“Vaccines’ Benefits Outweigh Risks” Implies Children Injured by Vaccines are Expendable
By Nancy Hokkanen
Online comments by vaccine injury
denialists often seem plucked from George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm, a dystopian allegory in which “some animals are more
equal than others.” At the websites of magazines struggling to regain lost
market share, the human counterparts of porcine characters Napoleon and
Squealer can be found denying medical facts and urging others to discriminate
against the vaccine-injured population.
As soon as TV’s “The View”
announced that celebrity author Jenny McCarthy might be hired as a
co-host (now official),
corporate media and internet trolls attempted anew to devalue her in the public
eye. Years ago McCarthy stated that her son reacted adversely to the MMR
vaccine; after a bout of seizures the boy was revived by medics, and treated by
physicians over the years with positive results.
McCarthy is president of Generation Rescue, an advocacy group started by parent volunteers to educate families about safe and effective biomedical autism treatments. Oddly, if you Google “Generation Rescue,” the first title to pop up is a sponsored link from the faux research group Autism Science Foundation. On July 9 ASF reported the groundbreaking news that “Mothers Who Have Children with ASD Show Significantly Higher Levels of Fatigue.”
At the U.S. News & World Report site, assistant opinion editor Pat Garofalo minced no words in his article “Keep Jenny McCarthy’s Vaccine and Autism Pseudoscience Off ‘The View.’” Staff at that publication have backpedaled hard from articles by former health editor Bernadine Healy, M.D., who advocated vaccine program transparency. A former director at the Red Cross and National Institutes of Health, Dr. Healy stated before her 2011 passing, “There are unanswered questions about vaccine safety. We need studies on vaccinated populations based on various schedules and doses as well as individual patient susceptibilities that we are continuing to learn about.”
At the pop-up-laden website of The Atlantic is a piece of work by associate history professor David M. Perry: “Destabilizing the Jenny McCarthy Public-Health Industrial Complex: Giving the anti-vaccine advocate a platform is dangerous.” The article is a cut-and-paste rehash of misinformed generalizations, delivered in loaded semantics. Though Perry’s child has Down syndrome, he attempts to speak for the entire illness-ravaged autism community by saying “they do not need McCarthy’s organization to ‘rescue’ them.”
Most commenters at The Atlantic critical of McCarthy display a lack of scientific rigor, offering emotional opinion as if it were axiomatic instead of providing valid independent evidence. Amongst the clichés, fearmongering, baiting and hating was the predictable call for censorship – ironically from a book author. Stacy Mintzer Herlihy, who with multimillionaire vaccine industrialist Dr. Paul Offit co-wrote Your Baby’s Best Shot: Why Vaccines Are Safe and Save Lives, declared that “[a] small subset of people are utterly immune to reason. Booing them off the stage is a perfectly reasonable tactic.”
Another commenter, “Kfredrick72,” wrote with chilling detachment, “And let’s face it, a tiny percentage of the population IS adversely affected by vaccinations, not so much autism but other complications. That in no way means we shouldn’t be using them. The benefits clearly outweigh the risks.”
There it is – that utilitarian public health meme designed to shut down vaccine safety discussion. But if one pauses to think, one realizes that the stark assertion carries unpleasant ethical implications.
Do vaccines’ benefits outweigh risks? For people who create vaccine policy or do not question it, the answer is yes. For those seemingly unharmed by vaccines or statistics wonks, maybe. For the uncounted victims of vaccine adverse reactions, no.
Such inconsistency is also the hobgoblin of vaccine policy messaging and decisionmaking:
- The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines risk as “possibility of loss or injury”; the definition of safe is “free from harm or risk; unhurt.”
- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control insists that the agency’s vaccine schedule for infants and children is safe, though some are injured. "Serious side effects following vaccination… are very rare and doctors and clinic staff are trained to deal with them."
- The CDC had the Institute of Medicine convene a committee to study the childhood vaccine schedule; it "expressed support for the childhood immunization schedule as a tool to protect against vaccine preventable diseases," yet urges further safety study… but not a vaccinated/unvaccinated study.
- The U.S. Supreme Court has declared that vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe.”
- The National Vaccine Safety Compensation Program has paid out $2 billion in vaccine injury claims, with 80% of cases filed thrown out.
- Since 1990, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System has received over 200,000 reports.
- The American Academy of Pediatrics seems to think that risk/benefit education only means warning about risks from NOT vaccinating.
Back to the Atlantic, where author Mintzer Herlihy also smugly asked a fellow commenter, “Tell which vaccines you want to stop and which vaccine preventable diseases you want back.” Though her question was rhetorical and puerile, polio deserves closer investigation.
