World Health Organization

The Kenyan Catholic Bishops are at it again, this time spreading fear of the polio vaccine

oracknows — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 01:00:07 +0000

The Kenyan Catholic Bishops are at it again, this time spreading fear of the polio vaccine

There's a delightful meme going around Facebook right now, featured above, that portrays five African women, fists raised, all wearing aprons proclaiming "Kick out polio!" Accompanying the meme is a message from the American Academy of Pediatrics celebrating that yesterday marked one full year since the last case of polio was recorded on the continent of Africa and praising African leadership in executing successful vaccination campaigns against this dread disease, in particular recent declarations in support of eradication from the African Union Heads of State Summit and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Foreign. I don't know if these women are nurses, doctors, or aid workers, but it's a great picture showing determination to eliminate polio, an achievable goal.

Unfortunately, it's not all African leadership. At the same time there were news stories celebrating this important landmark in the effort to eradicate polio from Africa (and eventually the world), there were other stories that were not so heart warming because, after briefly mentioning this achievement, the report switches gears and interviews Dr. Wahome Ngare, who invokes the specter of eugenics before launching into a rant about vaccines:

But last week, a polio vaccination campaign in Kenya faced an unlikely opponent: The country's Conference of Catholic Bishops declared a boycott of the World Health Organization's vaccination campaign, saying they needed to "test" whether ingredients contain a derivative of estrogen. Dr. Wahome Ngare of the Kenyan Catholic Doctor's Association alleged that the presence of the female hormone could sterilize children.
Ngare is a practicing gynecologist with no infectious disease experience.

He raises the specter of eugenics — sterilizing segments of human populations. He put forth other objections as well: "There are all sorts of stories out there," he told me. "Vaccines can cause autism. Vaccines have been used for spread of HIV. There are some cancer-causing viruses that you'd find in vaccines. So there are lot of stories. Some of them we don't know whether they're true or not true."

Here's the audio:

Oh, no. Not again.

Unfortunately, yes, it's happening again. You might remember that last fall, the same clueless cast of characters used essentially the same fear mongering rumor to stoke fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the tetanus vaccine right in the middle of a vaccination campaign in young women to prevent neonatal tetanus in their babies after they were born. In that case, the general class of misinformation was the same, namely that somehow vaccines would sterilize their women or children. Last time around, the Kenyan bishops, aided and abetted by the Kenyan Catholic Doctors, claimed that the campaign to vaccinate young women against tetanus was in actuality a "mass sterilization exercise using a proven fertility regulating vaccine." In fact, proving that once a crank latches onto an idea he never lets go of it and, in the antivaccine crank world, if your only tool is a hammer every vaccine turns into a nail. Nagare is the same doctor who was spreading the misinformation that the tetanus vaccine was a plot to sterilize young Kenyan women in the prime of their fertility; his lack of imagination has apparently led him to say the same thing about the polio vaccine, except that this time it's sterilizing the children.

As I detailed at the time, it was a conspiracy theory that conflated an old attempt to develop an immunocontraceptive; i.e., a vaccine that would serve as a contraceptive. In the case of the tetanus vaccine, Ngare claimed that it contained beta-HCG, sometimes called the "pregnancy hormone" because of its critical role in maintaining the pregnant state. That made it a promising target for immunocontraceptives, and decades ago vaccines were tested that targeted hCG, the intent being to result in the inability to maintain a pregnancy. It takes little more than a quick trip to Wikipedia (among other sources) to learn that as far back as the 1970s, hCG was conjugated to a protein known as the tetanus toxoid in order to make a vaccine against hCG. The reason was that hCG itself did not provoke enough of an immune response. It’s not necessary to know all the details and history. However, from the 1970s on, there have been clinical trials of such vaccine contraceptives using hCG, and it is possible to prevent pregnancy by this approach, although antibody response against hCG declines with time. Overall, it was not a very good method of contraception, which is why there's little interest in it today. However, there's a lot of interest in conflating the tetanus toxoid in the old hCG vaccines tested 20 years ago with the tetanus vaccine. It's a conspiracy theory based on a profound misunderstanding of what was actually done. It's also not unique to Kenya but has appeared in the Phillippines and other Third World countries.

So what is the story this time around? There's no tetanus toxoid in the polio vaccine to produce confusion like this, and besides, vaccination campaigns against polio are focused more on children. The story mentions a derivative of estrogen, which, if Ngare is to be believed (he isn't), can sterilize children (even if it were in the vaccines it can't). I can't really figure out where Ngare got this idea. He's gynecologist and should know female hormones and what they do. He should know that a small amount of estrogen from a single vaccine is not going to be enough to sterilize a child, but apaprently he doesn't. At least in the case of the conspiracy theory campaign against the tetanus vaccine, there was a mechanism for the charge that at least sounded superficially plausible. True, it disintegrated rapidly under even a little bit of scientific scrutiny, but it was way more specific than this latest charge of there being "estrogen" in the polio vaccine, which is so vague that Ngare might as well have just said "toxins."

Naturally, Ngare claims he is not antivaccine:

But Wahome is not, he insists, anti-vaccine. He administers vaccines to patients in his clinic. His children are vaccinated. "Regular immunizations are safe and they must continue," he says. "You must immunize your child."

But are his children vaccinated against polio? Against tetanus? Of course, as is the case with our very own American antivaccinationists, most likely Ngare is feeling a little cognitive dissonance at his views on the tetanus and polio vaccines. Also, he knows it's generally not a good thing to be antivaccine or even perceived as antivaccine, especially if you're a doctor; so he resolves the conflict by convincing himself he's "pro-vaccine safety." Jenny McCarthy couldn't have done it better. No doubt Ngare thinks he's protecting Kenyan children from the evil depredations of the United Nations and World Health Organization, but in reality all he's doing is impeding the efforts of the Kenyan government to eradicate polio.

It's tempting to stand back and mock someone like Ngare, and, given his medical education, he really should know better. However, we have our very own antivaccine doctors—pediatricians, even!—right here in the good ol' U.S. of A.; so we shouldn't feel too smug. Also, given the history of colonialism and exploitation of Africa by European powers, it's not surprising that distrust of outside institutions like the WHO is easily stoked there:

In Kenya, vaccine suspicion has taken its own local strain, aimed less at vaccines themselves than at the international bodies, like the U.N. and WHO, that distribute them. The distrust has been fueled by WHO's decision to blanket Kenya with polio vaccines, well over and above routine injections, in an effort to boost population immunity. The idea is that some of the people reached by the campaign will have already been vaccinated, but some will not. The WHO says there's no harm in giving extra vaccines to children who are already vaccinated.

Which is true, but you can see how that might raise suspicions, particularly after this incident:

Their concerns heightened after a recent unrelated incident in which about 30 children who received an injection of an anti-malarial drug in a dispensary in western Kenya appeared to be paralyzed. The drug, believed to be quinine for advanced cases, was found to contain the pain drug paracetamol, according to the bishops. Paracetamol is also known as acetaminophen.

In particular, the CIA fed these sorts of conspiracy theories when it was revealed that in 2011 it organized a fake vaccination drive in Pakistan to get a hold of Osama bin Laden family DNA.

Fortunately, the Kenyan government isn't taking this lying down and is working hard to counter this latest bit of antivaccine misinformation:

...the vaccination programme is necessary to control any recurrence of the disease and the bishops' opposition has been met with dismay by officials.

The ministry of health released a statement from Dr Nicholas Muraguri, director of Kenya's medical services, who said: "Any attempts aimed at mobilizing the public against taking their children for vaccination is a serious violation of the right of children to health and survival.

"The ministry of health once again reassures the public of the safety of all vaccines used in Kenya. I therefore appeal to all stakeholders, especially the leadership of the Catholic Church, to continue supporting" the immunization campaign.

And, in response to the Catholic Bishops' demand that the vaccines be tested by an outside agency:

However, health cabinet secretary James Macharia said that the ministry could not accede to demands made by different religious groups. "We have different religions with different doctrines. If we allow health to be managed based on people's beliefs, we will have major problems in this country," he said.

"We are not about to back down on campaigns because of one religion. The bigger picture is the children who are at risk."

Exactly. Antivaccinationists, be they religiously-motivated or motivated by pseudoscience (or both), should not hold a government campaign to eradicate a deadly disease. Fortunately, it appears to be working, at least for now.

Maybe the five women in the meme above should pay Dr. Ngare and the Kenyan Catholic Bishops a visit to knock some sense into their heads. That, I would love to see.

oracknows Tue, 08/11/2015 - 21:00

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No, Lawrence Solomon, UNICEF and WHO are not trying to sterilize women with tetanus vaccines!

oracknows — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 07:50:13 +0000

No, Lawrence Solomon, UNICEF and WHO are not trying to sterilize women with tetanus vaccines!

There are some antivaccine lies that just never die. Well, actually, most of them are very much like Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and Freddy Krueger in that, just when you think you've killed them at the end of the latest confrontation, they always come back. Always. As an example of this, let's go back four months ago. Remember back in November when I discussed a particularly pernicious antivaccine lie that's been spread by Kenyan Catholic Bishops and the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association? It was the claim that the tetanus vaccine used to prevent neonatal tetanus in young women in Kenya is laced with a "sterilization chemical" that causes miscarriages. As I described in my own inimitable fashion, it's been a particularly dumb conspiracy theory that nonetheless seems to have legs. Similar claims, dating back at least to the 1990s, that there is “something” in vaccines that results in infertility and sterilization, have been unfortunately very effective in frightening people in Third World countries and have played a major role in antivaccine campaigns that have delayed the eradication of polio.

Enter Lawrence Solomon. You remember Lawrence Solomon, don't you? He's what I referred to last summer as a rising star in the antivaccine movement. A conservative columnist for the Financial Post, when first we met him he was complaining about a "conservative 'failure' of skepticism" on vaccines because, apparently, conservatives haven't been antivaccine enough for his liking. (Maybe he's happier with more recent developments.) Indeed, Solomon used some seriously brain dead arguments about herd immunity indistinguishable from the nonsense they regularly spew over at the antivaccine crank blog, that wretched hive of scum and quackery known as Age of Autism. He's also a rather obnoxious Twitter presence, frequently "challenging" people to prove him wrong, apparently not realizing that his arguments are such hoary antivaccine nuggets (of the variety produced out of the hind ends of mice and other rodents) that I and most skeptical bloggers already have numerous times over the years.

Speaking of AoA, it would seem that Solomon decided to get into the antivaccine website/blog business and directly compete with AoA. He's recently launched a site called VaccineFactCheck. It's generally a repository for antivaccine misinformation that, Solomon being the inexperienced pseudoscience activist that he is, makes The Thinking Moms' Revolution look as though they are actually living up to their deluded sense that they are thinking, and that's hard to do. As an example, I present to you Solomon's post Vatican: UNICEF and WHO are sterilizing girls through vaccines.

Brace yourself. Stupid is coming:

Vatican Radio last week charged that United Nations organizations promoting population control are using vaccines to surreptitiously sterilize women in Third World countries. Kenya’s Ministry of Health, along with the UN organizations — World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF — deny the charges, which carry the full weight of the Vatican. Vatican Radio is the official “voice of the Pope and the Church in dialogue with the World.”

“Catholic Bishops in Kenya have been opposed to the nationwide Tetanus Vaccination Campaign targeting 2.3 million Kenyan women and girls of reproductive age between 15-49 years, terming the campaign a secret government plan to sterilize women and control population growth,” reported Vatican Radio, as it took the occasion of the ordination of a Kenyan Bishop, Joseph Obanyi Sagwe, as an opportunity to remind the world of its concern.

Is this the same nonsense that the Kenyan Bishops were spouting in November that I deconstructed in detail? Why yes. Yes it is. Notice how Solomon pointedly describes Vatican Radio as the "voice of the Pope and Church in dialogue with the world," as if to imply that the Vatican actually endorses the position of the Catholic Bishops. In fact, the article cited is a pretty dry, straightforward news report about the ordination as Bishop of Kakamega of Joseph Obanyi Sagwe that mentions the factoid about Kenyan bishops' claims about the tetanus in passing, along with a bunch of other facts about the ordination. It neither endorses nor refutes the Kenyan Bishops' claims about the tetanus vaccine. I also note that Solomon's very headline also tries to make it sound as though the Vatican itself is accusing UNICEF and the WHO of trying to sterilize girls in Kenya using vaccines. The Vatican endorses no such claim.

None of that stops Solomon from continuing to parrot the very pseudoscience and misinformation that surfaced about the tetanus vaccine back in November. I refuted them then, and Dr. Jen Gunter just refuted them yesterday. Doubling down on the misinformation, Solomon even posted a follow up to his original article implying that the Vatican was endorsing the Kenyan Bishops' claim that UNICEF and the WHO are spreading around tetanus vaccines laced with hCG to sterilize their girls with a disingenuous "Q&A" about hCG in a vaccine might cause sterility. One notes that he refers directly to the "Vatican's explosive charge" here. Once again, as the news story makes clear, there is no evidence to indicate that it is the Vatican that is making this charge. It is clearly the Kenyan Bishops who are making this charge. The two are not the same. Bishops do not necessarily speak for the Vatican, and Vatican Radio just reported it as a single paragraph in a straight news story.

In any case, Solomon, ever the clueless antivaccine flack, believes a lot of nonsense in order to believe there's any credibility to the Kenyan Bishop's charges:

Have UNICEF, WHO and the Kenyan government been secretly using HCG-laced tetanus vaccines as a population control measure, as the Vatican and its Kenyan bishops maintain? The bishops sent vials of the tetanus vaccines from the batch reserved for females of reproductive age to four unrelated laboratories inside and outside Kenya. All four showed that the tetanus vaccines were laced with HCG. In contrast, tests performed on 50 vials of tetanus vaccines for general use in the population showed all 50 to be clear of HCG.

I discussed this all in detail before, but I suppose I should do it briefly (for Orac) again.

Before you can understand the why the claim that beta-hCG is in the tetanus vaccine would produce fear that the vaccine is in reality a sterilization agent, you need to know about a previous experimental vaccine. hCG is what is commonly referred to as the “pregnancy hormone.” Pregnancy tests are based on detecting hCG, which can first be detected about 11 days after conception and whose levels rise rapidly thereafter, peaking in the first 8-11 weeks of pregnancy. In the past, attempts have been made to produce a vaccine that targets hCG and thus results in the inability to conceive a child. It is a technique that falls under the category of immunocontraception. It takes little more than a quick trip to Wikipedia (among other sources) to learn that as far back as the 1970s, hCG was conjugated to a protein known as the tetanus toxoid in order to make a vaccine against hCG. The reason is that hCG itself did not provoke enough of an immune response. It’s not necessary to know all the details and history. However, from the 1970s on, there have been clinical trials of such vaccine contraceptives using hCG, and it is possible to prevent pregnancy by this approach, although antibody response against hCG declines with time.

Now here's the problem. As the WHO has already noted, even if the findings of beta-hCG in the vaccine vials were real, hCG is present at far too low a level to be an effective immunocontraceptive, and the blood tests presented by the Kenyan Catholic Doctors Association are actually do not show any evidence of beta-hCG being used to sterilize women:

Additionally, the findings of the laboratory tests purported to be from a woman called St. Michael (explained below) all come out with normal values from the reference values assuming that the woman is not pregnant. The highest level of the β-HCG hormone was found to be 1.12 mIU/ml (and 1.2 mIU/ml for S-Quantitative β-HCG). There was no control used (or presented) and it would have been interesting to see what the result will be with tap water. There is a situation where ant- β-HCG antibodies can be produced by the body and that can act as a contraceptive, however, this requires the administration of at-least 100 to 500 micrograms of HCG bound to tetanus vaccine (about 11,904,000 to 59,520,000 mIU/ml of the same hormone where currently less than 1 mIU-ml has been reported from the lab results.

Also, as Dr. Gunter notes, the Kenyan Catholic Doctors Association didn't actually measure beta-hCG in vaccines, but reported values from the blood of women vaccinated with the tetanus vaccine. She also pointed out:

Tetanus vaccine laced with the beta-hCG hormone wouldn’t do anything anyway. After all women inject themselves with beta-hCG to trigger ovulation in infertility therapy all the time. I hope I don’t have to point out that it would be rather counter productive to use an abortifacient in infertility therapy. Also, hCG doesn’t have a very long half-life, i.e. it clears the system pretty quickly. It is usually undetectable by 7 days after injection, which is why after hCG injections women typically wait at least a week to do a pregnancy test to avoid false positive from the injection. Then there is the basic physiologic/evolutionary concept that a hormone dangerous to pregnancy wouldn’t be produced in pregnancy. And if you believe in intelligent design, no omnipotent intelligent being would design pregnancy that way either!

Finally, Solomon, like the Kenyan Bishops, is about 20 years out of date. The vaccine in which hCG was linked to the tetanus toxoid was tested back in the 1990s more than 20 years ago, which, not coincidentally, is around the time that claims that UNICEF and the WHO are trying to sterilize young women in the Third World with vaccines started popping up in the Philippines. It is possible to prevent pregnancy by this approach, but antibody response to hCG declines with time and the contraceptive activity is not sufficiently durable to be useful as a long-term contraceptive. Moreover, as I discussed last time the original scientist who developed the hCG-tetanus toxoid vaccine to be used as a contraceptive pointed out that a similar hCG vaccine using a different carrier, LTB, is now being tested. He also pointed out that the tetanus toxoid carrier was replaced with LTB to avoid the very misinformation that has been associated with the valuable tetanus vaccination.

Lawrence Solomon likes to claim that he's not antivaccine but that he's just citing facts. However, with launch of his new website, and his parroting long-discredited antivaccine conspiracy theories like the one claiming that the WHO and UNICEF are trying to use the tetanus vaccine to sterilize young women in Third World countries, Solomon has officially entered the territory of Age of Autism, NaturalNews.com, The Thinking Moms' Revolution, and other rabidly antivaccine propaganda websites. That is not a good place to be, and he's not even particularly smart or creative in his regurgitation of antivaccine pseudoscience. Worse, as Jen Gunter points out, neonatal tetanus is deadly. Lawrence Solomon is thus helping to perpetuate misinformation that will lead to the painful deaths of Third World newborns from neonatal tetanus.

Oh, and Mr. Solomon should also realize that even one of the originators of this claim, MaterCare, even issued a press release that basically says, "Oops, we were wrong!" without actually admitting any real error, even saying in one of its numbered points that the "language used and the accusations in Kenya are almost identical to the 1990’s scenarios" and even goes so far as to characterize what's going on in Kenya as "an unfortunate re-cycling of inaccurate information."

Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers are back.

oracknows Mon, 03/23/2015 - 03:50

You'd think that with all the supposed attempts at sterilization through vaccination, that the world population wouldn't be going up so rapidly. Not very impressive attempts, I must say

Not entirely OT as anti-vaccine lunacy, like Spring itself, has sprung...

AoA today:
- Heckenlively writes that he, Mikovits and Hooker will appear at the Commonwealth Club** in SF as 'whistleblowers' and are being compared to Ellsberg and Snowden- the show will go on in a few weeks.

- Ginger Taylor ( who doesn't live in California) discusses Dr/ Senator Pan in a rather strident piece. It seems that anti-vaxxers object to his legislative attempts to curb exemptions as well as blocking their tweets.

Seriously- California is a lovely place and not all of its inhabitants are as loony as Heckenlively and Hooker.

Perhaps some minions might like to tweet sanely at Dr Pan?

** weren't other anti-vaxxers from TMR etc shown the door/ cancelled in the past few years there?
I think that there was to be an event at the Palace of Fine Arts.

@ e canfield
Never let facts mess up a good story.

IIRC, it's not too tricky to get into Commonwealth Club events. I can't see 'em charging much, if anything, to see Heckenlively speak. Who fancies going?

What does Heckenlively have to do with this post?

http://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2015-04-09/american-whistleblowe…

Vatican Radio is the official “voice of the Pope and the Church in dialogue with the World.

"And now, from those wonderful people who brought you Boston's Child Sexual Abuse scandal..."

Was responding to Denuce at #2. If you feel like I'm derailing things, delete as apt and please accept my apologies.:)

Sorry.

No biggie. I only get annoyed when commenters derail things early on in the comment thread, because the earlier in the thread it is, the easier the thread is to derail. Seriously, bringing up off-topic stuff should not happen until there are at least 10 comments in the thread. Every so often, I tend to express my pique if I'm in less than a happy mood, as some regular readers have probably noticed. Think of it this way. If someone does it on the very first comment, there will definitely be an annoyed reaction on my part. The farther into a comment thread we go, the less chance of a reaction, with virtually no chance by around 15 or 20 comments.

The solution? Add on-topic comments to get the thread over 10 or 20, and then go wherever the comment thread evolves. :-)

“And now, from those wonderful people who brought you Boston’s Child Sexual Abuse scandal…”

Except that there's no evidence I could find that the Vatican even endorses the crackpottery of the Kenyan bishops and doctors promoting this nonsense.

I tried commenting on Solomon's anti-vax blog, but he is denser than a black hole. He seems to think hospital medical care did not change the first half of the 20th century.

Have you ever looked at his Twitter feed? :-)

Does anyone know what set Lawrence Solomon off?

Suddenly, he became an anti-vaccine advocate.
Does he have a personal connection to "vaccine damage" or does he just - as a conservative ( libertarian?)- despise governmental interference in people's lives ( or whatever it is they're squawking about now)?
He seems to have come out of nowhere- not that he's not going nowhere.

From Vatican News:

"The joint team of experts appointed by the Catholic Church and the Minister of Health in Nairobi have declared that the vaccine used in the campaign against tetanus in Kenya is safe, even if the three samples contained the Beta HCG sub unit which, according to what the Kenyan Bishops denounced, is a permanent population control tool . This was announced by CISA Catholic agency in Nairobi, according to which the three samples will be subjected to further analysis."
http://www.news.va/en/news/africakenya-tetanus-vaccine-the-first-tests-…

Orac: "Except that there’s no evidence I could find that the Vatican even endorses the crackpottery of the Kenyan bishops and doctors promoting this nonsense."

On the other hand, there's no evidence that the Vatican has told these guys to knock it off. The fact that the Vatican declines to say anything on the matter, and takes no steps to reign the bishops in is rather telling.

Complaint: can we please get a better quality of AV numpties?

I am speaking specifically of Solomon in this instance. Genevieve H (who I believe is a biologist) went into great detail on why the Kenyan bishops were mistaken at The Rational Catholic blog, on November 12, 2014.

Matercare said there's no there there about the Kenya manufactroversy on December 10, 2014.

Why oh why is Solomon (and whatzername Brogan) trying to sell this steaming pile of lies now?

(For some reason, the deal in Kenya made me gibber.)

Orac@11

Except that there’s no evidence I could find that the Vatican even endorses the crackpottery of the Kenyan bishops and doctors promoting this nonsense.

But they aren't doing anything to stop it either. Obviously they are aware of these bishops' views:

Catholic Bishops in Kenya have been opposed to the nationwide Tetanus Vaccination Campaign targeting 2.3 million Kenyan women and girls of reproductive age between 15-49 years, terming the campaign a secret government plan to sterilize women and control population growth.

No mention of how this is dangerous (potentially infant killing) garbage or even an attempt to distance themselves (the Vatican) from it. Not entirely the same but it reminds of the Rush lyrics, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." Personally I think you are giving the Vatican far, far too much credit.

Dang, PGP beat me to it. I'm glad I wasn't the only one who was thinking that.

Does anyone know what set Lawrence Solomon off?

Suddenly, he became an anti-vaccine advocate.

He's been writing antivax stuff for 2 or 3 years as I recall, although nothing like his output in the past year. He has been a denier of anthropogenic climate change for years, touting his, shall we say, unique views that fossil fuels are the BESTEST THING EVAR for the environment.
Now that his stance is more and more busted, he probably needs to cash in on some other wingnuttery. - antivax!
Rumor has it that a book is in the works. What a surprise.

Orac: "Have you ever looked at his Twitter feed?"

Yep.

I rather suspect that Solomon's impetus to start the VaccineFactCheck website was likely his editors telling him to knock it off using his Financial Post column to spread antivaccine BS.

Hmmm. I wonder if he'd dare show his face in the comments here. :-)

I would love to challenge his CV. Apparently there is not much known about him nor his education. He has been very coy, and most of the stuff is sourced back to himself.

Have you ever looked at his Twitter feed? :-)

What a pest. Solomon puts the "twit" in Twitter.

Solomon posted multiple anti-vaccine articles on the Financial Times, using Dr. Gregory Poland's study of MMR vaccine effectiveness and safety. Solomon chose an article which is behind a pay wall and he engaged in the most blatant forms of cherry picking and quote mining. Links to Solomon's Financial Times articles were provided to AoA readers by Anne Dachel and her flying monkey squad came out in droves to carpet bomb the Financial Times.

I'd like to see Mr Solomon come here to defend his statements about the safety and effectiveness of MMR vaccines and his newest ludicrous statements about the vaccination programs in place in Africa to prevent neonatal tetanus infection.

What a pest. Solomon puts the “twit” in Twitter.

He's also utterly clueless about when his arguments have been utterly dismantled. He's rather like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail that way. After all his arms and legs have been chopped off, metaphorically speaking, he still thinks he can win and that his opponents, by turning their attention elsewhere from him, are fleeing because they are afraid of him.

...likely his editors telling him to knock it off using his Financial Post column to spread antivaccine BS.

Now if they'd only tell him to knock off the anti-climate science BS, we'd be all set. Censorship!

"On the other hand, there’s no evidence that the Vatican has told these guys to knock it off. The fact that the Vatican declines to say anything on the matter, and takes no steps to reign the bishops in is rather telling."

This isn't about the Vatican or the Catholic Church.

Nevertheless, the Pontifical Academy for Life stated clearly that the benefits of vaccines, including those grown on fetal cell cultures, outweigh the risks.
http://www.ncbcenter.org/document.doc?id=7

I think he's a good example of crank magnetism. He was (is?) an environmental columnist, and could be counted upon to ignore the scientific consensus in order to promote some cherry-picked quote-mined single study, or zombie talking point.

His book, The Deniers, is so full of easy to debunk "facts" you'd think he'd be too embarrassed to show his face again; if you ever need examples of logical fallacies for a class to dissect, that book could fill your first few weeks. The critical thinking skills demonstrated in it are so bad you just laugh at loud.

Disclosure: I never read the whole book, but someone brought in a copy to the lab, and we'd take turns reading out loud some of his points. It was good for a laugh....along with a sad sob and multiple face-palms.

I'd wager that within, ohhhh, 3-5 years, he'll have adopted another crank conspiracy, and will milk that for a while next.

The Catholic Church has in generally been pretty much OK with science in general for a long time. They accept evolution (with an escape clause about God being happy about it, or something) and global warming, which to me are the main litmus tests, so to speak. The current Pope (yay!) is causing some consternation among the wingnuts, which is a Good Thing in my book.

I can never figure out the folks who care so deeply about unborn children (those not born because of nefarious contraception plots) and don't seem to care at all about real live children who are apt to die from vaccine preventable disease. It boggles the mind.

"You’d think that with all the supposed attempts at sterilization through vaccination, that the world population wouldn’t be going up so rapidly."

Not to mention the World Depopulation Conspiracy that relies on vaccination (with lesser inputs from chemtrails, fluoride etc.).

I despair at the miserable failure of our evil plans :(

@kdog, that's because underneath it all, it's also about controlling women and keeping them so busy with babies that they don't have time to demand to be treated like human beings with agency rather than chattel.

I think he’s a good example of crank magnetism.

Or, more cynically, Solomon is hoping for crank magnetism to affect his audience. "If I can make people stupid enough, they might shift over to my variety of free-market pro-carbon-industry conservatism!"

From his perspective, every hippy-leaning anti-vaxxer is a potential convert to his cause, only needing to be convinced that glibertarianism is the true intellectual home of anti-vax thought.

Related to the tetanus vaccine:
While some nutjobs are reviling vaccines in any form, other people are working at saving lives with them:

Tetanus Vaccine Boosts Cancer Vaccine In Fighting Brain Tumor

If the article is somewhat accurate, that's a pretty neat approach to treat brain cancer.

Sidenote: For the US history specialists, there is a (obscure?) reference to Paul Revere.
(I only heard of him via David Weber)

I think this is the first Solomon article on vaccine issues I have seen, from January 2014: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/lawrence-solomon/vaccine-skeptics_b_454851…

Helianthus -- In the US, Paul Revere is a near-mythical figure due largely to a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow commemorating his "Midnight Ride" --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Revere%27s_Ride

I gotta admit, it's a catchy poem.

Matthew Rolloson: "This isn’t about the Vatican or the Catholic Church."

Did you not read the headline? The Vatican appoints Catholic bishops. Catholic Bishops in Kenya are telling women not to get the tetanus vaccine, and lobbying against it. So, yes, I'd say that does make it the Vatican's problem.

Palindrome: "The Catholic Church has in generally been pretty much OK with science in general for a long time."

Well, they've had to pretend that in order to wave away the bad PR that followed the trial of Galileo. The vast majority of Catholics probably believe that science and their particular brand of religion can coexist- until they bump up against something that requires them to chose. It's the same thing with the Hippocratic oath and Catholic doctors- at some point, the patient's going to end up losing.

@Dorit Reiss,
Here is a dumb article by Solomon in the Financial Post from 2012:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/06/fps-lawrence-solomon-get-dirty-…

@TBruce: thank you!

until they bump up against something that requires them to chose.

What might force such a choice?

When a religious doctrine is flexible enough, it becomes essentially unfalsifiable. Biblical literalism is almost pathetically falsifiable, for example, but the old-line denominations appear to have long ago retreated from such indefensible positions, and wisely so.

"Did you not read the headline?"

Do you mean this one?

No, Lawrence Solomon, UNICEF and WHO are not trying to sterilize women with tetanus vaccines!

There's no mention of bishops, the Catholic Church, or the Vatican in that headline.

Given the Catholic Church's general pro-vaccine stance, it would be nice to see them step in and tell the Kenyan bishops to knock it off with the fear-mongering. I'm not really sure about the internal workings of the Catholic hierarchy or why that's not happening, though. My main beef with the Church is the proscription of condoms, actually, especially in countries where AIDS is running rampant. That sh*t seriously needs to stop.

The Catholic Church is generally fine with science, though, and the Catholics I've known have all been pretty chill. Most of them don't follow all the rules, either - I mean, most Catholic women use birth control, and I have a very sweet friend in Poland who's about as gay as they come and who still goes to Mass on a fairly regular basis. More power to him, I say.

I’m not really sure about the internal workings of the Catholic hierarchy or why that’s not happening, though.

Africa is an important growth area for the church. But strong competition from the Baptist / Pentecostal dunkers. As long as the branch offices keep recruiting, I can't see the head office over-ruling their authoritarian, socially-conservative, anti-science tendencies, unless they officially adopt human sacrifice.

Matthew Rolloson: Ok, I mixed up the article and headline. But the Catholic Church still needs to tell the bishops and the doctors to knock it off, especially since the doctors are trying to id themselves as Catholic.

Palindrom: There have been cases where Catholic doctors and nurses have let pregnant patients die. The other situations might be if a Catholic researcher ends up working with stem cells- the research simply can't be done by a religious person, or a Catholic who has to step back from climate research or environmental activism (Christianity and environmentalism cannot coexist.)

step back from climate research or environmental activism (Christianity and environmentalism cannot coexist.)

That is an absurd statement. You seem to have lumped all of Christianity in with a certain segment of Evangelicals who see the earth as nothing but a trampoline to paradise, so we might as well use everything up before the rapture.

There are plenty of Christians out there who take the Bible's call to stewardship of the earth very seriously. I know some of them personally.

United Church of Christ Statement on Climate Change
http://www.ucc.org/environmental-ministries_climate-change-and-global
Why Is Global Warming An Issue Of Faith?

{Statement Extract}...People of faith are beginning to realize that global warming and climate change are issues of environmental justice. For humans, those who are poor or unable to adjust will be the first to feel the effects of a warming planet; many will lose their homes to rising seas and be unable to grow food for their families. ...

JP: "You seem to have lumped all of Christianity in with a certain segment of Evangelicals who see the earth as nothing but a trampoline to paradise, so we might as well use everything up before the rapture. There are plenty of Christians out there who take the Bible’s call to stewardship of the earth very seriously. I know some of them personally."

Isn't the whole point of Christianity to denounce all earthly things, and avoid anything that might possibly be pleasurable, aside from finger-wagging? Individual Christians might be involved in the environmental movement, but one or the other of their beliefs will eventually self-destruct. There's a reason you'd never hear a word about the environment spoken at the Vatican, in an Orthodox Church or a Lutheran or Anglican church. It's not just evangelicals who can't stand the Earth.

Sadly familiar with Mr. Solomon. His 'Wind Turbine Syndrome' writings are spammed by the anti-wind crowd in my neck of Ontario. A whole different bucket of FUD for him.

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/11/25/lawrence-solomon-ill-winds…

Isn’t the whole point of Christianity to denounce all earthly things, and avoid anything that might possibly be pleasurable, aside from finger-wagging?

No. There's a strain of that in most varieties of Christianity, certainly. It largely arises from the pernicious influence of certain Manichean and Gnostic ideas on what was, in its early days, essentially a mystical Jewish sect. (Judaism holds the earth itself to be inherently holy, and indulgence in earthly pleasures is hardly looked down upon. Song of Solomon, etc.)

Part of the problem, too, is that people can get confused about the difference between "the world," i.e., Mammon, and "the earth," which you are replicating in your response above. Even the Desert Fathers at their most world-hating and ascetic never cursed the earth.

You actually will hear, depending on various things like who's preaching or what Sunday it is or whatever, quite a few words about environmentalism in churches of the Orthodox or Lutheran or Anglican varieties. Most churches have taken a pro-environmentalism, anti-global-warming stance even officially. Heck, just have a gander at this Whackyweedia page.

There have been cases where Catholic doctors and nurses have let pregnant patients die.

Not too many, I bet.

The other situations might be if a Catholic researcher ends up working with stem cells- the research simply can’t be done by a religious person, or a Catholic who has to step back from climate research or environmental activism (Christianity and environmentalism cannot coexist.)

Uh, no. As JP has so ably said, Christianity is much more doctrinally diverse than this.

And as for the stem cells, as well as birth control, I think that most Catholic scientists would pretty much agree with Earl Butz, Nixon's good-ol-boy secretary of ag. He was eventually kicked out for repeating a really bad racist joke -- which I'm sure most scientists would find egregious -- but before that, one of his controversial witticisms was on target, I thought: When asked about the Pope's attitude toward contraception, he said:

He no play-a the game, he no make-a the rules.
</blockquote

Over 20 posts and not totally off topic, but connected.

These type of lies have gotten people killed. The same type of rumor was going around in one of the West African countries during the height of the Ebola outbreak. People were saying those that were working there, treating people and testing people were actually giving people Ebola.

There were a few groups of aid workers killed by villagers and it was thought they were killed because some had been spreading the rumors they were giving people Ebola when testing them.

These types of rumors can be very dangerous.

PGP,

There’s a reason you’d never hear a word about the environment spoken at the Vatican, in an Orthodox Church or a Lutheran or Anglican church.

I'm not a great fan of religion, but that isn't true. The Vatican, for example, has made several staments about the environment.

The importance of ecology is no longer disputed. We must listen to the language of nature and we must answer accordingly. - Pope Benedict XVI to Reichstag Building, Berlin, 9/22/2011

The Evangelical Church of America states:

Caring for God’s creation is an ever evolving topic in this world, especially with each new natural or human-made disaster. As stewards of this world, we are called to examine our behaviors toward creation. While we need to take from the land for food and sustainability, we also need to be careful that we maintain good stewardship and do not exploit the wonderful things the earth provides.

The Anglican Church is similarly concerned about the environment, as its Shrinking the Footprint campaign reveals.

"The present challenges of environment and economy, of human development and global poverty, can only be faced with extraordinary Christ-liberated courage." - The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby

Well, I'm glad that a few of the regulars and UCC Member point out relevant positions held by various Christian denominations that show that PGP is wrong about- at least some- Christians' stances on the environment. We could probably also find out how individuals in those denominations line up ( or not) with those positions.

BUT we might ask, "How did she come by this impression of such strong Christian opposition?"
I think that there are particularly strident groups ( like anti-vaxxers) who work very hard at representing themselves as the Majority Voice or suchlike. I don't know for sure if they predominate in any particular denomination or if they have political aspirations and manage to get themselves on television ( or if indeed political candidates/ representatives make a show of their own anti-environmentalism and label it as Christian in order to be more acceptable)

PGP: perhaps you could give us examples of which individuals/ groups you mean? ( I have a few guesses)

There are people with an agenda who would benefit from loosened environmental standards and I'm sure that they would use any reason to justify their beliefs to others. Perhaps the position itself might better be called 'political' rather than 'religious'.

@politicalguineapig

I’m a devout atheist, but you are very wrong about mainstream protestantism--including Lutherans:

http://elca.org/News-and-Events/7697

Note: The ELCA is the main branch (synod) of the Lutheran Church and I have to say that there are a few small sects within the Church that are fundamentalist (and ignored by the majority). Michelle Bachmann belonged to one of them and then tried to pass herself off as “just a Lutheran”. Happily, she jumped ship and became a mainstream fundie.

Lutherans are not at all anti-science and it is possible to be an atheist (openly) and still enjoy the fellowship of a Lutheran congregation.

@ Martin:

Really? Oh J-sus! What next!
Well, I KNOW about Anglicans/ Episcopelians tolerating atheists- that's old- but now Pope Frank and Lutherans yet?

I predict we'll soon be in high demand as friends to illustrate tolerance.

About fifteen years ago I was in attendance at a United Methodist bible study group (it's a long story), where they discussed Genesis 1:28 and how it meant stewardship. Per the Methodists, wasting God's resources is a sin, and I imagine other mainstream Protestant denominations feel the same way.

*raises hand* ELCA member here. ;-)

Bachmann started out Wisconsin Synod, not ELCA. This is not a sect of the ELCA, and never has been (and would likely be offended at the suggestion). The non-denominational church she now attends is the same one a friend of mine attends. It started out Baptist, but is now the sort of generically Protestant megachurch that has become so overwhelmingly popular in recent years. Since WELS does not consider the Eucharist of other denomations valid, they probably would officially say she's going to hell.

The WELS (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod) did not follow several other synods which merged to form the ELCA*. WELS is more what folks tend ot think of when they hear the term "evangelical Protestant". It's for folks who though the Missouri Synod was too liberal. They won't even take communion with non-WELS folk. (I'm a heathen according ot their doctrine.)

*And because I'm a little slap-happy from a very trying week at work -- and it's only Tuesday! yippee! -- I'm now thinking "Merge, and combine to form MEGA-LUTHERAN!"

Oh, and I've pointed this out before, but in many parts of the country, including mine, the only hospitals in the jurisdiction are faith-based (in this county, Mennonite and Roman Catholic).

The Catholic hospital chain here is still run by nuns and when I say "run" I mean all of senior management. I was at a healthcare coalition meeting during the height of the Ebola panic in late October, and a number of organizations were contemplating the example of the serious financial damage done to Texas Presbyterian for accepting an Ebola victim. One chain stated flat out that if someone with EVD symptoms showed up in the ED, the ambulance would be given directions to the university medical center "up north" in the big city, and told to keep going.

The bean-counter representing the Order of St Francis stated glumly that "the sisters won't allow that." If someone showed up sick, they would be admitted, Ebola or no Ebola.

Everytime I see PGP's rants about Christianity, I have to think of a vicar who I knew something like 35 years ago, who offered a place for drug abusers, transsexuals and tranvestites. He cared for them when lots of people didn't. Progressives and feminists often didn't accept transsexuals and there was a book 'The transexual empire' doing the rounds, which considered transsexuals as an evil plot to put women back under patriarchate.
And yes, I'm still an atheist and still don't see much use for religion, but I don't see religion as the root of all evil and I acknowledge that people can be insprired by religion to help humanity.

PGP may be a nice person in real live, which I am not, but online she can be embarrassing.

Progressives and feminists often didn’t accept transsexuals and there was a book ‘The transexual empire’ doing the rounds, which considered transsexuals as an evil plot to put women back under patriarchate.

I don't know about often, but yeah, there are some radfems out there who are pretty anti-trans. See also the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, unfortunately.

BUT we might ask, “How did she come by this impression of such strong Christian opposition?”

Because she's a bigot, who believes that if some member of a group that doesn't include her has a trait that she doesn't like, then all members of that group have that trait.

For example, there was a video of a racist chant by members of a fraternity at a school in Oklahoma. I expected that at some point, PGP would have posted one of the following statements -

All members of SAE are racist
All frat boys are racist
All OU students are racist
All persons in Oklahoma are racist
All white men are racist
All men are racist
All who chant are racist

I have no opinion on how she came to be a bigot.

@ JP
I don't know how many feminists nowadays are anti-trans, but some 35 years ago, I had a transsexual friend, who had problems in the women-group she was part of. And I know a reviewer of the newspaper I still read, wrote a favorable review of the book. So I have the impression the ideas weren't that uncommon at that time. I think Germaine Greer also had some issues with transsexuals.

But I'm not bashing feminists, nor Christians, because some of them have done or said some nasty things in the past.
It might be a lesson for PGP.

Just to further clarify the position of one church

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/24/climate-change-denia…

Climate denial is immoral, says head of US Episcopal church
Climate change is a moral challenge threatening the rights of the world’s poorest people and those who deny it are not using God’s gift of knowledge, says presiding bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori

@lynn - it makes sense, given the overall negative effects that will be first experienced by the poorest countries.....many of whom are much more "religious" than we are here.

There have been cases where Catholic doctors and nurses have let pregnant patients die.

I know there was a somewhat famous case in Ireland a few years ago when a woman who went to a Catholic hospital suffering from a miscarriage and later died. That was a very complicated, multi-factoral case and not as simple as "the doctors let a pregnant woman die".

If you are referring to other cases, please provide sources for that claim that suggest there is a pattern on Catholic hospitals not doing what they can to save pregnant patients.

I have to say that I am not a fan of the Catholic church's stand on birth control, abortion, or women's rights, but I'm not a Christian either. :)
And I can tell you injecting even a fairly large amount of hCG into your body will not render you infertile. It is the 'trigger shot' for ovulation as Orac points out. And I have had many of them. And through infertility treatment am incubating my second and last pregnancy. Besides, the threshold for detecting pregnancy (if I remember right) is something like >5 (whatever units I am fuzzy now on the details) because women can have trace amounts and not be pregnant. Even more important with fertility treatment, which is why you don't test for a week so you don't get a false positive.
a-non - quibble with your post, from reading media coverage of the Irish case you cite, they seem to have really let this woman die. According to reports she presented miscarrying, but because fetal heartbeat could still be detected they would not do a D&C. By the time the fetus actually died (no heartbeat detected) she had a massive infection and died. If she had had a prompt D&C on presenting with an incomplete miscarriage it is probable she might have lived. So yes, in that case the Catholic ethos against abortion directly led to her death. So I would argue with you on that one. I vehemently disagree with a total ban on abortion in any case, but the prevailing opinion seems to be that the pregnancy was not salvageable no matter what was done so that by denying the D&C while heartbeat still detectable was wrong and contributed to her death. There have been numerous cases that are beginning to come out of non-Catholic women treated at Catholic hospitals wanting to have tubal ligation done after delivering and being denied because the Church prohibits it. Again, I think when you are in the business of providing healthcare you should respect a woman's right to bodily autonomy meaning respecting her right to permanent sterilization if she wishes it. This is an issue in communities where the sole hospital provider is a Catholic run one because it denies you the choice to seek a different provider. I don't think religion should be forced on people and that seems to be the case that is happening here in the US.

All: Point taken. Problem is, there's megaphones on the right and crickets on the left. Rubio and Rick Scott are planning to sell the Everglades, and odds are most of the activists against that won't be affiliated with churches. It's like the anti-vax thing all over again. Most people are going to assume parents aren't likely to vaccinate, because the people who vaccinate have mostly been quiet. The same thing applies to environmentalists- you find ten environmentalists, and odds are all of them are either athiests, Jewish or lapsed Christians.

Shay:Ebola's one thing, pregnancy's quite another. In most doctrines, a woman who is pregnant ceases to be a person for the duration of the pregnancy. If a Catholic doctor or nurse has to chose between the mother and the fetus, they'll usually dither until both are gone, because fetuses rank higher in God's esteem than women do. Treating a man with ebola is different, because a man is always a person.

Johnny: I'm not a bigot, I just find that society makes much more sense when people are sorted into categories, based on beliefs, class, and clubs they belong to. As for the frat boys, well, what can you expect from a bunch of drunk, stupid kids who have never set foot outside their hometown until they went to college?

@PGP - you've just provided a great definition of a bigot....

On a lighter note...
occasionally, stereotyping can be fun!

I just discovered something called 'judgmental maps'
just g--gle "judgmental map" and the name of a locale with which you are familiar...
-btw- New York and London are hilarious- e.g. particular areas labelled as 'small republican hamlet' or just 'wankers'

Perhaps your town is available

AND yes, I know that whoever drew these up is totally beyond forgiveness. And none of it is REALLY true.

There's a reason why people think like this though.

Lawrence: No, bigots sort by race and religion, which are usually things people don't get a choice about- at least, if they happen to be born into a religion like say, Judaism or Islam.

The same thing applies to environmentalists- you find ten environmentalists, and odds are all of them are either athiests, Jewish or lapsed Christians.

In your head, maybe. IRL, we live in a Christian-majority nation, and secular folks are only slightly more likely to be environmentalists than religious folks, according to this actual data I found, so actually, most of your 10 hypothetical environmentalists are going to be some flavor of Christian. (More likely moderate or liberal than traditionalist.)

Treating a man with ebola is different, because a man is always a person.

I think the hypothetical situation involved a person with Ebola, not a man.

I’m not a bigot, I just find that society makes much more sense when people are sorted into categories, based on beliefs, class, and clubs they belong to.

I prefer to relate to people as individuals, but that's just me. (See what I did there?) I mean, sure, if the "club" somebody's in is the freaking KKK or something, I'm pretty comfortable pre-judging them, but that is a fairly extreme example.

No, bigots sort by race and religion, which are usually things people don’t get a choice about-

What about sex/gender? Sexual orientation? Country of origin? Socioeconomic status? Rural/urban? Etc?

which are usually things people don’t get a choice about- at least, if they happen to be born into a religion like say, Judaism or Islam.

Wait a second - you are aware that Jews and Muslims can change their religion, right? (At least outside of places like Saudi Arabia, anyway.) Or that people can, say, convert to Judaism or Islam? Or quite being religious at all? Or... etc. If you decide to judge people based on their religion, whether or not they chose it, you might miss out on some pretty great people. But then, my general philosophy about other people more or less line's up with Ed Wood's: "Why, I never judge anybody! If I did, I wouldn't have any friends!"

I mean, heck, I even have friends who are evangelical atheists, and I even put up with them saying things like, "But you're so smart, how can you not be an atheist*?" without even making retorts like, "But you're such a nice person, how can you be an atheist?" (I don't make that retort because I can see how it's really stupid.)

*It depends on one's definition of the word, I suppose.

