Thursday, February 12, 2009
Flu Season is Here
I just checked Google Flu Trends and flu season is upon us. It's time to tighten up your diet, find a good source of vitamin D and avoid sick people. Avoid sugar, industrial vegetable oil and processed food in general as they lower immunity. If you feel like you're coming down with something, consider fasting to nip it in the bud. It works for me.
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61 comments:
sounds good! no flu shots here.
actually just keeping up with diet helps me
One of my siblings has no sense of germ control and is coughing all over the living room, which I've been in a lot and I don't feel at all sick. A different sibling had caught something from her, but she wasn't around it nearly as much as I was. Maybe sick people and germs are a vaccine in themselves, haha. For a proper diet and lifestyle that is.
woo
Or just simply get a flu shot, since this year's vaccine is an excellent match for the prevailing strains.
I have recently read that the flu is caused by a lack of vitamin D. The theory is that we actually always have the virus but our systems keep it in check. Due to the lack of vitamin D in winter our bodies are unable to keep the virus in check and we get sick.
For me, a full spectrum lamp has helped since I live the Northeast. Plus, avoiding sugary/starchy foods as they will feed any disease.
I think we are supposed to be able to properly store Vitamin D, though (doesn't that happen when you tan?)
If you get sun in the summer (which, most people do) and in the spring; I don't think winter should be a big problem - unless you are unable to store Vitamin D properly. Vitamin D does have other properties, such as making it possible for us to absorb calcium (that's it's main function).
For example, alcohol blocks the ability to properly use and absorb Vitamin D, so just think about the possibility of harmful foods or additives and how they might affect this as much or more then alcohol.
Zerkat, sorry but I think you've confused correlation with causation regarding Vitamin D and the flu.
I think because nutrition is so complicated and bound up with an entrenched dogma those of us who have rejected the mainstream view and adopted another tend to view all medicine suspiciously - and specifically, I've noted, vaccinations.
Recently Mark Sisson also posted against getting a flu vaccination and now (regrettably) Stephan.
Proper nutrition and proper micronutrient levels are without question necessary to keep our immune systems (and every other system) functioning at peak form.
This does NOT mean we are immune to infectious diseases - it merely means we've got a better chance at defeating it than someone who is weakened.
If you doubt this, please explain why tens of millions (if not hundreds of millions) of people, eating their superb natural diets, getting plenty of Vitamin D, in many cases living essentially paleolithic hunter-gatherer lives, died of small pox, plague, measles, etc?
I am talking of course about the native inhabitants of South, Central and North America, during the time period 1492 to around 1900.
Get your vaccinations, people. All of them.
@chlOe: "I think we are supposed to be able to properly store Vitamin D"
That's true, but blood levels of vitamin D first need to be raised to the level at which storage can start, about 50 ng/ml.
StephenB
Yes we do store vitamin D but when you have no access (i.e. work in a windowless office and go to work in the dark and come home in the dark) to sunlight during the winter there is no way to keep your levels up. If your stores are used up by mid-winter then you need to supplement some how. Oh and the fact that some of use work in this windowless environment year round means that we are severly deficient even in summer.
I suppose you could even get sunlight in the winter just by face. But I don't think it's quite natural to be living in an office all day either; then again, I never go in the sun that much and I haven't gotten the flu in like 6 years at least. But I agree that there are other factors to why you get sick; including, mainly, the immune system and if your body is properly balanced.
chlOe,
I'm 47 and I've never had the flu. Colds, yes, GI viruses, yes, but never a true flu. Never had any flu vaccines, either. BTW, I lived in the Triangle '86-'95 (I noticed you are located there). Miss the BBQ and my friends.
But even though I have lived in Southern California for more than a decade, I did not maintain an adequate Vit D level (avoided the sun due to a basal cell carcinoma removed ten years ago). Lots of health issues began or got worse for me during this time, but I can't say for certain it was connected with low Vit D, but I'm pretty sure it was at least a factor.
Nearly everyone I personally know who has had Vit D tested in the past year or two (about a dozen+ people), is either very low in the reference range, deficient, or even extremely deficient, unless they have been taking at least 1000iU of Vit D3 per each 25 pounds of body weight (relatively "high" doses). My doctor says that he rarely sees patients with levels in an optimal range (above 50 ng/ml).
That is the case whether they are located in Upstate NY, Seattle (that friend had a very deficient vit D3 level at time of breast cancer diagnosis), or where I live in SD, Cal. Yes, even in sunny mild coastal SD one can be deficient in Vit D (folks here do protect themselves from the sun, perhaps even more than others because of the climate and fear of aging). I also know a 45 yo mother and her two teenage sisters in Upstate NY, all three had levels below 20 ng/mL this winter - one sister has had bone problems with her spine (including a vertebra stress fracture) for several years.
My point is that sun on the face, neck, or even hands and arms likely isn't enough exposure to store up and maintain Vit D for most people, not with indoor lifestyles, massive indoctrination about sun avoidance and sunscreens, unfounded assumptions about dietary Vit D, and lack of knowledge about the importance of adequate Vit D3 from either the sun, diet, or supplements. Geographic location isn't an assurance of enough sun exposure, either (the angle of winter UV rays even in SD,CA require significant skin exposure at a narrow time range in midday to make adequate Vit D, especially for middle aged and older folks and those overweight). It's possible to get enough of the right sun angles, but one needs the ability to get outside and exposed in midday (that isn't feasible for most people). Early morning and late afternoon just doesn't provide the right angle of sunlight wavelength even here. And on the coast, it's cooler than you might imagine. I wear wool and layers many days in winter, not summer shorts and t-shirts.
The only people I know who maintain good Vit D levels also supplement rather significantly, no matter where they are located.
Yeah but what I was saying is that what you eat can greatly effect how you store and absorb Vitamin D; as well as any Vitamin.
I just brought up the facial exposure because of the eskimos - who live in alaska and the sun goes away for a while in the winter, and in the summer, they have the reflection of the snow and the sun maximizing their sunlight - but it's restricted to their face because of their heavy clothing. Only in recent modernization have they begun to get bone problems (perhaps no Vitamin D to absorb their calcium..), which people blame on their high meat diet. I think it's their adaption of modern food which probably has some effect or another on how they synthesize and use vitamins.
Yes, the reduction in fish and mammal liver consumption (high in Vit D) for the Inuit who are now on mostly industrial diets is probably a huge factor in their rise for chronic disease. They also don't have fair skin, so my guess is they might not get much as much Vit D from the sun as from diet under any condition, though maybe the reflective nature of all that bright white environment in winter helps (speculation).
While my family doesn't eat anything like an Inuit diet, I do source our meat and eggs (some of our dairy, too) from outdoor non-CAFO farmers and I'm trying to integrate more liver/offal into our food, too, with Vit A & D in mind, as well as other benefits. So while we don't consume D2 fortified milk like most people, what fluid milk we do consume is raw from a pastured herd (naturally will have some Vit D3). We also consume plenty of egg yolks from outdoor "backyard" hens, and other animal fats that should provide some Vit D as well as facilitate absorption.
