Octopus Overlords

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Wed May 08, 2019 7:28 pm Separately:

Some ultraconservative Catholics oppose chickenpox vaccinations because it was developed in the 1960s from cell lines of two aborted fetuses.

But fetuses aren't used for modern manufacture, are they?

I mean, the history of drug development is rife with morally questionable actions. Navigating that minefield has got to be challenging for a modern stone age family.

I promise you they won't refuse a limb saving skin graft or other stem-cell derived treatment that doesn't come out of a needle.

The Roman Catholic church has issued edicts in 2017 that the vaccines saved more people from evil than the evil it contains. Call it "necessary evil" if you will. It urges parents to seek non-fetal-derived vaccines if possible, but do NOT refuse vaccines based on this factor alone, if no other choices are available. It obviously also urged drug makers to create vaccines WITHOUT those cell lines.

I've been debating a couple of that twats on Twitter over the weekend. I'm pretty convinced two or three of those are sock puppet accounts operated by the same person. They sound alike, but they're careful not to step on each other's topics.

it's always the moving goalpost. They claim a proper double blind placebo controlled vaccine test wasn't done. I showed them one. They start nitpicking like "oh, it's not done in the US" "it's done back in the 80's" "it didn't use INERT placebo" and **** like that.

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Sun May 12, 2019 12:24 pmI've been debating a couple of that twats on Twitter over the weekend.

Your time would be better spent punching yourself in the crotch.

I know, I know. Should be playing BATTLETECH instead.

Kurtzgesagt's latest video.

Ugh depressing.

The New York Times wrote:Despite Measles Warnings, Anti-Vaccine Rally Draws Hundreds of Ultra-Orthodox Jews

An ultra-Orthodox rabbi falsely described the measles outbreak among Jews as part of an elaborate plan concocted by Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York to deflect attention from “more serious” diseases brought by Central American migrants.

A pediatrician questioned whether Jews were being intentionally given “bad lots” of vaccines that ended up giving children a new strain of the virus. And Andrew Wakefield, the British doctor whose study linking measles vaccines with autism was widely discredited and condemned, appeared via Skype to offer an almost apocalyptic vision of a world in which vaccines were giving rise to deadlier immunization-resistant diseases.

Andrew Wakefield is a piece of crap.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2019 11:04 am Andrew Wakefield is a piece of crap.

And should be jailed for medical malpractice.

Some of these parents may already be in jail/lost custody of their kids, as they are freaking dosing them with "bleach" to cure Autism:

The parents in many of these groups, which have ranged from tens to tens of thousands of members, believe that autism is caused by a hodgepodge of phenomena, including viruses, bacteria, fungal infections, parasites, heavy metal poisoning from vaccines, general inflammation, allergies, gluten and even the moon.

The so-called treatments are equally confused. Some parents credit turpentine or their children’s own urine as the secret miracle drug for reversing autism. One of the most sought-after chemicals is chlorine dioxide — a compound that the Food and Drug Administration warns amounts to industrial bleach, and doctors say can cause permanent harm. Parents still give it to their children orally, through enemas, and in baths. Proponents of chlorine dioxide profit off these parents’ fears and hopes by selling books about the supposed “cure,” marketing the chemicals and posting how-to videos...

...Horrified by the treatment of these children, Eaton and Seigler research the parents online to determine their identity and location, then send screenshots of the Facebook posts to the local Child Protective Services division, though they rarely hear back on whether action was taken. The pair say they’ve reported over 100 parents since 2016. They also report the posts to Facebook and have submitted their findings to the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Justice and child abuse organizations.

As the parent of an autistic child, I never cease to be amazed at how criminally fucking stupid some parents are.

I had no idea this was happening, and yet after finishing I'm not surprised. Absolutely gut-wrenching to read.

Rivera declined to be interviewed by NBC News, but in emails she defended chlorine dioxide and her credentials. “This is a medical issue. I have a degree in homeopathy and work with MDs and PhD scientists,” she wrote. Rivera did not respond to requests for more information about these doctors and the institution that granted her degree.

