Friday, November 28, 2008

Measles

If "Measles is about the most infectious virus we know. It just spreads like wildfire", why have just 60 children caught the infection out of 10,000 in Cheshire!?!

PS I had measles three years ago so now have lifelong immunity to the disease...

PPS How many of the 1,049 new measles cases had already been vaccinated!?! "Due to the damage to the immune system, ONLY the vaccinated are contracting the atypical forms of the diseases, which are more serious than the typical forms, e.g. the rash in atypical measles moves in the wrong direction, heading straight for the vital organs instead of away from them, resulting in those serious cases of pneumonia, meningitis, etc, we keep getting told about.".

"Outbreaks often occur soon after the vaccination programs (e.g. Corpus Christi, 1985 where, by the way, ALL those who contracted measles were vaccinated, the unvaccinated 1% did not!)".
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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Back in the good old pre measles vaccination days how many died or got permanent damage ?
would be nice to have this for balance.

1:01 am
SaltedSlug said...

Here again are we?

It just spreads like wildfire", why have just 60 children caught the infection out of 10,000 in Cheshire!?!

Erm, because not all of those 10000 were exposed to the disease? Because when a child gets sick the parents keep them home?
I mean if 60 kids were exposed and all 60 caught it and were isolated at home until they weren't contagious any more, that would kind of be what you'd expect, right?

Due to the damage to the immune system...
What damage? What system? There is no one system to damage. Our bodies have a myriad of different processes all of which fall under the banner of "immune system". The only way to 'strengthen' this system (WRT Measles) is to either:

A) Develop the relevant antibodies 'naturally' by catching the disease and possibly going blind or dying (The fact that you didn't means nothing to the ones who did).

or

B) Develop the antibodies artificially by vaccination and possibly getting a sore arm/headache.

"Outbreaks often occur soon after the vaccination programs

No, they often happen after some tabloid vaccine scaremongering causes parents to stop vaccinating their kids.

(e.g. Corpus Christi, 1985 where, by the way, ALL those who contracted measles were vaccinated, the unvaccinated 1% did not!)"

Misleadingly stated. Abstract from the NEJM here
Conclusion: Shit happens and vaccines aren't perfect. And because they're not perfect they rely on herd immunity, and if that is compromised the system fails. Bearing in mind that this is the only stated example, (which is 23 years old) this is entirely what you'd expect if you had a system which was 99% effective - breakouts which barely ever happen.


Oh and the atypical measles thing is caused by someone being incompletely vaccinated using either the old 'dead' vaccine or the new one which has been buggered by incorrect storage.

Details


Although I must ask, bearing in mind your obvious scepticism (nothing wrong with that), what would convince you that vaccination WERE worthwhile?

4:56 pm
Anonymous said...

That's an interesting article. Given the way that science so often turns into unchallengable dogma it would not suprise me at all if it was correct.

I don't recall anyone ever having huge problems with measles either, like chicken pox it was a trivial illness.

4:56 pm
Mark Wadsworth said...

What Xoggoth says.

Word veri: redlegen, which is frustratingly two letters away from "red leg' (apt to a measles debate) and one letter away from 'red legend' (which is something which Snafu is not).

10:14 pm
Snafu said...

Saltedslug, I'm sure you are right
however, what I find disturbing is that when my daughter was vaccinated, not once did a medic raise any concerns or express any doubts about the effectiveness or the dangers of a whole range of vaccinations that are injected en masse.

Like most things in life, it's a tight-rope of balancing the pros and cons of ones actions but I would like to be aware of the cons before jumping aboard!

PS If the rubella vaccine is only effective for twenty years, should women of child bearing age (say fifteen for arguments sake) be given the rubella jab rather than babies?

PPS As for what would make vaccinations worthwhile, it has to be based on cost benefit analyis. I can imagine nothing worse than being a parent whose decision to innoculate their child leads to serious harm. I like to have as much information to had as possible rather than blindly trust the pharma giants.

10:56 pm
SaltedSlug said...

Fair enough. I'm not speaking as a parent and so perhaps lack perspective.

That said, the reason that the medical professionals don't mention the 'dangers' as detailed in the article you linked to (and the likes of Whale.to and jabs.org.uk etc.) is that -in all probability- they don't actually exist.
Don't get me wrong, vaccines are not without fault (indeed medical science isn't perfect by any means and Big Pharma don't help the argument by often being morally reprehensible), but the risks involved are tiny. The worst risk from MMR, for example, is that the child is allergic and suffers anaphylactic shock - but this is true of a plethora of things which the child may come in to contact with.

My point is, big pharma wouldn't be able to cover up the problems with a vaccination used in over ninety countries(MMR), to millions of kids if in fact there was an obvious threat to their health; the combined epidemiological data would be damning. Bear in mind that although they may fund the vaccine research, and have an obvious interest in the vaccine being seen to be good, all medical research has to pass arduous testing and clinical trials independent of the manufacturer, and the scientific peer review process -whilst not ideal- is the best we could probably hope for. There are many sources of information independent of big pharma (The Cochrane Collaboration for example) who would be a better first stop. Just because they agree with the consensus doesn't make them part of the conspiracy.

I would just say, it's best to be wary of sites which represent the 'fringe' of science -especially when they're selling books, are touting altmed or are just nuts (like whale.to).

Christ, I do go on.

P.S - Re: Rubella - I have no idea, I was at school pre-MMR and so all the 12yo girls had the rubella jab back then. But checking the NHS website, apparently they check you for rubella immunity in the early stages of pregnancy, and do stuff based on that. But it seems that they try to sort out the main proliferators(kids) with MMR and hope that removes the problem.

I'm going to stop now.

12:48 pm

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