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I know someone who got brain cancer as a small child, and both her and her mother blamed it on vaccinations, claiming that the doctor told them that's what caused it. Is this a common belief among anti-vaccine people? It seems... pretty ridiculous, really. I feel like causing brain cancer would be pretty big news. Besides, narrowing down the source of cancer to a specific thing smells of bullshit. Then again, the mother also was firmly convinced that, because her cellphone had lost reception a couple of times, that her divorce-pending husband was wire tapping her. So I'm not ascribing much in the way of logic to this one.
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Jul 4, 2014 03:47
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Karia posted:I know someone who got brain cancer as a small child, and both her and her mother blamed it on vaccinations, claiming that the doctor told them that's what caused it. Is this a common belief among anti-vaccine people? It seems... pretty ridiculous, really. I feel like causing brain cancer would be pretty big news. Besides, narrowing down the source of cancer to a specific thing smells of bullshit. People like putting faces to their problems, regardless of whether it's logical or not, and especially for something as personally traumatic as cancer. The daughter may well have just had it drilled into her head by her mom, who knows. In a similar vein, a sister of mine has told me several times that vitamins cause cancer, and that medical facilities in Mexico are hiding the truth from the rest of the world. I don't think she's ever even met a cancer victim. It's crazy how people can trick themselves into thinking they know something about a topic they've had no experience with. I catch myself doing it often. The human brain is a piece of work.
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Jul 4, 2014 04:35
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Karia posted:I know someone who got brain cancer as a small child, and both her and her mother blamed it on vaccinations, claiming that the doctor told them that's what caused it. Is this a common belief among anti-vaccine people? It seems... pretty ridiculous, really. I feel like causing brain cancer would be pretty big news. Besides, narrowing down the source of cancer to a specific thing smells of bullshit. The "doctor" who said that was likely some naturopath quack they went to because the parents already didn't trust real medicine.
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Jul 4, 2014 04:56
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Oh, no arguments there, it's pretty clearly bullshit. I'm just wondering if claims about cancer are widespread, it was the first time I'd ever heard about it.
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Jul 4, 2014 05:18
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Maybe when they got the "vaccination" it was actually an injection of plutonium by a naturopath doctor!
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Jul 4, 2014 05:40
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Karia posted:Oh, no arguments there, it's pretty clearly bullshit. I'm just wondering if claims about cancer are widespread, it was the first time I'd ever heard about it. Well, once you're already going to quack doctors, anything you have will be blamed on whatever real medicine things they can come up with. If they'd brought the kid there with chronic diarrhea the quack would probably have blamed vaccines too.
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Jul 4, 2014 05:50
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Rollofthedice posted:In a similar vein, a sister of mine has told me several times that vitamins cause cancer, and that medical facilities in Mexico are hiding the truth from the rest of the world. I don't think she's ever even met a cancer victim. It's crazy how people can trick themselves into thinking they know something about a topic they've had no experience with. I catch myself doing it often. The human brain is a piece of work. Too much of certain vitamins does cause cancer. A trial of vitamin e and selenium for prostate cancer prevention was stopped because it caused an increase instead. Taking antioxidants may reduce the effectiveness of the mechanisms the immune system uses to kill cancerous cells (they blast them with radicals, among other things). Some radicals like NO are used as signals and antioxidants may interfere with a pathway in a way that could lead to cancer (I don't know that much about these signaling pathways though).
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Jul 4, 2014 08:13
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Ytlaya posted:Maybe when they got the "vaccination" it was actually an injection of plutonium by a naturopath doctor! Homeopathic plutonium: the longer it decays, the more effective it becomes.
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Jul 4, 2014 08:43
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RagnarokAngel posted:I don't understand how this is stupid. The vaccine is cheap and easy to distribute, we only stopped doing it because civilians in the US are almost certainly never going to encounter it, but giving it personnel going abroad is certainly within the budget. I was only in the Peace Corps and they gave me a laundry list of vaccines that most people will never need to get, because seriously why risk it? I think he meant it's stupid that we keep weaponized stocks of smallpox just in case we find another continent full of natives that need blankets. I mean, I know they love their toys, and it did do the trick of genocide once, but is that really something we can ever bring ourselves to do again? (Sadly, yes.)
