I think we are missing the point here. Are u less likely to give your kids the mmr, if you own a 29 er…

I think the mtber demographic less likely to give their children the MMR jab are those with fixie fat bikes

Mac can we realistically assume that people can filter out the crap in the media when their reasoning capability is effectively

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Vw2CrY9Igs[/video]

Niche denial, I can buy that.

And rubella is measles when you get it as an adult – is that right?

No, different diseases.

(just to confuse things, measles is AKA rubeOla but is not rubella)

I’ve just been trying to unravel the alleged motive behind the original fraud this evening but it all seems rather unclear, other than the doctor fella was being paid some money by some lawyers..

From what I recall Wakefeild was being paid by lawyers who were trying to bring a case on behalf of children who developed autism (after the MMR jab) & did not declare that as an interest when he published his ‘findings’ . I think it was also alleged that Wakefield planned a rival vaccine that he had patented on the basis that MMR had been shown to prove autism. The BMJ also said there was clear evidence that he fabricated data to prove his case. Wiki is your friend.

just to confuse things, measles is AKA rubeOla but is not rubella

Rubella is also know as German Measles which compounds the confusion. Its a mild enough disease in most cases but dangerous to expectant mothers. In our day only teenage girls were given a Rubella jab, but now everyone gets immunised so that rather than women be defended against the disease its deemed wiser for there to be no disease in the population to be at risk from.

K o 9 – are you not miss-remembering your Measles parties for Chicken Pox parties?

its deemed wiser for there to be no disease in the population to be at risk from

you know, they should think up a name for that phenomenon 😉

Restless when you say things like

How do you know vaccines are safe?

Do you not think the way to do it is to weigh up the evidence. The operative words being ‘weigh up’ as in ‘assess’. So rather than treating the discredited output of a charlatan as being the equal to a large number of peer reviewed studies which prove that he is a fraud and a disgrace to medical science, you might actually attempt to gain some insight as to the relative worth of the evidence. Otherwise you end up with ‘some people say the earth is flat and some say it is round. How can you possibly tell which is correct?’

The biggest “LOLZ” of the whole saga is this forrest plot

If you don’t get how to interpret it, you should just shut up and listen to the advice of your doctor.

Karin, it’s pretty clear why

Complications with measles are
relatively common, ranging from the
relatively mild and less serious ones
like diarrhea to more serious ones such
as pneumonia , otitis media , acute
encephalitis (rarely SSPE — subacute
sclerosing panencephalitis), and corneal
ulceration (leading to corneal scarring ).
Complications are usually more severe
in adults who catch the virus.
Between the years 1987 and 2000, the
case fatality rate across the United
States was three measles-attributable
deaths per 1000 cases, or 0.3%. [5] In
underdeveloped nations with high rates
of malnutrition and poor healthcare,
fatality rates have been as high as 28%.

If you don’t get how to interpret it, you should just shut up and listen to the advice of your doctor.

My doctor tells me to look stuff up on the internet. Which is handy as the first link google brought up told me the not to take the tablets he’d prescribed with tap water as ‘tap water is a carcinogen’. So I take advice from my GP with a pinch of salt (unless it turns out that also causes cancer) 🙂

Maccruiskeen – I may well be mis-remembering. However, I don’t remember any fear around measles/german measles/mumps, and I don’t recall any contemporaries having lasting side effects from the diseases. But I did change school 9 times so, while my sample is bigger, I wasn’t around for very long to witness results!

Hospital inhabitants are exactly the same nowadays as those you list – except now of course hospitals are also home to mrsa and norovirus. 🙂

There’s a lot of suspicion around government proclamations, eg thalidomide was supposed to be safe. On the other hand, you don’t see people in leg-irons these days (from polio) which is a good thing.

There’s a lot of suspicion around government proclamations, eg thalidomide was supposed to be safe

Thalidomide’s a weird and sad case. They were only beginning to get to grips with the first really potent drugs in the 1950s and testing was much less well developed. It’s also, sadly, impossible to predict its effects using rodents because they metabolise it differently and the same things just don’t happen to their young – you needed a monkey and they’re expensive (and cute) and so weren’t used hardly at all

Thalidomide was a strong driver for developing better testing and monitoring of drugs – you could see it as a good example of the “system” in a lot of ways

eg thalidomide was supposed to be safe.

Thalidomide is also still in use today in the treatment of cancers and HIV, it was only harmful in very specific circumstances.

