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Archive 1Archive 2
"Medea" by Evelyn de Morgan, 1889, in Quattrocento style

The Definition, or "What this Page is About"

Midgley

Untitled

This is at the top because it logically fits here (the page is now 91kbytes long and is going to need some tidying, which is not a wiki-skill I have yet, help appreciated.

The page is currently about groups and individual people, historical and contemporary, who share a definite common factor that they are anti-vaccination. It is also about the nature of the arguments deployed (not, strictly, about whether they are wholly or partially or totally valid, becuase that belongs on the vaccine_controversy page, but about their nature).

Necessarily, it is about the roots of those beliefs (something that evolved in the wiki discussion process on this page, after the story started).

A definition of an anti-vaccinationist is a reasonable thing to try for - I'd suggest a Delphic one. John is an anti-vaccinationist. Anon thing is an a-v Ombudsman is an a-v. I'm not an anti-vaccinationist.

John decided to help with the definition by type by providing a list of assertions (you could say characteristics or propositions) that an anti-vaccinationist will make (or show), whish are listed in tables in teh article.

Anyone who has real trouble working out what defines an anti-vaccinationist (and why the Chief Medical Office of the UK is not an anti-vacciantionist because he thinks that we should vaccinate against Rubella, but not, routinely against Chickenpox, in 2005) then I suggest two things:-

  • 1. Look at the tables and try to match beliefs to people;
  • 2. describe a person here on the Talk: page, and we'll come to a delphic concensus on whether they are, or are not.

Midgley 02:29, 3 February 2006 (UTC)



Wikipedia:How_to_archive_a_talk_page


Sources, or Illustrations

Percolation of rumour, Persistence of demonstrable error

The alleged Smallpox outbreak (Google: swabi smallpox 2002) is a good example, Chickenpox was reported as Smallpox which is regarded as extinct - except in the anti-vaccinationist writings on the Web. The report was widely copied without any critical assessment, over a host of websites. WHO reported fairly promptly (probably after abut as long as it takes to drive over and radio back, actually) that this was not Smallpox, but no correction occurs in any of the first few pages of Googled results... To what extent the misinformation continued to be spread after it was clear that it was Chickenpox might be interesting to map given the appropriate software. Midgley 10:12, 24 January 2006 (UTC)--Midgley 14:05, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

See sub-page Midgley 15:22, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

source material

Proceedings of the RCP around 1873 vaccination act.


The historian Martin Kaufman, writing about anti-vaccination movements in 19th and early 20th century America, concluded his paper with this comment,

"With the improvements in medical practice and the popular acceptance of the state and federal governments' role in public health, the anti-vaccinationists www.mercola.com/2002/sep/7/anti_vaccinationists.htm [unreliable fringe source?] Midgley 14:10, 28 January 2006 (UTC)


Brief of the Royal Commission

to investigate the anti-vaccination grievances as well as to hear evidence in favor of vaccination. The commission sat for seven years, hearing extensive testimony from opponents and supporters of vaccination.

Bibliography from VACCINATION AND THE ANTI-VACCINATIONISTS

"Anti-vaccination movements are not a new phenomenon. The "Society of Anti-Vaccinationists" was established in 1798, 2 years after Edward Jenner had demonstrated that cowpox material was effective in preventing smallpox. In 1853 the Anti-Vaccination League was founded in London to provide a nucleus for anti-vaccination groups to oppose the compulsory vaccinations acts of Great Britain... " http://www.nicd.ac.za/pubs/press/vaccination.htm

Bedford H, Elliman D. Concerns about immunisation. British Medical Journal 2000; 320: 240-243. Clements CJ, Evans G, Dittman S, Reeler AV. Vaccine safety concerns everyone. Vaccine 1999, 17: S90-S94. Dales L, Hammer SJ, Smith NJ. Time trends in autism and in MMR immunization coverage in California. Journal of the American Medical Association 2001, 285: 1183-1185. Dittman S. Vaccine safety: risk communication - a global perspective. Vaccine 2001, 19: 2446-2456. Farrington CP, Miller E, Taylor B. MMR and autism: further evidence against a causal association. Vaccine 2001, 19: 3532-3635. Feikin DR, Lezotte DC, Hamman RF, Salmon DA, Chen RT, Hoffman RE. Individual and community risks of measles and pertussis associated with personal exemptions to immunization. Journal of the American Medical Association 2000, 284: 3145-3150. Gangarose EJ, Falazka AM, Wolfe CR, Phillips LM, Gangarosa RE, Miller E, Chen RT. Impact of anti-vaccine movements on pertussis control : the untold story. Lancet 1998, 351: 356-361. Hanratty B, Holt T, Duffell E, Patterson W, Ramsay M, White JM, Jin L, Litton P. UK measles outbreak in non-immune anthroposophic communities : the implications for the elimination of measles from Europe. Epidemiology & Infection 2000, 125: 377-383. Henderson DC. Mercury in vaccines - reassuring news. Lancet 2002, 360: 1711-1712. http://www.who.int/vaccines-diseases/safety/prof/misconcept.htm. Six common misconceptions about immunization. World Health Organization 2000. Madsen KM, Hviid A, Vestergaard M, Schendel D, Wohlfahrt J, Thorsen P, Olsen J, Melbye M. A population-based study of measles, mumps and rubella vaccination and autism. The New England Journal of Medicine 2002, 347: 1477-1482. Orenstein WA, Hinman AR. The immunization system in the United States - the role of school immunization laws. Vaccine 1999; 17: S19-S24. Pichichero ME, Cernichiari E, Loprelato J, Treanor J. Mercury concentrations and metabolism in infants receiving vaccines containing thiomersal: a descriptive study. Lancet 2002, 360: 1737. Poland GA, Jacobson RM. Understanding those who do not understand : a brief review of the anti-vaccine movement. Vaccine 2001, 19: 2440-2445. Rappuoli R, Miller HI, Falkow S. The intangible value of vaccination. Science 2002, 297: 937-939. Salmon DA, Haber M, Gangarose EJ, Phillips L, Smith NJ, Chen RT. Health consequences of religious and philosophical exemptions from immunization laws. : individual and societal risk of measles. Journal of the American Medical Association 1999, 282: 47-53. Spier RE. Ethical aspects of vaccines and vaccination. Vaccine 1998; 16: 1788-1794. Taylor B, Miller E, Lingam R, Andrews N, Simmons A, Stowe J. Measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and bowel problems or developmental regression in children with autism: population study. British Medical Journal 2002, 324: 393-396. Vermeersch E. Individual rights versus societal duties. Vaccine 1999, 17: S14-S17. Wolfe RM, Sharp LK, Lipsky MS. Content and design attributes of antivaccination web sites. Journal of the American Medical Association 2002, 287: 3245-3248. Wolfe RM, Sharp LK.. Anti-vaccinationists past and present. British Medical Journal 2002, 325: 430-432. World Health Organization. Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety : Report. Weekly Epidemiological Record 2002, 77: 389-394.


A quote on the difference of vaccination from medical treatment

Vaccination is unique among de facto mandatory requirements in the modern era, requiring individuals to accept the injection of a medicine or medicinal agent into their bodies, and it has provoked a spirited opposition. This opposition began with the first vaccinations, has not ceased, and probably never will. From this realisation arises a difficult issue: how should the mainstream medical authorities approach the anti-vaccination movement? A passive reaction could be construed as endangering the health of society, whereas a heavy handed approach can threaten the values of individual liberty and freedom of expression that we cherish.

~http://www.jpands.org/hacienda/article36.html

Need evaluation

Other Pages

A block on Talk:Chickenpox with accounts of some people which were excised from that article...

The Midgley gambit of deletion by merger

THis appears to be an ad hominem attack. been away for a while? Learned anything? Midgley 23:23, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Just an obvious vaccinators ploy to get rid of all those pages to vaccine critics! This is what he is trying to cover up [[deprecated source?] john 19:55, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

It is pretty obvious that you created the anti-vax page so you could delete by merger,Viera Scheibner, Beddow Bayly, and so on. And this page was created by a vaccinator mostly using a document written by a vaccinator to bash antivaccinators. I have learned that much about you allopaths. john 12:19, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

john may not yet have learned the Wiki policies despite being forcefully reminded of them - Assume Good Faith and avoid ad hominem attacks.
I object to this and to johns assertion that he knows my motives.
With the greatest of respect Dr Midgely, whilst john may on occasion not use the most eloquent turns of phrase, it is difficult to deny your motives are transparent from your actions and they are all over Wikipedia. The Invisible Anon - 86.10.231.219 09:22, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
It is not difficult at all, I could manage it three times before breakfast. And it is ad hominem. If my motives are obvious then there is actually no need to tell people what they are or imply they are in any way anything but of the highest propriety. Midgley 11:06, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
john has, I hope, material about the people involved, they and the general tendency are, as I have written, interesting (don't get confused, not very interesting, but somewhat) and yet, in edits to an encyclopedia, all that is offered (and is not encyclopedic) is that they were against vaccination. Did they have parents, addresses, go to school, have children, carry out a business other than interfereing with that of others? Where they elected, or not elected when they stood, or did not, for public office, on a single-issue or a well-balanced platform?
Representing such a single facet as being a biogrraphical entry, rather than a paragrpah in an article such as this seems wrong to me, and suggests an unhealthy fixation and the effort to make a boring book. Which WP should not be.
ad hominem attacks and assertions such as those above suggest a paranoid tendency, are against WP policies and are imporper and upsetting. I shall ask admins to make cease them. Midgley 12:45, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Good point on biographies. To focus on "X was eminent; X was anti-vaccination" is just appeal to authority. There's far more to people's lives than this, and biographies should mention it. You only need to go to broader sources than ones fixated on vaccination. For instance, in later life Edgar March Crookshank was a JP, unsuccessful candidate for MP as a Unionist and Tariff Reformer, chairman of a couple of Scottish-Australian corporations and big game hunter, owning Ridge Hill Manor (later to become Saint Hill Manor). 213.130.141.11 19:02, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

sensible arrangement of material on a single subject

The distinguishing feature, and the information presented on them, is that they oppose vaccination. The pages are not biogrpahical, and the subject is therefore diffused. ("A characteristic of anti-vaccinationists writing is that it is promiscuously reduplicated.") Midgley 23:23, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Talking of promiscuous reduplication... Wikipedia:Copyrights / Linking to copyrighted works is worth a decko.

Linking to copyrighted works is usually not a problem, as long as you have made a reasonable effort to determine that the page in question is not violating someone else's copyright. If it is, please do not link to the page. Whether such a link is contributory infringement is currently being debated in the courts, but in any case, linking to a site that illegally distributes someone else's work sheds a bad light on us.

A clear guideline there on what to do about external links to websites that host large chunks of text from books/articles whose date shows they're still in copyright. 213.130.141.11 19:14, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Not a good edit - not some, and are anti

The article on vaccination citics was deleted after a discussion, Ombudsman's edits are tending to recreate it, starting witht hetitle. THis isan article about antivaccinationists, and there is no indication produced, not so far as I have seen in the general body o f material, of the groups and individuals involved being _for_ any vaccination.

THere was already a redirect from vaccine critics to this article, which remained.

Vaccine critics was one article, this is another.

Reducing the clarity of the opening paragraph and of the title tends to obscure - obfuscate even - the actual nature of the pehenomenom. Midgley 10:39, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

It has also broken a bunch of links, reucing the coherence of WP.

Antis ... implicitly will be opposing something, won't they - so the bit about fighting the policies although left in is pretty redundant. If they weer _critics_ they might be criticising the policy, in which case it might be mere coincidence that all of them were resolutely opposed to every aspect of every immunisation, and one would have to add extra verbiage to indicate the direction of their criticism. But as anti-s it is made clear in a single composite word. Isn't the language wonderful.

