A response to the Huffington Post article Vaccine Denial = Scientific Illiteracy

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http://gnhealth.com/vaccinedenial.htmlBy Gary Null, Ph.D., and Doug Henderson, J.D. A response to the Huffington Post article Vaccine Denial = Scientific Illiteracy. The format faithfully quotes the author’s work followed by a critique of his points. By Jacob DickermanHUFFINGTON POST March 30, 2009 | 03:00 PM (EST)Vaccine Denial = Scientific IlliteracyDickerman: Last time I wrote about this subject, I made it too subtle. I thought that deliberately tagging both David Kirby and Jenny McCarthy, titling it "to David and Jenny, with Love", and then writing about how a woman's "mommy instinct" got her to kill an unarmed black man with no evidence of harm was a funny, but subtle way to point out that really, folks like David Kirby and Jenny McCarthy are just scientific illiterates, pointing fingers at whatever they can, even though thimerosal was removed from the childhood vaccination schedule in 2001 and rates of autism diagnosis have not slowed at all. This time, as you may have noticed, I have abandoned subtlety.Here's the cusp of the matter. These guys scream, "You're giving mercury to my kids!!! ARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!" but when scientists stop giving vaccines with thimerosal to children, the anti-vaccination crowd goes "You're giving aluminum to my kids!!! …And it doesn't matter that the aluminum is part of the chemistry that makes the vaccine=2 0work better, and it doesn't matter that their kid gets less aluminum from vaccines than they do from that hippy-dippy soy baby formula shit they put into their stomachs because Mommy's afraid of making cows cry.Reply: This is a prima facie example of Dickerman’s scientific illiteracy. Even more, this is particularly heinous because Dickerman’s ignorance or intentional misrepresentation of the facts means that others who trust his analysis will place their children in harm’s way. The truth is that toxic substances are needed to make vaccines. Vaccines consist of several toxic substances that are necessary to: a) prevent the vaccines from becoming infected, or; b) assist in the performance of the vaccine. Chief among these substances are mercury, formaldehyde and aluminum.In the last decade, the number of autistic children has risen from between 200-500 percent in each state. In a classic case of cause and effect, this rise was preceded by the introduction of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in 1975. Perhaps Dickerman can make his flippant argument to the grandson of Representative Dan Burton, who was fully healthy until the day he was given injections for 9 diseases. Autism quickly followed these injections. The injections contained thimerosal, the mercury preservative. (Mercury is a neurotoxin that can injure the brain and nervous system.) Burton’s grandson’s system was flooded with 41 times the quantity of mercury capable of harming the body. Perhaps, Dickerman can look into the grandson’s eyes and tell him that vaccines are safe and those questioning their safety are not of sound mind and scientific principle.Dickerman: These guys will not be happy until the syringe is filled with water. Because for them, it will always be=2 0the fault of the vaccines. It doesn't matter what the science says, because these people don't care about science. Their argument is purely ideological, and does not belong in any discussion of scientific, medical, or political policy.Reply: No, Mr. Dickerman, it is you who have ignored vast amounts of articles by well-respected doctors questioning the safety of the vaccines. Again, to return to the aluminum issue. Aluminum is in a number of vaccines. Macrophagic myofasciitis, a recent disease, is characterized by pain in muscles, bones and joints. Every single person with this disease has been given vaccines containing aluminum. To put it another way, only persons injected with vaccines containing aluminum can get the disease. Portions of aluminum are left behind in tissues and interfere with the immune and nervous system for the remainder the person’s life. Dickerman labels as frivolous the claims that substances contained in mercury are dangerous. Then he dismisses them. Well, he cannot argue with the facts. Virtually every vaccine contains aluminum and mercury. In terms of the etiology of Alzheimer's disease, these20metals seem to play a significant part. One expert stated that someone who has been given 5 or more yearly flu vaccine shots has increased his chance of developing Alzheimer's disease by a factor of 10 when compared to someone who has had a maximum of 2 shots.It gets worse. In addition to being exposed to aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde, etc., we are also at risk of getting simian virus 40, as well as additional, dangerous viruses that may result in cancer, leukemia and several other serious health conditions. One of the major problems is that the vaccine pool is tainted because of