OK, Mark (and Kirsten). Give an example of one of each of the above from my comment.

Something that is:

1) severely cherry picked
2) irrelevant
3) deceptive
4) wrong
5) misleading

Dr Wakefield is absolutely correct. How many vaccine-injured children do you know personally? Chances are if you don’t mix in special needs circles you won’t know any, and you will think that either children with permanent vaccine-induced brain injury don’t exist or that it happens to the often quoted 1 in a million children. Is this “1 in a million” a scientific fact or did someone dream it up?

“I suggest you take the advice you gave Michelle:
“Try this. Search for evidence that contradicts your beliefs. Attempt to build a case against your self. If you don’t come at this with a preconceived idea. You may be able to find your way to the truth.””

FYI
That is what I was doing visiting this site in the fist place. Before I form an opinion on any subject I like to get information and facts on that subject. And examine competing view points if they exist.

Sadly I find that the information provided on this site and by you to be of low quality, severely cherry picked, Irrelevant, deceptive, wrong and misleading. Not all at once of course.

Quoting Dr Wakefield. Really? Surely not!

“Do you believe that your position is backed by evidence and that indeed the majority of available evidence supports it?”

My position meaning what? Do vaccines cause brain damage? Yes. Everyone accepts that they do. We just don’t know how often vaccine brain injury occurs because no one is bothering to count the number of children affected, or keep a record of them. Compensated vaccine injury cases such as Robert Fletcher, Hannah Poling, Bailey Banks and Benjamin Zellar represent the very tip of the iceberg.

Take the babies and small children with severe local reactions, fevers, high-pitched crying, vomiting, diarrhea, and seizures. Hardly any of these known reactions ever get reported to CARM because most doctors and nurses consider that such common events are normal after vaccination, and don’t cause any permanent effects, despite the lack of evidence that they don’t, they just believe.

Now if we had a proper post-marketing surveillance system, all reactions would be taken seriously, documented and reported, the children would be thoroughly examined at the time of their reaction(s), and they would be checked regularly. As it is, despite severe and serious reactions, most parents continue with the vaccination programme because they believe their doctors when they say vaccines are safe, and they fear that their children will die if they’re not protected because that is what they’ve been led to believe. This often results in more serious reactions, which are also not documented or reported. By the time the parents report that their child appears deaf, has lost language and other skills, is acting strangely and has become remote, a paediatrician or psychologist steps in and labels what he sees as autism. What this label is really describing is brain damage in the absence of a known cause, and because these doctors also believe that “vaccines are safe and don’t cause autism”, they don’t believe that the behaviour they see can be caused by vaccines. All they are doing is simply labelling a group of symptoms. It is time the word autism was removed from our vocabulary.

Does that mean I believe that all cases of ASD are caused by vaccines? No, I don’t. For instance, I would expect children with Fragile X, and children affected by drug abuse during pregnancy to exhibit at least some of these symptoms e.g. FAS children, and children who have suffered abuse. This is why, in my view, it is essential that children with these symptoms are thoroughly medically examined, and aren’t just given a psychiatric label, which is what “Autism” is.

“Do you believe that vaccines should be eliminated from medical care?”

I believe that in time they will be eliminated. As Maurice Hilleman said, “I think that vaccines have to be considered the bargain basement technology for the 20th century.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bmZmHsZtrA

“If the above were to take place and people began to die of vaccine preventable illness. Would you change your position?

You are assuming that I believe that vaccines should be eliminated, and that people will begin to die from diseases for which there are vaccines. Vaccines like any other product should be available to those who believe in them. If people believe that regularly having concoctions of ingredients injected into themselves and their babies protects them, then by all means let them do it. But this procedure shouldn’t be classified as “safe for all children” and endorsed by doctors, as if it is a harmless practice, when some children are brain damaged and others are killed, and our governments protect the manufacturers of these products from liability. Parents need to know that if their child is damaged by vaccines, no one will listen, and no one will help. As Dr Andrew Wakefield has said, “The children are swept under the carpet, and forgotten”.

