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Comment by fnordfnordfnord | Hacker News Reader

>"But then opponents spoke out: self-described ‘vaccine victims’ — perhaps similar to people today who claim the MMR vaccine causes autism. Back then, they said that the Lyme vaccine gave them arthritis."

Okay, vaccines can harm people. It's a fact, get over it, now let's see an honest discussion with more facts and less name-calling.

>" There were a number of East Coast lawyers who started putting together class-action lawsuits."

So? Vaccine manufacturers are immune from lawsuit. Cases are tried in vaccine court[1]. Awards are paid by the gov't.

> "many drug companies say not they’re not interested in working on one."

There is no excuse for this. If we have to suffer the perversion of market forces seen in our vaccine industry, there should be no excuses for companies who don't want to produce an existing product merely because it isn't profitable enough.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_court

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> Okay, vaccines can harm people. It's a fact, get over it

It's also a known fact Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 research paper, that tried to discredit the MMR vaccine by linking it to other complications is fraudulent and wrong.

That research paper was nothing more than a work of fiction.

The problem is, decades on 'vaccine victims' still quote Andrew Wakefield’s research paper as a reason to not vaccinate.

Those are the 'vaccine victims' he was referring to and they are alive and well, working hard to bring back the iron lung hospital wards of the 1950s with their stupidity and ignorance.

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/goldenage/wonder/Archive/Images/Ir...

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/01/what-ame...

>It's also a known fact Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 research paper, that tried to discredit the MMR vaccine by linking it to other complications is fraudulent and wrong.

1. Straw man

2. The paper didn't "try to discredit the MMR vaccine" it said: "We identified associated gastrointestinal disease and developmental regression in a group of previously normal children, which was generally associated in time with possible environmental triggers." and recommended/asked for further studies. It may have been dead wrong. I don't care. It was never the sort of thing that a reasonable person would base a decision to vaccinate solely upon.

>That research paper was nothing more than a work of fiction.

Did you read it? It's a pretty low quality paper, it was a "study" of 12 patients. Hardly enough statistics to make any strong conclusion. No reasonable person would consider it such a strong statement.

>The problem is, decades on 'vaccine victims' still quote Andrew Wakefield’s research paper as a reason to not vaccinate.

They don't need to do that. They can just use the CDC data or the NVIC data. Or the drug companies' own data (when they've been forced to release it)

>Those are the 'vaccine victims' he was referring to and they are alive and well, working hard to bring back the iron lung hospital wards of the 1950s with their stupidity and ignorance.

I like your links to photos of Polio victims. Thankfully, people back then weren't afraid to notice that the first generation of Polio vaccines actually gave Polio to some who took them. Instead of denying the possibility that their vaccine was imperfect, or telling everyone "our vaccine is good enough!, sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet", they improved/perfected the vaccine. Good for them. Shame on their successors.

> The paper didn't "try to discredit the MMR vaccine"

Smells like an attempt to discredit MMR to me:

According to a major investigative feature by Brian Deer, in 1996 Dr Wakefield was retained by the solicitor Richard Barr to carry out investigations on a number of children with autism and bowel problems (1). The object of these investigations was to confirm parents' claims that their children's behavioural and digestive symptoms had been caused by the MMR vaccine, so that they could claim compensation from the vaccine manufacturers.

It appears that four or five of the children included in the series of 12 cases reported in the Lancet were in the group represented by Barr.

http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA40D.htm

> Thankfully, people back then weren't afraid to notice that the first generation of Polio vaccines actually gave Polio to some who took them.

I'm sure they knew. I'm sure they also knew that for children Polio caused paralysis in about 1 in 1000 cases.

They may well have feared the vaccine, but I suspect their fear of the consequences of Polio were far greater.

The simple fact is vaccination works. Just look how Polio has been effectively irradiated thanks to vaccination:

http://www.post-polio.org/ir-usa.html

Edit: Statistics below from page above

Total Polio Cases

From: 1937 - 1997 = 457,088

From: 1998 - 2008 = 1

To decide whether to use a vaccine that can eliminate 40,000 annual cases of Polio and the only side effect might be it could be harmful to a few people is a no brainer.

To use your own words, sure vaccines can harm a very small number of people, but that same vaccine will be extremely beneficial to huge numbers of people.

People need to get over it and get vaccinated.