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Jul 4, 2014 10:00
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Adenoid Dan posted:Too much of certain vitamins does cause cancer. A trial of vitamin e and selenium for prostate cancer prevention was stopped because it caused an increase instead. Taking antioxidants may reduce the effectiveness of the mechanisms the immune system uses to kill cancerous cells (they blast them with radicals, among other things). Some radicals like NO are used as signals and antioxidants may interfere with a pathway in a way that could lead to cancer (I don't know that much about these signaling pathways though). What they did find is that the tumor suppressor protein, p53, uses free radicals to initiate cell death on cells that have irreparable DNA damage, which usually leads to cancerous growth. What p53 uses to kill these cells are free radicals. You can see how taking a lot of antioxidants would interfere with this process naturally.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:30
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Hah. My mother refused to vaccinate me because she got caught up in the whole "vaccinations causes autism" hype. Then when I "got" autism anyway her solution to that was to change doctors any time the current doctor hinted at autism because "nothing was wrong with her daughter" At least I could get the vaccinations on my own when I became an adult.
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Jul 5, 2014 18:50
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SedanChair posted:Homeopathic plutonium: the longer it decays, the more effective it becomes. Duh the lead will shield you from chemtrail radiation.
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Jul 5, 2014 19:03
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Zephyrine posted:Hah. My mother refused to vaccinate me because she got caught up in the whole "vaccinations causes autism" hype. Is your mother still crazy?
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Jul 5, 2014 20:56
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Harik posted:I think he meant it's stupid that we keep weaponized stocks of smallpox just in case we find another continent full of natives that need blankets. I mean, I know they love their toys, and it did do the trick of genocide once, but is that really something we can ever bring ourselves to do again? (Sadly, yes.) The reason we keep it, is because if someone decides to try to get a hold of a load of it and drop it somewhere, we can make a vaccine. Its one of those issues where in order to make a vaccine for X, we need a sample of X. That and while I agree that smallpox is a horrible horrible disease and we should never *ever* let it out in the wild again, I'm hesitant to destroy such a thing simply due to potential research uses. What if we discover something that operates a lot like smallpox? Or what if we could take smallpox, a debilitating disease that is easily spread, and manage to genetically engineer it into a new beneficial bug? We have it contained, there's no need to just destroy an organism that's evolved like this and can possibly provide scientific benefit. I don't really think we have 'weaponized stocks'. Its more we have samples of the disease that if someone bad got a hold of could use to infect a lot of people, but since we've got samples all over the world, we can vaccinate everybody fairly easily. Barring any screaming anti-voxxers saying they'd rather let their children die horribly and painfully than possibly get autism, of course. 
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Jul 5, 2014 21:01
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A vial of smallpox virus sitting in a lab somewhere is hardly a "weaponized stock".
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Jul 5, 2014 21:06
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Mrit posted:Is your mother still crazy? No she died when I was 20. I don't miss her.
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Jul 5, 2014 21:34
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Tarezax posted:A vial of smallpox virus sitting in a lab somewhere is hardly a "weaponized stock". Also quite frankly we have more expedient ways to wipe out an entire civilization than we did in the 1700s. I don't think they're gonna dust off that old nugget when they could solve the problem just as quickly another way.
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Jul 5, 2014 22:00
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E-Tank posted:The reason we keep it, is because if someone decides to try to get a hold of a load of it and drop it somewhere, we can make a vaccine. Its one of those issues where in order to make a vaccine for X, we need a sample of X. That and while I agree that smallpox is a horrible horrible disease and we should never *ever* let it out in the wild again, I'm hesitant to destroy such a thing simply due to potential research uses. What if we discover something that operates a lot like smallpox? Or what if we could take smallpox, a debilitating disease that is easily spread, and manage to genetically engineer it into a new beneficial bug? We don't need those samples to make more vaccine. It's absolutely unclear why the last small pox samples have not been destroyed. Probably because he US and Russia are stupid stubborn fools.
