snoozedoctor:
2 scenarios, (1) a world with no Bill Gates- uncertain, can't say how it would have turned out (2) a world with Bill Gates - personal computers and billions in charity. I'll take option 2.

you actually think bill gates invented the personal computer and nobody else was trying or able? omfg.

anyway here's some more explanation of exactly what "giving to charity" means in this context:

... he admits, Microsoft's image has benefited, "and maybe a few more users come along. There's nothing wrong with that at all." That the foundation shuns quiet altruism in favour of maximum publicity proves the point. It has flown journalists and photographers around the world to spread the word that Microsoft's chairman cares. "It's very important to us that we're not just seen for our great financial results," he says.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/feb/04/voluntarysector.guardiansocietysupplement


The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France — the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe.

...

Like most philanthropies, the Gates Foundation gives away at least 5% of its worth every year, to avoid paying most taxes. In 2005, it granted nearly $1.4 billion. It awards grants mainly in support of global health initiatives, for efforts to improve public education in the United States, and for social welfare programs in the Pacific Northwest.

It invests the other 95% of its worth. This endowment is managed by Bill Gates Investments, which handles Gates' personal fortune.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,6827615.story

here are some items that you may have overlooked in the article about thimerisol.(that have nothing to do with wakefields paper)

1.) In 1977, a Russian study found that adults exposed to much lower concentrations of ethylmercury than those given to American children still suffered brain damage years later. Russia banned thimerosal from children's vaccines twenty years ago, and Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have since followed suit.

2.) Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal, knew from the start that its product could cause damage -- and even death -- in both animals and humans. In 1930, the company tested thimerosal by administering it to twenty-two patients with terminal meningitis, all of whom died within weeks of being injected -- a fact Lilly didn't bother to report in its study declaring thimerosal safe. In 1935, researchers at another vaccine manufacturer, Pittman-Moore, warned Lilly that its claims about thimerosal's safety "did not check with ours."

3.) During the Second World War, when the Department of Defense used the preservative in vaccines on soldiers, it required Lilly to label it "poison."

4.) In 1967, a study in Applied Microbiology found that thimerosal killed mice when added to injected vaccines. Four years later, Lilly's own studies discerned that thimerosal was "toxic to tissue cells" in concentrations as low as one part per million -- 100 times weaker than the concentration in a typical vaccine. Even so, the company continued to promote thimerosal as "nontoxic" and also incorporated it into topical disinfectants.

5.) The same year that the CDC approved the new vaccines, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck's vaccine programs, warned the company that six-month-olds who were administered the shots would suffer dangerous exposure to mercury. He recommended that thimerosal be discontinued, "especially when used on infants and children," noting that the industry knew of nontoxic alternatives. "The best way to go," he added, "is to switch to dispensing the actual vaccines without adding preservatives."

6.) Before 1989, American preschoolers received eleven vaccinations -- for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of twenty-two immunizations by the time they reached first grade.

At two months, when the infant brain is still at a critical stage of development, infants routinely received three inoculations that contained a total of 62.5 micrograms of ethylmercury -- a level 99 times greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin. Although the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses little danger because it breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several studies -- including one published in April by the National Institutes of Health -- suggest that ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing brains and stays in the brain longer than methylmercury.

The House Government Reform Committee discovered that four of the eight CDC advisers who approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine "had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine."

7.) Paul Patriarca of the FDA blasted federal regulators for failing to adequately scrutinize the danger posed by the added baby vaccines. "I'm not sure there will be an easy way out of the potential perception that the FDA, CDC and immunization-policy bodies may have been asleep at the switch re: thimerosal until now," Patriarca wrote. The close ties between regulatory officials and the pharmaceutical industry, he added, "will also raise questions about various advisory bodies regarding aggressive recommendations for use" of thimerosal in child vaccines.

But rather than conduct more studies to test the link to autism and other forms of brain damage, the CDC placed politics over science. The agency turned its database on childhood vaccines -- which had been developed largely at taxpayer expense -- over to a private agency, America's Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it could not be used for additional research. It also instructed the Institute of Medicine, an advisory organization that is part of the National Academy of Sciences, to produce a study debunking the link between thimerosal and brain disorders. The CDC "wants us to declare, well, that these things are pretty safe," Dr. Marie McCormick, who chaired the IOM's Immunization Safety Review Committee, told her fellow researchers when they first met in January 2001. "We are not ever going to come down that [autism] is a true side effect" of thimerosal exposure. According to transcripts of the meeting, the committee's chief staffer, Kathleen Stratton, predicted that the IOM would conclude that the evidence was "inadequate to accept or reject a causal relation" between thimerosal and autism. That, she added, was the result "Walt wants" -- a reference to Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the National Immunization Program for the CDC.

