Why We Need Vaccine Safety Oversight: US Court Ruling - MMR Vaccine Damaged This Child

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

This is not an anti vaccination thread, this is a pro vaccine-safety thread.
Government agencies are NOT protecting our health from unsafe products and medicines.
This is due in part to huge conflicts of interest and financial connections.
We've seen how FEMA handled Katrina, how the FDA ignored contaminated peanuts for years,
and how the US Govt did not want to take action on melamine in infant products.

The US Court also ruled last year in favour of a little boy Benjamin Zeller, deciding that as a result of the MMR vaccination received on 17 November 2004, Benjamin, suffered persistent, intractable seizures, encephalopathy, and developmental delay

US Court Rules In Favour Of Family In MMR Vaccine Case Ben Zeller

ENTITLEMENT RULING1
ABELL, Special Master:
On 15 February 2006, the Petitioners filed a petition for compensation under the National
Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (Vaccine Act or Act)2 alleging that, as a result of the MMR
vaccination received on 17 November 2004, their child, Benjamin, suffered persistent, intractable
seizures, encephalopathy, and developmental delay. Petition at 1.

...The Court found, as a matter of fact, that Benjamin would not have experienced the seizure disorder and acute encephalopathy or the marked deterioration in neurologic development evidenced by the medical record in this case, but for the administration of the MMR vaccine on 17 November 2004 and the ensuing seizure on 27 November 2004. As such, the law applicable in the Vaccine Program leads the Court to conclude that the vaccination at issue was the cause-in-fact of the injury discussed in the Court’s findings. Shyface, supra.

It also seems evident that the vaccine was a substantial factor in causing the injury found by
the Court, which, prima facie, would appear to satisfy the element of proximate cause in this case.
Applying the traditional legal rule from Tort law, that Respondent takes Petitioner as he finds him
(a.k.a. the “Eggshell Skull Rule”), the fact that Benjamin may have had a genetic predisposition or
a physiologic susceptibility does not defeat Petitioner’s case as a superseding factor. So long as the
vaccine was a substantial factor, and its influence was not overborne by a superseding cause, the
Court is justified in ruling that the proximate causation requirement is satisfied.

Applying the so-called Althen elements to Petitioner’s theory of causation, the Court rules
that Petitioner, through Dr. Kinsbourne, has proffered a medically plausible theory of causation that
links the injury found by the Court to the vaccination at issue via a logical explanation of cause and effect, all within a medically appropriate time frame between vaccination and the onset of the initial seizure, and the overarching timeline of Benjamin’s medical course. Dr. Kinsbourne’s theory,
corroborated by the medical literature filed in this case, posits preponderant evidence that the MMR
vaccine can cause encephalopathy and seizures. Likewise, a review of the medical records filed in
this case serve to support the contention that such pathologic process was indeed at work in the
instant case. Accordingly, the evidence proffered and the findings of the Court stated above combine
to satisfy the “can it–did it” test as well.

[tabatha]

1. It is all about safety and regulation.

Which the right-wing does not want to do.

[HamdenRice]

2. It's also an insoluble economic problem, more than a safety problem

This is what I think a lot of the extreme pro vaxers don't get. It's a problem straight out of the work of the greatest theoretician of the economics of tort law, a professor named Guido Calabrese, who was dean of Yale Law School for some years.

Basically, vaccines provide tremendous benefits, but also burden people with costs in the form of side effects. Almost every vaccine administration has side effects, at least in provoking an immune response (otherwise it wouldn't be an effective vaccine) which can be unpleasant, and cause at least some morbidity and lost work days. But the typical person who experiences that also experiences the benefit of immunization.

The problem is with externalities. Vaccines impose severe costs on a very few people -- the people with really bad adverse reactions, ie the people who are compensated by the Vaccine Court. That is a negative externality.

At the same time vaccines provide positive externalities. People who don't take the vaccine benefit from a less infectious society. Also people who take the vaccine and don't have adverse reactions in a way are benefiting at the cost of those who do.

There is no "market" in the externalities of vaccines. There is no way for the people who benefit from social immunity and public health to "buy" that benefit from the people who suffer the worst reactions.

So the costs and benefits are reallocated through mechanisms like the Vaccine Court.

But to simply say vaccines are all good and people have to take them no matter what, doesn't grapple with the complexities of how the benefits look different to individuals compared to society.

[trotsky]

3. "But to simply say vaccines are all good and people have to take them no matter what"

Since no one in this forum has ever said that, once again you're just arguing with your old friend.

[HamdenRice]

4. It's always entertaining ...

to watch entire conceptual categories and fields of knowledge go completely over your head!

:hi:

[trotsky]

5. So you admit no one actually said that.

That's wonderful! You're making progress!

