…I love your assertion of “being more informed”, yet being so virtually fact-free about the issue. All I’m saying is – look outside the bubble. And just because something is contrary to “received wisdom”, it doesn’t automatically lend it legitimacy or truth…
Cenk, it is not about better vaccines or no mercury. You also have to improve on your research. Look for sciencebasedmedicine.org, for example, for your information. Since about 2008 the US Government bowed to pressure and took all the mercury from the vaccines for the basic schedule, even though they had mountains of evidence demonstrating that the mercury had not produced Autism or any other alleged side effect.
The problem is psychological, not medical. Lots of people since the dawn of vaccines have had problems with the intrusive nature of vaccines, combined with the need for a leap of faith, whereby you do not feel sick but have to accept the instructions of a doctor, and then you generally don’t get sick, so you never could know if the vaccine worked or not. It is like the fear of flying. I am an idiot who has crashed his car a few times, but I feel safer in my car, with me driving, than in a commercial airliner that will fly some 500 years non-stop before there is a 50% chance of an accident, but I cannot be in control of it myself.
The campaigns against vaccination did not start with Autism, they did not start with mercury, and they did not end when mercury was removed from the basic schedule of vaccines. They did not stop when Andrew Wakefield, the (in my opinion) criminal who started the current wave of anti-vaccination was proven to be fraudulent and stripped of his license to practice medicine. These campaigns will stop only when people start treating science with the respect it deserves.
It should be noted for the record that many of the most common vaccines never contained mercury, those that did substantially reduced or eliminated it entirely from children’s vaccines 15 years ago, and the form of mercury that they contained, which prevents bacterial growth, is easily and harmlessly eliminated from the human body. It isn’t the harmful form of mercury. If you still are irrationally concerned about it, the CDC has a publicly posted list of which vaccines do and do not contain it. Even for those that do (like the flu shot), there is often a mercuey free version as well.
Let’s also note that the organic (i.e., carbon/hydrogen/oxygen plus a bit of nitrogen, sulfur etc) part of the thiomersal molecule is so relatively large and complex compared to most dangerous mercury compounds, it is EXTREMELY unlikely that mercury will be available to react. Most thiomersal is, in fact, excreted in feces and urine with the mercury attached.
So the exposure is -even- lower than the amount would indicate.
Additionally, thiomersal is extremely water soluble (it has to be for a vaccine – otherwise it’d be an oily layer on top, or a powdery precipitate on the bottom of the vial), which means that it will not accumulate in body fat either (think water+oil – they don’t mix), nor will it penetrate into the brain or nervous tissue elsewhere.
Fat-soluble mercury is extremely dangerous – for instance, dimethyl mercury, which has a lethal dose of less than a mg. It is completely insoluble in water.
With thiomersal, the solubility is above 2 pounds per liter of water. That’s extreme water solubility, which means that thiomersal does not cause mercury poisoning both in short and long timeframes, because a requirement for that is low/no water solubility.
Sure, you can find web sites saying “BUT IT CONTAINS MERCURY” and “IT’LL POISON YOU”. But, if you look into actual science (or basic college chemistry/pharmacology), it is obvious that it, in fact will not—not even in doses that are hundreds of times those you would receive with all the vaccines you receive in a lifetime.
I’m sorry, but with doctors being inundated by pharma sales people , with at the most a bachelors degree doing the bidding of their corporate masters, day in and day out even the doctors have no idea of what they are prescribing. An informed person MUST do research on this shit the doctors are prescribing because even they don’t know the side effects of this medicine. Yes, ask the professional! Ask them a lot of questions, but also be informed about this shit pharma has gotten approved by the FDA mostly untested shit. Don’t just take it for granted the doctors knows all and is god. I am not saying do not vaccinate, but know what is going on… geez, I can’t believe i have to go on a rant, but then I remind myself I live in the most corrupt, most entertained, most ignorant country in the world.
The problem is, geoforms, that science literacy is extremely low in the US (and the world generally). So people take dramatic takeaways from, say, a scientific paper, that just aren’t there.
For instance, “There was a statistically significant increase in the frequency of adverse events by 24%”. That doesn’t mean that 24% of people got an adverse event—it means that the frequency was the baseline * 1.24. Which is a muuuch smaller number in most cases.
