Hey.

Pastebin was just a way to show you the message without it being censored, there is no way to answer there. If you want to do this via email that's fine with me btw my email is wolf.arthur@gmail.com

I think it's not productive if we answer every single one of the other person's point, I think we should concentrate on points where we feel we have strong evidence and/or logic, and on points where we feel we have some chance of changing the other's mind. To me changing minds ( and having mine changed if I'm wrong ) is the productive thing we can achieve here.

So, the report says :

<blockquote> The evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between diphtheria toxoid–, tetanus toxoid–, or acellular pertussis–containing vaccine and encephalitis. </blockquote>

Your reaction is :

<blockquote> In other words there is no good science to make a judgement. </blockquote>

I think it's great that we actually got down to something we can clearly identify as a disagreement and we can look into more closely.

I actually have access to a real life scientist in my life ( she does like, farming science, how do you make it so your pig farm is productive etc ) and I asked her about this. He's in short/in substance what she had to say ( heavily paraphrasing/shortening ) :

<blockquote>  If the scientists tell you there is no adequate evidence to accept or reject something, you follow the burden of proof, and go with the null hypothesis. If this is a trial, the null hypothesis is the guy is innocent until proven guilty, if this is trying to know if a vaccine is safe, the null hypothesis is it's safe as long as it's been tested and there is no evidence that it's unsafe </blockquote>

I think her view here is different from yours. You seem to be saying ( correct me if I'm wrong ) that if we can't determine a link between illness X and vaccine Y, then we have bad science and therefore unsafe science, and therefore an unsafe vaccine ( sorry if I'm misrepresenting, you are welcome to correct me ).

However, the way I understand science, is that if we have a new medicine, we test it enough to get data that would likely show it's dangerous if it actually is, and if that data doesn't show that it is actually dangerous, we tentatively assume it's safe, but we keep looking at evidence ( in particular it's widespread use ) in case some issue shows up later on. If an issue shows up later on, then that data can in fact convince us that the medicine is unsafe ( the same way we might say somebody is not guilty of a crime, but if years later new evidence shows up he might get another trial ).


To come back to what you said :

<blockquote> In other words there is no good science to make a judgement. </blockquote>

In fact there is. There is no science good enough to conclude that the vaccine is harmful. Which means if we are at the stage in the vaccine's lifetime when it is thought to be safe, then we do not have enough good evidence that links problem X to the vaccine to conclude that the vaccine is unsafe.

Do you see the difference between what you said and the way I'm putting it ?

Typical story as an example to discuss :

A. Vaccine is discovered
B. Vaccine is tested in small numbers ( animals then humans, classic stuff )
C. No harm is found
D. Vaccine starts being used
E. No harm is found thrugh that use
( at this point I think you'd agree it's reasonable to keep using it until evidence of actual harm is found )
F. Some harm from the vaccine is suspected ( say somebody got a severe illness soon after innoculation, but we don't know at this point if the vaccine caused it or if it's chance )
G. We do a large scale study of the people who used the vaccine to see if we find a link
H. We find that the evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between the illness and the vaccine
I. The vaccine continues being considered safe

Does that make sense as an explanation as to why "there is no good science to make a judgement", *in the context of this story*, is in fact not a problem ?

You then say :

<blockquote> Notice that this is the shortest of all the sections, there is no science at all. So they dont know if this vaccine or any vaccine for that matter except the MMR , causes autism. </blockquote>

The point I'm trying to make is : there is no link between a given vaccine and autism until it has been demonstrated that there is a link. It seems to me that you don't agree with this idea, and if it's the case I would really like you to explain to me why you think this way.

When we say X doesn't cause autism, what we mean is "we haven't found a link between X and autism". It might actually be the case that X does cause autism, but without a good reason to think that's the case, it's reasonable to work with the idea that it doesn't. If we didn't do that, we'd have to worry that every medicine causes every illness. That would be completely unreasonable and impractical, wouldn't it be ?

I'm gong to skip the rest of your message as I think it all boils down to this fundamental difference on burden of proof / evidence / null hypothesis etc, so I think we should concentrate on discussing that.

( About Denmark, I did google it and wasn't about to find a convenient comparison of how it is in the US [remember I'm not familiar with how that's set up] and how it is in Denmark. I found tools for parents from there to figure out the schedule for their kid but not something that'd help me figure out how to compare with the US. I would expect if your point about Denmark having much less vaccines but still having the results of countries that vaccinate more, that would be a good talking point for anti-vaccine people and therefore it should be easy for you to find a site ( even an anti-vaxx one ) that presents the cases and sources it's facts. But I couldn't even searching in anti-vaxx sources. ).

About vaccine ingredients, I have in fact seen the lists. I was looking at the one you linked just a week ago talking to somebody else. Could you take an ingredient you feel is widely used, and has significant harm ( just give me the ingredient you think supports your point the most ), and give me a source ( can be your own blog ) explaining it's harm in humans ?

Thanks !!