Writing about your personal demons for the public is seldom a good idea, and it is a particularly bad idea when you are starting at 3.40am as they are haunting you. We are spending Hogmanay in the beautiful city of Gdansk. It is my first time here for over twenty years, but the city has remarkable memories for me.
In November 1994 I was newly arrived as First Secretary at the British Embassy in Warsaw when a fatal fire occurred at the famous shipyard, in a hall being used for a rock concert tied in to a MTV transmission. The fire doors were all padlocked shut, and the heat had reached such intensity that a flash fire had occurred right across the hall. Miraculously only five people had died immediately, but hundreds had been horrifically burnt or suffered fume inhalation and the hospitals were completely overwhelmed.
Within hours of the fire I was dispatched to Gdansk by our dynamic Ambassador and found myself on a train heading North with only a Motorola mobile phone the size of a large brick (1994) and a phone number for DFID, in those days a part of the FCO and known as ODA. I roused from his London bed the official in charge of emergency assistance, Mukesh Kapila, and he instructed me to get a list from the medical authorities of all the supplies required. He explained that major burns required large volumes of consumables by way of ointments and special gauzes and bandages.
Arriving in Gdansk I very soon discovered that the victims were dispersed round several hospitals and there was no central authority able to produce a list of requirements. Poland was still in the early stages of a shock transition from communism and elements of administration were shaky at the best of times, let alone in a large scale emergency. The only way to make any progress was for me physically to go to every hospital and every concerned ward, buttonhole the doctors there and ask them what they needed.
To say they were swamped would be ridiculous understatement. Victims were everywhere, very many critical, and in some places bleary-eyed doctors literally had nothing – creams, bandages, painkillers, saline drips all exhausted. Meeting many doctors, when I told them I could get anything sent out instantly, the reaction ranged from angrily incredulous to massive bear hugs.
It was of course difficult. In 1994 Polish medical practice differed quite sharply from British. There were language barriers; my as yet basic Polish lacked medical vocabulary. And I had to keep interrupting incredibly busy people. But after the first couple of hospitals I was able to extrapolate and phone through to Mukesh the most obviously urgent items, and by the end of the day I was clutching 16 handwritten lists and could sit down to consolidate them.
But I have not described to you what it was like to go round those wards. I really cannot – it was indescribable. Horribly disfigured people screaming and writhing in pain, begging and pleading for any relief, even asking to die. And the worst thing is, they were all teenagers – the average age seemed about 16. One image I shall never forget was of a girl sitting bolt upright in bed, looking calm, and I recall thinking that at least this one is OK. But I had seen her right profile and as I passed her, the left side of her face was literally skeletal, with a yellow blob for an eye, no skin and just the odd sinew attached to the bone. Her calm was catatonic.
But in a way still worse were two girls who looked perfectly healthy, lying on top of their beds apparently in an untroubled sleep. The doctor told me that they were already brain dead, having inhaled cyanide gas from the combustion of plastic seating. The mother of one of them was there and she pleaded with me to tell the doctor not to turn off the ventilator; the poor woman was crazed with grief and pulling at her hair, which was dyed red. I can still recall every detail of the faces of both mother and her still daughter.
I called in every day for a week or so and sat with the mother a few minutes, in silence. Then one day they were gone; the doctors had switched off the ventilator.
Andrze Kanthak, our Honorary Consul, was a fantastic support and worked extremely hard throughout this period – but as we walked together into the first ward, Andrze simply fainted straight out at the sight of it all. That evening we had hardly finished consolidating my 16 lists and sending them off to Mukesh when news arrived that the first shipment of most urgent supplies was arriving at Gdansk airport, and we dashed off there with a lorry from the City Council.
It was a bitter disappointment. Customs refused to release the medicines until duty had been paid and, still worse, everything would need to be checked and certified by the food and drug administration, which could take weeks. All my fury at the self-satisfied officials was of no avail, and we returned temporarily baffled.
A phone call now came that DFID had chartered a flight to arrive the next day with 20 tons of medical supplies, so the situation was now critical. Walesa was now President and I suggested we contact his office, but Andrze advised we should rather recruit Father Jankowski.
Jankowski was the parish priest in Gdansk who had been integral to the Solidarnosc movement, and at that time he wielded enormous political influence. His home was extraordinary for a parish priest – literally palatial – and when I met him there the next day he readily agreed to help. He came to the airport with us as the chartered cargo flight arrived, and supervised the loading into the council lorries which I dispatched to the various hospitals. A tall imposing figure in a flowing black cassock, the customs officials who had blocked us obeyed him without question.
Things calmed down over the next few days, Mukesh Kapila himself came out, and the hospitals once supplied performed brilliantly. Astonishingly, from hundreds of cases of severe and extensive burns, with scores in intensive care, we lost nobody except the two girls who were already brain dead, bringing the final death toll to seven. The incredible survival rate was viewed as a miracle, and perhaps it was, but it was a miracle assisted by some fantastic doctors, by Mukesh Kapila and his staff, by Father Jankowski, by Andrze Kanthak and by the Secretary of Gdansk Council whose name (Janowski?) has slipped my mind, embarrassingly as the experience made us firm friends for a long while.
But I am afraid to say the personal impact on me was quite severe. It is no secret that I struggle against bipolar disorder, and the sheer horror of those days in the wards undoubtedly triggered me for quite a while. I also suffered recurrent nightmares for more than a decade, about the horrific burns but also about the brain dead child and the mother tearing her hair. Worse than the nightmares were the waking flashbacks, not so much visual as emotional, experiencing the feeling of it happening again.
When I got back to the Embassy nobody was very interested in what I had been doing. I was ticked off for returning a day late and also for not obtaining much media publicity for the UK’s role. I have written before that one of my frequent duties in Poland was to conduct high profile visitors around the concentration camps, a visit all British politicians wish to make. Those places filled me with horror, which resonated on the same emotional frequency as the Gdansk trauma. Those frequent visits made my time in Poland difficult to me, which is a shame as it is a delightful country and people.
Back here now as a tourist, with my family and at a festive time, no troubling memories are assailing me. I find I can now be proud of what we did, rather than ashamed at my emotional reaction afterwards. And I can’t quite tell you why, but I felt it should be recorded.
Finally, it is worth noting that this Gdansk experience was one of a number which led me immediately to understand that the famous BBC report on “Saving Syria’s Children” was faked. The alleged footage of burns victims in hospital following a napalm attack bears no resemblance whatsoever to how victims, doctors and relatives actually behave in these circumstances.
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Trouble brewing for May with Yvette Cooper’s No Deal amendment, currently being debated. Tory majority is precarious as 10 Tories are backing it.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2019/jan/08/brexit-latest-news-no-deal-amendment-liam-fox-says-backing-amendment-designed-to-make-no-deal-harder-would-be-irresponsible-politics-live
No dollars for the wall and no pounds for no-deal Brexit preparations.
Heathrow activity halted as drone is spotted!
Or is it a UFO?
Ref the Skripals’ house in Salisbury.
A military team is moving in to remove the roof. Scaffolders are erecting a tent over it.
Hamish de Bretton Gordon came on to BBC South Today just now to say that ‘the deadly material has impregnated the roof timbers and roof tiles’.
YCNMIU.
Q Where are the Skripals?
Because Skripal had half a ton of Novichock stored in the loft.
No it was smeared on the door knob.
Yes, some of it leaked out of the loft and dripped on the door handle.
@ Blunderbuss January 8, 2019 at 23:02
Quite possible – I believe it had rained, so caused the roof to leak.
Getting more like the twin towers wreckage being trucked out as fast as they could under secrecy as time goes on. It will be the floors next.
I’ll stick with Newton and Einstein on that one and not NIST.
I do love a good Conspiracy though and the Skripals are great example of what happens when you let Gavin?Theresa and various others shoot their mouths off first and fill in the gaps later.
The thing is though if this really was Novichok the 5 main players would be stiff as planks by now and not alive to tell their tale to various media outlets.
Thank God for modern medicine and Porton Down I say.
Newton was a no nothing according to NIST but hey- we’ve given up on experts so why not?
The accelerating collapses of the Twin Towers do not contradict Newton’s laws, quite the opposite. With proper consideration of the building’s structure, Newton’s laws predict accelerating collapses; the buildings’ design made them prone to it.
I still like the quote someone made, I think it was here, along the lines of. before you construct a big lie, establish first what is the truth. Personally I think the Skripals,’ guinea pigs had had offspring who escaped to live in the roof.
My own guess on this at this very early stage is that it is not disconnected with the arrest of Paul Whelan as a spy. Perhaps they want him back. What Sergei and Yulia Skripal never had was consular access because we (UK) never followed the established protocol. If the Skripals are alive, and I have my doubts, the UK might be paving the way for Russia to do their own investigations, and perhaps even speak to the alleged targets of Novichok.
YCNMIU.
No but somebody is. I wonder what the next script will be. They’ve had plenty of time to come up with something convincing.
What could be less convincing than removing the roof because the door handle is contaminated?
@ Blunderbuss January 8, 2019 at 23:09
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZlxNaTa9gc
As Confucius would have said,
So how is this highly volatile and toxic substance able to get washed off of the door handle by rain and up into the roof when we’re told it’s so volatile that rain is the reason it became less toxic and therefore is the reason it failed to kill it’s intended subject or anyone else, and that the traces in the hotel room required no special measures as it had all but dissapeared by the time they (conveniently) found it in the hotel room of Abbotski and Costellova?
Well, the policeman first tried the door (and got Novichok on his hands) but he couldn’t get in. Then he climbed on the roof and smeared Novichok on the tiles. Then he took off some tiles and smeared Novichok on the roof timbers as he climbed into the loft. It’s quite simple really.
@ Dan O’Thebes January 9, 2019 at 10:17
Because the Queen of Hearts said so.
so are they monitoring the rp Skripal’s roof tiles? If so what about Charlie Rowley’s apartment ? indeed his whole block?