Similarly, most people don’t understand statistical phenomena such as noise, and various forms of bias. Thus, if you want to read scientific stuff—and if you want to “do research”, that is what you should do—you really should introduce yourself to those things.
Plus, people have a haaard time telling pseudoscience from real science, and people will tend to understand towards the most easily understandable version of things, because “the simple explanation is the best” and “common sense” – neither of which have any god damn bearing on the truth, the science or the actual data.
Finally, most of the sites people seem to research on, are sites that themselves have a sales agenda (“natural” products, alternative “treatments” et cetera). The only difference is that the stuff these guys are peddling as supplements is subject to /NO/ verifiable quality or efficacy control. So you’re essentially choosing to put faith in something – which is just as irrational as religion. Just because something’s been used for thousands of years, doesn’t mean it’s any good or harmless (classic examples include arsenic, lead, mercury, hemlock, jimson weed…). Hint – it’s not “alternative treatment” if there is ACTUAL evidence for its efficacy.
And nope – I’m not a pharma shill. I have no relation to that industry at all, nor any particular love for it. But it so hurts me when I see people think “they are doing the research”, and in reality, are falling for the fanciful fantasies peddled by frauds and hucksters who are out to score an easy buck with “natural” and “alternative” products and treatments.
You are a shill. The information these doctors get on most of what they prescribe is from the company itself whose only objective is to increase sales and stock prices. Thanks to Ronald Raygun and other neoliberal pigs that infest so-called American Leadership that is all they have to do. And as for personal research, yes you have to filter and most Americans do not seem to have that ability, but don’t blindly follow the advice of doctors without knowing WTF he is telling you to take – he/she gets a kickback on prescriptions – yes a profit motive. Yeah, I trust them big time knowing they are making extra money pushing more shit. This isn’t fucking science it’s marketing and frankly I don’t think you know the difference Devastatin’ Dave. I see you have ‘statin’ in your name, high colesterol aye?
I agree that you should never take anyone’s word as good without any backup. But the problem is that the information most people will be able to “research” is bad – and has just as much a profit motive as the big pharma stuff. On a smaller scale, yes.
But don’t think the alternative therapy / food supplement industry is an angel—’cause it ain’t.
And nope, I’m not a shill. I don’t own stock in anything pharma-related (or anything at all). I don’t work and haven’t worked for the pharma or chemical industry. I’ve never received a dime from it in any context, whatsoever.
The Devastatin’ Dave is a jocular reference, since my name is David. Try searching for Devastatin’ Dave on Google Images – it’s one of the funniest album covers in the world, probably. I don’t use statins—I’m 27, healthy and not on any drug therapy. In fact, statins are a really good example of how science works, because recent SCIENTIFIC research showed a very limited effect on survivability of the most used statins.
Big Pharma didn’t get to hide that—and it’s already having an effect on doctors in the entire western world, who are reviewing statin-using patients. And no, they didn’t prescribe them before because they got paid off by the pharma industry, but because independent research showed a survival advantage compared to placebo.
I view this not just through the prism of the USA. In my country, Denmark, for instance, doctors are not allowed to be reimbursed by or get perks from the pharmaceutical industry in any way. The drug agency has rules against pharma employees getting to play a regulatory role (hint, Denmark is one of the least corrupt countries in the world). But our recommendations regarding pharmacotherapy and vaccines are very similar to those in the US—because they are based on actual, peer-reviewed, INDEPENDENT science. Not science funded directly or indirectly by the pharma industry. INDEPENDENT science.
Additionally, most vaccines worldwide—and not just in the 3rd world—are made by government agencies. A lot of immunotherapeutics (polyvalent immunoglobulin for instance) are, too. And there is no profit motive there, either…
So please, get more informed. Big pharma behaves badly, for sure. But that does not mean there is a huge mega-conspiracy… The world does not end at the US border either…
Don’t tell me get more informed… I am more informed about this issue then you and most of your people! But since I live in this fascist country, my focus is what is going on here and where my outrage over American bullshit is, that yes, spills over into the rest of the world.
Sorry dude, unless you have a degree in microbiology you have neither the brain capacity not the mental one to judge whether vaccines are good or bad.