We're also recently gluten-free to make sure gut absorption isn't compromised, since that may have been an issue in the past, particularly for my 10 yo old (fecal fat absorption tested as mildly compromised, but he has really heavy bones for his size and excellent resistance to tooth decay so perhaps our high fat diet made up for any malaabsorption).
So despite what I think is a pretty good diet for Vit D content and absorption, I find the whole family still needs to supplement year round with significant D3 to get the 25 (OH)D levels to get into and stay in the optimal 60-80 ng/mL range). I'd love to do it all with diet, but our 25 (OH)D tests haven't shown that to be possible yet. I'm trying to make sure we get prudent amounts of sun exposure, too, but that hasn't been enough either. My 10 yo can probably do ok without D3 in the summer months, but I know my husband and I don't get enough sun to make enough Vit D3.
http://www.virologyj.com/content/5/1/29
On the epidemiology of influenza
I keep my status over 50ng 125nmol/l with 5000iu/daily + regular sun exposure (I live in UK so this is only in summer)I won't have flu jabs but haven't had flu or a cold since increasing my 25(OH)D status however I also don't consume sugar,industrial vegetable oil or processed foods so maybe it's a combination of all these factors.
For information on vaccinations, Vaccination: The Hidden Truth is a great start. If you don't have time to watch the whole video (the one linked is part 1 of 5), there are a series of articles that cover the key topics in the video, with great graphs. One very poignant one shows how statistics have been manipulated to make it look like vaccines are responsible for the decrease in diseases when they actually are not.
And finally, here is an article specific to flu vaccinations.
Really, Senta? Do you then reject germ theory and all of the genetics that underlies it? Do you also reject all current understanding of how the immune system works?
This is the sort of pseudo-science viewpoint I'm finding disturbingly common in the low-carb/paleo diet community.
Do you actually think that vaccines cannot work? What is your basis for thinking that?
The only rational basis for questioning vaccine efficacy is this: vaccines are a manufactured product composed of an immune system stimulant (adjuvant) and the factor we want the immune system to learn.
You can question the manufacturing process - does it do what is intended with the proper level of quality assurance?
You can question how the adjuvant stimulates individual immune systems and how well the learned substance corresponds with the wild pathogen. Since vaccines are evaluated based on their population statistics there will always be pathological individual cases.
What you cannot question, unless you're a pseudo-science fan (or reject science, e.g., creationist), is that vaccinations actually work.
A vaccination is a hell of a lot better than actually getting the disease it's protecting against.
I hope you and your anti-vaccinationist ilk never get any of the horrible diseases for which there are effective vaccines, but if you should get one - don't expect any sympathy from me.
And you should expect a quite different reaction from me should this situation occur: lots of idiots refuse to get vaccinated against say, measles, leading to a large reservoir of infected hosts. Then the measles incubating in these hosts mutates into a form (thanks to the large population) that the current vaccine doesn't protect against.
Which then wreaks havoc.
Believe me, the survivors won't be sympathetic to your views.
Sam,
No, I do not reject germ theory and all of the genetics that underlies it nor do I reject all current understanding of how the immune system works. Since you answered so quickly you obviously did not watch the video, read any any of the articles or check the references, many of which are to published scientific research.
It's hard to learn something new, Sam, when you are convinced that you already know everything. Good luck with that stance.
This argument of yours I have heard before and it is unsound:
"lots of idiots refuse to get vaccinated against say, measles, leading to a large reservoir of infected hosts. Then the measles incubating in these hosts mutates into a form (thanks to the large population) that the current vaccine doesn't protect against."
With your logic, everyone in the world should also be taking antibiotics to prevent bacteria from mutating to more virulent forms. Obviously not a good idea.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Regarding your counter-argument regarding taking antibiotics:
No.
Antibiotics actively select for bacteria that are immune to them.
Vaccines passively protect against encountered pathogens. There's no active selection process.
Do you want to try again?
Sam,
No need to try again since you still did not watch the video or read any of the articles that were linked. There is plenty of information there about active vs. passive immunity as well as the innate and adaptive immune systems.
OK Senta, I bit. I scanned the linked articles.
Sure enough, it's the same correlation confused with causation endemic (lol) to poorly educated people who cannot understand nor accept science. (Not to mention remarkable innumeracy.)
The anti-vaccination movement is filled with people cut from the same cloth as that of the creationists.
Amusingly, some of the complaints on the site are actually the rational arguments I presented above. Of course, they claim that all vaccine adjuvants cause widespread harm and that vaccine immunity is always a poor fit for the actual pathogen. Evidently, no doubt for every vaccine ever made or to be made.
Stephan:
Over the Xmas holidays I started coming down with a cold and went from 3k D3 per day to 12k per day, three days straight. Each time, within hours, symptoms (scratchy throat, runny nose) that were only about 25% as severe as I usually have, diminished to nothing, only to return the next morning. By the morning of day 4, nothing, and never to return.
Sounds far fetched, but that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.
Sam,
Cool it. You're free to disagree with anyone here, including me. But you need to debate the issue instead of slinging insults and attacking peoples' intelligence. That's not the way to get to the truth or convince others.
I think you are not aware of the controlled trial that evaluated the effect of vitamin D supplementation on the occurrence of flu. Here's
the result. Thus, no one here is confusing correlation with causation.
Second, I'm nobody's nanny. If people want to get a flu shot, they are free to do so. I won't be getting one because I'm young and healthy, and I don't want an injection of toxins designed to prevent a non-life-threatening illness that I rarely get anyway.
Flu can be life-threatening in the elderly, but there is no consensus even in the medical community on whether flu vaccines even reduce mortality in the elderly. The problem is the selection bias in these studies: people who motivate themselves to get a flu vaccine may be healthier in other ways. See these papers:
1. Lenzer J. Bias alone could account for benefit attributed to flu vaccine, study finds.
BMJ 2008;337:a1550
2. Dean T., et al. Mortality Reduction with Influenza Vaccine in Patients with Pneumonia Outside “Flu” Season - Pleiotropic Benefits or Residual Confounding? American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 2008;178:527-533
Ack!
Correction. I take 6k per day (but only since the last few months) and I upped that to 18k per day for three days to kill that cold.
Stephan,
I snidely addressed Senta's pervasive anti-science mindset and only insulted his linked website - and you, being a doctoral candidate in neurobiology, should be sympathetic to the problems of dealing with willful ignorance.
Zerkat alleged that flu was *caused* by a lack of Vit. D and I properly challenged his assertion. I also noted that proper nutrition plays an important (but not determinative) role in sucessfully fending off infectious disease. Vaccinations certainly play a determinative role.
(I also note that nobody has bothered to answer why the native American populations were annihilated by infectious disease if proper nutrition is so powerful.)
As far as the Vitamin D study - I don't have access to the paper, but googling the researchers' names popped up a powerpoint presentation containing a summary of their results:
www.usuhs.mil/mem/champpresentations/VitaminDandInfluenza.ppt
The presentation of the paper's results shows the same thing. Vit. D supplementation reduces flu incidence. BTW, that's not a strong causal link. Strong causality can rarely be ethically determined in the medical sciences, since you can't deliberately infect your human subjects....
