The Washington Monthly

Because I just love this argument I have lifted Kevin Drum right out of his blog atThe Washington Monthly and plopped him down here:

"YES, NATIONAL HEALTHCARE REALLY IS THE WAY TO GO....Advocates of universal healthcare frequently claim that European-style national healthcare systems, aside from being fairer, are just more efficient than ours. They provide decent healthcare at a lower cost than the jumbled, pseudo-free market system we have in the United States.

But is it true? Do even relatively mediocre, underfunded national healthcare systems like the one in Britain perform as well as American healthcare? A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reaches a pretty unambiguous conclusion.

The researchers studied health outcomes in both countries and controlled for age by comparing only people aged 55-64. They controlled for race by studying only non-Hispanic whites. They controlled for obesity. They controlled for income. They controlled for education. They controlled for everything they could think of. Here's what they found:

'At every point in the social hierarchy there is more illness in the United States than in England and the differences are really dramatic,' said study co-author Dr. Michael Marmot, an epidemiologist at University College London in England.

....The upper crust in both countries was healthier than middle-class and low-income people in the same country. But richer Americans' health status resembled the health of the low-income British.

The researchers are careful to say that their study doesn't prove that Britain's healthcare system is better than America's — something that would be nearly impossible to demonstrate conclusively with a study like this in any case. But that's not the point. The point is that it's obviously not worse even though the British spend about half as much as we do per capita.

So here's the deal: under the British system, you don't have to worry about which doctors your HMO allows you to see. You don't have to worry about losing coverage if you get laid off. You don't have to worry about being unable to get a new job because you have a pre-existing condition. You don't have to worry about being bankrupted if you contract a serious chronic illness. And large corporations don't have to worry about going out of business because of spiraling healthcare obligations.

And the result of all this? Healthcare that's as good as ours and delivered for about half the cost. Under a national healthcare system, when you get sick, all you have to worry about is getting well. Explain to me again why we're afraid of this?

—Kevin Drum

There. Doesn't that sound right?

Plame game gets interesting!

The Raw Story reports, New Jersey senator calls on CIA director to conduct Plame damage assessment

Take a look at that link. Inside is a letter that was sent by NJ Senator Lautenberg to Porter Goss of CIA requesting a national security damage assessment from the Plame outing. It seems that there is a decent amount of evidence that when Plame was exposed she was working on Iran's efforts to gain Nuclear technology. That truly would be a blow to our security as we are now being led down a path to war with Iran for trying to get nukes...

NEWS OF THE WEIRD

Read this. It's really funny.

Thinktwice link to Lancet

Lancet article linked from Thinktwice

No evidence for measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine-associated inflammatory bowel disease or autism in a 14-year prospective study. (Research Letters) Heikki Peltola; Annamari Patja; Pauli Leinikki; Martti Valle; Irja Davidkin; Mikko Paunio.

Interestingly this article appears in an issue of The Lancet (registration required) in which the Thinktwice website says another article appears, with the opposite premise. I was unable to find this other article as, I might add, I have been unable to find a number of other articles that appear on Thinktwice. I am not sure whether this is oversight or if indeed these articles do not exist. As you can tell from the other entries there are a good number of very genuine articles and studies of side effects of vaccination. It would seen incongruous that a site that supposedly details all of the "many scientific studies that document hazards associated with vaccines..." would include citations that cannot be verified. This does, however, seem to be the case.

Thinktwice link to British Medical Journal

Thinktwice links to British Medical Journal

This is a link to a full text article that documents side effects to MMR. Registration required.

Abstract: Children who receive a combined vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella may be more at risk for developing joint and limb symptoms than those who do not. A survey compared the number of episodes of joint and limb symptoms during the first six weeks after vaccination among 1,846 vaccinated children to the number of such episodes among 1,075 children who were not vaccinated. Of the children who reported pain or discomfort in joints or limbs or swollen joints, 145 (9.1%) were vaccinated, and 73 (5.9%) were not. Twenty-four children in the vaccinated group (1.5%) reported their first episode of joint and limb symptoms, compared with 11 (0.9%) in the unvaccinated group. Girls had the same risk for experiencing episodes of joint and limb symptoms as boys, but more risk for experiencing their first episode. Children younger than five years had a significantly higher risk of experiencing these episodes, compared with older children. Most children experienced mild symptoms, but three children required hospitalization.

Lancet link from Thinktwice.com

A new method for active surveillance of adverse events from diphtheria/tetanus/pertussis and measles/mumps/rubella vaccines. This links to the full text of the article. Registration is required.

