New blog post - Pushing buttons

[Guest guest]

http://australiansceptics.com/2012/05/10/pushing-buttons/

I came across a blog the other day called â€Which button would you click?â€

This article contains the typical pro-vaccine scenario of having to make the choice between pushing a button that kills 1 out of every 1,000

children at random (the supposed rate of death from disease) or pushing

the other button to kill 1 out of 1,000,000 children at random (the supposed rate of death from vaccine reactions). At the end of the scenario, the question is posed: “Which one would you click?The blogger’s response is “it’s a no brainerâ€, and in some ways he is

correct. It does take absolutely no brain power to follow the advice of

most mainstream medical and scientific professionals, but it does take brain power to actually look at the historical data on mortality rates of supposed vaccine-preventable diseases yourself and see whether vaccines really do save lives.

“Experience of the last two centuries indicates that

infectious deaths fell to a small fraction of their earlier level without medical intervention, and suggests that had none been available they would have continued to decline, if not so rapidly in some diseases.â€Professor McKeown in “The Role of Medicineâ€If we look at the mortality rates in Australia pre-vaccine for most childhood diseases, we will see that there was already a 90-99%

decline before most vaccines were introduced. We see the same decline in diseases like Typhoid and Scarlet Fever for which no vaccine was ever

used in Australia.How is that possible. you might ask? If vaccines did not save us from disease, what else could it possibly be?

“In the now developed countries, mortality due to tuberculosis, measles, whooping cough, typhoid fever, diarrhoeal diseases and many other infections began to fall long before the responsible microbial agents had been identified and before specific measures of control or treatment were known. This decline – much greater

than anything achieved since through the use of vaccination and antimicrobial drugs – paralleled the improvement in general living conditions. Microbes and the diseases caused by them prosper, therefore,

only in environmental conditions favourable to them.â€Dr Moises Behar said in his report to the World Health.I have actually asked a vaccine advocate in an online debate, “What evidence do you have to show what percentage of lives saved historically come from vaccines, and what percentage of lives saved are from improved living conditions?†Funnily enough, they had no answer.Over and over again we are told that vaccines save lives and unvaccinated people are putting everyone’s life at risk, but where is the evidence of this? Now when I say evidence, I don’t mean estimated lives saved based on estimates of vaccine efficacy and the population. I

mean actual numbers of real people who have been saved from death because they were vaccinated. The answer is - there is no evidence. You cannot actually prove that vaccines save lives – you can only prove that it causes the body to produce antibodies to the vaccine viral and bacterial particles and that is not the same thing. So if vaccines are not proven to save lives, is it really a “no brainer†to push that second button?

If people stopped vaccinatingTo demonstrate the supposed catastrophic results that can occur when vaccination rates decline, the graph (below) was produced to show that pertussis rates and deaths went up in Japan when the vaccination coverage declined due to concerns over 37 infant deaths that occurred after vaccination with the DTP vaccine. What this graph does not include

though, is the fact that pertussis is a cyclical disease that tends to peak every 5 to 6 years and that when Japan started vaccinating again, they changed the age of vaccination to 2 years old. As a result, something startling happened! Japan jumped from 17th to first place in infant mortality in the world!This was also seen in England in 1975, when the media reported a link

between brain damage and vaccination. Parents stopped vaccinating and the overall infant mortality rate plummeted, but when vaccination rates started increasing again, MacFarlane in 1982 noted;

“The postneonatal mortality fell markedly in 1976, the year in which a sharp decline in perinatal mortality rate began. Between 1976 and 1979, however, neither the late nor the postneonatal mortality rates fell any further. Indeed, the postneonatal mortality rate increased slightly among babies born in 1977″. A much more telling pertussis graph to include would have to be the one for the whooping cough epidemic here in

Australia. It started with over 4,000 cases in 2007; 14,000 cases in 2008; 29,000 cases in 2009; 34,000 cases in 2010; and 38,000 cases in 2011.What are the vaccination coverage rates for infants under two? Between 93 and 96%. It certainly doesn’t seem like high vaccination rates equal, less whooping cough now does it?Lastly, I just have to say that people who do not vaccinate are not seeking to push that first button. They do not seek to take vaccination away from people who believe in it, they just want complete and transparent information given on both sides of the argument and the right for people to make up their own minds about what risks they are willing to take for their own families.by Epiphany

Meryl Dorey,SpokespersonThe Australian Vaccination Network, Inc.Investigate before you vaccinateEditor,Living Wisdom MagazineFamily, Health, EnvironmentPO Box 177BANGALOW NSW 2479AUSTRALIAhttp://www.avn.org.auhttp://www.living-wisdom.comPhone: 02 6687 1699 FAX 02 6687 2032skype: ivmmagFreedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose. - C. MillsThe authority of any governing institution must stop at its citizen's skin. - Gloria SteinemWe rely on the help and support of our members and subscribers to continue offering our services freely and without prejudice.Please consider helping us by joining the AVN as a member. Go to http://www.avn.org.au to become a member or donate to support our work.We also sell books, videos and DVDs on vaccination and other health issues. Go to http://shop.avn.org.au/ for more details.