The anti-vaxers’ ability to find real doctors to support their particular brand of quackery is admirable: think Dr. Jay Gordon, Andrew Wakefield and countless others. Someone I was not previously aware off joins the illustrous ranks; we are introduced to Dr. Russell Blaylock M.D. In a recent tweet, Meryl “I’m not anti-vaccine I’m pro-safe-vaccine even though vaccines=rape” Dorey linked to an article ominously titled “If You Are In Support of Vaccinations, Read This If You Dare“, published at thehealthy- economist.com. Now, how could I be expected to resist a dare from thehealthy- economist? I had to read.
As the first sentence of the article shows, we’re in for quite a spectacle:
If you are in support of vaccinations, this well written, concise and compelling letter by world renowned neurologist Dr. Russell Blaylock MD will dismantle every single argument used to support this inhumane, barbaric practice.
Wow, he’s world-renowned and is going to dismantle every single argument supporting vaccinations in one letter. What could possibly go wrong with that? I’m sure a world-renowned neurologist won’t stoop to the tired, old, already debunked anti-vaccine talking points. No, this guy will present earth-shattering evidence, unassailable arguments that will just leave the rest of us in the pro-health community flabbergasted and speechless. Did I mention he’s a world-renowned neurologist?
He’s not new to the pseudo-scientific world according to the Skeptics Dictionary. He’s been around for a while apparently dabbling in pseudo-scientific endeavors with regards to vaccines, cancer, and other woo lovers topics such as water fluoridation, teeth fillings, aspartame etc.
According to this website, which one assumes is his own personal site (although we cannot know for sure), he is a neurosurgeon, author and lecturer. He’s written 3 books, one of which caught my attention in particular. It is titled Natural Strategies for Cancer Patients and here’s a partial description of the work taken from the website (emphasis mine):
Through carefully references studies, he clearly demonstrates that when properly designed and compounded, nutrition dramatically enhances the effectiveness of traditional treatments, and importantly, prevents them from harming surrounding normal cells and organs-a major complication of all traditional treatments. He also shows that even when used alone, these nutritional treatments can work as well as traditional treatments without the terrifying side effects. Practical, detailed steps are outlined on how to design your nutritional treatments, with explanations as to how they work. As with all his books, the material is carefully referenced with scientific articles cited in the book.
That raises a red flag right away. Eating well can work as well as the traditional treatments? Surgery and chemotherapy can be replaced by a proper diet? Sounds a bit fishy to me, but without reading the book and the literature on cancer I couldn’t quite pronounce it as BS. So we’ll leave that for an oncologist to review.
The thing that is important here is not that he is apparently putting forth this nutrition cancer treatment theory, but that apparently Dr. Blaylock, a neurosurgeon, feels he has enough expertise to dish out advice about cancer and vaccines, two areas outside of his actual field of expertise, neurology , besides the expertise that all doctors have due to their medical training.
Dr. Blaylock writes the Blaylock Wellness Report which cost $79 for 2 years worth of monthly electronic issues, and $89 for the print version. Subscribe today and get a great free gift: a cancer-cure book by none other than Suzanne Somers! That fact alone makes me think that Dr. Blaylock has become a permanent resident of Wooville.
And let us be clear that this is not an ad hominem on him; he might be right in his arguments about cancer and vaccines, and I am not saying that he must be wrong because he’s going outside his area of expertise. After all, I am going outside of my area of expertise in this blog. However, I do not preface everything I write with my other credentials, as if they add anything to the actual arguments. He may be a world-renowned neurosurgeon, but he is not a world-renowned oncologist, or immunologist.
Speaking of arguments, let us see what the earth-shattering piece of wisdom will Dr. Blaylock come up with in regards to vaccines.
Dr. Blaylock’s Anti-Vaccine Arguments
Those who are observant have noticed a dangerous trend in the United States, as well as worldwide, and that is the resorting of various governments at different levels to mandating forced vaccination upon the public at large. My State of Mississippi has one of the most-restrictive vaccine-exemption laws in the United States, where exemptions are allowed only upon medical recommendation. Ironically, this is only on paper, as many have had as many as three physicians, some experts in neurological damage caused by vaccines, provide written calls for exemption, only to be turned down by the State’s public-health officer.
