Oh, boy, I stepped in it by mentioning vaccines the other day. The email has been overflowing with people offering a lot of sound background like this from reader Lois:
Hi George,
I’m afraid I must disagree with your wonderful children on the autism/vaccine issue. Dr Andrew Wakefield is the doctor whose autism-vaccine link study has been discredited. They say he faked the evidence and he lost his medical license. There has been a huge attempt to discredit him and his study which you can see if you do a search for his name. But if you look between the lines you will find vaccine manufacturers are quietly awarding families large settlements because they admit their vaccine did cause the child’s autism. You can read about it here: LINK
Dr Wakefield has filed a lawsuit for defamation of character in Austin TX. You can read about it here: LINK
Since Dr Wakefield’s study was published in the British Medical Journal (which they retracted) and the BMJ receives funding from pharmaceuticals I think it is worth at least listening to what Dr Wakefield has to say.
And reader Gary adds:
Whoa, not so fast, George.
I remember reading an article that showed that measles was declining into insignificance at the time the vaccine was introduced. Once introduced, there was an increase in the incidence of measles!
I’m sure the article is still out there somewhere. The data surely is.
I would remind everyone, including your kids, that the proper conclusion is to never hastily come to a conclusion
And reader Teresita in the Philippines has a personal reason to be skeptical:
When I was in grade school in the 1950’s,
our whole school was vaccinated for polio.
Guess what? My classmate got polio soon
after. She had been absent for a long while
and one day comes to school with braces
on her leg. I stand up and tell the teacher,
how can she get polio if she got vaccinated?Sit down! was the only response I ever got.
I never had my child vaccinated because even
in 1975 the word was out.
See also #8 on the list. Is that for real?
By the way, to find that referenced CDC page, you will need to tear apart the underlying URL because Googling it returns a 404 error. But, seeing as I’m seriously interested, I was able to track it back through the web archive pages to here and on this page the CDC says (in part):
- SV40 is a virus found in some species of monkey.
- SV40 was discovered in 1960. Soon afterward, the virus was found in polio vaccine.
- More than 98 million Americans received one or more doses of polio vaccine from 1955 to 1963 when a proportion of vaccine was contaminated with SV40; it has been estimated that 10–30 million Americans could have received an SV40 contaminated dose of vaccine.
- SV40 virus has been found in certain types of cancer in humans, but it has not been determined that SV40 causes these cancers.
- The majority of scientific evidence suggests that SV40-contaminated vaccine did not cause cancer; however, some research results are conflicting and more studies are needed.
- Polio vaccines being used today do not contain SV40. All of the current evidence indicates that polio vaccines have been free of SV40 since 1963.
A 2007 PubMed.gov reference is here and seems to minimize SV40 risk, but then again, with more than 98-million people injected, what would you expect officialdom to list?
And reader Nancy chimed in with:
Hi George,
Reading about how your daughter took you to task at “suggesting” there may be a link between vaccines and peanut allergy. I don’t know why those who are pro-vaccine cannot even fathom they might be harmful. Perhaps it is because they also could not fathom that the same companies who make the vaccines are killing people with their pharmaceuticals and the same doctors that recommend/give them are killing people through medical mistakes. Look at the number of people who die from medical mistakes… 44,000 to 98,000 people a year. Do we hear a wail and cry about this? No, because people have been convinced everything is done “for our own good” and this must just be collateral damage. Your daughter seems to be a bright young woman, but her virulent opposition to a suggestion that vaccines might be causing her peanut allergy, seems to be the emotional knee-jerk reaction we have been programmed to have. I mean who would want to believe that her life-endangering peanut allergy could be part and parcel of the multitude of vaccines she received as a child. It is always hard to come to the understanding that something being in the best interests of a people is just a happy coincidence and not the main goal.
I was heartened to read that your daughter and reader Dean feel that exposure to toxic chemicals, pesticides, aspartame and the Standard American Diet can be removed from the “conspiracy theory” list of what might cause autism. How many stresses can our bodies take is the question? We keep piling them on and then wonder why autism and degenerative diseases have just “appeared” for no reason? Our bodies actually MAKE tumors to wall some of this stuff off. The straw breaking the camel’s back seems to fit here.
As an investigative journalist you might enjoy reading another investigative journalist, Liam Scheff who wrote “Official Stories-Counter Arguments for a Culture in Need” and goes against all of this mainstream propaganda of “vaccines, pharmaceuticals, processed foods, etc. must be good for you because the FDA wouldn’t allow them if they weren’t”. Here is an excerpt about vaccines from his book.
Not surprisingly, we didn’t get too much (as in any) support for vaccinations from medical types. But a Canadian pharmacist wrote:
RE: “How do we get the content of banned studies (of Monsanto RoundUp vs Autism) …mostly done abroad?
