Close Up's programme on whooping cough, was a triumph of emotional blackmail using a cute baby with whooping cough, to push a policy which doesn't work. But worse than that, was the standard of discussion on Close up's facebook page. You know that eminence based manipulation has truly scraped the bottom of the barrel when Grant Jacobs obliquely counsels all readers not to even look at the scientific links put up, .... inferring that those who don’t have the right background won’t understand the studies posted implying that there is no need for anyone else to look at them either
What does Jacobs then post? A link to Imac, who according to him are the sanctified pontifical crystal ball. IMAC - Nikki Turner the world's best trained cherry picker, purveyor of mandatory vaccination given half a chance -and the constant "leaver-outer" of any information that really matters, who.....subscribes to the Nike Motto, as do her followers.
And IMAC certainly would never remind the viewers on Close Up, that her colleagues in Australia, who actually understand the science.... cancelled the "cocooning" which Nikki Turner so earnestly advocates, because it doesn't work. Can't let facts get in the way of a good thing for vaccine manufacturers, and IMAC asserting it's "control" and peer group pressure!
The most accurate assessment of the calibre of cognitive dissonance displayed by the provaccine people on Close-Up's page? A post by Erin LeKiwi which went like this:
Really does make you question the capacity of people to think when you have conversations like this, huh...
A. "Omgz get the vaccine!"
B. "But the vaccine doesn't work and never has - look at all this info!" *gives copious data, medical research, studies, statistics etc*
A. "Omgz shut up you don't know what you're talking about! Get the vaccine!"
B. "I just gave you all the evidence you could ask for... why get a vaccine that doesn't work?"
A. "You're just biased!"
B. "No, look at the info..."
C. "Omgz get the vaccine you mean plague-ridden ignorant non-vaccinators, I should have sovereignty over your body and make you get it! It's because of you my baby got sick!"
B. *facepalm*
Read Full Blog
Hilary's Desk
Close-Up on whooping cough, part One.
The dangers of catscans and X-rays.
(To find data for yourself go to pubmed and put in the words "Computed Tomography radiation dose")
Here is a 2012 ISRN Gastroenterology article discussing stomach catscans in Inflammatory Bowel Disease. (pdf)
Here is a 2007 New England Medical Journal article.(pdf) Read this 2007 article thoroughly.
The 2007 article shows are that whereas in 1980, there were about 3 million catscans yearly, by 2005, there were around 62 million yearly (72 million were performed by 2007). The authors suggested that around one third of catscans are unnecessary and could have been replaced with non-radiation technology, which means that around 20 million catscans subjected patients to unnecessary risk..
Every cat scan has an adult radiation dose of around 10 mSv, and paediatric dose of 20 mSv. Usually, two to three scans are performed, but sometimes even more. CT (computed tomography) scans cause around 2 per cent of all cancers primarily lung and colon. About 11 per cent of all CT scans were carried out on children to determine if they have appendicitis, and researchers considered that children were at greater risk of developing cancer because their radiation load continues to increase as time goes on.
The study estimated that around 2% of cancers could be caused by catscans, and discusses doses, comparing catscans with survivors from Nagasaki and Hiroshima who received doses of between 5 - 150 mSv.
The study also felt that part of the problem was that doctors didn't feel that catscans emitted more radiation than ordinary xrays. Another 2007 study showed that most doctors underestimate radiation amounts.
Quote:
In summary, there is direct evidence from epidemiologic studies that the organ doses corresponding to a common CT study (two or three scans, resulting in a dose in the range of 30 to 90 mSv) result in an increased risk of cancer. The evidence is reasonably convincing for adults and very convincing for children.
Here is the dose chart from the NEMJ 2007 article:
In reality though these doses cannot be trusted because a study in 2009 found the following:
"We documented higher and more variable doses than what is typically quoted from the most common types of diagnostic CT studies performed in clinical practice. For example, the median effective dose of an abdomen and pelvis CT scan (the most common type of CT examination performed in the United States) is often quoted as 8 to 10 mSv. Yet we found that the median dose of a routine abdomen and pelvis CT scan was 66% higher, and the median dose of a multiphase abdomen and pelvis CT scan was nearly 4-fold higher.” Read Full Blog
Dumbed down school children?
This is called "vaccine education" Australian Government style, from a book supplied throughout schools:
Clearly, school children are now considered so dumb that no facts are required. Why would the Australian Government be providing this cartoon book (which had the above picture in it) to all Australian school children? (I have only scanned half of it.) Of interest, this book does NOT appear on Medikidz website. The whole book is an emotive, potted version based on garbled facts and a massive dose of peer group pressure. I wonder why "science' is no longer good enough? Perhaps if children knew the facts they might not want another vaccine?
In an attempt to improve the flagging rates of Gardasil uptake in USA, the Association of Women's Health in Washington DC, has sent this family divisive cartoon hither and yon, for doctors to give to girls as "information as well. The tactics in 2012, are to key into peer group pressure at all times - appeal to girls whose peers think that parents don't know squat, and parents who follow like sheep, those who follow the Nike motto of "just do it". Note that not one FACT is involved in either parent's cartoon decision making...any surprises there?
