that people who are vaccinated are still infectious and can pass on the bacteria, as you were under the impression the vaccine is only effective against the toxins. The vaccine is effective against the toxin and the bacteria as the vaccine also contains components of the surface of the bacteria.

Nothing works 100% antibiotics do not work 100%, vaccines do not work 100% and washing hands and being clean does not work 100%. However vaccines provide protection against diseases who;s scourge are now a memory to us in the age of the vaccine and the antibiotic.

I hope this has helped to answer some of your questions.

as the vaccine also contains components of the surface of the bacteria.

Sounds fair enough. But your link nor anyone elses has shown that a pertussis vaccine causes a more rapid clearance time than an unvaccinated. Not saying it does/doesn't but how do you know or are you only inferring that it must somehow?

And because pertussis varies clinically, you have all of these vaccinated people walking around with pertussis infection thinking that they are no problem. Wouldn't they certainly be a source of infant infection. With sheer numbers even more likely than an unvaccinated?

That is a fair statement. If you are asymptomatic, meaning you don't have a cough you are much less likely yo spread it around. The bacterium is spread around on droplets produced when coughing.

You are correct also just because people are vaccinated they should not act like they are invincible! I think a middle ground here is to make sure people don;t think that just because they are vaccinated they are totally immune. Some lucky people are some are not.

In addition I think you have come up with an interesting research idea I don;t know what the clearance rate of the vaccinated would be.

At any rate, what i think you are calling for is caution when it comes to being vaccinated which is fair.

Robert, you yourself are using a strawman argument! You're attacking a position (how fast the infection clears) unrelated to the topic at hand (whether the vaccine is effective) to try and somehow "win" an argument. You have claimed that the vaccine is nothing more than a "glorified cough suppressant", but you cannot defend that statement so you instead try to attack others' statements rather than to back up your own. What hypocrisy!

You don't need a citation, study, or any background in science to know that if I start with 100 dollars in the bank and start gaining interest, I'll get to 200 faster than some guy who has to find the 100 dollars to deposit first. Same concept here. I'll clear the infection faster if I start with the antibodies than if I have to get those antibodies first. No "study" needed.

Instead of playing this strawman game and attacking other posters' children's health, how about you actually prove that the vaccine is worthless???

You're attacking a position (how fast the infection clears) unrelated to the topic at hand

You have given zero evidence or citations that this is true. You made the claim. You back it up. Analogies are not sufficient evidence in lieu of a claim you made.

how about you actually prove that the vaccine is worthless???

Another dishonest tactic by a dishonest person claiming they are a scientist when they are not. Show me quotes where I said "the vaccine is worthless". You don't have the brain nor the critical thinking skills to be a scientist penquin. Stop claiming to be one. You make scientists look bad.

You made the claim

Actually it was you who said that there was no difference in the ability of unvaccinated and vaccinated when it came to clearing the disease. I pointed out a glaring omission by you. You can't back up your claims (again), so you resort to lying. It's pathetic, man. Every time there's a vaccine article, you're there saying it's all a myth, but you can't provide any evidence.

Show me quotes where I said "the vaccine is worthless".

Oh, like this one?

It's a glorified cough suppresant. But it either doesn't work as good as advertised or it wanes faster than previously advertised.

Lying to get out of lies you've told. Tsk, tsk. Here's another lie:

Another dishonest tactic by a dishonest person claiming they are a scientist when they are not

Character assassination, point blank. Again, I'll give you my work and collegiate history in science if you provide your email address. You're being dishonest by calling everyone who disagrees with you a "non-scientist", especially since you've admitted on multiple occasions that you "have no formal education in science". Reading a bunch of Internet conspiracy theories doesn't make you more in the know than people that can understand science. Everything on the Internet is true, right Robert? OMG

Thanks for the link Krestov. That's one I hadn't read.

According to the data in this paper, kids in England and Wales who have not been vaccinated are far more likely to become sick with pertussis than kids in the general population, which includes both fully-vaccinated and unvaccinated kids.

