Anti-Vaxxers and the Taliban

Q: What do antivaxxers such as Lowell Hubbs have in common with the Taliban?

A: They both have a thing against polio vaccinations.

We have recently learned that the Taliban is effectively banning polio vaccinations within the portions of Afghanistan under their control not because they don't believe the vaccines work, and not because they fear that these vaccines are harmful in any way... but because they don't like the US drone strikes that have killed some of the Taliban leaders.

Yes you have read that correctly - the Taliban is very similar to antivaxxers in that they don't seem to care that the polio vaccine can save thousands of lives.  They don't care that the vaccine has been shown to eliminate polio, and they don't care that the vaccine can prevent people from being stricken with the disease. All they care about is pushing a political and/or social agenda.

It says a lot about people who find themselves fighting for the same things as the Taliban - for the most part both of these groups of people are trying to harm Americans, and as sad as it may seem they both seem to have a lot in common.  The difference is one of these groups are a bunch of ignorant souls who haven't mentally advanced beyond the stone age and who tend to fear what they don't understand... the other is the Taliban.

“He that lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas”  ~Benjamin Franklin

CNN: Don't Fall at the Finish Line in the Race to Eradicate Polio

I came across an interesting opinion piece published on the CNN website the other day discussing polio vaccination programs.  Much of the data aligns with what we have seen from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and elsewhere, but it is never a bad idea to get a reminder of what we are up against.

"In less than a quarter century, the number of children paralyzed by polio has dropped spectacularly — from 350,000 cases annually to just 650 last year. In 1988, there were 125 countries where polio was endemic. Today, there are just three - Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan."

Lowell Hubbs would have us believe this is all a coincidence and that the containment of polio in over 120 nations had nothing to do with vaccines.  Not only is that opinion absurd, but it makes you wonder what other explanation he can offer which would make sense.  In a period of just over 20 years, we have been able to control, reduce, and in some cases totally eliminate polio from over 120 nations.  We haven't made significant changes in anything else, but when scientists and doctors enter an area and start vaccination the population.... the rate of polio drops like a stone to the point where it is eventually and entirely eliminated in the younger (vaccinated) population.

I actually wonder if Mr. Hubbs and his anti-vaccination friends have any understanding of disease whatsoever.  Do they honestly feel diseases like polio just disappear without any outside factors?  Do they understand what it means for a disease to be endemic in the first place?  Do they have any explanation for why vaccinated populations no longer have to fear contracting polio and why with widespread vaccination programs in a matter of years the spread of diseases such as polio can all but be eliminated?

You will often hear anti-vaxxers like Mr. Hubbs claims vaccinations don't work or that they cause more harm that good.  Well in this one example alone there are over 349,000 people a year who won't need to suffer from the effects of polio... all due to the polio vaccine.  Does that seem like something causing more harm than good?

The next argument anti-vaxxers like to make is that vaccinations exist only to increase profits of the pharmaceutical companies who manufacture the vaccines.  Apparently the scientists and doctors and researchers who work on these vaccines as well as the healthcare workers who are responsible for distributing and administering the vaccines are all involved in some massive conspiracy to make money... and these thousands upon thousands upon thousands of individuals are all just looking to make a quick buck so they remain quiet.

Really?  There comes a point where I have to assume even a conspiracy theorist such as Mr. Hubbs looks at his own theories and says they are simply too hard to believe, but I won't claim to be an expert on those who appear to be suffering from psychological disorders.

"Last week, health ministers representing nearly 200 countries underscored their strong belief in the effectiveness of vaccines and their importance of protecting all the world’s children by passing two resolutions. One declared polio eradication a worldwide health emergency. The other endorsed a global plan to ensure that all children — not just those in wealthy countries — have access to vaccines that prevent diseases."

I know of no conspiracy theory on the planet which has successfully argued the involvement of hundreds of people from hundreds of different nations.  Are we really to believe people like Mr. Hubbs who claim the polio vaccine simply doesn't work, or should we believe the experts and the data which proves otherwise?

The choice is clear - and it seems nearly 200 health ministers have come to the same conclusion.

Read the full CNN article here:  Opinion: Don't fall at the finish line in the race to eradicate polio

What's The Harm In Avoiding Vaccines?

We often read about anti-vaccinationists who cite a random child they claim is "vaccine damaged" as evidence enough that we shouldn't attempt to vaccinate children.  We also read tear-jerking stories from various individuals about how a child received a vaccination and within days or weeks (or in some cases months) they started running a fever and shortly thereafter started regressing in their development and eventually were diagnosed with autism or some other neurological disorder.

It doesn't seem to matter that there is never any conclusive proof to link vaccines to these disorders because most antivaxers believe personal observation by parents or family members or random bloggers is superior to peer-reviewed science performed by trained physicians, clinicians, researchers, and scientists. 

