don’t believe there are any poster saying there are zero instances of children harmed by vaccines. but vaccines **do ** prevent large #s of kid damaged/killed by the diseases they prevent.
foresam
Sorry to have been so long getting back to you, time zones being what they are and your entertainment quotient being too low to be worth sitting up after midnight… Never mind. “200 times as much mercury as is thought to be safe” according to who? Mercury in what form? Are we talking about ethyl, methyl, metallic, what? And in exchange for what? Would I do it just for fun? No. Would I do it in return for my daughter avoiding weeks of misery and a significant chance of deafness, blindness, and death? I would (and did) do it in a heartbeat.
Things are just not as black & white as you’d like them to be.
As an oh-by-the-way, like you, I suffered through mumps and measles and other things that kids used to get because no one could stop them. I missed chicken pox thanks to blind luck. When my daughter was born she was damn-sure vaccinated against the usual childhood diseases plus TB, hep A and B and some more things. I was also immunized against chicken pox. None of us became autistic. Using the rules of evidence that you seem to use, I’d say you were full of shit or we would have been autistic.
I notice that a lot of your posts refer to malpractice and how doctors and pharmaceutical companies are covering up so they don’t have to pay for their mistakes. Now that you’ve mentioned it, you wouldn’t be involved in any legal action against vaccine companies would you? I have a suspicion that you’ve tried to make money off of this, the evidence didn’t support you, and now you’re trying to change the evidence. You’d find a better audience for your bullshit if you stuck with fucking Oprah and Jerry Springer and the like. Most of their audience gets their science news from the National Enquirer and similar quality news media.
As an aside, what you’re doing to your son (assuming you actually have a son) is bordering on abuse. You’re subjecting him to medical techniques which are unnecessary and I suspect you lack the training to do it properly or recognize/treat side effects when they occur. With luck, someone will remove that child from your care and get him some real help instead of the fucking snake-oil you’re presently giving him.
Testy
Well there’s screening and there’s screening. What I can give proof of is that screening in the manner advised by that and a similar AAP policy statement has not increased in that time. This study documents that pediatricians have persisted in being unreliable users of standardized screening. That mere 23% doing formal screening is about the same as was reported in similar studies from 1998 and 1978. And that’s for the most widely used instrument, the Denver. Virtually no one actually uses the CHAT (the Checklist for Autism in Toddlers).
What we actually do is ask a few of our favorite milestones in each age range and ask open ended questions. What we’ve gotten gradually better at over the past 20 years that I’ve been in the biz (no proof to offer here other than my eye-witnessing it) is listening to the answers. The availability of early intervention services has us motivated to look more because we can do more. We want to find that which we can offer help with. But no, docs weren’t routinely screening and we still aren’t. Not as guidelines would have us do it anyway. (A separate debate among pediatricians is whether our clinical and informal developmental assessments, which have been the mainstay of pediatrics since the beginning of the profession, are good enough if we actually listen well. I think they are.)
And I plead guilty to the charge of wanting to maximize public health and of seeing that immunization programs have done much to that end. I am also aware of the real risks associated with vaccine programs. The mild ones are common and the serious ones extremely rare, but they are indeed non-zero. But , no, the black helicopters forget to drop off my copy of the master plan to harm children.
As to foresam and his cite … hey, he at least tried to come up with a study. It’s a small start. True it was the Geiers, infamous for conclusion first and then make the data fit by whatever means necessary and who have profited tremendously by the vaccine conspiracy hysteria that they keep fanning. Rebuked by judges multiple times for intellectual dishonesty. But still it is a cite. Not one that shows much of anything even if we believed the data for a variety of reasons and one that is contradictory to the vast majority of other data collected. But for foresam … it’s almost like seeing Frankenstein’s Monster learn to put on a top hat. But not quite.
come on guys suck it up. Polio is no big thing. This guy had polio and became the president. Didn’t seem to bother him.
Oh wait, what’s that? Why does his chair have wheels on it? 
:smack:
Oh yeah, I remember, polio cripples.
Sierra Indigo
foresam’s belief that thymerosol causes autism has the status of a religious belief. No amount of evidence is ever going to make him rethink that. I agree that it’s a waste of time to really debate the guy. OTOH, I just enjoy watching the guy get abused and reviled for being such a dumbass. It’s like watching a bad auto accident that you can’t take your eyes away from. 
