Homeoskeptic said:
O, but yes I do.
Please refresh my memory and explain to me exactly the question that I asked you.
What is a nosode, what is an autonosode and what is a sarcode and what is the difference between them?
Please stop backtracking and just answer this question.
Go on amaze me and demonstrate to me that you know one single thing about homeopathy!! You can't!! O well, don't worry about it too much, I am sure the homeopathic community can do very well without you.
Do you know what NH? I neither know nor care what the detailed definitions are. What they really are is water or sugar pills.
I do care that a friend who is a pathologist at a veterinary college recently PMd a litter of puppies wiped out by haemorrhagic diarrhoea. The pathologist phoned the referring vet to ask about their history, on the assumption that they would obviously have been vaccinated against parvovirus and so they might have have had something new and interesting. So, pathologist says to vet, "When were they vaccinated?". Vet, ".......". Finally vet admits they had the homeopathic nosode for parvo instead of the real vaccine.
Guess what, this is not the first time this has happened.
I know a breeder who deworms puppies with magic water.
Guess what. When these puppies (and their diarrhoea and poor growth) go to new homes and get a proper wormer, the worms fall out of both ends of them.
The anti-vax loons did a survey of vaccine reactions in dogs. It was based on responses to a questionnaire in a magazine asking people if their pets had been ill after a vaccination and what the interval was.
Guess what. They found a peak of illness reported in the 3 months after vaccine.
I tried till I was blue in the face to explain to the idiot who had analysed this survey that if they ask leading questions of a self-selected group they'll get whatever the hell answer they wanted to get in order to make their silly political point.
Guess what. He may have been able to use a spreadsheet but he was the most statistically ignorant person I had ever met (at least until I came across members of the homeopathic community: see sig line)
So now time and money has been spent doing the job properly. The data were released 2 days ago.
Guess what. There is nothing.
"Practice Overview of Canine Health (POOCH): an epidemiological investigation of ill health in dogs
and any temporal association with vaccination
D.S. Edwards, W.E. Henley, E.R. Ely, J.L.N. Wood
Animal Health Trust, Lanwades Park, Kentford, Newmarket, Suffolk CB8 7UU
Following a magazine survey, one anti-vaccination campaign group claimed that ten percent of dogs suffered illness
within three months of vaccination, implying that canine vaccination was responsible for this ill health due to
impairment of the immune system.
An epidemiological investigation, entitled practice overview of canine health (POOCH), was conducted to determine
whether a temporal association between canine vaccination and ill health in dogs exists. The study population
consisted of dogs that had used the services of a veterinary practice within the previous twelve months. Practices
were randomly selected from a national list and individual dogs were randomly selected from the databases of
participating practices.
Postal questionnaires were sent by the veterinary practices, with a practice covering letter, a letter explaining the
study and a reply paid envelope. One questionnaire, with the name of a specific dog, was sent per household. The
questions regarded any signs of ill health in the dog within the two-weeks preceding completion of the questionnaire;
it’s vaccination history and questions about the dog, its household and any flea or worming treatments administered.
Owners who had not responded to the questionnaire after three weeks were sent a reminder card. The last vaccination
dates for participating dogs were also obtained from the practices. The study was designed to have 80% power to
detect a two-fold increase in signs of ill-health for dogs vaccinated within the last three months, compared to dogs
vaccinated prior to this.
The data from completed questionnaires were checked for errors before being recorded in a customised MS Access
database, following which it was examined using standard approaches for categorical data analysis. Multivariable
logistic regression modelling was used to adjust estimates of the effect of recent vaccination on risk of ill-health for
potential confounders. Variables were retained in models if they significantly reduced model deviance (likelihood
ratio ?2 statistic P <0.05). A form of non-linear mixed effects modelling, called generalized logistic regression, was
used to determine whether clustering of illness in dogs occurred at the practice or breed level. Equivalence between
the risks of ill-health amongst dogs vaccinated recently and those not vaccinated recently was tested by use of the
Hauck–Anderson procedure.