I can remember another important historical dismantling some 17 or so years ago where the evidence was taken away and destroyed. What is interesting is that this article suggests Sergei Skripal is still alive with some suggestion that they don’t know yet whether he wants to return to his home. If anybody knows where he is, or what condition he is in, might I suggest that if they still can of course, they ask him.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-46792956
Beat me to it!
They should also ask Sergei if he wants them to replace his roof. Have they got his permission?
I see Sharp Ears has his ear to the ground too on this.
If Sergei is still alive, if he is compos mentis, he should be asked via his solicitor, if he desires his roof being removed?
There would then be a legal trail.
If Sergei is compos mentis, he should be asked if he now wishes to speak with his aged mother, before it is too late.
The Skripals, if alive and functioning, are probably in their own Trueman Show. They are surrounded by all the people from real life and some famous journos. Or maybe more like the Village from the Prisoner. Living in a simulacrum. Maybe they realised. We can’t keep them hidden forever, what of Habeous Corpus? There must be some legal stuff to do. A missing person can be declared dead and their estate dealt with afaik.
It is like watching a amateur playwrights cluncky play wot they wrote.
@ Dungroanin January 9, 2019 at 01:57
Habeous Corpus is not applicable in cases of National Security!
But you are absolutely right – it is scandalous that they are being held incommunicado.
Yulia is or was a citizen of Russia.
Yet as far as we know Yulia has not been allowed to speak to anyone from their Embassy?
As far as we know she has not been charged with any crime?
Some have said that there have been more than one Yulia.
Perhaps the Yulia in custard is not the actual daughter of Sergei but an operative for Putin?
@ michael norton January 9, 2019 at 09:18
‘..Perhaps the Yulia in custard is not the actual daughter of Sergei …’
You spotted it! Sergei’s daughter detests custard, but loves jello.
And peaches and cream!
Skripal is now Number 6 but can he escape from The Village and will he be pursued by a balloon full of nerve gas?
@ John Goss January 8, 2019 at 20:31
Talking about historical ‘dismanling’, Paul Craig Roberts has something to say:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50902.htm?fbclid=IwAR2XmJ-0VPTY1NnqFkeqE7TfdBQJDrBJfEBgBD2GrDs_w2LxKAPVj3RaNHE
Breaking news: they’ve discovered nano-thermite in Skripal’s roof.
I think you mean termites.
https://bpca.org.uk/News-and-Blog/termites-in-the-midlands
A female Turkish journalist joins 68 other journalists who are in jail. So much for protestations of democracy there.
Journalist Pelin Ünker sentenced to jail in Turkey over Paradise Papers investigation
Journalist was found guilty of ‘defamation and insult’ for writing about companies owned by former PM
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/09/journalist-pelin-unker-sentenced-to-jail-in-turkey-over-paradise-papers-investigation
In November, a judge turned down Turkish requests to extradite a media proprietor and others.
UK court rejects Turkish extradition request for media boss
Judge refuses case against Hamdi Akin İpek on grounds it was ‘politically motivated’
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2018/nov/28/uk-court-rejects-turkish-extradition-request-for-media-boss
On those diversionary drones.
January 9, 2019
“Invasions”: the Desperate Need to Distract From the Brexit Shambles
by Kenneth Surin
In these days of the 24/7 news cycle– with virtually instantaneous spin on the part of politicians and their slick media gurus, and ever-gullible segments of social media– it’s become easy to plant stories that can soon be shown to be false flags.
One of these false flags occurred in the UK in the recent holiday season. As I mentioned in a CounterPunch article a couple of weeks ago, Gatwick, the UK’s second largest airport, located 30 miles south of London and serving 43 million passengers a year, was closed for a nearly two days during the busiest travel period of the year when multiple drone sightings were reported over its runways throughout that time.
/..
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/01/09/invasions-the-desperate-need-to-distract-from-the-brexit-shambles/
Ellman presented her anti Palestinian bill in the HoC yesterday. More of the usual rhetoric and nothing about the Israeli treatment of Palestinian men, women and children*, many of the latter tried in military courts and imprisoned.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2019-01-08/debates/B5B5517B-8158-4B90-95D1-F446C16B1E38/InternationalDevelopmentAssistance(PalestinianNationalAuthoritySchools)
Ellman has been rewarded with a damehood for her work for the FoI lobby.
* https://defenceforchildren.org/dci-palestine/
Has this gone up yet?
The Integrity Initiative has mobilized an international disinformation campaign across Europe. Now, with government and right-wing foundation money, this massive “political smear unit” is infiltrating the US.
By Max Blumenthal and Mark Ames
https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/01/08/new-documents-reveal-a-covert-british-military-intelligence-smear-machine-meddling-in-american-politics/
Dear God.
@Dave
Are you being manipulated by me?
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/12/gdansk/comment-page-9/#comment-816136
“The Doctor Will Sue You Now”
– APPROPRIATE CRIMINAL SANCTION
– In view of the scale and gravity of Achmat’s crime and his direct personal criminal culpability for ‘the deaths of thousands of people’, to quote his own words, it is respectfully submitted that the International Criminal Court ought to impose on him the highest sentence provided by Article 77.1(b) of the Rome Statute, namely to permanent confinement in a small white steel and concrete cage, bright fluorescent light on all the time to keep an eye on him, his warders putting him out only to work every day in the prison garden to cultivate nutrient-rich vegetables, including when it’s raining. In order for him to repay his debt to society, with the ARVs he claims to take administered daily under close medical watch at the full prescribed dose, morning noon and night, without interruption, to prevent him faking that he’s being treatment compliant, pushed if necessary down his forced-open gullet with a finger, or, if he bites, kicks and screams too much, dripped into his arm after he’s been restrained on a gurney with cable ties around his ankles, wrists and neck, until he gives up the ghost on them, so as to eradicate this foulest, most loathsome, unscrupulous and malevolent blight on the human race, who has plagued and poisoned the people of South Africa, mostly black, mostly poor, for nearly a decade now, since the day he and his TAC first hit the scene.
– Signed at Cape Town, South Africa, on 1 January 2007
– Anthony Brink
– – – – – – –
– Despite the extremes of this case, not one single alternative therapist or nutritionist, anywhere in the world, has stood up to criticise any single aspect of the activities of Matthias Rath and his colleagues. In fact, far from it: he continues to be fêted to this day. I have sat in true astonishment and watched leading figures of the UK’s alternative therapy movement applaud Matthias Rath at a public lecture (I have it on video, just in case there’s any doubt). Natural health organisations continue to defend Rath. Homeopaths’ mailouts continue to promote his work. The British Association of Nutritional Therapists has been invited to comment by bloggers, but declined. Most, when challenged, will dissemble.”Oh,” they say, “I don’t really know much about it.” Not one person will step forward and dissent.
– The alternative therapy movement as a whole has demonstrated itself to be so dangerously, systemically incapable of critical self-appraisal that it cannot step up even in a case like that of Rath: in that count I include tens of thousands of practitioners, writers, administrators and more. This is how ideas go badly wrong. In the conclusion to this book, written before I was able to include this chapter, I will argue that the biggest dangers posed by the material we have covered are cultural and intellectual.
– I may be mistaken.
https://www.badscience.net/2009/04/matthias-rath-steal-this-chapter/
Is this what you stand for? Blunderbuss? Paul Barbara?
@Clark
Perhaps I should be flattered. You seem to have built me up into a criminal mastermind, akin to Professor Moriarty.
@ Clark January 10, 2019 at 01:59
Watch ‘Vaxxed’, then we can dialogue.
Good idea. Have you read the libellous Wikipedia article about it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaxxed
And here is Jytdog threatening an editor with sanctions:
“You are heading directly for AE. You can do as you like, of course, but this path you are creating, step by step as you make these decisions about how to work here, leads to sanctions. Jytdog (talk) 19:09, 14 April 2016 (UTC)”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Vaxxed/Archive_1#Hit_Piece
Then Mjolnir Pants (one of Jytdog’s many sidekicks) denies that a threat has been made and says that the editor’s (perfectly genuine) claim that a threat has been made amounts to a personal attack on Jytdog.
“First, no-one has threatened you. Nor has anyone made any ‘twisted implications’. Your assertions to the contrary, however, could be construed as a personal attack”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Vaxxed/Archive_1#Hit_Piece
More precise link for above quotes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Vaxxed/Archive_1#Problematic_edit
Oh right so Vaxxed is Wakefield’s own film!
What does he say about those samples he took by lumbar puncture etc? You reckon that was medically appropriate?
Were you effectively following it via the MSM at the time?* Remember to include ‘alternative’ sites that are really quoting the same sources as the MSM, eg Lancet, doctors, medical bodies etc.
(* I wasn’t.)
Talk page archives? Editor TeeVeeed makes an interminable fuss about the description of David Gorski. It looks like TeeVeeed is being a pain in the arse for the sake of it. Does that remind me of someone?
@ Clark January 10, 2019 at 01:59
Starting 16:55 mins into ‘Vaxxed’ ( https://vimeo.com/230115723 ) the documentary shows the official list of possible side effects of the M-M-R II vaccine (but the list, which comes with each vaccine ampule, is not routinely given to the parents. Indeed, the mother just before that clip explains no one mentioned anything about side effects to her).
Under ‘Some side effects are rare but may be serious. You should call your health care provider if you notice any of the following problems:
*Difficulty breathing, wheezing, hives, or a skin rash may be the sign of an allergic reaction.
*Bleeding or bruising under the skin.
*Seizures, a severe headache, a change in behaviour or consciousness, or difficulty walking.
Get that last point? Sound a bit like autism?
Watch the documentary; see the numerous video clips of babies before and after the vaccine was injected. Then decide if it is Blunderbuss and me that are putting children’s health in jeopardy, or you and SA.
This is not about slagging each other off, or scoring points. This debate is deadly serious.
You do not possess the intellectual tools to assess these matters. Neither do I, but at least I know that about myself, and I know that such tools exist, and where to find them.
In the mean time, you are risking people’s health and lives through your, sorry, ignorance and arrogance.
I’m glad you agree that the “debate” (such as it is) is deadly serious. Please tell Blunderbuss that, because it’s a message I’ve been trying to get across for weeks. Maybe he’ll actually listen to a fellow conspiracy theorist.