slipshod animal isolation techniques. But the government has indemnified the vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits—effectively giving them carte blanche to make profits at the expense of our children without any accountability.Records indicate that American children at the age of 2 began receiving hepatitis B vaccine in December 2000. Yet, double-blind, placebo controlled studies on the safety of the hepatitis B vaccine in this age group had never been done. The results were sobering an all too predictable. Shortly thereafter, over 36,000 adverse reactions and 440 deaths followed. However, some experts suggest that this is merely the tip of the iceberg, with the true incidence being much higher. Dr. Philip Incao declared “…the conclusion is obvious that the risks of hepatitis B vaccination far outweigh the benefits. Once a vaccine is mandated the vaccine manufacturer is no longer liable for adverse reactions.”To elaborate on that last point, consider the following, excerpted from Thomas Smith’s article, Subterfuges and Syringes The Real World of Vaccinations: The article was published on February 1, 2003,and offers valuable insight into what the government had attempted to do. However, when Gary Null exposed this to his audience, it created such an uproar that hundreds of thousands of his listeners joined forces with bloggers and contacted their elected officials to have this section removed. We present it here to show intent:“Criminal government legislation. The Model States Health Powers Act contained provisions to mandate compulsory vaccination. Property confiscation, incarceration in "quarantine" centers and the use of law enforcement to ensure compliance was all carefully detailed. This is reminiscent of the "concentration" camps employed by another twentieth century despot when he was redesigning the government of his country. This was to be essentially a state activity. However, many States failed to adopt this totalitarian monstrosity as being alien to our American sense of fitness. Many States tabled it, one State, Alabama, rejected it outright.To many, it appeared to provide too much power to a government that is showing disturbing signs of being willing to kill large numbers of people any way that they can just so long as they can accomplish their hidden goals.When it became clear that mandatory vaccination was dead at the State level, it was included in the most totalitarian piece of legislation ever attempted here in America. It was included in The Homeland Security Bill which recently passed and will soon be signed into law by the president. Even many that voted on this bill do not realize what it contains.Many congressmen did not even read the final draft upon which they voted. This bill provides for "mandatory vaccination of the entire population at the discretion of the director of Homeland Security." All options for refusal of the vaccine have been deleted. Personal, religious and medical exemptions have been deleted; informed consent is no longer required. Refusal will lead to arrest, property confiscation and imprisonment. Tommy Thompson, Secretary of Health and Human Services is already on record as saying "I have a vaccination with the name of every American on it."This bill also authorizes "other medical interventions" as specified by the director of Homeland Security. One of the most outrageous clauses in this bill is known as the "vaccine injury indemnity clause." This clause holds the makers and distributors of vaccines harmless for any injury that they cause. The theory is that vaccination is a necessary response to terrorism and that any injury caused by the vaccine is an unavoidable collateral casualty.. This clause removes any redress at law. If, as will happen to many, you are injured by the vaccine you or your survivors cannot even sue for damages..Prior to the passage of the Homeland Security bill, federal law required all suits against vaccine makers to go before a special court before any civil action could be brought in the State civil court system. This court is known as the "vaccine court." It was set up to help protect vaccine makers against la rge punitive awards provided by outraged jurors in the State courts. This court is presently facing over 1000 suits brought by parents of autistic children whose autism was caused by MMR vaccines.On November 25, 2002 the Bush administration asked this court to order the evidence from hundreds of cases of autism by vaccine be kept from the public. The "special master", George Hastings, of this court has promised a "speedy" ruling on this request.If this request by the Bush administration is approved it will make it very difficult for the parents of these damaged children to obtain redress in the State civil courts. It is to be noted that the State civil courts were set up to handle precisely this sort of action..Michael Hugo, a Boston lawyer, in commenting on this situation said: "We dealing with real injury to real children in a program that is funded by taxpayer dollars. It