I think we should find out what was protecting the vast majority of people who did not suffer from these diseases, and if they did, did not die or have any residual effects, and what was wrong with those who did.

The safety of vaccination is based on belief, not science.

No, I’m not going to the trouble of answering your questions when you don’t answer any of mine and won’t admit it when you are clearly wrong.

I suggest you take the advice you gave Michelle:

“Try this. Search for evidence that contradicts your beliefs. Attempt to build a case against your self. If you don’t come at this with a preconceived idea. You may be able to find your way to the truth.”

Do you believe that your position is backed by evidence and that indeed the majority of available evidence supports it?
Do you believe that vaccines should be eliminated from medical care?
If the above were to take place and people began to die of vaccine preventable illness. Would you change your position?

“I am still unshure why your obsession with Thimerosal persists.”

LOL My ‘obsession’ with thimerosal began with your incorrect statement above i.e. 1. “Thiomersal contains ethyl mercury which is naturally expelled form the body rather quickly”.

Burbacher has shown that you are wrong. Why don’t you admit it? Mercury of any kind is highly neurotoxic and shouldn’t be injected into pregnant women and their fetuses, newborns, babies, or children – anyone in fact.

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/819872-overview

“All forms of mercury are toxic to the fetus, but methylmercury most readily passes through the placenta. Even with an asymptomatic patient, maternal exposure can lead to spontaneous abortion or retardation.

“Excretion of inorganic mercury, as with organic mercury, is mostly through feces. Renal excretion of mercury is considered insufficient and attributes to its chronic exposure and accumulation within the brain, causing CNS effects.”

You wrote:

“Thimerosal is not in childhood vaccines. Of the three vaccines subsidised for the 2010 influenza season. None of them contain Thimerosal”

The Chief Advisor for Child and Youth Health Dr Pat Tuohy recommends Vaxigrip for babies 6 months and over. It has thimerosal in the multidose vial.

http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/indexmh/fever-and-convulsions-in-children-receiving-flu-vaccine

“Neither Hannah poling or Baily Banks have autism.”

Yes they do.

Bailey Banks was diagnosed with PDD-NOS (an Autism Spectrum Disorder counted in the autism rate) and Hannah’s father, a neurologist and an assistant professor at the Medical College of Georgia, and Hannah’s mother, a lawyer and a nurse, stated in a letter to the New York Times that their daughter was diagnosed with Autism according to the DSM-IV.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/05/opinion/l05autism.html?_r=1

Steven Novella is right that many people, not just the ones he calls antivaccinationists, were waiting for the rate of autism to drop after what was supposed to be the complete removal of thimerosal from paediatric vaccines so it is not surprising that this was not allowed to happen. Can you imagine the effect a decline in the autism rate would have had? The rate did start to dip in 2004, but has continued to skyrocket ever since.

If you know anything about Autistic Disorder, do you think that Kanner, or any other doctor before this decade began, would have diagnosed these 4 and 5 year old children with autism?

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/117052/autistic_children_dont_like_to_cuddle.html?cat=72
Autistic Children Don’t like to Cuddle” and Other Myths About Autism Spectrum Disorders

“When little Johnny came running up to give me a big hug, five minutes after we first met, I was completely caught off guard. After all, children with Autism don’t like to hug or cuddle. . . or so I believed. When I began working with Autistic children, I thought I knew a little bit about the disorder, and in all fairness, that’s exactly what I knew — a little bit. I had a lot ot learn…..I admit that I was more than a little surprised by how much some of the children I worked with had to say about every topic imaginable — quite similar to other four and five year olds that I have known. I was also pleasantly surprised at how much they wanted my attention; they wanted me to play with them, read books to them, hug them, tickle them, and talk to them. ”

Do you really imagine that this young woman has autism?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV_CcmLlaw4&NR=1&feature=fvwp

“”You have the right to be givin the information you need to know about your health” Doctors are required to provide accurate and truthful information. If this is not done. A complaint can be laid with the health and disability commissioner. Could you really not find this information your self?”