@Clark 11:53
“You do not possess the intellectual tools to assess these matters. Neither do I…”
So we are all in the same position of ignorance but, in spite of this, Clark is qualified to comment on the matter but Paul Barbara and I are not.
@ Clark January 10, 2019 at 11:56
Why don’t you just watch the documentary, and then you would be in a far better position to discuss the pro’s and con’s.
You kept refusing to watch ‘Zero’, which would have shown just how ridiculous the government narrative was.
And regarding the ‘disgraced’, ‘struck off’ doctor Andrew Wakefield, why not watch him defending his position:
‘Dr Andrew Wakefield tells his side of the story in the MMR Vaccine causes Autism debate’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmGCc65pfEk
I think part of the problem is that Wikipedia has constructed a false view of science. In the Wikipedia construct there is something called The Scientific Consensus which means “the view of the majority of scientists”. Once this Scientific Consensus has been established it becomes “The Truth” and any scientist who questions it is labelled a pseudoscientist or a charlatan.
This black and white view of science (The Truth versus pseudoscience) is not one that I recognize but it does seem to be the one that Clark recognizes.
I thought science advanced.
If science is to advance, it will be by testing new ideas, new ideas replace old ideas.
It is difficult to see how science can be settled.
@michael norton 15:06
I agree. “Settled science” is another Wikipedia construct.
Wanna bet Newton’ll be proved wrong about the motion of billiard balls? Settled, I’d say.
I watched some of Zero. Didn’t I write some comments about that at the time? I think I said that I agreed with some of it but thought some bits were silly.
Two visitors arrived at mine around midday, and are staying a while, so I’ll be busy.
Well c’mon! There’s no such thing as settled science, so surely someone has a hundred quid saying Newton is about to be quietly shuffled away?
@Paul Barbara
Are you being manipulated by me?
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/12/gdansk/comment-page-9/#comment-816136
@ Blunderbuss January 9, 2019 at 23:04
So you’re the puppetmaster! I only knew it was someone called Vlad.
Yes.
Professor Moriarty, alias Vlad the Impaler.
‘CDC’s Own Expert Vaccine Court Witness Confirmed Vaccines Can Cause Autism, So They Fired Him Immediately’:
https://www.activistpost.com/2019/01/cdcs-own-expert-vaccine-court-witness-confirmed-vaccines-can-cause-autism-so-they-fired-him-immediately.html
‘…Recently, Sharyl exposed that CDC’s expert vaccine witness, who previously debunked vaccine autism claims during Vaccinees Injury Masters hearings, Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, a pediatric neurologist, told CDC “long ago” that vaccines could cause Autism, but they refused to accept Zimmerman’s information. Instead, Department of Justice [DOJ] lawyers immediately fired him.
According to Sharyl,
Dr. Zimmerman declined our interview request and referred us to his sworn affidavit. It says: On June 15, 2007, he took aside the Department of Justice—or DOJ lawyers he worked for defending vaccines in vaccine court. He told them that he’d discovered “exceptions in which vaccinations could cause autism.” “I explained that in a subset of children, vaccine induced fever and immune stimulation did cause regressive brain disease with features of autism spectrum disorder.”
“I explained that in a subset of children, vaccine induced fever and immune stimulation did cause regressive brain disease with features of autism spectrum disorder.” [CJF emphasis]…’
‘Vaxx Propaganda in Overdrive as Vaccine/Autism Link Confirmed – #NewWorldNextWeek’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bOEFymlGRo
Paul, you seem to be pushing this very hard; really trying to put people off vaccination. Before there’s time to watch and discuss one video, you’ve posted two more. And you’re sure you’re fully capable of understanding and weighing the issues, right? You know better than doctors. And you agree with the early 2000s MSM when they were promoting Andrew Wakefield over mainstream medicine, because they were revealing something vitally important. But they were all “got at” and turned against him, right?
OK, so since you understand these matters, Please tell me the prevalence of autism.
WHY has this question gone unanswered?
So far this is the ONLY scientific question, and yet it remains unanswered.
@Clark
Why are you rejecting the affidavit of Dr Andrew Zimmerman? Is he not a “proper” doctor because he has written something you disagree with?
Why are you accusing me of rejecting anything? I told you, I’m busy at present. I had time to ask some questions, which no one has replied to. Would you take Paul Barbara’s medical advice over that of typical doctors?
@ Clark January 11, 2019 at 23:44
Would YOU advise a family member (if you have anyone in that category) who had babies, to ‘Play the White Man;’ and get whatever vaccinations the PTB say they should accept?
And have you watched ‘Vaxxed’?
No, I thought not.
AND I KEEP TELLING YOU I’M BUSY.
In Europe yes, in the US just the important ones.
@Clark 01:02
Yes, we know you’re busy. You don’t have to reply instantly. Leave it for a while until you have more time.
Then you should tell Paul Barbara to have some patience.
And you could help me by totalling up the running time on YouToob I’m meant to catch up with now; I shouldn’t go suspecting that you’re trying to flood me out. And you could answer the damn question; how prevalent is autism?
Paul Barbara has not given any advice, he has just reproduced a statement by Dr Andrew Zimmerman. Why do you misrepresent what we say?
Paul Barbara is encouraging parents to withhold all their children’s vaccinations. Go on, twist as much as you can… You really disgust me at times.
“Paul Barbara is encouraging parents to withhold all their children’s vaccinations”.
Where did he say this? I haven’t seen it.
@Paul Barbara
I’ve just watched this in full:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmGCc65pfEk
It’s a real eye-opener. I won’t say any more just now because I don’t want to be accused of brainwashing people.
Blunderbuss, it just occurred to me as I opened your latest link; do you have any connection to any think-tanks?
Nine minutes into Blunderbuss’s relink of “Dr Andrew Wakefield tells his side of the story”, this looks like it’s going to be Andrew Wakefield defending himself against an accusation of medical fraud by Brian Deer.
At 07:40, Wakefield’s projection for the audience reads: “How Brian Deer Hijacked Science”.
Maybe I’m biased, but this looks too personal to be science. Even if Brian Deer has exaggerated or even concocted accusations against Wakefield, I doubt he could hijack the whole of science on his own. So we’re straight into conspiracy theory land, us few heroic mavericks taking on the powerful institutions who don’t want you to know. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is how various mainstream newspapers were presenting it around 2002, isn’t it? They had a lot of sympathy for Wakefield at the time. That’s a media question; we’re debating, and you’ve both put a lot of pressure on me to watch this so please try to answer.
If we were doing science, I’d expect to be concentrating on research into vaccines, autism etc., rather than Wakefield and Deer.
“Beer as in Braindeer” by Robert Wyatt. That’s been played twice in the last couple of days because one of my visitors likes Matching Mole. Brian Deer Dearlove Richard, guilt by association. Who’s pulling my strings, eh? What if it turns out we were all pulling each other’s?
“Blunderbuss, it just occurred to me as I opened your latest link; do you have any connection to any think-tanks?”
No, do you?
“Maybe I’m biased, but this looks too personal to be science”.
And isn’t your opposition to Dr Wakefield “too personal to be science”?
“And you could answer the damn question; how prevalent is autism?”
I’ve no idea. Please tell me.
@Clark
I think the problem is that you don’t understand the difference between having an opinion and giving advice.
If I say “I am in favour of Brexit”, I am expressing an opinion. If I say “I think you should support Brexit”, I am giving advice. Can you see the difference?
I am in favour of vaccination (I had a flu vaccination last year) but I am not advising anybody else either to have, or not to have, a vaccination. Patients must decide for themselves and, if they want advice, they should consult a doctor.
I think patients should be informed (by doctors and drug companies) about possible side-effects of vaccines. Is it your view that patients should not be informed about possible side-effects?
– “I’ve just watched this in full […] It’s a real eye-opener.”
But it didn’t open your eyes to what is probably the first fact we should examine. Great start.
What “opposition to Wakefield”? Asking for his own take on what he was struck off for? Saying he opened his lecture like a conspiracy theorist? Am I meant to be deaf and blind to those? Or am I not meant to mention them?
Blunderbuss, you have very obviously expressed approval of the links Paul Barbara has been posting. But this is part of Paul Barbara’s ongoing campaign to advance a conspiracy theory that vaccines are part of a sinister plot by the medical establishment to damage the health of rest of the population. He is very clearly trying to scare people off of vaccination. And you have been encouraging and supporting him. I’d call that irresponsible, unless you have very good understanding that it’s justified.
Of course people should be told about side effects. Are you still beating your wife?
@Clark 10:48
It seems that you have judged Wakefield guilty on all counts, without listening to his side of the story. If that isn’t opposition to Wakefield, I don’t know what is.
No, I’m not associated with any organisations.
@Clark 11:00
I’m not trying to scare people off vaccination and I don’t think Paul Barbara is either.
We are still up against the problem that you have a black-and-white view of science. You seem to believe that it is an absolute certainty that vaccines cannot cause autism. Science does not deal in certainty. There is always more research to be done.
I am not saying that vaccines either can, or cannot, cause autism. All I’m saying is that it’s a possibility, and further research should be done on it. Unfortunately, the media campaign against Dr Wakefield has deterred other researchers from doing this research and the progress of science is being hampered.
What? I’m not allowed to know straightforward facts of what Wakefield did before hearing what Wakefield has to say about why he did it? Can anyone stick tubes up kids’ bums and syringe fluid out of their spines just because they think they should?
@Clark 12:38
I’m not stopping you from knowing any facts. You are free to read whatever you like.
The problem, Blunderbuss, is that you keep latching onto conspiracy theories, and yes I do mean conspiracy theories, and insisting that they should be taken as seriously as science.
Just because someone says something that sounds technical and sciency doesn’t mean it’s science. For instance, the QLink pendant claims to protect the wearer from electromagnetic rays by correcting their energy frequencies – it needs no batteries as it is ‘powered’ by the wearer – the microchip is activated by a copper induction coil which picks up sufficient micro currents from the wearer’s heart to power the pendant. All very technical-sounding, but utter bullshit. There is masses of this stuff that masquerades as science by borrowing a few technical terms and stringing them together in a way that sounds meaningful but isn’t.
