Interesting, what was that like? Did he actually believe all the claims he was making?
The Tommey family (worked with Andy on Vaxxed) are some of the kindest people I've ever met, and I'd like to see them again.
Suzanne Humphries is possibly one of the smartest people I know, and is incredibly well-read. She's a nephrologist who started charting patterns around people getting flu shots followed by sudden kidney failure, well before Andy did his "research". She brought this to the attention of a researcher, and was promptly dismissed. She's not anti-vaccine, but is pro-vaccine-safety, which I appreciate as an intellectually honest position. Out of the whole crowd, she's the person I would listen to. She's a bit like Andrew Yang; she doesn't hold opinions, the data is her opinion.
I'm not sure why this is getting downvotes. I'm answering the question.
I've never heard of Humphries before your comment. I searched and found a long video of Humphries where she says, at the outset:
>> "never has there been a safe vaccine, never will there be a safe vaccine, and it is not possible to have a safe vaccine." [1]
IMO, a reasonable person would call that an anti-vaccine point of view, don't you think? Calling it pro-vaccine-safety seems disingenuous.
Anyways, I agree with you that she seems well read and she articulates her position in a level-headed manner and I'm even open to her being correct. But her position seems to be very anti-vaccine because she tells us that vaccine safety is "not possible" and that there will never be a safe vaccine.
I get frustrated with her sometimes, because her ideas are incredibly rational and coherent, but she doesn't understand presentation or how to sell an idea.
I would recommend her book if you want to gain an understanding of the rationalist arguments against modern vaccination:
https://www.amazon.com/Dissolving-Illusions-Disease-Vaccines...
It's controversial thought, but it is enlightening, especially if you want to understand why some "otherwise" smart people believe this nonsense
My early childhood passed in a city where meat was sold on pushcarts and where drinking tap water was an easy way to have an infection. I guess having the unnatural disease matter filled with metals injected into my muscle might have saved me from becoming a statistic.
No problem. Hope you enjoy if you decide to peruse.
To be fair, he's only a neurosurgeon, so I'm sure we all know better than him about this.
To clarify, he's only a pediatric neurosurgeon who pioneered procedures previously pondered as preposterous. This is actually something he's a recognized expert on, but because he holds a different opinion than you, he must be wrong.
He's not even antivax, he just thinks that newborns shouldn't receive a full round of shots immediately after birth, but that they should be spaced out. What an idiotic, uninformed individual.
I think he's being used as an example of someone who can be brilliant in one specialty while demonstrating /u/magashna's "doorknob level intelligence" in other fields like Egyptian archeology.
"Practitioner" would have made a beautiful 7x combo
> Andrew Jeremy Wakefield is a discredited British ex-physician who became an anti-vaccine activist. As a gastroenterologist at the Royal Free Hospital in London, he published a 1998 paper in The Lancet claiming a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and autism.
Unless the child has allergies to the vaccine, or a compromised immune system, it isn't reasonable to leave the child without vaccination. Intelligent people have more complex ways of rationalizing the decisions they make based on fear. It doesn't make the decision intelligent or wise.
Either way, better vaccines will be a boon to all. Hopefully, it will also ameliorate the fears of some "anti-vaxxers". My own fear is that because irrational decisions are already not based on evidence, these people will be unable to consider or accept new evidence, even when their specific rationalizations have been accounted for.
I mean, honestly, do you think that vaccines are harm free panacea for all that ills humanity? One of the reasons that the anti-vaxxer movement is so dangerous is precisely because vaccines are dangerous and some people's bodies are intolerant to them (most obviously imuno compromised individuals).
What I find so bizarre is that the debate feels like a ball game between two rival teams where one team is crushing the other. The losing players start talking trash and all the players on the other team have to do to shut them up is say "look at the scoreboard".
For vaccines, the scoreboard is pretty clear. Child mortality rates are at historic lows globally. Vaccines are the clear winner by a huge margin. In other words, "look at the scoreboard".
I thought it was someone against vaccination?
Orwell wrote many essays about this. Orwell wrote very many good essays.
Have you re-created the paper's data analysis from the (typically not easily available) data? Turns out some medical communities, like physiology, suck at data analysis.
Because if not, then you're just as uninformed as the anti-vaxxers with a healthy mix of arrogance.
If you are a researcher in the field, keep up the good work, but this arrogance towards the little ones fuels anti-vaxxer movement.
I despise people who are "on my side of the debate" belittling those they disagree with. Such incivility!
"How every food you eat is specifically processed" To a large extent yes - foodie.
Better example: web development. I don't care, I don't care to read about it. I also offer little judgment on that matter. I respect the opinion of those who seem to have an informed decisions on the topic, but I don't belittle those who don't trust the opinions of these, largely self appointed, experts.
