[p2p-research] 1/3 of US parents oppose Swine Flu Vaccine (risk assessment)

[Paul D. Fernhout]

I've been looking more at the relation between Type-1 Diabetes and 
vaccination and I find this study summar fascinating:
   "Vaccines Not Linked to Childhood Diabetes"
   http://infectious-diseases.jwatch.org/cgi/content/full/2004/409/1
"""
Critics of childhood vaccination programs have proposed links between 
vaccines and increasing incidences of autism and type 1 diabetes mellitus in 
children. Strong scientific evidence has accumulated against any association 
of vaccinations with autism (see Journal Watch Infectious Diseases Dec 12 
2003 and Oct 10 2003). Now, using a registry of all children born in Denmark 
from 1990 through 2000, a national vaccine registry, and a national hospital 
registry that identified diabetes diagnoses, investigators have performed a 
longitudinal study of vaccinations and type 1 diabetes.
   The researchers identified 681 cases of type 1 diabetes among 739,694 
children during 4,720,517 person-years of follow-up. Comparison of diabetes 
rate ratios among unvaccinated children and children who received at least 
one dose of vaccine (Haemophilus influenzae type b; diphtheria, tetanus, and 
inactivated poliovirus; diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis, and 
inactivated poliovirus; whole-cell pertussis; measles, mumps, and rubella; 
or oral poliovirus) showed no association between vaccination and disease. 
Rate ratios did not change with succeeding doses of vaccines, with greater 
total numbers of vaccinations, or in the 2 to 4 years after receipt of any 
vaccine. Vaccinations were not associated with development of type 1 
diabetes in siblings of diabetic children.
   Comment: Findings from this elegant epidemiologic study should refute 
claims that vaccinations cause type 1 diabetes mellitus in children. The 
study design eliminated potential selection and recall biases. Setting the 
record straight on vaccinations and diabetes is in the best interest of 
public health.
"""

What is most interesting about this "elegant" study is that it has only 
taken place years after the vaccines have been in widespread use. A decade 
earlier, some research suggested otherwise, including experiments with 
rodents, as listed in part here:
   http://www.mercola.com/article/vaccines/references.htm

Think about that for a moment. Vaccines were released with little testing 
other than immediate side effects, and then many years later, to combat 
other research saying their are unexpected long term effects, some 
researchers (with lots of money?) start looking for evidence there are no 
long-term side effects in specific areas. Let's say these new researchers 
are right in their conclusions that there is no link between vaccination and 
diabetes. What does this still say about the entire process of determining 
the long term safety of a vaccine? It says, everybody getting a vaccine is a 
guinea pig. And given vaccines continually change in formulation and who 
produces them and how, what does past success even say about future performance?

Of course, you can't actually see the study without special access or going 
to a library that has the journal, even though this research was no doubt 
subsidized by the taxpayer. :-(
http://www.pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html

Also, based on one country, with probably very specific sources for 
manufactured vaccines (likely, not from the USA), conclude that all vaccines 
are safe in this way. That's like saying lower death rates in accidents from 
people driving Volvos in Sweden means everyone who drives a Ford Pinto in 
the USA is safe.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto

Doctors like to say vaccination is "safe and effective". Well, so is 
gasoline, and so is nuclear power, and so is open heart surgery, depending 
on how you define your terms and the context.

The question is, "how safe", and "how effective"? And "how confident" are 
people about those estimates (including estimates about "unknown unknowns")?

Also, what are the alternatives? For gasoline, it takes about as much 
electricity to make a gallon of gas as it would to power an electric car the 
same distance, so the gasoline is unnecessary except as a temporary storage 
device for electric power. For nuclear power plants, we can have solar power 
instead, with different costs and benefits. For open heart surgery, one 
could preventively eat a healthier diet and fast periodically to avoid the 
need for it, or take fish oil capsules afterward to make it work better.

Here's an example with numbers showing how only a slight difference in 
estimate of risk about vaccines might lead one to avoid them entirely.