[HamdenRice]

6. I really enjoyed your take on Guido Calabresi's "Tragic Choices" ...

and how it modified the theoretical concerns he first put forth in his most important work, "The Cost of Accidents." I was pleasantly surprised that you have given up on the "one liner" approach and decided to write a thoughtful critique of the idea that his theories of "cost spreading" in failed markets applies to vaccines and the Vaccine Court. I think your concern that the Vaccine Court might not be an application of Calabresi's theories to drug company liability is well taken. I would not have thought about some of the insights you provide, but the fact that you spent so much time coming up with a detailed analysis overcame my initial reluctance to see your point. It really was impressive that you spent so much time and effort thinking about these issues ...

Oh. Wait a minute. You didn't.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[trotsky]

7. So you admit you made up a position that no one holds?

We can continue to expose your immaturity here as long as you'd like, Hammy. Or admit you made up your own one-liner, and we can proceed.

[HamdenRice]

8. What on earth are you babbling about now?

Of course I'm not admitting whatever you are babbling about. Let me bold and italicize the sentence that explains what I am doing, so that any reader or casual visitor to this forum or any other person with even the most compromised of cognitive capabilities can understand: I am lampooning your complete inability to deal with the substance of a sophisticated economic argument.

That is all I'm doing.

[trotsky]

9. Perhaps if you could actually MAKE said "sophisticated economic argument"

this could have all been avoided. However, all you did was recite someone else's idea, and then made up a fictitious character to criticize.

Keep trying, Hammy. You're a riot!

[cosmik debris]

11. Did you ever hear the story of the man

who stood in front of the monkey cage at the zoo?

PM me if you want the details.

[HamdenRice]

16. The intelligent, rational guy who stood in front of the monkey cage?

I won't go further, but no, I haven't heard it, but I certainly know from first hand experience of certain "discussions" here what happened.

:rofl:

[Name removed]

17. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

10. "Vaccines impose severe costs on a very few people"

Without vaccines a large group of people would pay large costs. You know how I know that? Thousands of years of recorded history where vaccines were not available.

"But to simply say vaccines are all good and people have to take them no matter what, doesn't grapple with the complexities of how the benefits look different to individuals compared to society."

First, give me any evidence that anyone has ever said that everyone should take vaccines "no matter what". Second, this is not a complex issue, and that's a huge problem in your argument. Society benefits from vaccines, and society is made up of individuals - thus a huge number of individuals benefit from our vaccine programs. And until you pull out a crystal ball and can foresee the future, we have very little chance of knowing which people will be adversely affected by common vaccines. Are you suggesting we stop all vaccinations until vaccines reach a 100% safety rate? That's certainly what you seem to be advocating, albeit by insinuation.

[HamdenRice]

14. "this is not a complex issue" -- actually it is, and your own post shows why

I agree completely that "Without vaccines a large group of people would pay large costs." I also agree that "Society benefits from vaccines, and society is made up of individuals..."

But here is why it is a complex problem. The economic calculation and optimal solution for society is different from the economic calculation and optimal solution for the individual. This is a classic problem of economics in the field called "collective action" problems.

These occur when the optimal solution for the individual is different from the optimal solution for society. The optimal vaccination solution for society is often (but not always) that everyone gets vaccinated. But if everyone gets vaccinated, the disease disappears or becomes very, very rare (eg introduced only by immigration). If the disease is very, very rare than the individual does not benefit from getting the vaccine, but runs a small risk of paying very high costs in terms of a serious adverse reaction, and has the certainty of a small cost in terms of the normal immune reaction which is often uncomfortable.

So, the optimal solution for the individual is: that everyone else gets vaccinated, but I do not. If we are talking about children, whose health parents often have even greater concern for than their own health, the outcome is magnified: the optimal solution is that everyone else's child gets vaccinated, but mine does not. That's called the "free loader" problem. Despite its name, it is not a moral condemnation of the freeloader, but an objective observation of what is actually in the individual's best interest and what he is likely to do. As you yourself point out, since no one has a crystal ball and can tell who will have the adverse reaction, that's all the more reason that the individual, facing the decision for his/her child, has a legitimate incentive to freeload. Economic theory recognizes the insoluble fact that optimal individual outcomes are often different from optimal social outcomes -- a fact that you seem to be trying to avoid or deny.

Collective action problems are widely studied and come up in a wide variety of situations. For example, a village in India might try to get everyone to contribute to building a canal to connect their local irrigation system to a larger water source. But the optimal outcome for the individual farmer is for everyone else to do so except him. In Botswana a village may decide that the pasture can support 10,000 cattle and divide that by 10 families allowing each to pasture 1000 cattle, or else the pasture will become degraded. But the optimal outcome for an individual herder is that everyone else limit themselves and that he adds two or three extra cows.

