Taking the Machine to School: Welcome Aboard, Dr. Glenn D. Braunstein

Back in early February , one of the many attacks centering on Dr. Andrew Wakefield came from a Dr Glenn D. Braunstein, the Chairman of the Department of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai in the form of a Huffington Post piece entitled Andrew Wakefield's Vaccination and Autism Study: Allegations of Fraud With Financial Motivations. I didn't find much of interest in that post, but it did include a link to an earlier article, which I found both fascinating and astonishing - especially considering the prestigious office held by the doctor. So what did it say, you ask. Here's how it begins:

Medically speaking, the good old days aren't something a physician gets sentimental about, unless there's a soft spot in his or her heart for the Middle Ages when small pox wiped out most of Western Europe; or the nineteenth century, when typhoid had its way with millions of children; or after World War I when influenza practically killed more people than the war itself.

 These were terrible diseases we've conquered thanks to vaccines.

OK, where to begin? Since it's rare for two paragraphs to contain so much misinformation, I'll just start from the top. Did the smallpox wipe out most of Western Europe during the Middle Ages? Of course not. According to Wikipedia:

During the Middle Ages, smallpox made periodic incursions into Europe but did not become established there until the population increased and population movement became more active during the time of the Crusades

So it's difficult to have an increasing population at the same time smallpox is raging through and decimating that very same population

But before we continue lets define what we mean by the Middle Ages. Again, using Wikipedia, we learn:

The Middle Ages...was a period of European history from the 5th century to the 15th centuryAnd just to make sure we're correct, let's look at another source that examines the incursion of smallpox into Europe.

And to be sure we've got our facts straight about what the smallpox was doing during this time period, let's look at secondary source. On page 28 of Donald R. Hopkins' book The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History we learn:

During the fifteenth century...smallpox apparently began to slowly gather momentum in Europe 

So at the end of the Middle Ages smallpox is not wiping out population; rather it's just slowly gaining a foothold.

Maybe Dr. Braunstein simply has his time periods confused. The population must have been nearly wiped out, just at a later date: when smallpox was in its prime. But when smallpox was, in the 18th century, a leading cause of death in Europe, the population was exploding, going from one hundred to two hundred million people.

OK, so even given the benefit of the doubt about time frames, its clear the assertions regarding the smallpox are complete nonsense; lets then move on to his next claim: that typhoid was conquered thanks to vaccines.

According to the textbook Vaccines (4th edition pages 1060-61):

The highest incidence usually occurs where water supplies serving large populations are contaminated by fecal matter. This situation existed at the end of the 19th century in most large cities in the United States...causing the disease to be highly endemic in large cities. With the introduction of water treatment at the turn of the 20th century...the incidence of typhoid plummeted precipitously in the large cities of the united states

And according to Arthur Allen, a great friend of vaccination and the author of Vaccine: The controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver,

Nationwide, the typhoid death rate declined 99 percent from 1906 to 1936, with little vaccination. P 137

So in reality vaccines had nothing to do with the conquest of typhoid. The assertion is just another erroneous claim advanced to further the cause of vaccination.

And now finally, in regards to Braunstein's last claim -- the conquest of the flu --I was not personally aware that the flu had been conquered. But this is of course wonderful news. Please excuse me while I go tell my Walgreens pharmacist.

Before the article ends Dr Braunstein advances one final noteworthy declaration:

And as far as all the scares and controversy about vaccinations lately, let's not confuse sound medical practice with making healthy choices on a visit to Whole Foods, especially since the assumption that vaccines aren't pure and natural is inaccurate.

And on this point I must agree. After all, in France, cave paintings clearly show early humans injecting one another with all types of vaccines. Additionally, the now-extinct trees and bushes on which syringes and vaccines grew are also depicted.

Correcting this shocking degree of institutional ignorance wont be easy, but we at the Vaccine Machine stand ready to do our part by communicating with and educating those blinded by their idealized images of vaccination. So come aboard medical establishment, the lessons are about to begin.

Dr Seagull Lays an Egg

What is Dr Seagull talking about? The only way vaccines work is with herd immunity? Herd immunity is just a byproduct of people acting to protect themselves. So if I get a flu shot it doesn't work because the rest of the neighborhood didn't get one? The vaccine peddlers are becoming more and more detached from reality. Besides, if vaccines can only work with high levels of compliance through force then they can't work. The dream of America is freedom, not freedom from the measles. We cannot and will not sacrifice the former for the latter.

