You can't be serious. Like, really, you cannot be serious. I provide three examples. You ignore the two [bathtubs, aspirin]
Why not fifty? Then we can spend all our time quibbling about irrelevant analogies. BTW where's your pot-isn't-harmful rebuttal?
>The level of concern ought to be at least somewhat proportionate to the risk, yet the degree to which certain people attend to the risks of vaccines is anything but commensurate with the level of attention given to the risks of poor diet, lifestyle, driving, sports, over-the-counter drugs, alcohol etc.
Yes, and yes. It is my contention that if the risks were communicated clearly and credibly that there would be less resistance.
>Nowhere are they designed to provide lots of spurious vaccinations for profit.
Just a bunch of hard-workin' honest folks trying to make a living. Got it. Want to buy some property? I don't have to prove that people in the pharmaceutical industry aren't immune from human nature.
>Your allegations that trials are "rigged" is without basis.
Read the book, or don't. If you claim there is nothing wrong with the state of the relationship of the pharmaceutical industry / FDA / EMEA you are either a liar or a fool.
Tamiflu (not a vaccine but it shows a drug company's willingness to hide inconvenient data from scrutiny) "We found a high risk of publication and reporting biases in the trial programme of oseltamivir. Sub-population analyses of the influenza infected population in the oseltamivir trial programme are not possible because the two arms are non-comparable due to oseltamivir's apparent interference with antibody production. The evidence supports a direct oseltamivir mechanism of action on symptoms but we are unable to draw conclusions about its effect on complications or transmission. We expect full clinical study reports containing study protocol, reporting analysis plan, statistical analysis plan and individual patient data to clarify outstanding issues. These full clinical study reports are at present unavailable to us."http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD008965...
Flu vaccine "The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions and spurious notoriety of the studies." [1][2] (both papers contain the same disclaimer)
> -- there is no evidence of malice here on the part of GSK
No, of course not. A settlement was reached. No need to pursue the matter further.
>It is a silly criticism that the rewards are paid by the government rather than the company
No, it is not. It perverts the normal corrective economic forces of the marketplace. Under that system, a manufacturer has no real incentive to correct defects in its products or manufacturing processes. Only to hide them from scrutiny when they occur.
>, as the goal is to provide adequate care to people adversely affected by public health efforts,
Partly, the goal is to ensure that the US retains a manufacturing capability for a critical need (vaccines).
>not to discourage the development of vaccines by private industry.
I think you misunderstood.
>Unfortunately, it's difficult to find aggregated statistics on idiopathic autoimmune disorders.
Yes, it is quite difficult to find reliable information about lots of things to do with the pharmaceutical industry. That's part of the problem. It wouldn't mean anything if it were true. The existence of a few cheats, and a few honest but misguided fools does not constitute proof that everyone is a cheat or a fool.
>I suggest a class-action lawsuit against the producers of nothing on behalf of women.
You're a funny guy. I bet that kind of wit earns you lots of respect.
>Because I don't need any more of a headache than you've already given me.
Well then go jump in a lake or something.
>66 serious events for 1,400,000 vaccinations, or a 1:21000 chance of serious adverse events. If all of those cases happen to the 1/3 of people who are "predisposed" to Lyme arthritis, their risk is really 1:7000, slightly lower than their 1:6500 risk caused by... nothing. And that's only for disorders arising in the same year as the vaccination.
Isn't LYMErix a series of three shots? The abstract said 1,400,000 doses were distributed. Does distributed == administered? Still though, you've been generous enough with the risk odds. 1:7000 is roughly on par with the chance I'll be seriously injured in a car accident. Do I wear seatbelts, yes. Do I choose carefully when and where I drive? Yes. In which case, why shouldn't I also carefully consider whether or not to take a vaccination, especially if efficacy is in question, or if I have low risk of contracting the disease it is supposed to protect me from?
>And this very low incidence rate
It's a pretty average incident rate, isn't it?
> is exactly what we expect to see after a vaccine has passed a properly formulated clinical trial.
So? It's also what we'd expect to see after a bad vaccine has passed a rigged ^H^H poorly designed clinical trial. It is a serious problem that failed trials can be run again and again until favorable results are obtained. Nothing prevents this from happening.
Fun fact about VAERS, reporting is voluntary and open to anyone, on the one hand filled with (sometimes garbage) from laypersons, and on the other underreported to by professionals.