Your "... an injection of toxins..." is a disturbing comment from someone at your level in the biological sciences and due to how emotionally loaded it is makes for an effective conversation-stopper.
Are you an anti-vaccinationist?
If you don't mind, I'd like to know the answer to that question. Up until now you've build a great reservoir of credibility with me and I won't like to have to reevaluate that.
Sam,
I am not against vaccinations on principle. The toxins I'm referring to are the formaldehyde, mercury and aluminum present in many vaccines. I don't know the ingredients of the common flu vaccine, but I recently got a tetanus booster and asked for the ingredients. It contained significant amounts of the three ingredients I mentioned.
I'll risk being injected with toxins to avoid diseases like tetanus, but not for an occasional minor disease like flu.
Oh and as for the native American populations, I don't think anyone is arguing that a good diet will protect all people from all infectious disease. There is clearly a genetic component.
But for a given genome, a good diet will generally protect against infections better than a poor diet.
Actually, confusing correlation with causation is exactly what vaccine proponents do. As demonstrated by the charts on this page, they have taken advantage of falling disease rates to claim that vaccines are the cause of the decline. But disease rates had already been declining and continued to decline even in unvaccinated populations. Vaccine proponents are masters at "How to Lie with Statistics."
As far as unvaccinated people harboring mutant strains of viruses - the new, more dangerous, atypical forms - that has never been proven. Only people who have been vaccinated actually come down with with the atypical forms. People who are unvaccinated do not come down with atypical diseases at all. You would think that with all those unvaccinated people harboring a virulent, mutant strain that at least one person would succumb to the disease. Vaccine proponents throw up a smokescreen, blaming the unvaccinated for the failure of their vaccines.
Toxic adjuvants are required to make vaccines "work." They are designed to enhance the immune response to the antigen (the micro-organism thought to be causing the disease which the vaccine is supposed to prevent) causing the production of IgG antibodies. So it is impossible to get a vaccine without the toxic adjuvants, not to mention the toxic preservatives (mercury, aluminum) and fixatives.
"Looking at it from an immunological point of view, the only "evidence" that is ever provided for their so-called effectiveness is that the vaccination succeeds in stimulating the immune system to produce antibodies. In fact the degree of success in doing this is the way that the effectiveness is often measured. However a false assumption is being made that the IgG antibodies produced will bring immunity.
In reality the immune system is far more complex than this. It has actually been established that there are very many processes that the body needs to go through in order to develop immunity. One example, which is probably the best of these understood (immunologically speaking), is that, at the minimum, the activation of the secretory antibody IgA needs to occur, which has an important role in the whole process. This, and many other processes that occur in the outer levels of defence, are BYPASSED by injections.
Dr Peter Baratosy has drawn a good analogy, which is that vaccination is a bit like trying to get a car to move just by pressing on the accelerator without putting it in gear. It makes lots of noise but does not move a single inch.
*Recently (as of 16/7/2004), a woman with a PhD in immunology confessed that she was not in favour of vaccination. When asked why, she said "Well, looking at serum through the microscope I could see that the antibodies went right past the vaccine-injected antigens as if they weren't even there." (When she was then asked, "Would you be willing to put that in writing?" she replied, "No, I would lose my job.")
So, as Dr Archie Kalokerinos says, you can have tons of antibodies and still get the disease, even die from the disease. Dr Archie Kalokerinos also goes further to say that you can actually have NO antibodies and yet still not contract the disease when exposed. In fact most of the time that we are exposed to a foreign invader, it does not even reach anywhere near the deep level to which we are injecting it with vaccines – we deal with it easily in the outer levels and might even develop immunity just from that."
Stephan,
Completely OT but this just jumped into my google reader. Thought it might interest.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090213-human-diet-cooking.html
"Interesting" conclusion to that article. As there usually is to Nat Geo and Sci Am articles... 1.5 years of evolution leads to certain practices, which are deemed unwise. :) How did you put it in your previous post? That powerful cultural norms keep people from accepting the obvious? Something like that.
FYI, the Vitamin D Council has some interesting speculation on the potential link between mercury toxicity from vaccines and vitamin D deficiency, since vitamin D is very important in detoxifying heavy metals. Sorry, I have not yet figured out how to embed links: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/vit-D-and-brain.shtml#hd4
The topic of vaccines is a controversial one. I think it's definitely an interesting topic that gets (or should get) people thinking about the role of government in our lives. It's an issue I've thought about extensively from that standpoint. I haven't looked into the science in any depth so I can't offer any profound opinions on vaccines. I'm not against them. However, I think it's an unconscionable violation of individual rights to *force* vaccines on people who don't want them. I know of one woman who spent three years in a wheelchair after a tetanus shot from age 13-16, of another person who was brain damaged from the pertussis "hot lot" days, and another person whose entire right side of his body was numb for an entire day after getting a tetanus shot -- this last case was relatively recent. I don't think it's a coincidence that most of the people reporting what they believe to be vaccine "damage" are reporting *neurological* symptoms. There aren't going to be any objective studies on such issues when the government is so heavily involved in promoting the practice based on the idea of "herd" immunity.
Those who think vaccines are a completely unmitigated benefit should perhaps ponder the implications of the existence of the government's National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which has to this date dispensed billions of dollars to vaccine-injured individuals. The risk from vaccines is small, sure. But that's a risk that people should be able to decide for themselves. That's not what we have. What we have is the government forcing products into peoples' bodies with the threat of lethal force if they don't comply. What is worse is that the presence of some "proprietary" protein adjuvants aren't even revealed on the label. That is not informed consent. While I don't have a problem with companies doing this, or with people able to choose for themselves whether they want to inject unknown proprietary proteins into their bloodstream, in too many cases there is no choice about it -- or at least, the government makes it very difficult for people to opt out. When the government requires vaccinations it decreases any kind of competetive impetus that would occur in a free market to improve a product. Imagine if the government forced everyone into buying a GM car and paid out whenever the car was faulty and resulted in someone getting injured, rather than the company being directly responsible. That's not exactly a recipe for quality control on the part of a manufacturer.
Some other things to consider are that across the country, pediatric practices are compensated by the government for maintaining certain vax compliance rates. Also, companies that manufacture new vaccines actively lobby state governments to get their products on the list of required vaccines, as was the case of Merck with their HPV vaccine called Gardasil. That's *disgusting*.
Personally, I'm pretty confident that vaccines have provided an enormous benefit to our country and indeed the world. But NEVER would I seek to force my judgment or product on others through the law. That's a crucial difference.
Senta, I was under the impression that thimerosal is being removed form childhood vaccines or some single dose vial vaccines. Do you have any more information on that? If this is true, and what you say about the adjuvants being required to stimulate the immune system (which I've read elsehwere) it would seem that these vaccines aren't going to work as well without the adjuvants.
Monica,
I liked this:
"The shift to cooking is reflected in modern human anatomy. For one, our jaws are considerably smaller—and thus less able to bite into hard foods—than those of our earliest ancestors.