These individual optimal outcomes are unstable because if everyone does what is optimal for himself or herself, the collective good is lost. But the collective outcome is not optimal for the individual, which means that some form of coercion is necessary -- whether its having doctors "push" vaccines, or making the threat sound more dire to the individual than it is, or the kind of hectoring arguments you see on this board. It's all an attempt to overcome the obviously optimal outcome for the individual. But the collective outcome is also sub-optimal because the sum of the perceived utilities of the individual optimal outcomes is higher than the sum of the actual individual utilities of the collectively optimal outcome.

Moreover, it may not even be the case that the optimal outcome for society is "everyone gets vaccinated"-- which is reflected in the advice given by medical organizations like the CDC. It depends on the disease, the vaccine, the cost of the vaccine and the vaccination campaign, and the amount and severity of adverse reactions. If for example a particular disease becomes very rare when vaccination rates reach 80%, it may be that some rate around 80% is optimal for society because the same societal objective will be reached at a lower cost, and those who want to opt out may do so without coercion. For some diseases, the optimal rate may be even lower. So, for example, the major medical organizations do not recommend that everyone get the flu vaccine. We also have to provide assurances, to those who are trying to decide whether to get the vaccine, and cannot know ex ante the risk, that if they have an adverse reaction, they will be compensated from a pool of money drawn from the good that the vaccine does for others -- hence the Vaccine Court, which functions in the place of a market such that those who benefit "purchase" their benefit from those who were injured.

In the case of every vaccine, complex collective and individual decision making takes place, and conflicting outcomes are inevitable. That's why it is, in fact, a complex problem.

[mzmolly]

25. Excellent

summary HamdenRice. :toast: to you.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

48. But to an individual, the decision is not complex

Most parents, faced with getting their children immunized, don't agonize over the complexities you're pointing out. They simply get their kids the immunizations they need.

Doctors, medical ethicists, sociologists, scientists, message board posters - these are the people for whom the issue is complex.

So to repeat my question: do you think we should completely discontinue our immunization programs until all vaccines can be guaranteed 100% safe?

[flyingobject]

12. Negative Trial Results Given to FDA May Go Unpublished or Sanitized

So the drug companies know of these problems, and instead of addressing it the
FDA keeps it quiet.

http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/ClinicalTrials/11912

[flyingobject]

13. Drug Companies spend more on marketing than research

Maybe we ought to prohibit them from advertising.

That is what some other countries do.

They could spend the money on making their medicines safer, or make them more affordable.

[SidDithers]

15. So, it's your contention based on this one incident...

that the MMR is unsafe and no child should recieve it?

Sid

[trotsky]

18. Interesting question:

Do you know how many children "suffered persistent, intractable seizures, encephalopathy, and developmental delay" due to the measles, mumps, and/or rubella DISEASES before we had the vaccine? (At least of those who survived those diseases, of course.)

[HamdenRice]

19. Another interesting question: Who would you sue when a child suffers from natural measles, etc.

The fact that something terrible could happen from a naturally occurring endemic disease state before vaccines does not relieve anyone of responsibility for producing a cure or preventive with bad side effects. In the natural course of the disease before there were vaccines, no one was legally or morally responsible. If the vaccine has adverse consequences for some, then there is a party who is legally and morally responsible.

If you save five people from drowning, it does not entitle you to turn around and immediately throw one of them off a cliff.

That's so elementary that I'm amazed you don't get it.

[trotsky]

21. As usual, you invent a different position to attack.

I of course realize that vaccines should be made as safe as possible (while still being effective), that vaccine manufacturers should be held to quality standards, and that those harmed by vaccines should have the right to sue.

So yet again you pick a fight with your imaginary straw friend. Good luck with that.

[HamdenRice]

26. Then what was your point? As usual it was lost in a miasma of ...

misplaced rhetorical questioning, snark and poor reasoning. Why ask about the adverse effects of the disease in the pre-vaccine era if you acknowledge that those effects are utterly irrelevant to the issue of liability for vaccine makers? The point was kind of ...

:silly: :crazy: :silly:

[trotsky]

27. And keeping true to form,

when your initial strawman attack is easily dispatched, you resort to ad homs. Some things never change.

[HamdenRice]

28. So criticism of sloppy reasoning is now ad hom?

Is that your point? Pointing out that your rhetorical question was misplaced and your implied comparison reflected sloppy reasoning is ad hom?

Why not just go all the way and claim that any criticism of anything you write or any position you take is ad hom?

As usual you are trying to drain all meaning from a term with a well understood and specific meaning.

[trotsky]

29. My original comment was more pertinent to this topic than you evidently realize.

Yet all you do is attack, insult, and attack some more. That's really sad. Whatever I did to piss you off so terribly, I guess I'll never understand.

Vaccines of course work by introducing antigens - in the case of MMR, it's a weakened version of the viruses that cause those diseases. Generally they're weakened by culturing in a different organism (often chicken embryos, thus the warning about egg allergies and many vaccines).

