Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Simaril on February 02, 2011, 03:30:06 PM
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that childhood vaccines are associated with a lower risk of one of the most common childhood cancers, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/02/us-leukemia-risk-idUSTRE7117IX20110202?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+reuters/healthNews+(News+/+US+/+Health+News) (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/02/us-leukemia-risk-idUSTRE7117IX20110202?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+reuters/healthNews+(News+/+US+/+Health+News))
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Whoa wait!? Vaccines help keep you healthy? :D But wait, don't some of these things cause autism (sarcasm).
Of course there could be a 3rd variable. I would imagine those countries that value vaccines also have a generally higher health care system, it's quite possible vaccines play a role and it looks like they will further this research, but as they say, not an end all answer to anything.
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Actually, this research was all in one country - looked at data on a county by county basis.
When hear about some medical discovery, before I take it seriously I consider a couple different things.
1.Is the finding bizarre, or does it make sense internally? Most studies look at a P value of 0.05 or better as significant, which means that there is a 5% or less chance of the findings being caused by chance alone. That's enough to get you published, and if the news wire picks it up you get a blurb on CNN. But that level of certainty means that one out of every 20 studies will have bogus results! This is the biggest reason we see "Coffee prevents heart attacks" one week, and "Coffee causes heart attacks" the next.
Especially with modern computing power, researchers can analyze dozens of data associations - so it costs almost nothing to see if nose hair length correlates with IQ. If they do enough of that nonsense, they can find something that looks impressive statistically but is just codified randomness. That's why I almost automatically discount associations that were not part of the study's original design and intent.
2. Does the finding make sense mechanistically? If there's a rational connection between the new finding and what we already know, it's more likely to prove out in the long run.
This is similar to the first point, with the main difference being that in #1 I'm talking about the overall commonsense feel of the result, and here I'm talking about the nuts and bolts of how the body works. There are MANY parts of real life medicine for which we don't have an explanation, but the finding is pretty darn certain nonetheless. But when we understand how something works, new findings are more believable if they fit with the mechanics we already understand.
So if something seems whacko, I tend to be a bit more skeptical, more likely to blame the finding on randomness.
3. Are there other studies that have shown the same thing? Obviously, somebody has to be first - but the more corroborating data, the more people find the same thing when they ask the same question different ways in different settings, the more likely the finding is real.
And when it comes to the question of vaccinations and decreased childhood lymphoid cancers, it meets all these standards. It makes sense that stimulation of the immune system could have an impact on the recognition and distruction of abnormal (cancer) cells - which almost always display abnormal immune antigen markers on their surface. There are multiple studies showing similar findings. And the more often the same decreases are found in different settings, the more likely those differences are signals and not noise.
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Very interesting. I'll have to keep this fresh in my mind and look for updates on this. It could've been chance, but 40% is a hefty percentage.
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I am a life long asthmatic with many allergies and am allergic to most antibiotics.
I always take the vaccines. I wanted to enlist in the Navy in 1974 at age 22 and I did. You want to talk about getting shots / vaccines? 2 full days of it you get, walking around in white boxer shorts around a heck of a lot of nice looking ladies, was kind of embarrassing to me. Tear gas and the smoke bunker cannot be too healthy for you!
This latest flu shot I got in October, for several days, the joints in all my fingers hurt like heck for a few days, like extreme arthritis. I do have a little bit mild arthritis. I take the vaccines because full blown flu for an asthmatic can be life threatening. I remember West Palm Beach hospital about 1955 in a full bed oxygen tent for 2 weeks---not fun. Why I am so much the loner type is 9 years of a lot of hospital stays away from family as a kid.
I just got the new Shingles vaccine. Shingles is no fun, my wife had it. Out of pocket it cost $195 up front! But the insurance paid most of it, eventually.
Living life is risky enough, vaccines---true, a small percentage of patients get the weird stuff.
But driving your car down the highway at 90 mph, or even at 55mph is dangerous enough, we just don't realize it or think about it. Study the physics of a 2 ton vehicle going down the highway at 55mph and hitting something. And you are basically sitting on a potential gas bomb---and sometimes they do catch fire and sometimes they blow up.
And most people I know smoke and drink booze and that's perfectly fine. Read up about what booze does to your brain and liver, even the occasional party-er.
My dad had whooping cough, mumps and rheumatic fever as a kid in the 1920's. Take your choice. I prefer the vaccines.
I have reflux disease. I took 80 mg of Prevacid for 8 years. Read the data safety sheet about Prevacid and lab rats and cancer. All medicines have risks, they find out usually during their testing phase. But not always, like Vioxx and Propulsid. I took Propulsid for 3 years, a great drug for GERD, but it was killing people, sudden death. FDA pulled both drugs, eventually. I popped a blood vessel in my head 9 years ago and I wonder if the medicines may have done it. Doctors did not know what the cause was, AVM they think.
They did pull Cyclamates(sp?) out of soda about 1970. But Saccharin is still on the market---known to cause cancer.
Think of all the crap they put in the food, then factor in working place hazards like machinists and welders are around every day.
One day out there, my number will come up, and that day, time will be up and I will die. But with that philosophy no need to take the vaccines. Catch-22 or I'm just a hypocrite. I can try to live my life feeling relatively good or go through life feeling like crap.
As to COMMON SENSE: I find that phrase, most people, common sense is a learned entity and not as common as one may think!