The Atlantic article: sur rebuttal

Peacenik has read a cross section of articles. Pro vaccine and con vaccine. Vaccines are becoming publicly available in Guelph on Friday. There will be clinics running all day for weeks. The Canadian vaccine will have adjuvants. But Canada has ordered some vaccine without adjuvants for pregnant women. This fact has added to any apprehension Peacenik has about the vaccines.

Peacenik doesn't know if the Canadian vaccine will create side effects that a vaccine without adjuvants will have. Helen Branswell, a respected Canadian medical reporter, says that this year's Canadian vaccine will cause sorer arms than last year's due to the adjuvants. Peacenik is hoping to golf on Saturday. Peacenik doesn't want a sore arm. So Peacenik will delay getting vaccinated until the first available chance after Saturday. Peacenik will get the swine flu vaccine and the seasonal vaccine.

But Peacenik also has a question. Peacenik Jr. almost certainly had the swine flu. But no tests were taken to confirm it. Should Peacenik Jr. still get vaccinated? Should Punditman? Should Don Cherry? Should Taxi Guy?

Posted on: October 27, 2009 6:31 AM, by revere

On Saturday we posted our take on The Atlantic magazine article by Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer. It's a major story in the November issue, a banner across the top of the cover page reading: Swine flu: Does the vaccine really work? We tried to ignore it. People kept asking us to comment on it, but we didn't want to get entangled in vaccine controversies. As Orac warned me, it's a game of Whac-A-Mole. But we got fed up and posted our global response, not a point by point refutation, since that wasn't what the issue was. Our main point was that it was a straw man argument built around the narrative device of the brave, mavericky truth teller who is shunned by colleagues and has to eat alone at conferences. A scientific Enemy of the People. Not unexpectedly it drew a sharp response from the authors here and elsewhere. So like the worker who gets his sleeve caught in the machine, we are being drawn inexorably into the gears of the vaccine controversy. Sigh. We should have known better. But what's done is done, so we will add this to our initial immediate reply to the authors.

Brownlee/Lenzer title their response to us, "Faith-based science not methodolatry is the problem." This is apparently a reference to our use of the neologism methodolatry to describe what we see as Dr. Jefferson's overweaning fealty to the randomized trial as the only reliable knowledge. It was actually a rather minor point, but not to hear the authors tell it:

Read on...

Once more on the vaccine question

Peacenik found this post to be persuasive.

Posted on: September 25, 2009 6:56 AM, by revere

There's hopeful news about the possibility of an effective HIV/AIDS vaccine and a weird story from Canada about "preliminary results" saying that you are more at risk from swine flu if you get the seasonal flu vaccine. With flu, anything is possible, but that is more than a little counterintuitive and strikes me as unlikely. Nowhere else has reported a similar experience. Since we don't know the methods or the data or the limitations or much of anything else that could allow us to consider how much to weigh this as evidence I won't say any more about it.

While we do write about vaccines here because it's a topic in the flu world, vaccines are not one of our obsessions. We'd much rather see the hopes and efforts of managing the consequences of an influenza pandemic invested in public health's infrastructure, not redundant efforts to make a buck on a single target vaccine by multiple companies. Influenza vaccine is a public good and should not be in the market system. But that's another topic. Since all kinds of vaccines are the topic du jour, we will, for a change, muse a bit about vaccines ourselves. Because some of what we say might be interpreted as mixed or ambivalent and seized upon by a growing movement of poorly informed or misinformed anti-vaccination zealots, we should be clear at the outset about our convictions: we believe strongly that all children should be vaccinated against childhood diseases with the currently available recommended vaccines and that most adults should also be vaccinated with the currently available recommended vaccines. We believe this because it's the most rational choice given the evidence we have. I also believe it should be essentially mandatory for children and almost never mandatory for competent adults. We'll discuss the one exception we currently see, shortly.

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Company Cleared To Test Swine Flu Vaccine Fighting Off Liquidation

Peacenik is not anti flu vaccine. Peacenik has gotten the regular flu vaccine for years. But Peacenik really will ponder whether to take a swine flu vaccine, if there is one. The company is in bankruptcy? That inspires confidence. Plus the timeline in this story suggests this vaccine will miss this flu season in any case. Of course regulators can always cut corners. Why not. To much regulation stiffles innovation, and progress, and crime, and the rip-off of the public. Will there be a flu vaccine this fall for swine flu? Will it be properly tested? Do you trust the government to protect your interests? Will you take the vaccine if there is one? Will Peacenik? Will Punditman?

By Jacqueline Palank

As a new White House report raises the possibility that up to 50% of the U.S. population could contract swine flu this season, one drug maker has come a step closer to distributing a vaccine. That is, if the involuntary bankruptcy filing against it doesn’t get in the way.

Protein Sciences Corp., of Meriden, Conn., is a privately held vaccine maker that last week won federal approval to kick off clinical trials of its vaccine for the H1N1, or swine flu, virus, the Hartford Courant reported. That means Protein Sciences’ PanBlok vaccine will be tested on humans as soon as the next few weeks. Such trials have already started in Australia, where winter - and flu season - are underway.