^ Bah, typos.

And I can tell you injecting even a fairly large amount of hCG into your body will not render you infertile.

No, wait. The "idea" is supposed to be is that the vaccine induces antibodies to hCG. I can't help but take note of this item from Mr. Lab Coat himself:

"HCG is a chemical developed by the World Health Organization for sterilization purposes."

This is an impressively stupid misreading of the quote that it prefigures:

"'The only time tetanus vaccine has been given in five doses is when it is used as a carrier in fertility regulating vaccines laced with the pregnancy hormone, Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) developed by WHO in 1992.' explained Dr. Ngare."

No, see, the sterilization instrument is what you mean, Mikey. Always consider the possibility that you're quoting something that hinges on commas for semantics.

I'm too tired to actually dig, but if memory serves, the actual hCG vaccines (which were conjugated to a TT carrier) wore off in about a year, with a recommended six-month dosing schedule to maintain the contraceptive effect.

Not finding anything on dosing schedules, but it looks like the main problem with the actual hCG vaccine so far is that it's not quite foolproof enough:

While the proof of concept is largely given by these studies, the shortcoming of the vaccine was that it generated above protective threshold titres in only 60–80% of women. This degree of efficacy is highly satisfactory for vaccines against infectious diseases but a birth control vaccine has to be effective in >90–95% of recipients in order to be acceptable. Further work on product development is required. It would require more potent adjuvants, which are available today from the pharmaceutical industry, instead of the alum employed in the test vaccine. At this time, there is also a need constantly to monitor the vaccinated individuals for the presence/absence of sufficient antibody titres that can block conception.

Incidentally, the fundies will not like it, as it's action is basically the same as that of the famed "Plan B" pill: it prevents an already fertilized egg from implanting, so, for "the men who stare at zygotes," it's technically an abortifacient.

I have known several people who converted to Judaism (one is the son of Presbyterian missionaries, and another used to be an AME Zion minister). Someone else I knew in college was Jewish by parentage and upbringing, and converted to Catholicism.

Plenty of anti-Semites wouldn't bother to ask questions, just count all of those people as Jewish.

Bigots also discriminate by, among other things, class (both class background and current income level), sexual orientation, marital/relationship status, body shape, disability status, level of education, and where people grew up. Some of those are attributes we have some amount of choice about; not all.

JP: "Wait a second – you are aware that Jews and Muslims can change their religion, right? (At least outside of places like Saudi Arabia, anyway.) Or that people can, say, convert to Judaism or Islam? Or quite being religious at all? Or… etc. If you decide to judge people based on their religion, whether or not they chose it, you might miss out on some pretty great people."

Islam and Judaism generally don't attract a lot of converts, though I am aware they exist. I *voted* for a man who converted to Islam, after all. But currently Islam and Judaism are more mixed up with specific cultures than Christianity is. IE, Christianity is basically the Wonder Bread of religion. There are some nice evangelicals that I've run into. I prefer to avoid that sort of person because I end up doing more lying than I'm comfortable with and we have absolutely nothing in common. I end up lying about my job(s) and even my hobbies.

" I end up lying about my job(s) and even my hobbies."

What on earth for?

Well, we could get into the whole question of, "is Judaism a religion, a "race," or a culture? But Islam is definitely a "universal" religion every bit as much as Christianity is. It doesn't attract a lot of converts in the US, sure, but it still has its growth areas. All this is beside the point, though.

There are some nice evangelicals that I’ve run into. I prefer to avoid that sort of person because I end up doing more lying than I’m comfortable with and we have absolutely nothing in common. I end up lying about my job(s) and even my hobbies.

I can't say I have any Evangelical friends that I know of - I am a pretty far-out kind of person, I guess. But Evangelicals are not the same as all Christians, and I do have some friends who are Christians.

Anyway, why bother lying? If you don't end up hitting it off with someone and you have nothing in common, no biggie. But if you do get along well with somebody, I mean, why not just try being honest about yourself? If they run the other way, then f*ck 'em anyway.

But Islam is definitely a “universal” religion every bit as much as Christianity is. It doesn’t attract a lot of converts in the US, sure, but it still has its growth areas.

As you say, it's beside the point, but Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world, which somewhat worries me*, though it isn't clear how many are moderates and how many are potential IS.

* Disclaimer - I have worked with many Muslims, have Muslim friends, have spent time in Muslim countries, own a copy of the Koran and have visited more mosques than I can remember (I was even blessed by an Imam in a run-down backstreet mosque in Cairo, which consisted of a vigorous head massage and a lot of chanting, presumably verses from the Koran).

Yeah, I have to say, it worries me a little bit too. I mean, the thing about Islam is that it isn't just a religion, but a blueprint for a society, one that's supposed to be an Islamic theocracy. And, uh, no thanks on that.

^ Which is not at all to say that I'm one of those right-wing a**holes who's all hot and bothered about "Sharia law" in the US or whatever.

@politicalguineapig, I am an atheist with friends who are evangelical Christians. They are very nice, very generous people. They are interesting people and I am happy to let them talk -- about themselves, about their religion, about their work, about their hobbies. They seem to appreciate a good listener.

I don't talk about religion to them. I don't lie; I just don't bring it up. Why should I?

You might try listening to people instead of prejudging them and despising what you think they would say if you ever allowed them to speak to you. You'd find that people do not actually fall into neat little categories for you to hate.

PGP sounds like one of the worst people I've ever had the opportunity to interact with.

And that's saying something....

I mean, the thing about Islam is that it isn’t just a religion, but a blueprint for a society, one that’s supposed to be an Islamic theocracy.

To any greater extent than Catholicism, Hinduism, judaism, etc. are not also considered by their adherents to be a blueprint for society?

No, bigots sort by race and religion, which are usually things people don’t get a choice about- at least, if they happen to be born into a religion like say, Judaism or Islam.

Of course you get a choice about the religion you adhere to. I was raised as a roman Catholic--first communion, altar boy, confirmation, the whole nine yards--but completed a formal conversion to Judaism about 10 years ago.

JP: But if you do get along well with somebody, I mean, why not just try being honest about yourself?

Because being back-stabbed isn't fun. I am honest, sometimes, but most of the time, it's not worth the effort.

LW: You might try listening to people instead of prejudging them and despising what you think they would say if you ever allowed them to speak to you. You’d find that people do not actually fall into neat little categories for you to hate.

It isn't about hating them, I prejudge people so I can tell them what they want to hear and put on a performance. I do listen, a lot more than I speak, as it's easier.

JGC: "Of course you get a choice about the religion you adhere to. I was raised as a roman Catholic–first communion, altar boy, confirmation, the whole nine yards–but completed a formal conversion to Judaism about 10 years ago."

Point taken, but I was trying to express that Judaism and Islam aren't just religions, they're bound up with a lot of cultural traditions too.

To any greater extent than Catholicism, Hinduism, judaism, etc. are not also considered by their adherents to be a blueprint for society?

With Catholicism you have a point - which is why I'm very glad the Reformation happened, and the subsequent Enlightenment era, etc. If you actually read the Gospels, though, there are no injunctions to go out and build a Christian state or government - quite the opposite, really. Christianity becoming the state religion of Rome was more a perversion of the original idea than anything else, although it's a historical fact, and who knows, things might've worked out worse had some other religion been adopted.

Judaism has mostly not really been a "universal," proselytizing type religion in the way that Islam and Christianity are. (There are some historical exceptions.) It's more bound up with a particular people and place, and I wouldn't have particularly wanted to live in ancient Israel either. I'm not really worried about Judaism establishing a Levant-wide theocracy or anything, though.

"Hinduism" is so broad a category as to be practically meaningless. I mean, "Hinduism" as an umbrella includes everything from monist materialism to Advaita Vedanta to the Hare Krishnas to mainstream Vaishnavism, etc., etc.

@ PGP:

Do you really think that people will reject you if you don't agree with them about everything?

Did you ever imagine that perhaps you have attractive qualities that make you interesting to them?

Look, various commenters are critical of how you express yourself but they don't just toss you away as a worthless waste of time. So they must be seeing something of value.
Maybe you're intriguing as a foil.

Personally I think that you're smart, a strong supporter of SBM, sometimes cleverly sharp tongued with trolls and able to respond to criticism without anger, resentment or aggression. I feel that what comes across as stereotyping and rejection of others may possibly be a mode of self-protection as well as insouciant language choice.

AND I don't think that you're so fragile.
Meaningful relationships have disagreements and give-and-take. Why should someone reject you if there is any disagreement? Why perform? ( Altho' everyone does to a degree/ did you ever read Goffman?)
Perhaps your real persona- which you express to a degree here- would be alright with some people. On-line communication can sometimes be a testing ground or rehearsal for everyday life.

If you actually read the Gospels, though, there are no injunctions to go out and build a Christian state or government – quite the opposite, really.

I will grant you that a lot of Christians seem to think there's such an injunction in the Gospels, though, which only goes to show that they have not actually read them or thought about them very much.

"The vaccines were sent to hospital laboratories and tested using pregnancy test kits which are developed for use on serum and urine specimens, and are not appropriate for a vaccine such as TT, which contains a special preservative (merthiolate) and an adjuvant (aluminum salt)"

Putting my Medical Technologist hat on ... there's no way in hell you could get an accurate reading from a test meant for urine or blood if you ran it on something with as few soluble molecules as a vaccine dose. As I recall, you can't even run it on urine if it's too dilute.

" In fact, in a laboratory in Hungary, it was shown that the sterile water supply from the local hospital gave a higher false positive level of hCG than did the TT vaccine. "

“‘The only time tetanus vaccine has been given in five doses is when it is used as a carrier in fertility regulating vaccines laced with the pregnancy hormone, Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) developed by WHO in 1992.’ explained Dr. Ngare.”

What's that, NHS guidelines?
The full course of the tetanus vaccination consists of five doses.
And how Talwar's work at the National Institute of Immunology in India became conflated with WHO is anyone's guess (though WHO = scarier).

Muhame Ngare is a lying low-life ratbag who will spout the mendacious script he's given, but as was covered in the earlier RI episodes on the Kenyan debacle, he is really acting here as a stovepipe, allowing the Kenyan Catholic bishops to tell themselves the lies they wanted to hear. It's not entirely clear why they want to re-medievalise medicine, apart from the prospect of increased influence.

I am still uncertain as to what was tested. Contrary to Dr. Gunter's post, the WHO statement only implies that blood samples were submitted. Tsu, above, quotes something saying that actual vaccine samples were submitted. I recall from the first round of this topic at RI that something supported what Tsu is quoting. But I still don't know for sure. The language used in all of this (i.e. from "original" sources, not Dr. G or Orac) has been sloppy and unclear.
What is clear is that the accusations made against the vaccine are complete nonsense.

I suspect that Solomon may be catching on to the notion that a great many people think he is an irrelevant dolt, and is striving for a new lookatme endeavor.

#95 This is what I found

www.fides.org/en/news/37295-AFRICA_KENYA_Anti_tetanus_vaccine_final_tes…

@PGP:

Because being back-stabbed isn’t fun. I am honest, sometimes, but most of the time, it’s not worth the effort.

Well, nobody likes being back-stabbed. I don't know if that's precisely the right word, but I have had a couple friends let me down or do me wrong in very big ways. I have to admit that we're not friends anymore. And yeah, it hurts like hell - but cutting yourself off from people because you're afraid of getting hurt is worse than, I think, any amount of pain. It might not hurt in the same way, but it's numbing, and an important part of you atrophies. Relationships - of whatever sort - aren't just nice, they're essential. I won't tell you they're safe, though.

And even pain isn't entirely bad. It lets you know you're alive, at least. I like this song which touches on the subject.

By the way, PGP, you should check out Tori Amos in general, if you aren't already familiar with her, which you might me. She does a cover of Joe Jackson's Real Men which I like better than the original.

I also have very strong associations with the album that song is on, Strange Little Girls.

JP, you also own "Strange Little Girls"?
I went to see Amos a few years ago when she came out to South Africa.

I envy you - I've never seen her live. I've owned Strange Little Girl since I was 13, I think. A cousin of mine, whom I love dearly, and who has been very troubled in various ways over the years, mostly involving men, gave it to me way back in the day.

She's doing pretty okay these days, actually. She got rid of the last guy who was a real loser and is concentrating on raising her two sons.

That album is also tied up for me with more recent memories, both good and bad, of a certain ill-advised tryst.f

http://holisticsquid.com/when-to-get-a-tetanus-shot/

Why bother get a tetanus shot guys, there is more research out there showing that even with high levels of antibodies there is still no protection whatsoever. Also levels of tetanus mortality have fallen despite there being a mythical vaccine. Case of not necessary - again

Let's propose an experiment for Johnny - he should get a shot of tetanus toxoid & then treat it holistically....then we'll see what happens.

What's the homeopathic treatment for tetanus?

@Johnny - wait, but if you are pushing "homeopathic vaccines" which mean that you believe that "like cures like" then what is the problem with current vaccines? They actually use that principle...and aren't made 100% water.

Johnny, care to cite those studies showing tetanus vaccine offers "no protection whatsoever"?

Didn't think so.

Science and the AAAS (not to mention the WHO) sell their souls to promote pseudoscience in medicine, part 2

oracknows — Tue, 06 Jan 2015 04:00:19 +0000

Science and the AAAS (not to mention the WHO) sell their souls to promote pseudoscience in medicine, part 2

The holidays must truly be over. I say this because, starting around Sunday, the drumbeat of blogging topics that I haven't covered but that apparently you, my readers, want me to cover has accelerated. However, before I can move on to what might or might not be greener blogging pastures, material-wise, I feel obligated to finish what I started yesterday, namely the deconstruction of an advertising supplement promoting the "integration" of "traditional medicine" (in particular, traditional Chinese medicine, a.k.a. TCM) for which Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) have sold their collective souls, part one of which is here. One reason is that I don't like to risk not finishing a series that I have planned. The other reason is that, unfortunately, Science has promised that this is just the first part of a three supplement series, and I didn't want to risk not getting back to part one before part two of this paean to pseudoscience, quackery, tooth fairy science, and quackademic medicine is published.

The supplement was, as you recall, entitled The Art and Science of Traditional Medicine Part 1: TCM Today — A Case for Integration, and when it comes to tooth fairy science and quackademic medicine, plus, as Kimball Atwood would put it, the weasel words of woo, it's breathtaking, as I described. Unfortunately, the fun, such as it is, continues in the articles in the supplement that I didn't get to yesterday. For example, there is an article by Josephine Briggs, director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH, formerly the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, or NCCAM) and a bunch of other advocates of "integrative" medicine entitled Integrating traditional medicine into modern health care. As you might expect, my first thought upon reading this title was: Shouldn't we figure out whether anything in TCM has any scientific basis first?

Apparently not, although Brigs and company do at least explain their purpose:

This first issue introduces the WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy (2014– 2023), highlighting the global scientific challenges and showing how a systems biology approach can be applied to diagnosis, leading to integrated network-based medicine. Recent advances in mechanistic studies of acupuncture are also discussed. Some of the exciting areas in TCM research include the therapeutic potential of herbal remedies against influenza, cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases; the exploration of gut microbiota-targeted dietary interventions against chronic inflammation; and the study of the biological activities of complex polysaccharides present in medicinal plants. Chemogenomics and network pharmacology have been applied to predict molecular targets and decipher the mechanisms of action of pure compounds or phytocomplexes found in combinatorial herbal formulas. A better understanding of the philosophy of synergetic interactions of Jun, Chen, Zuo, and Shi classes of Chinese materia medica used in traditional formulations has led to a simplified Jun-Shi compatibility drug discovery strategy model.

Evaluating the safety of herbal medicines is critical to their wider acceptance as valid therapeutic agents. Integrated toxicological approaches have been successfully applied in this area, for instance to identify antifibrotic and profibrotic substances in certain medicinal plants. As research into the broader application of traditional medicine continues, newer 'omics technologies and poly-pharmacokinetics will also play an increasing role in bridging the gap between the personalized approach of Chinese medicine theory and modern clinical research methodology.

No one disputes that powerful medicines can be isolated from plants and other natural sources. If that weren't the case, then natural products pharmacology (or, as it's also called, pharmacognosy) wouldn't be such an important part of pharmacology. Of course, using herbal remedies means substituting impure extracts with high lot-to-lot variation in active ingredient(s) for purified, well-characterized pharmaceutical grade active ingredient(s). Perhaps you are wondering what Jun, Chen, Zuo, and Shi classes of Chinese materia medica are. Perhaps this little excerpt from an article on TCM will help you:

The Herbal was put under the name of Shennong or Godly Farmer but it was likely compiled during the Qin/Han dynasties (221 BC – 220 AD). It is the summary of pharmaceutical knowledge during that time. It discusses in detail 365 kinds of drugs, and it also mentioned the basic pharmacological theories which are still being taught in today’s Chinese medical schools. It includes the following: Jun Chen Zuo Shi (monarch, minister, assistant, and guide) indicating the different functions of drugs in a prescription; the Four Qi’s, four properties of drugs; Five Tastes, five kinds of flavours: sour, bitter, sweet, acrid, salty. Long term clinical practice and modern scientific researches have proved that most of the effects of the drugs recorded in this book are true, as with Chinese ephedrine (Herba Ephedrae) used in the treatment of asthma, goldthread root ( Rhizoma Coptidis) prescribed in dysentery, kelp (Sargassum) prescribed in goiter and so on.

If you look closer, you'll find that Jun (ruler or emperor) corresponds to the principal ingredient directed at the main cause and/or symptoms of the disease, Chen (minister) describes herbs directed at the underlying cause of the disease as well as accompanying symptoms. (You know, Jun and Chen sound very similar to me.) Zuo (assistant) drugs are supposed to help the Jun and Chen drugs do their work by alleviating secondary symptoms of the disease and counteracting adverse effects of other drugs. Finally, shi (enabler or guide) drugs supposedly direct the action of all the others into the right "channels," thus somehow making sure that the other drugs "do not exceed the patient's capacity to cope with their actions." It's all very complicated and seemingly rationale sounding. Of course, in TCM, the "underlying cause" of diseases invariably involves imbalances in proteries like "dampness" and "heat" or the like, rather than anything with any basis in science. Remember that. These TCM herbs are all designed not based on any scientific understanding of a disease and its symptoms, but rather on a prescientific belief system rooted in religions beliefs (Taoism) very much like humoral theory that ruled in Europe for two millennia.

As I like to ask, where's the love for traditional "Western" medicine, which postulates imbalances in characteristics not unlike those central to TCM beliefs?

Perhaps the most depressing part of this whole supplement is that the World Health Organization (WHO) is actively promoting the "integration" of traditional medicine, chief among them TCM, into science-based medicine, as indicated in a rather long article entitled The WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy 2014–2023: A perspective, by Zhang Qi and Edward Kelley.

Like other articles in this supplement, the article starts out with the logical fallacy of argumentum ad populum; i.e., an appeal to popularity. Yes, tiresome and predictably, the authors tout how much TCM is used in China. Strike that, they tout how much T&CM (traditional and complementary medicine) is used, bragging about countries in which traditional medicine is completely integrated into health care systems, including China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), the Republic of Korea (South Korea), India, and Vietnam. what I can't figure out from this is why we in the "West" would want to imitate medical systems in North Korea or any of these countries. Yet, according to this article, the WHO's objectives include more tooth fairy science on traditional medicine, assuring the safety of traditional medicine. Then, the third objective is:

Objective 3: To promote universal health coverage by integrating T&CM services into health care service delivery and self-health care. One of the most significant questions raised about T&CM in recent years is how it might contribute to universal health coverage by improving service delivery in the health system, particularly primary health care. A first step is to capitalize on the potential contribution of T&CM to improve health services and health outcomes. Mindful of the traditions and customs of peoples and communities, member states should consider how T&CM might support disease prevention or treatment as well as health maintenance and health promotion. This process should be consistent with safety, quality, and effectiveness standards and in line with patient choice and expectations. Based on each country’s realities, it is recommended that models for integrating T&CM into national health systems should be explored.

Talk about weasel words of woo. How would "integrating" traditional medicine ito health care delivery services promote universal health coverage? It wouldn't, at least not unless you define "universal health coverage" as encompassing pseudoscience and quackery or, at the very least, treatments based on prescientific notions of disease whose efficacy and safety are either not established or established, but not in the way the WHO wants. Seriously. you know how much I rail against the infiltration of quackery into medical academia, calling it quackademic medicine? I had no idea that the WHO is actually actively promoting the infiltration of quackery not just into medical academia but into health care systems around the world. It boggles the mind.

Next up is an article by Josephine Briggs. I had hoped to avoid it, because it's really full of the weasel words of woo, but I can't. Perhaps the most brain-melting non sequitur I've ever seen comes in the second paragraph of her article, entitled A global scientific challenge: Learning the right lessons from ancient healing practices. Make sure you aren't drinking anything while you read this. Otherwise, I'm not responsible for ruined keyboards:

For many living in developing economies, traditional healers and herbal remedies are the only source of available health care. In contrast, developed economies typically use these approaches as an optional complement to modern medicine, driven by patient preference. However, in both China and India, the ancient medical traditions—traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine—have flourished either in parallel or integrated with advanced modern care. Currently, in North America and Europe certain ancient healing practices—such as acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine, massage, and meditation—have generated increasing interest and are seen as gentler, “low-tech” complements to conventional care.

The persistence of such traditional practices in these settings suggests we have much to learn from them. Modern scientific methods can offer means to examine traditional practices. In this brief perspective, a few examples of traditional remedies are discussed to illustrate the issues we face in thinking about the intersection between modern medicine and traditional healing practices.

Um, no. It doesn't. At least, it doesn't except in the most trivial meaning of the term "learning something." Think of it this way. Belief in ghosts persists, despite science that shows that ghosts don't exist. Does this mean that we have "much to learn" from studying ghosts? No. Perhaps we have something to learn from studying believers in ghosts as a means of studying human belief and credulity. No doubt we can do the same with alternative medicine, but that doesn't mean that we should adopt belief in alternative medicine by "integrating" it wholesale into national health systems any more than we should adopt belief in ghosts as a national policy.

OK, that was a bit of a strained analogy, but you get the point.

Briggs pulls out the standard tropes about how the identification of natural products somehow validates TCM, pointing out that half of the pharmaceuticals approved by the FDA were "either natural products, synthetic derivatives, or had at their core a prototype molecule derived from a natural product." Certainly, there's no doubt that natural products and their derivatives are an important source of drugs. That doesn't mean one has to "integrate" TCM with scientific medicine in order to have the benefit of these compounds. Again, that's what we have natural products pharmacologists for. Indeed, adopting TCM instead of cherry picking herbs that can be demonstrated to have medicinal benefit would be counterproductive because of all the pseudoscience and mysticism associated with TCM.

Next up, Briggs admits that acupuncture is primarily a placebo intervention but says that we should use it anyway. She cites a paper by Vickers et al that was widely touted as "proving" that acupuncture works for pain but doesn't prove anything of the sort. Then she writes:

Specifically, when acupuncture was compared to no acupuncture (in effectiveness studies), the benefit appears to be quite sizable, approximately 50% reduction in pain severity. In contrast, when acupuncture is compared to a sham treatment (in efficacy studies), more modest effects are observed (Figure 2). Although statistical significance is achieved, the reduction in pain severity is not as substantial, typically only 20%. Based on this analysis, it seems reasonable to conclude that needling itself may be contributing to acupuncture’s pain-reducing effects, and that the overall benefit is heavily dependent on context—on the reassurance and expectation produced by the acupuncture ritual.

What does this mean for clinical practice? Here, the arguments erupt. Is a contextual effect (some would call it a placebo) that relieves pain and reduces the need for medication an acceptable form of treatment? This is still, for many Western practitioners, a quandary to which there is no simple answer. Building a better biological understanding based on the neuroscience of pain may provide some common ground. As we learn more about the central effects—specific and nonspecific—can also be teased out. pain circuits, the mechanisms underlying acupuncture’s effects—specific and nonspecific—can also be teased out.

Shorter version: The evidence is most consistent with the conclusion that acupuncture is a theatrical placebo (although we really, really hope that the needling actually has pain relief properties), but we should use it anyway, damn the ethical objections to lying to patients. After admitting that "traditional medicine diagnoses" are often not related to science or reality, she then concludes that "clearly, Western medicine does not have all the answers, and systems of care that allow thoughtful integration of healing traditions with modern medicine may offer help to troubled patients." In other words, let's fill in the gaps with magic, the same way creationists fill in the gaps in evolution with God.

Last up (for me at least) is a jaw-dropping article by Jan van der Greef and others entitled East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet? It begins with a blatant appeal to cultural relativism, saying that "modern Western scientific model" arose in its own cultural context. In comparison, "A different approach to understanding reality and the laws of nature arose in Eastern cultures, such as China. Both models can be considered valid, each with its own model-dependent realism."

Postmodernism reigns supreme!

Based on postmodernism, van der Greef continues:

One way to bridge the two worldviews is through unification of diagnosis, based on an integration of the collections and arrangements of symptoms and signs. Western biomedical advances offer a plethora of biomarkers that can be detected and measured with advanced equipment, while Chinese medicine contributes knowledge about the dynamic relationships among signs and symptoms. The right side of Figure 2 provides an example of this inter-relationship for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In Chinese culture, RA is classified as a “Bi Zheng,” a so-called painful obstruction syndrome. In TCM diagnosis every condition is primarily distinguished according to eight basic principles: External-Internal, Heat-Cold, Excess-Deficiency, and Yin-Yang. Figure 2 focuses on the Cold- Heat differentiation.

The signs and symptoms of RA are universally represented across peoples independent of culture, although variations in concepts and emphasis can be seen. In TCM, RA patients can be subdivided based on the predominance of “hot” versus “cold” symptoms. Examples of “hot” symptoms, as illustrated in Figure 2, are thirst, fever, irritability, restlessness, warm feeling, dry mouth, and pain that is relieved by cold, while “cold” symptoms include clear urine, sharp pain, stiff joints, and pain that is relieved by warmth. This systemic approach may help biomedical researchers to distinguish biological subtypes of RA in a manner that could lead to personalization of medical care; firstly, through more personalized lifestyle advice, and in the long term, through the application of modern biomedical technology in studies of RA subtypes. Ultimately, recognizing the particular individualized presentation of RA across different patients based on a systemic approach may improve treatment choices and outcomes.

Arrghh! Not this nonsense about rheumatoid arthritis again! I've dealt with it before in detail a mere two months ago, when I discussed a truly credulous Wall Street Journal article about TCM that described exactly this attempt to use systems biology to "prove" that TCM diagnostic criteria and concepts accurately describe the pathologic processes resulting in RA. van der Greef even discusses the same research as justification for his "unification," complete with this diagram:

Arrrgh!

There's more in the next article, this time by Leung et al and entitled Integrated network-based medicine: The role of traditional Chinese medicine in developing a new generation of medicine:

According to the philosophy of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), health is the state of harmony between individual internal physiological networks (IPNs) and external environmental networks (EENs). Aberrant interactions between and within these networks cause complex diseases. TCM is grounded in these holistic principles, integrating philosophies from art and science; it stresses the maintenance of balance, or homeostasis, between the systems of the body and nature.

We believe that this kind of network-based holistic approach to medicine offers a useful counterpoint to today’s biological reductionism-based thinking. We champion integrated network-based medicine (INBM) which takes a systems approach to understanding the individual’s body as a whole, as opposed to relying on discrete components such as gene mutations, in order to explain illness (1). Built on the principles of IPNs and EENs, INBM offers a comprehensive medical system that integrates fundamental theories, diagnostic methods, and therapeutics based on a holistic and dynamic network-based approach.

What does this even mean? Sadly, I know. It means "integrating" TCM with "Western" medicine and then pointlessly applying all sorts of advanced systems biology techniques to give it the sheen of real state-of-the-art science. There's even another chart:

Do you get the message? See how TCM is in the same circle as personalized medicine and digital medicine surrounded by all sorts of science-y terms and illustrations, with the circle being on the right end of an arrow, the end labeled "future perspective"? That's right. The message is that the "integration" of TCM with science-based medicine is the future. You pesky reductionist "Western" scientists who dismiss the Five Elements and imbalances of dampness, dryness, heat, and cold (for instance) are the past.

The scary thing is, the authors might actually be right. "Integrating" quackery with medicine does seem to be the future these days, and universities, the NCCIH, the WHO, Science, and the AAAS appear to be doing their very best to make that future a reality.

oracknows Mon, 01/05/2015 - 23:00

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American Association for the Advancement of Science

National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine

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World Health Organization

complementary and alternative medicine

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Science

No, the CDC did not just apologize and admit that this year's flu vaccine doesn't work

oracknows — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 05:45:25 +0000

No, the CDC did not just apologize and admit that this year's flu vaccine doesn't work

If there's one thing about having a demanding day job, it's that the cranks usually have the advantage. They can almost always hit first when a news story comes out that they can spin to attack their detested science. On the other hand, it usually ensures that by the time I get home, have dinner, and settle down in front of the TV with my laptop to discusse the latest bit of science, there's some tasty crankery to deconstruct.

Oddly enough, tonight appears not to be one of those times. Heck, as of this writing, even that wretched hive of antivaccine scum and quackery, Age of Autism,, doesn't have anything up about it. Oh, well, never let it be said that something so minor stopped me from discussing science that interested me. I'll just have to try to find new ways of making it fun and interesting.

So, by now surely you've seen the news stories that popped up beginning yesterday morning with headlines like CDC Warning: Flu Viruses Mutate and Evade Current Vaccine and Flu vaccine protects against wrong strain, US health officials warn, Flu shots may not be good match for 2014-15 virus, CDC says, and Health Officials Warn This Year’s Flu Vaccine Won’t Prevent New H3N2 Strain Of Influenza. You get the idea. This year, apparently, the flu vaccine isn't as effective as health officials would like. How could this have happened.

Those of you who are knowledgeable about the flu vaccine know that, as useful as it is, it's not one of the greatest vaccines as far as effectiveness. Actually, that's not true. Its effectiveness can and does vary considerably from year to year. The reason is simple. There are many strains of influenza, and the vaccine as currently formulated generally only covers a handful of strains. Basically, every year the World Health Organization, in collaboration with the CDC and other health organizations throughout the world, has to make an educated guess which strains of influenza will be circulating the following winter. Many months' lead time is required because vaccine manufacturers require it to develop and test the new formulations and then to ramp up their manufacturing capabilities and distribute the vaccine. Generally, the WHO chooses three strains it deems most likely to cause significant human suffering and death in the coming flu season. Specifically, the chosen strains are the H1N1, H3N2, and Type-B strains thought most likely to cause significant human suffering in the coming season, although, starting with the 2012–2013 Northern Hemisphere influenza season, the WHO has also recommended a second B-strain for use in quadrivalent (four strain) vaccines. Basically, the WHO coordinates the contents of the vaccine each year to contain the most likely strains of the virus to attack the next year. Wikipedia has a helpful article that lists the formulations of all the flu vaccines recommended for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres dating back to 1998, to give you an idea what's been recommended in the past. Also, there are exceptions. In the 2009-2010 season, for example, the H1N1 pandemic was occurring, and it was recommended that everyone be vaccinated against H1N1 in addition to the normal flu vaccine.

As you can imagine, predicting many months in advance which strains will be circulating in the following flu season is a dicey proposition under the best of circumstances. When the WHO gets it right, the flu vaccine is maximally effective. When it doesn't, we have a situation in which the vaccine is not as effective as we would like. As this news story relates:

Much of the influenza virus circulating in the United States has mutated and this year's vaccine doesn't provide good protection against it, federal health officials are warning.

Flu season's barely starting, but most cases are being caused by a strain called H3N2 this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a health warning issued to doctors Wednesday night.

The flu vaccine protects against three or four strains of flu — there's always a mix of flu viruses going around — and H3N2 is one of them. But the strain of H3N2 infecting most people has mutated and only about half of cases match the vaccine, CDC said.

Basically, all the news stories to which I linked report a the issue in a similar way. One of the major strains in the vaccine is H3N2, a strain that normally circulates in pigs and can cause serious outbreaks. Unfortunately, based on its initial observations and data collection, the CDC has concluded that the H3N2 strain that's causing most of the disease has undergone what is referred to as "genetic drift," changes in the genetic makeup of the virus that make them different from the strain used many months ago to determine the recommended formulation. Personally, when I see stories like this, I like to go to the source. When the story is about a scientific study, that source is the original peer-reviewed scientific article. When it's about something like this, the source is the CDC press release:

So far this year, seasonal influenza A H3N2 viruses have been most common. There often are more severe flu illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths during seasons when these viruses predominate. For example, H3N2 viruses were predominant during the 2012-2013, 2007-2008, and 2003-2004 seasons, the three seasons with the highest mortality levels in the past decade. All were characterized as “moderately severe.”

Increasing the risk of a severe flu season is the finding that roughly half of the H3N2 viruses analyzed are drift variants: viruses with antigenic or genetic changes that make them different from that season’s vaccine virus. This means the vaccine’s ability to protect against those viruses may be reduced, although vaccinated people may have a milder illness if they do become infected. During the 2007-2008 flu season, the predominant H3N2 virus was a drift variant yet the vaccine had an overall efficacy of 37 percent and 42 percent against H3N2 viruses.

“It’s too early to say for sure that this will be a severe flu season, but Americans should be prepared,” said CDC director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. “We can save lives with a three-pronged effort to fight the flu: vaccination, prompt treatment for people at high risk of complications, and preventive health measures, such as staying home when you’re sick, to reduce flu spread.”

I can see what's coming. In fact, I'm very surprised that, as I write this, it hasn't come already. If there's one vaccine that antivaccinationists love to hate, it's the flu vaccine, because, compared to other vaccines, it's the easiest target, given that it tends not to be as efficacious as many other vaccines. Heck, it's the vaccine that Bill Maher likes to hate on (or at least show contempt for). Contrary to what antivaccinationists and cranks like Bill Maher would have you believe, the flu vaccine is not dangerous, and it does work. It might not work as well as some vaccines, and, until a universal flu vaccine is developed that targets antigens common to all strains of flu is developed, it never will be. But it's still worth getting.

No, the flu vaccine is not worthless, but you know that hysterical antivaccine articles claiming that to be the case are coming.

For completeness' sake, I'll just mention that the quadrivalent flu vaccine for the 2014-2015 flu season is targeted to these strains:

A/California/7/2009 (H1N1)pdm09-like virus
A/Texas/50/2012 (H3N2)-like virus
B/Massachusetts/2/2012-like virus.
BBrisbane/60/2008-like virus (only included in some vaccines)

As this story on how this happened relates:

Since Oct. 1, 82% of the influenza virus samples subjected to laboratory testing have been H3N2 viruses, according to data from the CDC. And only 48% of these samples are closely related to the A/Texas/50/2012 strain that was picked for the flu vaccine distributed in North America.

Most of the rest of the H3N2 samples were similar to another strain called A/Switzerland/9715293. That strain was picked for the flu vaccine for the Southern Hemisphere, but not the one here.

Unfortunately, although the "drifted" A/Switzerland/9715293-like (as in genetic drift) strains were detected in late March 2014, after World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations for the 2014-2015 Northern Hemisphere vaccine had been made in mid-February, their prevalence increased enormously by September, by which time it was far too late to reformulate this year's vaccine:

Health experts charged with monitoring flu viruses first detected strains of the A/Switzerland virus in the U.S. in March, Frieden said. By then, "it was already too late to include them in this season's vaccine," he said.

Besides, at that time, the A/Texas strains were still "by far the most common of the H3N2 viruses," he said. The A/Switzerland strains didn't appear in large numbers until September, he said.

Twice each year, the World Health Organization issues a recommendation for a flu vaccine — one for the Southern Hemisphere and one for the Northern Hemisphere. This approach gives health planners two opportunities to plan a vaccine.

Putting it all together, what this all means is that the remaining 18% plus the remaining 48% of the H3N2 strains that are close matches to the vaccine H3N2 strain (0.48 x 0.82 = 0.39 or 39%), for a total of 57% constitute a good match for what's out there. How did this happen this year? The same way it happens on any year when the flu vaccine isn't as good a match as we would like to the strains circulating: Health officials made the best prediction they could at the time, but the virus changed in the six or seven months between when they had to commit to a formulation of the flu vaccine and the start of the flu season.

Another aspect of this is that it is likely that the H3N2 component of this year's flu vaccine is still good enough to confer partial immunity to the A/Switzerland/9715293-like strains, so that, while it doesn't protect against becoming sick by these strains it could make the illness less severe. This is important because the H3N2 strains tend to be associated with severe flu seasons.

Not surprisingly, as I was writing this, a notice popped up in my Google Alerts telling me that everyone's favorite quack, antivaccinationist (but I repeat myself), and all-purpose conspiracy theorist, Mike Adams, had weighted in under a rather restrained (for him) title, CDC issues flu vaccine apology: this year's vaccine doesn't work!, complete with a link to this video:

Contrary to what Gary Franchi of NextNewsNetwork claims, no, the CDC did not just say that the flu vaccine doesn't work. It really didn't. It just said that we can expect it to be less effective this year because it's not as good a match as we would like. What's with this concrete thinking among quacks? It's the Nirvana fallacy in action: If a "Western" medical intervention isn't 100% effective, to them it's pure, dangerous crap. Funny how they don't apply that standard to the woo they normally like to pedal.

But back to Mikey. Hilariously, after touting a "story" from a crank news source and criticizing the CDC for supposedly producing a defective vaccine and then selling Tamiflu at a high cost, Adams pivots to promoting his own execrable science. Truly the man is without self-awareness:

Mercury tests conducted on vaccines at the Natural News Forensic Food Lab have revealed a shockingly high level of toxic mercury in an influenza vaccine (flu shot) made by GlaxoSmithKline (lot #9H2GX). Tests conducted via ICP-MS document mercury in the Flulaval vaccine at a shocking 51 parts per million, or over 25,000 times higher than the maximum contaminant level of inorganic mercury in drinking water set by the EPA.(1)

The tests were conducted via ICP-MS using a 4-point mercury calibration curve for accuracy. Even then, the extremely high level of mercury found in this flu shot was higher than anything we've ever tested, including tuna and ocean fish which are known for high mercury contamination.

In fact, the concentration of mercury found in this GSK flu shot was 100 times higher than the highest level of mercury we've ever tested in contaminated fish. And yet vaccines are injected directly into the body, making them many times more toxic than anything ingested orally. As my previous research into foods has already documented, mercury consumed orally is easily blocked by eating common foods like strawberries or peanut butter, both of which bind with and capture about 90% of dietary mercury.

This was, of course, one of the silliest things Adams ever did with his new toy (his mass spectrometer), as I had considerable fun relating here.

Adams then goes on to tick off a litany of antivaccine lies, using a typical antivaccine technique known as "argument by package insert." The central fallacy of such an argument is that package inserts are legal documents, not so much scientific documents, and are thus hyper-conservative in listing any reaction that's ever been reported after a drug or vaccine, whether there is good scientific reason to believe that reaction is due to the vaccine or drug or not. He trots out the old claimed link with Guillain-Barre syndrome that is almost certainly not real. He even trots out the formaldehyde and toxin gambit!

It all builds up to a crescendo of Mike Adams crazy belied by the relatively tame (for him) title of his post:

Trusting a flu shot made by a corporation of felons is a lot like trusting the purity of heroin you buy from a street dealer. Both flu shots and street heroin have at least one thing in common, by the way: neither has ever been tested for safety.

We also know that flu shots contain neurotoxic chemicals and heavy metals in alarming concentrations. This is irrefutable scientific fact. We also know that there is no "safe" form of mercury just like there is no safe form of heroin -- all forms of mercury are highly toxic when injected into the body (ethyl, methyl, organic, inorganic).

The only people who argue with this are those who are already mercury poisoned and thus incapable of rational thought. Mercury damages brain function, you see, which is exactly what causes some people to be tricked into thinking vaccines are safe and effective.

Technically, you'd have to be stupid to believe such a thing, as the vaccine insert directly tells you precisely the opposite.

Mikey, Mikey, Mikey...at least he always entertains. No one can quite reach the spittle-flecked faux outrage with such hyperbole, with the possible exception of his mentor Alex Jones. But notice the inherent sucking up to his audience. He (and, by extension, those who believe him) are not "sheeple"! They're not "brain-damaged" by mercury! Oh, no! Only they understand and avoid the evil pharma cabal. Everyone else is a mercury-damaged sheeple.

This year's flu vaccine might well be suboptimal. Unfortunately, until there is a universal vaccine that targets parts of the virus that don't mutate so rapidly, the flu vaccine will always be suboptimal. Of course, companies and scientists are frantically working on just such a vaccine. If it weren't so incredibly hard to do, they would have produced one already. In the meantime the flu vaccine, as imperfect as it is, is the best we have, and it is still very much worth receiving because the flu still can kill healthy individuals.

oracknows Fri, 12/05/2014 - 00:45

Tags

Antivaccine nonsense

complementary and alternative medicine

Skepticism/Critical Thinking

World Health Organization

complementary and alternative medicine

medicine

Science

Couple questions.
(1) Is this the same flu shot that 14 people died shortly after receiving in Italy?
(2) Isn't there a possibility that vaccination with this flu shot (or any flu shot), while it might protect you from the strains it was intended for, may actually make you more susceptible to other strains, a phenomenon sometimes associated with "Original Antigenic Sin"? As shown, for example, in
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19440239

Do you mean the flu shot shortly after which four elderly people died (as elderly people are wont to do) - out of around 4 million shots, the one which has now been promptly investigated and shown to be unrelated to those deaths?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30316113

Probably.

is a lot like trusting the purity of heroin you buy from a street dealer..

Speaking from experience, Mike?

there is no safe form of heroin

A perfect analogy, showing how little Mike know..
Heroin is used in low doses as a painkiller, notably in the UK hospitals.
Apparently, using small doses of something dangerous at high doses is relatively safe. Who would have thought it?

@Nat - that particular Flu shot is only used in Europe & it only indicated for high-risk / elderly individuals (and yes, as Rebecca pointed out, the shots have been cleared as a cause - especially given that at least one of those individuals died of a ruptured aorta).

And to your second question, that study involved Mice & has not been shown to be replicated in humans.

making them many times more toxic than anything ingested orally

I'm curious about his definition of "many times", since about 95% of orally ingested methylmercury gets absorbed through the intestinal tract.

As for his strawberry/peanut butter binding claim, I'd like to see a study showing that eating those foods at the same time as your tuna fish sandwich (blech) would lead to binding of the mercury in the tuna such that it gets excreted rather than absorbed.

Wouldn't you think that a commenter would not post a study of lab mice, published during 2009, when the topic of Orac's blog is the update from the CDC, about weekly confirmed cases of influenza in humans?

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/

Todd W. I read columns and posts from the brain trust at AoA, that the increase in peanut allergies is directly attributed to the number of vaccines on the CDC Recommended Childhood Vaccine Schedule.

One polite gentleman (no irony this time) on the comments threads already used the "CDC said the flu shots are worthless" claim. The problem is that given what the regular media was doing with this, there are more sources for this around, including some that are not anti-vaccine. It's good to have the rebuttals. Thank you.

@lilady

Oh, I know. They also make the false claim that vaccines contain peanut oil.

I can just see it now, some crank will claim that peanut butter binds to mercury, and because some people have an allergy to thimerosal, this will result in them also developing a peanut allergy. I know it doesn't make sense to people who understand science and reality, but cranks aren't that well-versed in logic.

I caught wind of this yesterday when nurse told me it was just on the news that the flu vaccine does not work this year.
So I aksed her which age groups? against matched or mis matched strains? Inactived or live attenuated? Of course the news did go into details.
It will be interesting to know.
Hopefully LAIV gives good cross immunity as most of my patents opt for it over IIV.

BTW yes the nurse has had her flu shot

@Rob Cordes, DO

Well, as René put it over at Epidemiological, you have five major opportunities to get the flu this year (two B strains, H1N1, A/Texas/H3N2 and A/Switzerland/H3N2), and the vaccine will protect pretty well against four of those, and may give some cross-protection against the fifth, for a milder course of illness than without the vaccine.

Whilst AoA doesn't address the question of this year's flu vaccine, it does provide amusement from other bad science ( and political speculation):

Dachel offers Stephanie Seneff's quote, ".. by 2025, one in two children will be autistic" and an article that considers the vicissitudes of that outcome. Further discussion with Seneff explicates her beliefs about causation- vaccines and glyphosate are the most likely culprits. AND she's from MIT**

Kent Heckenlively produces further variations upon his habituated theme:
brave freedom fighters/ superheroes or suchlike battle the entrenched evil empire. Reading Attkisson's new book ( in addition to his own obviously) has led him to declare that soon all of these small defiant groups will gather together and confront their enemy and " bring down their empire of lies"
I think Kent missed his calling: writing scripts or storylines for ( respectively) bad action films or crappy comics..

** isn't it hilarious when alties applaud people from well known institutions ( universities, periodicals, governmental agencies) when they agree with their woo but castigate the same places when they disagree as being part of the cartel?

And Mikey now offers hope to those made stupid by the establishment's poisons or poisonous lies or whatever:
he has a free course in amping up your "cognition" ( which I -btw- listened to nearly half ) and it's all about cleaning up toxins and filling up on supernutrition. And becoming more spiritual.

Nurses Who Vaccinate have also addressed this rumor:

The flu season has only just begun, and we've already had five flu-related pediatric deaths. It is imperative that nurses to educate patients, colleagues and their communities about the need to vaccinate against the flu. Protection is still protection, which is better than no protection at all.

Skeptical Raptor has a cute and accurate flowchart on who needs a flu vaccine. (Hint: everybody over 6 months old who has not medical contraindications.)

TL;DR conclusion: The flu vaccine is incredibly safe. It’s fairly effective, though that can vary from year to year as flu variants mutate, like this year. This year’s vaccine may not be able to prevent a new variant of H3N2 flu, but it may lessen the symptoms of the variant.

1) Is this the same flu shot that 14 people died shortly after receiving in Italy?

No, it is not: that vaccine is adminsitered only in Europe and for a specific population (those at high risk or elderly). Note that the deaths appeared to correlate only to one or two specific lots of that vaccine, and that these lots have been examined and found not to be defective. Not also (more critically) that no causal association has been found between vaccination with these lots and the deaths which followeed.

(2) Isn’t there a possibility that vaccination with this flu shot (or any flu shot), while it might protect you from the strains it was intended for, may actually make you more susceptible to other strains, a phenomenon sometimes associated with “Original Antigenic Sin”?

Possible? Perhaps, but I think the more germane question is whether it would be likely . The only instance I'm aware of where previous vaccination against a different strain resulted ina measurable decrease in antigenic responses to the circulating flu strain was in the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, in individuals vaccinated against the strain A/Brisbane/59/2007 (H1N1) within the 3 months prior to being infected by the Pandemic H1N1/09 virus.

PMCID: PMC3165229

And of course, you'd be sacrificing protection against the other strains in the vaccine which are well matched (plus the protection against the almost 50% of circulating H3N2 strains which are a good match) if you chose to eschew vaccination becuase of concerns over this 'original sin'.

