Drug Companies' Control Vaccine Studies Getting Published

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Do Drug Companies Control Medical Journal Vaccine Studies?

In a review of influenza vaccine studies, researchers found that the studies sponsored by industry are treated more favorably by medical journals -- even when the studies are of poor quality.

According to Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), this confirms that drug companies marketing vaccines have undue influence on what gets published in medical journals regarding vaccine safety and effectiveness.

The researchers identified and assessed more than 270 published studies on influenza vaccines, and found no relationship between study quality, publication in prestige journals or their subsequent citation in other articles. Instead, the single most important factor determining where the studies were published or how often they were cited was sponsorship, with those partially or wholly funded by the pharmaceutical industry having higher visibility.


Sources:

British Medical Journal 2009: 338-354

Business Wire February 12, 2009

from mercola.com
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For those of us who are very allergic to mercury compounds, this really sucks. t's been years since I've had a flu shot and a few years ago I really went downhill after getting 2 shots for other inoculations. Why do I have to get seriously affected for months/years, just to get immunized? How many pennies per vaccine would it cost to make mercury free vaccines?

I'm not sure if vaccines caused any of my AS, but it sure makes the symptoms worse when I get shots.

Well that's scary. Thanks for posting that. I've been worried about the power of the psychotropic drug industry for a while now...

Is that actually a real thing? You actually got tested by an allergist and they said you were allergic to mercury compounds?

Mercury is in fact a poison, and people can die from it, but not from an allergic reason.

FYI there's more "mercury" in a tuna sandwich than in a flu shot, and the kind of mercury in fish is more dangerous than the kind of "mercury compound" found in flu vaccines.

I really wouldn't cite NVIC as being especially impartial either.... talk about the pot calling the kettle black. How many pro-vaccine links do you think you're going to find on that site?

The human body can become allergic to pretty much anything, I mean their are people allergic to water so it stands to reason that some people could be allergic to mercury. Which it would really suck to be allergic to mercury cause I love tuna hmmm can I have that tuna sandwich?


Anyways their have been many independent studies done by credible researchers who follow the rules that finds that thimerosal in vaccines doesn't cause autism. What about researchers like Mark and David Geier who manipulated their research data and created a false organization which they ran so they could say their research was being reviews?

Wow, Mage, you make a lot of assumptions...

It's well-documented in my medical records that I'm allergic to thimersol, and has been for years. I can't use the thimersol-preserved contact lens solutions because my eyes will swell up and I'll get itchy. There are a lot of people who are allergic to thimersol and can't get flu shots for that reason. I'm also allergic to other non-transition metals, like Zinc.



Note that I used the word "allergic". That is different than saying I'd had mercury poisoning. If I'd suffered from mercury poisoning, I wouldn't have used the word "allergic".



FYI, there are not different "kinds of mercury". The kind of "mercury" in fish is simply "mercury", since there are not many kinds of an element, unless you're talking about radioactive elements that occur in isotopes. Isotopes of an element have nuclei with the same number of protons (the same atomic number) but different numbers of neutrons. There is only one kind of "mercury".

As far as allergies go, a dangerous compound is simply the one that the person is allergic to. And the degree of dangerousness in an allergic reaction is directly related to the strength of the person's allergic reaction, not something to do with some property of the compound itself. I.e. you can't say peanuts are more dangerous than shellfish, since whether or not the allergic reaction is dangerous depends on the individual's histamine reaction to a particular exposure.

Finally, taking a heavy metal orally is not the same as having it injected intravenously, inhaling it or dripping it into one's eyes. We don't absorb all of the compounds in our digestive tract, particularly metals. In fact, a chelating agent can quite easily block the absorption of heavy metals in our intestines. That is how phytates in soybeans work, which is why some vegetarians that rely too heavily on soy proteins develop mineral deficiencies. So your mercury tuna sandwiches aren't nearly as bad as having mercury injected intramuscularly.



I didn't get the information off NVIC's site but it was an article from an independent newsletter.

ephemerella- wow! You´re back! I haven´t seen you on WP for awhile...I thought maybe you had moved on. Glad to see you back on WP.