Let's look a the current US vaccine schedule for kids and adults:
   http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/schedules/default.htm

For children birth to six, it involves about thirty five injections for 
about fifty doses of vaccines (some like MMR or DToP have multiple doses of 
different vaccines in one shot).  For children seven to eight, it involves 
about twenty injections, for about twenty-two doses of vaccines. For adults 
nineteen to eighty (six more decades of life), it would entail about sixty 
flu shots, plus about twenty three other shots, for a total of about eighty 
three shots, comprising about one hundred doses of vaccines. I'm doing a 
rough calculation here eyeballing the charts, the numbers might be off by 
one or two here or there. Essentially, add them up and it is about 35 + 20 + 
83 injections (so, about 138 injections lifetime) and 50 + 22 + 100 doses of 
stuff, or about 172 doses of vaccines across a lifetime. So, as I've said 
before, approaching two hundred doses of vaccines are recommended (assuming 
you add each aspect of something like MMR seperately). This assumes the 
person does not travel somewhere tropical or go into the military, where 
they might receive tens of more doses of various stuff (often with more risk 
of side effects). And, that assumes the vaccine schedule does not continue 
to increase, as here, with perhaps a mandatory swine flu shot that has been 
talked about.

It's pretty much agreed by most doctors that the chance of a serious adverse 
reaction to an injection of a vaccine is roughly one in a million. Some 
things are more likely, somethings less, but certainly, that's the order of 
magnitude a doctor may throw around as likely. And it sounds like good odds, 
right? A one in a million risk for near certainty for not getting some 
specific disease that sounds terrifying.

Let's say you, for whatever reason, think that one out a million is an 
underestimate of the total risk per dose of vaccine. That is not a 
completely irrational position, given how little anyone can study the long 
term side effects of a specific batch of vaccine in advance (as the above 
study about diabetes and vaccination, decades after the fact). Also, it is 
not completely irrational to question how vaccines may have manufacturing 
defects after they are approved (like that example of in Cuba when vaccines 
made in India were contaminated), especially if they are produced for the 
most profit or by the lowest bidder. Remember, each injection poses a 
physical risk of a misplaced injection in a vein or with a contaminated 
needle, too. Also, going to a health care facility to get a vaccination may 
also expose you to a serious communicable diseases. You might feel there is 
just a little corruption there, just a little conflict of interest, just a 
little group think going on, just a little looking the other way in relation 
to profits; not necessarily widespread collusion, just a bit of what you see 
going on everywhere in US society with Enron and Iraq and the lack of 
universal health care and so on.

So, what is the true risk? We don't know. But let's say you think it is more 
like a risk of long term serious injury or death of one in ten thousand 
instead of one in a million. Still not certain, but just substantially 
higher, by a factor of 100. It's not completely irrational. There are some 
vaccine risks that are listed as one in ten thousand. Applying this just a 
little more broadly is not completely unreasonable, even if some 
statisticians would fault it based on the data they are looking at (although 
again, there is uncertainty about whether to trust them). I'm not saying 
this risk assessment is right; I'm just saying it is not completely irrational.

OK, let's work with those numbers. So, over an eighty year life, what would 
be the odds of a serious problem from vaccination, if you think that way? 
Well, approximately it is 200 vaccine doses times one-in-10,000, or, about a 
2% general risk of severe injury from participating in a life-long 
vaccination program as a civilian.

But, that's in general. What if you have a family history of asthma, 
profound autism, diabetes, or other immunes system disorders? Or what if you 
have, say, a lot of metal crowns or metal fillings in your teeth, and so 
your body is already burdened with continually removing heavy metals? Well, 
it might be reasonable to think you or your child are specifically at 
additional risk in your individual case. Let's say, you feel you are at five 
times the average risk if you have both fillings and and immune system 
disorder in the family. I'm not saying that is right; I'm just saying one 
might easily feel that way without being considered completely hysterical. 
People make individual risk assessments all the time that differ from the 
official averages. In that case, you might think your risk of getting 
profound problem from vaccination is five times more likely that 2%, so more 
like 10%.

But, doctors will tell you the odds are just one in a million (without any 
context or specificity to your situation) of a problem. But you might see 
this as a 10% risk. This is the huge gap in statistical analysis and 
perception that may drive some of this controversy. Do many people think 
vaccines are a 10% risk for their child? Or is it a one in a million risk, 
like any doctor will tell you (without context)? Who really knows? 
Obviously, if people really knew for sure, why would the people who did that 
study above on just one auto-immune disease in one country related to 
vaccination be so obviously proud of their recent achievement?