However, it is to be expected that if the real, full-strength, human-acclimated versions of these viruses can cause the symptoms the OP mentions (which they do, of course), that even weakened versions of them could induce the same symptoms in some vaccine recipients - whether it's due to an excessive reaction by the immune system, or a spontaneous mutation in the weakened virus, or some other reason. That is what I wanted the OP to acknowledge or at least think about, considering her personal crusade against vaccines that she deems "unsafe."

Now if you can give a reasoned, respectful, non-insulting, non-arrogant response to this post, perhaps we could turn over a new leaf? Or you could just insult me some more, bring up a new straw man to attack, or throw out a couple dozen smileys and/or a picture of your favorite Monty Python character, all the while claiming I'm the problem.

[HamdenRice]

34. "reasoned, respectful, non-insulting, non-arrogant response "

That discussion has already been going on about cost/benefit analysis. Feel free to add anything to it's that relevant, respectful and non-insulting.

[trotsky]

36. Thank you for your polite response.

However I see you ignored the reason why I posted the question I did. You don't get to dominate this thread - I have every right to ask a question, and I just explained to you why it is pertinent to the topic.

[varkam]

22. Risk / Benefit

There are many people the world over working hard to try and reduce ADRs that drugs have and to develop methods of treatment with a lower risk benefit ratio. No one is saying that one is entitled to throw one child off of a cliff because you saved five from drowning. But if your only option is to do nothing, and let five drown whilst saving one whereas you can act to save five but drown one, I think that most people would chose the action that operates for the greatest good for all of us.

[HamdenRice]

23. Yes, exactly -- see posts 13, 14

The problem is that unlike other products, the costs and benefits are distributed in ways that make individual optimal outcomes and societal optimal outcomes different. It is way too unrealistic to think that people "chose the action that operates for the greatest good for all of us"; they chose the action that operates for the greatest good for their children (in the case of childhood vaccines) and themselves -- as well they should.

[varkam]

31. Which, in the case of vaccines...

is to vaccinate.

[HamdenRice]

32. You've completely doged the question

It's not whether "to vaccinate." It's how many to vaccinate. It's whether people should be able to opt out of vaccination if, in their cost/benefit analysis and utility schedule, they rate the risk as too high. It's whether "routine" vaccination schedules that seem to accumulate more and more vaccines that admittedly have side effects to very young children might not be the best approach and whether the influence of vaccine makers might be influencing the vaccine schedule for inappropriate reasons to the detriment of public health and economic efficiency.

Clearly requiring everyone to be vaccinated is the wrong choice for most diseases and most vaccines.

So this then raises the question of whether the advice we get and programs that are implemented by or with the lobbying of pharmaceutical companies are the optimal outcomes for society and optimal outcomes for the individual. It should be obvious that a corporation whose officers have a legal duty to maximize profits -- whose officers who could be sued for millions or even billions of dollars if they don't maximize profits -- would use their influence to ensure that the advice society receives is to vaccinate everyone, or as many people as possible. Yet that advice rarely stands up to economic or public health logic, and most people who follow their line have fallen for what is in effect a line of corporate propaganda, and are not promoting the best scientific, economic, legal or even ethical line of reasoning.

[varkam]

33. "Clearly requiring everyone to be vaccinated is the wrong choice for most diseases and most vaccines

What is your support for that statement? Or is this another one of those times where I ought to employ my sense of humor and regard that as a joke?

So this then raises the question of whether the advice we get and programs that are implemented by or with the lobbying of pharmaceutical companies are the optimal outcomes for society and optimal outcomes for the individual. It should be obvious that a corporation whose officers have a legal duty to maximize profits -- whose officers who could be sued for millions or even billions of dollars if they don't maximize profits -- would use their influence to ensure that the advice society receives is to vaccinate everyone, or as many people as possible. Yet that advice rarely stands up to economic or public health logic, and most people who follow their line have fallen for what is in effect a line of corporate propoganda, and are not promoting the best scientific, economic, legal or even ethical line of reasoning.

I can barely make sense of that. You vaguely seem to be making the argument that, since pharmaceutical companies make money off of vaccines, they are somehow inherently bad. Furthermore, you seem to be asserting that pharmaceutical companies have a total lock on any information that gets to the consumer which, if I might say, is a bit tin-foilish.

Furthermore, you seem to disregard the demonstrable benefit that vaccines provide as well as the requirement that vaccine-uptake need remain high in order for society to receive the benefit of herd immunity.

[HamdenRice]

37. Here's a thought experiment

Here's an economic thought experiment. Let's say we're talking about a childhood disease of the MMR type or chickenpox, that is uncomfortable to get and has a small risk of serious complications when a person gets the disease naturally and there is a vaccine for it.

You can line up the benefits and costs of the vaccine. On the benefit side each person who gets the vaccine is pretty much certain not to get sick. Each person who is vaccinated also avoids the risk of very serious complications and even death. Each person who gets the vaccine decreases the demand on total health expenditures. When many people get the vaccine there are additional benefits such as the potential additional cost of handling an epidemic are eliminated, and as vaccination rates reach 100%, herd immunity is reached, which means that even the unvaccinated are highly unlikely to become infected.