Just...ugh.

Better still, these morons are buying into something invented by a former Scientologist who claims to be a billion year old space god placed here to watch over us.

Yes, people are that goddamn stupid sometimes.

Hoping CA does the right thing and yanks "Dr. Bob"'s medical license:

“Dr. Bob” Sears, MD, the controversial California physician known for his Godwin-esque advocacy against vaccination requirements and a vaccine book filled with misinformation, is facing another accusation from the Medical Board of California, less than a year after he was placed on probation for medically negligent practices. Ironically, the complaint was filed just two days before Sears testified at a California legislative committee hearing against SB 276, a bill that aims to prevent exactly the behavior that led to his previous censure and this complaint.

How does a guy that doesn't believe in vaccines become a doctor anyways? Its like giving an Amish guy a pilots license.

It's not that he doesn't believe in vaccines, it's that he has a much stronger belief that he can make a lot of money selling all his anti-vax shit.

Kentucky

The Kentucky Court of Appeals ruled that state health officials were within their power to ban a chickenpox-afflicted student from school, even at private institutions.

A three-judge panel upheld a lower-court ruling that involved the Northern Kentucky Health Department and two Catholic schools in Boone County, about 25 miles south of Cincinnati.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals issued its ruling on Friday, but made no comment beyond a pro forma declaration, "order denying relief."

Daehawk wrote: ↑Tue Jun 25, 2019 3:47 pm How does a guy that doesn't believe in vaccines become a doctor anyways? Its like giving an Amish guy a pilots license.

Some doctors basically lose their faith and embrace pseudoscience.

Suzanne Humphries, originally a nephrologist, became a homeopath, and started using her kidney "expertise" into diagnosing all sorts of kidney damage as "vaccine injury".

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2019 9:06 pm I had no idea this was happening, and yet after finishing I'm not surprised. Absolutely gut-wrenching to read.

Rivera declined to be interviewed by NBC News, but in emails she defended chlorine dioxide and her credentials. “This is a medical issue. I have a degree in homeopathy and work with MDs and PhD scientists,” she wrote. Rivera did not respond to requests for more information about these doctors and the institution that granted her degree.

Just...ugh.

A degree in homeopathy is supposed to impress? That's like a degree in alchemy.

Trump University? They have the finest homeopathy degrees. The best.

Grifman wrote: ↑Tue Jul 02, 2019 12:44 am

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2019 9:06 pm I had no idea this was happening, and yet after finishing I'm not surprised. Absolutely gut-wrenching to read.

Rivera declined to be interviewed by NBC News, but in emails she defended chlorine dioxide and her credentials. “This is a medical issue. I have a degree in homeopathy and work with MDs and PhD scientists,” she wrote. Rivera did not respond to requests for more information about these doctors and the institution that granted her degree.

Just...ugh.

A degree in homeopathy is supposed to impress? That's like a degree in alchemy.

Vaccinated girl dies due to anti vaccers.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... une-system

She was taking medicine to lower her immune system for something else.

With that said, there *are* a few bits that antivaxxers got right, but I seriously doubt they found it by purpose. It's far more likely they stumbled upon it after trying to blame anything and everything.

The honest truth is scientists still don't quite understand how aluminum adjuvants work to enhance vaccine response. They just know that it does. And there are suggestions that aluminum adjuvants can overstimulate / damage mitochondria in certain people which leads to ASD-type symptoms. (The Anna Polling case being one such example) Previous tests on aluminum toxicity are centered on soluble aluminum salts, not aluminum compounds such as those used as adjuvants. And the toxicity level was based on rabbit tests, which may not be accurate.

Before I go into the technical details, I'll just have a rant: My problem with these studies with antivax leanings is they feel too much like motivated thinking. Instead of having a hypothesis and test with experiments, it feels as if the test results didn't fit their expectations, so they came up with a NEW hypothesis with the same data. It's basically the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.