Now, given that in the USA, many of the diseases vaccines are for were on 
their way out before vaccination, and others may be treatable in other ways, 
and most (not all) may pose little trouble for an otherwise healthy child, 
especially one who is breastfed for at least two years according to WHO 
guidelines, then what are the real benefits of vaccination for a parent's 
child?

Here, again, we could look in detail at the benefits of vaccination for 
various diseases in reducing the risks of specific diseases. In most cases, 
the risks of contracting the diseases are low in the USA. But, they are not 
absent. Still, then we can look at the confidence a parent has they are 
helping their child grow in a healthy way (eating right, exercise, good 
stress and not bad stress, avoiding compulsory schools that spread 
communicable disease and psychological pathology, and so on). So, a parent 
might not unreasonably decide that whatever the doctors say about risk of 
contracting a serious disease, maybe the risks are ten times lower for their 
specific child. The risks vary for each disease, obviously. A better 
analysis would look into each one. I don't know the exact composite figures 
(I have not looked at this stuff recently). I've vaguely remember talk about 
it being 15% risk of severe problems for the unvaccinated child in poor 
countries with sewage running in the streets, and maybe 2% in the USA. Let's 
go with the 15% figure for the USA, because I admit this is a weak part of 
my essay here. But, if you think your child is doing ten times better than 
average because of good care, then, you think at most, they have a 2% chance 
risk of dying from something a vaccine could save them from. Again, I'm not 
saying these figures are accurate; I'm just saying how one might end up 
feeling they were not tremendously unreasonable.

Now, lets put those assessments of risk and benefits together, in a case 
where we have only shifted the decimal points three places, based on not 
completely unreasonable assumptions. If you were to feel the risks are 10% 
of serious side effects for your child from a full course of vaccination 
lifelong, and the risk of having a serious problem with any disease were 
significantly lower than generally described in you case  at 2%, then would 
vaccinating in general make much sense? For you as an individual, 
interpreting the odds that way, vaccination would seem a foolish choice 
(ignoring moralistic arguments for taking on five times more risk for the herd).

Then, add on to that simple analysis seeing some advice like this:
   "Avoid Flu Shots With the One Vitamin that Will Stop Flu in Its Tracks "
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/10/21/avoid-flu-shots-vitamin-d-is-a-better-way.aspx
"""
Another influenza season is beginning, and the U.S. Center for Disease 
Control and Prevention (CDC) will strongly urge Americans to get a flu shot. 
In fact, the CDC mounts a well-orchestrated campaign each season to generate 
interest and demand for flu shots.
   But a recent study published in the October issue of the Archives of 
Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine found that vaccinating young children 
against the flu appeared to have no impact on flu-related hospitalizations 
or doctor visits during two recent flu seasons.
   At first glance, the data did suggest that children between the ages of 6 
months and 5 years derived some protection from vaccination in these years. 
But after adjusting for potentially relevant variables, the researchers 
concluded that "significant influenza vaccine effectiveness could not be 
demonstrated for any season, age, or setting" examined.
   Additionally, a Group Health study found that flu shots do not protect 
elderly people against developing pneumonia -- the primary cause of death 
resulting as a complication of the flu. Others have questioned whether there 
is any mortality benefit with influenza vaccination. Vaccination coverage 
among the elderly increased from 15 percent in 1980 to 65 percent now, but 
there has been no decrease in deaths from influenza or pneumonia.
   There is some evidence that flu shots cause Alzheimer’s disease, most 
likely as a result of combining mercury with aluminum and formaldehyde. 
Mercury in vaccines has also been implicated as a cause of autism.
   Three other serious adverse reactions to the flu vaccine are joint 
inflammation and arthritis, anaphylactic shock (and other life-threatening 
allergic reactions), and Guillain-Barré syndrome, a paralytic autoimmune 
disease.
   One credible hypothesis that explains the seasonal nature of flu is that 
influenza is a vitamin D deficiency disease.
"""

I'm not saying Mercola is right, but perhaps one can see that one might find 
Mercola persuasive, in the context of just a somewhat different assessment 
of vaccination risks and rewards (as above, it is something not completely 
unjustifiable to the average person with a mild distrust of scientist or 
government, even if it differs from what many doctors would tell you as they 
parrot the information they are given).