>If your argument consists of denying the conclusions of scientific studies outright without any further analysis,
My argument is that it is practically impossible for a layperson to make an informed decision. If one takes a pessimistic view of pharmaceutical industry behavior and a conservative approach to risk management, one can arrive at a reasonable suspicion that all things vaccine-related aren't up to snuff. It is in the public interest for full disclosure of drug trial data and adverse event data to be made.
>>Specifically, judgments about whether the vaccine was truly responsible for an adverse event cannot be made from VAERS reports.
>So the CDC is here... to back me up. Did you even look at the Google results?
So does that mean that there are never any real adverse events? That would be great news! You pick your favorite result, I'll pick mine.
>You do of course have to keep these numbers in perspective. VAPP remains rarer than terrorism.
Yes, it is rare, but no, VAPP (1 in 2.4M?) is much more common than terrorism(1 in 10M?).
>A gross misrepresentation of life in developing countries, of the meaning of the term "immunodeficiency", and the causes of immunodeficiency.
Malnutrition cannot cause immunodeficiency? You should write a paper. You'll be famous.
> The misinformation
There is no misinformation. I have been in error, so have you there is a difference. Your persistent insistence that I am some kind dishonest crazed anti-vaccine crusader is ridiculous. You're the one who seems to be foaming at the mouth.
> you attempt to spread is dangerous,
What is dangerous is the erosion of peoples' confidence in medicine (lost your herd immunity, see how that happened?), and the fact that nobody from that profession can seem to muster an acceptable explanation for often simple things. You keep thinking that condescention will somehow bring people around.
>people have the collective right to be informed that your arguments are weak and your conclusions incorrect.
Sure, here it is. Let them read this glorious thread.
>It is in the interest of people reading this to see your claims debunked,
Which claims are debunked? So I had a mistaken understanding of the way vaccine court operates in some cases, a fact which was pointed out and acknowledged a day ago. You win!
Have you shown that pharmaceutical company malfeasance is nonexistent?
Greed and negligence are miraculously absent from pharmaceutical company staff?
Have you shown that vaccines never injure anyone?
Have you shown that vaccine injury prevalence is outside the range of normal harms we subject ourselves to?
Have you shown that vaccines are always effective?
Have you shown that there is a just/reliable/fair remedy for harms from vaccine injury?
> I have attempted to do so in a clear and scientifically accurate manner.
So far I'm only convinced of the outstanding magnitude of your charm.
>My intent is to expose you.
Well here I am. A guy who reads the labels of things before he lets people jab him or his kids. Sometimes, I even decide the vaccine isn't necessary, or worth the risk (gasp!), even though I am aware of the fact that I don't have enough data to make a proper informed decision. In the absence of data, I often plan for the worst reasonable case. I'm aware that I may be a little bit too skeptical. That's too bad. If you find that prospect terrifying for you or your children, then I advise you to find a better way to communicate, or find a way to make all of the data that one needs for a proper decision available. I advise everyone else who gives a crap to do the same.
Okay. I win. I win because this post is entirely off-topic. You wrote not one word about LYMErix, because you haven't got any further serious contributions. This is so riddled with errors I don't know how to respond in a serious manner.
Yes, sometimes you decide that vaccines aren't worth the risk. You do it because you are irrational and paranoid. You ask me that, in order to demonstrate that the LYMErix trials were not "rigged", that pharmaceutical companies must be shown to be the second coming of Jesus Christ. It's absurd, and what's more absurd is that you go on to casually dismiss all of the relevant data on the basis of a book collating instances of problems in the medical industry. The specific fallacy is ad hominem: my adversary is a jerk, so don't believe him. The influenza trial you mention? I didn't respond because that quote you've pointed out twice now relates to efficacy, not safety. We were talking about vaccine safety, and frankly I don't have time to embark on a wide-ranging analysis of the medical industry. If you continue to poison your own well by reading only books written for a popular audience with titles like "Bad Pharma", you will of course be misled repeatedly into this sort of recondite discourse and you will be woefully uninformed and unprepared for it. So you have so far doubted every study that disagrees with you on frivolous grounds, and you blindly accept any piece of information that supports your position -- the book, the one influenza vaccine study you're so fond of, etc -- and none of these is deserving of such unflappable sycophancy by someone who claims to care about intellectual honesty. The thing is, if you were really concerned about the truth, I shouldn't have to explain this to you.
