Booster jabs - fraudulent vets?

[Wrath of the Swarm]

It's not a gross oversimplification, it's simply true.

Far too many pointless (and sometimes very harmful) treatments were once adopted for humans without doing any actual work to see if they were really safe. Try doing some research on "nasal radium" some time when you're feeling bored and content with medical research as it stands.

There might be unforseen consequences of unnecessary action, and unforeseen consequences of lack of action. Doctors (and vets) are only responsible for the unforeseen consequences of what they do, not what they don't do. Ergo, if the safety of a procedure or method hasn't been verified, don't use it!

 

[geni]

That non-rational conservative thinking has been responsible for a great deal of harm over the years. It'll have to go. /QUOTE]

Offering to pay for research are you?

Research is expensive so of course you end up with higher vacine costs. Combien that with the anoying groups of anti vivsection campianers (or whatever those groups call themselves now) which push the costs still higher and you have a lovely situation where you only do reasearch when you need to. Since there appear to be few know risks attached to the vacine giving it every year is cheaper initaly and upsets few people. But if you want to pay for more research I'm fine with that. some of the funding might even end up at my uni (allthough the main area there is working out how to synthersise various posible drugs rather than testing their effectiveness).

 

[Rolfe]

Ergo, if the safety of a procedure or method hasn't been verified, don't use it!

No, just let your patient die. OK, that's an extreme case, but it's perfectly realistic.

Actually, the safety of the procedure in this case has been verified. What is at issue is the necessity for administering the treatment so frequently. We know it's both safe and efficacious to administer it annually. We don't know whether the efficacy would still be satisfactory if we increased this interval to two years.

In fact, by Wrath's own standpoint, we must not jump to moving to a two-year interval, because that has not been proven to be safe.

Rolfe.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

It's not a gross oversimplification, it's simply true.

Far too many pointless (and sometimes very harmful) treatments were once adopted for humans without doing any actual work to see if they were really safe. Try doing some research on "nasal radium" some time when you're feeling bored and content with medical research as it stands.

There might be unforseen consequences of unnecessary action, and unforeseen consequences of lack of action. Doctors (and vets) are only responsible for the unforeseen consequences of what they do, not what they don't do. Ergo, if the safety of a procedure or method hasn't been verified, don't use it!

Give me a break. It's not pointless. Rolfe has provide many points. There are no unforseen consequences because the safety is proven, and the effectiveness (therefore not pointless).

Only quacks, hacks, and homeopaths want to push the "unforseen consequences" lie. The consequences are the effectiveness of the vaccine and dogs not dying of disease.

Saving dogs from having to be tested, saving money, etc. on pointless and unnecessary research is the point of yearly boosters.

The safety is verified. The homeopath quacks are ignoramous hacks.

 

[geni]

Ergo, if the safety of a procedure or method hasn't been verified, don't use it!

At short notice I can't think of any drug which fits this criteria outside of homeopathy.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

At short notice I can't think of any drug which fits this criteria outside of homeopathy.

LOL, yes. Considering homeopathy methods/meds aren't tested, regulated, and proven to be safe or effective.

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

No, just let your patient die.

A condition where it is known that the patient will die without the treatment doesn't fit the conditions I specified. Even in that case, studies demonstrating the effectiveness of a particular technique are necessary before we can settle on one way of doing it.

Actually, the safety of the procedure in this case has been verified.

So animals given multiple vaccinations each year have been compared to animals given vaccinations only when their immunity lapsed, and their health outcomes compared? How was this possible if we don't even know when the vaccines lapse?

 

[Eos of the Eons]

So animals given multiple vaccinations each year have been compared to animals given vaccinations only when their immunity lapsed, and their health outcomes compared? How was this possible if we don't even know when the vaccines lapse?

Dogs who don't get the yearly multiple injections do have a higher rate of death due to the vaccine preventable diseases.

...have to look for Rolfe to get specific numbers. Why put your dog at risk? Why put dogs into multiple years of testing?

 

[geni]

LOL, yes. Considering homeopathy methods/meds aren't tested, regulated, and proven to be safe or effective.

I am perpared to accept that distilled water is safe. Certainly I can't find and mention of it on my COSH sheets.

 

[Rolfe]

Hi Eos, I was wondering where you were. This lot is right up your alley.

I can see that this lot of anti-vax nutcases is likely to be taken up by your more usual opponents, and used to justify their position. I was therefore anxious to point out from the start that this is not a group of responsible vets expressing reasonable concern, but just another classic homoeopathic agenda.

The biggest lie they are telling is that they see many cases of adverse vaccine reactions. They don't. They simply attribute everything that happens in the month or two following vaccination to the vaccination.

Concentrate on the feline sarcomas. That is real. In fact, it shows what happens when there is a real problem. It is identified, verified, characterised, researched and taken very seriously. Contrast that to the baseless allegations about other alleged adverse effects - much as with the MMR business, the more you look, the more there's nothing there.

Frankly, if there was indeed a real possibility that vaccination might cause (for example) haemolytic anaemia, the veterinary haematologists and immunologists would be over it all like a rash. Great research opportunity to get their teeth into. To be honest, I did a small pilot study myself when the first paper made the original allegation. Unfortunately it took me about three hours to prove to my own satisfaction that I'd be wasting my time if I took it any further. Some other people did similar studies and found the same thing and published them. We all went away, because researching a non-happening isn't the passport to scientific advancement.

On the other hand, look at the amount of work being done on "vaccine-associated feline sarcoma". Nice little line of work for the oncologists and immunologists and so on, and they've got their teeth into it. Nobody is even slightly interested in covering anything up, or sparing the drug companies feelings. It's a useful object lesson.