Oh, I’m familiar with the Code of Rights, but what teeth does it have? It’s not like a lying doctor will face losing his medical licence, or imprisonment.

What I asked you was how “verbal exchanges between doctors and their patients are policed, and how doctors who lie are punished”. How does anyone know what transpires in a doctor’s surgery without actual evidence? And when it’s a patient’s word against a doctor’s, whose word do you think will be believed?

Michelle is absolutely correct when she wrote:

“Doctors simply don’t tell parents the truth at all, the only thing they tell parents is that they should vaccinate their child, they don’t warn them about adverse reactions at all except that they may get a slight fever and soreness at the sight, then when the parent rings in desperation because their baby is screaming and back arching they’re told that it is a “normal” reaction and nothing to worry about.”

Doctors don’t have to fully inform parents about the risks of vaccines, their aim is to get as many parents as they can to comply and vaccinate their kids – and they get bonuses for doing so.

“Adverse reactions to vaccines can be severe. As they have been with Hannah Poling and Bailey Banks. No medical intervention is 100% safe. Biology is complicated.”

Go to the top of the class! Now you’re saying you agree with me that the doctors responsible for the information on the Immunisation Advisory Centre website are lying when they state that even when children do have serious and severe vaccine reactions they “have no long term effect”. Do you think they care about the Code of Rights?

I asked you how you know for certain that vaccines have saved literally hundreds of millions of lives, and you said, “I look at the data. Smallpox was responsible for an estimated 300­“500 million deaths during the 20th century alone. And now it’s been eradicated. Then then there is Polio, Influenza, Rhubella, Pertussis, Measles…”

Notice how many times “estimated” appears in that smallpox article you’re quoting from Wiki?

Read this from Dr. William Koch’s book, The Survival Factor in Neoplastic and Viral Diseases:

“In 1918, the US Army forced the vaccination of 3,285,376 natives in the Philippines when no epidemic was brewing, only the sporadic cases of the usual mild nature. Of the vaccinated persons, 47,369 came down with small-pox, and of these 16,477 died. In 1919 the experiment was doubled. 7,670,252 natives were vaccinated. Of these 65,180 victims came down with small-pox, and 44,408 died. In the first experiment, one-third died, and in the second, two-thirds of the infected ones died.”

Now, how many of those millions of smallpox deaths in the 20 century had been among vaccinated persons? Do you know?

You talk about the decline in the prevalence of other diseases, but it seems to be standard practice that shortly after a vaccine has been introduced, the disease is redefined. and the resulting data will be used to show the vaccine’s success.

For instance, before 2000 measles in Africa was clinically defined as a cough and a rash, then they introduced laboratory confirmation of cases, and around 80% of the reported cases that looked clinically like measles but weren’t really measles were discarded.

Then in 2007 the WHO announced, “Measles deaths in Africa plunge by 91%”, and attribute the decline in measles mortality to measles vaccination. (Note that they didn’t mention in that article other strategies they used such as giving measles-infected children Vitamin A).

So how accurate do you think your data are when the WHO changes the rules? When yesterday a child with a cough and a rash had measles, but the same child today doesn’t have measles because of a simple bloodtest.

Oh, you didn’t answer my question: What do you think caused the massive 90%+ decline in the mortality rate from infectious diseases before the introduction of vaccines. I’d like to hear what you have to say about that.

Are you aware that Burbacher had to add that Thimerosal to the vaccines he was using?
One study that stands alone can never provide conclusive data. Replication and verification is always required.
This is why one must interpret the entire literature on any subject.

“Hannah Poling and Bailey Banks”.
Neither Hannah poling or Baily Banks have autism.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=66
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=393

When trying to provide a link between autism and vaccines that doen’t exist. At least try to find cases of actual autism.
Find an excellent summary of this topic here.
http://sciencebasedmedicine.org/reference/vaccines-and-autism/

“Please show me the law that you say exists which states that doctors have to tell parents the truth about vaccines. I’d like to read it to discover how verbal exchanges between doctors and their patients are policed, and how doctors who lie are punished.”

http://www.hdc.org.nz/media/123229/english-leaflet.pdf

“You have the right to be givin the information you need to know about your health”
Doctors are required to provide accurate and truthful information. If this is not done. A complaint can be laid with the health and disability commissioner.
Could you really not find this information your self?