Furthermore, forced compliance just works at the margins. Those wanting protection can get vaccinated. If that's not enough they can stay home, away from germs. If that doesn't protect them to their satisfaction, too bad. No one has a right to force unwanted medical treatments on others regardless of the reasons.

And measles is a killer? I guess Goebbels was right: when lying lie big.

Anyway, herd immunity is public health's fantasy, not ours. And using the state to achieve it is entirely antithetical to the proper and just role of government: to protect rights, not to violate them to satisfy the goals of certain obsessive vested interests.

If there aren't enough willing vaccinees to achieve herd immunity, then you can't have your precious herd immunity. Get over it.

American Values vs. The Scientific American

The editors of Scientific American, in coordination with the pro-vaccine propaganda emerging from the release of Paul Offit and Seth Mnookin's new books (the two authors encouraging us to both vaccinate and bow down to the will of "science") and the release of a report attacking Dr Andrew Wakefield and his study tying autism to the MMR vaccine, have, in the magazine's February issue, submitted their own bit of vaccination disinformation.

The article entitled Fear and Its Consequences begins with an incident that has nothing to do with either fear or its consequences: the California pertussis outbreak of 2010

California is now in the middle of the worst outbreak of pertussis in half a century... The number of annual cases has been climbing in recent years. Last year, though, the rate of infection rose, once again, to epidemic proportions—7,297 known and suspected cases, a fourfold increase from 2009. 

Of course, no piece of establishment generated propaganda would be complete with out a rehashing of this epidemic - even though "vaccine refusers" had as much to do with it as they did with the financial crisis of 2008.

The editors then employ a nonsensical premise in an attempt to sell us on the idea of herd immunity (they sure do love their herd immunity)

The success of any given vaccine depends on so-called herd immunity, in which a high rate of immunization in a population helps to protect those individuals who are not immune.

No the success of a vaccine depends on how well it protects those receiving it - any herd immunity is a simply a byproduct of large numbers of people choosing that vaccine - or sadly, being forced to accept it.

Continuing on with the herd immunity theme, they assert:

Herd immunity requires high immunization rates—around 95 percent for highly contagious infections like pertussis and measles. 

As to their point, I'm not sure. As I've discussed ad nauseum, 1 million cases of undiagnosed pertussis occur each year; making herd immunity to pertussis pure fiction.

The editors prattle on:

When immunization rates drop below the critical level, disease can strike not only unvaccinated individuals but also vaccinated ones, because all vaccines fail to confer immunity in a certain percentage of people.

Terrifying. Damn those anti-vaxxers! But wait rates have never reached 95% for the measles - or any other illness for that matter - even under the regime of forced immunization. So how could rates be falling below critical levels when they've never reached critical levels?

Either way, whether or not they reach critical levels is unimportant because the attainment of those levels does not justify the unwanted medication of America's children.

Next up is the endangerment card:

Parents who opt out are endangering not only their own kids but everybody else’s, too—including those who cannot be vaccinated because they are too young or immunocompromised, as well as youngsters who have received their shots.

In my opinion (and that's the only one that counts when my child is involved) the endangerment comes when you allow 70 doses of vaccine to be administered to a young child. As to the precious herd, the danger of catching an infectious illness is a product of civilization, not a result of those who choose not to vaccinate. When we're forced to vaccinate we're simply being forced to protect others by using our children as objects. Opting out of that immoral system simply returns us to a baseline at which one person is at a moderate risk of catching an illness from another person

Slogging through their list of talking points, they arrive at the Wakefield matter

In February 2010 the Lancet retracted Wakefield’s infamous paper. That leaves no scientific evidence to support the assertion that vaccines cause autism or other chronic diseases. 

They fail to inform their readers that there may be no scientific evidence because science has never seen fit to examine whether or not vaccines (not just one single vaccine or one single vaccine ingredient) cause autism - especially when these vaccines are given in countless different combinations during different stages of development.

Finally the article sinks to it's most pathetically absurd point

The right to decide what is best for oneself and one’s children ends where science has so clearly documented a threat to public welfare. It’s time for the other 48 states to eliminate these exemptions and adopt strict enforcement policies to ensure that kids get their jabs. 