Recently an Indiana journalism professor discovered film footage showing former president Franklin D. Roosevelt being pushed in his wheelchair. For decades Roosevelt’s waist-down paralysis from poliomyelitis in 1921 was kept from the public by the selective reporting of newspapers, radio stations and newsreel photographers. Our 32nd president served during the Depression, Dust Bowl and World War II – monumental challenges that influenced journalists’ decision to avoid giving other nations the impression that our leader, and hence our country, were weak.
Roosevelt served four consecutive terms with complicit news editors censoring the true nature of the president’s disability. Ten years after his death, a vaccine to prevent polio was introduced to a public fearful of seeing children and adults encased in iron lungs, struggling for breath. However the 1955 medical breakthrough was not free from harm; manufacturing problems at Cutter Laboratories resulted a tragic backfire, with a number of children contracting polio from the vaccine.
Other polio vaccine problems emerged years later. The book The Virus and the Vaccine by Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher details how the SV40 virus contaminated polio vaccines given to nearly 100 million Americans from 1955 through 1963. The virus came from the kidneys of green monkeys used to culture the vaccine; SV40 is linked to deadly human brain cancers. Interestingly, in February 2000 excerpts from the book were posted at – of all places – The Atlantic.
In modern-day India with its population of 1.2 billion, the cheaper oral polio vaccine is linked to cases of paralytic polio. An April-June 2013 article in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics states, “[W]hile India has been polio-free for a year, there has been a huge increase in non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP). In 2011, there were an extra 47,500 new cases of NPAFP. Clinically indistinguishable from polio paralysis but twice as deadly, the incidence of NPAFP was directly proportional to doses of oral polio received. Though this data was collected within the polio surveillance system, it was not investigated. The principle of primum-non-nocere was violated.”
Media and society share the attitude – welcomed by government and manufacturers – that vaccine safety problems should be downplayed or even censored. Why? To reward good intentions. To prevent mass vaccine abstinence that might result in disease outbreaks. To protect news sources… or to protect financial interests.
Just like the Roosevelt years, today’s reporters are trying to avoid giving the impression that our national vaccine program is weak and instead shape a spotless public health image. But that propped-up false reality comes at the expense of health and life for an undetermined number of vaccine-injured infants, children and adults. Undetermined because no one is counting.
The net result of today’s vaccine injury denialism by public health policymakers and media has become disastrous. The U.S. is sicker than ever, with 1 in 5 children receiving special education services and 1 in 2 suffering chronic illnesses, many which medical studies show may be linked to over-vaccinating. The total VAERS reports are estimated at 1 to 10% of actual vaccine injury cases... so the true number of people injured could be 2 million to 20 million.
Media silence about vaccine injuries sends the same cruel message as self-centered online commenters who insist that vaccines’ benefits outweigh risks: Children who die from disease are tragic losses, but children who die from vaccine injury are expendable.
Last year Ginger Taylor wrote movingly about "Admitting That Vaccine Injured Children Are Acceptable Losses," after reading the article "The Value of Life, Statistically Speaking" at CFO online. Within industry, manufacturers employ clinical-sounding terminology to accommodate or disguise product loss. For example, a metal tool designer will factor the “expected fallout rate” into their bid calculations to win contracts. That means a certain percentage of units will be lost on the production line. Still, the ultimate goal is to eliminate waste and damage.
So why is the CDC allowed to have any “expected fallout rate”? And how high must that rate rise before they take action to reduce it?
Why has vaccine injury research been essentially abandoned just as more and more vaccines are being created and approved for mass use, injected into living, breathing infants, children, pregnant women, seniors?
Why have so many similar cases of encephalopathy and mitochondrial dysfunction been paraded in front of VICP Special Masters and Department of Justice attorneys without them bothering to suggest that the CDC look into preventing more human carnage?
People who deny vaccine injuries or consider them as “expected fallout rate” are:
- complicit in a deeply flawed system of government that dooms an undetermined number of children to ill health, pain and discomfort, multiple disabilities, and even premature death;
- forcing families to face stress, abandonment, depression, home loss, financial ruin and other miseries;
- condoning scientific mediocrity in the research and manufacturing;
- allowing government to use science as a tool… not to uncover universal knowledge, but instead as a lever of political force via oppressive health policies.
Society’s attitude toward vaccine injury amounts to an abusive spouse’s blame-the-victim mentality. It’s long past time for an ethical reboot and reeducation on the elements of an appropriate human response. Things like belief. Sympathy. Investigation. Treatment. Prevention. Compensation. Education. Aftercare. And some basic human kindness.
