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The Cargo Cult of Business » The Cargo Cult of Disease Control

The Cargo Cult of Disease Control

Published on 15 Aug 2005 at 12:00 pm | No Comments | Trackback
Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Manifest Masquerade, Brain Trust, In Corporations We Trust, Technopolitical, Business and Corporation Related, Health and Safety, Government: Federal, State and Local.

Hopefully, the majority of readers are already familiar with the ongoing controversy over possible permanent child mental impairment from the administration of mercury-laden vaccines. We debated whether this topic was really relevant to the whole cargo cult approach we’re on about, in spite of the importance of the issue virtually demanding as much exposure as possible. But it was the conduct of the various government and private institutions involved in this disgusting imbroglio that tipped the scales. If you’re new to this topic, then be prepared for an eye-opener of what happens when the ability to distinguish between bamboo and aluminum is lost.

 For years, mercury compounds known to be toxic to human tissue have been used in vaccines to prevent spoilage. However, the alarming rise in autism in the past several decades has drawn more and more citizens, government representatives, and advocacy groups to question these mercury compounds (Thimerosal, made by Eli Lilly, being chief among them) as being the likely source of the increasing levels of mental dysfunction we are seeing across larger and larger segments of the child population of the U.S. The response from our governmental agencies entrusted with the well being of our nation’s children has been nothing short of scandalous, as evidenced by this substantive expose from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. via Rolling Stone back in June. If the underhanded dealings at the CDC and its cohorts uncovered by Mr. Kennedy are true then we have a huge problem with the integrity, trustworthiness, and objective scientific rationale of our primary medical institutions like the CDC, the FDA, and the IOM.

What is suprising is that, in spite of ongoing efforts of advocacy groups like SafeMinds to expose this naked and possibly hazardous emperor, and even in spite of the dedicated support and engagement of government representatives like U.S. Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana and U.S. Rep. Dan Weldon of Florida the medical establishment keeps cranking out the same tired rhetoric based on the same skewed sample data (more on what I mean by "skewed" in a moment). In this followup-article, RollingStone notes that their article triggered an allergic reaction in most of the MSM: "What is most striking is the lengths to which major media outlets have gone to disparage the story and to calm public fears — even in the face of the questionable science on the subject."

These are the official party lines of the CDC and FDA. Moreover, over at Slate Arthur Allen takes exception to Mr. Kennedy’s reporting in particular and the public furor in general of this issue. His criticism of advocacy groups for putting passion before diligence may have some amount of truth. But both Allen’s response, and the official responses of the CDC and FDA, do nothing to address the damning evidence uncovered by Mr. Kennedy of the treachery and suppression at the Simpsonwood conference. They just completely ignore it, as if it isn’t there (and no doubt wishing it would just go away). Worse, they not only ignore Verstraeten’s statements at the conference, they have effectively buried by dismissal the earlier studies he cites. Of course this is all utterly unconscionable. I would contend that this active suppression of evidence and inquiry alone constitutes grounds for dismissal and censure of all involved in the Simpsonwood conspiracy, with the possible exception of Mr. Verstraeten. But none of this villainy has anything to do with the proferring of cooked data that is the phenomenon of cargo cult science; I visit it here to specifically point that fact out so that we can move on to the meat of the problem.

Now, above, I have claimed that the data being presented here is skewed. There are many areas in this case in which the CDC, in particular, is culpable of weak scientific method, the ab initio suppression of prior studies being chief among them. But the most evocative case is the issue of the citing of EPA-safe levels of mercury as a viable, robust safety standard for application to vaccine usage. This is completely misleading. The EPA guidelines are for toxicity, which is to say, they are concerned with lethal doses. They in no way, shape, or form attempt to address the issue of neurological damage. Furthermore, all the studies done to date have been short term. By the FDA’s own guidelines, they only assess harmful vaccine effects in a small sample population; their Stage 3 testing is designed to analyze the efficacy of the active anti-viral components in a larger sample population, not preservative side-effects. And, I emphasize it again, none of these studies have in any way been constructed to assess long-term neurological damage. What’s happening here is that the medical establishement, with what appears to me to be full complicity aforethought, is attempting to proffer tangentially related studies in an effort to whitewash any concerns about vaccine mercury toxicity and its long term neurological effects.

