A skeptical view of vaccination is gaining currency, while health authorities around the world are preparing to resort to compulsory vaccination against the H1N1 strain of influenza.
H1N1, also termed the swine flu virus, is said to have developed in part from a virus that infects pigs but also containing parts of viral material from bugs that affect humans and birds. It appears unlikely that this virus could have developed through natural incubation in pigs, as no infections in swine herds have been reported. There is evidence that points towards a laboratory origin of the virus. Beldeu Singh argues this point, with quotes from official sources, in his article titled VIRUSGATE?.
The media generally add to the hype over what has been called a mild flu by several experts but has led the World Health Organization to declare the maximum level alert – a pandemic level 6 – after quietly changing the definition of a “pandemic” eliminating the requirement of the disease having to be deadly.
With many question marks left hanging in the air, skepticism has been mounting and is spreading like wildfire along the lines of social networking and generally through the net, from person to person, bypassing the media which are largely perceived to be part of the problem rather than a source of unbiased information.
While a movement that questions vaccine safety has been around for years, it has been kept at bay through marginalization in the press and through legal chicanery against those who warn of damage. The crusade against Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who has been under “prosecution” for years now, after publishing a paper that hypothesized vaccine damage from MMR (mumps, measles, rubella) combination vaccines, is but one example of the legal persecution afoot. You can read up on that case on the site of CryShame (http://www.cryshame.co.uk/). Just follow the links titled “GMC Hearing”.
A good glimpse at the marginalization of the vaccine skepticism movement is the Wikipedia article titled Vaccine Controversy. In what could arguably be a violation of Wikipedia’s own policy of maintaining a neutral point of view, the treatment of the concerns of vaccine opponents is very much based on the pro-vaccine standpoint of pharmaceutical medicine and talks down on those clearly deluded few who would think that a public health measure could be doing more harm than good.
Another piece of the puzzle, and perhaps the one that provided the inspiration for this article, is a film on vaccination damage made for Canadian TV, but never aired.
The French version – Silence on vaccine – is on Google Video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8503852033482537965#
In English, the title is – Shots in the dark – and it can be found on YouTube (there are nine parts – you find the others under “related videos” in the right hand column of the YouTube page):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7F62tPLxvE
Could the H1N1 swine flu epidemic that is expected to lead to coercive vaccination be a turning point in all of this?
I would argue yes, it can and probably will. The momentum generated by the interplay of likely manipulation of the virus in question, over-hyping the seriousness of the world wide spread of the disease, concerns over privacy and freedom of choice in health in the face of coercive vaccination, combined with the direct p2p interaction made possible by the net, makes for an explosive and potentially game changing mix of factors that could well revolutionize how we see government mandated public health measures and how we relate to them.
Circumstances are awakening the sleeping giant which the vaccine skeptics movement has so far been. People’s desire for self determinism and freedom of choice is pitted against coercive government intervention in a way that has not so far been possible.
Confirming this view, I find a recent article: Vaccine skepticism is in the air in the LA Times.
Some links to the vaccine skeptics, in case you wonder where they are:
Vaccination Debate http://www.vaccinationdebate.com/web5.html
Vaccination Liberation http://www.vaclib.org/
National Vaccine Information Center http://www.nvic.org/
Certainly this is not an exhaustive list. It is merely the tip of an iceberg – a sleeping giant in the process of awaking.
I am not a vaccine sceptic. In rare cases, I am sure that vaccines do cause harm. However measles, mumps & rubella cause far more harm to young children. The anti-vaccination movement has a number of high-profile supporters but precious little evidence to support their claims. I’m a bit disappointed to see the P2P Foundation supporting this. Vaccination is one of humanity’s great medical achievements.
Ben Goldacre has some interesting comments here: http://www.badscience.net/2008/08/the-medias-mmr-hoax/
Hi Matt, reporting on a web movement, by Sepp, does not mean “the P2P Foundation is supporting it”. It just means that the vaccine movement has interesting p2p (viral) aspects, and that non-mainstream viewpoints are of interest as a challenge. I’m not a vaccine sceptic myself, though I believe their are well documented neurological issues associated with non-vital vaccines. The swine flu is a different case however, as a disease it is less dangerous than the normal flu, legal liability has been waived by the U.S. administration, and nurses unions went on record opposing it in both the UK and France (the latter I recall more distinctly for having read it recently in lemonde.fr). A healthy dose of scepticism is well warranted in this case. For my own children, I would only use legally obligatory vaccines, followed by a detox cure, but I would be very very wary of exposing them to the swine flu vaccine.
From Paul Fernhout, via email:
“Here is a software analogy to vaccination, thinking of a vaccine like a software patch for security issues in an operating system. These are the sorts of meta issues that are rarely discussed when focusing on pseudo-arguments about the results of specific studies.
