Meryl Dorey, AVN & Vaccine Efficacy

A news report suggests that, for a variety of likely reasons, the polio vaccine appears to have lost efficacy in Pakistan...

Officials at the National Polio Control Programme said the number of polio cases had increased during the last three years after going down for the previous seven years. 

They suspected that the vaccine might have lost its efficacy after not having been stored at the required temperature, especially in far-flung areas where electricity supply is disrupted for long periods. 

Athar Niaz Rana, head of allergy and immunology department at the Shifa International Hospital here, said: 'Vaccine failure and failure to vaccinate are two important factors which have affected the national polio campaign.' 

He insisted that the 'security situation in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province is also one of the factors which has led to the failure of vaccine in that region'. 

So, polio cases had been decreasing for several years but have recently shown an increase. Interestingly, Meryl Dorey (presumably) of the AVN has linked to this article from her Facebook page with the short and simple comment...

'Polio vaccines may have lost efficacy in Pakistan' 78% of cases occurring in the vaccinated.

Hmmm, so no mention whatsoever of the mitigating circumstances but there's something even weirder about this comment - Meryl doesn't believe vaccines are effective in the first place so how can she accept any possibility that they can lose efficacy? Something can't lose the efficacy it never had.

Indeed, the situation in Pakistan should surely demonstrate to any reasonable reader that properly prepared, stored and administered vaccines are effective.

That story dates back to December last year but here's a more recent one, from today in fact, which you are unlikely to see the AVN link to...

15 Nigerian children paralysed by polio in 1yr - Report

A total of 15 children in six northern states in Nigeria and Abuja were paralysed by polio in the last one year (February 8, 2010 to February 8, 2011) according to the latest edition of an online newsletter, Countdown to Polio Eradication in Nigeria, which monitored the progress made by Nigeria in polio eradication.

[...]

“To completely eradicate polio in Nigeria, every child under five in every city, village and settlement must receive oral polio vaccine multiple times,” Pate advised

The full story tells how Nigeria has enjoyed an annual 98% reduction in polio cases and was close to eradicating the disease. Tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists living in relative safety, for now, in developed countries will likely dismiss this reduction by suggesting doctors simply stop reporting the disease as polio. I've dealt with this "Polio is the same as Accute Flaccid Paralysis" nonsense before.

Meanwhile, vaccine efforts in Pakistan are further hampered by conspiracy theories spread by the country's religious right who claim that vaccinations have been designed by western organizations to reduce Muslim populations.

Poliomyelitis mainly affects children under the age of five, but adults carry and spread the virus. Prevention can be ensured by a few drop of an oral vaccine.  There are only four countries left in the world who are still dealing with polio: India, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.  And only Pakistan is seeing a rise in infection rates.

In related news, Rotary have committed to eradicating polio within a few years...

The incidence of polio infection has plunged from about 350,000 cases in 1988 to 968 cases in 2010. Four new cases were reported in the past week bringing to 9 the number of new cases in 2011. More than two billion children have been immunized in 122 countries, preventing five million cases of paralysis and 250,000 pediatric deaths.

Once again I find myself bemused by the cognitive dissonance on regular display over at the AVN. They support people who deny germ theory but link to stories about doctors apparently spreading pertussis to patients. They claim modern medicine is good for emergency trauma cases whilst also claiming it is run by corrupt pharmaceutical companies who will happily maim and kill us all if there's a dollar to be made. They think the small amount of anecdotal evidence against vaccines outweighs the vast amounts of anecdotal evidence that vaccines are basically safe. They believe childhood diseases are a natural right of passage and that vaccines screw up the natural processes of immunity but recommend homeoprophylaxis to help your children avoid catching these diseases. They don't believe in vaccine efficacy at all but now they link to stories which show a drop in vaccine efficacy - and they seem to think this supports their case.

How can anyone trust any sort of "information" a group like this might spread? I can't.

If you have any more examples of the ongoing dissonance at the AVN, drop a comment.

Vic govt supports quackery?

Graeme Hannigan from the Victorian Skeptics left a comment on my article about the Coroner's findings into the "death by homeopathy" of Penelope Dingle.

I'm reproducing the comment in full here...

In view of the Coroners Recommendation no.! the Victorian State Governments Department of Health provides an internet based information service, called the ‘Better Health Channel’.
http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/

The ‘Better Health Channel’ provides downloadable PDF ‘Fact Sheets’ not only relating to medical treatments but also pertaining to the following complementary and alternative health practices; 

Acupuncture, Alexander Technique, Aromatherapy, Ayurveda, Bowen Therapy, Herbal Medicine, Homeopathy, Kinesiology, Massage, Meditation, Myotherapy, Naturopathy, Osteopathy, Reiki, Tai Chi and Yoga.