In today's world it seems that all you need to do to get kids to conform is give them cartoons to read, which tell them "YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM WANTS YOU TO GET A VACCINE! GO TO A CLINIC NEAR YOU! Never mind about facts. Peer pressure will do. Most vaccine recipients only find out about facts, if everything turns to custard for them.
No doubt in the not too distant future, in line with previous insultingly stupid educational DVDs.... IMAC et al, will follow suit. Read Full Blog
Nuke'em all. More eminenced based guestimation, part 5.
During a trip to the United States in 1993, a fall down a stairwell landed me in St Joseph’s hospital in Atlanta, where I was wheeled in to have an ankle X-ray. As part of the process I was covered with an incredibly heavy, 5 mm thick, lead “drape”. The “drape” was more a tent, because it extended down to the floor covering my head, and going down to the floor on three sides. During the five minutes or so it took the lead smocked staff to do the X-rays, I had to breath carefully, and be aware of heat rising. The staff knew what I was going through, because the minute the X-rays were finished, the trolley was pushed out the doors into the cool corridor, and the lead covering whipped off double quick. "Would a child cope with this?" I asked the staff. According to the radiologist...."Yes".
Fast forward to 1997, when Ian messed his ankle, and we landed up in Pukekohe X-ray. Was he covered with a lead sheet? No. What to do?. I looked around, and there hanging in the corner, covered in masses of dust (which escaped the cleaner's notice....) was a pathetic 2 mm thick, lead apron.
I understand.... that I have been a trial to my children over the years, but when it comes to their safety, I make no apologies for fighting in their corner – even if they hated it. “Mum, you’re an embarrassment!”
”Are you going to put that lead apron on Ian?” I asked the radiographer.
”What for?” the technician sneered. “The only radiation in this room” said she gesticulating through the air in a line, “is this tiny bit, that goes down the beam onto the ankle and into the plate.”
I stood and waited. The technician placed his ankle on the plate, and then went out the room to take the x-rays. I remained, next to Ian.
The door swung open again. “Mrs Butler, you need to come out here please!!” said Ms Grumpy Bum.
”Why is that?” I asked innocent faced.
”Because it’s dangerous, and everyone not having an X-ray must be out here, not in there!” Intoned Grumpy Bum.
”But you just said this was quite safe for Ian because the rays only go down this wee area here” (putting my hands under the beam) “and if it’s quite safe for Ian, ... which is why he doesn’t need an apron, ....then it’s even safer for me, surely!” She knew I was going for her…..
Grumpy Bum flung the apron on Ian, and near hauled me out by my ear. Suddenly she swung around and said, “Oh, I know who you are. You’re that nut who doesn’t vaccinate. Now it figures!” as if only a non-vaccinator could think of something as lunatic as radiation protection….
I replied, ”No, you’re the one that doesn’t figure. It doesn’t seem to occur to you just how inconsistent your arguments are. You said Ian didn’t need an apron, yet had kittens when I wanted to stay in there. You can’t have it both way. In 1993, when I had a similar X-ray to Ian in USA, they damned near squashed and asphyxiated me under a 5 mm very heavy lead drape. They even wanted to know what part of my menstrual cycle I was in. Yet you treat X-rays like some glass of water, ….. until someone puts you on the spot!”
By this time, Grumpy Bum was really angry....”Well, you’re the first person who has EVER asked for a lead apron for their child.” That explained the layer of dust just about like concrete....
“Why is it, the regulations say you have to stay out here, in a safety room during x-rays?” I asked. Grumpy Bum snapped, “Because we do it all the time, that’s why!” I looked at her and said, “Do you honestly think that a dust laden lead apron, is just a decoration for show? It’s not even thick enough, for a start. Every single person who is x-rayed in this room should have a 5 mm lead apron at least… put on, as a matter of course. Not one parent should EVER have to ask you to protect their child with a lead apron.....”
Just last year, a parent approached me, very upset that this “discussion” was still considered “lunatic fringe neuroticism” in our local X-ray facility.
New Zealand appears to be continuing this utterly irresponsible blasé attitude to X-rays, which perhaps is why most parents don’t even think about it, and consider CT scans akin to a blood test.
Seems that not much has changed in three regards. Most parents are still either ignorant of the dangers of X-rays – or would prefer to expose their children, rather than ask for protection for their children. And most x-ray technicians still live in la-la land. Part of this blasé attitude might stem from the fact that during my childhood, when we went to shoe shops, this cool looking machine
was where we were sent to entertain ourselves, while Mum tried on shoes. We’d stick our feet in the slot around the back, and look down at our wiggly toes in our shoes, and swap places, looking at everyone else’s toes as well. It was great fun and a great giggle. It was “scientific” shoe fitting, and medically sanctioned as “quite safe”. Hahaha. Not.
And this was what our feet were being zapped with.
You will find a good history of the shoe fitting flouroscope here: At least they moderated the amount of radiation for children, though no doubt, it was far too high even so…
But I wonder, if a past generation, desensitised to radiation issues by such things as these, is part of the problem today?
Just recently the FDA issued a cat scat radiation alert The Chicago Sun Times is only one of the newspapers reporting this. I note so far, that there is "silence" in the NZ media. The risks of a cat-scan depends on who you listen to. In 2011 ABC ran this article which is airy-fairy and not particularly precise. Yet, in 2003, ABC ran a much more definitive programme, which has disappeared from their archives, pointing out that if you have a cat-scan you might as well have sat on the outskirts of Hiroshima (PDF embedded). It's understandable that such "emotive" language would be frowned on today, even though it's a very realistic portrayal of the risks of Catscans.