Never mind that this is patently false, at least in the US. No one is being forced to vaccinate at all. There is no vaccination police that checks if you have vaccinated your child and comes knocking on your door if you didn’t. You will not be lead away in handcuffs for missing your 2-year-old’s vaccine appointment. Well, not in the real world anyway. What we do have in place are rules that require proof of vaccination for children attending daycare and school, where, you know, one parent’s choice not to vaccinate affects other children’s health, like the recent measles outbreaks which were in large part caused by the unvaccinated and ended up causing hundreds of thousands of taxpayer money to control show.
One might use this same logic to say that government is mandating forced clothing, since we are not allowed to walk around naked in the streets. How dare those bastards tell me what I have to cover up?
Those that espouse this fake freedom argument are acting childish: they want to do what they want, but they do not want to bear the responsibility for their actions. They basically say that they don’t give a damn if their choice not to vaccinate their child ends up killing someone else’s child who may have been too young to get the vaccine, or couldn’t get it for medical reasons. They want society to care about their sense of freedom while at the same time they don’t give a rat’s ass about other people’s lives and health. A bit delusional no?
Worse are the States, such as Massachusetts, New Jersey and Maryland, where forced vaccinations have either been mandated by the courts, the state legislature, or have such legislation pending. All of such policies strongly resemble those policies found in National Socialist empires, Stalinist countries, or Communist China.
I’m surprised he didn’t mention Nazi Germany. Maybe that whole “Obama is a socialist” nonsense affected his choice of totalitarian country.
Not only are the courts mandating jabs, but we are also forced to put on a seat belt every time we drive, no exceptions allowed. Those socialist bastards. They do not let us have sex in public either; why not? It’s our bodies and it’s not hurting anyone. Stalinist perverts.
One quickly concludes that if the vaccines are as effective as being touted by the public-health officials, then why should one fear the unvaccinated? Obviously the vaccinated would have at least 95% protection. This question puts them in a very difficult position. Their usual response is that a “small” percentage of the vaccinated will not have sufficient protection and would still be at risk. Now, if they admit what the literature shows, that vaccine failure rates are much higher than the 5% they claim, they must face the next obvious question – then why should anyone take the vaccine if there is a significant chance it will not protect?
Well that’s ignorant to say the least; no one claims that vaccine effectiveness is 95%. Effectiveness varies depending on the vaccine. Pertussis vaccine for example is about 80% effective; the flu shot even less, at around 70% or so if memory serves me well. Where is he getting the 95% protection number from? Nevertheless, that is just ignorant, the next piece is downright stupid. He asks “why should anyone take the vaccine if there is a significant chance it will not protect?”. Whaaa? Why should any thirsty person drink a half a glass of water, if there is a significant chance it will not quench their thirst? The simple answer, that one would expect a world-renowned neurosurgeon to know, is that a half a glass of water is better than no water. Similarly, 80% protection from whooping cough is better than no protection. Maybe he skipped the class in medical school where they taught that.
But just you wait, the next one is a bombshell:
Herd immunity is mostly a myth and applies only to natural immunity – that is, contracting the infection itself.
Wow, just wow. At least he’s not going all the way off the cliff like some anti-vaxers do when they completely reject the idea of herd immunity; at least he’s only rejecting herd immunity from vaccinations. Because, you know when a virus is trying to spread, it really does give a damn whether the antibodies in the host’s body were created “naturally” or through a vaccine. Viruses tend to be picky that way.
His next rambling on herd immunity needs to be paraphrased as I cant quote it all. First he starts of by stating that natural immunity acquired by getting sick lasts a lifetime. Sure, no problems with that, so long as we’re also willing to note that disability related with being sick also lasts a lifetime, and death from the disease lasts, well you know, forever.
Then he makes a wilder claim: most vaccines offer no protection after 2-10 years. By the time 10 years have passed you’re just as vulnerable as you were before you got the vaccine apparently. As such, he argues, most adults have been living with no protection for decades, and lo and behold no outbreaks have occurred. Herd immunity therefore is a myth. I guess smallpox decided it was time to pack its bags and leave, on its own. Similarly whooping cough, measles, polio, mumps and all the other vaccine preventable disease viruses have come to a similar conclusion by themselves. Viruses tend to be spontaneous like that, free spirits that they are. Vaccines had nothing to do with any of that apparently.
The fact of the matter is that looking at the vaccine schedules for 0-6, 7-18 and adults over 18 one quickly notices that only one vaccine requires boosting every 10 years, specifically the Tdap, and even then it is only the tetanus portion that is recommended to be boosted every 10 years. Why would the evil, ignorant doctors require boosting for one only, if protection from all vaccines dissapears after 10 years? Must be part of the cover up I guess.