You seem to be trying very hard to undermine people’s understanding, making them think science is all just a matter of opinion. Now why might you be doing that, eh?
@Clark 17:08
Let’s take this one step at a time. I think you are saying that any possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism is a conspiracy theory. Is this correct?
(just so no one mistakes this for a conversation about science; it isn’t. It’s a conversation about people.)
@Clark 19:06
Now who is not answering the question?
@Clark 11 Jan 19, 01:46
“Please tell me the prevalence of autism”.
I can’t answer this question but I’m sure you can.
According to Wakefield, the number of reported cases of autism increased sharply after the MMR vaccine was introduced. Is he wrong? Please give the figures.
@Clark
According to this:
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html
Identified Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder increased from 1 in 150 for children born in 1992 to 1 in 59 for children born in 2006.
I will leave you to comment on whether this is statistically significant.
I got 37 minutes into Wakefield’s lecture and then stopped and read some of the background in Bad Science. I’ll come back to that. After Wakefield stopped going on about Deer it got more interesting. Wakefield is a gastroenterologist, and when he talks about treating children with intestinal pain and behavioural problems, he seems very sincere and caring, and sounds like he gets some very good results. That is all to his credit. What he hasn’t got is a link between autism and MMR.
I’m not surprised that Wakefield is bitter because Brian Deer seems to have developed an obsession with doing him as much damage as possible. But this is easy to understand; Deer is scapegoating Wakefield on behalf of his entire profession of corporate media journalists. It was them that launched Wakefield through the roof on a very thinly supported claim; in 2002 they were so sure they were right, and they were supporting a maverick against a faceless bureaucracy. When the science didn’t go the way they expected they just started ignoring it again, and Deer was the only one clever enough to realise that someone needed to do some damage control.
Wakefield showed projections of the authorisation from the ethics committee. This seems misleading because the authorisations were issued on false pretences; Wakefield took samples from the children for research when the ethics clearances were for treatment. It was research because the children had been sent specifically to Wakefield by lawyers, as someone who could establish a link between MMR and behavioural problems. The ethics committee should have been told that, but they weren’t.
Blunderbuss, thanks and congratulations upon your information retrieval. OK, so what’s the incidence of MMR?
Paul Barbara, did you know that lawyers sent those twelve children to Wakefield because they wanted to sue the vaccine manufacturers? Did you realise that Wakefield was effectively using those children for research?
@Clark
“Blunderbuss, thanks and congratulations upon your information retrieval. OK, so what’s the incidence of MMR?”
I’m not going to be your research assistant. If you want to know, you find out.
@Clark
“I got 37 minutes into Wakefield’s lecture and then stopped and read some of the background in Bad Science”.
Yes, you only want to hear bad things about Wakefield.
I did actually read “Bad Science” a while ago and, in my opinion, the book itself is bad science.
@Clark
“Paul Barbara, did you know that lawyers sent those twelve children to Wakefield because they wanted to sue the vaccine manufacturers? Did you realise that Wakefield was effectively using those children for research?”
And what do the parents of the 12 children think about this? Have any of them publicly condemned Wakefield?
@ Clark January 12, 2019 at 17:08
Try telling the devastated parents that they are just conspiracy theorists.
@ Clark January 13, 2019 at 04:00
If you were the parent or lawyer acting for them of a damaged child or children, would you not wish to sue the manufacturers?
And Wakefield prescribed diets for these kids, which often if not always alleviated some of their symptoms.
Research? Are you suggesting some kind of Dr. Mengele experiments?
If not, what are you suggesting? That careful evaluation of the parent’s recollections, and photos or videos of the child before and after the vaccination, and observation of the child’s behaviour, is somehow unethical?
What I see is that you two, Blunderbuss and Paul Barbara, are still just fighting. You seem to think you’ve identified me as either a sheeple or a shill, and now all you can do is fight, as if it’s some reflex response, eg:
– “Yes, you only want to hear bad things about Wakefield.
– I did actually read “Bad Science” a while ago and, in my opinion, the book itself is bad science.”
You seem to have filtered out my approval of Wakefield’s medical work (due to your own cognitive dissonance?) And if you had read Bad Science, you’d know that Goldacre is scathing towards the mainstream media rather than Wakefield, of whom he’s mildly critical, but whom he repeatedly supports against being scapegoated by the media for their own hysteria. So either you didn’t read it attentively, or you’re making a false claim.
– “I think you are saying that any possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism is a conspiracy theory. Is this correct?”
No it’s wrong, and a silly question to boot. What’s a conspiracy theory is that Wakefield made some sort of breakthrough and now there’s a huge conspiracy to suppress this great ‘truth’ he ‘revealed’ – this is Paul Barbara’s theory, which you, Blunderbuss, are supporting him in. Go on, ask him, instead if forming a team with him to ‘defeat’ me. Science isn’t about personal triumph or defeat. It’s about evidence, and there’s far more evidence available about vaccines and autism than the points that will be raised, interminably, about Deer and Wakefield.
Paul Barbara – “Are you suggesting some kind of Dr. Mengele experiments?”
Wakefield had colonoscopies and lumbar punctures performed upon the children. One such child (from a different group) suffered a perforated bowel leading to multiple organ failure, kidney and liver failure, and neurological problems.
But Wakefied did not have these tests performed in order to discover the correct treatment, ie. for the children’s medical benefit. He had them performed to try to gather evidence that MMR can cause autism, ie. to advance his professional theory and to support the lawyers’ case. Research on human subjects requires unambiguous ethical clearance, it mustn’t be disguised as necessary treatment, and I hope you agree with that rule. That’s what Wakefield was struck off for, NOT for being an embarrassment to the Agenda 21 depopulation programme or whatever.
Now please pardon me for stating the obvious, but no, parent’s opinions are far from unbiased. If little Jonny gets hauled up in front of the headmaster for stealing from Jimmy’s lunch box, how likely are Jonny’s parents to say “oh yes, at home he’s always stealing off his little sister”? Or would it more likely be “What, Our boy a thief? Never!” We all know how families work, because in politics we keep seeing dynasties.
Lawyers try to be successful lawyers, and that means winning cases and/or maximising compensation. But which of these is their priority? If they were truly trying to advance scientific truth, they should hardly ever settle for compensation out of court, should they? But most such medical cases are settled out of court, with compensation linked to gag orders.
42 minutes into “Dr Andrew Wakefield tells his side of the story in the MMR Vaccine causes Autism debate” and Wakefield is just repeating boilerplate anti-vaccination propaganda, nothing to do with his former professional expertise. Anyone could trot this stuff out; Wakefield’s only function here is to provide a veneer of medical-scientific authority, and he ought to know better.
51 minutes; Wakefield is talking about studies, so it’s more interesting again. But right now he’s giving risk figures for asthma as percentages of each other, so I’ve no idea how often asthma is a complication. Earlier he gave lots of percentages without giving the sizes of the populations they were from.
56 minutes, and for some time Wakefield has been spouting what sounds to me like pure FUD. Republicans love this stuff like they love to hear creationism and how the government is pure evil. We seem to be on a “They won’t kill enough primates during testing to ensure safety in humans” binge at present. Everyone but anti-vaxxers are “Them”, no matter whether they’re research, medical, industry or government and no matter which country they work in.
This stuff’s all just propaganda. It slants and spins everything towards the impression it wishes to project.
Many of the issues Wakefield mentions are important issues, but the error is when Wakefield claims that “They” ignore this that or the other because “They” don’t care. But be a little more critical; Wakefield’s own figures come from “Them” – he can’t have it both ways; either “They” study this stuff or they don’t.
57:18 – is Wakefield claiming to have contributed to the papers at 57:20 and 58:54? Because they don’t seem to have his name on them.
Having got to the end, I’ve skipped back to about 50:00 – from around here to the end, Wakefield has presented various ideas from various research papers, expounding his own interpretation, interspersed with highly charged anti-vaccination remarks.
The video really doesn’t provide an appropriate environment to present this stuff. The papers Wakefield cites were presumably published in academic forums, where critical analysis and counter-argument provide background against which the papers’ significance and flaws can be considered. There’s none of that in such a highly technical lecture to non-specialist public, making it too easy to come away with a biased impression. We’d each have to go and find discussions about the various papers for ourselves.
We could do that and discuss our findings if you like because Wakefield does seem to cite papers clearly, but I suggest we cooperate because there will be a lot of material to look through.
But enough for tonight…
Brian Deer presents a far better case than does Wakefield. Wakefield applied to patent a rival vaccine to MMR: UK patent GB 2 325 856 A, priority date 6 June 1997, publication date 9 December 1998. He’d also been contracted by a lawyer to establish a case linking MMR to autism, and was paid over £400,000. He ‘adjusted’ medical records to fabricate a link.
– “How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed”
https://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347
The Lancet paper was a case series of 12 child patients; it reported a proposed “new syndrome” of enterocolitis and regressive autism and associated this with MMR as an “apparent precipitating event.” But in fact:
* Three of nine children reported with regressive autism did not have autism diagnosed at all. Only one child clearly had regressive autism
* Despite the paper claiming that all 12 children were “previously normal,” five had documented pre-existing developmental concerns
* Some children were reported to have experienced first behavioural symptoms within days of MMR, but the records documented these as starting some months after vaccination
* In nine cases, unremarkable colonic histopathology results—noting no or minimal fluctuations in inflammatory cell populations—were changed after a medical school “research review” to “non-specific colitis”
* The parents of eight children were reported as blaming MMR, but 11 families made this allegation at the hospital. The exclusion of three allegations—all giving times to onset of problems in months—helped to create the appearance of a 14 day temporal link
* Patients were recruited through anti-MMR campaigners, and the study was commissioned and funded for planned litigation
The Russians are stealing the earth’s magnetic field!
https://www.rt.com/news/448550-magnetic-field-navigational-mystery/
WARNING
THIS BLOG SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A SOURCE OF MEDICAL INFORMATION
Mods – I think you will agree with this. If not, please delete it.