Rolfe.

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

Dogs who don't get the yearly multiple injections do have a higher rate of death due to the vaccine preventable diseases.

It's not a matter of giving vaccinations or not giving vaccinations. It's a matter of giving vaccinations yearly or giving them less frequently.

Do you have any more strawmen you'd like to dump on us? Now would be a good time.

 

[Rolfe]

A condition where it is known that the patient will die without the treatment doesn't fit the conditions I specified.

I don't recall you specifying any conditions. You simply declared that if a procedure wasn't verified as safe, it should not be used. Fortunately, people who actually practise medicine understand about risk/benefit assessments.

So animals given multiple vaccinations each year have been compared to animals given vaccinations only when their immunity lapsed, and their health outcomes compared? How was this possible if we don't even know when the vaccines lapse?

Your assumptions are incorrect. Animals vaccinated yearly were shown to suffer no adverse effects when compared to unvaccinated animals.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

It's not a matter of giving vaccinations or not giving vaccinations.

Yes, actually, it is, when you are considering safety.

If yearly vaccination is associated with no adverse effects, then it is reasonable to assume that vaccinating every two years will not have any adverse effects either.

You are confusing safety with efficacy.

We know that vaccinating every year does not cause adverse effects, and we know that it protects from disease. We assume that vaccinating every two years will not cause adverse effects either, but we do not know for sure if it will protect from disease.

Therefore, the precautionary principle comes down in favour of vaccinating yearly, at least until we can say for sure that vaccinating every two years is efficacious.

Rolfe.

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

And if you don't know about the risks or benefits, you can't perform the assessment.

So: if studies examining whether different vaccination schedules might have different risks haven't been done, and it's known the current method has risks and prices, the decision to stick with the current system and not investigate the others isn't justified.

 

[Rolfe]

So: if studies examining whether different vaccination schedules might have different risks haven't been done, and it's known the current method has risks and prices, the decision to stick with the current system and not investigate the others isn't justified.

I'll go over it again.

The safety (that is the whether or not the vaccine itself causes adverse effects) has been established as satisfactory for yearly administration. Logic dictates that we would not expect the sudden appearance of adverse effects for longer intervals.

The efficacy (that is whether the vaccine protects against disease) has also been established satisfactorily for yearly administration.

Thus we know that yearly administration is both safe and effective - we have a workable system. We have a dose rate, if you like, which is high enough to work and low enough not to cause problems in itself.

However, for the reasons already stated, rigorous testing for efficacy was not carried out for periods longer than a year. We have not established if a lower dose will still be effective, in effect. Need I go over the reasons again?

Its easy to test for the minimum effective dose when it's a simple drug like penicillin or aspirin. Just give less and less until the dose stops working. But for vaccines, what you're talking about is prolonging the period of time experiments have to go on for to establish the efficacy of a longer interval between doses. Not easy, not cheap, and not good for the experimental animals.

So, we have a dose which is effective, and safe, and practical, given that the yearly injection (of leptospira vaccine) is a must anyway. This was believed to be a practical and sensible place to be.

Now, you say this system has "risks and prices". What risks would these be? That a bunch of homoeopathic lunatics will dream up imaginary adverse reactions? News flash. They'll do that anyway, even if you extend the booster interval to five years or more. It's how they are. What prices would these be? A few pounds extra every other year, maybe, for the booster appointment. And consider - if the manufacturers have to spend a lot of money to get the licence period extended to two years, they may have to increase the price of the vaccine so much that this "gain" is wiped out anyway.

Or you could just ask your homoeopath for a nosode, it's a free country. These things aren't tested or validated in any way of course.

Rolfe.

 

[Homeoskeptic]

Do you actually know what a nosode is?

Can you tell me what the difference is between a nosode an autonosode and a sarcode?

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

The safety (that is the whether or not the vaccine itself causes adverse effects) has been established as satisfactory for yearly administration. Logic dictates that we would not expect the sudden appearance of adverse effects for longer intervals.

But the question is whether any adverse effects might be reduced with a different schedule.

I see similar arguments being used when people begin discussing the possibility of early childhood vaccination being linked to later problems. The question is not whether vaccination should be abandoned, but what the costs are and whether they can be reduced.

 

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Homeoskeptic (Naturalhealth)
Well, I hate to disappoint you but yes they are actually.

Also, do you actually know what a nosode is?

Yes, I do. All I can say is, it's just as well they're diluted past Avogadro's number.

We all know your idea of "tested". Or should that be "proved"? "At least all our remedies are rigorously proved", you said. Yes, to your own definition of "proved". Which does not mean "demonstrated to be effective against disease".

Efficacy of parvovirus nosode.

And again.

And a third time.

This one regarding Dictyocaulus nosode is too old to be accessible on-line, though I can provide the reference if you want it.

Taylor et al. (1989) described seven calves treated with a commercially purchased homoeopathic nosode for Dictyocaulus viviparus and seven with a sham solution, both groups then being challenged with virulent larvae. No antibody could be demonstrated in either group, mortality in both groups was high, and there was no difference in the number or morphology of the worms recovered from the groups post mortem. The conclusion was that "There were no discernable differences between the treated and the control groups in their manifestations of resistance to D. viviparus or their clinical responses to the diseases produced."

You can go on asserting that this rubbish works till the cows come home (or alternatively die, as happened in that last experiment), but you have not a shred of evidence worth the name to substantiate your claims.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

But the question is whether any adverse effects might be reduced with a different schedule.

What adverse effects? You can't get less than none.

Rolfe.

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

Vaccination in humans has known risks, and possibly unknown ones. How is it that vaccination in animals has been demonstrated to be totally without side effects?