Vaccinations, Pt 2
POSTED BY: canttakesky
UPDATED: Wednesday, May 22, 2024 17:51
VIEWED: 18576
PAGE 13 of 17
Recap first:
Quote:
Sig: you insist that vaccines are ineffective.
CTS: Again, I have never made this argument.
The following quotes are supposed to prove that I argued vaccines are ineffective.
Quote:
"I can say, "I lived where wildlife bubonic plague was epidemic. Because of near universal carrot-eating, no domesticated animals got the plague." Maybe they didn't get the plague because of other factors, and not because of the carrot-eating?"
"You can have 6000 peer reviewed studies. Quantity, to me, is immaterial. It is the quality of any number of studies that matters. I have not seen any quality in either vaccine or climate change research."
"There has been no good scientific research on vaccines."
"This "fact" is not undisputed. Studies showing that vaccines produce "immunity" in the "vast majority" have been challenged as methodologically flawed."
"Give me a study that you believe is conclusive proof of effectiveness and I'll tell you what is wrong with that conclusion."
"When physicians find out someone has been vaccinated for polio, they are encouraged to look for another diagnosis." (A wholly unfounded claim btw.)
"And no one ever said the paralysis wasn't REAL. The question is, was the paralysis (and the various outbreaks) caused by the poliovirus, or Coxsackie, or echovirus, or any number of enteroviruses that present similar symptoms?"
"I have to date seen no studies proving vaccines to be either effective or safe in the "vast majority" of recipients."
"I am saying, the same clinical disease as smallpox is still going around. One may make the case that smallpox (the virus) has been eradicated, based on a technicality. For practical purposes, the disease has NOT been eradicated."
Originally posted by rue:
"I think it's clear that mandatory smallpox vaccinations have eliminated the scourge of smallpox from around the globe."
Originally posted by CantTakeSky:
"And I think it is far from clear."
ALL of those quotations say this: There is no good research proving vaccines are effective. None. Whatsoever. Note I am criticizing research, the "science." In every, single, quotation.
NONE of those quotations say this: Vaccines are ineffective. Note none of the quotations are speaking of vaccines.
Apparently, you can't tell the difference between RESEARCH of vaccines, and the vaccines themselves.
Again, it is all-or-nothing mentality. If I criticize the science, I must be attacking the vaccines. Science of vaccines EQUALS vaccines. No distinction. Bizarre.
I will reiterate my position statements.
Quote:
1. The benefits of vaccination have been greatly exaggerated. The true extent of benefits are not known. Vaccines do appear to be effective, but the industry has "helped out" the effectiveness by common advertisement/ propaganda tricks in order to sell more vaccines.
4. The overwhelming majority of vaccination studies done by Big Pharma/Big Medicine have flawed methodology, murky definitions, and invalid conclusions. They appeared to be conducted not to find truth, but to support specific desired results.
Add #10: To date, I have seen no good or conclusive evidence proving vaccines to be effective or safe.
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Wrap your head around this: I believe vaccines have some effectiveness. I just can't prove it using existing literature. (Similar to my position on homeopathy, actually.)
Oh, I get it. When you hear, "No evidence to prove effectiveness" you interpret "ineffective."
Like if you hear, "No evidence of guilt," you interpret "not guilty."
Nah, I'm much more precise with my language. "No evidence" means "no evidence." It doesn't mean "ineffective." For me, "No evidence of guilt" me
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Quote:Thank you.
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
It claims to do things that it can't, but if you are happy to waste your money, and it makes you feel better, good luck to you.
Quote:Just like with physicians, there are good homeopaths and bad ones.
She or he will discourage you from visiting a GP because she or he has a belief that western medicine is bad for the body, so you will not get blood tests, scans, xrays, or any other tests which could give you a diagnosis.
The good ones do not discourage you from visiting a GP and get lab work. In fact, the homeopaths I hang out with (on forums) very much encourage getting as much info as possible and do the lab work. Many of them are highly formally educated. Some of them are M.D.'s. Some of them are homeopathic veterinarians DVM's, specializing in homeopathic treatment of animals.
