In the wake of the Charlottesville rally of white supremacists in 2017, resulting in the murder of a counter-protester, Donald Trump uttered these immortal words:
You also had some very fine people on both sides.
With that ugly claim, Trump signaled his sympathy with racists. Is Trump a racist? As Sen. Cory Booker recently pointed out, “The racists think he’s a racist.” That, of course, is the point. He is pandering to racists because he values their support above their immoral views and harmful acts.
But make no mistake, there are not very fine people on both sides of the white supremacy debate. There are only racists — whose racism hurts others — and everyone else.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Is La Leche League anti-vax? Anti-vaxxers think it is.[/pullquote]
In the wake of an blog post asking if La Leche League is anti-vax, I found this statement on their website:
La Leche League does not have a stance on vaccinations …
Really? LLL doesn’t have a stance on the greatest public health advance of the past century, an advance that has saved more lives than breastfeeding ever could? Apparently, there are some very fine people on both sides of this issue. LLL is eager to pander to them because it values the support of anti-vaxxers above their unscientific, unethical views and harmful refusal of vaccines.
Make no mistake, there aren’t two sides to the vaccine debate. There are only conspiracy monetizing, pseudoscience peddling charlatans — whose fear mongering represents the greatest public health threat in this century to children in industrialized countries — and nearly all doctors, scientists and public health officials in the world.
Is LLL anti-vax? The anti-vaxxers think it is.
This list comes from the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), possibly the premier anti-vax organization.
La Leche League can be found nestled among the major purveyors of pseudoscience like Mercola.com and Dr. Bob Sears. There is no indication that this endorsement was solicited, but it is an endorsement nonetheless.
Speaking of anti-vax charlatan Bob Sears, recently disciplined by the Board of Medicine of California for giving out vaccine exemptions, he is a regular speaker at LLL conferences, including the LLL International Conference in 2007. Indeed, he was scheduled to speak at this LLL conference that took place months after he had been placed on probation.
The topic? How to evade California’s recently strengthened vaccine mandate.
All of which raises the question: if La Leche League is willing to twist and ignore scientific evidence on vaccination — arguably the single most important protection of the health of children — can they be trusted to accurately represent the scientific evidence on breastfeeding?
The answer is an emphatic, “No!”
What does the truth matter when your goal is to promote breastfeeding even above the health and safety of babies?
It doesn’t matter enough to warn mothers about the dangers of breastfeeding itself. Breastfeeding is now the leading risk factor for newborn readmission to the hospital; literally tens of thousands of babies are being readmitted each year for iatrogenic problems caused by aggressive breastfeeding promotion. You might think that the readmission of tens of thousands of newborns each year merits a discussion on the LLL website, but you would be wrong.
What does the truth matter when your goal is to promote breastfeeding even above the health and safety of babies?
Fully one third of cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) are associated with bedsharing and the American Academy of Pediatrics is quite clear that bedsharing is unsafe for babies and should be avoided. LLL mentions the AAP recommendation only to disparage it.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says, “Infants may be brought into the bed for feeding or comforting but should be returned to their own crib or bassinet when the parent is ready to return to sleep.” Easy to say… Eventually, many mothers find that bedsharing is a low-risk, long-term solution for sleep deprivation and an unhappy baby…
What does the truth matter when your goal is to promote breastfeeding even above the health and safety of babies?
La Leche League is no longer an organization devoted to science (if it ever was). It is a special interest group devoted to advancing the fortunes of itself and its members, regardless of whether children are harmed as a result.
There are not “fine people” on both sides of the anti-vax debate. There are only conspiracy monetizing, pseudoscience peddling charlatans and nearly all doctors, scientists and public health officials in the world. Going forward, medical professionals and medical organizations should either convince LLL to adhere to the scientific evidence or sever ties with them.
If La Leche League doesn’t stand on the side of doctors, scientists and public health officials, then doctors, scientists and public health officials should not stand by LLL’s side.
https://bit.ly/2DDRul0
The risk of seizure after the MMR vaccine is:
1 in 641 in children overall
1 in 252 in siblings of children with a history of febrile seizures
1 in 51 in children with a person history of febrile seizures
5% of febrile seizures result in epilepsy
The risk of seizure due to measles is 1 in 3000.
The risk of dying due to measles is 1 in 10,000 (similar to the chance of being struck by lightning once in a lifetime).
The risk of a child dying in the USA in his or her first year of life, due to all causes, is 1 in 170.
Notice: Although a personal or family history of seizures is considered a precaution to MMR vaccination, it is not considered a contraindication by the CDC. Therefore, doctors who only know about CDC contraindications, may not know about the significant risk of seizure after MMR vaccination, especially in families with a history of seizures. Also, depending on where a doctor works, he or she may be prohibited from recommending medical exemptions for any reasons besides CDC contraindications.