Any way, one of the studies that antivaxxers tout was how small doses of adjuvants on mice somehow produce more brain damage, whereas big doses did not show the damage. It's pretty obvious this started as a test on adjuvant toxicity, and the result didn't fit their expectations. Normal scientists would have said "something's wrong with this experiment, we should redo it". But these guys changed the hypothesis and added an explanation that larger doses created a local wound and triggered healing to "contain" the adjuvants particles whereas the small dose just triggered macrophage to remove the adjuvant particles (eventually into the brain).

And the test that the mice shows brain damage? It shows in only one out of four tests, and even then it's borderline and subject to interpretation (i.e. "open field test", the claim was mice didn't move as much. But by then, mice had been living in labs for months)

The whole study just "feel" wrong, not that you can convince antivaxxers of that.

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Sun Jul 14, 2019 7:35 pm The honest truth is scientists still don't quite understand how aluminum adjuvants work to enhance vaccine response.

Step away from the rabbit hole and walk towards the light, Kasey Chang. Walk towards the light...

Adjuvants enhance immunity to vaccines and experimental antigens by a variety of mechanisms. In the past decade, many receptors and signaling pathways in the innate immune system have been defined and these innate responses strongly influence the adaptive immune response. The focus of this review is to delineate the innate mechanisms by which adjuvants mediate their effects.

I'm not going to quote the second part where they detail the specific reasons why adjuvants are used.

If you want more about the alum-based adjuvants and how they work:

The clinically approved alum adjuvants consist of precipitates of aluminum phosphate and aluminum hydroxide to which antigens are adsorbed. Although traditionally thought to function primarily by forming a long-lasting depot for antigen and by promoting their uptake by antigen-presenting cells (APCs), it is now clear that innate immune stimulation plays a primary role in the adjuvant activity of alum (Lambrecht et al., 2009; Marrack et al., 2009). Alum is used primarily to enhance antibody production and does not utilize TLR for its function in vivo (Gavin et al., 2006). In humans, responses to proteins with alum tend to be a mix of Th2 and Th1 cells (Didierlaurent et al., 2009); however, in mice alum induces a profoundly polarized Th2 cell response, with Th2 cell-dependent antibody isotypes, to nearly all protein antigens. Studies in vitro employing macrophages and DCs have demonstrated that, after lipopolysaccharide (LPS) priming, alum can activate the NLRP3 inflammasome to produce mature IL-1β (Li et al., 2007). This process appears to involve phagocytosis of alum crystals and lysosomal release of cathepsin B into the cytoplasm, where the enzyme localizes at the site of caspase-1-associated inflammasome activity (Hornung et al., 2008).

That's mostly above my pay grade too, FWIW.

I know, I'm getting a crash course of armchair immunology.

That blab about macrophages is what antivaxxers are blabbing... That the alum crystals somehow ended up in the brain, passed through the blood brain barrier. And I was like... what? Macrophages can do that?

But hey, that's what you get when you argue with people who think they know more than they actually do. But some of them are not bad with Google-fu.

OTOH, I make fun of them all the time.

We've had several patients (parents really) leave or be dismissed from our Pediatric practices due to our vaccine required policy. It's sad, like kids under 24 moths with nothing and parents determined to keep it that way.

You'd think those parents could at least give them 25 moths.

Kraken wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 10:57 am You'd think those parents could at least give them 25 moths.

I was unaware that moths served as a disease vector for humans.

Isgrimnur wrote:

Kraken wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 10:57 am You'd think those parents could at least give them 25 moths.

I was unaware that moths served as a disease vector for humans.

It's funny until Mothra comes and kills us all after we've shit on the Earth for so long.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07 ... nd-faster/

Measles is killing more people in the DRC than Ebola—and faster

Since January 2019, officials have recorded over 100,000 measles cases in the DRC, mostly in children, and nearly 2,000 have died. The figures surpass those of the latest Ebola outbreak in the country, which has tallied not quite 2,500 cases and 1,665 deaths since August 2018. The totals were noted by World Health Organization Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a speech today, July 15, at the United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland.