For decades the public health community has coasted on past successes, congratulating themselves for responding to a problem with a solution. But as long as policymakers remain willfully blind to the new problems inadvertently caused by their well-intended solution, society cannot create a medical model for vaccine injury treatment and prevention.
“No one should be threatened by the pursuit of this knowledge,” Dr. Healy said. “Vaccine policy should be the subject of frank and open debate, with no tolerance for bullying. There are no sides – only people concerned for the well-being of our children.”
With Franklin D. Roosevelt long dead, the journalists of today felt no need to suppress the video showing his physical impairment. Must society wait more decades – entire lifetimes – before vaccine injury concealment by media becomes just another sad footnote from history?
The benefits definitely outweigh the risk in it's numbers statistically but we live in a society where it's acceptable by big corporations to say a certain amount of children are expendable... It's really shocking.
Posted by: Gerrard Downs | December 12, 2013 at 06:00 AM
My daughter Victoria was under 3 months of age when she received the stage 1 H1N1 vaccine, also known as Swine Flu. Up to this point, my daughter was developing a good food variety, performed excellently on home hearing tests, and had a sparkly awareness look to her eyes.
After the vaccine, both my wife and myself began to notice changes in our daughter. Her food variety began to decrease. Her performance on the home hearing tests dropped. She lost the look of awareness in her eyes. She began to look like she was in a drug-induced daze. She has constantly baggy eyes.
At the age of six months, when our two older children had started to sit up by themselves, Victoria could not. At the age of one year, she could not walk, but barely sit up on her own. My other two children could walk, and maintained their food variety. Victoria started walking at age 18 months.
Before the stage 1 swine flu vaccination (we never got the stage two), Victoria was engaged with others. After the vaccination, she began to withdraw, only letting myself and her mother hold her.
My daughter Trinity was present the day Victoria got her stage 1 swine flu shot. Trinity, a little over a year old, received the stage 1 swine flu vaccination, although she received the inhalation vaccination (Victoria received the shot.)
Fortunately for Trinity, she had a stuffy nose that day and the death-cine sprayed back out of her nose. She has never had any symptoms, Victoria does.
To this day, Victoria, age 4, has a very limited food variety, and sometimes she gets burned out on those foods. She is not potty trained. Only recently has she been able to use the bathroom on the toilet, and then maybe seven times since she was born.
She has the mentality of a two year old. She cannot speak except sporadically, although she has had some successes in this area. Most times it is baby babble and some owling (making 'Ooooo' sounds like an owl). She loves water, so she is not full blown autistic, but she is definitely on the spectrum.
Not only all of the above happened, but the doctor who's office gave her the shot even tried to cover up the fact that both of my daughters received the shot by putting it in their shot records that a flu shot was given, but did not identify the type of shot given nor the drug manufacturer. The doctor even put in a false date for the date of the vaccination, 11 months after the fact, a date in which we did not go to his office.
Vaccines are a clear and present danger to the health, safety, and lives of our children.
If you suspect your child/children has autism, please go to http://conspiracyprophecyguy.blogspot.com/2012/05/autism-spectrum-disorder-symptom.html. It contains a chart for some of the autistic spectrum disorders with a homemade scale for gauging the severity of them. If your child/children has some of the symptoms listed and you are concerned that he/she might be on the autism spectrum, please see a doctor for an official diagnosis.
Posted by: Marshall Ramsey II | July 25, 2013 at 11:14 PM
One of the odd things about the conversations in the comments sections of these articles is that the vaccine defenders keep talking in very vague terms about the "Science" - saying that the Science has spoken, and that only the brilliant experts understand Science which is beyond a peon's comprehension - yet apparently the only conceivable response to a vaccine injury is to stop vaccinating. Since not vaccinating would be (they say) a terrible choice, there is nothing to be done. People should stop talking about their children's vaccine injuries and accept their children as they are. Talking about vaccine injuries would scare people away from vaccines, so we should just accept the (supposedly) one in a million serious vaccine injuries which are the cost of fighting communicable diseases.
But, if Science is so great, isn't there more to it than that? Can't modern scientific and medical expertise be applied to study the serious adverse reactions and figure out whether something more can be done to prevent them, who is susceptible to these injuries, how to identify vaccine injuries, what are the mechanisms of injury, and how to treat them if they occur?