Twenty-eight practices participated in the study and 3,966 useable questionnaires were received and entered on to
a computerised database. Over 19% of dogs had signs of ill health within two weeks of questionnaire completion
with the frequency of specific signs of illness reported ranging from 0.5 to 54.5 per 1,000 dogs. The dogs’ ages
ranged from 2 weeks to 23 years (median 6 years, 4 months). Twenty three percent of dogs were recently vaccinated
(<3mo). The percentage of ill health amongst dogs recently vaccinated (<3mo) was 16.4% compared with 18.8% of
dogs that had not received any vaccination for over three months.
Vaccination within the previous three months was not significantly associated with ill-health at the univariable level.
No statistical evidence of clustering at the veterinary practice or breed level was detected in the generalised logistic
regression modelling. Logistic regression modelling indicated that signs of ill health within two weeks of questionnaire
completion significantly increased with age.
Following adjustment for age in multivariable analyses, recent vaccination was not found to be significantly associated
with ill health (P = 0.2) Multivariable analyses adjusted for age also showed that the number of prior vaccinations
was not associated with signs of ill-health. The lack of significant association between recent vaccination or number
of vaccinations and ill-health was not confounded by other variables. Further multivariable analyses found no
significant overall temporal associations between signs of ill-health and recent vaccination within preceding time
intervals of 1 through to 12 months. Analyses using the Hauck–Anderson procedure indicated that recently vaccinated
dogs had similar levels of ill-health to dogs not recently vaccinated. Within the acceptance limits of +/- 5%, recent
vaccinated (<3mo) and non-recent vaccinated groups were equivalent.
The POOCH study was designed to provide the necessary quantitative data with sufficient power to test the
hypothesis that vaccination is temporally associated with canine ill-health. Questionnaire responders were blinded
to the study hypothesis in order to ensure the validity of the study. Health in vaccinated and non-vaccinated animals
was not compared because of the difficulty in identifying a comparable population of non-vaccinated dogs: Veterinary
practices only see small numbers of non-vaccinated dogs and those that are seen are likely to be exposed to
different environmental risk factors than vaccinated dogs, as the decision to vaccinate is likely, for example, to be
influenced by the socio-economic status of the owner. Using other vaccinated dogs as controls and looking for a
temporal association between vaccination and ill-health should have reduced the effect of unmeasured confounders.
The findings of this study do not support the assertion that ten percent of dogs suffer ill-health within three months
of vaccination."
So what have we got. A bunch of homeopathic loons getting onto the anti-vax gravy train based on how many sick animals vaccination causes. Remember, these w*nkers claim that every other patient they see has their invented syndrome of 'vaccinosis'. They publish their assertions based on an old scare story just before the counter-evidence was about to be published.
(Small side point to Wrath. We'll never have the huge datasets to look for the 1 in a million risks that they can detect in man because no one is being paid to collate the data. But, in the end, I can live with 1 in a milion risks to an animal's health being left unidentified)
I'm happy to have a debate about reasonable vaccine regimes, but my Uncle's dog died just before Christmas of Lepto after he had missed 2 booster vaccs. For the other vaccine components, I would want to see resistance to challenge tested not investigation of antibody titres, because these are not the same thing. But how many dead beagles do you want to create trying to prove this for each time-point out to 10 years?
Going to blood tests will cost the clients much more. We've done it for some clients and it greatly increases the costs and they all turn out to need Lepto anyway, so it really is just a debate about the other fractions. We've also recently seen a case of distemper just to prove that these diseases are still out there.
Now NH, you've been told how to win the $1M. Either do it and receive our astonished admiration or quit the pretence of being a doctor. And by the way,
every single instance I have had of any direct or indirect knowledge in the veterinary world of homeopaths, they have either lied about the true outcome and/or misrepresented the disease to the owner, so I am really not very interested in pandering to you and your fantasy world of quackery. We all know why you will not subject yourselves to definitive testing: you know you will fail and your house of cards will crumble.
(Edited to remove worst of frothing rage!)