Re Helianthus #3: You don't even need to go to the UK prescription example. Heroin is no more inherently dangerous than any drug which one can overdose from. If you take too large a dose (which mostly happens due to uncertain purity from street dealers where better than expected purity is a killer) you can OD and potentially die. Just like just about every other drug. This is how there is a sizeable community of long-term heroin users who don't drop dead randomly. (much like there are people on other opiates/opioids for long periods due to chronic pain management).

Putting it all together, what this all means is that the remaining 18% plus the remaining 48% of the H3N2 strains that are close matches to the vaccine H3N2 strain (0.48 x 0.82 = 0.39 or 39%), for a total of 57% constitute a good match for what’s out there.

Am I math challenged this morning? Seems to mean 18% plus 48% equals 67%, not 57%.

82% of the circulating strains right now are H3N2. This year's vaccine is only a good match for 48% of those H3N2 strains. That's makes up 39% of the total strains. Add to that the 18% of the total strains that not H3N2 and thus still a good match, and you have 57%. Or am I missing something here?

Pharma shill author. Witting or unwitting. Makes no difference. It is obvious by the language.

Dachel offers Stephanie Seneff’s quote, “.. by 2025, one in two children will be autistic”

And not very long after that three in every two children will be autistic, I I remember the graphs.

@Liz Ditz, for completion, so has About Pediatrics: http://pediatrics.about.com/od/inthenews/tp/Pediatric-News-and-Alerts.h…

As far as original antigenic sin you are off the mark. That is when there is an antigenic shift. This is an antigenic drift.

I am sure you rocket scientists have never done all of research study on the anomalies of the new vaccine schedules. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that as the scheduled amount of childhood vaccines went from 10 vaccines by the age of 4 in 1983, to more than 30 by the age of 4 in 2014. And with this statistical insignificant fact that the rate of autism, auto-immune diseases and severe allergies has skyrocketed. Where are the studies on bombarding a developing immune system with 6-10 different vaccines on the same doctors visit? Move along sheep!! Here are some facts for the"science" based herd straight from the CDC website. See where it says formaldehyde, aluminum, etc....
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/additives.htm
Or the amount of $2,857,926,807.60 that has been paid out because of adverse reactions to vaccines! Facts found here!!
http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/statisticsreports.html

JGC @20: I think it's 120%, actually.

And Dr. Bob Sears chimes in. Sigh. https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=809888069049679&id=11…

@ JGC:
@ JP:

AND after that, the evil toxins will reach back in time and turn all of the non-autistic adults into autistic children,
Chilling, isn't it?

I don't see a byline on this article. Who wrote it?
Mike Adams does sign his work, at least.
I did not see the mercury charge addressed in this article, either.
Why not?
Also, how is the efficacy of flu vaccine tested?
Or do we just 'take their word' that it's effective?

Hyperbole.... As I read the article from Mike and this article, I think the hyperbole quotient is similar. It's funny when you read the comments too. The voicings are the same. They just have a different view. Both equally convinced that the other side are idiots. Polarization for the sake of having your argument heard.

@Mark

I'm sure you've done studies to rule out the increased presence of personal computers in homes over the past several decades. In 1983, few homes had a personal computer. Now, almost every home has one. And the prevalence of autism has increased over the same period. Where are the studies looking at this? Or the studies looking at the correlation between autism rates and the increased consumption of organic produce? Wake up, sheep!

@Terry - you will find that the "nutbaggery" is well beyond the pale over at Mike's....here, at least, science in the word of the day.

@mark

Have you ever heard of the phrase "the dose is the poison?" Because there is a lot more aluminum and formaldehyde in an apple than in a vaccine, unless you've learned how to survive without eating food at all. Also the sue of sheeple says a lot about the lack of argument that you have.

@delta1, @terry

Let's see, at least Orac has actual science behind his views. What science does mikey adams have to back up his assertions? Also, did you miss the title of the blog?

As Lawrence remarks, Mike Adams' writing is entirely divorced from reality - if you need any convincing merely read his bio @ healthranger.com or his articles @ Natural News.

In addition, he has a STORE (@ Natural News) where he drums up fear of illness hawks supplements, super foods and other products that he shills through his mercenary journalism and faux research.

@Mark, #23, can you show me where the rates of autism as "skyrocketing"? Prevalence is increasing, but prevalence does that with diseases and conditions that are not deadly and have no cure. As a friend once told me, you didn't have cancer when oncologists were not around, mostly because it wasn't called cancer. You have all those things now because we're getting closer to the true prevalence in our population, about 1%-2%, hardly skyrocketing. That, and, you know, plenty of us don't equate autism with deadly diseases.

@Mark:

I am sure you rocket scientists have never done all of research study on the anomalies of the new vaccine schedules.

Ah yes. The old "Too many Too soon" claim. And you're wrong. Too many too soon has been investigated and discredited. Also, your claim is old news. Antivaxxers have moved on from that and are now claiming it's the shots the parents received as children that turned their children autistic.

@Delta1
Here is a description of the testing process that flu vaccines go through. Here are a few examples of how flu vaccines are tested. As you can see, flu vaccines are pretty thoroughly tested. You can get more detailed information directly from the horse's mouth by searching PubMed.

Hope this helps.

Mark: "Or the amount of $2,857,926,807.60 that has been paid out because of adverse reactions to vaccines! Facts found here!!"

I used to be a rocket scientist, this means I can actually find valid ratios.

Now, take a look at the table titled "National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) Adjudication Categories by Vaccine for Claims Filed Calendar Year 2006 to Present."

Go to the bottom of it and tell see how many vaccines have been given between 2006 and 2012, it is almost two billion. We can extrapolate to over two billion vaccine doses between 2006 and 2014. Now look at the total number compensated between 2006 and March 2014, it is only 1300.

Now can you tell us what the ratio of the number of doses given to the number was awarded claims? Can you explain what it means? How does it compare to the injuries caused by actually getting a disease? Be sure to show your work.

Delta1: "I don’t see a byline on this article. Who wrote it?"

Look at the title of this article on top of the page. There you will see the 'nym after the words "Posted by." Click on it and you will figure out the worst kept secret on the Internet. Consider it a wee intelligence test.

@Mark
FYI, these are the types of anomalies rocket scientists deal with.

I see my problem--I was doing simple arithmetric--adding 45 and 18--and not accounting for the fact that the vaccine is a match for less than 100% of the circulating strains.

I'd blame lack of sleep, if I could only remember what that word (sleep) means...

Isn’t there a possibility that vaccination with this flu shot (or any flu shot), while it might protect you from the strains it was intended for, may actually make you more susceptible to other strains, a phenomenon sometimes associated with “Original Antigenic Sin”?

Unsurprisingly, a much better way to generate OAS is by contracting influenza itself.

In any event, the mouse study (the ferret version would have been a better choice) isn't an example of OAS: H3N2 and H5N1, obviously, aren't closely related. What one has here isn't so much a recommendation against H3N2 vaccination as a recommendation for inoculation with H3N2 virus on the off chance that human-to-human transmissible H5N1 will pop up overnight with no tradeoff in virulence.

One point that is worth considering is that this year's vaccine strains are the same as last year's vaccine strains. Even if this year's flu strains matched the vaccine strains, that fact would make this year's vaccine less useful, in terms of the number needed to treat to prevent one respiratory infection, for anyone who was vaccinated last year. Immune response to flu antigens does not vanish into nothing after a mere twelve months, so there is carryover protection. My husband got vaccinated both of the last two years, and this year he not only had a particularly severe two-day bout of his usual fever and body ache, but a red, warm, swollen area 8 cm wide at the injection site. Maybe that's evidence that he still had plenty of immunity left and would have been better off avoiding the cost and discomfort.

It turns out that it's not unusual for two years' vaccines to be identical or functionally identical. This information can be found online, and in future we'll factor it into health care decision-making. If the costs and harms of an intervention are not zero, it is not logically the case that any benefit above zero justifies it for all persons. The lower the expected benefit at any given time, the lower the costs have to be to make it worthwhile.

I am sure you rocket scientists have never done all of research study on the anomalies of the new vaccine schedules.

What anomlies are you speaking of? Be specific.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that as the scheduled amount of childhood vaccines went from 10 vaccines by the age of 4 in 1983, to more than 30 by the age of 4 in 2014.

Actually it’s simply a function of developing, over time, vaccines which affect additional infectious diseases, in much the same way we went from having one or two effective antibiotics to (penicillin, sulfanilamide) to having multiple effective antibiotics.

And with this statistical insignificant fact that the rate of autism, auto-immune diseases and severe allergies has skyrocketed.

Let’s assume this is true (and that is an assumption, BTW—the increase in autism you’re noting, after all, is an increase in the number of individuals receiving new diagnoses of autism spectrum disorders, not necessarily an increase in the actual number of autistic individuals in the population): did you have a point? Surely you’re not arguing that simply because both exhibit similar trends over time one must cause the other?
Where are the studies on bombarding a developing immune system with 6-10 different vaccines on the same doctors visit

I’d start with DeStefano et al (PMID:23545349), then work your way through the studies cited in that publication’s bibliography,

See where it says formaldehyde, aluminum, etc….

Yes—again, did you have a point? More critically, do you have any evidence that at exposure levels achievable by routine vaccination formaldehyde, aluminum or any of the other additives/excipients present in vaccine formulations are harmful?
Let’s put those first two in perspective:
Aluminum is one of the most ubiquitous elements on the planet and infants are exposed daily to much, much greater amounts of aluminum from dietary and environmental sources than they could possibly receive as the result of immunization. To put it in perspective, over the first 6 months of life an infant could be exposed to a maximum of 2.5 mg of aluminum as the result of routine immunizations. During those same 6 months it would be exposed to 10 mgs of aluminum if it's breast feeding; if receiving formula instead we're talking about a 40 mgs of aluminum, and as much as 120 mgs if it's receiving a soy-based formula.
The theoretical maximum exposure to formaldehyde from immunization would be at the scheduled 6 month visit, when the child could potentially receive up to 4 immunizations (HepB, DTaP, IPV and possibly influenza). This would expose them to around 310 ug of formaldehyde. That's less formaldehyde than you're exposed to simply as part of a normal diet (10,000 to 20,000 ug/daily) and in fact less than you'll receive when by eating a single apple, (between 430 and 1100 ug formaldehyde).

Or the amount of $2,857,926,807.60 that has been paid out because of adverse reactions to vaccines!

Out of how many millions of doses of vaccines administered, over what time period? No one is arguing, after all, that vaccines NEVER cause adverse reactions. The risks associated with vaccination are instead well characterized—the most common are both transient and minor (soreness at the site of the injection, mild fever, etc.) while those that are serious (encephalopathy, GNS) are all but vanishingly rare, such that the risks associated with being vaccinated are orders of magnitude lower than the risks associated with remaining vulnerable to infection.
Consider encephalopathy, for example: the MMR vaccine has been found to cause encephalopathy with an incidence of ~1 case in every 1 million vaccines administered. Measles, on the other hand, causes encephalopathy in 1 out of every 1000 infections—three orders of magnitude more often than the vaccine against measles. Clearly if you’re worried about suffering from this side effect, you’ll elect to be vaccinated.

Borked block quote!

Dachel offers Stephanie Seneff’s quote, “.. by 2025, one in two children will be autistic”

Keep in mind that the first three pages here (PDF) are the sum total of Seneff's "prediction."

Haha, Stephanie Seneff. I originally came across this blog when looking for help debunking a really dumb "glyphosate causes every disease ever" article that people were waving all over Facebook. The only "study" it actually linked to was this one, by Seneff. The best part of it is that she claims that the "mechanism" by which glyphosate causes everything from cancer to depression to autism is "endogenous semiotic entropy," which is literally nonsense. Word freakin' salad.

Sorry, "exogenous semiotic entropy." Either way, it's nonsense.

@jane

One point that is worth considering is that this year’s vaccine strains are the same as last year’s vaccine strains.

That's not actually true. Some of the strains are the same, some are different.

The 2013-2014 seasonal vaccine included:
* A/California/7/2009 (H1N1)-like virus;
* (H3N2) virus antigenically like the cell-propagated prototype virus A/Victoria/361/2011;
* B/Massachusetts/2/2012-like virus.

Some 2013-2014 vaccines also had B/Brisbane/60/2008-like virus.

This year for the 2014-2015 flu season, the vaccine contains:
* A/California/7/2009 (H1N1)pdm09-like virus;
* A/Texas/50/2012 (H3N2)-like virus;
* B/Massachusetts/2/2012-like virus.

Some also contain B/Brisbane/60/2008-like virus.

The A/H3N2 portion is different from last year's formulation. That makes it worth it to get it again this year, since H3N2 tends to be responsible for more serious disease.

Sir, you are a quack!

Mike Adams’ writing is entirely divorced from reality

Reality took out a restraining order against him.

Orac said:
" Mikey, Mikey, Mikey...... No one can quite reach the spittle- flecked faux outrage.... Alex Jones"

OH I don't know about that! I think that Gary Null may be even worse- plus he's been at it for longer and he produces longer written, spoken and filmed rants.

As a matter of fact, he's got a new docu-drama premiering today called 'Poverty, Inc" ** that was reviewed by the New York Times.

** these clever titles! Not the first time he's used that formula

@ herr doctor bimler:
Cognition should do the same

This is my first time visiting your blog page. Since you're a scientist who seems to understand how vaccines work and what goes into them, would you mind telling me what exactly goes into a vaccine other than the viruses themselves.

Mike Adams’ writing is entirely divorced from reality

Maybe he just needs some Universal Reconnection.

@Narad

My reactions to those slides ranged from "That's vaguely plausable" through "No, we know the symptoms of that are not like what you've described" through "Total facepalm." But at least there's that laugh at the end where she wasn't able to find any toxicological studies about glyphosate.

The A/H3N2 portion is different from last year’s formulation.

The change was just because A/Victoria/361/2011 had pooped out from egg culturing. A/Texas/50/2012 is antigenetically similar.

^ Ah, antigenically, that is.

The human body produces and deals with more formaldehyde daily, as the result of normal (and necessary) biochemical processes such as amino acid demethylation, than it could ever be exposed to as a consequence of routine vaccination.

For example, in a newborn the normal circulating formaldehyde concentration is roughly 2 to 3 ug per mL of blood, with a total blood volume of between 230 to 280 mL. That works out to between 460 and 840 ug total formaldehyde.

The hepatitis B vaccine given at birth will expose them to an addition 7.5 ug of formaldehyde, an increase of a whopping 0.9 to 1.6%.

For children other than newborns, the impact is of course far, far less significant. By the age of 6 if they complied with the recommended vaccination schedule they could be exposed to a grand total of about 1,800 ug of formaldehyde. The average six-year-old child weighs about 21 kg with a blood volume of about 1.5L, containing between 3,000 to 4,600 ug of circulating formaldehyde.

Six years’ worth of formaldehyde from routine vacinations is less significantly less that the formaldehyde a six year child’s body handles every minute of every day with no harmful effects.

All together now: the dose makes the poison.

In case you're wondering about the influx of newbies, some of whom appear to be repeating antivaccine tropes, some of whom simply don't know some basics about vaccines, a high traffic Facebook page appears to have picked this post up, and I'm getting a lot of traffic seemingly from that one Facebook page. I can't tell what it is from the referring URLs. In any case, traffic per hour is running about 5-6x normal right now. It appears to be peaking; so I expect it to start drifting back down towards normal soon. How soon and how fast it will do so, I have no idea. Hopefully not real soon and not real fast. :-)

It would be funny if it were an antivaccine page that sent all this traffic to me, thus ensuring my traffic-based reimbursement produces additional sufficient filthy pharma lucre to buy perhaps a nice bottle of Macallan 12 year single malt scotch for Christmas enjoyment.

If natphilosopher's website (comment #1) is any guide, he or she is an independent fact-based thinker, a lonely lighthouse of rationality in a world overrun with conformity and groupthink. So I am confident that fact-based details will be provided shortly about those "14 people [who] died shortly after receiving [a flu shot] in Italy".

I was SHOCKED to discover that
(a) A bottom-tier wesite of hard-right social / religious conservative loons by the name of Townhall had picked up on the farcical Kenyan-bishops-against-vaccination "sekrit sterilisation" bullsh1t;
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/christinerousselle/2014/11/09/kenyan-bisho…
and
(b) Natphilosopher cites this toxic Townhall to pimp the same thoroughly discredited unstory. Good choice of sources, dude!

Mom of Three (#51):
This is my first time visiting your blog page.

Then you might want to start by looking at the 'Search" box at the top right corner of the page, before making yourself stupid with off-topic demands.

Mom of Three: " Since you’re a scientist who seems to understand how vaccines work and what goes into them, would you mind telling me what exactly goes into a vaccine other than the viruses themselves."

Here are some useful resources:
http://www.virology.ws/influenza-101/

I would encourage you to listen to the podcast by the virologist who did that course, you can find it at http://www.twiv.tv/ .

Also read the biography of Maurice Hilleman by Dr. Paul Offit, Vaccinated. Plus you might try the two major books about the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, first try Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 by Gina Kolata and The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John Barry.

You see, it is a bit more complicated than what can be gleaned from a blog comment. If you were really interested you would have been able to find appropriate literature at you local library, and perhaps even taken some basic college biology, chemistry and statistics classes.

Oh, I forgot another good resource for "Mom of Three":
http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/different-types-vacci…

Since you’re a scientist who seems to understand how vaccines work and what goes into them, would you mind telling me what exactly goes into a vaccine other than the viruses themselves.

First point: vaccines do not neceesarily contain live attentuated or killed viruses: most vaccines developed today are acellular vaccines that instead contain than viral proteins or small peptide sections of viral proteins.

In addition to the antigens themselves, vaccine formulations typically will contain trace materials at very low levels remaining behind from the manufacturing processes(e.g., formaldehyde and ovalbumin). They also contain deliberate additions that fall into roughly two classes: adjuvants which promote a stronger immune response to the antigens, and other excipients which may not be biologically active following inkection but confer other benefits: stabilizers, preservatives, buffering agents to maintain a desired pH, etc.

@Carolyn Moore:

Sir, you are a quack!

Given that you're a Young Living "distributor" on the side from your day job, that's a lot of irony.

Then again, given that day job, this is just pathetic.

@Mom of Three

The FDA has a nice page describing common vaccine ingredients and why they are used. For the complete list of all ingredients in the vaccine, see section 11 of the package insert. Most of the vaccines we're talking about in this thread are listed on this page. You should be able to find the ingredients list there.

@carolyn

Care to point out where do you think Orac is a quack? Or are you used to spouting out insults when faced with actual science.

Given your day job selling supplements, I assume you probably have to resort to insults because anything rational would take away from your business.

For a good discussion of the how and why the flu shot has variable efficacy, I'd like to suggest Mark Crislip's Quackcast 20. If you haven't heard it, it's well worth it. Because the world needs more Mark Crislip.

http://www.pusware.com/quackcast/quackcast20.mp3

Who wrote this?

"Who wrote this?"

It looks like someone named Nancy wrote this. Why do you ask?

If you're wondering who wrote this article though, it's someone who writes under the nickname of Orac. His real name is shrouded in mystery, cloaked in secrecy, and hidden by dark forces, and only obtainable by obscure hacking techniques like googling "Orac real name"

Nancy: "Who wrote this?"

Have you bothered looking what comes after the words "Posted by" that is under the title?

Remember, there will be a pop quiz later. So you might want someone help you to learn how to read two syllable words and how to click on a link.

Thomas, they may even miss the video of him speaking on December 3rd article. Not exactly showing much intellectual acumen.

Thomas, you should instruct the inquirer that whomsoever attempts to g--gle Orac's real name shall summon forth the investigative mechanations of our Illuminati masters ( Oh, praised be their names) and automatic tracking devices will be initiated immediately.
OBVIOUSLY, they will be subjected to merciless and endless taunting by the regulars as well.

Don't say I didn't warn you, scoffers.

Maybe Nancy and Delta1 can be study buddies.

"Who wrote this?"

This is unalloyed Dunning-Kruger. For Nancy: see
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

I did not see the mercury charge addressed in this article, either. Why not?
Also, how is the efficacy of flu vaccine tested?

Oh noes! Orac was not sufficiently verbose!

Your article does show up after clicking on another facebook article about the CDC making an apology. I am an RN-always trusted blindly that vaccines are wonderful and safe, so of course also had my kids vaccinated, who unfortunately also have ADD and Asperger's. I started to have some concerns after the HPV was forcefully offered to my daughter after every visit and started to read studies and look at adverse reactions which concerned me. I've had the flu once (not clinically diagnosed) and had two flu vaccines in my almost 50 years. Last year we were mandated to wear a mask or get the flu shot, so I started having more of an interest in this area and was surprised to note that two of my patients last year had documented adverse reactions to vaccines that resulted in chronic demyelinating polyneuropathy; one of these cases was attributed to a 2001 flu vaccine. So I was surprised to read your statement: "Contrary to what antivaccinationists and cranks like Bill Maher would have you believe, the flu vaccine is not dangerous, and it does work." Yet, 800 kids in Europe developed narcolepsy after receiving Pandemrix H1N1 in 2009. You also stated, "He trots out the old claimed link with Guillain-Barre syndrome that is almost certainly not real." I wasn't able to follow your link, but GBS is certainly acknowledged to be an adverse reaction to vaccines.
Just to note: the vaccine given by my organization last year didn't seem to offer much protection either. Most of the cultured patients had a strain of 2009 H1N1 which was in the vaccine. What I keep wondering is why a flu vaccine has now become close to mandatory to almost every human being over 6 months? These vaccines used to be reserved for the elderly. Why do pharmacies and grocery stores offer discounts if you get your flu shot?

I’m getting a lot of traffic seemingly from that one Facebook page.

Well, there's this.

And here I had to settle for a single-dose QIV....

Also, how is the efficacy of flu vaccine tested?

Why do I suspect that someone who is too lazy to actually type three words into G—le and pick the second result is not going to have much luck with the answer? (There's both VE and efficacy in there.)

Mercury, as a metal, doesn't have a charge. It does exhibit two oxidation states (+1 and +2) when interacting with other elements.

Narad: "Why do I suspect that someone who is too lazy to actually type three words..."

This same person was too lazy to click on the blue words that followed "Posted by" that was right after the title.

Choosing a 2014-2015 flu vaccine
http://forums.webmd.com/3/allergies-exchange/forum/2532

You are still not giving both sides. Not everyone getting a vaccine is the same, but even mainstream peer-reviewed medicine has demonstrated that the flu vaccine does not save lives in the elderly who die from flu the most

http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=486407

Conclusion from peer reviewed paper in the JAMA network

Conclusions We attribute the decline in influenza-related mortality among people aged 65 to 74 years in the decade after the 1968 pandemic to the acquisition of immunity to the emerging A(H3N2) virus. We could not correlate increasing vaccination coverage after 1980 with declining mortality rates in any age group. Because fewer than 10% of all winter deaths were attributable to influenza in any season, we conclude that observational studies substantially overestimate vaccination benefit.

Todd.W
"Oh, I know. They also make the false claim that vaccines contain peanut oil."
Some flu vaccines contain Polysorbate 80. Polysorbate 80 manufacturers use a variety of vegetable oils that could include peanut oil. It is therefore not possible to rule out the presence of peanut oil in vaccine.

Flu vaccine can cause egg allergy in healthy non-allergic individuals.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2249232/pdf/epidinfect00008…
"Contrary to the IgG response, IgE specific to Fl rose significantly after immunization in a considerable number of vaccinees, the results suggesting that influenza vaccine may play a role in sensitizing an individual to egg protein."
May have contributed to Japan stopping mandatory influenza vaccination of school children in 1987.

Same mechanism, different allergen:
Kuno-Sakai H, Kimura M. Removal of gelatin from live vaccines and DTaP-an ultimate solution for vaccine-related gelatin allergy.Biologicals 2003;31:245-9.

Further research:
Summary:
Childhood Immune Disorder Risk Map per the Richet Allergy Model

Details:
https://foodallergycauses.wordpress.com/

novalox,

Ingesting something is not the same as injecting the same thing.
Vaccine makers make the same mistake. Various food proteins in vaccines contribute to the food allergy epidemic.

JGC,

Ingesting something is not the same as injecting the same thing.
Vaccine makers make the same mistake. Various food proteins in vaccines contribute to the food allergy epidemic.

I asked the FDA if they have determined a safe level of these allergen proteins that can be present in vaccines. Their response:

“There is not, as you describe it, an FDA determined safe amount of a potentially allergenic ingredient contained in a vaccine. The FDA reviews vaccine composition in its entirety to ensure the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.”

So no research has been performed on the effect of multiple vaccines with multiple adjuvants, multiple allergens being administered simultaneously. The amount of allergens in vaccines is unregulated an no safe limit has been established or enforced.

JGC,

"First point: vaccines do not neceesarily contain live attentuated"
Well, live attenuated influenza vaccines (LAIV) do indeed contain live attenuated viruses.

i couldn't take you serious after I read, "the flu shot is not dangerous". Seriously do you read any of the facts before you write your myopic arguments?

Orac is afraid of the science here? My posts are being deleted!
https://foodallergycauses.wordpress.com/

Todd. W and Mark,

Tropomyosin is present in the brain, intestine and muscles.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17949819

Charles Richet demonstrated a 100 years ago that any protein injected into the body will result in sensitization. Subsequent exposure to the same protein will cause anaphylaxis.What if the protein is your own muscle protein torn off and injected by the intramuscular vaccine shot?
We also know that many vaccines contain aluminum compounds as adjuvants that increase the immunogenicity of the injected protein. So could one develop autoimmunity to tropomyosin? Result could be autism and/or ulcerative colitis.

Das, KM; Dasgupta, A; Mandal, A; Geng, X (1993). “Autoimmunity to cytoskeletal protein tropomyosin. A clue to the pathogenetic mechanism for ulcerative colitis”. J Immunol 150 (6): 2487–2493. PMID 8450225.

Many ASD kids also suffer ulcerative colitis.
So a mechanism for causal relationship between ASD and vaccines does exist.

Destefano et. al, have left out a big variable in this study - c-section births.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=23545349

C-section birth prime for IgE development by a factor of 5.
http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749%2812%2903130-2/fulltext

This could be an important detail if ASD is caused by tropomyosin autoimmunity. It is also easy to confirm? Tropomyosin IgE should be testable in ASD patients?

Slightly off topic perhaps but I recently learned of a new *ahem* sciency explanation of why vaccines are the evil.
You see, microbes and viruses share genetic material all the time so even when giving an inactivated vaccine the normal flora soak up all the vaccine genetic material and some of them turn into the disease the vaccine supposedly prevents. See, make perfect sense.
I don't spend the time trolling the underworld of quackery some do so I don't know how common this one is and I only read this one for the first time a few weeks back. But for some reason, perhaps related to the idea being bat shit crazy, I fear it will become common.
Beware the zombie infections rising from the dead!

The thing about science is that it should speak for itself. If it proves something true, great! If new findings disproves the previous findings then great! Keep going. Blogs like this promote fraudulent science.

Orac is afraid of the science here? My posts are being deleted!

No, Posts by people who have never commented here before go into automatic moderation. Once I approve them, new commenters can comment freely, with minor restrictions that various filters will occasionally catch and send to moderation (profanity or too many links, for example). You're just lucky I decided to go through one last round of moderating comments before I went to bed.

It's too late and I'm too tired now to take a detailed look at your website but the quick run through I gave it is not impressive.

It is so cute when the Dunning-Kruger crowd shows up and tries to talk down to people with science educations.

You are still not giving both sides.

And you are cherry picking.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/one-flu-into-the-cuckoos-nest/

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/random-flu-thoughts/

i couldn’t take you serious after I read, “the flu shot is not dangerous”. Seriously do you read any of the facts before you write your myopic arguments?

That's OK. I couldn't take you seriously when it became clear that you think the flu vaccine is dangerous and didn't bother to cite relevant scientific literature.

I wasn’t able to follow your link, but GBS is certainly acknowledged to be an adverse reaction to vaccines.

Newer research indicates that the risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome is higher after getting the flu than it is after vaccination against seasonal influenza:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24524517
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23810252
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24585755

Argument by package insert again, which, as I explained, is largely meaningless, because package inserts are mainly legal, not medical documents that include every adverse event observed after a vaccine, whether there is good evidence for a causative link to the vaccine or not. In the case of GB syndrome, there is not. Indeed, flu vaccination appears to be protective against GB syndrome compared to getting the flu, as the studies I cited indicate.

Well, there’s this.

If that is indeed the source of the influx of Dunning-Kruger types, it's depressing, because it indicates massive traffic to that page, given that only a small fraction of readers of a Facebook page with a link will actually click on the link.

@Orac: I noticed that someone also posted a link to this post on Bob Sears' Facebook page when he started spouting nonsense. I would surmise that your minions have simply been busy today, but that wouldn't explain why the traffic seems to be coming from one particular Facebook page. I'm not sure which is more depressing, though, as a possible explanation, Mike Adams or Bob Sears,

Polysorbate 80 manufacturers use a variety of vegetable oils that could include peanut oil. It is therefore not possible to rule out the presence of peanut oil in vaccine.

Now, there's a level of desperation I haven't encountered before.

Oh maaaan. I went to Facebook to see who has more followers, Mike Adams or Bob Sears, and it turns out they're about equal at 30 some odd thousand, which is bad enough. But "Natural News" has 1.5 million likes. That is truly depressing.

I mean, hey, "Natural News," that sounds all nice and crunchy, right? ...

I'm guessing the influx is probably mostly from NaturalNews.com, which is indeed depressing.

I’m not sure which is more depressing, though, as a possible explanation, Mike Adams or Bob Sears,

It's all good. As what would a few days ago been called a good man once said "Be careful, you might learn something".

A few of the anti-vaxers might learn something. Probably not the ones who post their knee-jerk reactions, but a few of the others who follow the link.

Hey, it could happen....

"82% of the circulating strains right now are H3N2. This year’s vaccine is only a good match for 48% of those H3N2 strains. That’s makes up 39% of the total strains. Add to that the 18% of the total strains that not H3N2 and thus still a good match, and you have 57%. Or am I missing something here?"

This originally confused me when I first read it so I hit up Flu Watch to work it out for myself.

From 10/01/14 through 11/29/14 CDC had characterized 132 influenza viruses, 115 influenza A and 17 influenza B.

Of the 115 influenza A viruses, 1 was an A/California/2009 (H1N1)pdm09-like virus while the remaining 114 were H3N2 viruses; 48 of the A(H3N2) viruses were A/Texas/50/2012-like.

Of the 17 influenza B viruses identified, 10 were characterized as B/Massachusetts/2/2012-like.

So... of the 132 viruses tested so far 59 [1 A(H1N1), 48 A(H3N2), and 10 B] have been from strains covered by the trivalent influenza vaccine, giving us an overall "match" of 44.7%.

Based on the last week, this is gonna be a fun season... :/

Narad,
"Now, there’s a level of desperation I haven’t encountered before"

The fact is Polysorbate 80 contents are unregulated. Do you have data to counter it?

You can have Polysorbate 80 (Tween 80) with Kosher certified tapioca, in your vaccine if you want:
http://www.crodahealthcare.com/home.aspx?view=dtl&d=content&s=149&r=346…

The fact is Polysorbate 80 contents are unregulated. Do you have data to counter it?

I have a better idea: Let's play "How Mr. Allergen Gets into Polysorbate 80"!

Start by explaining how the oleic acid is produced.

"Start by explaining how the oleic acid is produced."

From vegetable oils.

Charles Richet demonstrated a 100 years ago that any protein injected into the body will result in sensitization. Subsequent exposure to the same protein will cause anaphylaxis.

I guess there are a lot of dead IVIG hobbyists yet to come to light.

“Start by explaining how the oleic acid is produced.”

From vegetable oils.

Please pay attention to the word in boldface this time.

novalox and JGC,

"the dose makes the poison"
I agree. Now can someone explain why the FDA does not seem to understand it? If the dose makes the poison, surely the amount of allergens present is vaccines should be tightly regulated?

I asked the FDA if they have determined a safe level of allergen proteins that can be present in vaccines. Their response:

No limits, no specifications, no enforcement for allergens in vaccines.

If there are no studies to determine safe levels for allergens in vaccines, the FDA also cannot quantify the risk involved with vaccinations. If risk has not been quantified, then the FDA's claim that the "benefits of vaccines outweigh the risks" appears to be bogus.

"I guess there are a lot of dead IVIG hobbyists yet to come to light."

We are talking about vaccinating healthy individuals. Not people with immune deficiencies.

I asked the FDA if they have determined a safe level of allergen proteins that can be present in vaccines. Their response:

“There is not, as you describe it, an FDA determined safe amount of a potentially allergenic ingredient contained in a vaccine. The FDA reviews vaccine composition in its entirety to ensure the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.”

No limits, no specifications, no enforcement for allergens in vaccines.

Perhaps you misread the charity embedded in their response.

“Start by explaining how the oleic acid is produced.”

The end product is what matters.

Here at http://www.polysorbate.jp/
"number one quality product in the world among Polysorbate80s."

features "Low Allergic Reaction (Low Degranulation)".
So what do you expect from the rest of the Polysorbate 80s?
It not only contains allergens, it contained enough to elicit allergic reactions in mammals.

“Start by explaining how the oleic acid is produced.”

The end product is what matters.

No, the laughably absurd persistence from field to end product of some unspecified peanut allergen is "what matters." I take it that this has never occurred to you before, given this boner:

“number one quality product in the world among Polysorbate80s.”

features “Low Allergic Reaction (Low Degranulation)”.
So what do you expect from the rest of the Polysorbate 80s?

Yes, in the face of straightforward questions, you've collapsed into grasping at Engrish. I would ask you to explain what the appositive "degranulation" is doing there and then explain what the fυck you imagine it has to do with peanuts, but that's why I started where I did.

So do get back to square one.

You are still not giving both sides.

Someone is complaining about the lack of cow-pie in their apple pie. Conceivably they have come to the wrong restaurant.

Charles Richet demonstrated a 100 years ago that any protein injected into the body will result in sensitization.

Ding!

Okey-dokey, that's done. It's a player piano.

I must admit, I was impressed by APV's argument back at #82 that manufacturers of polysorbate-80 also work with vegetable oils therefore products containing polysorbate-80 also contain peanut oil (children's ice-cream, Mandrake!). It is akin to arguing that cats must have scales because

He who made kittens put snakes in the grass

(No charge for the Jethro Tull earworm).

@Narad

that’s done. It’s a player piano.

I would have gone for a scratched vinyl record.

The text at the link is amusing. Listing everything which can go wrong, and overinflating the risks. And downplaying the benefits.
Given the number of needle punctures I got, I wonder why I'm not dead yet.

No, seriously:

Intranasal: the risk is injecting live viruses on to your olfactory nerve that is millimeters away from your brain.

That's why we are secreting copious amount of mucus up there. So don't use a neti pot before vaccinating, dummy.

You may also consider stopping breathing. You may accidentally inhale some wild viruses and deposit them directly onto your olfactory nerve, courtesy of the guy who sneezed and filled the air with viral particles 5 minutes ago.

Also, stay deep underground in a NBC-proof bunker. If you step outside, you may be stuck by a meteorite. A very rare event, but one is never cautious enough.

“I guess there are a lot of dead IVIG hobbyists yet to come to light.”

We are talking about vaccinating healthy individuals. Not people with immune deficiencies.

Go back to #108, reread your own words, and then try to figure out why the first paragraph of the link isn't the reason for its presence.

Given the number of needle punctures I got, I wonder why I’m not dead yet.

Ah, yes, I forgot about allergy immunotherapy, which of course causes anaphylaxis week in and week out. The whole thing is so brain-dead that I'll kick myself for the waste of time in the morning:

What if the protein is your own muscle protein torn off and injected by the intramuscular vaccine shot?

I see the same material is spammed verbatim at scienceforums (from 'Vinucube'); at Centerforinquiry (from APV); at a peanut allergy site (as Vinucube again); and at
h_ps://foodallergycauses.wordpress.com/ (from a year ago).

APV / Vinucube has not shown any sign yet of interest in non-confirming arguments or evidence but such is the nature of obsessive reasoning.

What if the protein is your own muscle protein torn off

You mean, like every feckin' time I exercise, or am beaten around the head and shoulders by people I was mouthing off at?

Karl Baba,

You are still not giving both sides. Not everyone getting a vaccine is the same, but even mainstream peer-reviewed medicine has demonstrated that the flu vaccine does not save lives in the elderly who die from flu the most

That isn't quite true. It's hard teasing out the effects of the influenza vaccine, especially in the elderly who have multiple causes of death. This one study found that the effects on the elderly are less than those found in other studies, such as the Dutch cohort study they mention that, "found a 24% reduction in annual mortality risk associated with revaccination of elderly people".

The study you cite points out that many elderly people have natural immunity to influenza viruses they were exposed to when younger, but acknowledges that, "if high vaccination coverage had been achieved during the 1968 pandemic and the following decade, many of the approximately 130,000 influenza-related deaths that occurred in this period among people aged 45 to 74 years might have been prevented".

I suspect they are correct in their conclusion that the effects of the influenza vaccine in the elderly has been exaggerated, but that doesn't mean the vaccine is useless, far from it. The lesson seems to be that people of all ages should get the influenza vaccine. Having tens or hundreds of thousands of people die so that the survivors are immune to some influenza viruses when they are older doesn't seem a very effective public health measure to me. That's why I get the influenza vaccine every year.

For an excellent discussion of influenza vaccine efficacy by an infectious disease specialist see this Science Based Medicine post.

@ herr doktor bimler

"What if the protein is your own muscle protein torn off"

You mean, like every feckin’ time I exercise, or am beaten around the head and shoulders by people I was mouthing off at?

Other categories of people at risk of sudden allergy by punctured muscles:
Rose gardeners, urchin fishers, hedgehog fans, fakirs, realistic swashbuckling re-enacters, people around the circus guy with the knife-throwing act, and acupuncturists' customers.

(although, all joking aside, some plants like poison ivy (I think?) and some sea critters can indeed increase your chance of a bad immune reaction - but it's because of some nasty molecules injected into your wounds, not because of "torn muscle protein")

@Pamela

"I am an RN-always trusted blindly that vaccines are wonderful and safe..."

That was your first mistake, ma'am. Never trust anything blindly, nor believe that something is safe. Everything in the known universe is not 100% safe nor 100% efficient not 100% efficacious. They really should have gone through basic biology and immunology in nursing school with you. I suggest you ask for a refresher or your money back.

"I started to have some concerns after the HPV was forcefully offered to my daughter after every visit and started to read studies and look at adverse reactions which concerned me."

Can you cite those studies about adverse reactions? I'd like to read them as well. All I've read is that adverse reactions are small in proportion and minimal in intensity. No deaths. No uteri falling out of women, as some anti-vaxxers have stated.

"I’ve had the flu once (not clinically diagnosed) and had two flu vaccines in my almost 50 years."

Look up "recall bias". You've had it more than once, I guarantee it.

"...was surprised to note that two of my patients last year had documented adverse reactions to vaccines that resulted in chronic demyelinating polyneuropathy; one of these cases was attributed to a 2001 flu vaccine."

Wow! That's pretty good epidemiological work. They tracked a very rare reaction to to a vaccine given 12 years earlier? I'm impressed. Can you tell us the VAERS record numbers so we can learn more. I'm sure your institution does its due diligence and reports these things to VAERS so that we epidemiologists can look into them.

"Yet, 800 kids in Europe developed narcolepsy after receiving Pandemrix H1N1 in 2009."

And subsequent investigation on the matter showed that they were genetically susceptible to narcolepsy through immunization or infection. In essence, they got narcolepsy from the vaccine that they would have gotten from the disease, only without, you know, the disease.

"Just to note: the vaccine given by my organization last year didn’t seem to offer much protection either. Most of the cultured patients had a strain of 2009 H1N1 which was in the vaccine."

"Seem"? What is the actual data, given as you know what strain they had? Were they vaccinated? Which vaccine were they given? If you throw around statements of fact, it's good to back them up with facts.

"What I keep wondering is why a flu vaccine has now become close to mandatory to almost every human being over 6 months? These vaccines used to be reserved for the elderly. Why do pharmacies and grocery stores offer discounts if you get your flu shot?"

Because of dead babies. We like babies not to die from vaccine-preventable diseases. They were reserved for the elderly AND for children when they were in short supply. But we now have a lot of different manufacturers making injectable and inhaled vaccines, and even vaccines made in cell cultures (insect cells, not dead aborted fetus cells from the 1960s; sorry, PETA) for people with egg allergies.

As for the discounts, it's a good business model. If you're going to get your shot at the doctor and get nothing but a good chance at protection, why not get a good chance at protection and 50% off your cheetos? So pharmacies and grocery stores are trying to attract responsible people who do their part for herd immunity who would otherwise get their vaccines at the doctor's.

I'm serious, though, check with your nursing school. I think they sucked at teaching you biology and basic principles of causation.

I see sick children day in and day out. Believe me, I take the first flu shot from the first batch of flu vaccine my clinic gets. I had the flu ONCE, as a teen--a week's worth of being bed-ridden with 105 temps and muscle aches that made even moving my eyes excruciatingly painful. After that I started getting flu shots--and have not had the flu since.

The AV loons show their utter, burning stupid when, year after year, they proclaim that a vaccine (ok, all vaccines according to them) is worthless because it is not 100% perfect. Nothing is perfect. Nothing. https://www.facebook.com/RtAVM/photos/a.414675905269091.96547.414643305…

Mike Adams is neither an accurate reporter nor a scientist:
he is a entrepreneur who creates articles as preparatory instruction for his sales pitch. Thus he's always writing advertisement- everything he does is motivated towards making readers mistrust medicine, governments, media and professionals. AND trusting him as an informed source.

He pushes the idea that vaccines are dangerous and/ or ineffective and that 'natural immunity' is superior THEN
he instructs how that end can be achieved, listing a plethora of natural foods, supplements and activities.

He scares people about civil unrest, food shortages and natural catastrophe and then sells them survival products.

ANYONE who reads Natural News can easily find his STORE- and even within many of his articles, specific products are highlighted.

I chose a few items available from the opening page of that store;
Turmeric Liquid Gold Extract @ 24.95
Family Maximum Pandemic Protection Kit @ 99.95
Select Lion's Mane Mushroom caps @29.95
SurThrival Immortality Quest Chaga Mushroom Extract @55.00

From the section labelled 'Immunity'
Veganzyme @ 49.96
Immune Support Pack @ 99.99

All prices USD. Some prices are already discounted

Go look for yourself.
He markets himself and his products endlessly..

Mike is a salesman who manages several businesses that enrich him. A few of these are registered overseas and thus less transparent to people who would like to see how much he earns from each one. One of his earlier successes was software that created e-mail advertising.

A Johns Hopkins scientist has issued a blistering report on influenza vaccines in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). Peter Doshi, Ph.D., charges that although the vaccines are being pushed on the public in unprecedented numbers, they are less effective and cause more side effects than alleged by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Further, says Doshi, the studies that underlie the CDC’s policy of encouraging most people to get a yearly flu shot are often low quality studies that do not substantiate the official claims.
Promoting influenza vaccines is one of the most visible and aggressive public health policies in the United States, says Doshi of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Drug companies and public officials press for widespread vaccination each fall, offering vaccinations in drugstores and supermarkets. The results have been phenomenal. Only 20 years ago, 32 million doses of influenza vaccine were available in the United States on an annual basis. Today, the total has skyrocketed to 135 million doses.
- See more at: http://yournewswire.com/johns-hopkins-scientist-reveals-shocking-report…
“The vaccine may be less beneficial and less safe than has been claimed, and the threat of influenza seems to be overstated,” Doshi says. Mandatory vaccination polices have been enacted, often in healthcare facilities, forcing some people to take the vaccine under threat of losing their jobs.
The main assertion of the CDC that fuels the push for flu vaccines each year is that influenza comes with a risk of serious complications which can cause death, especially in senior citizens and those suffering from chronic illnesses. That’s not the case, said Doshi.
When read carefully, the CDC acknowledges that studies finding any perceived reduction in death rates may be due to the “healthy-user effect” — the tendency for healthier people to be vaccinated more than less-healthy people. The only randomized trial of influenza vaccine in older people found no decrease in deaths. “This means that influenza vaccines are approved for use in older people despite any clinical trials demonstrating a reduction in serious outcomes,” says Doshi.
Even when the vaccine is closely matched to the type of influenza that’s prevalent, which doesn’t happen every year, randomized, controlled trials of healthy adults found that vaccinating between 33 and 100 people resulted in one less case of influenza. In addition, says Doshi, no evidence exists to show that this reduction in the risk of influenza for a specific population — here in the United States, among healthy adults, for example — extrapolates into any reduced risk of serious complications from influenza, such as hospitalizations or deaths, among seniors.
“For most people, and possibly most doctors, officials need only claim that vaccines save lives, and it is assumed there must be solid research behind it,” says Doshi. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, he says.
Although the CDC implies that flu vaccines are safe and there’s no need to weigh benefits against risk, Doshi disagrees. He points to an Australian study that found one in every 110 children under the age of five had convulsions following vaccinations in 2009 for H1N1 influenza. Additional investigations found that the H1N1 vaccine was also associated with a spike in cases of narcolepsy among adolescents.
Doshi’s concerns echo those of Dr. Russell Blaylock, a neurosurgeon and author of “The Blaylock Wellness Report” who has deep concerns over the safety and efficacy of the flu vaccine.
Not only is the vaccine not safe, Dr. Blaylock tells Newsmax Health, it doesn’t even work. “The vaccine is completely worthless, and the government knows it,” he says. “There are three reasons the government tells the elderly why they should get flu shots: secondary pneumonia, hospitalization, and death. Yet a study by the Cochrane group studied hundreds of thousands of people and found it offered zero protection for those three things in the general community. It offered people in nursing homes some immunity against the flu — at best one-third — but that was only if they picked the right vaccine.”
A study released in February found that the flu shot was only 9 percent effective in protecting seniors against the 2012-2013 season’s most virulent influenza bug.
What’s even worse is that small children who are given the flu vaccine get no protection from the disease. “The government also says that every baby over the age of six months should have a vaccine, and they know it contains a dose of mercury that is toxic to the brain,” says Dr. Blaylock. “They also know the studies have shown that the flu vaccine has zero — zero — effectiveness in children under five.”
For most people, says Dr. Blaylock, flu vaccines don’t prevent the flu but actually increase the odds of getting it. The mercury contained in vaccines is such a strong immune depressant that a flu shot suppresses immunity for several weeks. “This makes people highly susceptible to catching the flu,” he says. “They may even think the vaccine gave them the flu, but that’s not true — it depressed their immune system and then they caught the flu.”
Mercury overstimulates the brain for several years, says Dr. Blaylock, and that activation is the cause of Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases. One study found that those who get the flu vaccine for three to five years increase their risk of Alzheimer’s disease 10-fold.
Doshi asserts that influenza is a case of “disease mongering” in an effort to expand markets. He points to the fact that deaths from flu declined sharply during the middle of the 20th century, long before the huge vaccine campaigns that kicked off the 21st century.
Why do drug companies push the flu vaccine? “It’s all about money,” says Dr. Blaylock. “Vaccines are a pharmaceutical company’s dream. They have a product that both the government and the media will help them sell, and since vaccines are protected, they can’t be sued if anyone has a complication.”
Doshi’s article “is a breath of fresh air,” says Dr. Blaylock. “This article exposes in well-defined and articulate terms what has been known for a long time — the flu vaccine promotion is a fraud.
“Here’s the bottom line,” says Dr. Blaylock. “The vast number of people who get the flu vaccine aren’t going to get any benefit, but they get all of the risks and complications.”