Most of the cases of pertussis reported in the paper were among children who had been vaccinated, but vaccinated kids were far less likely than unvaccinated kids to have gotten pertussis. I looked closely at the largest cohort in the study that was verified by culture or PCR, which included of 5-9 year-olds who were scheduled to receive vaccine regimen 2, which was the one in use at the time they were 2 months old. 97.7% of their same-age peers in the general population were fully vaccinated, and 2.3% of them remained completely unvaccinated. (Kids receiving only 1 or 2 shots were not included in the cohort.) That small group of 2.3% accounted for 1/4 (25%) of all cases of pertussis in that cohort. This was a cohort with a "vaccine effectiveness" of 92.8%, which is lower than most cohorts in the study (ranking 8th out of the 11 cohorts reported in Fig. 4), meaning I'm describing this effect conservatively rather than picking data that best match my argument.

Although this study looks at a very thorough set of data and provides lots of useful information, I think it's weaker than most epi papers. Noting that, among all deaths of patients who had "laboratory-confirmed" pertussis (whatever that means - lab methods have evolved considerably over the past 1.5 decades since their source was published), none had documented vaccinations more than 10 days prior to getting sick is meaningless. Was such documentation standard in the source(s) they used? They don't say, begging the question (that I'm sure conspiracy theorists are asking) of how many of those deaths were caused by the vaccine itself. I think that's a matter of sloppiness rather than anything suspicious because it's consistent with the fuzzy methodology and reporting throughout the paper.

Part of the paper reads like an advertisement for the RSIL, which has offered a variety of testing methodologies since... whatever. (Any Brits here? Is the HPA part of the civil service? How about the RSIL?)

The authors also focus on the proportion of cases that had been vaccinated rather than the more meaningful epi methods of determining odds ratios, risk ratios, or cases per 100,000 (with the exception of Table 1, which does not give information on vaccination, nor is it specific enough to apply to any cohort). In other words, this paper gives no information concerning how vaccines (or more to the point, the accelerated pertussis vaccination regime, which is in the paper's title but barely mentioned in the article) affect the likelihood that patients will become ill with pertussis. It emphasizes the shift of total cases onto the unvaccinated (which is the only thing indicated by their VE scoring system) rather than the reduction of disease likelihood. That is, after all, the purpose of vaccination programs. VE just starts out with a certain number of given cases and sorts out who was vaccinated, and whether their representation in this group is disproportionately small.

Are the authors using such methods to distract from something? Is there a short-term complication they don't wish to discuss? Maybe, though I seriously doubt the latter. They could avoid such questions by reporting all their hard work clearly and neutrally. They disclosed having received some monetary benefits from vaccine manufacturers, though they didn't disclose which ones or whether they were manufacturers of any pertussis vaccine. Any of these weaknesses could easily be explained with clearer writing, but in combination they add up to a weak paper that could have been so much more than it is. The authors deserved a better peer review than they got. Someone needed to bring these questions to their attention before this article went to press. They put a lot of work into this epi study, and a little advance criticism might have helped them make this into a paper worthy of their hard work.

This is a difficult aspect of science. While I'm an emphatic proponent of universal vaccination, and this paper would support my position, I don't think the evidence reported in this paper is very strong, and it leaves me with too many questions to rely upon it. Still, there's an awful lot of quality data remaining after my criticisms...

dcs, Robert would be quick to point out that while 1/4 of the cases were unvaccinated, 3/4 were vaccinated, which he would use to try to support his bogus argument. Nevermind the fact that the relative rates of infection are much, MUCH higher for the unvaccinated, with 2.3% unvaccinated accounting for 25% of the sickness. He just does not get (or refuses to acknowledge) the idea of relative rates of infection. Better off talking to a brick wall, because at least it reflects a minimal amount of sound, whereas Robert just denies, denies, denies. He'll just keep repeating those same, tired talking points without thinking. It's sad that he spends his days on this discussion board repeating the same phony arguments. Nevermind the fact that he himself was vaccinated and keeps repeating that he has "never been sick"...kind of an argument in favor of vaccination, but I digress.

I posted a whooping cough study from a few years ago on MSNBC, in which it was 26 times worse to be unvaccinated compared to vaccinated. He first claimed it couldn't be true because I was only publishing the link to the article, not the study. Then when I published the link to the actual study, he claimed that it couldn't be true because more vaccinated got sick than unvaccinated (discounting the idea of relative rates of infection). No matter how many articles you post, he tries to either discount the study or defame you. It's sad. You just can't fix stupid.