>Smells like an attempt to discredit MMR to me:

"We have identified a chronic enterocolitis in children that may be related to neuropsychiatric dysfunction. In most cases, onset of symptoms was after measles, mumps, and rubella immunisation. Further investigations are needed to examine this syndrome and its possible relation to this vaccine. "

It was a study of twelve (12!) children! To credit Wakefield with sole responsibility of the "MMR scare" over that simple statement is crazy. There is no way that Wakefield's paper single-handedly sparked and sustained this debacle for some fifteen years now.

What really smells in this affair is Brian Deer, a journalist in the employ of a director of GSK (James Murdoch), who himself made the initial report against Wakefield et al to the British GMC while simultaneously reporting on the scandal (while denying that he had anything to do with the initial report). As bad as Wakefield's paper was, it was nothing compared to the farce that followed in the form of the GMC hearings, BMJ's character assassination, and later retraction[2] The whole thing is a farce from one end to the other.

>The simple fact is vaccination works.

Of course it does. Stop with the straw man already. But, vaccines aren't flawless. They aren't perfectly safe, and in some cases the risks outweigh the benefits. Effort should be concentrated on perfecting vaccines, not denial of fallibility. Until then, a proper weighting of risks and benefits is required.

>People need to get over it and get vaccinated.

Shall we sign you up for Gardasil, and perhaps the new Acne vaccine? Have you had a Rotavirus booster? Of course you have. Better safe than sorry!

[2]http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d1678.long

> Thankfully, people back then weren't afraid to notice that the first generation of Polio vaccines actually gave Polio to some who took them. Instead of denying the possibility that their vaccine was imperfect, or telling everyone "our vaccine is good enough!, sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet", they improved/perfected the vaccine

This is untrue. An experiment in the 30s at New York University did indeed give polio to some people, but that was never marketed as a workable vaccine. The vaccine developed in the early 50s, which was marketed, was extremely effective, developed by different people, and is still in use today.

The oral polio vaccine, which was developed later, is also in use today (though it is being discontinued in the developed world), and that one _is_ known to very occasionally induce polio.

So, to be clear, the first generation of polio vaccines did _not_ give polio to those who took them. The second generation, which has historically been more popular because people are more comfortable with oral than injected vaccines, occasionally does, though it's extremely rare.

>So, to be clear, the first generation of polio vaccines did _not_ give polio to those who took them. The second generation, which has historically been more popular because people are more comfortable with oral than injected vaccines, occasionally does, though it's extremely rare.

My recollection of the details was mistaken. Thanks for the correction.

Also this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/mar/07/mmr-row-doctor...

As far as I know, the immunity only applies for the vaccines listed on the Vaccine Injury Table, which is comprised mostly or entirely of vaccines specifically recommended by the CDC for children. The lyme vaccine, like many other vaccines, isn't on the VIT.

FDA did not clear the vaccine for children, so from this one probably isn't on the list of covered vaccine. The entire vaccine court system was established so that drug companies can make vaccines with minimum headaches. Why would any company produce vaccine when there are other profitable things to make?

>Why would any company produce vaccine when there are other profitable things to make?

They wouldn't. But if my gov't is going to give out immunity that benefits a particular industry, then I want my gov't to also demand/subsidize products like Lyme vaccines from that industry.

Are you reading the comments or just pasting text from a form letter? The industry does not have "blanket immunity." There are specific vaccines on the VIT that the CDC has specifically recommended for children (of which the Lyme vaccine is NOT one) and those are the only ones which the company cannot be held liable for. You keep talking about looking at the CDC data, perhaps you should start.

So your entire argument that class actions against Lyme manufacturers don't matter because "the government will pay the fine" is baseless, wrong, and intentionally misleading.

Of course lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies matter. They are pretty much the only corrective feedback protecting people against negligence and/or abuse.

> let's see an honest discussion with more facts and less name-calling

I don't see any name calling or dishonesty.

>self-described ‘vaccine victims’ — perhaps similar to people today who claim the MMR vaccine causes autism. Back then, they said that the Lyme vaccine gave them arthritis.

It's the air-quotes, and the unfair comparison to "people today who claim the MMR vaccine causes autism."

That's not name calling, nor dishonesty, and I think the comparison is fair.

>Okay, vaccines can harm people.

Yeah, so can lightning, bathtubs, and aspirin. The risk from vaccines is miniscule, and "vaccine victim" is an appropriate way to castigate people who don't understand statistics. Your kid is at more risk of SIDS than vaccine complications. Or, y'know, a bicycle accident. Pretty much everything is more dangerous than vaccines, from McDonald's to driving to drinking -- even smoking marijuana, for that matter, looking at you Bill Maher.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease#Vaccination

>So? Vaccine manufacturers are immune from lawsuit.

