From: ct (tilley@att.net)
Date: Tue Feb 08 2000 - 01:19:24 MST
sigh..
> Yes, you can find a lot of advocacy groups making strong claims.
> But quotes from these groups are not an adequate response to my directly
> citing evidence from the academic literature on this topic.
cdc = Center for Disease Control = US National Center for Infectious
Diseases
who = World Health Organization
vaccinealliance.org = GAVI...board = Bhutan govt, Zimbabwe govt, Canadian
govt, World Bank, Rockefeller Foundation, US National Institute of Health,
Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports--Netherlands, Center for Vaccine
Development at University of Maryland School of Medicine, United Nations'
Children's Fund, Gates CVP=Bill&Melinda Gates Children's Vaccine Program at
PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health)
The line separating academia from business from govt from advocacy groups
appears to have evolved to encompass and unify disparate communities towards
achieving a common goal.
> On the effect of medicine overall in the US, I point you to:
> Joseph P. Newhouse And The Insurance Experiment Group,
> Free For All? Lessons from the RAND Health Insurance Experiment,
> Harvard University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-674-31914-1
Saving Scarce Public Health Resources and Saving Lives, Dr. Paul Epstein,
M.D., M.P.H., Harvard University School of Medicine
http://www.globalchange.org/adaptall/95oct50d.htm
"Climate forecasting can also be extremely useful in targeting scarce
funding for surveillance and response, research and training, and emergency
production of vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics, in the U.S. and abroad..."
in a publication by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Hal commented:
In the same way, we don't know what would have happened if vaccines and
other medical technologies had never been developed.
Robin added:
So when a time series of deaths from a certain illness doesn't seem
to show a substantial effect due to the supposed breakthrough treatment
for that illness, that seems to be evidence against medicine. This
lack of time series effect seems to apply for these diseases and
treatments:
I was unfamiliar with the term "time series effect." However the CDC covers
this in Special Analytic Issues, under Aberrations in Time.
http://www.cdc.gov.epo/surveillancein/newpage21.htm
"1. State health departments report the occurrence of approximately 50
notifiable diseases weekly to CDC's National Notifiable Disease Surveillance
System (NNDSS)...
...4. CDC MMWR Current/Past Experience Graph
a. compares the number of reported cases in current 4-week period for a
given health event with historical data on the same condition from the
preceding 5 years."
In light of the extensive recording mandated by the CDC, it is difficult to
imagine that relevant time series effects are unavailable or nonexistent for
the disease/vaccination pairings that you listed. Our in-house
epidemiologist may be able to shed light on this...or perhaps a call to the
State Lab?
Thank you for this discussion. The time-series and ARIMA models are
applicable to another area that I have been studying with minimal progress.
So.
ct
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