is unbelievable to me that the president of the United States, in the name of trying to help the drug industry, would put the interests of the drug industry over the interests of neurologically impaired sick children and their parents."Dickerman: Let's take a hypothetical look at the anti-vaccination mindset. Imagine now that I live in Harlem for years, and am robbed multiple times, and every time I am I say, "It's the blacks." Now, most of my neighbors are black, it's not an entirely improbable thing that the people who are robbing me again and again are black, I'm probably saying that because I'm a racist, but you can't really be sure and I'm not necessarily wrong. So then I move to Greenpoint. And in Greenpoint, I am repeatedly robbed, day after day and every time I am, I say, "it's the Polish." Once again, most of my neighbors are Polish, so it's not entirely unreasonable to assume that when I am getting robbed multiple times every week, it's the Polish people around me that are doing it. So I move to Washington Heights, where I am robbed repeatedly and of course whenever I am, I tell people, "It's the Dominicans." But a pattern is starting to emerge and my friends point it out to me, and so I tell them "It's the minorities." And so eventually, when I move to Riverdale, surround myself with Orthodox Jews, and am repeatedly robbed day in and out, I tell people "It's the minorities." And it makes sense to me. And by sticking to these guns, I get to ignore the facts that my roommate is a crack addict and that in all my time living in New York City, I've never learned that I should lock my door.Reply: Dickerman’s arguments clearly show that he is also illiterate in fallacious reasoning. The cause and effect linking vaccinations to autism is strong. His hypothetical scenario has nothing to do with th e mindset of those questioning the safety of vaccines. Dickerman presents a ridiculous scenario then links those questioning vaccines to the scenario, thus making the arguments of those questioning the safety of vaccines appear to be ridiculous. The problem is there is no connection between those stating there is a connection between vaccinations causing autism and a person being robbed by various ethnic groups.The cavalier tone of Mr. Dickerman’s article is particularly troublesome given the epidemic of autism spectrum disorders that is decimating the nation’s children. There is nothing associated with autism spectrum disorders that is humorous.Dickerman: There has been ONE doctor - ONE REAL DOCTOR - on their side. He was the guy who started it, Andrew Wakefield. And recently, it's been shown that he was full of shit. Kirby's last blog post took a crack at Brian Deer's article on Wakefield, but here's the thing. If Brian Deer is right on this thing in any way at all, then at the very least Wakefield is a crummy scientist, and given how little anything that Wakefield's done has been verified by anyone else, Brian Deer probably has hi s facts straight.Reply: Clearly Dickerman hasn’t done his homework if he believes that there is only one “real” doctor who questions the efficacy of vaccinations. Just a cursory glance of the Internet reveals legions of doctors (real, credentialed doctors) who believe there is a link between vaccines and autism spectrum disorders. Why would Dickerman deliberately attempt to deceive his readers into thinking otherwise? Had he done a scant amount of research, he would have read a plethora articles by well-respected medical doctors that eloquently articulate their doubts about the efficacy of vaccines.For example, in Throwing Children into Oncoming Traffic: The Truth about Autism, by Kenneth Stoller, MD, the author expresses the following:In the 1990s, I had known there was a problem with many vaccines because they contained the preservative thimerosal (50% mercury), and I had discouraged many parents from having their children vaccinated with vaccines containing thimerosal. There is no safe level of mercury, and it didn't make sense to inject the most toxic non-radioactive element on the planet into children. Still I had never made the connection between autism and mercury. (I knew what thimerosal was because while I was in college, my brother had a very bad reaction to the thimerosal that used to be used in contact lens solution.) I was taken aback that something so obvious had not registered with me, but I didn't realize that my physician colleagues and I had been subjected to a disinformation campaign to make us think there was no connection between mercury and autism. It has been known for sometime that mercury was causing autism, but someone has been running interference. The question is, who was running interference? In February 2007, the watchdog agency on America's health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), made the official announcement that a breathtaking one in 150 kids is autistic in the US. If you go to the CDC website on autism (http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism), you will see lots of pictures