Catholic Teaching and Immunization Policy

[blackforest]

It’s a case against mandates. Even when a sizable body of foremost experts disagree with a rationale, you’re supposed to comply or lose your job. I would never stop you from getting a flu shot for work of your own accord. Jonas Salk would have filed a philosophical exemption against Sabin’s vaccine. Choice is a good thing.

 

[Pup7]

At the time, the research pointed to mandated vaccines in that case being the best choice.

And positions change as research shows new things. It’s how we learn.

The reasoning behind the new discussions on mandating vaccines in other cases are the pockets of things like mumps and measles showing up. These aren’t just “childhood illnesses” (that phrase from the antivax crowd never fails to make my eyes roll). These are serious diseases that aren’t anything to play around with. I don’t have to look any farther than my own family in this case.

My brother got mumps so bad (he had them TWICE, literally TWICE! before age ten, so yes, it can happen) in the 1950s, before the vaccine, that his testicles as a six year old swelled up to the size of large oranges and my mother was told he would likely be sterile.

As it is, he only had one child despite years of no birth control.

 

[blackforest]

Well and good, but I think you and I both know that the words, " . . . but it’s in a medical journal," don’t really cut it.

Richard Smith: Medical research—still a scandal - The BMJ

Twenty years ago this week the statistician Doug Altman published an editorial in the BMJ arguing that much medical research was of poor quality and misleading. In his editorial entitled, [...]More...

blogs.bmj.com

http://www.labnews.co.uk/features/peer-review/

Dark Side of Medical Research: Widespread Bias and Omissions

Biased medical drug research studies arise from financial conflicts of interests with pharmaceutical or medical device companies.

www.livescience.com

Evidence based medicine is broken

Evidence based medicine (EBM) wrong footed the drug industry for a while in the 1990s. We could fend off the army of pharmaceutical representatives because often their promotional material was devoid of evidence. But the drug industry came to realise that EBM was an opportunity rather than a...

www.bmj.com

Evaluating evidence takes a lot more intellectual legwork.

 

[Pup7]

That induced eye roll from me.

What do you think we do, exactly? I have graduate level work in research. We tend to know what we’re doing and how to read critically.

 

[blackforest]

Nobody is stopping anyone from getting vaccines. I linked a study above showing that countries without mandates still had high vaccination rates. Low rates tend to occur in impoverished areas.

 

[blackforest]

I did specify "I think you and I both know . . . " There’s no need to roll eyes. Let’s try to remain as charitably Catholic as we can this morning.

 

[Pup7]

Evaluating evidence takes a lot more intellectual legwork.

Yep, I know that…so why say it? Again, that’s what annoyed me.

I wasn’t thinking quite as snippy as the Internet made that comment seem, I promise.

 

[Pup7]

I did specify "I think you and I both know . . . " There’s no need to roll eyes. Let’s try to remain as charitably Catholic as we can this morning.

Fair call - I agree. I’m all in.

That eye roll comment really does seem worse than how I intended. I’m genuinely sorry. My facial expression wasn’t quite THAT bad.

 

[Pup7]

I will share this:

I was sitting in my grad level stats class with the 54 other members of my program when the professor ACTUALLY SAID “so if you run a statistical test and you don’t get quite the results you were expecting, you can run another statistical analysis”.

You should’ve seen the looks exchanged - I was sitting in the second or third row from the top of the lecture hall and saw it happen. Some of the people in this course actually WORKED in research (one of my classmates developed a patent for a specific type of blood filtering device - this was the caliber of student we had).

The thing is that most folks don’t know that’s how it works - so a lot of people take one article or one citation as gospel - and that’s not how it should be. I do agree with what you said, and I think that’s what you meant.

The best kept secret on the Internet is Google Scholar. You seem to be into research - have you ever used it? It is AMAZING what you can get access to without having CINHL or access to the other database whose name is eluding me at the moment (LOL).

 

[Gab123]

the professor ACTUALLY SAID "if you run a statistical test and you don’t get quite the results you were expecting, you can run another statistical analysis”

Yes, this is exactly what the billion dollar pharmaceutical industry knows. Statistics can spin data any way you want. So it all depends on who you trust. Usually by following the big money you can find those willing to fudge numbers

 

[Pup7]

You’ve twisted my words a bit here, but that’s fine (I don’t mean that smart, for the record, though that’s how it sounds in print). That’s not quite how it works.

You do realize that the people actually doing the work aren’t the guilty party here, correct? That they get no glory or cash from the industry for what they do? That my classmate who developed that filter got NOTHING out of the patent - not even her name on the device - because she worked for the company, and her idea was the intellectual property of that company?

You’re right in thinking the industry itself is corrupt in many ways. But it’s not at the base levels you’re going to.

(The idiot CEO who raised the cost of an Epi-Pen to $600 a dose - or whatever it was - isn’t the person who actually developed the pen to start with. That’s what I mean. And yes, I’m aware of the line I’m walking here. And I’m even more disgusted by the fact that she got away with it.)