Abstract: Linking computer hospital records with vaccination data may be an accurate surveillance method of adverse reactions to common childhood vaccines. The adverse reactions of children under two years old to diphtheria/tetanus/pertussis (DTP) and measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) vaccines were compiled. Fever convulsions were associated with DTP vaccination in infants under one year old and typically occurred after the third vaccination. The chances of hospitalization for 10-month-olds were much higher than for 4-month-old infants. MMR vaccination may have caused idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (decreased blood platelet levels) in 14 children. The risk estimate derived from hospital admissions was five times higher than that from physician-reported cases. Therefore, routine monitoring of vaccine side effects may be advantageous.

The article makes some references to complications of vaccinations, though the thrust is more focused on getting monitoring and information sharing systems in place to keep heathcare providers and suppliers aware of side effects.

Statistics and Graphs

Statistics and Graphs

The WHO has on it's website a series of great graphs and maps showing the decrease of outbreaks of common viral diseases and the concurrent rates of vaccination. There are also monitory system PDF documents available here that are complete with reference bookmarks.

Immunization Studies: Adverse Vaccine Reactions. Thinktwice!

Immunization Studies: Adverse Vaccine Reactions. Thinktwice!

This location seems to have a bunch of citations of actual scientific studies. I have not been able to discern if the studies cited are indeed saying the things that the site's author claims but those that I have verified have at least touched peripherally on the dangers of vaccination. In looking through the abstracts I have noticed articles published in all of the most respected journals including The Lancet, Nature, Journal of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, etc.

Without access to the original journals I cannot vouch for the citations nor talk about what is actually said within them but I get the feeling from the abstracts that there is indeed some very decent information in them.

AIDS Origin Theory: Polio Vaccine? - AIDS Treatment News

AIDS Origin Theory: Polio Vaccine? - AIDS Treatment Newsby John S. James
Published: March 20, 1992
In March 1992 two separate theories have been published suggesting
that AIDS may have been accidentally introduced into humans by live-
virus polio vaccines which may have been contaminated with unknown
monkey viruses. These theories are more plausible than most of the
AIDS-origin ideas which have come along. But they are still
speculative; the evidence only suggests that it is possible that AIDS
started this way, not that it actually did.
Important articles about the polio-vaccine theory have appeared
recently in ROLLING STONE, THE LANCET, and THE HOUSTON POST. Instead of
restating the points they made, this article will provide annotated
references, so that readers who are interested can go to the original
sources.
"The Origin of AIDS," by Tom Curtis, an 8,000-word article in the
March 19, 1992 ROLLING STONE, suggests that an oral polio vaccine used
in over 300,000 people in the Belgian Congo (now Zaire) in the late
1950s may have transmitted an unknown virus which may have been present
in monkey kidney cells in which the polio virus was grown during the
making of the vaccine. Use of this vaccine was apparently discontinued
in 1959, after Albert Sabin, M. D., developer of the polio vaccine in
most widespread use today, reported that an unidentified virus had been
found in it. No known monkey virus resembles HIV-1, but there are
believed to be many unknown monkey viruses; it is possible that a virus
close to HIV-1 exists but has not been discovered.
"Simian Retroviruses, Poliovaccine, and Origin of AIDS," by Walter
S. Kyle, published in THE LANCET, March 7, 1992, suggested that AIDS
might have been transmitted to the gay community in the United States by
use of the Sabin live-virus oral polio vaccine as a treatment for
herpes, before the development of acyclovir. This use was suggested by
A. Trager, in at least two articles published in 1974. The vaccine was
given orally (the same way as when used for prevention of polio, but
apparently in larger doses), once a month for three months only.
Several published letters, in English, German, French, and Hebrew,
discussed this use of the Sabin vaccine.

More here.

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Why Japan stopped using MMR

BBC NEWS
| World | Asia-Pacific
| Why Japan stopped using MMRBy the BBC's Charles Scanlon in Tokyo

Japan's Health Ministry says the withdrawal of the MMR vaccine for children did not cause an increase in deaths from measles.

It followed UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's comments this week in which he cited Japan as an example of the dangers of not having the combined vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella.

There is a huge controversy in the UK, with thousands of parents refusing to let their child have the combined MMR injection over fears that it has links to autism and bowel disorders.

But the medical establishment says such a link does not exist, and that the MMR vaccine is far more effective than having separate injections.

Measles epidemics

Japan stopped using MMR because it was linked to outbreaks of non-viral meningitis and other damaging side-effects. Doctors say there were problems with the vaccine which was of a different type to that used in the UK.

They stopped using the MMR vaccine in 1993 and reverted to three separate injections for measles, mumps and rubella.

Japan's Health Ministry said more than 100 people died from measles over the next six years, while there were no deaths in the UK.

But a spokesman said even more had died from the disease during the period when MMR was being used.

He said the withdrawal of the triple vaccine had had no impact.

Deadly epidemics of measles are far more common in Japan than the UK. The ministry says that is because children are often vaccinated much later.

Japanese officials say they have no record of a connection between MMR and autism.

This looks a bit damning. I am looking into what actual studied this was based upon...