________________________________
Bill I do care very much about ‘my youngest descendants’ and I am very sorry for your personal experiences connected to autism, whatever they may be.
However. Before the MMR vaccine was introduced in 1971 there were around 500 deaths per year from Measles, around 50 deaths a year from Mumps and 20 or so deaths per year from Rubella in the US alone. After the vaccine the number of deaths from these diseases dropped to less than 1 per year. These are DEATHS; the number suffering from these diseases was more than 2000 times the death rate. These are absolute figures; the total population just about doubled in this time frame so the percentage change is even more impressive. Vaccines save lives, and not just a few. I’m all for stopping vaccination when and if these diseases ever disappear but, based on today’s news (http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/27/health/harvard-university-mumps-outbreak/index.html), they have not.
The recent increase in Autism diagnosis has occurred since around 2000 (mainly due to better diagnosis) but the current vaccine has been in use since 1971. Autism affects males at a rate 4.5 times that of females. Twin studies show there is a genetic component to autism. It occurs at about the same rate in all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups around the world. It occurs at about the same time in life (vaccinated or not). These factors do not add up to a vaccine causing autism. Correlation does not prove causation.
I do not have the resources to do my own scientific study on the connection between autism and vaccines. This would require taking national data over decades from millions of people. I do not have time to get a PhD in immunology. So who should I trust? Certainly not the vaccine manufactures. Should we go with anecdotal evidence? I don’t think so. Fortunately the CDC (funded by the government, not the vaccine industry) has done my homework for me. A team of experts, far more qualified than I, have looked at the evidence and said "To date, the studies continue to show that vaccines are not associated with ASD.” Should we keep looking? Sure I’m all for that! Are there contrarian views who have done studies? Yes, and this is true about nearly every topic you can mention. Does that mean we get to pick and choose who we want to believe? I think we go with the best available information and I’m going to bet the CDC has the best information. Yes they could end up being wrong and I’ll be the first to change my mind if they come up with different data. Yes, we should find the cause of autism, whatever it is. Should we stop vaccinating? I sincerely hope not, at lease not yet, for the sake of my grand kids and everyone else’s.
In addition; go to Science magazine and search for autism. There has been a lot of research which is slowing leading to a better understanding of autism. None of it implicates vaccines.
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1. Re: [**External**] Re: More blood Re: disinformation
(bnorwood111@gmail.com)
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2020 08:05:21 -0500
From: bnorwood111@gmail.com
To: Phys-L@phys-l.org
Cc: phys-l@mail.phys-l.org
Subject: Re: [Phys-L] [**External**] Re: More blood Re: disinformation
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Nope.
Sent from my iPhone
On Jan 29, 2020, at 8:27 PM, brian whatcott <betwys1@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Bill, since you insist I offer a more direct judgment I will say this.
I set aside as far as I can, any study which used American physicians and epidemiologists because, since medicine was converted by Congressional law to a profit-making enterprise, U.S results are at once made suspect by the ever present profit motif in medicine and also in law-making mediated by lobbyists, but also by the known discrepancies of life-expectancy as between the US and a number of other countries.
Instead, I prefer to look at European studies where lobbyists' efforts are less all-encompassing, though sadly, not absent.
If I search for studies intended to study the relation between autism and popular vaccines like MMR (Measles, Mumps Rubella) I come upon papers like this one as a sample of the general European approach to vaccination*,*though it suffers statistically because it is retrospectiveand it carries a U.S imprimatur ~
Annals of Internal Medicine:
n = 657 461 children born in Denmark from 1999 through 31 December 2010, with follow-up from 1 year of age and through 31 August 2013.
During 5 025 754 person-years of follow-up, 6517 children were diagnosed with autism (incidence rate, 129.7 per 100 000 person-years). Comparing MMR-vaccinated with MMR-unvaccinated children yielded a fully adjusted autism hazard ratio of 0.93 (95% CI, 0.85 to 1.02). Similarly, no increased risk for autism after MMR vaccination was consistently observed in subgroups of children defined according to sibling history of autism, autism risk factors (based on a disease risk score) or other childhood vaccinations, or during specified time periods after vaccination.
Is this sufficiently blunt (head-on) to meet your requirement?
Brian W
On 1/29/2020 6:01 PM, Bill Norwood via Phys-l wrote:
Brian,
- You keep drawing attention away from the central issue.
- Please, let me see you address head-on the issue about the degree to which you are responsible to perform objective research designed to maximally defend those you care about against the ravages of autism.
Bill
Sent from my iPhone
On Jan 29, 2020, at 4:09 PM, brian whatcott <betwys1@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Bill,
I am not a climatologist. Should I do my own objective research, read 50 books on the topic possibly - before accepting the global warming hypothesis?
I am not a brilliant or even a mediocre physicist, by the way, just as you would probably agree you are not an epidemiologist.
Brian W
p.s. I DO know how 'endemic' is defined - and that's something!
On 1/29/2020 12:38 PM, Bill Norwood via Phys-l wrote:
Brian Whatcott,
- Yes, I have studied and worked roughly 1000 hours on the vaccine problem, and I readily admit that I do not know it all.
- Even the producers of the documentary for which I wrote the transcript, which involves several board-certified physicians as well as an array of other highly qualified specialists, virtually admit via an add-on that their documentary does not ?know it all.?
/snip/
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