JOHNS HOPKINS SCIENTIST RAISES SERIOUS VACCINE QUESTIONS

[PorkChopSandwiches]

JOHNS HOPKINS SCIENTIST RAISES SERIOUS VACCINE QUESTIONS
3 days ago | US | Posted by Joshua Cook
November 14, 2013


Peter Doshi, a scientist at Johns Hopkins University, recently published a paper in the British Medical Journal raising serious questions about the benefits of the influenza vaccine.* In his paper, he criticized the methodologies of the major studies on which America’s public health push is based, as well as pointing to statistics which indicated that there are more potential dangers to the vaccine than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate. Some of the potential side effects are mercury poisoning, increased incidence in narcolepsy, even death.



*

People with weakened immune systems – such as seniors, young children, or people suffering from preexisting medical conditions – are at risk from the vast majority of flu strains.* Influenza is also a much more rapidly evolving virus than those responsible for shingles/chickenpox, smallpox and polio.* This means that scientists must attempt to predict the major flu strains for any given year in their vaccine creation, and that there is a chance that the vaccine will not, in fact, prevent the flu at all.

Doshi’s concerns – and those of other reputable scientists and doctors – make sense in light of these facts.* Though studies have indicated that people who get flu vaccines tend to avoid the flu better than those who don’t, even the CDC recognizes that this difference could be attributable to differing health habits among the two populations.* Someone diligent enough about their health to get a flu shot is probably also conscientious enough to routinely wash his/her hands and engage in other immune-boosting activities.

Doshi says that once this factor is removed, studies indicate that the effect of the flu vaccine is minimal.* It doesn’t seem to decrease the risk of complications, and likely only reduces the risk of illness by 1-9%.


In fact, Doshi’s statistics indicate that there is no benefit at all for young children.* There are risks, though, from mercury toxicity to an increased incidence in narcolepsy to death.* One of the most notoriously dangerous vaccines was the 1970s swine flu vaccine, which killed multiple people as the government continued to promote it and dismissed concerns.


Dr. Russell Blaylock recently told NewsMax, “For most people flu vaccines don’t prevent the flu but actually increase the odds of getting it.”

So if vaccines don’t really help people why does the government and big pharma companies push them every year?

“It’s all about money,” says Dr. Blaylock. “Vaccines are a pharmaceutical company’s dream. They have a product that both the government and the media will help them sell, and since vaccines are protected, they can’t be sued if anyone has a complication.”

*

[deebakes]

:tinfoil:

[PorkChopSandwiches]

Just passing along the facts

[DemonGeminiX]

No offense, Porky, but I'm gonna side with Dee on this one. And is there any particular reason why you're yelling in your title?

:-s

[PorkChopSandwiches]

No. Just how the text was when I copied it.

[DemonGeminiX]

:lol:

Where did you get the article from that they have their titles in all caps?

[Loser]

Mercury poisoning in vaccines?

thiomersal hasn't been used in wide spread vaccines in about a decade.

[PorkChopSandwiches]

:lol:

Where did you get the article from that they have their titles in all caps?

Ben Swans website

[Muddy]

Just passing along the facts

I have to go with Dee man.. The guys a Dr.. As is my great uncle... an M.D... A Pediatrician even..

[Griffin]

Like the time Barney signed the log at the lodge as "Barney Fife M.D."
Andy said, "Barney!...You aint no doctor!"
Barny replied with, "Barney Fife, Mayberry Deputy"

[FBD]

Good luck with the flu, gents :hi:

[Teh One Who Knocks]

The Poxes Blog


One of the rules of this blog has been to not name any names, but it’s going to be broken for this post because it’s hard not to break it in this case. The person I’m going to write about is putting himself out there, sometimes vociferously, to say some things that, as an epidemiologist, I find frustrating. First, a little background. A few months ago, a friend of this blog wrote this post about influenza vaccines. In that post’s comments, the name of one Peter Doshi, PhD, came up. Dr. Doshi wrote this article in the British Medical Journal and delivered this presentation (PDF) at the “Selling Sickness 2013″ conference in Washington, DC. In his article and his presentation, Dr. Doshi, who is not an epidemiologist, makes some clear mistakes about the nature of the yearly flu epidemics that we see, the deaths from influenza, and the benefits/risks of the influenza vaccine.