Also, our gut is not set up for processing raw items as effectively as cooked food.
What set us apart from apes, Northwestern's Leonard said, was a need for a high-quality, high-calorie diet, combined with a drive to be active over a large area."
We have weak guts due to a long history of cooking our food and skimming the most nutrient-dense resources off of just about any ecosystem, which may have been a factor in allowing our brains to expand. We need extremely high-quality food relative to other omnivores. By "high-quality" I mean extremely nutrient- and calorie-dense. All this stuff about eating tons of fibrous veggies and diluting the calories is hogwash in my opinion. Our digestive system just doesn't function optimally with that much roughage.
And that guy's conclusion at the end of the article is ridiculous. I'm going to post on the latest paleo diet clinical trial in a few days. It makes the guy they interviewed in that article sound like a chump.
Both Nat Geo and Sci Am get delivered into my feed reader. I have concluded after reading many popular articles from these sources, on topics of interest to me or even in my own field, that most of what these two sources put out is utter s***. Well, let me qualify that. There is usually a smattering of truth in each article, but the concluding statements by the reporter are so woefully ignorant that it beggars belief. Almost always the articles conclude with some contrary bit thrown in for fun that has nothing to do with the actual science. It's something they must learn in journalism school.
I'm always suspicious popular science articles on topics where I don't know much about the field at hand. I've seen too much crap produced by clueless reporters, even in mycology (hardly a controversial field most of the time!), to take anything I read in the popular press too seriously. I'm not even sure the scientists are quoted accurately all the time, either. For instance, Leonard's concluding statement in that article is puzzling. I don't know the guy, but his concluding "quotes" are completely at odds with his other statements. Which paleo books are dangerous? I'd like his opinion on that one.
Even the "facts" presented in the articles are often problematic. If it's not from someone I trust or if it's not in the scientific literature and I can verify by reading it that it's good science done well, I'm usually skeptical of it. Such is the sorry state of science reporting in 2009.
Well I know I'm starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist so I'll shut up now. :)
I'll give you an example, though. (See? I can't quit.) There's a documentary called Planet Earth produced by BBC (a most dubious source of news, IMO) that claims that there are 1000 species of Cordyceps (insect pathogenic fungi) and each species has its own species of host.
It's a film with some amazing footage and artistry, but this information is utterly false. There is no group of parasites that's that specific. I work with the most host specific insect pathogenic fungi and on average, each fungal species in the group is capable of infection 2-3 host species with some considerable overlap in hosts. To my knowledge, the most recent papers on Cordyceps indicate about 400 known species (there probably are 1000 or more but they're not known to science at this point) and from what we know of their host specificity, which is precious little, they're probably not very host specific at all. There's no possible way that level of host specificity could even be determined in Cordyceps hosts since most of them are decayed by the fungus by the time they are found. At best, Cordyceps species are likely specific only to the family level.
When I hear conclusions like this in popular pieces that are obvious distortions of the known facts (I can't imagine any mycologist who would put out such faulty numbers and create ridicule for themselves amongst their colleagues) it's hard for me not to take most of what I read or see on other topics with an enormous chunk of salt, including so-called "science" documentaries. I suppose the filmmakers wanted to impress their viewers with the sheer diversity and specificity of life forms out there so they decided to take a little artistic license. It's extremely irritating because there are better examples. (And it can also be really counterproductive if people find out the truth.)
Ha, cordyceps. Are those the "boner mushrooms" they harvest in Tibet?
Monica,
This is from the FDA page about thirmerosal:
"Thimerosal has been removed from or reduced to trace amounts in all vaccines routinely recommended for children 6 years of age and younger, with the exception of inactivated influenza vaccine (see Table 1). A preservative-free version of the inactivated influenza vaccine (contains trace amounts of thimerosal) is available in limited supply at this time for use in infants, children and pregnant women. Some vaccines such as Td, which is indicated for older children (≥ 7 years of age) and adults, are also now available in formulations that are free of thimerosal or contain only trace amounts. Vaccines with trace amounts of thimerosal contain 1 microgram or less of mercury per dose."
So it is still in flu vaccines and present in "trace" amounts in other childhood vaccines. Trace amounts have never been proven to be safe. Trace amounts also start to add up when multiple vaccines are administered.
The vaccines below contain 25 micrograms of mercury (2008 info):
DTwP All Products
DT Diphtheria & Tetanus Toxoids multi-dose
Tetanus Toxoid Adsorbed USP
Tetanus Toxoid Adsorbed Adult Use
Tetanus Toxoid Booster sanofi pasteur
Afluria multi-dose
FluLaval GlaxoSmithKline
Fluvirin Novartis
Fluzone 5 mL vial
Menactra sanofi pasteur multi-dose
Most flu vaccines also contain 25 micrograms of mercury per dose. The EPA and FDA both specify allowable daily exposure limits of 0.1 microgram per kg. So in order to meet these exposure limits one would have to weigh at least 550 pounds to receive one of these vaccines.
You are correct about removing the adjuvants. They stimulate the immune system (sensitize, as in anaphylaxis, not true prophylaxis) and allow the manufacturer to use less antigen. Using more antigen can in many cases be lethal and in all cases is more expensive.
*sigh*
I was going to exit this conversation but Senta's latest missives cannot go unchallenged.
I suggest doing some googling but a fun site that addresses the anti-vaccinationists in an entertaining way (similar to how Dr. Eades deals with nutritionists and nutritional studies):
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?cat=36
I want to repeat something I said above: just because modern medicine is woefully wrong about nutrition is no justification for viewing all of modern medicine with suspicion. Unfortunately, this is a common perception in the "alternative" diet community and needs to be challenged wherever encountered.
Is that what you call those fungi? LOL.
Yeah, I guess they do look like that. A lot of the fruiting bodies poke out of the ground after the fungus has killed an arthropod. Poke. haha, I said poke.
Yes, they often seem to emerge from the duff and when they are collected the insect sometimes isn't removed so they just appear to be growing in the ground. Most of them are parasites of arthropods and I believe the species that is collected in Tibet is fairly popular in China as well.
About 5% of Cordyceps are parasites of Elaphomyces, which is itself a subterranean mycorrhizal fungus. Of course, chitin is abundant in the cell walls of fungi and exoskeleton of arthropods. I'm not sure whether the shift in food source has occurred once or more than once in the Cordyceps lineage.
Monica, not only do they look like that, they actually eat Cordyceps sinensis for impotence in traditional Chinese medicine. It's that good old "doctrine of signatures".
Sam - excellent posts.
You know, the low carb community originally promoted good science, but too often it seems like fringe pseudoscience ideas seems to make up the bulk of discussions. I guess there is just a certain element of us that wants to be contrarian, rather than correct. As LC becomes increasingly absorbed by the mainstream that element frantically turns to more extreme ideas (like, vaccines being bad and that vitamin d can prevent illnesses, both being obviously irrational when we look at history).