–Try to get access to The Cochrane Library. This is a huge online full-text library of medical lit which is not based in the USA. I found out about it while studying for the Canadian Pharmacist Board exams. 34 years in US healthcare practice, and I had never heard of them, but Cochrane Library is a big deal, and probably has those studies. It is VERY expensive, but many US counties, cities, organizations and even states have paid access to it.
Here’s a link: http://www.thecochranelibrary.com/view/0/index.html
As much as I would like to draw my kids into the discussion, I don’t think that’s a good idea. As near as I can figure it, the medical industry is sold on vaccines (and so am I but with caveats and asterisks all over the place). For one, there is enough “science” and statistics that it can be a career-ender for people in medicine to even dare to think outside the box. On the other hand, I expect the kids are bright enough to “question everything” when it comes to vaccines.
The reason I’m pondering this so deeply now is simple: A will be hitting 65 next year and that’s about when many older folks get vaccinated for shingles. Better known medically as herpes zoster which is seriously unpleasant. Curiously, the Wikipedia entry about prevention of shingles mentions (second time in a morning) the Cochrane Library! So for whatever reason, Universe sees fit this morning to rub Cochrane Library in my face several times so I got it, I got it…
A live vaccine for VZV exists, marketed as Zostavax.[27] A systematic review by the Cochrane Library concluded that Zostavax can reduce the absolute risk of shingles by 1.75%, a 50% relative risk reduction.[28] This translates to 1 episode of shingles prevented for every 70 patients vaccinated. A 2007 study found that the zoster vaccine is likely to be cost-effective in the U.S., projecting an annual savings of $82 to $103 million in healthcare costs with cost-effectiveness ratios ranging from $16,229 to $27,609 per quality-adjusted life year gained.[29] In October 2007 the vaccine was officially recommended in the U.S. for healthy adults aged 60 and over.[27][30] The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends shingle vaccine for use in people 60 years old and older to prevent shingles, but it is not recommended to treat active shingles or post-herpetic neuralgia (pain after the rash is gone) once it develops.[31] Adults also receive an immune boost from contact with children infected with varicella (chicken pox), a boosting method that prevents about a quarter of herpes zoster cases among unvaccinated adults, but that is becoming less common in the U.S. now that children are routinely vaccinated against varicella.[9][32]
In the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, population-based varicella immunization is not practiced. The rationale is that until the entire population could be immunized, adults who have previously contracted VZV would instead derive benefit from occasional exposure to VZV (from children), which serves as a booster to their immunity to the virus, and may reduce the risk of shingles later on in life.[33] The UK Health Protection Agency states that, while the vaccine is licensed in the UK, there are no plans to introduce it into the routine childhood immunization scheme, although it may be offered to healthcare workers who have no immunity to VZV.[34]
One of my relatives had a run-in with shingles and she was miserable for six months. Said it was like all the nerves in her body coming up to the surface and being irritated. So this has me thinking about the problem. What I don’t know – and which when comes time for another visit to the country doc next month – is whether the shingles vaccine can be had:
- Certified mercury/Thimerosol-free
- Certified free of any stray crap like strings of other DNA (like SV40)
- Certified free of any glyphosates
- Certified free of egg, wheat, peanut or aspartame residues and formaldehyde-free.
- …etc.
I don’t expect it is, since Big Pharma likely has plenty of reason (economically) to make vaccines which can store at room temp for long periods of time. BUT since I have allergies, I don’t want any additional lead, DNA strings, glyphosates or allergens in the mix.
I think if medical doctors had to sign a “certified-free”document and had to write down what the risks attendant to each drug they prescribed were, they’d do a lot more work on primary medicine of the “You are what you eat and drink” variety and less of the “Tell your doctor” type.
I expect that any doctor, confronted with a patient-produced piece of paper to be signed first would decline to administer…yet on the other side, patients have to sign all kinds of forms.
I’d sure like to hear from the other (pro-vaccine) side, but unless I can get clean, single-purpose organic vaccine for shingles, I am presently disinclined to roll up the sleeves anymore, despite a possible predisposition to shingles down the road having had chicken pox as a kid.
Greg’s Morning Coffee
This was a good one:
george.
good morning. coffee hasn’t kicked in yet, but first thought regarding above was “paybacks are a …”
no, more like “reap what you sow.” think hiroshima, nagasaki… iraq (depleted u). etc.
i live near greenbank, wv. i tell my nrao employee friends the reason e.t. hasn’t phoned them is the rest of the universe is avoiding us.
let’s see, corexit in the gulf, mafia nuke/ chemical dumping in the med, bleeding alaskan herring, antibiotics and, and… who knows what in the asian fish-farm feed… where is an italian to go to buy fish for the feast of the seven fishes?
more coffee, regards,
Oh, speaking of Corexit… A buddy of mine is going through offshore rig school and you know what? Although no one will write any of this down on paper, people planning to work jackups or floaters (rig types) are being told by instructors: “Unless you’re drowning, don’t drink any of the water and if you fall in, immediately shower and scrub the hell out of yourself…”
Another data point: Helicopter emersion training (where people are strapped in choppers and dumped upside down into the water so they know how to get out at night) is being done upstream in fresh water now because of the continuing risk in the Gulf.
