#44788: Lord Runolfr — 10/20  at  06:56 AM
Why on Earth would an IDiot want to take an influenza vaccine, anyway? Avian influenza is the work of an intelligent designer, which means that any harm it causes to human beings has a higher purpose. We should gleefully let the bird flu run rampant; if it creates a global pandemic and kills thousands of people, that's what the "intelligent designer" wants!

#44794: decrepitoldfool — 10/20  at  07:49 AM
What if the Intelligent Designer's higher purpose was to see if we'd wise up and beat this thing? Where's the evidence that she values intellectual lazyness? Or passivity in the face of death?

#44795: — 10/20  at  07:50 AM
Fifth Amish child in Minnesota has polio

...
State epidemiologist Harry Hull last week said he expects more cases of polio infection to turn up as community members are tested. Most were never vaccinated.

#44797: Orac — 10/20  at  07:56 AM
I'd have to disagree about one thing with Dr. Fried. There are already more than enough anti-vax loons out there as it is, what with the mercury-autism conspiracy theorists and the other anti-vax activists. They're already leading to the return of diseases (like pertussis) that were once eradicated in this country. We don't need to encourage any more, as tempting as it is in this case.

#44802: Kristine Harley — 10/20  at  08:13 AM
Definitely, I want all creationists to be vaccinated. One unfortunate, counter-intuitive aspect of avian flu is that the prospect of unvaccinated survivors actually increases the chance of carriers, thus increasing the spread of the disease, and of course, I wish no one ill will. What I really want is not a pandemic wiping out the largest group ever to be (posthumously) nominated for a Darwin Award; that would be an utter tragedy. What I want to see is an acknowledgement from these people that, their semantic shell-games aside, science has a methodology for studying biological processes and that these processes are knowable, explainable, and able to be manipulated. The rules are the same for everyone, and students should not be allowed to "make up their own minds" as to what constitutes the scientific method. It's real, and it works.

#44803: franky — 10/20  at  08:18 AM
Kristine,
Yea, I don't think that acknowledgement is going to come any time soon unfortunately.

#44809: — 10/20  at  08:40 AM

There are already more than enough anti-vax loons out there as it is, what with the mercury-autism conspiracy theorists and the other anti-vax activists.

You speak like someone who has had dealings with them I've just reserved Evidence of Harm at my university library. It's going to be.... interesting.

#44830: — 10/20  at  10:53 AM
Once I asked about some of these things apparently projected to kill and destroy to an Young Earth Intelligent Designer Creationist, who said that it all isn't analogue to guns and bombs and... biological weapons, but rather to an intelligently designed building that accidentally collapses (as humanly intelligently built buildings sometimes do, despite of being intelligently designed). "Thus", these "accidents" don't disprove intelligent design... nor are intelligently designed to do what they mostly do...


It all remembers me of the Fred Hoyle quote they often repeat. Seems that is impossible to an comercial airplane to be build randomly by an hurricane, but seems that they can make a B52 bomber and some pretty harmful artillery stuff, with ease.

And we will eventually hear the same creationists that defend that these things aren't projected by G.O.D (Good Old Designer) using the bombardier beetle as an example of irreducible complexity and project.

Of course, with incorrect physiology.

But maybe they were designed by the D.E.V.I.L.

#44874: eRobin — 10/20  at  03:45 PM
Although I would suggest that maintaining a large pool of unvaccinated creationists would simply provide a reservoir for the disease, and that would also do us no good.

I read somewhere that we need people to get the flu when the Pandemic comes but I forget why exactly. One reason I know for sure is that survivors will be immune and therefore useful. The reason I can't remember exactly has something to do with the virus having a chance to mutate and become less deadly. I think that was what I read. It sounded good to me.

#44961: — 10/21  at  12:34 PM
I am always amazed by the the concept of "microevolution". What does it mean - not being a true expert, as near as I can tell it means that amount of evolutionary change we can definitively observe. For example, the development of a drug resistant bacteria. Of course, it is still "just" a bacteria.

