Posted by Larry Hoover on September 29, 2009, at 7:48:42
In reply to Re: Swine flue vaccine UTube sent to me a must see » Larry Hoover, posted by Phillipa on September 28, 2009, at 20:55:43
Sorry, my intent was not to ask you to defend the video, Phillipa. I habitually click the "add name of previous poster" box.
For about 2/3 of the clip, the doctor is giving all the reasonable commentary about protecting yourself from infection, and what to do if certain symptoms come up, i.e. when to call the doctor or go to the hospital. But when he starts talking about vaccines, he goes off into unsupported science.
First off, the link between vaccines and autism. The evidence for that association was entirely fabricated. The original paper has been withdrawn. The author has been soundly denounced by his fellow academics. Huge epidemiological studies have been done that have found no evidence of any association between vaccines and autism, but the myth persists. The reason for that is that two unrelated events coincide during a child's development. The best time to immunize a child due to the maturation of their immune system happens to be the developmental period when autism is often first identified.
The doctor mentions that patients with mitochondrial disorders are at risk for adverse reactions due to the mercury-containing vaccine preservative thimerosal. That, too, was part of the original fabrication. See above.
He confounds mercury concentration with mercury dose, which is quite unacceptable from a man of science. Yes, the concentration of mercury in the vaccine (if it even has any.....not all vaccines do, and none of the individual dose preparations have any....only the multiple dose ampoules have it) is thousands of times the concentration limit for mercury found in food (not the 25,000 times he alleges), but the dose is the product of concentration times volume (for liquids), or concentration times mass (for solids). The dose of mercury from one vaccination is about on par with that from a tuna sandwich, or fish and chips.
And finally, he alleges that he has anecdotal evidence for adverse reactions in his fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue patients. That may or may not be true, but I have seen no such pattern in any of my readings. There are sensitive people out there, and his sample may be very biased. I would never generalize from anecdote, and neither should he. How would his patients do if they had pneumonia?
In all of medical history, the most important medical advance of any, in my perhaps not so humble opinion, was the development of vaccines. Only 100 years or so ago, childhood survival rates were about 2 out of 3. One child of every three died from communicable diseases before they reached adulthood. We have lost a social memory of those pandemics. Of what whooping cough is like, or the lifetime debilitation that can follow scarlet fever or polio. Mumps and measles are making a comeback, because some greedy idiot in Britain fabricated a link between vaccines containing thimerosal and autism, so that he could market a new one that had no thimerosal. People die from influenza. If you don't get vaccinated, you may not die from the flu, but you may pass it on to someone who will. The Spanish Flu pandemic that closely followed World War I killed far more people in Europe than did the war it succeeded.
Part of my scientific work involves risk assessment. I have no hesitation whatsoever about being vaccinated. Every vaccine in existence has a far, far lower risk profile than does the disease for which it was developed. End of story.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:918589
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090921/msgs/918934.html