Deetee said:
Maybe Rolfe is in Birmingham
The vets' warning comes as more than 6,000 vets from all over Europe gather in Birmingham for the world's largest congress devoted to domestic pet welfare.
Yes, I was on my way to Birmingham when John Saxton hit the fan.
I met Badly Shaved Monkey there (with his wife - also a vet - and children). They are staying the whole weekend so you'll have to wait till Monday or whenever he recovers to hear his choice take on this lot (I've already heard it, the air was blue).
On 26th January a letter was published in
Veterinary Times, which in my opinion shouldn't have been published as it stood, because it contained an unwarranted scurrilous attack on all mainstream members of the profession, and although it was partly couched in diplomatic tones, was a senseless attack on sensible existing vaccination policies. I append here the letter Badly Shaved Monkey wrote in reply, which was also published.
I was pleased to see a number of colleagues, in suggesting a review of appropriate veterinary vaccination programmes, come out in support of a well-thought-out vaccination policy.
Sadly, their homoeopathic "qualifications" seem to have been omitted from their signatures. Unaccountably, Mark Elliott's VetMFHom recovered from its bout of shyness to feature in the signature of the letter in his own name in the same issue. Shurely shome mishtake?
I look forward to the homoeopaths' enthusiasm for evidence-based medicine extending to the claimed benefits of magic water. I particularly look forward to a review, based on high-quality data, of strategies using nosodes rather than licensed vaccines for the prevention of disease.
There you have it. Of the 31 signatories to that letter 24 are known homoeopaths, and I suspect the remaining seven are studying homoeopathy. One of them then wrote a personal letter to BSM, taking him roundly to task for casting aspersions on the efficacy of nosodes.
The rest of the profession said "bloody homoeopaths", and got on with looking after their patients. Then yesterday morning John Saxton, one of the maddest of the lot, got on Radio 4's
Today programme, and let fly again, with even more disgraceful remarks. You want to know about John Saxton?
Here is a sample. As well as homoeopathy, he is also into
Radionics, and something called "Pranamonics", which has something to do with Hindu mysticism I believe.
Well, he repeated that his colleagues were scamming the public by injecting pets with harmful substances (vaccines) purely for the money. He then launched into a litany of horror of the incidence of vaccine-caused illness he sees in his practice. Unfortunately Frieda Scott-Park, BSAVA President, who was interviewed in reply, probably wasn't forceful enough in putting the creep where he belongs, and the story grows.
You may be recognising this picture now. Anti-vax homoeopaths attribute all ills that occur in the months following vaccination to the vaccination, and start an anti-vax crusade. We've seen the human versions, now we have the animal version.
The facts are as follows.
There is a genuine problem with cat vaccines (possibly all injections into cats, to some extent), in that a small proportion of patients (about 1 in 25,000 in this country) will develop a malignancy at the injection site. See
here for the best information about this. This ONLY applies to cats, and is something vets are aware of and are discussing with their clients. The question for each individual cat is how necessary is the vaccination (especially the feline leukaemia part, which is suspected as being the highest risk), considering local prevelance of disease and need for vaccination for catteries or shows, compared to that 1 in 25,000 risk.
The rest of the allegations of adverse vaccine effects are so much horsefeathers. People have been flying kites about vaccines causing various things, including haemolytic anaemia, for well over ten years now. None of them has proved to have the slightest substance to it. As someone said to me a couple of days ago, I think the smoke (and mirrors) raised by the anti-vax crowd actually took our attention away from the real fire, which was the feline sarcomas.
Compare the sarcoma situation, where the first suspicions were raised, subsequent enquiries confirmed that there was something going on, and more and more evidence was gathered to support the case, all in a few years. It is now the subject of serious research and a growing body of literature. Certainly nobody is running any sort of cover-up. In contrast, repeated surveys to try to ascertain if there was anything to the other allegations have repeatedly drawn a total blank. Just like the MMR thing. Of course, that doesn't stop lunatics like John Saxton and his mates from dragging up every tentative suspicion from the past 20 years.
Here is the real deal as far as dogs are concerned.
One of the vaccine components (leptospira)
must be given every year because the immunity barely lasts that long. And the disease is out there and it kills dogs, so you can't afford to neglect that one. So you're stuck with the dog turning up and having that injection every year anyway. After that, all we are negotiating about is how many of the other vaccine components are given at the same time.
Now we do know that the other vaccine components probably do last quite a bit longer than a year in many dogs - probably a majority. But there are important considerations here. These vaccines are also only licensed for one year's efficacy, and there is no reliable data to say just how many dogs are immune for longer. Legally, a vet is obliged to follow the data sheet and vaccinate every year, because that's all that has been proven to give satisfactory performance. If a vet wants to vary that, this is "off-label" use and requires long consultations with the owner and probably signed waivers and so on. Given that there is no evidence at all that sticking all components into the dog every year is actually harmful (John Saxton is talking through his backside on that one), then why not? The difference in cost between consultation, health-check examination and leptospirosis booster, and consultation, health-check examination and full booster, isn't huge. This is not a profiteering exercise.
But now, suppose we start to worry about the yearly boosters for the other components. Can we safely omit them from Fido's regimen this year? The only way to tell is to do a blood test to see if he is still immune. Oh great, that's where I come in. That will be £30+VAT thank you very much.
Get real. I like money as much as the next person, but I don't want it that way. Why pay at least £40 (including sampling and handling fees) to find out your dog didn't need maybe £10 worth of vaccine? Or worse, to find he
does need it - and you have to book another consultation appointment to have that done. There's no way this exercise is going to save any pet owner any money.
There is some research being done to see if some of the vaccine components are able to be licensed for two-year or even longer intervals. By the way, that involves doing experiments on dogs, which the vaccine companies were a bit relutant to do in the climate of anti-vivisection, but now they feel they have to do it. If the licence periods are extended, fine. We can skip the blood test bit and simply give the appropriate combination each year, maybe some years only the leptospirosis will need to be given. But since there's no known danger to vaccinating every year, why not just wait till that has come through the system? And even when it has, will owners notice much difference? No, it will still be a trip every year to have an injection of some sort, and no huge price difference.
Until someone can get a whole new longer-acting leptospira vaccine licensed, which won't be tomorrow.
Come on guys, we've seen anti-vax scares before, and we know the sort of person who makes them. What makes you think this one is any different?
Rolfe.
