Successfully evaded Hep B for my son at birth, and through consistent prodding in the following days. I’m with a group of anti vax parents and we’re seeing comparably better results when we walk around in public places where there are also other children.
Also, we’ve got 340 million people in the US and Denmark has 6 million people. Can we get an epidemiologist or the infectious disease specialist from the US to comment? It would be easy to herd 6 million cats. I would like to hear from someone who’s trying to herd 340 million of us.
I love this. This is the essence of what Sensible Medicine should be doing. Sparking healthy debate is healthy. Doing proper testing to re-establish trust in the medical industry is critical, especially here in Canada where the lies and governmental overreach deeply damaged our society. Science was abandoned and ‘the science’ took over. Debate was snuffed out in public circles. Keep it up SM team. The Danish doctor makes a lot of sense. Dr Cifu is still a hero, but must practise what SM preaches. Test, test, test. Facts, not opinions.
Mr Cifu provides a comment that is rife with logical fallacies… as is American style medicine where there’s a dangerous gap between theory and standardized perspectives, and real world situations in which one-size fits all treatments and generic ‘vaccines’ are not qualitatively consistent things. For example, disease case counts are really a count of diagnoses by people paid to follow the same one-size fits all standards. Fast and easy to use ideas we are paid or coerced to use.
But there’s the rub, Mr Cifu needs to fall back on questions of where anomalies occur and argue that more people follow American standards than European practices.
There’s nothing proven when talking about proper patient or population care in terms of practices meeting requirements in reality when a dear doctor argues that he is right and the other guy is wrong because more pros do things our way, not yours.
Sounds like a gang of teenagers arguing about the best colour and length of hairstyle under threat of exclusion or punishment. Anyone who asks or needs to differ is at risk of being beaten up by the powers that be.
It’s American biomedicine: An appeal to authority that is dangerous on many levels for the person for whom MDs have a duty of care. Moreover let’s get real: How many MDs actually go through the motion of giving vaccines or providing fully informed consent, let alone individual risk assessment?
How many American MDs saw the person drop after novel shot technology was injected, and then cared that the authoritative cause-effect links were corrupted by the standard definition of ‘vaccination’… didn’t occur in the data until two weeks after the second dose. Cool for you, not so good for the family losing someone on the way home or two weeks after ‘full vaccination’. But heck, some say- there’s no evidence of problems because by American standards, lack of evidence can be equated with evidence of lack. At least that was the stance of Mr Science before he retired.
I always wonder what might have been different if the media wasn’t so fear mongering during the pandemic. And if the lockdowns - supported by the administrations (both of them to their own extents). Fauci’s dart throwing for social distancing and masking perhaps would have been questioned. One also MUST factor in that science got very divided (and men WERE women, and children were surgically altered, etc.). That division alone has shown MUCH division among experts on social media, mainstream media, journals (!). I have to scratch my head at the fact that Fauci is a pardoned person now, reducing credibility even more. These are very dark times for the healthcare industry and I’m not sure the genie can be put back into the bottle. I’m not necessarily a fan of RFK2, but I am DEFINITELY not a fan of where many things have come to within medicine.
I totally agree with Dr. Cifu who is measured and data-driven. I am a retired pediatrician. I believe that there will be enough reasoned physicians and scientists at HHS that a significant alteration in vaccine administration is unlikely. We may see more and better randomized trials on all sorts of therapies including vaccines.
This is a great format. Long form debates on this stack have been routinely excellent.
It seems many of the disagreements were stylistic in nature, and nothing I was too bothered by when the OP first came out.
As with all things RFK, it comes down to vaccines. And naturally, “skepticism” will overlap with “quackery” in some manifestations. When done wrong, like RFK does at times/often, he ends up being both a skeptic AND a quack.
The underlying issue seems to be a lack of clarity about the scientific method, and in attributing logic’s burden of proof: (that’s an issue with education, such that the population often does not grasp fundamental scientific literacy…but that’s a different issue for a different day)
1. You CAN’T prove a negative.
2. A positive assertion attracts the burden of proof.
3. You “accept” the null hypothesis (that there is NO causation) unless evidence is provided that is sufficient to reject the null, and accept that there IS causation.