You repeatedly pretend the various mistakes you've made are unimportant to the point, even though basically all of the claims in your original post have been discredited. In this new post of yours, you do it again: pharmaceutical companies will not even in a fantasy nightmare scenario suppress information about idiopathic problems, because "idiopathic" means without any determinable cause. The chance of being injured in a car accident likewise is after wearing a seatbelt, and yet you consider this a remedy. All available evidence says that the LYMErix trials were gonest, and you call them rigged. Furthermore, your apparent belief that a "starving waif in some developing country" is at a high risk for malnutrition-induced immunodeficiency is outrageous. While immunocompromise appears in extreme cases of malnutrition, this is rare even in LDCs and the vast majority of immunodeficiency cases of any relevance are linked to diseases and genetic disorders. This is in addition to your misrepresentation of Japanese vaccine scheduling, your misrepresentation of the history and use of OPV, and your misunderstanding of vaccine court, this last point having been central to your original argument. Your misinformed opinion is so asinine it affects my application of Hanlon's razor, and furthermore: everything I have posted has been true, and where approximations have been used they have been clearly marked alongside the relevant reasons for applying them. Your assertion that our arguing techniques have been in any way comparable is laughable.
This is in addition to the fact that your responses to my arguments have been terrible; you wish to characterize my opening comparison as absurd when even in a previous post you had acknowledged it as reasonable: how else am I to interpret your claim that vaccine risk is fundamentally more avoidable than lightning, which was at least close enough to the mark to be amusing, but now it is merely sad.
The repeated insults you have delivered over the course of this thread have been without provocation. I have been harsh, but in every case I have been careful to address your argument, not you, and you have justified it by the paucity of honesty on display. Whether you want to believe it or not, the misinformation on display in your posts is exactly the sort of selective attention and scaremongering that is damaging public-health efforts across the globe.
You are a dangerous, blithering idiot, and I bid you good day.
Why not fifty? Then we can spend all our time quibbling about irrelevant analogies. BTW where's your pot-isn't-harmful rebuttal?
>The level of concern ought to be at least somewhat proportionate to the risk, yet the degree to which certain people attend to the risks of vaccines is anything but commensurate with the level of attention given to the risks of poor diet, lifestyle, driving, sports, over-the-counter drugs, alcohol etc.
Yes, and yes. It is my contention that if the risks were communicated clearly and credibly that there would be less resistance.
>Nowhere are they designed to provide lots of spurious vaccinations for profit.
Just a bunch of hard-workin' honest folks trying to make a living. Got it. Want to buy some property? I don't have to prove that people in the pharmaceutical industry aren't immune from human nature.
>Your allegations that trials are "rigged" is without basis.
Trials are rigged, improperly designed if you want to be charitable. http://www.badscience.net/books/bad-pharma/
Read the book, or don't. If you claim there is nothing wrong with the state of the relationship of the pharmaceutical industry / FDA / EMEA you are either a liar or a fool.
Tamiflu (not a vaccine but it shows a drug company's willingness to hide inconvenient data from scrutiny) "We found a high risk of publication and reporting biases in the trial programme of oseltamivir. Sub-population analyses of the influenza infected population in the oseltamivir trial programme are not possible because the two arms are non-comparable due to oseltamivir's apparent interference with antibody production. The evidence supports a direct oseltamivir mechanism of action on symptoms but we are unable to draw conclusions about its effect on complications or transmission. We expect full clinical study reports containing study protocol, reporting analysis plan, statistical analysis plan and individual patient data to clarify outstanding issues. These full clinical study reports are at present unavailable to us." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD008965...
Flu vaccine "The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions and spurious notoriety of the studies." [1][2] (both papers contain the same disclaimer)
Merck has allegedly lied for years about the efficacy of their MMR vaccine in order to retain exclusive license. https://www.courthousenews.com/2012/06/27/47851.htm
> -- there is no evidence of malice here on the part of GSK
No, of course not. A settlement was reached. No need to pursue the matter further.
>It is a silly criticism that the rewards are paid by the government rather than the company
No, it is not. It perverts the normal corrective economic forces of the marketplace. Under that system, a manufacturer has no real incentive to correct defects in its products or manufacturing processes. Only to hide them from scrutiny when they occur.
>, as the goal is to provide adequate care to people adversely affected by public health efforts,
Partly, the goal is to ensure that the US retains a manufacturing capability for a critical need (vaccines).
>not to discourage the development of vaccines by private industry.
I think you misunderstood.
>Unfortunately, it's difficult to find aggregated statistics on idiopathic autoimmune disorders.
Yes, it is quite difficult to find reliable information about lots of things to do with the pharmaceutical industry. That's part of the problem. It wouldn't mean anything if it were true. The existence of a few cheats, and a few honest but misguided fools does not constitute proof that everyone is a cheat or a fool.
>I suggest a class-action lawsuit against the producers of nothing on behalf of women.