The FDA Catscan recommendations for parents are....that parents:
Keep track of their child's medical-imaging histories as part of a discussion with the referring physician when a new exam is recommended (see the "My Child's Imaging Record"23 24 card, available from the Alliance for Radiation Safety in Pediatric Imaging).
Ask the referring physician about the benefits and risks of imaging procedures, such as:
How will the exam improve my child's health care?
Are there alternative exams that do not use ionizing radiation and are equally as useful?
Ask the imaging facility:
What safeguards are in place to mitigate the risks to my child? For example, does the facility use reduced radiation techniques for children?
Are there any additional steps that may be necessary to perform the imaging study (e.g., administration of a contrast agent, sedation, or advanced preparation)?
Can you imagine what the reaction could be…. to asking these questions in a New Zealand hospital today???? Would some Grumpy Bum jump down your throat? After all, if it happens in normal Xray facilities, would these FDA suggested questions about catscans be considered... questioning their competence? And perhaps exposing their ignorance?
The FDA says that Ionizing radiation exposure to pediatric patients from medical imaging procedures is of particular concern because pediatric patients:
are more radiosensitive than adults (i.e., the cancer risk per unit dose of ionizing radiation is higher);
have a longer expected lifetime for any effects of radiation exposure to manifest as cancer; and
use of equipment and exposure settings designed for adults may result in excessive radiation exposure if used on smaller patients.
The medical community has emphasized dose reduction in CT because of the relatively high doses of CT exams and their increased use, as reported in the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) Report No. 1604 5. the increased radiosensitivity of pediatric patients compared to adults makes it important to adjust equipment settings to optimize radiation exposure to pediatric patients for all types of X-ray imaging exams.
This is the website the FDA refers parents to.
But, get this.... .....
Note that CONTRARY to my experience in 1993, NOW the patient isn’t required to have an apron at all!!! HOWEVER, ..... anyone else moving around in the room at the time has to have “wraparound protection”. Wouldn't that seem to make the FDA's questions which parents should ask...sort of... redundant?
More bizarre “eminence based” medicine.
There may come a time in future history – if there is anyone around to write it…., when this type of “risk-neglect” - not providing lead shielding for patients being x-rayed.... is considered as “barbaric” as bloodletting once was. Read Full Blog
Babies don't feel pain: Eminence based stupidity part 4.
Did you know that for decades, ultra intelligent people who went through medical school, truly believed that babies don't feel pain? This bolt from of the blue, hit us on November 24, 1981, with the birth of our first child. Paediatric "paragons of all truth", had done eleven (yes you read that right) needle insertions into the spine of our baby, while a nurse held him, face down, around her body, to stop him wriggling. Strangely enough (pardon the sarcasm) after screaming for quite some time, he went into shock.
When I arrived at the neonatal unit two hours afterwards, I didn't recognise his face. It was swollen and puffy. He was rigid, and had clamped his thumbs in his fists, and wouldn't respond to me for nearly three hours. I felt like our baby had disappeared.. Why had they not called me? They thought I might get upset. What an understatement.
In attempting to discuss this situation with the head paediatrician, I was told that "newborns don't feel pain".
Try telling that to a first time mother who has just accidentally spiked her newborn with a nappy pin.
Evidence of that pain is irrefutable, with the baby screaming it's head off, right? So how was it that these eminent patriarchs thought for nearly 50 years....that babies don't feel pain? Beats me.
The result of this absense of both common sense and understanding the laws of "cause and effect", was that all manner of tests and surgery was done on babies, with ONLY paralysing drugs and no anaesthesia.
In 1987... FINALLY... doctors recognised that babies do indeed feel pain. Here is the pdf of the NY Times article.
Strangely enough Wikipedia completely ignores the fact that for decades, doctors thought that babies didn't feel pain. I guess even they realise what the public might think of that admission. Even today, pregnant women are told that their unborn babies won't feel a thing during an abortion, when in fact, they do.
Back in 1981 though, it never occurred to us to research whether or not babies felt pain because any normal person can tell you that newborn babies feel pain. It never occured to us that anyone would think otherwise. As the paediatrician intoned, "Don't worry, babies don't feel pain..." my neck just about dislocated with constant disbelieving head shaking, and... as time went on, watching the very clear evidence that our son remembered. At 6 weeks of age, when a white coated species came near him, he started to shake, and scream blue murder. That happened without fail for the next few years. Even a doctor dressed in jeans and a T-shirt had only a meagre chance of even touching him.
Imagine my disgust then, when the New Zealand Herald published an article in 1992 showing that some newborns brutally treated this way, had long term addictions as a result.
This news item resulted in this correspondence with a paediatrician who was the first "human" I had met, when it came to this topic.
By the time a 1995 study came out showing that circumcision primes babies for future trauma I was very unsurprised.
Why is it, that no-one thinks that vaccines might do the same thing .... or if they do, it's rationalised away with the assertion that pain is worth it, because then, "your child won't get sick and die".
