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1. Jarvis Reinforces Chiropractic!
2. HPV Vaccine for Boys?
3. Upcoming Seminars
4. Vaccines and California 7th graders
5. Prevnar: unnecessary vaccine?
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1. Chiro-Bashing Backfires: Thank you Will-yam Jarvis
In the past 30 years there have been many media-rites– raiders of the lost art, perhaps – who front for the bottomless pockets of those whose agenda has been to destroy the chiropractic profession. And access to all the media those pockets could provide. These crusaders didn’t have to be particularly intelligent, or convincing, certainly not academic or even remotely accurate in crafting their slings and arrows, because whatever they came up with was going to appear in worldwide media venues, for years. Maximum smear power, big on innuendo, short on fact.
Fortunately most are now in their doddering years, so their names are largely forgotten.
One of the least apt of these lower primates was certainly a carbon unit named Jarvis. And what were Jarvis’ credentials that gave him the authority to evaluate our profession? A PhD in physical education! That’s right — his total academic credentials were in gym! Kind of like Barrett, his hapless protege, a failed psychiatrist who never passed boards.
Anyway, in the 70s and 80s Jarvis was assigned take his anti-chiropractic slide show on the road to do as much damage as possible. All facilities of mainstream medical education welcomed him. But even with all those resources and advantages at his disposal, Jarvis had very little effect. This story may illustrate why.
In a recent Las Vegas seminar I met a doctor who told me how in the late 70s when he was still a student he learned that Jarvis was to give a presentation to the medical students at the prestigious Loma Linda University medical school in southern California. Interested to see what was up, the young chiropractic student and his friend drove over to Loma Linda and walked into the lecture room.
Apparently Jarvis was holding forth in a lecture room to a full assembly of second and third year med students. Slides of DD Palmer and BJ Palmer were shown while Jarvis provided a running narrative explaining his version of universal intelligence and innate intelligence, etc. Jarvis began to quote BJ’s ideas, such as – there is a universal intelligence which manifests through all living things and the expression of that intelligence in humans is known as innate intelligence, mediated through the nervous system, and the body has its own very powerful capabilities of healing itself if free from interference, etc…
The doctor said that he actually didn’t remember Jarvis saying anything particularly insulting or belittling about BJ’s ideas, but it seemed as though Jarvis assumed that if he just quoted BJ directly, that would be enough to show the med students how ridiculous BJ’s position was.
But it didn’t work.
What happened instead is that suddenly these medical students, having never heard anything remotely like a vitalistic philosophy of healing before, began to lean forward and listen very intently. Soon they began to ask very pointed questions that Jarvis was not prepared for. Doesn’t all healing ultimately proceed from the body’s own immune system? Doesn’t the nervous system actually control every cell and tissue in the body? Isn’t the spinal cord the most delicate tissue, the most subject to compromise in the entire body…etc. Questions like that.
Instead of BJ being made to look ridiculous, Jarvis was the one who looked unlettered since he couldn’t find fault with the ideas he was trying to present in a negative light. The only thing that Jarvis could think of to criticize BJ was to say that chiropractic was empirical. That’s it.
Now the classical definition of empirical is that which is proven by observation, experience or experiment.
So what’s wrong with that, the students wondered? Jarvis ended up wasting his time, except for introducing these few students to the idea that chiropractic might indeed be a valuable healing art that they hadn’t understood before, worthy of further investigation.
People say empirical as though to imply that there is no scientific method, no ‘evidenced based’ game being run, and therefore the subject should not be considered valid. The enshrinement of evidenced-based science. But is that really the model we wish to aspire to, the measure by which we seek to be judged? Peer review – the controlled randomized clinical trial? These are the boasts of organized medicine, their code of honor and distinction from the wild menace of ‘folk medicine.’
Let’s look at just a few of the recent accomplishments of evidence based medicine:
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– the Kirsch study that showed how 82% of antidepressants are no better than a placebo
– Japan outlaws Prevnar and H. influenzae vaccines after 6 children die, Jan 2011
– cancer as the #2 cause of death among US children, the most vaccinated group in history
– the US as #46 in infant mortality worldwide
– prescription drugs as the #1 cause of death in the US
– after 30 years the manufacturers of cold medicines admit they’ve never been tested and should no longer be recommended to children under 4 — Nov 2010
– Swine flu vaccine approved after 5 weeks
– 86% collusion rate among authors of peer review and drug companies
In the new Chiropractic Seminar we go on at length with this list. But the point is, wouldn’t empirical be a vast improvement over what we see here with conventional medicine? Wouldn’t you rather go to a doctor who is going to get results that can be clearly observed rather than one who is going to ‘prove’ results by means of a complicated system of validation riddled with quid pro quo arrangements, lobbying, and overt payoffs? And this doctor is going to prove to you that you are now better even if you feel 3 times worse?