Even in public, federal officials made it clear that their primary goal in studying thimerosal was to dispel doubts about vaccines. "Four current studies are taking place to rule out the proposed link between autism and thimerosal," Dr. Gordon Douglas, then-director of strategic planning for vaccine research at the National Institutes of Health, assured a Princeton University gathering in May 2001. "In order to undo the harmful effects of research claiming to link the [measles] vaccine to an elevated risk of autism, we need to conduct and publicize additional studies to assure parents of safety." Douglas formerly served as president of vaccinations for Merck, where he ignored warnings about thimerosal's risks.

9.) In May of last year, the Institute of Medicine issued its final report. Its conclusion: There is no proven link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines. Rather than reviewing the large body of literature describing the toxicity of thimerosal, the report relied on four disastrously flawed epidemiological studies examining European countries, where children received much smaller doses of thimerosal than American kids. It also cited a new version of the Verstraeten study, published in the journal Pediatrics, that had been reworked to reduce the link between thimerosal and autism. The new study included children too young to have been diagnosed with autism and overlooked others who showed signs of the disease. The IOM declared the case closed and -- in a startling position for a scientific body -- recommended that no further research be conducted.

The report may have satisfied the CDC, but it convinced no one. Rep. David Weldon, a Republican physician from Florida who serves on the House Government Reform Committee, attacked the Institute of Medicine, saying it relied on a handful of studies that were "fatally flawed" by "poor design" and failed to represent "all the available scientific and medical research." CDC officials are not interested in an honest search for the truth, Weldon told me, because "an association between vaccines and autism would force them to admit that their policies irreparably damaged thousands of children. Who would want to make that conclusion about themselves?"

10.) the government continues to ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries -- some of which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China, where the disease was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of thimerosal by U.S. drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that there are now more than 1.8 million autistics. Although reliable numbers are hard to come by, autistic disorders also appear to be soaring in India, Argentina, Nicaragua and other developing countries that are now using thimerosal-laced vaccines.

I contend that the main arguement of the article is that because of the collusion between government and the vaccine industry we do not know the true (fully disclosed) effects of thimerisol on our population.

I thank you for finally explaining your comment. But I find it hard to see how you could say 'I believe' or 'I think' his paper was based on wakefields when the article explicitly states that the sevretive meetings were a result of a study done by a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten.

"The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. "I was actually stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism.

Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children"

"The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been "lost" and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.?

Does the information above bother you ? In addition, while this hasn't been explicitly asked of you yet. What are your thoughts on the cumulative level of thimerisol in the previous vaccine schedule as highlighted below?

Before 1989, American preschoolers received eleven vaccinations -- for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of twenty-two immunizations by the time they reached first grade.

At two months, when the infant brain is still at a critical stage of development, infants routinely received three inoculations that contained a total of 62.5 micrograms of ethylmercury -- a level 99 times greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin. Although the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses little danger because it breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several studies -- including one published in April by the National Institutes of Health -- suggest that ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing brains and stays in the brain longer than methylmercury.

The House Government Reform Committee discovered that four of the eight CDC advisers who approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine "had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine."

And of course you are correct, "most" vaccines can now be found without thimerisol. Here is the current rundown of which vaccines actually still contaiin thimerisol (DTwP & Tetanus do not have a non-thimerisol choice)
http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/thi-table.htm (as of December 14, 2007)
I'm glad that we all seem to generally agree here that people have every right to deny being vaccinated (although the devil is in the details). As I posted above there are lots of scientific studies that when looked at as a whole, show that vaccines are neither 100% safe nor 100% efffective as "pro-vaccination" advocates would like people to believe.(which i think jsutifies a persons right to choose).

For those who believe they or their chidren have been injured by vaccines they can use this government resource

National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP)
http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/

The VICP is located in the HHS, Health Resources and Services Administration, Healthcare Systems Bureau, Division of Vaccine Injury Compensation.

Vaccine Injury Table
http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/table.htm

Preventing disease for the good of a society is preemptive by definition. That is the nature of preventative medicine.