Well, I never expect to change anyone's mind when I post to an online discussion, least of all Robert's. When I direct a comment to Robert, I know he isn't the only one reading it. (Only a small fraction of readers ever post anything themselves.) What I hope to do is make a good, cogent case for my position, respectfully point out the problems in any contrary arguments that I'm aware of, and hope that people who care to read what I have to say might look into it for themselves. I also try to model respect for others, constructive discussion, and the the scientific method, with all its strengths and weaknesses, in the hope that others might take an interest in it as an approach to better understanding. It's not the only valid approach, but its the only universal approach with a language understood worldwide, and more importantly, it's self-correcting, which religions seldom do. I'm not going to convince Robert to vaccinate himself or his kids, if he has any, but just maybe, there might be others reading and contrasting our posts, maybe even Robert himself, who might take an interest in the scientific approach to evidence evaluation, maybe in some other topic.

If even one person attempts to learn how the scientific method works and is dissuaded from turning to Internet conspiracy theory websites for information based on our posts, we've done our job. I just fear that the misinformation campaign that these whackjobs keep churning out does not cost children's lives. To think that one guy (Wakefield) was responsible for much of the fear of vaccines speaks a lot to people's A) gullibility and susceptibility and B) wanting to believe that the gov't is manipulating people. I hope that a 50+ year high in whooping cough cases convinces at least one person out there that perhaps vaccinating IS the right approach after all.

Be careful, Penquin, Dcs is a real scientist. You are a pretend quality control manager with a bachelors degree who claims you are real scientist with expertise in scientific issues(apparently any medical issue). If Dcs sticks around I can easily expose what a fraud and liar you are. It won't take long. It only takes a matter of consitency. Yours is a psychological and character flaw problem. He should be able to easily your flawed character traits that are unbecoming of a professional scientist. Dr. Eric will not be far along himself. But you already know that.

Dr. Eric will not be far along himself

Please, big words from a little man. You have yet to do anything to even remotely challenge my credibility

Im waiting for you, old man

Penquin,

Actually it was you who said that there was no difference in the ability of unvaccinated and vaccinated when it came to clearing the disease.

Again please cite where i actually said this. If not it should be just assumed another one of your blatant lies.

I love how you just throw $%^ on the wall see what will stick and then run away.

Sammbob, those wacko parents (which I am not) are that way because of a government doctor and the press. The doctor that published that fake study way back that showed it caused autism and then the press ran with it, beating the thought into the heads of everyone.

The first step in helping those parent understand is understanding them. They work from the motivation that they care about their kids, and that they do not want to cause them greater harm.

The other problem is the new formulation. Several other recent outbreaks involved young teenagers and older children who all had the pertussis vaccinations as toddlers. These kids came down with whooping cough before their next scheduled booster. The new formulation doesn't provide as much immunity or last as long as the old one and many are becoming infected as it wears off. Couple this to a very high rate of non-immunized people in Washington state and you get trouble.

people who chose not to vaccinate are not doing it because of jenny mccarthy or some doctor that saw a link with autism. they are doing it becuase of the risk of reactions, the ingredients in them, the fact that there has NEVER been one single study on the combination of the vaccines our children have at the schedule we have to see if it is harmful. the studies funded by the pharmaceutical companies who put the vaccine out are biased. when they start doing the studies that the parents are requesting, then we can see where we stand. but for now injecting the list of toxins which alone are astounding, but combined. when would your body ever fight off 7 diseases at one time? NEVER. why do we inject 7 doses of 7 different diseases into infants and then expect them to be okay? there has not been one long term study of the effects of these vaccines. if we are the long term study, i would say we are failing this experiment and most of us had only 10 doses compared to the 68 doses our kids receive today.

That's right "bisquits".....so lets just let our kids die instead.

And yet, somehow, oh I don't know, maybe it's science or somethin', my kids who have had all those toxic mega-doses big pharma blah blah ARE TOTALLY FINE. As is every single other vaccinated kid I know.

Umm, maybe it's because the youngest were breastfed and has nothing to do with vaccines? Breastfeeding provides an infant with certain immunities that the mother already has and does make a difference.

I had all the vaccines, was bottlefed and ended up with allergies, asthma, diabetes, etc. My sister, had all the vaccines, was bottlefed and had no allergies, no asthma, no diabetes. Did you ever think that maybe it DOES have something to do with genes? Before you ask, we had the same mother and father (who DID have allergies/asthma).

