Propaganda

I take extreme issue with the trajectory of this article, particularly featuring an parent who has not vaccinated her child as being some kind of authority. It lends credence to an exceptionally dangerous practice among some parents who foolishly do not vaccinate their children. I consider such a decision on the part of a parent to be not only stupid, but negligent. The only thing that prevent more death from disease than vaccination is proper sanitation followed by proper nutrition.

If the parent in question has ever allowed her child to ride in a motor vehicle, then she has put her child at far greater risk of death than any vaccination ever could.

There is little I loath more than the anti-vaccine idiocy out there that seems to proliferate on the internet, and amongst airy fairy new age nutbars who'd rather rely on crystals, and chanting to "cure" disease.

The issue here should be corporate for-profit influence on public health. Vaccines are far too important to public health to be left to profit driven enterprise.

I'm no expert on this drug

I'm no expert on this drug so have to rely on comments by doctors. The article of yesterday in the T/C says it really isn't a good idea. Gordo is on side no doubt because the fed will be paying most of the bills

$80 million for what?

Not only is it unknown if Gardasil can prevent cervical cancer, it’s also questionable that HPV is the main cause of the cancer. Despite Dr Kendall’s claim, HPV is not found in all cervical cancers. It’s more likely that the many risk factors, chief of which is smoking, are the main cause. With Merck’s aggressive sales pitch having been successful worldwide, how is the relative predominance of the 150 (some say thousands) of HPV strains changing? How long will Gardasil be effective against HPV infection, let alone any possible efficacy against cervical cancer?

$39 million for two Grades vaccinated for two years, plus research? A Canadian Press article of Sept 20, 2007, announced BC Gardasil funding for 50,000 Grade 6 girls with no mention of Grade 9. The yearly cost of the vaccine alone with no administrative costs would be about $20 million for all Grade 6 girls and more like $80 million for Grades 6 and 9 for two years.

Propaganda?

Not many people would disagree with you James if you were talking about proven vaccines. This is not a proven vaccine and it comes at a cost. There are many things that could use the money in our health care system. This is not "anti-vaccine idiocy", this is a very expensive vaccine that has not been proven. People are asking very reasonabale questions here. Considering my doctor just laughed and rolled his eyes when we talked about the HPV vaccine, what does that tell you?

Experiment ?

If this vaccine is as unproven as some claim, then this program at least borders upon being a mass trial / experiment.

That being the case, it would seem imperative to me that monies dedicated to long-term follow-up would accompany the program.

I see no mention of that being the case.

Hogwash

This article just screams paranoia and pseudo-conspiracy theory and has very little scientific merit. Not very well-balanced in terms of evidence presented, and riddled with political innuendo vs lab results.

Trying to claim Merck has a powerful lobby with...

Wow. $11 grand over three years. That must buy at least two plates at fundraising dinners.

The real point is that if the vaccine wasn't safe, Health Canada wouldn't have approved it. The one thing we still don't have in Canada is the US fast-track system of getting drugs to market before they're proven. Although a few slip through I would imagine that the benefits outweigh the costs, ie. more people can be cured of/control illness than die from it or from drug side-effects.

You "would imagine that the

You "would imagine that the benefits outweigh the costs."? Doesn't sound very scientific to me. Are you aware that Gardasil was fast-tracked for approval by the FDA? And, after that, it was fast-tracked by the Canadian Government when it was allotted $300 million in the Feb, 2007 budget, five months before receiving approval from Health Canada! Meanwhile, the final report on post-marketing studies required by the FDA is not due until 2018.

Ah, Burns

This thread is about vaccines and you don't seem to be able to understand that Bill C 51 is:
"An Act respecting foods, therapeutic products and cosmetics"
Herbs are both foods& therapeutic products.

“sell” includes offer for sale, expose for sale or have in possession for sale — or distribute to one or more persons, whether or not the distribution is made for consideration —
The Act relies not on science or proven danger, but the "Minister's opinion".
Maybe you'd like to read the thing before defending it.

Then, how many "adverse reactions" do you need to tell you something strange is happening? 5 deaths aren't enough?

Why is the reporting of an adverse reaction
to a vaccine or medication voluntary
both in Canada and the US? How deceptive is that?

How many deaths from not having been vaccinated as opposed to deaths FROM VACCINATIONS in Canada?

Well, we can't really know since nobody is keeping track of it.

All of your assumptions about vaccinations need to be updated.
http://www.909shot.com/myths.htm

Rumsfeld

Ah right the old Rumsfeldism "the absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence." What a colossal joke.

Reporting is voluntary, so you make the claim that because it is voluntary physicians and anyone associated with health care are involved in a conspiracy to suppress the true and terrible nature of vaccines. Why? Who the hell knows. I'm sure you can come up with a tin foil hat theory to justify your nonsensical claims. But to go on and say no one is keeping track of it is also nonsense. Reporting is voluntary remember. There is a system in place. Here is the website of one in the US:

http://vaers.hhs.gov/

I'm sorry mopled, but where vaccines are concerned you are so colossally misguided that I have to question your ability to think rationally on the subject. Clearly all the scientific evidence in the world, and especially the fact that vaccines are used by billions worldwide with nary a reported adverse effect in comparison makes no difference to you.

As for bill c-51 why don't you read it? Theraputic products should be regulated. Tell me, can't you see the dissonance between your position on vaccines, which are carefully tested in clinical trial prior to their use on the public, yet theraputic products, many of which make incredibly outlandish claims of their health benefits, should have no regulation at all? In fact you are willing to scream blue murder over any attempt to ensure the safety of these products.