Make sure your doctor knows about the latest research about the risk of seizure from the MMR vaccine. Your son or daughter may be eligible for a medical exemption.
#Physicians4InformedConsent #InformedConsent #Measles #MeaslesOutbreak #Outbreak #MMR #PICphysicians #Seizures #Epilepsy #NoDoctators #FirstDoNoHarm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15265850
https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/165/8/911/184889
https://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j5104/rr-13
Download one-page PDFs of PIC’s educational materials here: http://www.physiciansforinformedconsent.org/measles
You are going to have to come up a source for your numbers.
Regardless, the risk of seizure is small, you can check the CDC on that. It sure beats the alternative of going back to a pre vaccine America, where we buried thousands of kids every year from Measles alone. Not seizures, dead kids. That does not even take into account the even higher rate of neurological sequelae. The risk benefit analysis is absurd here. Anyone with any regard for the community would vaccinate. It is in all our interests. But anti vaxxers think only of themselves and damage all. Hundreds of cases of a disease we had eradicated, all thanks to idiots like you.
INTERESTING FACTS FOR CURIOUS MINDS:
2017 Number of deaths for leading causes of death in the US:
Heart disease: 635,260
Cancer: 598,038
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 161,374
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 154,596
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 142,142
Alzheimer’s disease: 116,103
Diabetes: 80,058
1. Measles: less than 1
LESS THAN 1/350,000,000 die from measles annually.
2. Average of 51 people die from lightning strike (VERY RARE) rate is 1/700,000 annually.
3. You are more likely to be hit by lightning 500 times than die from measles in the US.
4. Conclusion: if you want to improve your odds of not dying, measles is your ticket.
What about prior to the measles vaccine?
PRIOR TO THE VACCINE in 1962 the population mortality rate from measles was 2/1,000,000…..
Measles was considered a mild childhood disease, and unlike the vaccine, the natural illness conferred lifelong immunity.
“Emergency”? Mandating the MMR vaccine? Maybe someone should remind politicians they represent the people not Pharma trying to get rid of their defective vaccine batches.
https://www.medicaldaily.com/ways-die-cdc-says-rarest-way-die-less-likely-getting-struck-lightning-295778
Bullshit. In the DECADE before the vaccine, there were an estimated 3-4 million cases ANNUALLY in the USA, and ON AVERAGE there were 6000 deaths every year. And that’s just the people it kills.
https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html
Measles also causes nasty complications, the most common one being pneumonia. In this day and age you’re less likely to die from that given that we have antibiotics, but you’re likely still going to require hospital treatment and have a really miserable time.
And do you know WHY we’re seeing so few deaths from measles in this day and age? BECAUSE THE VACCINE WORKS!!!!!!!
Also all those diseases you list as being the leading causes of death are diseases of old age. They’ve overtaken vaccine preventable illnesses because people aren’t dying as children to diphtheria or measles.
Dumbass.
The true toll of measles:
Some people may suffer from severe complications, such as pneumonia (infection of the lungs) and encephalitis (swelling of the brain). They may need to be hospitalized and could die.
As many as one out of every 20 children with measles gets pneumonia, the most common cause of death from measles in young children.
About one child out of every 1,000 who get measles will develop encephalitis (swelling of the brain) that can lead to convulsions and can leave the child deaf or with intellectual disability.
For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die from it.
Measles may cause pregnant woman to give birth prematurely, or have a low-birth-weight baby.
https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/complications.html
In other words, 1 person dying when we have an outbreak of ~700 cases is about what we’d expect.
As a historian, I see mountains of evidence of the nastier complications of measles every day. Before the vaccine was released everybody knew people who suffered such serious measles complications as permanent hearing loss, sterility, and mental retardation. Every community saw healthy children become permanently disabled by it. Or you can walk through any cemetery that dates back to the 18th or 19th century and see that the MAJORITY of graves belong to children or young people who died of the common childhood diseases – including measles.Before the twentieth century, this was how most people died – before the age of twenty, due to communicable disease. It saddens me greatly that as the generations that lived before vaccines die off, the younger generations choose to believe the epidemics that caused such great suffering were fables.
But hey, on “The Brady Bunch” the measles were just depicted as a week off school, so what’s the harm? After all there is no greater authority than TV sitcoms, right? Or perhaps Russian bots on Facebook? That’s where I’ve sourced most of the information you’ve been posting. Maybe you should do some more “research”.
You need to address the real threats to childrens’ health. http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/mit-researcher-glyphosate-herbicide-will-cause-half-of-all-children-to-have-autism-by-2025/
If you feel that way then discuss what you want to on your own site. Dr. Tuteur picks the topics here.