From the article:

>Subsequently, hundreds of vaccine recipients reported they had developed autoimmune side effects. Supported by some patient advocacy groups, a number of class-action lawsuits were filed against GlaxoSmithKline

In effect, your claim appears to be without basis.

The thing is, a certain proportion of people will develop autoimmune issues randomly at any time. If they've been vaccinated recently, there's a chance they'll blame it on the vaccine, but that does not mean the vaccine caused their autoimmune disorder. That is why science is performed by using randomized controlled trials to study the side-effects of treatments, and these scare tactics are absurd and damaging to society. The actual incidence of problems caused by vaccines is much lower than the incidence of problems incorrectly ascribed to vaccines.

From a later post of yours:

>They can just use the CDC data or the NVIC data.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Citation_needed

Vaccines are by and large rigorously tested before entering the marketplace. Here's an example of the tests done on the Lyme disease vaccine:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X00...

>A clinical trial of over 10,000 adults showed [...] Only mild or moderate, transient vaccine-associated adverse events have been reported after immunization.

Is ten thousand people not enough for you? How many would convince you? A hundred thousand? A million? Are you willing to pay for this, or do you think science falls out of the sky?

>I like your links to photos of Polio victims. Thankfully, people back then weren't afraid to notice that the first generation of Polio vaccines actually gave Polio to some who took them. Instead of denying the possibility that their vaccine was imperfect, or telling everyone "our vaccine is good enough!, sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet", they improved/perfected the vaccine. Good for them. Shame on their successors.

Consider the previous statement about failing to comprehend statistics. Consider also that your statement is blatantly false: the oral polio vaccine developed in the 1950s remains in use today, and has successfully contributed to the eradication of polio in most of the world. Unless of course you mean the disastrous 1936 "vaccine" that didn't actually prevent anything and was basically the virus itself, but I'm sure you're not intent on being so... misleading.

The injected polio vaccine, itself still on its first generation, never carried such risks, but it's hard to get people to agree to an injection -- maybe because of vaccine scaremongry? Anywho, statistics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#Iatrogenic_.28vac...

>The rate of vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis (VAPP) varies by region but is generally about 1 case per 750,000 vaccine recipients.

That means that VAPP is one of the only things that is actually less likely to happen to you than a terrorist attack. The existence of VAPP at all is due to the use of a live attenuated virus vaccine for poliomyelitis, which itself is due to the fact that polio is just a real bastard to culture and the vaccine was developed a long time ago. Vaccine reactivation is fun to worry about because it's scary, but in all conceivable circumstances presents far less risk than the disease itself.

>There is no excuse for this. If we have to suffer the perversion of market forces seen in our vaccine industry, there should be no excuses for companies who don't want to produce an existing product merely because it isn't profitable enough.

I dunno, the existence of people who are willing to spread pseudo-"cautionary tales" based on misrepresented data who can make marketing the vaccine a largely fruitless endeavor seems like it very well might be enough to discourage even a benevolent nonprofit organization. I'm glad we don't have such people around here.

Also: it's a "perversion of market forces" when a product that doesn't sell is withdrawn from the market?

>It's a fact, get over it, now let's see an honest discussion with more facts and less name-calling.

Fact #n+1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy#Impact_...

>Yeah, so can lightning, bathtubs, and aspirin. The risk from vaccines is miniscule.

Unlike lightning, risk of harm from vaccines is preventable. One commenter mentioned the Polio vaccine earlier. The OPV does cause a small number of people to develop polio. The matter was paid attention to, OPV use was curtailed in favor of the other vaccine, the problem was solved. The reformulated vaccine retained its effectiveness without further incidences of Polio infection. If it happened today, I would expect people like you tell those first Polio vaccine victims to "Piss off!", "It's good enough!", "You're a fake!", "You have a 'genetic predisposition'" or other hand-waviness, "Adverse effects are rare.", "You probably already had Polio.", etc.

>even smoking marijuana, for that matter,

To paraphrase you [Citation_needed]

>Pretty much everything is more dangerous than vaccines,

Most people take various levels of precaution against those risks, yet many will just let anyone in a lab coat jab them without hesitation. Fine for them, fine for you, but don't expect me to fall in line without more information.

>Your kid is at more risk of SIDS than vaccine complications.