You're a funny guy. I bet that kind of wit earns you lots of respect.
>Because I don't need any more of a headache than you've already given me.
Well then go jump in a lake or something.
>66 serious events for 1,400,000 vaccinations, or a 1:21000 chance of serious adverse events. If all of those cases happen to the 1/3 of people who are "predisposed" to Lyme arthritis, their risk is really 1:7000, slightly lower than their 1:6500 risk caused by... nothing. And that's only for disorders arising in the same year as the vaccination.
Isn't LYMErix a series of three shots? The abstract said 1,400,000 doses were distributed. Does distributed == administered? Still though, you've been generous enough with the risk odds. 1:7000 is roughly on par with the chance I'll be seriously injured in a car accident. Do I wear seatbelts, yes. Do I choose carefully when and where I drive? Yes. In which case, why shouldn't I also carefully consider whether or not to take a vaccination, especially if efficacy is in question, or if I have low risk of contracting the disease it is supposed to protect me from?
>And this very low incidence rate
It's a pretty average incident rate, isn't it?
> is exactly what we expect to see after a vaccine has passed a properly formulated clinical trial.
So? It's also what we'd expect to see after a bad vaccine has passed a rigged ^H^H poorly designed clinical trial. It is a serious problem that failed trials can be run again and again until favorable results are obtained. Nothing prevents this from happening.
Fun fact about VAERS, reporting is voluntary and open to anyone, on the one hand filled with (sometimes garbage) from laypersons, and on the other underreported to by professionals.
>If your argument consists of denying the conclusions of scientific studies outright without any further analysis,
My argument is that it is practically impossible for a layperson to make an informed decision. If one takes a pessimistic view of pharmaceutical industry behavior and a conservative approach to risk management, one can arrive at a reasonable suspicion that all things vaccine-related aren't up to snuff. It is in the public interest for full disclosure of drug trial data and adverse event data to be made.
>>Specifically, judgments about whether the vaccine was truly responsible for an adverse event cannot be made from VAERS reports.
>So the CDC is here... to back me up. Did you even look at the Google results?
So does that mean that there are never any real adverse events? That would be great news! You pick your favorite result, I'll pick mine.
>You do of course have to keep these numbers in perspective. VAPP remains rarer than terrorism.
Yes, it is rare, but no, VAPP (1 in 2.4M?) is much more common than terrorism(1 in 10M?).
>A gross misrepresentation of life in developing countries, of the meaning of the term "immunodeficiency", and the causes of immunodeficiency.
Malnutrition cannot cause immunodeficiency? You should write a paper. You'll be famous.
> The misinformation
There is no misinformation. I have been in error, so have you there is a difference. Your persistent insistence that I am some kind dishonest crazed anti-vaccine crusader is ridiculous. You're the one who seems to be foaming at the mouth.
> you attempt to spread is dangerous,
What is dangerous is the erosion of peoples' confidence in medicine (lost your herd immunity, see how that happened?), and the fact that nobody from that profession can seem to muster an acceptable explanation for often simple things. You keep thinking that condescention will somehow bring people around.
>people have the collective right to be informed that your arguments are weak and your conclusions incorrect.
Sure, here it is. Let them read this glorious thread.
>It is in the interest of people reading this to see your claims debunked,
Which claims are debunked? So I had a mistaken understanding of the way vaccine court operates in some cases, a fact which was pointed out and acknowledged a day ago. You win!
Have you shown that pharmaceutical company malfeasance is nonexistent?
Greed and negligence are miraculously absent from pharmaceutical company staff?
Have you shown that vaccines never injure anyone?
Have you shown that vaccine injury prevalence is outside the range of normal harms we subject ourselves to?
Have you shown that vaccines are always effective?
Have you shown that there is a just/reliable/fair remedy for harms from vaccine injury?
> I have attempted to do so in a clear and scientifically accurate manner.
So far I'm only convinced of the outstanding magnitude of your charm.
>My intent is to expose you.
Well here I am. A guy who reads the labels of things before he lets people jab him or his kids. Sometimes, I even decide the vaccine isn't necessary, or worth the risk (gasp!), even though I am aware of the fact that I don't have enough data to make a proper informed decision. In the absence of data, I often plan for the worst reasonable case. I'm aware that I may be a little bit too skeptical. That's too bad. If you find that prospect terrifying for you or your children, then I advise you to find a better way to communicate, or find a way to make all of the data that one needs for a proper decision available. I advise everyone else who gives a crap to do the same.
[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004879... [2] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD001269...