Right, I'm off to Venice 'til Wednesday.
May or may not be writing anything in the interim, but I'm sure you'll behave yourselves without me.
Saturday, 29 August 2009
Friday, 28 August 2009
Those nasty social workers again
Now, most of the right-of-centre blogs give social workers a hard time, generally accusing them of social engineering and of being unaccountably draconian in splitting up families. I'm slightly more sympathetic -as apparently it's my lot this week to be an apologist for statism- because of the nature of Mrs Slug's work (and I have another big post planned addressing those very points); but this from the Times is an interesting one:
Social workers out to scupper 13-year-old girl’s round-world voyage
I don't think, as Libertarians, we disagree that parents have to take responsibility for their kids until those kids reach an age where they can look after themselves. Further, if those parents fail to look after the kids (however the hell you gauge such things), we don't have any problem with someone -i.e. a social worker or equivalent- stepping in to act in the child's best interests if they have been compromised by the actions or inactions of the parents (see Baby P).
(NB: If anyone has seen an argument contrary to this, point it out to me)
So, is what they're doing, is allowing their child to attempt this 'round the world sailing venture akin to neglect?
It's certainly dangerous, and the fact that the youngest person to do it so far was a 17 year old boy (physiologically very different) doesn't really help matters. I also think that if she were to die in the attempt, the Times' reporting would be a sight more aggressive to the parents, as well as to the social workers (who will never win) for not stopping them after learning of the event.
Would you let her go, if she were your child? Pretty sure I wouldn't.
Is the state justified in stopping her if the parents won't? Probably, at least by any objective standard I can come up with.
What do you lot reckon?
Social workers out to scupper 13-year-old girl’s round-world voyage
Mike Perham sailed into the record books yesterday as the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe single-handedly but his entry is under threat from a 13-year-old Dutch girl, Laura Dekker, who wants to make her own round-the-world voyage. Today she will find out whether the Dutch courts will let her do it.And predictably enough, the first comment I saw was:
Laura’s parents have agreed to her plans, but the Dutch Council for Child Protection is so concerned about the potential dangers of the trip that it has asked Utrecht District Court to grant it temporary custody of her so that it can keep her on dry land.
Another example of nanny state trying to run people's lives for them. If there is a proper support system in place she should be allowed to go.And MY first reaction was to agree: if she wants to do it, she should crack on -personal responsibility and all that. But, then it occurred to me: She's 13, i.e by any standard metric, a child. And that we prosecute parents with neglect for leaving 12 year-olds on their own and buggering off to Spain for the weekend. How is this different?
I don't think, as Libertarians, we disagree that parents have to take responsibility for their kids until those kids reach an age where they can look after themselves. Further, if those parents fail to look after the kids (however the hell you gauge such things), we don't have any problem with someone -i.e. a social worker or equivalent- stepping in to act in the child's best interests if they have been compromised by the actions or inactions of the parents (see Baby P).
(NB: If anyone has seen an argument contrary to this, point it out to me)
So, is what they're doing, is allowing their child to attempt this 'round the world sailing venture akin to neglect?
It's certainly dangerous, and the fact that the youngest person to do it so far was a 17 year old boy (physiologically very different) doesn't really help matters. I also think that if she were to die in the attempt, the Times' reporting would be a sight more aggressive to the parents, as well as to the social workers (who will never win) for not stopping them after learning of the event.
Would you let her go, if she were your child? Pretty sure I wouldn't.
Is the state justified in stopping her if the parents won't? Probably, at least by any objective standard I can come up with.
What do you lot reckon?
Daily Mash on Wiki
Assuming you're all sensible, I'm sure you've already read the Mash:
REALITY ALTERED TO SUIT WIKIPEDIA
In case no-one has already suggested it, I think anyone who edits/defends the dirty 'pedia should be refered to as a "wikipedo".
REALITY ALTERED TO SUIT WIKIPEDIA
Daniel Lethbridge, Professor of Knowledge at Oxford University, said: "Although much of the information on Wikipedia - such as 'bats fly upside down' and 'all dinosaurs were from Liverpool' - is completely 'wrong', we've decided to just give up and hand custodianship of facts over to the morons.
"Have you ever been to a corporate 'creativity' seminar where some oily goof on a grand a day tells you there's no such thing as an incorrect opinion? Well, that what the world is like now."
In case no-one has already suggested it, I think anyone who edits/defends the dirty 'pedia should be refered to as a "wikipedo".
Thursday, 27 August 2009
Panic!!
From the Daily Hate:
Trapped under the sea: Hundreds in Channel Tunnel terror after train breaks down for six hours.
Blimey, that sounds dramatic.
Some began to panic, one diabetic woman fainted, some had asthma attacks and several children passed out.Hmm.
A sealed metal carriage door had to be prised open to allow cool air in, bottled water ran out and the toilets stopped working.
Passengers also said they were left uninformed about what was being done to get them out.
So, to sum up:
- You were on a train
- It stopped
- It got stuffy
- People checked up on you via the service tunnel that exists for exactly that purpose (which is also an available escape route if one should be required)
- You waited some more
- The train got there
Oh the humanity.
I hope the Mail, in it's own inimitable style, is embellishing this a touch. This isn't terror (acute claustrophobics exempted -but they should've taken the ferry), this is an unpleasant inconvenience.
Without getting too patriotically trite; we're supposed to be a country of stiff upper-lips, getting-by in the blitz, and shaking off tube bombings to go for a pint. Not a bunch of whining ponces, crying to the papers about the 'ordeal' they've suffered in having a toss start to the holiday.
The experience was compounded because the loss of power had effectively locked all the doors, although emergency lights did come back on.Probably for the best, else these fairies would've been running up and down the tracks in a blind panic.
He said: 'We had a technical incident on one of our trains. Everybody was safe throughout.'Fuck that, what about the psychological damage, you evil corporate bastard?
COMPO! COMPO!
Addendum: Apologies for the ironically Daily Mail-esque nature of this blog post
Dilbert but...different
Since I'm offsetting the po-faced seriousness of yesterday's vaccination posts, today's funneh is:
The rest of them are here.
God, I think I just voided myself.
The rest of them are here.
God, I think I just voided myself.
Swine Flu challenge
The ground rumbled, the rivers ran as of blood and the angels cried, for Maddox has updated his site:
He wants someone to give him Swine flu so that he can -via youtube- show how stupid it is.
He is all that is man.
I will never take the swine flu vaccine because I already have it; it's called my immune system, and it's badass. I have never gotten sick in my life. My immune system is so strong that I have to get AIDS just to be normal. Your best defense against getting swine flu is to be me. Your second best defense is to have me cough in your face.
He wants someone to give him Swine flu so that he can -via youtube- show how stupid it is.
He is all that is man.
Wednesday, 26 August 2009
Don't put your head in a proton beam
Unless you're hardcore.
I haven't pimped my work in a while, so here's that clip of the very best of British beamlines (on which we've just finished the last of the seven TS2 phase 1 instruments, whohoo):
Bugorski was taken to a clinic in Moscow so that doctors could observe his death over the following two to three weeks.Nice
What a guy, he just shook that off.Still, not only did Bugorski not die, but he remained a normally functioning human being, capable even of continuing in science
The dividing line of his life goes down the middle of his face: the right side has aged, while the left froze 19 years ago. When he concentrates, he wrinkles only half his forehead.Ok, that's a bit messed up.
I haven't pimped my work in a while, so here's that clip of the very best of British beamlines (on which we've just finished the last of the seven TS2 phase 1 instruments, whohoo):
Vaccinations Part 2 : Mercury & Thiomersal
Continued from Part 1 - MMR
In the US, the major vaccine fear has been around the use of a preservative called thiomersal (US spelling: Thimerosol), although this hasn't been as much of an issue over here, with the roll-out of the new thiomersal-preserved swine flu vaccine, people have started to voice concern. Here's Henry for example.
So lets talk about mercury in vaccines, shall we?
In 1998, U.S. legislation required the measurement of mercury in all food and drugs. By 1999 the FDA had learned that infants could get as much as 187.5 μg of mercury from the thiomersal in all their vaccines. They were concerned because mercury is toxic, which it is. Horribly so. But the thing is, toxicity is all about dose - lots of things are toxic, but you don't notice because your exposure to them is negligible.
Similarly with mercury, it's EVERYWHERE: in the soil we grow our vegetables in (and therefore in the veg itself), in fish, in meat(which at some point ate the veg), in tap-water (about 2 parts in a billion), but we don't notice, why is that? Because we have a tolerance to a greater or lesser extent to everything. You don't notice the arsenic in your table salt, do you? I'll come back to this, let's get back to the narrative:
Thimerosal is a preservative that allows vaccines to be sold in multi-dose vials. It contains ethylmercury. It was tested and found to be safe before it was added to vaccines and animal studies showed no adverse effects. In 1929 in Indiana it was tested as a treatment in a meningitis outbreak(they weren't big on ethics back then) — adults injected with 2 million μg (10,000 times the total amount in all children’s vaccines) didn’t develop symptoms of mercury poisoning.
In 1999 the U.S. removed thiomersal from vaccines. The decision was not based on evidence but was due to the opinion of Neal Halsey, the FDA committee member who threatened to hold his own press conference if they didn’t do what he wanted.
His passion convinced the other committee members to invoke the precautionary principle — essentially bending over backwards to prevent any possible harm from a high total body burden of mercury from a combination of diet, environmental and vaccine sources. He didn’t even consider autism: he was only concerned about possible neurologic damage.
They announced their decision in words guaranteed to confuse the public and create suspicion:
Similarly to the MMR scare, a fair proportion of US parents became very worried, and it wasn't long before some were drawing the connection between mercury and autism. There is no longer any serious scientific debate about this, mainly due to the lack of a plausible mechanism and lack of evidence. Evidence isn't everything? Get in the feckin sack.
Whenever you see ongoing public debate on this issue it is inevitably driven by ideological groups who have an anti-vaccine agenda. These groups rely upon increasingly implausible and desperate rationalisations, conspiracy mongering, and simply bad logic.
But they have also based many of their arguments on a separate line of scientific evidence, that of toxicology – studying the effects of mercury and thiomersal on cells and in the body. In fact it is increasingly looking as if toxicological evidence will be the last stand for these groups on this issue.