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Jul 5, 2014 22:33
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Ogmius815 posted:We don't need those samples to make more vaccine. It's absolutely unclear why the last small pox samples have not been destroyed. Probably because he US and Russia are stupid stubborn fools. http://www.chop.edu/service/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-science/how-are-vaccines-made.html quote:How Are Vaccines Made? So if we want to make vaccines, we need to be able to breed the virus, so we can take parts of the virus, to make the vaccine. E-Tank fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Jul 5, 2014 |
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Jul 5, 2014 22:39
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Ogmius815 posted:We don't need those samples to make more vaccine. It's absolutely unclear why the last small pox samples have not been destroyed. Probably because he US and Russia are stupid stubborn fools. Some day they might actually turn out to be useful, somehow. Science hates throwing stuff like that away simply because you have no idea what it might be useful for. This is also a good argument for the preservation of endangered species from purely practical terms. They might turn out to benefit us some day.
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Jul 5, 2014 22:49
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I managed to convince a hippy friend to start vaccinating her kid the other day by just talking through her concerns one at a time with her. I explained the mercury thing by first pointing out thimersol(sp?) isn't actually IN kids vaccines as far as I was aware, but even if it is, its part of a molecule we just piss back out again. She had concerns about autism, so I explained the history of medical fraud with that one and even if it was true the odds of brain damage from it are far lower than the odds of pretty savage brain damage from measles or the flu. Finally she had a concern about it not being "natural", so I told her how her loving immune system works, and immunisations about the most "natural" thing in modern medicine and in fact we've been innoculating children in one form or another for a couple of hundred years. Finally she noted the cowpox welt on her mothers arm. I said to her "Well, lets hope smallpox never does the rounds again, and we'll worry about that hosed up vaccine then" She said she wanted to talk to a doctor about starting vaccinations on her son, so I've given her the number of a friend who's a GP (Whos hippy friendly but fairly stern about not giving in to pseudoscience guff). Oh, and naturalnews.com should be removed from the loving internet as a health hazard to people with poor science education. duck monster fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Jul 5, 2014 |
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Jul 5, 2014 22:49
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E-Tank posted:http://www.chop.edu/service/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-science/how-are-vaccines-made.html The smallpox vaccine is made from a virus that infects cows. You should at least google something before you try to call someone out.
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Jul 5, 2014 23:16
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Ogmius815 posted:The smallpox vaccine is made from a virus that infects cows. You should at least google something before you try to call someone out. Huh, could have sworn that was what they did *at first* before realizing it'd be more effective to just do a partial virus or something. My apologies, I was totally wrong. I'll still claim that we shouldn't destroy it. A: Why should we? Its for strictly anti-biological weapon purposes. B: If somehow it could become useful, and we've destroyed it? Well that's loving it. Any potential gains or research we could have gotten is gone. Forever. C: War of the Worlds, Man. War of the Worlds.  kidding, but seriously. Do we really want to deny others the ability to study something and possibly get breakthroughs from it?
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Jul 6, 2014 01:00
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E-Tank posted:A: Why should we? Its for strictly anti-biological weapon purposes. A: Bullshit. The smallpox stocks are not useful for any defensive purpose. They're not needed for vaccines or treatments, and the only purposes they could possibly serve are deterrence and counterstrike capabilities, both of which are morally indefensible. B: Smallpox DNA has been completely sequenced, and the technology to manufacture viruses from their DNA exists. Even after the destruction of smallpox stocks, a well-equipped laboratory would be more than capable of synthesizing their own smallpox virus from scratch. C: Guess we'll just have to spray cowpox over the heads of alien invasion ground troops instead of smallpox. Ought to be almost as effective but with far, far less collateral damage. As for your last point, see B - smallpox has been so thoroughly analyzed and has enough close relatives that we don't need actual physical smallpox virus around for a lot of research, and if we absolutely need some actual smallpox, we can synthesize it, even with genetic mods to limit its danger if needed.