Do you think history supports A)?

B) is simply true. I asked a biologist and she said that active virus mutate. AIDS is a good example(and the one she used), and mutation is the reason why there are actually multiple forms of AIDS. For more virulent diseases, like polio, measles, mumps, and rubella, widespread lack of vaccines would increase the likelyhood a number of people being infected. If they were infected the mere fact that they have an active virus means that the virus will mutate. In effect, negating the existing vaccine.

Africa has had outbreaks of Polio for this very reason.

http://microbiology.columbia.edu/PICO/Chapters/NewsAfrica.html

I prefer to use conditional language most of the time simply, because I could always be wrong. I do not think you should use it to infer that I am misleading people or simply stating things willy nilly. But I could have misinterpreted your comment. Text is always hard to read that way.

If anyone would like more information on the oppossing view, there is a video called Vaccines: The Risks, Benefits and Choices. What I like about the info the Dr. presents is that it is very thorough and well documented from government sources and studies. you can download it below (it is about 700 megs)

http://www.archetype-productions.com/nfo/vaccines/Vaccines-The_Risks_The_Benefits_The_Choices.avi

(synopsis)
At a time when many more adults are questioning the problems that may be associated with vaccines, Dr. Tenpenny presents information and facts that are not readily heard at the doctor's office. This 3-hour, highly-informative presentation offers a comprehensive overview of the most common childhood vaccines. A short overview of vaccination history, conflicts of interest and the lack of scientific data to support the current "one-size fits all" vaccine protocol is also discussed. Dr. Tenpenny presents a very clear picture of the immune system and offers compelling information regarding the "real" risks of choosing to not vaccinate.

Topics Discussed:
Smallpox and the potential for bioterroism
Polio eradication: Then and Now
The increased number of vaccines...part of the problem
The problem of molecular mimicry
The problem with aluminum: It's Not Just The Mercury
Hepatitis B vaccine...is it necessary?
Diptheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis (DTaP)
H. influenza vaccine (the HiB)
Pneumococcal vaccine (Prevnar)
Chickenpox vaccine (Varivax)
Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR)
The IOM report about thimerosal (mercury)
The Swedish Study about thimerosal (mercury)
Short overview: flu shot, college menigitis vaccine, and RSV

Hey Sarzy. In light of our conversation and your upcoming debate, I uploaded a video for you called Vaccines: The Risks, Benefits and Choices. What I like about the info she presents is that it is very thorough and well documented from government sources and studies. you can download it below (let me know if you have any trouble, it is about 700 megs)

http://www.archetype-productions.com/nfo/vaccines/Vaccines-The_Risks_The_Benefits_The_Choices.avi

(synopsis)
At a time when many more adults are questioning the problems that may be associated with vaccines, Dr. Tenpenny presents information and facts that are not readily heard at the doctor's office. This 3-hour, highly-informative presentation offers a comprehensive overview of the most common childhood vaccines. A short overview of vaccination history, conflicts of interest and the lack of scientific data to support the current "one-size fits all" vaccine protocol is also discussed. Dr. Tenpenny presents a very clear picture of the immune system and offers compelling information regarding the "real" risks of choosing to not vaccinate.

Topics Discussed:
Smallpox and the potential for bioterroism
Polio eradication: Then and Now
The increased number of vaccines...part of the problem
The problem of molecular mimicry
The problem with aluminum: It's Not Just The Mercury
Hepatitis B vaccine...is it necessary?
Diptheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis (DTaP)
H. influenza vaccine (the HiB)
Pneumococcal vaccine (Prevnar)
Chickenpox vaccine (Varivax)
Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR)
The IOM report about thimerosal (mercury)
The Swedish Study about thimerosal (mercury)
Short overview: flu shot, college menigitis vaccine, and RSV
____________________________

Vaccination is built around a "belief system." We believe vaccines are safe; we believe vaccines are important to health; we believe the stories we've been told about vaccines being responsible for the elimination of smallpox and polio. And we really want to believe our doctor has read all the available information on vaccines--pro and con--and is telling us the complete truth about vaccines.

However, belief is based on faith, not necessarily on fact. For example, we want to believe that vaccinating our children will keep them from getting sick. However, there is a plethora of information documenting this is not necessarily so.

Vaccine Failures: http://www.nmaseminars.com/VaccineFailureList.html