Which is why my kids have been vaccinated (with a subset of the vaccines recommended by the schedule). I just don't jump up out of my chair every time some drug company comes out with a new product to sell. Do you rail against people from countries who follow different vaccine schedules from the one in your country? http://vaccine-schedule.ecdc.europa.eu/Pages/Scheduler.aspx What do you think of the Japanese, who are relative "vaccine deniers"[2] yet somehow miraculously have the longest life expectancy anywhere on the planet?[3]

> a number of class-action lawsuits were filed against GlaxoSmithKline

>In effect, your claim appears to be without basis.

Vaccine court doesn't protect companies when they knowingly or maliciously harm people, my mistake.

>absurd and damaging to society.

What is absurd and damaging to society is the persistent obfuscation and non-disclosure of clinical trial data, and the failure to conduct proper non-rigged trials. The safety of drugs and medicine is important and it must be credible. There is widespread doubt (among people who pay attention) about the system that is supposed to ensure peoples' safety. Instead of addressing reasonable peoples' reasonable concerns, people such as yourself resort to rudeness, specious character attacks, and other fallacious tactics.

>The actual incidence of problems caused by vaccines is much lower than the incidence of problems incorrectly ascribed to vaccines.

Fact is, you don't know if that is true or not. You don't have any proof of it. You merely want it to be true that anyone who claims injury by a vaccine is a fraud, and a litigious cheat. [Citation needed, indeed.]

>re: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Citation_needed

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=CDC+Vaccine+Adverse+Event

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=NVIC note not a gov't org

Give Google a try, you'll get the hang of it.

see also: The Cochrane Collaboration http://www.cochrane.org/

> Vaccines are by and large rigorously tested before entering the marketplace.

If that were really true for the LYMErix vaccine, the trials would have revealed the large fraction of people[1] who were predisposed to adverse reaction. There are serious problems with drugs qualification testing in the US and EU. Why don't you go read Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre. here is a preview. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKmxL8VYy0M

>Is ten thousand people not enough for you? ....

The statistics have to be credible. http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/039...

And: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004879... specifically: " The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions and spurious notoriety of the studies. "

>Consider the previous statement about failing to comprehend statistics.

If you believe, based on your statistical prowess that the current system of drug/vaccine certification trials will effectively prevent bad drugs/vaccines from reaching the marketplace, then it is you who has an inadequate grasp of statistics.

>Consider also that your statement is blatantly false:

Or consider that my recollection of the details was mistaken slightly. OPV use was curtailed after VAPP was discovered.

>That means that VAPP is one of the only things that is actually less likely to happen to you than a terrorist attack.

As long as you aren't a starving waif in some developing country (or a starving waif from the US). From the Wiki: In immunodeficient children, the risk of VAPP is almost 7,000 times higher

>I dunno, the existence of people who are willing to spread pseudo-"cautionary tales" based on misrepresented data who can make marketing the vaccine a largely fruitless endeavor seems like it very well might be enough to discourage even a benevolent nonprofit organization. I'm glad we don't have such people around here.

After reading that again, I kind of regret that I wasted any time at all responding to you. If you're the sort of person who thinks a pharmaceutical company makes a favorable comparison to a "benevolent nonprofit organization" then it seems unlikely that you and I will find common ground. You're rude, you're flamebaiting, you've mis-characterized my comments, and your snide innuendo is an offensive character attack.

[1] About one-third of the general population is HLA-DR4+ and risks contracting the arthritic condition when exposed to the vaccine, according to the complaint. The HLA-DR4+ trait is easily detected by a routine blood test; however, SmithKline never recommended that doctors screen for the trait before administering the vaccine, the lawsuit alleges. source: http://www2.lymenet.org/domino/news.nsf/UID/SBHVaccineSuitPR...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_immunizations#Worldw...

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...

>Unlike lightning, risk of harm from vaccines is preventable.

You can't be serious. Like, really, you cannot be serious. I provide three examples. You ignore the two [bathtubs, aspirin] that don't fit the pattern you want to make up (one for three isn't very good), where said pattern is "vaccines preventable, accidents not", and you further ignore that being struck by lightning is obviously preventable by, e.g., staying indoors, and while this isn't perfect the vast majority of lightning strikes do in fact occur outside. So your use of lightning is wrong, and it is yet insufficient to support the greater point you are making, which is also wrong.

>Most people take various levels of precaution against those risks, yet many will just let anyone in a lab coat jab them without hesitation. Fine for them, fine for you, but don't expect me to fall in line without more information.