Essentially the antivaxers would have us believe that the risk of giving a child a vaccination is far, far greater than the risk of going without said vaccination.  This belief essentially ignores all common sense and requires a selective rewrite of history in order for us to ignore the massive outbreaks of polio or smallpox previous generations had to deal with.  We also need to ignore the thousands of children who used to suffer from various diseases such as the measles, pertussis, mumps, rubella and several other preventable diseases along with those who were permanently injured or even those who died after contacting one of these diseases.

Nevertheless antivaxers seem convinced vaccines are dangerous and there is no justification for using them... ever. In fact we often hear antivaxers suggest that the diseases and viruses that vaccines protect against aren't really a problem at all.  We even see stories from antivaxers where they have bragged about having "pox parties" where they expose their children to others who have chicken pox, and in extreme cases there have even been published reports of parents ordering lollipops from infected children which they then give to their own kids in the hopes they will actually contract chicken pox. 

I wish I could make this stuff up, but sadly this is the reality.  Meanwhile, even though we have mountains of evidence and research showing the overwhelming effectiveness of vaccines, and even though we no longer need to worry about diseases such as smallpox or polio specifically because they were eradicated via vaccination programs, we still do not have so much as a single peer-reviewed study which has been able to link vaccines with a neurological disorder such as autism.  Not a single study.

In fact, we know thousands upon thousands of children needlessly suffer from vaccine-preventable diseases each and every year.  In some cases this may be because a child has an existing medical condition which prevents them from receiving a vaccine.  In some cases it could be due to to a vaccine not being effective in that child (no vaccine is 100% effective in every human just as no medication is effective in every human).  However in our current environment, most children who suffer from vaccine-preventable disease seem to be unvaccinated (due to their parents' unwarranted fears and actions based upon emotion rather than scientific fact), or they contract the disease from an unvaccinated child.

In effect, antivaxers promote the idea that vaccines are dangerous not because of what does happen or because of what has happened, but because they fear what might happen.  They ignore the millions of lives saved by vaccines and the millions more who didn't suffer with a preventable disease all due to their illogical belief that the rare condition that they "maybe sort of think might have something to do with vaccines" should take precedence over the numerous diseases we know are prevented by those very same vaccines.

I dare ask - are these people capable of performing basic arithmetic operations?  Even if we were to believe that vaccines might result in autism... even if we ignore accepted science and just assume that the majority of all cases of autism are due to vaccines, have they ever compared the risk of contracting a vaccine-preventable disease to the risk of being diagnosed with autism?  Have they also considered that in many cases those who contract vaccine-preventable diseases can suffer lasting effects which could include permanent disability or even death? 

Keep in mind we are ignoring accepted science here, so we need to ignore the fact that there is no evidence linking vaccines and autism and we need to ignore the fact that even the very strong anti-vaccine Generation Rescue non-scientific and heavily biased phone survey found there is not a statistically significant difference in the rate of autism between unvaccinated children and vaccinated children.  Even with all of this ignored, what is the logic behind the belief that the risk of autism somehow trumps the risk of death?

Surely critical thinking skills or common sense have no place in this discussion.  After all, what possibly could be the harm from NOT vaccinating a child?  Well if you have ever wondered what the answer to that question might be, you may find this website interesting:  What's The Harm. 

Of course it should be noted this website does not serve as a comprehensive list by any means.  The website is not updated on a regular basis and it is only a few select examples of the harm that anti-vaccine views have created, but it does serve as a reminder of why vaccines are so important.

You know what else is important?  The number 57,628.  That is how many cases of polio were reported in 1952.  Of those cases, 3,145 people died and 21,269 were left with varying degrees of paralysis.  All of this occurred in one single year prior to the development of the polio vaccine.

Of course if you are a vaccine conspiracy theorist like Lowell Hubbs, you tend to believe polio just magically disappeared from the planet and that it had nothing to do with vaccines.  In fact Hubbs still believes sugar consumption is to blame for polio, so he isn't exactly an expert on the subject.  But I digress...

Another important number is 400,000.  That is how many Europeans died annually from smallpox towards the end of the 18th century.  It is also estimated that as many as 10% of all children born in Sweden in the 17th century died from smallpox, and the estimates for Russia were one out of every seven children would die from the disease.

1813.  That is the year the US Congress passed a law (aptly named the Vaccine Act of 1813) to ensure the safe and legitimate smallpox vaccine would be available to the public.  By the late 1800s, smallpox was effectively eliminated within the US due to the vaccine.

50,000,000.  That is the estimated number of cases of smallpox that occurred worldwide as recently as the early 1950s.  Look at that number again.... fifty million cases!
 
So how about the number 25.  That seems to be a rather important number as well, because it is the percentage of people who died from smallpox after being infected.  Yes that is 25% or put another way one out of every four people who contracted smallpox would die from the disease.  In the early 1950s, this would be approximately 12,500,000 dead humans each year all because of one preventable disease.  That is greater than the populations of New York City and Los Angeles combined, and it was happening year after year.