Did you know that tetanus is the only disease for which herd immunity cannot work, because it is not spread via human-to-human contact? Yet, Dr. Blaylock uses tetanus in his letter to make a point that herd immunity does not work. You’d expect him to know that the concept of herd immunity does not apply to tetanus, but who cares about facts when we’ve got an ideology to advance right?
When we examine the scientific literature, we find that for many of the vaccines protective immunity was 30 to 40%, meaning that 70% to 60% of the public has been without vaccine protection.
In regards to the above quote, what I am interested to know is whose behind was this statistic pulled out off? Many of the vaccines offer only 30-40% protection? I’d like to see what scientific literature supports that ridiculous claim.
Being done with herd immunity, Dr. Blaylock moves on.
Those pushing mandatory vaccination for an ever-growing list of diseases are a mixed bag. Some are quite sincere and truly want to improve the health of the United States. They believe the vaccine-induced herd immunity myth and likewise believe that vaccines are basically safe and effective. They are not evil people.
Well thank you. I thought I was generally a nice guy; it’s good to have my belief confirmed.
A growing number are made of those with a collectivist worldview and see themselves as a core of elite wise men and women who should tell the rest of us what we should do in all aspects of our lives. They see us as ignorant cattle, who are unable to understand the virtues of their plan for America and the World. Like children, we must be made to take our medicine – since, in their view, we have no concept of the true benefit of the bad-tasting medicine we are to be fed.
Yeah, who the hell do they think they are? Power to the people right? We’ll make our own damn medical decisions thank you very much. I wonder if he used to consult his patients when he was about to operate on them? I mean, who says we can’t Google neurosurgery (now I know he’s retired and there was no Google back then, but you get the point)? Who the hell needs elitist, “wise men and women” neurosurgeons telling us what the best course of action is? I don’t want these guys with their sharp scalpels anywhere near me. I hear a good diet can fix anything.
I have also found that a small number of people in the regulatory agencies and public health departments would like to speak out but are so intimidated and threatened with dismissal or destruction of their careers, that they remain silent. As for the media, they are absolutely clueless.
Ah, wouldn’t be an anti-vax piece without an appeal to conspiracy, would it? I’m surprised they haven’t been bodily threatened, and only fear for their jobs and careers; I mean what kind of half-baked world-wide conspiracy is this that doesn’t threaten people with their lives? As far as the media comment goes, I can’t argue with that. Remember Oprah and Larry King giving all that time to Jenny McCarthy? Talk about clueless.
I have found that “reporters” (we have few real journalists these days) rarely understand what they are reporting on and always trust and rely upon people in positions of official power, even if those people are unqualified to speak on the subject. Most of the time they run to the Centers for Disease Control or medical university to seek answers. I cannot count the number of times I have seen university department heads interviewed when it was obvious they had no clue as to the subject being discussed. Few such professors will pass up an opportunity to appear on camera or be quoted in a newspaper.
Insolent fools; going to the CDC and medical universities to get information and commentary on vaccines! How do they know whoever they’re talking to is qualified to speak about vaccines, you know like a neurosurgeon is? Although, to be fair, Dr. Blaylock is right to complain about the media’s dismal coverage of most matters scientific, but not in the ridiculous sense he means it, but the other way around. Need I mention Oprah and Larry King again?
One special fear of theirs is that the public might discover the fact that most vaccines are contaminated with a number of known and yet-to-be discovered viruses, bacteria, viral fragments, and DNA/RNA fragments.
Bingo! Not only is he knowledgeable about all the present contaminants in vaccines, but he’s warning us about the ones that haven’t been discovered yet, about whose existence he apparently is all too confident. Talk about being at the forefront of scientific knowledge. He’s literally waiting for science to catch up with him. In fact, he appears so much at the front, I am afraid science will never be able to catch up to him.
The idea that adults and their children would be forced to submit to being injected with dozens of these organisms and organic fragments is terrifying. No regulatory agency is tracking to see if chronic diseases are rising in the vaccinated, yet we have compelling evidence of a massive rise in all autoimmune diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, and certain cancers since the advent of a dramatic increase in the number of vaccines being mandated.
I’ve also noticed that we’re getting fatter too. Must be the fault of those damn vaccines. This is terrifying. Next comes a bit of an attempt to scare your pants off:
Of special concern is the finding that many of the contaminant organisms can pass from generation to generation. For example, new studies have found that SV-40, a major contaminant of the polio vaccine until 1963, not only existed as a latent virus for the lifetime of those exposed to the vaccine but was being passed on to the next generation, primarily by way of sperm, something called vertical transmission. This means that every generation from now on will be infected with this known carcinogenic virus. There is also compelling evidence that some polio vaccines manufactured after 1963 may contain SV-40 virus.