of smiling happy children with autism, and we'd be told that autism spectrum disorders are "a group of developmental disabilities defined by significant impairments in social interaction and communication and the presence of unusual behaviors and interests." You won't be told that, for many parents, autism is a nightmare from which they never wake up. "Significant impairments" can mean that a child is violent and self-abusive, non-verbal, and physically sick. You won't be told that this is a medical disease in which most autistic children have significant inflammation in both gut and brain including colitis, super-infections, and severe food allergies. Even though autism affects one in 90 boys (four boys affected for every girl) in the US, the CDC can't seem to tell us exactly why. The CDC states, "We still don't know a lot about the ca uses of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). Scientists think that both genes and the environment play a role, and there might be many causes that lead to ASDs." The site also doesn't mention that only one in 10,000 children in the 1970s and one in 2,500 in the 1980s were autistic. The CDC site also doesn't tell us about a secret meeting that was held in June of 2000 in which over 50 individuals from the CDC, World Health Organization (WHO), National Institutes of Health (NIH), American Academy of Pediatrics, and many representatives from pharmaceutical interests discussed data from the CDC Vaccine Data Sets showing that the increase in mercury exposure from the stepped-up vaccine schedule in the 1990s caused an 11-fold increase in neurobehavioral disorders (www.autismhelpforyou.com/Simpsonwood_And_Puerto%20%20Rico.htm). What you will see on the CDC website is "Several studies have looked at whether there is a relationship between vaccines and autism. The weight of the evidence indicates that vaccines are not associated with autism." In the article entitled, Why You Should Avoid Taking Vaccines, Dr. James Howenstine, MD, begins with a quote from Dr. James R. Shannon (the former Shannon director of the National Institutes of Health, a post he held for thirteen years) declared, "..the only safe vaccine is one that is never used."Dickerman: He was the guy who started it, Andrew Wakefield. And recently, it's been shown that he was full of shit. Kirby's last blog post took a crack at Brian Deer's article on Wakefield, but here's the thing. If Brian Deer is right on this thing in any way at all, then at the very least Wakefield is a crummy scientist, and given how little anything that Wakefield's20done has been verified by anyone else, Brian Deer probably has his facts straight.Reply: In examining Dickerman’s article Vaccine Denial = Scientific Illiteracy, he uses the term illiteracy, which in this context means the condition or quality of being ignorant or unknowledgeable in a particular subject or field. If a case were to be brought against Dickerman, accusing him of scientific illiteracy, his article would be exhibit A.In his attack on Wakefield, Dickerman uses an article by Deer to do so. Here’s what Keith Olbermann had to say about Deer regarding this issue:The bronze to Brian Deer. He wrote the “Times of London” report that Dr. Andrew Wakefield had alleged altered key research linking the measles, mumps and rubella triple vaccine to autism in children, which earned Dr. Wakefield a spot on this list yesterday. The “Times of London” did not bother to mention that the British investigation into whether or not Wakefield did that was as a result of a complaint by Brian Deer. The guy who wrote the article about the investigation never mentioned that he was the individual who precipitated the investigation. The truth about the doctor‘s research may be in doubt here, but not Deer‘s vast conflict of interest, nor the “Times of London‘s” journalistic malfeasance. Wakefield viewed Deer’s conflict of interest in the following manner:Mr. Deer’s latest article was based upon ‘evidence’ that he claims was presented at the GMC hearing - which started in 2007, is due to conclude sometime in 2009 - without disclosing the fact that it was he who brought the original complaint. He therefore has an undeclared interest in its conclusions. Failure to havedisclosed this conflict to readers of the Sunday Times is misleading.Wakefiled presented his defense in the following manner:“A journalist has a duty to report fairly and accurately on such proceedings, but in this case not only was my response and evidence omitted from the Sunday Times report – but crucially, so was that of my colleagues. (As will be seen below, one of the serious inaccuracies in the reports is the suggestion that I was involved in either the formulation of the diagnostic conclusions reported in the Lancet or the recording of the ‘data’ referred to in the article). This is, as is well known to Mr Deer through the evidence adduced at the GMC, totally untrue.It was, in fact, Mr Deer, who in February, 2004, initiated the investigation by the GMC in the first place - three days