There seemed a sound logic to vaccination, based on you are given a mild form of for example the flu virus to enable the immune system to build up a resistance to the full blown virus. But on this basis some think even a mild dose is a bad idea and so refuse vaccination and avoid the company of those who have, to avoid getting the flu. Instead they try and keep warm, eat well and wrap up well when they go out.
To counter this the medics inform us don’t worry your injected with a dead virus, so it wont give you the flu, but if so how can this help stop you getting the flu?
– “how can [a dead virus] help stop you getting the flu?”
I’m not an immunologist, so the following is a guess. What matters is that the immune system can recognise the viruses, and they remain recognisable if they’re ‘killed’ in a suitable way.
But actually the question is moot. We don’t need to understand how it works so long as we can prove that it does work; compare with anaesthetics, which have been used for decades but are still far from being fully understood.
Prevention is better than cure is a good idea, but how can you be sure what prevents something as opposed to cures something, particularly regarding catching viruses. I.e. how do you know improved figures, if they show fewer people catching flu, are due to the jab as opposed to something else?
I’m not an epidemiologist either, but I think the usual approaches are cohort studies, and case-control studies. Placebo-controlled studies are usually unethical, because you shouldn’t withhold treatment from the control group. Cohort and case-control studies use the data about people who opted against treatment as the control sample.
Bad Science is a mine of information. Easy to read, and frequently hilarious too.
Except the flu virus mutates.
This means even if a vaccination, injection of a dead virus, could strengthen the immune system against flu viruses, it can’t against a particular virus, meaning it superfluous to have an injection every year.
The medics response to this was to say the flu jab lessens the severity of the flu you may catch!
Presumably these depend whether the virus mutates beyond recognition by the immune system, and whether partial or unreliable recognition can strengthen or hasten immune response. But the relevant studies will be in the immunology literature; without looking into that, all you and I can do is guess.
@ Blunderbuss January 12, 2019 at 17:54
I reckon enough evidence has been put up on here; if some people just don’t want to know, and insist on ad hominems, it is probably best to just ignore further ‘feeding’.
That the mods have let this vaccine discussion go on so long, is a miracle.
I’m quitting while I’m ahead, before we exasperate the mods.
– “I’m quitting while I’m ahead…”
And that sums up your attitude. To you it’s not about careful, balanced examination of evidence, in order to improve everyone’s understanding. No, it’s a fight, it’s personal and it’s all about winning. And thus I have no choice but that you designate me your enemy – I’ll repeat that – one of your enemies is the only role you will permit me. In your opinion I’m a “feeder” and “someone who doesn’t want to know”.
Of course it’s simply impossible that you’ve made a mistake; I mean, it’s not like you could possibly suffer from arrogance or a sense of superiority, is it? Not even subconsciously. No. Others are the sinners, whereas you are a Beacon of Truth.
Oh sorry, you were insinuating I’m a troll rather than a feeder.
So having made out I was refusing to watch the videos you linked, now you’re announcing your departure before I post any further analysis of them. So, I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t, just like a witch trial. But that’s always the way with conspiracy theorists.
@Clark 14:45
All the criticisms that you have made of me and Paul Barbara could equally well be applied to you. It is a waste of time trying to have a sensible discussion with you so I’m quitting too.
I’ll just repeat – scientific discussion could be had about autism and vaccination, but discussion about Wakefield and Deer wouldn’t be scientific and wouldn’t contribute much.
I suppose you’re both running off before I start listing the studies which show that MMR is safe and doesn’t cause autism. Probably best.
@ SA
January 9, 2019 at 09:58
‘Paul
You seem to be an excellent political activist but please do not muddle fact with fiction, science with beliefs and find conspiracy where there is none. A lot of so called evidence that is produced against vaccines and such like by conspiracy theorists, yes, I repeat, conspiracy theorists, is based on poor anecdotal observations and not science. Humanity needs to move on and the way forward is science. Yes of course the way to medical progress has been littered with some mistakes a such as the thalidomide tragedy but that was not based on conspiracy, just bad methodology and ignorance Scientific method examines the options and gets the answer by examining the evidence but the CTs work by bending the evidence according to a preconceived answer.’
I’ll try to deal with your points with the help of four very short clips from ‘Vaxxed’ ( https://vimeo.com/230115723 ):
First minute or so: The MSM get into a frightful state – the incidence of measles has skyrocketed, and tripled since 2013 to 644 cases in 2014 (compared to 100,000’s of autism cases). Which would you rather your child, or grandchild, or a relative’s or friend’s child, should fall victim to? I had measles, mumps, whooping cough and anything else that was floating about, and I’m still around.
Starting approx. 1:50, Dr. William Thompson, a scientist at the CDC, states his case against the CDC.
Approx. 16:55 minutes in, it shows the official MMR II side effects list. This is not generally given to the parent, and many if not most are not told of all the possible side effects. A ‘rare’, (but possible) side effect is: *Seizures, a severe headache, a change in behavious or consciousness, or difficulty walking’. Sound like ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) to you? It does to me.
Approx. 19:55, a little story about how not only Smith, Kline, Glaxo DELIBERATELY put children at know highly serious risk, by marketing an insufficiently tested drug, but in the very month it was withdrawn in Canada because kids were getting meningitis from it, the British NHS contracted to get it for British kids. After a few years, of course, British kids started getting meningitis, as was to be expected, and it was banned in Britain (but the British NHS tried it’s utmost to not expose their criminality. So, did SKG give it up as a bad job? Heck, no. Still money to be made, in Third World countries, so they markets it in Brazil.
‘….Yes of course the way to medical progress has been littered with some mistakes a such as the thalidomide tragedy but that was not based on conspiracy, just bad methodology and ignorance….’
No my friend, that was pure, unadulterated conspiracy to disregard the children for profit on the part of SKG, and by the NHS to save money (and doubtless by some judicious ‘lobbying’ (read bribery) by SKG and probably some high level shareholders.
Regarding that case, here’s another link: ‘Secret British MMR Vaccine Files Forced Open By Legal Action’:
https://explorevaccines.wordpress.com/category/mmr-vaccine/
‘…Scientific method examines the options and gets the answer by examining the evidence but the CTs work by bending the evidence according to a preconceived answer…’
If you were to approach this issue with an open mind, you would find that it is the Big Pharma scientists and their minions and ‘bribees’ and MSM parrots that ‘…work by bending the evidence according to a preconceived answer…’ – after all, they have big bucks at stake, and both in the States and in the UK a ‘bend-over backwards’ government indemnified the Big Pharma Corporations against vaccine damages, and took any damages upon the State (alias ‘Muggins’ the taxpayer).
– “the incidence of measles has skyrocketed, and tripled since 2013 to 644 cases in 2014 (compared to 100,000’s of autism cases).”
Even if Wakefield were right about subgroups, there is clear evidence against vaccinations causing 100,000s of autism cases. OK, that evidence might be in error, just as your certainty to the contrary might be in error. If you’re wrong, the apparent choice you are offering:
– “Which would you rather your child, or grandchild, or a relative’s or friend’s child, should fall victim to?”
…would be illusory. The actual choice would be for a risk of autism either way, with or without protection against against certain diseases.
– “I had measles, mumps, whooping cough and anything else that was floating about, and I’m still around.”
So you’re saying it would have been fine if one of them had killed you, right? Or made you blind or deaf, given you pancreatitis or made your testicles wither. You’re saying you’re OK, so those killed or injured by those diseases don’t matter. Well shame on you for thinking that way; care to retract it? No I didn’t think so.
Paul, your concern about corruption, collusion and distortion of evidence are absolutely right; many more cases like the ones you mention are covered in Goldacre’s Bad Pharma. I wish you’d read it because Goldacre has documented exactly how several of them were perpetrated.
What lets you down is your assumption of a massive conspiracy with this monolithic objective, because every time you see evidence that contradicts your position you think “that evidence must have been fabricated by the conspiracy”. Assuming a vastly powerful conspiracy condemns you to perpetual prejudicial guesswork, because you have to guess which papers are trustworthy; you can’t judge them by their quality because you have to judge them by whether they support your foregone conclusion or not. So you end up stuck in a loop of confirmation bias.
You could look into a case-control study by Smeeth et al. using the GP Research Database. And there’s the cohort study by Madsen et al. in Denmark from 1991 to 1999. Also, the Cochrane Collaboration released a systematic review of the MMR literature in 2005.
Adverse Events Associated with Childhood Vaccines: Evidence Bearing on Causality (1994)
Chapter 6; Measles and Mumps Vaccines:
https://www.nap.edu/read/2138/chapter/7#131
The first section describes the development of measles vaccines from 1944 onwards.
Page 123: History of Suspected Association
– The occurrence of encephalitis following a natural measles virus infection is well described. The condition is quite severe, often leading to permanent brain damage or even death. There may be no detectable pathologic lesion, but in most cases some edema and demyelination are noted. Early studies of the adverse events associated with measles vaccine concentrated on “encephalitis.” These are described below (Landrigan and Witte, 1973; Nader and Warren, 1968).
– The first report of encephalopathy following vaccination with the live attenuated Edmonston B (Rubeovax) measles vaccine appeared in 1967 (Trump and White, 1967). A 2-year-old girl developed unsteadiness 7 days following vaccination. This was followed by pronounced generalized ataxia (diagnosed as cerebellar ataxia), fever, vomiting, and an exanthem. There was pleocytosis in the CSF 1 month after vaccination. The ataxia persisted for at least 8 months. Because of the child’s history and physical and laboratory findings, the investigators attributed the condition to measles vaccination. Two early case series investigations of neuralgic disorders following measles vaccination included reports of “encephalitis.” These are discussed below.
There’s a huge amount of information in that chapter; it certainly looks as though the risks of vaccination have been studied intensively, and are well quantified.
My guess? Getting a measles vaccination is a lot less risky than getting measles.