What makes the SV-40 contamination disaster of such concern is its association with so many cancers – including mesothelioma, medulloblastoma, ependymoma, meningioma, astrocytoma, oligodendroglioma, pituitary adenoma, glioblastoma, osteosarcomas, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, papillary thyroid carcinomas, and anaplastic thyroid carcinomas.
Wow, sounds scary. SV-40 has been associated with all those cancers! Damn, if only we had a reliable source of information about the SV-40 polio vaccine debacle of the 60s. Hold on a second, we do! The National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health has a very well referenced page on this very issue and, lo and behold, Dr. Blaylock seems to be wrong:
Over the last four decades, an intense research effort has been made to determine whether this route of exposure to SV40 has caused health problems in people, including cancer. Epidemiology studies involving decades of observations in the United States and Europe have failed to detect an increased cancer risk in those likely to have been exposed to the virus. These include a long-term Swedish study, which followed 700,000 people who received SV40-contaminated vaccine (7), a German study with 22 years of follow-up of 886,000 persons who received the contaminated vaccine as infants (8), a 20-year study of 1,000 people in the United States inoculated during the first week of life with contaminated vaccines (9), and a 30-year follow-up of approximately 10 percent of the entire U.S. population (using data from the National Cancer Institute‘s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results registry) (10). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds no evidence that SV40-contaminated vaccine lots cause cancer (11).
[...]
Using data from the Danish Cancer Registry covering the period from 1943 through 1997, the researchers compared the cancer incidence in people vaccinated with SV40-contaminated poliovirus vaccine as infants (i.e., those born from 1955–1961) or children (i.e., those born from 1946–1952), to those not exposed to SV40 (i.e., those born from 1964–1970). Those exposed to SV40 had a lower overall cancer risk than those not exposed. Furthermore, they did not have an increased incidence of mesothelioma, brain tumors (including ependymoma and choroid plexus tumors), osteosarcoma and other bone tumors, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, or testicular cancer, compared to those not exposed to the virus.
But then, the government is covering everything up, so the above information cannot be trusted. One needs to go to independent, unbiased sources to get to the truth, sources such as Dr. Blaylock who thinks he’s figured out the truth about vaccines, yet doesn’t seem to understand that the concept of herd immunity does not apply to tetanus.
At least Andrew Wakefield has a retracted vaccine study to his name.
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Great post, Leart!
Well, except for some diseases like pertussis (for which immunity only lasts from 3-12 years) or influenza (which only lasts a year or so). Oooh, and tetanus, which doesn’t grant any lasting protection following infection, plus it kills about 1 in 20. And, true, chicken pox immunity does last a lifetime, but it also comes with the added benefit of shingles, which the vaccinated need not fear. Then, of course, there’s measles, which also confers lifelong immunity, along with a roughly 1 in 8,000 chance of persistent infection in the brain leading to SSPE, which is almost universally fatal. But, hey! At least you won’t get measles ever again, unlike with the measles vaccine which only grants…oh…lifelong immunity without the risk of SSPE and significantly lower risks of things like encephalitis, pneumonia or death compared to natural infection.
But, hey, world-renowned neurosurgeons know everything, so he must be right. Right? Beuler?
See, I was too generous when I gave him that point without much of a fight. Thanks for setting the record straight Todd.
He has actually been retired from practicing medicine for years, at least a decade. I am sure he is world renowned in his own mind and in the minds of the people who get his newsletter.
Thank you for pointing out his more recent list of grievous errors.
I was made aware of this clown on a parenting site a few years ago. The resident anti-vaxer was so proud that she got Dr. Blaylock to speak at her event. Did you know that he can diagnose death from MSG just by asking what the person’s last meal was? It’s true:
“I was in a bookstore in Oxford, Miss. This young guy was there, and he just dropped and died. We took him to the hospital and tried to resuscitate him, and we couldn’t. He was only 26 years old, and he had just eaten a big bowl of soup at one of the restaurants. Well, I talked to the person that was there, and he said they use a lot of hydrolyzed protein and MSG. People will eat a meal, have a soup before the meal, get this huge dose of MSG, and drop dead from the arrhythmia.”
The whole interview is classic. Blaylock even claims that “Big Artificial Sweetener” leaves him alone because he “knows too much.”
