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Hilary's Desk

Paul Offit's Science Friction

Hilary Butler - Monday, April 25, 2011


"In the late 1980s, pockets of unimmunized children in the U.S. led to a resurgence of measles that caused 11,000 hospitalizations and 123 deaths.

6 Unfortunately, the lesson from this experience is still being learned today—2008 saw the largest outbreak of measles in this country in over a decade, an outbreak fueled by purposeful refusal to vaccinate, as opposed to programmatic deficiencies or increased importation of disease from other countries.7 In other words, recent outbreaks have occurred because individuals who should have been immunized were intentionally not immunized."

What impression does this give you? That in the late 80's a few kids accidentally slipped through the net, but NOW in 2011, lots more parents are intentionally not vaccinating their children, and are a "threat to us all"? 

Have a look at this USA 1994 headline"More tots need shot in the arm: Half lag behind in vaccinations" Okay? In a country where four million babies were born every years, that's a humungous "pocket" don't you think?  The statement in Paul Offit's book "Deadly choices" that , since 1991, the percentage of unvaccinated children has more than doubled” ..... 

is ethereal fiction.

Google News Archives is a nifty little "go back" machine which can go into any public newspaper archive and come up with absolute gems which lays out the fiction for all to see.  It helps that I know what I'm looking for, since when I was in American in 1990, and 1993, all the newspaper articles lamenting the low vaccination rates were so plentiful to collect. 

Why were vaccination rates so low in the 80's and 90's? Partly because of two television programmes, Phil Donohue and Lea Thompson from WRC-TV "Vaccine Roulette" fame in 1982.  Then there were the years of incisive newspaper reporting including many authored by John Hanchette and Sunny Kaplan of the Gannet New Service over many years, informing parents of everything doctors never told parents in those days.   Which culminated in a book called "Vaccination Nation: Children on the Frontlines".

And of course, there were the media releases (more porkies) from vaccine manufacturers whining about how it was too expensive for them to be forking out all these compensation payments, and so they would stop manufacturing vaccines, and leave the kiddies to die!  Of course, that provoked an outcry - so they all ramped up pressure to get "indemnity" from prosecution!  Hence 1986.  Parents noted that too. Google archives will give you a very good idea why vaccination rates were so low, which can readily demonstrate whose into fact, and who prefers fiction..

On page three, Paul Offit then wombles on about 70 children who got measles in 2008, but we don't hear Paul Offit state that:

"In the current outbreak, 13 patients [20%] were under a year old and therefore too young to have been vaccinated, and 7 others [11%] were 12 to 15 months old, with parents who had not yet taken them for their first vaccination, which is due at 1 year. Sixteen others [25%], who were older, came from families that refused vaccination. Fourteen more had what officials described as “unknown or undocumented vaccination status.”

Instead, take note of Offit's comment on page two, that in 2011 when USA has the highest rates of vaccination ever:

"These outbreaks threaten to return the U.S. to a situation where measles is again endemic".

To back that up, he digresses to the 70's in UK, where he says:

The consequences of refusal to vaccinate have played out dramatically in the United Kingdom. In the late 1970s, intense media coverage of anecdotal reports claiming that the pertussis vaccine caused neurological problems (a claim that is false) resulted in a drop in immunization rates from 81% to 31%, resulting in outbreaks of disease that killed hundreds of infants.




What are his references for this?: 



9 Cherry JD. The epidemiology of pertussis and pertussis immunization in the United Kingdom and the United States: A comparative study.

Curr Prob Pediatr1984;14:1–78.



10 Gangarosa EJ, Galazka AM, Wolfe CR, et al. Impact of anti‐vaccine movements on pertussis control: The untold story. Lancet. 1998;351:356–361.



If there were HUNDREDS of deaths as a result of the vaccination rates in UK dropping, don't you think that this 1984 Pollock medical article about whooping cough at that time, would have shown that?  Dont' you think that in 1984, Pollock would have taken the opportunity to ram hundreds of deaths down the gullets of UK parents? 

Dr Pollock couldn't, for the simple reason that in contrast to Offit's assertions there were NOT any where near 100 deaths, let alone hundreds.  In that decade, much to the UK Ministry of Health's surprise (and perhaps dismay) the UK whooping cough death rates dropped .... and kept ON dropping. Check it out yourself.

