[p2p-research] If vaccines were software patches (was Film : SILENCE, ON VACCINE..)
Paul D. Fernhout
pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com
Sat Sep 26 03:09:27 CEST 2009
A starting point to understand the controversy:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=vaccine+"conflict+of+interest"
"Results 1 - 10 of about 222,000 for vaccine "conflict of interest". (0.33
seconds) "
Something I posted to slashdot (a techy site, so full of programmers and
system administrators) in relation to vaccines (with some minor changes):
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. Similarly, we will never know how good
phage therapy would be right now for dealing with bacterial illnesses with
more investment compared to antibiotics and vaccines. Example:
"Phage Therapy: Where communism succeeded and capitalism failed"
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL9910/S00096.htm
"While there are some genuine reasons why phage treatments of bacterial
diseases were overlooked in the 1930s and 1940s, the failure to develop a
western research program into bacteriophage treatment in the 1980s and 1990s
represents an inexcusable failure of western capitalism. By the 1980s, there
could be no denial that antibiotic resistance was going to be a major
problem in (if not before) the twenty-first century. Yet, we just didn't
want to know about what will probably turn out to be the most important
medical breakthrough in the twentieth century; a breakthrough made in
communist Georgia, in Stalin's Soviet Union."
The above is not to argue that any specific vaccine or schedule has any
specific consequence, although, say, administering Hepatitis B vaccine at
birth to children of mothers who test negative for HepB certainly seems
questionable to me. If one wants a place to start examining this issue,
understanding why HepB is administered at birth in the USA, working through
all the pros and cons, and looking in detail about the statistics and
various assumptions, as well as the policies in other countries, would be a
good place to start, IMHO. Once one understands the logic used to justify
that first vaccination at birth to a helpless infant depending on us to keep
them safe, then one can turn to understanding the logic (or lack thereof) in
relation to other immunizations, with up to hundreds of exposures to various
vaccines over a lifetime (assuming annual flu shots and regular boosters).
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
Ryan Lanham wrote:
> I am no expert on this topic, but I do know that a fair number (at least
> 3-4) of the major physician bloggers (e.g. Chad Orzel) are very vocal in
> attacking anti-vaccine arguments and characterize them as essentially
> equivalent to parents not seeking medical aid for their children. I do not
> have strong feelings on this one, but I am aware of the argument for those
> who wish to dig deeper. It is a frequently blog topic on several science
> blogs.
>
> Ryan
>
> On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 10:00 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> thanks Sepp, hope you can find the time for a little write-up,
>>
>> Michel
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 10:07 PM, Sepp Hasslberger <sepp at lastrega.com>wrote:
>>
>>> I found the video in English as well. It's on YouTube as a series of
>>> shorter segments, starting with this one:
>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7F62tPLxvE&feature=player_embedded
>>>
>>> The wikipedia article is strongly biased in a pro-vaccination direction,
>>> which I would regard as a violation of wikipedia's own point-of-view policy.
>>> The article makes nothing of the concerns of those who challenge the wisdom
>>> of vaccination, while regurgitating the pro-vaccine propaganda, even in the
>>> images associated with the article. Typical for wikipedia.
>>>
>>> As for the suppression - it seems that the documentary was made for
>>> Canadian TV, and the suppression consists of it never having been shown on
>>> the public TV network, but it does seem to be freely available on the
>>> internet.
>>>
>>> Something on the growing vaccine skepticism network on the web ... perhaps
>>> I can get to that these next days.
>>>
>>> Kind regards
>>> Sepp
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 24/set/09, at 15:28, Dante-Gabryell Monson wrote:
>>>
>>> I notice there is also a page on wikipedia :
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_controversy
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 2:46 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Sepp,
>>>>
>>>> the commentary seems to imply that this video is suppressed from
>>>> distribution somehow .. it's a documentary about neurological problems
>>>> involving vaccines ...
>>>>
>>>> I wonder if you could not write up something about the growing vaccine
>>>> scepticism movement on the web, if you have time,
>>>>
>>>> Michel
>>>>
>>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>> From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante at ecobytes.net>
>>>> Date: 2009/9/24
>>>> Subject: Fwd: - Film : SILENCE, ON VACCINE "/ "SHOTS IN THE DARK
>>>> To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Silence On Vaccine
>>>> 51:21 - 6 months ago
>>>> Silence On Vaccine 09-12-2008
>>>>
>>>> SORTIE DVD : "SILENCE, ON VACCINE "/ "SHOTS IN THE DARK"
>>>>
>>>> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8503852033482537965#
>>>>
>>>> Sortie DVD du film "SILENCE ON VACCINE"
>>>>
>>>> IMPORTANT :
>>>> L'ONF a permis la sortie du documentaire sous condition qu'aucune
>>>> personne,
>>>> aucun commerce, ne puisse acquérir le film pour la revente. De plus
>>>> aucune publicité ne sera faite
>>>> pour faire connaître la sortie DVD.
>>>> Conséquemment la population ne sera pas informée de la sortie du
>>>> documentaire.
>>>> Pour cette raison, je vous remercie de faire parvenir ce courriel à
>>>> tous vos contacts, que
>>>> l’information circule, et que la sortie du documentaire ne reste pas
>>>> sous silence.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> Non, 200 photos ne passent pas par e-mails ! A moins d'utiliser Windows
>>>> Live…
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
>>>> Research: http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html - Think thank:
>>>> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>>>
>>>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net -
>>>> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>>>
>>>> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
>>>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>>>
>>>> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
>>>> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> p2presearch mailing list
>>>> p2presearch at listcultures.org
>>>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Research:
>> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html - Think thank:
>> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>
>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>
>> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>
>> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
>> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
More information about the p2presearch
mailing list