If you didn't know that these people - for decades - didn't believe that babies felt pain, remember this:
What doctors tell you with regard to vaccines - .....how wonderfully safe, and effective they are; that they can't cause harm and never cause autism......, - might be proven to be outright lies tomorrow, solely because some doctors have not yet learned this bit of truth:
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Eminence Based Medicine Part 3
Back to Basics, Part 1 and Part 2, lay the framework for asking the key questions of this blog, which relate to "Just how 'scientific' are vaccines, in principle, in practice, in fact and in application?" In order to understand the implications of that in babies, the lack of understanding about the neonatal immune system (and new discoveries which are very disturbing) - another three part blog series - has to be read:
Vaccines and Neonatal Immune Development
How a baby fights infection and Develops Immunity
Can vaccines become cranial and Immunological cluster bombs?
Each of the three blogs above, suffer from the same problems as medical research. They describe what is NOW known (which scratches the surface and exposes past ignorance), but they don't describe the immune system in total for the simple reason that medical researchers can't know, what they don't know. The little they do now know, shows that many of their previous assumptions on what vaccines do in the body are wrong, and would be of concern to parents, if that information was given to them. Immunologists see no reason to inform parents, and despite what they don't know, the" blind" medical system is happy to insist on universal "compliance" of the even more "blind" parents, without consideration of the principles of "choice" or "informed consent".
In part one of this series we discussed "Why doctors keep doing treatments that don't work", which said:
"In you, this therapy won't work, so skip it." The opportunity to take potentially life-saving therapies and give them only to the 30%-50% of a cohort that deserves them, by virtue of having some positive impact, saves half of the expense."
This same principle also applies to vaccines in many different ways, though you wouldn't know it in the present "one-size-fits-all' vaccine curriculum. The current editor of a medical journal called VACCINE, is Gregory Poland, a man who has done a lot of research on a topic called VACCINOMICS, which is similar to epigenetics, but which takes no notice of the "age, infection, diet, stress and you name it" mentioned in part 2.
Gregory Poland knows that the ONLY people who get a disease and get seriously sick from it, are people who have a genetic susceptibility to THAT disease.
Gregory Poland also knows that the very people who don't respond to a specific vaccine, are the same (very rare) people who got serious complications to the disease.
Gregory Poland knows that genetic susceptibility is why not everyone has complications to, or dies from measles, whooping cough, haemophilus or any of the other diseases. Genetic susceptibility is also why, in undeveloped countries where TB and leprosy are endemic due to malnutrition, even then.... only about .01% of the population will actually get clinical disease.
In a developed country, the controlling factor of the immune system is nutrition, and truly - if you put garbage in, you will get garbage out. Which is why bad nutrition is a major driver of infection. Eat badly and you will get sick. Everyone knows that. Add in war and stress, and things get even worse.
And Gregory Poland knows that in developing countries "malnuitrition" and dirty water, are the biggest drivers of disease.
Gregory Poland knows that if you responded well to the measles vaccine, you are very unlikely to have been a person who would have responded badly to the disease, and in terms of preventing complications and disease, the vaccine was not much use to you, the individual.
But Gregory Poland would that even if you don't need vaccines, you should have them in order to protect the people who WOULD suffer serious consequences, most of who do NOT respond well to the vaccine.
Gregory Poland also knows from his published research, that susceptibility to vaccine reactions, is NOT the same "susceptibility" as that relating to the disease, because a reaction can be caused by any number of vaccine components completely unrelated to the disease. So the "risks" from the vaccine are quite different from the "risks" for the disease, because the genetic susceptibility to the two aren't the same. But he doesn't want to talk about that.
Gregory Poland also has patents to new types of vaccines he is developing, which he hopes will - sometime in the future, result in vaccines for people who don't NOW respond to current vaccines. Which is sort of in line with the comment above which says: "The opportunity to take potentially life-saving therapies and give them only to the 30%-50% of a cohort that deserves them, by virtue of having some positive impact, saves half of the expense."
You'd think that ideally ... we could then just give vaccines to those people with the genetic susceptibilities which results in the immune system not working properly right? Not really. Looking at genetic susceptibility actually means nothing - if you don't know how the immune system actually interacts under any circumstances.
Another question often asked is, "Well, why don't they work out who can tolerate the disease and who can't?"
Answer. They don't understand how genetics relates to the immune system well enough to figure that out.
so then you ask, "Why don't they find out who is at risk of the vaccines, so that they won't receive them?".
Answer. Same answer as above.
And the bottom line really is, that - despite all the information in the medical literature to the contrary, "apocryphal dogma" says that there is no need to know any of that "stuff", because "we know that" vaccines have saved billions of people all around the world since Jenner's time...., and without all those vaccines shoved into babies since half way through last century, there would be no children left now, would there?
Pardon the sarcasm. But that's what most mothers believe now, and such nonsense is inferred to in the medical literature, CDC, and all sites which push vaccines.
Which raises another question (also slightly sarcastic)
If the "lives saved" arguments were true, then we could also lay at their doorstep another crime - that those lives saved were a major "driver" for "too many humans cause climate change", no?
The ignorance of the medical profession described in these three blogs raises many questions, some of which are:
1) How much of what is accepted as vaccine dogma, is "eminence-based" medicine, based on apocryphal suggestions from remote history?