Regards
Testy
Concerned Parent
I love the user name. Is the implication that other are not concerned parents? The bottom line is that if you don’t vaccinate your kids, you are not actually a “concerned parent.” Or maybe your concerned but just untrained or not bright enough to figure risk vs. rewards.
Testy
Why don’t you ask some of the 7,226 people here
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/Autism-Mercury/
about using chelation?
The APO proteins may be the answer.
I had this discussion in mind when I chose that name.
I am deeply concerned about the affect Amanda Baggs’ fraud is having on parents and children in the autism world. Sadly, judging by the closure of the second thread, it appears that members of this forum who claim to be ‘fighting ignorance’ don’t believe her Celebrate! Don’t treat! autism propaganda worth worrying about, and I did not receive a response from the moderator when I emailed him or her about my concern.
I am actually beginning to suspect that the Neurodiversity Movement has more than a few supporters from the medical profession, especially when I notice Doctor Hentor the Barbarian linking to ex-DAN! doctor Jim Laidler’s site.
FYI, Laidler blamed vaccination for his sons’ autism and because he had successfully treated them with chelation for heavy metal toxicity, Dr Bernard Rimland chose him to write the “DAN! position paper on Mercury Detoxification of Autistic Children” in 2001. One year later, he recanted, joined the Quackwatch team, and set up Autism Watch.
Tell me something. If your first baby had severe adverse reactions to vaccination and was brain-damaged, would you risk vaccinating subsequent children?
It’s perfectly possible to believe that both the “neurodiversity” and “anti-vaccination” movements are a bunch of crap.
Concerned Parent
It may be true that Roosevelt had something other than polio. OTOH, many people were crippled by polio, some winding up in iron lungs. Polio vaccine has saved a LOT of lives. Whether or not Roosevelt had polio has no bearing on whether polio killed people.
Yes, I would. That assumes that she didn’t have a compromised immune system or some other condition that prevented it. Hell, I’ve had bad reactions to vaccines myself. The Navy gave me a yellow-fever shot once that swelled my arm up like a balloon.
Some children are born defective, that’s just the way it is. I understand it’s comforting to say that some outside influence caused this but that doesn’t make it true, just comforting. It’s even more comforting if it wasn’t just a mistake, but an actual conspiracy.
As far as Amanda Baggs and Droopy and the rest, they’re all self-confessed lunatics of one sort or another. Amanda Baggs seems so incredibly fucked up that she isn’t sure exactly WHAT the hell is wrong with her. Or even whether it’s her or someone else. Debating a lunatic on a message board strikes me as a waste of time.
The problem is that now you’ve attacked something that has maintained public health for many years. Thanks to you and those like you, fewer children are being vaccinated.
When kids die from preventable diseases, don’t stand around wailing and claiming “But I had no idea! Why didn’t someone TELL me.” You have been told. Instead, you and those like you need to line-up for your Darwin Awards.
Testy
A little bit off topic but related.
Why are there exemptions from the required vaccinations before going to school? If it’s a medical necessity I’m all for it but that usually isn’t the case. While I’m wholeheartedly behind the separation of church and state, I don’t think this should be allowed. People who don’t vaccinate their kids risk a lot, and the risk isn’t just limited to the kids belonging to idiots. They can also infect others. Isn’t this allowing religion to go a bit too far?
Regards
Testy
What the fuck? I believe I answered two or three iterations of your question before the thread was closed. I was willing to follow you a ways down the rabbit hole, but only so far, and only if the fucking thread is still open, dummy.
If your question is why do other clinicians have a hard time discerning ADHD from PDD, I can’t speak for other clinicians, can I?
I asked you which features in particular should be so difficult to work out. You failed to respond to that. I can’t see any point in developing a paper in response to a nebulous question of uncertain purpose. What, specifically, should be so difficult about it?
FWIW, my own experience suggests that having a sib who had such a reaction to a vax would be considered by most doctors an “other condition that prevented” vaxing any other chjildren from the same parents. Herd immunity does not require that 100% of the population be vaxed, and (conversely, or is that inversely?) even with that mythical 100% vaxing you would not have 100% protection.