All-powerful Science can only tell people, "Your child's condition is just a coincidence, you have no proof it was vaccine-related, go see a behavioral therapist." And if someone argues that their fully vaccinated children have serious health/immune/neuro issues as a result of vaccines they are simply proclaimed to be an "anti-vaxxer".
Really? Is modern science and medicine so simplistic? Diseases bad, vaccines good, end of story? Diseases bad, vaccines good, and if you question this you're just not smart and educated enough to understand Science.
Posted by: Twyla | July 20, 2013 at 03:52 AM
"Do vaccines’ benefits outweigh risks?"
This would seem to be rather easy to establish. Simply take a large group say 20,000 kids and allow half to be "vaccinated" and half NO "vaccination". In fairly short order the question will be answered.
That this can NEVER be done tells me all I need to know. How about you?
Posted by: Lou | July 19, 2013 at 02:23 AM
Thank you Nancy for your excellent work and for the historical reference to Seth Mnookin’s past heroin addiction. Also see http://www.salon.com/1999/08/27/heroinson/ .
In support of Jake Tapper’s shameless attack on Jenny McCarthy (during the July 16, 2013 airing of The Lead on CNN) he brought in Seth Mnookin with the inference that he is an “expert.”
First Jake says “The credible medical and scientific community says she [Jenny] is wrong. The numerous studies have found no link between vaccines and autism.” And shortly after that Seth Mnookin says “That message that she is giving has been roundly, roundly disproved time and time again.”
But both Jake’s and Seth’s conclusions are scientifically incorrect. There are studies that infer a risk. And there are awards by the Vaccine court that recognize vaccine injuries related to autism. And in science--absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. One example of this can be found in the history of tobacco science where industrial scientists concluded for decades that they could not find evidence of a significant risk of cancer from tobacco use.
Posted by: Jim Thompson | July 18, 2013 at 03:31 AM
Benedetta,
They should pass a bill providing funds for the most humane and painless way for people like us to off ourselves. It would solve so many problems and allow the ruse to be transparent. Seriously though we are screwed as you have suggested.
Visitnicktor
Posted by: Visitor | July 18, 2013 at 01:05 AM
What is that there, them risks?
Do we know all the risk, as they spout it off to us?
I don't think so:
"The number of visits to a doctor's office that resulted in a diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children and adolescents has increased by 40 times over the last decade, reported researchers funded in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Over the same time period, the number of visits by adults resulting in a bipolar disorder diagnosis almost doubled. The cause of these increases is unclear. Medication prescription patterns for the two groups were similar. The study was published in the September 2007 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry."
Last week my husband had pneumonia (immune system won't fight off what it should, but it sure is doing a dandy of a job attacking the pigment of his skin - vitalgo getting worse).
And to add on to it all - because we all love stress -- my daughter was putting cinnamon in the washing machine as she talked rapidly none stop on one subject and then another making really no sense at all. Lovely week.
I know that this has been replayed through out my community -- But mine - my family - showed temp spikes and Kawasakis right after vaccines- and encepholopathy - so I am the only one clued into why -this jack *&$% is happening
So when I hear that someone grown kid climbs an electric pole to strip wires -and is electrocuted - I know there is more going on there than really needed drug money.
They are invincible - can do anything - hypomania.
Posted by: Benedetta | July 17, 2013 at 11:03 PM
VMGillen's commented that:
"....perfection is, after all, God's bailiwick."
It is always interesting to me when someone brings God into the discussion of autism, or any disability for that matter. It is like telling a paraplegic that God only caused the accident because God knew he could handle it.
Perfection is exactly what many of us parents found on the day of the birth of our children. All of the environmental insults (vaccines, chemicals, heavy metals, pollution, etc) that our children received and encountered in their young lives were not creations of an all caring and just God, nor was it of an evil design; these insults were all the the work of the greed of man. Yes - even the polio vaccine was a product of greed and ego - read the history without bias and it is there.
VMGillen's use of the word "bailwick" is interesting to me in and of itself. Having a simple JAD (just a dad) degree I had to look it up. I found on wikipedia (forgive me) that "The word is now more generally used in a metaphorical sense, to indicate a sphere of authority, experience, activity, study or interest."
I think that VMGillen could do well to remind himself that while we here at AoA do not profess "perfection", I do feel that the writers and those of us who regularly read and comment here at AoA condsider autism as OUR "bailiwick" - on a 24/7/365 basis.
Posted by: Tim Kasemodel | July 17, 2013 at 08:34 PM
I think "visitor" may have a point...if anyone knows the media, it's Pharma.
