Staring at the Moon Because of Gardasil

Update  10:24 PM November 25, 2010
Age of Autism has removed the Staring at the Moon Comment.  But they've left up some that are nearly as looney. 
Age of Autism is supposed to be about autism. Actually, it is almost entirely about opposing vaccination.  And that includes opposing HPV vaccination which takes place at ages 12 and up.  Which is certainly older than the age of onset of almost all autism.

For the US thanksgiving, they picked out a story of something going wrong after HPV vaccination.

The story is the typical atypical anecdote. But it is the comment that is truly priceless.  For those who don't know, AoA carefully moderates (actually censors) views it doesn't like.   Yet this comment got through.

For people who don't see the humor, consider this --- vaccinations are usually given during day time and indoors.   So how did they determine that she was immediately staring at the moon?

A great sign for the times

A smile thanks to Age of Autism.

Updated November 17 10:30 a.m.   AofA censored my response.

Age of Autism has made me smile, thanks to  a comment.  I post at Huffington-Post under the user name sheldon101.

Over at Age of Autism JB Handley has posted a great bit of investigative reporting designed to prove that the blogger Sullivan most often found at the Left Brain/Right Brain is actually the pediatrician Dr. Bonnie Offit, wife of Dr. Paul Offit, so much hated by vaccination opponents.

What's really funny is that the major piece of evidence is based on sloppy reading of a comment.  JB thinks that the comment has someone referring to Sullivan as a female. In fact, the comment is partly about Sullivan and then switches to discuss an article by Amanda Peete.  JB goofed.

Anyhow, I'm reading the comments  and I come across this:

Ok. Now who is Sheldon on huffpo?

Posted by: HFAmomto3HFAgirls | November 16, 2010 at 06:44 PM

To which I replied, but expect AoA won't publish.

Re: Ok, Now who is sheldon at huffpo?

I am and I would like thank HFAmomto3HFAgirls for making my day.

Posted by: sheldon101 | November 17, 2010 at 01:19 AM

He Who Pays the Piper --- I am Bonnie Offit.

Age of Autism is a web site that is truly anti-vaccine, with all the weirdness, illogic and inconsistency that this requires.    They have 3 editors.    I think they've finally demonstrated to one and all that they've gone off the rails because they've published a very long article where one of their favorites JB Handley of  Jenny McCarthy's  Generate Rescue nonsensical website claims that Sullivan is actually Dr. Bonnie Offit.

Sullivan is a long time blogger and commenter on autism and autism and vaccine. Dr. Bonnie Offit is the wife of Dr. Paul Offit, a world-renowned expert on vaccines, one of the inventors of Rotateq vaccine and an outspoken advocate of vaccination.   Vaccination opponents really, really hate him. 

It is a bizarre article.  But leaving aside the contents of the article, the question is why did A of A publish it?   Because it makes not only JB look foolish, it makes AofA look foolish.  And AoA has published comments on the blog entry that are critical of it. 

Applying AofA logic to the problem, there is only one possible conclusion.  JB gives so much money to AoA that they have to publish what he writes.  They are creatures beholden to him.   And here we thought that AoA was a hard hitting, carefully edited web blog.   Now we know better. 

A Better HPV Vaccine in Phase III Trials

When I learned that the HPV vaccines only contained the strains that caused 70% of cervical cancer, I assumed that there would be a vaccine coming sooner or later that protected against additional strains. After all, the infants pneumonia vaccine, the PCV vaccines, started with 7 strains and just recently added 6 more strains and in particular strain 19A which was increasing in frequency.  And that's what I've written in comments at Huffington-Post.


I finally got fed up with hearing that HPV vaccinces didn't protect against all the strains that I started looking around on the internet.  It took a bit of time to track down, but at least one better vaccine, codenamed V503 by Merck is undergoing Phase III studies, the ones used to approve a vaccine, with FDA  filing planned for 2012. 


Over and over those opposed to HPV vaccination complain that the vaccines don't protect against all the strains of HPV that cause cancer. That's true.  The vaccines are near 100% effective in protecting against the strains in the vaccine.  The high percentage results from the vaccines using virus like particles (VLP) which are remarkably effective in stimulating the immune system.