It’s a lot to go through, but it’s necessary to do so because Dr. Doshi’s work is coming up more and more in anti-vaccine sites like here, here, here, here, and here. Dr. Doshi makes two claims about the flu and the flu vaccine. First, that the flu doesn’t kill as many people as claimed by public health agencies (and that not that many people get it each winter), and, second, that the flu vaccine is not as safe nor effective as it is claimed to be. (If I have time as I’m writing this, I’ll touch on his claim that the alerts over pandemic flu are a way to “sell” fear or some such.)

First, Dr. Peter Doshi claims that the flu ain’t all that bad. He heavily criticizes the estimated numbers of deaths attributable to influenza:


“US data on influenza deaths are a mess. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledges a difference between flu death and flu associated death yet uses the terms interchangeably. Additionally, there are significant statistical incompatibilities between official estimates and national vital statistics data. Compounding these problems is a marketing of fear—a CDC communications strategy in which medical experts “predict dire outcomes” during flu seasons.”

And, from his presentation:

http://i.imgur.com/sf8izUwl.png

Here’s the thing about influenza deaths, from an epidemiological point of view. They are not reportable to public health. That is, healthcare providers and others are not required to report each influenza death (or influenza-related death) to public health authorities like they have to do with cases of Legionnaires’ Disease or meningitis. Some states do actively look for deaths associated with influenza through searching for a mention of influenza in death certificates. Others use what little money they have to pay investigators to go looking for influenza-associated deaths in hospital records of people who die at hospitals from things like pneumonia and sepsis. It seems to me that Dr. Doshi’s world is not perfect, and whatever estimation is done by CDC and others is just a “PR” ploy.


“CDC states that the historic 1968-9 “Hong Kong flu” pandemic killed 34 000 Americans. At the same time, CDC claims 36 000 Americans annually die from flu. What is going on?

Meanwhile, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), “influenza and pneumonia” took 62 034 lives in 2001—61 777 of which were attributed to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was flu virus positively identified. Between 1979 and 2002, NCHS data show an average 1348 flu deaths per year (range 257 to 3006).”

See, as an epidemiologist in our nation’s capital, I know that that these numbers are all estimates, and that they’re estimates based on surveillance systems. That is why Dr. Peter Doshi seems to be confused enough to ask “What is going on?” What’s going on is that not everyone who gets the flu gets tested, not everyone who gets tested tests positive even if they have the flu because of a limitation in screening tests, and not everyone who tests positive gets reported to public health, even if they die. It’s not a PR ploy to quote these numbers because they’re based on the best available evidence. As CDC puts it:


“CDC does not know exactly how many people die from seasonal flu each year. There are several reasons for this. First, states are not required to report individual seasonal flu cases or deaths of people older than 18 years of age to CDC. Second, seasonal influenza is infrequently listed on death certificates of people who die from flu-related complications. Third, many seasonal flu-related deaths occur one or two weeks after a person’s initial infection, either because the person may develop a secondary bacterial co-infection (such as bacterial pneumonia) or because seasonal influenza can aggravate an existing chronic illness (such as congestive heart failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). Also, most people who die from seasonal flu-related complications are not tested for flu, or they seek medical care later in their illness when seasonal influenza can no longer be detected from respiratory samples. Sensitive influenza tests are only likely to detect influenza if performed within a week after onset of illness. In addition, some commonly used tests to diagnose influenza in clinical settings are not highly sensitive and can provide false negative results (i.e. the misdiagnose flu illness as not being flu.) For these reasons, many flu-related deaths may not be recorded on death certificates. These are some of the reasons that CDC and other public health agencies in the United States and other countries use statistical models to estimate the annual number of seasonal flu-related deaths. (Flu deaths in children were made a nationally notifiable condition in 2004, and since then, states have been required to report flu-related child deaths in the United States through the Influenza Associated Pediatric Mortality Surveillance System).”

Told you. Maybe Dr. Doshi should read how epidemiologists do these death estimates. Maybe he’d come to the conclusion that we’ve all come to: YES, THE FLU KILLS.