Marienee
Maybe having a sib that had a reaction is a valid reason not to get the other one vaccinated. I’ll admit it could be true but I’ll wait for a doctor to come along and let me know. A real doctor, not one of the anti-vax snake-oil people or a fucking homeopath or something.
I am well aware that herd immunity does not require 100% vaccination and that even if you do vaccinate 100% you still won’t have 100% immunity to a disease. Nothing works 100% of the time. Nevertheless, more of the herd vaccinated is better than fewer.
Also, lets talk about the herd immunity thing. Which herd are we talking about? Is it people in your neighborhood? The US? Worldwide? What? What happens if the kid travels? For sure you better not send them to Asia, or the Middle East, or Africa, or South America, or a hell of a lot of other places. Also, you might want to keep your kid away from anyone that has recently traveled to them. (That’s not a personal “you” by the way. Just general)
Regards
Testy
Well there are times that a kid has features of each. Sometimes it is co-morbidity but one gets the kid a label and the other is just managed. Sometimes it is, as previously discussed, that PDD kids certainly have attentional differences. Casual observation would have a hard time discerning difficulties with shifting attention or splitting attention from inattention and PDD kids may have a hard time sustaining attention on items that have no salience to them. And some ADD kids have some narrow interests and histories of language delays … It really can get difficult sometimes to decide which label is most appropriate. None of which bears on her point but is still true.
No a sib’s alleged rxn is not a contraindication in real life.
And you call yourself “DOCTOR”! I am just amazed. Do you verbally abuse your patients as well?
I’ll ask you again,
“As a doctor and a clinician, do you diagnose toddlers and young children with ASDs?”
Are pediatricians the only people screening for autism, and are they the only ones able to give an autism diagnosis?
Don’t be ridiculous! :rolleyes: No one in their right mind would believe that you or any other medical professional would intentionally harm children. However, there are many in your profession who don’t take vaccine reactions of any kind seriously. From my experience, most reactions are regarded by them as common, insignificant, or coincidental, and very, very few are reported to the proper authorities.
Tell me. As a pediatrician, do you believe that parents are sufficiently informed about diseases called ‘vaccine preventable’ and the real risks of vaccination, to be able to make fully-informed choices for their children? From my experience, doctors bully and emotionally blackmail parents in order to achieve compliance. If parents don’t do it, their baby will be brain-damaged or die from a dreadful disease. Parents with a new baby are extremely vulnerable to fear-mongering. And when things go wrong, the medical profession turns its back on them. They don’t want to know. Do you think it might be because they are financially rewarded for keeping their immunisation rates up, or because they fear losing their licence to practice if they stop promoting and administering vaccines?
Some doctors and pediatricians, as you know, and I am very tempted to write, ‘many’, don’t vaccinate their own children according to the schedule, or don’t vaccinate their children at all. Do you think it’s fair that doctors have the freedom to pick and choose vaccines, or delay vaccination for their own families, and yet demand that the common herd to do as they say and vaccinate their children according to the schedule?
Oh! Perhaps you should let LavenderBlue know that children are damaged by vaccination.
When a child experiences a vaccine-induced encephalopathy, what effect does it have on the child’s subsequent behaviour?
And do you find any similarities between post-encephalitic syndrome and symptoms of autism?
Yes.
There were 26 companies making vaccines a few decades ago. That number is now down to 4. Vaccines are not a big income source for multiple reasons. For one thing, the federal government buys the majority of the vaccines and institutes controls on prices and lots of rules on manufacturing. For another, it is difficult to anticipate demand for some vaccines, like influenza vaccine. In a mild season, many people will not get shots, and if the scientists are wrong about about what strain of flu will prevail (influenza virus mutates frequently), manufacturers are stuck with the wrong vaccine. It’s for reasons like these that so few companies are left, and (like a couple of years ago) there are shortages that have to be made up abroad.
Despite all this, antivaxers continue to falsely claim that drug companies profit hugely from vaccines - while ignoring the big bucks made by promoters of chelation, secretin therapy and other phony “cures”.
Concerned Parent mentioned James Laidler M.D., parent of an autistic child who initially was a member of the mercury militia and now fights autism quackery. Makes interesting reading. Laidler is, of course, anathema to those who continue to delude themselves about the causes of autism and its treatment.