In 70% of cervical cancer cases caused by HPV, the strain was either 16 or 18.   That's Gardasil.  It turns out that a 2009 study shows Cervarix seems to also be pretty effective against other strains, so it is covers the strains causing the cancer in 80% of the cases. That's in this part of the world.


But it is also true that in other parts of the world different strains cause more of the cancer. That's important because you want to sell the same vaccine all around the world.   And a vaccine that protects against additional strains would make a more effective vaccine and one easier to sell. 
Merck is now conducting five phase III studies on V503.   It protects against 9 strains.  The four in Gardasil, 6 an 11 for genital warts and 16 and 18.  It adds 31, 33, 45, 52 and 58.  That should cover the strains that cause almost all cases of cervical cancer caused by HPV.


The most important study is V503-001 it compares Gardasil to V503 in over 14000 women.  It has been ongoing since 2007 with the primary data completion date of November 2011 . Merck plans to file for approval in 2012.  It should be a pretty easy approval process as they are merely adding additional strains of vaccine made by the same processes and for which there is robust safety and effectiveness data. 

Judicial Watch and HPV - Scaring the Unwary

Based on comments first researched and posted at Huffingon-Post in August 2010.

It cost me 48 cents and a bit of time to prove that Judicial Watch, a conservative judicial watch dog that seeks honesty and  transparency in government does not practice this itself.

Judicial Watch went way outside their normal area of interest and decided to go after HPV Vaccination. They made a Freedom of Information Act request of the FDA and ended up getting no more information than was publicly available without a FOIA request and their subsequent FOIA lawsuit.

But that's not the way they make it sound on their website, retrieved in August 2010, where they write:

On August 20, 2007 Judicial Watch filed a request for updated adverse event reports and received 1,824 reports on September, 13 2007. Judicial Watch then filed a complaint against the FDA on October 3, 2007 for failing to fully respond to the May 9, 2007 FOIA request.

Judicial Watch has posted links to the adverse event reports below and continues to monitor VAERS reports submitted to the FDA in relation to Gardasil.

The case was closed in April 2010.

This statement has confused those who don't understand the details into believing that the FOIA request and lawsuit were productive in providing information that wasn't available to the public without a FOIA request or lawsuit.  And that the information they report is evidence that getting the vaccination makes what happened next more likely than if they didn't get vaccinated.

Judging by their FOIA lawsuit complaint, the court docket and the agreed dismissal by the parties, they got nothing that wasn't available to the public with a bit of work.

What actually happened? Most of what they got were reports that FDA employees generated from the VAERS database, which the FDA provided in response to the FOIA request.  That database is available to anyone in both raw form and through an online tool.  To see this for yourself click on the I have read and understood the preceding statement box at the bottom of the page on the uses and limitations of VAERS.  On the resulting page, select CDC-Wonder in the second paragraph.  

You now have an online database tool that you can use to generate the same reports that Judicial Watch filed a FOIA to receive. And that they are trumpeting to those who don't better.

So what did their lawsuit accomplish? Nothing, except a lot of time and money wasted by those who had to respond to it. 

Don't believe me? Read the complaint, the docket and the agreed dismissal of the case at google Documents where I've posted them
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B7TTKX7laEzvMzhhMjkyYWMtM2UxNi00N2EzLWE0OTUtZTVhYmRlYzY3OWJm&hl=en What I really like is their concession to only getting the publicly available correspondence for the vaccines.

Why the 48 cents? That's what it cost me to get the documents not available at Judicial Watch's web site using PACER, Public Access to Court Electronic Records (United States). 

The Funny Numbers from HPV Studies

This blog entry was originally a number of comments at Huffington-Post researched and posted in late August 2010.  You can find them by looking here.


Leslie Botha of holy hormones, sane vax and a radio show  wrote:

According to FDA documents if a woman is exposed to HPV and gets vaccinated with the HPV vaccines her risk of getting cervical cancer increases to 44.5% with Gardasil and 32.5% with Cervarix. 

And "FDA reports also state that 73.3% of women getting Gardasil will develop a 'new medical condition."  The last claim is really funny, but you have to read through this article to find the joke.

I strongly believe that anyone reading anything should consider the plausibility of the claim. How likely is that these numbers 44.5% with Gardasil and 32.5% with Cervarix, even if accurate mean "The FDA knew that the many women who were already infected with HPV would double their risk of cancer if they got vaccinated, but approved the vaccine anyway."