This means that:
1. You cannot prove that vaccine X does NOT cause autism, or whatever else
2 (a) If you want to assert that vaccine X DOES cause autism, it’s your job to go out and prove that, and you SHOULD be considered a quack unless/ until you do.
2 (b) If you assert that the current US childhood vax schedule is effective, it is your job to go out and prove it.
3 (a) you should accept that vaccines do not cause autism, unless someone proves it does (and nobody has). Be the skeptic, not the quack.
3(b) you can also accept that the current US childhood vax schedule is overkill, unless someone goes out to prove it is necessary. And it seems, in the meantime, that the low hanging fruit that satisfies skepticism and repels quackery would simply be to eliminate the number of low evidence shots from the current schedule, like other nations seem to do.
I agree with Dr. Cifu, to the extent that you can’t / will never be able to whack every quack mole. But I agree with the OP author insofar as a better job needs to be done to make sure current recommendations are in fact founded upon good evidence (and many seem not to be).
Thanks, Dr. Cifu. I'm sorry to read all the comments here. I think VP has attracted a rather anti-science crowd, whether that was his intention or not. RFK Jr is on the record that there are NO vaccines that are safe and effective, and according to his book on Fauci, he does NOT believe in the germ theory of disease. As Paul Offit has stated, no matter what good things he might promote about exercise and healthy diet (while eating McDonalds on Air Force One), you cannot embrace somebody who is clearly against vaccines (and will lie about it under oath). He often claims he never said what he actually said on camera. So I don't know why so many doctors believe him when he says "I'm not against vaccines." If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you. If he's confirmed, I would not be the least bit surprised if he tells Marty Makary to rescind authorizations of most (all?) vaccines. Then Makary and VP will be stuttering and claiming they never defended him and they never thought he would do such a thing. PLEASE! It will be on all those who support him now when that happens. Oh, and no antivirals or antibiotics, either. After all, germs don't cause disease!
After reading that section, I think most readers will acknowledge your quote was taken out of context. In reality, RFK presents well-reasoned arguments and displays nuance (e.g, admits that "some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they’re causing" And, "The polio vaccine, was it effective against polio? I’m going to say, “Yes.” And if say to me, “Did it cause more death than avert? I would say, “I don’t know, because we don’t have the data on that”)..\
"and includes some highly debatable ones (seed oil, glyphosate)."
Explain why glyphosate - something which destroys your gut biome by blocking the shikimate pathway in bacteria - is highly debatable. Or did you mean it's being debated a lot now? Which it definitely should be.
"There is no link between vaccines and autism. PERIOD. FULL STOP. We should not spend our time disproving baseless hypotheses."
Adam, sorry but you're wrong. I know three people who's child/child/niece had regressive autism after a round of vaccines near 1-2 years old. In one case the change was so striking, that the siblings were given medical exemptions.
Furthermore, there are studies on the Hep B vaccine alleging that it causes behaviors similar to autism in animals. This could explain a rise in autism without it being noticed. The Hep B vaccine should only be given to infants with a close family member who is Hep B positive.
Your response is straight out of the CDC playbook. We expect better from you.
You may expect more, but unlikely you'll get more as many (but thankfully not all, and thankfully not the many critical thinking ones that have emerged in recent years) doctors are indoctrinated into vaccines right from med school. It's so much so that it becomes a part of their identity. Questioning it is horrible to contemplate as there's a fear of your identity defragmenting. Among the best protections against cuh defragmentation are the sort of arguments one sees here, i.e. anti-science, etc etc.
Dr. Schaltz-Buchholzer makes a far more compelling argument than Dr. Cifu. Dr. Cifu, is citing stats from the WHO, which should be an immediate red flag to question all his hypotheses.
If vaccines don't cause autism, why do so many doctors, experts, and authorities figures get so bent out of shape at the idea of a study to prove/disprove the theory?
You all are so confident that they don't cause autism, so put your money where your mouth is. Or is it that you're actually scared of the moral consequences of discovering that you were wrong?
Successfully evaded Hep B for my son at birth, and through consistent prodding in the following days. I’m with a group of anti vax parents and we’re seeing comparably better results when we walk around in public places where there are also other children.
Add to your list on observations to ban direct pharma advertising to patients.
No name calling, but I wouldn't trust Cifu to be my physician.