It does not seem to me that the edit from "preservation of health" to "as a public health measure" reflects the public stance even of the person who made it. The implication would be that anti-vaccinationists are in favour or neutral toward individual vaccination to produce individual immunity while objecting to this being a public policy. I can see elements f this in various writings, but it doesn't work - opposition to public health measures and compulsion would be on principled grounds, whereas much material is presented - partly including an unsourced quote selected to add tot eh article - which asserts that vacciantion and immunisation does not produce immunity and, elsewhere, induces disease in the individual. Midgley 10:59, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Population size

Anti-vaccinationists are a small headcount. Is there an indication of how many people are involved? Even in the 19th century they were a small minority, although like creationists in Kansas, Trotskyites in Liverpool in the 70s, and various other small motivated groups they were likely to get into boards where policy was applied. "Many" is a POV addition commonly made, and never referenced by a reasonable effort to actually count. THe latter would be a sensible part of an article on anti-vaccinationists, no? Midgley 11:04, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

brought in from other pages

A part of the historical section in Vaccination

At the time, both vaccination and inoculation were condemned by the Protestant and Catholic churches.[1] Yale president Timothy Dwight IV held that vaccination thwarted God's will, saying:

If God had decreed from all eternity that a certain person should die of smallpox, it would be a frightful sin to avoid and annul that decree by the trick of vaccination.

British theologian Edward Massey published The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation in 1772. Boston clergymen and devout physicians, believing that "the law of God prohibits the practice," formed the Anti-vaccination Society. Others held that the practice was unnatural and dangerous, going so far as to demand that doctors that carried out these procedures be tried for attempted murder.

Parts of theose churches surely, rather than all. 12:35, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

UK Law, medical advice and Registered Medical Practitioners

Looking at a website referred to in the text, which is actually a reduplicated copy of Whale.to, and is in the .uk domain, I note that the first item in teh page to which one is directed first asserts that only a doctor may offer medical advice, before going on to offer medical advice labelled a opinion.

The UK law is actually quite different, IANAL but I am a UK doctor.

Anyone may offer medical advice and indeed offer to treat humans. (Other animal species are assumed to need more protection than their own common sense, and only a qualified Vet may treat or offer to treat anyone else's animal)

What is restricted is asserting that one is a Registered Medical Practitioner, which only those who are, may.

Richard Feynman's biography gives the account of his receiving many huge documents asserting they were proofs of perpetual motion or difficult theorems in mathematics. His practice was to read them until he came to the first mistake, and then return them to th eauthor indicating "the first mistake is in page n line m" where n tended to be a small number.

If this approach is taken to anti-vaccinationists' material, the amount of reading necessary is much reduced!

In this spirit, the first mistake in www.vaccination.org.uk occurs in page 2, paragraph 1.

The name chosen of course associates the author (I do not believe there to be more than one) with the worst elements of Web society, the domain squatters, as a proper name for the domain would be anti-vaccination.org.uk . This mislabelling is also a characteristic of the tendency. Midgley 13:12, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Character of Anti-vaccinationist writing

Reasonably enough there is a question over citing references for this, which turns out to be less obvious than it first seemed.

Is there a character to the material, and its promulgation? There certainly is, and some elements listed seem to me not to need a reference since they can be seen by anyone with Google and 1 minute. One effect of the link-farming and reduplication that has gone on on the Web is that meta-information tends to be buried to any casual search (teh proliferation of articles apparently abut someone, which turn out to contain only that they opposed vaccination - as though one wrote a "biography of Mr Lindbergh which consisted of only "He consistently and successfully opposed gravity" - is an example of a similar tendency or tactic).

(If someone want sto make a case that the material is no different from anything else, that would also be reasonable, I think we are allowd to look at things and feel their nature)

Sometimes a test of the reasonableness of a statement is to test its opposite - if soneone says "antivaccinationist writings on th web and elsewhere are no different in any respect (save their conclusion) from writing about topics in general" would that pass unchallenged? I think not.

More research is needed. Should we assume that those anti-vaccinationists who read and edit this article are operating in a spirit compatible with WP, and if they had ever seen an analysis of teh character of the writings they accumulate and pass on would prsent it here. TO do otherwise would be to conceal information in order to present a POV, which I thnk is actually part of a character of teh writings, whch distinguishes it from scientific work in general as well in its degree if not absolutely as from documents prepared by eg civil serants to support decisions on policy. Polemic is a word that comes to mind. Midgley 14:09, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

There is quite a good story here

Why though am I supplying all the detail? Midgley 14:20, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Because the best articles are often the work of one editor. I can think of several examples. JFW | T@lk 09:05, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

NPOV "absolutely everything wrong"

"totally disputed" from an anonymous IP address with only one previous contribution to WP (on German in Amercia) seems somewhat unhelpfully unspecific and detailed. What, has none of the various authors added anything at all that is correct in the slightest element? Any chance of getting a WP ID, then it won't look as thoguh you are someone else pretending to be new. Midgley 23:30, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

It's tag trolling. Removed. Ombudsman is now using the placement of the tag as a reason to remove it from other articles[2]. JFW | T@lk 09:02, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
See the helpfully named Restoring Tag section below for the next chapter of this thirlling serial...Midgley 11:18, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Specific People

This is from the Rabid Response ssytem of the BMJ - which is not, although it is sometimes represented as being, peer-revewed publication in the BMJ:- (Google: BMJ DOnegan Midgley)

As to Jayne Donegan, the judgement[1] is damning, but polite, and that isn't censorship either. "44. It has not been a well-balanced exercise. At the end of her first statement Dr Donegan made this declaration -

"…..this is an independent medico-legal report based on my opinion, knowledge and research on the diseases, their vaccines and taking into account the particular cases of the children involved. I understand that the court will use it in coming to a decision as to what is in the best interests of the children involved. I have indicated my sources extensively. The facts and opinions expressed in this report are true and accurate to the best of my knowledge. I confirm that any fees are independent of the outcome of the case."

45. I regret that Dr Donegan has not fulfilled that declaration. Mr Cohen submits that she has not understood nor complied with her duty to the court. I am satisfied that his submission is well founded. Had I heard her evidence alone, I might have been mislead and could well have reached a decision not supported by the research upon which she largely relied.

...

53. Dr Conway considered Dr Donegan's first paper in a response of over 60 pages with which Professor Kroll entirely agreed. I am satisfied he was not over critical. But at various places he points to Dr Donegan being confused in her thinking, lacking logic, minimising the duration of a disease, making statements lacking valid facts, ignoring the facts, ignoring the conclusion of papers, making implications without any scientific validation, giving a superficial impression of a paper, not presenting the counter argument, quoting selectively from papers, and of providing in one instance no data and no facts to support her claim.

"

In the appeal case[2], the point of appeal was not the science, but reasonably enough the Court considered it and recorded:- "36 The judge concluded that the medical evidence relied on by the two mothers to show that vaccination is dangerous and unnecessary was untenable. Dr Donegan's report was based on no independent research, and most of the published papers cited by her in support of her views turned out either to support the contrary position or at least to give no support to her own. Not to mince words, the court below was presented with junk science.

37 In opposition to this material the judge had the evidence of two knowledgeable clinical scientists, both respectful of parental anxieties. They concurred in the conclusion that, while you can never prove a negative, there was strong scientific evidence that the risks of not immunising children were real and in many instances serious – tetanus, meningitis C, mumps, measles and rubella presenting what Professor Kroll characterised as 'a plausible risk of severe illness and death'; that the effectiveness of the vaccines was high; and that their known side-effects were rare and not life-threatening.

38 It is especially worth highlighting why autism was not an issue in this case: not even Dr Donegan suggested that there was a scientific case for linking it to the MMR vaccine. I appreciate that outside the confines of the present case there is an ongoing dispute about autism and the MMR vaccine; but this much at least deserves to be known. "

(A Short Digression on technical solutions to social problems. It was shortly after this that one of my colleagues became so irritated by trolling on that forum that we arranged for the production of the Firefox/Greasemonkey Bozo-filter for the BMJ RR http://osborne.defoam.net/~akm/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/2005/10/16#antiquack - obtainable from http://www.userscripts.org/scripts/show/1956 I recommend it.)

What was eating them in 1921?

History is very dry if it is just what was added to a constitution... Why was it added? What had happened? What medical treatmetn was no longer perceived as voluntary? Midgley 15:56, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Maybe a response to official action in relation to the smallpox outbreak in Nottingham and Middlesbrough in 1920-1921? The situation attracted a deal of pro-vaccination press, including criticism of the conscientious objection get-out for avoiding vaccination.
PS The Anti-Vaccination League was going at least until 1968. The latest record I can find is a Times obituary for Apr 02, 1968, which reports a Miss Mary Gertrude Oldfield Howey leaving it a bequest. 86.140.183.102 19:35, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Has the Times put those on line I wonder. Midgley 19:56, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes; they're in the Times Digital Archive. But it's spread across multiple articles, all in PNG format that makes transcription a pain. 86.140.183.102 20:15, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I have absolutely no right to ask you for a URL, but apparently I have been curing people's diseases using a top-heavy and unstable germ theory all these years, so i had better go and look at the other one. Midgley 23:24, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Article title

Shouldn't this be at Anti-vaccinationism? User:Zoe|(talk) 22:53, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

How about anti-vaccinationist ? as in anti-vaccination ist thought, deed, behaviour, persons.
Well, if you want to decompose it so that there is one page for teh people, and one for the movements, I suppose you could do that, but it is difficult to keep the movement out of the people, and vice versa. I'm interested in the people, not that I'm in charge or anything.
how long can this get before you feel it is an excessively long page? May we leave it with the workign title, and the assumption that it is about _people_
I appreciate that the distinction is subtile, it may even be subtile enough to make no differnece. As a comment though, one participant in the editing picked "vaccine critics" to move it to, not "vaccine criticism" and there is already a page with a big fight going on called vaccine_controversy.
Midgley 23:22, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Am I being cheeky in proposing a compromise? Until the page reaches unstable dimensions and fissions into those two aspects, hopefully without spreading little clumps all over and splitting other pages, I'll make a redirect that'll make either title arrive here. When we have two, we can undo that. OK? Midgley 23:26, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia in general tries not to have articles with plurals in the title. User:Zoe|(talk) 23:28, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
A reasonable point. What is the article about the painters who painted nice-looking red-heads called? I have not looked, although I should. Midgley 23:34, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
OK, it is a redirect from pre-raphaelites which is what I and most people would look for them under, to the canonical title of pre-raphaelite_brotherhood (which after four goes I can't remember exactly enough to write a link, you fix it.)
It is probably the last thing to spend any energy arguing about, I prefer the title I picked, anyone who changes it I think gets to fix the links, the redirect is going to need to stay in place the other way round and WP fashion/policy/habit/preference is far more important than one page's title, just - teh people are the interesting bit to write about here, and the change is a great temptation for one of th tactics of argument, to talk - IE repeat many times - about the assertions that form the -ism rather than what, and what if anything else the various individual -ists did and why.

Midgley 23:42, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

If you find me an anti-vacciantist who in addition to professing and practicing anti-vaccinationism kept two pet wombats and painted red-heads, you can call the page whatever you like - none of these people seem to have had hobbies (barring the obvious and th suggestion that like re-enactors of the Civil War (English CW that is, none more civil) some people may get their fun out of dressing up in the old arguments and re-fighting the old battles with the old weapons. And the old germ theory, whcih seems to he run along th elines of "it just happens, and there are germs that have something else to do").

a-vs' arguments

I suspect that this large table should be on vaccine_controversy actually - since nothing about it names even one person, but if it gets heavily cross-referenced to who uttered them first then it adds to the story started in the page. It seems likely to be good material - I am just slightly surprised that nobody has laid them out before - or have they? Midgley

Meanwhile, i need to look at the non-Pasteur germ theory. Somehow I seem to have been making cheese and wine based on the Pasteur one and missed the alternative. What does an undermined cheese look like? Midgley 23:22, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

  • You can start with this article [[deprecated source?] and [[deprecated source?] I don't hold out much hope. The Germ theory is imprinted into medical training, especially if there is an interest in vaccination. Believing in pleomorphism for a vaccinator is a bit like the Pope renouncing his vows as Mendelsohn said: "For a pediatrician to attack what has become the "bread and butter" of pediatric practice is equivalent to a priest denying the infallibility of the pope."