On the cost side there is the cost of the vaccine -- let's arbitrarily say $10. There is the discomfort of the routine immune response. There is the very small risk of very serious complications (but which is much smaller than the risk of serious complications from the disease), and the cost to public health expenditures of taking care of those victims of adverse side effects. Lastly, let's say that most people willing take and volunteer to take the vaccine (call them vaccine volunteers, VV) and there are people who for whatever reason don't like the side effects and/or are afraid of the possibility of serious adverse reactions (call them vaccine skeptics, VS). In other words the VS would be happier if they didn't have to take the vaccine. Some really hate vaccines and some are just mildly suspicious, so you can rate them from the most vociferous opponents to the less opposed, and label them VS1 (numero uno vaccine hater), VS2, VS3 and so on.

Let's say that as a result of some vaccination campaign society approaches 100% vaccination and the disease is almost eradicated. Herd immunity is achieved.

Economists often look at any economic situation (an "allocation") and ask: Is it possible to make it better? In fact, they have an even more stringently conditioned question: Is it possible to make any person better off without making any other person worse off? If it is not possible to make any person better off without making any person worse off, then the situation is called, "Pareto Optimal" (named after the Vilfredo Pareto, the economist who came up with the idea). You are in the best possible world (putting aside justice of distribution issues).

If it is possible to change the allocation to make at least one individual better off without making any individual worse off, then that change (a Pareto improvement) should, theoretically be made.

So let's look at our 100% vaccination situation. Is it Pareto Optimal? Well, if VS1 were allowed to opt out of the vaccination program, VS1 would not experience the discomfort of vaccination; VS1 would not run the risk of an adverse reaction; VS1 would experience happiness at being able to do what he wants and avoid coercion (an increase in utility), and the health system would save $10. Moreover, no one would be worse off because VS1 would not be able to catch chicken pox because of herd immunity, there is no threat of an epidemic, he poses no threat to the vaccinated or himself.

So allowing VS1 to opt out would be a Pareto improvement. Society would be better off allowing him to opt out.

Are we at the Pareto Optimal situation yet? No, because if we let VS2 opt out, there would be an other Pareto improvement. And VS3. And so on.

In fact letting VS opt out (free load on herd immunity) would continue to improve Pareto efficiency until herd immunity was threatened. If that allows say 100,000 VS to opt out, the public health finance system saves $1,000,000 without any adverse effect on public health. The only real detriment is that it might encourage too many people to opt out, and the system would to come up with some way of explaining to VS100,001 why he can't opt out, but VS100,000 could. We would also have to allocate opt outs geographically so that they are not concentrated in a way that would threaten local herd immunity. But this is really an expression of distrust of the medical consumer. One solution is to coerce everyone to take the vaccine because it's easier to explain (actually lie about) and protect herd immunity that way. Another is to be completely honest and honor each patient's right to make informed decisions for himself or herself within the constraints of having to protect herd immunity.

While this isn't some sort of definitive proof, it is a deductive indication from game theory and economics that the socially optimal allocation of vaccines is probably somewhere lower than 100% for most diseases and is probably around herd immunity. It could be lower for other diseases. It could be higher for other diseases which are so terrible that eradication is the only responsible public health policy (like small pox).

This is not an remarkable fact. I've probably had more vaccines (and more exotic vaccines) than anyone here other than health care providers because I've had to travel to very poor regions of Africa and Asia. I have nothing against vaccines. But it's obvious that some of the vaccines for exotic diseases I've had are inappropriate for the general US population. The CDC is constantly doing these complex calculations of risk, cost and benefit -- as for example, when they recommend that the flu vaccine be given to the elderly, the immuno compromised and the young, but not necessarily to everyone.

Now imagine that you are a CDC economist who has run the cost benefit analysis and ask the manufacturer of a vaccine whether they should recommend 100% vaccination or 80% vaccination (herd immunity). The pharma exec is duty bound to say 100%. If you are in law school, you must have heard by now (even if you haven't taken corporations) that state corporation laws impose a fiduciary duty on corporate officers to manage the corporation solely for the benefit of shareholders -- which means solely for the purpose of making profits. You can see this explained very well in the documentary, "The Corporation." As someone who worked in the corporate finance sector (when I wasn't in non-profits), I can confirm that this is an accurate and conventional description of how corporations operate. That's not a conspiracy. That's just how corporations work. This is a non-controversial claim about corporate behavior, and considering how horribly inefficient our current for profit health care system is, because of corporate attempts to improve profits (cherry picking insurance companies, drug companies that lobbied to prevent the federal government from bargaining over prices, etc., etc., etc.--it goes on an on, in a "parade of horrible" behavior) it's hard to see how anyone could say that the idea, that the profit motive negatively affects health outcomes and allocations in this country, is some sort of conspiracy. It's a documented fact.