And where is this winner of an interview? Natural News of course!
http://www.naturalnews.com/020550.html
Oh my that’s like the Axis of Stupid: Adams and Blaylock.
I stopped reading when you said no one is forced to vaccinate. Or does threatening people with jail not count, as they did in Maryland? http://bit.ly/j3Unam
Ms. Gottstein, you tiny url goes to a general google search. If you have a specific case in mind, please link directly to it. Because it might show there is some specifics that you are ignoring, or that it actually happened.
By the way, no one has to send their child to a public school. There are many private schools that allow children with vaccines to attend (though they are often the Waldorf schools that shut down when there is an outbreak), and homeschooling is allowed just about everywhere.
Sounds like you stopped reading, period. At least with regards to any sources that don’t agree with the random Google pages you happen to find that support your preexisting beliefs. Maybe you should do more reading and less whining about how you refuse to read anything that disagrees with you.
You’re right Sandy, and the author of this piece was so reckless in stating that no one is forced to vaccinate in this country, that I would even call it a lie. A friend of mine refused Hep B vaccination for her newborn in New York City in the mid-90′s when she came in to the hospital after a complication with a homebirth. She was immediately reported to the CPS (even though she was a good mother of two, previously, and a social worker herself) and they took custody her infant, and wouldn’t let her have the baby with her in the hospital room. Cases of a similar nature are reported all the time. Hep B is a sexually transmitted disease, and there was no scientific evidence of efficacy for it to be administered to newborns at the time it was mandated. Yup, you can’t extrapolate from efficacy in adults to efficacy in infants! But hey, I want to listen to the advice of the people who do, which would be the ACIP. Its also a particularly dangerous vaccine, and Michael Belkin’s statistical analysis showed that the risks of side-effects outweighed the risks of infection, due to the low incidence of the disease.
It is also dishonest to say, “no one is forced”, because law-abiding people are forced simply by their adherence to the law in states without religious and philosophical exemptions, as it is also the case that a huge number of badly vaccine damaged children did not die or receive their permanent injuries on their first shot, but after receiving later shots in the schedule, when their intimidated physicians refused to give them exemptions even after prior incidents of reactions severe enough to cause their children to be hospitalized. These deaths can be laid at the doorstep of the polarized pro-vaccine camp, creating a climate of “your either with us or against us” that removes the appropriate medical safeguards for mass vaccination programs from working properly. You can see that kind of unbalanced fanaticism reflected in Rosch’s use of the word “whining.” So, Mr. Rosch, you know, if you want to make the world a better place, you might want to spend your time examining where that hatred comes from that has you attacking strangers on the internet, rather than campaigning against the rights of your fellow citizens to control their own bodies, rather than have them controlled, by a government that is obviously untrustworthy. The CDC knew about the Tuskegee experiments, and didn’t stop them….yup, those’r the people I want making my medical decisions for me!
And “no one has to send their kid to public school”? Give me a break! Doesn’t that comment deserve the Marie Antoinette award. NY Steiner was ~$30,000 per year, tuition. Homeschooling generally requires one parent not to work. A great option educationally, but it isn’t widely available to people in these economically strapped times. So hopefully I will see the “pro-health” community campaigning vigorously for the full rebate of educational taxes to anti-vaccination parents who are not permitted to send their children to school, but I wouldn’t be holding my breath. From what I’ve seen here, you folks are much more interested in scapegoating than freedom and health.
The arrogance in the pro-vaccination community is so intense, as illustrated in the constant sarcasm in the article above, it undermines the credibility of the accurate criticism they could otherwise contribute to improving immunization practice in the US. I found this article and the later discussion, so self-congratulory and rude, I will be unlikely to return here. I’m sure others will also be unlikely to want to take the time to inform such a self-righteous group. Unfortunately then, we will have another little eddy in the sea of consciousness of folks just talking to the people who agree with them, and creating “crippled epistemology” in Cass Sunstein’s words. I do discuss medical technologies with ardent proponents of them myself, in a more civil and apparently, much more well-informed venue, than this.
I’ll append a short description of the Tuskegee experiments here:
“Between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama, The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service, to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis that was given to unwitting ‘negro’ patients” (they told them they *were* being treated).
When someone sneers at the notion of conspiracies, that’s another place to stop reading an article that doesn’t seem otherwise exceptionally meritorious! Paperclip was a conspiracy; Gladio was a conspiracy; the CIA has admitted to facilitating drug traffic into the US; the kind of people who proliferate nuclear weapons don’t do it openly. Sneering at conspiracy theories always shows someone whose thinking is seriously unintegrated with reality.