The same vaccines you use are prescribed world wide where big pharma doesn’t exist and virtually all vaccines are developed by government institutions not big pharma which actually wants idiots like this woman to continue their Quixotic crusade which will eventually enhance their bottom line because the drugs used to fight the diseases that should have been prevented by vaccines are patent protected and extremely expensive.
I can speak from experience as a residency trained family physician that we do not prescribe medications just because we are acquainted with them through bid pharma research. As far as getting kickbacks, many of the national medical academies and associations condemn the practice of physicians taking perks from big pharma and many institutions forbid it.
As a physician, I may not know everything about a drug but I at least look at its profile, independent university studies about efficacy, and use a scorecard developed by my medical association which allows one to review drugs based on several characteristics not just sales talk. Also many of us are inclined to consult with or have patients consult with pharmacists who cannot subscribe medications so have little incentives to recommend specific drugs.
Further, because of the insurance companies, we have formularies from which we must prescribe and these typically include generics and older medications as the only ones covered. There is no incentive to choose new drugs generally and as a matter of FACT many older drugs are just as efficacious and with well known side effects than new drugs.
No, I am not and neither are our colleagues are gods and the god complex died years ago especially as there are monetary incentives to develop medical homes and provide patient-centered care. Further, in some European countries, physicians are trained in the use of evidence-based traditional herbal practices and here in the US, thousands of physicians are trained in integrative medicine and thousands more accept it or refer patients to practitioners who do.
The practice of inoculation was practiced in Africa and Asia for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years before Jenner figured out the relationship between cowpox and preventing smallpox. Immunization is not new and the general hysteria around the practice is unwarranted. It is true some people may be harmed by them and hopefully with increasing research in genomics we will soon be able to deliver truly personalized medicine which treats individuals as unique and we will be able to identify who may not benefit from particular treatments.
I rarely respond to posts about this subject but as a doctor, I take the seriously the Latin root of that word which is doctore. Doctore means to teach and that is my primary task after listening and providing comfort. I must be a scientist to teach with integrity so although big pharma controls many aspects of treatment, they do not control the most important aspects of doctoring.
Comments
…I love your assertion of “being more informed”, yet being so virtually fact-free about the issue. All I’m saying is – look outside the bubble. And just because something is contrary to “received wisdom”, it doesn’t automatically lend it legitimacy or truth…
Cenk, it is not about better vaccines or no mercury. You also have to improve on your research. Look for sciencebasedmedicine.org, for example, for your information. Since about 2008 the US Government bowed to pressure and took all the mercury from the vaccines for the basic schedule, even though they had mountains of evidence demonstrating that the mercury had not produced Autism or any other alleged side effect.
The problem is psychological, not medical. Lots of people since the dawn of vaccines have had problems with the intrusive nature of vaccines, combined with the need for a leap of faith, whereby you do not feel sick but have to accept the instructions of a doctor, and then you generally don’t get sick, so you never could know if the vaccine worked or not. It is like the fear of flying. I am an idiot who has crashed his car a few times, but I feel safer in my car, with me driving, than in a commercial airliner that will fly some 500 years non-stop before there is a 50% chance of an accident, but I cannot be in control of it myself.
The campaigns against vaccination did not start with Autism, they did not start with mercury, and they did not end when mercury was removed from the basic schedule of vaccines. They did not stop when Andrew Wakefield, the (in my opinion) criminal who started the current wave of anti-vaccination was proven to be fraudulent and stripped of his license to practice medicine. These campaigns will stop only when people start treating science with the respect it deserves.
It should be noted for the record that many of the most common vaccines never contained mercury, those that did substantially reduced or eliminated it entirely from children’s vaccines 15 years ago, and the form of mercury that they contained, which prevents bacterial growth, is easily and harmlessly eliminated from the human body. It isn’t the harmful form of mercury. If you still are irrationally concerned about it, the CDC has a publicly posted list of which vaccines do and do not contain it. Even for those that do (like the flu shot), there is often a mercuey free version as well.
Let’s also note that the organic (i.e., carbon/hydrogen/oxygen plus a bit of nitrogen, sulfur etc) part of the thiomersal molecule is so relatively large and complex compared to most dangerous mercury compounds, it is EXTREMELY unlikely that mercury will be available to react. Most thiomersal is, in fact, excreted in feces and urine with the mercury attached.