I've been able to track down all three numbers. Not surprisingly, the people who license vaccines are not insane.

When does homeopathy work?

The classic answer comes from Mitchell and Webb:

That's crazy talk, Simon.  Ok, so you kill the odd patient with cancer or heart disease or bronchitis, flu, chickenpox or measles.  But when someone comes in with a vague sense of unease or a touch of the nerves or even more money than sense you will be there for them with a bottle of basically water in one hand and  a huge invoice in the other.

That's about 2 minutes in on the great "Homeopathic A&E" by Webb and Mitchell.  (A&E is the UK term for a hospital Emergency Room).  If you haven't seen it, watch it now. You can find it along with some other great videos at http://www.1023.org.uk/videos.php     

http://www.1023.org.uk is a UK website that has in the past and will in the future gather those skeptical of homeopathy to take massive overdoses of homeopathic remedies in public and observe the results.  So far, no one has died.

Why fear of vaccination is spelling disaster in the developing world:

Just came across this October 2010 piece in the UK Guardian via  Jabs Loonies (in the UK vaccine shots are called jabs.  JABS is also a UK group opposed to vaccination.

Why fear of vaccination is spelling disaster in the developing world:  Anti-vaccination scares are as old as vaccination itself – but now they are putting lives at risk in the developing world

Well worth reading.    

Ingredients of vaccines: Enjoy!

A comment and my response to the blog entry 9 Ways To Avoid The Flu This Season at Huffington-Post

Independent1969   8 hours ago (1:36 PM)

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Ingredients of vaccines: Enjoy!


http://www.advancedhealthplan.com/bhvaccineingredients.html

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Sheldon101   3 hours ago (5:47 PM)

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Ingredients of McDonald's Oreo McFlurry: Enjoy!

Vanilla Reduced Fat Ice Cream: Whole milk, sucrose, cream, nonfat milk solids, corn syrup solids, mono- and diglycerides, guar gum, imitation vanilla flavor, carrageenan, cellulose gum, vitamin A palmitate. Oreo® Cookie Pieces: Sugar, enriched wheat flour, (contains niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate {vitamin B1}, riboflavin {vitamin B2}, folic acid), vegetable shortening (partially hydrogenated soybean oil), cocoa (processed with alkali), high fructose corn syrup, corn flour, whey, baking soda, cornstarch, salt, soy lecithin (emulsifier), vanillin an artificial flavor, chocolate. http://everything2.com/title/Oreo+McFlurry

Having recently had an Oreo McFlurry, when I saw this comment,I just wondered.

Listing the ingredients in vaccines is an attempt to scare people. When it comes to flu vaccine, the only ingredient some might want to worry about is thimerosal. There's a very strong consensus that the amount of thimerosal in flu vaccines is perfectly safe for everyone. Those experts who have a concern with thimerosal (UC Davis Mind Institute in particular) merely recommend that infants and pregnant women get vaccinated with thimerosal-free influenza vaccine.

Don't give in to the fear mongers.

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Vaccinating Kids Against the Flu Helps Others - More Evidence

2010-2011 and The Elderly
History says 2010-2011 influenza should just be 2009 H1N1. That's not happening. The mix of infecting strains that are 2009 H1N1 (great antigenic matches to vaccine), a new H3N2 type (great match) and influenza B (very good match) isn't clear. The better the match, the more likely the vaccine will work.  That's good for those under 65, bad for those older.

The MMWR study also found that during seasons when influenza A (H3N2) viruses were prominent death rates were more than double what they were during seasons when influenza A (H1N1) or influenza B viruses predominated. In addition, the study confirmed previous findings that about 90% of influenza associated deaths occur among adults 65 years and older.

Typing of strains in the US from the start in October (week 40 to week 43) (information will change week by week) has 83 H3, 30 2009 H1N1 and 90 influenza B.  CDC International Surveillance update as of November 4, 2010 (link is to current information which will change) has Canada reporting predominantly H3N2 strains.  China is also predominantly reporting H3N2 strains.

The elderly were protected last year because they had either vaccine or natural infection protection against 2009 H1N1. They don't have protection against H3N2 that's new this year. So much more so than last year, they need to be vaccinated. In the US, consider Fluzone HD.