Further ignorance and absolutely sheeplike conformity was displayed in this article when opposition to fluoride as dismissed as “woo”. LOL! Yup, Dr. Phyllis Mullenix, the toxicologist who did the screening of fluoride herself, and found neurotoxicological effects as severe as with chemotherapy agents and published her results The Journal of Neurotoxicology and Teratology—that’s “woo” alright! And Nobelist Arvid Carlsson, the pharmacologist whose testimony helped convince Sweden to stop fluoridation—oh, that’s “woo” alright! Or chemist John Yiamouyiannis, or medical anthropologist Roger D. Masters, or William Marcus, the EPA scientist who was restored *with punitive damages* after he blew the whistle on fraud to minimize carcinogenic effects of fluoride shown in EPA research…all woo? Or were you just too lazy/uncritical or dishonest to check an assertion you knew nothing about (obviously…if you’d had any experience in biochemistry, you’d know fluoride compounds are used as enzyme inhibitors in research, and thus are obviously suspect as a health risk) when it gave you a target group to scapegoat?
Here’s some more “woo” on fluoridation…if you botch it, people DIE. I wonder how many prevented cavities counterbalance a single death?
“In rare cases improper implementation of water fluoridation can result in overfluoridation that causes outbreaks of acute fluoride poisoning, with symptoms that include nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Three such outbreaks were reported in the U.S. between 1991 and 1998, caused by fluoride concentrations as high as 220 mg/L; in the 1992 Alaska outbreak, 262 people became ill and one person died”
Balbus JM, Lang ME. Is the water safe for my baby?. Pediatr Clin North Am. 2001;48(5):1129–52, viii.
Are you so angry and so insecure about your intellects, that you think some of the glory of science will rub off on you by parroting what you think are pro-science lines? I would really be ashamed of myself if I’d written something so embarrassingly foolish as this article (or applauded it)…I only hope some of you aren’t too far gone to admit when you’ve made a mistake and learn from it.
I wouldn’t be debating here. You can take this gift and learn from it, or you can choose not to. Your lives and the sanity of your thought processes are your own responsibility. I suggest reading psychoanalyst Alice Miller’s “Banished Knowledge” and “the Drama of the Gifted Child” to get a clue where the roots of the kind of fanatical close-mindedness we see here comes from.
Because you just like to dump a Gish Gallop and run away. You said absolutely nothing about the dubious practice of the retired Dr. Blaylock who sells a “Brain Repair Formula” and writes on subjects that are outside his medical specialty.
I see no reason for tax payers to let those who are willing to flaunt public health into publicly funded schools. The excuse that a parent cannot work fails to compel me since I had to stay home due to having a child become disabled due to a real illness (before a vaccine for it was available). There was no way I could afford a nanny or other person to take him to all of his doctors and therapist appoints, much less deal with the special education system.
The most stupid thing I was ever told that I was “lucky” that I did not have to pay for my son’s preschool. It was a special ed. program at a public school. What the foolish woman did not know was that we were also paying about $100 per week on therapies, had to pay a percentage for the neurologist and for his emergency stays at the hospital, even though we have good health insurance.
If you don’t want to stay home to homeschool, create your own “vaccine free” school. Surely you can find a group of like minded anti-public health advocates to join you.
Interesting that you bring up Tuskegee. The cries we hear from some groups is that there should be studies on vaccinated versus children who are not vaccinated. Except those have been done.
Before the1970s it was common to test vaccines on children who were places in institutions like Willowbrook. What was even worse is that some of these children were deliberately infected with the pathogen to see if the vaccine worked.
Since the public schools did not allow disabled children to attend their schools before 1975 (Public Law 94-142), parents either had to have one parent stay home or put them in these special schools.
Because of the rubella epidemic in the early 1960s there was tremendous demand for placements in institutions like Willowbrook. The child would get moved up the waiting list if the parent agreed to enroll their child into the medical studies.
I also do not want to see tax payer money going into those kinds of vax vs. unvax studies. They should be funded by groups like SafeMinds and Generation Rescue. Perhaps they can get Dr. Blaylock to kick in some of his profits from his “Brain Repair Formula.”
Hi, where is the scientific rebuttal of the ingredients in the brain repair formula?
It’s not up to us to prove it doesn’t work, it’s up to those who think it does to prove that it does and until that happens it is assumed to not work.
Thank you, Pam, for taking to task the nastily arrogant & sarcastic ‘pro-vaccine’ folks on this website- which I will not revisit, either- and for attempting to present the other side of the coin in a balanced, rationale and dignified manner. You run rings around them.
