<p>Ah, I see. No wonder I missed it, it was in the linked article.</p>
<p>Anyways, that is interesting that the data isn’t available. Let’s assume the worst, that the study is bunk, and we have to discard it.</p>
<p>That’s fine, but there are other studies (the aforementioned Danish one, in particular, but also UK studies) that still show no links. And no studies that do. Therefore, with evidence that disproves the hypothesis of a link, and on evidence to substantiate it, the only reasonable thing to do is to assume it’s an incorrect hypothesis. Unfortunately, reason is one thing that there hasn’t been a particularly large amount of in the anti-vaccination camp recently.</p>
<p>And, even if the parents are better educated than the general public, what does that have to do with anything? Are you saying the children of educated parents are somehow less susceptible to diseases? Please explain.</p>
<p>Yes. I’m saying that more educated parents feed their children better and take better care of them, as well as live in better conditions, etc. etc. etc. All of which make their children less susceptible to infectious diseases.</p>
<p>I couldn’t read that Mercola article, btw, it’s subscribers-only.</p>
<p>Look, if these non-vaccination programs work so well, why is there no data to back that up? You give me anecdotes, anecdotes, anecdotes. I give you rigorous scientific studies. How about a rigorous scientific study that supports your conclusions? Are there any?</p>
<p>Are you saying the children of educated parents are somehow less susceptible to diseases? Please explain.</p>
<p>Does this really need an explanation? I’ll have to look for links but higher income & education is definitely associated with improved health. Earlier and easier access to care, better nutrition, and better living conditions are among the obvious benefits. I find that “educated” parents can even get their kids a diagnosis that “uneducated” parents can’t. I wonder if the reverse is true.</p>
<p>Wait a minute! You’re contradicting yourself, both 1of42 and Shrinkrap! You just ridiculed the article (the one with the ingredients) for claiming that children on organic diets are less susceptible to disease, yet now you say that this is true of children of educated parents!</p>
<p>???</p>
<p>Please make up your minds.</p>
<p>If it were indeed that easy to avoid infectious diseases, then that is definitely in favor of the argument that parents should have the right to pursue healthy, natural alternatives instead of taking a risk, ANY risk, of side effects from potent drug cocktails.</p>
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<p>You need only provide an email address and you can access all the articles. It’s free and you can cancel at any time. I get his newsletter and it is indeed well worth it (even though I disagree with his views on vegetarianism).</p>
<p>I didn’t ridicule any article. I didn’t even read it. There are enough peer reviewed articles I need to read thank you, and I will limit my practice to those who want to hear about them. Especially about psychotropics. I can’t know everything. I just wanted to respond to the part about income and health, and to mention that the giving of diagnosis can be somewhat subjective and influenced by many things. I’m glad your doing some homework, and I’m glad you care about your kids. I wish everybody did. I grow and eat organic BTW, and I’m glad I can afford to. Poor, uneducated people can’t get to a grocery store sometimes, let alone choose organic.</p>
<p>“There is a solo pediatric practice in the suburbs of Chicago that does not vaccinate, the rates of asthma, add/adhd etc are almost nill in this practice of 2,000 kids.”</p>
<p>Are these claims supported by publications in peer-reviewed journals? To convince the majority of your opponents on this board, you need to link something from Medline, not Mercola!</p>
<p>Thanks for letting me know I am wasting my time.</p>
<p>I thought this was a discussion, a dialog, a give-and-tale of ideas. If you are refusing to read the info presented by the ‘other side’ then clearly your mind is made up and you have no interest in furthering your knowledge… which leaves only one conclusion: that you are actually on a campaign to promote YOUR point of view with no interest in other perspectives.</p>
<p>You have to understand that scientific studies are expensive and require FUNDING. I used to work at a medical university and I can tell you that the FUNDING for research was a VERY BIG DEAL.</p>
<p>People don’t just do studies because they’re interesting in the truth, as you might think. Studies are FUNDED by the big pharmaceutical companies!</p>
<p>No funding, no studies!</p>
<p>Now, I ask you this: Why in the world would they want to fund studies that could potentially show results from a natural substance, thus eliminating the need for the drugs from which they derive their income?</p>
<p>Why would they fund studies that might potentially prove that their bread-and-butter products, vaccines, could be harmful and thus reduce their INCOME?</p>
<p>Think about it.</p>
<p>We’d like to think that the drug industry has our best interest at heart. Undoubtedly the individual doctors DO. But the drug companies as an INDUSTRY? Get a grip. It is a BUSINESS. A highly lucrative BUSINESS.</p>
<p>I apologize for not reading your link before posting. I read it after. There is so much I have trouble with when data is presented that way, that for me, it is a bit of a waste. In general if I were to read every link in every post, I would also want to look up the source and any references. That does not make it a waste for you to post, or others to read. I am only one of many. And just so you know, if you read my few posts, you will see I have shared NO point of view on the subject of vaccinations. Only on the use of diagnosis, and the role of income and education on health. And don’t get me started on the pharmaceutical industry. This is not the place.</p>