@Chris Hickie #128

Just out of curiosity, should immunocompromised children be kept away from all the dirty little LAIVed ones should they pay your office a visit??

Before swallowing Doshi's claims whole, it might be helpful to read this recent article:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2014/11/03/shocking-report-o…

"Doshi’s concerns echo those of Dr. Russell Blaylock, a neurosurgeon and author of “The Blaylock Wellness Report” who has deep concerns over the safety and efficacy of the flu vaccine."

Russell Blaylock - now _there's_ an impeccable source. His "deep concerns" also extend to dire warnings about aspartame, water fluoridation and amalgam fillings. According to the Encylopedia of American Loons, Blaylock "has also suggested that the H1N1 virus may even be man-made and purposely released by someone with the ”Illuminati Depopulation Agenda”".

http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2013/04/505-russell-blaylock.html

Wonder if Doshi appreciates having a nutbar like Blaylock fawning all over him.

Blaylock also has his very own page on whale.to, a sure sign of entry into the upper echelons of altie crazy.

@B.J. Mckay:

Given that no effort was required for the cut and paste per se, one might think you could have at least reproduced the identifiable paragraphs from the original.

What I keep wondering is why a flu vaccine has now become close to mandatory to almost every human being over 6 months?

I seem to have missed this, as, apparently, did vaccine manufacturers.

@Narad

I was not trying to reproduce anything I was simply re-posting an article that I read. I am therefor not agreeing with it nor denying. I was under the assumption that this might be a place that we could spread ideas. However, after reading many of the post, I have noticed that you people just like to put down those that you do not agree with. I tell you what fella, I am not a doctor nor a medical employed professional of any kind, but you nerdy bastards would say some of the things to me in person that you said to the people that commented on this post, I then would deal with you each accordingly. There is no need to put someone down just because you do not agree with their views. There are many things that I do not agree with but I read each post and attempted to learn from each. If you do not like what or how I say it please feel free to meet me somewhere and we can for sure discuss this in person.

Ack. Doshi. A guy who's invited to speak at antivaccine crank conferences:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/crank-conferences-a-parody-of-scien…

And is basically wrong about so many things:

http://thepoxesblog.wordpress.com/2014/10/24/just-in-time-for-halloween…

http://thepoxesblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/non-epidemiologist-tries-t…

http://thepoxesblog.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/science-and-reality-and-ai…

@apv, bj

Hmm, so where are your citations, since you are bringing up the assertions. It's in your court to show evidence for them after all.

Also, have you even read the title of the blog? If you are going to get butthurt from your views being challenged, you either find evidence to support your assertions, or don't post at all. Whining and complaining about your feelings being hurt just makes you look like you have no evidence for your assertions and makes you come out as having misplaced view in the least, a liar at the worse.

So, what's it going to be?

I was not trying to reproduce anything I was simply re-posting an article that I read.

I take it that identifying internal contradictions is not your strong suit.

I am therefor not agreeing with it nor denying.

Uh-huh. I guess it was also too much trouble to mention this after exhausting yourself with a cut and paste.

I was under the assumption that this might be a place that we could spread ideas spam Blaylock press releases.

FTFY.

I tell you what fella, I am not a doctor nor a medical employed professional of any kind, but you nerdy bastards would say some of the things to me in person that you said to the people that commented on this post, I then would deal with you each accordingly.

Oh, look an Internet Tough Guy.

There are many things that I do not agree with but I read each post and attempted to learn from each.

Just a few sentences ago, you had read "many of the post." One might suspect that what in fact happened is that you just wandered in and plopped down your Blaylock spam.

If you do not like what or how I say it please feel free to meet me somewhere and we can for sure discuss this in person.

What's your address? Do I get to meet Bear?

I was not trying to reproduce anything I was simply re-posting an article that I read. I am therefor not agreeing with it nor denying.

As George Burns said: "Sincerity. Once you can fake it, you've got it made."

Too bad for you.

Actually one of the foremost vaccine researchers in the WORLD--Dr. Jefferson--has stated that there is NO PROOF that the Flu vaccines work. I guess you could go up against HIM?

Do Flu Vaccines Really Work? A Skeptic's View
http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1967306,00.html

" On Feb. 16, the Cochrane Library published your updated review of all major studies on the efficacy of flu vaccines for the elderly, some of the results of which you believe to be preposterous. Can you explain?
We looked at studies on vaccines in the elderly and in health care workers who work with the elderly, and we found an implausible sequence of results. We have studies that claim up to 90% effectiveness against death from all causes [in inoculated patients compared with the nonvaccinated]. If you were to believe that evidence, you would believe that flu vaccine is effective against death not only from influenza, but also from heart attack, stroke, hypothermia, accidents and all other common causes of death among the elderly. That is quite clearly nonsense.

This is not to say that these and other studies, taken together, suggest that vaccines don't work for the elderly. The answer is a question mark. We don't know what protection, if any, vaccines offer. I don't think that's a bad thing. Uncertainty is the motor of science. We need large studies to find out.

Why do you think such studies have not been done?
I don't know. We've known for years that we needed proof one way or the other, and governments have not taken any notice of this. It's an extraordinary situation.

One argument I've heard is that it would be unethical to compare vaccines against a placebo because you would be withholding crucial treatment from patients. Do you agree?
No. We don't know these vaccines work, so you can't make that claim. But if you really find placebos to be unethical, then why don't you randomize against masks, hand-washing, gloves, distancing — public health measures that have proven to be effective?"

So....you take it on faith. Big Pharma makes lots of money from your "faith." People get the shot and still get sick.

BTW, CIDRAP chimed in on the subject yesterday. They're not down with the lessened severity part.

"I tell you what fella, I am not a doctor nor a medical employed professional of any kind, but you nerdy bastards would say some of the things to me in person that you said to the people that commented on this post, I then would deal with you each accordingly."

Haha. Hahaha. Hahahahaha. Yeah, accordingly.

"Actually one of the foremost vaccine researchers in the WORLD–Dr. Jefferson–has stated that there is NO PROOF that the Flu vaccines work. I guess you could go up against HIM?"

He's a foremost vaccine researcher? How? And, yes, I'd go up against him any day of the week, even Sundays.

this might be a place that we could spread ideas

You know that there are these things called "blogs", where if you want to spam Blaylock's press releases spread ideas, you can copy-paste crap to your heart's content?

you nerdy bastards would say some of the things to me in person that you said to the people that commented on this post

If those other commenters are in the habit of saying stupid things in real life as well as in pseudonymous on-line fora, then no doubt they're used to other people calling them numpties and eedjits in real life too.

" Big Pharma makes lots of money from your “faith.”"

I almost forgot to ask... How much money does Big Pharma make from vaccines compared to, say, erectile dysfunction tablets? Be quantitative.

Re: Tom Jefferson

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/one-flu-into-the-cuckoos-nest/

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/01/25/cochranes-tom-jefferson-on…

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/10/26/when-methodolatry-strikes-…

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/flu-vaccine-efficacy/

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/yes-but-the-annotated-atlantic/

I tell you what fella, I am not a doctor nor a medical employed professional of any kind, but you nerdy bastards would say some of the things to me in person that you said to the people that commented on this post, I then would deal with you each accordingly.

So you'd thank them for their reasoned responses to the abject BS that people have posted here?

Somehow, I don't think that's what he meant... :-)

Most of the cultured patients had a strain of 2009 H1N1 which was in the vaccine.

I guess they get exposed while going to all those art galleries and concerts. How about the philistines?

@Helianthus #119

Dang. I was going to point out that town with the meteor-accosted lady was the birthplace of Gomer Pyle (Jim Nabors) and that she was probably sitting on the couch watching The Andy Griffith Show at the time...What would have been the odds of that?? Unfortunately, the dates don't quite work out and TAGS was aired on CBS and not NBC. The 'doctor' still looks like *Floyd*, though.

Sylacauga, Jim Nabors:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/8627

In 2004 the CDC hid data linking vaccines to increased autism in black boys (note CDC Thompson's admissions in 2014). Yet uninformed or agenda driven people continue to say it is safe. The "pro vaccine crowd at any cost" would say that the 2004 data is just an omission of relevant findings. The fact that they hid this data on behalf of big pharma troubles me. The CDC is no longer to be trusted and anyone automatically defending vaccines and flu shots, too, like this "author" who also is either misinformed or is leaving off relevant info by omission, should not be trusted. This topic is easily deflected away from anti vaccine / flu shot sentiment. When you dig DEEP into the facts you will find countless incidents of US government atrocities at the hand of big pharma or CIA or the military complex, like Tuskegee, Lyme's disease, Ebola (yes Tulane is at work again - this time in West Africa), etc. On this OLD you tube video for Vaccine newbies... Ignore the dramatic narrative and just listen to the leading guy at Merck talk about vaccines and aids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13QiSV_lrDQ People who generally question vaccines are conservative truth seekers - where people attacking the truth seekers are generally liberal and lump all of their agendas into black and white Gun control, abortion, vaccines - its all about towing the rope. I am neither. Republicans are equal to democrats in corruption and ability to improve life or the economy. But instead I am a father with children trusting neither side. Take your analysis and shove it up your asses and just rely on facts. If you are going to use history to defend vaccines, then include all history. VAccines can work, but does our government do anything correctly? So if I had to ask a question, why should we ignore the past atrocities and trust them now?

B.J. @135:

I tell you what fella, I am not a doctor nor a medical employed professional of any kind, but you nerdy bastards would say some of the things to me in person that you said to the people that commented on this post, I then would deal with you each accordingly.

Well, I'll tell you what, fella: I'm not a doctor or a medical professional, either. But when it comes to medical information that can make the difference between life and death, or between widespread suffering and a lessened amount of widespread suffering, do you know who I look to? That's right: doctors and medical professionals. Credible ones.

You seem to be getting your information from one Russell Blaylock. Now, I can see how you might think that he's a reliable source, given that he's an MD and a retired neurosurgeon, and even introduced a new treatment for brain tumors at some point in the past.

Even a quick perusal of the Wikipedia page on the guy, though, raises some red flags. There doesn't seem to be a conspiracy theory he doesn't like, from "death panels" to the bizarre idea that the Soviet Union tried to induce "collectivism" in the American public by introducing various illegal drugs and sexually transmitted diseases. Even if the Soviet Union had tried to do something like that, which it didn't, I'm unclear on how exactly AIDS, the clap, cocaine and heroin would induce "collectivism" in a population. (Maybe by sapping and impurifying our precious bodily fluids?) Somebody who believe such patently absurd things, and isn't above going on the Alex Jones show to spread his BS is hardly a credible source, as far as I can tell, and as you can see by the copious amount of links above.

Actually, what makes me really angry about people like Blaylock, Doshi, and Jefferson et al., is that they use their credentials and a lot of "science-y" sounding language to misinform the layman. Whats' more, they should know better, which means they've either gone off the deep end, or they're so cynical as to put their own ideologies and pet theories above the actual lives and well-being of other human beings.

And as far as the tough guy act, I'm not intimidated, and I doubt anybody else here is. I may be a little "nerdy" myself, but I ain't too many steps from the trailer, if you know what I'm sayin', and I'm no stranger to bullies' bravado.

Urgh, blockquote fail.

herr doktor bimler,

About #118, Polysorbate 80 manufacturers use vegetable oil in the manufacture of the product. They don't just work with it.
As I wrote in #113, the allergen is still present in the Polysorbate 80.

They use maize and wheat to make Polysorbate 80 here:
http://www.emdmillipore.com/US/en/product/Tween%C2%AE-80-%28Polysorbate…

Hellanthus,

About #119

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/rare-infection-prompts-neti-po…

The more stuff you put in your nose, the more likely that you are going to have a problem. With asthma and allergy so common, many people also use inhaled corticosteroids which suppress immune function in the nostrils.

Narad,

About #122, allergy immunotherapy can cause anaphylaxis.
http://www.uptodate.com/contents/anaphylaxis-induced-by-subcutaneous-al…

You have to understand that it takes very little allergen to cause sensitization, but a lot more allergen to elicit an allergic reaction.

DTaP followed by DTaP produced no anaphylaxis.
DTaP followed by MMR produced anaphylaxis.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9949325

Bottom line, food proteins in vaccines cause food allergy in healthy non-allergic individuals.

Well now here's the thing. Why should I have myself injected with a foreign substance that most of the time works somewhat but never perfectly, that on a whim, a power broker can add a chemical/ingredient that will render a small (OR LARGE IF THEY LIKE) but significant part of the population either sterile, sick, give them cancer, or autism or whatever the power broker cares to insert. Agenda 21 is not a nutcase fantasy. Most who work in the industry have no clue as information is need to know and compartmentalized so most think they are doing good....probably just like the writer of the article. If I take the shot, I'm taking a chance it might help...AND taking a chance this is the time "they" add the one ingredient that will affect me in a way I did not sign up for. The writer of the article cannot declare vaccines 100% safe....that would be a bald faced and ridiculous lie. On the other hand, I can refuse the pressure of making big phama a few bucks more on top of their billions and just wait and see if I actually get the flu which is rarely fatal and since the advent of intraveinous fluid replacement and fluid modulation capability via lasix and other diuretics hardly a worry because at most it's a couple days in the hospital. That's the likely worst case scenario. I will chance that because I have the added bonus of peace of mind....which is priceless.

herr doktor bimler,

About #124, yes if you tear your muscle, in theory there is a small probability that you could sensitize yourself to tropomyosin.
With intramuscular vaccines/injections, you not only tear muscle, but you also have viral/bacterial proteins and adjuvants injected at the same time. When you increase immune response by such an action, the probability of sensitization goes way up. Then, we repeat it 40 times over a few years for a kid.

Rene Najera,

About #127,

Since you are en epidemiologist, I think you should demand that FDA add a warning in the package insert stating "Vaccines may cause the development of food allergy".

As I wrote in #83, vaccines have been shown to cause development of food allergies in healthy non-allergic patients due to food proteins present in them.
Today when doctors diagnose food allergy they don't suspect a vaccine may be involved and therefore DO NOT report it to the VAERS. This is a vicious circle. You epidemiologists don't see the data in VAERS, you dissociate vaccines/food allergies which means even fewer doctors report, etc.

Then, we repeat it 40 times over a few years for a kid.

40 separate injections? ORLY?

You'd think that the epidemic of tropomyosin auto-immunity among acupuncture patients would have been noticed by now.

I see Mike Adams' fans are not only too lazy to click on the link under the title and after the words "Posted by", they are too lazy to put the name of their authority of choice in the search box located to the right of the title.

If they had bothered the could have found out how well names like Blaylock, Jefferson and Doshi would be considered. Not much. Do try it for other names like "Mercola", "Fisher", "Blaxill", etc. And only post their screed after you have read the resulting links.

APV: "DTaP followed by MMR produced anaphylaxis."

Try actually reading the link you provided. They were "monovalent measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines containing 0.2% gelatin as stabilizer"... and it was in Japan. It has nothing to do with the trivalent MMR used in the USA. Japan had a different MMR vaccine.

Oh, and you should also try putting Polysorbate 80 in the search box to the right of the article title.

Now the next link that all of you should now provide is the PubMed indexed studies by reputable, qualified researchers that show any influenza vaccine approved for use in the USA causes more harm than the actual disease. A disease that kills about a hundred kids per year in the USA, and has already killed five children this season.

As I wrote in #113, the allergen is still present in the Polysorbate 80.

They use maize and wheat to make Polysorbate 80 here:

No it isn't present. Maize and wheat aren't even present in the final product. Why doesn't your hero Mikey DeRanger buy a bottle and test it for allergens; it shouldn't be hard for such an accomplished scientist.

With intramuscular vaccines/injections, you not only tear muscle, but you also have viral/bacterial proteins and adjuvants injected at the same time. When you increase immune response by such an action, the probability of sensitization goes way up. Then, we repeat it 40 times over a few years for a kid.

Riiight and this just happens all the damn time. How pathetic.

About #122, allergy immunotherapy can cause anaphylaxis

Allow me to refresh your memory:

Charles Richet demonstrated a 100 years ago that any protein injected into the body will result in sensitization. Subsequent exposure to the same protein will cause anaphylaxis.

As I wrote in #113, the allergen is still present in the Polysorbate 80.

No, you desperately barfed up something completely fυcking irrelevant. You have no fυcking idea how polyoxyethylene sorbitan esters are manufactured or how the fυck an allergen is supposed to survive this, much less in any discernible quantity, and you don't give a shіt because you're a fυcking moron who has so little going on between your ears that all you can do is repeat the same shіt over and over again.

Go back to the fυcking Poughkeepsie that is scienceforums-dot-net.

On the other hand, I can refuse the pressure of making big phama a few bucks more on top of their billions and just wait and see if I actually get the flu which is rarely fatal and since the advent of intraveinous fluid replacement and fluid modulation capability via lasix and other diuretics hardly a worry because at most it’s a couple days in the hospital.

I guess you haven't figured out that that's where the "power brokers" really have a field day.

When you dig DEEP into the facts you will find countless incidents of US government atrocities at the hand of big pharma or CIA or the military complex, like Tuskegee, Lyme’s disease, Ebola (yes Tulane is at work again – this time in West Africa), etc.

P.S. I am not a crank.

its all about towing the rope
What fresh illiteracy is this?

Lyme's disease is made by the CIA now? The plot thickens.

I can imagine men in black gathering around very small cages, watching over ticks, fleas and other bugs. Must be fun.

Re: intraveinous fluid replacement.
So people are mistrusting what Big Pharma is putting in 1-ml vaccines, but will hook up on a 1-liter bag of IV fluid made by the same companies without a second thought?

@Coleman Anderson

"Agenda 21 is not a nutcase fantasy."

Says the nutcase with a fantasy.

"The writer of the article cannot declare vaccines 100% safe….that would be a bald faced and ridiculous lie. "

No one worth their salt when it comes to credibility and scientific accuracy will ever declare vaccines 100% safe. Do you want to know why? Because nothing in the known universe is 100% safe, not even that mole on your back.

"On the other hand, I can refuse the pressure of making big phama a few bucks more on top of their billions and just wait and see if I actually get the flu which is rarely fatal and since the advent of intraveinous fluid replacement and fluid modulation capability via lasix and other diuretics hardly a worry because at most it’s a couple days in the hospital."

Yeah, tell that to the thousands who die from it each year. Stupid people, they should have gotten lasix.

Mick Carlotta: "In 2004 the CDC hid data linking vaccines to increased autism in black boys (note CDC Thompson’s admissions in 2014)."

Do you really not know how to use a search engine, even one that is in the box at the top of this page? Here, let me help you:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/?s=thompson

Coleman Adamson: "The writer of the article cannot declare vaccines 100% safe….that would be a bald faced and ridiculous lie."

Please give the direct quote from the above article where that is claimed. Also look up "Nirvana Fallacy."

"On the other hand, I can refuse the pressure of making big phama a few bucks more on top of their billions and just wait and see if I actually get the flu which is rarely fatal and since the advent of intraveinous fluid replacement and fluid modulation capability via lasix and other diuretics hardly a worry because at most it’s a couple days in the hospital."

So you think "intraveinous fluid replacement and fluid modulation capability via lasix and other diuretics" do not provide Big Pharma profits.

I went to my local pharmacy where the flu vaccine costs about $30. Now in front of me is the bill from the three day hospital stay for my son a almost three years old. It is about $10000. You really need to convince me that treating influenza is more cost effective than preventing it.

From APV

many people also use inhaled corticosteroids which suppress immune function in the nostrils.

I'm not a doctor so I could be way off, but it seems to me that, if you are taking immunosuppressant drugs, that may not be the right time to get a vaccine.
Not necessarily because the vaccine will create troubles, but simply because it will be much less likely to work.

@APV

"Since you are en epidemiologist, I think you should demand that FDA add a warning in the package insert stating “Vaccines may cause the development of food allergy”."

So does, you know, food. Should we label everything that may cause the development of a food allergy? Because that's a lot of labels. Or should we label not what "may" but what "does"?

"As I wrote in #83, vaccines have been shown to cause development of food allergies in healthy non-allergic patients due to food proteins present in them."

Citation, please?

"Today when doctors diagnose food allergy they don’t suspect a vaccine may be involved and therefore DO NOT report it to the VAERS."

Much in the same way that they don't suspect owls bathed in chocolate of causing the food allergy. Does this mean that owls bathed in chocolate cause food allergies but we're ignoring that?

"You epidemiologists don’t see the data in VAERS, you dissociate vaccines/food allergies which means even fewer doctors report, etc."

Hahahaha. Hahahahaha. He thinks he knows what we do.

He thinks he's people.

As I wrote in #113, the allergen is still present in the Polysorbate 80.

The claim might be more credible if APV had specified which allergen was meant (rather than tergiversating and moving the goalposts back and forth between peanut oil -- cue the scary Twilight-Zone music! -- and wheat / maize raw materials). Not *much* more credible, but it's worth a try.

But then when you check comment #113, it turns out that the only support APV provides for the allergens-in-Polysorbate campfire tale is a link to a Japanese supplier's advertisement which emphasises the lack of allergic response to the product.
WTF?

So the drug companies, the WHO and CDC knew in March that the vaccine would likely not be that effective but continued to roll it out and sell it anyways because they started production in February...seems pretty ethical

Agenda 21 is not a nutcase fantasy
I am disappointed by Coleman Adamson's failure to go into more detail about the New World Order, MK-ULTRA, and Bill Gates' plan to depopulate the world.

When you dig DEEP into the facts you will find countless incidents of US government atrocities at the hand of big pharma or CIA or the military complex

Mick Carlotta is also an expert on voices in the head.

A dose of Fluarix Quadrivalent vaccine contains less than 0.55 milligrams of Polysorbate 80. A litre of Polysorbate 80, at about 1075 grams, would be sufficient for about 1.95 million doses, a 20 litre pail sufficient for 39.9 million doses. If the Polysorbate 80 cost ten thousand dollars per litre to manufacture, it would contribute about 512 millicents cost per dose of vaccine. $10K/L seems like it would be enough to be fairly rigorous in refining the oil feedstock to be sure it was free of allergens, especially considering that ordinary refined peanut oil from the grocery store is generally considered to be allergen free.

WTF?

It doesn't understand that this (PDF) was written by nonnative English speakers, and it's too dense or dishonest to realize that it takes about 30 seconds to get a clue.

But, I want vaccines without any Tandy Corp. PS-80 in it...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80

herr doktor bimler,

"The claim might be more credible if APV had specified which allergen was meant"

I can't read the minds of the Polysorbate 80 manufacturers.
They could be using any of a variety of allergens.
The FDA does not require the contents of Polysorbate 80 to be listed on the package insert. I am pointing out (1) that at least maize, wheat and kosher tapioca are definitely used in the manufacture of Polysorbate 80 and (2) that even high quality Polysorbate 80 manufacturers are unable to claim an allergen-free product.

http://www.crodahealthcare.com/home.aspx?view=dtl&d=content&s=149&r=346…
http://www.emdmillipore.com/US/en/product/Tween%C2%AE-80-%28Polysorbate…

" advertisement which emphasises the lack of allergic response to the product."
Low allergic reaction is NOT "lack of allergic response".
As I have pointed out before, if you have enough allergen in Polysorbate 80/vaccine to elicit an allergic reaction, you have more than enough to cause sensitization.

DTaP followed by DTaP produced no anaphylaxis.
Sensitization but no elicitation.
DTaP followed by MMR produced anaphylaxis.
Sensitization followed by elicitation.
MMR has more gelatin than DTaP.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9949325

Bottom line, food proteins are present in vaccines and cause food allergy in healthy non-allergic individuals.

I guess comments do not get through the moderator if the exercise common sense?

Doug,

"it would be enough to be fairly rigorous in refining the oil feedstock to be sure it was free of allergens, especially considering that ordinary refined peanut oil from the grocery store is generally considered to be allergen free."

Nope. Pl. see #177. It takes only trace quantities of protein to cause sensitization.

Example: 15 mcg of viral protein produced anti-influenza IgE in 3 of 3 people (100%).
Smith-Norowitz TA, Wong D, Kusonruksa M, Norowitz KB, Joks R, Durkin HG, Bluth MH. Long Term Persistence of IgE Anti-Influenza Virus Antibodies in Pediatric and Adult Serum Post Vaccination with Influenza Virus Vaccine. Int J Med Sci 2011; 8(3):239-244. doi:10.7150/ijms.8.239. Available from http://www.medsci.org/v08p0239.htm

"I guess comments do not get through the moderator if the exercise common sense?"

Nope, they do not, as you can see.

@Chris, #60, yours is a particularly valuable post for me, thank u kindly for the references, I just read http://www.virology.ws/influenza-101/
Straight science, no BS.
Dr. Edzard Ernst & Simon Singh are amongst my favourites on the topic of sham medicine, I've read (and recommend for learning and amusement) their e-book from Amazon Trick or Treatment
http://www.amazon.com/Trick-Treatment-Undeniable-Alternative-Medicine-e…

APV,

Bottom line, food proteins in vaccines cause food allergy in healthy non-allergic individuals.

No they don't. There is a large body of good quality evidence that contradicts your claim, for example this review.

I looked at your blog, and found an embarrassing collection of cherry-picked and grossly misinterpreted studies and breathtakingly ignorant speculation about them. Here are some of the claims you made:

Vaccines work by causing allergy to viruses and bacteria

The study you posted to support this statement does not support it. People with normal levels of IgE are not allergic, and the patients in the study with elevated IgE were allergic to environmental allergens and food, as evidenced by skin sensitivity tests. There is no reason to believe the IgE to influenza was caused by the vaccine and not by exposure to wild influenza viruses, and in any case the levels are too low to be called an allergy.

But by the same token, the immune system is also sensitized and responds to even small quantities of any other protein injected along with the vaccine, when adjuvants are used.

Adjuvants are designed to increase IgG responses, not IgE responses. I can't find any good evidence that any vaccine induces allergies, and as I mentioned above, there is good evidence that they do not.

Polysorbate 80 contains vegetable oil.

No it doesn't, it is made from vegetable oils, but it doesn't contain any, any more than a piece of plastic contains crude oil. If you have evidence that polysorbate contains any proteins, please provide it as I can't find any.

When acidity in the stomach is reduced by acid reducing medications, food proteins are not broken down. They travel to the intestine intact and get absorbed into the blood stream.

Intact proteins get absorbed in the intestines? How does a huge protein molecule cross the mucosal lining of the intestinal wall? The study you cite to support this found increases in IgE in patients on long-term proton pump inhibitors, which they suggest is due to triggering of mucosal sensitization, not absorption into the blood as you claim.

Egg in the flu vaccine caused the development of egg allergy.

The study you cite to support this is a 27-year-old paper that states that there is, "a potential risk of allergic manifestation after influenza vaccination". I can't find any evidence that this is actually the case.

Example of inducing food allergy in mice:

You have grossly misunderstood the study you linked to in which different food proteins were injected into mice interperitoneally and specific IgG1 antibody serum levels measured. There is nothing there about IgE or the induction of food allergies, the aim of the study was to see if the same foods that induce allergies in humans induce large IgG responses in mice.

A typical flu shot contains 15 mcg of hemagglutinin (HA) protein per virus type and 0.5 mcg of ovalbumin protein. About 60% of US children who receive a flu shot get sensitized to the HA protein. The result is the immune system attacks HA proteins on subsequent exposure giving protection against the flu virus.

That's an IgG reaction to the influenza protein, not an IgE reaction associated with allergies..

One can expect 60/(15/0.5)=2% of those who receive the flu shot to get sensitized to the ovalbumin protein.

Even if your calculation was valid, which it isn't, you would expect people who are vaccinated against influenza to develop IgG antibodies against ovalbumin protein, not IgE and an allergy.

The result is the immune system attacks the ovalbumin protein on subsequent exposure, giving egg allergy.

No, they might develop some IgG antibodies against egg protein, but I see no evidence that 0.5 micrograms of egg protein will induce an allergy. The lowest amount of protein that can produce an allergic reaction is in the order of tens of micrograms:

The lowest observed adverse-effect levels are commonly in the range of 1-2 mg of natural foods, representing a few hundred micrograms of protein. These minimal reactive doses characterize about 1% of people allergic to milk, egg, or peanut. The level at which no observed adverse effect is seen might be a few tens of micrograms of protein for peanut.

It seems very unlikely that such a tiny amount of egg protein could make a person allergic to eggs. The vastly greater amounts of egg protein in many foods is a much more likely source of egg allergy.

Indeed the estimated prevalence of egg allergy in children in the US is ~2% of the population.

Really? Oh dear. That's milk and egg allergies, and according to your reference it's "1-2% for young children and 0.2-0.4% in the general population". Since most people lose their egg allergy by the time they reach adulthood, and plenty of adults get influenza vaccines your calculations don't seem to work out.

Polysorbate 80 is used in the laboratory to cause lung injury in sheep for research. Many vaccines contain Polysorbate 80 and can be causing lung injury in humans resulting in asthma.

From a paper on the subject, "in five sheep, lung injury was induced by lavage with 0.2% polysorbate 80 in saline". Are vaccine recipients lungs washed out with 0.2% polysorbate 80? That's 2 grams per liter, or 2,000 µg per mL. Are you really suggesting that the maximum of 100 µg polysorbate per dose of any vaccine causes lung damage when injected intramuscularly?

The immune system can be sensitized to the protein and begins attacking parts of our own body – an autoimmune disorder results.

Except that doesn't happen; there is a large amount of evidence to the contrary, see my first link above.

This study shows that unvaccinated children had zero occurrence of asthma compared to 1.8-4.6% for vaccinated children.

There were 13,359 vaccinated children and only 94 unvaccinated children aged 1-17 years in the study, so it isn't very surprising that none of the unvaccinated children aged 1-10 years were not asthmatic. The difference is not statistically significant. You seem to have missed the prevalence of asthma at 11 to 17 years which is higher in the unvaccinated 8.4% (95% confidence limits 2.8 to 22.3) than in the vaccinated 7.0% (6.2 to 7.8), though again the difference is not statistically significant. Maybe that's because these children didn't have their lungs washed out with detergent.

Based on the Richet allergy model, one would predict that the pancreatic digest in the HiB vaccine could cause autoimmunity to the pancreas, thus attacking pancreatic cells resulting in the autoimmune disorder – Type I diabetes.

Yet large epidemiological studies have found not a ghost of a hint of an association. See PMID: 12182385 (any further links will put this comment into moderation).

There's more, but I'm tired of this, and need sleep, but I think I have made my point. You don't have sufficient understanding of the subject matter to be making these alarmist claims that are contradicted by large amounts of good quality evidence. Some people may believe this nonsense and decide against having their children vaccinated as a result. I'm sure you mean well, but your obsessive fixation on vaccines as a cause of food allergies is incorrect and dangerous. I suggest you find a hobby that doesn't put children's lives at risk, or get a basic education in science in general and immunology in particular before posting any more of this garbage.

herr doktor bimler,
About #159
Yes, easily 40 separate injections.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolescent.html
Like I wrote before, acupuncture does not inject adjuvants, viral/bacterial proteins that increase immune response.
It is not risk-free, but less risk than vaccines.

Roman: "@Chris, #60, yours is a particularly valuable post for me,"

Thank you!

APV: "It is not risk-free, but less risk than vaccines."

So what exactly is the relative risk between the influenza vaccines approved for use in the USA compared to actually getting influenza? Just provide the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers to support your answer. And remember it is the relative risk between the vaccine and the disease, not about allergies... and just stick to influenza.

APV,

15 mcg of viral protein produced anti-influenza IgE in 3 of 3 people (100%).

Presumably you mean those that received Fluzone, who were all over the age of 40, and were vaccinated less than two years previously. A full adult dose of Fluzone contains 45 µg influenza antigens, not 15. As I pointed out in my last comment, we don't know if the anti-influenza IgE detected was due to vaccination or to exposure to wild influenza viruses. One subject, a 16-year-old boy, was vaccinated against influenza but only had anti-influenza IgG, not IgE. I suggest that's because he hadn't yet been exposed to wild influenza viruses, while all the other subjects, apart from two one-year-olds, had both anti-influenza IgG and IgE.

Even assuming that 45 micrograms of influenza antigen really did cause an allergy to influenza, which is very doubtful, why should we believe that the mere 0.5 micrograms of egg protein in an influenza vaccine would cause egg allergy?

Really hitting the sack this time....

APV: "Yes, easily 40 separate injections."

So what? Also the rotavirus is an oral vaccine.

I counted 31 up through age four if the child got an annual influenza vaccine. So, really, tell how much more dangerous are the eight influenza vaccines approved for children in the USA more dangerous than influenza. A disease that has already killed five kids on its way to killing a pediatric deaths this season.

Just give us the study that shows those relative risks. We'd be interested if the influenza vaccine killed dozens of kids each year in the USA.

@APV
Since you're so interested in how the immune system works, I highly recommend this video series.

The tl;dv is that the immune system cannot react to just any protein: the protein has to be one that you are genetically disposed to reacting to and that the part of the immune system devoted to keeping it from attacking the body hasn't learned to be part of the body. (The immune system actually has assassin cells that go about checking immune cells to see off they could potentially attack body cells, and makes them die if they can. It's pretty cool! Watch the videos.)

Also, the immune system doesn't have a way to know how a protein got into your body. It treats a protein the same whether it got there through injection, through food, or was made by the body itself. The immune system is in constant contact with muscle cells. If there is one thing better at sensitizing the immune system than vaccine adjuvants, it's actually getting sick, and the immune system gets the fun task of killing off muscle cells infected with viruses periodically. If the immune system could get sensitized to muscle proteins, that would certainly do it.

justthestats,
"the protein has to be one that you are genetically disposed to reacting"

justthestats,
“the protein has to be one that you are genetically disposed to reacting”
No. Charles Richet tried sea anemone toxin on dogs and got a reaction. You can inject any food protein into rats/mice along with alum and you can get a reaction. No genetic disposition to a particular protein is necessary.

"Also, the immune system doesn’t have a way to know how a protein got into your body. It treats a protein the same whether it got there through injection, through food, or was made by the body itself."
You are absolutely right. Food proteins are never naturally present in the blood. Food is always broken down by the digestion process into amino acids before it is absorbed.

If you take acid-reducing medications, proteins are not broken down and intact proteins can get absorbed. So you develop allergy just as if the food proteins were injected. Bottom line, food proteins don't belong in the blood regardless of route of administration.

"it’s actually getting sick, and the immune system gets the fun task of killing off muscle cells infected with viruses periodically. If the immune system could get sensitized to muscle proteins, that would certainly do it."
The interesting part is, this process has been perfected to work safely (most of the time) over millions of years of evolution. So we see those exceptions once in a while like strep causing rheumatic/scarlet fever or campylobacter causing GBS.

Chris,

About #188,
Vaccines save lives. I am not questioning that.
We have to move on from "vaccine vs. no vaccine" and focus on improving vaccine safety to cut back the suffering from vaccine-induced diseases.
Instead, the FDA/CDC seem to want to hide/obfuscate the facts about vaccine-induced diseases. The result is a loss of trust and less vaccine uptake. Opposite of the desired effect.
Make vaccines safer. Specify and enforce limits on allergens in vaccines. Make the safety information public. Have open discussion of risks. Earn trust. People will vaccinate.

"We have to move on from “vaccine vs. no vaccine” and focus on improving vaccine safety to cut back the suffering from vaccine-induced diseases."

Where is the quantification of those "vaccine-induced diseases"? Specifically the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers. Has any influenza vaccine in the USA caused a hundred pediatric deaths in the USA due to allergic reactions? That should be something that would be in the literature.

Make sure they are ones that you have read and understood. It has been noted multiple times on this thread that what you cite does not say what you claim they say.

Kreblozen,

About #187,
"A full adult dose of Fluzone contains 45 µg influenza antigens, not 15.". Yes, it is 15 mcg per virus type for a total of 45 mcg in a trivalent vaccine.

There were unvaccinated controls in the study who did not exhibit any anti-influenza IgE, demonstrating that the vaccine caused the IgE synthesis.

"why should we believe that the mere 0.5 micrograms of egg protein in an influenza vaccine would cause egg allergy"
It is a matter of probability. 15 mcg was enough to cause IgE in 100% of subjects. So one can "back-of-the-envelope" estimate that up to ~3% may develop anti-ovalbumin IgE or egg allergy due to the 0.5 mcg of ovalbumin in the vaccine.

@Coleman Anderson
So you don't trust those evil BigPharma basterds not to make you sterile with their "not 100% safe" vaccines yet those same evil basterds poduce safe liters of iv fluids and lasix that are guaranteed to cause no harm?
How do you function in real life with that kind of thinking?

So the drug companies, the WHO and CDC knew in March that the vaccine would likely not be that effective but continued to roll it out and sell it anyways because they started production in February

Um, no:
"Influenza viral characterization data indicates that 48% of the influenza A (H3N2) viruses collected and analyzed in the United States from October 1 through November 22, 2014 were antigenically "like" the 2014-2015 influenza A (H3N2) vaccine component, but that 52% were antigenically different (drifted) from the H3N2 vaccine virus....

"Drifted H3N2 viruses were first detected in late March 2014, after World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations for the 2014-2015 Northern Hemisphere vaccine had been made in mid-February. At that time, a very small number of these viruses had been found among the thousands of specimens that had been collected and tested, but these viruses have become more predominant over time."

...seems pretty ethical

Whoops.

@APV #191:

"No. Charles Richet tried sea anemone toxin on dogs and got a reaction. You can inject any food protein into rats/mice along with alum and you can get a reaction. No genetic disposition to a particular protein is necessary."

Most likely the protein used in this experiment had a conserved region that is cross reactive with another allergenic protein.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009167490402682X

Besides, if mammals did produce allergic reactions to any foreign protein in the blood stream, don't you think we'd all be going into anaphylactic shock anytime we had a repeat viral infection with like the Epstein-Barr or rhinovirus?

Chris,

About #193,

Flu vaccine can cause egg allergy in healthy non-allergic individuals.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2249232/pdf/epidinfect00008…
“Contrary to the IgG response, IgE specific to Fl rose significantly after immunization in a considerable number of vaccinees, the results suggesting that influenza vaccine may play a role in sensitizing an individual to egg protein.”
May have contributed to Japan stopping mandatory influenza vaccination of school children in 1987.

Same mechanism, different allergen:
Kuno-Sakai H, Kimura M. Removal of gelatin from live vaccines and DTaP-an ultimate solution for vaccine-related gelatin allergy.Biologicals 2003;31:245-9.

And you know that food allergies can cause death.

APV: "May have contributed to Japan stopping mandatory influenza vaccination of school children in 1987"

Interesting. So this Japanese vaccine used in the 1980s is now causing a hundred pediatric deaths per year in the USA? How does that work?

Let me cut and paste the question for you with some added emphasis: "Where is the quantification of those “vaccine-induced diseases”? Specifically the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers. Has any influenza vaccine in the USA caused a hundred pediatric deaths in the USA due to allergic reactions? That should be something that would be in the literature."

I believe I mentioned before that Japan is not in the USA. The vaccines are different because they are a different country. Oh, and vaccine manufacturing has changed in the three decades.

Oh, and if you want to claim allergic reactions, you have to quantify with documentation that they caused a hundred pediatric deaths. This is part of the relative risk bit.

Slan Williams #197,

"Most likely the protein used in this experiment had a conserved region that is cross reactive with another allergenic protein.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009167490402682X"

Not sure I understand. How did the animals develop sensitization to the other allergenic protein?
Lab rats/mice living in controlled environments have even less risk of sensitization to allergens?

"Besides, if mammals did produce allergic reactions to any foreign protein in the blood stream, don’t you think we’d all be going into anaphylactic shock anytime we had a repeat viral infection with like the Epstein-Barr or rhinovirus?"

Very good question. With billions of years of evolution, it is a fine tuned process. Any organism with that level of sensitivity would have gone extinct. As I have pointed out before, it takes a lot less protein to cause sensitization than it does to elicit a reaction. In the case of food allergy, oral intake of allergen involves huge amounts of protein compared to what you might breathe in from an virus infected sneeze/cough mist.

This brings up another interesting possibility. Flublok advertises that they have 45*3=135 mcg of viral protein, 3X the normal amount. If next year's strains are selected to be the same as this year's, risk of anaphylaxis due to anti-influenza IgE could become a real problem.

LurkeyLoo @195: I rather suspect he doesn't, as he seems to be suffering from poorly controlled mental illness, which is actually more sad than it is funny. Otherwise I'd be posting a lot more "Mandrake" jokes.

Ref #189 -->>APV.

@APV
Since you’re so interested in how the immune system works, I highly recommend this video series.

In addition I suggest checking out this helpful blog post hosted by Dr. Jennifer Raff: How the Immune System Works
http://violentmetaphors.com/2014/04/20/how-the-immune-system-works/#mor…

Chris #199,

"Has any influenza vaccine in the USA caused a hundred pediatric deaths in the USA due to allergic reactions?"
I believe that would not be the appropriate question to ask.
The question is how many of the 15 million people with food allergies developed it because of a vaccine.
The Japanese research I cited was to show that vaccines do indeed cause food allergies. In the US, I have not found equivalent studies at all. If you don't study the problem, how can you be sure it does not exist?

The problem I am talking about is not immediate vaccine induced allergic reaction causing deaths. That is well known, well documented. The problem is vaccine induced sensitization which may occur weeks after the vaccination.

" Oh, and vaccine manufacturing has changed in the three decades." Not as much as we would like. We still grow viruses in chicken eggs as it has been done for 70 years.

New vaccine technology uses insect (moth larvae) cells and Madin Darby Canine Kidney (MDCK) to grow viruses. For a patient with egg allergy, avoiding egg is difficult enough. Imagine someone with moth allergy trying to avoid moth dust.
MDCK could cause autoimmunity to your kidney because they have similar proteins? ("molecular mimicry").
Looks like with our new vaccine technology, we are not making it safer, we are jumping from the frying pan into the fire ...

@APV #201
"Not sure I understand. How did the animals develop sensitization to the other allergenic protein?
Lab rats/mice living in controlled environments have even less risk of sensitization to allergens?"
Because the proteins are cross reactive: they share a similar sequence of amino acids meaning that antibodies to one will recognize the other. People with latex allergies also have an allergic reaction to a number of fruits and vegetables because some plants produce a protein called hevenin which is structurally similar enough to be recognized latex antibodies. So someone with a latex allergy could have a severe reaction to an avocado, even if it's the first time they've had one.
http://latexallergyresources.org/latex-cross-reactive-foods-fact-sheet

"As I have pointed out before, it takes a lot less protein to cause sensitization than it does to elicit a reaction."
You're confusing the two concepts. Sensitization refers to the generation of anti-allergen IgE antibodies, which occurs slowly and may not produce symptoms. But once those antibodies have been produced, the immune system can produce them again, but much more quickly and in abundance. This is the reaction, the massive dose of IgE that causes a cascade that results in symptoms from a tiny dose of the allergen. This is why once diagnosed, people are advised to avoid repeated exposures to the allergen, it gets worse over time and even trace amounts can cause reactions.

"If next year’s strains are selected to be the same as this year’s, risk of anaphylaxis due to anti-influenza IgE could become a real problem."
Your calculations are incorrect. There are a total of 45μg, 15μg from each of the three strains, it's no different than any other year's flu vaccine. And to your second point: it would have already happened. From 2000-2006, the A/New Caledonia/20/99(H1N1)-like virus was included in the influenza vaccine, yet there were no widespread reports of anaphylaxis, either from the vaccine or natural infection.

Further, the Fluzone High-Dose vaccine contains four times the amount of antigen as the does the regular vaccine. If your ideas are correct, anyone who got that vaccine should go into anaphylactic shock upon receiving another. But there haven't been any reports of that since its introduction in 2009.

So do you think that if the flu shot I had this year was grown on some of them there canine kidney cells causes that sensitivity you have been yammering on about, then one of my dogs licks me on broken skin that I might either drop dead or start howling with them when an ambulance goes by or having an uncontrollable craving for a pig ear ...... Or something?
Is that how that works on your planet?

I think this is my favorite so far from the Smith-Norowitz MPU IgE factory. I guess "not vaccinated but infected" would have blown the N < 10 rule or something.

APV: "I believe that would not be the appropriate question to ask.
The question is how many of the 15 million people with food allergies developed it because of a vaccine."

No. You do not get to dictate what questions I ask. I want to know about the relative risk only between the vaccine and the disease. If you are making claims the vaccine used in the USA causes more harm than the disease, you need to provide that data. So far you have failed.

And food allergies are another topic.

Influenza has killed five children in the USA this year. The past couple of years it killed over a hundred. If you believe that allergic reactions to the influenza vaccines approved for use in the USA cause more harm than influenza, then you must provide the verifiable evidence that there were at least a hundred antipathetic shock incidents verified from the influenza vaccine in children each year in the USA.

Hey! You made the claim, you have got to show it is relevant. Provide that evidence.

"antipathetic"... stupid spell check:

"anaphylactic shock" (and yes, there is a red line showing it is not a word in the vocabulary)

So, yeah, prove that more kids die from allergic reactions to the vaccine than from influenza in the USA. Which is not Japan (a country that decided to bow to anti-vaccine pressure to delay pertussis vaccines, only to have over forty babies die from pertussis).

APV @157: 40 times over a few years for a kid.
APV @185: Yes, easily 40 separate injections.
h__p://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolescent.html

Boldface added to emphasise the non-orangeness of the apple and the non-appleness of the orange being compared.

@Narad #207

I guess using infants as controls for the immune response of young and middle aged adults makes an N=8 study rock solid.

LurkeyLoo @195: I rather suspect [Coleman Adamson] doesn’t, as he seems to be suffering from poorly controlled mental illness, which is actually more sad than it is funny.

Is he, though? It's as if US politicians have spent the half-century since "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" was published, using it as a manual, so now the beliefs of Coleman Adamson and Mick Carlotta don't really seem too out-of-step with the Tea Party movement or with some state legislatures.

New vaccine technology uses insect (moth larvae [sic]) cells.... Imagine someone with moth allergy trying to avoid moth dust.

And you imagine that Sf-9 is cross-reactive with every type of cell from all moths how?

^ "type of cell proteinaceous debris"

Kreblozen #184 Part 1,

Thanks for the detailed response.

"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X04002014"
Like other similar studies, they are looking at the "hygiene hypothesis".
They are looking to see if lack of natural illness (due to vaccines) is the cause of allergies.
That is a completely different investigation and inapplicable to what we are discussing.
We are talking about vaccine ingredients directly inducing allergies.

I already covered the Smith-Norowitz et. al study in #194.

"I can’t find any good evidence that any vaccine induces allergies,"
Gelatin in vaccines was proved to be the cause of gelatin allergy.