This looks highly informative too:
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
Vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella in children
Cochrane Systematic Review – Intervention
Version published: 15 February 2012
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004407.pub3/full
– Background: Mumps, measles and rubella (MMR) are serious diseases that can lead to potentially fatal illness, disability and death. However, public debate over the safety of the trivalent MMR vaccine and the resultant drop in vaccination coverage in several countries persists, despite its almost universal use and accepted effectiveness.
– Objectives: To assess the effectiveness and adverse effects associated with the MMR vaccine in children up to 15 years of age.
– Authors’ conclusions – Implications for research: The design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies, both pre and post‐marketing, are largely inadequate and need to be improved. Standardised definitions of adverse events should be adopted. More evidence assessing whether the protective effect of MMR could wane with the time since immunisation should be addressed.
OK I’ve watched Vaxxed and my initial thoughts on it are here:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/12/gdansk/comment-page-9/#comment-817650
@ Paul Barbara January 14, 2019 at 00:02
@ SA
January 9, 2019 at 09:58
Further to my previous response, another interesting article, which shows up the competing goals of the government and Big Pharma, the least of which is safety.
‘Vaccine Mandates Results Don’t Safeguard Children’s Rights or Health: How Did We Get Here?’:
https://peoplestrusttoronto.wordpress.com/2019/01/16/vaccine-mandates- results-dont-safeguard-childrens-rights-or-health-how-did-we-get-here/
‘…Occasionally, legal officials expressed their disapproval of vaccine mandates outside of emergencies, as with the North Dakota judge who, in 1919, pronounced childhood vaccination in the absence of a smallpox epidemic an act of “barbarism.” The same judge also wrote presciently about the self-interest of the medical profession and vaccine manufacturers—“the class that reap a golden harvest from vaccination and the diseases caused by it.” In comments that bear repeating today, the judge stated,
“Every person of common sense and observation must know that it is not the welfare of the children that causes the vaccinators to preach their doctrines and to incur the expense of lobbying for vaccination statutes. …And if anyone says to the contrary, he either does not know the facts, or he has no regard for the truth.”
The legal sea change in 1986
Although vaccination mandates had become legally “well-entrenched” by the mid-1950s—regardless of emergency and “all but erasing” Jacobson’s cautionary language—Holland emphasizes that this legal framework arose in the context of a single vaccine for a contagious disease considered to be life-threatening. Even when the polio vaccine subsequently came on the scene, the nonprofit organization that helped develop and distribute the vaccine “opposed compulsion on principle.”
According to Holland, the creation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—“a federal advisory body with little public participation and no direct accountability to voters”—laid the groundwork for far more coercive vaccine policies. In fact, ACIP has become, over time, the “driving force” behind vaccine mandates. Whereas Jacobson justified mandates under specific and rare circumstances, ACIP has created an “infrastructure” that pushes mandates for any vaccine-preventable illness.
…revenue-generating vaccine development and promotion have enjoyed priority over vaccine safety science and injury compensation since the Law’s (NCVIA) inception”……’
@Paul Barbara
Where vaccination is voluntary (as in the UK) there is very little controversy about it because parents can choose whether to have their children vaccinated or not.
Where it is compulsory, there is likely to be an anti-vaccine backlash:
https://www.vaccinestoday.eu/stories/mandatory-vaccination-work-europe/
@ Blunderbuss January 17, 2019 at 19:40
But where the ‘Master’ goes, the poodle is sure to follow….
@Paul Barbara
Who is the ‘Master’?
@ Blunderbuss January 17, 2019 at 22:46
The US, although they are manipulated too.
Thing is, we are likely to follow mandatory vaccines because we follow the US. It will probably be preceded by an engineered outbreak of something or other.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Arctic-Lineage-Canine-Distemper-Virus-as-a-Cause-of-Death-in-Apennine-Wolves-%28Canis-lupus%29-in-Italy-pone.0082356.s001.ogv
Back in the ’90s my friend Martyn got a little puppy, called her Messalina. He was on a hippy thing, only eat organic, vaccines are a scam etc, so he didn’t have her vaccinated. She got distemper and died.
Martyn died of the bowel cancer in 2003. I sat on his bed in Hull Royal Infirmary in 2003 watching the PatientLine rip-off telly together; we watched Saddam Hussein’s statue being pulled down by a bulldozer, so obviously staged, we just looked at each other.
Vaccines eliminated smallpox. They were on track to wipe out polio, but a conspiracy theory fucked that up.
@ Blunderbuss January 17, 2019 at 19:40
‘CDC video PROVES that vaccines are being rushed to market without proper testing and verification’:
http://www.vaccines.news/2018-10-25-cdc-video-proves-that-vaccines-are-being-rushed-to-market.html
Proof that all the talk about adequate testing is bo**ocks, from the CDC itself.
To have a child die of a natural illness is tragic; but imagine if parents have a perfectly healthy baby, take it for ‘vaccinations’, and the vaccinations kill the baby. How much more devastating is that:
‘Doctors whitewash killing of infant who died after 8 simultaneous vaccinations’:
http://www.vaccines.news/2016-02-25-doctors-whitewash-killing-of-infant-who-died-after-8-simultaneous-vaccinations.html
As for the polio vaccine: ‘Massive CDC cover-up under way as “polio-like” illness spreads’:
http://www.vaccines.news/2018-11-19-cdc-cover-up-under-way-as-polio-like-illness-spreads.html
‘…Over the past several years, the mainstream media has taken notice that hundreds upon hundreds of children are becoming mysteriously paralyzed by the disease, which does, in fact, have a link to the polio virus found in polio vaccines.
As it turns out, tests revealed that polio-vaccinated children had enterovirus D-68 in their bodies – enterovirus D-68 being a “cousin” of the polio virus that wreaked havoc throughout the earlier part of the 20th century.
Research published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) admits that, at the very least, a vaccine link to AFM can’t be completely ruled out, despite how the pro-vaccine lobby tries to convince everyone that vaccines are 100 percent safe and effective at all times.
“It is taboo to suggest a role for vaccines, but some old-timers remember ‘provocation poliomyelitis’ or ‘provocation paralysis,’” this study states.
“This is paralytic polio following intramuscular injections, typically with vaccines … If a polio-like virus is circulating in the U.S., the possibility of its provocation by one or more vaccines has to be considered.”….’
CDC, FDA, EPA – all ‘Regulatory Agencies’ who have been sold out to the Corporations.
Anyone who believes the prattling safety assurances of these Corporation mouthpieces needs their heads examined.
Until you will look at the scientific evidence, and examine it in proper perspective, continuing to push anti-vaccination propaganda is irresponsible. Paul, it is an evil thing to do, because adding your influence to other ill-informed opinion increases suffering and death.
vaccines.news is not a scientific source. It does not place the risks of vaccines in their proper perspective, which is to compare them with the risks of the diseases they prevent. But all you will say about scientific sources is that they are all part of a conspiracy, while never considering that the sources you promote are effectively a conspiracy themselves.
It is dishonest to pretend that the medical profession promote vaccines as “100 percent safe and effective at all times”. It does not.
And Paul, having met you, I can make a fair guess of what lies behind the conspiracy theories you promote; you know, the bits you never mention because they might get your comments deleted and eventually get you banned. That sort of concealment, and the sort of dishonesty I point out above – deciding that the end justifies exaggeration, concealment and dishonesty – is precisely the sort of Machiavellianism that you claim to oppose.
Paul Barbara,
I’ve done some research, and it seems very likely that the article you linked, “Doctors whitewash killing of infant who died after 8 simultaneous vaccinations”, is Fake News.
Care to discuss this?
Just one of the pieces of evidence – the article claims:
– “Although an autopsy was conducted on Matthew’s body, even after more than a year, the results remain undisclosed”
But coroner’s reports are public records:
https://firstamendmentcoalition.org/2009/06/access-to-coroners-report/
Paul, is the promotion of untruth a Christian principle?
For all my searching, the only mention of this story seems to be multiple anti-vax sites all telling the same highly sensationalised story, one independent blog which is sceptical, and two fundraising sites. The GoFundMe fundraiser has shut down, but it appears in Google’s cache:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7AmebbkiwkkJ:https://uk.gofundme.com/4q7qng
The funding campaign was set up by “Heather Obray”, whose profile seems US-centric, but note that the cached URL above is “uk.gofundme” According to the page, the Matthew Gage Downing-Powers campaign was set up on the very day he died. From the page source (link at top of page):
– “I created this page to help raise money for the Downing/Powers Family. Their an amazing family going through something no one should ever have to go through. Their youngest of four boys Matthew Gage passed away suddenly this morning (October 9th, 2013) at the young age of 5 1/2 Months Old. The Family is hurting, at a loss, and is in need of help to raise money for funeral expenses. Anything you can donate is greatly appreciated!!! THANK YOU ALL AND GOD BLESS!”
Note “funeral expenses”. But the anti-vax sites say the hospital refused to release the body, cremated it, and only returned the ashes – I doubt that’s remotely legal. OK, all this doesn’t prove the whole story’s a scam, but it all looks highly suspect to me.
Still, if inventing emotive lies puts people off vaccination it’s a good thing, right Paul? Even if some of them catch serious diseases, die, or infect other people, right? Because of course you’re highly skilled in epidemiology, obviously.
Now. Polio.
I happened to know someone crippled by polio. He was a few years older than me. Still, better than getting vaccinated, eh Paul? ‘Cos that’s “against nature”, isn’t it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliomyelitis#Epidemiology
– “Following the widespread use of poliovirus vaccine in the mid-1950s, the incidence of poliomyelitis declined dramatically in many industrialized countries. A global effort to eradicate polio began in 1988, led by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and The Rotary Foundation. These efforts have reduced the number of annual diagnosed cases by 99.9 percent; from an estimated 350,000 cases in 1988 to a low of 483 cases in 2001, after which it remained at a level of about 1,000 – 2000 cases per year for a number of years. In 2015, cases decreased to 98 and further decreased in 2016 to 37 wild cases and 5 circulating vaccine-derived cases, but increased in 2017 to 22 wild cases and 91 circulating vaccine-derived cases“
Oooh! LOOK at the cover-up! And in any case, 91 deliberately inflicted cases are far worse than 350,000 natural, God given cases, aren’t they Paul?