Posted by: Zed | July 17, 2013 at 08:21 PM
This week some so-called "science" bloggers are blindly copy-and-pasting the rumblings of former heroin addict Seth Mnookin as if he's Allan Pinkerton reborn. Mnookin may boast the ability to use "imprimatur" in a sentence, but he's still damaged goods -- trashing the vaccine-injured and their families in an attempt to redeem himself in the eyes of those whose trust he shattered during his using years.
If only a small nugget of that supercilious outrage were expressed toward vaccine developers who are truly endangering children:
- falsify mumps efficacy research (Merck: East Pennsylvania Civil Action 10 4374)
- steal +$1 million from the CDC and top the OIG Most Wanted list (Poul Thorsen)
- falsify mercury toxicity research (Thomas Verstraeten, et al.)
- publish an antigen study loaded with selection bias (Frank DeStefano et al.)
- expedite publication of fraudulent autism/mercury epidemiology (Jose Cordero, Robert Chen, Elizabeth Miller)
Posted by: nhokkanen | July 17, 2013 at 06:36 PM
Nancy -
This is excellent!
"Most commenters at The Atlantic critical of McCarthy display a lack of scientific rigor, offering emotional opinion as if it were axiomatic instead of providing valid independent evidence. Amongst the clichés, fearmongering, baiting and hating was the predictable call for censorship – ironically from a book author."
Censorship is only tool they have left! Obviously nothing else is working, including this ridiculous barrage of hate over something as silly as hosting a talk show.
Posted by: PJ Carroll | July 17, 2013 at 06:18 PM
Hi Barry,
Just to mention that VMGillen has commented here a number of times in past, though not frequently.
John
Posted by: John Stone | July 17, 2013 at 05:57 PM
When someone argues for today's vaccine insanity based on past success (or sometimes a scripted narrative of success--I have had family members likely injured by vaccines, some injury that may have perpetuated down to succeeding generations and wonder if the benefits ever outweighed the costs that have never been truly counted) I wonder if the truth is they don't want to know the truth, even to the point of denying the suffering relief that a greater general understanding of all facts could bring, even to the point of allowing possible harm to themselves and their family in the future?
But then, I know there have been some who want to keep the public in a state of not wanting to know, seemingly from polio on. With the rise of paralytic polio for instance the observed probable role of pesticides was silenced, and we continue to use some of those now-banned-in-the-U.S. pesticides in countries where we are still trying to eradicate polio with sometimes more than a dozen doses of vaccine administered, spreading the virus through oral vaccine use and paralyzing many as stated above.
And I wonder how often medical school teaches about observed higher rates of paralysis in those who had a tonsillectomy. I suspect the medical establishment just started teaching that the tonsils weren't really useless after all without passing on (at least in general education) the why for the change of doctrine. Don't we need to acknowledge and study this instead of suppressing it? Maybe it wasn't just the removal of tonsils involved in some cases of paralysis--if it was though it is important for understanding the vaccine's actual benefit--but maybe pharmaceuticals involved in such surgery led to susceptibility to paralysis or maybe tonsillitis indicated environmental toxicity or nutritional deficiencies are present...
We rarely teach about the "cures" that add to the costs such as high dose aspirin administered during the influenza pandemic in 1918. Sometimes the best medicine may be to stop something we are doing, but there are some that would rather assign all our suffering to disease as a justification for another intervention with a price tag and with side effects. They scare the public, "we are due for another pandemic anytime," legislate all kinds of draconian violations of individual rights, and then after a pandemic redefinition we get the H1N1 scare trying to get everyone to take two risky, probably useless flu shots, enriching a few with public funds worldwide, and I think, trying to condition the masses to accept such abuse on a regular basis.
Few know how much we are now vaccinating infants in the first six months of life when the immune system is not matured and we don't know how much if any protection is being conferred.
Few know that the first vaccine given to newborns in the U.S. cannot benefit the vast majority of them, because they are not at risk for the disease in the first place, and few consider what it means that people in "authority," knowing there are vaccine risks not fully calculated, made such a recommendation in the first place.
Few know that there is little liability or accountability in the system due to the establishment of the NVICP in 1986, and because of this, we are now giving more vaccines than when the problems caused by the few we were giving motivated the unconstitutional liability protection in the first place.
Few even understand the connection between many of the difficulties our youth are burdened with and immune system dysfunction. Few understand that vaccines attempt to chemically "enhance" immune function. Few understand how much impact a dysfunctional immune system has on the brain and over-all well-being.
Few know that vaccines are only studied against other vaccines or fake placebos containing active and toxic vaccine ingredients. They are not studied in the combinations given, nor is the cumulative risk of the entire schedule studied.