Frankly, I find that dissonance creepy. Vaccines which are exceptionally safe with simply enormous health benefits you attack relentlessly, while products that largely rely on the placebo effect for positive benefit, and may cause considerable harm due to contamination you want to have no oversight whatsoever.

James Burns

I think you are wrong, Mopled, in linking GWest with James Burns, since he has supplied you with a link that destroys Burn's silly hypothesis that "voluntary" reporting by the medical profession constitutes a suitable replacement for tracking by an impartial gov't agency.

http://www.whp-apsf.ca/en/documents/adrBackground.html

There is no arguing that modern vaccines have resulted in the virtual eradication of many childhood diseases oommon in my childhood such as Polio, Measles, Mumps, and Diptheria, and prior to that, Smallpox. The list is long.

Beyond question, there are are occasional - and quite rare - deleterious side-effects from vaccines, but given the odds, any parent would be very foolish not to risk them.

But James Burns very deliberately ignores the overwhelming evidence that times have dramatically changed in the Health Care industry, as our gov'ts pursue the Ayn Randian ideal of turning all gov't services over to industry. If by some chance he cannot see that, he's self-delusional.

For at least twenty years, Gov't has been in the business of shutting down its labs and agencies which once provided the public with confidence in the drugs offered, and Burns draws heavily on that still-lingering confidence, while ignoring the mounting evidence that Big Pharma is short-circuiting testing as it tries to get its products on the market before its competitors.

One of the results of that is doctors experimenting upon their patients with different drugs. The outcome of this is, some claim, perhaps >250,000 deaths annually in the US as a result of mis-prescribed drugs, as part of what we now call iatrogenic medicine.

We've seen the problems which have arisen from over-prescription of mood-altering drugs such a Prozac, and the counter-productive results of over-prescribing anti-biotics.

These and other findings have NOT arisen a a result of the pharmaceutical industry or the medical professions policing themseves, as J Burns would have us believe, but rather from independant researchers in Universities and gov't, often in the face of near-terrorist activities by Big Pharma. And J Burns wants these shut down too, to save us money.

You are correct ME2 and

my apologies to G.West for not having made the distinction between a style he often employs on other threads and his posting on this one.

One of the dangers of vaccination has been the "hot lot" problem. Occasionally a batch will be defective and dangerous. Without compulsory reporting, these lots may escape official notice until after a great deal of damage has been done.

Instead of a common sense measure being employed to prevent real danger, we have Health Canada trying to sneak past the outrage of Bill C-51 which will subject harmless products to draconian legislation.

It really doesn't seem to matter what party is in power, drug companies rule the roost at Health Canada.

Misrepresentation

ME2, I do believe I focused on vaccines did I not? The efficacy of vaccines we seem to agree on.

But the rest of your diatribe against me is utter trash. I hold none of the positions you accuse me of, and I challenge you to show where in what I've written that I do. If you cannot support those accusations then I suggest you retract them.

Rertaction

You are 100% correct, James Burns. In your post above, WHAT VICTIM?,you state :

"I will, say, as I've said before, vaccines are far too important to be left to research, development and ownership by for-profit corporations. Doing so means the interests of public health take a backseat to profit. That is a big mistake."

Clearly, that is the exact opposite to the imputations I made re your motivations, and I unreservedly withdraw them and apologise for the unwarranted and unfair attack upon your credibility.

Since as I recall, this is the second time I've made this error with you, and since I usually try to be more careful, I've tried to figure out why I've made the same mistake twice. I think it's because some time ago I assessed the tenor of your postings wrongly, and those preconceptions have remained.

So please be assured that while I retain the right to disagree with you, I will in the future approach your posts using an entirely different perspective.

Again, my apologies.

Mandatory Immunization

Whenever a new vaccine has come into society, there is always a very vocal minority that opposes it. That has even included the Salk vaccine for polio. Remember sanatoria with dozens of rooms filled with iron lungs? Remember the panic when a whooping cough epidemic hit a school, when panicked parents would keep their kids home? Well, I do.

There is no point getting into much detail but there have always been a very motivated band of lay people trying to tell the rest of society that their model for anything is better and that we should disregard the opinions of academics and other professional bodies.

If we, as a society, listened to screeching naysayers we would still live in caves.

Thanks

ME2 thank you.

One of the reasons I had such a strong reaction to your accusations is that I've done volunteer work in the past for open source medical publications. The primary purpose of these publications is to combat the influence of pharmaceutical corporations on medical research, and the reporting of research.

I think the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on the medical profession is corrupting and exceptionally dangerous. I do not think the pharmaceutical industry has public health as its foremost concern, and that has led to abuses by industry.

Government has obviated its responsibility of oversight with the misguided notion that by offloading the responsibility on industry they are saving money, when in fact all they are really doing is externalizing the costs by eliminating a line item from their balance sheet. The fact they end up adding more costs in the form of public disability and death due to improperly tested and regulated prescription medicine doesn't seem to bother many in government, which both baffles and angers me.

Now admittedly I can be exceptionally aggressive on certain topics. Vaccines are one, because they have been a godsend for public health. I tend to go on the attack when people knowingly or unknowingly misrepresent vaccines, because there is little I loath more than misinformation that results in real harm and loss of human life.

But again, thank you for taking the time to understand my position.