Tricking School into Accepting Unvaxxed Kids

amother

Ruby

Wed, Sep 07 2016, 6:43 am

amother wrote:

I actually find it quite funny when people get all up in arms about the poor people who can't be vaxxed and then get nasty and insist they wouldn't let their kids near the non vaxxed ones. Of course that never includes those who can't be vaxxed for medical reasons and they obviously pose the same threat. The anger also isn't usually coming from those who can't vaccinate their kids it's coming from everyone else who is super eager to get nasty in their defense. If their kids are vaccinated and they believe it's the answer to all evil then they should be covered. And whether or not it is a risk to other unvaxxed kids should be no concern to them.

I'll repost the link that I posted upthread which explains this phenomenon.
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.....-risk
This study shows that contrary to what we self-righteously tell ourselves, we don't react with moral outrage to objective danger but the other way around. First we feel moral outrage and then we decide how dangerous something is based on how morally outraged we feel. Completely subjective and irrational and revealingly fickle. It's a fascinating read.

amother

Amethyst

Wed, Sep 07 2016, 7:04 am

Maybe wrote:

see how much you know or don't http://enrichedparenting.org/v......html

If Wakefield would have $500,000 he could apeal & get his licence back like his Co=author http://www.ebcala.org/areas-of.....nduct

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases......html

How is lying ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FumTh_IaKgA

Umm, I know about vaccinations, I'm an immunologist. I don't need a silly test!

His co-author received his license back on appeal because he was found innocent of ethical misconduct. This was proven because before any of Walker-Smith's own studies, he requested approval and followed through appropriately. Further, any children he refereed to for the study, he did input into the review. IRB approval is a difficult process that needs to be taken seriously. Further, Walker-Smith supports vaccinations and agrees with the retraction due to gross ethical misconduct. On the other hand, the ethical misconduct was committed by Andrew Wakefield. He would not receive his license on appeal. I can't even use words for what he did. But, if I ever even attempted to do what he did, I would be in prison.

amother

Magenta

Wed, Sep 07 2016, 7:42 am

amother wrote:

The study you cited asked people to assess risk based on anecdotes.

With vaccines, there is objective data indicating scientifically the degree of risk. Herd immunity only works when a critical percentage of the population is immunized.

For example, that measles outbreak at Disneyland last year.

There is a small percentage of people who can still contract a disease even if they are immunized, IF a specific percentage of the general population is NOT immunized.

That's how the measles outbreak spread, and even people who HAD been immunized became at risk.

So yes, if a majority of people don't vaccinate, it puts at risk some of the minority who do.

Of course, we don't know beforehand which children who have been vaccinated may nevertheless still be susceptible to the disease if they are exposed to it. So parents' concern here is understandable.

And this doesn't even address the other issue--kids who are immuno-compromised and can't be vaccinated, and will be the most hurt by the disease. (Again, if a specific percentage of the population is vaccinated, those kids will be protected too)

But maybe amethyst amother can explain it better.

amother

Magenta

Wed, Sep 07 2016, 8:04 am

Maybe wrote:

Speaking of money, did you know that he accepted a sum of $600,000 to write his original (retracted) study, showing a link between vaccines and autism?

The money was paid to him by lawyers who were in the middle of suing pharmaceutical companies, claiming that their clients' autism was caused by vaccines.

This was just one of the various conflicts of interest that Wakefield failed to disclose.

amother

Ruby

Wed, Sep 07 2016, 8:25 am

amother wrote:

The study you cited asked people to assess risk based on anecdotes.

In scenarios for which there is data quantifying actual risk. The findings of the study are absolutely applicable here: our assessment of the risk of other people's parenting decisions is not reflective of the actual risk but on our thoughts and feelings about their choices. Calling for non vaxxing parents to lose their children or to be imprisoned which is common here and all over the internet, is out of proportion to the actual risk, especially since we ALL take greater risks with our children every single day. Driving and participation in organized sports are 2 that come to mind.

amother

Amethyst

Wed, Sep 07 2016, 9:39 am

Maybe wrote:

Jeff Bezos owns the paper https://www.google.com/#safe=s.....owner

Look how many pharma investments he owns http://www.bezosexpeditions.com/

no conflict ???