...
I don't subscribe to the notion that the majority can force anyone to take a risk for the "greater good", but the "greater good" is not even served by the selective and dishonest script we are given on vaccination. We are a chronically ill nation. Our mainstream "healthcare" system first and foremost serves a few who perhaps believe they are the "greater good," temporarily, through patentable, profitable, not very effective pharmaceutical treatments, treatments that often create "need" for more treatments (vaccines are probably the first in many cases), while the majority of us are enslaved by the current system of ignorance.
Posted by: Jeannette Bishop | July 17, 2013 at 05:28 PM
Indeed - NO PEOPLE are expendable. I grew up in the era of polio - and my oldest is unable to have children due to exposure to measles. We must be very, very careful to avoid knee-jerk reactions. Safety trumps - but 100% safety is probably impossible - perfection is, after all, God's bailiwick.
**********************
So let me get this straight.
You're a person who just happens to have lived through the "polio era". Who for some reason still decided not to vaccinate their child against measles. And that child, of course, went on to develop measles. And just happened to suffer the incredibly rare , supposed side effect of sterility.
And as a first time commenter, you just happened to decide to drop by today, and use that experience to weigh in on the issue of whether the "benefits outweigh the risks".
Yeah, right.
Posted by: Barry | July 17, 2013 at 05:25 PM
Excellent, Nancy! Thanks.
Posted by: Zoey O'Toole | July 17, 2013 at 03:22 PM
VMGillen; I am sorry your oldest is unable to have children. But you do realize tthat for people with severe autism, not having children is the least of their problems?
People whose adult life is spent in institutions or requiring one on one care because they can't talk generally don't get to have children either.
For many people if their child with severe autism had the ability to speak, not self abuse etc, they would gladly take infertility in exchange;( you can always adopt) not that in some of these cases, there is any real chance of their disabled non verbal, potentially institutionalized pain filled child having a relationship that would produce a baby outside of horrendous situations such as rape.
I think if you haven't spent time with someone with severe autism, then you have no idea how completely NON SCARY the alternative "your kid might have fertility problems" is.
Posted by: Hera | July 17, 2013 at 03:10 PM
VMGillan, I just think they do not really know what the physiological effects of vaccines really are and this needs to be given a lot more study. I don't mean to be rude but isn't it mumps that prevents one from having children (in a small percentage)?
Posted by: Jen | July 17, 2013 at 02:11 PM
Pharma cannot tolerate ANYONE who might provide some FACTS and true insight on vaccines,
and allow them access to the masses besides themselves.
Posted by: cmo | July 17, 2013 at 02:02 PM
MGillen,
You said "100 percent safety is probably impossible."
But way back in 1939 John Erichsen Jones provided scientific evidence of mercury toxicity to fish. He reported his data in (1) a series of survival curves for various heavy metals, and (2) a table of survival limits. The scientific study used controls, fish exposed to distilled water, and concluded that the lethal limit of mercury chloride to Stickleback fish is 8 parts per billion. See figure number one at http://jeb.biologists.org/content/16/4/425.full.pdf .
And it was agreed to remove Thimerosal from vaccines "as soon as possible" in 1999. July 7, 1999 at 4:15 p.m. to be exact.
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/04p0349/04p-0349-ref0001-05-Tab-03-Joint-Statement-Thimerosal-AAP-PHS-vol6.pdf
Posted by: Jim Thompson | July 17, 2013 at 02:00 PM
Indeed - NO PEOPLE are expendable. I grew up in the era of polio - and my oldest is unable to have children due to exposure to measles. We must be very, very careful to avoid knee-jerk reactions. Safety trumps - but 100% safety is probably impossible - perfection is, after all, God's bailiwick.
Posted by: VMGillen | July 17, 2013 at 01:29 PM
"The coordinated media attack on Jenny McCarthy as a woman, mother, celebrity, and citizen of a supposedly free country, which like the peer reviewed journals appear to be ghost written and distributed by Pharma, is sickening. But I have faith that the brilliant Barbara Walters will see right through it. As for the American public, it is heartening to see so many intelligent voices commenting on these hit pieces and exposing the lies."
