Day of reckoning for Andrew Wakefield

[Grizzly Man]

[soubresauts]

In any case, can you rationalise your assertion of how Streptomycin, patented, produced and ,marketed by Big Pharma, 'saved us' from TB, but the same Big Pharma is now creating vaccines for TB (and other diseases) which actively cause disease in children, so that they can further develop drugs and boost profits?

I don't think there's any point of disagreement for us here.

Antibiotics are the only prescription drugs that cure disease, and streptomycin was particularly significant.

I believe that antibiotics are not particularly lucrative for the pharmaceutical companies these days, and they're not as effective as they used to be.

Those companies are in business to maximize profits for their shareholders; nothing surprising or unusual in that.

The ethical or unethical record of pharma companies is, to a large extent, a matter of public record (though you often have to dig and dig...). I would guess that Merck behaved well in relation to streptomycin, though I haven't checked it out. Merck's more recent behaviour is something else. Take Vioxx, for example. Here's some info from, surprise, surprise, Brian Deer!

[drkpower]

I would guess that Merck behaved well in relation to streptomycin, though I haven't checked it out. Merck's more recent behaviour is something else.

I see..
So, they were ethical in respect of streptomycin (and other antibiotics) yet very soon thereafter, when they began to develop vaccines, they have started to committ the most heinous crimes by developing vaccines that actually cause disease amongst young children and others.......

Wake up!

[Gnome Chomsky]

The reason for polio elimination in Ireland is

Elimination of poverty, better buildings, clean water, sanitation, sewerage systems, and so on.

But many diseases are not eradicated in Ireland. Apparently that stuff doesn't have quite as dramatic an impact on diseases which aren't routinely vaccinated against.

How odd. How very odd.

[soubresauts]

Well, you're lucky you're not one of the 1 in a 1000 children that goes on to develop serious complications from measles

I'm sure that that figure is not applicable to children who are reasonably well cared for -- decent parents/guardians, housing, environment, food, water, etc. In other words, for people like us, the threat of measles is negligible.

... and you're lucky not to have been affected by rubella in the womb

As far as I know, until the 1970s, nearly everyone used to contract rubella in childhood and thus gain immunity. Certainly that was the case with everyone I knew growing up. It was always well known that if a woman had missed out on the disease, she was at risk during pregnancy. Common sense applied...

... and lucky you didn't get meningitis or encephalitis from mumps, and weren't miscarried as a result of your mother getting mumps, lucky you didn't suffer kidney, heart, or hearing damage from scarlet fever or one of the others...and so on.

Maybe I was lucky, but everyone I knew (family, relatives, neighbourhood, schools) got all or nearly all of those diseases and I never heard of such complications. Of course Dublin in the 1960s was very different from Africa...

Even if one swallows the 'statistics' trotted out on blogs, the recorded harm done by 'harmless' childhood diseases is far more serious than that done by vaccination...

The statistics on this webpage (or "blog", if you insist) came from the UK, US and Australian governments, and give the lie to your assertion.

... Indeed, the entire history of harm from childhood diseases is being dismissed here on the basis of anecdotal and purely personal experience...

See above.

[rhonda15]

vaccines to please watch this great vid

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...54167169825323

edit:

another great vid

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...47125053615129