Yet we no longer need to fear smallpox because of one thing... a vaccine.  Perhaps the most significant vaccine ever developed by man, and one which has saved millions upon millions of lives, which leads us to yet another important number...

1979.  That is the year that smallpox was certified as being eradicated from our planet.  There have been no cases reported since, and the disease is no longer a threat.  Again, this is all due to the availability of a vaccine.

I could obviously go on with numerous other vaccines and explain how many lives have been saved or how much suffering has been prevented, but the point here is that when a parent believes they are doing their child a favor by not vaccinating them from numerous preventable diseases, they are quite simply ignoring history.  They are gambling with their child's life, and they are ignoring science, logic, and reason. 

Thus even if we ignore the lack of science linking vaccines and autism and even if we give in to emotional pleas and pretend that parents who decide against vaccination are just doing what they feel is best for their children, what does this leave us with?  We know autism isn't a fatal disease so what this tells us is that parents would rather put their children at risk of contracting a fatal disease than even allow the slightest risk that they may suffer with a neurological disorder... surely that can't be right can it?

Are these antivaxer parents really that disconnected from reality?  Are they really unable to pick up a history book and take five minutes to learn about how preventable diseases like polio, smallpox, rubella, measles, varicella, and many many more have led to so many deaths?  Are they just ignorant of history and the science behind vaccines?

I really can't say why some parents decide against vaccines, but when I look at the facts it really comes down to either blatant ignorance, laziness in not bothering to do the research or examine history, or possibly the worst excuse of all... selfishness.  As sad as it may seem, there are a certain number of parents out there that have such a fear against having to raise a developmentally disabled child, that they would rather avoid life saving vaccines in the off chance they might find themselves with a "broken" child. 

Keep this in mind the next time some antivaxer brags about how they refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated - because aside from the fact they are scientifically and historically illiterate, instead of protecting their children, they are effectively telling them they would rather see them dead than allow them to be diagnosed with autism.

Disgusting?  You bet.

BBC News: India 'close to wiping out polio'

Lowell Hubbs doesn't believe that the polio vaccine was the reason that the US no longer has to fear polio, and he has even gone so far as to blame sugar for the polio epidemic.  I've discussed this idiocy in the past (the comments are often the best part), but for whatever reason Hubbs is still convinced that polio vaccines are worthless.

For this reason, I thought he might enjoy a recent article which explains how India is very, very close to finally wiping out polio... all due to a vaccine.

BBC News: India 'close to wiping out polio'

ThinkTwice and Polio: An Idiot's Guide to Critical Thinking

As he seems to do several times a week, Mr. Hubbs attempted to leave a comment on one of the blog posts here with a lot of nonsense mixed in with links to numerous anti-vaccine websites (including his own personal website several times).  One of his latest comments included the following quote:

"See if you can do your next blog page as to an analysis on this document? There sure are allot of references in it! But I won't add confusion to your personal issues and use the word "fully" again, you can just judge for yourself. Do a comparison against your figures? Like I said, the information is and has been all controlled. The polio vaccine: a critical assessment of its arcane history, efficacy, and long-term health-related consequence.  http://www.thinktwice.com/Polio.pdf"  ~Lowell Hubbs

This is yet another example of how Mr. Hubbs doesn't understand the difference between peer-reviewed science and an editorial.  Thus, I'll try to walk him through the process one more time although I'm fairly certain he won't be swayed since antivaxers rarely, if ever, rely upon logic or fact when they argue their points.

First of all notice that the article Mr. Hubbs cites here is hosted on the thinktwice website.  So the first thing we need to know is what that particular website is associated with.  Mr. Hubbs may feel this isn't important, but the point is you wouldn't want to read a "study" or "article" that claims smoking is actually healthy and that it doesn't cause cancer as has been proven in the past only to find that article was written by tobacco researchers who work for Altria nor would you give it credibility when you found it was hosted on the Altria website.

For that reason I examined the thinktwice website and tried to determine who was associated with it.  Unfortunately the "about us" page doesn't list any names or any doctors who are affiliated with the website, so I have no way to know who runs or manages the website nor do I know their qualifications.  They do however list a nice disclaimer that includes such phrases as:

• "Some of the information presented on the Thinktwice Global Vaccine Institute website may conflict with data presented elsewhere. Therefore, readers are encouraged to remain circumspect and use discretion when interpreting contradictory, complex or confusing concepts."
• "Vaccine recommendations change rapidly. Immunization schedules are periodically revised. Therefore, the FDA and CDC -- not the Thinktwice Global Vaccine Institute -- should be consulted for the most up-to-date information regarding who should or should not receive vaccines, at what ages, and the number of doses."
• "For official information about vaccines, contact vaccine manufacturers, the FDA, CDC or World Health Organization"
• "The Thinktwice Global Vaccine Institute does not recommend for or against vaccines. Parents and other concerned people must make this decision on their own. Because the data on this website tends to implicate vaccines (find fault with them), readers are advised to balance the data presented here with data presented by "official" sources of vaccine information, including pharmaceutical companies, the FDA, CDC and World Health Organization."