My take differs. They knew {the View producers and those who pay them} and know exactly what bringing Jenny on means and will precipitate, in fact it is expected and their interest is in having a figure with some polarizing effect, but also one who is by and large ridiculed as the left's{or right's if you see it that way} goal is to actually reinforce the authoritarian state/pharma power structure view that confers power upon the Walters of the world. therefore Jenny is a whipping girl in smart glasses appearing in a stereotypical blond hair news reporter motif allowing the smug who never studied the subject masses who want to feel they are secure in there trust, and by extension intelligence, to believe that vaccines are divine. The public there fore wants Jenny, which is why the powers want her, to reinforce there correctness and give them security only truly providing continued blindness to everyone those who proffer the charade want which is most of the View's audience in these regards. I have nothing against Jenny and many on the left, but there is the segment of leftism that operates on manipulation. It made just be the media's misuse of some left appealing power paradigms, but in reality the two become one. The right has this too, but generally not about autism or vaccines. So ask, who could have predicted the media diatribes against Jenny and dangerous views being on the View?...anyone aware and thinking. I have no problem with Jenny, but I actually feel we have been making good strides and her invitation into some limelight in concert with vaccine attention is what the other side wants due to our progress. They gained some ground when she was more the focus in my opinion. If you think tagging a left aspect is unfair look who has gone after Jenny most. Look who she is replacing and ask how Jenny McCarthy fills any of the conservative void left by Hasselback. Hasselback was the foil in many regards and Jenny is the same for them.
Posted by: Visitor | July 17, 2013 at 12:45 PM
TVBizwire
"Barbara Walters Is Urged to Keep Jenny McCarthy Off 'The View' USA Today"
http://www.tvweek.com/blogs/tvbizwire/2013/07/barbara-walters-is-urged-to-ke.php
"The group Every Child by Two, an international vaccination group founded by former first lady Rosalynn Carter, wrote to "The View" producer Barbara Walters urging her to keep McCarthy off the show.
"Children have died due to this misinformation, and those who perpetuate lies for personal gain ought to be held responsible," said Amy Pisani, the executive director of Every Child by Two."
Personal gain? Do grief and relentless personal and professional media attacks constitute personal gain? This hit piece attempts to validate Every Child by Two by linking it with the reputable humanitarian Rosalynn Carter, when it is in reality a Pharma front group, as reported in this 2008 AOA article:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/08/every-child-by.html
Posted by: Linda | July 17, 2013 at 12:26 PM
I think it's interesting how this discourse has evolved over the last few years from our promoting "safer" vaccines (one at a time, only the most "necessary" ones) to the realization that all vaccines are very dangerous, and much more dangerous than the vaccine-preventable diseases. The formerly common diseases like measles, mumps, chickenpox, and pertussis simply aren't dangerous for previously healthy, well-nourished children, and usually not dangerous for adults either. The vaccines are still devastating. If you don't vaccinate for diseases like meningitis, children will develop immunity through sub-clinical exposure by the time they are adults. Breastfeeding and limiting exposure to other children as much as possible are sensible tactics for protecting children, better than the often damaging or fatal vaccines. Young infants are the only ones at risk from pertussis, and should be quarantined at home for their protection. Dr. Suzanne Humphries has an on-line protocol for treating pertussis with high-dose vitamin C therapy which has saved the lives of many infants.
People often think that the DPT, polio, and MMR are necessary vaccines because of the "deadly" nature of the diseases, and that their benefit is greater than the risk. But I think now we have more facts to consider than we did a few years ago, and now see that pertussis is no longer that bad (both my vaccinated 8-month old daughter and I had it), polio is no longer in our country and the experience in India shows that the vaccine is not very effective and may likely greatly increase the rate of paralytic disease, while the avoidance of sugar greatly decreases rate of infection during an outbreak (South Carolina data, not India). Intravenous vitamin C greatly increases survival rate in cases of tetanus, already not usually fatal. Measles, mumps, and rubella are just not very dangerous disease. Rubella is dangerous for fetuses if the mother was not fortunate enough to have contracted rubella naturally before pregnancy, but since the vaccine is very dangerous, that should not be a reason to damage others to protect the pregnant woman.
The risk/benefit analysis clearly indicates that vaccines are much riskier than the diseases, and options such as homeopathy to prevent complications and treat serious cases is a much wiser alternative.
Posted by: cia parker | July 17, 2013 at 11:28 AM
The coordinated media attack on Jenny McCarthy as a woman, mother, celebrity, and citizen of a supposedly free country, which like the peer reviewed journals appear to be ghost written and distributed by Pharma, is sickening. But I have faith that the brilliant Barbara Walters will see right through it. As for the American public, it is heartening to see so many intelligent voices commenting on these hit pieces and exposing the lies.