I find it remarkable how limited some people are in understanding how long a million years really is. Imagine if you put $1000 into an account that returned 5% for 1 million years....

#46239: — 10/31  at  11:25 AM
Have any of the previous contributors made any study of what many respected medical professionals have to say about vaccination? The information is readily available to anyone so I won't supply any links.

They should all be sure to run right out for their Tamiflu shots. That is, if they haven't already done so.

1. Avian Flu Drug: The Rumsfeld Connection

The drug company that created Tamiflu - being touted as the only effective weapon against the spread of avian flu - has a little-publicized link to the Bush administration: Donald Rumsfeld was the company's chairman.

Rumsfeld served as head of Gilead Sciences, Inc., from 1997 until he became Bush's secretary of defense in 2001.

Gilead licensed the drug to Roche for marketing, and Roche announced Tamiflu's first approval in 1999.

Now Tamiflu has been designated as the best drug available that can purportedly slow the spread of avian flu if it evolves the ability to readily jump between humans, and hundreds of millions of doses have been ordered around the world.

Sales of Tamiflu are reportedly projected to reach $1.1 billion next year.

But Tamiflu may not be the anti-flu panacea it's been cracked up to be.

Researchers in Japan monitored the evolution of ordinary flu viruses that had infected 50 children. The flu victims were treated with Tamiflu.

"Beginning as early as day four after the drug was given, flu strains resistant to it emerged in about one-fifth of the children," Fortune magazine reported.

Other recent studies show that Tamiflu may have lost much of its effectiveness against avian flu - eight of ten victims in Vietnam died despite getting the drug.

So some are becoming highly suspicious of the continued touting of the drug.

"Somehow it became established that Tamiflu really worked," reads a report on the Web site FreeMarketNews.com.

"This was the party line, anyway, for about a week, until word began trickling back in that maybe Tamiflu didn't work.

"We even find corroboration of it here on Democrats.com, in what appears to be either a chat room or news roundup as follows: 'Rummy was CEO of Gilead Sciences until named to the Bush cabinet and, like Cheney, still has ties that bind to the 'old company.'"

FreeMarketNews.com, which promotes itself as a news site for "free-market thinkers," goes on to say:

"Now isn't it an 'amazing coincidence' that the drug Tamiflu patented by Gilead Sciences is being pushed by the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases as the Number One choice for flu."

Two footnotes:

From 1977 to 1985, Rumsfeld was the chairman of another drug firm, G.D. Searle & Co., which developed an oral contraceptive and the sweetener aspartame. (Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawdy! Submitting this article makes me appear as a "Bush Hater!" Suspicious? Yes. Hater? No. Alan)
In June, Gilead sent Roche a notice of termination of the Tamiflu deal for breach of contract, Investor's Business Daily reported. Among several complaints from Gilead, the company charged that Roche hasn't correctly calculated royalties for Gilead, which gets 10.3 percent of sales.
The dispute has gone to binding arbitration.

Editor's Note:

Read Dr. Blaylock's warnings about flu shots and aspartame. He links both to brain diseases. (Perhaps Dr. Blaylock has inadvertantly provided the key to the "vaccination controversy." Alan)
Source: NewsMax.com

#47223: Tom Morris — 11/05  at  02:53 AM
Well, Phil Johnson is already an HIV-denier. Anti-vax rubbish would be a perfect addition to his CV, which stands now as living proof that being a university professor is no proof of intelligence (or indeed Intelligent Design). "A Man For This Season" indeed.

#47254: Orac — 11/05  at  11:53 AM
I wonder if Phil Johnson is already anti-vax. As you say, it would fit in perfectly with his advocacy of intelligent design and his HIV/AIDS denialism.

Phil Johnson is simply yet another example of what happens when someone highly educated and trained in one discipline decides that he knows something about another discipline. The same thing happened with Linus Pauling and his embrace later in life of vitamin C as a cure for cancer and and antiaging treatment and a variety of other altie strangeness. And that was just one scientist moving into a different scientific discipline, not a lawyer deciding he knows biology.