It is a religion first and foremost, with Vaccination the main article of Faith:

No. And no, vaccination is a small fraction of our work and as a general practice we do more of it than any other layer of the NHS. Hypertension takes up more of our time as does Diabetes and either of those has closer claims to being an article. But no it isn't a religion. EBM is one difference, and something that meddlesome may have got a sniff of backalong. Midgley 21:25, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
  • "Physicians have taken the place of priests; vaccination plays the same initiatory role as baptism, and is accompanied by the same threats and fears; the search for health has replaced the quest for salvation; the fight against disease has replaced the fight against sin; eradication of viruses has taken the place of exorcising demons; the hope of physical immortality (cloning, genetic engineering) has been substituted for the hope of eternal life; pills have replaced the sacrament of bread and wine; donations to cancer research take precedence over donations to the church; a hypothetical universal vaccine could save humanity from all its illnesses, as the Saviour has saved the world from all its sins; the medical power has become the government’s ally, as was the Catholic Church in the past; "charlatans” are persecuted today as "heretics” were yesterday; dogmatism rules out promising alternative medical theories; the same absence of individual responsibility is now found in medicine, as previously in the Christian religion; patients are alienated from their bodies, as sinners used to be from their souls."---Olivier Clerc www.whale.to/a/clerc.html
  • "I no longer believe in Modern Medicine. I believe that despite all the super technology and elite bedside manner….the greatest danger to your health is the doctor who practices Modern Medicine. I believe that Modern Medicine’s treatments for disease are seldom effective, and that they’re often more dangerous than the disease they’re designed to treat. I believe more than 90% of Modern Medicine could disappear from the face of the earth---doctors, hospitals, drugs and equipment---and the effect on our health would be immediate & beneficial……Modern Medicine can’t survive without our faith, because Modern Medicine is neither an art nor a science. It’s a religion."---Dr Robert Mendelsohn MD

Bechamp

In the immortal words:- "You cannot be serious!" Arguably, before Penicillin it was a bit harder to verify koch's postulate (this may be soemone else's cue to go read something) but Becahmp, 102 years and more ago, was just plain wrong. Midgley 23:31, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

A question for a beliver in bechamp's theory:- Assuming you wash your hands after wiping your bottom, is that only to make the next sandwich you eat taste better? If not, what exactly are you trying to accomplish? Midgley 23:32, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Read up on his theory, that is a good start. john 13:54, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Historicity

Is belief in a different theory about germs (I'm not philologist enough to say whether "germ theory" is actually about what is the germ of diseases rather than "what are these funny wriggly things multiplying under the microscope that i scraped off this poorly person") current or is it a historical curiosity? Ombudsman, one for you I think...Midgley 11:17, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Restoring tag

This article currently targets modern vaccine critics primarily. Historically, the term anti-vaccinationst primarily applied to vaccine critics who opposed any and all vaccinations, during a long ago time when cowpox inoculations were the primary or only vaccinations commonly administered. The landscape has changed significantly since then, perhaps since about the 1950s, primarily it seems as a result of the success of the polio vaccine which, despite its initial major drawbacks (i.e., SV40), provided a strong case for the benefits of at least certain vaccines. Most vaccine critics nowadays recognize that some vaccines are invaluable and that there is a rational basis for the use of some vaccines as part of a prudent medical approach to protecting public health. The concerns of modern vaccine critics largely stem from the vast overuse of vaccines seen today, as is plainly evident from some of the many absurd additions to vaccine schedules in recent years. Because the term 'anti-vaccinationist' is somewhat of an anachronism, the current article should be split into two distinct articles, one covering the history of the anti-vaccinationist movement (comprising a small minority of critics today), with another more appropriately titled article on the broader topic of modern vaccine critics. Lumping both subjects into a single article is misleading at best, since critics today --rather than opposing all vaccines-- mostly want to see thimerosal and certain other additives removed from all vaccines, longer intervals between vaccines (rather than the MMR and the new 5-in-one shot, and administration at later ages when immune systems are more fully developed), more vaccine injury research, and some (or a great deal more) moderation in the number (and types) of vaccines added to the vaccine schedule. For these and other reasons --including the concern expressed by some that the article may be a bald attempt to discredit the majority of vaccine critics who are not opposed to all vaccines-- the tag on article is now going to be restored. Ombudsman 09:00, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the comments. There is some undoubtedly good material there - which if it can be referenced and/or substantiated seems to me to have a proper home in the article, rather than the discussion.
I do not think that all of the statements about current anti-vaccinationist thought and intent above are true, or perhaps apply to substantial portions of the identifiable group. As a trivial example, for instance, the Ctee on Safety of Medicines would I am sure like to see an absence of Thiomersal in vaccines, and the same goes for other regulatory bodies, doctors and the companies producing them. But that does not make them in any useful sense anti-vaccinationists, nor does it have any specificity for vaccines as distinct from every other class of real or potential medicine, or real or potential additive or preservative. I don't think one needs an encyclopedia to tell one that making medicines with nothing in them that is not needed is best, or that as manufacturing technologies improve, the risk of bacterial (for those who think Pasteur had a clue) introduction and multiplication recede and thus additives previous needed become not needed.
But the argument about Mercury etc is not on that basis, nor proportional, and is not always (ever?) used to argue for an improvement in a vaccine, but rather as an argument that a vaccine should not be used - with the expectation that when the Thiomersal is removed, another argument will be dusted off and used to the same purpose.
Historicity. The thesis I started the page with, taking it from the BMJ paper referenced within, is that there is an identifiable movement, set of tropes, continuum of argument which is not broken at a particualr date.
An argument that there was a historic movement which passed away and that there is now a different modern movement doing different things in different ways for different reasons which should be treated differently when describing or discussing it and the people in it does not seem to me to be made out by the comment above, nor by anything else.
A tactic in argument which is seen here and there is to insist that every case is different, and thus no overview or categorisation or aggregation of like things into classes for teh purpose of considering them and producing or testing general rules is legitimate. Man is an animal whcih classifies, and this works well for us - I see splitting of the material around this topic as a way of preventing consideration of it rather than facilitating it.


Specific rejoinders:-
Moderns'. The article in its current state (which is unfinished, and I think a draft tag would be more appropriate than an unbalanced one if onewants to reflect that) does not seem to me to bear on moderns more than historicals. If it does, providing some infomation on the historicals might be the most effective way to balance it. If there is no information on them, then the balance would be as good as it could be anyway.
What the historicals originally wanted. This is a disagreement! The names of the organisations may give a clue - the national anti-compulsory vaccination league for instance.
anachronism. The term is wonderfully accurate and provides a good class for consideration of a collection of people with continuing unifying common characteristics of behaviour. Are there are sub-groups, or do people with one concern become subsumed into a whole, with an overlap into other areas such as in the UK Munchausens by proxy? I think they do actually, although I am quite prepared to see someone produce an example of a group who are against a specific vaccine while queuing up to have all the others.
Prepared, still... Midgley 12:51, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
arguments over the timing and extent of immunisation schedules. Different topic if it is serious, but it is not a serious argument, it is an argument with the appearance of rationality being presented and used as a way of blocking vaccination of any sort. Technical discussion of the ideal timing of immunisations, the ideal packaging etc are not of the same class or by the same people, and do go on with a limited amount of enthusaism and no rancour.
Its nice to talk... Midgley 10:15, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Further and Better details please:-
"many absurd additions to vaccine schedules in recent years" from above. How many, which ones are (/not) absurd, how recent (I think 1990 is arguably recent, and I think I take a long view on things) In short, when and what was the last non-absurd addition to a vaccine schedule made, or are the sensible ones interleaved? Midgley 11:37, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Ombudsman restored the tag[3]. However, apart from the comment above, which has been addressed thoroughly by Midgley, Ombudsman has not participated in editing either the article or this talkpage. I've removed it again. Moralistic theorising does not aid the content of this article.

On balance, tags like that should be placed only if the person who places them has made at least a nominal attempt at improving the factual accuracy and/or balance of presentation. Ombudsman has done no such thing, but simply crashes in to do some graffiti and then vanishes. Poor collaborative behaviour, methinks. JFW | T@lk 17:04, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

And again[4]. No attempt to edit the article text, no discussion on the talkpage since original post above. Am I alone in thinking that Ombudsman will disagree to any content on this subject? JFW | T@lk 17:26, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
No. Is this prima facie evidence of bad faith and disrupting WP? Midgley 12:52, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

In his famed ponderous edit summaries[5][6] Ombudsman defends his actions. "Discussion by edit summary" is extremely bad form, and Ombudsman complete reluctance to address the above responses make me think he is acutely incapable of doing so. Simply slapping tags without making at least a nominal attempt to address the perceived bias is about the epitome of POV trolling. JFW | T@lk 11:13, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

"famed ponderous edit summaries", "make me think he is acutely incapable of doing so" "the epitome of POV trolling" - 1) abusive, 2) personal mockery 3) lacking civility - at the very least. Keep the personal stuff out please and stick to the issues. The piece is POV. Easy to see. No need for big debate. Suggest Ombudsman have a nice nap. No need to say any more and there was not before. The Invisible Anon 12:45, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
He is widely known, they are ponderous. It is however chronic rather than acute. Midgley 13:16, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Ombudsman has been on ad-hominem terms with me for a little while now. Abuse and lack of civility are routine. I have no problems returning fire with fire. As for mockery, this is purely stylistic. Why do you need to defend Ombudsman, by the way? You have edited the article, while Ombudsman's behaviour bears more resemblance to that of a pigeon. JFW | T@lk 03:35, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

"the laughable assertion that concerns are merely moralistic"

(where is the assertion asserted to have been made that is asserted to be NPOV and untrue? - Ombuds are supposed to deal with maladministration, not deal it out.)

Ombudsman restored the tag again, to the whole article, having made no useful comment about specific grounds for it, contribution to the article to improve it, replied to the responses above. This is purely obstructive, also stupid. Is adding a tag 3 times 3RV? Come on Ombudsman, grounds for your assertion. Midgley 12:28, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Note that the point made by Ombudsman, although I do not accept the motive described for it, has been reflected in the article, by the inclusion of the argument about Thiomersal (I'm English). Ombudsman could take time off feeling persecuted to reflect that he has contributed to improving an article considerably. The Thimerosal one that is. Midgley 12:31, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Vaccine Schedules

There is a nice page (it has colour in the tables, even) at Vaccine_schedule which seems very appropriate for material on how to actually _decide_ what schedule to give vaccines on and when to give them. I think that the range of opinions on when to give what and the way in which schedules are arrived at would be appropriately dealt with there, and is not really the material of this page. Pages need to stick to their own topic, not that of another page - we could simply refer to that, if a substantial proportion of people commonly identified as A-Vs are actually merely differing in opinion from the consensus on _when_ to give immunisations. It seems clear to me that such technical discussions will already be well written up and references easy to find, since they will have given input to official national policy-forming bodies, and there will be reasoned arguments behind each of the existing schedules - even if the reasonaing is of the order of "we want to get people as immune as we can to as many of the listed diseases as we can as early as we can without over-working everyone concerned and then keep them immune as long as it matters. And eradicate Polio. Actually the eradication of infectious diseases would be a reasonable page topic - immunisation is a part of it, politics another, sanitation and housing and feeding people yet another, most of whcih would not need writing in it since they have great pages already to point to. Midgley 10:54, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Roses and names

Whatever. "Restoring tag" is one of those headings that is less than fully informative. Ombudsman's chose tag was NPOV, for anyone who comes by after teh article is agreed to have become POV.

Whereas the discussion is about division of the article into several, historicity and so on. Newspapers never let journalists write headlines for their storeis, instead sub-editors pick one, often discarding the journo's first suggestion. The aim is to pick a short phrase which sums up the content of the story.

I think that story had much more content than "I've put the tag back". Midgley 10:59, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


Quotes

Need dates attached, since we are reminded by Ombudsman that some of this is historical, some modern, and there may be a difference between them (I think it is mutation and evolution, rather than tehre being any boundary, opinions may differ). Midgley 11:58, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

(opposing) Belief Systems

Is the anti-vaccinationist phenomenom partly an epiphenomenom of a clash between belieff systems, with science regarded as a belief system by some who prefer a different one, and others wrapping their belief system in the trappings of science to slip it by?