So aside from the fact that it is glaringly obvious Mr. Hubbs has failed to read the disclaimer, it seems apparent that those behind thinktwice are at least being honest about the fact that they have no credentials and shouldn't be trusted to offer objective advice.  Yet Mr. Hubbs still believes this is a trusted unbiased source worthy of citing?  When will the man learn.
 
So since we can't determine who is behind the website, what else do they have to offer?  Well as is the case with every single antivaxer website I have found thus far, they have an online store which can sell you books and various supplements.  In this  case they are pitching a colon cleansing product called "Herbal Fiberblend" for only $40, or a product called "HumiKleanse" for Heavy Metal Chelation for only $25.  Don't ask for any science to prove either of these products actually work however, because there isn't any.  They are marketed as nutritional supplements and therefore are not required to prove they do anything other than drain your wallet.

Looking further on the website, there are also the obligatory "homeopathy kits" ranging in price from $29.95 all the way up to $99, as well as random pamphlets and books an even PowerPoint presentations ranging from $49 to $99... but hey at least the $99 presentation includes a whopping 32 slides about vaccinations, so that must be a bargain.
 
Let me stop right here and ask if you went to the CDC or FDA website and they had a store where they would sell you books and pro-vaccine pamphlets and slideshows... would you believe for a second that those websites were as reputable and other websites which offer their information for free in an effort to simply educate the public?  If you visited the website of a major pharmaceutical manufacturer and they were selling books for $19.95 that show how their pills can solve all of your ailments and that there are no known side effects... would you actually believe that book is in any way unbiased?  Could you trust the information shown to you was impartial and fair if you knew their goal was to have you pack your online shopping cart with various remedies and books and emergency supplies?  No you wouldn't - because real unbiased science doesn't rely upon pushing the reader towards an online store.  Real science and real unbiased information is only interested in sharing that information, which is why you will never see a reputable website or medical journal offer to sell you some random supplement as a promotional tie-in to the information being disseminated.

So we have clearly established this website is an antivaxer joke with a sole purpose of selling goods to ignorant masses who don't understand science.  Now it is time to move on to the real purpose of this post and that is to review the article Mr. Hubbs feels is so worthy to be cited time and time again.

The first thing you notice about this article is that it is not a research study nor is it peer-reviewed.  That should be red flag number one that you aren't getting the whole picture.  Red flag number two is that there is only one author listed and that author (Neil Miller) is not a doctor, research scientist, or medical researcher.  In fact Mr. Miller's education was an undergrad degree in Psychology and as far as we can tell he has never participated in or added his name to any peer-reviewed science published in a reputable medical journal.

Red flag number three is that this article is "published" not in a true reputable and/or respected medical journal, but rather in Medical Veritas which as we have discussed in the past is not a real medical journal but rather a journal created by the anti-vaccine and anti-mainstream medicine community so they could pack it full of their unsupported and non peer-reviewed opinion pieces and then claim those pieces were "published".

As you actually begin reading the article that Mr. Miller has drafted, you soon realize that he makes numerous accusations but with very little supporting evidence, and the evidence he does use is manipulated to make suggestions or correlations which are unproved.  Case in point, Mr. Miller claims that "Polio cases skyrocketed after diphtheria and pertussis vaccines were introduced" and he shows a chart which lists the number of cases of polio and how from a period in the 1930s to a period in the 1950s the number of cases seemed to be rising exponentially. 

As any good antivaxer would do, Mr. Miller automatically picks a vaccine to arbitrarily blame for this rise, and he doesn't bother to consider any other alternatives.  Unfortunately for Mr. Miller, polio was already on the rise long before the diphtheria and pertussis vaccines were introduced and continued to rise after their introduction even in the portion of the population which wasn't receiving normal vaccinations.  Also, even though vaccinations for diphtheria and pertussis continued to be given throughout the next several decades (and are still given today) polio has not increased as a result.  Miller is guilty of the assumption that correlation equals causation, and either out of ignorance or intellectual dishonesty he fails to recognize or report the glaring holes in his theory.

Miller then goes on to postulate that polio is caused by an "excessive use of sugars and starches" and he uses quotes from the 1940s that suggested nations that used the most amount of sugar also had the highest rates of polio.  He also suggests polio outbreaks were always more severe in the summer months and that was due to children drinking soft drinks, eating ice cream, or ingesting other products which are artificially sweetened.  Mr. Hubbs and other antivaxers have made these claims in the past and as always they are proven to be entirely without merit.

