But I notice you have mentioned in previous posts your lack of ‘faith’ regarding this vaccine as well.

Your posts about Gardasil basically state the same concerns many people (who have bothered to look into it) have, the real problem is that the public isn’t being told the whole ‘truth’ the public should be told that HPV is NOT really an ‘STD’ and that it is one of the most common and contagious everyday viruses that circulates this earth. Saying that someone should get vaccinated against it before they become sexually active is a joke. Children can have HPV, babies get it from their mothers, animals carry it. Bla bla bla I could go on for a while about the uselessness of this vaccine but it would be better if someone who needed to hear it was listening (i.e the hundred of parents lining up their teen girls to receive the jab) and if perhaps a Doctor or even the NZ health department was saying it, or if the adds on TV or the Gardasil pamphlets stated it! THAT would be REAL informed choice.

Homefirst Health Services: A clinic serving as an incredible beacon of health

Located on the outskirts of Chicago, Illinois, USA, the doctors at Homefirst are likely to recommend vaccinating not at all.

Medical Voices Vaccine Information Center has chosen to showcase Homefirst for the following reasons:

Homefirst has 35,000 pediatric patients, 90 percent of which are completely unvaccinated, and the rest have received few vaccines.

Zero known cases of autism. They are “supposed” to have hundreds

Asthma rates so low, insurance giant Blue Cross Blue Shield’s systems flagged the “issue”. Homefirst got a call wondering how this could be.

Their patients are so healthy, a lawmaker proposed a law requiring that a study be done to determine why these unvaccinated patients are so much healthier than their vaccinated counterparts.

Sounds interesting. I would like to see a competent epidemiologist look at the clinic and see if vaccination is the only differential.

The SIDS/e-coli argument has been around for years, as you mention the document I sent you was from 2002, but today we see articles like this:

http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/14501

“Now, British researchers say they may have found that bacteria is a contributing factor in SIDS” How interesting!! NOW? Now they see the light??? But I wonder if anyone will do anything about it THIS time and I wonder how many babies could have been saved or could be saved in the future if someone takes this ‘old’ data and does something about it.

“The reality is that some of the things we currently do will be shown eventually to be bad. Vaccination may well be one of them” I think people already know this, just not enough people or not enough people in the right positions, willing to say anything :

I was told a couple of nights ago about a woman with a PhD in immunology
who confessed to a chiropractor that she was not in favour of vaccination.
When he asked her why not, she said “Well, looking at serum through the
microscope I could see that the antibodies went right past the
vaccine-injected antigens as if they weren’t even there.” When he then
asked, “Would you be willing to put that in writing?” she replied, “No, I
would lose my job.” (Vaccination Information Service 2004)

I am glad to see a doctor who is open minded enough to at least consider the other side of the story. I think these issues will go on long into the future, who knows what will happen? Is it too late with diseases being replaced left right and center? Like pneumococcus infection increase following haemophilus vaccination or HPV strains being replaced by more dangerous strains. It is all a little scary, especially with compulsory vaccines on the horizon.

Pneumococcus infection is a more common cause of septicaemia, NOT more frequent. This is because the Hib vaccine has all but eliminated the all too common Hib septicaemia. Septicaemia is now rarer than before. hence pneumococcus is more common. We don’t know enough about HPV but I have expressed similar concerns on other posts. And compulsory vaccination will NEVER have my approval.

“Abell also chided MacDonald for his assertion that “all the medical literature is negative” in regards to an ADEM-PDD link. “However, soon thereafter, he corrected this statement by clarifying, ‘I can find no literature relating ADEM to autism or [PDD],’” Abell wrote. “It may be that Respondent’s research reveals a dearth of evidence linking ADEM to PDD, but that is not the same as positive proof that the two are unrelated, something Respondent was unable to produce. Therefore, the statement that ‘all the medical literature is negative’ is incorrect.”

The Court also took MacDonald to task for insisting that Bailey’s initial symptoms were not 100% consistent with the signs of ADEM. “His distinction seems one of degree, not of type, and strikes as a trifle semantic,” Abell sniffed. He also noted that McDonald was having a hard time determining Bailey’s current diagnosis. “He ultimately concluded that ‘Bailey falls into the large group of children with autism/PDD in which by our current evidence-based medicine we rarely can make a specific diagnosis.’”"

I know researchers tend to rely on their unrivalled technical knowledge of a subject (ie their profession) as their only rebuttal to criticism of their actions. The trouble is this only holds true in academia and public policy to a certain extent before it gets tested by the judiciary, who are potentially more skilled in weighing up the merits of research than the researchers themselves, when that research happens to be relevant to a real-world situation (often also an intrinsically legal situation). The medical researcher’s opinion and their research becomes secondary to that of the judge, and for good reason!

Despite despite the judge having found causation to a much higher degree than any researcher could in this particular field of inquiry, you speak of statistical correlation as being required for a definite conclusion for your profession. I find the argument that more evidence is required before a link between autism and the MMR vaccine also to be, “one of degree, not of type, and strikes as a trifle semantic”. The message that the MMR vaccine is completely safe needs to be dropped by the MOH, & the question of the need for an MMR vaccine needs revisiting I imagine.

The judge’s main criticism was very valid: that MacDonald stated that the literature was negative rather than sparse and equivocal. I still think that the anti-vaccine lobby overstates their case in exactly the same fashion.

The same way you do, by weighing the evidence. I am rarely fooled by the games of the pharmaceutical companies and most doctors that I know maintain a very healthy skepticism. We are also skeptical of the myriad websites that tell us how terrible the drugs we use are. We read our journals and keep an eye out for studies that rationally indicate problems.

The reality is that some of the things we currently do will be shown eventually to be bad. Vaccination may well be one of them. Paracetamol may be another (although I seriously doubt that). But to run around changing your opinion about a treatment on the flimsiest of evidence is not only unscientific but highly dangerous to patients. Doctors will always be inherently cautious about risk.