Now, I'm not saying these figures are the actual risks. I'm also not saying 
don't vaccinate. It's an individual choice, and fraught with risks and 
uncertainties (including risks about assessing the risks), and there are 
lots of specifics to be looked at, even for each vaccine. Two related books 
that try to be balanced:
http://www.askdrsears.com/thevaccinebook/
http://www.amazon.com/Vaccinations-Thoughtful-Sensible-Decisions-Alternatives/dp/0892819316

But, I'm saying, if you look at the numbers with just a little distrust, and 
a little specificity to your case, it is easy to see why many 
just-slightly-out-of-the-mainstream parents might choose not to vaccinate at 
all.

Again, this is a broad and fairly simple analysis. One might of course want 
to look at the risks and likely benefits for any specific vaccination. 
Still, it remains unknown how vaccines interact, or what the total body 
burden of two hundred doses of vaccines, delivered by more than one hundred 
injections, each adding to a body burden of dealing with mercury and 
aluminum and lots of other stuff might add up. So, deciding to get vaccines 
one by one may still create systemic risks not obvious in each individual 
decision. In automotive safety terms, this in analogous to "the seven 
factors that make an accident", where if you can reduce just one factor, a 
catastrophic accident might be avoided.

In the USA today, perhaps due to the previous successes of vaccines as well 
as other factors like hygiene and nutrition, people are far more worried 
about autoimmune disorders like diabetes and autism than communicable 
diseases like measles or polio. Maybe that is right, maybe that is wrong, 
but it certainly easy to understand. And, with the rising rate of autism 
diagnosis (whatever the cause) no up to about one out of a hundred, it lends 
some credence to how one could feel justified in assessing the lifetime risk 
of vaccination at 10% of serious injury, even if that assessment might not 
be right according to various academic statisticians.

The deepest problem here is trust. There is lack of trust in part because 
family practice doctors don't have that much time to spend talking with 
patients or even doing their own research and face severe liability for not 
following state guidelines. But, more than that, there is also lack of trust 
because the medical community has not bent over backward to avoid even the 
appearance of a conflict of interest in determining these numbers. Plus, 
there are ethical reasons why human experiments related to vaccination are 
hard to perform. Because the whole vaccination thing has taken on such moral 
overtones, it is hard to even have a conversation about trust (or risk).

And of course, the whole US school system may have also failed the country, 
according to the Vice Provost of Caltech:
   http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
"I would like to propose a different and more illuminating metaphor for 
American science education. It is more like a mining and sorting operation, 
designed to cast aside most of the mass of common human debris, but at the 
same time to discover and rescue diamonds in the rough, that are capable of 
being cleaned and cut and polished into glittering gems, just like us, the 
existing scientists. ... It explains why we have the best scientists and the 
most poorly educated students in the world. It is because our entire system 
of education is designed to produce precisely that result."

And Jeff Schmidt talks about failures at the professional level of schooling 
too:
   http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
"He argues in Disciplined Minds that work is an inherently political 
activity and that hiring therefore involves political screening.  This 
understanding leads naturally to a new argument for affirmative action: to 
increase political diversity in the workplace."

But, in this case, has the school system failed the country because, like 
with the implication of Dr. Goodstein's suggestion, most scientists are 
right about the statistics of vaccination and the average person can not 
understand the statistics and so has done a faulty private risk assessment? 
Or has schooling failed the country because (implied according to both of 
Goodstein, and Schmidt, as well as Chomsky cited below) the scientists have 
been shaped and polished like existing scientists, and so they then engage 
in group think which the average citizen is unable to see through? Or, is 
the truth even more complex, that both scientists and citizens of all sorts 
of positions are right about some things and wrong about others? :-)

And, as with statistics, whichever way a parent decides, there is some 
chance it will be the wrong choice, and a child will die (either from the 
disease or the side-effects of vaccination). As a parent, there is some 
chance your child will die or become disabled no matter what choice you make 
for them. That is in the nature of parenting. You play the odds, even in 
letting kids climb trees or ride bicycles, and you hope for the best. It's 
nerve wracking if you let yourself think about it too deeply. What it at 
issue is, what are the true odds? And that is something it is hard for a 
parent to figure out, in part because it is apparently hard for even the 
scientists to figure out (as above), and then, if any of scientists actually 
do studies, it is hard to know which studies and which scientists to listen 
to. Human immunology is a rapidly changing field that even experts in the 
area can not keep up with. We can see repeated instances of the lone 
scientist being right, even as we can see even more instances of the lone 
scientist being wrong.