So the exposure is -even- lower than the amount would indicate.
Additionally, thiomersal is extremely water soluble (it has to be for a vaccine – otherwise it’d be an oily layer on top, or a powdery precipitate on the bottom of the vial), which means that it will not accumulate in body fat either (think water+oil – they don’t mix), nor will it penetrate into the brain or nervous tissue elsewhere.
Fat-soluble mercury is extremely dangerous – for instance, dimethyl mercury, which has a lethal dose of less than a mg. It is completely insoluble in water.
With thiomersal, the solubility is above 2 pounds per liter of water. That’s extreme water solubility, which means that thiomersal does not cause mercury poisoning both in short and long timeframes, because a requirement for that is low/no water solubility.
Sure, you can find web sites saying “BUT IT CONTAINS MERCURY” and “IT’LL POISON YOU”. But, if you look into actual science (or basic college chemistry/pharmacology), it is obvious that it, in fact will not—not even in doses that are hundreds of times those you would receive with all the vaccines you receive in a lifetime.
I’m sorry, but with doctors being inundated by pharma sales people , with at the most a bachelors degree doing the bidding of their corporate masters, day in and day out even the doctors have no idea of what they are prescribing. An informed person MUST do research on this shit the doctors are prescribing because even they don’t know the side effects of this medicine. Yes, ask the professional! Ask them a lot of questions, but also be informed about this shit pharma has gotten approved by the FDA mostly untested shit. Don’t just take it for granted the doctors knows all and is god. I am not saying do not vaccinate, but know what is going on… geez, I can’t believe i have to go on a rant, but then I remind myself I live in the most corrupt, most entertained, most ignorant country in the world.
The problem is, geoforms, that science literacy is extremely low in the US (and the world generally). So people take dramatic takeaways from, say, a scientific paper, that just aren’t there.
For instance, “There was a statistically significant increase in the frequency of adverse events by 24%”. That doesn’t mean that 24% of people got an adverse event—it means that the frequency was the baseline * 1.24. Which is a muuuch smaller number in most cases.
Similarly, most people don’t understand statistical phenomena such as noise, and various forms of bias. Thus, if you want to read scientific stuff—and if you want to “do research”, that is what you should do—you really should introduce yourself to those things.
Plus, people have a haaard time telling pseudoscience from real science, and people will tend to understand towards the most easily understandable version of things, because “the simple explanation is the best” and “common sense” – neither of which have any god damn bearing on the truth, the science or the actual data.
Finally, most of the sites people seem to research on, are sites that themselves have a sales agenda (“natural” products, alternative “treatments” et cetera). The only difference is that the stuff these guys are peddling as supplements is subject to /NO/ verifiable quality or efficacy control. So you’re essentially choosing to put faith in something – which is just as irrational as religion. Just because something’s been used for thousands of years, doesn’t mean it’s any good or harmless (classic examples include arsenic, lead, mercury, hemlock, jimson weed…). Hint – it’s not “alternative treatment” if there is ACTUAL evidence for its efficacy.
And nope – I’m not a pharma shill. I have no relation to that industry at all, nor any particular love for it. But it so hurts me when I see people think “they are doing the research”, and in reality, are falling for the fanciful fantasies peddled by frauds and hucksters who are out to score an easy buck with “natural” and “alternative” products and treatments.
You are a shill. The information these doctors get on most of what they prescribe is from the company itself whose only objective is to increase sales and stock prices. Thanks to Ronald Raygun and other neoliberal pigs that infest so-called American Leadership that is all they have to do. And as for personal research, yes you have to filter and most Americans do not seem to have that ability, but don’t blindly follow the advice of doctors without knowing WTF he is telling you to take – he/she gets a kickback on prescriptions – yes a profit motive. Yeah, I trust them big time knowing they are making extra money pushing more shit. This isn’t fucking science it’s marketing and frankly I don’t think you know the difference Devastatin’ Dave. I see you have ‘statin’ in your name, high colesterol aye?
I agree that you should never take anyone’s word as good without any backup. But the problem is that the information most people will be able to “research” is bad – and has just as much a profit motive as the big pharma stuff. On a smaller scale, yes.