Posted by: Linda | July 17, 2013 at 11:24 AM
kfredericks72's statement is chilling as someone who nearly lost a loved one to a flu shot (she developed Guillaume Barre). I would turn it back to them as to specifics- what exactly are the vaccine side effectsor "complications" (besides a swelling at the injection site?)?! Do they know the mechanism for these specific vaccine adverse effects or complications? What is the difference between encephalopathy caused by vaccines and that of autism? THEY HAVE NO CLUE.
Posted by: Jen | July 17, 2013 at 10:31 AM
This odd interlude is from Jake Tapper's show yesterday:
"McCarthy maintains she is not anti-vaccine, telling CNN in 2008, 'I'm not saying don't vaccinate our kids! I don't understand why it's so freaking hard to comprehend? We. Need. Safe. Shots!'
Vaccines without preservatives McCarthy advocates for are not considered a viable alternative by most experts.
'What she's advocating is a return to vaccines that don't have preservatives in them that both keep them safe and also make sure that those vaccines are contaminated in any way. She's proposing something that isn't a realistic option,' said [Seth] Mnookin."
I heard the show. I don't remember the names of any preservatives mentioned. I assume Mnookin's talking about thimerosal.
Posted by: Carol | July 17, 2013 at 10:13 AM
Jenny could skip Autism on the View and simply talk about all the other medical problems American children have compared to other countries.
ADD, ADHD, auto-immune this, auto-immune that, with the majority of American children on a chronic pharma drug for $300 to $1000 a month....
I would suggest the View have a half dozen SIDS parents on the show talking about SIDS spikes following 8-9 vaccines on the same day...
Posted by: cmo | July 17, 2013 at 08:56 AM
PS The fundamental problem with the "risks" is that no one is counting - passive surveillance (VAERS) isn't counting, and neither is the technical option to sue the government (the VICP), so there is no evidence base for the rubric that the benefits outweigh the risks.
One of the delusive features of this have been people who have been intellectually flattered by their ability to engage with the concept of accepting the lesser risk. The other thing is that "the benefits outweigh the risks" has been somewhat supplanted by rhetoric which tells you there is no risk at all. One of the troll strategies (and of course most professional journalists are trolls in this affair) is to say "oh, we didn't really mean that but you are all still stupid".
But the fact is that none of these stooges has the right to say Jenny's child was not vaccine damaged (they weren't there) nor do they have the right to tell her she shouldn't say it. The ultimate conclusion is this not about "good science" with all their self-righteous pieties, it is about rent-a-mob rule and atrocious bullying.
Posted by: John Stone | July 17, 2013 at 08:40 AM
Pharma successfully lobbied the U.S. congress for immunity from product legal liability. What they have not successfully lobbied is a law regulating public awareness of the potential for dangerous side effects of vaccines. Apparently one of the “dangers” in any vaccine safety debate is loss of profits by Pharma.
Posted by: Jim Thompson | July 17, 2013 at 08:12 AM
“No one should be threatened by the pursuit of this knowledge,” Dr. Healy said. “Vaccine policy should be the subject of frank and open debate, with no tolerance for bullying. There are no sides – only people concerned for the well-being of our children.”
A perfect example of those "threatened by the pursuit of this knowledge" is evident in the immediate, vicious, viceral .. well-coordinated .. attack that has been unleashed in a media onslaught of "hysterical" coverage regarding Jenny McCarthy's joining "The View".
After all, if Jenny's views on vaccines and the policies by which they are administered are so obviously .. scientifically unsound and dangerous .. this would be the perfect time for vaccine demigods Paul Offit and Seth Mnookin to confront her. No?
What better opportunity to embarrass Jenny in the "court of public opinion" .. than Offitt and Mnookin .. two vaccine propagandists who are attracted to cameras as are moths to a flame .. appearing as guests on the show to do it?
Nah, much better to launch your cowardly attack scrunched far down in your foxhole .. than to expose yourself to the return fire from someone who is not afraid of bullies .. and .. is quite willing to stand and fight for what she truly believes.
Shame on their media allies .. on this issue .. no less cowards than the guys holding their coats .. while they do the real dirty work .. assassinating Jenny's character .. for them.
Posted by: Bob Moffitt | July 17, 2013 at 06:48 AM
Hi Nancy
But not to forget that 54% of US children have a chronic disease and I in 6 has a developmental impairment:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876285910002500
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2011/05/19/peds.2010-2989.abstract
And all we know is it was not the vaccines, or do we?
How many children have to be expended before we find out?
As to Paul Offit, this is the most useful link:
http://www.drpauloffit.org/
John
Posted by: John Stone | July 17, 2013 at 06:37 AM