To dare speak about Vaxxed on MN?

[thegoodfight]

NC for this but a regular.

So I've just watched the documentary Vaxxed. I know how vaccine threads unfold on MN, so I'm ready to be told IABU however I feel like everyone should see this whatever your views - it's about the cover up around studies into autism and MMR

There is an admission from a CDC insider that he worked on the study and hid data which proved a link (a strong an quite frankly astounding one) and the data was sent to an external biologist who saw it for himself. There are first hand accounts from parents, scientists, doctors and politicians. The CDC haven't denied anything or called their lawyers despite it being an allegation of the biggest medical fraud ever (not exact words but something along those lines)

I just can't believe it's not been in the news! AIBU to ask if anyone else is planning to watch it??

From Peter Doshi, Associate Editor of the British Medical Journal, 7th February 2017:

" And among those uncertainties are the known and unknown side effects that each vaccine carries. Contrary to the suggestion—generally implicit—that vaccines are risk free (and therefore why would anyone ever resist official recommendations), the reality is that officially sanctioned written medical information on vaccines is—just like drugs—filled with information about common, uncommon, and unconfirmed but possible harms.1011 Although MMR and autism have dominated journalistic coverage of this issue, and journalists have correctly characterized the scientific consensus that rejects any such link, most journalists have insufficiently acknowledged the fact that bodies such as the Institute of Medicine have “found convincing evidence of 14 health outcomes—including seizures, inflammation of the brain, and fainting—that can be caused by certain vaccines, although these outcomes occur rarely.”12 And for 135 other adverse events investigated, the committee concluded “the evidence was inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship” with vaccines.
Medical journalists have an obligation to the truth. But journalists must also ensure that patients come first, which means a fresh approach to covering vaccines. It’s time to listen—seriously and respectfully—to patients’ concerns, not demonize them."

Link to full article:
www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.j661.full?ijkey=PLLsazuxmr6PVC1&keytype=ref

Sadly for those who do vaccinate and their child has a serious reaction there is no safety net - the Vaccine Damage Act badly needs updating to cover this.

All medicines can have side effects for some people and it is unrealistic not to recognise that and look after the small number of people who are harmed by trying to do the right thing.

"Sadly for those who do vaccinate and their child has a serious reaction there is no safety net - the Vaccine Damage Act badly needs updating to cover this."

Really? My understanding was that the parameters were quite broad. What sort of update do you think's appropriate?

Katieb55
[[https://www.nap.edu/read/13164/chapter/1#xiv the iom book that article referes to]] it is actually quite easy to look for information and it also compares the outcomes against the original disease which puts everything into perspective ie yes seizure is an outcome but it is also to the original disease. My ds had well over 20 febrile convulsions to flu, tonsilitis, gastric flu etc but never had a seizure as a reaction to a vaccine.

He had a patent for a single vaccine, which could also used to repair so called vaccine damage.

the patent

The Vaccine Victim Support Group are currently campaigning for amendments to the Vaccine Damage Payment Act. This is an abbreviated list of changes requested in their APPG paper from 2011:

The anomalies to the current scheme:

The current scheme of vaccine injury compensation in the UK as established by the Vaccine Damage Payment Act 19179 contains a number of serious anomalies. These are :-

1. Not all vaccines are covered. Hepatitis A&B vaccines, & yellow fever vaccines are not covered. Influenza vaccine is not covered. The “safety net” therefore has holes in it and we submit this should be addressed so that everyone who is resident in the UK and is vaccinated should have the ability to have recourse to the compensation scheme in the event of a serious adverse effect
2. The current scheme is aimed mainly at compensating children, although adults are also sometimes covered.
3. Children who die before the age of 2 are not covered. This exception is now difficult to justify as the loss of a child at 18 months is equally as tragic and devastating as 6 months later. This exception should be abolished.
4. The 60% injury threshold. There is currently an arbitrary distinction in the scheme between injuries which are still very significant but amounting to a 59% (or lower) level of permanent disablement, and those of 60% or above. The refusal of any compensation for someone with a 59% permanent disability cannot objectively be justified, bearing in mind the very low numbers of awards made.
5. The current level of award of compensation of £120k, rather than compensatory damages. This creates anomalies so that a child with a catastrophic injury resulting from clinical negligence in the administration of a vaccine (e.g. in breach of contraindication) may receive £3M, and a child with a similar injury resulting from an adverse reaction to the vaccine would receive only one twenty-fifth of the compensation. This largely means the burden of caring for the disabled person falls on their families.
6. There should be provision in the scheme for some flexibility as to when an application has to be made by.
7. The current scheme does not contain any Table of Injury where causation may in certain circumstances be presumed. The absence of such a table leaves open to doubt and litigation the question of causation and this makes the system more difficult to administer.