Source drying and Herd Immunity
Elsewhere I've plugged a great article from the World Health Organization that explains many of the concepts relevant to vaccines and vaccination.   In particular, the related concepts of source drying and herd immunity  called in the WHO article herd protection. Herd immunity/protection requires vaccinating (getting the vaccine) a high enough percentage so that the percentage actually immunized (prevented from becoming infected) stops the disease from spreading amongst those who are still susceptible.  When there is herd immunity, an outbreak will not occur.
The explanation of source drying from the WHO article is worth quoting in full:

American Capitalism at Work

Via Shot of Prevention

There's money to be made in vaccines (or at least getting people to come to your store, get vaccinated and feel loyalty or buy other stuff).


So it shouldn't be surprising that an advertising insert in the LA Times (as it is a pdf file, best to save it by right clicking here rather than opening in your browser) is all about vaccines.  But it is surprising.




The insert is "Distributed within: Los Angeles Times, November 2010 This section was written by Mediaplanet and did not involve Los Angeles Times News or editorial Departments. Mediaplanet’s business is to create new customers for our advertisers by providing readers with high-quality editorial content that motivates them to act."


The main advertiser -- Target.  A number of non-profit groups also have ads.

There's a full page ad by Sanofi Pasteur recommending that teens and adults who come into contact with infants get vaccinated against Pertussis. There are two such vaccines.  Sanofi Pasteur's Adacel is made a few miles away from where I live in Toronto. The site was originally the Connaught Antitoxin Laboratories and University Farm and has been used for vaccine research, development and production for nearly a hundred years.

There are some great stories in the supplement.  Go take a look.

Oscillococcinum - Truly Bizarre Even by Homeopathic Standards

Oscillococcinum is a very popular remedy for influenza and cold symptoms. Even by the bizarre standards of homeopathy, it is bizarre. When history passed it by in the 1930s, it should have gone onto the trash heap of history. 

Oscillococcinum isn't a classic homeopathic remedy made by finding substances that make a group of test subjects feel similar to the disease or condition and then diluting it until their isn't a molecule of the substance left in the remedy or preventative (homeoprophylaxis). Sometimes a homeoprophylaxis vaccine has been made using the infecting virus or bacteria and then diluting it so there isn't a molecule left.

Even by these bizarre ideas, Oscillococcinum is truly bizarre. A French doctor found a oscillating bacteria in the blood of those with 1918-1919 Spanish Flu, chickenpox, shingles and other diseases. He looked for the bacteria in animals and found it in the liver of a duck and named his product Oscillococcinum in 1925.

At the time, (the 1920s) many experts believed that influenza was caused by a bacteria. The usual culprit was the bacteria named in 1920 Haemophilus influenzae. In the 1930s the cause of influenza was determined to be a virus (which cannot be seen using a light microscope, but only by an electron microscope invented in the 1930s)

Hi type B, causes bacterial meningitis has been greatly reduced by the Hib vaccine.So even going by the inventor's beliefs, there is no reason to believe that ground up duck parts diluted to nothing should help with influenza.

Borion, the maker of Oscillococcinum has a US website, www.oscillo.com.  A site search using site:www.oscillo.com duck found only a reference to a Wall Street Journal article that is no longer available. But I predict that even that article never mentioned that it was invented because of a historical error in determining the cause of influenza and other diseases.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillococcinum
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/964317-overview

The History of Vaccines

A plug for a new website on the History of Vaccines found at http://www.historyofvaccines.org/

To shed some light on the history of these illnesses, and the development of vaccines to prevent them, The College of Physicians of Philadelphia has created The History of Vaccines, a website dedicated to exploring the role that immunization has played in the human experience and its continuing contributions to public health.

Well worthing looking at. It includes a History of Anti-vaccination Movements http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/history-anti-vaccination-movements  showing that they are not a new phenomena.

On the Board of Advisor of this Philadelphia initiative are Dr. Stanley Plotkin, developer of the Rubella vaccine used worldwide and Dr. Paul Offit , co-inventor of the Rotateq rotavirus vaccine.

Rotateq and PCV2 - ACIP October 27-28

In the spring of 2010, concerns were raised when a new technique discovered DNA from a pig virus (PCV1) in the rotatvirus vaccine, Rotarix. PCV1 is harmless in pigs. At the same time, no PCV1 or PCV2 (which causes disease in pigs was found in the Rotateq rotavirus vaccine. 