The reason for this is simple – mercury is a neurotoxin, as we've already said. No one denies that. Proponents of the thiomersal-autism relationship essentially argue that we can know that thiomersal causes autism because it is toxic to the brain, or at least we should assume that until we prove beyond doubt that it is not toxic.
This is called proving a negative, and if you paid attention in science class, you know that this is an impossible standard. And it is irrelevant because we already know that mercury is a toxin. But this arguments misses two key points:
The first is that toxicological evidence can never answer the question of whether or not a substance actually did cause harm. In this respect epidemiological evidence trumps toxicological evidence – and all (and I mean ALL) the epidemiological evidence says that thiomersal is not linked to any harm.
A brief aside for the blessed uninitiated, some definitions:
The second point is that toxicity is all about dose – any substance is safe in a small enough dose and anything is toxic (even oxygen, even water) in a high enough dose. What the anti-vaccine crowd has not demonstrated is that the mercury found in thiomersal is toxic at the doses given in vaccines.
Related to the question of dose is that of access – is the toxin in question getting exposed to brain cells in a sufficient dose to cause neurotoxicity? Sure, mercury damages brain cells when you pour it on top of neurons in a petri dish, but this does not necessarily mean that thiomersal in vaccines has the capability to cross the blood-brain barrier in order to cause toxicity. Because the epidemiological evidence shows no connection to autism, the assumption has been that the dose of mercury in vaccines is too small and it is cleared too quickly from the body for it to cause any measurable toxicity.
This brings us to a recent study, which looked at blood, stool, and urine levels of mercury in children following their newborn, 2 month old, and 6 month old vaccinations.
(The study was performed in Argentina because thiomersal has been removed from all routine childhood vaccines in the US and the UK.)
They calculated the half-life of mercury in the blood of 72 healthy children in each age group and found that the mean half-life (the time it takes for half of remaining mercury to be cleared from the blood) is 3.7 days, without a significant difference between the age groups. Levels of mercury in the blood returned to pre-vaccination levels in about 30 days. These results are significant for various reasons.
First we need to know that there are various types of organic mercury, the two most important being:
methyl mercury (the type found in certain fish)
and ethyl mercury (the type found in thiomersal ).
Methyl mercury is more toxic than ethyl mercury and is cleared more slowly, but data on the exact clearance rate for ethyl mercury was lacking. For this reason when calculating safety limits for human exposure the higher toxicity and slower clearance rates for methyl mercury were assumed. The half life of methyl mercury is about 30 days. This means that ethyl mercury (at least in young children - it is probably slower for adults) is cleared about 10 times more quickly than was previously assumed.
This is critical because the argument made for the potential toxicity of thiomersal was based upon the cumulative dose of ethyl mercury of all childhood vaccines. The argument was that ethyl mercury was building up from vaccine to vaccine, and that even if the dose from a single vaccine were safe, the cumulative dose is what was toxic. This new study shows fairly conclusively that all the ethyl mercury given in one vaccine will be cleared by the time the next vaccine is due to be given – so their is no build-up, no cumulative dose. This effectively shoots down the last remaining scientific argument of the mercury= autism crowd.
The authors also noted that the levels of mercury they measured in the blood were generally low, writing:
so we find ourselves with toxicological evidence moving in line with the epidemiological and other independent lines of evidence toward the conclusion that thiomersal given in childhood vaccines is not a contributor or cause of autism or other neurological disorder.
There are more studies to be done, but there always are – science is a messy and complex business. But it is reassuring to know that children clear ethyl mercury 10 times more quickly than was previously assumed, and that levels do not build up from vaccine to vaccine.
At least it is reassuring to those of us who look at all the evidence to formulate our opinions.
There was no thiomersal in any vaccine except the flu vaccine after 2002. The mercury=autism crowd expected autism rates to drop, thereby proving the mercury connection. Autism rates rose. Instead of relinquishing their belief, they made implausible attempts to implicate new sources of atmospheric mercury, from cremations of bodies with mercury amalgam fillings or from pollution wafted across the Pacific from China.
They'll never be happy, because their position is not a rational one; they have committed themselves so totally and invested so much of their time and effort in this fruitless and medieval belief system that I could have tablets written by God telling them that vaccines are safe, and they would say he was in the pocket of big Pharma.
Anyway, now you know what I know.
Key Research and summaries courtesy of ScienceBasedMedicine.org
Thiomersal and Autism
Andrews N, et al., Thimerosal exposure in infants and developmental disorders: a retrospective cohort study in the United Kingdom does not support a causal association. Pediatrics, 2004;114:584-591.
Summary: From the methods of this study: “A retrospective cohort study was performed using 109,863 children who were born from 1988 to 1997 and were registered in general practices in the United Kingdom that contributed to a research database.” And the results: “Only in 1 analysis for tics was there some evidence of a higher risk with increasing doses. Statistically significant negative associations with increasing doses at 4 months were found for general developmental disorders, unspecified developmental delay, and attention-deficit disorder. For the other disorders, there was no evidence of an association with thimerosal exposure.”
In other words – the researchers found a random scattering of mild positive and negative correlations between thimerosal exposure and a few neurodevelopment outcomes, with most outcomes showing no correlation. This is consistent with other studies and is essentially what we expect if thimerosal does not cause neurodevelopmental disorders. Some in the anti-vaccine camp have cherry-picked the weak association with tics, but there is no more reason to think that correlation is anything other than random noise than there is to believe that thimerosal protects against ADHD based upon this data.
___________________________________________________________
Fombonne E., et. al., Pervasive Developmental Disorders in Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Prevalence and Links with Immunizations. Pediatrics. 2006;118:139-150.
Summary: This is a population based study involving 27,749 children born from 1987 to 1998. The researchers calculated the total exposure to thimerosal, which dropped to zero after 1996 as thimerosal was removed from childhood vaccines in Canada at that time. They found:
Heron J, Golding J, and ALSPAC Study Team. Thimerosal exposure in infants and developmental disorders: a prospective cohort study in the United Kingdom does not support a causal association. Pediatrics. 2004;114:577-583.
Summary: This study is similar to the Andrews study, except this was prospective rather than retrospective. They followed > 14,000 children with neurological assessments from 6 to 91 months of age. As with the Andrews study they found a random scattering of mild correlations, mostly negative (meaning that thimerosal exposure was associated with a decreased risk of neurological signs or disorders) and only one positive correlation with poor pro-social behavior. These results are consistent with chance, i.e. no cause and effect between thimerosal and neurodevelopmental disorders.
The researchers conclude: “We could find no convincing evidence that early exposure to thimerosal had any deleterious effect on neurologic or psychological outcome.”
___________________________________________________________
Hviid A, Stellfeld M, Wohlfahrt J, Melbye M. Association between thimerosal-containing vaccine and autism. Journal of the American Medical Association 2003;290:1763-1766.
Summary: This is yet another population-based study looking at a large number of children – this one is a Danish study comparing children vaccinated with a thimerosal-containing vaccine and the same vaccines but without thimerosal. The methods indicate:
Madsen KM, Lauritsen MB, Pedersen CB, Thorsen P, Plesner AM, Andersen PH, Mortensen PB. Thimerosal and the Occurrence of Autism: Negative Ecological Evidence From Danish Population-Based Data. PEDIATRICS Vol. 112 No. 3 September 2003, pp. 604-606
Summary: Madsen et al evaluated autism rates in Denmark from 1971 – 2000. From 1961 – 1970 children received 400 micrograms of thimerosal. From 1971-1992 they received 250 micrograms of thimerosal. After 1992 all thimerosal was removed from childhood vaccines in Denmark. The study identified 962 children with autism over this period. They found that from 1970 to 1990 there was no change in the incidence of autism. After 1990 autism rates began to increase, which was attributed to expanding diagnosis and surveillance. These numbers generally match the experience in other Western nations. (See here and here for further discussion.)
___________________________________________________________
Miles JH, and Takahashi TN. 2007. Lack of association between Rh status, Rh immune globulin in pregnancy and autism. American Journal of Medical Genetics, Part A1. 143(13):1397–407.
Summary: Given the lack of association between vaccine exposure, thimerosal exposure, and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), proponents of the mercury- autism hypothesis have blamed possible exposure by the mother to thimerosal exposure during pregnancy. Rh- mothers may be treated with Rhig which may be preserved with thimerosal. This study looked at 305 mothers with children on the autism spectrum and compared them to general population. They found so significant difference in the risk of being Rh- or having been exposed to thimerosal in mothers with ASD children compared to the general population. Therefore exposure to thimerosal during pregnancy does not appear to be associated with ASD.
___________________________________________________________
Schechter R, Grether JK. Continuing Increases in Autism Reported to California’s Developmental Services System: Mercury in Retrograde. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2008;65(1):19-24.
Summary: The data presented in this study is the most definitive evidence against an association between thimerosal in vaccines and autism. It shows that after all but trace amounts of thimerosal were removed from the routine childhood vaccine schedule (although remaining in some optional flu vaccines), the rate of autism diagnoses did not decrease, as predicted by vaccine-autism proponents. This is especially significant because this is the same database used by proponents to argue that the increase in the rate of autism in the 1990s correlated with an increase in the vaccine schedule and the total thimerosal exposure.
The graph below shows the steady increase in the rate of autism diagnoses (by birth year) long after the removal of thimerosal from the vaccine schedule was completed – by the end of 2002.
___________________________________________________________
Thompson WW et al. Early Thimerosal Exposure and Neuropsychological Outcomes at 7 to 10 Years. N Engl J Med. 2007 Sep 27;357(13):1281-92.
Summary: This study enrolled 1047 children and compared their thimerosal exposure based upon immunization records to outcomes on standardized neurological testing. They found: “Among the 42 neuropsychological outcomes, we detected only a few significant associations with exposure to mercury from thimerosal. The detected associations were small and almost equally divided between positive and negative effects.” This is the expected statistical noise, occurring by chance alone. This study therefore lends strong support to a lack of association between thimerosal exposure from vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders. (Further discussion here, here, and here.)
___________________________________________________________
Tozzi AE, Bisiacchi P, Tarantino V, De Mei B, D’Elia L, Chiarotti F, Salmaso S. Neuropsychological Performance 10 Years After Immunization in Infancy With Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines. PEDIATRICS Vol. 123 No. 2 February 2009, pp. 475-482 (doi:10.1542/peds.2008-0795)
Summary: This study analyzed data from a vaccine safety study performed in 1993. They were able to compare two groups randomized to different pertussis vaccines with either low dose (62.5 µg) or a higher dose (137.5 µg) of thimerosal ten years later. They found no difference in autism rates between the two groups. When they did multiple comparisons for other neurological conditions they found only two minor correlations, less than predicted by chance – so essentially the study found no significant correlation between two doses of thimerosal and neurological outcome. This evidence contradicts the belief that a similar increase in the dose of thimerosal in the US in the 1990s caused an increase in the incident of autism. (See here for further discussion of this study.)
___________________________________________________________
Verstraeten T, et al., Safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines: a two-phased study of computerized health maintenance organization databases. Pediatrics 2003;112:1039-1048.
Summary: This is a 2-phase retrospective cohort study looking at a large database of children from three HMOs. The first phase looked at 124,170 children from 1992-1999 from two HMOs and found an association between thimerosal exposure and tics in the first HMO and an association between thimerosal and language delay (but not tics) at the second HMO. The second phase was of 16,717 children from 1991-1997 at a third HMO and found no significant associations. The strength of this study is that it used three independent data sets to confirm any chance associations. It found no consistent associations between thimerosal and any neurodevelopmental disorder, and it found no association at all with autism or ADHD. This is most consistent with a lack of association between thimerosal exposure and neurodevelopmental disorders, but the authors call for follow up of the inconsistent association with tics and language delay.
___________________________________________________________
In the US, the major vaccine fear has been around the use of a preservative called thiomersal (US spelling: Thimerosol), although this hasn't been as much of an issue over here, with the roll-out of the new thiomersal-preserved swine flu vaccine, people have started to voice concern. Here's Henry for example.
So lets talk about mercury in vaccines, shall we?
In 1998, U.S. legislation required the measurement of mercury in all food and drugs. By 1999 the FDA had learned that infants could get as much as 187.5 μg of mercury from the thiomersal in all their vaccines. They were concerned because mercury is toxic, which it is. Horribly so. But the thing is, toxicity is all about dose - lots of things are toxic, but you don't notice because your exposure to them is negligible.
Similarly with mercury, it's EVERYWHERE: in the soil we grow our vegetables in (and therefore in the veg itself), in fish, in meat(which at some point ate the veg), in tap-water (about 2 parts in a billion), but we don't notice, why is that? Because we have a tolerance to a greater or lesser extent to everything. You don't notice the arsenic in your table salt, do you? I'll come back to this, let's get back to the narrative:
Thimerosal is a preservative that allows vaccines to be sold in multi-dose vials. It contains ethylmercury. It was tested and found to be safe before it was added to vaccines and animal studies showed no adverse effects. In 1929 in Indiana it was tested as a treatment in a meningitis outbreak(they weren't big on ethics back then) — adults injected with 2 million μg (10,000 times the total amount in all children’s vaccines) didn’t develop symptoms of mercury poisoning.
In 1999 the U.S. removed thiomersal from vaccines. The decision was not based on evidence but was due to the opinion of Neal Halsey, the FDA committee member who threatened to hold his own press conference if they didn’t do what he wanted.
His passion convinced the other committee members to invoke the precautionary principle — essentially bending over backwards to prevent any possible harm from a high total body burden of mercury from a combination of diet, environmental and vaccine sources. He didn’t even consider autism: he was only concerned about possible neurologic damage.
They announced their decision in words guaranteed to confuse the public and create suspicion:
“current levels of thimerosal will not hurt children, but reducing those levels will make safe vaccines even safer.”Yeah, they could've phrased that better.
Similarly to the MMR scare, a fair proportion of US parents became very worried, and it wasn't long before some were drawing the connection between mercury and autism. There is no longer any serious scientific debate about this, mainly due to the lack of a plausible mechanism and lack of evidence. Evidence isn't everything? Get in the feckin sack.
Whenever you see ongoing public debate on this issue it is inevitably driven by ideological groups who have an anti-vaccine agenda. These groups rely upon increasingly implausible and desperate rationalisations, conspiracy mongering, and simply bad logic.
But they have also based many of their arguments on a separate line of scientific evidence, that of toxicology – studying the effects of mercury and thiomersal on cells and in the body. In fact it is increasingly looking as if toxicological evidence will be the last stand for these groups on this issue.
The reason for this is simple – mercury is a neurotoxin, as we've already said. No one denies that. Proponents of the thiomersal-autism relationship essentially argue that we can know that thiomersal causes autism because it is toxic to the brain, or at least we should assume that until we prove beyond doubt that it is not toxic.
This is called proving a negative, and if you paid attention in science class, you know that this is an impossible standard. And it is irrelevant because we already know that mercury is a toxin. But this arguments misses two key points:
The first is that toxicological evidence can never answer the question of whether or not a substance actually did cause harm. In this respect epidemiological evidence trumps toxicological evidence – and all (and I mean ALL) the epidemiological evidence says that thiomersal is not linked to any harm.
A brief aside for the blessed uninitiated, some definitions:
Toxicology = study of poisons on living organisms
Epidemiology = study of effects of stuff (eg. diseases and medicines/side-effects) on large groups of people.
Related to the question of dose is that of access – is the toxin in question getting exposed to brain cells in a sufficient dose to cause neurotoxicity? Sure, mercury damages brain cells when you pour it on top of neurons in a petri dish, but this does not necessarily mean that thiomersal in vaccines has the capability to cross the blood-brain barrier in order to cause toxicity. Because the epidemiological evidence shows no connection to autism, the assumption has been that the dose of mercury in vaccines is too small and it is cleared too quickly from the body for it to cause any measurable toxicity.
This brings us to a recent study, which looked at blood, stool, and urine levels of mercury in children following their newborn, 2 month old, and 6 month old vaccinations.
(The study was performed in Argentina because thiomersal has been removed from all routine childhood vaccines in the US and the UK.)
They calculated the half-life of mercury in the blood of 72 healthy children in each age group and found that the mean half-life (the time it takes for half of remaining mercury to be cleared from the blood) is 3.7 days, without a significant difference between the age groups. Levels of mercury in the blood returned to pre-vaccination levels in about 30 days. These results are significant for various reasons.
First we need to know that there are various types of organic mercury, the two most important being:
methyl mercury (the type found in certain fish)
and ethyl mercury (the type found in thiomersal ).
Methyl mercury is more toxic than ethyl mercury and is cleared more slowly, but data on the exact clearance rate for ethyl mercury was lacking. For this reason when calculating safety limits for human exposure the higher toxicity and slower clearance rates for methyl mercury were assumed. The half life of methyl mercury is about 30 days. This means that ethyl mercury (at least in young children - it is probably slower for adults) is cleared about 10 times more quickly than was previously assumed.
This is critical because the argument made for the potential toxicity of thiomersal was based upon the cumulative dose of ethyl mercury of all childhood vaccines. The argument was that ethyl mercury was building up from vaccine to vaccine, and that even if the dose from a single vaccine were safe, the cumulative dose is what was toxic. This new study shows fairly conclusively that all the ethyl mercury given in one vaccine will be cleared by the time the next vaccine is due to be given – so their is no build-up, no cumulative dose. This effectively shoots down the last remaining scientific argument of the mercury= autism crowd.
The authors also noted that the levels of mercury they measured in the blood were generally low, writing:
We also observed that the highest levels in samples that were taken from children shortly after vaccination were <=8 ng/mL. The importance of blood levels of ethyl mercury for assessing toxicity is unknown, but blood levels have been shown to be a predictor of toxicity for methyl mercury exposure. The low levels of mercury detected in this study suggests relatively low risk for toxicity from this exposure.
so we find ourselves with toxicological evidence moving in line with the epidemiological and other independent lines of evidence toward the conclusion that thiomersal given in childhood vaccines is not a contributor or cause of autism or other neurological disorder.
There are more studies to be done, but there always are – science is a messy and complex business. But it is reassuring to know that children clear ethyl mercury 10 times more quickly than was previously assumed, and that levels do not build up from vaccine to vaccine.
At least it is reassuring to those of us who look at all the evidence to formulate our opinions.
There was no thiomersal in any vaccine except the flu vaccine after 2002. The mercury=autism crowd expected autism rates to drop, thereby proving the mercury connection. Autism rates rose. Instead of relinquishing their belief, they made implausible attempts to implicate new sources of atmospheric mercury, from cremations of bodies with mercury amalgam fillings or from pollution wafted across the Pacific from China.
They'll never be happy, because their position is not a rational one; they have committed themselves so totally and invested so much of their time and effort in this fruitless and medieval belief system that I could have tablets written by God telling them that vaccines are safe, and they would say he was in the pocket of big Pharma.
Anyway, now you know what I know.
Key Research and summaries courtesy of ScienceBasedMedicine.org
Thiomersal and Autism
Andrews N, et al., Thimerosal exposure in infants and developmental disorders: a retrospective cohort study in the United Kingdom does not support a causal association. Pediatrics, 2004;114:584-591.
Summary: From the methods of this study: “A retrospective cohort study was performed using 109,863 children who were born from 1988 to 1997 and were registered in general practices in the United Kingdom that contributed to a research database.” And the results: “Only in 1 analysis for tics was there some evidence of a higher risk with increasing doses. Statistically significant negative associations with increasing doses at 4 months were found for general developmental disorders, unspecified developmental delay, and attention-deficit disorder. For the other disorders, there was no evidence of an association with thimerosal exposure.”
In other words – the researchers found a random scattering of mild positive and negative correlations between thimerosal exposure and a few neurodevelopment outcomes, with most outcomes showing no correlation. This is consistent with other studies and is essentially what we expect if thimerosal does not cause neurodevelopmental disorders. Some in the anti-vaccine camp have cherry-picked the weak association with tics, but there is no more reason to think that correlation is anything other than random noise than there is to believe that thimerosal protects against ADHD based upon this data.
___________________________________________________________
Fombonne E., et. al., Pervasive Developmental Disorders in Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Prevalence and Links with Immunizations. Pediatrics. 2006;118:139-150.
Summary: This is a population based study involving 27,749 children born from 1987 to 1998. The researchers calculated the total exposure to thimerosal, which dropped to zero after 1996 as thimerosal was removed from childhood vaccines in Canada at that time. They found:
The prevalence of pervasive developmental disorder in Montreal was high, increasing in recent birth cohorts as found in most countries. Factors accounting for the increase include a broadening of diagnostic concepts and criteria, increased awareness and, therefore, better identification of children with pervasive developmental disorders in communities and epidemiologic surveys, and improved access to services. The findings ruled out an association between pervasive developmental disorder and either high levels of ethylmercury exposure comparable with those experienced in the United States in the 1990s or 1- or 2-dose measles-mumps-rubella vaccinations.___________________________________________________________
Heron J, Golding J, and ALSPAC Study Team. Thimerosal exposure in infants and developmental disorders: a prospective cohort study in the United Kingdom does not support a causal association. Pediatrics. 2004;114:577-583.
Summary: This study is similar to the Andrews study, except this was prospective rather than retrospective. They followed > 14,000 children with neurological assessments from 6 to 91 months of age. As with the Andrews study they found a random scattering of mild correlations, mostly negative (meaning that thimerosal exposure was associated with a decreased risk of neurological signs or disorders) and only one positive correlation with poor pro-social behavior. These results are consistent with chance, i.e. no cause and effect between thimerosal and neurodevelopmental disorders.
The researchers conclude: “We could find no convincing evidence that early exposure to thimerosal had any deleterious effect on neurologic or psychological outcome.”
___________________________________________________________
Hviid A, Stellfeld M, Wohlfahrt J, Melbye M. Association between thimerosal-containing vaccine and autism. Journal of the American Medical Association 2003;290:1763-1766.
Summary: This is yet another population-based study looking at a large number of children – this one is a Danish study comparing children vaccinated with a thimerosal-containing vaccine and the same vaccines but without thimerosal. The methods indicate:
Population-based cohort study of all children born in Denmark from January 1, 1990, until December 31, 1996 (N = 467,450) comparing children vaccinated with a thimerosal-containing vaccine with children vaccinated with a thimerosal-free formulation of the same vaccine.The results are pretty straight-forward and entirely negative:
The risk of autism and other autistic-spectrum disorders did not differ significantly between children vaccinated with thimerosal-containing vaccine and children vaccinated with thimerosal-free vaccine.___________________________________________________________
Madsen KM, Lauritsen MB, Pedersen CB, Thorsen P, Plesner AM, Andersen PH, Mortensen PB. Thimerosal and the Occurrence of Autism: Negative Ecological Evidence From Danish Population-Based Data. PEDIATRICS Vol. 112 No. 3 September 2003, pp. 604-606
Summary: Madsen et al evaluated autism rates in Denmark from 1971 – 2000. From 1961 – 1970 children received 400 micrograms of thimerosal. From 1971-1992 they received 250 micrograms of thimerosal. After 1992 all thimerosal was removed from childhood vaccines in Denmark. The study identified 962 children with autism over this period. They found that from 1970 to 1990 there was no change in the incidence of autism. After 1990 autism rates began to increase, which was attributed to expanding diagnosis and surveillance. These numbers generally match the experience in other Western nations. (See here and here for further discussion.)
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Miles JH, and Takahashi TN. 2007. Lack of association between Rh status, Rh immune globulin in pregnancy and autism. American Journal of Medical Genetics, Part A1. 143(13):1397–407.
Summary: Given the lack of association between vaccine exposure, thimerosal exposure, and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), proponents of the mercury- autism hypothesis have blamed possible exposure by the mother to thimerosal exposure during pregnancy. Rh- mothers may be treated with Rhig which may be preserved with thimerosal. This study looked at 305 mothers with children on the autism spectrum and compared them to general population. They found so significant difference in the risk of being Rh- or having been exposed to thimerosal in mothers with ASD children compared to the general population. Therefore exposure to thimerosal during pregnancy does not appear to be associated with ASD.
___________________________________________________________
Schechter R, Grether JK. Continuing Increases in Autism Reported to California’s Developmental Services System: Mercury in Retrograde. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2008;65(1):19-24.
Summary: The data presented in this study is the most definitive evidence against an association between thimerosal in vaccines and autism. It shows that after all but trace amounts of thimerosal were removed from the routine childhood vaccine schedule (although remaining in some optional flu vaccines), the rate of autism diagnoses did not decrease, as predicted by vaccine-autism proponents. This is especially significant because this is the same database used by proponents to argue that the increase in the rate of autism in the 1990s correlated with an increase in the vaccine schedule and the total thimerosal exposure.
The graph below shows the steady increase in the rate of autism diagnoses (by birth year) long after the removal of thimerosal from the vaccine schedule was completed – by the end of 2002.
___________________________________________________________
Thompson WW et al. Early Thimerosal Exposure and Neuropsychological Outcomes at 7 to 10 Years. N Engl J Med. 2007 Sep 27;357(13):1281-92.
Summary: This study enrolled 1047 children and compared their thimerosal exposure based upon immunization records to outcomes on standardized neurological testing. They found: “Among the 42 neuropsychological outcomes, we detected only a few significant associations with exposure to mercury from thimerosal. The detected associations were small and almost equally divided between positive and negative effects.” This is the expected statistical noise, occurring by chance alone. This study therefore lends strong support to a lack of association between thimerosal exposure from vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders. (Further discussion here, here, and here.)
___________________________________________________________
Tozzi AE, Bisiacchi P, Tarantino V, De Mei B, D’Elia L, Chiarotti F, Salmaso S. Neuropsychological Performance 10 Years After Immunization in Infancy With Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines. PEDIATRICS Vol. 123 No. 2 February 2009, pp. 475-482 (doi:10.1542/peds.2008-0795)
Summary: This study analyzed data from a vaccine safety study performed in 1993. They were able to compare two groups randomized to different pertussis vaccines with either low dose (62.5 µg) or a higher dose (137.5 µg) of thimerosal ten years later. They found no difference in autism rates between the two groups. When they did multiple comparisons for other neurological conditions they found only two minor correlations, less than predicted by chance – so essentially the study found no significant correlation between two doses of thimerosal and neurological outcome. This evidence contradicts the belief that a similar increase in the dose of thimerosal in the US in the 1990s caused an increase in the incident of autism. (See here for further discussion of this study.)
___________________________________________________________
Verstraeten T, et al., Safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines: a two-phased study of computerized health maintenance organization databases. Pediatrics 2003;112:1039-1048.
Summary: This is a 2-phase retrospective cohort study looking at a large database of children from three HMOs. The first phase looked at 124,170 children from 1992-1999 from two HMOs and found an association between thimerosal exposure and tics in the first HMO and an association between thimerosal and language delay (but not tics) at the second HMO. The second phase was of 16,717 children from 1991-1997 at a third HMO and found no significant associations. The strength of this study is that it used three independent data sets to confirm any chance associations. It found no consistent associations between thimerosal and any neurodevelopmental disorder, and it found no association at all with autism or ADHD. This is most consistent with a lack of association between thimerosal exposure and neurodevelopmental disorders, but the authors call for follow up of the inconsistent association with tics and language delay.
___________________________________________________________
Vaccinations Part 1 -MMR
I've been having a bit of a discussion with Henry over at his place about vaccinations. Basically he is of the somewhat fringe, Vaccines-are-filled-with-poison-and-cause-autism frame of mind, and I'm a bit more of a shill for big Pharma and the State. I'm still waiting for that cheque, Glaxo, if you're reading.
So, rather than run 20-odd comments in his posts, I thought I'd fire out my 2.5 cents on why vaccines are both safe and necessary, and why this scaremongering is dangerous and unwarranted.
First off, lets talk about MMR.
I've mentioned Andrew Wakefield before (bits of which I've stuck into this post), but you can't talk about MMR without mentioning him, as he is pretty much the only cause of the scare.
He published an article in The Lancet in 1998 detailing how he had performed biopsies via colonoscopy on 12 kids who had intestinal problems and developmental issues. 10 of the children were autistic and he had found a pattern amongst them of intestinal inflammation. Now the Parents of 8 of these kids thought they had developed symptoms of autism right after they had the MMR jab.
The paper he then published stated clearly:
Compliance with the MMR schedule dropped from 92% in the UK down to 85%, and measles cases soared from only 58 cases in 1998 to 1,348 cases in 2008. Which is just over a 2000% increase. Of those 1348, two kids died.
In one hospital in Ireland, 100 children were admitted for pneumonia and brain swelling caused by measles and of those, three died.
In 1994, measles had been declared under control; in 2008 it was endemic again.
Wakefield’s data was later utterly debunked as incorrect and fabricated, but even if it had been right, it wouldn’t have been good science.
To show that intestinal inflammation is linked to autism, you would have to compare the rate in autistic children to the rate in non-autistic children. Wakefield used no controls to demonstrate this.
To implicate the MMR vaccine, you would have to show that the rate of autism was greater in children who got the vaccine and verify that autism developed afterwards. Wakefield made no attempt to do that.
His thinking was fanciful and full of assumptions, but short on logic and a plausible mechanism. He hypothesized that the measles virus damaged the intestinal wall, that the bowel then leaked some unidentified protein, and that protein went to the brain and somehow caused autism. Well, assuming this wasn't so much made-up bollocks, if the measles component caused this condition, it would do it in the single jab form as well, wouldn't it? As one of his critics pointed out:
The GMC also accused him of ordering invasive and potentially harmful studies (colonoscopies and lumbar punctures) without proper approval and contrary to the children’s clinical interests. One child suffered multiple bowel perforations during the colonoscopy. Several had problems with the anaesthetic. Children were subjected to sedation for other non-indicated tests like MRIs.
When human research is conducted, it must be approved by your facilities' ethics board. This study was not approved. It also turns out he bought blood samples for his research from children as young as four - who were attending his son's birthday party. To be fair, he did give them a fiver each. What a guy.
The further into his past you looked, the worse it got; 2 years before the study, Wakefield had been approached by a lawyer representing autistic children, who then specifically hired Wakefield to do research to find evidence to support a class-action lawsuit against MMR vaccine manufacturers. The children to be studied were the children of the lawyer's clients, and 11 of the 12 studied were eventually litigants. Obviously, Wakefield failed to disclose any of this.
He also failed to disclose the half-million pounds he received from the lawyer, via his Wife's company.
Also, Brian Deer discovered that Wakefield had patented his own 'alternative' MMR vaccine prior to conducting his research, and would stand to make a massive profit if he could reduce confidence enough in the existing vaccine.
After all this was revealed, his co-authors disowned the paper and the Lancet printed a retraction. Wakefield now works at an autism facility in the States and still has a large number of followers.
No subsequent research has ever been able to replicate Wakefield's supposed findings - shockingly enough. Other studies showed that the detection of measles virus was no greater in autistics; that the rate of intestinal disease was no greater in autistics; that there was no correlation between MMR and autism onset, and that there was no correlation between MMR and autism, whatsoever. Furthermore, the only developed country to give in to public concern and abandon the MMR jab -Japan- has not seen the drop in autism one would expect if MMR were to blame(although there was a subsequent epidemic of mumps).
And so the 'MMR controversy' (and it's subsequent consequences) has proven to be a product of media scaremongering, and their entirely credulous reporting of a fraudulent and badly performed scam.
Also, here's some graphs courtesy of Ben Goldacre (oh and that article is worth reading to hear an idiot radio presenter making a fool of herself talking about MMR):
Key Research and summaries courtesy of ScienceBasedMedicine.org
MMR and Autism
Honda H, Shimizu Y, Rutter M. 2005. No effect of MMR withdrawal on the incidence of autism: a total population study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 46(6):572–79.
Summary: Population-based study of 300,000 in Yokohama, Japan looking at ASD diagnoses from 1988-1996. From 1988 to 1993 MMR vaccination rates declined, and there were no MMR vaccinations after 1993. Meanwhile, during the same period of time ASD diagnoses steadily increased. Therefore there was a significant lack of correlation between exposure to the MMR vaccine and the subsequent diagnosis of ASD.
___________________________________________________________
Hornig M, Briese T, Buie T, Bauman ML, Lauwers G, et al. (2008) Lack of Association between Measles Virus Vaccine and Autism with Enteropathy: A Case-Control Study. PLoS ONE 3(9): e3140. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003140
Summary: This study replicated the original Lancet article by Andrew Wakefield that started the scare that the MMR vaccine might be associated with autism. The researchers found that there was no correlation between measles virus being found in the gut and autism, and also found no correlation between the timing of the MMR vaccine and the onset of autism or GI symptoms. (Further discussion here and here.)
___________________________________________________________
Wakefield AJ et al. Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. The Lancet, Volume 351, Issue 9103, Pages 637 – 641, 28 February 1998 doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(97)11096-0
Summary: This is the original Lancet article by Andrew Wakefield that spawned the MMR-autism scare. The study is a small analysis of 12 subjects that Wakefield claims had evidence of the measles virus in their GI tract and that this correlated with the MMR vaccine and the onset of autism. This study has subsequently been discredited on a number of levels. It turns out that Wakefield had undisclosed conflicts of interest – namely a patent application for a replacement MMR vaccine. He was also a consultant for an attorney looking to sue the manufacturers of the MMR vaccine, and in fact many of the subjects of this study were childen of clients of this attorney. The techniques used to identify measles virus in the GI tracts were later disputed and failed to replicate. Review of records also disputes the timing of the onset of symptoms and the MMR vaccine. The scandals surrounding this study eventually led to 10 of the original 12 co-authors to retract their support for the paper. (For a more detailed history and analysis see Brian Deer’s investigation.)
___________________________________________________________
So, rather than run 20-odd comments in his posts, I thought I'd fire out my 2.5 cents on why vaccines are both safe and necessary, and why this scaremongering is dangerous and unwarranted.
First off, lets talk about MMR.
I've mentioned Andrew Wakefield before (bits of which I've stuck into this post), but you can't talk about MMR without mentioning him, as he is pretty much the only cause of the scare.
He published an article in The Lancet in 1998 detailing how he had performed biopsies via colonoscopy on 12 kids who had intestinal problems and developmental issues. 10 of the children were autistic and he had found a pattern amongst them of intestinal inflammation. Now the Parents of 8 of these kids thought they had developed symptoms of autism right after they had the MMR jab.
The paper he then published stated clearly:
We did not prove an association between measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described . Virological studies are underway an may help resolve the issue.He then went ahead and told a press conference to say the MMR vaccine probably caused autism anyway. He also recommended switching to the single vaccinations, even though these were not available at the time. The response from the likes of the Mail was predictable and devastating i.e. "Ban Three-In-One Jabs say Doctors".
Compliance with the MMR schedule dropped from 92% in the UK down to 85%, and measles cases soared from only 58 cases in 1998 to 1,348 cases in 2008. Which is just over a 2000% increase. Of those 1348, two kids died.
In one hospital in Ireland, 100 children were admitted for pneumonia and brain swelling caused by measles and of those, three died.
In 1994, measles had been declared under control; in 2008 it was endemic again.
Wakefield’s data was later utterly debunked as incorrect and fabricated, but even if it had been right, it wouldn’t have been good science.
To show that intestinal inflammation is linked to autism, you would have to compare the rate in autistic children to the rate in non-autistic children. Wakefield used no controls to demonstrate this.
To implicate the MMR vaccine, you would have to show that the rate of autism was greater in children who got the vaccine and verify that autism developed afterwards. Wakefield made no attempt to do that.
His thinking was fanciful and full of assumptions, but short on logic and a plausible mechanism. He hypothesized that the measles virus damaged the intestinal wall, that the bowel then leaked some unidentified protein, and that protein went to the brain and somehow caused autism. Well, assuming this wasn't so much made-up bollocks, if the measles component caused this condition, it would do it in the single jab form as well, wouldn't it? As one of his critics pointed out:
“Single vaccines, spaced a year apart, clearly expose children to greater risk of infection, as well as additional distress and expense, and no evidence had been produced upon which to adopt such a policy.”Anyway, it turns out that whilst some have given Wakefield the benefit of the doubt regarding whether he was incompetent or knowingly fraudulent about his 'study', Brian Deer at the Times has found out that his biased and incorrect results might of been fiddled to suit his scaremongering.
However, our investigation, confirmed by evidence presented to the General Medical Council (GMC), reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal. This was then reviewed and the Lancet paper showed them as abnormal.
When human research is conducted, it must be approved by your facilities' ethics board. This study was not approved. It also turns out he bought blood samples for his research from children as young as four - who were attending his son's birthday party. To be fair, he did give them a fiver each. What a guy.
The further into his past you looked, the worse it got; 2 years before the study, Wakefield had been approached by a lawyer representing autistic children, who then specifically hired Wakefield to do research to find evidence to support a class-action lawsuit against MMR vaccine manufacturers. The children to be studied were the children of the lawyer's clients, and 11 of the 12 studied were eventually litigants. Obviously, Wakefield failed to disclose any of this.
He also failed to disclose the half-million pounds he received from the lawyer, via his Wife's company.
Also, Brian Deer discovered that Wakefield had patented his own 'alternative' MMR vaccine prior to conducting his research, and would stand to make a massive profit if he could reduce confidence enough in the existing vaccine.
After all this was revealed, his co-authors disowned the paper and the Lancet printed a retraction. Wakefield now works at an autism facility in the States and still has a large number of followers.
No subsequent research has ever been able to replicate Wakefield's supposed findings - shockingly enough. Other studies showed that the detection of measles virus was no greater in autistics; that the rate of intestinal disease was no greater in autistics; that there was no correlation between MMR and autism onset, and that there was no correlation between MMR and autism, whatsoever. Furthermore, the only developed country to give in to public concern and abandon the MMR jab -Japan- has not seen the drop in autism one would expect if MMR were to blame(although there was a subsequent epidemic of mumps).
And so the 'MMR controversy' (and it's subsequent consequences) has proven to be a product of media scaremongering, and their entirely credulous reporting of a fraudulent and badly performed scam.
Also, here's some graphs courtesy of Ben Goldacre (oh and that article is worth reading to hear an idiot radio presenter making a fool of herself talking about MMR):
Key Research and summaries courtesy of ScienceBasedMedicine.org
MMR and Autism
Honda H, Shimizu Y, Rutter M. 2005. No effect of MMR withdrawal on the incidence of autism: a total population study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 46(6):572–79.
Summary: Population-based study of 300,000 in Yokohama, Japan looking at ASD diagnoses from 1988-1996. From 1988 to 1993 MMR vaccination rates declined, and there were no MMR vaccinations after 1993. Meanwhile, during the same period of time ASD diagnoses steadily increased. Therefore there was a significant lack of correlation between exposure to the MMR vaccine and the subsequent diagnosis of ASD.
___________________________________________________________
Hornig M, Briese T, Buie T, Bauman ML, Lauwers G, et al. (2008) Lack of Association between Measles Virus Vaccine and Autism with Enteropathy: A Case-Control Study. PLoS ONE 3(9): e3140. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003140
Summary: This study replicated the original Lancet article by Andrew Wakefield that started the scare that the MMR vaccine might be associated with autism. The researchers found that there was no correlation between measles virus being found in the gut and autism, and also found no correlation between the timing of the MMR vaccine and the onset of autism or GI symptoms. (Further discussion here and here.)
___________________________________________________________
Wakefield AJ et al. Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. The Lancet, Volume 351, Issue 9103, Pages 637 – 641, 28 February 1998 doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(97)11096-0
Summary: This is the original Lancet article by Andrew Wakefield that spawned the MMR-autism scare. The study is a small analysis of 12 subjects that Wakefield claims had evidence of the measles virus in their GI tract and that this correlated with the MMR vaccine and the onset of autism. This study has subsequently been discredited on a number of levels. It turns out that Wakefield had undisclosed conflicts of interest – namely a patent application for a replacement MMR vaccine. He was also a consultant for an attorney looking to sue the manufacturers of the MMR vaccine, and in fact many of the subjects of this study were childen of clients of this attorney. The techniques used to identify measles virus in the GI tracts were later disputed and failed to replicate. Review of records also disputes the timing of the onset of symptoms and the MMR vaccine. The scandals surrounding this study eventually led to 10 of the original 12 co-authors to retract their support for the paper. (For a more detailed history and analysis see Brian Deer’s investigation.)
___________________________________________________________
Tuesday, 25 August 2009
You see, this is the problem with the NHS...
...they're all perverts:
Scientist tells of 'culture' at NHS of sending pornographic emails
The man likes his pr0n.
I always have a lot of time for the workplace wanker; it's the quintessential expression of contempt for one's employer.
"You're paying me to be here, and I'm beating it like it's robbed money off me."
Beginner's mistake with the IT helpdesk though, that's called doing a Gadd.
Update. a colleague just showed me rather apposite clip from Big Train:
Scientist tells of 'culture' at NHS of sending pornographic emails
...the 54-year-old was caught out when a pornographic PowerPoint presentation infected his computer with a virus and he called the trust's IT team to help.
They discovered the images and emails on his computer, and a search of his office and locker also uncovered a bag filled with pornographic magazines, a blue movie and a print out of a naked woman in his desk drawer.
The man likes his pr0n.
I always have a lot of time for the workplace wanker; it's the quintessential expression of contempt for one's employer.
"You're paying me to be here, and I'm beating it like it's robbed money off me."
Beginner's mistake with the IT helpdesk though, that's called doing a Gadd.
Update. a colleague just showed me rather apposite clip from Big Train:
Saturday, 22 August 2009
Get in the sack
Here's Dara saying what I want to say almost daily:
"Just because science can't prove everything, doesn't mean you can fill in the blanks with whichever fairy-tale takes your fancy"
Words to live by.
"Just because science can't prove everything, doesn't mean you can fill in the blanks with whichever fairy-tale takes your fancy"
Words to live by.
Friday, 21 August 2009
Deifying DanHan
H/T Theo Spark
I swear to God, I could listen to this guy for hours(watch all six parts):
Dave better up his game, because -and I don't pretend to be indicative of anyone but myself in this benighted Isle- if this guy was running the blues I would vote him in in an instant. Whereas (assuming no LPUK candidate) I would only vote for Team Dave because he was arguably the least shit, and definitely Not Labour.
I swear to God, I could listen to this guy for hours(watch all six parts):
Dave better up his game, because -and I don't pretend to be indicative of anyone but myself in this benighted Isle- if this guy was running the blues I would vote him in in an instant. Whereas (assuming no LPUK candidate) I would only vote for Team Dave because he was arguably the least shit, and definitely Not Labour.
Thursday, 20 August 2009
Tractor stats
Another year, another surge of savants, apparently.
I've made the point before, but GCSEs and A levels are borked beyond redemption. The main reason being that if they were rewritten to be sensible and the marking purged of politicisation, the new student would be put at an immense disadvantage to his or her counterpart from the year before. Imagine if pass rates went back to 1988? Does anyone honestly think the headlines would be 'Massive rise in A level standards?'when the previous years' A now scrapes a C?
No, the education results are the tractor stats of this (and arguably previous) government, and they must always be seen to rise above the year before. Now, I don't know if this is direct political interference (hmm) or some kind of unconscious collective group-think among educators and examiners (none of whom wish to be the heralds of bad news), but something must change if we are to be taken seriously amongst industry and the international community as an educated nation.
The obvious answer is to eliminate the potential for political gaming of the system by having education standards independent of the state, i.e the likes of the IB. Again, the short-term social and political obstacle to this -within our present state run (almost)monopoly of the education system- is that our existing infrastructure and education profession set-up is entirely geared around teaching to some very specific bulletpoints, namely SATS, GCSEs and A Levels. And so any outing into new waters is likely to cast our students into a poor light when compared to foreigners completing the same qualification within a system geared toward it.
If the Tories deliver upon their promise to adopt the Swedish model of vouchers, which parents can redeem at (hopefully) independently run schools of their choice, these issues hopefully will resolve themselves - after a no doubt painful fashion. People don't like change.
So, especially after watching DanHan's speech at the Army and Navy club, I'm feeling vaguely optimistic that Dave the Forehead can deliver us some good news.
The bastard better; the idiots are swarming faster then I can cut them down.
I've made the point before, but GCSEs and A levels are borked beyond redemption. The main reason being that if they were rewritten to be sensible and the marking purged of politicisation, the new student would be put at an immense disadvantage to his or her counterpart from the year before. Imagine if pass rates went back to 1988? Does anyone honestly think the headlines would be 'Massive rise in A level standards?'when the previous years' A now scrapes a C?
No, the education results are the tractor stats of this (and arguably previous) government, and they must always be seen to rise above the year before. Now, I don't know if this is direct political interference (hmm) or some kind of unconscious collective group-think among educators and examiners (none of whom wish to be the heralds of bad news), but something must change if we are to be taken seriously amongst industry and the international community as an educated nation.
The obvious answer is to eliminate the potential for political gaming of the system by having education standards independent of the state, i.e the likes of the IB. Again, the short-term social and political obstacle to this -within our present state run (almost)monopoly of the education system- is that our existing infrastructure and education profession set-up is entirely geared around teaching to some very specific bulletpoints, namely SATS, GCSEs and A Levels. And so any outing into new waters is likely to cast our students into a poor light when compared to foreigners completing the same qualification within a system geared toward it.
If the Tories deliver upon their promise to adopt the Swedish model of vouchers, which parents can redeem at (hopefully) independently run schools of their choice, these issues hopefully will resolve themselves - after a no doubt painful fashion. People don't like change.
So, especially after watching DanHan's speech at the Army and Navy club, I'm feeling vaguely optimistic that Dave the Forehead can deliver us some good news.
The bastard better; the idiots are swarming faster then I can cut them down.
Teh Awesome via Cake
Just when you think the internet can't surprise you any more:
Cake Wreck
Check out the cancer rat as well.
Not sure I fancy a piece of Lenin, though:
Wow.
Monday, 17 August 2009
Lets Ban Ham
Here we go again, hang on a minute.
Today, children, as part of our Daily Mail-esque oncological exercise to categorise everything into cures/causes of cancer:
Ham will give you horrible, horrible cancer and you've only got your mum to blame. The bitch.
Dick Puddlecote and NickM over at the Cat Counters have already had a go at this one, so I'll just toss my tuppence worth on the pile.
I could rant about the ball-smashingly interminable nannying from these charities, but that's all a bit old, so God help me I'm going to look at the studies.
Our resident scaremongers are once again WCRF. They of
"Salty soup poses cancer risk"
"Cancer Fear of Calorie-Laden Iced Coffees"
and now
"Ham sandwich warning to parents" fame.
The thing about WCRF, is that they generally don't provide quantitative information on the risk of cancer in relation to consumption of these foodstuffs they keep banging on about. They instead highlight only associations, e.g.
(a) certain brands of coffee are highly calorific;
(b) over consumption of calorific foodstuffs results in obesity;
and
(c) obesity increases cancer risk.
They follow this up with weaselly worded, sweeping advice: e.g. don't drink ‘too much’ iced coffee, don't eat ‘too much' processed soup, don't give children ham for lunch ‘too often’. What the hell is too much and how do you know, based on these vague observational studies you keep commissioning?
WCRF press releases, because they both fail to provide any true measure of the actual risk of consumption or what is meant by 'too much' or 'too often', do not contain sufficient information for anyone to make informed choices about healthy eating and so instead - all too predictably - just scare and confuse journalists and the public alike.
To be fair, this recent, bacon-flavoured press release does provide a 70g threshold for processed meat consumption in the UK which scientists estimate ‘could’ reduce bowel cancer by 3,700 cases - but it curiously neglects to provide the total number of bowel cancer cases necessary to place this figure in any context. The WCRF guidance on what is healthy for children to eat for lunch is at odds with that provided by the FSA. The FSA places emphasis on a balanced and varied diet and does not impose prescriptive limits on safe amounts of individual foodstuffs.
So I reckon WCRF is patently more interested in raising its profile and generating headlines than it is in public health.
Just in case you really care, CRUK have a fairly decent summary of the known studies here. I'm not going to give up the bacon butties just yet, but then I don't eat them every day.
Anyway, who the hell eats 160g of processed pork EVERY day?
Get some fruit down you, you fat bastards.
Oh and check this out. It is a truly excellent demonstration of the various ways of spinning the 'risk' associated with bacon butties.
Do please propagate.
*Slug slithers outside and shuts the door*
*muffled cry from outside:*
*"FUCK ME RAW WITH WITH A FOUR IRON!"*
*door opens, Slug slithers back in*
Right I'm good to go.*muffled cry from outside:*
*"FUCK ME RAW WITH WITH A FOUR IRON!"*
*door opens, Slug slithers back in*
Today, children, as part of our Daily Mail-esque oncological exercise to categorise everything into cures/causes of cancer:
Ham will give you horrible, horrible cancer and you've only got your mum to blame. The bitch.
Dick Puddlecote and NickM over at the Cat Counters have already had a go at this one, so I'll just toss my tuppence worth on the pile.
I could rant about the ball-smashingly interminable nannying from these charities, but that's all a bit old, so God help me I'm going to look at the studies.
Our resident scaremongers are once again WCRF. They of
"Salty soup poses cancer risk"
"Cancer Fear of Calorie-Laden Iced Coffees"
and now
"Ham sandwich warning to parents" fame.
The thing about WCRF, is that they generally don't provide quantitative information on the risk of cancer in relation to consumption of these foodstuffs they keep banging on about. They instead highlight only associations, e.g.
(a) certain brands of coffee are highly calorific;
(b) over consumption of calorific foodstuffs results in obesity;
and
(c) obesity increases cancer risk.
They follow this up with weaselly worded, sweeping advice: e.g. don't drink ‘too much’ iced coffee, don't eat ‘too much' processed soup, don't give children ham for lunch ‘too often’. What the hell is too much and how do you know, based on these vague observational studies you keep commissioning?
WCRF press releases, because they both fail to provide any true measure of the actual risk of consumption or what is meant by 'too much' or 'too often', do not contain sufficient information for anyone to make informed choices about healthy eating and so instead - all too predictably - just scare and confuse journalists and the public alike.
To be fair, this recent, bacon-flavoured press release does provide a 70g threshold for processed meat consumption in the UK which scientists estimate ‘could’ reduce bowel cancer by 3,700 cases - but it curiously neglects to provide the total number of bowel cancer cases necessary to place this figure in any context. The WCRF guidance on what is healthy for children to eat for lunch is at odds with that provided by the FSA. The FSA places emphasis on a balanced and varied diet and does not impose prescriptive limits on safe amounts of individual foodstuffs.
So I reckon WCRF is patently more interested in raising its profile and generating headlines than it is in public health.
Just in case you really care, CRUK have a fairly decent summary of the known studies here. I'm not going to give up the bacon butties just yet, but then I don't eat them every day.
Anyway, who the hell eats 160g of processed pork EVERY day?
Get some fruit down you, you fat bastards.
Oh and check this out. It is a truly excellent demonstration of the various ways of spinning the 'risk' associated with bacon butties.
Do please propagate.
Wednesday, 12 August 2009
'People are idiots' Shocker
I'm going to stop reading the Beeb.
Science questions baffle parents
Presumably on account of the parents believing the sun to be a shiny sky cow, and the internet to be a magic bucket filled with fluff and Facebook.
Amusing though it is to think of 'Parents' being confused about 'where babies come from', I'm pretty sure they know how they get in there in the first place, and I'm also quite confident the Mums noticed where they come from; so I'm guessing they didn't understand the whole cell division thing. Oh hang on:
You notice how this article is written as though all this is all so much obscure and arcane knowledge, such that it is news to the author as well? Rather than being reported as the secondary school staples these facts are, the article is written so as not to make any readers feel stupid for not knowing. Observe how the examples are explained 'so the website says' 'it says' rather than as cold hard reality 'it is' (emphasis mine and comments mine):
"It's not your fault, my fellow bovines, Science is really hard."
Even the title of the website pisses me off:
Science: [ So What? So everything ]
The sooner the environmentalists herald in the next dark age, and our herd of superficial, earth-shatteringly ignorant mouth-breathers is thinned out; the sooner we will, as a society, take stock and sort our priorities out.
Science: So what? Fuck you.
----------------------------------------------------
*Update - The Onion, 12 years ago:
Science questions baffle parents
More than half of the 1,002 parents surveyed thought their children knew more about science than they did.
Presumably on account of the parents believing the sun to be a shiny sky cow, and the internet to be a magic bucket filled with fluff and Facebook.
The top three most-asked questions were: "Where do babies come from?", "What makes a rainbow?" and "Why is the sky blue?".
Amusing though it is to think of 'Parents' being confused about 'where babies come from', I'm pretty sure they know how they get in there in the first place, and I'm also quite confident the Mums noticed where they come from; so I'm guessing they didn't understand the whole cell division thing. Oh hang on:
How to answer about where babies come from? The website explains that babies are created when a cell from the mother and a cell from the father join together or "fuse".
You notice how this article is written as though all this is all so much obscure and arcane knowledge, such that it is news to the author as well? Rather than being reported as the secondary school staples these facts are, the article is written so as not to make any readers feel stupid for not knowing. Observe how the examples are explained 'so the website says' 'it says' rather than as cold hard reality 'it is' (emphasis mine and comments mine):
After the two cells fuse, the site goes on, they divide over and over again to create a ball of cells called an embryo that goes on to become a baby that grows inside the mother for nine months.I'm being hard on the author, seeing as they are just quoting what's on the site, but the necessity of this initiative just really makes my teeth itch. And the patronising, dumbed-down nursery language is absolutely pathetic. I look at this article and read:
The website explains how a rainbow is made from light and water - with help from the sun. (With 'help' from the Sun? made from light and water? you mean it IS light as observed THROUGH water, yes? what kind of babying mongspeak is this?)
And the sky is blue, it says, because the sun produces white light which is made up of all the colours of the rainbow. (And this annoys me as well, whilst kind of true. It's made of the visible light part of the EM spectrum, and a fair bit which is invisible as well)
"It's not your fault, my fellow bovines, Science is really hard."
Even the title of the website pisses me off:
Science: [ So What? So everything ]
And 20% of parents said they felt silly when they did not know the answer to their children's questions.Good, you fucking failure. It's just a massive shame that the other 80% of parents who couldn't answer their kids' very basic questions don't have the same shame and self-awareness.
The sooner the environmentalists herald in the next dark age, and our herd of superficial, earth-shatteringly ignorant mouth-breathers is thinned out; the sooner we will, as a society, take stock and sort our priorities out.
Science: So what? Fuck you.
----------------------------------------------------
*Update - The Onion, 12 years ago:
Study: Uneducated Outbreeding Intelligentsia 2-To-1
CHICAGO—In a report with dire implications for the intellectual future of America, a University of Chicago study revealed Monday that the nation's uneducated are breeding twice as fast and twice as often as its educated. "The average member of the American underclass spawns at age 15, compared to age 30 for the average college-educated professional," study leader Kenneth Stalls said. "America's intellectual elite, as a result, are badly losing the genetic marathon, with two generations of dullards born for every one generation of cultured literates." Added Stalls: "At this rate, by the year 2100 there will be five smart people on Earth, swallowed whole by more than 12 billion mouth-breathers incapable of understanding the binary exponentiation that swamped the Earth with their like." High-school dropout Mandi Drucker, 16, said of the findings, "All I know is, we're in love."
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
Cancer, cancer everywhere
Look you lot, just stop it will you?
Today, drinking gives you mouth cancer.
If the beeb told me tomorrow that drinking causes Elephantitis and makes God harm puppies, I would not blink.
Do you know what causes cancer?
Continuing to breathe causes cancer.
Being a multicellular organism causes cancer.
Life causes cancer.
To quote Woody Allen: "No-one gets out of life alive". To all of the various scaremongerers taking the Daily Mail universal oncological approach (i.e all things must be classified into two groups: causes or cures of cancer), bearing in mind I have to die at some point: what would you prefer me to die of?
I understand, Cancer Research bods, the work you are doing is a 'Good Thing', but these daily Panic stories are quickly becoming redundant, and the continuing effort on vilifying drinking is rapidly becoming tiresome.
As had been said elsewhere, when the righteous won the day on smoking, they weren't sated. It was only the first on the list. The next items on the agenda for prohibition-in-the-public-good are (in order):
Leave.Us. Alone
Today, drinking gives you mouth cancer.
If the beeb told me tomorrow that drinking causes Elephantitis and makes God harm puppies, I would not blink.
Do you know what causes cancer?
Continuing to breathe causes cancer.
Being a multicellular organism causes cancer.
Life causes cancer.
To quote Woody Allen: "No-one gets out of life alive". To all of the various scaremongerers taking the Daily Mail universal oncological approach (i.e all things must be classified into two groups: causes or cures of cancer), bearing in mind I have to die at some point: what would you prefer me to die of?
I understand, Cancer Research bods, the work you are doing is a 'Good Thing', but these daily Panic stories are quickly becoming redundant, and the continuing effort on vilifying drinking is rapidly becoming tiresome.
As had been said elsewhere, when the righteous won the day on smoking, they weren't sated. It was only the first on the list. The next items on the agenda for prohibition-in-the-public-good are (in order):
- Alcohol
- Fatty foods
- Harsh language (arguably already happened)
- Human happiness and contentment
Leave.Us. Alone
Monday, 10 August 2009
Berlin
A good time, yesterdayRight. I'm back from Berlin, and will not be in need of beer for the foreseeable.
Drink was imbibed, wurst was eaten and the inevitable stag parties were well-behaved (indeed, the one's I've noticed over the last three years have always got on famously with the locals).
There was a 'Bavarian' beer tent set up by Lowenbrau down on the west end of the beer mile, which was packed with locals of all ages having a wild time: drinking, singing and dancing to the oompah band and later to incredibly bad europop. This was both a great laugh and a bit depressing, because I really couldn't imagine the same over here. Maybe I'm just jaded, but I cannot escape the idea that we just cannot enjoy ourselves without some tool having a skinful and starting a fight. Would be delighted to be wrong, however. If anyone was there: how did the counterpart beer festival in London go recently?
Drink was imbibed, wurst was eaten and the inevitable stag parties were well-behaved (indeed, the one's I've noticed over the last three years have always got on famously with the locals).
There was a 'Bavarian' beer tent set up by Lowenbrau down on the west end of the beer mile, which was packed with locals of all ages having a wild time: drinking, singing and dancing to the oompah band and later to incredibly bad europop. This was both a great laugh and a bit depressing, because I really couldn't imagine the same over here. Maybe I'm just jaded, but I cannot escape the idea that we just cannot enjoy ourselves without some tool having a skinful and starting a fight. Would be delighted to be wrong, however. If anyone was there: how did the counterpart beer festival in London go recently?
Berlin is an odd place; The streets smell like drains and the U-bahn network smells overwhelmingly of ozone and lube oil. The buildings are a total contrast between the classical and neoclassical architecture of the West, and the Stalin-era Socialist Classicism of the East. My hotel was on 'tother side of Alexanderplatz, in what was once East Germany, and lets us just say the communists did austere very well. The buildings around Karl Marx Allee (along which the beer festival spans 1.7miles) start massive and imposing and trail off into shittiness the more east you go; their primary purpose being to show the magnificence of Soviet architecture to the west.
Much of the property round those parts has become disused and dilapidated. You can imagine whomever was in charge of planning and development in West Germany when faced with the infrastructure bequeathed to them after unification, pinching the bridge of his nose and going: "Fuck me, where do you even start?" -Things are very grey and very square around those parts.
Much of the property round those parts has become disused and dilapidated. You can imagine whomever was in charge of planning and development in West Germany when faced with the infrastructure bequeathed to them after unification, pinching the bridge of his nose and going: "Fuck me, where do you even start?" -Things are very grey and very square around those parts.
Gotta love east BerlinGood beer, imaginative ways of cooking bits of beast, friendly locals, and did I mention the beer?
Oh, and the trains run on time, natch.
Wednesday, 5 August 2009
Prost!
Oh look, people enjoying a drink without fighting and vomiting in the street. Whatever next?The archaic unix fortune cookie program, proffers:
"In 1967, the Soviet Government minted a beautiful silver ruble with
Lenin in a very familiar pose -- arms raised above him, leading the
country to revolution. But, it was clear to everybody, that if you
looked at it from behind, it was clear that Lenin was pointing to 11:00,
when the Vodka shops opened, and was actually saying, 'Comrades, forward
to the Vodka shops.'
It became fashionable, when one wanted to have a drink, to take out the
ruble and say, 'Oh my goodness, Comrades, Lenin tells me we should go.'"
In adherence to the principles of scientific Marxism-Leninism (I think the key one is doing as we're told), I am going to Berlin tomorrow for the Berlin Beer Festival.
It is a mile of beer and wurst along Karl Marx Allee, and is an annual pilgrimage for me and my chums.
Expect ill-advised, semi-lucid ravings between now and Monday.
Tuesday, 4 August 2009
Monday, 3 August 2009
Pat Condell
If you don't know of Pat Condell, he's a stand-up comedian who has a rather negative view of organised religion in general and Islam in particular.
I've been subscribing to his videos on iTunes for ages now, but Counting Cats recently highlighted his most recent work, and it is a peach:
Top drawer stuff, and I recommend you go though his back-catalogue of awesome.
I've been subscribing to his videos on iTunes for ages now, but Counting Cats recently highlighted his most recent work, and it is a peach:
Top drawer stuff, and I recommend you go though his back-catalogue of awesome.
Sunday, 2 August 2009
Rewarding Failure
What fresh hell is this?
No, no, no, that wasn't the deal.
The deal was: Students of proper subjects like me (Electronic engineering) and my mate Dave (Physics) put in about 28 hours a week on our courses and had no lives. Philosophy students finished their week on Wednesday morning and then smoked odd things, got pink-eyed and generally had far more sex then we did for the rest of the week.
The trade-off being: We would be eminently employable and would waltz into a half-decent job at the end of three years, and then have the gloating satisfaction of watching Tarquin the Film Studies graduate being reduced to menial labour for bitter and cruel employers with penchants for buggery.
That is the deal, it's in the fucking scriptures somewhere.
Now they're sending these scrotes off on holiday, whilst the real people are working for a living and wondering why they have even less money in their pocket despite earning an order of magnitude more than they got by on in Uni?
I shall say again for posterity: FUCK. THIS. PLACE.
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is offering money for university leavers to take trips to places such as Costa Rica, Borneo and India.
No, no, no, that wasn't the deal.
The deal was: Students of proper subjects like me (Electronic engineering) and my mate Dave (Physics) put in about 28 hours a week on our courses and had no lives. Philosophy students finished their week on Wednesday morning and then smoked odd things, got pink-eyed and generally had far more sex then we did for the rest of the week.
The trade-off being: We would be eminently employable and would waltz into a half-decent job at the end of three years, and then have the gloating satisfaction of watching Tarquin the Film Studies graduate being reduced to menial labour for bitter and cruel employers with penchants for buggery.
That is the deal, it's in the fucking scriptures somewhere.
Now they're sending these scrotes off on holiday, whilst the real people are working for a living and wondering why they have even less money in their pocket despite earning an order of magnitude more than they got by on in Uni?
I shall say again for posterity: FUCK. THIS. PLACE.
How to empty a city of jobs in two years
Since I'm apparently in Daily Mail mode (and also by way of Window Licker), apparently the way forward is to tax people for going to work:
Employers face £350 Parking tax
That's right if you drive to work they want to tax the company (i.e. you) £250-rising to £350- for the privilege.
Comment from Nottingham council:
Me, about a minute ago
Eh? How the blue blistering fuck is it 'fairer' to get the poor benighted working stiffs who are already paying through their hoops for the running and maintaining of a car, to pay for the costs of the development of transport for other chuffing people? If some tool wants to spend time with Joe-Twat-Public that's their look out.
"Oh well, it's to encourage people to use alternative forms of transport to get to work."
No it's not, according to that article there are 40,000 people traveling to work by car in Nottingham, there is no way in hell that you could mobilise enough buses/trains/trams to get a significant fraction of those people (on top of existing commuters) to work and back at roughly the same time of day to their disparate places of work. No, what we have is a captive base of motorists who are ripe for milking, being cynically exploited for funds at a time when a local government should be doing it's damnedest to make their area as attractive as possible to prospective investors and staff.
All they are going to achieve is the reduction in existing companies and jobs within their area, and to scare off anyone thinking of setting up shop in Nottingham.
Atlas Shrugged had it's flaws as a novel, but old Ayn was bang on about the Moochers and Looters squeezing the productive members of their society when things go awry, and the worse things get, the harder they squeeze.
Interestingly, one of the commenters reckons:
*Update* Bristol Dave doesn't approve either.
Employers face £350 Parking tax
That's right if you drive to work they want to tax the company (i.e. you) £250-rising to £350- for the privilege.
Comment from Nottingham council:
'We put forward the idea of workplace parking levies as a fairer way to raise money to invest in the future of local transport services. We are pleased that the people of Nottingham will be the first to benefit.'
Me, about a minute agoEh? How the blue blistering fuck is it 'fairer' to get the poor benighted working stiffs who are already paying through their hoops for the running and maintaining of a car, to pay for the costs of the development of transport for other chuffing people? If some tool wants to spend time with Joe-Twat-Public that's their look out.
"Oh well, it's to encourage people to use alternative forms of transport to get to work."
No it's not, according to that article there are 40,000 people traveling to work by car in Nottingham, there is no way in hell that you could mobilise enough buses/trains/trams to get a significant fraction of those people (on top of existing commuters) to work and back at roughly the same time of day to their disparate places of work. No, what we have is a captive base of motorists who are ripe for milking, being cynically exploited for funds at a time when a local government should be doing it's damnedest to make their area as attractive as possible to prospective investors and staff.
All they are going to achieve is the reduction in existing companies and jobs within their area, and to scare off anyone thinking of setting up shop in Nottingham.
Atlas Shrugged had it's flaws as a novel, but old Ayn was bang on about the Moochers and Looters squeezing the productive members of their society when things go awry, and the worse things get, the harder they squeeze.
Interestingly, one of the commenters reckons:
That would be hysterical; imagine all the companies pulling a late 'un scraping off the paint the day before the tax comes into effect, turning their car-parking space into 'generic utility space'. How can you tax by individual bays when there aren't any? Sure, the council'll get their bit eventually, but if it were my company in Notts the conversation would go a bit like this:
When this was first mooted in1997 our Works Director checked and found that by definition a car park must have bays (white lines). He also discovered that if their were no white lines then the tax could not be levied.
Apparatchik: How many car parking spaces does your company have on it's site?
CEO Slug: One
Apparatchik: Just one? Well, how big is it?
CEO Slug: Oh, about a mile square.
*Update* Bristol Dave doesn't approve either.
How do you spell 'Irony' ?
Apparently It's spelt B.O.R.D.E.R.A.G.E.N.C.Y
Migrant hid in Border Agency bus to reach UK
Sweet Jesus, you seriously could not make this up (yes, thank you Littlejohn).
Frankly I'm shocked, shocked I tell you. Almost as if it's one rule for them, and another for the people they victimise on a daily basis when they're pretending to be an effective border control.
Personally, I'm glad he got in. I hope he somehow gets the full set of benefits and a three-bedroomed house in the home counties. I feel this would be justified entirely by his earth-shatteringly massive brass balls, which he no doubt had to hoist up and hold at chest height to run away form the bordor control staff who weren't chasing him. Let him in, the guy could give lessons in enterprise and initiative to our feckless home grown scroungers. And, since he made those shiny arsed incompetents at border control look like prize tools, frankly you can give him my tax and NI contributions for the year. Honest, I don't mind. What's that? You need that money to pay staff to bully tourists and be stunningly ineffective at their jobs? Oh all right then.
Did no-one notice WE'RE A FUCKING ISLAND? We've probably got the easiest national borders to police in Christendom. To paraphrase Gordon Gekko:
If Labour ran a funeral parlour, people wouldn't fucking die.
UK Border Agency staff, yesterday
Migrant hid in Border Agency bus to reach UK
Sweet Jesus, you seriously could not make this up (yes, thank you Littlejohn).
The immigration officers - whose job is to stop illegal immigrants entering the country - were oblivious to the stowaway hiding between the fuel tank and the chassis of the coach bringing them through the Channel Tunnel until they arrived at their depot in Folkestone.
The hack at the Mail must've had to go clean himself up after he heard that. This would be the kind of thing they hassle coach and lorry drivers to check, isn't it?
A few moments later, the man dropped down from the coach on to the ground and fled. The coach driver, who was still in the vehicle, ran after him, but was unable to catch upBut not the B.A staff? Must've clocked out already for the day.
There will be hauliers up and down the country who will be absolutely furious that they have incurred huge fines when they have had people who have stowed away on their lorries. Yet the UK Border Agency's driver doesn't appear to be receiving the same treatment.
Frankly I'm shocked, shocked I tell you. Almost as if it's one rule for them, and another for the people they victimise on a daily basis when they're pretending to be an effective border control.
Personally, I'm glad he got in. I hope he somehow gets the full set of benefits and a three-bedroomed house in the home counties. I feel this would be justified entirely by his earth-shatteringly massive brass balls, which he no doubt had to hoist up and hold at chest height to run away form the bordor control staff who weren't chasing him. Let him in, the guy could give lessons in enterprise and initiative to our feckless home grown scroungers. And, since he made those shiny arsed incompetents at border control look like prize tools, frankly you can give him my tax and NI contributions for the year. Honest, I don't mind. What's that? You need that money to pay staff to bully tourists and be stunningly ineffective at their jobs? Oh all right then.
The man then made his break for freedom, to join the estimated 725,000 other illegal immigrants living here.
Did no-one notice WE'RE A FUCKING ISLAND? We've probably got the easiest national borders to police in Christendom. To paraphrase Gordon Gekko:
If Labour ran a funeral parlour, people wouldn't fucking die.
UK Border Agency staff, yesterday
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