For the pro pharma/GMO/chemical company scientists paid to comment here. https://gmofreeusa.org/research/glyphosate/glyphosate-overview/
Glyphosate is an antibiotic that destroys beneficial gut bacteria needed to make vitamins, detox, and modulate the immune system. https://patents.google.com/patent/US7771736B2/en
Glyphosate is an antibiotic? Dang! We should try it out on C diff. Given the rate of antibiotic resistance, it’s quite remarkable that a money-grubbing “chemical” company should miss that opportunity to extend their patent and get a new market.
Glyphosate is an herbicide. We spray it on plants to kill them. It’s what is in Round-Up Reddy Soybeans. It is not, and has never been, and antibiotic. And I will note that most of us here are quite against GMOs as practiced by Monsanto and Dow, while quite in favor of GMOs as seen in golden rice. Not all GMOs are created equal, y’know? And that is something of a non-sequitur, given that the topic is vaccines.
The patent you are linking is for a potential use, in combination with other things, as an anti-parasite drug in animals. Not an antibiotic, and not for human use. And, I might add, with no indication that it was ever actually developed as a drug; lots of patents are filed and approved for products that never make it to market.
Is this really the best you can do? You should be ashamed of yourself, presenting such shoddy “evidence”.
You need to address the real threats to childrens’ health. http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/mit-researcher-glyphosate-herbicide-will-cause-half-of-all-children-to-have-autism-by-2025/
You are giving a master class in gullibility! https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1a680f0f2f214dea864a20f92c7034a6d44e6f4a1a1539c8544946c87b0c7d79.jpg
lol
“Health Impact News” is right up there (or down there) with whale.to as a source for scientific information.
Pan, please speak up…it’s hard to hear you over the lies you’ve told all these years.
https://youtu.be/qRT1o0M_L2Y
Pan bought by yours truly Big Pharma! Vaccines are the greatest scam in the history of the world. Too many peer reviewed scientific studies prove the dangers of vaccines.
No buddy organized religion is the biggest scam in the history of the world.
The greatest story ever sold.
Believing in God is not organized religion, organized “religion” is a denomination, although I do not believe a denomination is required to please God I believe that the Orthodox Church is an organization of Catholic Churches that help you grow and practice your faith.
To me atheism is the biggest scam, I do not see how a random explanation in the middle of nowhere in preexisting 3D space can create a complex world.
Oh, science doesn’t explain the world. It explains the universe, which is much bigger and more complex than a single world. There are lots of details we do not know, there’s lots of really big things we don’t know, but we’re fairly confident we have the outlines of the history of the universe.
Gravity is a tricky bugger, though. We’re still trying to figure that one out. Recommend you take a course or fifty on physics and astrophysics if you really want to help us enhance our understanding of the universe. Unless, of course, you’re satisfied with the stupid answer of “Goddidit, stop asking questions”, but that was never good enough for me.
“Believing in God is not organized religion”
Is that what I said, no It was not.
I don’t know, Atheism never asked me for money. First thing any church does is pass the collection plate.
BAHAHAHAHAHA Atheism as a scam. Because that makes SO much sense, what with Atheists demanding you pay 10% of your income annually OH WAIT
Which studies? Citations please.
Who is Dr. Pan? Who are you?? What is happening???
Dr. Pan, you may want to stop deleting posts that you disagree with:
https://www.aclu.org/…/court-rules-public-officials…
https://www.newsobserver.com/…/article224028675.html
This is not Dr. Pans website. If you have something to say to him do it on his site please.
OT: Dr. Amy have you seen this? It was written in 2014 so you probably have but if you haven’t you should take a look. Anyone else in the mood 4 a laugh should read it too.
https://birthsciencecourse.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/how-the-skeptical-ob-helped-me-decide-to-have-a-homebirth/
Yeesh. What an idiot.
One of my wooier friends (also an L&D nurse) posted on Facebook crowing about some conference she’d been to and discussing, among other topics, “the flaws in the ARRIVE study” and I looked it up and I just had to *headdesk* and then navigate over here for some sanity. Of course the way to improve the healthcare of black mothers is to try to do fewer interventions. Smh.
Yeah, my cousin who is a CNM has been posting the same kind of thing. How we need more homebirth midwives for black mothers. Headdesk city. A homebirth midwife would not have saved Serena Williams.
If Serena Williams, or Shalon Irving, had had providers who paid better attention to her and caught her symptoms before they progressed, she might have had better outcomes. These people are trying to build the case that midwives would be those providers who pay better attention, but HB midwives are… really not. And some nurse-midwives are great, but some are not so much. Kind of like some doctors are great and some not so much.
Plus, even the best and most attentive provider is limited in response AT HOME, and if I recall, Serena needed a heparin drip and additional surgery.
Yeah, that too. I can only hope that high-risk patients like Serena would not be handled at home, but you know there’s some idiot somewhere who’s tried.