Notice that Miller drills down on one particular state (North Carolina) and shows how their rates of polio dropped after they were warned to decrease the amount of sugar intake.  However Miller offers no data on surrounding states to determine if these numbers were witnessed elsewhere, nor does he provide any evidence beyond personal opinion that sugar intake in North Carolina actually decreased.  He does mention that one ice cream manufacturer shipped one million pounds less in a single week after the sugar-causes-polio claim was first reported, but Miller fails to mention the reason for that drop in shipments nor does he provide any evidence beyond that one week.

The problem is, this was the 1940s and it wasn't like companies had automated shipping lines or replenishment on demand ordering systems.  Besides the fact it wouldn't be feasible for a manufacturer to even be notified that they shouldn't ship massive amounts of ice cream during a single week, there is no background data to support the theory that sugar consumption in general actually decreased.  For all we know this one particular manufacturer (which Miller conveniently fails to mention by name) could have had a plant malfunction or a union strike, or a problem obtaining milk supplies or any other issue which was the root cause for them being unable to produce the same amount of ice cream.

It is quite possible that other manufacturers shipped even more ice cream to North Carolina during this same period, but we aren't given that data.  We are only given the select pieces of data that Miller wishes us to read in order for him to make his scientifically unsupported position.  A true study would not have relied upon such assumption and rather would have examined numerous states, their rates of polio, the amount of sugar consumed per capita from all known sources, and any other underlying factors which could have been to blame for a reduction in the number of cases (such as a unusually wet or humid summer resulting in less human to human contact, improved sanitation resulting in less fecal-oral contamination, more awareness of the disease resulting in less human transmission, or countless other factors).

A true study would have at least examined other potential causes or other factors, but Miller isn't concerned with digging deep, he is only concerned with cherry-picking numbers and statements to support his anti-vaccine viewpoint.  Case in point out of the 50 US states, Miller selects five states that reported more cases of polio after the development and usage of the polio vaccine than they did previously.  Although he cannot directly connect the rise in polio to the vaccine (as he cites no supporting studies which show those that were vaccinated were the same people diagnosed with polio) he does attempt to make a correlation between the two.  I would have loved to examine the figures for the 45 remaining states to determine if they too saw an increase in the number of polio cases after the vaccine was used, but unfortunately Miller doesn't tell us where he obtained his numbers... merely that they were sourced from "U.S. Government statistics".

Does it strike Miller as odd that the five states he has represented (Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut , and Massachusetts) are all in New England and all border one another?  Does it strike Miller as strange that although the vaccine was in widespread use nationwide that he was unable to find any other areas that saw this sudden spike in the number of cases of polio?  Did Miller consider other possibilities for these increases such as an outbreak in New England?  Obviously not.  This is why such an article would never be taken seriously in a true medical journal and why Miller had to resort to publishing this idiocy in Medical Veritas and on his own website.

The fact is, across the entire US there were close to 58,000 cases of polio in 1952, whereas after a massive vaccination campaign we witnessed a massive decrease in cases to around 15,000 in 1956, to just over 3000 in 1960, and in 1965 there only 72.  A few years after that in 1969 there were less than 20 total across the entire US, and by by mid 70s there were only around 8 cases per year.  Does Miller believe this is all due to the US vastly decreasing the amount of sugar intake? 

If that is Miller's suggestion, then he is being incredibly dishonest because sugar consumption in the US has actually increased during that same period from 6,846,000 tons in 1948 to 9,884,000 tons in 1969.  Unlike Miller I would like to disclose that those figures are total across the US and are not broken down per capita nor did I cherry pick just a few select states to make a point.  However it should be noted that per capita sugar consumption rose during this same period.  I know this because I am capable of doing basic math, and according to the US Census Bureau the US population was 146,631,302 in 1948 and 202,676,946 in 1969.  That tells us that American consumption of sugar in 1948 was 93.4lbs of sugar per person, while it was 97.5lbs of sugar per person in 1969.

Note to Mr. Hubbs:  There are 2,000lbs of sugar in a ton, thus 6,846,000 tons of sugar equates to 13,692,000,000 pounds.  If you divide that figure by the total population of 146,631,302 your end result is 93.37706079, or roughly 93.4 pounds of sugar per capita.  Math doesn't lie.

In fact actual consumption per capita continued to rise until the development of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) which started to supplant sugar in many of the foods and drinks Americans consume beginning in the 1970s.  With all of this being said, one might think if Miller's hypothesis is correct we would have seen a massive increase in the cases of polio as sugar consumption rose, but sadly for Miller that wasn't the case and in fact the opposite was true.  That isn't to say more sugar consumption is good for people by any means, but it obviously doesn't relate to the number of nationwide cases of polio either.

