Vaccination & epidemic

[Undertoad]

Bumped. I finally got around to looking at the studies

BMJ 2001 Jul;323(7305):163-4
and
N Engl J Med. 2003 Mar 6;348(10):951-4

and it appears Pie has sent me the original studies, and not the criticism of them. Pie, what I have is BMJ edition 322, not 323, and NEJM 347, not 348.

I read the studies, or at least what I could understand of them without 300-level courses in statistics. In the NEJM study, roughly of 80% of about 500,000 children in Denmark were MMR-vaccinated, and roughly 80% of autism cases in the same group of children were of MMR-vaccinated children. (IOW, 20% of autism cases were in non-vaccinated children.)

It will be interesting to see how this is criticized.

[Clodfobble]

No one ever claimed that the MMR is the sole and exclusive trigger of autism. It's not just about the MMR, it's about the aggressiveness of the entire schedule, and the way vaccinations are intended to work. Even vaccine opponents aren't sure why the MMR seems to have a higher risk than other vaccines.

It is, in short, all about the adjuvants. The immune response is an extremely complex biological process, but in layman's terms, it's somewhat like this: the immune system works in stages. The first antibody response is supposed to be from IgA antibodies, which live almost exclusively in the lungs and digestive tract. This is how most diseases enter the body. The IgA antibodies are the ones that organize the overall response to the pathogen, and call in the IgE antibodies (which are what give you a typical allergic response of itchy eyes, sneezing, etc.) to do the dirty work of fighting the pathogen. They also are the ones that best "remember" the pathogen for the future, so that the body has immunity.

When you inject the pathogen directly into the bloodstream, you completely bypass this IgA part of the immune system (and that is one reason why blood-borne diseases are usually so much more devastating than airborne.) This is an acknowledged drawback of injected vaccines, and it is precisely why they include an adjuvant with the injection, usually the heavy metal aluminum. An adjuvant is a substance which, for an unknown reason, hyperstimulates the IgE response. We can't get the IgAs to remember the pathogen, since we've excluded them from the process, so instead we just throw the IgEs into overdrive, significantly overproduce antibodies to fight the pathogen, and that way plenty are left over after the disease is defeated. But these antibodies die off over time, and this is why injections don't provide lifelong immunity while getting the actual disease does, and why we need booster shots after a few years.

Is it really so hard to imagine that artificially stimulating the IgE antibodies would lead them to be more likely to mistake harmless substances (like, say, peanut proteins) as pathogens, thus creating an allergy to peanuts? It's not just about the MMR, and it's not just about autism. All autoimmune disorders are sharply on the rise, because we are screwing with our immune system and forcing it to work in ways it isn't designed to. The only reason the autism advocates are the only ones screaming is because having a kid with a severe peanut allergy just isn't that big a deal (I know, I have a stepson with one.) All the lesser diseases, while they might be lifestyle-altering, still leave you with your kid intact. But they are all a reflection of the problem--asthma, allergies, autism, ADHD, celiac disease, type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis...

Incidentally, it's quite possible to administer vaccines in an airborne fashion, breathing them in through a mask. When they do this, no adjuvant is needed, and indeed, that's how they do vaccinations in Africa, because they have to re-use all their medical equipment down there, and re-using needles in an AIDS-ridden population is a big no-no. Guess who doesn't have an autism epidemic like we do? Of course, detractors will say that's because African doctors are too stupid to recognize autism when they see it, and African parents are too stupid to know whether their child knows how to talk or not.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Is it really so hard to imagine that...

It's not hard to imagine, no.

[Aliantha]

I don't think most people think African parents are too stupid. Possibly not educated enough to pick the symptoms, and most likely not wealthy enough to seek help anyway.

[Clodfobble]

Yes, very cute HM. There are studies to back it up, but that shit's just not available for free on the internet, sorry. If you're interested, it's not hard to find books on the subject.

Originally Posted by Aliantha

I don't think most people think African parents are too stupid. Possibly not educated enough to pick the symptoms, and most likely not wealthy enough to seek help anyway.