And this is what leads our august medical high priesthood to grace these pages. The most striking thing to me about the whole sordid affair is the relentless refusal of the medical establishment to accept and execute an absolutely exhaustive series of objective, public studies into this social, if not medical, crisis. Not only are they trying to sell us plug nickels in place of comprehensive investigation; they’re doing their best to keep the light of day from ever coming to rest on this issue at all. You’ve got your CDC elite, as well as some of the rank-and-file, bemoaning what negative attitudes towards vaccines may come from this. This treatise from the Grey Lady (courtesy Rep. Burton’s web site) indicates the apparent appalled shock of numerous medical personnel: ‘"It doesn’t seem to matter what the studies and the data show," said Ms. Ehresmann, the Minnesota immunization official. "And that’s really scary for us because if science doesn’t count, how do we make decisions? How do we communicate with parents?"’ I think the high-priest mentality is perfectly summed up by Dr. Paul Offit of the CDC, per the Rolling Stone article: "Science," says Offit, "is best left to scientists."

This is where I’m going to hammer on these blackguards. Science, for anyone who has been paying attention since alchemy dropped out of favor around the turn of the 18th century with the rise of Enlightenment rationality, is, at base, a framework for applying critically rational analyses to controlled experiments in how various aspects of the Universe "behave." The key part of this is "critically rational"; science works as science precisely because the methodologies of rationality that it relies upon were, from the very beginning, "open source memes" based solely on the precepts of logical thought.  In short, it’s not having a fancy piece of sheepskin or a ream-long C.V. that makes you a scientist; it’s the method of rational inquiry that you use.  And it’s not like that’s a secret; that’s exactly how we explain "the science thing" to our kids!

So, as you may imagine, as an engineer with a rather extreme rational bent, I take such ducking-and-running-for-cover by an allegedly accomplished "scientist" such as Dr. Offit  at the CDC to be a stinging indictment of the existence of hidden agendas at best, and dirty deeds at worst. First, as you would expect, I’m frankly contemptuous of such claims to elitism in rational thinking. Rigorous mental discipline, not social or professional status, is what confers knowledge of the Universe. Second, if these healthier-than-thou docs are on the up-and-up (in other words, if their science is sound,) then any group of medical researchers will arrive at the same conclusions, because they will be following the same rigorous, objective, analytical procedures.

But that’s not what’s happening here. Instead of objective criteria of assessment, the medical establishment is flinging sticks of bamboo and coconut shells in an effort to get the public to put them back on their exalted thrones and leave science to the scientists. As noted above, they’re even stooping to the level of trying to misapply unrelated data. Ed Thibodeau over at Nonplussed has a pretty good take on this.  For me, these sorts of underhanded shenanigans are the final straw. I don’t need to have my wife’s actuarial background in statistical analysis (though I’ll bet having one of those sure helps ;-) to see that due diligence is not being done on the autism data in question. At the very least, shouldn’t the response of diligent, forthright officials dedicated to acting in the interest of their public trust be something like: "Pending extensive and conclusive investigation, effective immediatley we’re banning all use of mercury in vaccine preparations." But that’s not what we have; even the FDA, the best it seems of a bad lot, is merely recommending that mercury use be discontinued. What we have here is a clear and prevailing effort on the part of the medical establishment to trade off expediency for diligence that stretches back for decades. With, mind you, the well-being of generations of children at stake.