“Thank you, Pam, for taking to task the nastily arrogant & sarcastic ‘pro-vaccine’ folks on this website- which I will not revisit, either- and for attempting to present the other side of the coin in a balanced, rationale and dignified manner.”
Shouldn’t you thank the nasty people who run this website for allowing your comments to appear, unlike the antivax websites which openly censor any truthful information about vaccines? Why is the antivax side so afraid of disagreement and the pro-children side so open to opposing views?
Because the anti-vaccine people don’t have any decent evidence and would lose any arguments they haven’t had rigged in their favour.
Another great piece, Leart. Beat me to it. It’s probably also important to warn people that they probably shouldn’t apply my drinking game to Blaylock’s article either.
“Never mind that this is patently false, at least in the US. No one is being forced to vaccinate at all. There is no vaccination police that checks if you have vaccinated your child and comes knocking on your door if you didn’t.”
Unless you plan to homeschool your child the police will arrest you for not providing an education to your child. So, in MS, either you vaccinate or you must homeschool.
The main issue with this whole argument is that pro-vaccers want to force everyone to vaccinate and anti-vaccers just want to be left alone. But according to the experts, the unvaccinated threaten the vaccinated, so the right to be left alone no longer applies. I personally feel that the vaccinated threaten the unvaccinated in the sense that the healthy unvaccinated will eventually have to pay for all the drugs and therapies for the chronically ill vaccinated.
You mean as we had to cover the $130,000 Utah measles outbreak, and the $800,000 Arizona measles outbreak costs? Arguments are made with facts not suppositions. Come back when you have more than a half-baked opinion to share.
And where are the facts supporting your arguments? In the old days you stayed home with the Measles until you were better. No need for a doctor unless a rare complication occured. You want to throw out some numbers..ok.
A study scheduled for publication in the Pace Environmental Law Review closely examined public information on 1,300 cases in which the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program compensated families. Significant brain injuries were found in compensated patients as a direct result of vaccinations. Eighty-three cases specifically resulted in autism and are being called, “the tip of the iceberg.”
Not including the millions of dollars that the government paid out directly, ask yourself how many millions of dollars will be needed to care for these children for the rest of their lives.
I think your the one who’s half-baked.
You mean the same Pace Environmental Law Review piece that said that there was no meaningful difference between “autism-like symptoms” and “autism”? Where they treat encephalopathy and brain injury as equivalent to autism, despite the fact that they are not, in actuality autism? The study that failed to get IRB review before being conducted, thus making it an unethical study? Is that the study to which you refer?
We’ll at least we can agree that vaccines can cause encephalopathy and brain injury as equivalent to autism.
You need to read what Todd wrote with a bit more reading comprehension, especially this phrase: “despite the fact that they are not.” Then go click on the link to his blog post.
Remember that the paper that was written by lawyers identified only 83 children compensated over the course of several years. This is a tiny small micro-drop compared to the number of vaccines administered every year. In no way does it show that vaccines commonly cause brain injury or encephalopathy (the latter my son has, due to seizures while suffering from a now vaccine preventable disease).
Now provide an actual citation to your claims, not VAERS or a lawsuit, something more like this:
Encephalopathy after whole-cell pertussis or measles vaccination: lack of evidence for a causal association in a retrospective case-control study.
Ray P, Hayward J, Michelson D, Lewis E, Schwalbe J, Black S, Shinefield H, Marcy M, Huff K, Ward J, Mullooly J, Chen R, Davis R; Vaccine Safety Datalink Group.
Pediatr Infect Dis J. 2006 Sep;25(9):768-73.
Please introduce yourself to the CDC Pink Book Appendix G. This is where these kinds of statistics were found:
Measles:
Year_Cases_Deaths__Year___Cases____Deaths
2000____86___ 1____1950__319124____468
2001___116___ 1____1951__530118____683
2002____44___ 0____1952__683077____618
2003____56___ 1____1953__449146____462
2004____37___ NA___1954__682720____518
2005____66___ NA___1955__555156____345
2006____55___ NA___1956__611936____530
Total__460___3 or more__3831277___3624
Now some more cites (not anecdotes):
J Infect Dis. 2004 May 1;189 Suppl 1:S210-5.
Measles hospitalizations, United States, 1985-2002.
Lee B, Ying M, Papania MJ, Stevenson J, Seward JF, Hutchins SS.
Epidemiology Program Office, and National Immunization Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia 30333, USA.