The Better Heath Channel makes no clear distinction between evidence based medicine and sham medicine. In the list of Tests and Treatments, Aromatherapy appears between Appendicectomy and Arthroscopy.

The wording of the disclaimers is identical and directives to ‘Please seek advice from a qualified health care professional’ could be interpreted equally as referring to an aroma therapist or a medical doctor.

To elevate sham medicine to the same level as evidence based medicine is a complete failure of consumer protection. The Victorian Government, by speculating on unproven medical practices is negligent in its obligations to the health consumer, encouraging of a credulous public attitude leaving health consumers open to abuse by the many charlatans who are only too willing to commit health fraud by offering false hope to the desperately sick and vulnerable.

The Better Health Channel carries the endorsements ‘approved by independent health and medical experts’ and ‘quality assured by Victorian Government Department of Health’. 

These endorsements could lead the uninformed reader to reasonably draw the conclusion that these unproven medical practices actually work.

As a further example of the presentation of ambiguous and misleading information, I draw your attention to the Homeopathy ‘Fact Sheet’ provided by the Australian Homœopathic Association;

http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Homeopathy?open

The ‘Fact Sheet’ makes at least twelve claims of homeopathy that have no scientific basis nor have these claimed properties been substantiated to modern scientific standards. The ‘Fact Sheet’ correctly states five times that homeopathy is based on belief, not science.

The ‘Law of Similars’ the cornerstone of homeopathic is not a demonstrable law of nature like gravity nor is it a law as enacted by legislation. It is more accurately described as the ‘Lore of Similars’ as in folk-lore.

Homeopathy lacks scientific grounding and repeated clinical studies, as confirmed by the Cochrane Collaboration Review, show that it lacks evidence of efficacy beyond that of a placebo.

The Victorian Government, by speculating on unproven medical practices, is culpably negligent in its obligations to the health consumer, is encouraging of a credulous public attitude, leaving consumers open to abuse by the many charlatans who are only too willing to commit health fraud by offering false hope to the desperately sick and vulnerable.

I invite you to join me by signing the petition calling on the Dept. of Health to review the Better Health Channel to ensure that the information provided is genuinely ‘Quality Assured’ by confining itself to science based medicine, supported by credible evidence of efficacy.

If the Dept of Health insists on including references to questionable health treatments it should clearly identify them separately from medicine.

It should also clearly indicate those unproven treatments, which are not grounded in science and that have no evidence of efficacy beyond that of a placebo.

Please feel free to sign my online petition at:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/42922.html

Support your local chaplain

Kylie at Podblack has asked us to fill in the National School Chaplaincy Program Consultation Questionnaire.

I thought about it, wasn't going to do it, then thought "if I don't, I can't complain when the Christain lobby gets its way." So I filled it in.

I have to note that I find the questionnaire too leading to be properly answered since several questions take chaplaincy as a final outcome for granted, for example...

Question 1
Do you support the introduction of minimum qualifications for school chaplains?

Question 4
What elements are most important for minimum qualifications for schools chaplains?

Question 5
Are there any other comments you would like to make about the qualifications of chaplains?

The only way I found to respond to these, and other questions, was to dismiss the questions as flawed since they assume some level of support for chaplaincy. Since question one allowed no space for comment, I couldn't answer it at all since any answer assumes a priori acceptance of chaplains.

thefreedictionary.com gives the following definitions for chaplaincy [my bolding]...

1. A member of the clergy attached to a chapel.

2.

• a. A member of the clergy who conducts religious services for an institution, such as a prison or hospital.
• b. A member of the clergy who is connected with a royal court or an aristocratic household.

3. A member of the clergy attached to a branch of the armed forces.

While it doesn't specifically mention school chaplains, it's pretty clear that the foundation of chaplaincy is religion. It is ridiculous, in this day and age and in a secular country, to be asking how religious counselling services should best be provided in our publicly funded schools. And that is what these questions are essentially asking.

Some people will argue that school chaplains are not employed to promote their faith but simply to provide caring, compassion and guidance to children who might need it. On the other hand, Chaplaincy Australia describes itself thusly [my bolding]...

Chaplaincy Australia is a National Department of the Australian Christian Churches (ACC) who is committed to communicating the Christian faith in a hands-on, compassionate and meaningful way.

I could point at the Catholic Church and scoff at the idea of members of the clergy being "hands on" with children, but this is too important to be distracted.

How is a religiously-based counselling service of any use to children whose parents may not wish them to be lied to about some supreme being watching their every move? How does it even meet the needs of children whose parents may wish them to believe in a different supreme being to the one being sold by Chaplaincy Australia, for example? The very idea is fundamentally flawed.