Obviously, quite a lot, given that EVEN WHEN that very flawed system called "evidence based medicine" clearly shows that a vaccine is found to be useless, the medical system continues to ignore the evidence, and as if on autopilot, they push it as their only "effective solution" to "that" problem. The two best scientifically proven examples of that "political junk science" shoved down parents' throats, are the whooping cough and flu vaccines.
Having said that, Australia has just discontinued the "cocooning" vaccinating of adults around newborn babies with whooping cough vaccines, because it doesn't work. For some funny reason, they haven't asked themselves the logical question which is, "If the whooping cough vaccines doesn't work in adults, why would we expect parents to believe that it "works" in babies?"
2) When a person is injected with a vaccine, and has a "reaction", why is it, that everything that happens after a vaccine is called "a coincidence", and that the "experts" state that the person couldn't possibly have died as a result of the vaccine?
3) Why do parents accept the word of these immunologists - who admit they know very little - when they say that they know what they are talking about?
4) Why is it alright for doctors to admit, as above that " we fully know that 30%-40% of the people to whom we provide such therapies derive no benefit but experience all the costs and all the adverse consequences." but then turn around and say that there are never... ever.... consequences to vaccines?
to be continued....
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Eminence based medicine, part 2
In order to know what vaccines do, and how the body responds to them, you have to understand the immune system in the first place, right?. All parents believe that doctors and immunologists understand the immune system. They wouldn't introduce vaccines if they didn't, right?. You can't possible evaluate "reactions" and problems in the immune system after vaccination unless you understand the immune system, right? And when "evidence based" medicine is the gold standard, they wouldn't do something without "evidence" that a vaccine doesn't "harm" the immune system, right?
Wrong actually.
In a 2011 article called "The Bodyguard" The esteemed Stanford University tells us this (full pdf) :
“If a patient were to ask me, ‘How’s my immune system doing today?’ I would have no idea how to answer that, and I’m an immunologist. None of us can answer that. Right now we’re still doing the same tests I did when I was a medical student in the late 1960s,” he says.
.... "In the last few decades a huge amount has been learned about the basic mechanisms of immune response — a super-smart system of sensors, cells and secretions that has evolved to guard us from invasion by pathogens or betrayal by our own tumor-prone tissues. It’s staggeringly complex, comprising at least 15 different interacting cell types that spew dozens of different molecules into the blood to communicate with one another and to do battle. Within each of those cells sit tens of thousands of genes whose activity can be altered by age, exercise, infection, vaccination status, diet, stress, you name it."
Which - as we said in "Why we would consider "Mandatory Vaccination" a criminal act" - are never taken into account in vaccine trials, or published data on deaths from diseases.
“That’s an awful lot of moving parts. And we don’t really know what the vast majority of them do, or should be doing,” says Davis, the Bert and Marion Avery Family Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. “We can’t even be sure how to tell when the immune system’s not working right, let alone why not, because we don’t have good metrics of what a healthy human immune system looks like.” Despite billions spent on immune stimulants in supermarkets and drugstores last year, we don’t know what — if anything — those really do, or what “immune stimulant” even means.
In other words, as they admit, they are setting up a system to try to find a needle in a haystack in a system they have no idea how it's working, or what it looks like... , and their method for finding out about it is... get this... "hitting it with something". Read on....
“Suppose you’ve got a very complicated system, with a lot of moving parts,” Davis says. “You don’t know how those parts talk to one another. You don’t even know where to start. So instead, you keep your eye on the whole thing, and you watch what happens to the parts when you hit it with a hammer. Some of the parts move together. Some move one after another. Then, you hit it with something else — a bucket of ice water, maybe — and see what moves this time, and when, and how much."
“We can perturb the immune system all kinds of different ways, measure the levels of hundreds or thousands of different things in response to that, and figure out which ones go up or down with different states of health or non-health,” Davis says. “Anything that might affect the system — a vaccine, a disease, a drug — can tell you something.”
(But what will it tell you?.....)
"To get answers, Stanford has created the Human Immune Monitoring Center, consisting of a couple of clusters of world-class instruments and expertise. The HIMC operates according to a principle Davis only half-jokingly refers to as “ignorance-driven research.” The more formal name is systems biology, an information-technology-rich approach to unraveling complex systems of intensely interacting components."
I have a problem with this. Just as torturing a human will get "information"... what sort of information will hitting the immune system actually tell you? A readable map of exactly how an immune system works?
Yet, these are the very people who tell parents that they know what there is to know about vaccines, they research them to the enth degree; they are safe, effective and do no harm - yet have NO IDEA how to work out exactly what vaccines actually do in the immune system other than make antibodies in most people, which they presume will protect against disease.
You may argue that scientists wouldn't have introduced vaccines in the 60's until they knew how they worked. Not so. In 2000, Eurekalert made this astonishing admission:
"Vaccines work simply by producing antibodies, right? Well, probably not. And this misconception coupled with basic ignorance of how they do work is stalling the urgent quest for an AIDS vaccine, claim leading HIV researchers. They say no one has bothered to find out how highly successful vaccines like polio, measles and hepatitis B actually protect people from disease.