Yeah, but wearing a helmet while riding a bicycle but not while riding a motorcycle is a clear sign of insanity, is it not? The level of concern ought to be at least somewhat proportionate to the risk, yet the degree to which certain people attend to the risks of vaccines is anything but commensurate with the level of attention given to the risks of poor diet, lifestyle, driving, sports, over-the-counter drugs, alcohol etc.

>What do you think of the Japanese, who are relative "vaccine deniers"[2] yet somehow miraculously have the longest life expectancy anywhere on the planet?[3]

The Japanese do not vaccinate for diseases which do not exist in Japan. They do, however, vaccinate for Japanese encephalitis, whereas the US does not -- guess why. Vaccine schedules in most countries are designed to attack the most prevalent diseases in that country; nowhere are they designed to provide lots of spurious vaccinations for profit.

>What is absurd and damaging to society is the persistent obfuscation and non-disclosure of clinical trial data, and the failure to conduct proper non-rigged trials.

Your allegations that trials are "rigged" is without basis. As I've explained below, your claims that the trials were "rigged" is a result of your failure to understand the effect size in question, that being the incidence of VAE linked to LYMErix. However, saying that clinical trials are "rigged" without any evidence therefor is absurd.

>There is widespread doubt (among people who pay attention) about the system that is supposed to ensure peoples' safety.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_words

>Vaccine court doesn't protect companies when they knowingly or maliciously harm people, my mistake.

Your "mistake" was posting this godawful response. You explicitly claimed that it does. I explicitly showed that it does not. Furthermore, you allege things which you have not shown -- "knowingly or maliciously harm people" -- there is no evidence of malice here on the part of GSK, and by the time HLA-DR4+ was properly identified, the vaccine was being withdrawn from the market.

It is indeed a good thing that these people are able to recover compensation from the government. It would be wrong to leave them out in the cold. It is a silly criticism that the rewards are paid by the government rather than the company, as the goal is to provide adequate care to people adversely affected by public health efforts, not to discourage the development of vaccines by private industry.

>Fact is, you don't know if that is true or not. You don't have any proof of it. You merely want it to be true that anyone who claims injury by a vaccine is a fraud, and a litigious cheat. [Citation needed, indeed.]

...okay. I do know that it's true. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find aggregated statistics on idiopathic autoimmune disorders.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0090122997...

>From the incidence data we estimate that 237,203 Americans will develop an autoimmune disease in 1996 and that approximately 1,186,015 new cases of these autoimmune diseases occur in the United States every 5 years.

Not everyone is at equal risk, of course. Diabetes, for example, is linked to obesity. But the incidence of these disorders is already 1 in 1300 annually. Let's... let's be liberal. Let's assume that for an ordinary person, it's five times lower -- 1 in 6500.

Oh, by the way. Women are predisposed to this danger arising from "nothing". I suggest a class-action lawsuit against the producers of nothing on behalf of women.

>If that were really true for the LYMErix vaccine, the trials would have revealed the large fraction of people[1] who were predisposed to adverse reaction. There are serious problems with drugs qualification testing in the US and EU. Why don't you go read Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre. here is a preview. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKmxL8VYy0M*

Because I don't need any more of a headache than you've already given me. "Predisposed" in your post comes with some big* scare quotes: if we assume that all adverse events occur in HLA-DR4... well, let's look at the data.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X01...

66 serious events for 1,400,000 vaccinations, or a 1:21000 chance of serious adverse events. If all of those cases happen to the 1/3 of people who are "predisposed" to Lyme arthritis, their risk is really 1:7000, slightly lower than their 1:6500 risk caused by... nothing. And that's only for disorders arising in the same year as the vaccination.

And this very low incidence rate is exactly what we expect to see after a vaccine has passed a properly formulated clinical trial.

Yes, I'm fudging the numbers. But I'm fudging them in your favor. The conclusion is obvious: down with nothing.

>The statistics have to be credible. http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/039...

If your argument consists of denying the conclusions of scientific studies outright without any further analysis, you're effectively making things up out of thin air. The study was correctly performed, as confirmed by the follow-up.

>http://lmgtfy.com/?q=CDC+Vaccine+Adverse+Event*

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Activities/vaers.html

>Specifically, judgments about whether the vaccine was truly responsible for an adverse event cannot be made from VAERS reports.

So the CDC is here... to back me up. Did you even look at the Google results?

>Or consider that my recollection of the details was mistaken slightly. OPV use was curtailed after VAPP was discovered.