“Adverse reactions to vaccines certainly had a long term effect on Robert Fletcher – a lifetime in fact.”

Yes. Adverse reactions to vaccines can be severe. As they have been with Hannah Poling and Bailey Banks. No medical intervention is 100% safe. Biology is complicated.

“Vaccines have saved literally hundreds of millions of lives.”

How do you know that for certain?

I look at the data. Smallpox was responsible for an estimated 300–500 million deaths during the 20th century alone.
And now it’s been eradicated. Then then there is Polio, Influenza, Rhubella, Pertussis, Measles…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Measles_US_1944-2007_inset.png
http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/pagesmh/4617/$File/2006-20questions.pdf
http://www.medsafe.govt.nz/profs/Datasheet/f/Fluvaxinj.pdf
http://www.medsafe.govt.nz/Profs/Datasheet/v/Vaxigripinj.pdf
http://www.medsafe.govt.nz/profs/Datasheet/I/InfluvacInj1.pdf
http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/indexmh/immunisation-schedule
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=2294

If you still think that “ethyl mercury (from Thimerosal) is naturally expelled from the body rather quickly” you need to read Burbacher (2005).

“There was a much higher proportion of inorganic Hg in the brain of thimerosal monkeys than in the brains of MeHg monkeys (up to 71% vs. 10%).”

“Vaccines do not cause any cases of autism. ”

Yes they do. Google “Hannah Poling” and “Bailey Banks”.

Are you claiming above that doctors don’t inject flu vaccines with thimerosal into pregnant women and babies 6 months and over?

Only in your mind is there no difference between an adult human digesting a tuna sandwich and a fetus or 6 month old baby metabolizing injected vaccine ingredients such as mercury. What do you think happens to the mercury injected into babies and children who’ve inherited the APO-E 4 gene?

Please show me the law that you say exists which states that doctors have to tell parents the truth about vaccines. I’d like to read it to discover how verbal exchanges between doctors and their patients are policed, and how doctors who lie are punished.

IMAC doesn’t claim as you do that “THE VAST MAJORITY of adverse reactions to vaccines are temporary and have no long term effect”, they state that even severe and serious reactions have “no long term effect”. That’s not the same thing, is it?

Adverse reactions to vaccines certainly had a long term effect on Robert Fletcher – a lifetime in fact.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1307095/Family-win-18-year-fight-MMR-damage-son–90-000-payout-concerns-vaccine-surfaced.html

“Vaccines have saved literally hundreds of millions of lives.”

How do you know that for certain? Historical graphs show that death rates from infectious diseases fell by more than 90% before vaccines were introduced. What do you think caused this massive decline?

“Your final comment is a red herring.”
Really? So even tho you take a position that is contrary to decades of research and the world wide consensus of medical opinion. You don’t find it necessary to back up that position with at least the same level of evidence that you demand from me?

“If a vaccine is not scientifically proven safe and effective in the long-term, then it is not worth the potential dangers (e.g. there were a reported 308,077 adverse reactions to the flu vaccine in USA alone”

They have been. Not in any double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Because these are simply not necessary for the type of proof you want. This is evidence by the decades of records available.
Vaccines save lives. That is simply a fact. Just because it requires a tiny understanding of large numbers and statistics to see it makes it no less real.

Michelle,
“By Choosing not to vaccinate your children. You endanger not only their lives. But the lives of others.”

Herd immunity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity
The vaccinated children are protecting your own.

“Children are the sickest they’ve ever been”
No. Every reasonable measure of childhood mortality shows that there has never been more children surviving to adult hood than there are now.

Try this. Search for evidence that contradicts your beliefs. Attempt to build a case against your self. If you don’t come at this with a preconceived idea. You may be able to find your way to the truth.