Of the two vaccines, Rotateq is the one most commonly used in Canada and the US.

Further testing of Rotateq using more sensitive means found PCV2 DNA in finished lots of Rotateq vaccine. By June 2010, the source of the PCV2 DNA had been traced to trypsin, an enzyme from pigs used in producing the vaccine. The trypsin had been treated with radiation (irradiated) to eliminate concerns with any viruses or bacteria in the trypsin. No PCV1 or PCV2 DNA was found in the materials used to originate the production vaccine. 

During the October 27-28 meeting of the group that recommends the use of vaccines in the US, ACIP, Merck provided an update on Rotateq and PCV virus from what they had stated earlier in the year. They found only pieces of PCV2 DNA in the bulk trypsin or the finished vaccine. They did not find any actual virus. What was new in the October 2010 meeting was the testing of blood and stool samples gathered over the years were tested to see if they had antibodies for PCV1 or PCV2. None were found. In an October 28th press release Merck states that it is "Developing approaches to enhance screening and removal of PCV from Rotateq."

There was no new presentation on Rotarix at the October meeting. With Rotarix, PCV1 was found in materials from the beginning of the development of the vaccine. PCV1 is the virus that is harmless in pig and humans. Actual PCV1 virus was found in stool samples of those vaccinated with Rotarix. Tests on samples found no antibodies against PCV1 in those vaccinated with Rotarix. The conclusion is that humans are not infected with PCV1. Removing any PCV1 virus from Rotarix will be difficult as it would require producing the rotavirus vaccine from the beginning and require testing again.

Unfortunately, the ACIP meeting minutes and slide presentations of October 27-28, 2010 have not been posted. The June 2010 ACIP Minutes are available as are the presentations from the makers of Rotateq, Rotarix and the CDC.

What's Acceptable Amongst Vaccination Opponents

In honor of  Vaccine Awareness Week

Age of Autism is the primary propaganda machine for the vaccines cause autism movement.  As others have pointed out, they now go well beyond autism as one of the sins of vaccines as they now react such as hysterically to reports on HPV Vaccine.

Age of Autism censors the comments that are sent to them.  I've had that happen to me, even when the comments were polite and accurate.  You post a comment, it has to be approved before it appears.  What's fascinating is the limits of the comments that they allow to appear.   If you want to explain that there are errors in a blog entry --- it almost certainly won't appear.

Eugenics - It's Not Just for Poor Countries Anymore
There's a claim floating around the internet that Bill Gates and his billions are trying to reduce the population of poor countries through the actual vaccines they are funding that are being used in poor countries.   The sliver of truth is this:  Gates and others believe that if they can reduce childhood deaths in poor countries through vaccination, then parents will choose to have fewer children because they will be more confident that their children will reach adulthood. This is explained in a 2009 letter from the Foundation. 

So there's a morsel of truth because there's a connection between vaccines and population control.   And there have been claims that vaccines for poor countries have contained ingredients that caused sterility.   No matter how false that claim is, it does sound like it could possibly be true.

But Age of Autism doesn't have a problem with a comment that reminds me of  William Cooper, whose solution to criticisms of his conspiracy theories was to expand them until they included those who criticized him.  My personal connection to Bill Cooper is an email telling me, that come the revolution, I would be hung as a traitor to the US Constitution.  I explained that I was Canadian and so, by definition, could not be a traitor to the US Constitution.

The comment  (full text below) has a Cooperesque view of the enemy.  Who are they?

These people control our media, health care, science, banks, governments but they have little control over social networking which is our strength. We may not have there money or power but we can summon our own individual power which I call the power of one...fight back, resist now!

 What are these people all over the world trying to do?

What what we are seeing is part of a new and very sophisticated global eugenics movement that seeks to identify and catalogue mitochondrial genetic defects that predispose the human population to disease.

The purpose of identifying these MtDNA defects is not to cure disease but to purify the gene pool by removing these defects. This is the ultimate goal.

Wow.  Now that's a great worldwide conspiracy.

If you choose to control through censorship comments that disagree with your views, then you are also responsible for those you do accept.   And this is what Age of Autism believes is acceptable.   Here's the comment in its full glory.