Vaccinations are like software patches that are proprietary closed-source products, that companies make money off of selling, and that patch installation service providers use to drive business throughput for their other services. Much of the regulation of these patches is done by people who have a direct or indirect commercial stake in this industry and convincing people they need the patch.
Vaccinations are like software patches that are generally released with only testing against a small population of software environments; this is like Microsoft releasing a single patch for everyone which modifies *all* x86 PC software in the world (including everything on GNU/Linux x86) after having tested it on a few versions of Windows and looking at the performance afterwards of a few major applications over a few months (or at best, a couple of years). Any problem a few years down the road is considered not to be related to the patch and in any case would be hard to prove. There is little testing of how patches provided at different times for different reasons interact.
Vaccinations are like software patches that you can’t back out — ever. And that is in a world where you only get one Operating System install per user — ever.
Vaccinations are like software patches where, if the patch corrupts your OS or applications or anti-virus scanner, well, that’s too bad, and it is almost impossible to prove it is connected to the patch. Cognitive dissonance theory suggests patch installers will rarely admit a patch could be at fault in any subsequent problem with the OS or any application, leaving OS users with dysfunctions but little recourse; see:
“Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts”
http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0151010986
“Renowned social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson take a compelling look into how the brain is wired for self-justification. When we make mistakes, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feelings of self-worth. And so we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral, and right — a belief that often keeps us on a course that is dumb, immoral, and wrong.”
Although, to be fair, those who do not install the patches will face the same cognitive dissonance issues.
Vaccinations are like software patches that change their code (formulation and quality control) year to year even if they are said to be made to prevent the same problem, with claims for the “safe and effective” nature of previous patches being used to justify claims about new untested patches from this year’s batch. Any acknowledged problem with previous years patches are dismissed with the argument that this year’s patch is better.
Vaccinations are like software patches that claim to be effective against this years trojan or worm or virus because they are said to be proven effective against last years trojan or worm or virus, ignoring the fact that trojans and worms and viruses mutate.
Vaccinations are like software patches that may only work in a positive way for ten years or so (assuming they do work at all).
Vaccination are like software patches that might be pushing some unknown limit of total patches that can be accepted and still have decent computing performance in the face of new demands on the system.
Vaccinations are like software patches that in many cases less that 50% IT professionals choose to install.
http://www.hhs.gov/ophs/programs/initiatives/vacctoolkit/index.html
“In 2007, [influenzea] vaccination rates were less than 50 percent for [health care personnel].”
Vaccinations are like software patches developed for an insecure Windows 95 OS that you legally have to apply to Mac OS X and GNU/Linux regardless of other security settings or procedures or applications on those other operating systems.
Vaccinations are like software patches that are built on a culture of patching security vulnerabilities without ever emphasizing basic security precautions like using encryption or administrator-level authentication or other safe computing practices. For a medical example, extended breastfeeding through the toddler years promotes the general immunological well-being of a person for life:
“Extended Breastfeeding (Beyond One Year)”
http://www.llli.org//NB/NBextended.html
Thus, one might think, based on the same rationalization used to legally require vaccination, that infant formula should be prescription-only (for rare special cases) since formula decreases “herd immunity”, but formula is available everywhere without a prescription, showing a double standard here. Chances are about half of US Slashdotters were raised entirely on formula and will create a lifetime infection risk for everyone around them as well as suffer from worse health for their entire lives. Yet, formula feeding is supposedly “a matter of personal choice” and was promoted by the medical care community in the past and continues to be heavily promoted to new parents by the formula industry. Similarly, good nutrition, enough sleep, avoiding bad stress (but having enough good stress), having face-to-face friends, and similar things promote wellness, but junk food, all-nighters, programming death marches, and spending too much time on Slashdot are all legal. 🙂
There are a bunch more analogies one could make, though they are more abstract, related to co-evolution or auto-immune disorders. Example:
“Vaccine-induced autoimmunity.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9115571
Anyway, the bigger picture is being missed often it seems to me. That is why it is so hard to assess risk versus reward, especially when an alternative might be to spend the money on research on wellness instead. We will never know how good anti-viral drugs or immune boosting drugs (or other wellness promoting technologies and techniques, including improved water quality and sanitation) would be right now if we had spend billions of dollars every year for the last fifty years refining wellness techniques and direct interventions instead of vaccines.”
Some resources on the recent swine flu controversies by Paul Fernhout, via email:
* http://www.alternet.org/media/142877/h1n1_just_isn%27t_that_scary%3A_why_there%27s_no_reason_to_go_overboard_with_swine_flu_hysteria?page=3
* Critical Alert: The Swine Flu Pandemic – Fact or Fiction?
