At 01:34 PM Tuesday 6/21/2005, Dan Minette wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Denton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2005 1:01 AM
Subject: Re: Cover-up or protection?
On 6/20/05, Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> So, does anyone know if the diagnosis of autism has fallen off by, say,
80%
> over the last few years? I'd guess that, if that happened, someone would
> have noticed.
I am wondering if Robert Kennedy Jr. engaged in a bit of overstating his
case.
Autism was defined before thimerosal was in use.
The linking of children's vaccines to autism was widely rumored for
years and dismissed as email based conspiracy theory.
>The main element of his story, the evidence of a CDC cover-up, looks
>pretty impressive.
Given a presupposition towards the view that anything that helps
corporations in any way must be against the public interest, I can see
that. But, I asked the question, "what would have happened if the CDC made
a public announcement that they were looking into the link?" Would a number
of people decide to not vaccinate their kids?
"Would" they? ISTM that the rumor alone has been sufficient to accomplish
just that, although we might disagree on just how large a percentage of the
population is needed to constitute a "number of people." The warnings to
parents about having their children vaccinated and advising them to see if
the laws where they live provide for them to make a claim that they object
to vaccinations on religious grounds in order to avoid having their
children receive the vaccinations which are in many districts required
before a child enters school are still circulating on other e-mail lists.
Would lawyers be able to
convince juries that someone with autism who had taken a vaccine had the
right to a settlement in the tens of millions?
Again, ISTM, based on some of the product liability lawsuits I have heard
about, that at least some lawyers would be able convince at least some
juries that the Sun is not in the sky at noon¹.
_____
¹Local apparent solar time, in the temperate or tropical zones of the
Earth, on a day when there is not a new moon or with the Moon not near the
line of nodes.
Would the few remaining
vaccine makers (IIRC, there is only 1-2 flu vaccine manufacturers in the
world), decide that the modest profits available to them are no longer
worth the risk? What are the odds that the study would be reproduced....or
would it be like all those power line claims....which people still believe
in, scientific studies be damned.
Given that Kennedy's claim is easily falsified by the data, I'd tend to
wonder if the CDC ordered study that did take pace is really valid....it's
just that they couldn't convince every lawyer, like RFK Jr., of that. What
exactly is wrong with Institute of Medicine Study? How does a lawyer tell
good science apart from bad?
Who cares when money is at stake (especially when he's going to get a
quarter to a half of it)?
Why trust him as a source when his claims are
trivial to falsify?
Again, who cares when money is at stake?
>I have heard some people saying they thought locally that autism cases
>had plateaued or were even dropping in the last couple of years. They
>were attributing it to bad economic times for nerds.
"Hearing some people say" is not a valid scientific study. :-)
Dan M.
-- Ronn! :)
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