Again, if not blatantly false, at least utterly misleading. The NIH did conduct trials to determine the safest form of oral polio vaccine, roughly ten years after it was introduced, largely because there's nobody, including me, who wants to see people get sick from a vaccine or anything else for that matter. The implication that the government scrambled to reformulate the vaccine in response to adverse events is absurd, and the 1960 formulation, still imperfect, is in use today:

>Outbreaks of VAPP occurred independently in Belarus (1965–66), Canada (1966–68), Egypt (1983–1993), Hispaniola (2000–2001), Philippines (2001), Madagascar (2001–2002),[48] and in Haiti (2002), where political strife and poverty have interfered with vaccination efforts.[49] In 2006 an outbreak of vaccine-derived poliovirus occurred in China.[50] Cases have been reported from Cambodia (2005–2006), Myanmar (2006–2007), Iran (1995, 2005–2007), Syria, Kuwait and Egypt.[51] Since 2005, The World Health Organization has been tracking vaccine-caused polio in northern Nigeria caused by a mutation in live oral polio vaccines.

You do of course have to keep these numbers in perspective. VAPP remains rarer than terrorism.

>As long as you aren't a starving waif in some developing country (or a starving waif from the US). From the Wiki: In immunodeficient children, the risk of VAPP is almost 7,000 times higher

A gross misrepresentation of life in developing countries, of the meaning of the term "immunodeficiency", and the causes of immunodeficiency. Immunodeficiency essentially means that a child cannot be vaccinated, as the purpose of a vaccine is to stimulate the immune system. Immunodeficiencies other than AIDS are not widespread in the developing world, nor are they generally a result of malnutrition, but you are of course correct that it is improper to vaccinate an immunodeficient child with any vaccine, OPV or otherwise! Agammaglobulinemia is, I assure you, not caused by poor nutrition.

>If you're the sort of person who thinks a pharmaceutical company makes a favorable comparison to a "benevolent nonprofit organization"

If I can show that it is true for a benevolent entity, then it follows a fortiori for GSK. That was the point.

>I kind of regret that I wasted any time at all responding to you.

Although your post is almost entirely banal, I do not regret responding to you. The misinformation you attempt to spread is dangerous, and while you have every right to claim it, people have the collective right to be informed that your arguments are weak and your conclusions incorrect. It is in the interest of people reading this to see your claims debunked, and so I have attempted to do so in a clear and scientifically accurate manner.

My intent is not to find "common ground" with someone who does not read the links they post. My intent is to expose you.

You can't be serious. Like, really, you cannot be serious. I provide three examples. You ignore the two [bathtubs, aspirin]

Why not fifty? Then we can spend all our time quibbling about irrelevant analogies. BTW where's your pot-isn't-harmful rebuttal?

>The level of concern ought to be at least somewhat proportionate to the risk, yet the degree to which certain people attend to the risks of vaccines is anything but commensurate with the level of attention given to the risks of poor diet, lifestyle, driving, sports, over-the-counter drugs, alcohol etc.

Yes, and yes. It is my contention that if the risks were communicated clearly and credibly that there would be less resistance.

>Nowhere are they designed to provide lots of spurious vaccinations for profit.

Just a bunch of hard-workin' honest folks trying to make a living. Got it. Want to buy some property? I don't have to prove that people in the pharmaceutical industry aren't immune from human nature.

>Your allegations that trials are "rigged" is without basis.

Trials are rigged, improperly designed if you want to be charitable. http://www.badscience.net/books/bad-pharma/

Read the book, or don't. If you claim there is nothing wrong with the state of the relationship of the pharmaceutical industry / FDA / EMEA you are either a liar or a fool.

Tamiflu (not a vaccine but it shows a drug company's willingness to hide inconvenient data from scrutiny) "We found a high risk of publication and reporting biases in the trial programme of oseltamivir. Sub-population analyses of the influenza infected population in the oseltamivir trial programme are not possible because the two arms are non-comparable due to oseltamivir's apparent interference with antibody production. The evidence supports a direct oseltamivir mechanism of action on symptoms but we are unable to draw conclusions about its effect on complications or transmission. We expect full clinical study reports containing study protocol, reporting analysis plan, statistical analysis plan and individual patient data to clarify outstanding issues. These full clinical study reports are at present unavailable to us." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD008965...

Flu vaccine "The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions and spurious notoriety of the studies." [1][2] (both papers contain the same disclaimer)

Merck has allegedly lied for years about the efficacy of their MMR vaccine in order to retain exclusive license. https://www.courthousenews.com/2012/06/27/47851.htm

> -- there is no evidence of malice here on the part of GSK

No, of course not. A settlement was reached. No need to pursue the matter further.

