Psience Quest

(2019-02-01, 09:15 AM)Max_B Wrote: [ -> ]I’m still refusing to have the flu shot... one of the studies I looked at showed just how effective it was, particularly amongst younger people. Really amazing effect. But there was summat weird happening with the results from much older people, as more of those having the flu shot were getting ill, than those who hadn’t had the shot. There seems to be something going on that is not well understood.

CDC’s Flu vaccine effectiveness comes from a cohort study that compares vaccination rates in people with confirmed flu and vaccination rate in people with flu-like illness. If getting the flu shot is correlated with increased risk of flu-like illness (which is likely since the side effects of the vaccine are flu-like) then this will produce a false appearance of effectiveness.

And now this...



Just when you thought the debate was settled over MMR and autism...

Dr. Zimmerman - whose expert testimony the Justice department used to deny thousands of families compensation for claims that the MMR vaccine caused autism in their children - has provided a sworn affidavit that he privately told Justice department lawyers in 2007 that he actually believed the vaccine could cause autism in some kids. He was fired the next day.

(2019-02-01, 01:21 PM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]I'm curious to see whether anyone is able to identify some of the glaring errors Hurmaneter made in his poster, as a demonstration of the validity of this approach.

Linda

I'm curious too which is why I posted here before showing to anyone else.

One thing I wasn't sure about: how to calculate unvaccinated probability of death or permanent injury by Measles since it involves a nested hypothesis or a dependent outcome... 1 in 2MM chance of getting measles if unvaccinated. Then 1 in 10,000 chance of dying if you get measles... so I just multiplied to get 1 in 20 billion. Whether or not that is the right way to calculate the probability, the odds of death by Measles if unvaccinated and not starving are so low as to be negligible so the vaccine offers no benefit to the individual in the way of risk reduction.

(2019-02-01, 07:41 AM)Typoz Wrote: [ -> ]A vomiting unicorn? Not sure I've seen one of those before.

You've only seen regular healthy unicorns?

I thought the funny watermark (a not-so-subliminal message) and sole reference to google would be disarming... make it seem less pretentious... and therefore more likely to be well received.

(2019-02-01, 01:38 PM)Stan Woolley Wrote: [ -> ]Close friends of ours, neighbours while living in Brunei, have experienced this bias first hand. They have two children, the eldest being a boy with autism. He, like so many others, started displaying distressing behaviour soon after receiving the mmr jab. 

The average Doctor or Pharmacist will not even have pondered the possibility that the very many such anecdotes similar to that above could possibly warrant serious consideration, or have validity. I think you are the same Linda. Ask yourself if my friends had come to you with very serious concerns about what was happening to their child, would you have kept an open mind?

I'm not sure what you are asking here. Clearly doctors pondered the possibility that the stories were valid and warranted serious consideration, because there has been considerable research on the subject. Most clinical questions come from observations such as these - something happened, and it was preceded by something else...was it causal? Sometimes the research confirms there may be a causal relationship, and oftentimes not. How does recognizing that the research in this case showed that there wasn't a causal relationship make me a bad doctor?

In any given month, thousands of children are diagnosed with autism in the absence of vaccination. Unless vaccines are highly effective at preventing autism, there should also be thousands of children diagnosed with autism in the month after a vaccination. I certainly agree that it's important to listen to patients/parents and treat their concerns seriously. But I also think it's important to be aware of what the research shows, or look to reliable sources for that information.
Linda

(2019-02-01, 02:16 PM)Brian Wrote: [ -> ]If you are just assuming errors and leaving others to do the work then it should be no surprise if people hold you in contempt.  However, I will give you the benefit of the doubt because I would really like to know one way or the other what the truth is and if you know something that we should know.  Please tell us what you think you know or else stop being cryptic!

No. Why would I? I don't care if you hold me in contempt. 

You guys seem pretty certain in yourselves. I'm curious to see what you come up with.

Linda

(2019-02-01, 03:51 PM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]No. Why would I?

Because it is you who is inferring there are errors

(2019-02-01, 03:51 PM)fls Wrote: [ -> ] I don't care if you hold me in contempt.

If it weren't for the crucified Jew, I certainly would.  I was merely saying you have no right to be shocked if people do.

(2019-02-01, 03:38 PM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]I'm not sure what you are asking here. Clearly doctors pondered the possibility that the stories were valid and warranted serious consideration, because there has been considerable research on the subject. Most clinical questions come from observations such as these - something happened, and it was preceded by something else...was it causal? Sometimes the research confirms there may be a causal relationship, and oftentimes not. How does recognizing that the research in this case showed that there wasn't a causal relationship make me a bad doctor?

In any given month, thousands of children are diagnosed with autism in the absence of vaccination. Unless vaccines are highly effective at preventing autism, there should also be thousands of children diagnosed with autism in the month after a vaccination. I certainly agree that it's important to listen to patients/parents and treat their concerns seriously. But I also think it's important to be aware of what the research shows, or look to reliable sources for that information.
Linda

I’ve read/seen a fair number of articles/videos that totally refute that second sentence Linda. Parents like my friends constantly report that they’re ignored by professionals they ask, they often feel patronised. It is no accident that such reports/videos are difficult to return to, because they are actively hidden. Of course, I might be able to eventually find them on YouTube, but the chances are that many simply disappear, even if I had the stamina to look hard for them.

I never suggested that you’re ‘a bad doctor’, but you are quite typical of the medical profession in that I think you run to scientific papers to ‘prove a point’ instead of listening properly to the other side that just possibly have very valid points to make. I have personal experience of rowing upstream against the majority. It wears you down!

(2019-01-31, 07:23 PM)Hurmanetar Wrote: [ -> ]I prepared this fact sheet on Measles and the Measles vaccine. Any thoughts? Did I get anything wrong?

[img]<a href=[/img]

My thought is that if we think about the most serious consequence - death - your figures are 400-500 deaths annually before vaccination and 7 deaths annually reported currently. (I'm not sure whether those figures are for the USA only or worldwide, but hopefully whichever is true it's the same for both.)

I see the caveat about only a small fraction being reported. But to conclude that vaccination had made matters worse, you'd need the efficiency of reporting between those two situations to be a factor of 60 or so different. You'd also need to account for the growth in population over the last 60 years, so that would become a factor of 100 or more.

I'd need a lot of persuasion to believe that the death rate now from measles vaccine is as great as or larger than the death rate from measles in 1960, but that the rate of reporting the deaths now is only 1% of the rate of reporting the deaths then.

Having said that, it may well be that the safest strategy is not to have your children vaccinated, provided nearly everyone else has their children vaccinated. But obviously that strategy fails if too many people adopt it.