I had my MMR at 42. Will I develop autism now?

" It's just wrong to assume that you have all the answers!"

Who's assuming they have all the answers? I certainly don't. I have sufficient doubts about the safety of vaccinating a severely allergic child with a family history of vaccine reactions, yet I have no evidence or proof that she is actually at higher risk. In the absence of evidence that she is at no greater risk I have made a decision to err on the side of caution (with regards to vaccine damage), as, having weighed up the risks of vaccinating and not vaccinating, it seems to be safer, for her. It might not be, or it might well be. Nobody knows, nobody can test either hypothesis without actually vaccinating her to see what happens, or not vaccinating her and assessing all the diseases she catches in her lifetime.

Precious little research is being done in these areas (because there is no money to be made from doing so of course!) but my silly and pathetic mind ponders the question and looks at what has changed for children in the last 30 years

Loads of research has already been done. Tonnes of it.

And you can ponder till the cows come home but you have neither the skills or the resources to look at anything in a systematic or scientific way.
Googling is not research. Reading the internet does not make you well informed. You are not a scientist; they know more than you do.

The arrogance is unbelievable.

I have sufficient doubts about the safety of vaccinating a severely allergic child with a family history of vaccine reactions Had you said that initially, that family history meant that vaccines were not recommended for your family nobody would have demurred.

But globalising this to the idea that vaccines are unsafe for everyone is very faulty logic!

Ds as well as the gefs + has nut and seed allergies as well as environmental ones. I have never seen anything to say he shouldnt have any of his vaccines.

Wakefield is not the only one responsible for the MMR myth.

Its also the lazy media who constantly publish health stuff without a thought or examining the quality of the report. The media should act as a filter here, and be aware of methodology flaws and how studies compare to others. There is no critical examination of whether what the data shows matches what is the written up conclusion of study is. The ability to understand stats and methodology does not require you to be an expert in every single subject you come across. You just need a good understanding of how stats work. This is sorely lacking in journalism.

Its not just the likes of the Daily Mail that are guilty of this either. There are examples pretty much every other day in the 'trusted' broadsheets and BBC. I know of one study where the data showed one thing, but the conclusion said exactly the opposite. It was a WHO report. The media just reported it, apart from a couple of unknown blogs with a particular interest in that subject who looked at it and went 'What the actual fuck?'

Instead they like the sensationalism of vaccinations and MMR as a scandal. Hey what gets more clicks than a good conspiracy theory.

This is actually one of the great problems of the NHS. Everyone is an expert based on nonsense and a report they read rather than through a deeper understanding of evidence based medicine. We have a culture of putting fear into how we treat our health, creating a 'worried well' rather than prioritising those who are actually ill.

By hey, beliefs huh? Everything is about who can talk the loudest and get heard the most rather than what is actually real or not.

I think this is a fascinating field, and I'm one of those posters who often pops up on vaccination threads. I haven't seen Vaxxed but I do think it's fair to say there that the MMR II has been in use for long enough now that if it was often associated with autism we would have noticed it. That's not to say it's not a factor in some rare cases, or that people weren't damaged by the original MMR - after all it was withdrawn because of excessive side effects - just that the Jeryl Lynn based MMR is largely safe for most people. Other vaccines of course work differently and, in many cases, are less well characterised.