I work in a long term care facility; a certain gastrointestinal bug has been circulating around the units. I had avoided significant symptoms for many days until the day I had restricted calories extremely and subjected myself to sleep loss, frigidity of weather and other stresses (physical/emotional). By that evening I puked everywhere because the bug got the upper hand.
I would have to disagree that fasting is the cure for illness... but I suppose it all depends on baseline condition. If one tends to eat moderate or high carb fasting definitely helps. For the carb eater, fasting is not very stressful as glycogen / stored sugars are plentiful in short term... and the reduction in glucose during fasting will help stave off illness.
For someone like me, a non-overweight person who eats ketogenically, fasting is an extreme stress because my glucose reserves are non-existent and I do not have excessive body fat to draw from either. In this case, the extra stress of fasting actually is counter intuitive and my immune system is weakened. If I ate more, but of the same ketogenic food, I probably wouldn't have thrown up that night.
The key, as I see it, is immunity. Sleep is even more or perhaps equally as crucial as food. Without fail my immune system takes a brutal nose dive when I lose my sleep.
Mecury and brain function.
Any thoughts on the implications if any of mercury in vaccines.
Senta said
"Most flu vaccines also contain 25 micrograms of mercury per dose. The EPA and FDA both specify allowable daily exposure limits of 0.1 microgram per kg. So in order to meet these exposure limits one would have to weigh at least 550 pounds to receive one of these vaccines."
(I am very grateful not to be at risk of small pox polio etc but do wonder at what point any risk from adjuvants / oxidative stress due to large numbers of inoculations could outweigh benefits ??)
A trial said
Involvement of environmental mercury and lead in the etiology of neurodegenerative diseases
"When applied at non-toxic concentrations, methyl-mercury, the most common environmental form of mercury, becomes neurotoxic under pro-oxidant conditions."
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=17985784
Sam, way to hang in there. I got in a similar flame war over at 180degreehealth.blogspot.com.
That said, I don't bother with flu vaccines, either. When I get old, I may start.
Vaccines can cause harm, but their net benefit is huge. If a few people opt out, it's their problem -- and not too big a problem as long a herd immunity remains high. The pro vaccine hysteria is mostly preemptive. If most people stop taking vaccines for polio, measles, etc. then we get enough hosts to allow epidemics. The pro vaccine forces want to nip the anti vaccine movement in the bud for this reason.
I thus agree with vaccination, but wonder if the pro vaccine forces are pushing too hard (in order to be preemptive). The number of vaccines they are pushing on infants is way higher than it was during my childhood.
Just how safe is it to introduce a half dozen vaccines at a time to a baby? And do we need to vaccinate infants for largely eradicated bugs like polio? Can't these wait a few years?
I don't know the answer to the first question, but I speculate that the number of vaccines at time is a bigger factor than thimerosol. Most of my body has been smeared with merthiolate at some time or another and I don't have mercury poisoning. Autism has gone up since we've cut back on mercury exposure.
CSM, I appreciate your thoughtful and respectful post.
Sam and ItstheWoo, I don't care to be baited by bullies whose only tactic is to hurl insults instead of cite facts and construct logical arguments.
I am glad to see that some people have been prompted to look into the issues a little more deeply. I too used to "believe" in vaccination, one of the sacred cows of medicine, and am grateful to the people who inspired me to ask more questions.
If there was a flame war, it was pretty one-sided. I have enjoyed reading Stephan's blog because it seemed to attract open-minded people who were civil about discussing different points of view. I would like to keep it that way so I will follow the lead of other wise readers and stop feeding the trolls.
I don't know how much good science was behind this, but I found an extremely interesting explanation for the decimation by disease of the indigenous American populations in the book 1491. The basis of the explanation is that the Americas were populated by a few small groups of people. With a smaller gene pool, their populations at the time of contact with the Europeans was less genetically diverse, and consequently the diseases were able to kill off a far greater percentage than would have done in a more genetically diverse population... ie. europeans. Those diseases killed Europeans too, just not as many. It never mentions diet, but I guess my point is that, if the explanation in 1491 is sound, it was a genetically determined fate.
I found the explanation particularly interesting since it's not the nature of disease to wipe out an entire host population because where would they then go? Why did so many of them die so quickly?
Alternatively, and more appropriate to this blog, the book goes on and on about the first smelly, crooked teethed, pock-marked Europeans admiring the beauty, stature, and health of the indigenous populations... documented in several journals (diaries) from the time. The indigenous peoples were, alternatively and understandably, repulsed by the Europeans. I'm sure the boat ride across with the Atlantic didn't help, but then, nor did their western diet of the times.
An interesting read.
There are quite some studies that show that flu-shots aren´t as effective as guys like Sam think.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/333/7574/912
http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/162/10/943
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(07)70236-0/fulltext
http://mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD004879/frame.html
Re: viruses wiping out native Americans, Dr. Jared Diamond wrote about this in Guns, Germs and Steel. The European diseases have come from germs of our live stock: cows, pigs, sheep, horses etc. None of these animals are endemic in the Americas, so the natives could not have been exposed to them to develop any immunity.
BTW, one of the main reasons Diamond sees why Europeans "conquered" the world was because Europe had tameable, herdable animals, from which to acquire high quality nutrients. (He mostly focuses on protein.)
Sven,
I didn't claim any general degree of effectiveness for the flu vaccine. I pointed out that this year's flu vaccine is an excellent match for the prevailing strains - and is certainly worth getting for that reason.
(See my first comment.)
The controversy among the anti-science, anti-vaccinationist crowd arises because they
a) don't think vaccines work at all
b) are full of hideous poisons that do BadThings
c) and are usually part of some government and pharmaceutical industry conspiracy.
The reality is of course
a) vaccines are tailored to populations, not individuals
b) they're not full of hideous poisons but may contain trace amounts of substances from the manufacturing process that some individuals are sensitive to
c) one of the functions of good government is to provide for public health.
Belmondo,
The origin of the diseases that killed the native American populations is quite well known.
I thought the point I was making was pretty clear. Excellent macro- and micro-nutrition is a necessary but not sufficient condition for preventing or ameliorating infectious disease.
The other elements of the protocol are of course hygiene (including clean water supplies) and yes - vaccination.
The origin of European immunity to these diseases was "natural" vaccination via breastmilk or non-pathogenic exposure. Or actual survival (pockmarks and all) after pathogenic exposure.
Well, my 3.5 yo daughter has come down with the flu, which had been circulating around her day-care.
I'm glad I made chicken stock using Fallon's recipe last week! I even threw in four extra chicken feet to the mix. I've upped my dose of fermented high-vitamin cod liver oil and high-vitamin butter oil to a half teaspoon of each per day for the past few days and have been taking 5k IU of D3 (in addition to what's in the cod liver oil) all to help ward off catching it myself. I think I may have a touch of it as my head is a little foggy today, but hopefully my nutritional status will catapult me quickly through it.
"c) one of the functions of good government is to provide for public health."
I was going to let the vaccine issue to rest, but I simply cannot accept that premise, Sam. This is not a political blog, and I hope Stephan doesn't mind me butting in with my own personal opinion since you've offered yours.