"I'm amazed by the amount of basic science we don't know," Philippe Kourilsky, director of the Paris-based Pasteur Institute, told the meeting: "We've had many successful vaccines over the past decades but we've missed a chance to see how these vaccines work. Each time a vaccine works the scientific community wanders off and leaves it to the public health workers to use it-and fails to invest in the research. If we had done that we would have been in a much better position to tackle the AIDS vaccine problem."
In order to temper the admission of ignorance, they have to make out that vaccines are, none-the-less, the most wonderful invention, and without question worth using, so the press release contains much self-congratulatory rhetoric to make the public stop asking fundamental questions. After all, they must know what they are doing!!! Ahem. And the scientific reality is you can't "miss a chance" to see how these vaccines work, if you have no idea how the immune system works as a whole, therefore it's impossible to see how the immune system deals with a vaccine!!! Furthmore, how do you define the word "works"? That a vaccine produces what you think are correlates of immunity? And then... on that assumption - you "presume" it works?
Part Three....
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Eminence based medicine - Part 1.
There is a fascinating video on medscape website which all parents should listen to, or read the transcript of. The article is titled: "Why Doctors Keep Doing Treatments That Don't Work".
The doctor concerned, states:
...."You have talked rather generously about evidence-based medicine. Most of medicine isn't evidence-based. The overwhelming majority is more "eminence-based," to steal from my colleague to the right [Eric Topol]. We do things because we have always done them. That is going to be less tenable, and you will be put under more and more scrutiny about "Why is that? Why is this happening to me?" or "Why, doctor, are you doing that as opposed to this?" You peel back the level that says, "Well, actually, there isn't any evidence to support that. That was merely my historical preference as opposed to my data-driven wisdom and decision-making." That will put pressure on what we do and will ask us to answer some of the questions about dominant practices that are founded largely by history".
He goes on to say:
...."If you go to your doctor at the moment with lower back pain, there is a pretty good likelihood that you will get some imaging for that, and there are pretty good data that say that no subsequent decisions hinge on the observations made in that imaging, or that those decisions will happen at some incredibly low likelihood. But it goes much deeper than the instances of known waste. We do a lot of things, as Eric [Topol] pointed out, that are population-based when we fully know that 30%-40% of the people to whom we provide such therapies derive no benefit but experience all the costs and all the adverse consequences. All it takes is understanding the genetic determinants, the historical determinants, or the epigenetic determinants that say, "In you, this therapy won't work, so skip it."
(Which comes back to what we were saying in "Back to the Basics") He then continues....:
"The opportunity to take potentially life-saving therapies and give them only to the 30%-50% of a cohort that deserves them, by virtue of having some positive impact, saves half of the expense."
and...... "Estimates of known waste are $700-$800 billion a year. The things we don't yet know are larger because we are doing things that are in the guidelines. But when you peel back a layer, those guidelines are derived largely from apocryphal suggestions in remote history, right? So, there is a tremendous opportunity, as we put pressure on the system, to justify why we do what we do. Importantly, we have a system with a bandwidth limitation living at the doctor. We can't keep up with the onslaught of information. We can't keep up with the patients we have to see. We are not really good at even figuring out which of the patients we are responsible for need to be seen at a particular time. We realize that "maybe I shouldn't be making those decisions because I can't comprehend all the diseases that my patients have. They are presenting information I don't yet know how to interpret."
Okay, so you've got all that ... have you? Are you starting to understand the "limitations" of medicine yet? Later in this series evidence based medicine will be discussed, because it is not what you think it is.... But back to this blog.) Guidelines are largely "apocryphal" suggestions from remote history, much of medicine is anecdote, and they often don't know how to interpret the information you tell them. Hmmmm.... How does this apply to vaccines?
Part Two .... Read Full Blog
Why we would consider "Mandatory Vaccination" a criminal act.
(This blog - written by Peter - is in response to the world wide move to make vaccine mandatory, to try to remove exemptions and force parents to accept a "one-size-fits-every-baby" vaccination programme.)
How can you "justify" a criminal Act?!!
As a start, a few definitions need to be born in mind.
A FACT:
An event, or thing, known to have happened or existed.
A truth that can be proved from experience or observation.
An inescapable truth, (often an unpleasant one, begrudgingly admitted.)
(See “The Great Divide” sections 176 and 177, pages 284 – 288)
A FALLACY:
An incorrect or misleading notion based on inaccurate facts or faulty reasoning.
A reasoning that is unsound.
AN OPINION:
Belief that is not founded on certainty or proof but on what seems probable.
A judgment given by an expert (e.g. of the medical profession). There is a danger that these opinions may be accepted as “facts”.
Now let’s get back to basics – plain simple stuff that is not obscured by being too complicated:
FOUNDATIONS – A FACT.
Whether it be the house we live in, or the world’s tallest building/tower, the most important part of the construction process is that which is hidden below the ground at depths carefully calculated to carry the “load” of the edifice which extends upwards, above it.
Solid rock base, deep pile drilling, steel reinforced concrete, earthquake and flood proofing techniques, and the like, are essential. They are facts no-one can ignore.
Back to basics is not only applicable to the construction of buildings. It applies equally to other areas of life too. For example, take education. Any teacher will tell you that you can’t keep adding to the learning base if the basics or foundations are not well-established and solid. Sooner or later, remedial work will be required and that can be costly and time consuming.
The old saying, “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link”, is so true.