Also, we’ve got 340 million people in the US and Denmark has 6 million people. Can we get an epidemiologist or the infectious disease specialist from the US to comment? It would be easy to herd 6 million cats. I would like to hear from someone who’s trying to herd 340 million of us.
Is there a danish sensible medicine? If someone could give me that information, I would love to read it.
I love this. This is the essence of what Sensible Medicine should be doing. Sparking healthy debate is healthy. Doing proper testing to re-establish trust in the medical industry is critical, especially here in Canada where the lies and governmental overreach deeply damaged our society. Science was abandoned and ‘the science’ took over. Debate was snuffed out in public circles. Keep it up SM team. The Danish doctor makes a lot of sense. Dr Cifu is still a hero, but must practise what SM preaches. Test, test, test. Facts, not opinions.
Mr Cifu provides a comment that is rife with logical fallacies… as is American style medicine where there’s a dangerous gap between theory and standardized perspectives, and real world situations in which one-size fits all treatments and generic ‘vaccines’ are not qualitatively consistent things. For example, disease case counts are really a count of diagnoses by people paid to follow the same one-size fits all standards. Fast and easy to use ideas we are paid or coerced to use.
But there’s the rub, Mr Cifu needs to fall back on questions of where anomalies occur and argue that more people follow American standards than European practices.
There’s nothing proven when talking about proper patient or population care in terms of practices meeting requirements in reality when a dear doctor argues that he is right and the other guy is wrong because more pros do things our way, not yours.
Sounds like a gang of teenagers arguing about the best colour and length of hairstyle under threat of exclusion or punishment. Anyone who asks or needs to differ is at risk of being beaten up by the powers that be.
It’s American biomedicine: An appeal to authority that is dangerous on many levels for the person for whom MDs have a duty of care. Moreover let’s get real: How many MDs actually go through the motion of giving vaccines or providing fully informed consent, let alone individual risk assessment?
How many American MDs saw the person drop after novel shot technology was injected, and then cared that the authoritative cause-effect links were corrupted by the standard definition of ‘vaccination’… didn’t occur in the data until two weeks after the second dose. Cool for you, not so good for the family losing someone on the way home or two weeks after ‘full vaccination’. But heck, some say- there’s no evidence of problems because by American standards, lack of evidence can be equated with evidence of lack. At least that was the stance of Mr Science before he retired.
I always wonder what might have been different if the media wasn’t so fear mongering during the pandemic. And if the lockdowns - supported by the administrations (both of them to their own extents). Fauci’s dart throwing for social distancing and masking perhaps would have been questioned. One also MUST factor in that science got very divided (and men WERE women, and children were surgically altered, etc.). That division alone has shown MUCH division among experts on social media, mainstream media, journals (!). I have to scratch my head at the fact that Fauci is a pardoned person now, reducing credibility even more. These are very dark times for the healthcare industry and I’m not sure the genie can be put back into the bottle. I’m not necessarily a fan of RFK2, but I am DEFINITELY not a fan of where many things have come to within medicine.
I totally agree with Dr. Cifu who is measured and data-driven. I am a retired pediatrician. I believe that there will be enough reasoned physicians and scientists at HHS that a significant alteration in vaccine administration is unlikely. We may see more and better randomized trials on all sorts of therapies including vaccines.
This is a great format. Long form debates on this stack have been routinely excellent.
It seems many of the disagreements were stylistic in nature, and nothing I was too bothered by when the OP first came out.
As with all things RFK, it comes down to vaccines. And naturally, “skepticism” will overlap with “quackery” in some manifestations. When done wrong, like RFK does at times/often, he ends up being both a skeptic AND a quack.
The underlying issue seems to be a lack of clarity about the scientific method, and in attributing logic’s burden of proof: (that’s an issue with education, such that the population often does not grasp fundamental scientific literacy…but that’s a different issue for a different day)
1. You CAN’T prove a negative.
2. A positive assertion attracts the burden of proof.
3. You “accept” the null hypothesis (that there is NO causation) unless evidence is provided that is sufficient to reject the null, and accept that there IS causation.
This means that:
1. You cannot prove that vaccine X does NOT cause autism, or whatever else
2 (a) If you want to assert that vaccine X DOES cause autism, it’s your job to go out and prove that, and you SHOULD be considered a quack unless/ until you do.
2 (b) If you assert that the current US childhood vax schedule is effective, it is your job to go out and prove it.