>It is a silly criticism that the rewards are paid by the government rather than the company

No, it is not. It perverts the normal corrective economic forces of the marketplace. Under that system, a manufacturer has no real incentive to correct defects in its products or manufacturing processes. Only to hide them from scrutiny when they occur.

>, as the goal is to provide adequate care to people adversely affected by public health efforts,

Partly, the goal is to ensure that the US retains a manufacturing capability for a critical need (vaccines).

>not to discourage the development of vaccines by private industry.

I think you misunderstood.

>Unfortunately, it's difficult to find aggregated statistics on idiopathic autoimmune disorders.

Yes, it is quite difficult to find reliable information about lots of things to do with the pharmaceutical industry. That's part of the problem. It wouldn't mean anything if it were true. The existence of a few cheats, and a few honest but misguided fools does not constitute proof that everyone is a cheat or a fool.

>I suggest a class-action lawsuit against the producers of nothing on behalf of women.

You're a funny guy. I bet that kind of wit earns you lots of respect.

>Because I don't need any more of a headache than you've already given me.

Well then go jump in a lake or something.

>66 serious events for 1,400,000 vaccinations, or a 1:21000 chance of serious adverse events. If all of those cases happen to the 1/3 of people who are "predisposed" to Lyme arthritis, their risk is really 1:7000, slightly lower than their 1:6500 risk caused by... nothing. And that's only for disorders arising in the same year as the vaccination.

Isn't LYMErix a series of three shots? The abstract said 1,400,000 doses were distributed. Does distributed == administered? Still though, you've been generous enough with the risk odds. 1:7000 is roughly on par with the chance I'll be seriously injured in a car accident. Do I wear seatbelts, yes. Do I choose carefully when and where I drive? Yes. In which case, why shouldn't I also carefully consider whether or not to take a vaccination, especially if efficacy is in question, or if I have low risk of contracting the disease it is supposed to protect me from?

>And this very low incidence rate

It's a pretty average incident rate, isn't it?

> is exactly what we expect to see after a vaccine has passed a properly formulated clinical trial.

So? It's also what we'd expect to see after a bad vaccine has passed a rigged ^H^H poorly designed clinical trial. It is a serious problem that failed trials can be run again and again until favorable results are obtained. Nothing prevents this from happening.

Fun fact about VAERS, reporting is voluntary and open to anyone, on the one hand filled with (sometimes garbage) from laypersons, and on the other underreported to by professionals.

>If your argument consists of denying the conclusions of scientific studies outright without any further analysis,

My argument is that it is practically impossible for a layperson to make an informed decision. If one takes a pessimistic view of pharmaceutical industry behavior and a conservative approach to risk management, one can arrive at a reasonable suspicion that all things vaccine-related aren't up to snuff. It is in the public interest for full disclosure of drug trial data and adverse event data to be made.

>>Specifically, judgments about whether the vaccine was truly responsible for an adverse event cannot be made from VAERS reports.

>So the CDC is here... to back me up. Did you even look at the Google results?

So does that mean that there are never any real adverse events? That would be great news! You pick your favorite result, I'll pick mine.

>You do of course have to keep these numbers in perspective. VAPP remains rarer than terrorism.

Yes, it is rare, but no, VAPP (1 in 2.4M?) is much more common than terrorism(1 in 10M?).

>A gross misrepresentation of life in developing countries, of the meaning of the term "immunodeficiency", and the causes of immunodeficiency.

Malnutrition cannot cause immunodeficiency? You should write a paper. You'll be famous.

> The misinformation

There is no misinformation. I have been in error, so have you there is a difference. Your persistent insistence that I am some kind dishonest crazed anti-vaccine crusader is ridiculous. You're the one who seems to be foaming at the mouth.

> you attempt to spread is dangerous,

What is dangerous is the erosion of peoples' confidence in medicine (lost your herd immunity, see how that happened?), and the fact that nobody from that profession can seem to muster an acceptable explanation for often simple things. You keep thinking that condescention will somehow bring people around.

>people have the collective right to be informed that your arguments are weak and your conclusions incorrect.

Sure, here it is. Let them read this glorious thread.

>It is in the interest of people reading this to see your claims debunked,

Which claims are debunked? So I had a mistaken understanding of the way vaccine court operates in some cases, a fact which was pointed out and acknowledged a day ago. You win!

Have you shown that pharmaceutical company malfeasance is nonexistent?