Second, Dr. Peter Doshi claims that the flu vaccine is more dangerous than we’re told and less effective than what we’re told. The effectiveness is the easy part. That one was covered by our friend in his post that I mentioned above and in an article he wrote for the History of Vaccines blog. The tl;dr version of those posts is that the vaccine is effective at different levels and for different populations. If you’re an older adult, the nasal spray will do squat for you, but it will really protect you if you’re very young. With the injectable vaccine, it will help you if you’re 18 to 64, and we can’t say that it will help in the other age groups. Although, studies have shown that the injected vaccine reduces mortality in the elderly, a point which Dr. Doshi doesn’t like. Why? Because, according to him, vaccines didn’t save us.

http://i.imgur.com/3J1oIICl.jpg

If that argument sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a common anti-vaccine talking point to point at graphs of mortality and say, “Look! Deaths from flu were way down before the vaccine ever came along!” Never mind that the vaccine reduced incidence of cases and death was more likely reduced through antibiotics for secondary infections and intubation for really complicated pneumonias. If you were to plot the number of influenza cases with and without a vaccine, the cases would be less. The ironic part is that Dr. Doshi mentions this in one of his slides:

http://i.imgur.com/tGQjhUMl.jpg

But, to him, a reduction of 50% is meaningless since it’s just one less person per 100. If we epidemiologists do the math, this turns out to be a few million in the United States alone, let alone the rest of the world. That’s not peanuts. That’s not nothing. That’s actual people who would not get the flu, not miss work, not miss school, not be at risk for complications, not pass it on to someone who could die from it, etc, etc, etc. That’s what we in public health think of when we look at the effectiveness of vaccines. The numbers may be cold, but to us they’re alive, they mean people.

Speaking of numbers, the influenza virus was not discovered until 1936, and, even then, diagnostics for it were not widely available for a long, long time. So how is it that he can plot influenza deaths during the 1930-31 influenza season? But I digress…

It’s very sad and disconcerting that Dr. Peter Doshi’s credentials as a post-doc researcher at Hopkins have made his opinions so valuable to the anti-vaccine crowds. As some of you may know, our friend is going to Hopkins to get his Doctor of Public Health degree in Epidemiology. It is my sincere hope that he runs into Dr. Doshi and they have a chat. Perhaps there’ll be graphs and charts explained. Perhaps Dr. Peter Doshi will have an epidemiology night school lesson. Above all, I hope that Dr. Doshi learns that his arguments are giving credence to some far-fetched ideas, and that he is not an epidemiologist.

Last, but not least, some other bloggers’ opinions on Dr. Peter Doshi:

“Crank “scientific” conferences: A parody of science-based medicine that can deceive even reputable scientists and institutions (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/crank-conferences-a-parody-of-science-based-medicine-that-can-suck-in-even-reputable-scientists-and-institutions/)“

“Unhelpful Commentary (http://effectmeasure.blogspot.com/2006/03/unhelpful-commentary.html)“

And Orac’s take on Dr. Doshi’s opinions (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/05/22/the-legacy-of-andrew-wakefield-continues/#comment-259609).

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Mercury poisoning in vaccines?

thiomersal hasn't been used in wide spread vaccines in about a decade.

Never let the facts get in the way of a good tinfoil hat conspiracy theory :nono:

[FBD]

bottom line for me is, I see a ton of fuckers get sick every single year after getting the flu shot. fuggin flu gets made out to be alike the bubonic plague or some shit, so hurry, get vaccinated so you can be sick as crap for a couple days just so you can perhaps potentially avoid being sick as crap for a few days. and people do it because they're told to.

[KevinD]

I've never had a flu shot. (well, maybe while in the Military, but I don't think it was out then) Maybe I have a fairly strong immune system, though I doubt it based on how often I got sick as a child. I rarely, if ever get the Flu, even over the last 7 years traveling worldwide in some 3rd world areas.
I have no gripes about the Flu shot, as it's pretty plain the immunizations have and do work. I'm not a big fan of the scare tactics the CDC uses.

[Muddy]

I think the flu portions are non-mandatory for school admissions in my area.. So this really is moot for me.

[Acid Trip]

Without vaccines polio and small pox would still be rampant. Maybe some of you wish polio/small pox could have ravaged your bodies and you missed out on all the fun? Odd, but to each their own.

The flu shot may be optional but the rest certainly are not.

[PorkChopSandwiches]

I dont have a problem with vaccines on a whole, I have a problem with the crazy amount of them, especially flu shots. I dont get the flu, so I'll take my chances...I have had it before and I can assure you I will live through it. The biggest issue is the shot has 0 guarantees, they take a guess at 4 out of all the options and say, well I hope this is the strain we will see. So in all reality another strain comes along and you still get it even with the shot.

[Acid Trip]

Out of curiosity, what minimum success rate would prompt you to get the flu shot? 50% or higher? 75%?