It's the government's job to protect individual rights, not set health policies. That is my opinion, yes, but your opinion is also an *opinion*. (Regardless of our conflicting opinions, the idea that a federal government should set health policies is completely contrary to the principles this country was founded upon. Check the constitution.)
If you believe that it's the government's job to provide for public health, then we get into a very slippery situation where anything even remotely related to public health should be a government decree, including diet. We've seen the disastrous effects of government dietary science for the past 40 years. (I believe that's a parent's and an adult individual's job, not the government's. People will make mistakes and bad choices for them and their children, but that's their right so long as there isn't severe abuse or neglect.)
If you believe that vaccines are crucial to public health, and that it's the government's job to provide for public health, it's not much of a step to say that the government should require a flu vaccine of every individual because it could save 75,000 lives per year. Do we really want to see governments go there? They are already vaccinating babies for Hepatitis B -- a disease spread through sexual contact and needles. That's ridiculous.
Pro- and anti-vax people are not all created equal. Anti-vax people are not all a bunch of conspiratorial nutjobs as you'd like to paint them. The risk from vaccines is, small, yes -- but those risks are REAL and very serious and that people should be able to decide according to their own best judgment what is best for them -- NOT the government as it currently does with its one size fits all recommendations. More to the point, you're presenting ad hominem arguments as a means of defending vaccines --which is an invalid form of argumentation.
Whenever you try to set public policies based in science, things get messy. The government mandates the use of vaccines. Children can’t enter government schools without compliance to the government vax schedule. The information about the vaccines–their safety, efficacy, etc.–is provided to parents by the government. And the industry has a huge role in getting their products on the mandated government vaccination schedule. None of that is a conspiracy theory. It's independently verifiable.
Science is not done by consensus as any public health recommendation must be, and whenever you remove peoples' freedom to choose and/or legal consequences from a manufacturer you remove a critically important aspect of how a free market works to ensure quality. That's not a conspiracy, either. It's a fact.
A rational society would take such an rights-based stance on this issue. Personal and family medical histories, the advice of a trusted physician, personal research, a serious evaluation of the benefits and real risks–all of these things need to be considered. No one in government has the right to substitute his judgment about what is best me or my children in the name of "public health" or the common good.
People have been severely and irrevocably damaged by vaccines. (I am not talking about autism.) My friend's brother in law is now severely retarded, unable to live independently from damage during the pertussis hot lot days. The risks are REAL, and they are devastating. Please ponder the existence and implication of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. If there is no harm, why does this program exist? (The existence of this program is not a conspiracy theory, either.)
Last October I started taking 10~12,000 i.u. of D3 every day, as I realized my cod liver oil was woefully low. Even though I ate a lot of sugar during the holidays and got very little sleep, I remained in great health. Usually that's my set-up for a cold.
I've been around a lot of sick people, especially kids, but so far, the worst I've gotten is a couple of sneezing fits.
As for vaccines, haven't had one in decades, and my young daughter hasn't had any either. Don't need 'em, don't miss 'em.
Monica,
You know, when I wrote that line I suspected it would cause the Objectivists and/or Libertarians among us to twitch... ;-)
You'll be shocked at the apparent contradiction: my political views are highly aligned with Libertarianism.
(In fact, I rather enjoyed reading Carl S. Milsted's - CSM in the post above - website and was struck by the strong parallels in our respective political/philosphical evolution.)
I'll beg Stephan's indulgence (which I'll bet is wearing thin...) and respond briefly to your points.
Regarding good government and public health policy:
This is an "is/ought" issue. The fact is public health policy "is" a function of government. Certainly the federal government has no public health constitutional authority (which hasn't failed to stop what "is" versus "ought") - except possibly along the usual tenuous thread of interstate commerce.
But states and their duly subordinated jurisdictions surely do. If you disagree, you're free to do so, but your view is in direct conflict with just about every state constitution and legal framework, not to mention actual historical practices (e.g., consider authority to impose quarantine and mandate water supply quality).
You may consider these practices an unwarranted infringement on individual liberties, but then you're reduced to what you want versus what actually is and has been historically.
As far as a slippery slope is concerned - well, yes. That argument can be applied to every single act of government. And following that line of thought leads eventually to some notion of anarcho-libertarianism as the ideal society - and no human society has ever actually implemented such a thing or apparently really wants to. Slippery slopes are usually blocked off by the collected judgments of citizens through the usual mechanisms of political activities.
Sorry - "is" vs "ought", again.
I've said above (several times), but I'll say it again. Modern vaccines are developed and manufactured and evaluated against populations, not individuals. There are always pathological individual responses - that is why the compensation fund exists (even if in many cases the causal link between vaccine and harm cannot be determined).
You don't seem to disagree that vaccines provide a public health good (ie, they're effective and safe) for the population at large while causing harm to a very small number of individuals (for whom compensation is available).
So why try to associate yourself with anti-science anti-vaccinationists as fellow travelers? They aren't bringing up rational arguments - they hate vaccines as ineffective poison injections foisted upon us by a government corrupted by evil pharmaceutical companies.
They are True Believers, just like creationists. No amount of evidence can sway them.
Hi Sam -- I'd be happy to discuss the political aspects in a private email, at monicabeth10ATgmailDOTcom, since this is not a political blog. Suffice it to say that I believe water quality and ownership could and has been rationally dealt with through objective tort and property rights laws, which wouldn't require pre-emptive laws, aka regulations as we currently know them. I am not an anarchist. The problem is that application of property rights hasn't ever been consistent in the US, not that it's never been done in specific cases. And in fact, it's been on shaky ground ever since eminent domain was instituted very early on in our nation's history, and now the alphabet soup agencies that create precedents for violation of property rights that are very difficult to be overturned in court (for instance, the mountaintop mining stuff where companies are legally allowed by the EPA to dump their waste polluting properties hundreds of miles downstream). I'm not saying that the founders had a clear understanding or defense of property rights. They didn't. Their approach was in too many cases very pragmatic.
I do notice that you haven't dealt with the FDA data on thimerosal that were brought up by Senta. Instead, you linked to a post discussing something marginally related as a means of rendering that argument "irrational" and "pseudoscientific." Also, the author of the article isn't in the least like Dr. Eades, as you assert. Dr. Eades never calls people quacks as an attempted means of invalidating their arguments. In fact, here's a good example of Eades defending what would commonly be considered quackery in today's medical world: http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/uncategorized/defending-aids-denialists/
In any case that particular article you linked doesn't actually discuss thimerosal, aluminum, formaldehyde, or proprietary and unknown proteins in any way. It merely invalidates the assertion that thimerosal is to blame for any number of health problems that have been claimed. Yet if the FDA data are true, that's a hell of a lot of mercury to inject into an individual at one time. I would bet that is the rationale for combining various antigens into one shot, as has recently been done with the MMRV vaccine (which used to just be the MMR). And if the anti-vax claims are true that the placebo in controlled trials has all the ingredients except antigens, then that is clearly problematic (not from a standpoint of determining efficacy, but from a standpoint of determination of harm).