The Vaccination Belief System

  • Infectious disease is caused by transmissible agents such as pathogenic viruses and bacteria.
    • They satisfy Koch's postulate.
  • the (human) immune system responds to invading organisms and to toxins from them (egTetanus) when they are presented to it.
  • fragments of organisms (eg Influenza vaccine, or a weakened variant of the organism (eg Rubella vaccine) or small amounts of a toxin chemically or physically treated to break the damaging part of the molecule (eg Tetanus toxoid) or an organism similar to the feared one but much less dangerous (eg Vaccinia for Smallpox or BCG for [Tuberculosis]] produce a response from the immune system which is similar to the response produced in survivors of infection with the natural or wild or feared organism.
    • The attenuated or substituted organisms are less dangerous than the wild organisms (eg vaccinia is less dangerous than variola minor which itself is less dangerous than variola major the two being strains of the same virus AFAIK and variolation an effort to pick the minor one in order to have a greater chance of surviving both it, and subsequent exposure to the major one))
    • as the risk of exposure to the wild disease, during the whole of life, becomes smaller, the acceptable risk of vaccines also becomes smaller, thus vaccines which were a great advantage when introduced are now regarded as some sort of bug soup that we prefer to avoid, and as Polio incidence falls toward zero, the less effective and nastier to take killed injectable vaccine becomes a relatively more favourable proposition than the oral Polio vaccine.
  • under suitable conditions some of these responses include immune memory, the capacity to much more rapidly produce a much greater response to a subsequent challenge (or infection or exposure) with the wild/feared organism.
  • under other conditions, the humoural immunity produced does not persist long, and therefore while the immunisation is useful for visits to infected areas, it is not suitable for lifelong protection.
  • vaccines are not perfectly effective, universally correctly stored or given, and do not in all cases encounter a perfectly effective immune system.
    • after most people are vacinated, in the persisting presence of circulating transmissible agents of disease, even though those who are not vaccinated are many times more likely to contract the disease when presented to it for the first time, there are very few of them compared to the large number of people individually unlikely to catch the disease because they have been vaccinated, and therefore it is not unlikely that the majority of people ho catch the disease will have been vaccinated - far from unlikely it is inevitable from the mathematics.
    • people with partial immunity from a response to vaccination or to a previous infection with the wild agent are less likely to die of the wild disease if they are exposed to it even if they catch it than people who have not been previously primed.
    • some people are naturally immune to some infecting organisms, indeed given our understanding of the interestingly random development of parts of the immune system, it may be that all people are immune to some infecting organism, whetehr or not it actually exists in the locality. (this is a small digression)


(do go on if I've missed some, so much if it is probably implicit in an ordianry education we may not know we believe it)

Midgley 14:16, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Belief Systems (from which descend part or all of those held by or informing those of some or most of Anti-vaccinationists

(an effort at a draft headline to go with the one above - I shan't sulk if it is improved upon)

Not to be rude, simple causes...

All disease comes from misalignment of the spine, improper diet, sin

I can't write this, someone else should Midgley 14:25, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

  • the danger of junk food has been supressed
  • Numerous disease treatments, disease prevention, knowledge, and cures have been ignored or suppressed
    • eg Vitamin C - has been suppressed mostly by ignoring its cure of infectious diseases, along with Vitamin A (discovered in 1932) [[deprecated source?] also ignored (subtle suppression) in heart disease [[deprecated source?] as is vitamin C [7], also ignored for drug addiction [[deprecated source?]
    • this suppression reveals the real agenda of the medical industry.

These are conspiracy theories
Rather a lot of Vitamin C is sold, and Linus Pauling has a Nobel Prize
Agenda? It is governed by chaos.

Like evolution fact? Relativity theory? I may not entirely understand WP, but I think an ad hominem appeal would be to say something like
"Midgley is so wonderful, that anything he says should be simply accepted, regardless of whether it fits what we know of the universe"
Now, don't let me dissuade anyone, but somehow I don't feel a need to practice blushing and looking modest just yet<g>. Midgley 23:15, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Breastfeeding is safe.

Example CHRONIC SCURVY Vitamin C Deficiency as a Cause of Heart Disease by Owen R. Fonorow PhD, MS, MBA www.whale.to/a/fonorow.html The 700,000 people who die needlessly every year in the USA are those who heed the advice of their cardiologist......Canadian doctors proved that a vitamin C deficiency causes the condition, commonly called "atherosclerosis". .....The knowledge that heart disease is a form of scurvy has been suppressed from the time that the first series of Willis articles was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in the early 1950s. ....Apparently, medical science is controlled by the drug industry. Even the US National Institutes of Health gives all appearances of being under the control of the drug industry, and it seems that not even members of Congress can overcome this obstacle.

Is this an assertion that all heart disease (presumably ischaemic heart disease) and that also atherosclerosis (whcih affects all other arteries, such as renal and carotid Aa is due only to lack of VItamin C?
It isn't credible. Midgley 22:17, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Can we put this one aside, off this page, since (unless someone shows differently) it doesn't seem to have any connection to vaccination and it seems to me that someone might manage to reject vaccination and the germ theory of Pasteur, without having to either take a view on Vitamin C and atheroma, or being dependent on what that view was?
It seems to me reasonable to say that that particular idea should be tried out on pages about Ascorbic Acid (assuming we are agreed that Chemistry is correct in describing what VIt C actually is) and on IHD and or Atheroma.
Is that unreasonable? It would be even better to take all of it off here where it is muddling, and try it on there. Midgley 22:22, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

the missing assertion

Numerous disease treatments, disease prevention, knowledge, and cures, such as Vitamin C, have been ignored or suppressed, which reveals the real agenda of the medical industry. It is one of the most important assertions, as you call them, as it shows the first agenda of the medical industry is profit not child health (you can't worship mammom and truth at the same time), and knowing the true agenda of the vaccine industry is the main way to expose them, so it was no surprise you took that off the page. Put it back please. Isn't credible isn't much of a reply to Linus Pauling. john 17:56, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Anti-vaccination disease theory

Coverage. Is it so uniform as that - one belief which can be expected to be held by pretty much anyone ... or are there different groupings, overlapping sets of beliefs etc. (not that I want to wikify a Venn diagram, given my progress with tabulating stuff.)Midgley 18:09, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Are we starting at different points? I see the critical element there as whether _all_ infections were caused by a defficiency in teh host, or whether sometimes you are in perfect health, and then colonised by a virulent pathogen which knocks you over regardless. The problem is that once we start being moderate about such things, we end up risking argreement that disease is multi-factorial, and that host resistance factors are significant, as are particualr pathogens Midgley 18:09, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Lost me there. Vaccinations runs on the theory germs are the only factor in disease{fact}(not from an a-v site either), and vaccination the only{fact}{likewise} defence.
No it doesn't. Try Google and "host factors". (or a medical textbook, of course). Have a go at de Lessops adnteh Panama Canal, it is an interesting disease and multifactorail in all directions. Midgley 23:03, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
You seem to be complicating things.
I deny that. The world is complicated, and occasionally I manage to elucidate a part of it. Midgley 23:03, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
It is a toxemic host (with smallpox that was living in and drinking filth) made more vulnerable by nutrient deficincies. The several forms of these intestinal crises, or drunks, follow holidays or feast-days. The lightest drunks are named colds, "flu," tonsilitis; the heaviest, diphtheria. In those who eliminate through the skin (the eruptive fevers), the lightest form is called measles; the heavier, scarlet fever; the heaviest, black smallpox. Children: Their Health and Happiness by J. H. Tilden (1928). Smallpox and diphtheria, now both very rare, have long since been cleaned up by the sanitary engineers. Chickenpox & Measles by Dr Bieler. I think you should be able to get where anti-vaccine disease theory is coming from. Disease comes from WITHIN essentially, and it can be tranmitted if the other person/host is in a similar toxemic state, and this has been wildly exagerated by vaccinators over the years, smallpox being a notable example [[deprecated source?] When you consider the fact they feared measles more in Leicester around 1880, you can get some idea about the extent of the fearmongering. So far as we are concerned in Leicester, a town containing 120,000 inhabitants, with many thousands of unvaccinated children, smallpox seems to be about the least dangerous of all diseases, and is not to be named by the side of scarlet fever, measles, whooping cough, diarrhoea, or even consumption. If a case of small-pox is discovered, instant isolation is adopted, and during the last five years we have hardly had five deaths. That being the state of the case, one need not wonder that the fear of the disease should disappear, or that resistance to vaccination should increase."--William Tebb 1881.{fact} One dude though it so uninfectious he thought onlt bedbugs could transmit it. "This child, although living in the same room with the patients at the Pest House, had not acquired the smallpox, after being exposed to it all of the time for a period of six weeks; yet upon the fifth day after returning home, this child acquired the initial fever. I then examined their house and found it to be literally alive with bedbugs."---CHARLES A. R. CAMPBELL, M. D. And you have to marvel at people falling for the germ theory when most people don't catch the diseases. "As a matter of fact, perhaps it is safe to say that not more than 10 per cent of the people ever would take smallpox if sleeping in the same bed with an infected smallpox victim."--Dr Hay. john 21:06, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Aaaaaaaaargh! "Don't think, try!" --- Harvey, W.
"matter of fact" "perhaps it is safe to say" COnjecture, or fact?
experiment: randomised trial, people snuggle up to a case or not. We count the survivors.
unethical, so we do it as an observational trial. Whatever, the difference is we actually count th survivors, not mangel English and irritate scientist and English user alike by mixing as above conjecture and allegation of fact.

Midgley 23:03, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

May I introduce you to the paragraph? Please. Midgley
Assuming disease comes from within, then why do new diseases develop (ex. new strains of flu)? What about epidemics of diseases (ex. bubonic plague)? --CDN99 21:21, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I think Florence N hit the nail when she said there are no specific diseases only specific disease conditions. Which was why plague died out, without a vaccine. To make out germs are the only factor in infectious disease is ludicrous, (John)
and so much easier to argue against than any explanation of disease actually being presented by doctors.
I mentioned no more than 24 hours ago here that "host factors" is a useful term to search on.
However, whatever the factors that make the host vulnerable to meningocci, and however they are exposed to it - both of which are worth working on - if they have had immunity induced they are noticeably less likely to die of meningitis from it than if they have not.
The difference here is the arguments actually made, vs the arguments the responses appear to be made to. Midgley 18:34, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Also, Plague has not died out... Midgley 18:35, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Ahem! John, do you accept you got this wrong, in which case have you changed anything you think or want to say? Or can we expect you to explain on the Plague pages why they are wrong to think it still occurs with around 1000 deaths per year?
I did mention in the article that continuing to make unchanged assertions despite their having been demonstrated to be clearly false is charactersitic of a-v argument...

Midgley 22:45, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't have any plague pages on my website, you are nitpicking. I have never even looked into plague, I presumed it had died out in this country. I don't think it is a good subject for you to bring up, considering the amount of lies that the medical industry churns out every day. Starting with the great smallpox lie, then the vaccines are safe lie. And so on. Also demonstrated to be clearly false is according to you, in many cases. Just because you say something is true or false doesn't necessarily make it so. john 07:29, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
and to ignore the more important causes--toxemia, nutrition, poisons and sanitation (both contributing to toxemia), is something else, as Bayly points out:
Perhaps the greatest evil of immunization lies in its diversion of public attention from true methods of disease prevention. It encourages public authorities to permit all kinds of sanitary defects and social problems to remain undressed, particularly in schools. It ignores the part played by food and sunlight and many other factors in the maintenance of health. It exaggerates the risk of diphtheria and works upon the fear of parents. The more it is supported by public authorities, the more will its dangers and disadvantages be concealed or denied." M. Beddow Bayly, M.R.C.S., 1944.
I don't like new paragraphs as it usually signifies another user comment. We need a tab facility. john 16:43, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
I do, and if intdented using more and more colons Midgley 18:45, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
It works wellMidgley 18:45, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
It works OK, but could be improved. john 07:29, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Tables

I don't think there's any hope for table format when there are long paragraphs and a large number of columns. There are other ways for formatting biographical info:

Semicolon (bolds but doesn't add to TOC)
Colon (indents)
Two semicolons (bold plus indent)

The tables should be removed, ja? --CDN99 16:40, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd hate that, the data is actually tabular and the purpose of some is direct comparison.
Perhaps we could see an alternative layout trialled in a section of this talk page?
i don't doubt the apeparance can be massively improved - this may even be one of the occasions where a table wider than teh screen is permissible. Midgley 17:46, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
can we format a table with its left edge displaced to the left by 200 pixels, so as to use the margin? And set widths on the columns so it looks better. Help please. Midgley 17:57, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
The aesthetics of the tables may be interfering with getting the content across, as well-intentioned as the use of the tables may be! Andrew73 18:05, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree they are horrible. By all means do better, but I think there are significant tabular elements to them.
I think there are too many columns, and some of the columns are too wide, and some of the contents could be replaced with abbr. codes icons whatever...
The worst possible layout would be a maze of tiny pages all alike scattered all over the place.
shall we see draft layouts from anyone who can do better - and I don't doubt they are legion.Midgley
How about a complex form - nested subtable - in the left column giving name qual born died medic y/n etc in column, thus reducing at least 4 columns to a single one, and decreasing blank white space in the left? I'd aprpeciate help on something like that...Midgley 18:20, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Meta:Help:Table Better? Midgley 20:26, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

The tables with the cleaner lines look better! Andrew73 19:10, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I can only understand this stuff by tabulating it. I do not believe anyone else can either, without a similar approach. Now studying nexted tables. Midgley 21:10, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Evolution

Yes? No? Midgley 19:14, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Vaccine on sale after banning elsewhere

2002 www.vaccination.org.uk/a/mmrclinic.html

Not legally, according to the article copied there. (That looks like a copyright breach)

I think you'd find if you dug into the international law around this, that countries claim two things:- 1. they are soveriegn so no other country has jurisdiction over them; 2. if they say something is legal, it is legal, within their borders. Naturally I deplore this ... or perhaps not. Midgley 01:06, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Vaccine safety - a question

Notwithstanding there being a perfectly adequate page on this, lets briefly amplify a statement in teh article given as a core assertion of antivaccinationists (may need demonstrating that is so but for now ...)