But don’t think the alternative therapy / food supplement industry is an angel—’cause it ain’t.
And nope, I’m not a shill. I don’t own stock in anything pharma-related (or anything at all). I don’t work and haven’t worked for the pharma or chemical industry. I’ve never received a dime from it in any context, whatsoever.
The Devastatin’ Dave is a jocular reference, since my name is David. Try searching for Devastatin’ Dave on Google Images – it’s one of the funniest album covers in the world, probably. I don’t use statins—I’m 27, healthy and not on any drug therapy. In fact, statins are a really good example of how science works, because recent SCIENTIFIC research showed a very limited effect on survivability of the most used statins.
Big Pharma didn’t get to hide that—and it’s already having an effect on doctors in the entire western world, who are reviewing statin-using patients. And no, they didn’t prescribe them before because they got paid off by the pharma industry, but because independent research showed a survival advantage compared to placebo.
I view this not just through the prism of the USA. In my country, Denmark, for instance, doctors are not allowed to be reimbursed by or get perks from the pharmaceutical industry in any way. The drug agency has rules against pharma employees getting to play a regulatory role (hint, Denmark is one of the least corrupt countries in the world). But our recommendations regarding pharmacotherapy and vaccines are very similar to those in the US—because they are based on actual, peer-reviewed, INDEPENDENT science. Not science funded directly or indirectly by the pharma industry. INDEPENDENT science.
Additionally, most vaccines worldwide—and not just in the 3rd world—are made by government agencies. A lot of immunotherapeutics (polyvalent immunoglobulin for instance) are, too. And there is no profit motive there, either…
So please, get more informed. Big pharma behaves badly, for sure. But that does not mean there is a huge mega-conspiracy… The world does not end at the US border either…
Don’t tell me get more informed… I am more informed about this issue then you and most of your people! But since I live in this fascist country, my focus is what is going on here and where my outrage over American bullshit is, that yes, spills over into the rest of the world.
Sorry dude, unless you have a degree in microbiology you have neither the brain capacity not the mental one to judge whether vaccines are good or bad.
The same vaccines you use are prescribed world wide where big pharma doesn’t exist and virtually all vaccines are developed by government institutions not big pharma which actually wants idiots like this woman to continue their Quixotic crusade which will eventually enhance their bottom line because the drugs used to fight the diseases that should have been prevented by vaccines are patent protected and extremely expensive.
I can speak from experience as a residency trained family physician that we do not prescribe medications just because we are acquainted with them through bid pharma research. As far as getting kickbacks, many of the national medical academies and associations condemn the practice of physicians taking perks from big pharma and many institutions forbid it.
As a physician, I may not know everything about a drug but I at least look at its profile, independent university studies about efficacy, and use a scorecard developed by my medical association which allows one to review drugs based on several characteristics not just sales talk. Also many of us are inclined to consult with or have patients consult with pharmacists who cannot subscribe medications so have little incentives to recommend specific drugs.
Further, because of the insurance companies, we have formularies from which we must prescribe and these typically include generics and older medications as the only ones covered. There is no incentive to choose new drugs generally and as a matter of FACT many older drugs are just as efficacious and with well known side effects than new drugs.
No, I am not and neither are our colleagues are gods and the god complex died years ago especially as there are monetary incentives to develop medical homes and provide patient-centered care. Further, in some European countries, physicians are trained in the use of evidence-based traditional herbal practices and here in the US, thousands of physicians are trained in integrative medicine and thousands more accept it or refer patients to practitioners who do.
The practice of inoculation was practiced in Africa and Asia for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years before Jenner figured out the relationship between cowpox and preventing smallpox. Immunization is not new and the general hysteria around the practice is unwarranted. It is true some people may be harmed by them and hopefully with increasing research in genomics we will soon be able to deliver truly personalized medicine which treats individuals as unique and we will be able to identify who may not benefit from particular treatments.
I rarely respond to posts about this subject but as a doctor, I take the seriously the Latin root of that word which is doctore. Doctore means to teach and that is my primary task after listening and providing comfort. I must be a scientist to teach with integrity so although big pharma controls many aspects of treatment, they do not control the most important aspects of doctoring.
#clownlivesmatter