after he published his first article in the Sunday Times alleging wrongdoing by myself and two colleagues at the Royal Free Hospital in London. This, and subsequent articles by Mr. Deer which alleged deceit, unethical experimentation on children, undisclosed conflict of interest, fraud, and profiteering, was also factually inaccurate and highly defamatory. I was forced to abandon my action for libel, after an interim ruling in the HighCourt ordered that it had to run concurrently with the GMC case, which my lawyers advised was physically impossible. We naturally decided the priority was to concentrate our efforts on the GMC hearing.Mr. Deer’s latest article was based upon ‘evidence’ that he claims was presented at the GMC hearing - which started in 2007, is due to conclude sometime in 2009- without disclosing the fact that it was he who brought the original complaint. He therefore has an undeclared interest in its conclusions. Failure to have disclosed this conflict to readers of the Sunday Times is misleading. The PCC code of conduct states that the Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading, or distorted information and that while ‘free to be partisan’ it must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture, and fact. The articles complained about are full of inaccurate, misleading, and distorted information and fail to distinguish between what are allegations and conjecture and ‘fact’ and I seek, in accordance with the PCC code, appropriate corrections and an apology.”Dickerman: I don't think it's easy to be the parent of an autistic kid. Honestly, I have nothing against these parents. They're in an awful situation and I'm sorry for what happened to their kid. But to think that the solution is to boycott vaccines, to the point that we have horrible, brain altering diseases like Hib coming back, to the point where there's still fucking Polio in the world - if these anti-vaccine activists had been around fifty years ago, we'd still have Smallpox (it hadn't yet been fully taken out by 1960). Do you know how badly we got fucked by Smallpox? This shit was legendary. Incredibly infectious, 25-30 percent who got it died, the rest were scarred, often blinded, and disabled by it for the rest of their lives. Look up the history of this country during the revolutionary war, body-count given to the Brits is insignificant compared to how many of us were dying from a disease which today, we don't have to worry about, because of the advance of medicine.Reply: In an article entitled Why You Should Avoid Taking Vaccines, Dr. James Howenstine, MD, states the following:“Cowpox vaccine was believed able to immunize people against smallpox. At the time this vaccine was introduced, there was already a decline in the number of cases of smallpox. Japan introduced compulsory vaccination in 1872. In 1892 there were 165,774 cases of smallpox with 29,979 deaths despite the vaccination program. A stringent compulsory smallpox vaccine program, which prosecuted those refusing the vaccine, was instituted in England in 1867. Within 4 years 97.5 % of persons between 2 and 50 had been vaccinated. The following year England experienced the worst smallpox epidemic[1] in its history with 44,840 deaths. Between 1871 and 1880 the incidence of smallpox escalated from 28 to 46 per 100,000. The smallpox vaccine does not work.Much of the success attributed to vaccination programs may actually have been due to improvement in public health related to water quality and sanitation, less crowded living conditions, better nutrition, and higher standards of living. Typically the incidence of a disease was clearly declining before the vaccine for that disease was introduced. In England the incidence of polio had decreased by 82 % before the polio vaccine was introduced in 1956.In the early 1900s an astute Indiana physician, Dr. W.B. Clarke, stated "Cancer was practically unknown until compulsory vaccination with cowpox vaccine began to be introduced. I have had to deal with two hundred cases of cancer, and I never saw a case of cancer in an unvaccinated person."There is a widely held belief that vaccines should not be criticized because the public might refuse to take them. This is valid only if the benefits exceed the known risks of the vaccines.”In his brilliant article, Subterfuges and Syringes The Real World of Vaccinations, author Thomas Smith writes the following:“Deceptive medicine. Note that the vaccination itself does not confer immunity. The immunity, in theory, results from the body successfully developing sufficient antibodies quickly enough to avoid acquiring the disease conferred by the vaccination.The childhood immune system is heavily dependent upon the antibodies it receives from its mother's milk. To stimulate the immature immune system in an effort to produce antibodies that it can not yet produce is at best insanity; at worst it is a most culpable criminal activity.Neither the kidneys nor the liver of an immature child can clear the relatively huge amounts of mercury poison given