That doesn't mean that for profit corporations have no role to play. It means that decisions have to be made based on public health, economics and ethics and that a lot of what corporations "say" has to be screened out as noise in the debate. With stringent regulations and with corporations being told what to do, what to produce and how to produce it, they should be free to make a modest profit. But right now, for profit corporations largely dominate the decision making -- including in the vaccine wars.

[trotsky]

41. Focus in on two sentences:

Now imagine that you are a CDC economist who has run the cost benefit analysis and ask the manufacturer of a vaccine whether they should recommend 100% vaccination or 80% vaccination (herd immunity). The pharma exec is duty bound to say 100%.

This seems to be the crux of your position. You fear that the pharmaceuticals have too much say in this. You can't demonstrate it, but you suspect it. I'm willing to let the infectious disease experts at the CDC make the calculations they do. Since NO vaccine has an absolute 100% coverage mandate, I suspect that the pharmaceuticals don't have as much say over the process as you think they do.

[HamdenRice]

42. "You can't demonstrate it, but you suspect it. "

No this is well documented, from the lobbying efforts to prevent drug re-importation to the lobbying to prevent the federal government from bargaining over the price of drugs. The claim that the Bush administration effectively turned over health policy to for profit corporations in pursuit of its free market ideology is a fact, not an undemonstrated belief.

Because corporations are legally bound to behave a certain way, it's actually an extraordinary claim that their recommendations with respect to vaccines are not based on profit motive, and extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

An example of their behavior in the vaccine arena is their lobbying to mandate Gardisil -- which shows a clear contrast between what the vaccine manufacturer wants and what public health officials say is the best approach:

http://www.news-medical.net/?id=21605

Merck lobbying States to mandate Gardasil for school girls

Merck recently has been providing lobbyists throughout the country with information about its human papillomavirus vaccine Gardasil in an effort to encourage states to mandate that middle-school age girls receive it, the Baltimore Sun reports (Smitherman, Baltimore Sun, 1/29).
...
Doug Stiegler, executive director of the Maryland Family Protection Lobby, said, "What I don't want is for Merck to come to the state and say we want to make millions of dollars from this, and we want you to mandate this for every schoolgirl who comes down the pike." Kelley and co-sponsors of the Maryland legislation said improving public health, not corporate interests, motivated them to introduce the legislation. Kelley added that parents who object to the vaccine for moral or religious reasons can opt out of the requirement.

According to the Sun, some health experts have said mandating Gardasil is premature, and the American Academy of Pediatrics is advocating a "go-slow approach" that focuses on raising awareness of HPV and monitoring the safety of the vaccine. Jennifer Allen, a Merck spokesperson, said the company's goal is to "support state efforts to implement policies to ensure Gardasil is used to achieve what it was designed to do, and that's to reduce cervical cancer and other HPV-related diseases," adding, "It's a public health goal that everyone has" (Baltimore Sun, 1/29).

<end quote>


http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14401

Merck's Murky Dealings: HPV Vaccine Lobby Backfires

In early January Marilyn Canavan and Andrea Boland, two legislators from wintry Maine, traveled to the tourist resort of Marco Island, Florida, for a conference organized by Women in Government (WIG), a non-profit organization.
...
"The tenor of presentations - they were not discussions ... (they) seemed one-sided to me," said Canavan, a four-term legislator. "I remember thinking as I was leaving the meeting, 'I just don't want to do this ... we need to have public dialogue.'"
...
Boland, a first-time legislator, joined Canavan, a WIG state director, at a small planning session, where she was taken aback by the extent to which corporations influenced WIG.
...
Both legislators believed that preventing cervical cancer was a worthy project, but it wasn't until a month later that Canavan and Boland learned that, more than making the vaccine available, Merck and WIG were campaigning to make Gardasil mandatory for all 11-12 year old girls.
...
Then, after the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, passed an executive order mandating vaccination for all girls entering sixth grade, Canavan learned something that shocked the former director of the State Ethics Commission: She discovered that WIG had taken funding from Merck.

<end quote>

[trotsky]

43. But since no vaccine has a mandatory 100% coverage rate,

including Gardasil, then no pharma company has the ability to require that, correct?

[HamdenRice]

44. Did you read the article?

Obviously the company cannot mandate 100% coverage. So they pay off legislators and governors who do have that power -- to mandate 100% coverage or as close to it as they can get, even though public health officials don't think that's the best approach.

This is a clear example of conflict between a profit driven goal and a public health goal.

[trotsky]

45. I sure did. But you realize that ultimately the attempt failed.

Politics is all about reconciling conflicting points of view, you know.