Miller then goes on to suggest the vaccine isn't actually helpful and rather it is responsible for causing polio.  He also suggests polio was on a decline on its own before the vaccine was introduced, but there is some clever word play used here.  Miller's actual quote is "from 1923 to 1953, before the Salk killed-virus vaccine was introduced, the polio death rate in the United States and England had already declined on its own". 

Notice the clever diversionary terms "death rate".  Miller isn't saying the cases of polio decreased which is what so many antivaxers don't understand.  The numbers I have shown earlier clearly show the number of cases of polio was still increasing at a rapid pace until after mass vaccination programs took effect.  Miller attempts to confuse people by focusing on the death rate as if that is significant, but once again he is cherry picking figures to support his viewpoint.  Notice that at no time does Miller suggest actual cases of polio were on the decrease before the vaccine, merely that the death rate was on the decrease.  This begs the question on why Miller would think polio by itself was perfectly fine provided it doesn't kill people.  I'm sure all of the paralyzed polio victims who have suffered for decades due to this disease would be happy to hear that Mr. Miller doesn't feel their disease is all that significant since it didn't kill them.

Back to reality, the reason that fewer people (as a percentage of polio cases) were actually dying from polio from the 1920s to the 1950s was not because polio had magically transformed from a deadly disease to merely a harmful disease.  Instead, the decrease in deaths was due in no small part to advancements in treatment of polio such as massage for muscle relaxation, confining patients to bed, increased usage of iron lungs, and perhaps most importantly usage of antibiotics to prevent infections.

As you can see, a little objective analysis of Miller's work easily shows gaping flaws in logic, blatant intellectual dishonestly, misleading conclusions, and even factual errors.  I could easily spend several days identifying the countless significant errors throughout the entire article, but at the end of the day no amount of facts or figures is about to sway a devoted antivaxer.  In their minds Miller is a hero for trying to suggest a vaccine causes more harm that good no matter how much evidence exists to the contrary.

Obviously antivaxers like Mr. Hubbs aren't intelligent enough to examine such a document and identify the gaping flaws and therefore they just accept it at face value.  The most comical aspect of this is the fact that Miller actually makes a reference to the concept of herd immunity (second page of the document under item 5) which is the total inverse of what Mr. Hubbs believes, but it is pretty clear that Mr. Hubbs never actually bothers to read the sources he cites and instead is lucky to make it beyond the title and the abstract.

Is it any wonder why nobody will ever take the antivaxer movement seriously?  I think not.

Polio and Coca-Cola

As I have discussed in the past, Mr. Hubbs doesn’t tend to believe that Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine was very successful.  In fact, Mr. Hubbs actually believes that polio rates actually increased after the release of the vaccine.

To add to this, in the past Mr. Hubbs has claimed polio was actually due to excessive amounts of “refined sugar” being consumed.  Mr. Hubbs (along with one of his anti-vaccination friends) then went on to explain how polio “started the year Coke came out” as if to blame polio upon a soft drink.

Yes as sad as this is, this is actually the theory being pushed by the anti-vaccination clowns.  Here is an exact quote:

“If you look at polio for example the history it started the year Coke came out. It was in the summer & because the kids were all drinking a lot of refined sugar in the hot sun it triggered the polio out break [sic].”

Now to be clear, that quote was not actually posted by Mr. Hubbs, or at the very least it wasn’t posted using the same username he was using at the time.  However, Mr. Hubbs did support the theory and actually added his own “research” in an attempt to back it up even citing his own website as if that adds any credibility to the issue. 

To make matters worse, around 98% of what Mr. Hubbs has used as source material for his idiotic beliefs on this issue stem from none other than whale.to, the known purveyor of all conspiracy theories known to man.  According to Scopie’s Law that automatically puts Mr. Hubbs in the loser bracket for this particular debate, but I’ll humor him for at least a few minutes.

The main issue with this “Coke causes Polio” theory is that it can be disproved in approximately 15 seconds by anyone capable of performing a google search.  The fact is, Coca-Cola was invented in 1885 and was in wide distribution by the 1890s. By 1895 it was sold in every state in the entire nation.

Polio on the other hand was first recognized in 1840.  Major outbreaks occurred in Europe in the 1880s and soon thereafter in the US where it peaked in the 1950s and 60s.  However Coke wasn’t even sold in Europe in the 1880s, so it obviously wasn’t causing polio.  In fact it wasn’t sold in Europe until the 1930s and 40s, so unless Europeans were receiving shipments of Coke from Marty McFly and Doc Brown via a 1985 Delorean that also happens to be a time-machine, it doesn’t seem all that plausible that we can blame the polio outbreaks upon Coca-Cola.

Then again if we have learned anything about polio at all, we know it is a viral disease transmitted from person to person primarily via a fecal oral route, and it has nothing to do with drinking a beverage or refined sugar.