Also, I was unable to breastfeed my son, so he was bottlefed, had all the required vaccines and had all the same allergy problems I had (my husband had been bottlefed, had all the same vaccines I had and no allergies).

My sister had two kids, both bottlefed, vaccines and one had allergies, one didn't. Her husband had no allergies (bottlefed, vaccines).

So...I'm kinda thinking that genes have a more important role in a person's health than vaccines do.

BTW - None of our kids had the whooping cough, diphtheria or measles. The only "disease" they got was chicken pox

Both of my children were bottlefed (I would say I didn't breastfeed because I was young and did not have influences around me to boast the benefits) and had all their vaccines thus far (my son is 6 and daughter is 9). My son has no allergies, and has been healthy his whole life (he's only been sick a few times, and all but one of those were with just a slight fever). My daughter was sick the first few years and is allergic to a few things (she had a suppressed immune system due to hypoxic brain injury she had as an infant, was hospitalized for 2 weeks, was pumped with god knows how many meds ). Her illnesses though, are usually no more than a fever for a few days, and a slight upset tummy. The first few years she was ill every few months, but now she goes pretty much through the whole year without being sick.

When I was a child, I was rarely ill, and I had all my vaccinations as well. Also I have no allergies.

Both my boys get all their immunizations (and I get flu shots and have gotten a tetnus/combo booster a little over 5 yrs ago), and both were breastfed over 2 years. Both have seasonal allergies (inherited from me, my dad, his dad, etc.) but have had fewer and milder illnesses than other kids at daycare and school. I do have to keep up on their allergy meds spring and fall, and summer if they show symptoms, but they've only had a handful of doctors visits due to illness, generally when congestion from allergies encourage an ear infection.

My sisters and I were bottle fed, and had numerous ear infections and quite a few rounds of strep throat.(minimal allergies on their part, same problems with illness)

My daughter now has a probable life long condition as a direct result of something in the combination of the Hib and Prevnar vaccines. This was confirmed and documented by her pediatrician, and is also a documented "side effect" on the vaccine data sheets. We are fortunate in that so far it's relatively minor (completely unrelated to autism)and something that can generally be worked around, but after 6.5 years it hasn't changed or improved. As there is no way to know what ingredient or ingredient combination caused the reaction, and no way to determine the effects of subsequent exposure, she no longer gets vaccinated. Believe me when I say that the spectre of autism wasn't even on our radar when we made our decision.

is 1 in 88 more enough for you? autism is affecting everyone at this point. someone either knows someone with autism or is dealing with an autistic child. i would say that "more people would have it" is clearly been shown

Getting Autism from a vaccine is just silly paranoia not supported by any ANY study.

Let's throw out autism then, just remove it from the conversation and talk about the thousands of documented and admitted to by the vaccine industry and AMA reactions to vaccines.

People die every year from vaccine reactions and no one bats an eye until the death toll goes into the dozens.

I am always amazed at Americans ability to trust Doctors, Lawyers, Policemen, Politicians and the good ole TV with everything they hold sacred. And then magically cry foul when one of them is found to have done wrong. It's like they are infallible demi-gods. Whatever happened to doubt and actually being informed?

The pertussis safety vs danger with the vaccine is a wash as far as I'm concerned and yes I have looked at the numbers and I have MADE MY DECISION AS IS MY RIGHT. Christ, some doctors in this country want to vaccinate our kids as infants against Hep C............ is my infant having casual sex? Are they an intravenous drug user? Come on people think outside the box and at least delay the bloody shot schedule like the Europeans do and the WHO recommends.

i think once they start adding the vaccine for "not smoking" and "obesity" to the infant schedule that people may wake up, but then again maybe not.

Hold on a minute JSaff, the Hep C vaccine does make sense in context, if a blood transfusion was to be administered accidentally with a dirty needle or perhaps a bag of contaminated blood, that Hep C shot would have been instrumental in preventing the disease in your infant, just putting the idea out there...

Ummmmmmmmmm, errrrrrrrrrrrrrrr- FYI:

There IS NO vaccine against Hepatitis C.

Getting Autism from a vaccine is just silly paranoia not supported by any ANY study.

These people don't need a pharmaceutical/CDC supported study to know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsnL9yHApIA

Robert, I'm a nurse AND the parent of an Autistic child.

I don't know why people are so damn afraid to admit that autism is caused by GENETICS. Which is why it, like other disorders, runs in families.