Quote:-

  • Vaccines aren't safe.
    • Vaccinators have stretched the definition of safe
      • to include death and serious brain damage.

Questions:- 1. What is the altenrative view of "safe", IE what would an anti-vaccinator find general agreement on if he called something "safe" among his peer group?

  • Safe is breastfeeding. End of story. Not something that kills 100 kids (as compensated by the NVICP, so I believe) a year in the USA, the bare minimum. john 07:33, 2 February 2006 (UTC)


2. Isn't there a bit of a paradox in the text as given - which was not all mine - in that if we define safe as including death and serious brain damage, what on earth is it that happens that allows anyone to say htat vaccines are not? Are we talking global thermonuclear warfare here, or peril to immortal soul? Or has someone got carried away? Or is it more simply a matter of whatever is defined as safe being largely defined in terms of "safer than vaccines", such that rather than the steady ratchetting up of requirments for safety that has occurred as disease becoems less manifest, it is actually a circular definition intended as polemic? Midgley 21:47, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Organisations

Is that it for the organisations?

No others known to anyone here?

No others then or now of note other than the four listed as yet?

Midgley 22:39, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Why the greed for organisations? The last time I posted some on other pages they got deleted! A lot of organisations don't want to be labelled antivaccine, so I was hesitant to list any more until I had asked them. They prefer to be pro-choice. the reason as I deduce it is because of medical industry propaganda, where anti-vaccine has been given the tag of mentally ill, for want of a better word. Terms used to infer mental illness are Conspiracy theorist, paranoid etc, an ad hominem tag, essentially. The medical industry has tried to banish the word anti-vaccine by this method, and succeeded for some time. Also you will never get any media attention if you come out anti-vaccine, so you will reach less people, they theorised. I will put a vaccine critic list up to cover the rest, but there are 20 or so. john 07:41, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Infallibility of references

John, may we be provided with an example of something that one of the authors you have thus far quoted on this page or in the article got, in your opinion, wrong, please

Or is everything they wrote fundamantal Truth? Midgley 22:50, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

We don't claim to get it right all the time. What you lot will never understand is the fact we don't need to lie. We didn't get into this for profit. My main interest is the truth, before vaccination. I spent 10 years on spiritual truths, which are a lot harder than medical ones, which I find easy. I thougt you were the one keeping log of our mistakes. When I look at the ones your lot come up with it is just nitpicking. I think there was one when Mendelsohn said so many docs didn't take rubella vaccine, which he was meant to have got wrong when you read the paper, but I'd have to read it myself before I'd trust what your side would say. And I can't imagine any doc taking rubella or hep B vax, can you? john 07:49, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Something specific please. Its a judgement test, really. Midgley 08:48, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Imagination is one thing... substantially every UK doctor has been immunised against hepatitis B with 3 or more doses of the Hepatitis B vaccine. Likewise all healthcare workers including receptionists who are not known to have had Chickenpox have recently caught up with Varicella vaccine. Rubella, I'd have to look up, but I suspect we would have complete coverage. A significant point here is that this is all easily available, to anyone who looks for truth rather than imagining Midgley 08:48, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

That is an improvement on 1990. In 1990, a UK survey involving 598 doctors revealed that over 50% of them refused to have the Hepatitis B vaccine despite belonging to the high risk group urged to be vaccinated. (British Med Jnl, 27/1/1990) If you can supply a survey that proves all have been vaccinated with Hep B, or the document that states they have to have the vaccine? Saying they all have been vaccinated is very different to them all having been. Some proof. john 17:43, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

The BMJ online does not yet go back to 1990, it does go back to 1994, and a search gives a considerable number of hits. This is a relevant link into a subset of that search. [9] Note that all medical school entrants since around 1994 have either been immune, or immunised against Hepatitis B. So every doctor graduating since at the latest 1999 has Hep B immuity confirmed, mostly by immunisation. Hepatitis B immunity is one of the conditions of employment in the NHS - enforced by occupational health and personnel departments in all hosptials etc. John really is totally out of touch on that one. Midgley 02:21, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Flu jab 2005: Research at two Liverpool hospitals found less than 8% of healthcare workers had annual jabs. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/4260138.stm john 17:43, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

John your arguments are getting really confusing. In the BBC article, you left out:Of the 144 staff interviewed, 29% said they did not need to be vaccinated and 18% said they were not aware of the vaccine...Only 10% knew the vaccine would protect patients against the serious complications of flu and 11% of staff were concerned about side effects of the jab. Did you think we wouldn't read the article, or do you eat confirmation bias for lunch??
You say that 50% of doctors refused to be vaccinated...if you're trying to make the case that doctors don't support vaccination...well, if they didn't, we would have a major conundrum on our hands wouldn't we? You call them all vaccinators, but then you claim they don't support vaccination (I can't find the source for that statistic either). Seriously, logic won't break your heart (no matter what the Stills say). --CDN99 18:00, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
I am not using it to suggest doctors don't support vaccination, more they don't have much confidence in it. As to my use of the term vaccinators, I do that to point out the bias in medical doctors, as they usually, eg JDWolf, try to pretend they have thought about the subject and made the decision for, when in reality they are vaccinators the moment they sign up for a medical degree course. Just like a politician will support his party when the whips crack the whip, not needed in most cases. Using political language, Allopathy is a party, vaccination is the main tenet of the party. john 20:33, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
"PL CMO (2003)8: Chickenpox (varicella) immunisation for health care workers
Varicella immunisation is now recommended for non-immune health care workers (HCWs), who work in primary care and  
in hospitals (both in the NHS and privately) and who have direct patient contact.
PL CMO (2003)8: Chickenpox (varicella) immunisation for health care workers
PL CMO (2003)7: Protecting women against rubella

From the beginning of October 2003, sero-negative women of child-bearing age and health care workers who need to 
be protected against rubella will be offered the combined measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine. This is because we 
are unable to secure supplies of licensed rubella vaccine.
PL CMO (2003)7: Protecting women against rubella "
Google. 5 seconds, once I got round to it. Should our time be wasted responding to imaginings? The scientific method of searching for truths is to by all means imagine something, working from a mental model based on experience and theory, but then test it. WP demands a similar minimal effort at verification. 09:05, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

not-for-profit

The Welcome Foundation is a not-for-profit. Not for profit is a meaningless term, meant to impy independent and unbiased, which is why they set them up. The Wellcome Foundation--I'd steer clear of that one, I'd love to have a reason to pull their game. john 15:42, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I think they are formally a charity, one subclass of not for profit organisation.
The meaning of "not-for-profit" is no more, in England, than the meaning of the English words, which mean it is not for profit, but in America - possibly variably State by State, certainly in California - and in Canada, tehre is a specific legal status in whcih an organisation can incorporate, and that is called not-for-profit by everyone who wishes to disucss them, rather than dismiss them.
I'd venture to suggest that a national league against {vaccination|vivisection|winding oddballs up} would incorporate itself as a not-for-profit of some sort, nowadays. Midgley 16:29, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

If capitalism is evil, it is not a vaccination problem. Vaccination IS Corporate medicine. You can hardly have evil capitilism and expect it to keep out of medicine, very naive, medicine is the biggest earner that I can think of, after weapons, but could be more than that. When the Corporations run the country (actually they are the money making tools of the Elite that run the country), as they do, it is know as Fascism. john 15:42, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

No. These are matters for other pages, which exist, File:Thumb/a/a7/Kwashiorkor child.jpg/175px-Kwashiorkor child.jpg

but Cuba is not notable as a stronghold of capitalism.

THis argument is on a level with "Purple is the new Black" in that it is silly Midgley 16:17, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
You can hardly have evil capitilism and expect it to keep out of medicine, very naive
Look to your own camp. Some of the slickest and most egregiously capitalist marketing I've seen is in the alternative medicine sector, which can get just as corporate as anything mainstream. What do you think this and this is selling? Herbal medicine. 86.139.229.178 17:55, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
If you can't argue your point for putting not for profit, or whether vaccination is capitalism, then remove those comments, Midgley. (John)
This is weird. John placed, as an assertion held by all anti-vaccinationists, that vaccines are very profitable, in the list...
I pointed out two cases where it is not for profit at all:-
  • the vaccine production by the Welcome Foundation
  • and vaccine production in Cuba, which is not a capitalist state
Noting alongside that the badness of capitalism is not a vaccine issue (emphatically not for Cuba...)
THe response above seems to be orthogonal to every axis f this universe. John, you put that item in. I think it is irrelevant. Midgley 21:46, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
It's not my camp. ... I think Dr Shelton's book title called The Myth of Medicine sums up my point of view on all medicine. I don't agree with having a medical monopoly that, in effect, forces expensive medication on people through enforced ignorance. Especially when there are disease cures out there, and the pharma med doesn't work, generally speaking. And causes huge deaths and disease. 150--780,000 itarogenic, plus the 700,000 who could be saved by Vitamin C from heart disease deaths. john 20:25, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Vitamin C for heart disease is in that camp. By medical monopoly, I suspect we mean the system where medicine is done largely by people who get a medical degree, and then follow postgraduate courses of study and training. The assertion that Pharma doesn't work (but Vitamin C which presumably is therefore not pharmacutical???) is incredible. Pharma started working around Willow bark and Foxgloves, and there is no obvious point at which to say all after this is rubbish. And, not vaccine... Midgley 21:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

If you can speak in plain English it would help orthogonal to every axis f this universe may mean something in your reality, but it looks like evasive gibberish in my reality, and I presume we are trying to communicate? If you don't know what a monopoly is then I can't help you, look it up perhaps? If that is your reply to vaccination being for profit (Cuba and Wellcome)then fine! (John)

You have deleted my comment about 60% of Africans being malnourished, that did make your comemnt look daft, quite apart from 50% of my column is missing.

I shall assume good faith and that John is confused. I have not deleted his material on Africa. John, you can go back through the history and find where you put it in, and then forward again, and you would find a link you can copy here as a diff that will show the difference made by any individual edit. I suspect you put the comment text in the wrong place in what is admittedly a complex table - notice I have tried to make it less unwieldy. You'd be wanting to reference it - as a comment, WP editors are highly likely to think that a reference to within WP is useful for that, most people woudl accept a UNICEF one as being free of teh specific interests here. If you can point to a diff, please do so, otherwise it would actually be polite to retract that. Midgley 13:13, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Assuming that 60% are malnourished, does this mean you support immunisation for 40% of African children? Midgley 13:13, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Of course not, have you NO idea about the argument against vaccination? It appears so. john 15:47, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Does WP contain a clear statement of the argument against vaccination? (I had though there might be as many as, say, two arguments, but one would do)Midgley 16:21, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Is anyone on hand, and a member of WP, who has a clear idea and is willing to articulate it? Midgley 16:21, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Is the idea of contingent arguments a useful one - that if you have an argument which to your mind means 100% of African children should not be vaccinated, there is not a lot of point in presenting an argument that 60% of them should not be vaccinated.Midgley 16:21, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
And indeed, if you have an argument that 100% of children should not be vaccinated, tehre is little point in saying that some subset of them should not be vacinated because they are African children.Midgley 16:21, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
At the end of a process of following each class up of the class which it is a member of, we might hope to arrive at one of several possibilities:-
  • That some children should be vaccinated, and who they are.
  • that no children should be vaccianted, and there is one reason which applies to all children and is sufficient argument. (regardless of any other reasons applying to any sub or supergroup) (god said don't do it is a pretty good example of one of the specific types of argument that would fit there - I wouldn't know, never having been told about it by god, but someone else might - I once met a newspaper editor who told me god had told him how to run his business. He is no longer in that job, but perhaps he mis-heard. This is a digression, TTBoMK god does not want anyone to reply to it.) Midgley 16:21, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
  • That no children should be vaccianted, some of them (say group A) because of one reason applying only to them (say reason 1)and another group (B) because of another separate and different reason (2) applying only to them. Logic warning: this is a weak argument since if a child can be found who is not A and not B then neither 1 nor 2 applies and you cold find yourself not arguing that they should not be vaccinated. Midgley 16:21, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
AN alternative reason for producing a horde of little arguments on small subgroups is so that as each falls, another can be introduced. It has been alleged, soemtiems in strikingly unfriendly fashion, that this is the truth. Demonstrating a coherent set and nesting them refutes this sort of argument, but of course invites an attack on the largest all-encomapssing argument first - much as scientists like to proceed with science. Midgley 16:21, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Also your removal of the vitamin C data was another red flag as to the paucity of your argument.

