I’m arguing with someone on a different board about vaccination schedules for kids, and she has come up with an argument that I haven’t seen before, and I’m not able to find any information about it online.
Any idea what she’s talking about? Do healthy adults actually become immunocompromised due to the way that the T2 is stimulated to force antibody production? What does that even mean?
Vaccinations don’t “force” immunity any more than diseases themselves do. If you want insight in exactly how each vaccine on the current schedule (as well as some that aren’t, like rabies and smallpox) read Paul Offit’s Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases. It’s partially a biography of a man named Maurice Hilleman, the research doctor who developed most of the current vaccines in use. Yep. One person is responsible for about 75% of the vaccines in use. The book also touches on the history of vaccinations (Jenner, et al.) and mentions things like the Cutter incident, but mainly what lay people will get out of the book is a technical understanding of how vaccines work.
That post you read looked like a word salad to me, but I have contacted two of my cousins, one who is an MD with a family practice, and one who has a Ph.D in biochemistry, and studies viruses. The second one probably knows the most, but she is in the middle of planning her wedding, so I don’t know how soon she can get back to me.
I know a few people who try to link, unsuccessfully, an immune disorder called neutropenia with vaccines, but it’s a white cell deficiency, and at any rate, some people experience a mild, transient form of it following viral infections (if you ever heard of someone being prescribed an antibiotic for a viral infection, it’s probably someone who gets this), so vaccines probably prevent it rather than cause it. Anyway, that’s the closest thing I’ve ever heard to vaccines being linked to immuno-suppression.
no, and she has no idea either. don’t waste your time arguing with her, and keep your kids (if you have any) far away from hers.
If I had to guess, I would say T2 is referring to the Th2 immune response which is part of antibody production. Th2 is a type of T helper cell which, as its name suggests, helps other immune cells mount a proper response. I’ve never heard of a Th2 response driving immunosuppression.
That’s a good idea.
Thanks for all the responses - I had a feeling she was talking out of her ass.
Or the T2 antibodies that are part of several tests for diseases, HIV for one. At any rate, I think she’s quoting something out of context, and has gotten it wrong, and has no idea what she’s talking about. She may have gotten some vestige of one of the old theories that HIV was introduced to Africa deliberately in MMR vaccines.
Actually, there was some concern once that HIV could have contaminated, IIRC, HepB vaccines (I think it was HepB-- maybe it was something else, but it doesn’t really matter for this story) because they used human serum in the research, which was conducted in the mid-70s on samples from infected people, and later, when HIV was discovered, the high rate of co-morbidity of HIV and HepB was cause for concern, but it turned out that the attenuating and filtering process had gotten rid of any HIV that might have been present. I can’t find the book to double-check the story and am repeating from memory, so sorry if I got a detail wrong; my point is, I can imagine several ways the poster the OP quoted lifted a detail from one of these stories and got it turned around to confuse tests for disease with tests for vaccine titers, or something.
OK. Did some unpleasant browsing on anti-vax sites. It seems she’s talking about helper-T cells. This is part of the belief some anti-vaxxers have that “natural immunity” (ie, getting a disease) is better for you than a vaccine. Vaccines, so it goes, produce “artificial” immunity, and are bad for your immune system in the long run, because the “toxins” in them do your immune system more harm than good, according to one site I found. I can find no suggestion of a mechanism in the long run, other than “toxins,” just quotes that certain percentages of vaccinated people, amounting to large numbers of people, get immune system disorders. Given the high number of vaccinated people, you could probably find high numbers of immune disorders among people who drink orange juice, or were born in a hospital.
Don’t bother to argue with this person. She’s just trying to find reasons for something she already made up her mind about. But you knew that.
I took one for the team and was arguing with anti-vaxxers for a while yesterday - my brain hurts! I was busy addressing the idea that 30 vaccinations would be too much for a child’s immune system, so either you should just skip them, or you should do them on an adjusted schedule.
I guess we all have to wade into anti-vaxx territory once in a while, so we know the enemy.
She has responded to my request for citations for this information:
That’s actually a link to an abstract on NIH’s (NCBI) PubMed database:
So, it’s actually from some people at Univ of BC, not NIH. Interesting that your person doesn’t understand what PubMed is.
The other article is a review behind a paywall.
Okay, more research done - it sounds like there is a question about how the aluminum in vaccines does what it does, but it seems like they’ve been using it for quite a while with no notable adverse effects.
As for aluminum as a heavy metal and should not be put in your body, to start with, aluminum salts (aluminum hydroxide, aluminum phosphate, or potassium aluminum sulfate) are used, not, like, aluminum foil. Also, the amounts you’d be taking in with vaccines would be minute.
I don’t think she has much of a scientific leg to stand on.
So, I had CNN on this morning and at about 10 mins to 10am they did a piece on the measles.
They mentioned the study linked above and it appears it was funded by anti-vaxxer foundations. I found the pdf of the article here:
http://www.meerwetenoverfreek.nl/images/stories/Tomljenovic_Shaw-CMC-published.pdf
and in the Acknowledgements section they state:
These appear to be anti-vaccine groups:
[I’m not familiar with this blog, so I can’t vouch with how reliable it is]
Thursday, August 15, 2013
A Snapshot of the Deep Pockets of the Anti-Vaccine Movement
[My bold]
Shaw and Tomljenovic are the authors of the linked UBC study, and:
Also:
Now, isn’t one of the criticisms of research funded by “BigPharma” is that it returns the exact favorable results that the pharma company wants and so can’t be trusted?
Some of these people could use a look in the mirror.
Tomljenovic and Shaw (a pair of opthalmologists with a, um, keen interest in vaccines), have churned out a quantity of poorly received and debunked research in recent years purporting to show vaccines cause autism, death, hemorrhoids etc. etc.
They rank barely above the Geiers in terms of credibility.
Thanks for the links. I wasn’t familiar with them, but it took all of about five minutes to see they weren’t really legit.
I can just see Cat Whisperer’s arguer sputtering “But,…but, they’re from NIH! Their abstract is on a nih.gov website!”
It reminds me of a time in grad school when another student said to our journal club: “This paper is from Harvard, so you know it must be good.”
Aluminum is not a heavy metal. Part of why it is used so much in industry is because it is so light.
Aluminum phosphide is toxic in large amounts, but I don 't think that’s what is used in vaccines, anyway. It’s used as a pesticide for stored grain in India, where it apparently has become a popular suicide drug, consumed directly from the container. I don’t think there are problems with grain it has been used on, though, as long as the directions are followed, because very little is used at once, and it dissipates.
Aluminum, however, has no biological use for humans-- it’s not a necessary mineral, like iron or copper, and because it can be toxic in certain forms, it gets classified as toxic, so it makes lists of “heavy metals” sometimes, since people equate heavy metals with “toxic.” Obviously, some heavy metals, like iron, are essential for life, and others are harmless. Using “heavy” as a byword for “toxic” is a misnomer.
Boffking is right, that aluminum is very light.
Aluminum phosphide can be abused --> some form of aluminum is in vaccines --> vaccines are bad is just “Bridges are made of paper” thinking again.