3 (a) you should accept that vaccines do not cause autism, unless someone proves it does (and nobody has). Be the skeptic, not the quack.
3(b) you can also accept that the current US childhood vax schedule is overkill, unless someone goes out to prove it is necessary. And it seems, in the meantime, that the low hanging fruit that satisfies skepticism and repels quackery would simply be to eliminate the number of low evidence shots from the current schedule, like other nations seem to do.
I agree with Dr. Cifu, to the extent that you can’t / will never be able to whack every quack mole. But I agree with the OP author insofar as a better job needs to be done to make sure current recommendations are in fact founded upon good evidence (and many seem not to be).
Thanks, Dr. Cifu. I'm sorry to read all the comments here. I think VP has attracted a rather anti-science crowd, whether that was his intention or not. RFK Jr is on the record that there are NO vaccines that are safe and effective, and according to his book on Fauci, he does NOT believe in the germ theory of disease. As Paul Offit has stated, no matter what good things he might promote about exercise and healthy diet (while eating McDonalds on Air Force One), you cannot embrace somebody who is clearly against vaccines (and will lie about it under oath). He often claims he never said what he actually said on camera. So I don't know why so many doctors believe him when he says "I'm not against vaccines." If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you. If he's confirmed, I would not be the least bit surprised if he tells Marty Makary to rescind authorizations of most (all?) vaccines. Then Makary and VP will be stuttering and claiming they never defended him and they never thought he would do such a thing. PLEASE! It will be on all those who support him now when that happens. Oh, and no antivirals or antibiotics, either. After all, germs don't cause disease!
"RFK Jr is on the record that there are NO vaccines that are safe and effective..."
...
Really? Any references to back that up your assertion I can look up? Or you just mindlessly regurgitating the talking points you've read or heard?
Here's the link to the transcript from the Lex Friedman interview that quote was snipped out. from: https://lexfridman.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr-transcript/ Start at 1:55:38 and read through 2:05:30.
After reading that section, I think most readers will acknowledge your quote was taken out of context. In reality, RFK presents well-reasoned arguments and displays nuance (e.g, admits that "some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they’re causing" And, "The polio vaccine, was it effective against polio? I’m going to say, “Yes.” And if say to me, “Did it cause more death than avert? I would say, “I don’t know, because we don’t have the data on that”)..\
"and includes some highly debatable ones (seed oil, glyphosate)."
Explain why glyphosate - something which destroys your gut biome by blocking the shikimate pathway in bacteria - is highly debatable. Or did you mean it's being debated a lot now? Which it definitely should be.
"There is no link between vaccines and autism. PERIOD. FULL STOP. We should not spend our time disproving baseless hypotheses."
Adam, sorry but you're wrong. I know three people who's child/child/niece had regressive autism after a round of vaccines near 1-2 years old. In one case the change was so striking, that the siblings were given medical exemptions.
Furthermore, there are studies on the Hep B vaccine alleging that it causes behaviors similar to autism in animals. This could explain a rise in autism without it being noticed. The Hep B vaccine should only be given to infants with a close family member who is Hep B positive.
Your response is straight out of the CDC playbook. We expect better from you.
You may expect more, but unlikely you'll get more as many (but thankfully not all, and thankfully not the many critical thinking ones that have emerged in recent years) doctors are indoctrinated into vaccines right from med school. It's so much so that it becomes a part of their identity. Questioning it is horrible to contemplate as there's a fear of your identity defragmenting. Among the best protections against cuh defragmentation are the sort of arguments one sees here, i.e. anti-science, etc etc.
This just came out today: https://popularrationalism.substack.com/p/senators-voting-against-kennedy-dont?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=475124&post_id=156921619&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ra80j&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Dr. Schaltz-Buchholzer makes a far more compelling argument than Dr. Cifu. Dr. Cifu, is citing stats from the WHO, which should be an immediate red flag to question all his hypotheses.
If vaccines don't cause autism, why do so many doctors, experts, and authorities figures get so bent out of shape at the idea of a study to prove/disprove the theory?
You all are so confident that they don't cause autism, so put your money where your mouth is. Or is it that you're actually scared of the moral consequences of discovering that you were wrong?
RFK Jr. admits to being a miasmist. What? How did we get to this point?