HPV - Cervical CancerFollow

Cancer and an evangelical mother, poor kid.

First of all, it's NOT the entire body of peer-reviewed medical evidence.

Second, that statement assumes that the members of the various investigative panels at the CDC and FDA are not actually basing their decisions on their own personal profit, which, considering how often it's shown these people have conflicts of interest, is a claim that can't be supported. The prisoners are watching the jail here.



That's one theory, but not enough to cover the fact that in just a few short decades, diagnoses of autism have gone from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 150. I'm not willing to stake my child's well-being on a blithe and scientifically unsupportable claim that, "oh, it's just coincidence."

It is interesting to note, however, how many people are invested in defending the medical and pharmaceutical establishment and how hostile they can become at the suggestion that that establishment may not in fact be working in their best interests.

To be fair, it's also a question of odds. If more kids get cervical cancer from HPV than get autism from vaccines, my choice becomes clearer.

Oh, but wherefore art thou now, Frances Kelsey?

I have a simple litmus test I tend to use when approaching a topic like this that is so hotly debated.

If one side is consistently debunking the others work via scientific, peer reviewed work and the other side is consistently making attacks on the legitmacy of the others work, I tend to come down on the side of the people using actual science; not the ones whose arguments consist entirely on attacking credibility.

Am I firmly on either sides court? Not at all. However I would probably get my kid a measles shot and not spend my time worry about some pink elephant that can't be proven.

No, my argument is that, if there are risks on both sides, then some serious consideration needs to be given to which side poses the MOST risk. Is my child in greater danger of from pertussis, or from brain inflammation resulting from the pertussis vaccine? Is my child in greater danger of suffering lifelong injury from measles, or from the MMR vaccine?

My argument isn't that I don't buy it, it's that I'm not willing to swallow it hook, line, and sinker without making a SERIOUS inquiry and weighing the cost/benefit anaylius first.



How so? I'm saying, "inquire further, the situation is clearly NOT as cut and dried as is being communicated to us." He's saying, "u nubs! Quit inquiring further, the situation IS cut and dried!"

No, my argument is that, if there are risks on both sides, then some serious consideration needs to be given to which side poses the MOST risk. Is my child in greater danger of from pertussis, or from brain inflammation resulting from the pertussis vaccine? Is my child in greater danger of suffering lifelong injury from measles, or from the MMR vaccine?

My argument isn't that I don't buy it, it's that I'm not willing to swallow it hook, line, and sinker without making a SERIOUS inquiry and weighing the cost/benefit anaylius first.


The problem is that you aren't capable of making a serious inquiry. If you decided to go to medical school, then went on and got a PhD in biochemistry and then wanted to weigh both sides, that'd be fine. What you're *actually* doing is looking at two unequal bodies of work and equating them as both valid because you haven't the education to actually understand any of it.

I realize you just want to do what's right for you children, but really, stick to things like reading to them and not letting them watch TV and stop trying to asses the relative risks and merits of a vaccination program that's saved countless millions of lives. The answer is the merits outweigh the risks. They'd probably outweigh the risks if they were the only cause of autism.

People are control freaks is the problem. It's human nature that people would rather have something horrible happen to their children that they did nothing to cause than to somehow feel blame for doing something that involved risk. People refuse to wear seatbelts because they might get stuck in them in accident and die. etc.

Aren't there better things to worry about in terms of risks to your children? Honestly, there's no shortage of actual realistic risks that you might be able to prevent. Worrying about this trivium just makes you a bad parent.

I mean, hell, if you don't raise them right they might end up Republicans. Worry about that.

I never claimed that there is as of yet a causal link, I said not the entire body of peer-reviewed medical evidence agrees that there IS no causal link. Or, as I've said a number of times already, "the jury is still out." There are PLENTY of peer-reviewed articles examining the content of mercury in vaccines (Is the Journal of the American Medical Association peer reviewed enough for you? and all one needs to do is compare the symptoms of austism to the symptoms of mercury poisoning (the lists are pretty much identical) and do the math from there. And that doesn't include taking into account the thousands of incidences where symptoms of mercury poisoning/autism set in within days or weeks of receiving vaccine injections with thimerosal in them, even though the children were developing completely normally until that point.

Is it a definite causal connection? I never made the claim it was. Is it enough to give a responsible parent some SERIOUS pause? Abso-f'ucking-lutely. Is it enough to make one question whether the cure is worth the disease? You betcha.





Learn to read. The claim that the FDA and CDC boards which evaluate these vaccines aren't acting out of a desire for personal profit because the individuals on those boards have investments in pharmaceutical companies and patents on some of these vaccines cannot be supported. All you need to do is read the results of the House of Representatives Government Reform Committee inquiry into the debacle with the rotavirus vaccine (is was taken off the market after killing at least one child), which found:

-Some members of both panels (the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee) owned stock in vaccine-manufacturing companies
-Some members of both committees held patents for vaccines affected by their decisions
-Paul Offit, M.D., a member of the CDC Advisory Committee who voted in favor of adding the rotavirus vaccine to the Vaccines for Children program, held a patent on a rotavirus vaccine
-John Modlin, chairman of the rotavirus working group of the CDC advisory committee, also served on Merck's Immunization Advisory Board and owned stock in Merck.

Can we be SURE these people are working in our best interests when these sorts of situations arise, when drugs are approved which KILL people, and the people approving those drugs are the ones profitting by their approval? What sort of f'ucked up system is that?

I'm not living in fear--I'm making responsible inquiries into the choices that will affect the well-being of my child.




How many times do I have to say I'm not speaking about just the HPV vaccine? Not enough is known about that one for me to form a judgement either way. My point is that making that one mandatory is just one more obstacle to my ability to choose which, if any, drugs I have injected in my children, when some of them aren't even necessary to my child's well-being.

That is as far as I got, since it mentions in the article that their would be an opt out clause for people due to religious/health reasons. So the rest of your argument was kind of not worth bothering with since it was a non issue made up entirely by you.

Didn't we have a discussion about vaccines causing autism before? I seem to recall a link to study that found no causal link.



This is more likely a case similar to diabetes, where they lowered the threshhold for diagnosis. It used to be if you have blood glucose over 140 mg/dL you would be diagnosesd with diabetes. Roughly 10 years ago they lowered the threshold to 120 mg/dL and there were reports of a drastic increase of cases of diabetes. At that time, lowering the level at which a person is diagnosed was much larger a factor in the increase in diabetes cases than any change in diets, exercise (or lack thereof), or any other factor that contributes to diabetes.

Link to full editorial.

Not to be snippy (honest) but editorials aren't peer-reviewed.

Edited, Feb 8th 2007 1:39pm by Jophiel

Not when there is a good chance the FDA's primary motive is the profits of the pharmaceutical companies (in which they share), while mine is unquestionably the welfare of my child.

That's a departure from arguing whether or not there's a link between vaccines and autism.

My mom used to date a guy who had contracted polio as a child from the vaccine (back when they vaccinated against it) and had minimal use and strength in his left arm. Certainly a case for potential compensation but I wouldn't have used it as an argument against the polio vaccine (pre-erradication).