Still, add state compulsion and jail time to that equation, as Ryan 
advocates for parents who do not vaccinate their kids according to CDC 
guidelines, and it would seem the whole problem may just get even worse. 
After all, if vaccines really work, why mandate them? Oh, I know the 
reasons: most vaccines are admitted to be only about 95% effective and they 
often fade over time, so public health officials are trying to exterminate 
microbes from the population by getting everyone to participate, and that 
mandatory vaccination statistically may slow down the spread of disease or 
make quarantine easier (or even possible). And the CDC and others argue 
risks of serious vaccine side effects are one-in-a-million (or lower). Sure, 
doing your part for "herd immunity" sounds sensible -- if you agree with all 
the other official assessments about risk in general, which you may not. And 
then one can also argue whether parents are being responsible in questioning 
what official sources say, and as Ryan suggests, if seat belts and car seats 
can be mandated (granted, in the face of much less uncertainty about 
cost-benefit trade-offs for children), why not mandate vaccination, or even 
circumcision, or other even more invasive medical interventions? So, sure, 
one can build a case for mandatory vaccination, subject to discussions of 
Constitution issues or scientific uncertainty or ethics surrounding 
parenting and compulsion. But, if one can do that, one can also build a case 
for mandatory breastfeeding to age two or later (WHO guidelines), or a case 
for mandatory purchase of organic food, or a case for mandatory 
homeschooling to prevent disease transmission, if one is consistent. So, if 
we do build a case for mandates, let's look far and wide for good ones. :-)

Mandatory cancer treatment has been upheld for children recently, for 
example. Although, again, as with car seats, it is easier to figure the odds 
for cancer treatment (although, even there, it is a complex issuer with 
alternatives and risk assessments).
   "Ethical and Legal Dispute over Boy’s Mandatory Cancer Treatment"
   http://www.globalethics.org/newsline/2009/05/25/religion-cancer/
"Newsweek reports that the Hauser case is the latest in a string of 
incidents in which medical treatment imposed by law has come into conflict 
with parents’ beliefs, including recent controversies involving mandatory 
inoculation and children’s rights to medical privacy."

But, a deeper question is, if the USA cared so much about child health, why 
is there not universal free-to-the-user health care in the USA? And why are 
so few children nursed for two+ years according to WHO guidelines? And why 
is it so hard to get local organic food at reasonable prices? Why is 
education in the USA set up as a breeding ground for disease among young 
children? Why don't parents get more time-off or a "basic income" so they 
can stay home with sick children instead of spreading disease around? Why is 
so little US aid abroad to help fix infrastructure issues (economic, 
physical, and political) that lead to starvation and malnutrition? And so 
on. So, why should one trust a US government agency about vaccine policy 
when so many other aspects of the US system seem supremely dysfunctional? 
Maybe that is guilt by association and unfair; I'm just outlining how one 
might not unreasonably have little trust in that entire system (fair or not, 
and whatever the scientists are saying or not).

There is also this systemic risk for the entire formal public health care 
enterprise in the USA, especially as it interacts with the mainstream media 
for distributing vaccination recommendations or discussing other health care 
issues:
   "What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream" b Noam Chomsky
   http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm
"""
The real mass media are basically trying to divert people. Let them do 
something else, but don’t bother us (us being the people who run the show). 
Let them get interested in professional sports, for example. Let everybody 
be crazed about professional sports or sex scandals or the personalities and 
their problems or something like that. Anything, as long as it isn’t 
serious. Of course, the serious stuff is for the big guys. "We" take care of 
that.
   What are the elite media, the agenda-setting ones? The New York Times and 
CBS, for example. Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, 
corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright 
owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and 
so on. They are way up at the top of the power structure of the private 
economy which is a very tyrannical structure. Corporations are basically 
tyrannies, hierarchic, controled from above. If you don’t like what they are 
doing you get out. The major media are just part of that system.
   Well, what do you expect to happen? What would you predict about the 
nature of the media product, given that set of circumstances? What would be 
the null hypothesis, the kind of conjecture that you’d make assuming nothing 
further. The obvious assumption is that the product of the media, what 
appears, what doesn’t appear, the way it is slanted, will reflect the 
interest of the buyers and sellers, the institutions, and the power systems 
that are around them. If that wouldn’t happen, it would be kind of a miracle.
   Okay, then comes the hard work. You ask, does it work the way you 
predict? Well, you can judge for yourselves. There’s lots of material on 
this obvious hypothesis, which has been subjected to the hardest tests 
anybody can think of, and still stands up remarkably well. You virtually 
never find anything in the social sciences that so strongly supports any 
conclusion, which is not a big surprise, because it would be miraculous if 
it didn’t hold up given the way the forces are operating.
   The next thing you discover is that this whole topic is completely taboo. 
If you go to the Kennedy School of Government or Stanford, or somewhere, and 
you study journalism and communications or academic political science, and 
so on, these questions are not likely to appear. That is, the hypothesis 
that anyone would come across without even knowing anything that is not 
allowed to be expressed, and the evidence bearing on it cannot be discussed. 
Well, you predict that too. If you look at the institutional structure, you 
would say, yeah, sure, that’s got to happen because why should these guys 
want to be exposed? Why should they allow critical analysis of what they are 
up to take place? The answer is, there is no reason why they should allow 
that and, in fact, they don’t. Again, it is not purposeful censorship. It is 
just that you don’t make it to those positions. That includes the left (what 
is called the left), as well as the right. Unless you have been adequately 
socialized and trained so that there are some thoughts you just don’t have, 
because if you did have them, you wouldn’t be there. So you have a second 
order of prediction which is that the first order of prediction is not 
allowed into the discussion.
""""