 

[Gab123]

You do realize that the people actually doing the work aren’t the guilty party here, correct?

That´s where the whistleblowers come in, for example people such as Dr. Wakefield, or Dr. William Thompson who exposed research fraud at the CDC.

As you said, statistics can be massaged in any way. And the fact that you don’t trust the CDC when it comes to the HepB for newborns says a lot. What about the millions of babies getting the shots when their parents have no clue and are just doing what the hospital tells them to do because the CDC says so.

 

[Pup7]

You do realize that the people actually doing the work aren’t the guilty party here, correct?

That´s where the whistleblowers come in, for example people such as Dr. Wakefield, or Dr. William Thompson who exposed research fraud at the CDC.

As you said, statistics can be massaged in any way. And the fact that you don’t trust the CDC when it comes to the HepB for newborns says a lot. What about the millions of babies getting the shots when their parents have no clue and are just doing what the hospital tells them to do because the CDC says so.

LOL again you twist my words.

What I said was I can find no compelling evidence for giving it at that stage of life. I never said I think it’s dangerous to give, I also said MANY times that I don’t fault anyone for giving it nor is it my place to put my personal beliefs on others. I don’t think it’s harmful. There’s zero evidence to suggest it is. I just can’t yet understand the reasons for it at that age. And that I thought the director of the NIH seemed to stumble when the question was put to him in a very reputable interview.

Also feel compelled to point out to other readers that the words about Wakefield and Thompson and everything following them aren’t mine though they appear as such in that quote, which is weird.

 

[Pup7]

I can already predict where this is going.

There’s plenty of evidence for other vaccines at specific ages. PLENTY. And plenty of valid reasons for giving them. So I don’t question them. And a child of mine would get them. They just wouldn’t get HepB when they leave the hospital. They’d get it later because I know the validity of the vaccine itself - probably not years and years later, but later. The rest of them? No issues.

Figured I’d be one step ahead of where this will lead, or at least attempt to be.

 

[Gab123]

Well. As you said. people should become informed. You may not find the Autism rates alarming, but we who have family members affected by autism, do find the numbers alarming. 1 in 110 babies born with a brain disorder is not coming from nature. And you’e the one that mentioned knowing countless stories of people getting all sorts of cancers and not having a clue where they are coming from.

Go ahead, you’re free free to pump your body with all the chemical products these pharmaceutical companies are making for a huge profit… Even the flu shot is a shot in the dark, as there are so many strains that the flu shot you get most likely will not protect you from the specific strain that is being spread. But the long-term side effects of filling one’s body with genetically engineered products is unknown. We do know that people are getting all sorts of cancers and diseases, which, as you pointed out earlier, are leaving people in the medical professions clueless as to where they are coming from…

 

[Pup7]

You have no idea what my family has in it, for one. So that’s an unfair comment.

There is compelling and growing evidence for an autism genetic component. You neglect the fact that the rates of autism are the same worldwide, and that UNVACCINATED KIDS are diagnosed at the SAME RATE, or that autism runs in families.

You do not know where it is coming from any more than the experts working on the issue. We know it is NOT caused by vaccines. It’s been proven. We know this. It was junk science. It’s not real.

You also ignore other outside sources. Unless you’re materializing food from thin air, you’re ingesting organophosphates. They’re even in foods stated to be organic, because they are permanently in the soil. We know they break DNA. It’s a biological fact. I could go on and on about chemicals responsible for this, or the things that were done before laws were passed, or the havoc wreaked on the environment by the Industrial Revolution over 150 years ago.

You’re ignoring all of this. Don’t take any medications, don’t drink the water, don’t eat food. Don’t breathe, actually. You are surrounded by contaminants on a daily basis. Consider that.

 

[Gab123]

I think most people have been affected since the rates have become so high. All I know is that there are whistleblowers whom lots of people choose to dismiss. Not to mention that there is much at stake if the public knew the truth. yes, the CDC website explains everything very nicely. What was the reason they gave for stopping the use of Thimerosal in the past?

 

[Pup7]

They only stopped it because now most vaccines are single dose. Single dose in the past was prohibitively expensive, and costs have dropped. It’s a preservative in multi-dose vaccines. It’s not used in childhood vaccines any more.

My other understanding is because of the garbage floating around because of the quack who started the claim that it caused autism. You get WAY more mercury in the average salmon, to be honest.

I’m sure there are plenty of other reasons I don’t know about.

It’s out of vaccines - has been for YEARS! - yet the autism rate continues.

It. Is not. Vaccines.

 

[Rhubarb]

Mercury isn’t necessarily harmful, too. Sodium and chlorine are both terribly dangerous to us in their elemental states. But sodium chloride is necessary for life.

 

[Pup7]

Mercury isn’t necessarily harmful. Sodium and chlorine are both terribly dangerous to us in their elemental states. But sodium chloride is necessary for life.

There IS a level at which it becomes harmful. But it’s well above what the average person can consume knowingly. You can kill people with mercury - it’s heavy metal poisoning.