Wrong! The only time the right to choose what's best for one's self comes under government control is when those choices infringe upon the rights of fellow citizens - and there is no right to be free from illness at the expense of others.

The threat to public welfare about which they speak is really a threat to people (scientists love to talk about herds and hives and communities and the collective but never people) but that threat comes not from other people violating our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happineess (the area in which government involvement and protection is legitimate). Rather these "threats" - if one could call the mumps a threat - come from a combination of infectious agents and the living conditions we, for the most part, choose ourselves.

As free people, we can discover and use vaccines, avoid people and live a life that supports health rather than illness.These, unlike forced vaccination, are legitamate ways we, the people, can protect ourselves - legitamate because we, in the process, do not trample upon the rights of others to obtain that protection.

Scientific American's disdain for freedom is hardly surprising since it and similar publications believe we all live to do as the scientists say. After all in a free country how would they expropriate the money of hard working Americans in order to fund their self indulgent little science projects. And how could they afford to traverse the world, attending their yearly global warming climate change summits - held of course in some of the world's most glamorous locations.

Who would give them the time of day were it not for their never-ending alarmism promising (without their leadership) both a world about to explode into a gigantic fireball and one a the precipice of being devoured by the scourge of infectious illness.

It's revealing that, in the very same issue in which this little editorial appears, two other articles call for the implementation of policys that would, to solve the crises de jour, tell us what to drive, the temperatures at which we'd be allowed to maintain our homes and of course what foods and beverages we'd be permitted to consume. No aspect of our lives is safe from the scientist and his political enablers.

Scientists are, even though they're loath to admit it, people like the rest of us. And as such they desire power, prestige and the ability to foist their political agendas upon others.

They labor under the delusion that "science" confers to them some legitimate authority to rule and control - just as the kings of yesteryear imagined their authority flowed from a divine source.

In light of the dangers science poses to freedom, it is time emulate the founding fathers' separation of church and state and, as the philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend suggested, separate state and science.

Release the Parrots!

Over the past several weeks a torrent of pro-vaccination misinformation has been unleashed upon the nation. Most of it parrots a variety of talking points concocted by vaccine idolaters Paul Offit and Seth Mnookin

Michigan's Kalamazoo Gazette begins the talking point parade with these two:

A growing number of parents are refusing to immunize their children

And:

...diseases thought long gone are making a comeback.

But vaccination rates are at all time highs. The small rise in exemptions (from say perhaps .05% to .2%) is negated by rises among the general population. After all you wouldn't say, after losing a five dollar bill but then finding a ten dollar one, that you had a net loss of five dollars  - would you?

As to the second point, throughout the entire vaccine era there have been small outbreaks of vaccine-preventable illnesses yet the author would have us believe it was 1950 and every child was contracting the measles, mumps and chicken pox

The Gazette then rolls out the obligatory pediatrician and public health official. First we're then treated to the lamentations of Pediatrician Eric Slosberg regarding the reluctance of some parents to do as their told and vaccinate:

“It’s very frustrating; to be frank, it’s like talking to a brick wall,”

We'll Eric there's a flipside to that. I'm very frustrated that you and your public health comrades can't take no for an answer and leave parents alone. It's kind of like talking to a brick wall. Some people don't want vaccines; get over it.

A Dr. Allan Lareau, of Bronson Rambling Road Pediatrics, in Kalamazoo then weighs in:

“Based on all available literature, evidence and current studies, there is no evidence to support that vaccines cause autism or other developmental disabilities,” Lareau said. “It’s way beyond a reasonable doubt at this point — vaccines are not a cause of autism.”

Sadly Dr. Lareau, like so many birds of a feather in the medical community, wants us to believe an absence of evidence due to a lack of investigation is the equivalent of a rigorous investigation of a possible link that turns up no association

Finally, in a point that seems to contradict the entire article - that people fleeing vaccination in droves - we discover:

Statewide, only about 4 percent of all children did not get vaccinated last year.

Its not any better in Baltimore where the Sun call measles and mumps "dreadful diseases"

Then the Pittsburgh Parrots of the Post-Gazette take their shot at the issue in an article that begins:

In the face of increasing evidence that families who oppose vaccination are endangering their own children and public health, some doctors and patients are starting to fight back.

As I've stated before infectious illnesses are a part of living among other people. Therefore people choosing to live around others are at risk of catching something. My decision to forgo vaccines doesn't place others at risk, it just leaves them where they started.