In addition, blacks consider the risk of side effects from the MMR vaccine to be higher and the benefits lower than other Americans.
There are also generational differences with adults under age 30 less convinced that the MMR vaccine brings high preventive health benefits.
People’s use of alternative and conventional medicine is linked with their beliefs about the MMR vaccine; those who report never taking over-the-counter cold or flu medication and those who have used alternative medicine instead of conventional medicine see higher risk from the MMR vaccine.
Plagiarism makes Baby Jesus cry.
Unless Seeing Clearly writes for the Pew Research center??
And now for something completely different…
I’m not doing Rabbit Facts again, but would anyone like some hair care advice? I’ve spent far too much time gathering knowledge about it, and now I must share it. Who knows, there might be something I can help you with!
Why is he back? Did he not learn from last time?
Actually, yes, I very much would. Especially if you have useful suggestions for superfine flyaway hair with cowlicks at either corner of the hairline that literally cannot be tamed (including straightening, curling, chemical treatments, deep conditioners and actual glue when I got desperate enough)
Adults under 30 have never seen a case of the measles. They don’t KNOW ENOUGH to fear it.
This reminds me of a news story I read yesterday. Evidently anti-vaxxers are using an episode of the Brady Bunch as “evidence” that measles is no biggie. What?? It wasn’t even a good sitcom IMO. But Maureen McCormick, a.k.a. Marsha Brady, has something to say about it. She is peeved that people are using her in this way because when she, a real life person, not a sitcom character, got measles, she got really sick with it. The family of Sherwood Schwartz, the creator of the Brady Bunch, is also saying he was very pro-vaccination, too, and got his children vaccines. It’s just that measles wasn’t one available yet.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/allthemoms/2019/04/28/brady-bunch-marcia-mad-anti-vaxxers-using-measles-episode/3611392002/
Can I just note, for the record, that Maureen McCormick is totally awesome. Not just with this, but through other stuff as well. When I was in Colorado, she was on lecture tour talking about birth control. She spoke on campus, but I didn’t find out about it until too late.
And, of course, Marcia….
The first I saw to refer to the Brady Bunch for the measles was Jay Gordon.
It was by that point I realized the guy was a real moron.
Ugh, I see people recommend him as a resource because he’s a plant-based pediatrician. No clue if he gives out responsible advice on raising children vegan, probably not. I think he’s part of PCRM which peddles some cherry-picked info. I consider them akin to PETA.
They have now, thanks to Wakefield et al. They’ve seen quite a lot of them, actually.
Richard Pan is pure evil
Emotional opposition? Sure, because we’ve witnessed both the damage done AND the dogma of the industry and govt that want nothing to do with real science.
Pure evil, Pan.
Like one my favorite real doctors likes to say, “either these pro-vaxx doctors and companies are ignorant or evil”. In other words there is no other way to explain the complete disregard for the proven multitudes of damage done by these shots and the lack of effectiveness of them.
Pan, I don’t consider you ignorant. I presume you’re well aware of the danger sand damage and have been bought off or you’re compromised and have to act this way or else.
Dude, could you not have put this all in one thread so people can collapses it and get to the comments by other regular readers? Quit spamming.
Omg nobody has up voted his comments so he started doing it himself.
Oh dude. Upvoting your OWN comments. Yikes.
I am starting to think the lights are on and nobody is home.
He is mainly spamming and clogging up the comments section. I know Dr. Amy does not ban anyone and I do agree with her about that but in this case I think she should make an exception.
I think we should use this opportunity to have some off topic chats – much more productive than listening to bullshit.
For example, does anyone have a good chilli recipe? We’re starting to try and eat healthier, including making stuff from scratch when we (well, me, because I like to cook more than mum) can. I’m also considering tofu, though not necessarily in the chilli.
Pharmaceutical Companies have zero liability over their products.
Would you buy an iPhone is Apple said they are not responsible for malfunctioning? Would you buy a car is the manufacturer said: It’s all on you buddy?
So why would you allow a product that has been proven to have severe side effects (look at inserts and VAERS) and has been causing more damage and deaths than the infections that it’s supposed to protect you from?
Yeah, that’s false. But hey, I suppose we can take solace in the fact that the world will never run out internet lolyers.
Only vaccine manufacturers were exempted from product liability laws by the 1986 Childhood Vaccine Injury Act not all pharmaceutical companies.
Actually, even the vaccine manufacturers weren’t wholly exempted from product liability claims by that legislation. When anti-vaxxers talk about the NCVIA, the bullshit falls like rain.
They certainly are exempted more than any other product on the market. Simply repealing the NCVIA would go a long way to restoring trust.
“They certainly are exempted more than any other product on the market.”
Not at all. To cite but one of many examples, firearm manufacturers enjoy vastly superior protection under both state and federal law from product liability claims than vaccine manufacturers.