along with the active agent in these vaccines.Perhaps the most pernicious of the incredible deceptions foisted upon a trusting public is the idea that vaccination programs ended the smallpox epidemics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The only thing about these vaccination programs that ended the epidemics was the discontinuance of the programs. Sometimes many people were jailed and disenfranchised by an arrogant and unresponsive government before they changed the law.What then did finally eradicate smallpox, which at one time really was a serious matter irrespective of vaccines? The great improvements in the health of people came through the eradication of diseases of filth and of filthy water. These advances consisted of major improvements in diet, hygiene, sanitary and health measures, underground sewage disposal, availability of uncontaminated water, as well as refrigeration and better preservation and distribution of food.The Center for Disease control in their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, July 20, 1999, 48:621-628 stated that improvements in water quality, sanitation and hygiene were the most important factors in the improvement of health and the control of infectious disease. Vaccines were not even considered to be among the factors.Scientist's John and Sonia McKinlay show the same thing in their research. In fact they were able to quantize these findings. They stated that 97% of the increase i n life span since the beginning of the twentieth century is due to the enormous improvements in sanitation of food, water and environment.World Health statistics Annual 1973-1976 Volume II also attributes the vanishing of infectious disease to improved standards of cleanliness in our food, water and environment.Do vaccinations really reduce either the incidence of or the severity of smallpox? From the many, many quotations from responsible, knowledgeable, and honest, medical professionals that could be used to answer this question perhaps this one will give the most focused response. This quotation is by J.W. Hodge MD. In his book "The vaccination superstition" he states: "After a careful consideration of the history of vaccination gleaned from an impartial and comprehensive study of vital statistics, and pertinent data from every reliable source, and after an experience derived from having vaccinated 31,000 subjects, I am firmly convinced that vaccination cannot be shown to have any logical relation to the diminution of cases of smallpox.Vaccination does not protect, it actually renders its subjects more susceptible by depressing the vital power and diminishing the natural resistance, and millions of people have died of smallpox which they contracted after being vaccinated."Dickerman: Are vaccines harmless? Well, for most of us -- yes. There is a small (TINY) percentage of the population that can't have vaccines, immune-compromised kids, and a very small number of people for whom the vaccines will in fact have a detrimental effect.Reply: In an article replete with examples of Dickerman’s scientific illiteracy, this may top them all. Harmless vaccines? The history of vaccines contradicts this contention. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, vaccines wreaked havoc on the population in many countries in which the government introduced vaccination programs: in Japan, there were 48,000 deaths from smallpox vaccination; in England and Wales, there were 45,800 deaths attributed to the smallpox vaccination in a population that had been 97% vaccinated against smallpox; in Australia and Germany, there were a total of 120,000 smallpox deaths despite widespread smallpox vaccinations; in Europe, there were 3,000,000 deaths in the portion of the population that had been vaccinated. Interestingly enough, deaths from smallpox vaccination decreased as an increased number of persons mounted staunch opposition to the against mandatory vaccination programs.For those who think resistance to vaccines originated with Jenny McCarthy, it is important to note that it actually initiated in England during the late 19th century. However, the vaccine rebels paid a stiff price, as England incarcerated approximately 2000 persons annually for not allowing themselves or their children to be vaccinated. A decisive factor that tilted the scales more in favor of the opposition occurred when leading scientists began speaking out about the horrors of vaccines. For example, in the book The History and Pathology of Vaccination," Doctor Crookshank (a biology professor at Kings College) openly expressed his opposition to the mandatory vaccinations programs. A slew of other important scientists followed. As a result, in less than two decades, England repealed its mandatory smallpox vaccination laws. Consequently, 1919 witnessed the death rate from smallpox plunge in a population of approximately 40,000,000 to a mere 28 deaths. Under the mandatory vaccination program, the death rate averaged approximately 44,000 from smallpox. In the United States, from 1948 