If Vitamin C is a vaccine, or a belief that vitamin C cures ... whatever .. is an essential part of a world-view that is held by most people who reject vaccination, then it should be in the article. If not, it shouldn't. Did I move it to the Talk page so it could be discussed? I confess, this is getting complicated. If you are sure Vit C is an intrinsic part of the article, put it in. 13:13, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


Also the vitamin C data is a good indication of the medical pharma monopoly. And pharma drugs work, but not to cure apart from bacterial infections (save me the cancer speil) whale.to/v/pharma_hoax_q.html. Vitamin C again, shows what does work. If pharma medicine was so wonderful you wouldn't be spending all this time trying to delete vaccine critics like Robert Mendelsohn, and doing your deletion by merger ploy, along with the other allopaths [10]. That is how monopolies work, keeping the truth at bay, while you flog the mostly useless medicine www.whale.to/v/pharma_hoax_q.html. Your sort of talk is a new one, I suppose it beats coming up with a decent argument. john 10:06, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Hmmm. How do you feel about architects? No, that would be a digression. Midgley 13:13, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Polio in Africa

A Transcript of a talk given by Kihura Nkuba (Nov 2002) In Africa polio does not kill anybody and they say it's very rare to catch. It's really very rare to get paralytic polio. They say it's in very rare circumstances, so what is it that is killing people in Africa ? Malaria. Every five seconds a child is dying of malaria in Africa. Now to get the dose of life-saving anti-malaria is about $5 but there is no government to give anti-malaria. When somebody gets malaria, if they have no money they even die. So the question I was asking and many people were asking was 'If you really want to help children, why begin with a disease that they don't have ? (applause) Why not look for something that is killing them and save them from what is killing them ?' And then (inaudible) ............. 'you know what, I like you very much. I save your children from this killer disease. Now there are no other diseases apart from this rare polio, so let's go and fight that as well.' But you don't begin with the rarest disease and spend all the government's meagre resources fighting polio, which is not a threat to most people, and then ignore something that is killing them in large numbers like malaria, like AIDS, like cholera, issues to do with sanitation, stunted growth - all the main things that matter to people the government was not fighting. www.whale.to/a/nkuba_h.html john 20:11, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

You go campaign for a malaria vaccine then, john? JFW | T@lk 20:44, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
LOL. Funny why Bill Gates gives all his money to vaccines in Africa, when they really need clean water, food, sanitation and decent med for the diseases that are killing them. john 10:08, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't entirely understand, John? Who is he? How does Malaria occur? Is it a germ, transmissible by an infectious vector?
There are several pages on Malaria, which yet lacks a vaccine, this is a vaccination page, and being able to hold more than one idea in our heads at once, healthcare teams do consider Malaria as well as other infectious diseases. Midgley 21:34, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
If you don't know who Bill gates is then you need to get outside the Church of Allopathy john 12:04, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
2004 Polio per 100 000 population
Nigeria  0.39
http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/health/infectious_diseases/polio/africa.html

"Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, where an ongoing civil war has kept vaccine supplies from being delivered to patients.  The country experienced the largest modern outbreak of polio in 1995, when over 1,000 cases of paralytic poliomyelitis were recorded in the city of Kisangani, and war has complicated recent efforts to chase the disease from the central African country."

"Bordering Congo to the Southwest, Angola is experiencing even more serious problems with a polio epidemic which is being exacerbated by civil war and the movement of millions of refugees within and out of the country.  The epidemic, which was first reported on 23 March 1999, has now caused over 700 casualties, including more than 40 deaths, making it one of the largest polio epidemics in Africa since vaccination began there in the 1950s.  On 8 April, the National Institute of Virology in South Africa confirmed that the epidemic is being caused by type 3 poliovirus."
http://microbiology.columbia.edu/pico/Chapters/NewsAfrica.html

|Midgley 21:34, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

SELECTION OF POV SECTIONS

Definition

No source for this definition:-

"Anti-vaccinationists are those who, on principled or on other grounds, are opposed to vaccination."

Reliable source essential for the "definition". This is so broad it could cover anyone who criticises any vaccination or objects for any reason to a vaccination

I'd be interested in other definitions of the group to which the article refers. As Pirsig might have put it, we can identify there is a group even if we are not precisely sure of its exact description.
eg. vaccinating infants to protect old people from 'flu when it is unethical to administer.
You need to try that clause again, it doesn't make proper sense but is covered elsewhere. Midgley 20:10, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Summary - No reliable source for definition. Response & edit history indicates text is editor's creation to push POV. The Invisible Anon 23:34, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

______________

What are the "principled grounds" - where are they set out and for which "Anti-vaccinationists". Reliable source essential for this.

Read down the page, try the three tables? Whether we have a reliable source on hand... I'll leave that for teh moment, I have asked the question a couple of times. Answers may now be more useful than re-asking it.
I agree (and set out to start with, and cover in the article) that it is interesting what grounds are adduced. Assume good faith would have it that we should regard them as principled grounds until we have a reason not to. Midgley 20:10, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Summary - No source for this assertion. Policy requires reliable sources. Response relying on "assume good faith" indicates text is editor's creation to push POV. The Invisible Anon 23:34, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

_______________

"Since the early 19th century, when vaccination became a standard part of public health and medicine, there have been groups and individuals who are most clearly characterised as anti-vaccinationists opposing such policies."

Reliable source essential for this statement.

Is there an assertion that the groups started noticeably earlier? Or later? Or never existed? That call for a source is actually complete rubbish. Midgley 20:10, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Summary - No source for this assertion. Response indicates text is editor's creation to push POV. The Invisible Anon 23:34, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

_______________

"Their identity and the repeating arguments, which change little with time or the vaccine discussed, are more interesting as a single topic than as a part of the discussion of infectious diseases and their control."

Reliable source essential for this statement.

I think it is interesting. Who thinks it is not? Perhaps it shold be recast into "this article is about ..." But authors and editors are commonly pardoned for assuming that they and their readers are dealing with something becuase it is interesting rahter than becuase they are obliged to.
Have you considered actually writing something in teh article? Midgley 20:10, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Summary - No reliable source for assertion. Response & edit history indicates text is editor's creation to push POV. The Invisible Anon 23:34, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

_______________

"Wolfe and Sharp (2002) argue that between the 19th and 20th century the arguments against vaccination used by anti-vaccinationists have remained essentially unchanged."

Not reliable. Numerous inaccuracies in Woolfe and Sharp eg. [[11]] require NPOV treatment -

Converse?The alternative to that statement would be along the lines of
"Since the 19th century the arguments against vaccination used by anti-vaccinationists have changed in their essence."
Which I suppose would be amplified by:-
"The following arguments used in the 19th century were abandoned, 
for the following reasons, and are now rejected as incorrect by anti-vaccinationists in general."
Now, the problem with that, is that in the supplied material thus far, I cannot see an argument of which that might be truly said, although I'd be made quite happy by being shown one.
Woolfe and Sharp, whose published paper was no better than many, and worse than some, but of a quality of coherence and checking that make it stand out among those on whale.to and multiply copied on other sites, appear to have takent eh same view, but they as far as I know lacked the direct dialogue we have here (with 3, or in principle all, anti-vaccinationists, even if one is unsure of their existence a a group) in the preparation of their paper.
Midgley 21:02, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Summary - Editor's response indicates consensus on the lack of balance. Response & edit history indicates editor's agenda is to push POV. The Invisible Anon 23:34, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

_______________

Wolfe and Sharp a POV article with no balance provided here to counter that.

The rapid responses are worth looking at, yes:-
Wolfe and Sharp molly-coddle the egos of the anti-vaccinationists. The anti-vaccinationists are a menace to society 
for if they had their way they would gladly put the greater population at risk of illness, 
disability and death from preventable diseases by eliminating mandated immunizations. 
Wolfe and Sharp do not even begin to slam the anti- vaccinationists inspite of the latter's claims of persecution.
is somewhat forceful...

Summary - Editor's response confirms lack of balance. Response & edit history indicates editor's agenda is to push POV. The Invisible Anon 23:34, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

_______________

Very selective, see all of the responses: History demonstrates that, in fact, the propaganda stems from your side of the debate rather than from that of the antivaccinationists. Has Robert never investigated the history of vaccines? All of the major "epidemic" diseases were just about on their way out long before any serious vaccinations took place and even then the percentages of those vaccinated were miniscule. ...... For the reader's information, all of the old "epidemics" were caused by malthusian-predicted societal outgrowths of food supplies with its subsequent malnutrition. The rats and fleas and bugs are still with us but the "epidemics" are all gone. Robert has been hoodwinked by the germ theory of disease [upon which a criminal industry depends] he joins the ranks of other historical victims of authoritarian propaganda based upon belief systems such as Ptolemy's flat-earth-centered universe. The germ theory of disease is such an incredibly stupid notion! It's like saying that flies cause manure piles and firemen cause fires. Doesn't anyone ever wonder why the doctors never "catch" all this stuff? In over thirty years of clinical practice I have never seen an infectious hepatitis "caught" by another member of a household and believe me when I say I really looked high and low for one of those. If I found one I would look for a source of the poisoning, not for a germ or a virus. The authors are victims of the germ theory propaganda that has about 85% of the world's "educated" population under its control. Dr Daniel H Duffy Sr http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/325/7361/430#24962 john 20:16, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

One reason to post an excerpt would be to suggest that it was accurate.
Is this posting above an assertion that it is accurate?
"Doesn't anyone ever wonder why the doctors never "catch" all this stuff?"
Is an amazing thing to say. And as accurate as the rest. I believe saying that in front of Dr Ong's family might be dangerous, don't you? http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/08/1049567632880.html

Time Course

No references appear to be cited for any of the statements made here. What is the source please.

Further comment to add later. This is a start. The Invisible Anon 19:51, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Possibly reading the article would be a start, there are a considerable number of refernces. As there are in this talk page.
The time course paragraph is an opening one, laying out some of the material that is covered in detail later in the page. Midgley 20:36, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
the nature of British* Society in the relevant period. Wikipedia provides two articles whcih _might_ be useful, but are less obviously so than one might hope for the purpose of the argument in this section. history Br. society and Hist. Br. Constitution. External references may be more useful. A historian would actually be handy for this... (not unreasonably, since we are to some extent discussing history here). The reputation of this State is of neither laissez-faire nor habitual compulsion - as shown in the Common Law rather than a Legal Code such as the French have. Some of the American Colonies were established by Englishmen and other Brits who would not put up with so much regulation as that, and unless the Founding Fathers had already Foundered by say 1850, one could assume perhaps that the USA was more laissez-faire than the UK? Victorian England established many public health measures - ergo they were not present before in great measure, and their need has been remarked upon in various places.
Is there any alternative suggestion as to the nature of the UK state at the relevant time? References? A better article on it? It is permitted to be of assistance in preparing an article, if someone feels it is less than entirley perfect already... Midgley 21:24, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Thimerosal - Deletion of Entire section from Thimerosal

Clear evidence of an agenda. Editor Midgley deleted an entire section [[12]] from Thimerosal and substituted it on this page.