I see where you’re coming from re: repealing NCVIA, but I think a repeal would be detrimental to parents of vaccine-injured children. Getting compensation for vaccine injuries is much simpler under the statutory system than it is in product liability litigation.
Under NCVIA, the parents file a petition for compensation with the U.S. Federal Court of Claims. The statute establishes a no-fault system under which the claimaint need not prove that the vaccine was defective or the manufacturer was negligent. If the child suffered certain specific injuries after receiving certain specific vaccines, compensation is automatic. In all other cases, the claimant need only show a causal connection between the vaccine and the injury. There are recovery caps for non-economic damages, but that’s true of general product liability law in most states as well. A successful claimant automatically gets an award of attorney fees. The compensation and fees are paid not from general revenue but instead from a fund created from a tax levied on drug companies that produce vaccines.
Win or lose in the Court of Claims, the claimant has option of accepting the Court of Claims’ judgment or filing a product liability lawsuit.
Standard product liability litigation requires the claimant to prove both fault and causation, which requires expensive expert testimony. The drug manufacturer and its insurers will hire the best civil defense lawyers on the planet and do everything possible to delay and make the case prohibitively expensive for the claimant and his/her lawyer. If the claimant wins at trial, s/he must still pay her own attorney fees, and is likely facing years of delay because of appeals.
NCVIA created what I think is a fairer and simpler system of compensation that’s preferable to the horrifically expensive crap shoot of standard product liability litigation.
Exactly. The NCVIA makes it EASIER for parents to successfully get a settlement for injuries caused by vaccines.
Here’s the problem that people have with the NCVIA
If it’s not one of the recognized vaccine injuries, you have to show that the injury was caused by the vaccine. Hence, you can’t just claim that your son’s autism was caused by vaccine, because the science is clear that it doesn’t happen.
But for actual, real vaccine injury? It’s a very convenient resource that benefits victims, and certainly does NOT shield the drug companies.
Spot on, Bofa.
It’s also well worth noting that: (1) the claimant must prove causation in all product liability cases; and (2) the standard for proving causation in NCVIA cases is more lenient than the standard for proving causation in civil actions generally. As a rule, the NCVIA claims process will almost always be a better option.
For anyone who might be interested, the alleged causal connection between vaccines and autism has been litigated multiple times in NCVIA cases. The written decisions of multiple special masters, court of claims judges, and federal courts of appeals are available at https://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/autism-decisions-and-background-information. Needless to say, it did not go well for the “vaccines cause autism” crowd.
Afaik, gun manufacturers are only protected from liability arising from criminal use of their products which is very different from the protection from liability for vaccine manufacturers which covers expected and routine adverse effects “on the table”. So the point of not admitting fault is that the products can remain on the “market” (of course, it’s not really a market like the voluntary market for other products) while vaccine recipients continue to experience adverse effects. The injured parties are not “compensated” at all. Their claims are settled by an offer of a non negotiable “table” settlement offer.
Btw, have the table settlements changed since 1986? Is it tied to any inflation markers? I also would argue that the claims process is not simple by ANY stretch of the imagination. Perhaps simpler than a single lawsuit like the Hannah Polling case but probably much more complicated that the class action suits that got Vioxx and Bextra off the market. Definitely less transparent.
I think repeal of VCIA is the right thing to do to regain trust because the way the claims are settled undermines the “safe” part of the “safe and effective” mantra and as we head towards mandatory vaccines and away from informed consent, there needs to be much more transparent tracking of side effects, and liability that includes real compensation for injured.
“Afaik, gun manufacturers are only protected from liability arising from criminal use of their products”
That’s a common misconception, but it is indeed a misconception.
“The injured parties are not ‘compensated’ at all. Their claims are settled by an offer of a non negotiable ‘table’ settlement offer. ”
(1) Not sure what you’re getting at here. Money received pursuant to a settlement is “compensation” by definition.
(2) I don’t know where you got the idea that there’s some sort of compensation table that automatically sets the amount of money a claimant receives, but that simply isn’t true. There’s an injury table that determines which cases are entitled to automatic compensation (automatic as in compensable without proof of causation), but there’s no table that sets the amount of an award. If the Department of Health and Human Services (the respondent in a NCVIA case) makes a settlement offer the claimant doesn’t like, s/he may exercise the right to a trial in the Court of Claims. As I noted above, there are caps on recovery of noneconomic damages (no caps on economic damages), but that’s true in traditional tort litigation as well.
“Btw, have the table settlements changed since 1986? Is it tied to any inflation markers?”
Again, there are no tables that determine compensation amounts.
“I also would argue that the claims process is not simple by ANY stretch of the imagination.”
“Simple” is a relative term. Is pursuing a NCVIA claim simpler than tying one’s shoe? No. Is pursuing a NCVIA claim simpler that pursuing a tort lawsuit against drug manufacturer? Absolutely.