Looks like Lyme Disease could have been a lot more preventable and treatable by now if not for the uninformed moronic anti vacc brigade back in the day.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... ion-on-way

But for scientists, one of the most tragic aspects of Bullough’s story, as with those of many other patients, is that it could potentially have been avoided. In the late 1990s, the first preventive human vaccine, called LYMErix, was developed and 1.4m doses had been administered by the end of 2001. The data suggests it was highly effective, protecting against the disease in almost 90% of cases.

LYMErix wasn’t perfect. It was relatively expensive, did not work in young children, only protected against one strain of Lyme disease and was only available in the US. But it appeared to be the first step towards eradicating the disease for good. Anti-vaccine fear saw it vanish from the market, however, and with that, all scientific research and investment in the field ceased.

NIH

By 2001, with over 1·4 million Lyme vaccine doses distributed in the United States the VAERS database included 905 reports of mild self-limited reactions and 59 reports of arthritis associated with vaccination. The arthritis incidence in the patients receiving Lyme vaccine occurred at the same rate as the background in unvaccinated individuals. In addition, the data did not show a temporal spike in arthritis diagnoses after the second and third vaccine dose expected for an immune-mediated phenomenon. The FDA found no suggestion that the Lyme vaccine caused harm to its recipients.

Ya that and stuff was found not related but the anti vacc brigade didn't let that go. They found something to latch to. Like all crazies will grab what they want and ignore any other facts.

Daehawk wrote: ↑Wed Aug 14, 2019 5:17 pm Flight attendant dies after contracting measles on flight from NYC.

Uhm...you may want to check your link.

gilraen wrote: ↑Thu Aug 15, 2019 12:04 am

Daehawk wrote: ↑Wed Aug 14, 2019 5:17 pm Flight attendant dies after contracting measles on flight from NYC.

Uhm...you may want to check your link.

hahaha thanks. Wasn't that cool a shirt anyways

CNN

Four European countries have lost their measles-free status as the region suffers a significant setback in eliminating the disease, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

With measles cases across Europe on course to double this year, the disease has made a comeback in Albania, Czech Republic, Greece and the United Kingdom, where it had previously been eradicated, a WHO report said.
...
Social media is proving to be a key battleground for health information.

Professor Martin Marshall, vice-chair of Britain's Royal College of GPs, said the findings were "disheartening" at a time when Europe had been making good press in eliminating an entirely preventable disease. He drew a link between declining vaccination rates and the spread of "anti-vaxer propaganda" on social media.
...
The issue has also reared its head in the US, which may soon lose its measles-free status due to outbreaks that have caused more than 900 cases of measles.

Those outbreaks have largely been among children in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community whose parents have refused to vaccinate them.

When the WHO declared in 2000 that the United States had eliminated measles, it was hailed as one of the biggest public health achievements in the nation's history.

Now there is a "reasonable chance" the country could lose its status in October, according to Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

I'm guessing there was a Grecian Glitch for this infographic:

Once again, NJ was poised to make the right decision, but they were shouted down by anti vaccine extremists:

As hundreds of chanting protestors filled the Statehouse halls and spilled into a courtyard outside, the state Senate abandoned an effort Monday night to pass a controversial bill that would eliminate a law that allowed 14,000 school children in New Jersey to skip their vaccines because of their family’s religious beliefs.

Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, said he was one vote short of passing the bill (A3818), which would allow only children with verified medical conditions to be exempt from vaccine laws.

Sen. Joseph Lagana, D-Bergen, could be heard explaining to Vitale that he wouldn’t vote yes because it is “just too personal for me.”

Joseph Lagana

He attended Fordham University, where he received a B.A. in history in 2000

Fordham is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit-affiliated university in the northeastern United States