And "fighting back?" How can you "fight back" when nobody's fighting with you. Just take your vaccine and go away - no fight. Their claims of fighting back are analogous to a thief fighting back against those refusing to be robbed.

Not to be denied a whack at the dead horse of the 2010 pertussis epidemic, the article's author continues:

in some pockets on the West Coast, 20 to 30 percent of the residents are unvaccinated...As a result, California is now experiencing its worst whooping cough outbreak in 50 years, with nearly 9,000 people infected and 10 children dead, and Pennsylvania's cases jumped more than 50 percent last year, to 950.

The piece continues, bemoaning the demise of the herd:

...there is an unsettling decrease in "herd immunity" in the American population. When vaccination rates are high, it doesn't matter if some individuals get preventable diseases, because they won't be able to spread very far.

Even though, and I don't know how many ways to say this, VACCINATION RATES ARE AT ALL-TIME HIGHS!!!

Our old friend Gregory Poland then appears claiming:

...about three of every 1,000 people who get measles die from it.

The doctor employs a common tactic of the vaccinator: make the illness seem more dangerous than it actually is.

Poland's probably constructing his numbers from data accumulated during the early 90s where mild measles cases were underreported and infants were more vulnerable than in the pre-vaccine era because mothers passed on less effective maternal antibodies (due to gaining immunity from vaccination and not natural infection)

Additionally the epidemic was concentrated amoung the poor: a group that is more severly effected by almost any infectious illness.

A more accurate measure of measles severity is derived from the CDC's estimate that ~3 to 4 million children contracted the illness each year resulting in 450-500 deaths - leaving us with a mortality ratio of ~1-8,000. And even that ratio overestimates the likelihood of death in a healthy child since those with risk factors such as malnutrition are far more likely to experience severe cases - just as a smoker is far more likely to suffer from lung cancer

Next, Julius Youngner, who helped develop the Salk polio vaccine is quoted:

"When you have a disease like smallpox where 30 percent who get the disease die, and you have this terrible scarring with the survivors, vaccine eradication becomes very popular," he said.

Apparently Younger hasn't read the aforementioned Baltimore Sun piece which states:

Brandeis University historian Michael Willrich is writing a book on the history of smallpox, and in an essay in The New York Times, he describes government troops and city policemen wielding clubs for the forcible administration of smallpox vaccine to suspicious factory workers and immigrants.

Finally it's back to Dr. Poland who ends on an "encouraging" note :

I've found...vaccine-hesitant parents can be reached with targeted education."

Of course those familiar with this blog know "targeted education" is simply a euphemism for propaganda

In conclusion, we examine the Manhattan Institute's City Journal where the the authors - one of whom is the director of the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Medical Progress - open with a combination of parrotry and typical Machine deception, squawking:

Vaccines, which save millions of lives every year,

Somehow they fail to mention that, even if these numbers were correct, they apply, not to America where we live, but to Africa, India and other remote corners of the globe where abysmal living condition play a far more powerful role that do mean old bugs and germs.

Then, turning their attention to the poor dead horse of pertussis (now battered beyond all recognition and only identifiable through dental records), they query:

Why, then, is that sickness [pertussis] making a scary comeback in California, which is currently weathering its largest whooping-cough epidemic since 1947, with over 7,800 cases and 10 deaths in 2010? Mainly because more and more parents, worried about the vaccine’s supposed side effects, are choosing to delay vaccinating their children—or not to do it at all.

I've debunked this assertion here and here.

Their next talking point claims that it's those damn "affluent and well-educated" who are spoiling everything for the rest of us by failing to comply with the wishes of our omniscient public health mandarins. This talking point seems to be an attempt to stir up a little class warfare and turn American against American - after all since when is wise to follow not the educated but the poor and ignorant.

The piece ends talking about "today’s anti-vaccine hysteria" which corresponds to their notion that anyone who declines a vaccine must be out of their minds (either naturally or as a result of panic, fear or hysteria) But I, and most others I know, when deciding against vaccination, were of sound mind and not in someway impaired.

Apparently unable to think for themselves, these "journalists" just parrot the spoon-fed talking points of public health functionaries. So when reading one of these stories extolling the miracles of vaccination, look past the feathers and see the facts. And remember, just because a parrot repeats something doesn't mean it's true.