Kuno-Sakai H, Kimura M. Removal of gelatin from live vaccines and DTaP-an ultimate solution for vaccine-related gelatin allergy.Biologicals 2003;31:245-9.
Egg in the flu vaccine caused the development of egg allergy.

Serological examination of IgE- and IgG-specific antibodies to egg
protein during influenza virus immunization
BY N. YAMANE AND H. UEMURA

Polysorbate 80 allergens: Pl. see #113.

"Intact proteins get absorbed in the intestines?"

The anti-ulcer drug study says:
"Thus, allergens or allergenic epitopes that survive the gastrointestinal transit in
an intact form can trigger mucosal sensitization".

So, yes, may be I can re-word that part. The point I am making is any medical intervention that bypasses natural protections that keep food proteins away from the part of the immune system where sensitization occurs, creates a problem. PPI and vaccines are both examples of such interventions.

The 27 year old study says:
"Contrary to
the IgG response, IgE specific to Fl rose significantly after immunization in a
considerable number of vaccinees, the results suggesting that influenza vaccine
may play a role in sensitizing an individual to egg protein."

You wrote:
"You have grossly misunderstood the study you linked to in which different food proteins were injected into mice interperitoneally and specific IgG1 antibody serum levels measured."

The study says:
"Primary and secondary immune responses (as measured by specific IgG1 antibody serum levels)"
So I believe you may have misunderstood it. The authors are clarifying that the SECONDARY immune response was obtained by IgG1 measurement. The PRIMARY is IgE mediated, Type I immediate hypersensitivity reactions.
So they studied both types of reactions and they did see robust primary response, in other words IgE mediated food allergies.
Food allergies of major interest in humans are IgE mediated and it would make no sense for them to just focus on IgG1 in studies on mice.
So all the IgG based arguments in your post do not apply.

"That’s milk and egg allergies, and according to your reference it’s “1-2% for young children and 0.2-0.4% in the general population”. Since most people lose their egg allergy by the time they reach adulthood, and plenty of adults get influenza vaccines your calculations don’t seem to work out."
I interpreted that as milk and egg 1-2% EACH. In any case, it is a "back-of-the-envelope" prediction. I am showing that the prediction numbers are not off by orders of magnitude.

Kreblozen #184 Part 2,

Asthma
"Are you really suggesting that the maximum of 100 µg polysorbate per dose of any vaccine causes lung damage when injected intramuscularly?"
With sheep, they "washed their lungs out" to reliably induce lung injury in every animal.
Flucelvax has more than 1mg of Polysorbate 80.
https://mttmblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/flusum2014.pdf
It is not inconceivable that with several Polysorbate 80 containing vaccines injected into a kid , some of them will sustain lung injury. The only way to confirm is to perform a study using vaccines with and without Polysorbate 80.

"There were 13,359 vaccinated children and only 94 unvaccinated children aged 1-17 years in the study, so it isn’t very surprising that none of the unvaccinated children aged 1-10 years were not asthmatic."
One would have expected 2-4 of the unvaccinated kids to develop asthma.

Further:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/439840
says:
"The strongest evidence in support of a possible association between vaccination and asthma comes from a prospective study of a cohort of children born in 1977 in Christchurch, New Zealand. In that study there was no evidence of asthma after 5 to 10 years of follow-up among 23 children who received neither pertussis nor oral polio vaccine, whereas asthma developed in >20% of 1184 children who had been vaccinated.”

Some pertussis vaccines (DTaP) contain Polysorbate 80.
Not a good idea to dismiss such findings ...

HiB and diabetes:
"Yet large epidemiological studies have found not a ghost of a hint of an association. See PMID: 12182385"
As I wrote in my blog:
"Since not all HiB vaccines contain pancreatic digest, one can expect the mixed results that are published."
The study you cite does not say whether the HiB administered contained pancreatic digest.

"I suggest you find a hobby that doesn’t put children’s lives at risk"
Food allergy is not a hobby for me. My son has multiple food allergies and asthma. Obviously his doctors did not know what caused it. So I had to do the research myself to understand what risks are involved in my family's future vaccinations. I am not putting children's lives at risk. The FDA's unsafe vaccines have put my child's and millions of other people's lives at risk.

Do you suppose a sample size of 13453 is enough to test whether increasing number of vaccinations is associated with allergies and atopic disorders?

In addition to [bronchial asthma, atopic eczema, and allergic rhinoconjunctivitis], we further compared diseases–such as obstructive bronchitis, pneumonia and otitis media, heart disease, anemia, epilepsy, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)–in unvaccinated and vaccinated subjects. No relevant differences in the lifetime prevalences were found, neither for different age groups nor between girls and boys. .. None of the hypotheses were found to be valid (5).

Or will all that be outweighed by an N=1 anecdote?

Slan Williams #204, #205,

You have to understand that it takes very little allergen to cause sensitization, but a lot more allergen to elicit an allergic reaction.
DTaP followed by DTaP produced no anaphylaxis.
Sensitization but no elicitation.
DTaP followed by MMR produced anaphylaxis.
Sensitization followed by elicitation.
MMR has more gelatin than DTaP.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9949325

"There are a total of 45μg, 15μg from each of the three strains, it’s no different than any other year’s flu vaccine. "
That's the traditional egg based vaccine. Flublok has 3X.

High dose has 4X but only so because 65+ have weaker immune responses. If high dose were administered to the general population, you might see anaphylaxis.

herr doktor bimler @212:

You have a point, alas. It's getting harder and harder these days to tell the right-wing loonies from people with actual mental illness. That said, the fellow who had the Facebook post about hearing voices does strike me as frankly paranoid, in a clinical sense. It made me sad, as a good friend of mine had a first-time psychotic episode this spring and isn't doing too hot at the moment, either. I worry.

Sigh...

"Have you ever seen a commie get a flu shot, Mandrake?"

herr doktor bimler #217,

"13453 sample size"
They did not study food allergies.
I have already posted studies clearly showing vaccines causing food allergies in studies that were designed to look for it.

Narad #213,

"And you imagine that Sf-9 is cross-reactive with every type of cell from all moths how?"
No. The fall armyworm (Sf-9) is native to the tropical regions of the western hemisphere from the United States to Argentina.
So you just have to avoid those areas. Easy.

Chris #208,

"If you are making claims the vaccine used in the USA causes more harm than the disease, you need to provide that data."
I did not make those claims. That's why I am saying your questions are inappropriate.
As I wrote before vaccines save lives. I want safer vaccines that result in less suffering for recipients.

Rene Najera #172
"So does, you know, food."
Food does not cause allergy unless you take it with proton pump inhibitors. So PPI should carry a label.

citations here again:
Flu vaccine can cause egg allergy in healthy non-allergic individuals.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2249232/pdf/epidinfect00008…
“Contrary to the IgG response, IgE specific to Fl rose significantly after immunization in a considerable number of vaccinees, the results suggesting that influenza vaccine may play a role in sensitizing an individual to egg protein.”
May have contributed to Japan stopping mandatory influenza vaccination of school children in 1987.

Same mechanism, different allergen:
Kuno-Sakai H, Kimura M. Removal of gelatin from live vaccines and DTaP-an ultimate solution for vaccine-related gelatin allergy.Biologicals 2003;31:245-9.

Further research:
Summary:
Childhood Immune Disorder Risk Map per the Richet Allergy
Model
https://foodallergycauses.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/cidm1.pdf

Details:
https://foodallergycauses.wordpress.com/

Science Mom #161,
"No it isn’t present. Maize and wheat aren’t even present in the final product."
How would you know? If you read Merck's allergen report, even they don't test it. There's no FDA spec. why would they waste their money testing?

Here in Never Never Land we NEVER take vaccines.
I have never had a flu shot. I have never had the flu.
Of course we all suffer from low mercury counts. I guess that's the price we must pay......

Chris #160,

"APV: “DTaP followed by MMR produced anaphylaxis.”

Try actually reading the link you provided. They were “monovalent measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines containing 0.2% gelatin as stabilizer”… and it was in Japan. It has nothing to do with the trivalent MMR used in the USA. Japan had a different MMR vaccine."

I quoted the relevant Japanese study along with my MMR comment. I provided the 2003 Japanese study as an example of gelatin in vaccines causing gelatin allergy.

US vaccines still contain gelatin and still cause reactions.
10 years later the FDA has learned nothing:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131108090127.htm

Hellanthus #171,
"I’m not a doctor so I could be way off, but it seems to me that, if you are taking immunosuppressant drugs, that may not be the right time to get a vaccine.
Not necessarily because the vaccine will create troubles, but simply because it will be much less likely to work."

Good point. The package insert has no warning about inhaled corticosteroid use. So there is vaccine efficacy risk as well as infection risk.

I can’t read the minds of the Polysorbate 80 manufacturers.

That is exactly what you are doing... with your argument that when the marketing droids of a Japanese chemical supplier decline to word their non-allergenic claims in absolute terms, they are therefore asserting that the product does contain allergens (yet to be determined, despite ominous statements elsewhere about peanut oil).

@Tim #131--your tone suggests you don't know anything about vaccines. The correct answer is any severely immunocompromised patients I see in my office are brought in through the back door to an exam room. I would, however, advise anyone in my exam room to avoid sitting next to you, but I'm sure as soon as they saw how far your head is up your ass they'd be giving you some distance of their own accord.

herr doktor bimler #227,
"I can’t read the minds of the Polysorbate 80 manufacturers.

That is exactly what you are doing… with your argument that when the marketing droids of a Japanese chemical supplier decline to word their non-allergenic claims in absolute terms, they are therefore asserting that the product does contain allergens (yet to be determined, despite ominous statements elsewhere about peanut oil)."

No I am merely pointing out their test results.
"In rat study, Polysorbate80(HX2)TM triggered less histamine release from rat mast cells compared to conventional Polysorbate80 formulations".
Polysorbate 80 contains enough allergen to cause elicitation as the test demonstrates clearly.
As I wrote before, it means more than enough allergen is present to cause sensitization. Whether it is maize, wheat, peanut, hazelnut or sesame allergens, they have to tell us.

The basic truth is that if people do not have vaccines, they can die. If anybody has seen a young child gasping for air because they had not been given MMR vaccine; or a child suffering from encephalitis because of no vaccines, then they would not question whether any vaccine is harmful to any individual. It is those ignorant people who refuse to vaccinate either themselves or their children should be charged with child abuse. There will come a time when preventable diseases become rife again and infant and child mortality will rise to dizzy heights again. Influenza kills, and if there is any way of preventing the disease it should be used.

BTW Try some delicious PETER PAN peanut butter to mop up the dietary mercury.
http://www.naturalnews.com/044339_dietary_mercury_heavy_metals_removal…

CDC sez.....
"Since 2001, with the EXCEPTION of some INFLUENZA (flu) vaccines, THIMEROSAL (mercury) is not used as a preservative in routinely recommended childhood vaccines.

Thimerosal is a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines and other products since the 1930's. There is no convincing evidence of harm caused by the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines, except for minor reactions like redness and swelling at the injection site. However, in July 1999, the Public Health Service agencies, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and vaccine manufacturers agreed that thimerosal should be reduced or eliminated in vaccines as a precautionary measure."
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Concerns/thimerosal/index.html

WOW! Did Dr. HOOK Orenstein have a case of a conscience? We know he had NO PROBLEM shooting up new born humans with high mercury content vaccines from 1986 - 1999. Could Verstraeten's 1999 Report of a vaccine/ Thimerosal link to AUTISM, LANGUAGE AND SLEEP DISORDERS, had anything to do with this change?
WHICH INFLUENZA VACCINES STILL CONTAIN MERCURY?
Do they give these to pregnant women?
Constant gardeners want to know.

MEMORY HOLE MACHINE:
President Obama said "never never" to 2009 swine flu vaccine for his family:

"Despite the fact that Obama on Friday declared a national emergency in response to the H1N1 outbreak, he apparently doesn’t deem it enough of a threat to have his two daughters vaccinated against the virus.

Such double standards have led media pundits to call for Obama to get his daughters vaccinated on live television, in an effort to encourage American parents to do the same for their kids. The swine flu vaccination program, which was initially intended to be a “mass” inoculation covering the entire population, has been rejected by a majority of Americans who harbor deep suspicions about dangerous additives contained in the vaccine such as mercury and squalene.

In a Campaign For Liberty video message, former Presidential candidate Ron Paul labeled the vaccination program a “failure,” and slammed Obama for failing to follow the same advice he gave to the nation.

“It’s interesting to note that the President’s children have not gotten their shots and the explanation for this is it hasn’t been available to them – now that’s a little bit hard to buy when you think that probably anything the President wants can be available for their children,” said Paul, adding, “So in a way he’s made his decision not to give his children these inoculations – so if he has freedom of choice on this, I would like to make sure that all the American people have the same amount of freedom of choice.”
http://www.infowars.com/ron-paul-questions-why-obama-daughters-havent-t…

DID OBAMA HAVE INSIDER INFORMATION?

"Finnish and international researchers recently found a conclusive link between the Pandemrix swine flu vaccine and new cases of narcolepsy," AFP reports."

HELSINKI — The Finnish government and major insurance companies announced Wednesday they will pay for lifetime medical care for children diagnosed with narcolepsy after receiving the swine flu vaccine.

"The compensation will provide much-needed financial assistance for the families, although it cannot take away the emotional distress caused by this condition," Social Services and Health Minister Paula Risikko said in a statement.

Finnish and international researchers recently found a conclusive link between the Pandemrix swine flu vaccine and new cases of narcolepsy, a chronic nervous system disorder which causes people to often uncontrollably fall asleep.

The Finnish Pharmaceutical Insurance Pool (LVP), which represents insurance companies, said Wednesday it would honour all insurance claims in this category.

LVP said it would review each claim individually to calculate the scope of the payout.

The Finnish government meanwhile agreed to cover any medical costs exceeding the insurance claims.

In Finland, 79 children between the ages of four and 19 developed narcolepsy after receiving the Pandemrix vaccine in 2009 and 2010.

Of these cases, an unusually high number, 76, also suffered from bouts of cataplexy, suffering hallucinations or paralysing physical collapses, according to Finnish research."
http://www.lymeneteurope.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3443

CHECK THIS OUT!
FDA Approves Experimental H5N1 Bird Flu Vaccine with Reactive AS03 Adjuvant for U.S. Stockpile
http://www.nvic.org/FDA-Approves-Squalene-H5N1-Bird-Flu-Vaccine.aspx

To the people (for example Lawrence) who said my link in response 1 has not been confirmed in humans, I'm not sure what they base that on. See for example:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22423139
which is a randomized placebo controlled study in children
and
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21880755

Also, its been further confirmed in mice.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20335492
and I don't know why you believe that if vaccines damage mouse immune systems you shouldn't be worried that they don't damage human immune systems.
So far as I know none of this has been rebutted in studies of humans either.

To the people (for example Lawrence) who said my link in response 1 has not been confirmed in humans, I’m not sure what they base that on. See for example:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22423139
which is a randomized placebo controlled study in children.
You can find more confirmation at my website. I tried to post but apparently too many links.

@ APV

Good point. The package insert has no warning about inhaled corticosteroid use. So there is vaccine efficacy risk as well as infection risk.

Missing my point.
As you missed my point when I mentioned neti pot way upthread.
(my point was, don't wash away your nasal mucus and it will do its job at protecting your olfactory nerve)

In my view, it's not the vaccine manufacturers' responsibility to write down stuff like this. Unless you want every vaccine dose to come with package inserts the size of a phonebook listing every intervention, medical or otherwise, known to man.
And anyway, they do mention it, in general terms (see below).

You are taking some drug and are planning to receive some other medical treatment? For Pete's sake, it's up to you to ask your doctor about potential interactions. Write a list down, or something. Drugs are not sugar pills.
And it's your doctor's responsibility as well - hence almost all health practitioners I met asking me if I'm taking any medication.

Anyway, I advice you to read the insert packages again. I went and read <a href="http://www.immunize.org/packageinserts/" a few of them here and they all mention the risks of allergic reactions and the potential negative interactions in immuno-compromised people (generally section number 5, subsections 5.3, 5.4).
The later would include potentially people taking corticosteroids.

One insert (flumist) is reporting a test of the vaccine on children, and the method section clearly stated that the subjects were selected as not having asthma or being treated with steroids prior to vaccination. So obviously vaccine scientists know of this potential interaction.

But really, if you have a medical condition, ask your doctor about vaccination. It's his/her job.

Botched link.

Here we go again

natphilosopher,

To the people (for example Lawrence) who said my link in response 1 has not been confirmed in humans, I’m not sure what they base that on.

You asked:

Isn’t there a possibility that vaccination with this flu shot (or any flu shot), while it might protect you from the strains it was intended for, may actually make you more susceptible to other strains, a phenomenon sometimes associated with “Original Antigenic Sin”?

The link you gave is to a study looking at the possibility of influenza vaccines making the recipient more susceptible to non-influenza respiratory virus infections, not other strains of influenza. Personally I would gladly exchange influenza for a common cold.

Maybe this will make you happier.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21880755

Getting a flu shot is your right. I'm not trying to discourage you. Do what you think is right. I just hope you won't try to impose it on me and my kids.

I would point out, however, that the flu shot, in years when it is effective, may protect you from flu that year, assuming you would have gotten it otherwise. Personally, I've never had a flu vaccine, and I also don't recall ever having the flu. Maybe I did when I was a kid, and forget, but that was a long time ago.
However, the flu shot won't do you any benefit the next year, according to any research I've seen. On the other hand, if it damages your immune response to other viruses or bacteria, and there seem to be papers showing that happens sometimes,
that damage may be forever. So weigh the benefit of having slightly less chance of getting flu one year, against the possible harm of being more likely to get other things forever.

APV,

You can inject any food protein into rats/mice along with alum and you can get a reaction. No genetic disposition to a particular protein is necessary.

Not true. Inducing allergies in animals is difficult, with special strains of mice having to be bred for the purpose, and adjuvants such as cholera toxin required to get an IgE response.

If you take acid-reducing medications, proteins are not broken down and intact proteins can get absorbed.

Not true. Intact proteins can make it to the intestines where they generate a mucosal response. Intact proteins are not absorbed except in neonates for a very few days after birth. Intact proteins cannot survive soluble and membrane-bound proteases, enterocytes do not have transporters to carry proteins across their plasma membranea and proteins cannot permeate tight junctions.
Instead, the FDA/CDC seem to want to hide/obfuscate the facts about vaccine-induced diseases.

Nonsense, the CDC are open about adverse effects associated with vaccines. They don't list food or other allergies as an adverse effects of vaccines because there is good evidence against this.

Make vaccines safer. Specify and enforce limits on allergens in vaccines.

Vaccines are already very safe, with severe reactions such as anaphylaxis occurring somewhere in the order of one in a million doses. Still efforts are being made to improve vaccines safety and efficacy, evidenced by thousands of research papers on the subject. This single report from the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has 100 references to allergic reactions to vaccines and how to avoid them. Just because you are ignorant of all the research going on in this area doesn't mean it isn't happening. Just because you have convinced yourself that vaccines cause food allergies doesn't mean it is true.

Make the safety information public. Have open discussion of risks. Earn trust. People will vaccinate.

There is a vast amount of information available on vaccine safety and plenty of discussion. People like you spreading misinformation about vaccine safety are a large part of the problem.

So the drug companies, the WHO and CDC knew in March that the vaccine would likely not be that effective but continued to roll it out and sell it anyways because they started production in February…seems pretty ethical

So what do you think would have been the most ethical course of action? If the vaccine is still, say, 45% effective, do you say "Hey, folks, we COULD give you 45% protection but since it's not 100%, we're giving you 0% instead"? Is that really the ethical thing to do? Did you even READ the article?

I guess comments do not get through the moderator if the exercise common sense?

I think that the fate of comments which exercise common sense will not affect you in any way.

natphilosopher,

Maybe this will make you happier.

This study compares vaccinated children with cystic fibrosis, with healthy unvaccinated children, hardly a fair comparison, and states:

Thus, annual vaccination against influenza is effective but may have potential drawbacks that have previously been underappreciated and that are also a matter of debate. By no means do we suggest halting annual vaccination of children, especially those at high risk for complications, such as CF patients. A number of studies have demonstrated that annual vaccination reduces the morbidity and mortality caused by seasonal influenza in children and is (cost-)effective.

They argue that live attenuated vaccines may be better at inducing immunity, which seems sensible to me.

Getting a flu shot is your right. I’m not trying to discourage you. Do what you think is right. I just hope you won’t try to impose it on me and my kids.

As long as you don't work with immunocompromised patients or insist your children go to schools and infect the children of more socially responsible people, that's fine.

I would point out, however, that the flu shot, in years when it is effective, may protect you from flu that year, assuming you would have gotten it otherwise.

You have about a 1 in 20 chance of getting influenza in any given year, and the vaccine reduces this substantially in a good year. even a 40% reduction in the chances of getting it in a year when the vaccine doesn't match the circulating viruses very well makes it well worth getting the vaccine, in my opinion.

Personally, I’ve never had a flu vaccine, and I also don’t recall ever having the flu. Maybe I did when I was a kid, and forget, but that was a long time ago.

You are either extraordinarily lucky or you are mistaken. I have had influenza several times, once as a child and a couple of times as an adult (thanks to working in a hospital, I suspect), once badly enough to put me on my back for two weeks, followed by a few weeks of feeling like I was 90 years old. That highly motivates me to avoid the experience in future.

If you really haven't had influenza and you are approaching old age, you really should consider getting the vaccine; it might save your life.

However, the flu shot won’t do you any benefit the next year, according to any research I’ve seen.

That's why I get it every year .

On the other hand, if it damages your immune response to other viruses or bacteria, and there seem to be papers showing that happens sometimes, that damage may be forever. So weigh the benefit of having slightly less chance of getting flu one year, against the possible harm of being more likely to get other things forever.

I wouldn't describe a 57% reduction in risk as "slightly less". This proven substantial reduction in risk of getting influenza which might put me in the hospital or kill me, against a theoretical and unproven risk that I might possibly be more susceptible to colds or other strains of influenza? That doesn't seem to be a difficult choice.

Also, I see no evidence that influenza vaccines "damage" immune response. The paper you cited suggested that wild influenza infection induces an increase in the frequency of virus-specific CD8+ T cells while vaccination does not, though it does induce a broader antibody recognition profile than infection. Both infection and vaccination generate virus-specific CD4+ T cell responses. Given a choice between getting influenza and the virus-specific CD8+ T cells, or getting the vaccine instead without the virus-specific CD8+ T cells, give me the vaccine any day.

The 57% reduction in influenza risk I refer to is for this year as described by Orac in his post. Most years the vaccine is even more effective.

Science Mom #161,
“No it isn’t present. Maize and wheat aren’t even present in the final product.”
How would you know? If you read Merck’s allergen report, even they don’t test it. There’s no FDA spec. why would they waste their money testing?

So you don't even read Milipore's spec sheets? They also list all possible allergens but there is no reasonable way that they would be present in the final product. It's not as though they just go to the Wesson factory and dip into their vats for product. These are pharmaceutical grade. You made the claims so the onus is upon you to provide evidence that any of the listed allergens are even in the final product.

@Chris Hickie #230

@ Tim #62 –Julian Frost (#74) is exactly correct. Besides infants too young to be vaccinated being at risk from the unvaccinated child coming into my waiting room with ..., I have other children who are immune-suppressed ... and either cannot be vaccinated or have lost their vaccine immunity from medical treatments. I REFUSE to let my waiting room be where they catch a VPD from some ignorant parent’s unvaccinated child. .

Ahh. So there is a 'backdoor'. -- A backdoor they apparently go into to be escorted to the 'waiting room'. Huh, interesting. I was mearly inquiring if the LAIVed kids would recieve the same ostracization as the unvaxed ones at your office (with respect to immonocompromised kids).

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/09/30/anti-vaccine-not-pro-safe-…

@APV #219

I spent the morning digging into this, and it looks like you’re taking a situation that requires a very specific set of circumstances and trying to apply it generally. In the study you cited, Nakayama et al found that after administering DTaP, a small number of patients had allergic reactions to the MMR vaccine. The administering the vaccines in reverse did not cause the same reaction which suggests that there was something about the DTaP vaccine that was allergenic. Further research found that a small number of patients had a a specific HLA antigen) that made them more susceptible to this reaction, so the researchers recommended that gelatin be removed from certain types of vaccines administered in Japan. The government and vaccine manufacturers agreed, and adverse reactions to vaccines fell quickly.
A few years later, a group at the CDC replicated the study using data from the VAERS database to determine whether or not something similar was occurring in the US. They found no increase in allergic responses following DTaP vaccination. Nakayama’s group responded to the Pool et al study with the following letter to the editor in the journal Pediatrics (it’s behind a paywall, so here’s a portion of it):

“We feel relieved after reading the paper by Pool et al and the VAERS Team (1) on the prevalence of gelatin allergy in the United States. They conducted a retrospective analysis after measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination…We reported that the cases of anaphylaxis or urticaria showed high positive rates of anti-gelatin IgE antibodies, and we speculated the causal relationship of the sensitization by gelatin-containing DTaP. (2) Discontinuation of gelatin-containing DTaP reduced the incidence of anaphylaxis after 1999, (3) and we have no report of anaphylaxis after vaccination with live virus vaccines containing hydrolyzed porcine gelatin in the last few years. Thus, we were solicitous for the incidence of anaphylaxis in the United States, but they reported that the incidence of gelatin allergy was lower than that observed in Japan.
But we suppose the different prevalence of anti-gelatin IgE depends on sensitivity for the detection of IgE antibodies against gelatin and especially on the nature of antigen for the assay. The same was the reason why the sensitization against gelatin increased in Japan. Some vaccine manufactures used poorly hydrolyzed bovine gelatin in DTaP, and some used hydrolyzed porcine gelatin. A large number of patients with anaphylaxis had a history of having DTaP containing poorly hydrolyzed bovine gelatin. Poorly hydrolyzed bovine gelatin was immunogenic when administered with alum adjuvant. They did not mention the nature of gelatin in DTaP in the United States in their paper, and we suppose that it was probably highly hydrolyzed porcine gelatin (2-3 kDa). Although it is considered as less immunogenic, gelatin-free DTaP is desirable to avoid the possibility of unnecessary sensitization against gelatin.”

And here is the response from Pool’s group in the same link (emphasis mine):

“Drs Nakayama and Kumagai note the difference in the prevalence of anti-gelatin IgE antibodies found in sera from patients suffering anaphylactic reactions to measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccines in their study in Japan (93%) (1) and our study in the United States (27%). (2) They suggest that this difference may be due to differences in the sensitivity and specificity of tests to detect anti-gelatin IgE, which in turn may depend on the nature of gelatin used in the assay. The solid-phase allergen for the radio-immunoassay we used was made from a random lot of flavored sugared commercial gelatin (Jell-O) and thus not exactly the same gelatin that is present in MMR vaccines. It is not clear if the "bovine gelatin" used in their assay was the same as that used in vaccines manufactured in Japan. However, we believe that differences between the gelatin in the immunoassay and the gelatin in the vaccine are unlikely to be the primary explanation for the difference in prevalence of anti-gelatin IgE found in the Japanese and US studies. In the first case report describing gelatin allergy as a cause of anaphylaxis to MMR, inhibition immunoassays were performed. (3) The patient's anti-gelatin IgE antibodies directed against gelatin (the same type of gelatin used in the assay in our present study) were inhibited not only by both bovine and porcine laboratory gelatins but also by the MMR vaccine itself containing pharmaceutical gelatin. This suggests that common IgE-binding gelatin epitopes are present on a wide variety of animal gelatins regardless of source or use. We also note that the prevalence of anti-gelatin IgE we found in US recipients of MMR suffering anaphylaxis (27%) is remarkably similar to that found in a study from Finland (28%) using different immunoassay techniques. (4) We believe a possibly more likely explanation for the difference in Japanese and US prevalence has been proposed by Dr Kumagai himself in a report describing a strong association between gelatin allergy and HLA-DR9, which is unique to Asians, in which he concludes that this association would "seem to provide a key answer to the question why there are so many reports of gelatin allergy in Japan compared to other countries." (5)
Drs Nakayama and Kumagai note that the addition of poorly hydrolyzed gelatin to diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP) vaccines in Japan may have contributed to sensitization to gelatin in some children, resulting in increased risk of anaphylaxis on subsequent MMR vaccination. (1) Removal of the gelatin from DTaP vaccines in Japan was followed by a decline in reports of anaphylaxis to subsequently administered MMR vaccines. (6) However, the nature of the gelatin in the MMR vaccine was also changed to a more thoroughly hydrolyzed material at the same time. Either or both of these changes could have contributed to the decline in reactions. (6) We do not believe that gelatin containing DTaP is a likely contributor to reactions to MMR in the United States, however. During a time when DTaP vaccines that contained traces of hydrolyzed gelatin became widely used, we did not observe an increase in allergic reactions to subsequently administered gelatin-containing MMR or variceila vaccines. (2)…Persons with a history of anaphylaxis after MMR or other gelatin-containing vaccine are likely at increased risk of similar reactions to subsequent doses of other gelatin-containing vaccines such as varicella and some brands of influenza. Therefore, for these persons we continue to recommend an allergy evaluation including assessment of anti-gelatin IgE by skin testing or now commercially available in vitro testing prior to such immunization.”

The research relating to the HLA antigen is here here.
The research of the two groups suggests the following: in a small portion of the Asian population with a certain HLA phenotype, injection with a certain type of gelatin combined with an adjuvant can produce sensitization to gelatin, not that vaccines cause widespread food allergies.

I have another long comment awaiting moderation, so I'll take a stab at APV's claims about plysorbates containing allergenic proteins:

Polysorbates are produced by treating sorbitol and a fatty acid with an excess of ethylene oxide in a pressure vessel while moderating the temperature because ethoxylation is exothermic and potentially explosive. Ethylene oxide is used as a sterilizing agent at lower temperatures and pressures. How do you propose proteins of any kind survive that special hell?

Tim,

Huh, interesting. I was mearly inquiring if the LAIVed kids would recieve the same ostracization as the unvaxed ones at your office (with respect to immonocompromised kids).

Why would a pediatrician ostracize the child of responsible parents?

There is a big difference between the enormous number of viruses emitted from a person infected with a viral respiratory infection (up to 20,000 viral particles per exhalation in this study), and the tiny number of viruses that might be shed by someone who has had the LAIV. According to the CDC:

Can people who have gotten the nasal spray flu vaccine spread the vaccine viruses to others?
Yes, it is possible, but it is very rare. Data indicate that both children and adults vaccinated with nasal spray flu vaccine can shed vaccine viruses after vaccination, although in lower amounts than typically occurs during shedding of wild-type influenza viruses. Rarely, shed vaccine viruses can be transmitted from vaccine recipients to unvaccinated persons. However, serious illnesses have not been reported among unvaccinated persons who have been infected inadvertently with vaccine viruses.

APV,

Food allergy is not a hobby for me.

What occupation do you have that relates to food allergies, and what qualifications in immunology do you have that equip you to contradict the findings of scientists and doctors who have thoroughly researched this area? I spent two years studying immunology and passed exams on the subject, yet I wouldn't consider myself well-educated enough to challenge the conclusions of these scientists.

If you are not employed in this area and have no qualifications (as your writings strongly suggest), then it is a hobby.

My son has multiple food allergies and asthma.

I'm sorry to hear that. Have these food allergies been confirmed by double-blind placebo-controlled tests? Skin sensitivity tests? Specific IgE? It is very easy to fool yourself into believing you or your child have food allergies. For example, in this study 65.5% of children who were believed to be allergic to milk were found not to be on double-blind testing (many parents still refused to believe the results and to reintroduce milk to their child's diet).

There are also many quack clinics who offer bogus allergy testing, mostly for IgG antibodies to food proteins, which are useless for diagnosing allergies.

Assuming he has been properly diagnosed, which foods is he allergic to? The most common food allergies by far are to milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, soy, wheat, fish and shellfish. I can see no plausible way that any of these could be caused by vaccines. Influenza vaccines contain vanishingly tiny amounts of egg proteins, but which vaccines contain fish or shellfish, or peanuts (peanut oil has never been used as an adjuvant in any commercially produced vaccine, before that old canard resurfaces)?

Obviously his doctors did not know what caused it. So I had to do the research myself to understand what risks are involved in my family’s future vaccinations.

You seriously believe that Googling scientific papers you clearly do not understand is superior to decades of research by thousands of highly trained scientists? Doesn't that strike you as just a little arrogant? You don't even seem to understand the difference between washing out a sheep's lungs with a 0.5% detergent solution and injecting tiny amounts of the same detergent in a vaccine intramuscularly, and still insist the latter can cause asthma, despite me pointing this out, which is mind-bogglingly ignorant. You might want to use your Googling skills to look up the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I am not putting children’s lives at risk.

If your alarmist scaremongering dissuades a single person from vaccinating their child you are most definitely putting their life at risk. How can you possibly argue otherwise?

The FDA’s unsafe vaccines have put my child’s and millions of other people’s lives at risk.

Millions? It is estimated that in the US there are 150 deaths each year due to food-induced allergic reactions. You haven't presented any convincing evidence that food allergies are caused by the vaccines on the current schedule in the US (or anywhere else). As I have pointed out, there is good evidence to show that vaccines do not cause allergies, autoimmune diseases or any of the other illnesses you have claimed they are responsible for. As Sian has elegantly explained, the situation in Japan with regard to gelatin was very unusual and very rare, due to a combination of genetics and poorly hydrolysed gelatin.

The paper you cited suggested that wild influenza infection induces an increase in the frequency of virus-specific CD8+ T cells while vaccination does not, though it does induce a broader antibody recognition profile than infection.

Speaking of which, this looks interesting (Medical Xpress story here).

I look for the overuse of words such as may, might, crank and quack. If people have to prove their point using sarcasm, possibilities and name-calling, I'm usually not interested in what they have to say. You lost me pretty early in your rant.

APV #227

"I provided the 2003 Japanese study as an example of gelatin in vaccines causing gelatin allergy."

In fact, that 1999 study compared vaccination with DTaP followed by monvovalent MMR, with vaccination with trivalent MMR followed by DTaP.

The study concluded that gelatin-containing DTaP vaccine *might* cause gelatin allergy.

Your citation doesn't support your bald, generic and consequently, highly misleading claim about "vaccines causing gelatin allergy".

Credit to Sian #247 for doing the work that you have failed to do, in following up what has happened since that study.

You say that 10 years on the FDA have learned nothing, but your own link refutes you

"Gelatin allergy is very rare," said allergist Richard Weber, M.D., ACAAI president.

"Many food intolerances can be mistaken as allergies. Those who believe they might have an allergy should be tested and diagnosed by an allergist before taking extreme avoidance measures or skipping vaccinations. The flu shot is an important vaccine and can even be life-saving for individuals that are at an increased risk for severe side effects associated with the flu."

You are clearly a know-nothing who misquotes, misinterprets and mangles the science, every which way except accurately.

APV #227

"I provided the 2003 Japanese study as an example of gelatin in vaccines causing gelatin allergy."

In fact, that 1999 study compared vaccination with DTaP followed by monovalent MMR, with vaccination with trivalent MMR followed by DTaP.

The study concluded that gelatin-containing DTaP vaccine *might* cause gelatin allergy.

Your citation doesn't support your bald, generic and consequently, highly misleading claim about "vaccines causing gelatin allergy".

Credit to Sian #247 for doing the work that you have failed to do, in following up what has happened since that study.

You say that 10 years on the FDA have learned nothing, but your own link refutes you

"Gelatin allergy is very rare," said allergist Richard Weber, M.D., ACAAI president.

You are clearly a know-nothing who misquotes, misinterprets and mangles the science, every which way except accurately.

How is this even a news story?

This happens pretty regularly with the flu vaccine due to the prolonged lead time needed to manufacture vaccine based on early surveillance, and an educated best guess as to variant is likely to be prominent for the North American flu season.

Well, here's the thing....

I just looked over Mikey's article again and comments that followed it ( I did however stay away from the FB page - I had enough of that on Friday) and

I wonder how many of his ardent followers know something about his background?

He misrepresents himself as a scientist: if you read his bio on healthranger.com, he carries on about his fabulous grades and science/ math background BUT then in an article in Natural News ( 19 July 2014) about his 'brush with poverty", he tells us that his degree is in TECHNICAL WRITING- that's not a science or mathematics-
sure, he can say that he took courses in ANYTHING, so do most people with any sort of degree; people with degrees in fine arts or music usually need to take requirements in science and math; business majors may have to study these subjects as well. I know an older psychologist who had to study Latin and Greek ( to attend university in Ireland).

When he talks about his original studies ( high school interests), it seems he was involved with electronics and computers. He developed advertising software for e-mail. It can be argued that Natural News itself is a form of prolonged internet advertisement.

Similarly, when he writes about his studies concerning health and nutrition, he focuses upon ALTERNATIVE sources- such as Gary Null. He doesn't have serious, systematic studies in science or medicine.

So Mike is not in a position to critique research in medicine and related topics- which he does every day.

He's a salesman and a writer. He inflates his credentials and experience.

If any of his followers are still around, read about him:
first, from his own sites which I mentioned above and then, put his name into the search box located at the top of this page. And -btw- he makes lots of predictions that never pan out . Rational wiki has more on Mike.

How do you propose proteins of any kind survive that special hell?

It insists that they must, because of a Japanese manufacturer referring to degranulation of RBL-2H3 mast cells in vitro.

Your citation doesn’t support your bald, generic and consequently, highly misleading claim about “vaccines causing gelatin allergy”.

The amusing part is that the one he should be waving around isn't exactly hard to find.

@karen
Care to explain to us how to meaningfully discuss flu vaccine effectiveness without the language of probability? If you pop open the pages of any science journal on any topic in the English language, you're going to see tons of mays and mights, because that's the way real science is written.

I was not trying to reproduce anything I was simply re-posting an article that I read. I am therefor not agreeing with it nor denying. I was under the assumption that this might be a place that we could spread ideas

BJ, why not state this in the first place when copy-pasting? Another thing, did it occur to you that what we post is usually something which we are on the line when not equipped with an appropriate disclaimer because, to me, your post is plagiarism beside being really outraging.

So before offering to meet someone here to discuss your point (in which I personally volunteer), ensure that all of us get the point across that it's a copy-pasta and it is not something you endorse. That's the basic minimum.

Alain

@karen

Did you even read the title of the blog? Your tone-trolling doesn't speak well about your observational skills.

Slan Williams #247,

Thank you for researching and posting this.

Your post make my arguments stronger.

1) Basically, injecting food proteins such as gelatin can cause healthy people to develop an allergy.

2) Of course, people can have genetic predisposition increasing susceptibility.
Then there are c-section births that make those newborns significantly more susceptible for IgE synthesis.
http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749%2812%2903130-2/fulltext

3) Hydrolyzed gelatin solved the problem. So breaking down the protein before injecting makes it safe at least from the perspective of allergy development. Clearly illustrating the danger of injecting intact proteins.

4) Some US vaccines still contain plain gelatin. Other vaccines contain hydrolyzed gelatin.
Since there are people of Asian origin living in the US, why has gelatin not been removed from vaccines?
Why no enforcement that all gelatin be hydrolyzed?
Why no package insert warning directed to people of Asian origin about the allergy risk posed by gelatin in the vaccine?
Of course, some Asian groups may be more susceptible but that does not mean other non-Asians are free of the risk.

Gelatin in vaccines are still causing problems in the US more than a decade after the Nakayama and Pool studies. Why?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131108090127.htm

If a landing aircraft pops a tire, you would expect to find the root cause and check ALL the tires before you take off again.
After the gelatin problem was identified, would you not expect that EVERY food protein in vaccines would have been thoroughly investigated the same way?

Would you not expect that there will be specific safe dose levels established and enforced for these allergens?
I am an engineer. We create specifications before we design products. We have tests that demonstrate compliance to the specifications to qualify the product. If vaccines were engineered, I expect such clear specifications and tests for allergens. I am shocked by the FDA's lackadaisical approach to vaccine manufacture that looks more like tinkering than engineering . Please prove me wrong by posting such a specification.

Why is the food allergy epidemic considered "an enigmatic epidemic", "idiopathic etiology" when food proteins in vaccines have been clearly demonstrated as a possible cause?

As I wrote before, many vaccine/allergy studies have focused on the lack of natural infections (due to vaccines) as the cause for allergies. Not on vaccine ingredients as the cause.
Other than the Japanese studies, there does not seem to be studies specifically looking into food allergies and vaccines. Why?

If no controlled studies have been performed with and without say casein in vaccines, how can we claim that milk allergy is not caused by vaccines?

Your poor use and grasp of the English language is enough to discredit everything you say.

If people have to prove their point using sarcasm, possibilities and name-calling, I’m usually not interested in what they have to say

Possibly we are saddened to hear of your uninterest.

I am also disappointed that Karen couldn't definitely say whether she was interested or not, but rather had to make her point using possibilities.

Japanese manufacturer referring to degranulation of RBL-2H3 mast cells in vitro.

I was wondering about this:
Couldn't mast cells be activated simply in the presence of surfactant agents? In this case, tween 80 sans allergens?
I remember vaguely something about this from my university years.

A Ggl scholar search turned out a few articles on this topic.
Example: The effect of surfactants upon mammalian cells in vitro. The authors insist that the surfactants were highly purified.
A bit old (1976), though.

many vaccine/allergy studies have focused on the lack of natural infections (due to vaccines) as the cause for allergies.

The hygiene hypothesis isn't really about vaccination, but rather about exposure.
In other words, it's not the fact that we don't get sick as often which is the issue, but the fact that we don't encounter as many germ species in our rather homogeneous urban environments compared to the microbial diversity one could be exposed to in the countryside.

A few sub-hypotheses are focusing on us lacking some types of symbiotic/commensal bacteria or on the possibilities of us lacking interactions with bigger parasites, like helminth worms (I will need very strong evidence to be convinced by the latter one).

But us getting more allergies because we get less measles? Nope, not a main hypothesis.
Even more so since a few infectious diseases are threatening to make a come back, without any visible corresponding decrease in the number of allergies.

tl;dr: it's not pathogens we are lacking, but variety in our friendly germs.

@Helianthus and Narad:

Presumably, anything that can bind to FcεRI receptors bound IgE could do it. Here's a recent paper trying to find out how opioids trigger degranulation:http://mobile.journals.lww.com/anesthesia-analgesia/_layouts/oaks.journ…

Sarah - to whom are you speaking? Did you have some examples on that person's "poor use and grasp of the English language"? Thanks.

I look for the overuse of words such as may, might, crank and quack. If people have to prove their point using sarcasm, possibilities and name-calling, I’m usually not interested in what they have to say. You lost me pretty early in your rant.

That's nice. I don't care. As I've said many times before, I write about what interests me in a style that I enjoy. Fortunately, a lot of other people enjoy it too, but this is my hobby, my blog, and it's done almost solely for my enjoyment. That, of course, and all that filthy pharma lucre. (That's more sarcasm, in case you can't tell.)

"Your poor use and grasp of the English language is enough to discredit everything you say."

Supongo que nadie nunca dice nada creíble en español.

Rene - como no?

@Rene

It's more powerful than that -- anything said in Spanish is instantly false.

@ Krebiozen #249

Golly. Kute, kute, kute... That doesn't sound like enough germinites to elicite a strong enough reaction for *contact immunity* to be effective. Or maybe the vaccines don't have to be so strong afterall??

It still does not answer my query -- Should immunocompromsed persons shun those who have been recently LAIVed or not??

APV #262

"Gelatin in vaccines are still causing problems in the US..."

Your link does not support your claim.

Your link also shows that your earlier citation for flu vaccine causing egg allergy is outdated.

In short, you have produced no up-to-date evidence to support your claims.

Should immunocompromsed persons shun those who have been recently LAIVed or not??

They should take the information provided by the CDC i.e.

Rarely, shed vaccine viruses can be transmitted from vaccine recipients to unvaccinated persons. However, serious illnesses have not been reported among unvaccinated persons who have been infected inadvertently with vaccine viruses.

and make a decision based on that and the nature of their condition. Since humanity is a seething mass of vaccine factories, squirting contagious aerosols out of almost every orifice, I imagine encountering a child post LAIV isn't any more dangerous than traveling on a bus or working in an office. Probably less so.

Vaccines on the brain... "virus factories", not "vaccine factories",

@APV:
I'm glad you've seen the light on genetic predisposition. That will save me from having to give you a family tree of the obscure food allergies in my family. Still, a few questions:
1. My child has some uncommon food allergies. It's really implausible that any of them could have been in any vaccination. Not has my child been on a proton pump

@APV
Nor has my child been on a proton pump. How do you explain these allergies?
2. If the immune system doesn't come into contact with proteins from food normally, how do allergic reactions to food even occur?

make a decision based on that and the nature of their condition.

Well I agree, Krebiozen -- both for the one getting vaxed and the one that may be negatively impacted and whether the twain shall meet. Unfortunately, there are workplace/compulsory education/state 'policy' and color-of-law defacto cohersion to consider and it is not that simple for even an *informed* individual to do the right thing, is it??

Pamela: Do yourself, your kids, and your patients a favor, and find a new line of work and a life away from your kids. I know you think your daughter is worthless and damaged- but that's mainly because you're standing in her way and sabotaging her. Previously, I though only parents on AOA or at TMR could sink that low, but I guess your common sense fell out long ago. Or you just like hating your kids.
I hope your kids cut ties with you once they're adults- or that maybe, you can recover that intelligence you once had. It's too bad you never bothered to look into real solutions for your kids, or understood that ADD doesn't equal mental retardation.

Krebiozen #250,

I am sure we have fine scientists and doctors way more qualified than me. If they had found a way to prevent food allergies or cure it, I would not be poking my nose in their business.

When the FDA approves Vioxx and it kills people more efficiently than it kills pain, you realize that there is more to this matter than having great scientists and doctors.

My son has had skin sensitivity tests and specific IgE tests. He has been prescribed Epipen. He spent a night in the ICU for an allergic reaction he suffered after receiving five vaccine shots in one sitting. The hospital reported that to the VAERS and sent his case to Johns Hopkins. They scratched their heads and came up with nothing. I don't blame them. Given a five vaccine cocktail with a poorly characterized/undocumented soup of ingredients, how could they track anything down?

He is allergic to milk, eggs, peanuts and tree nuts. One bite of a Burger King veggie burger without cheese meant an ER visit.

Vaccines contain, egg, casein, agar directly listed. And as I have written before, Polysorbate 80 is a source of undisclosed, uncontrolled allergens.

Some studies have linked vaccines to asthma. Others have not.
Why has there not been a controlled investigation? The Japanese studies regarding gelatin were controlled, focused on an ingredient and clearly got down to root cause. Where is the equivalent study for asthma?
With Polysorbate 80, I am pointing out a possible mechanism. It can only be proved by a controlled study.

"You seriously believe that Googling scientific papers you clearly do not understand is superior to decades of research by thousands of highly trained scientists? Doesn’t that strike you as just a little arrogant?"

At least some doctors don't have the time to study package inserts and stay up to date. One doctor thanked me for creating this:
https://mttmblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/flusum2014.pdf
Our doctor did not know that the oral typhoid vaccine had casein which could be a problem for my son. I had to tell him.