Usually, it is like the asthma scenario I described, where they encourage you to use both homeopathy and medicine until you feel well enough to cautiously wean off the medication.
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"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm
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CTS
Whatever.
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Quote:No, you are trying to encourage irrational thinking. Because no data, no matter how good, is good enough to convince you that vaccine works, and no data, no matter how poor, is poor enough to convince you that homeopathy doesn't work
I am trying to urge more multifactorial thinking on this.
And Kiki has come up with past quotes to prove it, as well as your own statements in this thread, where you will accept some graphs but reject others, accept some anecdotal evidence over controlled studies, cast "doubt" on solid evidence where no reasonable doubt exists and pump up other evidence (like vaccine and autism) where none exists.
You said it best yourself:
"Give me a study that you believe is conclusive proof of [vaccines'] effectiveness and I'll tell you what is wrong with that conclusion."
Can I correct that for you?
"Give me a study that you believe is conclusive proof of homeopathy's effectiveness and I'll tell you what is wrong with that conclusion."
Shoe on other foot doesn't fit? That's because you are irrational... unable to objectively and evenly ratio one set of facts against another. For you goose sauce does not equal gander sauce, and that in a nutshell is what's wrong with your approach. I have no doubt that you are motivated by the best of intentions to get the best medicine for everyone, but the way you parse the data leaves your proposed pathway to that goal very suspect. There are no doubt problems with vaccines, but you do a disservice to your argument by refusing to engage in the data objectively.
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Quote:Absolutely. Absolutely. I would be happy to show you what is wrong with any study on homeopathy's effectiveness.
Originally posted by SignyM:
"Give me a study that you believe is conclusive proof of homeopathy's effectiveness and I'll tell you what is wrong with that conclusion."
Did you not read my post to Magon about science of homeopathy?
Or was "CTS The Monster in 3D" too entertaining to pull away from?
Quote:See, this is the uni-dimensional, all-or-nothing thinking I am talking about.
you will accept some graphs but reject others,
I don't reject or accept graphs. Graphs depict DATA. I don't reject DATA in the graphs. It is like what DT said about "invalid experiments." There is no such thing. Just as there is no such thing as "invalid data."
I reject INTERPRETATION of graphs that is not substantiated by the data. I reject certain CONCLUSIONS of graphs that is not substantiated by the data.
The way I "reject" unsubstantiated interpretations is to ask questions and voice doubts about confounders. That is the way I was taught to do science in graduate school throughout countless presentations.
You are conflating "interpretation/conclusion" with "data/graphs." Big difference.
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"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm
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I suppose If I wanted to defend the posting, I could take a side (which I'm avoiding doing) and I could claim that these animals needed vaccinations, which would be a stronger argument if we didn't practice euthanasia, discrediting our collective good will towards the small fuzzy citizenry.
Oh yeah? Wait 'til I get the vote 
Okay, so I'm an illegal alien, a furriner.
Hey, Corporations are citizens, right? So...
That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.
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But you will promote homeopathy despite lack of data showing its effectiveness, and discourage the use of vaccines despite data showing its effectiveness. So, we get to look at the risks of one versus the other, which is where rational thinking comes in.
In 80% of cases, doing nothing works. Homeopathy, holy smoke, faith healing, doing nothing at all.... they're all equal. Tincture of time, people get better. In fact, in those cases doing nothing may even be better than doing something ... all drugs have side effects. Just plain water is at least harmless (unless of course your water is contaminated or laden with bacteria).
But what happens in the 20% of other cases? Cancers, epidemics, serious trauma, epilepsy, diabetes ... things for which people will NOT get better "doing nothing" but in all likelihood will either die or become permanently disabled. Well, then you have to seriously weigh the risks of "doing nothing" (which is where I put homeopathy) versus "doing something". Cancer needs more than homeopathy. As distasteful as this may be to consider, cancer needs surgery or powerful drugs or radiation pr possibly some combination ... blowing holy smoke or holding hands and singing or drinking water which has been seriously banged doesn't work. Same with diabetes. Before the production of insulin, people who got diabetes died, and no amount of tearfully pleading with the gods or positive thinking changed that.