I am willing to keep an active mind on this issue. There are a great number of people who have mostly sound reasoning on certain issues, yet have faulty reasoning on others. That's not a mechanism for invalidating ALL of the held positions of those people. What has to be dealt with is the facts of the issue instead of presenting ad hominem argumentation, which you've largely done here. What you have to show for the ad hominem argument to work is *dishonesty*, which you haven't done. You've just asserted it by repeatedly mentioning creationism.
The graphs of disease incidence over time that Senta provided seem compelling to me so long as the data aren't false or manipulated. Why did scarlet and typhoid fever disappear without vaccines? What, if anything, makes those diseases different from other diseases that have disappeared with vaccines? I'm a fungal taxonomist, not an epidemologist, so if you or anyone else know the answers to those questions I'm willing to see reason.
If you have additional evidence to counter what Senta has said or provided in that regard, or have some evidence that there is dishonesty involved where those data are concerned, please feel free to provide it to me personally. Better yet, I'm sure we would all like to hear it since it's directly relevant to invalidating the claims of anti-vax people and would result in a better understanding of the truth.
Until I do more research on the issue, I think the precautionary principle applies, particularly in light of the current epidemiological situation in the United States. To wit, when was the last natural case of polio in the US? The world will not collapse if even a large number of individuals at this time forego these vaccines, and my best guess is that vaccines are currently causing more damage than benefit. (And I think we do need to consider whether the spread of a disease, or even passive inaction as opposed to a lack of action harm has *already* been demonstrated, is really a violation of individual rights. Letting your kid ride a bike without a helmet and letting a toddler wander the streets alone while you go to work are worlds apart. Only in the second case, I would argue, does the state have the right to intervene, and that is because *the child's rights are being violated*. A child's rights are not exactly the same as adult rights.)
"You don't seem to disagree that vaccines provide a public health good (ie, they're effective and safe) for the population at large while causing harm to a very small number of individuals (for whom compensation is available)."
I don't disagree based on my current understanding, but I am always willing to reconsider my thinking given compelling data. Also, whatever I think on the science, for me to agree with you that governments have the right to force things on people for the public good would be a defense of *utilitarianism*, not *individual rights*.
I am not trying to align myself with any group, pro- or anti-vax. But I believe that parents who don't actively think about this issue for their children, and merely accept the views of health authorities or doctors are as equally morally culpable on this issue as those who accept without thought what anti-vaxers have to say.
So, to merely accept your (or Senta's) representation of things without evaluating either person's claims further is second-handed thinking, which I don't ascribe to.
By the way, Sam, there is one more thing that bears mentioning. You keep bringing up the evil conspiracy on the part of the pharmaceutical industry.
Isn't it interesting that the same evil conspiracies are often mentioned in the paleo community wrt nutrition. Yet I don't ascribe to those. I don't believe it's an evil money making conspiracy. Despite that, I do agree with the "paleo" people on their assessment of the science.
I think the diet issue is primarily an epistemological problem. It's a matter of health professionals not looking at the data themselves, and blindly accepting what is taught in textbooks -- which is, of course, politically influenced. That lack of critical thought doesn't make them part of an evil conspiracy. (It doesn't make them morally virtuous, either, though.)
I don't think it's beyond comprehension that the same bad epistemology and political forces could be at work in the vaccine issue. Until I learn more, I'm keeping an open mind since it's not an issue I have a lot of time to investigate right now. Such critical inquiry into vaccines is worlds apart from questioning the validity of evolution or the roundness of the Earth.
If you could suggest any good sources on the vaccine issue, I'd be welcome to consider them in the future.
Ah, the political ramifications...
Vaccines don't just protect the user, they protect the entire population by reducing the number of disease vectors. Those who take vaccines help protect the public health (just as law abiding gun toters protect public safety ;-).
If enough people take a vaccine, then the need for an individual to take a vaccine goes down. For example, the risk of getting polio in the U.S. is near zero even without getting the vaccine, since most other people are innoculated.
While I shudder in horror at the idea of socialized medicine, public health is a rightful function of government: tracing down typhoid carriers, ensuring adequate restaurante sanitation, etc. And yes, ensuring that poor children can get vaccines is an example of public health -- for the disease vector reason already stated.
I don't think the government needs to force vaccines on people. If only a few opt out, then the threat of epidemic remains low. Active encouragement, however, is a good idea.
Another good idea is not putting infants into child care, where they get exposed to too many bugs...
----
Anyway, back to the core issue. The Amerindians had variations on the paleo diet, and died by the millions (according to some estimates of pre-Columbian populatinon) when exposed to European germs. Even though a diet confers physical beauty, it may not confer super immunity.
"Those who take vaccines help protect the public health (just as law abiding gun toters protect public safety ;-)."
YES. But not carrying a gun, and potentially or actually benefiting from those that do, does not mean you are actively violating someone else's rights by not carrying a gun. Likewise, receiving the benefits of herd immunity while not getting vaccinated does not mean you are violating someone else's rights who has been vaccinated. It may not be *fair*, I agree.
CSM, I'm glad you don't believe that vaccinations should be forced. But many in our government do. See here: http://rationaljenn.blogspot.com/2007/11/who-owns-your-body.html
Of course, the implicit statement sent by forced vaccinations on the "herd" is that either 1) not getting vaccinated violates someone else's rights by spreading disease or 2) individuals are too dumb to make health decisions for themselves or their children.
Needless to say, I disagree with both. Under that utilitarian logic, flu vaccines should also be forced on everyone since 75,000 people die from flu yearly. Wouldn't the flu vaccine be a lot more critical at this point than other vaccines?
"For example, the risk of getting polio in the U.S. is near zero even without getting the vaccine, since most other people are innoculated."
Exactly. And do we know what the immunity levels are in those who have been vaccinated for polio? I don't know the exact numbers for polio, but for chicken pox those who have immunity as measured by antibody titer after a round of vaccinations is around 84% -- I googled for an article on this last week and those are the numbers from a recently published abstract (can't be bothered to look it up again). I have heard similar numbers for polio but I don't know the actual numbers. Despite similar considerable numbers of non-immunity, as least as measured by antibody titer, there has been no case of natural, non-vaccine acquired polio since the 70s in the US, to my understanding (someone correct me if I'm wrong).
"public health is a rightful function of government: tracing down typhoid carriers, ensuring adequate restaurante sanitation, etc."
Well, I'd have to disagree with that. I think the purpose of government is to determine whether rights have actually been violated through courts of law by certain entities, with punishment if guilt is proved -- not to actively track down *potential* rights violators (which could be anyone, really) and pre-emptively make them comply with reams of inane regulations that may have little actual benefit to anyone. That's utilitarianism. But under that logic, all sorts of state actions become necessary. It would definitely imply that the state should be involved in regulating raw milk for public health (of course, I don't agree with that on principle but in practice it's also turned out to be a disaster). It would imply that maybe CEOs should just be jailed because they commit more white collar crime than other members of society. (While that is extreme, that's the exact reasoning that leads to pre-emptive regulations like Sarbanes Oxley.)