to 1969, three hundred children died as a result of receiving the smallpox vaccination. Oddly, during these very y ears not a single case of smallpox was recorded in the United States. A prestigious a member of the World Health Organization advisory panel on viruses, Professor Ari Zuckerman chimed in: "Immunization against smallpox is more hazardous than the disease itself."Dickerman: The science is in. Children are exposed to more new pathogens on a daily basis than the entirety of what they're given in their vaccination schedule, you get more formaldehyde into your body from the paint on your walls, and even if it was still in the childhood vaccination schedule (which it's not), the amount of mercury in thimerosal is orders of magnitude below what it would take to actually damage your brain. Vaccines do not cause autism. Measles, Mumps, and Rubella are not diseases we should let come back. Allowing these "green our vaccines" Evidence of Harm "Mercury Militia" people to have their pre-scientific crap pollute our public discourse is retarding our nation's health, and we can't stand for it anymore.And by pushing forward their campaign to throw an ideological penny onto science's tracks, these parents and advocates are hurting those kids too. See, those kids... they can't have immunizations, and so the only thing keeping them from getting sick is that enough of their little friends have gotten those shots, making it statistically unlikely that the non-immunized kids will get these illnesses. Viruses don't thrive in a vacuum, it's called herd immunity, and without it those little kids - you know, the ones who's immune systems are screwed up and can't get the benefit of childhood vaccines - they'd probably be dead. In the UK, the original home of Wakefield and still a bigger part of the anti-vaccine movement than the states (don't worry! We can still catch up! USA! USA!), many of these childhood ailments are already making a comeback, and we have small spots in the states where it's happening too. Thank you, vaccine denialists, for saving our kids.Reply: If Dickerman truly believes that mercury in vaccines causes no harm, I suggest that he volunteer to be vaccinated. I do not know the science he is referring to when he says that the science is in. The science I have examined shows that mercury is still in vaccines, despite assertions that it has been removed. In short, vaccines are not free of mercury. For example, the Health Advocacy in the Public Interest (HAPI) raised $500 to pay an independent lab to test whether four vaccines still contained heavy metals. in 1999, a number of drug manufacturers willingly started manufacturing vaccines they claimed were mercury free. Yet, some product inserts still show that trace amounts of mercury remain in the vaccines, though the total amount has been significantly reduced. Still, other drug manufacturers assert their vaccines are totally free of mercury.The independent lab reported that thimerosal is still used to manufacture the majority of vaccines and that these drug companies are merely filtering out the thimerosal from the final product. But, according to Boyd Haley, Ph.D. (Chemistry Department Chair, University of Kentucky) mercury clings to the antigenic protein in the vaccine and cannot be entirely filtered out. The results showed that all four vials of the vaccines they analyzed had mercury in them. Yet, the manufacturers stated that two of the vials were totally freer of mercury. But, there is more. Aluminum (in one vial, it existed in an amount nine times greater than the three others), which exponentially enhances the toxicity of mercury—leading to the death of neurons in the brain—was present in all four vials. (See above for discussion for a discussion on aluminum.) A growing number of persons now allege that the amount of mercury in routine childhood vaccines is linked to the epidemic of autism cases and other neurological disorders our children have been diagnosed with. It is absolutely criminal to claim that toxic substances are not in a product being given to human beings. In particular, the highly sensitive immune system of children. If the mercury, aluminum and other poisons have not been removed, their presence should be reflected on the insert. In addition, the drug companies should not be allowed to present products containing mercury as being mercury free.Remember: The amount of mercury in a single vaccination contains up to 125 times the Environmental Protection Agency’s allowable quantity of toxic mercury. Compounding the problem is the fact that this particular form of mercury is in a highly toxic form. It has been known, since 1929, to ravage children’s nervous systems and to devastate their kidneys, liver and immune systems.«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»§ - PULSE ON 21st CENTURY ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE! §Subscribe send email to: - «¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»GREAT VACATION RENTAL ON THE LAKE: www.vacationhomerentals.com/39833