“Perhaps simpler than a single lawsuit like the Hannah Polling case but probably much more complicated that the class action suits that got Vioxx and Bextra off the market.”
Oh deary deary me oh my, no. A class action lawsuit is arguably one of the top ten most complex and expensive endeavors humankind has ever devised. The most complex NCVIA case is multiple orders of magnitude simpler than any class action litigation.
“I think repeal of VCIA is the right thing to do to regain trust because the way the claims are settled undermines the “safe” part of the “safe and effective” mantra and as we head towards mandatory vaccines and away from informed consent, there needs to be much more transparent tracking of side effects, and liability that includes real compensation for injured.”
I’ve learned the hard way that arguing anti-vaxx talking points on the internet is something of a fool’s errand, so I’ll leave most of that alone.
As for “real compensation,” as noted above, a vaccine injury claimant is free to reject the outcome of his or her NCVIA case and file a product liability lawsuit against the drug company. The notion that big businesses and their liability insurers throw money at people upon the mere filing of a lawsuit is tort “reform” propaganda that has zero basis in fact. It’s more likely to go like this:
After 2-3 years of scorched earth litigation in which the claimant’s lawyers spend $100,000 or so of their own money working up the case, a jury trial will occur (assuming the case wasn’t thrown out on summary judgment). The plaintiff will probably lose, since a defense verdict is the likely outcome in cases such as this. If that happens, the plaintiff gets nothing and is on the hook for the $100,000 his lawyers advanced. (By contrast, a claimant in a NCVIA case gets an award of attorney fees and costs even he loses.)
But let’s say things go really well. The jury finds for the plaintiff, and awards $1 million in economic damages and $2 million in noneconomic damages. The trial judge will reduce the noneconomic damages award to $250K as the applicable tort “reform” law mandates. At that point the drug company will appeal. If the verdict holds up in the intermediate appellate court, the drug company will seek review in the state supreme court. Let’s say that after 3-5 years in the appellate process, the plaintiff prevails.
Now it’s finally time to collect! The judgment amount is $1.25 million. The contingent fee on a case that goes through the full appellate process is 45%, or $562,500. The lawyers also advanced $100K in costs, so the total payment to plaintiff’s counsel is $662,500. That leaves $587,500. But wait! Turns out the plaintiff’s health insurance company paid $350,000 of the plaintiff’s injury-related medical expenses. A subrogation/reimbursement clause in the plaintiff’s health insurance policy mandates that the health insurer be repaid from the proceeds of any tort recover. After 5-8 years of litigation that resulted in a complete victory, the plaintiff walks away with $137,500. Great result, eh?
In any event, I think we can agree your original statement that the NCVIA completely exempts vaccine manufacturers from product liability claims was incorrect, yes?
Here’s a REAL MD, one not bought off by the industry, that woke up to vaccines and did some intense research about how this same debate has been happening for 100s of years
https://youtu.be/DkNmMHyWGNg
Encyclopedia of American Loons – #783: Suzanne Humphries
OH MY GOD thank you for this rabbit hole. How have I never found the Encyclopedia of American Loons before?
I’mma waste so much time on this site, TVTropes is so 2000-Late
She…she thinks kidney failure is caused by vaccines.
Of all the underlying illnesses in our database (diabetes and PKD are the most common), I have never once seen “vaccines.”
In fact, our doctors insist that all patients be up to date on vaccines before transplant. You’d think a former nephrologist would be aware of these basic facts.
“Here’s a REAL MD, one not bought off by the industry”
TRANSLATION= Here is a lying asshole that has figured out how to get rich off of pandering to idiots.
Your interpretation is fallible. These doctors risk so much testifying against big pharma.
This argument shouldn’t be about vaccines at all. It should be about government overreach and little by little taking away your personal liberties and freedom of choice. This is totalitarianism. This should scare everyone who lives in a free country whether you are for vaccines or not.
Pharmaceutical Companies have zero liability over their products.
Would you buy an iPhone is Apple said they are not responsible for malfunctioning? Would you buy a car is the manufacturer said: It’s all on you buddy?
So why would you allow a product that has been proven to have severe side effects (look at inserts and VAERS) and has been causing more damage and deaths than the infections that it’s supposed to protect you from?
Would you please go the hell back under your rock. Or start taking the Depakote again.
I do not blame you for your rudeness, it’s a common symptom of atheism, get help.
OT: The Dear Formula Feeding Mothers, Why Are You So Angry? lady has come with a new pail of shit. You see, it’s a problem if you say “Not all women can breastfeed” because it creates an alibi for not being committed enough to breastfeeding. Basically, all healthy women can breastfeed!
Bitch. If I could have gotten my hands on her self-conceited neck, I would have wrung it. I would have knocked her teeth off. I would have torn the lying mouth off her smug face. Bitch had to choose this day to post her ugliness. She had to.