"If your alarmist scaremongering dissuades a single person from vaccinating their child you are most definitely putting their life at risk. How can you possibly argue otherwise?"

If someone believes my blog and ignores the FDA, that tells you the level of mistrust the FDA has earned.
That is not my fault. It is the FDA's fault.

"The FDA’s unsafe vaccines have put my child’s and millions of other people’s lives at risk."

I said lives at risk, not deaths. So yes, millions is correct. There are millions of people with life-threatening food allergies.

Poorly hydrolyzed gelatin:
Where's the spec.? Where's the enforcement? Why can that not happen again? Why can that not happen here?
Some vaccine still use plain gelatin ... the FDA has not learned anything ...

@APV #262

I considered refuting your last post point by point, but everything you say has been predicated on the idea that vaccine ingredients can cause allergies. Outside of one single, extremely specific incident, this has never been proven. This is a time when I really wish studies with negative results were published more often because it's entirely possible that these ideas have been tested and found incorrect, but aren't many researchers who are willing to publish a paper with negative results and still fewer publishers who would accept one. What we do have are retrospective studies that failed to show a correlation.

You mentioned that you were an engineer, though not what kind, but let me assure you that the biological systems involved in immunity are infinitely more complicated than anything humans have ever designed and your comment in your last post about science's failure to completely demistify the mechanisms of food allergies shows how little you understand of laboratory research. What appears to you as "tinkering" is the best way we know how to tackle an extremely complicated problem. If you have a better idea, great. I doubt there isn't a vaccine manufacturer who wouldn't appreciate an approach to simplify their research. If you seriously think your ideas have traction, I suggest you either start taking classes and working towards earning a degree in immunology or partnering with someone who already has one. Then you can find a lab and apply for a grant from NIAID or another similar organization to research just this topic. If you want to affect change in how this research is done, you're not going to do it by posting an idea supported only by a poor understanding of immunology and cherry picked internet research.

Krebiozen #250,

Shellfish - there is the possibility of cross reaction between human muscle protein tropomyosin and shellfish tropomyosin.
So not exactly a vaccine ingredient but an intramuscular shot risk.

@Krebolzen 243"
"You have about a 1 in 20 chance of getting influenza in any given year, "

I'm guessing that number is measured in a vaccinated population.

Me: Personally, I’ve never had a flu vaccine, and I also don’t recall ever having the flu. Maybe I did when I was a kid, and forget, but that was a long time ago.

Krebolzen @243 You are either extraordinarily lucky or you are mistaken. I have had influenza several times,

Yes, maybe you are prone because you've been vaccinated? Ever think of that? I gave you 4 separate references suggesting that.
One of them is literally the only RPC study I've ever found that compared a vaccine injected into children to an actual placebo (not another vaccine) and followed their health (not the effectiveness of the vaccine on that specific disease) for more than 4 months. If you have cites to others, I'd love to see em.

So fa, you have given not a study to dispute any of the 4 I've given that each reported immune system damage.

When the FDA approves Vioxx and it kills people more efficiently than it kills pain

Are you sure you want to go there?
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/30/500000_excess_deaths_fr…
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/04/22/an-antivaccine-thinker-cal…

Shellfish – there is the possibility of cross reaction between human muscle protein tropomyosin and shellfish tropomyosin.

Anyone reacting to shellfish tropomyosin from self-tropomyosin sensitivity will react more strongly to steak or pork those being closer matches. Therefore steak allergy will be more common than shellfish allergy. But it isn't.
Of course if people were becoming allergic to their own tropomyosin (due to needles, or any other reason) then they would not need shellfish consumption to make it obvious.

Due to having seasonal allergies to various pollen, along with horses and cat dander, I had to get allergy shots once a week for several years.

I am sure that APV would disaprove.

Not to jump into the middle of whatever pissing match this forum went into this weekend, but thought I'd offer something on the pathway for allergen response in the questions for food and non-contact.

Typically (and when I say typically, I mean not always in every case, but only to the better of our understanding), hypersensitivity goes to four main types. The type probably asked about in relation to food absorption would be Type4, which deals in the inflammatory bowel disease, as one example. Type4 hypersensitivity also deals with Type1 diabetes, MS, rheumatoid arthritis, peripheral neuropathy, and contact dermatitis -- to name some examples.

Type4 deals with two mechanisms in T Lymphocytes. CD4+ (helper cell) respond to tissue antigens by secreting cytokines, which in turn stimulates inflammation and activates phagocytes. A cytokine is basically a chemical signal, it's pretty powerful, in fact, patients that die from ebola virus actually die from the their own cytokine storm. Granted, facilitated by the viral invader. A phagocyte is what it sounds, a cell that engulfs or eats all kinds of crap and gets rid of whatever needs getting rid of. The other type is CD8+ T lymphocyte (cytotoxic) which is the killer cell that causes direct cell toxicity. So, two mechanisms involving cytotoxins & macrophage inflammation.

Okay, now when we talk about hypersensitivity, that means an inappropriate response, i.e. allergic reaction to some antigen. Now the question goes to how do you get that without direct contact, correct? Well there is some presentation by the tissue cell of the antigen. This cell is called a dendritic cell, also can be called a Langerhans cell, that presents the antigen to the CD4+ (T-helper), and from their you can get a positive feedback loop of cytokines without direct contact of the allergen. The result is some inappropriate response, possibly minor or even majorly/systemic. You can expose yourself to an antigen all your life and not have a problem, until you have that next exposure and then your system goes apeshit.

Now if you take this and say that I just proved the gut tie-in to vaccine injury, please don't waste my time -- first, I don't prove anything, and secondly, no. Injury is supported through genetic predisposition of the individual, not the vaccine. Although a vaccine can be a rare trigger for some people to have their own system respond in maladaptive manner, in that they were already set to go into (what it means to be genetically predisposed). We just don't know everything about our predispositions.

Just tonight you can catch a 60 mintues special on cancer pathways, very similar discussions in science. They are mapping genomic mutations and spending a ton of capital in information technology to analyze possibilities. We aren't there yet, but only to reiterate the same message accross the open-sourced peer review university system, it's not the vaccines. The snippet reports showing nothing more than spurious correlation that get blasted across activist websites really add nothing to a global problem where we have millions each year die to preventable disease. Some to supply logistics, or war, or plain dumbass stupidity.

Communities in our developed countries having 25-35% unvaccinated rates to highly contagious and sometimes deadly microbes. I don't get it. Do people actually want health care providers to cut their kid's throat open and shove a tube in it so that they won't suffocate? Maybe parents need a mandatory six week rotation in an ER so they can see the reality of this mis-information campaign.

I guess I did jump in Orac, stupid me. Anyway, off the soapbox. I hope I provided some viable information on hypersensitivity. Maybe stop thinking of the human body in A must always equal B causation and effect, except of course microbes can kill, and they are very good at it.

Sian Williams #283,

"Outside of one single, extremely specific incident, this has never been proven."

At least two:
Gelatin allergy:
Kuno-Sakai H, Kimura M. Removal of gelatin from live vaccines and DTaP-an ultimate solution for vaccine-related gelatin allergy.Biologicals 2003;31:245-9.

Egg allergy:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2249232/pdf/epidinfect00008…

and similar mechanism with ticks and alpha-gal:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3057034/

"infinitely more complicated than anything humans have ever designed"
So, I would expect an even more rigorous and systematic approach to problem solving. Manufacturing Polysorbate 80 does not seem like rocket science. Why can't you have an allergen spec. and compliance check?

Your citation says:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448377/
"We found an association between vaccination and the development of allergic disease; however, this association was present only among children with the fewest physician visits and can be explained by this factor."

Sorry, I don't understand why "fewest physician visits" can be used to throw away this association. It looks more like the authors did not like the results, so they are looking for a way to obfuscate? And further, the same pattern of lack of attention to detail. Not all DTaP are the same. Not all MMR are the same. They don't note the ingredients. Seems like a lot of effort being wasted.

justthestats #278, #279,

"I’m glad you’ve seen the light on genetic predisposition"
My understanding is you cannot be born with an IgE mediated allergy. You could have a genetic predisposition to developing IgE when exposed to a protein.

The mechanisms I am aware of for sensitization are injections/vaccinations, insect bites, PPI, skin prick tests or feeding allergens (infant formula) to a newborn in the first few days of life.

'uncommon food allergies"
If you could list them I may have a possible source ...

"2. If the immune system doesn’t come into contact with proteins from food normally, how do allergic reactions to food even occur?"
My understanding is the sensitization and elicitation occur at different locations. If an allergen is injected into the muscle, IgE antibodies are created there (sensitization) and circulate in the blood. The IgE bind to the surface of mast cells and basophils in your mouth for example. When you now eat the allergen, the IgE detect the allergen and cause degranulation of the mast cells/basophils (elicitation of an allergic reaction).

So foods can safely come into contact with parts of the immune system in your mouth as long as they don't have food specific IgE displayed on the mast cells/basophils.

Leigh Jackson #275,

"Your link does not support your claim."
Sorry, what claim?
"Your link also shows that your earlier citation for flu vaccine causing egg allergy is outdated."
I think you misunderstood. My citation is about flu vaccine causing sensitization (development of allergy in a non-allergic individual). The gummy bear article is talking about people who are already allergic to egg, reacting to a flu vaccine.

Leigh Jackson #254,

1999, I cited Nakayama et. al to show less protein was needed for sensitization than elicitation. You are right that they hypothesized a causal relationship.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9949325

2003, they proved it beyond doubt, hence recommending removal of gelatin.
Kuno-Sakai H, Kimura M. Removal of gelatin from live vaccines and DTaP-an ultimate solution for vaccine-related gelatin allergy.Biologicals 2003;31:245-9.

"You say that 10 years on the FDA have learned nothing, but your own link refutes you"
What has the FDA learned and what is the refutation?

Spiritual warfare at the SMITHSONIAN! Must see!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cKE8pyfcZc#t=288

Science Mom #245,

The allergen report shows a big list of allergens that are not present because they are not used in the manufacturing process. No problem with that.
Then they claim maize and wheat are used in the manufacture but not present in the final product even though they don't test for it! That's the problem.

HDB @175

I followed your link to Mike Carlotta's expertise on Voices In the Head where he was kind enough to provide a link toe the Wikipedia article on Microwave Auditory effect. However, I was disappointment the article was sadly lacking any information on the efficacy of tinfoil headgear in mitigating the effect. Perhaps Mike Adams could do a study.

Krebiozen #241,

"Inducing allergies in animals is difficult,"
If you want 100% of the animals to become allergic, if you want them to stay allergic for the duration of the experiment, it can get a little challenging I suppose. If you just inject allergen + alum into a set of mammals, I expect that some will develop allergy. That may not be enough for laboratory use.

"They don’t list food or other allergies as an adverse effects of vaccines because there is good evidence against this."
There is no evidence against food allergies that you have posted. Did I miss it?
They are not paying attention to what the Japanese have found both w.r.t gelatin and eggs.

"with severe reactions such as anaphylaxis occurring somewhere in the order of one in a million doses."
As I pointed out before, anaphylaxis is the tip of the iceberg. If there is enough allergen to cause anaphylaxis, there is way more than enough to cause sensitization. So for every anaphylaxis case , there are probably thousands of sensitizations that occur and are not accounted/studied as adverse events.

Vaccine clinical trials do not inspire confidence either. In many cases, they look for "solicited adverse events" which are usually mild effects for 7 days. We know that immune disorders will take a few weeks to develop. What is the difficulty in soliciting immune disorder events also and waiting for a few weeks post-vaccination? Then the studies report only solicited events only if they affect more than 5% of participants. Why?
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedPr…

Then there are trials where the control group is injected with aluminum hydroxide. Why inject anything into the control group?
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedPr…

Sian Williams #206,

May be we have been seeing allergic reactions (not anaphylaxis) caused by anti-influenza IgE for a long time. We just did not recognize it as such. The 15 mcg may be too small to cause anaphylaxis. There is this common claim by people that they got flu from the flu vaccine. Perhaps there is some truth to it. They did not get the flu but they are suffering an allergic reaction with flu like symptoms (runny nose, itchy eyes and it may even be biphasic with a primary IgE mediated and a secondary IgG mediated response).
These people may have been sensitized either by the previous year's vaccine or a wild type infection and the current flu vaccine elicits a response that is mistaken as "getting flu from the flu shot". Possible?

@APV - no.

it may even be biphasic with a primary IgE mediated and a secondary IgG mediated response

My immunology lessons are a bit outdated, but I was under the impression that the IgE path and the IgG path are mutually exclusive (at least in the context of going toward normal immunity or toward allergy).
It's used in one method of desensitization: keep exposing the patient to the allergen until his/her immune system shift from IgE to IgG.

I was also under the impression that a strong stimulation of the immune system is more likely to go toward the IgG path than the allergy route.

I could be wrong, but I would like a chance to change my mind with something else than speculations.
In other words, do you have any evidence toward your hypothesis?

There is this common claim by people that they got flu from the flu vaccine

Let's see. It's flu season, a wild, contagious virus is going around, and we are all congregating in some place to get our shots.
Wouldn't it be some good chance for the wild virus to invite itself to the party and contaminate a number of non-immune people conveniently gathering in a enclosed place?
No need to multiply entities to explain the "got flu while getting the flu shot" claim.

APV:

There is this common claim by people that they got flu from the flu vaccine. Perhaps there is some truth to it. They did not get the flu but they are suffering an allergic reaction with flu like symptoms...

Perhaps these people have little green men running around inside their bodies causing the symptoms? Until you provide evidence that stands up to scrutiny, rather than supposition, my supposition has as much going for it as yours.

So over to you. Where is the evidence? Who published it? Has it stood the test of time?

Tim,

Unfortunately, there are workplace/compulsory education/state ‘policy’ and color-of-law defacto cohersion to consider and it is not that simple for even an *informed* individual to do the right thing, is it??

It seems simple to me. Get your and your child's vaccines according to the current schedule, and if you know someone on immunosuppressive drugs, for example, maybe keep away from them for a few days after the LAIV.

natphilosopher,

“You have about a 1 in 20 chance of getting influenza in any given year, ”
I’m guessing that number is measured in a vaccinated population.

It's interesting that you guess that, but no, that's the number of people in an unvaccinated population who got influenza in a systematic review of influenza vaccine effectiveness (a Cochrane review that is behind a paywall). In this systematic review in well-matched years there were 12,237 placebo patients of which 844 got influenza that season, a risk of 1 in 14, meaning unvaccinated people can expect to get influenza every 14 years on average, a bit more often than I estimated.

Of the 15,877 LAIV vaccine recipients, 255 got influenza, a risk of 1 in 62, meaning that vaccine recipients were four times less likely to get influenza than those that didn't get the vaccine.

"I have had influenza several times,"
Yes, maybe you are prone because you’ve been vaccinated? Ever think of that? I gave you 4 separate references suggesting that.

I'm in my 50s so I would expect to have had influenza a few times, but I haven't had it since I started getting the vaccine five years ago. None of your references suggest that the influenza vaccine increases the risk of getting influenza, in humans or mice. One study suggests that in mice vaccination against one strain of influenza made the mice immune to this strain but more susceptible to a different strain. This has not been replicated in humans but if it were it would argue for the addition of more strains in the vaccine, wouldn't it? Vaccine development is an ongoing process, and we sometimes get surprises like this, but there is no doubt at all that we are better off with vaccines than without them.

One of them is literally the only RPC study I’ve ever found that compared a vaccine injected into children to an actual placebo (not another vaccine) and followed their health (not the effectiveness of the vaccine on that specific disease) for more than 4 months. If you have cites to others, I’d love to see em.

That RPC study found that the vaccine recipients got less influenza ("TIV recipients had significantly lower risk of seasonal influenza infection based on serologic evidence"), but more colds than non-vaccine recipients (17 more colds in the vaccine group than in the placebo group). Perhaps getting influenza confers cross-immunity to cold viruses. Anyway, as I wrote before, I would much prefer a cold to influenza.

So fa, you have given not a study to dispute any of the 4 I’ve given that each reported immune system damage.

I see different responses to wild influenza viruses as compared to influenza vaccines. I see no evidence at all of "immune system damage". It seems very clear to me that it is much better getting an influenza vaccine than not getting one.

@Tim #246:

I am not sure why you insist on using "ostracized" and "dirty" in your posts. A child who has received LAIV is not "dirty", and the non-vaccinating parents I've banned from my practice can come back if they decide to vaccinate. But until then, I do not need their unvaccinated child bringing measles, whooping cough or chicken pox into my waiting room. And I sure don't want to hear their anti-vaccine nonsense in the exam room.

I'm so glad I made popcorn prior to reading the comments today.

There is this common claim by people that they got flu from the flu vaccine. Perhaps there is some truth to it. They did not get the flu but they are suffering an allergic reaction with flu like symptoms…

So, please inform us as to what kind of allergic reaction includes high fever, chills, secondary pneumonia, etc.

Your 'what if' barrel - you've scraped it clean.

Your poor use and grasp of the English language is enough to discredit everything you say.

Heh.

APV,

I am sure we have fine scientists and doctors way more qualified than me. If they had found a way to prevent food allergies or cure it, I would not be poking my nose in their business.

It's not about you poking your nose where it doesn't belong, it's about you not having the education to understand the papers you are reading and coming to ridiculous conclusions based on them. For example, you claim that the tiny amount of polysorbate 80 in some vaccines may cause asthma because it damages the lungs of sheep when their lungs are washed out with a 0.5% solution. That is ridiculous as claiming that a pieces of tissue paper could cause head injuries because it is made of the same substance as a baseball bat, especially when the epidemiological evidence shows no associations between vaccines and asthma.

As an engineer, how would you respond to a person without any education in engineering making claims about the subject that were based on a complete misunderstanding of how things work?

When the FDA approves Vioxx and it kills people more efficiently than it kills pain, you realize that there is more to this matter than having great scientists and doctors.

Vioxx is a very effective painkiller that has transformed many people's lives and that may also increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes in those that take it in high doses for more than 18 months. The evidence isn't clear, and it may be that other drugs in this class may have similar effects. There are risks and benefits, but the drug appears to be safe when taken in lower doses for less than 18 months. It certainly doesn't kill people more efficiently than it kills pain, that's just ignorant hyperbole.

My son has had skin sensitivity tests and specific IgE tests. He has been prescribed Epipen. He spent a night in the ICU for an allergic reaction he suffered after receiving five vaccine shots in one sitting. The hospital reported that to the VAERS and sent his case to Johns Hopkins. They scratched their heads and came up with nothing. I don’t blame them. Given a five vaccine cocktail with a poorly characterized/undocumented soup of ingredients, how could they track anything down?

That must have been a very frightening experience, and a very frustrating one. I can understand why you are grasping at straws to try to make sense of what happened. However, I think you have mistakenly seized upon vaccines as a cause of your son's problems and you are so focused and invested in this that you are unable to take a step back and look at the subject with some perspective and objectivity.

Vaccines can cause allergic reactions in some susceptible individuals, we know that, though the CDC estimates that this is very rare, happening after only one in a million vaccines doses. You seem to be extrapolating from this one very unusual experience and making an unjustified leap to the conclusion that your son's allergies were caused by vaccines, not just triggered by them.

Vaccines contain, egg, casein, agar directly listed. And as I have written before, Polysorbate 80 is a source of undisclosed, uncontrolled allergens.

You have presented no evidence at all that polysorbate 80 contains food proteins, and it is practically impossible that it does, given the manufacturing process.

Some studies have linked vaccines to asthma. Others have not.

The Institute of Medicine carried out an extremely thorough review of the evidence for various adverse effects of vaccines, including asthma three years ago, and concluded that there is no link. I suggest you read the report, which can be downloaded free of charge.

Why has there not been a controlled investigation? The Japanese studies regarding gelatin were controlled, focused on an ingredient and clearly got down to root cause. Where is the equivalent study for asthma?

There is no evidence that suggests a need for one. This study of 167,240 children found no link between diphtheria, tetanus and whole cell pertussis vaccine, oral polio vaccine or measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and the risk of asthma. They concluded that the weak association between Hib and hepatitis B vaccines and asthma were probably due to health care utilization or information bias.

With Polysorbate 80, I am pointing out a possible mechanism. It can only be proved by a controlled study.

Why would anyone spend millions of dollars on a study to prove a hypothesis that is not only extremely implausible but also has evidence that directly contradicts it? The "possible mechanism" you cite is based on washing out sheep's lungs with concentrated polysorbate solution, not injecting a tiny amount intramuscularly. It's ridiculous.

“You seriously believe that Googling scientific papers you clearly do not understand is superior to decades of research by thousands of highly trained scientists? Doesn’t that strike you as just a little arrogant?”
At least some doctors don’t have the time to study package inserts and stay up to date. One doctor thanked me for creating this: [...]
Our doctor did not know that the oral typhoid vaccine had casein which could be a problem for my son. I had to tell him.

I'm not talking about front line doctors, who may not be up to date with this subject, I'm talking about scientists who have spent their lives studying immunology and vaccines. You seem to think that your knowledge and understanding of the subject is superior to theirs when it very clearly is not.

If someone believes my blog and ignores the FDA, that tells you the level of mistrust the FDA has earned. That is not my fault. It is the FDA’s fault.

So it's OK for you to spread lies and misinformation about vaccines and if anyone believes you and doesn't vaccinate their child, resulting in them dying of pertussis, it's not your fault it's the FDA's? If you cry "fire" in a crowded theater and people are trampled to death, is that someone else's fault too? The theater staff should have been more effective in stopping the panic?

“The FDA’s unsafe vaccines have put my child’s and millions of other people’s lives at risk.”
I said lives at risk, not deaths. So yes, millions is correct. There are millions of people with life-threatening food allergies.

Yet there is no reason at all to think these allergies were caused by vaccines. Are supermarkets putting millions of people's lives at risk too by selling food?

Poorly hydrolyzed gelatin: Where’s the spec.? Where’s the enforcement? Why can that not happen again? Why can that not happen here? Some vaccine still use plain gelatin … the FDA has not learned anything …

Allergic reactions to gelatin in vaccines occur after only about one in two million doses, suggesting that only one in two million people have a gelatin aIlergy, despite the billions of doses of gelatin-containing vaccines that have been administered over the years.

I don't know the specifications for gelatin in vaccines, but I am quite sure there is one. Vaccine manufacturers don't want their customers dying due to use of their products, and they are well aware of the problem with gelatin. Hypoallergenic gelatin is available, and I'm sure it is used in vaccine manufacture, though I don't have the time to dig around and find the relevant data. The rarity of gelatin allergy seems to me to be prima facie evidence of this.

There is this common claim by people that they got flu from the flu vaccine. Perhaps there is some truth to it.

I don't think so:

Of 849 subjects enrolled in the study, 425 received a placebo and 424 received influenza vaccine. Baseline characteristics were similar between the groups, and 99% of subjects completed interviews to assess side effects after the study injection. No differences were seen between the 2 groups for the systemic symptoms of fever, myalgias, fatigue, malaise, or headaches. Overall, 35.2% of placebo and 34.1% of vaccine recipients reported at least 1 of these systemic symptoms (P = .78, chi 2).

Ingesting something is not the same as injecting the same thing.

True, but unless you have evidence that the route of adminsitration makes a difference--that when injected rather than than ingested aluminum at levels of exposure achievable by routine vacination is toxic or otherwise harmful, I has to ask: did you have a point?

Polysorbate 80 manufacturers use a variety of vegetable oils that could include peanut oil. It is therefore not possible to rule out the presence of peanut oil in vaccine.

Lust like, because the polypropylene barrels of the syringes used to give the innoculations are manufactured from petroleum, it's no possible to rule out the presence of crude oil...

APV, I've got one simple question for you:

Do you have any evidence whatsoever demonstrating that the risks associated with being vaccinated against influenza exceed the risks associated with remaining vulnerable to infection by influenza?

Beacuse if not, all your posts re: polysorbate 80, allergic responses, etc., reduce to "Oooh, ingredients! Scary stuff!""

JGC. I already asked him. He weaseled out with some idiotic excuse.

So, yeah, it comes down “Oooh, ingredients! Scary stuff!””

You'd think fossils would repel Christians like garlic does to vampires. I wish we could find something that works on Toto.

And it's even worse when those blasted ingredients are made of
((shudder))
chemicals!!!

-btw- Kim @ AoA has her take on the flu shot 'problem'
and yes, it's atrocious.

"You'd think fossils would repel Christians"

Why?

Maybe fossils are from a prior *creation*, PgP -- Maybe it got broke somehow.

Back when I was 'churched', I only ever knew one prominent member who actually adhered to a literal age of Earth to be 6K years -- He worked in missile defense for the US government.

I grew bitter and frustrated over certain subjects I knew not to be the truth yet 'the church' was politically active in working against those 'truths' in parroting an imposter of a federal governance. Advocating and helping to mandate programs which were particularly 'non-christian' in the implementation and outcomes. I have declared publicly and even more intensly privately very bad things to the father above as well as the earthly one -- I wish I had the 'faith' to conclude that the former, at least, has not perhaps forsaken me over it.

There were good people there; I, like you, have my own trust issues which sort of manifested as an unheartfelt *renouncement* -- You come off as displaying abject hatred and this is not likely to win over many of that crowd who stand opposed to many aspects of 'sbm'.

Consider this: The Book makes a distinction between the physical and spirital 'world'. Physical instruments may not be able to detect (make a measurement) of 'spiritual' phenomena and manifestations (<--Karl Popper is guffawing me now, I know). What exists 'outside' our known universe?? Have we detected 'dark matter' or 'dark energy' (still physical, to be sure) even though their existance is *implied* through other physical observations?

Here is a work of fiction I think you may find enjoyable, Politicalguineapig:

Nightfall
http://www.fictiondb.com/author/isaac-asimov-robert-silverberg~nightfal…

Lots of parallels in that one -- Archeologists, anthropologists, theologians, religious cults, psycologists, doctors, astronomers, physicists, students, crazy radio prophets and their outspoken radio critics... Within the University setting, the scientific method and it's evolving of knowledge and scope based on new previously occulted (hidden) information.

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, bow would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God!

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Other world! There is no other world! Here or nowhere is the whole fact. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

@Krebiozen.

I can't be bothered to plough through your blather and feed the troll, so just a comment.

Just finished reading Paul Offits "Do You Believe in Magic?' A nice little read..good intro to the topic for Newbies, but I also learned a few new things myself.

Like , for instance, Krebiozen, was a "cancer cure" hoax in the 1950's. It contained nothing but mineral oil and creatine, it was shown to have zero effects, and the promoters of it (Dr Andrew Ivy, and Mr Stevan Durovic) were indicted on 49 counts of mail fraud, mislabeling, conspiracy and making false statements.

And that is what you choose as your handle.
Interesting.

You’d think fossils would repel Christians like garlic does to vampires. I wish we could find something that works on Toto.

While we're at it, what repels pathological bigots?

@Krebiozen.

I can’t be bothered to plough through your blather and feed the troll, so just a comment.

You should have bothered. Krebiozen has been a valued contributor here for more years than you've been here days. Your announcement that you can't be "bothered" to respond to his actual content and will instead judge him on his handle reflects poorly upon you, not him.

A prompt apology might mitigate somewhat the damage you've just done to your own image, but frankly I don't know whether someone who thoughtlessly assumed "I sees a handle what looks suspicimous! Must be troll! I go bash for funsies and boast how me not read before bash!" would create a positive impression can understand that.

“I sees a handle what looks suspicimous!"
I can't be bothered ploughing through the blather of someone claiming to be a mineral!

NewCoasterMD,

I can’t be bothered to plough through your blather and feed the troll, so just a comment.

I'm awfully sorry to bore you, though how you reading what I wrote "feeds the troll" escapes me. Personally I do try to read what someone has written before criticizing them, to avoid making a twit of myself.

Like , for instance, Krebiozen, was a “cancer cure” hoax in the 1950’s. It contained nothing but mineral oil and creatine, it was shown to have zero effects, and the promoters of it (Dr Andrew Ivy, and Mr Stevan Durovic) were indicted on 49 counts of mail fraud, mislabeling, conspiracy and making false statements.

Krebiozen was not just a bogus cancer cure, it has been touted as evidence that placebos cure cancer. It comprises two examples of people believing in obvious nonsense in one, and it's a cool-counding name. That's why I chose it. Did you have a point?

Antaeus, your kind words re appreciated. Thanks.

I meant "are appreciated", probably obviously.

APV #290

What claim?

Your claim (#262) that gelatin in the *US* is *still* causing problems.

Implying that there have been problems with *US* vaccines from the time of the Nakayama study of 1999. Sian has shown why problems in Japan were not problems in the US.

Your link (#262) shows that where gelatin allergy is suspected people should be tested before receiving vaccines containing gelatine. This is in line with the Pool study for the CDC, which showed no substantial increase in allergic responses to MMR following DTaP but did find raised levels of anti-gelatin antibodies (compared with non-allergic control subjects) in a quarter of allergic response cases. Pool said these people should seek an allergy evaluation before taking further gelatin-containing vaccines. In other words a cap was placed on childhood vaccines containing gelatine for those showing allergic responses and raised levels of anti-gelatin antibodies. Lessons have been learned. Pool found no evidence to suggest egg traces in MMR might cause egg allergy.

In #224 you say: Flu vaccine can cause egg allergy in healthy non-allergic individuals.

Has the 1987 suggestion of Yamane and Uemura that flu vaccine *might* cause subsequent egg allergy ever been confirmed? They did not show that flu vaccine can cause subsequent egg allergy. It is much more difficult to prove a negative so the onus is on you to show evidence that flu vaccines can cause food allergies. So far mentioned one exceptional case in Japan and one other possible case. Tenuous evidence upon which to cast doubt on vaccines in general.

Re #204, in a reply to Chris who asked:

“Has any influenza vaccine in the USA caused a hundred pediatric deaths in the USA due to allergic reactions?”

You said:

"I believe that would not be the appropriate question to ask.
The question is how many of the 15 million people with food allergies developed it because of a vaccine.
The Japanese research I cited was to show that vaccines do indeed cause food allergies. In the US, I have not found equivalent studies at all. If you don’t study the problem, how can you be sure it does not exist?"

I think that Chris's question is perfectly appropriate but not yours. That allergic reactions to vaccines can cause deaths is well known.
So far you have not supplied any evidence, other than the single and special case of gelatin in Japan and the possibility of vaccine produced egg allergy found by Yamane and Uemura, that there is a real problem about vaccines causing food allergies.

And Pool was doing just what you ask for. He was looking to see if the same problem as in Japan applied to the US.
He found that it did not do so.

Oh, I see you have added carbohydrates to the list of vaccine-caused food allergies, but wait, it doesn't actually say that vaccines have been shown to cause carbohydrate food allergy. Another maybe, perhaps.

Shay: I'm just grumbling about the Air Force taking up space in a museum where other people go to learn. As I've mentioned, the Air Force has been overrun by fundies.
Plus there was a rather annoying Youtube posted by a creationist who trolled the Field Museum. There really should be policies against that sort of thing. God is fine, science is fine, but the twain should never meet.

APV:

Food does not cause allergy unless you take it with proton pump inhibitors.

Now that really is a remarkable claim. So food allergy was nonexistent before the invention of PPIs. Wow. PPI development traces back to 1975. So I guess there were no food allergies before that? And all those kids with peanut allergies are on a drug that's not recommended in children? Hm. Interesting. I wonder what it was people had forty years ago that they thought were food allergies but apparently were not.

Also, wow, so proton pump inhibitors block 100% of all acid production. Huh. I did not know that. That probably explains why, while using them, I've died of malnutrition.

@Politicalguineapig,

Could you link to something about the museum, please?

It's been 22 years since I retired from the Air Force, so my memories are a bit out of date, but I don't recall it being "overrun by fundies" back then.

There was the usual range of religious viewpoints.

I suppose one could be a YEC and still do good research on high energy lasers, particle beams, radiation hardened electronics, and many of the other subjects that were being researched back then and continue to be studied now.

And, perhaps the nut job recently elected to the state legislature by a district in Colorado Springs indicates a more right-wing skew among the Air Force than the general population.

Is the Field Museum the one in Chicago?

I doubt that a museum running an exhibit on Voodoo Sacred Powers of Haiti has a strong objection to some of those Air Force scientists suggesting to young people looking to meet a scientist that they could further their education and do some scientific research in the Air Force.

Also, wow, so proton pump inhibitors block 100% of all acid production. Huh. I did not know that. That probably explains why, while using them, I’ve died of malnutrition.

Starting from my usual position of ignorance, I speculate that the pepsin in your stomach will not proteolyse so efficiently in the less-acidic conditions, but there will be no effect on proteolysis from trypsin, so you probably haven't starved after all. To everyone's relief.

I’m just grumbling about the Air Force taking up space in a museum where other people go to learn.

1. Assuming you're referring to the Air and Space Museum, how do you propose to demonstrate to the learning public America's aviation and space exploration efforts without mentioning the Air Force (I'm not a big fan of the USAF -- if their aim was better I'd be a rich widow right now -- but they dofly, y'know)?

2. Again assuming you're referring to the Air and Space Museum, where in the museum is any mention made of that branch's current religious makeup?

It seems our resident bigot has taken offense at the video posted by idiot Toto at 294 (the video, that is, she doesn't seem to be offended by the idiot's off topic and pointless post).

It takes a special kind of person to be offended by the Air Force band playing what could be called a Christmas song at Christmas time (more or less) at the Air and Space museum, that houses many Air Force artifacts.

Let's face it, they are both special.

could somebody please pull my morning comment for Politicalguineapig out of *moderation*?? It has only been there for 8~9 hrs or so... That's ok. I didn't consider it time sensitive or anything.

My reply to Hickie even less so -- He knows what I meant by 'ostracize' and the consequences it can have.

NewcoasterMD:

"I can’t be bothered to plough through your blather and feed the troll, so just a comment."

Wow, just wow. How about refraining from posting nasty derogatory comments about Krebiozen, who is extraordinarily well versed in all fields of science...and has earned the respect of Orac and the posters here?

"Just finished reading Paul Offits “Do You Believe in Magic?’ A nice little read..good intro to the topic for Newbies, but I also learned a few new things myself."

You're late to the party. Orac already posted about Dr. Offit's book and most of us have already read Dr. Offit's book, which was published, June 2013:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/06/19/do-you-believe-in-magic-in…

"Like , for instance, Krebiozen, was a “cancer cure” hoax in the 1950’s. It contained nothing but mineral oil and creatine, it was shown to have zero effects, and the promoters of it (Dr Andrew Ivy, and Mr Stevan Durovic) were indicted on 49 counts of mail fraud, mislabeling, conspiracy and making false statements."

Really? We had no idea about Krebiozen cancer cure quackery:

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/krebiozen.html

Shay: http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/about/michael-l-mikey-weinstein/

This should help explain why I take a dim view of the Air Force. If they actually did any science anymore, I'd be surprised. They're clearly occupying that place as an operation in order to pretend to be benevolent and hand out tracts.

As for the Field Museum, here's the first result I got:

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/231715/creationist-lady-has-amazing-mel…

Someone on the staff had to be in on that. Which means, someone is sabotaging the exhibits. And yes, it's in Chicago.

-btw- Kim @ AoA has her take on the flu shot ‘problem’
and yes, it’s atrocious.

Oh, Jesus, I'm glad I wasn't drinking anything when I reached Cynthia Parker's comment. Brace yourselves:

"To be fair, it wouldn't be possible to always accurately predict what strains of flu are going to predominate in the coming winter. Researchers go to China in the summer, kill a lot of wild geese there, and examine the flu viruses in their livers, because historically those are the ones that will sweep the Northern Hemisphere with flu in the coming winter. Obviously not an exact science since so many other factors come into play."

Krebiozen, who is extraordinarily well versed in all fields of science
Especially for a fox.

"Oh, Jesus, I’m glad I wasn’t drinking anything when I reached Cynthia Parker’s comment. "

I have continuously invited her to hang out with me and see how flu surveillance is done. I've even done it in Spanish. She keeps telling me that she's too sick and whatnot to do anything... Anything except continuously, constantly, unrelentingly comment and write on the topic of vaccine "injuries".

I really feel bad for her. Can you imagine living in that world?

herr doktor bimler...

Krebiozen is in good company with his avatar: :-)

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/10/15/the-victims-of-andrew-wake…

Rene Najera: I don't feel sorry for Cynthia Parker. When she embarks on 24 hour straight commenting jags posting hundreds of comments, she is neglecting her 14-year-old special needs child. She's a pathological lying liar who misrepresents the child's traumatic birth (emergency C-Section, with a true knot in the umbilical cord), her familial gene mutation which is a risk factor for her own Asperger syndrome and the multiple developmental disabilities in her family and her self-diagnose of her baby's "hepatitis B vaccine associated encephalitis".

She's on record as wanting her child to contract measles rather than providing the MMR vaccine for her child.

Herr Doktor @ 334
Yes but he is "as cunning as a fox what used to be Professor of Cunning at Oxford University but has moved on and is now working for the U.N. at the High Commission of International Cunning Planning"

This should help explain why I take a dim view of the Air Force. If they actually did any science anymore, I’d be surprised. They’re clearly occupying that place as an operation in order to pretend to be benevolent and hand out tracts.

If by science you mean avionics, engineering to include aeronautical, civil, computer, electronical and bioenvironmental, and meteorology (not to mention rocket science) yes, I believe the Air Force does "do science." As for the rest of your comment, it is beyond my power to ungarble.

I was just befuddled by APV's comment that people don't get food allergies from eating foods. Uh....how ELSE would you get some of them? I can be certain that my daughter developed her strawberry allergy from eating them, NOT from some phantasm of APV's imagination.

And I am sincerely sorry if his child had severe allergies. They can be hell to live with (my brother and a very good friend of mine had them. I never did). Strangely to say, we all had the same vaccine schedules (actually, I got more than my brother because he never got the MMR, having had the illnesses. I got the MMR, even though I *had* had the illnesses, just because....

@ Narad:

I know.

I always wondered what that *cia* nym was all about ..
OK, it's a contraction of 'Cynthia' I suppose and should call up associations to the 'central intelligence agency'- but no caps- that's a switch-
so what is she then: a spy in the house of woo or such?
Friggin' far associations will stick out.
( Or as we experts say: it's so 'loopy'.)

At any rate, is there still no word on Andy's continuously haranguing vexation ( a/k/a the lawsuit)? I just got in and haven't searched yet.

Krebiozen #340,

Polysorbate 80 and lung injury:
I would not dismiss it just yet ...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3949648
http://www.uptodate.com/contents/taxane-induced-pulmonary-toxicity

Adding insult to lung injury:
Vaccines have human lung fibroblasts. Autoimmunity?

Sian Williams posted details of HLA-DR9 individuals being more susceptible to gelatin allergy.
We know that c-section birth primes for IgE. How can one dismiss the possibility that such newborns are likewise susceptible to food proteins in vaccines, when no studies have been performed?
No studies have been performed even when one vaccine is used but in reality, we inject five in one sitting?

Vaccine/injection causing food allergy, studies:
Gelatin in vaccine caused gelatin allergy (Thanks to Sian Williams, HLA condition noted).
Egg in flu vaccine caused sensitization.
Influenza virus protein in flu vaccine causes sensitization (IgE) to viral protein.
Mice/rats sensitized regularly in the lab with injected food proteins.

Vaccine/injection NOT causing food allergy, studies:
None posted.

But conclusion: Vaccines DO NOT cause food allergies! Does that make sense to anyone? Sorry, it does not make sense to me.

The mechanism of injected proteins causing sensitization has been demonstrated over and over and there should be no doubts about it. The only open question is: Is there a dose of allergen sufficient to cause sensitization present in the vaccine?. As many have pointed out, the dose makes the poison.

Yet we have scientists talking about "poorly hydrolyzed gelatin". I expect people to talk about hydrolyzed gelatin meeting a quality spec. or violating it. How is poorly hydrolyzed gelatin defined? An FDA inspector dipping his finger in the vat and sticking it in the air? This is not engine oil. We inject our babies with it. Is this the best the FDA can do?
And this poorly hydrolyzed gelatin is everywhere. The DTaP in Japan had it causing sensitization. The MMR in Japan had it causing anaphylaxis. The MMR in the US had it causing anaphylaxis. The flu vaccine in the US has it causing anaphylaxis.
And as I repeatedly pointed out, it takes a lot less allergen to cause sensitization than it does to cause anaphylaxis.
15 mcg of viral protein caused sensitization in 100% of recipients (granted, N=3). 15 mcg of viral protein is not known to cause anaphylaxis.

I have been accused of scaremongering. If this is the way the FDA conducts its vaccine safety business, we ought to be scared of vaccines.

FWIW,
I asked a lot of doctors about the food allergy/vaccine connection.
The vast majority did not respond.
Dr. Polly Matzinger, NIAID/NIH, pointed out the BALB/c mice food allergy model and said the same could be happening in humans and should be investigated.
Dr. J Bart Classen wrote: "The concept of epitope spreading applies. If a macrophage has on its surface a tetanus immunogen and an self immunogen then the body will start developing immunity to the self immunogen as well. The self immunogen does not have to be in the vaccine only on the MHC molecules of a macrophage presenting the vaccine antigen (ie tetanus)."

MI Dawn #340,

To get strawberry allergy, the proteins in strawberry must be presented to parts of the immune system that can cause sensitization. If simply eating strawberry could cause you to develop an allergy, you should become allergic to every type of protein you eat.

If you ate strawberry with acid-reducing medications, you could develop an allergy. If you had eczema and Filaggrin mutations, then touching strawberry (juice?) may cause it.
I have not heard of strawberries in vaccines ... yet.

Calli Arcale #326,

You did not follow the whole thread.
Obviously healthy people eating foods will not cause them to develop food allergies. PPI can cause you develop allergies to food you eat. But that is not the only way to get food allergies. If you looked at the rest of my posts, I am saying food proteins in vaccines are the biggest contributor to the food allergy epidemic, not PPI.

APV, have you never heard of English rhetoric? Are sentence structure and paragraphs a foreign concept where you are from? Do you seriously think humans are equivalent to sheep? This is what you posted as evidence:
J Appl Physiol (1985). 1986 Feb;60(2):433-40.
Oleic acid lung injury in sheep.

What are your feelings about high schoo , college kids and young adults getting weekly allergy shots? Should those weekly injections be banned? I know it was annoying to me to get that office each week, especially for the year when my new employer's wouldn't pay for them because it was a "pre-existing condition."

"Dr. J Bart Classen"

That is hilarious. He is a patent troll.

If you put the address of Classen Immunotherapies, Inc in Google Maps you will find out it is not an office building, but a house. A very nice house with a pool, but still just a house. Not someplace that would have any kind of research labs.

Or a good reference for evidence.

Leigh Jackson #323,

Yes, gelatin is still causing problems in the US.
In 2013, ACAAI warned of gelatin in flu vaccines causing anaphylaxis. Lesson learned for me is:
Removal of ALL food proteins from vaccines -an ultimate solution for vaccine-related food allergy, as in:
Kuno-Sakai H, Kimura M. Removal of gelatin from live vaccines and DTaP-an ultimate solution for vaccine-related gelatin allergy.Biologicals 2003;31:245-9.

Yamane and Uemura demonstrated up to 2 RAST class increases in ovalbumin IgE caused by flu vaccines in some recipients. There were 10 out of 100 recipients who developed ovalbumin sensitization anew. I don't know what more confirmation you are seeking.

The Pool study looked at egg but it has nothing to do with MMR.

"So far you have not supplied any evidence, other than the single and special case of gelatin in Japan and the possibility of vaccine produced egg allergy found by Yamane and Uemura, that there is a real problem about vaccines causing food allergies."
So far ZERO evidence has been provided showing food proteins in vaccines DO NOT cause food allergies. So people should not be complaining about the number of studies both human/animal that I have posted demonstrating the mechanism at work.
Chris' question is inappropriate because I am not advocating against vaccination to solve the food allergy problem. I want food proteins removed from vaccines so people can safely vaccinate. So deaths due to vaccine-preventable diseases is an inappropriate question to ask.

Tick bite:
"carbohydrates to the list of vaccine-caused ..."
No, one more example of the consequences of bypassing normal food/protein processing in the digestive tract.
Nature's "vaccinations" are just as troublesome as man-made vaccinations.

Chris #345,#46,

They experiment on sheep/mice because the results usually apply to humans. What's your point?

Allergy shots are optional. You are not going to die without it.
So if you want to take the risk of allergy shots, it's up to you.
With vaccines, you don't have such a choice.

About Dr.Classen: If you dispute his epitope spreading comment, please post evidence.

Chris: Bart Classen, eh? I opened up one of the old (2012) posts on the SOP blog...which featured troll Putin and Parker's sockie "Ella". Classen was mentioned and I provided the link to his corporate website.

I also found Sharyl Attkisson's blog, where she champions the work of Classen...good for laughs:

http://sharylattkisson.com/research-immunologist-sees-vaccine-link-to-a…

Remember what they say about wrestling pigs. :-)

If by science you mean avionics, engineering to include aeronautical, civil, computer, electronical and bioenvironmental, and meteorology (not to mention rocket science) yes, I believe the Air Force does “do science.”</blockquote

Next you're going to give away the seamy underbelly of Ball jars.

You did not follow the whole thread.

This isn't exactly something that would work in your favor overall.

Obviously healthy people eating foods will not cause them to develop food allergies.

Have you ever encountered the advice that one should never write a sentence whose meaning hinges on a comma?

APV #347

What more confirmation do I want?

A lot more.

You want me to prove a negative?

First you give me the evidence which proves that there isn't a teapot in orbit round Mars. Then I will set about trying to figure out how to provide evidence that vaccines do not routinely cause food allergies. Beyond saying that there is no evidence that they do.

Chris' question is perfectly appropriate. Why won't you answer? It's a perfectly easy question to answer if what you say is true.

Here is the question:

Where is the quantification of those “vaccine-induced diseases”? Specifically the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers. Has any influenza vaccine in the USA caused a hundred pediatric deaths in the USA due to allergic reactions? That should be something that would be in the literature.

It's nice to find people have been saying nice things about me while I was curled up sleeping in my foxhole (with Baldrick and Blackadder). I wasn't sure anyone appreciated just how hard it is typing without the benefit of opposable thumbs. Thanks. BTW, I think Brian Deer's avatar is a dog, not a fox, but I can't be sure without getting within sniffing distance.

Yes, the pertussis vaccine did not work....

"(NaturalNews) Unvaccinated children are supposedly the cause, according to state health officials, of a recent whooping cough outbreak that occurred in the posh Cape Cod area of Massachusetts. But as reported by CBS Boston, all of the children affected by the outbreak were already vaccinated, proving once again that vaccines don't really work.

Some 15 children at Falmouth High School reportedly came down with the respiratory illness, which also goes by the name pertussis, sparking a wave of panic about a corresponding increase in vaccine exemptions. But as usual, nobody affected by the outbreak was unvaccinated, and no matter how hard the media tries to spin the issue, those who were vaccinated were not protected."

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/047930_whooping_cough_vaccinations_exemption…

APV,
When you find you have made a dumb mistake and dug yourself into a hole, I suggest you admit it and stop digging, instead of trying to justify it like this.