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/04/29/Swine-Flu.aspx
“Your Fear Will Make Some People VERY Rich in Today’s Crumbling Economy … More than half a dozen pharmaceutical companies, including Gilead Sciences Inc., Roche, GlaxoSmithKline and other companies with a stake in flu treatments and detection, have seen a rise in their shares in a matter of days, and will likely see revenue boosts if the swine flu outbreak continues to spread. Swine flue is extremely convenient for governments that would have very soon have to dispose of billions of dollars of Tamiflu stock, which they bought to counter avian flu, or H5N1. The US government ordered 20 million doses, costing $2 billion, in October, 2005, and around that time the UK government ordered 14.6 million doses. Tamiflu’s manufacturer, Roche, has confirmed that the shelf life of its anti-viral is three years. As soon as Homeland Security declared a health emergency, 25 percent — about 12 million doses — of Tamiflu and Relenza treatment courses were released from the nation’s stockpile. However, beware that the declaration also allows unapproved tests and drugs to be administered to children. Many health- and government officials are more than willing to take that chance with your life, and the life of your child. But are you? ”
* “What to do If You Are Forced to Take Swine Flu Shot ”
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/09/19/The-Truth-about-the-Flu-Shot.aspx
“Treatment for Toxic Vaccine Exposure”
Or:
* http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/10/21/avoid-flu-shots-vitamin-d-is-a-better-way.aspx
“””
A reference to pro-vaccine science sites, by Ryan Lanham, via email:
Respectful Insolence is a major pro-vaccine site…and compelling (at least to me)…it is sometimes called “Orac”
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/02/best_pro-vaccine_commercial_ever.php
The whole scienceblogs community is very pro-vaccine and they have great fun lampooning the Hollywood types who often come out linking vaccines to autism, etc.
I have great respect for Sepp and reasonable people can disagree, but the science community…the academics, practitioners and researchers all, seem very vocal and agitated to be pro-vaccine. They have repeatedly debunked claims against vaccines…and there are literally hundreds of studies. No compelling evidence to date I know of against standard vaccines.
As I said, it is a topic with a great deal of sources…as I see them, I’ll begin to refer them here so chains can begin.
I’d consider it to be far less contraversial than, say, nuclear power, where I have learned a lot from following both sides in association from comments and passions of people here. I am still pro-nuclear, but much less so than I was a year ago. Maybe there is room on vaccines for moving people one way or the other.
If people are unwilling to consider contras, debate becomes meaningless. Sadly, the US political system is often in that mode now…ideology against ideology or…ideology against fact-based…depending on one’s point of view.
The viral nature of the phenomenon of vaccine skepticism is closely connected with the ideology of vaccine proponents and their methods. Going over the top, they stimulate the popular backlash that spreads among the affected population. The more exaggerated the warnings of dire dangers (as in the case of swine flu), the more the promoters of vaccines lose consensus. The backlash is proportional to the sometimes unscientific or outright deceptive tactics used to promote vaccination as a concept, to provide proof of vaccine safety or deny proof of damage done by vaccines, and the intensity of the “sky-is-falling” warnings of pandemics that regularly fail to materialize in the way they are being promoted.
Commercial interests do come into play to color the science, as documented in a recent analysis that found that four articles arguing that a mercury vaccine additive to be quite safe were written by a network of industry-connected authors who failed to declare their conflicts of interest. See
Analysis of the Social Network of Authors in Four Recent Articles on Autism, Mercury and Selected Childhood Vaccine Exposures at
http://vaccineinfo.dk/i/AutismAuthorsNetwork-18May04.pdf
From Tom Rawlings:
Hi – before I start I need to state I don’t know a lot about the vaccine controversy. However the article posted on the p2p looks a little like denialism – while I don’t know enough about the vaccine controversy, I have been involved in long-running attempts to combat creationism and global warming denialism. Here’s a few examples of what I mean:
– Claims of wikipedia bias – you also find this constantly with creationism and global warming denialism. In my experience there is often a narrative that when an argument goes against one side there is a temptation to blame the moderators of the platform rather then re-examine the argument itself. That is not to say it does not happen, just to say that such claims need to be backed with evidence. For example the wikipedia page on the foundation linked in the p2p article is also in dispute – for the opposite reasons; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:National_Vaccine_Information_Center
– Links to ‘institutes’ with grand sounding names – National Vaccine Information Center – sounds like an official body but it is not – it is a campaign group – nothing wrong with that except if they are a campaign, they should be honest about it. Again you find this all the time in global warming and creationism, e.g. Biologic Institute – sounds official but is a front campaign group for Intelligent Design.
– For example the article suggests that the mainstream view is incorrect, fine, then posts links to the debate, but the p2p article only posts links to one side and so looks less like an analysis of this issue and how it has gone viral and more like a propaganda article on this issue – which I am uncomfortable with. My concenrn for things like this is they bleed into to well documented denialism, of which one of the most potent exposes I have read of late is Gen Goldacre on AIDS denialism… http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2009/06/start/the-man-who-sold-out-medicine.aspx