Remember what day is 26 April? Anyone? Because here, we do! 26 April 1986 was the Chernobyl day. The day they started lying to us. Five days later, the cloud reached us here. By then, it was already known what was coming but the Communist Party leaders made their favourite decision – we’ll keep silent. We ate fresh salads. Men, women, and children marched in the 1 May manifestation under the radioactive rain. My 2 mo brother lay in a crib on the open verandah “to get some fresh air”. What he got was an illness of old people. Twice. The prognosis that he’d die. Twice. He was the first kid in our city to ever be diagnosed with his – barely, it was so unheard of in a child. But then, other kids appeared. They were all his age. All Chernobyl age.
I suppose they were all breastfed. My brother certainly was. There WASN’T any formula available to buy on the market and those who could lay their hands on some were already warned not to breastfeed. Not after the cloud. They were the privileged class, you see. The children born with birth defects in horrifying numbers some months later? They were not. My brother was not. He was the son of a mere schoolteacher and a sailor. Why should anyone warn them? (I still harbour a good amount of hate for my primary school teacher whom I used to love. We were invited to her house and I remember being awed that they only drank water from a bottle. Mineral water, it was. I hadn’t seen such before then. She was the wife of a high-ranking party functionary. She didn’t tell my mom, “Don’t give them water from the tap. Don’t breastfeed him.”)
I wish to God he wasn’t breastfed. I also wish I could have this witch here to tell me to my face how breast is always best. I think I would have needed Dr Tuteur’s help after this – or rather, her husband. Because today, I can happily cause her grievous harm.
Dear lord. I hadn’t seen that article before I googled it. Why are formula feeders angry? Because of things like you (the author) wrote in that article. False information about formula being “deficient” when compared to breast milk, statements that only breastfeeding mothers get shamed for feeding their babies in public, the fact that you consider breast feeding to be “heroic.” Lady everyone gets shamed for feeding their baby in public. EVERYONE. If your kid is on the breast you get the modesty brigade. If the kid is on a bottle you get the “Breast is Best” brigade. If you have an infant, and you feed that infant in public SOMEONE will take offense, no matter how you are doing it. There is no societal consensus, at least in the US, that bottle feeding is the “proper” way to feed a baby. When it comes to baby feeding, you are not an oppressed minority. Those who practice delayed weaning, who breastfeed toddlers, do get people on their case, that’s true, but when it comes to an infant, ya’ll are not the underdogs. When it comes to infants you are bullies. And you’re not even striking out only at those who would shame you later for your toddler choices. There’s no direct correlation between formula feeding, and shaming people for delayed weaning. Plenty of people who perpetrate that were themselves breastfeeders who weaned earlier than you choose to. Plenty of formula feeders see a breastfeeding toddler in public and just shrug, to each their own. Doesn’t matter to them at all. I don’t have to ask why you’re so angry. You’re angry because you get (unjustly) shamed for delayed weaning. But you’re taking it out on THE WRONG PEOPLE.
I am so sorry. No wonder you are angry.
LLL lies by omission. They don’t say “don’t vaccinate” but they do say “breastfeeding passes immunity from mother to baby.” Then when people draw the conclusion “since I breastfeed I don’t need to vaccinate” they intentionally remain silent. They could tell the truth which is that the immunity passed through breastfeeding is just some IgA’s which only provide temporary weak protection against stomach bugs. They could clearly state that breastfeeding does NOT pass IgG’s which are what protect against serious illnesses. They could clearly state that you absolutely still need to vaccinate. But nope they intentionally keep quiet. They want anyone they can get on their side even if it means misleading them.
I think people tend to conflate the temporary immunity the baby gains from antibodies passing through the placenta into fetal circulation, with the much more dubious antibodies coming in through breastmilk. At any rate, both are fleeting and are no substitute for vaccinating…
The LLL page is quite clear in what they are claiming
https://www.llli.org/breastfeeding-info/benefits/
(emphasis mine)
Which is nonsense.
Complete nonsense. IGG antibodies pass through the placenta during pregnancy, so any immunity you’re going to pass to the baby is there already and will fade within a few months, whether you breastfeed or not.
Honestly. Do they even science????
Do you think they even realize that after birth a baby has its own immune system separate from the mother. Therefore is not protected against things that mom is protected against from being vaccinated herself, and the baby is going to need his own protection (vaccines). I think they have trouble realizing that they are two separate people, with immune systems independent of each other.
Frankly they don’t even understand what is meant by “immune system.” They have a hazy image of hale and hearty and wholesome and rosy cheeked from fresh air. Their understanding in no way includes immunoglobulins much less humoral immune response vs cell mediated immune response.
