July 27, 2008

Mainstream Medicine Does It The Max Power Way


Max Power: Kids, there’s three ways to do things. The right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way!

Bart: Isn’t that the wrong way?

Max Power: Yeah, but faster!
The theme of the day is the outing of the efforts by Mainstream Medicine to deal with the problem of parents turning on their brains and doing their own research in to vaccines.

Medicine is quite upset that parents are no longer ignoring MainMed's conflicts of interest, swallowing their unsatisfactory answers to important vaccine questions, failing to notice pediatricians collective yawn at the autism epidemic (and the ADD epidemic and the diabetes epidemic and the asthma epidemic etc.) and deciding to go to other sources of information.  The solution they propose?

They have decided to take autism seriously, engage the parent community a dialog that holds them to account in their vaccine statements, throw out bad research, acknowledge the truckload of evidence that backs the vaccine/autism theory, design studies in partnership with parents that will answer the important questions and enforce ethics guidelines to attack all the credibility and conflict of interest problems they have.

NO OF COURSE THEY AREN'T, SILLY!

They are doing it the Max Power way.  They are going to take the failing tactics of the passed decade but this time do more of it with more famous people, better graphics and an interactive experience.  New and Improved Dismissal of Parent Questions and Concerns.  Now with more Patronizing!  Apparently since giving inadequate answers to parents in the exam room has yielded such a poor result in maintaining high rates of vaccine uptake, they are going to up the ante and take their bad shtick to You Tube.


On Age of Autism Katie Wright has a piece on the CDC's recent conference call to figure out how to get parents to just stop asking questions, and stop doing their own research and just vaccinate like they are told.

Docs are encouraged by Nurse Patricia Stinchfield to act compassionate and humor parents, but never encouraged to actually consider the idea that have a point.  And right on cue she points us back to Dr. Paul, "100,000 vaccines at once" Offit:
"I like Dr. Paul Offit’s analogy of the ocean analogy. So describe to parents that the immune system’s like an ocean. And that at that first two month visit for example, they’re going to have eight antigens added to that immune ocean.

Think of it like eight cups of water being added to an ocean. It’s far from overload and far from being too weak to accept those."
Since when has eight cups of water managed to change the behavior of the entire ocean, put it on high alert, and get it to seek out and kill every shark contained in it across the surface of the planet and occasionally overstep its banks and incapacitate New York City?

And how about this gloss over in teaching docs how to asses were the parent is coming from in order to talk them into vaccinating:

"Sometimes we’ll find parents that say well I came in at two months and they got a bunch of shots. I thought that was all that they needed.

What’s their experience? Maybe they have a person in their family who has had a significant side effect to a vaccine. What are their emotions? What are their beliefs? Try to determine that."
Note that a family history of vaccine injuries is something to talk a parent down from, not something that the doctor should take into account and USE MORE CAUTION IN VACCINATING!

Nurse Stinchfield boils down the point of the conversation with parents in this telling statement:

"You want to keep the conversation focused. You want to control without being controlling...

...But we need to help parents be guided to the answer together.

We wouldn’t say to a parent, well your child needs open heart surgery, but that’s up to you. You can choose if you want to do that or not.

So I’m not sure why we say that when we’re talking about vaccines.

So the need for vaccination is the same as the need for open heart surgery, and parents should be "guided" to believe that they ultimately cannot say no to either.

So this is not an earnest conversation by any stretch.  It is a manipulation with a predetermined outcome.  "To control" the parent in to vaccinating.

When my husband read this, he hearkened back to the four months he once spent selling cars.  "You know what that is?  That is text book, day one lesson in how to sell.  They are not giving medical advice, they are selling vaccines exactly like I was taught to sell cars".

And she also asks doctors to keep in mind that:
"...there is not a physiologic reason to design an alternative immunization schedule. And there’s no biological rationale for splitting up a dose, giving an (M) and an (R.) (instead of MMR)."
And that is pretty much all the evidence we need to know that MainMed is not only not taking our concerns seriously but they are not even listening to our vaccine safety arguments.

Did I mention that the conference call was entitled , "Why Science Is Not Enough".  Because, of course, CDC believes that Science has spoken and there is no evidence of any link between vaccines and autism.

The most mockable part of this conference call?  The fact that they didn't actually bring in mothers who are not vaccinating to actual hear their concerns, they brought mothers who were "in the vaccine business".

Katie was right, you need to read this thing for yourself.  I could go on, but I think I have made enough points here.


Natural News has a story on a JAMA study on You Tube videos with the focus on countering the messages that urge caution in vaccinating.

"[YouTube is] the perfect venue for an anecdote, both positive or negative," Jennifer Keelan said. Wilson said that vaccine advocates can no longer ignore or marginalize anti-vaccine advocates.

"In the past that could work, but it's not going to work anymore. Now there are ways for people with these viewpoints to communicate with each other," he said. "These sites are now providing people with a mechanism by which they can bypass the conventional filters and get their messages out. It can be dangerous."

Some observations on this quote by this University of Toronto researcher.

First, it acknowledges that the plan of mainstream medicine for dealing with people who question the safety and efficacy of vaccines was to "ignore and marginalize" them.

Second, it acknowledges that there have been "filters" in place to keep any voice that critizes vaccination from being heard by the general public.

Of course we have been living this for years, so it is no surprise to us.  But it is interesting to see docs finally admitting it.

Bottom line, The Semmelweis Reflex is still in full effect.  Decades passed and untold numbers of people died between the time Semmelweis discovered that doctors were making their patients sick by not washing their hands, and the time when germ theory was accepted by MainMed and docs actually started washing their hands.  How long will it take before they realize that they are harming their patients with their hubris and actually investigate and address the vaccine problem correctly?

The truly shameful thing?  MainMed has the Semmelweis story to learn from, yet it does not learn.

3 comments:

Minority said...

"Decades past and untold numbers of people died between the time Semmelweis discovered that doctors were making their patients sick by not washing their hands,"

should be "Decades passed"

but it is a great post, thank you!

Ginger Taylor said...

fixed... thanks.

Rachel said...

What an upsetting read.

Just when I get glimmers of hope (chelation study, AAP at DAN conference, Congressional calls for vax/non-vax studies), it is quickly squashed.

No matter what proof comes up, they will never listen. At least not in OUR children's lifetimes.

So I guess we just have to keep being the thorn in their side as we do what we have to do.