No such thing as a genetic epidemic. Genes don't suddenly change.Genetics doesn't explain the increase unless you don't believe there is an increase like the CDC says. Also Autism is a spectrum not all is the same and there are different causes.

Robert, You're not the brightest crayon in the box are you?

Were you vaccinated before your pregnancy? Was your child vaccinated?

Are you an LPN?

JSaff: I am currently in liver failure awaiting a liver transplant due to hep C. My crime? I was a Search and Rescue medic in the military. I flew on helicoptor combat rescue missions and frequently received minor injuries while working on bleeding people. The type I have was geno-typed and had come from somewhere in the middle east, fits with my assignments. I went from being super fit and healthy to living on handfuls of pills, unable to work and have very little retirement income. Hope that knocks the legs out from under that sanctimonious high horse you are perched on.

Here in Washington, we have quite a few enclaves of those who like to refer to themselves as the "educated" non-vaccinators. A college education is no substitute for common sense. Yet they think that they ought to know more than their doctors...because they have the interwebs, and the interwebs is always right!!!

Yes, I know I'm being sarcastic, but I'm serious when I say there's a lot of them up here. It seems to be a part of the "alternative" parenting trend that's sweeping through the ultra-liberal communities. I don't think much of anything in that type of "parenting" (or lack thereof) is particularly healthy for children, but this is the worst of all.

Well, here are the side effects of your "education". 3000 cases. How many more before you figure it out???

The CDC has conceded that the vaccine doesn't work as well as they've been advertising. They were overconfident which cause a propaganda campaign to blame the unvaccinated.

Genes don't suddenly change.

Do you not believe in evolution? Surely our genes have changed since we were apes.

Also, what is cancer other than mutated genes causing unchecked cell growth.

Finally, you don't even need "changing" genes...we all have two parents who contributed portions of our DNA. The combination of those genes is different than either of the parents' genetic code.

How many ways can you be wrong in one sentence?

Also Autism is a spectrum not all is the same and there are different causes.

Or it's a variable set of genes causing varying degrees of autism. The more discrepancies you have in your genes, the further on the spectrum you are.

I love how you state that "there are different causes", when NO ONE has proven ANY cause yet. So you know for a fact that there are multiple causes (none of which are genetic, according to you, despite the evidence), yet no scientist has proven any cause yet. You are off the deep end, brother.

Have you noticed that the incidence of "true" autism (think Rain Man) HAS NOT CHANGED, and that the vast majority of ASD cases are PDD-NOS, which was recently added under the ASD umbrella? So you add a disorder to ASD and Bam, a sudden increase. Hmmm, go figure. Citation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_autism

Who knew that widening the definition would lead to more cases? Anyone with a brain.

But keep denying that this is a major factor in the supposed "epidemic" increase. It's really helping your cause. Next thing you'll tell me was that we never landed on the moon.

One can clearly see that you are an incompetent scientist.

One can clearly see that you are an incompetent scientist.

Yes, only one: you. The rest of us see science for what it is: a way to prove that lunatic fringe positions like yours are wrong. I'd love for you to show me where I'm incompetent in my assessment about autism diagnoses.

Still waiting on your proof...as I have been for years. When challenged, you retreat into a corner. What lies will you tell this time around? You always have me guessing! Is it a complete dismissal that they changed the DSM definition of autism? I have the DSM-IV on my bookshelf right here, if you'd like me to consult it!

Or how about your quote: "Genes don't suddenly change"? I'd love to see your proof of that (especially since cancer is, in a nutshell, genes suddenly mutating). You crack me up with your lies upon lies!

I got it when I was 12 or 13 and it's the only sickness I remember well. I had bronchitis and whooping cough was so much worse, I would cough up half the food I tried to eat and it lingered for months. I share your aversion the memory of whooping cough Ellen.

Also the number of reported cases doesn't seem all that high to be called an epidemic. When I became ill with it the doctor told my mom that the vaccine needs boosters as it only lasts 7-10 years. Quick google search suggests it might only lasts 3 years gtfo.

Doctors know everything and never lie. Clearly Google is full of BS.

And Alex Jones.

Wakefield's studies were made up out of faked data, gathered by performing unnecessary procedures on disabled children, in order to further his own financial interests. They've been repudiated by the journal in which they were originally published, the Lancet, and he's been struck off the medical register in the UK, and may no longer practice medicine there.