This question is open to anyone. I know my annual flu shot won't always work but even a chance at being immune is worth it to me. Especially with a 5 month old baby in the house.

[PorkChopSandwiches]

I wouldnt ever get one

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Out of curiosity, what minimum success rate would prompt you to get the flu shot? 50% or higher? 75%?

This question is open to anyone. I know my annual flu shot won't always work but even a chance at being immune is worth it to me. Especially with a 5 month old baby in the house.

I got the flu last year REALLY bad...this is the first year I am seriously considering getting one. The added chance of not getting the flu again this year by getting the shot is definitely worth it.

[PorkChopSandwiches]

Let us know how you feel afterwards

[Muddy]

My aluminum foil hat protects me from the flu vaccine..

[Acid Trip]

I got the flu last year REALLY bad...this is the first year I am seriously considering getting one. The added chance of not getting the flu again this year by getting the shot is definitely worth it.

I got it 6 or 7 years ago and thought I was going to die. Ever since then I've gotten my flu shot and I've managed to avoid it.

[PorkChopSandwiches]

I have also managed to avoid it without a shot, for longer then 6 or 7 years

[Hal-9000]

I've had years with and without the flu shot....years with, I have WAY less colds and flu....I had pneumonia twice within about 90 days...the year I didn't get a shot.

Once that happens your body is never the same in terms of immunities. I had to get a pneumonia vaccine the following year...


Getting the flu is defendant on a lot of factors....your built in immunities are only one facet of defense....how many people you interact with, how healthy they are, your geographic location, the weather*...it all contributes to whether a virus will take hold in your body or not.

*I was told by a lung specialist that once you get a severe flu in your lungs, going from a warm environment to cold, back to warm, is one of the worst things for you...

[PorkChopSandwiches]

A flu shot isn't going to protect you from colds and pneumonia

[Hal-9000]

first step in getting pneumonia is a severe case of the flu....don't kid yourself ...I've got the tshirt twice and it you don't just wake up with pneumonia one day :lol:

[Muddy]

Porkys not a doctor, but he did stay in a Holiday Inn Express! :dance:

[Hal-9000]

if a person has never suffered with the flu ...good for him, really.....it sucks like nothing else


and, the same person shouldn't be commenting on the effectiveness of flu shots if he's had no experience in the field :lol:

[Muddy]

I had the shit one time.. I really did feel like I could feel what it was like to die there for a day or two...

[Hal-9000]

Beside the headaches, snot and lung congestion...I tried to get up to answer the phone and hit the floor from dizzyness...that scared me.


same thing happened in a emergency clinic waiting room when I had double pneumonia...sat there for 3 hours, they called my name and I saw the floor come up to meet me :lol:


they gave me emergency nebulization treatment, which is pure oxygen mixed with some other shit.....tres embarrassing and worrisome..

[Teh One Who Knocks]

I had the shit one time.. I really did feel like I could feel what it was like to die there for a day or two...

Yup, exactly how I felt last year when I had...never felt so awful in my life.

[Hal-9000]

men take a lot of heat for complaining about the man-flu...

a doctor explained it well - we have more muscular and larger systems (sinuses, endocrine etc) in our bodies when compared to women, so the symptoms tend to be more severe in men.

you can't really put words to the symptom - My body feels like hell and I wish I was dead :lol:

[Teh One Who Knocks]

There was about 2 to 3 days where I would have gladly welcomed death over the way I was feeling at the time :lol:

[Hal-9000]

yeah there's a big difference between an annoying cold and the pray for death flu :lol:

[Acid Trip]

I had the shit one time.. I really did feel like I could feel what it was like to die there for a day or two...

Same with me. I've been stabbed, shot, and broken 5 different bones. None of those were as painful and drawn out as the flu.

[PorkChopSandwiches]

if a person has never suffered with the flu ...good for him, really.....it sucks like nothing else


and, the same person shouldn't be commenting on the effectiveness of flu shots if he's had no experience in the field :lol:

I have had the flu before, I just was saying I havent had it in the years AT was stating, without the shot as well. My point being , he very well could have made it all those years without

[Hal-9000]

I have had the flu before, I just was saying I havent had it in the years AT was stating, without the shot as well. My point being , he very well could have made it all those years without

That's something I often wonder about, how would I have done if I didn't have the shot that particular year? ....

The worst reaction I've ever had from a flu shot was a sore arm the next day....I never got sick with the flu the following days/weeks or developed narcolepsy etc :lol: