Reply To: Vaccine contaminants and safety


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SA
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Clark
Thank you for attempting to address both our concerns. As you say answering in a satisfactory way entails time and research and that is useful if these efforts are acknowledged. I would and have sometimes apologised if I have made a mistake but what is frustrating is when you have done some background research and found some reasons to explain some claims, is that the responders, in this case Paul, does not address the questions but goes on to either add more claims of a different kind, or ignores the answers all together. That makes me think that someone is debating from a fixed position and therefore it would be impossible to change this fixed view. But as you have yourself said before, we bother to do the research and to answer not necessarily to try and change the responders mind, but to counter their arguments as there are many readers of this blog, who may be otherwise misled.
There are general principles: we live in a neoliberal capitalist society and ever since Eisenhower coined the phrase, the Military Industrial Complex, we are fully aware that all big corporations have one overriding aim, making money for the shareholders above all else. But they do not do that by just ripping you off, that belongs to the middle ages with robber princes. The success of capitalism has been that not only are these products excellent products, but that they become desirable and essential to the style of life that has become adapted (or corrupted) to these items. So to make a lot of money corporations have to be highly successful, nobody will make money out of products that are rubbish or harmful (except for the arms industry, but the harm is done to others, in the name of protecting us). But capitalism has developed ways of making enterprises more successful than they should be by the regulatory and political capture, the revolving door, legal dominance and formation of monopolies and cartels. This is the world we live in and we have to accept. But it is a whole integrated system and is difficult to fight by trying to pick issues that divert from the real issues and divide between us, as you say. In the case of big Pharma, as in the case of banking and as in the case of the petroleum industry and automobile industry, there are sharp practices and major failures. The fact the VW fiddled their emission figures and the fact that the banks have played loose with our money, does not mean that we should so mistrust everything to do with banks and motor cars and revert to live in caves. This is were I find the antivaccine movement most wanting. Of course there are historic issues with vaccination and of course there are issues with how drugs are licensed, but the anti vaccine movement appear to live in a time warp and quite often their methodology is dubious. As you pointed out yourself, Wakefield, who started all this may have been sponsored by some insurance companies. So it behoves us all if we are to succeed in our efforts, to be very diligent in checking the credentials of those we support.
I did not try to disparage Bad Science or Bad Pharma, just merely to say that there are other sources, and no one text becomes a bible, I have read the bible many times in the past and will not substitute it with other texts.
Sorry for this long preamble which does not address directly some of the issues Paul has raised. I shall try to do so if I have time later.