Friends, dreams and how not to...

[smokingboot]

Very odd.
A long time dear friend of mine has just FB linked to this: https://www.facebook.com/Bthechangeagent/posts/697247353773659


The source for the post seems to be this: http://www.vaccineinjury.info/survey/results-unvaccinated/results-illnesses.html

which is a questionable re-interpretation of this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3057555/


My mate is a nurse, intelligent and incredibly kind, with an open mind and an interest in alternative therapies. She also has the pragmatism that comes from dealing with pee, pus, and poo for decades. She and I studied together and we both know the importance of checking one's sources. I cannot believe she would post this without having reliable information to hand. Maybe she knows something I don't. After all, nursing is her life's work.

I have always believed that parents should have the right not to vaccinate, or to at least insist that vaccines are given singly, but they must have the facts sans distortion before they make such a decision; I'm not sure that's what is happening here.

My best bet is to ignore the post, I think, free speech and all that... But I feel somewhat uneasy. In my dreams last night I was in a tube station. I've been there before. This fictional station's about 5 stops away from London Bridge, and has neither lights nor a track nor a platform,nor a tunnel, only the knowledge that the train is coming in on the left hand side, so everyone waits on the right. I always end up mistakenly on the track with people shouting at me to get out of the way of the train, which turns up really slowly. Engaging with my old mate on the anti-vax issue would feel like that dream. If I had to make the journey, I wouldn't start from here.

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

I'm a nurse, too. Or was a nurse: I stopped practicing in the early 1990s.

The problem with the study your friend cites is that it's not a random sample, and one must assume a self-selected sample is rife with all sorts of confirmation biases.

That said... I have no doubt that the mercury-based preservatives used for decades with vaccines did have some sort of effect beyond what people being vaccinated were being told about. Were these effects dramatic? Who knows? Possibly in some people with underlying susceptibilities. Certainly not for the majority of vaccine recipients, and I had no qualms about vaccinating my own kids.

Remember 25 or so years ago when portable phones were first being introduced into the marketplace, and there was a big flurry of Those phones cause cancer squawks from people whom the portable phone industry was quick to dismiss as nutters?

Well, of course, you don't: You're younger than me! :-)

But it was a deal back then.

And, indeed, some epidemiological studies are showing statistically significant though modest increases in glioma incidence among smartphone users.

Not sure what the moral of that story is...

But one thing your friend gets right: Big Pharma is not your friend. :-)

[smokingboot]

I seriously don't know. My mother vaccinated me against everything; I was like a dartsboard before I could walk. She was a nurse. And she freaked out about mobile phones and cancer!

Thing is, members of my family do register on the spectrum, and there is certainly a background of considerable mental illness, whilst, ironically, being physically as healthy as horses and lasting for unholy aeons. My brother (the one who screamed)was diagnosed long ago with ADHD, and occasionally there have been some questions raised about me. The quote was something like 'High functioning empath...idiot savant...shonky antennae...' These make me sound much more cool than I come across without them!

If I had kids I'd vaccinate them.

As to big pharma, I don't know enough about it. Basically if it makes me well, it is my friend. But I wonder if that's an easy cop out for a Brit, as so much of our prescription costs have traditionally been covered by the NHS.