[HamdenRice]

46. It didn't fail.

Democratic politics is about reconciling points of view. But we have a severely flawed system that allows in effect legal bribery and ways to circumvent democratic institutions. You have to really bend over backwards not to see that the vaccine manufacturer wants the private and public health finance system to purchase more Gardisil than is indicated by public health and economic concerns:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16948093

Texas governor orders STD vaccine for all girls
Decision comes after maker of cervical cancer shot doubled lobbying efforts

AUSTIN, Texas - Bypassing the Legislature altogether, Republican Gov. Rick Perry issued an order Friday making Texas the first state to require that schoolgirls get vaccinated against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

By employing an executive order, Perry sidestepped opposition in the Legislature from conservatives and parents’ rights groups who fear such a requirement would condone premarital sex and interfere with the way Texans raise their children.

Beginning in September 2008, girls entering the sixth grade — meaning, generally, girls ages 11 and 12 — will have to receive Gardasil, Merck & Co.’s new vaccine against strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV.
...
Merck is bankrolling efforts to pass state laws across the country mandating Gardasil for girls as young as 11 or 12. It doubled its lobbying budget in Texas and has funneled money through Women in Government, an advocacy group made up of female state legislators around the country.

Perry tied to Merck
Perry has ties to Merck and Women in Government. One of the drug company’s three lobbyists in Texas is Mike Toomey, Perry’s former chief of staff. His current chief of staff’s mother-in-law, Texas Republican state Rep. Dianne White Delisi, is a state director for Women in Government.

The governor also received $6,000 from Merck’s political action committee during his re-election campaign.

[trotsky]

47. You have a strange definition of fail then.

I define it as not accomplishing one's goals. If the goal of Merck was to get 100% mandatory vaccine coverage for Gardasil, then they didn't accomplish that goal. They failed. Perry's order was overturned. So your claim that somehow NOT getting the 100% coverage they wanted ISN'T failing is a little confusing.

You have to really bend over backwards not to see that the vaccine manufacturer wants the private and public health finance system to purchase more Gardisil than is indicated by public health and economic concerns

Careful here - you're returning to your strawmen. I never said that vaccine manufacturers DON'T have an interest in selling as much product as possible. Please don't assign positions to me that I don't hold.

But anyway, until we set up your utopia, what do you propose in the interim?

The governor also received $6,000 from Merck’s political action committee during his re-election campaign.

President Obama received several hundred thousand dollars from various pharmaceutical companies during the primaries and GE campaign. Can he be trusted on healthcare?

[HamdenRice]

49. You're missing the point of the thread

Texas was a clear example of a company trying to rig the political process which demonstrated that public health and profit motives were inconsistent.

Rather than go down the rabbit hole on this specific example, let's be clear about what the main claim of the thread is: Corporations that manufacture vaccines have an incentive to and record of influencing the political process and medical establishment to prescribe vaccines at levels that are not optimal from a public health or economic perspective.

Do you disagree with that statement? If so could you state your claim affirmatively? For example is your claim that corporations do not pursue profits as their primary goal? Is it that they do not try to influence the political process or medical regimes in ways that are profit optimizing rather than health optimizing?

I think it's very important for you to state your claim because it's really difficult to see what you are arguing. That's not intended as snark but honestly just trying to get to the bottom of what your objection is.

As for my "utopia" prescription, it's pretty much what good Democratic politicians, like Obama, already do: (1) raise money from many small contributors which outweighs the effect of large corporate contributions, (2) screen out corporate "noise" from debates about important issues like public health because most corporate officers are promoting profit maximizing rather than public good maximizing policies, and (3) regulate corporate behavior and products because they cannot be expected to produce, and history shows they rarely have produced, products of the safety that the public demands.

[trotsky]

50. "let's be clear about what the main claim of the thread is"

Can you please quote the exact part of the OP that states the "main claim of the thread" to be that? Because I think you are projecting YOUR claim onto the OP, assigning strawmen positions to me, and then arguing with those.

My initial post in response to the OP was addressing her apparent claim that a MMR vaccine recipient who experienced "persistent, intractable seizures, encephalopathy, and developmental delay" is automatically indicative of "government agencies ... NOT protecting our health from unsafe products and medicines." The measles, mumps, and rubella viruses can cause all of those symptoms on their own. Since the vaccine against them uses weakened versions, it is entirely reasonable that in rare circumstances, the vaccine could cause those symptoms too - and it's not necessarily a sign of corporate malfeasance and a total failure of government regulatory agencies if it does.

That was my claim. Do you have a problem with it?

[HamdenRice]

51. Good grief. The main point of "my" sub-thread

is what I should have said. We were just discussing corporate behavior and cost benefit analysis. I asked you several questions. Can you answer them?

As for your questions, yes, I have a problem with your analysis. The effects of a disease have different legal and ethical consequences from the effects of a product.