And of course that’s not to say that there have been no studies objectively demonstrating the value of the adjustment. Merely that we can never compete at their level of experimentation – or of control of findings, to be accurate, with all the billions at their disposal to prove whatever they are assigned to prove. [See #2 below] But the politics of evidence-based is hardly proven in the pudding: the true health benefit is rarely evident.
Long may you rot Mr Jarvis. But you didn’t destroy us. That we must attempt to do ourselves. Never send an amateur to do the work of a professional.
Chiropractic will always survive, but as for excellence, well that seems to be limited these days to the area of the individual practicing doctor, and how well he learned the story and then learned how to tell it.
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2. NEW ASSIGNMENT: HPV VACCINE FOR BOYS
The New England Journal of Medicine continues its demise as a reliable source in two sales pieces masquerading as peer-review in the 3 Feb 2011 edition, both on the fiction of the Human Papilloma Virus vaccine for preventing genital warts in boys. (Kim, Giuliano, [10,11])
Having been approved in 2006 to supposedly prevent cancer of the cervix, HPV vaccine has been given indiscriminately to boys as well for the past 5 years. Nobody ever asked why. People finally began to notice it last year, and an unproven, untested rationale began to appear in pop media – that the HPV vaccine also prevented genital warts in boys.
What a serendipitous coincidence – this vaccine that we have been claiming will prevent cancer of the cervix in 12 year old girls also has the added value of preventing genital warts in 12 year old boys. And we just found out. How convenient then that they can both get the same vaccine on shot day!
This is the precise level of logic that the general public accepts as sensible – nothing coincidental about it. Even though there had been no studies of the vaccine and genital warts in boys, suddenly they’re claiming its efficacy. So in true slave to fashion style, NEJM took up the bit in Feb 2011 in the above cited 2 articles to prove the connection. Hopelessly confused and self-contradictory, the tone for the Giuliano study is set in the second paragraph: [11] on p 401:
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“The primary objective was to show that the HPV vaccine reduced the incidence of external genital lesions related to HPV”
Excuse us, but isn’t the objective of any new clinical study to test a hypothesis? At least pretend like you’re not merely providing the required evidence for your employers. Now everybody knows that funding for vaccine studies comes from the manufacturers who are attempting to prove a vaccine’s effectiveness, but most have the good sense to at least pretend to be finding out whether it works or not. These peer review editors are really getting casual.
Not surprising is the conflict of interest disclosure section at [11] in which almost all of the authors admit that they are either employees of Merck or have received financial rewards for doing the study.
The two ‘new’ studies are actually not new at all but just re-writes of data from 2004-2008. What is new is the assignment: prove that the HPV vaccine prevents genital warts in boys. Which conclusion Merck’s employees deliver, just as they were paid to do.
I realize that this level of analysis is a bit beyond the public’s usual interest, but it isn’t that technical or abstract, and the whole argument collapses readily after the most superficial look at the data. The tragedy is – aren’t our children worth at least that much scrutiny about what we are injecting into their formative systems? Apparently not. 75% of parents just roll over.
Vaccines alter DNA. That is incontrovertible; the manufacturers state it. And vaccines are also immunosuppressive and neurotoxic in the infant, who is not born with an intact immune system, or a complete central nervous system.
Deficiencies of immunity and neurological formation, as well as DNA alteration will certainly handicap vaccinated humans in the long term, preventing them from replicating the strongest progeny possible. Multiply that trend by a dozen generations: epigenetic de-evolution. Social Darwinism.
Or looking at it through the other end of the telescope, Natural Selection will now favor the Survival of the Correctly Informed. Nature will be obeyed.