I would therefore like to link together a few basic facts that provide for me a solid foundation to withstand certain eroding strategies contained within the “storms” of life. For me these facts are rock solid.
FACTS:
• Every person born into this world – man, woman or child – is a unique individual.
Out of all the billions making up the population of planet Earth, there are no two people who are exactly alike. Factors such as physical, mental and spiritual characteristics, DNA and fingerprints; personalities; family trees, genes and environment; to name but a few, all contribute to make each one of us the special human being that we are. The more I think about it, the more mind-boggling is this fact. The evidence and resulting implications are overwhelming.
Systems... (such as the medical) are not usually designed to cater for individual differences. They depend on numbers of people – the greater the numbers the better they work, because it then becomes possible to lump people together according to typing criteria. This will produce categories which are assumed to have common characteristics/needs/problems, etc and will assist in conformity, compliance and control processes. Just consider how computers make this so much easier. The world’s ways have the ability to squeeze people into moulds.
As an ex-schoolteacher I am well aware of the ideal ratio of one pupil to one teacher. Individual differences need to be catered for so as to get the best results. and to help the student reach his or her potential. The bigger the group or class size the more “problem” side effects there are to address. ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL. A fact that cannot be argued. Just go into any shoe shop or clothing store.
With these two basic facts applying to you and me, how are the systems which operate throughout the world going to function, so that the unique individuals will be treated as they should be?
The ideal is not possible - for a range of reasons.
Governments – that means politicians – have the role of implementing policies which are always said to be in the best interests of “the people”! They exist to help keep communities safe, to provide good health and educational services, as well as appropriate welfare benefits, and to address socio-economic concerns and reasonable standards of living. We all know what happens in reality – some groups of people will benefit, many groups won’t, and always you will find a huge range of specific individual needs which haven’t and can’t, be adequately met.
Taxpayers’ money pays for legislative implementation, but as part and parcel of this will be the vested interests of the commercial world, and the competition that goes with it. All sorts of regulations will be drafted to supposedly protect those on the receiving end of the systems.
One of these systems is particularly important as it is seen to be essential to keep each unique individual fit and well – the medical organizations. How we look after our bodies and what we allow to go into them should be a very personal matter. No decisions should be made without careful weighing of the facts. The medical system relies heavily on the products sourced from drug and vaccine manufacturers. Naturally these vested interests want to convince potential “clients” that what doctors use, and what health departments recommend and subsidize from Government funding, have all been thoroughly tested and have FDA approval. So what is involved in gaining the required “certification”?
Look carefully at the following facts.
Vaccine trials usually have at least three phases. Phase one trials, (depending on the vaccine) are usually conducted on healthy adults, unless the trial is a very rare one….specifically to test a vaccine in a subset – e.g. flu vaccines tested in asthmatic children. Each “normal” vaccine trial has a list of “exclusions” or “inclusions”, and if any trial participant has an identifiable health problem they are excluded from a trial. If the vaccine is for babies, the next trial might use 100 healthy babies who also fit very strict criteria. A third phase, might be a larger number of children and babies, who also have to meet very strict criteria. It’s not unusual in a trial, for over half of the applicants to be rejected.
So as an adult, you might be refused participation in a trial if:
You’ve taken a drug that suppressed your immune system in the previous three months.
Been given a blood product.
Had an infection known to significantly impact the immune system.
You have diabetes.
You have a primary immunodeficiency. A member of your family has an immune system that doesn’t work normally.
You take any drugs the trial researchers consider might predispose you to problems.
Any other problem in your records the doctors consider reason for exclusion.
A baby or a child might be refused participation if:
Born earlier than 37 weeks.
Weighed less than 2,500 grams at birth.
Had any problems breathing at birth, or apgar under 9
Receive any IV medications or antibiotics or have any congenital, developmental or immunological issues, central nervous system issues, seizures or organ dysfunctions.
Any other event the doctors consider a reason for exclusion.
In other words, any whiff of a problem and you or your child are shown the door.
There is also no longer any such thing as a true inert placebo. A control group of similarly squeaky clean healthy people will be injected with a previously licensed vaccine or drug, assumed to be safe, to act as a ‘control’. Or sometimes the “placebo” vaccine is everything that is in the vaccine except the antigen, which might include aluminium, formaldehyde, neomycin, culture medium proteins, or other manufacturing byproducts which are not inert, and can act as antigens in their own right. The placebo group can have quite significant responses to the licensed vaccine/drug, but so long as the responses to the licensed vaccine are the same or less than the trial vaccine, the trial vaccine is considered to have no problems.
In scientific terms then, the results of those three phase trials on very healthy people should only apply to the people in whom the vaccines were tested, but in practice, once a drug or a vaccine is licensed, the criteria of inclusion for the drug or vaccine is expanded to fit as many groups as possible. When it comes to vaccines, the reality is that doctors will emphasise to the parents of children with conditions which would have excluded them from a trial, that that very condition makes it even MORE important that the child has that vaccine.
But if it’s not acceptable to administer that drug or a vaccine to babies or adults with those health problems, why does it then become acceptable after a vaccine or a drug is licensed?
Exclusion of sick people and the use of fraudulent “placebos” are two reasons why drug and vaccine data looks so good. Were both trialled using a real placebo and groups representative of those who would eventually be advised to take the product, the results might look vastly different.