Monica,
Sorry for the confusion, but my intention with the link was not to refute a particular argument - the link was actually to the vaccine categorized posts at sciencebasedmedicine.com.
Since many people here read Dr. Mike, I drew the comparison in tone so that people could decide if this site was to their taste.
The doctors there discuss all kinds of things, not just vaccines, including occasionally making nutritional blunders...
As for Dr. Mike (we are going FAR afield here) - certainly he doesn't conduct an argument by insult. But he sure peppers his analyses with very entertaining (to me, at least) commentary on the people whose work he's examining. The word "idiot" is frequently used, for instance.
Regarding information about typhoid fever (and every other known disease) - the CDC and WHO have much useful information. In a nutshell, TF declined because of chlorination, effective antibiotics, and the vaccine. I presume the same is true of scarlet fever.
Here's what the New York Times thought about the decline in TF in 1921 (and contrary to Senta's website, they attribute the decline to both sanitation and innoculations):
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9B04E4D81E3FEE3ABC4D52DFB366838A639EDE
Here's a graph from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Typhoid_stats.png
You don't have to accept my statements, the anti-vaccinationists' statements, or my (or others) cherry-picked refutations of the anti-vaccinationists' statements.
You can find your own, just like I did above, using google, in just a few minutes.
Sam, the first antibiotic was developed in the mid forties, with others soon to follow. Take a look at the wiki graph you provided. It's very obvious that the decline in TF was not due to antibiotics. When future cases were seen, I'm sure there were cases that were eliminated by antibiotic usage of infected individuals but that's obviously had nothing to do with the general decline seen from 1900 to 1950.
Obviously water sanitation would have a LOT to do with all of this, but that isn't debated amongst the anti-vax crowd so it's a bit of a non-sequitur with regard to their claims. In fact, they'd say that better sanitation was the chief cause of declines. Based on incidence rates of all the common diseases from the late 1800s onward, that seems like the most logical conclusion, actually. Take a look at the incidence of polio and consider when the Salk vaccine was invented. (Interestingly, pasteurization is also strongly advocated by health authorities today based on the horribly diseased conditions of city dairies of the late 1800s that bear no resemblance to a modern grass fed farm with adequate sanitation technology.)
Interestingly, TF seems not have completely disappeared in the US. Around 400 cases yearly, 70% of which occur from international travel. Roughly the same is true for scarlet fever also with low incidence, yet about 6 people dead last year from it. I think it's curious that neither of these disease have sprung back in large numbers due to the vast numbers of unvaccinated individuals, as has been suggested would happen in various posts above. And despite the low incidence, why doesn't the CDC recommend vaccination for TF? After all, they are vaccinating for polio. And there is NO vaccine for scarlet fever and the disease curve looks pretty much like the one for typhoid fever.
The Times article seems logical and I'm sure the TF vaccine at the time did confer some immunity in the populations in which they were used. However, this abstract is interesting:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6341210
Notice the large range in immunity figures. With that in mind, it would logically appear that improved sanitation was mostly responsible for TF reduction, with some role for vaccination and an extremely minimal role for antibiotics which probably got rid of the very small vestiges. Since that was also the case with scarlet fever, which has no vaccine, I think it's reasonable to critically evaluate the supposedly crucial role of vaccines in decline of some of the other diseases as well.
Monica,
Are you pulling my leg? I made no claim *when* antibiotics contributed to the decline of typhoid fever - merely that they could have. (Referenced from the Wikipedia article on typhoid fever. Obviously antibiotics can't reduce incidence unless therapy is started before infection or before symptoms are exhibited. Antibiotics are curative, not normally used as prevention.)
The typhoid fever graph from Senta's site is clearly labeled "No Widespread Vaccination".
This is wrong. Why, it might even be fairly described as dishonest.
A trivial amount of work on my part was enough to find a 1921 source that clearly ascribed the reduction to sanitation and "extensive innoculations ... in both the army and navy" and the urging for more widespread vaccination in the population.
In addition, the Wikipedia graph showed that widespread chlorination started around 1908, corroborating the claim in the NYT article.
What exactly are you disputing? You have asked so many fragmented and disjoint questions that I question your motives.
Why does the CDC not recommend routine TF vaccinations? Answer (which you could have reasoned out for yourself): the vaccines require regular boosters, and are of relatively low (>~60%) effectiveness, there are effective antibiotics for treatment, and thanks to sanitation TF is low in incidence.
Why vaccinate for polio and not TF, in spite of similar infection rates? Answer: the polio vaccine requires only a single booster for lifelong immunity, the effectiveness is near total, and antibiotics cannot treat a virus.
Why haven't TF and SF sprung back into widespread incidence? Answer: public health requirements that separate sewage from drinking water supplies and forced chlorination of water that prevents contamination or kills these bacteria. There's nothing curious about it.
And you think this bolsters the claim of the anti-vaccinationists that
a) vaccines NEVER work
b) vaccines are ALWAYS harmful
I've become convinced you're not even sure what the anti-vaccinationists are actually claiming.
Convince me you actually know this, and that you've done some basic homework, such as starting at the CDC and WHO, and googling for every search term you think is relevant.
Until then, no way.
Here's a freebie that addresses the anti-vaccinationists' claim that infectious diseases were already in decline and that vaccines had nothing to do with it:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm
You can find much more comprehensive treatments of this issue by googling.
Sam, I'm not pulling your leg.
You've admitted that the original TF vaccine was only 60% effective. (Of course, no study determining efficacy was actually originally done!) Given that military members and the insured were likely the only ones vaccinated (how many people actually had health insurance in the early 1900s?) and that it likely only provided immunity for 305 years, I think the vaccine had relatively little to do with the decline, particularly since the disease is similar to scarlet fever as far as the vector is concerned and there was no inoculation for scarlet fever, either, which has a very similar incidence curve. I'm sure it played some role but this was mostly due to better sanitation.
You said antibiotics were partly responsible for the decline in TF. That's demonstrably untrue so now you're trying to change the target by focusing on those pesky anti-vaxers. But *I* never claimed that vaccines never work, never provide immunity, or are always harmful -- nor has anyone else in the comments line. Only that they shouldn't be forced and I'm not as convinced as you are that getting a flu shot is a good idea.
Anti-vax people do not come in all one color, either, as you continue to assert. All you need to do is head on over to the National Vaccine Information Center to see that.
The CDC as a reliable source of information? You must be pulling *my* leg. The analyses on the CDC site are full of holes (not to mention a ton of collectivist ideology and scare tactics). Check out their timeline on measles. Let's draw the line back to 1800 and not start it at 1950, shall we? Of course, the CDC's analysis of other issues, including obesity and raw milk, is woefully lacking, so it's par for the course.
I'm done on this issue.
Hi Stephan
I guess it might be seasonal to resurrect this thread...:)
You mention fasting to nip infection in the bud. How long do you fast for? And if the infection won't cede, do you go back to eating after x days, or keep it up?
Curious, because I think I'm coming down with one of those unidentified winter things that might be flu, or again might not.
Thanks for this blog: it's one of the best:)
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