Sorry, I have absolutely nothing to contribute to this discussion though, as I don´t know much about vaccines or whether they cause autism or not.

I don't think thimerosal or vaccines cause autism or Asperger Syndrome.

I consider allergic reactions to be things that cause my AS symptoms to get A LOT worse and affect my functioning. My metal allergies seem to really affect my cognitive functioning in ways that are classic AS symptoms.

IMO the "vaccine causing autism" people are just seeing AS symptoms fluctuate in their kids. It's a fact of AS that symptoms come and go. If I am in a place where there are a lot of annoying sensory things going on of a particular nature, I can become disoriented and confused. Experiencing an allergic reaction is really annoying and you can't get away from it.

But since I'm sensitive to the ingredients in cheap vaccines, I'm a little pissed that the drug industry is going through so much trouble to fight the data that vaccines do indeed cause side effects because they don't want to have a little more expensive preservative. Whether or not the vaccines caused some kids' autism, it still affects a kid to have a negative reaction to a questionable cheap preservative in vaccines.

Sorry I really need not type when I am upset, sleepy, hungry, or irritable or all four. Well anything that causes stress can cause your autism symptoms to intensify. Anyways drug companies like all other companies care about money nothing else, however the real problem is not them but the general doctors. Doctors are in my opinion have hearts and want the best for their patients or they have no heart and care only about money.

Ephemerella is very well right. It is irrelevant if vaccines do cause autism. What is relative is the actual side affect and how safe/healthy they can be to young or the old (really though, to anyone). Not just vaccines with thimerosal either, but all vaccines.

I have an article here written by a doctor who believes that mercury can cause autism. However, this doctor isn't anti-vaccine, he suggests we use a safer vaccine approach. If you're interested in his full article, you can read it here: A User-Friendly Vaccination Schedule

The above article is kind of long, but I found it a very worthy read. He has another one on mercury with of course supportive arguments towards mercury causing autism and alzheimers. He also shows a graph that indicates our sources of mercury intake as a whole. Sea food is only 1/3 the amount of vaccines according to this graph. Dental amalgam's are the highest source, with vaccines behind it.

With all the garbage they put in vaccines, it can't be good for the body at ANY age. However, at young or older ages, the body is more vulnerable. Cause of autism in the young isn't the only concern; screwing up their immune system (at a very vital age for its development) by not giving it a chance to actually work is one of them.

Yes, there are honest doctors our there who really do care for people, but it is a fact of life that money is in charge. The honest doctors may also be completely wrong too. After all, medicine is a practice, and practice makes perfect!


One note to Ephemerella. Forget getting flu shots, it is a waste of money, time, and your health. They can't cure the common cold because the common cold is caused by pretty much random viruses that they can't predict. The flu is pretty much the same concept, so how can they effectively immunize you against something they can't predict? From what I understand, they use the previous years flu strain to make the next years flu shot, so you're still vulnerable to the flu anyways. Want to avoid getting sick? Get some vitamin D, eat and drink good, and sleep right.

I didn't say there was more than one kind of mercury, the element. But you were actually referring to Thimerosal when referring to your mercury allergy, a molecule containing mercury atoms, not straight up mercury. Then they're methylmercury which is totally different chemically, and this are the ones you're more likely to find in fish. You can't just lump them all into "mercury" or "mercury compounds". Sodium or chloride by themselves are toxic to humans, but sodium chloride is necessary for you to live. I'm allergic to diflucan which is made up of tons of different elements, iron, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrous, and I can eat tons of different varieties of those elements in various molecules. But it's only that exact combination that is present in diflucan that I'm allergic to.

I totally agree. I've spent the last few months reading biochemistry & medicine. Am treating myself for a lot of issues using nutritional therapy and other lifestyle changes now. There are a lot of antivirals out there that are much more effective than what the drug companies can patent and doctors prescribe, simply because they've been known to man for thousands of years and are unpatentable, common naturally occurring plant cures. A lot of medical research has gone into figuring out how these plant cures work, lately, but we certainly don't hear about it and our doctors don't tell us about it. What doctor is going to write you a prescription for the flu, that reads: eat a lot of garlic, take some olive leaf extract and oil of oregano? But in fact those things are much more effective than known antivirals that are patented. Tamiflu, for example, is not that effective against flu even though our gov't has spent billions stockpiling it in case of a bird flu pandemic.