How does your sense of “fair play” respond so far?!
When a vaccine or drug is certified as being safe etc, the unique individual, with all the uniqueness of all the variables applying to everyday circumstances and situations will not be representative of the group selected for the trials conducted. As soon as the “FDA stamp of approval” has been given, it will be offered with considerable arm-twisting to all who are considered “eligible” and are supposed to receive it.
Think about the variables which apply to each unique individual in this public usage. For example, factors such as:
• emotional and physical states of health.
• the effects of being exposed to others’ states of health.
• stress of various kinds
• diet
• fresh air and sunshine
• living conditions
• the body’s reaction to foreign substances ingested or injected
• the importance of a child’s pregnancy’s management
• the birth itself
• when the cord was clamped
• breastfeeding etc.
How many of these variables appear in the list of conditions applying to the trial group?!
The plain fact is that no one can be sure of the long of short term effects of using a vaccine (or drug) on the unique “yous” and “mes”.
No wonder confusion can be created by voices that don’t agree. The facts mentioned above and others below, should deliver a very clear message for those who are prepared to think them through. The tactics and strategies employed by the “system” tend to ignore these facts. This is highlighted by the arrogance of statements claiming that vaccinations are completely safe and effective.
The medical system and the vaccine manufacturers cannot, indeed will not, give an unqualified guarantee that a vaccine will provide absolute immunity, and that there will be no side effects to those to whom it is administered.
Responsible informed choice should be sacrosanct and respected. To introduce any form of compulsion in the light of these facts, makes a mockery of basic freedoms and rights! It would be tantamount to legalizing and promoting an act that could lead to grievous bodily harm, even death.
The FACTS set out here are simple to understand and are irrefutable, but to some people however, they may be unpalatable.
The specific, basic question, need not be fobbed off as being too complicated:
Read Full Blog
A costly lethal plague that we must wash our hands of
So said Dr Glenn D Braunstein, M.D., today, in Huffington Post while lamenting the fact that every year, one in 20 people are infected by staff, and 98,000 Americans die, because the medical profession still don't wash their hands. Dr Braunstein is unusual, in that he's speaking out. (Either that, or ... he's naive.) He rolled out the usual stories of Semmelweis, and also explains why official statistics are a gross under-estimate. Then of course, there is the thorny figure he doesn't discuss for deaths from preventable medical error (sorry "system's error - and that 2008 figure is out of date) and another death roll call from prescription drugs which beats that from heroin and cocaine combined. Add these three figures together - the annual death figure courtesy of the medical profession, explodes way beyond 300,000 deaths per year, just for USA alone. What is the total world wide?
Just remember that these are the same people who call parents who don't vaccinate their kids, "scientific terrorists" and are trying to take away the rights of parents to say no to vaccines on the basis that unvaccinated children are the biggest threat to mankind on the face of the earth.
Dr Mendelsohn used to jokingly say that if the medical profession was closed down for a few months most undertakers would go into receivership. I used to think he was joking, but ... maybe not.
So how is it that the average person actually thinks that hospitals are healthy places to be?
In November 1981, I lowered my butt into a salt sitz bath prepared by a nurse, and sat there staring at one inch of dust on open copper pipes through holes in the bathroom wall. I glanced around and everywhere I looked, dirt abounded. Just as the nurse came to help up up out of the sitz bath she screamed as a large cockroach scuttled across the floor. "I'm not as concerned about the cockroaches, as I am about the rat droppings in the corner", I murmured.
Every day, I watched as the nurses tossed bloody sheets, towels, face flannels and a varied assortment of "linen" into large bags to be sent to the laundry, and wondered, were they sorted into special machines? What happened to all those sheets from patients know to have MRSA? Where did that sheet, that was just put on your child's hospital bed,... come from? How do you know it's sterile? And why was that stethoscope so blithly around the doctor's neck, so casually shoved down one shirt, and then down the next, with no thought of cross-infection?
How was it that these medics considered anything to do with them, ... automatically cleaned? With what? Ritual dogma?
In 1997 while watching our son in Middlemore for a week, nothing had changed. Cleaning staff's idea of doing a job was still a cursory whistle around the room, and I can't blame them for wanting to get out faster than they came in. Slide your finger along the shelves - and the sink - don't be surprised at the result. Look upwards at the vents which lead into the ceiling. Have a good look at the mattresses and the springs under the bed.
One of the worst rooms I saw photographic evidence for in the last two years, was an isolation room in Starship. Even there, medical staff still don't wash their hands between every patient, and I would still love to test all those "white" coats - their ubiquitous symbol of "purity"......
I could go on, but surely, anyone with half a brain can see - with their own eyes - without being given mortality stats by a doctor - that the most dangerous and unsanitary places you could possible be in, are hospitals, and doctors' surgeries - anywhere where sick and injured people mingle and the vaccinated staff think that they are bulletproof, while considering the unvaccinated, "typhoid marys" to be eliminated.....
And surely anyone with half a brain can see the hypocrisy of this same group of people pointing the finger at the unvaccinated.
(PS. A small consolation for you. I have it on good authority, that two years ago, in Auckland hospital in the ECMO room, you could eat off the floor no problem.) Read Full Blog