Didn't you ever hear of Brian Deer? All journalist should learn from him. There was an audio recording supporting the claims and providing evidence to the payments. Also, Wakefield 'developed' a safer vaccine which he attempted to patent in 1997 just months before the paper went out. This was already after his 'volunteers' were enrolled and his 'data' was collected and analyzed. The man only came out as anti-vaccine when his license was withdrawn. He then moved to the USA and was adopted as a spokesman for the anti-vaccine movement. Before that, he did not make any express anti-vaccine comments.

http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-summary.htm

Barr [audio] paid the doctor with money from the UK legal aid fund: run by the government to give poorer people access to justice. Wakefield charged at the extraordinary rate of £150 an hour - billed through a company of his wife's - eventually totalling, for generic work alone, what the UK Legal Services Commission, pressed by Deer under the freedom of information act, said was £435,643 (then about $750,000 US), plus expenses. These hourly fees - revealed in The Sunday Times in December 2006 - gave the doctor a direct personal, but undeclared, financial interest in his research claims: totalling more than eight times his reported annual salary and creating an incentive not only for him to launch the alarm, but to keep it going for as long as possible.

In addition to the personal payments, Wakefield was awarded an initial £55,000, which he had applied for in June 1996, but which, like the hourly fees, he never declared to the Lancet as he should have done, for the express purpose of conducting the research later submitted to the journal. This start-up funding was part of a staggering £26.2m of taxpayers' money (more than $56m US at 2014 prices) eventually shared among a small group of doctors and lawyers, working under Barr's and Wakefield's direction, trying to prove that MMR caused the previously unheard-of "syndrome". Yet more surprising, Wakefield had asserted the existence of such a syndrome - which allegedly included what he would dub "autistic enterocolitis" - before he performed the research which purportedly discovered it.

This Barr-Wakefield deal was the foundation of the vaccine crisis, both in Britain and throughout the world. "I have mentioned to you before that the prime objective is to produce unassailable evidence in court so as to convince a court that these vaccines are dangerous," the lawyer reminded the doctor in a confidential letter, six months before the Lancet report.

And, if this was not enough to cast doubt on the research's objectivity, The Sunday Times investigation unearthed another shocking conflict of interest. In June 1997 - nearly nine months before the press conference at which Wakefield called for single vaccines - he had filed a patent on products, including his own supposedly "safer" single measles vaccine, which only stood any prospect of success if confidence in MMR was damaged. Although Wakefield denied any such plans, his proposed shot, and a network of companies intended to raise venture capital for purported inventions - including "a replacement for attenuated viral vaccines", commercial testing kits and what he claimed to be a possible "complete cure" for autism - were set out in confidential documents.

amother

Amethyst

Wed, Sep 07 2016, 10:07 am

Maybe wrote:

If you trust con man Brian Deer , end of conversation

http://www.ageofautism.com/201......html

The audio and records he un-earthed, regardless of who he is or supports, remain the voices and the papers of the owner --Andrew Wakefield.

You can kill any messenger, but, the message remains. I don't care about Andrew Wakefield or Brian Deer. I care that Wakefield's science was falsified, he accepted money for personal gain and was completely unethical to his study participants. This is what matters. How did he do this to children and their parents? How? As a scientist, a mother and a proponent of global heathcare, how could he do this to children? We as scientists have moral ethics and guidelines which must be followed all the time. There are no exceptions. Ever.

amother

Magenta

Wed, Sep 07 2016, 10:59 am

amother wrote:

The issue is not, how risky is the behavior. The issue is whether that risk could have been avoided.

Driving is pretty much universally accepted in the US as a necessary part of regular life, so that would be a poor comparison.

A better example might be, parents who refuse to strap their very young children into the car; their three-year-olds are standing up while on the highway.

And I think that in a case like that, yes, you will find similar reactions.

amother

Ruby

Wed, Sep 07 2016, 12:16 pm

amother wrote:

The issue is not, how risky is the behavior. The issue is whether that risk could have been avoided.

Your explanation is consistent with the conclusion of the study. You're saying that people who are outraged about non vaxers and not outraged about the actual level of objective risk to their children. They take actions every day that pose greater objective risks to their children than do parents choosing not to vaccinate. Yet they have decided that non vaxers' risk-taking is not justifiable and their own greater risk-taking is. And on this basis some people call for imprisonment and loss of custody. Stop and think about that for a minute.

Edited to reflect that this is not your personal opinion but an explanation of others' reactions.

Goldie613

Wed, Sep 07 2016, 12:55 pm

Jumping back in (I can't believe this thread is still going) = putting aside Wakefield's ethics for the moment, his methodology was a huge problem. I heard his autism and MMR study mentioned once as an example of how NOT to do a research project.

The study was done on a ridiculously small number of kids (only 12) and no controls (though I heard stories that he added controls later). For comparison, most studies we hear about in the US will mention numbers in the thousand plus range. Generally speaking, the more cases you study, the better the odds are that your findings will apply across the population as a whole. His study was too small to do that. Ideally, someone should have looked at his work, followed his research path, and come up with the same results in a much larger study.

instead, it became one of these "everyone's talking about this" things. Personally, I have yet to hear of a reputable study that backs his findings up, though if anyone has heard of one I'm all ears.