My buddy says “Texas shrimp only of from Thailand” for him and his family. Duly noted.
The Sky is Falling Dept.
This question from a reader has me stumped:
George:
Out of curiosity, is it just me, or does it seem that it is getting darker earlier than it should be?
For example, at 7PM, it is getting dark, when I can remember in the past, it would be light out past 8 PM at this time of the year.
Also, a lot of leaves are starting to change colors already in our area.
It is almost like the calendar is a month off.
It would be interesting to see if anyone else has similar anecdotal observations.
I usually go to bed before the sun’s down in the summer, so I couldn’t rightly say. But local sunset time is listed as 7:58 tonight and it should be up at 6:52 this morning. But I’ll let you know.
Trivia: Speaking of the Sun and such, from back when I was living on our sailboat and learning celestial navigation, most people don’t know what the upper limb of the sun is, compared with the lower limb.
For the answer, and a fine short course in celestial navigation (when the boss isn’t looking, of course) flip over to here. Tomorrow morning work out the local angle hour (LHA) for Palestine, Texas at 11:43 AM CDT if you think you understand it.
For the precise location use 31°45?29?N 95°38?19?W. Only vaccine comments with the right solution to this morning’s work-work will be considered…
Thursday at the WuJo
WuJo is back and we have a report from reader Karl who explains his case as follows:
Vanishing movie ticket.
On August 18, 2013, a friend and I went to go purchase tickets to see a movie. As usual, we picked seats K10 and K11 (K being the 11th letter of the alphabet, makes it 11:11).
After the cashier handed me the tickets, I shuffled them and gave one to my friend, then looked at the remaining ticket which read K11.
As I went to put the ticket in my right pants pocket, the ticket was knocked out of my hand by my car keys that I had clipped to my belt loop. I looked down to find the ticket and could not see it.
I took a step back and still no ticket. The floor was a polished cement floor with no pattern or odd colors, so it would have been very easy to pick out a ticket on the floor from the background.
There were no counter tops that it could have slipped under. I thought maybe it did get into my pocket somehow, or fallen in the cuff of my pants, or the tongue of my shoe, but the ticket was nowhere to be found.
There were very few people in the theater, and none were even close to us that could have picked it up (the theater had just barely opened). This happened all very quickly.
Meanwhile, the cashier was watching all of this happen and couldn’t believe it either. He ended up having to hand write me a ticket so that I could get into the theater. The ticket simply vanished.
I went into the bathroom and stripped down, shook out my pants AND my underwear, took off my shoes and socks and my shirt and shook it out. The ticket was gone. Never to be recovered. My friend said that it wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t have been there to witness the whole event, after all, he was standing there and watched everything.
I’m half expecting the ticket to show up in some odd place sometime in the future.:
This is precisely a wonderful case of WuJo because what more than likely happened is that the multiverse split (as it continuously does) and the ticket will reappear when the multiverse oscillates back across the current track we’re on.
Have you ever looked at the “staff of Caduceus closely?
Wikipedia says it’s “is the staff carried by Hermes in Greek mythology. The same staff was also borne by heralds in general, for example by Iris, the messenger of Hera. It is a short staff entwined by two serpents, sometimes surmounted by wings. In Roman iconography it was often depicted being carried in the left hand of Mercury, the messenger of the gods, guide of the dead and protector of merchants, shepherds, gamblers, liars, and thieves…
What IF we have lost some ancient knowledge long ago an d the story of Hermes was a perversion of earlier knowledge that we’ve just forgotten about and which was botched by the old dude who were handing down the legend. What IF the multiverse is real and it parts and comes back together as what I describe as:
This would go a long way toward explaining a LOT of odd phenomena including the problem of where people go when they die.
What IF when we die, we simply stop the forward movement and freeze at a particular place, at a particular time and the rest of the world goes on without us?
Or, what if there’s another crossing reality that we step on to or in to?
This is a most curious way of looking at things and these crossings seem to happen more some places than others, which is why Native American lore (and other) refers to places of “power”. Louis L’Amour’s The Haunted Mesa deserves yet another read since clearly, in that book L’Amour was getting to portals between worlds as certain kivas in the Southwest.
Of all of L’Amour’s books (100 novels, 250 short stories and more than 320-million in print) this is the one that intuitively would be one of the finest sci-fi/dramas out there. All it would need would be a Spielberg and John Williams to do a soundtrack to bring it to life. But the idea is there and could it be that the inhabitants of the UFO’s and the “abduction” people could all be part of a real life Adjustment Bureau? They’d be the “watchers…”
Who’s to say, at least before work on Thursday…
More tomorrow, then…
Write when you get rich…
George (george@ure.net)