As I alluded, it does not take an education to determine that your child is or is not speaking, or is or is not smacking themselves in the face all day long. The symptoms are subtle at the age of 2-3. They are not subtle at ages 4, 5, 6, or all the rest of the years of their lives as this disease continues to affect them.

[Aliantha]

A lot of African people who live a tribal life would believe their child was possessed if they exhibited those types of symptoms. That is my point when I suggest that education is part of the issue. Sure they'd know something wasn't right, but they'd have a whole different way of thinking about what was wrong with their child than you or I might.

eta: The same goes for any other culture which still lives a tribal way of life.

[Clodfobble]

Right. And they would hold exorcism ceremonies, or have whatever methods of treatment they thought might be successful--the point being that they would recognize the disease and know who had it and who didn't. And outsiders could tabulate how many "possessed" children there were in a group of people, and know what they were really counting. And in the end, they have done all this, and determined that the rate of autism in Africa is vastly lower than in America, both in areas where they vaccinate (through breathing treatments) and areas where they don't.

[TheMercenary]

The whole thing is much more complicated, but that is a good synopsis of how it works with the immune response.

[Aliantha]

My point was that not all detractors of the theory you're presenting necessarily assume people from Africa are stupid.

[TheMercenary]

This is a better synopsis of how the immune system works if anyone is really interested in understanding it better. It is quite complicated but efficient. The human body is amazing...

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Human_P...inst_Infection

[Skunks]

I don't think in re: Africa the issue is one of education or health awareness, but more the question of where children rank, culturally. We're pretty children-centric, all overpopulation aware and trying to get the infant mortality rate down more than it already is.

Not my area of limited-enough-to-bullshit awareness, but I read Dancing Skeltons once. What I got was: the poor health of developing children was due largely to the fact that their nutrition was considered after that of others.

Flip the coin around: if children should be seen and not heard, would a child not developing verbal skills be noticed?

[Clodfobble]

Yes, we can throw guesses out all day long as to why the results of a study that none of you have read might or might not have cultural flaws that our own educated and trained scientists are unable to compensate for.

Or, we can take the simplest route: the government has already admitted, twice, that in certain cases, vaccines and the MMR in particular can and did trigger certain types of autism in certain children. With 5,000+ identical cases waiting in line on the docket behind those two, and hundreds of thousands waiting in the wings, they had every motivation in the world not to set that precedent unless they absolutely had to, unless the evidence presented to them (which took years to present, by the way, it wasn't just a casual conversation on a message board) was so undeniable there was just no way around it.

The main consensus of scientific opinion on this subject is shifting, as science always does, and it is moving towards my side, not yours.

[Undertoad]

It would appear in the case of Hannah Poling that the government has "admitted" (by settling out of court) that thimerosal was responsible. That's not your position.

[Undertoad]

The NY Times Poling story: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/08/us/08vaccine.html

Originally Posted by NYTimes

“Let me be very clear that the government has made absolutely no statement indicating that vaccines are a cause of autism,” Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Thursday. “That is a complete mischaracterization of the findings of the case and a complete mischaracterization of any of the science that we have at our disposal today.”

[jinx]

Do you have a link to the government admitting it was thimerosal specifically?

JULIE GERBERDING, DR., CDC DIRECTOR: "Well, you know, I don't have all the facts because I still haven't been able to review the case files myself. But my understanding is that the child has a -- what we think is a rare mitochondrial disorder. And children that have this disease, anything that stresses them creates a situation where their cells just can't make enough energy to keep their brains functioning normally. Now, we all know that vaccines can occasionally cause fevers in kids. So if a child was immunized, got a fever, had other complications from the vaccines. And if you're predisposed with the mitochondrial disorder, it can certainly set off some damage. Some of the symptoms can be symptoms that have characteristics of autism."

Actually, no one knows if she was predisposed with a mitochondrial disorder, or if she developed it, along with autism, after receiving 5 vaccines against 9 antigens in one day because she had fallen behind the mandated schedule due to illness.