J Infect Dis. 2004 May 1;189 Suppl 1:S69-77.
Acute measles mortality in the United States, 1987-2002.
Gindler J, Tinker S, Markowitz L, Atkinson W, Dales L, Papania MJ.
National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Impact of specific medical interventions on reducing the prevalence of mental retardation.
Brosco JP, Mattingly M, Sanders LM.
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2006 Mar;160(3):302-9. Review.
J Infect Dis. 2005 Nov 15;192(10):1686-93. Epub 2005 Oct 12.
Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis: more cases of this fatal disease are prevented by measles immunization than was previously recognized.
Bellini WJ, Rota JS, Lowe LE, Katz RS, Dyken PR, Zaki SR, Shieh WJ, Rota PA.
Respiratory and Enteric Viruses Branch, National Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia 30333, USA.
Economic Evaluation of the 7-Vaccine Routine Childhood Immunization Schedule in the United States, 2001
Zhou F, Santoli J, Messonnier ML, Yusuf HR, Shefer A, Chu SY, Rodewald L, Harpaz R.
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2005;159:1136-1144.
An economic analysis of the current universal 2-dose measles-mumps-rubella vaccination program in the United States.
Zhou F, Reef S, Massoudi M, Papania MJ, Yusuf HR, Bardenheier B, Zimmerman L, McCauley MM.
J Infect Dis. 2004 May 1;189 Suppl 1:S131-45.
Pediatric hospital admissions for measles. Lessons from the 1990 epidemic.
Chavez GF, Ellis AA.
West J Med. 1996 Jul-Aug;165(1-2):20-5.
Measles epidemic from failure to immunize.
Dales LG, Kizer KW, Rutherford GW, Pertowski CA, Waterman SH, Woodford G.
West J Med. 1993 Oct;159(4):455-64.
Like I said, in rare circumstances complications happen. In immune compromised children, any sickness could prove fatal.
Measles causes complications at a rate of one out of a thousand times. If you believe that one out of a thousand children are immune compromised, please provide a real citation.
Also, I find it disturbing that any child who is disabled or died from measles in a way “deserved” their fate do to some randomly chosen by you health issue. That is a form of eugenics, and that is not a good thing.
Maybe if you would make sure kids are fed properly and not eating GMO’s and processed foods and HFCS all the time, those outbreaks would have cost not even 1/1000th of what they did.
There is no evidence that genetically modified foods or processed foods are any less safe than foods which haven’t been modified or processed (and quite a bit which indicates that the unprocessed foods can be dangerous, pasteurisation is done for very good reasons).
Citation, please. Something with the caliber of this study, which showed one main difference between those that are vaccinated and those without any vaccines: the children who had never been vaccinated became ill with vaccine preventable diseases more often. Funny that.
Maybe you can find a child that is unvaccinated and has Autism. I’ve been looking but haven’t found one.
Thousands of children cared for by Homefirst Health Services in metropolitan Chicago have at least two things in common with thousands of Amish children in rural Lancaster: They have never been vaccinated. And they don’t have autism.
“We have a fairly large practice. We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we’ve taken care of over the years, and I don’t think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines,” said Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, Homefirst’s medical director who founded the practice in 1973. Homefirst doctors have delivered more than 15,000 babies at home, and thousands of them have never been vaccinated.
Ask Kim Stagliano, of the Age of Autism blog. Her youngest daughter is completely unvaccinated, and yet she still has autism. Oh, and you may be surprised to find that the Amish do have autistic kids, just like non-Amish.
Jim, look at the right hand side of this page. See the notice of the latest pdf issue of Vaccine Times, click on it and read page 23. Tell us all about it, please.
I googled Angie Jackson:
Is this the same woman who tweeted her abortion on twitter? This woman seems a little out there, to say the least. I am hard pressed to believe her Autism story.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/angie-jackson-live-tweets-abortion/story?id=9937689&page=2
Angie Jackson is a common name. Your attempt at poisoning the well is pathetic.
Jim,
You asked for one case and you were presented with 2. Will you now drop the “vaccines cause autism” rubish, or will you just move the goalpost and demand something else? Ball’s on your court.
@Jim One of my previous neighbors had 4 kids; 3 were UNvaccinated and were all autistic – the 4th (the youngest by a different father) was vaccinated (at the father’s demand) and ISN’T autistic.
Anecdotes are anecdotes;toss in a couple of bucks and you can get a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
What a load of shit. You really are messed up, aren’t you.
Totally out of my damn mind.