Polysorbate 80 and lung injury: I would not dismiss it just yet …

While noting that asthma is not lung injury, let's see what the studies you linked to say.
The first states:

We injured the lungs with intravenous infusions of oleic acid at doses ranging from 0.015 to 0.120 ml/kg.

In a 70 kg human this dose would be between 1.05 and 8.4 mL, weighing between 895,000 and 7,518,000 micrograms (density of oleic acid is 0.895 g/mL) - there are 1,000 milligrams to a gram and 1,000 micrograms to a milligram, remember. Oleic acid is directly toxic to epithelial cells, and specifically accumulates in lung tissue. Even if polysorbate 80 accumulates in lung tissue and is as toxic to lungs cells as oleic acid, which it doesn't and isn't, how is this relevant to a 25 microgram dose of polysorbate 80 in an influenza vaccine injected intramuscularly? The dose of oleic acid given to sheep intravenously is at least 35,800 times greater than the dose of polysorbate 80 given to humans intramuscularly.
The second study is about intravenous infusions of cytotoxic chemotherapy drugs (taxanes) causing lung injury. What possible connection you think this has with polysorbate 80 escapes me.

By the way, the lung injury caused by lung lavage with polysorbate 80 also occurs with saline. That's because our lungs remain inflated because they contain a range of phospholipids that prevent the alveolar walls from sticking together. One reason premature babies have trouble breathing is because the phospholipids in their lungs have not developed completely.

Back in the day I used to measure the ratio of lecithin to sphingomyelin in amniotic fluids, to see if the fetal lungs were mature enough to induce labor or to do a CS. This was a labor-intensive process, extracting the lipids into chloroform, evaporating the chloroform, then doing 2-D chromatography using filter paper and finally spraying with a horribly caustic blue dye in a fume cupboard. That was one test that worried me, knowing that if I produced a wrong result I could be responsible for a baby that could not breathe being brought into the world. But I digress.

The point is that polysorbate 80 is a detergent, very similar to the detergents we use to wash dishes. Washing out the lungs with a 0.5% detergent solution (that's 5 grams or 5 million micrograms of polysorbate per liter) will remove the phospholipids that are essential to normal lung function. This is how polysorbate causes lung damage in sheep. Clearly, injecting 25 micrograms of polysorbate into a muscle will not have the same effect.

Adding insult to lung injury: Vaccines have human lung fibroblasts. Autoimmunity?

Some vaccines are made using human lung fibroblasts (WI-38), but they do not contain them, any more than cars contain car factories. Anyway, if exposure to any human biological material causes autoimmunity, why isn't everyone who has every had a blood transfusion, a transplant or been given other human-derived material suffering from autoimmune disease? Like allergies, it isn't just exposure to a protein that causes autoimmunity, it requires the immune system to screw up too. If simple exposure to lung fibroblasts or to foods were enough everyone would develop allergies and autoimmune disease.

How I managed that blockquote fail when I checked it several times I do not know. Sorry.

@Krebiozen.

I can’t be bothered to plough through your blather and feed the troll, so just a comment.

Troll? Perhaps you should read his comments over the last few years and get a clue how accurate, polite and scientifically-competent Krebiozen is.

Just finished reading Paul Offits “Do You Believe in Magic?’ A nice little read..good intro to the topic for Newbies, but I also learned a few new things myself.

Somehow I don't think you learned much at all other than to be an arrogant asshat after reading a book.

Like , for instance, Krebiozen, was a “cancer cure” hoax in the 1950’s. It contained nothing but mineral oil and creatine, it was shown to have zero effects, and the promoters of it (Dr Andrew Ivy, and Mr Stevan Durovic) were indicted on 49 counts of mail fraud, mislabeling, conspiracy and making false statements.

And that is what you choose as your handle.
Interesting.

And yet you chose "MD" as part of your handle. I guess you don't get irony.

From the article you cited re: "Polysorbate 80 and lung injury: I would not dismiss it just yet …"

Intravenous infusion of oleic acid into experimental animals causes acute lung injury resulting in pulmonary edema.

Could you tell us which vaccines, either for seasonal flu or part of the recommended childhood schedule, are given intravenously?

Good news for bad people:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IAhDGYlpqY&list=LLj_rGwliE_BdGlk5qBF9a…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NaGWXxvIxo

If you put the address of Classen Immunotherapies, Inc in Google Maps you will find out it is not an office building, but a house. A very nice house with a pool, but still just a house.

Bah! My lab doesn't even have a stinkin' Jacuzzi.

Next you’re going to give away the seamy underbelly of Ball jars.

And I left out ballistics, too.

NewcoasterMD has posted some provocative comments on the SBM blogs about the health care system in Canada and how (s)he practices in Canada....so there are those excuses for her/his personal attacks.

It would be nice if we had people from outside the United States, commenting here...cough...cough...sarcasm.

So far ZERO evidence has been provided showing food proteins in vaccines DO NOT cause food allergies

So far ZERO evidence has been provided showing APV IS NOT a child molester.

See how that works?

Seriously, though, it's generaly a good idea to look for evidence that something happens before you try coming up with far-fetched explanations for how it supposedly happens. For example, if you'd tried using the search function on this blog you'd have seen Orac's discussion of this study showing that vaccinated and unvaccinated children have similar rates of atopic disease (i.e., allergies.) If you read the discussion at the end of the paper, they reference several other studies that came to the same conclusion.

Toto: Your news sources about the pertussis outbreak are suspect. The mainstream reporter who reported that "pertussis outbreak" in a high school on Cape Cod managed to screw up the report...it is full of errors:

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/11/14/whooping-cough-outbreak-on-cape-c…

@APV: you have NO idea how allergies are obtained, do you? You have your idee fixee (can't put accents on from this computer). My brother and friend never had PPIs, had few vaccines (children of the 50s and 60s that we are) and had severe allergies/eczema from infancy on.

My daughter was 14 and completely healthy when she developed an allergy to strawberries. Yes, it is a true, tested allergy. No, she is not allergic to most other fruits. She was not taking PPIs, had had no recent vaccines, and it was a very unpleasant surprise to find her developing a severe case of hives when eating her favorite fruit.

You can believe what you want. The rest of us will stick with knowledge.

@ Krebiozen:

Awwwww! You have your own little foxhole- probably lined with chicken bones.

Unfortunately, I see too many of your brethren run over by cars around here. Amongst the people I know who fed various members of your tribe, 2 of 3 have suffered losses.

-btw- BD's dog avatar looks like a Chow. I remember my late mother pointing them out to me long ago.

OBVIOUSLY I know all about dogs, being feline myself- it comes with the territory.

In other anti-vax non-news:

Jake speculates about why people behave as they do- not his strong suit. (@ Autism Investigated together) He is apparently no longer under Andy's spell.

AND we learn that Celia Farber also writes for the Epoch Times. Perhaps these two have much in common.

AND Ren and the other shills are correct: AI is a gossip column.

Someday I should illustrate graphically how many of the most mind-shatteringly unrealistic cranks and frauds share mutual friends and work together in their endeavor to create edifices constructed entirely of b@llsh!t, tangled fishing line and sealing wax

-Sigh!- that should be Autism Investigated TODAY

@MI Dawn

My daughter was 14 and completely healthy when she developed an allergy to strawberries.

Perhaps she shouldn't have been mainlining strawberry preserves? Smuckers has much to answer for.

@MI Dawn

I can be certain that my daughter developed her strawberry allergy from eating them, NOT from some phantasm of APV’s imagination.

Well, you see, according to APV, getting any protein into you causes an allergy and potential anaphylaxis, except when it's inconvenient to APV's ideas, then they don't.

APV:

You did not follow the whole thread.

No, I did follow the thread. I just felt ridicule was the best way to approach your claims. I mean, you have blamed a lot of things for allergies, but you did actually word it as a blanket statement there. Your language is sloppy, and it hurts your arguments. Of course, the fact that most of your arguments consist of a tenuous chain of supposition doesn't help either, so maybe it doesn't matter -- perhaps there is a point beyond which poor structure won't hurt you any more than the lack of evidence already does.

It is, frankly, absurd that PPI usage would contribute to food allergies, for a lot of reasons, but the biggest one to my mind is the one I alluded to in my mockery of your claim: that if it were true, people who use PPIs would die of malnutrition because none of their food would be adequately digested. This is clearly untrue. At worst, PPIs can reduce absorption of certain minerals because they're not as well dissolved. But that's all.

BTW, I have been on PPIs for several years now, and I have failed to acquire any new allergies. ;-) I know, N=1 and it's just an anecdote, but consider also that children are almost never put on PPIs, yet that is the age group vastly most likely to be diagnosed with a food allergy.

Oh, and there are unvaccinated kids with food allergies. But I'm confident you can dismiss that too, or maybe you just assume that antivaccinationists are definitely the sort to put their kids on PPIs. ;-)

Shay:

Next you’re going to give away the seamy underbelly of Ball jars.

And I left out ballistics, too.

Random fun factoid that Narad was probably alluding to: the company that makes Ball jars used to be Ball Corporation, but they spun off the home canning supply business (though the jars still have their logo on them). They do still make jars and bottles for the canning industry. And ballistics? Well, they got involved with that in the 1950s, when they started making guidance packages for missiles.

Ball Aerospace is a major manufacturer of sensors, star trackers, communications systems, and so forth for spacecraft and aircraft (including the JSF), and also a complete satellite manufacturer and systems integrator as well. They built MRO's main camera, HiRISE, for instance, and the WorldView-1 and WorldView-2 commercial imaging satellites, just to pick a few random examples from their very long list.

Something to think about the next time you're making jelly and staring at that cursive Ball logo. ;-)

I actually thought Narad was referring to Randall Jarrel's poem.

Jarrell.

Sorry.

@Toto

Your tornado is calling - no one takes Natural News seriously.

Well, no one with a functional brain, at least.

If eating proteins while taking PPIs is dangerous, what about after pumpectomy?

Recommendations for patients post-gastrectomy:
Recommendations for patients post-gastrectomy:

... One of these should be a protein food (meat, cheese, eggs).
Add extra protein to foods by adding shredded cheese, dry milk powder, or peanut butter.
...
Keep high-calorie snacks handy, such as cheese, peanut butter crackers, and yogurt with no added sugar.

And as for "risk" from IM injections, what about the risks from large-bore IV, not to mention surgery or injuries like compound fractures of long bones slopping blood, marrow and bits of muscle all over the place? What of the old days when barbers used styptic pencils with all that nasty response-provoking aluminum?

Old days? I still have and use a styptic pencil. I don't use it often, and it's probably safe to say its older that some of the commenters here, but it still works.

I think it dates from the mid to late 70s.

The second study is about intravenous infusions of cytotoxic chemotherapy drugs (taxanes) causing lung injury. What possible connection you think this has with polysorbate 80 escapes me.

It can be used as the carrier, so it must be to blame.

There's one small problem on the allergens front, though.

@PgP #312,
PgP, I'd tried to post some 30 hrs ago but it must have gotten lost in transit... Sorry. Try the Nightfall, though; It is

available on audiobook for those on the run...
===============================

Maybe fossils are from a prior *creation*, PgP -- Maybe it got broke somehow.

Back when I was 'churched', I only ever knew one prominent member who actually adhered to a literal age of Earth to be 6K years -- He worked in missile defense for the US government.

I grew bitter and frustrated over certain subjects I knew not to be the truth yet 'the church' was politically active in working against those 'truths' in parroting an imposter of a federal governance. Advocating and helping to mandate programs which were particularly 'non-christian' in the mplementation and outcomes. I have declared publicly and even more intensly privately very bad things to the father above as well as the earthly one -- I wish I had the 'faith' to conclude that the former, at least, has not perhaps forsaken me over it.

Here is a work of fiction I think you may find enjoyable, Politicalguineapig:

Nightfall
http://www.fictiondb.com/author/isaac-asimov-robert-silverberg~nightfal…

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God!

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Other world! There is no other world! Here or nowhere is the whole fact. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
==============================================

Chris Hickie,
You know what I mean by 'ostracize' and how the adamant against vaccination banging into the adamant against
treatment or diagnosis for avaxers may lead to a serious contagious disease being allowed to continue to circulate as well as the former being relegated to seeking *woo*. Of course, working woo tends to be prohibited; Otherwise it would be called 'medicine' and locked away behind the equally hard-to-access prescription wall -- Should, God forbid, there ever be *any evidence to show*, that is.

Well, no one with a functional brain, at least.

The guys at the Service Center report that complaints of boredom from the bot led them to shunt new input to /dev/null.

@APV

I've already done my homework -- the likelihood of the allergens my family is sensitive to being present in vaccines ranges from "illegal" to "highly implausible." I don't doubt it's possible to dream up some six-degrees-of-separation explanation for how they could get into some batch somewhere, but you also would need to take into account that I can trace these allergies back several generations, so we're talking about radically different vaccines that the individuals involved were exposed to.

You've asked why vaccines aren't tested for the presence of all known food allergies. I don't think you realize the scope of the engineering project for that task. There are 1270 food allergens listed in Allergome alone! Most of them currently don't have tests that could detect them at the level you seem to think is necessary, and we'd not just need tests that can do it, but can do it with sample sizes small enough that we don't need to use up the whole lot testing the purity of the lot.

As a person who just wants to do what's best for my family and society (a mother of a bone marrow transplant survivor who was extremely immune-deficient so dependent on others' vaccinations), I am curious of your stance on a couple of Mike Adams' points that I noticed you did not directly address in your article.

1) I was waiting for your response to Mike Adam's discovery that there was 100x the amount of Mercury in the flu vaccine, as compared to what is found in infected fish...(fish they recommend you limit your consumption of and recommend pregnant women don't consume at all). Why do you support the flu vaccine knowing it has these levels of mercury which are scientifically proven to be bad for you? Is the mercury the lesser of 2 evils? Shouldn't we be fighting for non-toxic versions of the flu vaccine?
2) You mentioned he did the "argument by package insert", which yes I agree is a legal document by all intents, yet I had hoped you would address his very credible issue with fact that "Safety and effectiveness of Flulaval have not been established in" kids or pregnant women, yet they promote the vaccines very strongly for both those demographics. Why would they promote such a thing when they haven't even established safety or effectiveness? Did they try and were unable, or did they not even try?? That seems ridiculous to me.

Thanks for taking the time to read this...as a mother I feel extremely frustrated to have to wade through all the quacks out there...in addition to be skeptical of my own government's best interest....and sometimes I just feel like it's easier to be a sheeple. :-/

Did you click on the links included in those sections? One of them addresses Mike Adams' nonsense about mercury in flu vaccines, and the other addresses why package inserts are not a good basis for arguing side effects. That's why I included those links, so that I wouldn't have to explain those points in detail. Think of the links as citations.

@Elilady
Exactly where are the "errors"?
Duh.

"But in this case, a school official tells WBZ that all the students had been immunized.
“None of these vaccines are 100 percent effective and there is some waning of effectiveness over time,” said Dr. Daley."

Sorta off topic, but it does concern the board -

Every time I come to the site on my iPad, about halfway into the page load, i get redirected to another site - it appears to be from an advertisement, but I shut it down once it starts, so I can't say for sure what it is. I can only load this site from a real computer that has ad block software.

Anyone else noticing such a thing?

@Ann

I had hoped you would address his very credible issue with fact that “Safety and effectiveness of Flulaval have not been established in” kids or pregnant women, yet they promote the vaccines very strongly for both those demographics.

That statement in the package insert applies to the manufacturer only. Basically, the manufacturer is stating that they have not studied the vaccine in those populations. It does not mean that no one has. Again, that is an example of the manufacturer complying with federal regulations.

If you search PubMed, you will find that flu vaccines have been studied in pregnant women and children, just not by the manufacturer.

@Ann

If Orac will indulge me, I'll add my own post about package inserts to the link he provided above to Skeptical Raptor's post. I recommend you read both links; it may help you understand what package inserts really mean, as well as what they don't say.

@ Johnny:

Oddly enough I had similar trouble with a laptop when I tried to use the RI dedicated link / app and go to today's current post. I got here through a circuitous pathway that included a post of Orac's about AJW- who I assume is frightening enough to scare off any advert mongering. Andy, that is.

@Johnny and Denice Walter

The problem was with Sitemeter. I had the same problem on my own blog earlier this evening and thought I'd gotten hacked. It turns out that the traffic tracking widget code from Sitemeter was the problem. Pretty much any blog that uses it will be having this same problem. The solution is for the blog owner to disable the code.

Hopefully it will get fixed, but from what I've been reading, Sitemeter may be a more or less abandoned service.

Calli Arcale 374#,

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15671152

Pl. post counter evidence.

I was waiting for your response to Mike Adam’s discovery that there was 100x the amount of Mercury in the flu vaccine

Stop right there.

Mike Adams DID NOT find any such thing. His sloppy reporting may produce that impression - it may be intended to produce that impression - but even if his "discovery" is completely accurate, what he "discovered" is merely the CONCENTRATION of mercury, not the AMOUNT.

The AMOUNT of a substance that is present is meaningful, when trying to assess toxicity. The CONCENTRATION is not.

To understand the difference, take two identical wallets. Both have a single $10 bill inside. Now take the second wallet and stuff 99 bill-sized pieces of paper in alongside the $10. Did you just change the buying power of the second wallet? Obviously not! The AMOUNT of currency in both wallets remains the same, even though you just changed the CONCENTRATION in the second by a factor of 100x.

If you really are the parent of a medically fragile child then you need to start getting your medical information from real sources, and not from Mike Adams.

Toto @ 387:

1. My 'nym in lilady

2. The article in question was confusing and the Falmouth health department and the Massachusetts State health department has not provided the numbers of high school students who actually received the Tdap booster, as required by Massachusetts State Law (There's a 5% refusal rate for students entering kindergarden).

http://www.healio.com/pediatrics/vaccine-preventable-diseases/news/onli…

Vaccination with DTaP, Tdap lowers risk for pertussis

...."Children who were unvaccinated for pertussis were more likely to develop the disease and had RRs ranging from 1.9 to 20.6. Those partially vaccinated had a 1.3- to threefold risk for pertussis. Vaccine effectiveness ranged from 47% among children aged 13 to 16 years to 95% among children aged 15 to 47 months.

“Our data demonstrate the effectiveness of pertussis vaccination among all age cohorts of children: No matter the age, an unvaccinated child was more likely to contract pertussis than a vaccinated or partially vaccinated child,” Liko and colleagues concluded...."

So...the question is would you rather have your adolescent child have a 47 % chance of having protective immunity after having received the Tdap booster or a zero percent chance of having protective immunity, because you opted out of the vaccine?

Krebiozen #358,

Docetaxel IV includes Polysorbate 80. Acute lung injury occurs often.
http://products.sanofi.us/taxotere/taxotere.html
"TAXOTERE 20 mg/mL
TAXOTERE (docetaxel) Injection Concentrate 20 mg/1 mL: 20 mg docetaxel in 1 mL in 50/50 (v/v) ratio polysorbate 80/dehydrated alcohol."

"35,800 times greater than the dose of polysorbate 80"
For a 30 lb., 3 yr. old. getting the Flulaval vaccine, that comes down to 250x.
https://www.gsksource.com/gskprm/htdocs/documents/FLULAVAL-QUADRIVALENT…
And we are not looking for acute lung injury. And assuming that a child is just a small adult.
Do children react/process Polysorbate 80 the same way?
When multiple studies also show unvaccinated children have less asthma, should we still ignore this?

Polysorbate allergens:
http://www.oncologypractice.com/co/journal/articles/0709425.pdf
http://polysorbate.jp/
"In rat study, Polysorbate80(HX2)TM triggered less histamine release from rat mast cells compared to conventional Polysorbate80 formulations. The latest in-vivo dog study has also indicated less histamine release of Polysorbate80(HX2)TM. The great feature of low allergy allows clients to use for drug formulations in safety. "

Many people here have decreed that Polysorbate 80 be allergen-free. Apparently, the manufacturers have not gotten the memo?

Further, 40% of flu vaccines do NOT contain Polysorbate 80 demonstrating that technology exists to make Polysorbate 80-free vaccines. Why still approve vaccines with Polysorbate 80?

"Some vaccines are made using human lung fibroblasts (WI-38), but they do not contain them, any more than cars contain car factories. "

By that argument, flu vaccines should not contain ovalbumin either. So vaccine makers do indeed ship bits of their vaccine factories in their vaccines. Flublok for instance has more fall armyworm and baculovirus protein (28 mcg) in the vaccine than the amount of a viral protein in a traditional vaccine (15 mcg). Trace quantities of production media are always present. As always, no spec. for these "trace quantities" to ensure safety nor enforcement.

Krebiozen #358,

"why isn’t everyone who has every had a blood transfusion, a transplant "

Unlike vaccines, there are no adjuvants in blood transfusion as far as I know. Transplants involve strong immunosuppressant therapy. Can't compare that to a healthy person receiving a vaccine.

justthestats #384,

"There are 1270 food allergens listed in Allergome alone!"

The Top 8 would be a good start ...
Or even better, remove the known sources of allergen.

@Elilady

The scientific evidence is staring you in the face.
All of the students who got pertussis had been vaccinated against it. The vaccine didn't work. End of discussion.
Maybe the Wizard can provide you with a conscience, yes?

doug #379,

How do you know they are not developing food allergies?
Aluminum on wounds could increase risk of eczema.

Ann:

I can only reiterate what other posters have stated about your choice of sources (Mike Adams), for information about vaccines.

Here, Dr. Paul Offit explains how bizarre side effects (a fractured leg, following a chicken pox vaccine weeks before), are listed on vaccine package inserts:

http://www.pediatricnews.com/specialty-focus/vaccines/article/how-to-ha…

If your child was hospitalized in reverse isolation, (s)he would have been ineligible to receive the LAIV seasonal influenza vaccine, as well as the health care staff who care for those in protective reverse isolation units and close household members. Health care staff and family members would have received a seasonal influenza vaccine:

https://www.whatcomcounty.us/health/commdis/immunizations/pdf/screen_ch…

MI Dawn

Please tell us how you think food allergies develop.

I had hoped you would address his very credible issue with fact that “Safety and effectiveness of Flulaval have not been established in” kids or pregnant women, yet they promote the vaccines very strongly for both those demographics.

Could you point out the bolded part? (PDF)

Note in advance that it's not approved for children younger than 3 years of age in the first place.

The Pregnancy Category* may also be of interest.

* It appears that this is finally shuffling off the mortal coil at the end of next June.

Sarah A #366,

The study you posted shows on Table 2 that unvaccinated children had zero occurrence of asthma compared to 1.8-4.6% for vaccinated children. Why do you ignore that?

Do you have a hypothesis for what is causing the food allergy epidemic?

Leigh Jackson #355.

"Where is the quantification of those “vaccine-induced diseases”? Specifically the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers. Has any influenza vaccine in the USA caused a hundred pediatric deaths in the USA due to allergic reactions? That should be something that would be in the literature."

I provided evidence from reputable qualified researchers that gelatin and egg allergy are caused by vaccines. You don't believe it. Why do you ask for more studies from me? Just to ignore them?

Krebiozen or Sian Williams,

Re:HLA-DR9 and gelatin.
Consider a novel hypothetical influenza-like virus, that instead of HA protein carries a gelatin-like protein. Would a vaccine created for that virus only work on people carrying HLA-DR9?

Consider a novel hypothetical influenza-like virus, that instead of HA protein carries a gelatin-like protein.

Define "gelatin-like protein." Or draw a before-and-after picture of the Gedankenvirus. It'll be fun.

^ Let me boil that down a little so that APV might be able to understand it: OK, let's imagine such a virus.

Some important steps have been skipped between whether it would be viable and whether the imaginary resultant vaccine would only work in a narrow haplotype.

APV,

Docetaxel IV includes Polysorbate 80. Acute lung injury occurs often.

You seriously think the polysorbate is to blame, not the cytotoxic taxanes which inhibit cell division? Even if it were to blame, the smallest dose they recommend in cancer patients is 60 mg per square meter, which equates to 102 mg in an average person (assuming area of 1.7 m^2), which would contain over 2 mL of polysorbate 80 weighing approximately 2.14 grams, over 2 million micrograms of polysorbate. Even Flulaval quadrivalent only contains 887 micrograms of polysorbate 80, 23,000 times less than that given to cancer patients.

“35,800 times greater than the dose of polysorbate 80″
For a 30 lb., 3 yr. old. getting the Flulaval vaccine, that comes down to 250x.

Of a different substance that is known to concentrate in the lungs and directly damage lung cells. Where is your evidence that injected polysorbate 80 in doses of less than a milligram injected intramuscularly cause lung damage?
And we are not looking for acute lung injury. And assuming that a child is just a small adult.

You seem to be assuming that a child is a sheep, and that injecting less than a milligram of polysorbate 80 intramuscularly is the same as washing out her lungs with a concentrated solution of the stuff.

Do children react/process Polysorbate 80 the same way?

Why wouldn't they? When studies have found no evidence of any harm in animals given the equivalent of a 70 kg person consuming about 140,000 milligrams of this substance every day for 21 days, I find it very hard to believe that less than a milligram is going to harm a child.

When multiple studies also show unvaccinated children have less asthma, should we still ignore this?

What multiple studies? Some studies found a link between whole cell pertussis vaccine and asthma (in particular a New Zealand study that included only 23 unvaccinated children), others did not. That vaccine is no longer in use anyway. As I pointed out above, this systematic review (links to an article on Medscape about the study) found no link except in the case of Hib and hepatitis B vaccines.
The Hib link was only seen in one HMO, though the same vaccine was used, suggesting his result was due to chance.
When the study authors performed a subanalysis that reduced possible health care utilization bias the association between hepatitis B vaccine and asthma disappeared, strongly suggesting that health care utilization bias was the cause of the association. In other words, children who received hepatitis B vaccine (when it was only given to children of high risk mothers) were more likely to see a doctor and more likely to get an asthma diagnosis as a result.

Also, as I pointed out before, asthma is not lung damage.

I have a sticky / key on my keyboard than sometimes doesn't work, it seems. Sorry about the blockquote fail, again. Looks like I'll be cleaning my keyboard later and won't have this problem again, I hope.

@APV:

No, I think you need to take some lessons on immunology and allergies. Food allergies come from exposure to FOOD in one way or another. Not vaccines.

@ Todd W.:

Fortunately the problem seems to have cleared up.

In other news...
Dan ( AoA) addresses the division within his community- anti-vax vs safer vax.
Scrolling Jake's blog at Epoch Times- if not navigated carefully enough- will precipitate a very massive illustrated advert for herbal cough drops. Heh.

You seriously think the polysorbate is to blame, not the cytotoxic taxanes which inhibit cell division?

I get the feeling that if APV could come up with some hand-waving argument that vaccines could be contaminated with cytotoxic taxanes ("perhaps taking the form "No one has proven they aren't...") he'd jump on them as well.

Since he can't., howver, it just has to be the polysorbate.

APV, the Untersmeyer et al citation you offered noted a rise in IgE directed against food allergens in patients receiving PPI's. However, the authors offer no evidence these subjects actually developing food allergies as a consequence.

Can you provide any evidence demonstrating that people who receive PPI's actually develop food allergies at a statistically greater incidence rate than people who do not?

That's the claim you've made, after all--not that their IgE levels increase detectably.

APV, that study shows that PPIs might possibly slightly aggravate allergies in susceptible individuals (i.e. people who might've gotten the allergies anyway). It does not prove your claim -- or even really attempt to. In all seriousness, you are seeking validation of your beliefs, not truth.

@Denise - Dan is having to deal with the very real issue of his group appearing to be complete wack-jobs, while he attempts to at least appear to have some credibility.....like admitting that the Smallpox vaccine was actually responsible for eradication & there are some "good vaccines" - it appears that these admissions are going to drive a number of his supporters up the wall.....

Well, I guess someone is running for the Respectful Insolence TOTY award. Good luck APV, you can smell 500 from here!

APV does have some stiff competition, but many of those like Thingy were banned. "Smarter Than You" made a claim of a huge announcement will happen in late 2010, and just disappeared.

Though, APV said his kid had an allergic reaction to a vaccine, I wonder how if the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program compensated his claim.

@ Lawrence:

Anti-vax groups appear to be separating into several groups which range from being moderately off-the-wall like Dan to full-tllt wacky ( Barry, Whiterose) : right now there is competition for the middle ground.

Oddly enough, I think that various Moms ( @ TMR and AoA) speak well to that middle by infusing their lunacy with interminable motherly concern and martyrdom- they also espouse traditional values like providing healthful food- not Big Farmers' brand- for their families. TMR even has a new cookbook for sale. Kim, Alison, Louise, Teresa, Lisa and Cat may become the mentors of many lost parents- in dire need of a confidante- who have access to a computer and spend time on facebook.

AS a feminist, I appreciate women taking leadership roles but them becoming thought leaders by disseminating mindless quackery is not exactly my cup of tea.

APV #404

The study you posted shows on Table 2 that unvaccinated children had zero occurrence of asthma compared to 1.8-4.6% for vaccinated children. Why do you ignore that?

You conveniently omitted the fact that those results are for the subgroups of children aged 1 - 5 and 6 - 10, respectively; in children aged 11 - 17 the incidence of asthma was slightly higher in unvaccinated children (8.4% vs 7.0%). Why do you ignore that? Because it doesn't support your foregone conclusion? Would I be justified in taking this single data point (or the more dramatic one where the rate of eczema was 26.4% in unvaccinated vs 15.6% in vaccinated 6 - 10-year olds) and concluding that vaccines prevent allergies? Should I then come up with far-fetched hypotheses to explain why vaccines prevent allergies while ignoring any evidence showing that they don't?

The authors of this paper looked at the rates of a number atopic diseases as well as infections in three different age groups. Some of the rates were higher in vaccinated children and some were lower, just as you'd expect by chance. Because the number of unvaccinated children was so much smaller than the number of vaccinated children (94 vs 13,359), it's not surprising that they didn't find any cases of a disease with such a low prevalence in the general population (they mention this in the paper, BTW, if you'd bothered to read it rather than skim for isolated data points to support your pet hypothesis.) The important thing is that there were no statisticaly significant differences in atopic disease between vaccinated and unvaccinated children, a finding that was replicated in several other studies referenced within the paper.

“In rat study, Polysorbate80(HX2)TM triggered less histamine release from rat mast cells compared to conventional Polysorbate80 formulations. The latest in-vivo dog study has also indicated less histamine release of Polysorbate80(HX2)TM. The great feature of low allergy allows clients to use for drug formulations in safety. ”

Many people here have decreed that Polysorbate 80 be allergen-free. Apparently, the manufacturers have not gotten the memo?

No, you have a problem getting it through your head that the manufacturer's page that you continually regurgitate was written by EFL speakers. Did you even read your second link?

"The reported rate of hypersensitivity reactions with docetaxel is estimated at 30% in patients who do not
receive premedications.[3] Although the mechanism of this toxicity is unknown, it is hypothesized that the reaction (like paclitaxel hypersensitivity reactions) is not IgE-mediated, because the majority of the reactions occur within the first two doses."

Did you not underrstand the second link in #381? Try this. It's pseudoallergy.

Anyway, it's been a week since Wakefraud's petition for review was due, and nothing has been posted to the case page. They can be a bit slow, but this would be a record from what I've seen.

The smart money at this point is on his having been rebuffed by every decent SCOTX practitioner to be found and walked away from it without the courtesy of an announcement for his for his adoring fans and donors.

It seems to me there is not a very clear understanding of what a hypersensitivity response (an inappropriate response) to a benign antigen means. Maybe the thought what a normal person doesn't react to should change to what happens in the abnormal response. If the immune system doesn't like an antigen, it's going to respond to it. I don't really care if you call food allergy, 'protein-like' (wtf?), or allergy xyzpdq. Certain people can't even touch an antigen or they trigger their hypersensitivity going into anaphylaxis. Some people can't even go into sunlight, as another example. Trying to nail everything down to IgE is really only one type; I know of four basic types (which I think includes switching antibody classes).

My point being, that people can get a trigger event from a vaccine, which really shouldn't be taken as a pseudoallergy. They have an adverse reaction. This relates to the genomic makeup of the individual; which is why some people really shouldn't vaccinate. And certainly to reiterate the same concept again, not something inherent within the vaccine that would be a mechanism for injury against the safety of the entire population.

@ Narad:

That's good to know. Does he have any additional legal avenues in which to perseverate? Or will he just write another crappy book or film enumerating his many woes?( Skyhorse apparently will publish any load of rubbish as long as it has 'autism' in the title and an altie slant).

Or can we start celebrating?

Regarding #421, the link in #381 really is much more on point, which is why I used it in the first place. It appears that the gross manifestation (as mentioned here without citation) is species specific, RBL-2H3 in a dish notwithstanding.

Horace: Read Nightfall, also have the podcast and the dvd. I don't do audiobooks, as they take up space and too much of one voice turns into white noise.

As for the rest of the comment, I'm okay with Christians on a personal level, it's just in the mass that they annoy me. At least the science crowd doesn't think I stop being human for nine months- or was never human in the first place, except for a few hoary professors who came up through the old boy network.

DW: Pretty much ditto on that comment. I also think it'd be nice if the TMR and AOA crowd stopped trading off the 'we feel this so it has to be true.' It plays into all the worst stereotypes of women. Emotions should be treated like luxury items, not used everyday, and they especially should not be used as substitutes for reasoning. (Plus the concern for their children, really? Who do they think they're fooling?)

I didn't know there was a podcast, thx.
http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2014/11/podcast-recreating-isaac-…

Dang. There was going to be a pretty nice birthing shed 'round the back.

Narad 425#,

Thank you for posting the #381 link. I did not know about pseudoallergy. Thanks for the education.

NOF is claiming their product is ultra pure therefore low degranulation. If complement activation is a non-IgE mediated pathway, would purity change degranulation?

http://www.polysorbate.jp/polysorbate_4.html
says:
"On the other hand, conventional Polysorbate 80 contains numerous impurities and different fatty acid residues."
Does fatty acid residues not mean food allergens?
Could this explain how they achieved low degranulation? By reducing allergens?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23159336
also about complement activation says:
"These findings raise concerns with regard to the indiscriminate use of Tween® 80 in clinical applications."

So, it looks like you have pointed out one more reason to get rid of Polysorbate 80 from vaccines.

MarkN:

My point being, that people can get a trigger event from a vaccine, which really shouldn’t be taken as a pseudoallergy.

Citation needed that vaccines can cause a trigger event that leads to allergies.

Sarah A $420,

I am not ignoring that data. As I have pointed out many times, for whatever reason, these researchers don't pay attention to detail.
It is difficult to draw any useful conclusion from this study because they did not include exactly what vaccines were involved and what the ingredients were. If the vaccine mix/manufacturer/process changed in the middle of the period that was studied, it is easy to explain the entire outcome for all age groups. If that study is used to conclude that vaccines do not cause asthma using part of the data, then it is equally possible to conclude that vaccines cause asthma using the rest of the data. Bottom line, poor study, inconclusive results. And unfortunately, it looks like we have plenty of those.

That is why, like the Japanese studies I provided, you pick one variable at a time to get meaningful results.

Chris #418,
"Though, APV said his kid had an allergic reaction to a vaccine, I wonder how if the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program compensated his claim."

I don't think it qualifies. That program is a joke. The victim has to prove the vaccine is unsafe and caused the injury?

JGC #414,

If IgE measurements have no useful predictive value for real allergy, why do all these researchers keep using it?
Vaccine makers measure anti-body titers in clinical trials. Perhaps that's a useless measure of real protection too?

MI Dawn #411,

So how do you explain the increase in food allergy over the past few decades?

Narad #407,

If "poorly hydrolyzed gelatin" is defined well enough for a real vaccine, it seemed like "gelatin-like protein" should be good enough for a hypothetical vaccine. In any case, the question is if gelatin immune response depends on people carrying HLA-DR9, then maybe vaccine viral protein immune response also is gene dependent?

Does fatty acid residues not mean food allergens?

No, it does not. It refers to the different fatty acids that are in the molecules that compose a sample of polysorbate 80. Oleic acid is the majority residue, but it's not the only one; offhand, it looks like palmitic is next in line.

As I have pointed out many times, for whatever reason, these researchers don’t pay attention to detail.

Oh, the irony.

If “poorly hydrolyzed gelatin” is defined well enough for a real vaccine, it seemed like “gelatin-like protein” should be good enough for a hypothetical vaccine.

You proposed a hypothetical virus, Mr. Details. Try reading the simplified reply again more slowly.

In any case, the question is if gelatin immune response depends on people carrying HLA-DR9, then maybe vaccine viral protein immune response also is gene dependent?

No, that's a different question. You're going to sprain something by constantly running around with goalposts, not to mention pretending that nobody's noticing.

APV @432:

So how do you explain the increase in food allergy over the past few decades?

Citation needed that there has been an increase in food allergies, that it is a genuine increase and not just better detection, and...
Evidence needed to support your claim that said increase is caused by vaccination.

Further to #434, the fundamental point of NOF's product seems to be that its final composition is 99% oleic acid ("residues," if one must). I suspect that this also includes peroxides.

There is nothing whatever here that has anything to do with peanut allergens. I have already pointed out the basic manufacturing problem to you, but the far more knowledgeable Sian Williams has patiently presented you with the core problem that you need to address.

And you didn't bother. Because you're not interested. I HAZ ENGRISH PAYG SEZ "ALLERGY"!!1!11!!!

Unrelated babbling about "one more reason to get rid of Polysorbate 80" is simply pretending that you managed to establish and defend something that is amenable to "increase" in the first place.

^ Grumble, grumble.

1. "99% oleic acid"

2. "the core problem"

@APV

Re: Vaccine Injury Compensation Program

The victim has to prove the vaccine is unsafe and caused the injury?

So you think that people claiming an injury should simply be awarded money unless HHS can prove that the vaccine did not cause the injury?

Oh, and by the way, if someone suffers a certain condition within a specified time period following vaccination, they don't even need to prove that the vaccine caused it. They just get the award. Those are called "Table Injuries". As for anything not on the table, yes, they should have to prove the vaccine caused the injury. But even then, the burden of proof is quite a bit lower than what you would find in a tort claim. Keep in mind, in a tort suit, the "victim", as you call them, not only has to prove the injury was caused by the vaccine, but that the manufacturer was negligent in some regard, AND their evidence must meet the Daubert Standard.

The victim has to prove the vaccine is unsafe and caused the injury?

Neither actually. The petitioner only need to demonstrate that it was more likely than not that the vaccine caused the event. For example, if you drop your kid on his head a few days post-vaccination, you aren't getting compensated for a vaccine injury.*

Is anyone else reminded of a certain someone who did the same Olympic-quality mental contortions to play armchair immunologist about latex?

* An actual NVICP claim.

If IgE measurements have no useful predictive value for real allergy, why do all these researchers keep using it?

APV, I'll have to consider this evasive response as a tacit admission that you can't provide any evidence demonstrating that people who receive PPI’s actually develop food allergies at a statistically greater incidence rate than people who do not.

@ Science Mom

Is anyone else reminded of a certain someone [...]

Oh yes, and it was actually worse. It was going ad infinitum like this:

Reader X is asking: [pertinent question from X]

My answer: it's a consequence of vaccine-induced latex allergy. Buy my book "vaccine-induced latex allergies" for more about vaccine-induced latex allergies.

APV may err on the wild mass guess side (meaning, you lack evidence for your claims), but at least we got to see his claims.

The victim has to prove the vaccine is unsafe and caused the injury?

Actually, in most cases no: they do not. The majority of compensation awarded to claimants by the NVICP (i.e., greater than 90% of all cases where compensation has been granted) are for table injuries which do not require the claimant demonstrate that (nor represent a finding that) the injury was caused by the vaccine.

@ Julian #429

My point goes to the genetic predisposition of the individual, and not to vaccine causing a hypersensitivity response that can be applied to a population. As to the individual predisposition, that's a case by case measure from the health care provider, of which we don't yet really have a great picture on every genomic possibility. Probably why we have such an interest in information technology, not only in this field, but onocology as well, maybe even more so.

So, my question as to citing as I'm not looking to apply an individual to the population -- do you want me to cite the pathway of an antigen invoking an allergic reaction in an individual? I don't know what that would really tell you that isn't already common medical knowledge.

MI Dawn #411,

How do you think people get latex allergy? Chewing on pencil erasers? Multi-dose vaccine bottle caps contain latex. The vaccine is contaminated when holes are punched into the caps to draw the vaccine. Inject latex contaminated vaccines into people and you have a latex allergy epidemic.

At least in this case, instead of saying "oh, it's a one in a million anaphylaxis problem", they are actually trying to phase out rubber caps.

APV, in response to his experience with NVICP: "I don’t think it qualifies. That program is a joke. The victim has to prove the vaccine is unsafe and caused the injury?"

So, this is the same guy who previously said: "My son has had skin sensitivity tests and specific IgE tests. He has been prescribed Epipen. He spent a night in the ICU for an allergic reaction he suffered after receiving five vaccine shots in one sitting. The hospital reported that to the VAERS and sent his case to Johns Hopkins."

So with the hospital actually sending in a VAERS report, you could not be bothered to follow up with the instructions on the Vaccine Information Sheet on how to make a claim with the NVICP.

For now one we will assume everything you said was a delusional fabrication. Especially since I have found claims that received compensation for allergic reactions here and there.

Though there were many that were dismissed. But since you had actual hospital records, you would have had a better chance... if you had actually tried.

Multi-dose vaccine bottle caps contain latex.

And we all know that's the only possible source of exposure to latex anyone could encounter during their lives, and that the incidence of latex allergies is much higher in developing nations which rely principally on immunization from multi-dose vials than in industrialized nations which do not.

Oh, wait...

Honestly, I think a more likely source of increased latex exposure comes from the Helium Privatization Act, which greatly reduced the price of helium, leading to a massive increase in use of helium party balloons, which are frequently made of latex and give off substantial amounts of easily-inhaled latex dust when popped. But I'm sure that's not as fun an explanation if you're looking to justify your believe that vaccines cause everything horrible. ;-)

Also, APV does not appear to have many any real attempt to obtain compensation for his child's injury, which seems odd to me. He says "That program is a joke. The victim has to prove the vaccine is unsafe and caused the injury?"

No. The whole point of NVICP is that you don't have the same burden of proof found in civil court. All you have to demonstrate is that it was *plausible* that you or your child was injured, and if it's a table injury (that is, one the court already knows about), all you need to provide is the date of the vaccination and some sort of documentation that the injury happened a plausible time after. Hospitalization for anaphylaxis following a vaccination? That should be trivial to demonstrate, so if APV is serious, he really should go do that.

It's always interesting when a commenter comes in with The Story. An elaborate, dramatic anecdote of so-and-so's medical trauma caused by thus-and-such and the awfulness that has ensured because of (place vast shadowy conspiracy here).

Then come the logical and cogent questions from the scientists and doctors in our ranks.

Then come the "I've been studying this for years" and "because it feels right to me" responses with links to either dubious sites (Mikey et al.) or respectable sites whose conclusions are utterly mangled by our plucky hero.

Then come more cogent questions from our commentariat and debunking of bad scientific and statstical interpretations.

Then comes the indignation and a rehash of The Story and some bits about how awful their lives have been and more links.

Then comes doubt, more debunking and questions about flaws in the timeline of The Story as it spreads across hundreds of posts. Snark increases in intensity. Denice writes a sonnet. Orac warns. HDB and Krebiozen whip out slide rules and metrics. If the Pharma Shill Gambit is raised a certain scaly overlord might chime in. PGP makes a good point but takes an ill-advised swipe at (insert subgroup here). Mayhem ensues in the back and forth.

Then comes The Flounce! Often with accusations of monstrous, unfeeling cruelty and kitten-eating on our part.

Then comes the "don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out" from several of the commentariat. Then we all apologize for stepping on each others toes and congratulate ourselves on our resolve. Recipes are exchanged. Then . . .

Troll fails to stick the flounce (how shocking). We press on into the mid hundreds and the process repeats itself as the dead horse that is The Story is beaten into a fine paste. Recipes for Horse Tartare are exchanged . . .

Pareidolius wins the thread! Brilliant summation.

Pareidolus -- those who won't stick the flounce always get "When The Foeman Bears His Steel" from The Pirates of Penzance running through my head.

Chorus: We go! We go!
Major-General Stanley: You're still here!
Chorus: Yes, yes, we go!
Major-General Stanley: But you don't go!
Chorus: We go! We go!
Major-General Stanley Dammit, they don't go.

And so on for at least one more reprise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAc5Z89SjH8

I can only hope that I don't become a zombie. Due to my congenital hypopituitarism, I received several years of growth hormone treatment while (not) growing up, back before synthetic hGH was available. So, after years of "cadaverous extract" pituitary injected intramuscularly, surely I've developed a serious food allergy to brains..?

@Calli Arcale: But then he'd have to *prove* his story. With medical records. Not just his verbal "this happened and it was so horrible".

Personally, if my child had had a reaction like that to a vaccine, I would have reported it to the VAERS database and happily supplied records if questioned. And if there were sequelae such as APV describes, I would have gone to NVICP *because* that is what it's set up for. No one would argue that anaphylaxis after a vaccine isn't a table injury and compensation would be readily available. So why hasn't APV done this?

(Of course, I could answer my own question - in APV's words...."It's all because the EVIL BIG PHARMA doesn't WANT you to know vaccines can cause injuries. They don't believe me when I tell them what happened. The doctors all denied it was possible and rigged the medical records. I know, I was there, I HAVE PROOF!!!!11111!!!!")

APV @447: Re Latex allergies. Latex allergies oftem arise in people who are regularly exposed to latex. This is why latex gloves are no longer powdered with latex dust; because it was associated with increased latex allergies.

Separately a latex allergy can be cross-linked with a kiwi, pineapple, and mango allergies. because the specific protein involved is similarly shaped.

And on the subject of food allergies, you do know that most of the immune system lives in the gut, right?

If you are serious about this, I would highly recommend Janeway's Immunobiology. It's one of the best introductory textbooks.

For a state that has a high level of science & education in it, and touted as a beacon of personal health and well-being, looks like my home state is also the pinnacle of really bad decisions on infectious disease:

http://www.kunc.org/post/colorados-personal-belief-exemption-target-new…

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6341a1.htm

In fairness, I should correct my statements on religion in my state as they show much more responsible compliance (1% waiver) than the personal-exemption (94%). Considering I put in a lot of hours at one of the best catholic hospitals, they actually do have great people there that take community health as the highest priority. And, the children's is really top notch. Surprising that the state sucks so much at the reality of infectious disease.

However, the Southeast, with all it's mass of health problems, surprisingly shows pretty high compliance in taking on infectious disease. I really wouldn't have thought that.

(sorry #458 post was meant for another topic). But if it gets this closer to 500, so be it.

@ Pareidolius:

Oh. Is that what I do?

At any rate, I am extremely pleased to be included in such esteemed sceptical company.

"Is that what I do? Let us count the ways...
As the sun rises on a tear-stained keyboard,
with lofty ideals and primed ambitions,
The brave warriors gird their loins for yet another day,
dismissive of the heat and sound
that pours forth from melted electron screens,
and once more join forces to lay waste the grey dawn of time, incognisant of Time's unremitting scythe.