Religious counselling has no place in public schools in the 21st century. If parents want their kids religiously schooled, they can send them to private school or, better still, church.

Medical answer of the week #1

Okay, time for a new segment...

MEDICAL ANSWER OF THE WEEK!

And this week's award goes to SAVN regular Maureen Chuck. Faced with a question on the VINE Facebook page which began...

"What is an alternatitve [sic] to Tetanus shot, dog bit me yesterday thru long pants..."

Maureen responded somewhat sensibly...

"Tetanus"

It doesn't get any better than this, does it? You just don't see that sort of intelligent humour (okay, it's possibly more truth than humour but it's still hilarious) on the anti-vax forums.

I'd like to think this will be a weekly award but chances are I'll never do it again. I'm like that.

Tracey Spicer on Vaccination Rape

Talk-back radio host Tracey Spicer has recently taken an interest in the Australian Vaccination Network and the so-called "vaccination debate". Last month, she hung up on Meryl Dorey during an interview about fraud claims levelled against Andrew Wakefield.

I was just perusing Stop the AVN's Facebook page when I saw this...

This follows a statement Dorey made on the AVN's Facebook page where she wrote...

Court orders child rape. Think this is an exaggeration? Think again. This is assault without consent and with full penetration too...

The ridiculously vile statement shocked even supporters of the page and was soon followed by something labelled by her detractors as a "notpology" since it was just an attempt at an excuse, dressed up as an apology.

I look forward to hearing what Spicer has to say about it. If you're not in Sydney, keep an ear on the 2UE webpage.

Update: Audio of the Tracey Spicer interview

COPYRIGHT:

On a separate issue, there's been a bit of a kerfuffle going on at SAVN this week as Meryl Dorey has apparently been reporting a variety of screenshots used on their page for infringing copyright.

I'm a little concerned about some of the defences I've read from SAVN supporters who imply that since Facebook posts are public, they can be copied. I think that's as wrong as suggesting that if someone posts a recipe on a website, it becomes public domain. It doesn't. It's no more public domain when published on the web than if it were published in print and made available through your local public library.

The same applies to"Tweets" posted on Twitter. While it may seem counterintuitive, because the fundamental point of Twitter is to have other people "Retweet" your comments, it appears that Twitter itself frowns upon using screenshots or other people's Tweets without their permission.

Don't
    * Use screenshots of other people’s profiles or Tweets without their permission.

No, I did not seek Tracey Spicer's permission for the screen-shot used above (which I actually copied from a copy on the SAVN Facebook pages) and yes, I have possibly breached copyright by posting it. But copyright law has fair use exemptions including use for purpose of critique and parody.

While I'd agree that the SAVN's use of screen-shots probably is (or ought to be) covered by fair use exemptions, and that is by far the main defence being used by SAVN contributors, I think it's important to understand that, exemptions aside, material can still be subject to copyright even if it is posted on a public forum, unless specifically exempted by the author.

BUT then there's the complex issue of originality! Have fun with that!


NOTE: I am not a lawyer but I don't expect Tracey Spicer to "ping" me for helping to advertise her radio show and I doubt the SAVN have breached anyone's copyright.

Meryl Dorey, AVN & Causal Links

One of the most frustrating habits of the anti-vaccine lobby (and the conspiracy-theorist-mindset in general) is their habit of taking two pieces of data and drawing a causal-link conclusion from them.

The most obvious example of this is the idea that since autism is diagnosed in children at around the same time as they receive the bulk of their vaccinations, vaccines must cause autism.

It's understandable that lay people would make a link like this in their own minds and I'm sure we are all guilty of it at times with various things, like it raining when we wash the car. Humans notice patterns like this and we have a habit of drawing conclusions from them.

It's even more understandable that lay people can be convinced by others who insistently claim such links and who seemingly back it up with supportive data. But this is where things get frustrating.

This week, anti-vaccinationists appear to turned their attention to a graph which allegedly shows that vaccination has had no effect on polio and that the disease was simply renamed.

Since the graph carries a copyright notice and since the AVN seem to have a bee in their bonnet this week about supposed copyright infringement on Facebook, despite the fact their own FB page is littered with screen-shots from all over the internet, I'm not going to show you the original. But here's a very rough copy based on the same data, so you can get the idea...

The graph was posted on the AVN Facebook page by Meryl Dorey and described as "proof" that polio had been redefined, not wiped out.