The fetal immune system is a fascinating area, but there’s a huge amount we don’t actually know about it. Fetuses in utero are able to respond to bacterial infection-from about 17-18 weeks gestation we can see a fetal inflammatory response in the placenta if there is intra-amniotic infection. We can physically see the fetus’ inflammatory cells moving to the source of the infection through the placenta and the umbilical cord. We can see microscopic changes in the thymus gland from about 17-18 weeks if a fetus has activated its T cells in response to an infection. But the fetal inflammatory response is very different from an adult or a child’s inflammatory response and we don’t really have any good animal models to work with. However, that doesn’t excuse lactation consultants and lactivists from making spurious and exaggerated claims about it, and some of the guff they come out with is unproven, probably unprovable at the moment and misleading in the extreme.
And antibodies are not immunity. Immunity comes from having your own library of memory cells to get your immune response up and going super fast. Having extra antibodies in your system doesn’t make you immune. At best, you’d fight off the infection faster.
And really, if throwing exoganous antibodies was an effective therapy, wouldn’t people be paying volunteers to do donate antibodies? Wouldn’t people be “Sure, since you are giving me the DTap anyway, collect some of my blood in case my newborn gets pertussis” What not-anti-vac mom wouldn’t do that?
Well, exogenous antibodies are administered in rare cases. Hep A immunoglobulin, rabies immunoglobulin etc. They ain’t first line though.
And what about that stupendously ridiculous spit-back theory that if the baby has an infection, the antigens get spat back into the mother’s breast ducts, and the miniaturized molecular bioengineering mechanism in her breasts will INSTANTLY tailor the breast milk to counteract the infection and produce the correct antibodies. It sounds like something from science fiction-if that was at all possible, it would revolutionise medicine, it would make us invincible in the face of infectious disease, there would be no worries about antibiotic resistance, no more ‘superbugs’, no more sepsis deaths. As it is, it’s complete hog wash. But if that is a reason that mothers are deciding not to vaccinate, and if lactation consultants and midwives are telling mothers that it is real, those people have blood on their hands.
I don’t think most people even realize that immunoglobulins pass through the placenta. Most people don’t even know that immunoglobulins exist or that there are different types. I think they just know “immunity is passed through a mother to her baby by breastfeeding” and think that they understand immunology.
For all the anti-vaxxers who thought putting a rapey, Nazi-sympathizing sociopath in the White House was a small price to pay for having a fellow anti-vaxxer as leader of the free world:
~ Donald Trump, anti-vaxx hero
Of course, that statement comes long after Trump had already appointed pro-vaxxers as Surgeon General, FDA Commissioner and CDC Director, not to mention appointing a former pharma industry lobbyist/drug company CEO as Secretary of HHS.
Man, oh man, did you dumbasses get trolled!
This never ceases to amaze me. Lactivists LOVE to say facts not attacks and blather on about how every major medical organization (AAP, AMA, WHO) recommends EBF but when it comes to vaccines or bed sharing risks, these organizations suddenly don’t know what they are talking about. I am the first to admit that the AAP, AMA, and WHO all recommend EBF but that doesn’t mean that they are right. It isn’t a conspiracy but rather that bad science and misinformation has been accepted as fact (breastfeeding promotion is misguided rather than being a conspiracy). Anti-vaxxers rather think these organizations know that vaccines cause harm but are in cohoots to cover it up for who the fudge knows why.
A lady on the internet threw “facts are not attacks” around the other day about the bountiful magic of her bosom and how it would guarantee health and wealth for her three children. It was all I could do not to respond with “the leading indication for high performance in a child is the income and educational achievement of the mother. You appear to be a SAHM who maxxed out in highschool. Do you really want to die on this hill? Facts are not attacks after all, right?”
But you know, that would have been mean.
When they go low, we go high. Except sometimes I think going low is the only way something might get through to these people. Sometimes you have to be blunt to get the message across to them. Its like Dr T has said previously-no one takes any notice whenever her message is couched in touchy-feely terms, and being abrasive, direct and harsh is the way she managed to get people engaging.
I have had the same thought sometimes.
tbh, I probably would have said it. It’s hard to predict the reaction though. Sometimes people say stupid things until other people call them on it; sometimes they dig in and get nasty.
The problem is that it is classist. This internet stranger is saying that she can overcome the lack of social mobility in america using only the power of breastmilk and my statement says nah, your kid never had a chance compared to my economic privilege no matter what you feed them.
It is more polite to pretend that bootstraps can get you the extra mile right?
I know what you’re saying. People have this weird obsession with food ruling how they’re viewed in the world. It seems like if you eat x, you can achieve your wildest dreams, but if you fail, it isn’t a lack of access to certain resources, but failure on the person’s part.
Also economic class. Organic and vegan diets very often cost a lot of money. It is just another way to say I am richer and better than you cause look I can afford this expensive crap.