But hey – don’t take my word for it: 

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=16741562

http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/ourcompany/historybottling.html

Mr. Hubbs also believes the polio vaccine itself actually created more polio than it ever cured, and he attributes the eradication of polio based upon – well truth be told he never really explains it other than to claim it cleared on its own.

However the facts are in 1952 there were at least 58,000 cases of polio diagnosed in the US.  By 1957 after a mass immunization campaign, there were only around 5,600 cases of polio diagnosed in the US.  That is over a 90% reduction in less than five years that Mr. Hubbs would chalk up to either a coincidence, or dumb luck (but it should be mentioned that sales of Coca-Cola during this period continued to rise).  By 1964 there were less than 125 diagnosed cases of polio in the entire nation yet Coke was more popular than ever.

Maybe we should blame Pepsi?

So if the idea that Coke causes polio can’t be proven, then Mr. Hubbs has had to move on to other excuses.  In one case Mr. Hubbs has even claimed the decrease in polio was due to the elimination of the usage of the pesticide DDT, but once again we find evidence that Mr. Hubbs apparently has his own version of history since DDT wasn’t outlawed until 1972 (long after the polio epidemics of the 1950s and 60s).

One has to wonder how anyone could claim that the vaccine itself actually increases the rate of polio however because the numbers just don’t add up.  In fact, in 1994 China vaccinated over 80 million children with the polio vaccine and have we heard of massive polio outbreaks in China?  No.  What about the 150 million children from India that have been vaccinated – do we see huge outbreaks of polio in India?  No.

By 1999 more than 450 million children worldwide had been vaccinated.  In that same year the number of reported cases of polio had fallen to around 7,000 from 100,000 just six years earlier, so is this due to a sheer coincidence?  No.

In fact, the areas with the highest rate of polio infections are actually those areas with the lowest amount of vaccinations.  Areas such as Nigeria, the Republic of Sudan, and other African nations that have the lowest rates of vaccination continue to deal with the highest rates of polio even today.

Now please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not suggesting the vaccine is without risks, because as with any chemical or supplement or food or additive, chances are someone will suffer negative consequences.  Just as many people are allergic to peanuts and can suffer serious complications from eating peanut butter up to and including death, similar risks are associated with many medications or vaccinations including the polio vaccine.

The most significant reported issue with the polio vaccine is what is called vaccine-derived poliovirus of VDPV.  VDPV is basically polio which is a result of usage of the oral polio vaccine, and it occurs in approximately 1 person per 2,500,000 vaccine recipients or if you would like a percentage that is approximately 0.00004%.  This tells us the remaining 99.9996% of the population are safe from the polio virus, and has lead the World Health Organization (WHO) to conclude the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks of contracting VDPV.

In fact, VDPV only occurs in under-immunized populations.  In fully-immunized populations people are protected from all strains of polio including VDPV.  So the question is, would it be better to avoid the handful of cases of VDPV by eliminating the vaccine while allowing thousands of children to contract wild poliovirus as a result?  I don’t think so, but anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists like Mr. Hubbs believe that would be an acceptable solution even though oral polio vaccines have actually prevented 6,500,000 polio deaths in the last 10 years alone.

Science Direct: One hundred years of poliovirus pathogenesis

But history and facts aside why should Mr. Hubbs care?  He himself has never suffered from polio and chances are nobody in his direct family has either (probably because they were all vaccinated), so apparently that suggests that Mr. Hubbs simply doesn’t give it any concern.  He doesn’t care about the millions of innocent children who have been spared from contracting polio.  He doesn’t care about the hundreds of thousands who may have died or been paralyzed, and he doesn’t care about all of the suffering, pain, and difficulty experienced by polio victims.  All Mr. Hubbs cares about is himself and trying to convince people that his google research and known conspiracy theorist websites should be more than enough to prove all vaccines are damaging.

Never mind the fact that throughout all of his silly and contrived arguments, Mr. Hubbs has never been able to actually provide any shred of reputable evidence to support his theories of the vaccine resulting in more cases of polio or that polio was caused by Coca-Cola or refined sugar or that DDT was a contributing factor or that the polio vaccine never worked.  This continues to be the nail in the coffin which holds all of Mr. Hubbs’ arguments, because to this day he still doesn’t understand the concept of burden of proof. 

Perhaps one day Mr. Hubbs will actually expand his knowledge to the point we can have rational debate about medical or scientific issues, but it is clear when someone actually thinks polio is merely some vast government or “big pharma” conspiracy in order to harm the populace under the guise of profit, or that a common soft drink actually causes polio – well needless to say that day is not coming anytime soon.

I wonder if Mr. Hubbs thinks Coke Zero causes shingles?