I read a paper just yesterday that analyzed one of the ways in which garlic is a great antibiotic/antiviral/antifungus natural medicine. A couple of years ago, it was discovered that garlic disrupts how communities of microbes communicate to each other in an infected host. Microbes use something called "quorum sensing" to chemically sense what is going on in their population during an infection and adjust their behavior as a group to exploit their conditions in the host better. Garlic is a "quorum sensing inhibitor" ("QSI"), and the microbes become disjoint and lose their coordination with each other, making the infection less successful. It really is a magical anti-pathogen natural medicine, which probably accounts for its reputation for warding off evil. If some drug company COULD patent garlic, it would be hailed as some miracle drug.

But when's the last time a doctor told you to eat a lot of garlic when you have a flu?

I totally agree with you. I don't need their vaccines and I really don't feel like I want to depend on doctors anymore. I've gotten so much benefit from the nutritional therapies I've started for AS in the past few months, more than I've ever gotten from a doctor's care!

Thank you for your nice comment!

I've been trying to get over some of my resentments and anger at the NT world. I'm still not really healed yet, but I'm feeling better. Been reading health & medicine.

What about study size?

Vaccine companies generally have more money. That means they can get the two thousand subjects they need, while a private university might be able to recruit only fifty.

Bigger studies = more people quoting them. I have a great deal more faith in something that has a lot of subjects.

Additionally, there should be more studies, in general, by the companies who manufacture vaccines, because they are the ones who have to prove to the FDA that their new product is safe. Once it's on the market, any further studies are usually conducted by people doing smaller scale research.

Is it good business practice to sell something that's dangerous? No. Check up on the companies that have in the past sold medication that was later recalled. They all too huge hits to their profits and ended up losing a lot to settling all the court cases--in the long run, it wasn't worth it. Any company that wants to make a profit on medication will logically try as hard as they can to make their products safe.

Can I get the flu from a tuna sandwich?

Well, the paper specifically investigated that question, and found that the drug companies' papers were being published at a higher rate, even in cases where the quality of the study was below that of papers showing that vaccines were linked to autism symptoms. If you reread the opening post, that's what it means when it talks about "quality" of the study -- that's a medical industry term that includes size of the study, statistical methods used, analytical approaches, the inferences and hypothesis testing, and so on.



Yes, but what happens is that there is a lot of information out there about some marginally effective drug, and then real information about how to actually treat a problem is not out there, if the drug company studies dominate the medical journals. For example, a statin might be effective at lowering LDL ("bad") cholesterol by 15 percent in a particular group of people in one study. Well, rice bran tocotrienols (a collection of vitamin E-like nutrients in brown rice) can reduce it by 10%. So eating brown rice instead of white bread and using rice bran oil (popular in Asia but unavailable here), is about as effective as taking a drug with serious muscle-wasting side effects and paying for medication for the rest of your life. When you add up all the other cholesterol-lowering foods out there (and there are dozens in common U.S. supermarkets), it's easy to see that a simple diet shift can replace drugs more effectively and cheaply, when it comes to statins for lowering cholesterol. But doctors if you have a heart attack, doctors might give you a brochure about changing your diet, but they won't "prescribe" a diet for you instead of prescribing statins for you, because that would require that someone do an overwhelming number of multi-million dollar trial that proves that a particular diet will lower cholesterol more than statins. Without that overwhelming record of studies published in medical journals, your doctor can be sued for malpractice for prescribing a diet for you to follow instead of statins for your high cholesterol.

The paper trail in medical journals creates the context in which doctors' treatment is judged competent or malpractice. They can't just do what they know is low cost and effective, without risking their careers, so long as medical journals are filled with drug company studies declaring their drug therapies as conclusive treatments, even if those drugs are expensive, only marginally effective and have bad side effects.