Greed and negligence are miraculously absent from pharmaceutical company staff?

Have you shown that vaccines never injure anyone?

Have you shown that vaccine injury prevalence is outside the range of normal harms we subject ourselves to?

Have you shown that vaccines are always effective?

Have you shown that there is a just/reliable/fair remedy for harms from vaccine injury?

> I have attempted to do so in a clear and scientifically accurate manner.

So far I'm only convinced of the outstanding magnitude of your charm.

>My intent is to expose you.

Well here I am. A guy who reads the labels of things before he lets people jab him or his kids. Sometimes, I even decide the vaccine isn't necessary, or worth the risk (gasp!), even though I am aware of the fact that I don't have enough data to make a proper informed decision. In the absence of data, I often plan for the worst reasonable case. I'm aware that I may be a little bit too skeptical. That's too bad. If you find that prospect terrifying for you or your children, then I advise you to find a better way to communicate, or find a way to make all of the data that one needs for a proper decision available. I advise everyone else who gives a crap to do the same.

[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004879... [2] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD001269...

Okay. I win. I win because this post is entirely off-topic. You wrote not one word about LYMErix, because you haven't got any further serious contributions. This is so riddled with errors I don't know how to respond in a serious manner.

Yes, sometimes you decide that vaccines aren't worth the risk. You do it because you are irrational and paranoid. You ask me that, in order to demonstrate that the LYMErix trials were not "rigged", that pharmaceutical companies must be shown to be the second coming of Jesus Christ. It's absurd, and what's more absurd is that you go on to casually dismiss all of the relevant data on the basis of a book collating instances of problems in the medical industry. The specific fallacy is ad hominem: my adversary is a jerk, so don't believe him. The influenza trial you mention? I didn't respond because that quote you've pointed out twice now relates to efficacy, not safety. We were talking about vaccine safety, and frankly I don't have time to embark on a wide-ranging analysis of the medical industry. If you continue to poison your own well by reading only books written for a popular audience with titles like "Bad Pharma", you will of course be misled repeatedly into this sort of recondite discourse and you will be woefully uninformed and unprepared for it. So you have so far doubted every study that disagrees with you on frivolous grounds, and you blindly accept any piece of information that supports your position -- the book, the one influenza vaccine study you're so fond of, etc -- and none of these is deserving of such unflappable sycophancy by someone who claims to care about intellectual honesty. The thing is, if you were really concerned about the truth, I shouldn't have to explain this to you.

You repeatedly pretend the various mistakes you've made are unimportant to the point, even though basically all of the claims in your original post have been discredited. In this new post of yours, you do it again: pharmaceutical companies will not even in a fantasy nightmare scenario suppress information about idiopathic problems, because "idiopathic" means without any determinable cause. The chance of being injured in a car accident likewise is after wearing a seatbelt, and yet you consider this a remedy. All available evidence says that the LYMErix trials were gonest, and you call them rigged. Furthermore, your apparent belief that a "starving waif in some developing country" is at a high risk for malnutrition-induced immunodeficiency is outrageous. While immunocompromise appears in extreme cases of malnutrition, this is rare even in LDCs and the vast majority of immunodeficiency cases of any relevance are linked to diseases and genetic disorders. This is in addition to your misrepresentation of Japanese vaccine scheduling, your misrepresentation of the history and use of OPV, and your misunderstanding of vaccine court, this last point having been central to your original argument. Your misinformed opinion is so asinine it affects my application of Hanlon's razor, and furthermore: everything I have posted has been true, and where approximations have been used they have been clearly marked alongside the relevant reasons for applying them. Your assertion that our arguing techniques have been in any way comparable is laughable.

This is in addition to the fact that your responses to my arguments have been terrible; you wish to characterize my opening comparison as absurd when even in a previous post you had acknowledged it as reasonable: how else am I to interpret your claim that vaccine risk is fundamentally more avoidable than lightning, which was at least close enough to the mark to be amusing, but now it is merely sad.

The repeated insults you have delivered over the course of this thread have been without provocation. I have been harsh, but in every case I have been careful to address your argument, not you, and you have justified it by the paucity of honesty on display. Whether you want to believe it or not, the misinformation on display in your posts is exactly the sort of selective attention and scaremongering that is damaging public-health efforts across the globe.

You are a dangerous, blithering idiot, and I bid you good day.

http://foaas.com/linus/fnordfnordfnord/scythe

I'd love to see you actually respond to scythe (the top reply to this comment) instead of spreading your misinformation elsewhere in this thread.

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