For example, in these health insurance debates going on right now, where is 
the US CDC in a big way? It does contribute positively to the debate, true.
   "CDC: Private health care coverage at 50-year low"
   http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-07-01-health-insurance_N.htm

But why is the CDC not dominating the airwaves with a plea for universal 
health care, for universal dental care, or widespread organic agriculture, 
or extended breastfeeding, or lots of outdoor exercise and vitamin-D, in the 
same way it puts out a plea for universal vaccination? Why does the obvious 
argument that tens of millions of US Americans with little access to health 
care is a significant national security risk for the spread of disease not 
trump all other discussion on this matter? I'm not saying that some people 
at the CDC don't try (perhaps within the limits Chomsky suggests), but in 
the context of US society, people at the CDC would be easy to fault for the 
failures of the US health care system in general, including how much time 
physicians devote to discussing vaccination compared to nutrition, exercise, 
or breastfeeding.

The most common communicable disease in the USA is caries (dental cavities); 
why does the US CDC do so little about that? Again, sure it does some 
studies, but where is the action?
   "Promoting Oral Health: Interventions for Preventing Dental Caries, Oral 
and Pharyngeal Cancers, and Sports-Related Craniofacial Injuries"
   http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5021a1.htm
General:
   http://www.cdc.gov/OralHealth/
The USA has poor dental health compared to many other industrialized 
countries. An example of the poor state of dental care in the US:
   "New York Times Examines Access to Dental Care in USA"
   http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/22754.php

If the first basis of a body's ability to resist disease is nutrition, then 
an inability to eat easily compromises health lifelong. The CDC pushes 
fluoridation (which some question, especially broadly applied), but where is 
the free-to-the-user dental coverage, especially for young children? Where 
is the extensive training of all family practice doctors in looking under 
the lip for early signs of dental decay, not on the back molars? Where are 
the visiting nurses to help out with parental education about this? Where is 
the early treatment of parents and other caregivers to slow the spread of 
caries to young children? Where is the focus on good nutrition and low 
stress for pregnant women in helping with childrens' forming teeth? Where 
are the more extensive studies on flouridation or xylitol? And so on. And 
why were these things not done twenty years ago? So, it is not unreasonable 
to have limited trust in a CDC that can't even handle well the most common 
disfiguring communicable disease in the USA which may cause additional 
nutritional-related disease for a lifetime.

One also does not have to be completely paranoid to question the US CDC's 
priorities; after all, the very name is "center for disease control" not 
"center for increasing wellness". (It's true their name includes "and 
prevention" and their mission is supposedly broader.) One might expect an 
organization with that name to favor "disease control" right now over risks 
to "long term wellness" later. So, it is not unreasonable to speculate that 
the US CDC is caught up in some sort of group think related to its common 
name and its mission, perhaps equivalent to how a conventional farmer will 
spray pesticide on sickly plants to try to control disease in them. But, as 
any organic farmer would tell you, feed the soil to feed the plants, and 
well-fed healthy plants have less diseases. The problem is, the CDC has no 
deep mandate to feed the soil of a health society; it mainly has a mandate 
to "control disease", even if, it is true, the mandate is supposed to be 
broader.
   http://www.cdc.gov/about/organization/mission.htm
So, it seems that even when people at the CDC realize these issues, there is 
little they can do about them. It has a budget of about US$6 billion a year. 
But that is only about US$20 a person in the USA, which is a tiny amount for 
a country with a GDP of about US$14 trillion.

