Either you had bad information or it was before my time in the infectious disease world.
It would have been roughly 10 years ago. Long enough I no longer remember the details.
FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION NATIONAL IMMUNIZATION PROGRAM RECORD OF THE MEETING OF THE ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON IMMUNIZATION PRACTICES June 23-24, 2004 Atlanta Marriott...[/url]
It's a WORD DOC describing the meeting minutes:Considering how many people are on the committee, whether attending this meeting or not, this can hardly be considered a group with heavy ties to the vaccine industry.
There needs to be manufacturer medical experts involved. Not everyone in industry needs to be viewed with total distrust. A healthy dose of skepticism maybe, but not total suspicion.
I agree. I would term my approach of one of healthy skepticism not total suspicion. I think it is reasonable to have industry representation. What I don't find reasonable is to have a large proportion of voting committee members with such ties to the manufactures. When I researched the issue, that was the case, and it was documented by the required filing of conflict of interest waivers for those members of the committee. I feel the reason such waivers are required is so interested members of the public (such as myself) can find out and judge for ourselves whether the potential bias on committee recommendations is a concern. I found it to be of concern and therefore, take that bias into account when making my decisions.
If I am capable of reading a manufacturer's research with appropriate skepticism, these committee members are as well. So to categorize any representatives from the manufacturers on the committee as necessarily suspect would be incorrect.
I'm not sure exactly what you are meaning by suspicion. Suspecting bias due in committee recommendations due to the documented affliations of members is not the same as being suspicious of the individuals committee members compentence, capabilities or motivations. Although many people do take it as such, that is not my concern. If "Groupthink" is a term you are familiar with, that comes closer to expressing my concern.
Of course we all hope GW won't install his cronies there like he has in the FDA. If he does, the infectious disease community will protest very loudly.
I don't know that he hasn't already and I don't know that even if the infectious disease committee were to protest I would hear about it. I don't follow the news closely these days. I find it too depressing and upsetting. At any rate, you've hit apon a serious problem that does concern me.
Besides the Rotovirus vaccine that had unexpected reaction in a very few patients, just which vaccines are you referring to? DPT was the best available until a better one produced later. Live polio vaccine is better for controlling large endemic disease burden and the killed vaccine adequate when only imported cases are occurring. Just what are you calling a "mistake"?
The Rotovirus is one such example. The original HepB vaccine given to infants is another. Just a few months after my son was born, the vaccine which I had refused for him as a newborn was taken off the recommended list for newborns.
Now, on the one hand, I'm glad the committee is willing to acknowledge such errors. On the other hand, such incidents make me disinclined to jump on the bandwagon when a new vaccine is introduced. I think they are both, as least in part, due to the bias of the committee towards vaccinatiosn. At any rate, I now figure that if I wait 5 to 10 years, such problems should surface and be corrected.
Again, absolutely untrue. VAERS is geared toward acute vaccine reactions but that doesn't mean it is the only monitoring of vaccine safety and effectiveness that goes on. There was no reason to address thimerisol until more recently. There is not a single case of a thimerisol caused adverse reaction except allergic reactions, no matter how many people believe there are. And allergic reactions have been addressed quite a ways back.
First of all, I haven't said anything about VAERS. Nor do I want to get into the thimerisol debate although Kelly posted some interesting information on that. My point is that until the thimerisol issue came up, no one was thinking about asking such questions or about checking to see if there were any cummulative effects that occurred as more vaccines were added into the routine childhood vaccination schedule. Personally, I think that the fact that the ACIP committee never considered checking for such problems prior to adding a vaccination to the schedule is another manifestation of the bias that I was concerned about resulting from too many members of the committee have documented conflicts of interests.
I think it's a fascinating but unfortunate occurrence. Why are people suspicious of vaccines? There aren't equivalent movements of anti-antibiotic believers? There are anti-medicine groups suspicious of all modern medicine but there aren't specific targets like vaccines are.
I think you are mistaken here. Ritalin qualifies as one such target.
Given the increase in immigrants in this country from countries with high rates of hepatitis B, I wouldn't wait on that one. Sexual intercourse is not the only place an exposure can occur.
I'm aware of this. What I don't understand is why my son's risk prior to that age would be any higher than my own? Why should I get him vaccinated but not myself?
Not only do I have confidence in the ACIP, they spell out every detail of their decision making rationale for all to evaluate. Why rely on experts when you can look directly at the evidence? You think it's the value assigned to potential risk. In reading your posts, you have not talked about the actual potential risks as much as distrust of vaccine manufacturers, distrust of the ACIP, and distrust of the information provided by those sources. That leads you to perceive a potential risk. The way I assign a value to potential risk is to look at the vaccine research, not at the experts. Get rid of the middleman. Explain to yourself why you wouldn't hesitate to take an antibiotic, (I assume), but you think about vaccines differently.
I don't hesitate to get my child a vaccination when I feel the benefit is worth the risk. The issue is that I don't trust the ACIP the way you do. As far as looking at the research not the experts, I have tried. The problem is, the research is often inconclusive, it's difficult to understand and a full time job to absorb all of it. I simply don't find myself able to research it as completely as I would need to in order not to rely on experts at all.
So, instead, I have to decide which experts I will listen to and how much credence to give them. For the most part, I feel the ACIP is composed of earnest professional competent people who study the issue intently and do their level best. I listen to their recommendations and find out their reasoning for their recommendations. But I also feel that, as a whole, the group has a bias towards vaccinations, so while I listen to them, I also tweak their recommendations a bit against vaccinations to compensate for what I perceive as the bias of that group.