I submit that this is cargo cultism at its worst: the application of fabricated appearances in place of scientific diligence. The NYT article, shall we say, favors by selection the attitude that the growing wave of outraged citizens (such as myself ;-) ) are engaging in "voodoo science." But that’s not what I see here; the FDA bans substances from use in foods all the time that have been shown to cause cancer in rats using questionable procedures. The procedures almost always involve artificially high doses, but that’s considered acceptable because the attendant risk to human life is so great. The whole idea is to err massively on the side of caution.

The CDC and the IOM are not in any way erring on the side of caution (I exempt the FDA only because they are encouraging the discontinuance of mercury usage). Instead, they are gambling the welfare of millions of future generations of children on a set of carefully chosen facts that are, by any rational criteria, not remotely sufficient in their representation of all the factors that need to be taken into account to form a comprehensive study.  The mere corellation of the use of a known deadly toxin in infants (my mind is still boggling at that one) with a commensurate rise in autism rates is sufficient to merit the ban of vaccine mercury use, just to permanently rule it out. You don’t need exhaustive clinical studies before you pull the alarm lever, and with these kind of issues at risk, anyone who waits until several hundred studies are done over many years before enacting a ban is crazy, evil, or both. This is poison we are talking about, people. The behavior of the CDC is hypocrisy and villainy on a grand scale, all the more so because of the entanglements with Big Pharma’s profit margins seen in the Simpsonwood transcripts. We carefully lock up the rat bait and the drain cleaner from our little ones, but we’re going to just casually inject them with mercury toxins several times a year because it costs less money? What madness is this that we’re permitting? And what does it say of us that we’re willing to tolerate in any degree smoke-filled-labs and specious data reporting from agencies charged with objective medical science as a public trust.

And that’s the real naked emperor behind all this. We’ve got a bunch of guys and gals with fancy pieces of paper saying that it’s really OK to inject teeny-tiny amounts of deadly poisons into babies and there will be no ill effects. Even though there are no, as in zero, long-term studies to back that assertion up. Now, I don’t know about you, but as far as my 1 year old daughter goes, I ain’t buying a word of it. Especially when it’s not like the poison is actually part of the "active ingredients". I’ve instructed my daughter’s physicians that under no circumstances is she to be given any mercury-containing vaccine. And as best I can, I’m making sure the lots are current (post-2001) and, where possible, individual doses. But that ever-so-remote possibility of an unethical pharma forging the labels to allow them to clear out their backstock of Thimerosol still bothers me. Even though I know no corporation entrusted with our children’s health would ever do anything as nefarious as that.

The CDC and the IOM seem desperately worried that public trust in vaccination programs will drop as a result of this furor, and we will then have epidemics on our hands. But they are selling us short as citizens with their condescension in presuming that we can’t tell the difference between the eminently desirable efficacy of a clean vaccine vs. the perils of a toxin-laden one. And it is their elitist condescension and their rejection of public, objective, scientific review that are shattering their facade of credibility here. And that’s the real irony in all their caterwailing about "voodoo science." If the baby of innoculation gets thrown out with the bathwater of toxin-tainted vaccines, it’ll be the CDC and IOM’s fault for not practicing objective, verifiable science in the light of day.

Here’s hoping that we at least have a case where the diligence of citizens and altruistic professionals prevails against the collusion of corrupt officials. Erring on the side of caution is the only acceptable approach where the health and well-being of our nation’s children are concerned. But the real scandal is the refusal of our entrusted medical institutions to practice objective, reviewable science. If the officials at the CDC, IOM, and their fellow lackeys in public and private sectors can’t be trusted to execute this most basic of charters, then they all need to be taken down and removed from office. I’m confident, though, that the blogosphere will do what the MSM either cannot or will not undertake: keep the fire lit on this issue against the forces of  medical cargo-cultism. And, as Mr. Thibodeau notes, against the campaign contributions of Big Pharma.

Paul

Honorable Mentions (not used in article text):

PROVE, Texas-based, advocacy group

Institute for Vaccine Safety - Thimerosol Content Matrix 

-- Paul
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