July 25, 2010

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

Kathleen Sebelius gave an interview to Moms Rising, and was asked some vaccine questions. Fran Drescher was present and asked her about spacing out vaccines:



Fran never got her answer, so no... the administration is not interested in opening up a discussion on spacing out vaccines. But it is curious that Ms. Sebelius claimed that vaccines are constantly being tested for efficacy and safety. Both individually and in combination.

Really?

Because there is no study into the four shots (seven vaccines) that my son received at 18 months when he regressed into autism. My understanding of the process is that they do test for efficacy, but not so much for safety, and very rarely to they test combinations of vaccines for either.

And of course there is no study that looks of the safety of the complete schedule in any way.

The vaccine studies that they actually do are small and don't follow kids for very long. I was horrified to learn that the safety study on the Hepatitis B vaccine that Chandler reacted to when he was a new born only followed children for THREE DAYS.

And of course these tests almost never include a true placebo group. Merely one version of a vaccine compared to another version of a vaccine or adjuvant.

Although it was good to hear it straight from the horses mouth that the vaccine schedule is what it is partly due to convenience. Gotta get as many shots in as many kids as possible when they are in the office! Brain damage be damned.

I came across an interesting movie quote in the NYT today. From a piece on the International AIDS Conference:

In a lovely ironic touch, the conference hall is only a few steps from the Ferris wheel in the Orson Welles film noir classic set in postwar Vienna, “The Third Man.” On it, a cynical dealer of counterfeit drugs tells his pursuer to look down at the people below and says: “Victims? Don’t be melodramatic.... Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?”




All that "constant testing" is not so much concerned with our particular little dots.



This is my little dot. His fevers, crying and constipation started three days after his first dose of Hepatitis B vaccine. I never could find a safety test that covered him.

11 comments:

K Fuller said...

Great find Ginger,
I have always loved the Nanny, and God Bless her for getting that question asked.

Minority said...

I was doing some research and came across this VAERS report:
no way to know if there were long-term consequences to a toddler who, for example, received HEP (hepatitis B vaccine), HIBV (Haemophilus B Conjugate vaccine), MMR (measles, mumps, rubella), PNC (Heptavalent pneumoccocal conjugate, Prevnar), AND varicella vaccine at one visit. This is HEP (1), HIBV (1), MMR (3), PNC (7), and VARCEL (1) or 13 vaccines at one slam, followed by a grand mal seizure which lasted three minutes, followed by a high fever.

Also noticed the use of the term "immunization" instead of vaccination. Wouldn't want terminology that might remind people that some vaccines are contaminated with adventitious agents (animal viruses) would we?

Cara said...

Yes, our kids are only "dots" to them ... perfect analagy. How else do you explain their blatant ignoring of what we parents are asking them to find out? I think they know ... that is what the constant cat and mouse game is about ... at "our" cost not "theirs."

Jim Thompson said...

Film Noir is a perfect description of Sebelius' bizarre disregard for vaccine injuries due to several vaccinations at once: “So that’s the safety features, something that we’re very aware of and concerned about. It’s a bit of a Catch 22. What you want to do is to offer them in a way that’s convenient, so if your child can safely have a couple of things taken care of at same time, you want to do that as opposed to saying to a busy mom or dad, come back three weeks in a row. But clearly, the safety issues are primary, so that’s constantly being tested and evaluated.”


And all the while this disregard for the feedback of parents’ observations of vaccine injuries:

“There are groups out there that insist that vaccines are responsible for a variety of problems despite all scientific evidence to the contrary. We have reached out to media outlets to try to get them to not give the views of these people equal weight in their reporting to what science has shown and continues to show about the safety of vaccines.” See

http://www.rd.com/health-slideshows/
h1n1-the-report-card/
article174741-1.html
(courtesy of Anne Dachel)

Jim Thompson said...

Here is more script with striking similarity to the Film Noir “The Third Man:

IMMUNIZATION SAFETY REVIEW, MULTIPLE IMMUNIZATIONS AND IMMUNE DYSFUNCTION - 2002 ; Kathleen Stratton, Christopher B. Wilson, and Marie C. McCormick, Editors, Immunization Safety Review Committee; Board on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE, NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS, Washington, D.C.

“The committee was unable to address the concern that repeated exposure of a susceptible child to multiple immunizations over the developmental period may also produce atypical or non-specific immune or nervous system injury that could lead to severe disability or death (Fisher, 2001). There are no epidemiological studies that address this. Thus, the committee recognizes with some discomfort that this report addresses only part of the overall set of concerns of some of those most wary about the safety of childhood immunization.”

See text of Immunization Safety Review Committee
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?
record_id=10306&page=4

(The 2001 Fisher reference is given as “Fisher BL on behalf of National Vaccine Information Center. 2001b. Letter to Kathleen Stratton. November 5, 2001”)

See reference to Fisher letter at
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?
record_id=10306&page=118

Jim Thompson said...