To "depoliticize" the issue, look at the vegetable, rhubarb. Lots of people grow rhubarb in the gardens, harvest it and eat it. But if you don't cut it correctly and include the leaves, it is poisonous. If you are stupid and harvest your own rhubarb, fail to clean it properly, eat it and get sick, then your situation, while unfortunate, does not lead to liability on the part of anyone part. But if you buy canned rhubarb that was improperly cleaned, you eat and and get sick, then the company is responsible, legally and ethically.

Anyone who produces a vaccine has a legal and ethical duty to make it as safe as possible. The fact that measles exists in nature does not excuse a drug company from making a vaccine that makes people sick. It may not reflect malfeasance, but it reflects "negligence" if there is an alternative method -- such as a vaccine based on a dead virus or some protein of the virus.

Now, can you address what your affirmative claims are about corporate profit driven motivation and public health that I already posed?

[trotsky]

52. This isn't your thread.

You're trying to rope me into defending the strawman position you've created in your subthread. I addressed the OP. Perhaps if you could show that it is technologically (and economically) feasible to create a live virus vaccine that CANNOT cause the same symptoms that the full-strength virus does but yet still delivers the same levels of immunity, you might have something to counter my original post on this thread. However it does not appear you are interested in doing that:

but it reflects "negligence" if there is an alternative method -- such as a vaccine based on a dead virus or some protein of the virus.

Well, there isn't an alternative method. You might be aware that a dead virus or partial virus vaccine rarely confers lifelong immunity. We need the virus or pathogen to START to replicate a bit in the body for the immune system to react properly, and develop a memory of how to fight it. That is where the technology is at. Now surely pharmaceuticals have a financial interest TO do better, since if they did, then everyone would want to use THEIR vaccine instead of their competitors', right?

[trotsky]

35. Should some people be allowed to opt out of paying taxes?

I mean, as long as too many don't do it, the government will still have enough money to function, right? Should people who think it's too risky to give up any of their income (being forced to cut back in their family budgets) be allowed to keep it?

Of course, using this analogy, we know that some people CAN'T pay taxes. They simply don't make enough. These folks would be analogous to those who are immune-compromised or otherwise not good candidates for vaccination. The rest of us who are able, must make the sacrifice to support these people in society. We pay taxes so they don't have to.

So of the people who make enough money to pay taxes, how many should we allow to opt out? How many CAN we?

[HamdenRice]

38. Yet people opt out of voting and joining the army

Taxes are not vaccines, are not voting, are not volunteering for the army. Each public duty has to be judged on its own.

One criteria is whether opting out hurts the larger social good. Opting out of paying taxes reduces the public purse so we don't allow it.

For an explanation of the cost/benefit effect of opting out of vaccines, see post 37.

[trotsky]

39. "One criteria is whether opting out hurts the larger social good."

Think about that for a moment.

If ONE person skipped out on paying taxes, how much does that hurt the larger social good? A few thousand dollars out of a multi-trillion-dollar budget?

"Opting out of paying taxes reduces the public purse so we don't allow it."

Opting out of vaccination reduces herd immunity of the population, yet you think it should be allowed?

There appears to be a little double standard here. Obviously a few tax cheats don't bring the whole country crashing down, since lots of people do it right now. And equally obvious is the fact that the relatively few people who have opted out of vaccination haven't brought about epidemics of measles. BUT we have seen instances such as in the UK with the Wakefield fraud MMR scare, diseases like measles quickly sweeping through a population in which vaccination dropped by a fair amount. What's the tipping point? Considering the sobering costs of the re-emergence of diseases, I don't think it is a wise social policy to try and find out.

[HamdenRice]

40. See post 37 nt

[trotsky]

24. Nicely done.

You took an extremely flawed analogy and made it work.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

20. no studies done of the unvaccinated populations

why is that?

Fear of the results?

Lack of scientific integrity?

[SidDithers]

30. Are you asking yourself these question?...

:shrug:

Sid

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

53. Sid, we need to study the unvaccinated, also the children who got sick right after vaccinations

-The govt has to pay out claims if they admit that vaccines have hurt these children.
-The govt and its FDA, compromised by members who benefit financially from their own decisions would have to admit it screwed up by approving some of these vaccines or fast tracking them.
-The govt hasn't looked at how to adjust the vaccine schedules to fit the child, which would likely
reduce vaccine injury.

There is so much conflict of interest in the bodies that are supposed to be looking out for us,
that we SHOULD NOT have confidence in their decisions.

There is a huge lack of independence from financial connections to the industries involved.

We have unvaccinated populations we could study,
we have injured children we could study.

We could spread out the vaccination schedule for some children,
we could find out how to avoid injuring others.

I am not and never have said childrend should not be vaccinated, but I am saying that
we need to do better.

To me, there is NO throwaway child.

I am SOOO lucky my daughter has not ever been injured by vaccines (to my knowledge.)
She does have ADHD, and some allergies, but nothing severe.