The fact is that statins are less effective in lowering LDL cholesterol than making a few simple dietary changes, and it's MUCH, MUCH less effective than making both diet and exercise changes, and have bad side effects. In fact, the protocol that is supposed to be followed is that the doctor only prescribes statins after attempts to use diet and exercise fail. But no one ever really practices that. They just write the prescriptions instead of trying to persuade their clogged-artery patients to give up their white bread and Cheez Whiz.

All of that drug-company-profiting ill practice is supported and enabled by the body of literature in medical journals being filled with statin-drug-promoting papers and there not being anywhere near an equal number of papers on diet-and-exercise studies where specific diets are proved to be linked to specific blood serum cholesterol numbers.



It's good business practice to sell a product that the consumer doesn't need to live a healthy life. If you can sell someone a prescription that costs $500 a month and create in them the expectation that they will die unless they take it, when all the person has to do is change their unhealthy diet and get some exercise, you have hit a goldmine.

The same is true of the vaccine side of the drug industry. The whole corner of that market is based on the belief that parents can save their childrens' lives with these cheaply made vaccines, when in fact vaccines can be made with better ingredients, instead of known allergens like ethyl mercury (thimerosal) for a preservative. There are other, better ways to inoculate a child, if you must have immunity to, say, measles.

I don't think that vaccines cause AS, but if you have an AS kid, or any kid with potential sensory integration dysfunction, shooting mercury compounds and other known sensorimotor disruptive allergens into them isn't doing the kid a favor. In my opinion, heavy metals allergies can aggravate the kid's AS symptoms for several years and months, and put them in a downward spiral of low functioning during some very important developmental years.

In my opinion, the drug companies making vaccines just want the public to accept the form of their product that is most profitable for them, even if that means that a few kids experience a few years of worsened AS symptoms as their brains are developing.

The whole issue of drug companies dominating the medical science: what is published in journals, what research gets funded, who gets appointed to medical boards, is becoming a hot topic this year.

The British Medical Journal has devoted a lot of space in its editions on the topic of drug company interference with how medical knowledge is being researched and published: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/338/feb05_1/b463#208364

Also, Harvard Medical School is starting a reorganization and making new rules, to try to address the fact that it's more or less staffed and funded by drug industry professionals.

The evidence that the drug companies have been corrupting what is seen as the science of medicine, is a debate that is breaking out in the open this year. The vaccine problem denial is a great example of how the drug industry has been able to create an aura of science around what is really simple denial of obvious problems associated with flawed, cheaply made and preserved products. It benefits the world to have mass produced, cheap vaccines to shoot into our babies to protect them from pathogens. But some people should be able to opt out or opt for better quality vaccines if they have AS in their families. If I have a baby, I won't inject him/her with anything containing traces of sensory-motor-specific toxic allergens unless I can get proof that the kid doesn't have a sensory integration dysfunction like I do, or until I know the kid isn't AS.

The vaccine-autism link deniers are only really fighting against the notion that we need to upgrade the quality of vaccines we use on kids, and/or change the protocols for people who opt to inoculate their kids at a later age? While I don't believe vaccines cause AS, IMO, ethyl mercury can sure screw up babies on the spectrum who are injected with it. And screwing up a baby for a few years while it's forming its speech brain is probably going to negatively impact his/her AS symptoms for life. How many gifted AS geniuses are we turning into AS who can't communicate well enough to share their gifts by disrupting their development at a critical time?

My problem with how drug companies are suppressing and fighting against the notion that there is a link between AS and vaccination is that all they are really fighting against is improving their highly profitable, dirt-cheap vaccines that are taking a toll on AS babies due to contaminants of cheap production.

This is totally true about garlic, I´ve read the same things. (I´ve read it has to be raw garlic, though). Also good antibiotic/antivirals are olive leaf extract and grapefruit seed extract. I notice when I feel like I´m coming down with a cold or a flu, green tea seems to help a lot. (I usually do a fresh orange juice, green tea and lots of sleep, and voila! The cold is gone by morning). I´ve recently read that white tea is even better than green tea, so I bought some of that and I´ve been trying that too.

Whenever I have any kind of illness, I always try the natural remedy first. I just get too many side effects from mainstream medicine; I´m always afraid to try something if I haven´t used it before. Too many bad experiences.