Does he have any additional legal avenues in which to perseverate?

One might wonder what's become of the ORI review of his two-month-old allegations letter.

@Narad
I'm certain it's been filed appropriately.

I’m certain it’s been filed appropriately.

It turns out that the language of 42 CFR Part 93 does indeed make notification to the complainant of shіtcanning completely optional.

@ dingo199:

Ha ha ha
.At least I never follow an antique rhyming scheme.

JustaTech #457,

"And on the subject of food allergies, you do know that most of the immune system lives in the gut, right?"

Thanks for posting that. The gut is where it all begins. In the past few decades, 20-30% of US kids were delivered via C-section. As you know, c-section births result in sub-optimal gut microbiome. These kids develop an unbalanced immune system primed for allergies (IgE), as a result. Vaccines of course contain food proteins and adjuvants which are administered up to five shots in one sitting. HLA-DR9 carriers in Japan were found to be more susceptible to developing allergy to gelatin. Likewise, I believe IgE primed kids are more susceptible to developing allergy to any protein in vaccines/injections.

Increasing c-sections.
Increasing number of vaccines in the schedule.
Increasing number of simultaneous shots (up to 5, increasing immunogenicity due to epitope spreading?)
Increasing food allergies.

Mere coincidence? I don't think so.

justthestats #279,

Since you said your family suffers food allergies, thought this may be of interest, if you have not seen it already ...

A diet enriched with cocoa prevents IgE synthesis in a rat allergy model.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22342543

HLA-DR9 carriers in Japan were found to be more susceptible to developing allergy to gelatin. Likewise, I believe IgE primed kids are more susceptible to developing allergy to any protein in vaccines/injections.

As fruitless as this type of question has proved to be in your case, I'm still inclined to wonder what meaning you assign to the word "likewise" here.

Please try to use some sort of abstract logical description. Then the propositions themselves can be dealt with. Again.

Or not.

JGC #449,

Risk of anaphylaxis to latex from injection obtained from rubber-stoppered vials.
http://www.aaaai.org/ask-the-expert/anaphylaxis-to-latex.aspx
As I have written many times, if there is enough allergen to cause elicitation, there is more than enough to cause sensitization.
Multiple surgeries is a risk factor for developing latex allergies because latex is repeatedly introduced in the body where sensitization can occur.
With vaccines, latex is introduced with adjuvants and viral proteins which increase immunogenicity.

Since you said your family suffers food allergies, thought this may be of interest, if you have not seen it already …

A diet enriched with cocoa prevents IgE synthesis in a rat allergy model.

Yes, like mammals, allergens are an undifferentiated blob.

Do you stand by this, or not? Here:

Some flu vaccines contain Polysorbate 80. Polysorbate 80 manufacturers use a variety of vegetable oils that could include peanut oil. It is
therefore not possible to rule out the presence of peanut oil in vaccine.

When gelatin is sent through "hydrolyzation hell", it should "kill" the allergen. So hydrolyzed gelatin was deemed good enough for vaccines.
There was no specification, enforcement or test for trace quantities of gelatin allergens.
For profit manufacturers, cut corners to make products that barely meet the customer's needs. Otherwise, they will go out of business.
The HLA-DR9 carriers in Japan turned out to be the canaries in the coal mine who discovered "poorly hydrolyzed gelatin" in their vaccines.

Now we have a "special hell" used to process Polysorbate 80 which is also supposed to "kill" all the food allergens used in the manufacture of Polysorbate 80.
Having learned nothing from history ...
There are no specifications, enforcement or tests for trace quantities of allergens in Polysorbate 80. Either by the FDA or by the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention.
Magically, we expect the Polysorbate 80 in our vaccines to be pure and pristine.
Apparently, the vaccine makers and the FDA have never heard of Murphy's law.

Kids born via c-section and primed for allergies are the canaries in our coal mine. At least to me, it seems like our kids have discovered a problem ...

Narad #472,

In the cocoa study, rats were injected with a pertussis vaccine containing alum as an adjuvant and ovalbumin.
Rats that were fed cocoa did not develop ovalbumin IgE.
Rats not fed cocoa developed ovalbumin IgE.

I of course stand by my Polysorbate 80 / peanut statement.
Sorry, but what's the connection?

When gelatin is sent through “hydrolyzation hell”.... Now we have a “special hell” used to process Polysorbate 80 which is also supposed to “kill” all the food allergens

Congratulations, you've invented a term to "answer" a specific question that you had had less delicately pointed out previously.

I'm still waiting for you to identify a single assertion that you concede was a load of crap, which is precisely why I singled out an example in #472.

Well?

@APV:

Increasing c-sections.
Increasing number of vaccines in the schedule.
Increasing number of simultaneous shots (up to 5, increasing immunogenicity due to epitope spreading?)
Increasing food allergies.

Once again, citation needed that there is a genuine increase in allergies, and not just better detection of same.

I of course stand by my Polysorbate 80 / peanut statement.
Sorry, but what’s the connection?

Oh, I see that the replies crossed paths. You stand by the assertion that vaccines might contain peanut oil because polysorbate 80. Got it.

The connection is rather simple: Despite being wholly unable to defend a litany of random assertions and trying to change the subject instead, they all remain totes eleventy valid.

So, great, you're effectively a robot with a lone tactic of wasting other people's time. Bye.

Drop it, APV. If you failed to convince the NVICP with its low bar for evidence, it is obvious your story and "scientific" claims have no valid basis.

You are now just a boring one trick troll bot.

With vaccines, latex is introduced with adjuvants and viral proteins which increase immunogenicity.

You’ve yet to provide any evidence that the use of latex-containing stoppers in single or multidose vaccine vials is a significant contributor to increased incidence of acquired latex allergies, APV—and quite frankly, given the number of sources of exposure to latex we encounter daily it isn’t a particularly plausible. It remains entirely an unsupported assertion on your part.

Can you provide any actual evidence this is the case—something like epidemiologic studies which find a statitistically greater incidence of latex allergies in individuals who have been vaccinated from latex stoppered or multidose vials versus those who have been vaccinated using non-latex stoppered or single dose vials?
Or is this, like your claim that vaccination is causally associated with increased incidence of food allergies, also rooted in nothing other than “Well, it could happen, couldn’t it?” handwaving?

Isn't the "c-sections cause allergies" a variation on the hygiene hypothesis, since the reasoning is that kids aren't getting as immediate an exposure to normal gut bacteria? On that basis, vaccines should actually help *prevent* allergies, since they replace some of the missing antigen exposure in early life. But I would not expect consistency from a person who grasps one tiny thing that seems to possibly tangentially relate to his point while ignoring the entire body around it which contradicts his point. Such is the behavior of one seeking justification rather than proof.

Perhaps APV would like to add this: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/836393 (the primary literature) to his/her reading list and come back with a tortured explanation of how it can't be correct.

There is evidence that children delivered by c0-section adn children delivered by vaginal birth exhibit different gut microbiomes. Of course children who have different diets, who are bottle-fed versus breast fed, etc., do as well. Whether or not 'different' in all cases must equal 'suboptimal', however, is not established.

While there does appear to be an association between c-section delivery and some immune-mediated disorders (e.g., asthma and juvenile arthritis) with respect to the incidence of food and other allergies (see PMID:25452656), which seem to be APV's obsessions in this thread, if anything the evidence goes the other way (see PMID:23826787).

In any event, unless he's going to try to argue that routine vaccination from latex-capped multidose vials containing polysorbate 80 derived from peanuts causes c-sections, I'm not sure what APV hopes to achieve by bringing up c-sections.

(Further to my #454)...

Oh, dear. I was born via C-section. That means I almost certainly have developed a food allergy to brains! Anybody know how allergies would manifest in zombies?

PS: I did a Google search of RI with my name yesterday, just to look back at some of my earlier comments, and found a few references to a John Richard Smith (aka Blackheart). I would just like to mention that I'm not him. I'm also not the author of such titles as "How to Lose Weight During Sex" or "Your Cat is Just Not That Into You", just in case anyone was wondering. Almost 500 comments down in a completely unrelated post is as good a place as any to mention this, right?

Anybody know how allergies would manifest in zombies?

They are invariably fatal but, fortunately, no one can tell.

Anybody know how allergies would manifest in zombies?

The sneezing eventually causes various body parts to fly off in random directions. However, I like the idea of a television show called The Scratching Dead.

APV#430

Um, yes, you did ignore the data. You cited two data points that you (erroneously) believed supported your hypothesis while pointedly failing to mention that the very next entry in the same table contradicted the point you were trying to make. You had no problem with the study's results when you thought you could use them to score a point, but since I called you out on it now you're going to whine that the study is "inconclusive." Well, no single study is ever conclusive, that's why I pointed out that you could find several more studies, including a review, in the references, which you've also studiously ignored. Unfortunately, exams are coming up and I don't have unlimited time to waste on your intellectual dishonesty, so I'll just sum up for the folks playing at home:

1) There is no evidence that vaccinated individuals are more likely to develop allergies than unvaccinated individuals

2)There is consistent, repeatable evidence that vaccinated individuals are not more likely to develop allergies than unvaccinated individuals

3) Therefore, there is no legitimate reason to undertake the massive, time consuming, expensive research that would be required to exonerate every individual vaccine ingredient individualy, especialy since

4) Whenever researchers do perform studies focusing on single vaccine ingredients (such as thimerosol or aluminum), the antivaxers claim that those studies are "inconclusive" because the real problem is actually the combination of vaccines. Or the timing. Or some rare genetic predisposition to "vaccine injury." Or the color of the band-aid the kid gets afterwards. And so on, ad infinitum.

Julian Frost #476,

As far as I know there is no routine allergy testing.
People get tested because they have symptoms.
Better detection cannot explain it.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db121.htm

Why are there more allergic reactions in schools/aircraft cabins for example, if it is just a detection issue?

JGC 479#,

I have numerous times provided citations to studies showing injection of egg and gelatin causing those allergies respectively.
I have also pointed out (with citations) that the same mechanism is routinely used to induce food allergy in lab animals.
Charles Richet showed a 100 years ago that any protein you inject into a mammal can cause sensitization.
You want to ignore all this evidence and you want more citations. There seems to be no point in giving you any more citations.

Calli Arcale #480,

Missing normal gut bacteria may be part of the problem. But there are also a higher amount of "at risk" bacteria that alter the immune balance.
“In the gastrointestinal tract of babies born by c-section, there is a pattern of “at risk” microorganisms that may cause them to be more vulnerable to developing the antibody Immunoglobulin E, or IgE, when in contact with allergens” – Christine Cole Johnson, Ph.D., MPH, chair of Henry Ford Department of Health Sciences.
http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749%2812%2903130-2/fulltext

"vaccines should actually help *prevent* allergies,"

Developing nations vaccinate a lot less than us. Yet they have less allergies and we have more. How do you explain that?

Science Mom #481,

Your article contradicts itself.

Dr. Offit says:
"If you look at children in the developing world — where they are much more likely to be exposed to infections earlier in life and where their intestines are often colonized by toxin-producing bacteria and parasites — the incidence of allergies and asthma is lower than in children in the developed world,"

Vaccination rates are way less in the developing world.
If vaccinations protect against allergies, the developed world should be allergy-free.

Sarah A #486,

"You cited two data points that you (erroneously) believed supported your hypothesis while pointedly failing to mention that the very next entry in the same table contradicted the point you were trying to make."

The authors ignored the data points and wrongly concluded:
"The prevalence of allergic diseases and non-specific infections in children and adolescents was not found to depend on vaccination status."

So it is especially important to point those out.
The "very next entry" is already accounted in the authors' conclusion.

JGC #482,

PMID:23826787

13 of 17 measures show worse outcome with c-section.
And perhaps the Finns do a better job of controlling the "at risk" bacteria in their hospitals.

“In the gastrointestinal tract of babies born by c-section, there is a pattern of “at risk” microorganisms that may cause them to be more vulnerable to developing the antibody Immunoglobulin E, or IgE, when in contact with allergens” – Christine Cole Johnson, Ph.D., MPH, chair of Henry Ford Department of Health Sciences.
http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749%2812%2903130-2/fulltext

Food allergy too ...
http://www.webmd.com/allergies/news/20041020/c-section-may-increase-kid…

And ...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19076564

APV,
You appear to be impervious to any kind of argument or evidence, so this is probably a waste of time, but anyway....

I have numerous times provided citations to studies showing injection of egg and gelatin causing those allergies respectively.

No, you have mentioned the Japanese experience in which poor quality gelatin in a vaccine gelatin allergy in a very few isolated cases where people had a specific genetic susceptibility. You haven't provided any evidence that egg in vaccines has caused allergy - just because people produce some IgE doesn't mean they are allergic, and the only people in that study with elevated IgE were shown to be allergic to other common environmental allergens.

I have also pointed out (with citations) that the same mechanism is routinely used to induce food allergy in lab animals.

And I pointed out that this is so difficult they have had to breed animal with a genetic susceptibility to developing allergies.

Charles Richet showed a 100 years ago that any protein you inject into a mammal can cause sensitization.

The amounts used to cause sensitization in animals are far higher than the amounts found in vaccines. For example this article by Anderson and Rosenau (PDF), following up on some of Richet's observations states:

In order to determine what amounts of euglobulins would sensitize we gave ten guinea-pigs varying amounts of euglobulins from 0.0000001 cubic centimeter to one cubic centimeter. These animals were subsequently tested for their susceptibility by the injection of six cubic centimeters of normal horse serum intraperitoneally. None of the animals that received smaller doses than 0.001 cubic centimeter reacted.

So in guinea pigs a minimum of 0.001 mL, or about 1,000 micrograms, of euglobulins were required to sensitize the animals. Since a guinea pig weighs about 1 kg, this is the equivalent of a dose of at least 3,000 micrograms in a human (assuming a baby weighing 3 kg). I am not aware of any vaccine that contains this much protein, whether from foods or anything else. Flulaval contains less than 0.3 micrograms of egg protein, for example.

You want to ignore all this evidence and you want more citations. There seems to be no point in giving you any more citations.

The evidence you cite does not support your assertions. Just providing evidence that something is possible is not evidence that it is true. We have provided direct evidence that your hypothesis is wrong, for example studies that find lower incidence of allergies in vaccinated people.

Vaccination rates are way less in the developing world.
If vaccinations protect against allergies, the developed world should be allergy-free.

You miss the point, again. Fewer childhood infections are associated with more allergies, which is one reason we see more allergies in the developed world. Among those in the developed world, who suffer fewer infections whether vaccinated or not (thanks to better hygiene, herd immunity etc.), we find that vaccines reduce the incidence of allergies.

The authors ignored the data points and wrongly concluded:
“The prevalence of allergic diseases and non-specific infections in children and adolescents was not found to depend on vaccination status.”

As I pointed out before back at #85, and Sian has reiterated:

There were 13,359 vaccinated children and only 94 unvaccinated children aged 1-17 years in the study, so it isn't very surprising that none of the unvaccinated children aged 1-10 years were not asthmatic. The difference is not statistically significant. You seem to have missed the prevalence of asthma at 11 to 17 years which is higher in the unvaccinated 8.4% (95% confidence limits 2.8 to 22.3) than in the vaccinated 7.0% (6.2 to 7.8), though again the difference is not statistically significant.

The authors were quite correct in their conclusions as none of the associations, positive or negative, were statistically significant and were likely due to chance.

The increased incidence of food allergy in those born by c-section, has not been confirmed; other studies find no association e.g. PMID: 18976354. I don't see how this supports your hypothesis that vaccines cause food allergies. It seems likely that delayed exposure to normal bacteria is responsible, as others here have suggested. Also, one of the studies you linked to points out that developing IgE-mediated sensitization to food allergens does not necessarily mean a patient has a food allergy. We produce IgE normally; it's an important defense against parasitic infection, and merely demonstrating that someone has produced a small amount IgE is not evidence of allergy.

No blockquote fail (hurrah!), but a typo:
" it isn’t very surprising that none of the unvaccinated children aged 1-10 years were not asthmatic" should read " it isn’t very surprising that none of the unvaccinated children aged 1-10 years were asthmatic", obviously.

APV: My unscientific guess is that more allergies are documented in schools because the kids are 1) extensively documented (all records are easily trackable) and 2)exposed to different things then they would be at home. As far as airplanes go..uh, it's a small enclosed space with recycled air, so any allergen in it is going to be more concentrated. You might as well ask why respiratory infections have such a high incidence among air travelers or students. Also, peanuts are a very common allergy, and until recently, they were a common airline food.

Reading along, I see analyzing data isn't your strong suit. You might want to consider: how diets in the developing world differ from American/European diets, whether a kid in the developing world could survive an allergic reaction, and that a few decades ago, allergic reactions weren't even survivable in the US or Europe.

It appears that we approach the magical number of 500 comments due to our critic's er... um.. analytical abilities.

I wins!

Where's my prize?

Danggit -- I had a great post too for 500

Angelina goes down with infectious disease:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_FNAj15tdk

Shots...who needs shots when you can consciously-uncouple from a microbe.....(yes, I know that was Paltrow)..

Kidding aside, Chicken Pox is kind of a big deal in adults. Hopefully it works out for her, because it's gonna suck.

Krebiozen #495,
" just because people produce some IgE doesn’t mean they are allergic, and the only people in that study with elevated IgE were shown to be allergic to other common environmental allergens."

They did not produce "some IgE", they produced anti-ovalbumin IgE. The study clearly demonstrates that ovalbumin in the vaccine caused new anti-ovalbumin IgE synthesis in some patients and an increase in anti-ovalbumin IgE in patients who already had that IgE, pre-vaccination.

"So in guinea pigs a minimum of 0.001 mL, or about 1,000 micrograms, of euglobulins were required to sensitize the animals. Since a guinea pig weighs about 1 kg, this is the equivalent of a dose of at least 3,000 micrograms in a human (assuming a baby weighing 3 kg). I am not aware of any vaccine that contains this much protein, whether from foods or anything else. Flulaval contains less than 0.3 micrograms of egg protein, for example."

That is contradicted by the fact that just 15 mcg of HA viral protein was able to produce anti-influenza IgE in 3 of 3 adults (100%), even without adjuvants. C-section births increases IgE synthesis risk by 5X in children. So add c-section and adjuvant factors that increase immunogenicity and you have created your own HLA-DR9 situation for all vaccines.
Then you have to include epitope spreading effects.

May be those animal researchers could learn a few things from the human food allergy model. Deliver rats via c-section, use anti-biotics to kill good gut bacteria, use human vaccines, five shots at a time, it seems to work very well in humans ... to produce food allergies.

Smith-Norowitz TA, Wong D, Kusonruksa M, Norowitz KB, Joks R, Durkin HG, Bluth MH. Long Term Persistence of IgE Anti-Influenza Virus Antibodies in Pediatric and Adult Serum Post Vaccination with Influenza Virus Vaccine. Int J Med Sci 2011; 8(3):239-244. doi:10.7150/ijms.8.239. Available from http://www.medsci.org/v08p0239.htm

"Fewer childhood infections are associated with more allergies, which is one reason we see more allergies in the developed world."

Which is the same as saying, children in the developed world are primed for IgE synthesis. This is why they are our version of HLA-DR9. You cannot inject food proteins into such susceptible children without serious consequences.

"We produce IgE normally; it’s an important defense against parasitic infection, and merely demonstrating that someone has produced a small amount IgE is not evidence of allergy."

I don't think we produce food specific IgE to defend against parasitic infection. As the Japanese egg allergy study showed, people increased their IgE level by up to two RAST classes due to the flu vaccine. Even if these people did not initially have food allergy symptoms, with repeated injections they will develop real allergy and symptoms.

Why is DTaP a series of five shots? The antigens are weakly immunogenic. With five shots, patients progressively develop protection. Same for food proteins allergy development. Whole limb swelling after DTaP is a symptom that is associated with the last two shots of the series. Exactly as one would expect. Patients develop more and more IgE against the antigens as they get more shots thus showing progressively more significant allergic elicitations on challenge with the same proteins.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10617749

So basically, you keep injecting food proteins, people slowly progress towards full blown food allergy.

In theory, pure vaccines (only viral/bacterial proteins) may protect against allergies.
It is a fact that real vaccines have allergens.
It is a fact that there are more allergies in the developed world.
It is a fact that vaccination rates are much higher in the developed.
So any claim of vaccines preventing allergies is at best an insignificant effect that is lost in the noise.

Politicalguineapig #498,

My point was that the allergies are real. They are documented in schools and airplanes because they occur. They are not just an effect of better allergy testing that just show up only in the medical records. These are real allergies that show up in the real world.

Krebiozen #495,

As I wrote before, if IgE does not have good predictive value, why do researchers keep using it? Why do vaccine makers use antibody titers? If IgE measures are no good for allergy, antibody titers must be no good for determining vaccine effectiveness either. It cuts both ways.

Krebiozen #495,

Thanks for the great paper by Anderson and Rosenau.

"We have before called attention to the fact that care must be taken in drawing conclusions as to the different effect of various agencies upon the sensitizing and toxic properties of proteins, for we have found that only I/IOOOOOO cubic centi- meter of horse serum will sensitize a guinea-pig, and Wells has found that I/20000000 of a gram of purified egg-white would do likewise. It requires considerably larger amounts to poison the animal."

Without the benefit of IgE testing, they were able to observe sensitization to 50 nanogram ( I/20000000 gram) of egg-white in 1909!

One simple question: More than one hundred years later, is it too much to ask that the FDA determine a safe limit for the amount of food allergens in vaccines and establish/enforce a specification? Especially in the context of a food allergy epidemic sweeping the developed world?

APC, stop being a spamming troll bot.

Accuracy, precision, and significance: The misery of cholera

pgleick — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:36:42 +0000

Accuracy, precision, and significance: The misery of cholera

We’re bombarded with numbers every day. But seeing a number and understanding it are two different things. Far too often, the true “significance” of a figure is hidden, unknown, or misjudged. I will be returning to that theme often in these blog posts in the context of water, climate change, energy, and more. In particular, there is an important distinction between accuracy and precision.

Here is one example – reported cases of cholera worldwide. Cholera is perhaps the most widespread and serious water-related disease, directly associated with the failure to provide safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. Billions of people lack this basic human right and suffer from illness as a result. Millions die unnecessary deaths.

The scourge of cholera. December 1912. Le Petit Journal, Bibliothèque nationale de France. [This image is in the public domain.]

The World Health Organization has reported that in 2011 (the last year for which comprehensive data are available) 58 countries reported 589,854 cases of cholera.

OK, I see that number, but what does it mean? Is it accurate? Is it precise?

Accuracy and precision are not the same things. In the field of science and data, “accuracy” is typically considered to be a measure of how close a number is to that quantity’s true value.

“Precision” is a term with two relevant meanings. The first describes the degree to which repeated efforts to do, or measure, something will produce the same results. The second meaning is a measure of the relative accuracy with which any given number can be represented, and is typically expressed through the use of “significant figures.”

Take, for example, the number 123. This has three significant figures. The implication is that the actual number is not 122 or 124, but 123 precisely, with a margin of error of a half of the last place (in this case 0.5). If the actual precision of measurement is not this small, then perhaps this number should be represented as 120 (with two significant figures), or even 100 (with only one significant figure).

[A minor aside: the number 100 could have 1, 2, or 3 significant figures – we don’t know unless it is stated explicitly. One way to do this is to use decimal notation. The number 100. (with the decimal point) has three significant figures, and can also be expressed as 1.00 x 10².]

Any particular data can be accurate, precise, both, or neither.

So, back to cholera. This number of cases -- 589,854 -- seems very precise. It is reported to six significant figures – a very high degree of precision.

In fact, however, this number is an example of “false precision” – it is presented in a way (with six significant figures) that implies, incorrectly, a higher degree of both precision and accuracy than reality warrants.

Why? First, it is entirely possible that this number is exactly the sum (i.e., it is precise) of the number of cases of cholera reported to WHO by the 58 reporting countries. But experts on water-related disease note the following:

Many countries around the world do not report water-related diseases at all. As noted above, in 2011 only 58 countries reported cholera. We know cholera occurred in countries not reporting.
Most cholera outbreaks are not detected. Thus, even countries reporting cholera underreport.
There is no agreed-upon standard definition for determining if a case of extreme or acute watery diarrhea is “cholera” or a different illness that presents the same way.
Health surveillance systems (i.e., medical systems for tracking, recording, and reporting disease) vary dramatically from country to country in their quality and completeness.
Some major countries, known to have extensive and severe cholera outbreaks, typically report zero instances of cholera because they either fear the stigma associated with the failing to provide adequate water systems or they hide cholera cases by labeling them as something else (such as acute watery diarrhea).

Thus, this highly precise number is neither precise nor accurate. Indeed, it is grossly inaccurate. The WHO acknowledges this, and indeed, believes the officially reported cases could represent only a small fraction of the actual number that occurs. Taking these uncertainties into account, WHO estimates that there are as many as 10 times more cases than are actually reported. A more detailed statistical analysis recently suggested that overall there are around 2.8 million cases of cholera every year (with an uncertainty range of 1.2 to 4.3 million) and about 91,000 deaths (with an uncertainty range of 28,000 to 140,000).

So, beware misleading numbers. The officially reported estimates of cholera cases are neither precise (despite six significant figures), nor accurate.

Finally, there is another aspect to “significance.” That is the importance of the figure in some context. In this sense, the cholera numbers may be neither accurate nor precise, but they are significant. They tell the story of a horrible and unnecessary situation – a deadly, crippling, and preventable disease that is the result of our failure to provide safe water and sanitation to all the population on the planet. Cholera is completely preventable – we've effectively eliminated it in the United States and other industrialized countries by putting in place wastewater treatment and water purification systems. Let’s improve our data collection and reporting system, so we know, accurately, the extent of the problem, and then let’s move quickly to do what is necessary to reduce and eliminate cholera.

Peter Gleick

pgleick Wed, 02/13/2013 - 08:36

Tags

water-related disease

World Health Organization

water resources

I disagree. WHO said "In 2011, a total of 58 countries from all continents reported 589 854 cases of cholera to WHO". The number of cases REPORTED is a direct count, and use of 6 significant figures is appropriate.

It's true that this number probably greatly underestimates the number of cholera cases that occurred, but WHO never claimed to be reporting that. The number they reported is both accurate and appropriately precise.

Yes, as I noted, the WHO number is certainly "precise" based only on the "reported" data, but it is neither precise nor accurate in the context of the overall cholera situation. I don't agree, however, that the number is "accurate" in any definition of the word!

Similarly, it's annoying when press converts a rounded number (pounds, kilometers) to another (dollars, miles) and states every digit of "accuracy".

Great discussion; and absolutely important both at conceptual and fatual levels.
The key message "Let’s improve our data collection and reporting system......to reduce and eliminate cholera.". There is a need to think about changing the whole game (not just the rules of the game) in developing countries about data collection and reporting systems. Rural areas of developing countries have a significant population with marginal health infrastructure. Many institutions try to play with data to show the "progress", by presenting the cases at lower sides. Other think (including educated staff in rural health centers etc) that it is just a cosmetic requirement, and has nothing to do with any improvement. I can mention many factors which I noted during field work in such areas; however, two things are important to improve data collection and reported systems (I am sharing for discussion here)
1- Awareness at all levels (from causes and identification of such diseases to reporting)
2- Involvement of nutral institution to collect such data (such as colleges, universities, and other research-based institutions with some sort of mechanism depending upon the local condition); because many health units prefer to report figures showing "better progress" for their adminstration and the government.
My Question is : What mechanism do you suggest to achieve the target of "improvement in data collection and reporting system"?, both in rural and urban areas of developing countries ?

Rosie Redfield's objection is entirely valid — as written, the claim is most likely both very accurate and very precise. This being the case, then the issue becomes whether or not the reporting of that number, or its reporting in the context of civil discourse, is presented (implicitly or explicitly) as a claim about all outbreaks of cholera or the WHO reporting of cholera. And in that context, Gleick's criticisms are relevant.

Two things:

First, surely Paulos's 1988 book, "Innumeracy" is extremely relevant to this blog within the wider context of education and civil discourse.

Second, "significance" is a term of art in mathematics and science elsewhere than in "significant figures" and nearly with as much importance and more timeliness: statistical significance. Statistical significance is frequently misunderstood and misused within science itself and even more egregiously in civil discourse (science journalism, mostly). I suspect, though perhaps wrongly, that this isn't what Gelick had in mind for his blog, but it's just as vital and relevant. What statistician Andrew Gelman has written on the topic is a good start.

Great comment, thanks. And good hint about Paulos's book. I may at times talk about statistical significance -- it is certainly often misunderstood and misused. I've often thought that a required statistics course in high school would be far more useful in life than some of the standard high school math requirements...

I'm ambivalent about stats in high school. On the one hand, I'm strongly in favor of including some probability and intro statistics into the high school math curriculum for liberal arts purposes; i.e., as an essential part of a basic education and with regard to numeracy in the context of citizenship.

On the other hand, in terms of practical utility (particularly vocational), I've read quite a few complaints from working scientists about their undergraduate statistics coursework. (In that it was much less useful than it could have been, and misleading in important respects.) But the same can be said about, well, everything in the high school curriculum and, indeed, much of the undergraduate curriculum in most subjects.

At that point we're grappling with the conflict between vocational and liberal arts education at the secondary level — we've pretty much agreed in the US to strongly favor a liberal arts approach to secondary education (and as an end to itself), but particularly in the context of certain vocations (including science) there's always some discussion favoring a more practical, technical approach.

Personally, I'd favor an even stronger universal liberal arts approach at the secondary level with an additional year or even two, with a decreased liberal arts emphasis and increased technical emphasis at the undergraduate level. But I know that's never going to happen and we'll continue to muddle through with compromises that don't do any particular thing very well.

That said, my preferred approach would then include probability and stats in high school taught as part of a broad, liberal arts math education; and then much, much better (and more) stats education for all the undergraduates who will actually be doing statistics.

CSI Brookhaven: 500-year-old Hair Tells Story of Royal Mercury Poisoning

ksnyder — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:00:00 +0000

CSI Brookhaven: 500-year-old Hair Tells Story of Royal Mercury Poisoning

Hair breaks. It singes. It falls out. It might not be the strongest feature of living human bodies, but hair is one of the best-preserved tissues of dead ones, providing a record of diet, age, metabolism, and, sometimes, even the cause of death.

Ferdinand II*

With intense beams of x-rays at Brookhaven's National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS), a team of researchers is using hair samples collected from the decomposed bodies of two 15th century Italian royalty to determine how they really died.

The subjects: Ferdinand II (1467-1496)* and Isabella (1470-1524) of Aragon, a medieval kingdom of what is now modern Spain.

Ferdinand was once the king of Naples. His death followed a spat with recurrent fever, malaise, fatigue, and bloody diarrhea.

Isabella

Isabella, the Princess of Naples and Duchess of Milan is thought by some to be the subject of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. She suffered from recurrent fevers, malaise, and died with dropsy, a general swelling of the body.

There's a common link between the Aragonese's late lives: both were treated with mercury, a cure-all skin disease remedy of the 15th century used to care for everything from itch to ulcers. It's also a neurotoxin that's especially harmful to the nervous system.

Historical accounts suggest that Ferdinand was using the heavy metal to treat syphilis. And based on Isabella's blackened teeth, researchers can tell that she also received mercury treatment.

Black patina composed of mercury found on Isabella's teeth

But were they exposed to enough mercury to kill them?

That's where a team of international researchers comes in. Almost 500 years after Isabella and Ferdinand died, scientists from the University of Chicago, University of Turin, University of Pisa, University of New Mexico, Academic Teaching Hospital MÃ¼nchen-Bogenhausen, and the New Mexico Health Enhancement and Marathon Clinics Research Foundation obtained strands of the royals' hair to study.

They presented their research this week at the 7th World Congress on Mummy Studies in San Diego.

Hair is continuously renewed during life, normally growing about 16 cm per year. Using beams of x-rays at NSLS just 5 microns in diameter - about the size of a dust particle - the researchers were able to look for heavy metal exposure in Ferdinand and Isabella's hair. The extremely small size of the x-ray beam allowed the researchers to zoom in on sections of the strands with a resolution equivalent to just 15 minutes of hair growth.

To get an idea of just how small 5 microns is, take a look at this image of a strand of hair. The red dot measures 5 microns in diameter.

They found elevated levels of mercury in Isabella's hair, ranging from 10-50 parts per million (ppm), within 20 days of her death. In the 15 days leading to Ferdinand's death, sky-high levels of mercury were present in his hair, ranging from 50-20,000 ppm. For comparison, the World Health Organization (WHO) places the level at which toxicity occurs at 50 ppm of mercury in hair. With a safety factor of 10 applied, WHO advises that members of the general public should have no more than 5 ppm of mercury in their hair.

The researchers also tested samples of muscle from Ferdinand and bone from Isabella for common diseases of the time period. Immunoassays showed that they tested negative for malaria. But they were positive for visceral leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease spread by sand flies that can cause skin ulcers in immune-suppressed subjects and, when left untreated, potentially fatal damage to many organs.

X-ray fluorescence studies at NSLS showed researchers the concentration of zinc (top) and mercury (bottom) in strands of hair from Isabella and Ferdinand's bodies. Isabella's hair is positioned above Ferdinand's. The hair roots are on the left. Red coloration is associated with the highest levels of mercury.

The researchers concluded that the potential skin lesions, often associated with leishmaniasis, were treated with large amounts of mercury. This could have led to mercury intoxication, which weakens the immune system. Although the exact role of mercury's toxicity in the early deaths of the royals remains to be determined, an overdose of the metal could have opened a door for latent infections, such as leishmaniasis, to turn deadly.

*6/18/11: Photo and birth/death dates changed. The text originally quoted the dates as "1452-1516," which corresponds to a different Ferdinand II.

ksnyder Fri, 06/17/2011 - 07:00

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The Global "Slow-motion Catastrophe" of Chronic Disease

lborkowski — Mon, 02 May 2011 15:43:46 +0000

The Global "Slow-motion Catastrophe" of Chronic Disease

Last week in Moscow, the World Health Organization and Russian Federation held the First Global Ministerial Conference on Healthy Lifestyles and Noncommunicable Disease Control, which addressed the "slow-motion catastrophe" of rising rates of non-communicable illnesses like heart disease and diabetes. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan warned that diabetes rates have skyrocketed in both rich and poor countries, but in poor countries "health services are almost totally unprepared to cope with the onslaught of chronic demands that come with the rise of non-communicable diseases."

As the WHO points out in a discussion presentation (PDF), just four NCDs are responsible for more than 60% of deaths worldwide: cancers, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and chronic pulmonary diseases. Tobacco use, harmful use of alcohol, physical inactivity, and poor diet are major risk factors for these conditions. And while developed countries are worried about chronic diseases' contributions to soaring healthcare expenditures, the effects on developing nations are even more severe. The presentation explains:

However it is in developing countries, particularly on the African continent, where the expanding NCD epidemic is fanning poverty, stifl ing economic growth and hindering development. In many households, the bulk of a family's income will go to caring for a loved one ailing from a NCD. Such "catastrophic expenditures" are preventing millions of people of advancing their lives and providing for their children's futures.

The Moscow Declaration that came out of the meeting emphasizes that "prevention and control of NCDs requirs leadership at all levels, and a wide range of multi-level, multi-sectoral measures aimed at the full spectrum of NCD determinants (from individual-level to structural) to create the necessary conditions for leading healthy lives." It includes a commitment to action on a total of 23 steps -- 11 of which are for national governments, six for ministries of health, and six for the international level. The steps include:

At the national level:

Implementing cost-effective policies, such as fiscal policies, regulations and other
measures to reduce common risk factors such as tobacco use, unhealthy diet, physical
inactivity and the harmful use of alcohol;

At the ministry of health level:

According to country-led prioritization, ensuring the scaling-up of effective, evidence-based and cost-effective interventions that demonstrate the potential to treat
individuals with NCDs, protect those at high risk of developing them and reduce risk
across populations.

At the international level:

Examining possible means to continue facilitating the access of low- and middle
income countries to affordable, safe, effective and high quality medicines in this area
consistent with the WHO Model Lists of Essential Medicines, based on needs and
resource assessments, including by implementing the WHO Global Strategy and Plan
of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property.

Although the WHO stresses that low-cost solutions to the NCD epidemic exist, it's hard not feel daunted by the scale of the challenge. Jake Marcus of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has a great piece in The New Republic considering why there's no global movement to combat NCDs, and he compares the fight against chronic illnesses to the global campaign against HIV/AIDS. NCDs, he point out, will be harder to organize around than AIDS because they build up over many years and have far more than one pathway for transmission; tend to take their most visible toll on older people, who are less likely to spark emotional responses from potential donors; and don't create the fear that a higher rate of infection increases everyone's chance of contracting the disease.

I'll add another challenge to his list: HIV doesn't have a manufacturer that benefits when people engage in risky behaviors, but their are plenty of companies that benefit from the unhealthy lifestyles that increase the risk of NCDs. Tobacco companies will collapse if everyone stops smoking. Alcohol companies will see their profits drop if excessive drinking stops. The manufacturers of high-calorie/low-nutrient food stand to lose millions if people adopt healthier eating habits. Carmakers could see their markets shrink as local governments make it easier for people to get around by walking, biking, and riding public transportation.

One of the national-level steps in the Moscow declaration is "Engaging the private sector in order to strengthen its contribution to NCD prevention and control according to international and national NCD priorities." The Washington Post's Will Englund reported from Moscow that "Unhealthy food, and what to do about it, was the most sensitive topic at the gathering." He notes that 10 big producers have formed "an alliance that says it is committed to reducing salt, sugar and fat in processed food and restricting advertising aimed at children. And he provides a couple of examples from countries that have addressed the issue of salt:

Finland tried to reduce the amount of salt in food by seeking voluntary commitments from manufacturers, with mild success, said Sirpa Sarlio-Lahteenkorva, an official in the Finnish Health Ministry. But when the government required salt labeling, consumption dropped sharply, she said. The same happened when the government increased taxes on alcohol. (Finland is the world leader in reducing deaths from non-communicable disease.)

The government of Argentina leaned on the country's bakeries and, without resorting to formal measures, got them to reduce by nearly one-third the amount of salt in bread over a few months, said C. James Hospedales, coordinator for chronic disease at the Pan American Health Organization.

I hope the Moscow meeting generates some additional funding and high-level attention to the problem of non-communicable diseases, because it's going to take a lot of work to reduce the global risk.

lborkowski Mon, 05/02/2011 - 11:43

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Inside the Outbreaks

mpendergrast — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:03:59 +0000

Inside the Outbreaks

Mark Pendergrast writes: To kick off this book club discussion of Inside the Outbreaks, I thought I would explain briefly how I came to write the book and then suggest some possible topics for discussion.

The origin of the book goes back to an email I got in 2004 from my old high school and college friend, Andy Vernon, who wrote that I should consider writing the history of the EIS. I emailed back to say that I was honored, but what was the EIS? I had never heard of it. I knew Andy worked on tuberculosis at the CDC, but I didn't know that he had been a state-based EIS officer from 1978 to 1980 in Oklahoma.

When he explained that EIS stood for the Epidemic Intelligence Service, I was intrigued. Was there really an outfit with a name like that? As I learned more, I realized that I had the opportunity to write the first history of an organization that has had a profound impact on the way public health is practiced not only here in the United States, but across the globe.

This book took me nearly twice as long as any previous book, even though it covers a shorter time period than my other histories. (For info on all my books, see www.markpendergrast.com.) I could not have survived on the advance from the publisher, so I am extremely grateful to the CDC Foundation and the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation for the grants that made the book possible.

The project took so long because it involved so many characters and investigations, making it a challenge to write. I considered organizing it by disease or theme, with a chapter each on polio, cholera, chronic diseases, environmental health, or violence, for instance. But such an approach would have meant jumping around in time, and readers would have lost the historical context. Instead, I wrote the book chronologically, from Alexander Langmuir's creation of the EIS in 1951 to the present. That meant that most chapters contain a smorgasbord of investigations.

Thus, for example, Chapter 5, "New Discoveries and Mysteries in the Early Sixties," begins with the 1961 hepatitis A outbreaks traced to oysters in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and to clams in Raritan Bay, New Jersey, and then to intentional urination in potato salad at the officers' mess at Cecil Field Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida. Then it shifts to hepatitis B traced to blood transfusions as well as to a New Jersey osteopath-psychiatrist who put IV drips into depressed patients to deliver tranquilizers, vitamins, and "energizers," cross-contaminating with hepatitis B by reusing the same tubing. Then the chapter jumps to salmonellosis due to raw eggs in cake mixes, which led back to chickenfeed made from contaminated fishmeal. Then I wrote about Salmonella hospital infections traced to nutritional drinks made with raw eggs. Onward from there to a remote Bolivian village to retrieve a particularly virulent plague bacillus for the Fort Detrick biological warfare scientists, followed by an apparent outbreak of lethal encephalitis among Guatemalan Mayans that stemmed from mercury fungicide on wheat seeds that the starving Indians had eaten. From there to leukemia clusters in Niles, Illinois, cholera in the Philippines, Reye syndrome in North Carolina, and finally, a section focusing on Alexander Langmuir in his prime. And that's all just one chapter!

Despite the book's disparate contents, there are narrative threads that weave throughout the book, some of which I will introduce here.

Alexander Langmuir himself provides one such thread. The founder of the Epidemic Intelligence Service was a visionary leader who put his personal stamp on the institution. "We'll get EIS officers on an epidemic as fast as we can," he said. "Throw them overboard. See if they can swim, and if they can't, throw them a life ring, pull them out and throw them in again."

The rituals and institutions that Langmuir established have proven to be remarkably hardy. The annual April conference is a case in point, a wonderful springtime introduction to Atlanta for new EIS recruits who can marvel at the amazing presentations - talk about a smorgasbord! - while being wooed and assessed (and simultaneously wooing and assessing) in this EIS version of a fraternity/sorority rush. They then return to Atlanta in the sweltering July heat for intense training, during which EIS officers make friends that often last a lifetime.

Diseases provide other narrative threads. Polio, for instance, is a major focus from the beginning, when EIS officers studied possible fly transmission, then put the EIS on the map during the 1955 Cutter Incident, when virulent live virus survived in some polio vaccines, thus paralyzing some recipients. I wrote about the 1962 decision to switch from the Salk killed injected vaccine to the Sabin oral live attenuated polio vaccine, the subsequent surveillance that revealed how children and their parents sometimes contracted polio as a result of the oral vaccine, the eventual decision to switch back to the killed vaccine in the United States, and the current pursuit of polio eradication that is tantalizingly close to success but is still frustratingly difficult.

Similarly, readers can follow threads throughout the book about malaria, Reye syndrome, Salmonella, diarrhea, smallpox, natural disasters, refugees and war, psychosomatic illnesses, problematical alternative medicines, E. coli O157:H7 and other foodborne pathogens, injuries, AIDS, Ebola, and many other health problems.

Another thread traces the evolution of more complex epidemiological methods, from simple description epi and cohort studies to case control studies, random sampling, and multivariate analysis.

Another is the impact of politics and global events on EIS investigations, from the Cold War fear of biological warfare that helped create the Epidemic Intelligence Service, to the Reagan administration's shameful neglect of AIDS, to the Bush and now Obama years. And on another level, there are the politics of the CDC and the Public Health Service. For years the CDC flew under most governmental radar, hiding out in Atlanta, but that ended with Legionnaire's disease and the national vaccination campaign against the swine flu epidemic that failed to materialize in 1976, which I covered in a chapter called "The Year of Living Dangerously." That year also introduced Ebola and Legionnaires' disease.

Unsolved mysteries provide another thread. EIS officers don't always break every case, at least not right away.

Yet another theme is the growing diversity of EIS officers. In the 1950s, most were white male physicians. Today over half are women, around a third are members of minority/ethnic groups, and a substantial number of officers arrive from other countries. Many are non-physicians.
Another thread in the book is how businesses sometimes put profits ahead of public health, as in the case of Reye syndrome and the aspirin industry or toxic shock syndrome and Procter & Gamble, which made the Rely tampon.

Other themes that thread throughout the book are: increasing microbial drug resistance to antibiotics, emerging infections, and the broadening EIS/CDC involvement in chronic diseases and behavioral factors such as smoking, drinking, suicide, and violence - and now looking at the public health impact of climate change.

Another theme that emerges throughout the book is that a disproportionate number of health problems afflict the underprivileged, the poor, the oppressed.

Yet another thread is the lesson that individuals, with their own particular interests and personalities, can make such a difference. There are many instances in which curious EIS officers or alums took on a problem and just wouldn't let it go.

In summary, let me quote from the book's epilogue, "The EIS Legacy," about the nature and importance of the EIS:

EIS alum Patrick Moore observed: "Most EIS recruits are not run-of-the-mill people. They aren't doing it to make lots of money. We really felt we were putting ourselves at risk, selflessly facing down bad diseases to help other people."

In the early years, most physicians joined the EIS to avoid the draft, but many remained in public health once they realized that they could have such a powerful impact on thousands of lives. That same realization occurred to latter-day officers such as Scott Harper, who observed: "Working as an EIS officer in public health was exciting, important, and satisfying. Whether investigating an outbreak or writing policy for vaccines, I had the opportunity to affect many more people's lives than a clinician seeing 30 people a day." Kay Kreiss recalled thinking, "This is the best job I'm ever going to have, with infinite backup and no administrative responsibility."

Scott Holmberg added: "Being dropped into an outbreak, given the authority to investigate it and do the detective work, then apply that knowledge to curbing the current outbreak and preventing future ones - there's no better work in the world. Wherever you go, everybody wants the same two things - peace and prosperity. It doesn't matter whether their lips are stretched and they are dyed blue, or whether they sit in front of a computer. They are worried about family, friends, tribe, nation."

I then went on to provide a quick summary of illustrious EIS alums and how they have influenced public health. I also wrote about EIS clones, the Field Epidemiology Training Programs around the world. And I concluded the book with these two paragraphs:

In 1951, Alexander Langmuir seized a Cold War opportunity to fund a small training program for young epidemiologists who would keep an eye out for biological warfare while responding promptly to unintentional epidemics. Today these EIS officers are the world's premier front-line disease detectives.

For an obscure government program, the Epidemic Intelligence Service has produced remarkable results. Perhaps it has done so in part by remaining relatively small, nimble, and flexible. One of the lessons of the EIS history is the impact that one person can have. Put creative, intelligent, well-trained, motivated individuals into the right environment, and the outcome can save lives and lead to vital careers. EIS officers and alums have had an impact far beyond their original numbers. Today, with global public health bedeviled by substantial threats, the life-saving work performed around the world by these shoeleather epidemiologists is more essential than ever. The EIS program and its offspring have, in short, influenced and defined how field epidemiology and public health are practiced on our planet.

So there's a somewhat scattered introduction to this book club discussion of Inside the Outbreaks. I look forward to hearing from readers and I anticipate an interesting, fruitful exchange.

Here is the only photo someone took of me in a village in Niger when I was following EIS officers there:

mpendergrast Mon, 06/21/2010 - 07:03

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