Anyway, it seems the one biggest lever the CDC has to pull on is 
recommending mandatory vaccination. So, maybe being mostly people who mean 
well, in desperation the CDC pulls on that level as hard as it can, to try 
to turn this Titanic society away from the iceberg of disease and towards an 
ocean of wellness. But what happens if the CDC has pulled so hard on that 
one lever that the lever has broken off in its collective hands? Maybe that 
is what is happening now with growing distrust of the CDC's recommendations 
about flu vaccinations?

But, if one thinks about this cost/benefit analysis as above, especially in 
a culture like the USA without free-to-the-user public health care to cover 
medical and social costs if something were to go wrong with a vaccine, then 
mandating vaccines seems one more unwarranted government intrusion. 
Mandatory flu vaccination, like fining people without health insurance, 
becomes an unfunded mandate that socializes costs and risks to the poor 
individual while perhaps providing dubious benefits compared to alternatives 
(like Vitamin-D pills or getting more outdoor exercise, in the case of the 
flu). Granted, in the USA, vaccines are often provided free-of-charge to 
people without insurance, but a lifetime of follow up care in the case of 
big problems usually is not provided. So, that is why compulsory mass 
vaccination is an unfunded mandate. In, say, Cuba or France, that equation 
would be different, as one would expect the health care system to take 
responsibility for the lifetime costs of vaccination problems, even 
*without* having to "prove" the problems are linked with vaccination, as is 
required in the USA.

The US CDC may work with what it has to promote health, as might any 
overworked family practice physician, but sadly, that is not much. Too 
little time. Too little resources. Too little openness for conversation to 
talk about levers breaking off. And, too little money to explore 
alternatives (US$6 billion), especially in a public and open way. But, in 
contrast, we're up to a trillion US dollars a year for US "defense", as if 
there would be much to defend if a sickly USA succumbs to a big plague 
because it is stressed out, with people either overworked or unemployed, and 
because children are crammed together in disease incubators called schools 
so their parents can work and child rearing costs can be minimized. It would 
be very funny in an ironic way if it were not all so sad.

In a hundred years, or maybe even only twenty or thirty, with a better 
understanding of the human immune system and the ecology and evolution of 
disease within a technological society, no doubt this vaccination decision 
will be easier to make along the lines Ryan suggests, where we know as much 
about these things as we do about the risks and benefits of wearing seat 
belts in automobiles. But we are not anywhere near there yet, IMHO. That 
study at the start shows that; as "elegant" as it claims to be, it was done 
after decades of uncertainty and using the general population as guinea pigs 
(assuming you even believe that study, or that it applies to all vaccines no 
matter where they are made and no matter what the formulation). Ultimately, 
what kind of health care policy is that, to compel mass vaccinations and 
then see what happens?

Anyway, part of what p2p is doing here is obviously giving more weight to 
the anecdotes and personal stories (like of parents whose children have 
died, developed profound autism suddenly, or developed Type-1 Diabetes, and 
so on). One can ask, is there any way those anecdotes could be organized in 
a way to give one a better ability to truly assess those risks?

But the other thing p2p does is give a chance to talk about the meta issues 
surrounding all this, in a way that those at the US CDC and similar agencies 
in other countries may be bureaucratically incapable of for the reasons 
Chomsky outlines (even if they mean well and individuals there may think on 
these themes).

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/


Michel Bauwens wrote:
> I'll bet that if you check, you will see that it is the best informed and
> most educated portion of the population that is against this particular
> vaccine ...
> 
>  putting a untested, liability free medicine that has been pushed by
> commercial interests, for a largely unfatal disease that has a lower
> deathrate than even the normal seasonal flu, is indeed the most sensible
> thing to do ...
> 
> my sympathy goes to the health workers figthing the coercive vaccination ...
> 
> Michel
> 
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 4:19 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> It seems the anti-vaccine movement is getting a little stronger...
>>
>> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33212378/ns/health-swine_flu