But what I often argue is that there hasn't been enough research to justify the assumption that many vaccines can be safely given simultaneously. I partially agree with the poster upthread who speculated that vaccines might be in part causing an increase in immune-related problems like allergies, autoimmune disease, or even some cancers. However, rather than singling out any one particular vaccine, my concern is with the schedule which gives more and more vaccines simultaneously. (I'm especially worried about very young babies getting up to 4 at a time, especially as they are now given Calpol to mitigate the side effects, which reduces the effectiveness of the jags.)

There's a lot of interesting new research coming out which challenges the assumption that vaccines only affect immunity to the particular disease they're targeting, and which suggests that non-specific effects of vaccines can have a large impact, particularly when they are given together. These can be both positive or negative, and the order the vaccines are given in can make a big difference. It's interesting to note that these effects are sex-specific, with girls generally more affected than boys, but that studies often don't stratify by sex so this association is lost. This work is in the early stages, but I'd like to see more acknowledgement of non-specific vaccine effects from the scientific community, and some consideration of this when schedules are being drawn up.

Review article below:
I've highlighted sentences that I think are relevant to the UK schedule.

"A recurrent theme in these studies has been that interventions may interact. Changing the sequence of vaccinations may change the effect completely—as when early HTMV was associated with increased female mortality because the children got inactivated vaccines after HTMV. Giving a live and inactivated vaccine at the same time can also change the effects completely. Adding VAS or micronutrients can amplify the effect of the intervention. Something that was once a good intervention may no longer be so if new interventions are added. There are likely to be many other interactions with immune-enhancing interventions or conditions which have not been explored."

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4052142/

KatieB55 It's interesting to read that quote from Peter Doshi. Just waiting for someone to come along and denounce him as an anti-scientific, lunatic-fringe conspiracy theorist. Strangely, no-one has.

I'm personally happy to accept that vaccines have probably done much more good than harm. But it bothers me to see people getting so angry with any questioning of the pro-vaccine orthodoxy. We know that most drugs have side effects. We know that the practices of pharmaceutical companies aren't always what they should be (I've read Big Pharma too). We should always be alert to the possibility that some vaccines might be causing harm to some people, just as we are alert to the possibility that some drugs on the market may turn out to be harmful. A lot of people seem to regard vaccines as having a special status that makes them immune (sorry) from all the critical questioning we employ towards other medicines.

from all the critical questioning we employ towards other medicines.

Do we? What other critical questioning is there over any medicine that comes close to the fuss over vaccines?

I dont think Katiebs quote is particularly helpful.
You need to look at the original disease and condequences and compare it to the vaccine. I have linked to the ioms book which is quoted and it puts a completly different perspective on it.

" A lot of people seem to regard vaccines as having a special status that makes them immune (sorry) from all the critical questioning we employ towards other medicines."

This usually means "The critical questioning employed towards vaccines has not come up with any evidence to support my personal theory"

But it bothers me to see people getting so angry with any questioning of the pro-vaccine orthodoxy.

No anger just frustration, perplexity at some of the odd ways it is being questioned. That 'special status' is an odd way of looking at it as is the idea that we, as a nation, critique any other medicines in any way, let alone with the mythologised fear we do vaccines.

"KatieB55 It's interesting to read that quote from Peter Doshi. Just waiting for someone to come along and denounce him as an anti-scientific, lunatic-fringe conspiracy theorist. Strangely, no-one has."

Well, I am certainly prepared to "denounce" him as someone who has been misquoted, and used as evidence in shaky arguments from authority. And who is not a doctor or any sort of expert in immunology. And who is, apparantly hitching his wagon to Trump........

I would have posted as Bertrand did, but, to be honest, given Doshi's credentials I wasn't sure I could be arsed.

The critical questioning employed towards vaccines has not come up with any evidence to support my personal theory

THIS, THIS, THIS is how so many of the "sinuous" posts on this topic (and there's more than one sinuous poster!) actually come across.

But globalising this to the idea that vaccines are unsafe for everyone is very faulty logic!

Eh? When did I do that OurBlanche, or are you talking about people in general?

It really is bizarre to suggest that vaccines are in some way immune from critical questioning. Do people seriously suggest that manufacturers put untested vaccines on the markets and demand that people just accept them?