Ignoring the fact that no one with any passing familiarity with vaccination considers polio to have been eradicated, I could waste some time and energy pointing out that if the graph were really demonstrative of a redefinition, then AFP diagnosis* should have increased as polio diagnosis fell, overlapping in the middle of the range around 1985. This graph appears to show polio as almost eradicated before AFP begins to rise at all. What happened between 1990 and 1995? Were all sufferers abducted by aliens before they could be diagnosed?

But I won't waste energy on any of that because the correlation from the graph isn't compelling anyway.

There is simply not enough information in this image to draw a conclusion that polio was simply redefined as AFP. There are just two sets of data travelling in opposite directions. Without further information, we can only guess if there's any relationship.

For example, anti-vaccinationists argue that because measles mortality fell around the time of improving public sanitation and before the introduction of the vaccine, then sanitation must be responsible for the improved outlook for measles suffers.

Now, mortality actually tells us nothing about infection rates** but since the conspiracy theorists like to use it, here's a graph showing the production of the petrol-powered motor car charted against measles mortality...

(Source for measles data, whale.to)

The graph is as good as I could do with the data and software at my disposal, an excuse I've seen used by at least one author of another questionable graph often cited by anti-vaccinationists. But, with a much better data fit than the AFP graph, this one makes a pretty convincing argument that the thing that actually reduced measles deaths was neither vaccination nor public sanitation but the proliferation of motorised vehicles.

If one statement has become a meme in the world of sceptical activists and those promoting science-based medicine, it's "correlation does not equal causation". This simply means that just because two things seem to coincide, they are not necessarily related.

If you buy a yellow Toyota you might suddenly notice how popular yellow Toyotas are, but that doesn't mean you started a trend. it just means you noticed something you weren't previously aware of.

Some things really are just coincidences and sometimes we notice them - but try telling that to a conspiracy theorist on a mission and see how far you get.

Once again I find myself doubting the AVN as a source of quality information on vaccination.

*Although Meryl Dorey describes AFP as a disease that is clinically indistinguishable from polio, it is in fact a set of symptoms and is caused by a number of diseases, including polio.

Since polio causes AFP, it should be pretty clear to most people why the symptoms are the same. But it is syllogistically silly to say that because the symptoms of AFP and polio are identical, they must be the same thing.

All labradors bark but all things that bark are not labradors.

All polio cases present as AFP but all AFP cases are not polio.

**Mortality is a poor way to demonstrate the effectiveness or otherwise of vaccines. A far better comparison is incidence - but charting incidence against vaccination rates doesn't work for people who are trying to demonise vaccines because such comparison tends to make the vaccine look effective.

NOTE: I am not a doctor or scientist. I'm just some guy with a blog so don't take my word for anything. I'm no more qualified to offer vaccination advice than Meryl Dorey. If you want advice on vaccination, ask a doctor - a real doctor who went to medical school and learnt useful stuff about biology and such - not one who thinks crystals allow you to communicate directly with angels or that God works his wizardry through your spinal column.

Why choose homeopathy?

This is just beautiful...



The trustingly dulcet tones of Kylie Sturgess, who should definitely have a gig on mainstream radio or television, explain the true power of homeopathy and why just taking an overdose won't be enough to topple widespread belief in it.

Sceptics risk it all for science...

This weekend (probably today when you read this), people around the world will once again attempt the impossible - to overdose on homeopathic products.

The 10:23 Challenge is a follow-up to the 'overdose' protest staged by the 10:23 Campaign in 2010. International protesters from more than 10 countries, and more than 23 cities will gather for over the weekend of February 5-6 2011, to make the simple statement: Homeopathy - There's Nothing In It.

The challenge will culminate on February 6th at the QED conference in Manchester, where 300 protesters will participate the largest ever single demonstration against homeopathy.

Aussie thrill seekers, or those who are just a bit thirsty, can find some info on Podblack's blog.

The Perth meeting will be in Forrest Place/Murray St Mall from noon, Saturday Feb 6 (oops, 5) and will include an information campaign. A repeat performance is planned at the Fremantle Markets, 10am on Sunday.

Vaccine War: SBS

So The Vaccine War has just aired on SBS in eastern parts of Australia and is about to start in WA. I went to check out the program's discussion forum but it looks like the whole SBS site is down.

Early Facebook reports suggest the anti-vaccine lobby are not too impressed with the documentary which, by all accounts, was properly balanced in favour of the evidence so I'm going to assume they are bombarding SBS with conspiracy-filled vitriol.

I'll know more soon when I get to watch it myself but I'm guessing they didn't support the notions that your local GP hates children or that vaccines contain microchips designed by lizard people to kill us at the flick of a remote switch.

UPDATE:

Discussion forum is back up for now.
The full episode is apparently online here.