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H1N1 Pandemic: Pentagon Planning Deployment of Troops in Support of Nationwide Vaccination

The epidemic that never was: Policy-making and the swine flu scare

According to CNN, the Pentagon is "to establish regional teams of military personnel to assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall, according to Defense Department officials."

"The proposal is awaiting final approval from Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The officials would not be identified because the proposal from U.S. Northern Command's Gen. Victor Renuart has not been approved by the secretary.

The plan calls for military task forces to work in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There is no final decision on how the military effort would be manned, but one source said it would likely include personnel from all branches of the military.

It has yet to be determined how many troops would be needed and whether they would come from the active duty or the National Guard and Reserve forces.

Civilian authorities would lead any relief efforts in the event of a major outbreak, the official said. The military, as they would for a natural disaster or other significant emergency situation, could provide support and fulfill any tasks that civilian authorities could not, such as air transport or testing of large numbers of viral samples from infected patients.

As a first step, Gates is being asked to sign a so-called "execution order" that would authorize the military to begin to conduct the detailed planning to execute the proposed plan.

Orders to deploy actual forces would be reviewed later, depending on how much of a health threat the flu poses this fall, the officials said." (CNN, Military planning for possible H1N1 outbreak, July 2009, emphasis added)

The implications are far-reaching.

The decision points towards the militarization of civilian instituions, including law enforcement and public health. The Pentagon is already planning on the number of troops to be deployed in the case of a pandemic. A nationwide vaccination program is already planned for the Fall. The pharmaceutical industry is slated to deliver 160 million vaccine doses by the Fall, enough doses to vaccinate more than half of America's population.

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Now Legal Immunity for Swine flu Vaccine Makers

punditman says...Punditman is amazed at the cavalier attitude that many of his acquaintances and friends have concerning the issue of vaccine safety and the trustworthiness of Big Pharma. When confronted with evidence against the track record of certain vaccines, or the abysmyl safety record of many of these corporations, such as Baxter, they say, "that can happen with any immunization." Precisely. So perhaps there is a better approach to our health, in particular when it comes to something like Swine Flu.

What's more, according to the article below, the first vaccines will be given to the public before full data on safety and effectiveness become available. Our kids of course will be the first guinnea pigs. Wonderful. Punditman predicts that of course the authorities will tell you that everything is safe and will imply that those who refuse vaccines for themselves or their families are wackjobs. You heard it here first.

Punditman says this is going to play out in interesting ways, because he thinks there are millions of people who have read the same articles as he has and share his skepticism. And all are not wackjobs.

So now we learn that these companies will get total legal immunity from any lawsuits resulting from the swine flu vaccine? Punditman says that if you don't smell a rat over this one, then you are obviously already ill. Get help!

by F. William Engdahl

The US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, has just signed a decree granting vaccine makers total legal immunity from any lawsuits that result from any new “Swine Flu” vaccine. Moreover, the $7 billion US Government fast-track program to rush vaccines onto the market in time for the Autumn flu season is being done without even normal safety testing. Is there another agenda at work in the official WHO hysteria campaign to declare so-called H1N1 virus—which has yet to be rigorously scientifically isolated, characterized and photographed with an electron microscope—the scientifically accepted procedure—a global “pandemic” threat?

The current official panic campaign over alleged Swine Flu danger is rapidly taking on the dimensions of a George Orwell science fiction novel. The document signed by Sebelius grants immunity to those making a swine flu vaccine, under the provisions of a 2006 law for public health emergencies.

Not so sage SAGE

That is once the WHO in Geneva, on recommendation of the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group on Immunizations, declared H1N1 to be Phase 6 or Pandemic, automatic emergency health response programs could be activated even in countries such as Germany where reported outbreaks of even “suspected” H1N1 can be counted to date on the fingers of slightly more than one hand.

The WHO’s SAGE is also worth scrutiny. Its Chairman since 2005 has been the UK Director of Immunization at the British Department of Health, Dr David Salisbury. In the 1980’s Salisbury reportedly drew major fire for backing a massive vaccination of children with a multiple MMR vaccine manufactured by the predecessor company of GlaxoSmithKline. That vaccine was pulled off the market in Japan after significant numbers of children developed adverse reactions to the vaccine and the Japanese government was forced to pay significant compensation to the victims. In Sweden the MMR vaccine of GlaxoSmithKline was removed after scientists linked it to outbreaks of Crohn’s disease. Apparently that had little impact on WHO SAGE chairman Salisbury.

According to one independent UK investigator, Alan Golding, who obtained Freedom of Information documents on the case, in “1986 Trivirix, an MMR compound containing the Mumps Urabe strain AM-9, was introduced in Canada to replace MMR I. Concerns regarding the introduction of MMR in the UK are recorded in the minutes of the Joint Working Party of the British Paediatric Association and the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI) Liaison Group on June 26th of that year. Such concerns were soon to prove well grounded, as reports began to come in of an increased incidence of aseptic meningitis in vaccinated individuals. Ultimately, all MMR vaccines containing the Urabe strain of mumps were withdrawn in Canada in early 1988. This was before Urabe containing vaccines were licenced by the Department of Health for use in the UK…”

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