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Jul 6, 2014 05:07
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Weaponized viruses are called that because they are designed to take out communal primate populations. There is no reason the natural version would be any less effective against a impossibly vague alien invasion.
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Jul 6, 2014 08:22
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The problem with fully infectious diseases as biological agents is viruses and bacteria tend to be pretty bad at sticking to nationalist scripts. Sure they'll make a mess of the target country. Then their neighbors, then the airbase your guys are in next to that, then downtown new york and before long your superweapon just blew up in yr base killing yr dudes. Which is why Anthrax and the like are far more popular choices since they cant really pass between humans.
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Jul 6, 2014 08:26
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If you guys are going ape-poo poo over stocks of smallpox which are just sitting in a freezer somewhere in a government facility, you realize that scientists have actually created a mutated, highly infectious strain of the Spanish Flu? And that these same guys have been developing extra virulent strains of H5N1 for years for basically no scientific purpose other than 'just because'? And that when papers are published, it will basically allow anyone with prerequisite knowledge to follow their exact experimental protocol and replicate their work? They are way, way bigger worries in terms of biological attacks than some virus on ice that nobody but government researchers can get to. And the stores are there for research purposes, not some ludicrous MAD reason. Here's why: The CDC posted:In 2011, the World Health Organization will recommend the fate of existing smallpox stockpiles, but circumstances have changed since the complete destruction of these cultures was first proposed. Recent studies suggest that variola and its experimental surrogate, vaccinia, have a remarkable ability to modify the human immune response through complex mechanisms that scientists are only just beginning to unravel. Further study that might require intact virus is essential. Moreover, modern science now has the capability to recreate smallpox or a smallpox-like organism in the laboratory in addition to the risk of nature re-creating it as it did once before. These factors strongly suggest that relegating smallpox to the autoclave of extinction would be ill advised. Here's the full article: http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/17/4/10-1865_article
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Jul 6, 2014 08:51
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Main Paineframe posted:B: Smallpox DNA has been completely sequenced, and the technology to manufacture viruses from their DNA exists. Even after the destruction of smallpox stocks, a well-equipped laboratory would be more than capable of synthesizing their own smallpox virus from scratch. These processes are error-prone, and there's no guarantee that what you get out is actually smallpox. And if there's suddenly an urgent need for a smallpox sample, do you really want to spend a bunch of time synthesizing a new one that might actually wind up being a bit different from the original due to imperfect viral synthesis processes? Follow-up question: are you an infectious disease biologist?
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Jul 6, 2014 22:08
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QuarkJets posted:These processes are error-prone, and there's no guarantee that what you get out is actually smallpox. And if there's suddenly an urgent need for a smallpox sample, do you really want to spend a bunch of time synthesizing a new one that might actually wind up being a bit different from the original due to imperfect viral synthesis processes? In what situation could we possibly have an "urgent need" for a smallpox sample which has to be exactly 100% the same as 1980s smallpox? Follow-up question: Are you?
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Jul 7, 2014 06:02
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Main Paineframe posted:In what situation could we possibly have an "urgent need" for a smallpox sample which has to be exactly 100% the same as 1980s smallpox? You might not be aware of this but we don't have any control over other countries' stockpiles.
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Jul 7, 2014 06:13
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Nintendo Kid posted:You might not be aware of this but we don't have any control over other countries' stockpiles. Right, but if they were using smallpox as a weapon, wouldn't we have ample access to samples of it, in victims?
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Jul 7, 2014 06:22
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You are an infectious disease biologist and you spend your time every day looking at current strains and potential strains. A funding politician comes up to you and says he wants you to research how future strains could appear and how to anticipate different outbreaks. How do you do that without actually doing lab research that involves the creations of new strains and researching them?
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Jul 7, 2014 06:23
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Golbez posted:Right, but if they were using smallpox as a weapon, wouldn't we have ample access to samples of it, in victims? It's a lot more dangerous to try to get poo poo out of victims when we can have the virus safely stored right there; already in a clean lab environment with proper biohazard shielding.