<p>No. I said that richer parents live in better conditions, feed their children more nutritious food, and so forth, and therefore in general have healthier children. I’m not convinced that if you compared the difference between organic-fed and non-organic-fed children, ceteris paribus, you would find any particular difference. But if you compare children being fed fast food every day, and not getting essential nutrients, with children being fed a healthy balanced diet (this is often the difference between poor vs. rich parents) you get a clear difference of outcomes.</p>
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<p>Maybe I’m having technical issues, but I provided all of my various email addresses, and it said they were all invalid.</p>
<p>Look, leal, I agree with you about the drug industry in general. They have their own pockets at heart, and the only reason they ever focus on consumer’s interests is that it helps their bottom line in the long run. However, that is not the reason studies have not been done. Studies have not been done because no doctor has ever found sufficient evidence (talking anecdotally here) to warrant an involved trial.</p>
<p>But you seem to think (and a lot of doctors agree, if your websites are to be believed) that this is incorrect. You’d think that between all the different players in the movement, someone has the money to finance a study. You can’t really be telling me that nobody has enough funding to fund even a relatively small, statistically robust study, can you?</p>
<p>To me, this looks like so much other snake-oil medicine: enormous numbers of claims are made, anecdotal evidence is presented whose truth is never confirmed, and any number of reasons are thrown up as to why true scientific study cannot be done.</p>
<p>Look, the instant somebody publishes a study that proves, in a way that is as rigorous as the current studies showing no link, that vaccination is linked to any of the health issues you have postulated, I (and probably the rest of society) will take note pretty quickly, I guarantee. Then, we can have a discussion about the risks vs. benefits of vaccination.</p>
<p>But until then, you (as a group of non-vaccinators) are risking the herd immunity we currently enjoy based on junk science and mass, baseless histrionics.</p>
<p>See, that’s the kind of stuff I’m interested in seeing. None of this anecdotal crap, statistical studies are far more useful.</p>
<p>I see a couple of possible flaws in that study’s methodology, like for example how it accounted for other environmental differences between vaccinated and un-vaccinated children, but that’s still a great find.</p>
<p>At least 2 children have died from the hysteria surrounding thiomersal - one from Hepatitis B, when he was not vaccinated, and another from a fatal heart arrythmia after he was injected with EDTA, a chelating agent, to attempt (I suppose) to remove the mercury from his body (thoguh that’s incredibly stupid, since ethylmercury - thiomersal - is actually passed out of the body relatively quickly). The harm goes further than that, but I’ll let you read for yourselves - sufficed to say that the hysteria the anti-vaccination crowd is causing with their histrionics has not been victimless.</p>
<p>Another conclusion on this issue, this time from the WHO, who you can’t really accuse of being in Big Pharma’s pockets:</p>
<p>Quoting Paul Offit, (NEJM article)the developer of the once feigned rotovirus that many infants died of bowel strangulation is not one who would be the best to measure accuracy in regards to vaccination damage/safety and honest unbiased information. He has a significant conflict of interest. </p>
<p>samiamy: That is incorrect. Offit developed the second rotavirus vaccine (RotaTeq), which has been shown to be safe. The first rotavirus vaccine (RotaShield) was the one that caused the issues. He was not involved in its development apart from being on the advisory committee at the CDC that studied it, where he abstained from voting on the vaccine due to conflict of interest.</p>
<p>Re: your first study in that post:</p>
<p>Shows that methyl- and ethylmercury cannot really be compared. The comparison was the basis of this whole hysteria in the first place - concerns that vaccines were exceeding allowable mercury dosages, on the assumption that ethylmercury behaved similarly to methylmercury, which it does not.</p>
<p>What are you getting at with it?</p>
<p>As for the compilation of studies, thanks for the link, and I’ll take a look at the studies hopefully later today.</p>
<p>Here, try this link. You’ll have to click on the articles you’re interested in. (The other link I gave you was for the individual articles so maybe that’s why it didn’t work.)</p>
<p>That’s right I disagree. As I said, I experienced firsthand what researchers went thru (politically) to get their research funded, when I worked at the medical school.</p>
<p>Case in point: Graviola herb. It showed promising results in lab tests, to destroy cancer cells. But they couldn’t isolate the exact active substance, in order to patent it, so they discontinued studying it. The data sat on a shelf for something like 20 years until one of the researchers took them to court and won, and got the preliminary study results released to the public, so the public could decide on their own if they wanted to include the herb in their cancer treatment protocol.</p>
<p>A co-worker at the medical school told me she used to work at the American Cancer Society and this sort of thing was very common.</p>
<p>Anyway, it’s been nice debating with you, I’m one of those parents who has a ‘healthier’ child (by far!) so I’ve done my part to contribute to society. If you still think I have no right to decide what’s best for my own child, then…think what you will.</p>