^imstellar:

in re the Natural Health guy: I knew you'd play the ad hominem card, but you were the one that picked an untrustworthy source to give, and he doesn't cite anyone except Youtube.

in re Polio: You're right. There was contamination. I got sidetracked by people claiming that the virus was causing cancer, though, because HPV is (AFAIK) the only virus proven to be linked to any form of cancer.

And yes, I did see sv40foundation.org. But it was obviously created with an axe to grind: I don't trust morgellons.org, either.

Yes, I know you don't trust the government. But the government cited, as I mentioned, actual research.

^EndAll:

Long article. Do you want to explain what in it is relevant so I can argue about it?

Edit:

I also want to point out, since imstellar made a point of it, that I'm not arguing about whether these things happened. I was just pointing out lack of evidence in the 'evidence' cited. You can't get all uppity about "Don't be so naive!" and then cite crazy people on the Internet as your proof of conspiracy theories.

Look into it further and you will find that all three are 100% historical facts. Look still further and you will find many more cases. Your attack on the natural news guy is ad hominem and irrelevant. I could have used a million different sources:

http://www.sv40foundation.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine

http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/t031113.html

The .GOV link (since I'm sure you trust the government :-P) confirms that SV40 was indeed found in polio vaccines:

"A significant number of early vaccine lots were contaminated with the previously unknown viral agent, SV40. In 1960, Drs. Sweet and Hilleman identified SV40 in monkey kidney cells and seed stocks used to produce the poliovirus. In 1961, Drs. Gerber, Hottle, and Grubbs discovered that the treatment used to inactivate SV40 was not completely effective.

In response to these problems, scientists, including those at the Public Health Service's (PHS) Division of Biological Standards (DBS), developed a tissue culture procedure to detect SV40. Once this procedure was developed, DBS notified manufacturers that " . . . no lots of poliomyelitis vaccine will be released in the absence of negative results of a valid tissue culture test for SV40." This requirement was later codified in regulations. Nevertheless, before SV40 was recognized as a problem and appropriate tests were developed, millions of people were vaccinated with poliovirus vaccines that contained SV40. Since this unfortunate event four decades ago, FDA has required that manufactures perform routine testing for oral poliovirus vaccines to demonstrate the absence of SV40."

-William Egan, Ph.D., Acting Director
Office of Vaccine Research and Review, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Food and Drug Administration
on
Hearing: SV40 in Polio Vaccine
before the
Subcommittee on Wellness and Human Rights, Committee on Government Reform, US House of Representatives


The fact that we are debating irrefutable historical events shows just how far from reality this discussion is.

What you should have learned today is:

1. Vaccines have historically been contaminated (Polio)
2. Vaccine manufacturers have knowingly shipped contaminated products (Bayer)
3. Modern technology/procedures have not prevented contamination (Baxter)
4. Even "wacky" sites with "wacky" conspiracies can present honest information (Natural News on Polio)

THUS:

Everything about this story is absolutely plausible. To dismiss it outright as "retarded" or "loony" is to reveal yourself as historically ignorant.

Yall are really something else. The amount of trust you place in people you don't know is really quite amazing.

THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE. Or were these historical events "conspiracies" as well:

Baxter Pharmaceutical Mixed Deadly Avian Flu H5N1 with a Flu Vaccine about to be shipped to 180,000 people!
http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2009/02/27/8560781.html
"The contaminated product, a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses and unlabelled H5N1 viruses, was supplied to an Austrian research company. The Austrian firm, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then sent portions of it to sub-contractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany.

The contamination incident, which is being investigated by the four European countries, came to light when the subcontractor in the Czech Republic inoculated ferrets with the product and they died. Ferrets shouldn’t die from exposure to human H3N2 flu viruses. "

Bayer knowingly sold HIV-contaminated vaccines!
http://www.naturalnews.com/News_000647_Bayer_vaccines_HIV.html
"In 2006, it was discovered that Bayer found out a vaccine it was selling in the United States was accidentally contaminated with HIV.

In order to cover its tracks, say the journalists in this video (below), Bayer pulled the vaccines off the market and sold them to consumers in Japan, France, Spain and other countries, where hemophiliacs were then contaminated with HIV due to the vaccine."

Mandatory Polio vaccines contaminated with SV40, causes Cancer!
http://www.healthy.net/scr/Article.asp?Id=2703
"The sudden rise in the number of deaths from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma may be linked to the polio vaccine given to children in the USA until 1963.