Mr. Hubbs Convoluted Idea of "Research"

As is often the case with conspiracy theorists, Mr. Hubbs believes he has a superior knowledge of science, medical issues, vaccines, and healthcare in general.  He believes anyone who doesn't agree with him or share the same viewpoint is somehow ignorant or being manipulated by the CDC, FDA, AMA, or "big pharma".  Mr. Hubbs commonly refers to Doctors and Researchers (or anyone who cites scientific evidence to support a claim) as "sheeple" and he believes his vast amount of time spent on the Internet somehow makes him an expert on vaccinations and medicine (among other things such as hacking and Apollo Moon landings).

Case in point, Mr. Hubbs sent an email which included the following passage:

Go review the information! I can explain it very easily, but I am not spending any more time with this today. Its all there. I have done thousands of hours of research and reading. I can tell you the real facts are all there. If you aren't willing to research it when it is right in front of you; then simply don't trash it. Only you can learn the truth; if you want to; I am not going to tutor and baby sit you. You clearly have no intention to want to know the real facts anyway.   ~Lowell Hubbs

This is a prime example of how Mr. Hubbs shows us that his idea of "research" involves sitting in front of a computer and reading various blogs or websites from anti-vaccination drones or accepting unsubstantiated statements from self-proclaimed experts who claim they can cure autism or have a 100% success rate curing cancer, but who are never able to prove their claims with reputable scientific studies.

The reality is, true medical research and knowledge is not gained by parroting statements of others (which may or may not even be based upon fact).  True research is done by those in the field and in the lab who are working with these issues as a career rather than a hobby.  If and when a breakthrough is made or a discovery is reached, these experts don't run out and blog about it or make bold claims to the public, because they know no outcome is considered proven science until it can be fully and accuarately replicated.

This is why the scientific community relies so heavily upon peer-reviewed science.  Anyone can make a claim, and anymore can claim they are able to prove such a claim, but fortunately for modern academia it isn't acceptable to merely take someone's word for it.  When it comes to matters of science and matters of fact, the conclusions and outcomes of studies need to be examined, verified, challenged, and yes authenticated.  Only when facts are double and triple checked, and only when statements and theories are examined by one's peers and validated to be accurate can we accept them as fact.

However in the mind of Mr. Hubbs, fact doesn't require such scrutiny.  It is more than sufficient to read a blog or a website and the statements of a profitteering alternative medicine practitioner and accept what they say at face value.  Mr. Hubbs doesn't have the critical thinking ability nor the scientific background to understand that this is not how science works, but that doesn't stop him from pretending what some of these people say is factual.

Rather than attempt to prove any of these statements or hypothesis, the anti-vaccination types fall back upon that old tired line that they are unable to publish their findings because they wouldn't be accepted in any medical journal.  Mr. Hubbs himself often repeats this excuse when pressed for evidence and he attempts to make claims about the flow of scientific information is controlled by "big pharma" or that the AMA et al would never allow such studies to be published because it would harm industry profits.

Granted when informed that there are hundreds of different scholarly journals published around the globe (many if not most of which are out of the reach of the AMA) and thousands upon thousands of studies published each and every year, Mr. Hubbs keeps finding excuses as to why none of these anti-vaccination "experts" have ever been able to prove any of their findings or publish any of their research in a true peer-reviewed journal.

For Mr. Hubbs it all comes down to money.  He claims there is no money to be made by a natural cure and therefore there is no funding to publish a study which would explain it.  However as I have discussed in the past, this quite simply is not true as there are many research grants available for the independent researcher who wishes to find a cure or new treatment for a disease.

Perhaps one of the greatest medical advancements in the past 100 years comes to us from Dr. Jonas Salk who provided us with the world's first polio vaccine.  Did Dr. Salk do his research at the behest of a pharmaceutical company in the name of profits?  Did Dr. Salk become a multi-millionaire from the patent to his vaccine?  Did Dr. Salk only license his vaccine to a specific company and charge an outrageous amount for it in order to pad the company bottom line and his own personal bank account?

The answer to these questions are all no, because not only did Dr. Salk not seek to hide his vaccine from the public, he offered it to all with no profit motive.  In fact when famously asked who owns the patent to the vaccine, Salk responded, "No one. Could you patent the sun?".

The point is, we as humans all have a desire to create a better society.  Although greed and money are driving factors for many, those who toil away for decades in a lab don't do so for fame or for wealth... they do so in order to make a difference.  There is no greater honor for a scientist that to discover something which can help eliminate disease among mankind or cure the suffering of others, and knowing they made a difference is worth exponentially more than any amount of material wealth could ever be.

The fact is our society loves a hero, and if there was a man or woman who could cure cancer, or if there was a person who could unlock the keys to the true root cause of autism that person would be not only a hero within the United States, but across the globe.  No amount of profit or greed would ever keep such a secret in the dark, but then again no amount of logic or fact is ever about to convince a conspiracy theorist like Mr. Hubbs that sugar doesn't cause polio and you can't cure cancer with baking soda.