And more script in “developing a better message” to address the “dots” as referred to in “The Third Man” from:

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE, Organizational Meeting of:
IMMUNIZATION SAFETY, REVIEW COMMITTEE, CLOSED SESSION, January 12, 2001, National Academies Building, 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C.

DR. MC CORMICK [one of the 2002 IOM IMMUNIZATION SAFETY REVIEW authors]:

“Apropos of this comment, I took away actually an issue that we may have to confront, and that is actually the definition of what we mean by safety. It is safety on a population basis, but it is also safety for the individual child. I am wondering, if we take this dual perspective, we may address more of the parent concerns, perhaps developing a better message if we think about what comes down the stream as opposed to CDC, which wants us to declare, well, these things are pretty safe on a population basis. I offer that as one strategy as we take this dual track. We may come up with more useful kinds of conversations to have in terms of thinking about that. That was one thing that I took away.”

See pages 33 and 34 at

http://www.whale.to/
vaccines/IOM.pdf

Jim Thompson said...

DR. MEDOFF: "What if there is an association between MMR and autism, and we assume there is. So, then it becomes really a question of the frequency of occurrence. Then, what is acceptable to society. That is the normal path.” ibid, page 42.

Jim Thompson said...

Ginger, more script with cynicism from:

HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS,, ECOND SESSION, JUNE 15, 2000, Serial No. 106–239

[P.104] “Mr. GILMAN. Thank you very much. I want to thank Mr. Waxman for yielding. I’d like to welcome the panel and thank our chairman of the committee for investigating Federal vaccine policy and any conflicts of interest on the part of Federal policymakers that may exist. However, the apparent ties between the pharmaceutical industry and the Federal Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control advisory committee members results in more than an ethical question. It results in personal injury and possible death for innocent children and adults. Previous investigations have revealed that the conflict of interest rules employed by the FDA and the CDC are weak and are not strictly enforced. Advisory committee members who have personal or financial ties to pharmaceutical companies have been granted waivers to participate in committee deliberations and many committee members have incomplete financial disclosure statements which may conceal their financial ties to a pharmaceutical company.”

[P.119] “Mr. WAXMAN. You try to reach out and get people who are geographically and ethnically diverse?

Ms. SUYDAM. We have a process, and in fact, we do have people on our committee who are not conflicted or do not have any conflicts.”

See http://www.whale.to/
vaccines/faca.pdf

Jim Thompson said...

Finally, here is an incredible discussion on how to conclude the IOM committee recommendations on the safety of vaccinations BEFORE the data has even been reviewed.

DR. MEDOFF: We can develop a paradigm based on each of these entities. So, you would have the first question, the correlation between X and Y. There is a weak association possibly. You find that. Then it becomes the different levels of communication. Up until the scientific one where you tell the right kinds of study, whether it is a randomized controlled trial or whatever, that would be the most convincing, or lower layers, the lower cuts in terms of what you tell the people, that this is possible but, if it does occur, it occurs very rarely. There is a conclusion in terms of communication between communication being for the CDC about what they should do in terms of scientific studies to solidify or nullify the hypothesis, but a communication to the public, to society, mothers and fathers, about what the state of the literature is, so they are not dissuaded by a neighbor or looking on the internet. I think that is what people were saying yesterday and I agree with that. I think the information that we derive from our communication has to be on several different levels.

DR. MC CORMICK: That is part of my dividing it between population and personal safety.

DR. MEDOFF: Is a paradigm part of it? Do we make a conclusion about what would be the most appropriate study or whether it should be studied or not studied?

DR. MC CORMICK: Yes, I think that is absolutely a part of the conclusions.

See pages 36 and 37. IMMUNIZATION SAFETY REVIEW, MULTIPLE IMMUNIZATIONS AND IMMUNE DYSFUNCTION - 2002 ; Kathleen Stratton, Christopher B. Wilson, and Marie C. McCormick, Editors, Immunization Safety Review Committee; Board on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE, NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS, Washington, D.C.


http://www.whale.to/
vaccines/IOM.pdf

Jim Thompson said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jim Thompson said...

And voila, the illustrious Pharma shill committee did what it was predetermined to do:

Committee Conclusions and Recommendations, SCIENTIFIC ASSESSMENT, Causality Conclusions:

“The committee concludes that the evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal containing vaccines and autism... In addition the committee recommends that available funding for autism research be channeled to the most promising areas.”

MARIE C. McCORMICK et al, IMMUNIZATION SAFETY REVIEW COMMITTEE 2004

See

http://books.nap.edu/
openbook.php?record_id=
10997&page=R5

-and-

http://books.nap.edu/
openbook.php?record_id=
10997&page=152