Researchers have found the polyomavirus known as simian virus 40 (SV40) in a large number of lymphoma sufferers - the same virus that was in the contaminated batch of polio vaccines.

The vaccine was prepared in rhesus monkey kidney cells, but some of the animals were infected with the SV40, which was then passed on to the vaccinated children. In all, millions of children from all 50 states were exposed to the virus from 1955 until 1963, when the vaccine was finally withdrawn.

Latent viruses were such a problem with primary monkey kidney cells that a worldwide moratorium on the licensing of all polio virus vaccines was called in 1967 because of death and illnesses that occurred in monkey kidney workers and vaccine manufacturing facilities"

Doc_M,

You wanna do the world a favor? Buy some off-the-shelf vaccines and do a complete chemical and biological analysis on them, and report your findings publicly. Unless you are giving us a technical lecture, or presenting experimental data, your opinion is really not worth any more than any of us non-virologists.

>> ^quantumushroom:
As the Germans say: "Too clever is dumb".
A gallon of atheist cleverness doesn't equal one spoonful of religious wisdom.


Oh yes, thanks to the wonders of religious wisdom and steadfast prayer, our life-expectency has tripled, we no longer have to worry about polio and numerous other diseases, our standards of living have improved drastically, we can cross the Atlantic in airplanes, land people on the moon, and understand our origins in good detail. Religious Wisdom is truly useful in so many ways. Imagine what we could accomplish if those pesky secularists gave up all this "clever" science nonsense and put their minds to something useful for a change, like trying to work out the true, deeper meaning of transubstantiation, imagine how much better the world would be!

"lot less wealthy somehow" - WIN. "Is that your hat." ... "Origami polio victims"... oh man, classic. Ah, the SS John Romero. This was one of those classic clips that you wanted to watch twice to catch the jokes again.

Oragami Polio Victims!

Classic! New phrase of the day for me!

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

1999 would have been too late for both of my kids.

In reply to this comment by MycroftHomlz:
In July 1999, following a review of mercury-containing food and drugs, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) asked vaccine makers to remove thiomersal from vaccines as quickly as possible, and it was rapidly phased out of most U.S. and European vaccines.


In reply to this comment by dag:
^ How about common sense - that injecting mercury directly into an infant's bloodstream - might not be the best idea. Regardless of whether it causes autism or not.

For me, the answer was pretty straight forward. It's selfish, and if we were living in an undeveloped nation, my answer might have been different.

Also, from things I've looked at, the fall-off in polio and other diseases in the US happened way before vaccines were common and had to do with better understanding of hygiene and sterilisation required to prevent the spread.

In July 1999, following a review of mercury-containing food and drugs, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) asked vaccine makers to remove thiomersal from vaccines as quickly as possible, and it was rapidly phased out of most U.S. and European vaccines.


In reply to this comment by dag:
^ How about common sense - that injecting mercury directly into an infant's bloodstream - might not be the best idea. Regardless of whether it causes autism or not.

For me, the answer was pretty straight forward. It's selfish, and if we were living in an undeveloped nation, my answer might have been different.

Also, from things I've looked at, the fall-off in polio and other diseases in the US happened way before vaccines were common and had to do with better understanding of hygiene and sterilisation required to prevent the spread.

history, the most forgotten tome of learning.

80 years ago. we were on the verge of a minor repression. we responded, for the first time in economic history, with a large government stimulus package. we languished in a depression lasting over three decades. an economic fork in the road which has brought us in no uncertain terms to the edge of the cliff we now peer over.

80 years older. we have cured polio. we have landed a man on the moon. we can build 4 billion structures on a piece of glass the size of a human fingertip. we have fiber-optically connected a third of the planet. we can analyze the composition of stars millions of light years away. we can predict the motion of an electron moving across a quantum barrier at fractions of the speed of light. we can manufacture tolerances to within 1/100th of a human hair.

we are about to respond to a minor repression with a large government stimulus package.

Educated people who preach total deregulation are being willfully ignorant of externalities, monopolies, contract enforcement, copyright/patent enforcement, eminent domain, ignorance of most consumers, how little success in competition has to do with the price/quality of the product in many cases (advertising FTW), and how food labels could lie and get away with it.

Between two competitors in the same fixed market, advertising is basically a zero-sum game that wastes revenue and increases the price to consumers.