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Jul 7, 2014 06:25
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Nintendo Kid posted:You might not be aware of this but we don't have any control over other countries' stockpiles. So? Smallpox isn't needed to make smallpox vaccines; we use closely related viruses like cowpox and vaccinia. Also, the only other country with a stockpile is Russia.
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Jul 7, 2014 07:15
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Main Paineframe posted:So? Smallpox isn't needed to make smallpox vaccines; we use closely related viruses like cowpox and vaccinia. Also, the only other country with a stockpile is Russia. So the frigging scientists of all people are saying that we should keep it around, and you're saying that we shouldn't because its scary locked up in its giant vault for research purposes. Yeah I'm gonna go along with the scientists instead of you. No offense.
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Jul 7, 2014 11:31
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Main Paineframe posted:So? Smallpox isn't needed to make smallpox vaccines; we use closely related viruses like cowpox and vaccinia. Also, the only other country with a stockpile is Russia. Actually smallpox might be needed to confirm efficacy, and is definitely needed to do smallpox-specific research. We also suspect that there may be other countries out there with smallpox on storage, the way there's undeclared nuclear weapons states out there.
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Jul 7, 2014 16:20
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The thing with the existing smallpox we have on ice is we know how to stop it dead in its tracks, like we have before. Its not the virus I worry about. I really don't think a human-to-human transmissible virus is every going to be used in a biological weapons attack by any sane government agent. Its too easy for it to find its way back home. As I said, theres a reason they like Anthrax for this sort of poo poo, because it cant transmit human-to-human its pretty easy to contain the damage to the intended target.
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Jul 7, 2014 16:25
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This story may be relevant to our recent discussion: http://m.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/07/08/smallpox-discovered-sitting-in-maryland-storage-room/ The FDA just found 15 vials of smallpox samples from the 50s in an unused (?) storage room that hadn't been touched since they took over the building (it's not clear from the article what agency had it before that) in 1972. The CDC plans to test the contents to see if any of the samples are still viable, then dispose of them.
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Jul 8, 2014 23:08
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E-Tank posted:So the frigging scientists of all people are saying that we should keep it around, and you're saying that we shouldn't because its scary locked up in its giant vault for research purposes. There's plenty of scientists saying it should be destroyed; in fact, most of the support for retention seems to be political, not scientific. And given that the CDC is the organization in possession of the US's smallpox stocks, it's not especially surprising that they're arguing in favor of its retention, since they have a pretty obvious stake in it! If we're going to the "appeal to authority" stage, let's ask the distinguished scientist who was the Chief of the WHO's smallpox eradication program, Dr. Donald Henderson: quote:Q: Is it true that you were in favour of destroying the remaining stocks of smallpox? Hmm. Looks like everyone was in favor of the destruction. Why don't we ask him why they haven't been destroyed yet? quote:4. What is your opinion of the decision to keep stocks of smallpox in the CDC's laboratory in Atlanta and in Russia? The WHO has voted on and recommended the destruction of smallpox repeatedly over the last thirty years, and the lack of any solid deadline or order comes down to one simple fact: the US and Russia aren't going to dismantle their
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Jul 9, 2014 00:08
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Main Paineframe posted:In what situation could we possibly have an "urgent need" for a smallpox sample which has to be exactly 100% the same as 1980s smallpox? I am not a biologist, but I am a scientist, and I defer to other scientists when it comes to discussing a field in which I am not involved. If CDC scientists ultimately reach a consensus and say that we should wipe out the remaining smallpox because we don't need it anymore, then I say go for it. But this research scientist says that we should keep it, and he outlines the reasons why: http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/17/4/10-1865_article e: To make my point more clear, I'd like to hear from more epidemiologists. There are going to be guys on both sides of the debate, but Dr. Weinstein makes some pretty convincing points for keeping it around, chiefly that smallpox is an interesting bug that could be the key to unlocking major medical advances QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Jul 9, 2014 |
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Jul 9, 2014 00:23
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