See for yourself, the website of a British doctor who put up graphs on whooping cough cases and deaths, and analysed the data.

But back to Offit's dire warning that current vaccination rates will make diseases endemic....

The REAL REASON for the American measles outbreak in the early 90's, was because ONE MMR vaccine didn't work.  In those days, kids only got one MMR.  The MAJORITY - over 50% of both measles cases and deaths in USA in the early 90's, had HAD one MMR, which is all that the schedule demanded.

Now, remember that Beaver times article sub-heading?  "Half lag behind in their shots" Funny then, that more than half of the cases were vaccinated and just over half the deaths were vaccinated.

Remember our very own vaccinated Nikki Jenkins in 1991 - who was in USA at a gymnastics competion, came down with ... wait for it... measles?  Gee whiz, who would have thought.  A vaccinated kid with measles.  She.. was one of those cases.  Yet... she had been vaccinated.  And all the rest of the NZ team who were vaccinated, were forcibly RE-vaccinated. ("You don't get vaccinated, you can't compete!")

And remember too, that as a result of the USA outbreak, with vaccinated New Zealander, Nikki Jenkins as a reminder, NZ then introduced a two-shot MMR programme, which they would not have done, had one dose been enough to prevent measles...

"The Offit plan" is to blame the 1990 unvaccinated "POCKETS", when in fact the problem was vaccine failure far more than failure to vaccinate!  Which is why the USA introduced two MMRs after the 1991 measles outbreak.  However, two shots might not be enough either.  In a Mumps outbreak in USA in 2009, 75% of the cases had had two MMR shots so it wo

n't take a genius to predict that just maybe, the adult vaccination schedule will probably feature 10-year MMR boosters, after all... another vaccine can't "hurt" can it?

So what's all this really about? 

This is unadulterated science friction (fiction) in order to create a facist culture of fear of the non-vaccinated, and disease, to legitimised legally sanctioned compulsory compliance and control of every adult and child.  

There is also the need to create an unthinking culture where "the herd" which doesn't need to be vaccinated will all rush out and have ANOTHER booster shot "just in case" ....  even though:

The truth was, most of the people getting shots probably didn’t have much to worry about; public and private schools and colleges have for years required students to receive the customary two doses of vaccine against measles before starting classes.

But it’s also true that memories can be foggy and many people don’t keep their immunization records.

“So, ‘just in case’ is terrific,’’ said Dr. Anita Barry, top disease tracker at the city health agency. “I think that’s a good way to look at it, and if they’ve been in this area, it’s good protection to have

After all, they've all been conned into believing that vaccines are as safe as "holy water"...

“Since it doesn’t hurt to have a shot, I figured I would get it,’’ Coll said. “Why not?’’

The creation of these mindsest by any means possible, is crucial to implement the next stage.

What next stage is that?

Paul Offit's hopes that his authoritative fiction, will convinced parents that the vaccines their children had, will no longer work if their vaccinated children are exposed to unvaccinated children.  Yes, it's illogical, but there you go. But the logical outcome of that is that he hopes that these (unthinking) parents will do his dirty work for him, and treat non-vaccinators like typhoid Mary paraiahs. 

Paul Offit talks about the principles of benificence, and protecting those too young to be vaccinated or children whose doctors are giving them drugs which knock out their immune systems.  He talks about nonmalificence and "justice" where children are protected from their parents beliefs about not vaccinating their children. Worse, kids can't have a mind of their own either!

He opposes: "any legislation or regulation that would allow children to be exempted from mandatory immunizations based simply on their parents’, or, in the case of adolescents, their own, secular personal beliefs."

He talks about how,  

The state therefore has a vested interest in minimizing the number of children exempted from vaccination, because disease will resurge if too many are exempted, and no one knows

a priori exactly how many is too many.


Which gives them the right to write the rules, seemingly. 

The problem is that Paul Offit's vision of compulsory control and compliance is based on a twisted figment of his imagination compiled from the views of similar zealots, not fact. 

That's the message which has to be got through to parents.


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