What a curious description of moving the section.. And curious of course means POV.
The Thiomersal article was left quite a nice article about a chemical, with a link to the material here - which has a body of agrement on teh talk page there - where I suggested the move. Nothing is lost, and this arrangement is at least as good as at least two others. I think the material beliongs together, and I think teh good faith of this anonymous editor User:86.10.231.219 is not something one should assume, in this topic. Midgley 02:16, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

The section about the thimerosal debate has nothing to do with anti-vaccinationists. The thimerosal issue is about banning the use of a neurotoxin (mercury in the form of thimerosal) in vaccines. It is not about banning the use of the vaccines nor is it a crusade of principle but about preventing harm to infants by eliminating the neurotoxin and not about eliminating the vaccines.

There is a substnatial overlap in people and in arguments. That is a large connection. Lets see what other people think. Persuading Leiffen (who has a reputation for acting abruptly when some people might look to see what had been discussed and assess whether other people's opinions might have validity to revert it was not actually an action I would suggest indicates you respect him. (one of Eric Bernes' games people play.)Midgley 02:16, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

This example also demonstrates the POV nature of the definition. The editor has been unable to cite any source for the definition [[13]]. It appears the editor's own creation designed to include any criticism of any kind of any vaccine's safety. This applies even to criticisms or critics irrelevant to the editor's postulated "anti-vaccinationist" movement.

You idiot. There are four anti-vaccinationist orgnaisations of historic record provided by John Scudamore, together with a zillion links to his pages and elsewhere, and a screed yeah long above here by people who may like to argue they are vaccine critics or whatever, but fit it well enough. In addition, a moment on Google shows several whcih nobody has got round to listing here yet. Do you think nobody actually looks at anything real here? Midgley 02:16, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

This is supported by evidence [[14]] to indicate an agenda on this editor's part to ensure any Wikipedia page which contains criticism of vaccines has that criticism deleted and moved to this page, irrespective of relevance or to have the page deleted. The Invisible Anon 00:00, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

The 'Evidence of an agenda' is I think to ensure a well WP:Cited & WP:Verify article, with hard scientific evidence and a careful demolishing of the pseudoscience of anti-vaccination campaigners. Sure there are problems with vaccines: poor batch control on occasions, less than 100% protection given, loss of immunity over time, minor local reactions, reduction in individual benefit when the overall population vaccination level gets high and so provides herd-immunity effects (a somewhat selfish viewpoint which ignores any responsibility to others - whether to those unable to have a vaccine through immunosuppression or who through bad luck do not mount an protective immune response after their own vaccination). All the points just mentioned (and there are many more) are reasonable to consider, however 'Anti-vaccinationists' latch onto any & all specific concerns, amplify them, add in additonal pseudoscience concerns (e.g. that germs don't cause disease), and then wrap the whole lot up in medical/government/money-grabbing-pharmaceuticals conspiracy theories. 'Anti-vaccinationists' try to present themselves as merely expressing reasonable concerns, but in reality have a belief system that means they selectively quote from the literature, ignore the overwhelming evidence that fails to support their worldview and consider anecdotal stories as more worthy than statistical data based on hundreds of thousands. As such they unfortunately stifle any reasonable debate on specific issues. The thimerosal issue was seized upon and became a large part of the anti-vaccination/anti-MMR campaign and so is quite legitimately included here (I accept that mercury's image is no longer as benign as it once was, what with schoolchildren no longer allowed to handle the liquid metal, mercury sphygmomanometers being replaced by alternatives, but that does not automatically mean tiny amounts of a compound of an element are the cause of autism, Crohn's disease etc etc).David Ruben Talk 01:44, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Another Midgeley deletion by merger. The Invisible Anon is correct, thimerosol hasn't any relevence on an anti-vaccine page. Also the attempt to put it here is to make out thimerosol critics are in the same camp as the anti-vaccinists. And since the POV of Midgley and co is to push the idea that anti-vax are mad, then you can see the game. john 09:30, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

John, apart from the "deletion by merger" having made 3 pages out of two, IE an increase of one well-formed page, whcih is not what most of us call deletion, if you feel thimerosal critics are mad you now have a wonderful opportunity to troll(*) over to the thimerosal controversy page and say so. Not here, since Thiomersal now has after some cooperative editing a single paragraph. Which seems about right to me, given the other page.
It is very kind of you to credit me with that page, and I suppose my being bold may have encouraged it, but it was set up by Leifern who has a considerable pre-existing interest in the topic. Concentrate on these things please.Midgley 12:59, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Pseudoscience? That would be an apt description for most of the epidemiological number games being played by government agencies and drug company sponsored studies. The comments above seem directed at vaccine critics, not at the 'anti-vaccinationist' straw man concocted here apparently for the sole purpose of its demolition in effigy. The part about stifling debate would almost be humorous, if only the entirely avoidable autism epidemic wasn't so tragic. These who are stifling debate here are the same ones who also seem to condone the character assassination of serious scientists like Vijendra K. Singh, Andrew Wakefield and Arthur Krigsman, yet play dumb when it comes to the withholding of data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink, the manipulation of the epidemiological data from Europe and Japan, and the shunting of research funds away from vaccine injury research. This article has diversion and character assassination written all over it, starting right from the title. This article has little to do with building an encyclopedia, and everything to do with injecting the rigid hierarchical cultural bias of medical orthodoxy into the relatively pristine and egalitarian culture of the Wiki. Almost all of the arguments set forth in the article, apparently to simply deprecate vaccine critics, can actually be applied more readily to the medical establisment itself, because there are plenty of flawed studies that can be pointed out as clear evidence of the rampant conflict of interest problems plaguing the research published in what were once prestigious medical journals. In contrast, the solid scientific evidence from small clinical studies, as well as the other compelling evidence including reports that autism is virtually non-existent in unvaccinated populations, provide hard examples of research areas of interest to vaccine critics that could be discussed rationally, if only all the red herrings --starting with the basic premise of this article-- were removed from the debate. It would be nice if subjects like the role of the immune system in neurodevelopment could be discussed with the learned representatives of the medical profession here who, instead, seem to spend most of their time deleting anything that even hints at questioning their authority. If any one of the medical professionals around the Wiki has expertise about the enteric nervous system, for example, it would be nice to discuss with them how vaccines affect the 'gut brain'. It would be nice to be able to walk into places like the M.I.N.D. Institute and find literature about dietary advice for children on the autistic spectrum, rather than being told that science on the matter was, a couple years ago, too uncertain and too controversial to warrant distribution of such publications. Simply put, in terms of psychology, what the defenders of medical orthodoxy are doing, with this article in particular and throughout the Wiki's medical articles in general, equates more readily with projection of their very own scientific shortcomings, rather than rational debate. Efforts to penetrate straw man arguments with serious discussion usually seem to backfire, eliciting little more than mockery, taunting and baiting. Rather than simply deleting the outright attacks on vaccine critics featured in this article (the same way wholesale deletions have been made by defenders of medical orthodoxy), plenty of opportunity was allowed for toning down the pov, before this article eventually was put up for AfD. In contrast, the vaccine critics article, a title that would obviously be much more appropriate for the topic at hand, was shot down by AfD almost immediately, much like the knee jerk deletions that have increasingly plagued many vaccine articles in recent months. Rodney King once said something that seems like it needs to be said again here... Ombudsman 11:13, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Great summary of this page Ombudsman. Even the title anti-vaccinationists grates and looks to have been a recent invention of vaccinators. Anti-vaccinists is better, and was used in the past. The whole aim is to make another page along the lines of Conspiracism, ie wackos, anyone anti-vaccine is by definition anti-science etc, so paranoid, mad etc. John Stauber spotlights the game: "The first step in his strategy is to isolate and marginalize the radicals. They're the ones who see the inherent structural problems that need remedying if indeed a particular change is to occur. To isolate them, PR firms will try to create a perception in the public mind that people advocating fundamental solutions are terrorists, extremists, fearmongers, outsiders, communists, or whatever." They didn't want the better term vaccine critics as they couldn't have played this game, and it keeps out 90% of the vaccine critics, as no vaccine critic wants to be labelled anti-vaccine (and you can see why when you come to Midgley's page). The section on Donegan is pure POV, and sums up the page. I need a Midgley translator, by the way. john 12:02, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Are those assertions against vaccination and vaccinators that are common ground among "critics of multiple things about many vaccinations but not absolutely all grounds against all vaccinations per se" or in short a-v and which you know and want to put in the talk page but don't wnat to put in the article? Or something else Midgley 12:59, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
If you can put that in plain English then I can think about a reply john 13:53, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
The gut brain is probably what I call the control system of the gut - which is busy enough that I don't want to run SETI on mine, but if Ombudsman actually looked at what people do he'd have found the article I wrote at http://ganfyd.org/index.php?title=Young_women_with_a_sluggish_bowel
The immune system in the gut is interesting,but not the subject of any contribution to this page, no more than is the fractal sequential distributed networked neural control of the gut, or the inter-related humoural control of digestion.

Moving on

Can we archive Thimerosal then? This one of the 580 Golgle hits Leifern didn't find is rather interesting... earlier than I thought. http://www.nicd.ac.za/pubs/press/vaccination.htm Earlier than any of the other contributiors thought I guess, or one of them would have mentioned dates, being colalborative good wikizens. Midgley 04:03, 3 February 2006 (UTC) Midgley 04:03, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

NPOV tag reversion war: a suggestion

Ombudsman prefers to put one tag on the whole article, but i wonder if anyone might consider the possibility that as many as a single section or line of the article - even one of the cells of the table containing material provided by john, tidied by me for layout, and listed as an assertion by some people against vaccination is not factually incorrect to describe as being an assertion made.... if so then putting the tags in all other sections would be a possibility... and we could then tackle them one at a time instead of taking one off and on. I don't think ombudsman is actually criticising the article, i think he is criticising someone who may not even exist, but that is another matter from process here. Midgley 13:34, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

There are too many of the totally disputed tags! What is needed is smaller tag for the individual items! Andrew73 20:00, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
I may be accused of trying to hide the disputes? I don't know all the tags yet. Midgley 21:13, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Religion

Currently in news media religious spokesmen are often brought on to comment on new developments, and it is usually possible to find one for, and one against (albeit one may be weird). I surmise that this has not changed greatly over a few centuries.

was vaccination different from potatoes?

By illustration of the introduction of a new thing, in the useful WP article potato we see

Potato plant
Initially the food was treated by distrust, and was believed to be unhealthy and even un-Christian. 
This prevented widespread acceptance for a period,

But now of course we know that bits of potato are a vital component of a Spanish omelette and various tapas, and very nice they are to.

So:-

  • are the intial responses quoted different for vaccination than for anything else?
  • are they imbalanced, in that on the stage at a meeting woudl be two men in dog collars, one for and one against, and certain literature only records that one was present.

In the absence of contemporary sermons or Papal Bulls it would seem the situation at least needs to read "the Catholic church regards vaccination as a proper medical procedure, although at its introduction at least one priest had doubts." (Which leads on to who he was, what his doubts were, when they changed, and why".

There are far too many flavours of Protestants to handle, but it is quite clear [15] that the Muslim and Jewish religious view is in favour of immunisation as of other medical activity - although there may be areligious element to the fuss in Kano with Polio. (Shall we concentrate the assertion or hyperbole or metaphor that vaccination is a religion practiced by doctors into a section here as well or just let it sink quietly?)