So, getting to the case of infectious diseases specifically... what are the risks of vaccinating versus the risks of NOT vaccinating???. This is where everyone needs to put their serious thinking-caps on, get out the scales, put the evidence for one in one pan and the evidence for the other in the other pan, balance them as best they can without putting their thumbs on the scale, recognizing that ALL data has flaws but that some data is more flawed than other data.
The risks of vaccination? Well, there are indeed adverse events. I'm going to tackle the most problematic vaccination -pertussis- which has a high complication rate with vaccination and a somewhat lower complication rate with the disease (relative to diseases like polio and smallpox, which are more clear-cut).
As I mentioned before, I knew two moms whose children were brain-damaged by pertussis vaccination. In those cases, the evidence was immediate and unmistakable... fever and seizures within two days of each dose of vaccine. (Parents continued with vaccination despite adverse effects, on assurance by doctor that these were "febrile seizures" and nothing to worry about. Kinds pissed you off, doesn't it? It should.)
So, adverse effects exist. How many? What is the numeric risk? The reporting system in the USA sucks, but using a BETTER reporting system the risk appears to be ...
Quote:
We describe a new method for active post-marketing surveillance of vaccine safety based on patient records. We studied the association between diphtheria/ tetanus/pertussis (DTP) vaccination and febrile convulsion, and between measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) vaccination and febrile convulsion and idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) in five district health authorities in England by linking vaccination records with computerised hospital admission records. We found an increased relative incidence for convulsions 0-3 days after DTP vaccination. The effect was limited to the third dose of vaccine for which the attributable risk (all ages) was 1 in 12 500 doses
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673695904719
However, there were no deaths. This is important, because of the following...
And what is the risk of NOT vaccinating? I gave figures for that already... among roughly 9100 reported cases of whooping cough, there were ten infant deaths in CA. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent reporting for the number of seizures (febrile or otherwise) with pertussis disease, so we don't have the same endpoint. We'll have to stick with death as the common yardstick. But
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To be fair to CTS, none of the quoted comments are actually saying "vaccines should not be used at all", rather she appears to be saying: "we don't have enough data about adverse reactions to vaccines or the effectiveness of vaccines to justify compulsory vaccination." Presumably, if vaccines aren't compulsory, some people will still choose to get them.
To be not fair to CTS, there really isn't a whole lot of information about how homeopathy works, interaction with the system, and so on. Those who use homeopathy may well be ahead of the medical community and scientific consensus, but until a method of action can be proposed and tested, homeopathy is not very scientific, and any argument in its favour can not be scientific.
I would also agree with Frem, in that preference or dismissal does a disservice to both naturalistic medicine and conventional medicine, and also potentially to the people who might consider them for treatment options.
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Quote:
Science on vaccines:
Safety: Inconclusive.
Effectiveness: Inconclusive
Science on homeopathy:
Safety: Everyone is pretty sure it is as safe as water.
Effectiveness: Inconclusive.
Uh. That's... Not. Um.
We know of adverse reactions to vaccines and not homeopathy, true, but you're neglecting to consider in both cases that effectiveness of treatment ALSO factors in to safety.
This really doesn't particularly demonstrate one is "better" than the other.
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Byte, this isn't about being "fair" or "not fair" to a particular person, it's about being rational or irrational about data. I contend that CTS is irrational (not able to evenly weigh or ratio evidence). There IS enough data to support compulsory vaccination for some diseases, although for CTS there will never be enough data... simply because she disagrees with data that contradicts her views. As far as homeopathy not being "scientific", when the purpose of a treatment is to cure or ameliorate disease, it should be pretty easy to figure out a reliable test to tell you if it is or isn't working any better than doing nothing or versus any other treatment out there. It's not magic. Those tests have been run, there isn't any evidence that it works at all.
CTS is very risk averse, and she is also somewhat oppositional. Push both buttons at once (someone is telling me to do something that might have an associated risk) and all of a sudden the risk looms very large... so large that it occupies all of her thoughts.
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