He is the worst sort of human being -- a man who exploited innocent children and their poor parents for years with data who knew to be untrue. Children have died due to totally preventable childhood diseases, all because he convinced a bunch of scared parents that not vaccinating their children was better for them. I only wish there was some way to try the man for murder.

http://www.gmc-uk.org/Wakefield_SPM_and_SANCTION.pdf_32595267.pdf

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/11/autism.vaccines/?hpt=Sbin

Thank you DRK for pointing that out. I had forgotten that Wakefield had been so thoroughly discredited.

Sadly it probably won't budge the Jenny McCarthy or so-called 'Dr. Sheppard's of the world.

I've never known anybody that was ever harmed by a vaccine aside from an allergy to a substance in it. However, I'm a professional genealogist and the number of records I've seen of deaths from polio, pertussis, diptheria, and tetanus are astounding. I for one do not want to go back to the dark ages. Everybody dies eventually, but there are less painful ways to go than a slow and painful illness!

Vaccines save lives! Regardless of whatever "studies" have been done on them, the fact remains that far fewer people are dying from these terrible diseases than they were before the vaccines were created. I'll take my chances with any risks from a vaccine, when my other choice is to take a greater risk of dying a terrible death from an illness I could avoid altogether.

Dr. Sheppard - don't know want you're a Dr. of, from where you rec'd your degree, or even if you really have a doctorate in anything at all. I'm not a doctor. But even I know you can't have "accurate studies" with fake data. And Blaylock is incorrect about squalene, the swine flu vaccine, and Gulf War syndrome. Leaving aside the fact that squalene is produced naturally by all living organisms, you still can't be harmed by something that is not in the vaccine to begin with.

There are side effects from almost anything ingested or injected; numerous and exhaustive studies have shown that vaccines fall into the category of doing much more good than harm for the individual and society at large. A significant part of an MD's oath is first, do no harm. So how about you get educated and stop spreading incorrect and potentially harmful rumors?

I've cut way back on vaccines and it has nothing to do with McCarthy or Wakefield, it had to do with watchign my mother's immune system go haywire and attack her body until it killed her....there is speculation that the squalene in vaccines, an adjevunct (think turbo charger) might affect some immune systems. There is a huge surge in autoimmune disorders, if you have been paying attention...is it related to all the vaccines?

We don't know...but until I do know, I'm taking my chances. A healthy person, with a strong immune system will most likey recover from most disease, I'll chance it.

I've also seen a handful of people with fatal and life altering reactions to vaccines...not autism, but death and brain damage/severe encephalitis. Don't leave out Guillane-Barr either....

Now add into that Mercury and Aluminum, foreign DNA, the whole "dogs get cancer at vaccine injection sites from foreign DNA concept", read "The River" or Dr. Mary's Monkey about SIV (is AIDS a mutated SIV virus, given to humans with monkey DNA that polio shots were grown in?), watching my kids get very sick after shots, etc. etc. etc...did you know in Japan when the original Chicken Pox vaccine was introduced the side effect was SHINGLES???

I don't need Jenny or Wakefield, I've been paying attention myself!

Many adults don't keep track or think they don't need it. This article reminded me that I need to check with my doctor at my next visit- I think I have 3 or 4 years left on mine, but it's best to check.

I found the Health Dept more costly. To answer people fearful, if you ask any Medical Professional if they and their families get vaccinated, you will find that they do. Why let babies die because you are consumed with unjustifiable FEAR?

Actually Clark, that is false. The industry was doing research on who gets vaccinated, and who does not, in an effort to more effectively market vaccines. The findings were that those most likely to be fully vaccinated were poor and uneducated...those least likey to fully vaccinate were more highly educated, and among that group were medical professionals. Sorry but the more you know, the less you vaccinate.

I am so sorry for your loss. Your family must be devastated.

You can get vaccinated for free or at minimal cost.

Yeah beacuse the H1N1 vaccination didn't reach engough people so ... well ... we have lots of surplus and its already taxpayer paid for so ... YOU NEED IT! cause ...

If vaccines worked you wouldn't need ANOTHER 'DOSE' antibodies do not 'wane'

It amazes me how the brainashed ask to be poisoned. FLUORIDE is a poison.

Ya it amazes me how the brainwashed are just lining right up for the firing squad.  In droves no less.