Let’s hope They never manage to wipe out this part of God’s divine gift of creation with their, evil, Luciferian vaccines, like they did the wonderful smallpox, eh Paul?
Talk to me, Paul. There are reasons that I take the positions I do – beyond the possibilities that I’m either stupid, evil, “need my head examining” etc.
Purely for the pleasure of tit-for-tat, I’m going to suggest that the resounding silence I hear is the result of…
Cognitive Dissonance.
‘The Truth About Vaccines!’: https://www.facebook.com/ttavdocuseries/photos/a.414431658915748/714819245543653/?type=3&theater
Click on the arrows and get another set of great arguments against the present US vaccine schedule for infants and children.
No I’m not going to Facebook for information about a scientific matter. In fact I never go to Facebook if I can avoid it.
Discuss with me. There is a scientific community; it is huge, and its members are in contact with other people all over the world. Its findings are made publicly available; science could not have achieved the marvels that it has if this were otherwise. By disregarding scientific evidence you seem to be dismissing almost the entire scientific community, and all their families and associates, as some sort of conspiracy, or sufferers of mass delusion. This is untenable, and utterly unconvincing except to the most paranoid of minds.
Parts of science become distorted, often through corporate influence. This is an interest of mine. Many instances are documented in Ben Goldacre’s books Bad Science and Bad Pharma, which you have refused to read.
There are several massive epidemiological studies that show that there is no difference between the rates of autism in vaccinated and unvaccinated people. Similar but converse studies show that there is no difference in the vaccination rates between autistic and non-autistic people. This is evidence from massive public databases to which many thousands of researchers have access.
Vaccines have dangers. This is not a secret, as dishonest sites pretend. It is very well quantified, and the protection offered by vaccines far, far outweigh their risks.
If you are incapable of reassessing, if you refuse to consider facts because you fear that your current position might be proven wrong, you are displaying the same intransigence that afflicts our world with war.
Most vaccines make relatively little profit because their patents expired years ago. I suspect you’ll find that this is why Cheney’s mob whipped up the bird flu scare – it was a way of selling a recently developed vaccine. But this is not a topic covered in Bad Pharma. I expect you’ll scoff for that reason and assume that Goldacre is “part of the conspiracy”, but there is a vast amount of information in that book and Goldacre has been a thorn in the side of the pharmaceutical corporations and the regulators. But you won’t find out unless you read the books. Read them in order because you’ll be needing the understanding in Bad Science before you can tackle the more complex deceptions of the pharmaceutical corporations covered by Bad Pharma.
Have you studied the HIV fraud?
Due to politics and the death of Freddy Mercury the HI Virus was blamed for AIDS, but it was deemed something everyone could catch and the authorities threatened an epidemic, mass slaughter, and sent a warning, safe sex, message to every household.
But it never happened because the HI Virus was harmless and Freddy died due to prolific drug taking, of the chemical variety, that destroyed his immune system. But far more £millions were ear marked to cure AIDS than for real and actual virulent illnesses.
And the cure is worse than the ‘infection’, but costs £millions. Due to the few cases in the West, they found a new crop in Africa, ‘Black Africans’, wanting at one time the South African government to spend 25% of its GNP on drugs from Big Pharma to cure the problem, when clean water and a healthy diet and education would be far more effective.
Right. So yet again we have an “the entire scientific and medical community are conspiring against the people” argument.
Just because you, personally have no connection with anyone in the scientific community, and know no science, doesn’t mean that everyone else does too. The technological world you inhabit, and the technology you happily use, would not work and could not have been developed without (mostly) free and (mostly) open science. Unless you think it was imparted by super-intelligent aliens or something, in which case you should just come out and say so.
Everything in your comment is false.
Except this:
– “But far more £millions were ear marked to cure AIDS than for
real and actualother virulent illnesses”“Studying” involves more than extensive reading of conspiracy theory websites.
We have a commenter on this site, a dedicated supporter of the Palestinians, a relative of Dr Halpin (look him up) who worked for decades in nuclear medicine. We have an occasional commenter, a dedicated supporter of the Palestinians and a very articulate critic of neoconservatism, who is a GP and A&E doctor in Glasgow. We have a regular commenter married to a lifelong health professional.
These are the sort of people your conspiracy theory condemns as either stupid or evil.
How do you know as they haven’t all commented.
If you genuinely have an interest in science and cover-ups, I could tell you of one I suspect myself, but discussing that before you have a basic understanding of how science proceeds and how the scientific community interact would be foolhardy.
Some people choose a career in science just as a job, or because they got good grades and just sit on the conveyor belt. But vast numbers are drawn to science because of their curiosity about physical reality. Huge numbers go into health work or medical science because they have a deeply felt desire to help other people and alleviate suffering. I know this first hand; I was at school and university with such people, and I am still in contact with some of them.
The idea that such people would just “say whatever they’re told to keep their jobs” is ludicrous. For a start, science is competitive; for anyone who can overturn the prevailing view, career advancement and prestige, and possibly fame and fortune await – though curiosity and improvement of theory and understanding are more usually their prime motivators. But beyond that, if the conspiracy model of science were true, where would science have come from? The politicians and financiers who hold the purse strings have barely a scientific thought in their heads; there’s no way that the members of the power structure could come up with the magnificent and internally consistent edifice of science, and simply impose it upon an unwilling scientific community, let alone a scam that looks like science, works for the technologies we all use every day, but is warped in the specific places claimed by conspiracy theorists. Perpetrating such a deception would demand literally super-human intelligence and super-human knowledge of the laws of nature.
The usual lengthy waffle! The HI Virus is harmless, but was deemed a harmful sexually transmitted virus that weaken the immune system and resulted in people catching any illnesses going. I.e. AIDS. Except its nonsense as Freddy Mercury died to prolific chemical drug taking, which was a lifestyle drug for many Gays, destroying his immune system.
But because it was deemed a “Gay disease” it was a political hot potato, with righteous polemics, and so the authorities made out everyone could get it, requiring the spending of £millions to stop its spread.
Except there never was a big spread of the ‘disease’ because HI Virus is harmless. Chemical drugs, as opposed to plant based drugs, are toxic and too much is poisonous and weakens (can destroy) the immune system. Just as, if you are feeling tired, hungry and run down weakens the immune system.
But in the mad world of the West wearing an AIDS ribbon was seen a ‘right-on’ and fed into the ‘progressive agenda’, resulting in politically correct health spending far surpassing more widespread illnesses.
But in the absence of the forecast epidemic, Big Pharma looked for new recruits and found a bountiful supply in Africa where HIV was found to be endemic and they got taxpayers to fund “anti-AIDS” treatments costing billions, but the treatment was worse than the illness, and irrelevant compared to the actual illnesses such as TB, Malaria, dirty water, poor education and diet that affected many in Africa.
Dave, it is really sad to see that you have been misled by, frankly, quacks and cranks, but it is entirely consistent with your climate science denial, and your denial of the findings of the engineering community regarding the collapses of the Twin Towers.
There are two ways to proceed. The connection between HIV and AIDS can be examined as a scientific matter. Or the degree of accuracy of work of the scientific community can be examined as a conspiracy matter.
Your understanding of science is clearly shown to be minimal by statements like this:
– “Chemical drugs, as opposed to plant based drugs, are toxic and too much is poisonous and weakens (can destroy) the immune system”
This is the naturalistic fallacy, and straight out of the quacks’ “How to Deceive the Scientifically Uneducated” playbook. All the substances around us are “chemicals”; I could call water “dihydrogen monoxide” if I wanted to make it sound scary and toxic, or I could say “sodium chloride” instead of salt. And many, many drugs come from plants, for instance heroin is diamorphine, isomerised from from morphine, which is refined from opium, gathered from poppies. What do you suppose the following terrifying “chemical” may be?
(R)-3,4-Dihydroxy-5-((S)- 1,2-dihydroxyethyl)furan-2(5H)-one
@ Dave January 23, 2019 at 10:59
Dave, there is a reason HIV is ‘endemic’ in Africa, but if I explain it here for sure my comment will be removed.
If you are interested, message me on Facebook (you may have to ‘friend’ me first).
Dave you didn’t engage with the question; what’s the difference between salt and sodium chloride? How do you decide what’s a “chemical” and what isn’t? Do you just accept whatever your favourite websites tell you?
Paul, does that mean you think Jews are behind the African HIV epidemic?
I’m being quite reasonable as I don’t subscribe to HIV/AIDS being a “Gay disease”. Its just another money making scam propelled by progressive politics and commercial virtue signalling!
I accept, like the climate scam (although all topics should be considered separately) it has its sincere believers and sits within a certain worldview, but its easily debunked by those who claim its real.
This was illustrated in Parliament when a Labour MP stood up and said he was coming out and disclosed he was HIV positive and had been for about 10 years but despite having the deadly virus was fine and dandy!!!
In Africa the HI Virus is a genetic inheritance, but I think its a different variant to what originally attracted attention in the West. But its difficult to transmit and like many viruses, easily controlled by the immune system. Web search HIV Hoax.
That MP is almost certainly on the anti-retroviral drugs that you claim should kill him.
Dave, a very general question; what are your thoughts and feelings about science?
HI Virus is harmless, so the “anti-retroviral” drugs are worse than virus because they can have side effects, unlikely deadly, as that would limit the profits to be made, but as the virus is harmless, I’m sure the MP is doing well from a healthy diet and exercise rather than the “anti-retroviral” drugs (if) taken!
So all those people who died of AIDS were just faking it, you reckon?
As HI Virus is harmless it can’t weaken the immune system. AIDS denotes a weakened immune system that results in people catching diseases. People die from any fatal disease caught due to a weakened immune system. Many things can weaken the immune system, but the prolific taking of lifestyle chemical drugs destroyed the immune system of certain VIPs, which for whatever reason was blamed on HI Virus rather than the drugs taken and then the whole thing became very political with common sense going out the window.