Pharma companies spend half their revenue on advertising to convince people to buy drugs that most of them don't need. If all the money were spent on research instead, all the drugs could be a lot cheaper. The US economy already produces much more than enough to satisfy the real needs of most people, and the rest of the economy revolves around brainwashing people into thinking they need things that they don't need through advertising.

You don't make money by providing the best or cheapest product to your customers, you make money by making them THINK that whether or not it involves actually doing it. Someone has to call advertisers on their bullshit. A typical corporate executive's only imperative is this: make a profit by any means necessary, even if it means lying to shareholders, customers, etc.

Most of the great advances in basic science did NOT come from anybody working for a company. Immediate get-rich schemes do not involve trying to understand the universe for the sake of understanding the universe. Newton was a professor, Darwin was an unemployed med school dropout who went with a ship captain to keep him company, Galileo was on state patronage, Einstein worked for the patent office, etc.

But I digress. The crux of the argument is externalities. Taxing negative externalizes and subsidizing positive externalizes are essential, as you'll see in any modern economics textbook. Otherwise we'd all kill each other with pollution and toxic waste, while neglecting to eradicate polio. If you've studied game theory at all (i.e. the prisoner's dilemma or the pollution game), you'll see that individual self interest often leads to an equilibrium that is bad for everybody. Government can adjust the payoff matrix so that the optimal (utilitarian) outcome is also an equilibrium for self-interested agents.

The reason private companies aren't mass-producing solar and wind power without subsidies is because it's still more expensive than oil and coal. Without government regulation, oil and coal would remain cheaper until we deplete the world's supply of oil and coal. If we deplete the world's entire supply of oil and coal, we'll breathe soot while Miami is underwater. Clinton's statement that massive amounts of wind/solar power would be in the interest of corporations only applies when governments tax fossil fuels or subsidize alternatives. The moral justification for taxation of negative externalities is basically the same as the moral justification for the government punishing somebody for beating up somebody else.

Immunization is the cornerstone of polio, smallpox, and measles eradication. Irrefutable.
http://www.polioeradication.org/history.asp

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

^ How about common sense - that injecting mercury directly into an infant's bloodstream - might not be the best idea. Regardless of whether it causes autism or not.

For me, the answer was pretty straight forward. It's selfish, and if we were living in an undeveloped nation, my answer might have been different.

Also, from things I've looked at, the fall-off in polio and other diseases in the US happened way before vaccines were common and had to do with better understanding of hygiene and sterilisation required to prevent the spread.

^
I don't mean to downplay the humanity of it. Of course the stakes in medicine are higher. Who cares what happens to a particle in an accelerator? Putting a life in harm's way is a whole different matter. Any parent understands the misgivings another parent might have about possible links. However, the larger public health hazard of kids not being immunized puts other kids at risk. So, as a parent, that concerns me. Polio was on the verge of joining small pox as a laboratory curiosity. Conspiracy theories in Nigeria (fearing that immunizations were a western plot to sterilize Muslims), allowed another outbreak. All evidence supports the fact that the collective public health benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of the vaccine, (which is not, and never will be zero).

But what really pisses me off about this type of reporting is the conspiracy/cover-up aspect. By association, it makes all doctors conspirators. We know more about the science of these things than anyone. The Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization are knowingly putting kids at risk? Give me a break. Every physician taking care of kids should feel personally insulted and defamed by such claims of deliberate medical malfeasance by neglect.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'music, polio, kinshasa, byrne, eno' to 'music, polio, kinshasa, byrne, eno, funky, sex machine, bikes' - edited by Eklek

From Tube: A group of disabled Congolese musicians is threatening to take the United Nations peacekeeping mission to court over a song for last year's elections.
Let's Go and Vote was played repeatedly in the run-up to last year's historic polls on radio and TV stations.

In a country where a third of the population is illiterate and with crumbling infrastructure, the song is credited with boosting turn-out to 70%.

But the eight members of the Staff Benda Bilili band were paid $50 each.

The UN has denied any responsibility for paying royalties.

On the video clip that became a hit, the street musicians appeared in their wheelchairs, dancing the rumba and urging people to "go and vote" for a brighter future in DR Congo.

"It is thanks to our song that people went and voted but Monuc [UN Mission in DR Congo] did not pay us and we are still forced to sleep and beg in the streets. This is slavery," said band leader Nzale Makembo.

'Fraud'

Most of the band are polio victims, who sleep rough next to the barbed wire fence which surrounds the Monuc headquarters in Kinshasa's dirty city centre.