Karinofnine – Member

I had mumps and measles as a child. And chickenpox. In fact, we used to have measles parties and chickenpox parties too – to make sure we got the diseases.

I’m having an AIDS party tomorrow, want to come?

If you don’t get how to interpret it

I’m not sure if I know how to interpret it – is the first part of the test to work out what the title of the graph is and what exactly the data points are from?

“We need to get tough on these people, if your child is unvacinated then they shouldn’t be allowed in school whether they are state or privately educated. If you want to go hippy, go full hippy and home educate them.”

wow! So you think parents should be forced by the state to have their children vaccinated?

People in Australia appear to cope with such levels of state control over their lives
http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/School_Entry_Immunisation_Certificate

If you don’t get how to interpret it, you should just shut up and listen to the advice of your doctor.

Unfortunately interpreting data is of little effect if you can’t articulate it. Granted the medical profession had the obstacles created by a lazy and divisive press, a corrupt medic and his rich sponsors, and herds of bandwagon jumping messiah complex alternative medicinal gurus….. but the medical profession is bigger than all of that and failed to articulate the facts clearly and consistently and persistly enough to counter the truck-loads of attractive bullshit.

Unfortunately interpreting data is of little effect if you can’t articulate it. Granted the medical profession had the obstacles created by a lazy and divisive press, a corrupt medic and his rich sponsors, and herds of bandwagon jumping messiah complex alternative medicinal gurus….. but the medical profession is bigger than all of that and failed to articulate the facts clearly and consistently and persistly enough to counter the truck-loads of attractive bullshit.

Good point, I’ll explain the graph to people later.

I’ve got to go and escort my missus back home as it’s dark.

With a little googling I’ve worked out that I did know how to interpret it after all, but you can’t really expect to say “here’s an incomplete set of information, if you can’t make a conclusion based on that then you’re too thick to make your own mind up”.

I suspect it might have been more useful to ask people if they understood http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa021134 (I’d be so, so interested to hear what AW makes of it).

I’m having an AIDS party tomorrow, want to come?

I believe they’re known as ‘poz parties’ 😯

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/poz-parties-bring-hiv-into-the-21st-century-26213697.html

Sorry Aracer, you have a fair point…..Wakefield just really….really winds my shit up more than anyone I know.

I do think science has to be made more readily understood by the public so that we can convince them of what we do, this could start with news papers appointing health correspondants that have a minimum of a 2:1 in a scientific discipline and who demonstrate an aptitude for making things easy to understand.

I don’t have the patience for that and I suppose my outraged Jeremy Clarkson way of making my point doesn’t help.

This explains the whole story quite well, with pictures and everything. And today, knowing all this, the cretins at the independent still tried to bring back the glory days of 1998.

I had measles for the second time (first as a nipper being a child of the 60’s)about 10 years ago in my mid getting onto late 30’s, **** agony one of the most terrifying periods of my life. Wouldn’t wish a nasty case of it on anyone and hopefully all of this media attention will make parents do the right thing.

this could start with news papers appointing health correspondants that have a minimum of a 2:1 in a scientific discipline and who demonstrate an aptitude for making things easy to understand.

Unfortunately thats naive. Thats not how papers work. It doesn’t matter whether the reporter has a nobel prize or has been hired on the strength of their haircut. Editors have decided what the story is going to be before the reporter starts to investigate it. If as a reporter you look into as story and the facts don’t fit the headline then your options are to either make them fit or to have the story given to someone younger, cheaper, keener and more sycophantic than you who will make it fit. That can only happen so many times before your desk looks very empty.

Thats assuming that the paper does any work at all, a very large proportion of the word count in papers is marketing passed off as journalism, the stories arrive from PR agencies ready written for journalists to print without having to read, edit or understand them

a very large proportion of the word count in papers is marketing passed off as journalism, the stories arrive from PR agencies ready written for journalists to print without having to read, edit or understand them

Always something worth bearing in mind if you’re after some publicity – write a story which is pretty much ready for publication, and you stand a good chance of getting it published by most lazy journalists.

Always something worth bearing in mind if you’re after some publicity – write a story which is pretty much ready for publication, and you stand a good chance of getting it published by most lazy journalists.

An friend of mine used to run a theatre and is also an ex-journalist. She used to be able to get a story in the local paper, and usually on the front page, almost much every week just by writing the thing up pretty much in its entirety. One time she managed to get the same story, with the same photo, on the front page of the same paper just two weeks apart – just to prove that the ‘journalists’ were neither reading her press releases or reading their own newspaper.

killed by the daily mail?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-22215185