This seems very unbalanced; you and Paul state your beliefs, and often repeat them, but neither of you engage in discussion; neither of you answer questions.
It seems like a sort of ratchet for promoting your beliefs. Do you regard this as a good way for people to interact?
Dave: “As HI Virus is harmless it can’t weaken the immune system.”
This is pretty bold claim, and runs entirely contrary to medical understanding. I doubt very much that you have any good reason for your views, other than simplistic one-liners which you’ll doubtless regard as proof in itself.
Your characterising all AIDS patients as drug addicts with weak immune systems is a gross, not to say scandalous slur.
Glenn, it’s the conspiracy theory promoted by Matthias Rath:
– “The Doctor Will Sue You Now”
https://www.badscience.net/2009/04/matthias-rath-steal-this-chapter/
As usual Glen-nl is being slippery, as I never said all weakened immune systems are due to prolific or even non-prolific chemical drug taking.
Same question to you, Paul. Obviously you’re quite prepared to cite ‘science’ when it supports your preconceptions, but that’s cherry-picking at best, and sometimes it means you support pseudoscience, eg. Dane Wigington’s blatant deceptions.
Science is a wonderful thing, but you need to retain some common sense when considering these matters. I don’t subscribe to the idea that HIV/AIDS was invented by Whites or Jews to kill Blacks, because as I’ve said its a harmless virus, but it is a money making scam.
Indeed Western medicine and vaccines has resulted in an explosion of the African population with probably half being under 25 and heading for Europe as part of the Globalist agenda. Read Camp of the Saints.
Dave, I’ve looked up Camp of the Saints and read a plot summary; it is about an enormous influx of immigrants from poorer countries into richer countries. It is reported to be very well written, so maybe I will read it one day. But it is a novel, and as a work of fiction it has no bearing upon scientific questions.
I have a great deal of questions because I find your outlook very different from my own, and it seems very difficult for me to understand. The questions concern various different subjects. Would you work through these questions with me to help me understand your outlook?
I haven’t read Camp of Saints either, but I am aware of its message, that the West is so politically correct it wont defend its borders and indeed promotes defenceless borders and mass-immigration from younger and poorer countries as masochistic virtue signalling!
My outlook is Homosexuality is due to nature not nurture and so I ignore the religious polemics about it and AIDS, but I understand why they consider it a sin, as they do many things, usually sexual activity, that threaten their ideal of the family.
These views predate the invention of the contraceptive pill which has led to a social revolution, but which takes time for religious teaching to adjust to, particularly in the universalist religions, who want to maintain unity, who cover large parts of the world where there has been no pill/social revolution.
This has no bearing upon whether HIV causes AIDS, which is a scientific question.
It is also false; I know of no countries with open borders. People are routinely denied entry to, and deported from, for instance, the UK.
So you are from the “we don’t have open borders because we only let in one million a year” school of thought?
I’ve explained the AIDS hoax, its elementary. HI Virus is harmless. People are ill/dying from illnesses caught due (or not due) to a weakened immune system. In the past Africans were dying from various illnesses such as TB, Malaria, but now this has been spun for political/commercial reasons with the claim they’re all dying of AIDS!
You have not “explained the AIDS hoax”. There is a large body of scientific research regarding the way HIV causes AIDS, and you have barely engaged with my question above; “what are your thoughts and feelings about science?”
What do you think science is and how do you think it is conducted?
I’m not convinced that you know or acknowledge the difference between fact and opinion.
Dave, you’ve mentioned “elementary hoax” before, so I assume you still think the low CO2 concentration means that CO2 can’t cause global warming. I tried to explain why that isn’t scientific, but I expect you think that “scientific” is just a pretentious way of saying “opinion”. But it isn’t. There is a very specific reason why the low concentration argument doesn’t work, and I’ll show you why if you wish.
You’re in a bubble of your own with a great imagination dressed up as science. I don’t need to know the technical details and terms, because they are covered by experts on websites explaining the hoax. But the absence of the forecast epidemic used to excuse excessively disproportionate health funding is a good starting point for a sceptic.
Dave, there’s no need to insult me. I’m no virologist, and I doubt you are either. But I certainly can address the low CO2 concentration argument. You had accepted that argument, but it can easily be shown to be wrong.
In science, if a claim is wrong, the author retracts it. You should never have encountered the low CO2 concentration argument because it is wrong, it should have been retracted. The fact that it hasn’t been suggests that the sites still promoting it are doing propaganda; they are certainly not doing science.
The same almost certainly applies to the sites denying the link between HIV and AIDS, but that’s beyond my competence. But I can show you how to bring the CO2 argument within your competence, which will help you know which sites you can’t trust.
Higher concentrations of CO2 are good for the environment as is a warmer planet.
Dave, you seem to be playing God there. Depending on temperature rise there will be land area loss due to ice melt, water expansion and consequent sea level rise. Much of the most productive land is coastal. If you want to avoid mass migration, climate change is definitely not the way to go.
You’ve also sidestepped the question. Are you now saying that the low CO2 concentration does not prove global warming is a massive deception? Have you revised your opinion of the sites that told you it was?
We went through a very similar process regarding the collapses of the Twin Towers. At first I was supposed to see that the collapses proved pre-rigged demolition, but when the evidence for that proved to be absent, I was supposed to think about the aircraft impacts instead. There’s a pattern here; moving the goal posts like this is not a scientific way of proceeding.
CO2 is a tiny fraction of the atmosphere and is irrelevant to changes in climate, and even if it had some influence, the man made bit is irrelevant as its a tiny fraction of naturally occurring and variable CO2. Simples!
And you’re on your own on 9/11.
Dave: “Simples!”
Actually, “Idiotic” is a far better description. As ever, you have idiotic one-liners that you – in your supreme arrogance not to say simplified views – consider more profound than the accumulated wisdom of countless experts in the field. Quite astonishing.
“On my own” – with the dozens of academics and engineers listed on the following page, the hundreds cited on the rest of the same blog, and the tens of thousands of US architects and structural engineers who voted down A&E9/11Truth’s motions at their professional societies’ meetings:
http://911-engineers.blogspot.com/2007/06/some-journal-papers-about-wtc-on-911.html
You really need to get out more Dave. There’s an effect people fall victim to called a “filter bubble”:
– “A filter bubble […] is a state of intellectual isolation that allegedly can result from personalized searches when a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user, such as location, past click-behavior and search history. As a result, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble
This can lead to confirmation bias:
– “Confirmation bias, also called confirmatory bias or myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. Confirmation bias is a variation of the more general tendency of apophenia”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
You did it again below in answer to Glenn; five thousand researchers, and all you could say was “Why was it held in Durban?”
For all you probably resent my efforts, I’m actually trying to help you break free of the influence of people who deceive you. I’m trying to help you be your own rather than pwnd.
You know, if you really think that “science is a wonderful thing” as you said, shouldn’t you take notice of what the vast majority of scientists are trying to tell you?
On HIV / AIDS, the reference Clark gave quoted the Durban Declaration, signed up to by 5,000 researchers and activists around the world.
———-
The evidence that AIDS is caused by HIV-1 or HIV-2 is clearcut, exhaustive and unambiguous… As with any other chronic infection, various co-factors play a role in determining the risk of disease. Persons who are malnourished, who already suffer other infections or who are older, tend to be more susceptible to the rapid development of AIDS following HIV infection. However, none of these factors weaken the scientific evidence that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS… Mother-to-child transmission can be reduced by half or more by short courses of antiviral drugs … What works best in one country may not be appropriate in another. But to tackle the disease, everyone must first understand that HIV is the enemy. Research, not myths, will lead to the development of more effective and cheaper treatments.
———-
This really should be the last word on the subject for anyone with a scrap of honesty. Will Dave read it? Noooooo. Will he understand and respond to it? Nooooooo. He has his _own_ experts on some crank site somewhere, and to hell with the millions of deaths caused by such profound arrogance and ignorance. Damn him and his know-nothing BS.
Why was it held in Durban? Was it because the new Black government was being as resistant to the Globalists as the White?
Why ask me, Simples Dave? Why not ask some of the thousands of researchers who signed up to that report, and people on the ground who know what they’re talking about. They can tell you why it was signed there.
While you’re at it, you can enlighten them about the truth about their vocations – you being such an expert and all in cutting to the “Simples”, and bask in their gratitude.
“HI Virus is the sole cause of AIDS”. Except AIDS as denotes a weakened immune system its elementary that many things can weaken the immune system, thus causing AIDS including being tired, hungry and cold. Simples!
But reality isn’t simple Dave. That’s why we need science.
Of course you can act simple if you want to.
But not your faith science.
If you say so darling xx
“Simples” Dave is just trying his hand at being a contrarian, as a sort-of intellectual exercise. What he’s actually proving, however, is one of Mark Twain’s maxims – that you can never win an argument with an idiot. He’ll drag you to his own level, and beat you with his superior experience there.
But you have to admit he’s cute, eh?
Hey Dave, methylated spirit starts out colourless; what concentration of methyl violet do you suppose they put in it to make it go that purple colour?
This is the CO2 concentration / wavelength absorption issue in a slightly different form.
Do I hear 410 parts per million? (Up from Dave’s 380) No?
Do I hear 40 PPM? No…
Do I hear 4 PPM? No??!
Surely such a low concentration can’t absorb all the green light…
Elementary! With Tom Lehrer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGM-wSKFBpo
And we have a result…
…and it’s less than two parts per million folks!
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2005/1524/schedule/crossheading/formulation-for-completely-denatured-alcohol/made
So your eyes have been deceiving you, and methylated spirit isn’t purple; it’s completely colourless! Simples! Elementary!
Have you read this, Clark? Did so myself while down in Portugal recently:
http://samkean.com/books/the-disappearing-spoon/
Glenn, no I haven’t, but I’ll put it on my list.
Dave, so to get back to the science, why do you continue to hold that 410 PPM CO2 cannot colour the atmosphere, when under 2 PPM methyl violet can colour methylated spirit?
Bye folks, I’ll be gone for a few days.
I’m sure you know what you’re talking about!!!