For the life of me I can't see how vaccination equates with potatoes. Potatoes did more than vaccination to reduce disease, but that isn't difficult as vaccination did nothing. john 13:52, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Sounds like a "yes". So in what way was the religious response to vacciantion different from that to the potato? Midgley 00:58, 6 February 2006 (UTC)


These are now sub-pages. They are linked as logical sub-pages of more than one main article. Dealing with restricted topics, it may now be appropriate to tighten them up. Midgley 14:37, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Time to rename or split article

It is high time to ascertain whether or not there is a consensus to either rename or split this article, or to keep this article (which may infer an assumption that it is brought up to npov standards and pared down for manageability). Presently, the content of the article is quite ambiguous, encompassing the entire gamut between anti-vax and vax critics subject areas. There are several comments over on the article's AfD supporting the renaming proposal. Ombudsman 04:15, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

There are several not supporting renaming, and there are several opposing it. The Earth is round and the sky is blue. We may manage to agree on the latter proposition, provided it has no relevance to vaccination but in discussing the former the immediate response to Ombudsman's selective presentation of easily discernible fact is a weary one. Midgley 12:20, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

split: Unsalvageable in its current form; move most of what is salvageable into vaccine critics. Ombudsman 04:15, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

An article called vaccine critics previously existed. It was written from a POV, found unsalvageable, and deleted. The POV was not the one that informs the initial writing of this article, which is not quite the same subject at present. Who wrote and contributed to the deleted article?
As I understand WP policy, as discussed on this page above, plurals are deprecated. Mutating Vaccine_critics to Vaccine_critic produces a name that is unsatisfactory since there are at least three of them ... here. Vaccine_criticism would be possible, but criticism is in my book, producing a balanced view of the whole of an effort as was the brief inter alia of the ROyal COmmission in mid-nineteenth century, and probably by the Royal COllege of Physicians around that time in material as yet not bound into this nascent article, and alas, the anti-vaccinationists to hand and referred to herein.
GIven this is urging to do something already known (and I misdoubt remembered by Ombudsman) as well as deprecated, I find it hard to see it as argument for coperation and easier to see it as argument from a conclusion rather than toward one and intended to impede other people working together on this large and diffuse article. In due coruse elements of it should split off - I have started a sub-page on Swabi for instance...
Looking at the AFD, the consensus at the moment is to keep the article with no renaming/splitting or other forms of unnecessary action you seem to be suggesting. There is nothing ambiguous about the content. Very few vax critics are not also anti-vax; I challenge you to give a good example. T@lk 05:06, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I would favor splitting, actually - the article is simply enormous. Every section in the article seems to have sufficient information to stand alone an as article, and I'd like to see us achieve that. (the way was done with Thimerosal, but for the material that's currently here) Michael Ralston 03:14, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
You should NOT be conducting a seperate vote while the AFD is in progress. This is disruptive. I am also very weary of your repeated attempts to put the {{totallydisputed}} tag on the article despite not replying to Midgley's elaborate replies above. JFW | T@lk 05:06, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Your repeated removal of the tag despite the egregious pov of the article is entirely unwarranted, and lacking evidence that the concerns have been addressed thoroughly through npov edits, the removals can reasonably be viewed as vandalism. Regardless of Midgley's replies, it has been clearly pointed out that, instead, the article itself has only grown worse. Ombudsman 05:49, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Even if there is a difference between vaccine critics and anti-vaccinationists, there is strong and incontrovertible evidence that opponents to vaccination would oppose any form of vaccination, plus said opponents have organised themselves into organisations that defend these views in the public discourse. To suggest that these are mere "vaccine critics" is a gross and I dare say dishonest misrepresentation. JFW | T@lk 05:08, 5 February 2006 (UTC)


This proposal has been undertaken in good faith. If there is an applicable policy clearly stating that discussion of a split or new name for an article should be delayed until after an AfD, then please feel free to remove this proposal until that matter is settled. While you have been quite prolific in posting comments defending this article, you might find that it is easier to collaborate and elicit constructive dialogue if you would be kind enough to tone down your rhetoric. Ombudsman 05:49, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Please review Wikipedia:Vandalism before accusing anyone of such. You claim there is "egregious pov", as you repeatedly state, yet you have not found the time or the inclination to address this pov by either editing the article or responding to Midgley's points above. That is poor form, but I've learnt to expect this from you. As for the rhetoric, pot meet kettle.
The proposal was obviously not taken in good faith, given your edit history on this article. You are seeking to destroy useful content because you disagree with its basic premise. I have challenged you to provide an example of a vaccine critic who is not an anti-vaccinationist, and I'm eagerly awaiting a serious response. JFW | T@lk 06:12, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Edward Yazbak, National Vaccine Information Center, Neil Miller, I could go on but you should get the point. (John)

Excuse me splitting this comment. John, this is all very obvious to you, but I don't know how to emphasise more strongly than has already been done that it is not obvious to everyone. In particular, you may find it helpful to assume that the doctors here are all very stupid, completely ignorant of everything including history and biology, biased of course having been taught by a hundred generations of biased doctors all conspiring to put a warped world-view forward to their own benefit and the harm of the world, and actually explain some of it.
"Res ipsa loquitor" you may say, waving a hand at one of your collected articles, and yet, the thing does not speak to me in the same tongue in whcih it speaketh unto thou. More important (in our context here in teh encyclopedia - WP) is that the hypothetical future reader drawn not to the row going on at present, but to teh area of calm surrounding a well-crafted concensus NPOV article, will need to be spoken to in a tongue they understnad, and being posessed of only moderate curiosity and time, they will not want to scurry hither and thither excpet to check and dig deeper into the agreed story that in that possible future exists here. Res ipsa loquitor is reptty much outlawed in English court now, not because they are conducted in English rather than Latin and thus a barrister would have to say "the thing speaks for itself" but becuase it was recognised that in fact often a plaintiff having a plaster on his leg did not demonstrate that it was the defendant's fault he fell down those stairs.
I have in fact expended an effort which is beginning to appall me on providing an admittedly as yet imperfect facility in which the material offered, the views presented, the history of a past effort by an assortment of people can be aggregated and after testing for credibility and spelling presented coherently to the world, partly becuase it has not been done yet, and partly becuase I have a fleeting interest in it and partly becuase thre is a possibility that this stuff, the process, the material, the history , the underlying world-view may actually 'matter.
Add what you say is relevant where I created space, please.
What instead I am getting is only adequately described by phrases I shall not commit to this record. Midgley 15:06, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

As I said before anti-vax isn't something anyone wants to be called as it has become synonymous with kook, purely due to medical industry propagada, which is Midgley's agenda obviously. john 09:58, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

John Scudamore is a major author of the synonymity. Midgley 12:20, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Actually, you are the prime mover in that regard, as we can see unfolding every day. No one has given the anti-vaccine term a moments thought until you came along. How fitting that you blame me. john 13:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
This could be an entertaining ding-dong, and a nice illustration of mutation of anti-vax to anti-vaccine and nit-picking on anti-vaccinationist and anti-vaccinist, but John recalled for us all that "in Smallpox days they used to call them anti-vaccinists" in the rfd argument, (note that there was then only one vaccine). I suspect his eclectic collection includes a copy of Webster, which in 1913 ... see the links demanded by another critic and which are now in the top paragraph of the article, on the use of the word (a desperate argument I'd say). TO distill a fact here, I have not been around since 1913, I am in fact young and dynamic, although not so young as to be immature, and the papers refernced discuss the topic - hence its appearance in an encyclopedia. Midgley 14:52, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Time to drop the idea that "anti-vaccinationist" is a neologism. It crops up in the intro to H. Rider Haggard's 1898 polemical novel Dr. Therne ("Some months since the leaders of the Government dismayed their supporters and astonished the world by a sudden surrender to the clamour of the anti-vaccinationists"). Also check out Google Books: 103 references, including other contemporary ones such as George Bernard Shaw's 1906 The Doctor's Dilemma and a 1908 Parliamentary Debate reporting a question on "handcuffing of a convicted anti-vaccinationist". Plenty more references in the The Times. Earliest I can find is Saturday, Aug 25, 1883; pg. 12, Charge Against A Medical Officer (accused of spreading the story that some eczemous children were suffering from syphilis caused by vaccination): "He further asserted that he was not an anti-vaccinationist". Tearlach 04:20, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Not time to "drop the idea that "anti-vaccinationist" is a neologism". See Neologism - "It can also refer to an existing word or phrase which has been assigned a new meaning." which is clearly the case here and "to reshape older terms in newer language form. Neologisms are especially useful in identifying inventions, new phenomena, or old ideas which have taken on a new cultural context." which also seems applicable. See in this context [[16]] the paragraph commencing "This example also demonstrates the POV nature of the definition. The editor has been unable to cite any source for the definition" The Invisible Anon 09:40, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Medical industry propaganda? Is your esteem for us so low that you deny us common sense? JFW | T@lk 11:05, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Is that your answer to my reply to your I have challenged you to provide an example of a vaccine critic who is not an anti-vaccinationist. Being on the outside I can see medical propaganda. john 13:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
If you repeat that one more time I will make sure you get blocked for repeatedly violating WP:NPA (with your mindless "vaccinator", "allopath"), WP:AGF and WP:CIVIL. JFW | T@lk 06:09, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I am unsure as to how medical industry propaganda equates to you personally, unless you take reponsibility for the medical industry as a whole. And this isn't your page, you voted for deletion, so I can't quite see how you can take offence. I know you like to try though. You are happy no doubt to call me a derogatory term anti-vaccinator which on this page is linked to the Nazi party, along with talk of psychosis etc (so you can see what I am getting at). Yet you get your knickers in a twist when I call you a vaccinator or allopath, which are well used terms outside of allopathy. And I haven't called you a vaccinator or allopath recently as I recall. john 10:08, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
john Please see my comments on your talk page [[17]]. You may also find this link of interest in the present context [[18]]
Vaccine critics was a page I started, which is why I find it pretty annoying we have this POV page to us kooks, but we will be proved right www.whale.to/vaccines/mmrchief.html, in time. john 10:08, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
And here [[19]], please correct me if I am wrong, but don't you see what appears to be Midgely calling the brother of the General Counsel of the AAPS a conspiracy theorist and psychotic?
The Invisible Anon 08:51, 6 February 2006 (UTC) & revised 09:28, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Appears so, but I don't think he read that article as it takes apart his argument! Which is typical Midgley, such a vaccine Priest, a believer like Jenner, and hasn't the slightest idea about the opposing argument, as he proved when he asked me if I would agree to vaccination in Africa if the kids were healthy. john 10:08, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Useful paper

The Lancet this week has a paper by Salmon et al on "Compulsory vaccination and conscientious or philosophical exemptions: past, present, and future". I suspect it will be immensely useful in making this article factual and cited. JFW | T@lk 11:10, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Sadly, I cannot access it without paying some humongous sum, so I shall have to trudge to the library once my night shift is over. JFW | T@lk 03:12, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I just stumbled across the Lancet article too, and found it interesting- I wrote a short summary of compulsory vaccination and opposition to it into vaccination, which I figured would benefit from it. More detail from it might indeed be useful for making this a more neutral article as well - it sure needs it. CDC (talk) 19:00, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

A wonderful website!

For the benefit of Americans (I'm English) and others, presumably North Cabotians, the title of this section is in fact ironic.

http://www.reformation.org/

It even has pictures, and conversation (as Alice would have preferred).

Is it mainstream, or not, and is the direction of percolation of material _from_ Tonga to Cabotia, or vice versa, or is there one or more intermediary steps? Midgley 16:02, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Ombudsman's Unfounded Assertions, and contributions

Ombudsman asserts that efforts have been made to tone down POV. I looked to see if Ombudsman had made any, and indeed to see if Ombudsman had actually contributed anything at all to this article.

On 28 Jan His Ommer made an alteration http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anti-vaccinationists&diff=prev&oldid=37065798 to the lead paragraph. He changed groups to "many groups" and narrowed the focus from vaccination to vaccination for herd immunity for public health. None of this was referenced. He also changed the name of the article to one that had previously been deleted and I think may have been one he wrote.

Apart from that, sicne then, the only contribution Ombod has made is to repeatedly insert the same tag, and refuse to offer any focus or improvement on any part of the article. THis is quite clearly his usual behaviour, and is disruptive and dishonest. Midgley 16:56, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps he was hoping for deletion. The best solution would be to revert to vaccine critics, but you couldn't push your POV to such extremes and exclude most vaccine criticism with that terminology. 22:03, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
As I said, there had been an article called that, which was deleted. I do not think John was a member at tht time. Ombudsman was though. Midgley 22:42, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
It was a page I started which is why I find this dogs dinner pretty annoying. john 10:10, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
That was that page. It was called vaccine_critics. It was, you tell us, as does ombudsman, about a different subject or group. It was deleted after due process. It seems to me a wholly unreasonable claim that this page is your work. If you think a page called vaccine critics about a different subject is useful then you are at liberty to actually write it. Then anyone may see what group it is about, and how they differ from other groups. Go forth and as a multiple write it. Complaining about it here suggests disruption ratehr than usful effort. Midgley 13:43, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Link to this article from offsite

There is a thread on mothering.com linking to this article. Might want to keep an eye out for rather POV edits.Geni 04:04, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

You mean apart from Midgley's epic POV? john 10:11, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Anti-Vaccinationist Assertions table

Are you going to fix that table? Or is that part of your POV, to chop the best bit in half. john 10:20, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I think it is your edit that isn't working. If asked politely for help in making an edit to fix it, I am no doubt one of many users who may be inclined to give assistance, more assistance in my case, to you. When we have time. Midgley 13:11, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
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