As to medicine, the medical field has a long and rich history of abuse of patient rights (from forcibly stopping breast feeding, forced sterilizations, forced infection with syphilis, not treating said victims, ect) and hubris (refusing to wash their hands is my favorite).
While I believe in vaccines, I don't fault any one for not trusting medical authorities. Dr.s are, typically, (because they are trained this way) very patronizing people that historically have not respected their patients agency.
Nobody is dismissing this "out of hand", but the minuscule percentage of the population these issues effect is being used as a crutch for the anti-vaxxer movement.
Why is it always about you, and not the people who can't get vaccines due to legitimate medical reasons whom might get ill because of people voluntarily compromising herd immunity due to ignorance?
I have strong feelings about people forcing their BS non-scientific beliefs on their minor children.
[In some old vaccines, they used a somewhat related similar virus/bacteria that was close enough to make you get the immunity, but not to cause the illness. I'm not sure if this method is used still today.]
Your "theory" on shingles is inaccurate. The chickenpox virus can go dormant and resurface as shingles. Read the Mayo Clinic's overview.[2]
Basically, you are entirely wrong and are spreading inaccurate information, stop it.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/vaccine-benefits.htm [2] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/shingles/symp...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza#Replication https://www.cdc.gov/flu/news/flu-vaccine-saved-lives.htm
The shingles vaccine bolsters immunity towards the chicken pox virus so that even when depressed your immune system has enough T-cells against the virus that it does not reactivate. Shingrex is 97% effective at preventing shingles.
* Every year the vaccine is updated to match the new mutation which is why you need to get one every year.
* Some years the vaccine is not fully protective, but it will still reduce the severity and duration. This could mean the difference between life and death for at-risk populations: old, young, immune-comprised.
* If enough people get it, it provides herd immunity for people who can't take it such as babies less than 6 months.
I know someone with a child who has an immune condition who can't get the flu vaccine. The father didn't think he needed to get it because he didn't think the flu was that big of a deal, and it's not for most healthy people. Well he gets the flu, gives it to his son, and the son ends up in the ICU. Thankfully the son survived. The father now always gets the flu shot.
My big thing is safety and accountability. Currently, if a vaccine is harmful, the company that makes it has no liability, /and/ there's no control/test testing. The only way they're tested is by giving people the same shot with and without the viral component.
Problem is, saying anything that makes vaccines not sound like unicorn blood makes you one of "them", and you obviously want everyone to die of polio.
Also, how would you do control testing for vaccines?
This exists because of a bill sheltering vaccine manufacturers from all liability.
As for control testing, you give some people a saline solution, others the shot, and others the shot with no virus. Put the issue to rest.
Again, what the heck. I'm answering the question.
Wait, why do you need the third group (saline solution) as part of the control?
The saline is to rule out effects from the preservatives and adjuvants used. The viral component of vaccines isn't what anti-vaxxers usually worry about.
No, it's because the average person has no idea what they are talking about and do primitive correlation.
After a flu shot you can very well feel unwell as your immune system ramps up to eliminate the inactive virus. The real flu is actually nasty. Most people just have colds and never experience full blown flu until they finally do and regret.
Oxymoron.
No that's an oxymoron if I have ever seen one.
Vaccines are very important and most make sense but we are at what appears to be a tipping point where profits may go over the general well-being of the public.
We need proper oversight.
[Citation needed]. Vaccines are practically sold at break-even cost, and in fact in the last few decades many companies have exited the vaccine market entirely because there was so little money to be made.
> as well as there being protections for the industry to prevent people for suing them if a vaccine turns out to be actually unsafe
These liability protections exist because vaccines are so unprofitable. If you didn't have indemnity for a product that both
a) gets distributed to almost everyone, and so even tiny probabilities of side effects result in large absolute numbers of cases
b) has a tiny profit margin
no one would ever take on that risk, and the only way for vaccines to get made would be from nationalized industries.
I believe the vaccines them selves are safe and tested.
> Our vaccine candidate is easy to manufacture, extremely stable and elicits a powerful immune response.
Those are what most of the intelligent anti-vaxxers worry about, except for a few people who object to fetal tissue being used in development, which is not an issue here.
I'm sure some folks will get up in arms about this, but it'll be a huge step forwards in many people's minds, and hopefully will be used as a template in the future.
To clarify: I'm not an anti-vaxxer, but I do think the testing process isn't rigorous enough, and I have seen absolutely awful medically confirmed reactions firsthand, which gives me a slightly different perspective. Vaccines are good, but I want the reaction rate in non-immunocompromised people to be zero