References:
9. Mann, D – HPV shot prevents genital warts in boys, WebMD 2 Feb 2011 – www.webmd.com/sexual-conditions/hpv-genital-warts/news/20110202/hpv-shot-prevents-genital-warts-in-boys-and-men
10. Kim, J – Weighing the benefits and costs of HPV vaccination in young men, New England Journal of Medicine p 393 – 3 Feb 2011
11. Giuliano, A – Efficacy of quadrivalent HPV vaccine against HPV
infection and disease in males, NEJM p 401 – 3 Feb 2011
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3. Upcoming Seminars
Vaccine/Detox Seminar
Orange County, CA – 11 Jun 2011
Ventura, CA – 9 Jul 2011
Oxford, England – 3 Sep 2011
Chiropractic Seminar
Caribbean Sea – 1 Aug 2011
Denver, CO – 20 Aug 2011
Barcelona, Spain – 10 Sep 2011
see Seminars for details
Caribbean date will be aboard the Royal Caribbean Serenade of the Seas leaving out of San Juan, Puerto Rico on 31 July. Call office to register for seminar. Book passage at www.royalcaribbean.com
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4. Repeat of Tricky New Law — vaccines for California 7th graders
There have been so many requests for information about the “new law” in California for 7th graders — I will say it once more here: there is no new vaccine requirement. The only thing different is that now the school will be checking to see if the child is vaccinated or has the exemption form. That’s it. No new law, just new checking. Exemption form is as good as it always was. Another much ado about nothing in the desperate attempts to sell vaccines.
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5. Excerpt from Vaccination Is Not Immunization
Prevnar: Unnecessary Vaccine
Since its addition to the Schedule in 2002, the Prevnar vaccine has been surrounded by controversy. Prevnar contains elements of Strep pneumoniae and diphtheria bacteria, and is marketed as protection for otitis media and bacterial meningitis.
The first and most striking problem with Prevnar is the claim that it protects against otitis media, which is usually a simple earache. Practically all babies get temporary earaches, which are mild and self-limiting and resolve in a day or two. Even the 2007 PDR cites 90% as the figure for infant earaches. [213]
It may be surprising to review the definition of otitis media: “a visually abnormal tympanic membrane suggesting effusion” [213], p 3468) That means looking in the baby’s ear, the ear drum appears red. This can happen after crying. There’s no culture, no blood test, nothing besides looking in the ear necessary to diagnose the commonplace “otitis.” Inflammation, not infection.
So why would violating a child’s bloodstream with a vaccine be necessary to prevent such a mild condition?
Are there any side effects from such a marginally important vaccine? Here’s a partial list, according to the manufacturer:
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fever
anaphylactic shock
seizure
hives
heart failure
gastroenteritis
rash
thrush
asthma
choking
pneumonia
conjunctivitis
otitis media
– 2007 PDR p 3468 [213]
Wait a minute. Otitis media as a side effect of the vaccine? Wasn’t that what the vaccine was for? And pneumonia? Is it a surprise that injecting healthy kids with Strep pneumoniae might cause pneumonia? And look at all the other serious side effects.
As we read through the manufacturer’s description of the original clinical trials, he states that the subjects were receiving all other standard vaccines at the same time. So how many of these other vaccines list otitis media as a side effect? Answer: 5.
Does that mean we needed this new vaccine to take care of a side effect from other vaccines? Looks like it. The only way this study would have been legitimate would have been if the control group were unvaccinated.
By the way, there were 12 deaths among the original subjects. [213]
The next amazing part of the sales job for Prevnar is the claim of protection against bacterial meningitis – an extremely rare disease in the US. The 2007 PDR claims that the incidence is “7 per 100,000” ([213] p 3463) and cites a source from a study written up in the 2 Oct 1997 New England Journal of Medicine [137]. But looking at the actual figures cited in the NEJM study itself, one finds they are claiming less than 1 case per 100,000 of bacterial meningitis. ([137], page 970) Guess the PDR sales force figure no one would actually look up the sources they cite, which generally is true. We can learn two things here:
1. PDR’s sources can’t necessarily be trusted, and
2. the incidence of bacterial meningitis is 7x rarer than they claim.
PROVEN EFFICACY
Does the Prevnar vaccine work? This subject is addressed head-on by a very thoroughly researched article entitled Prevnar : a critical review of a new childhood vaccine, by British educator Michael Horwin. [138] The original clinical trials on Prevnar resulted in only a 7% reduction in earaches from the vaccine. That’s the highest benefit they can claim for Prevnar – a vaccine for simple childhood earache, with all the above dangerous side effects, that may only work 7% of the time.
QUID PRO QUO
Horwin also goes into a detailed analysis of the financial entanglements between FDA advisory committees who approved Prevnar and WyethAyerst, the manufacturer. He shows how the most visible proponents of Prevnar, the doctors who do the world lecture tours and have huge research funding and get coverage in medical publications – the specifics of the financial incentives they reap. After a few minutes reading those sweetheart deals, the overall picture comes into focus quite nicely. [138]
CANCER AND INFERTILITY
The standard cancer disclaimer sentence appears in the manufacturer’s 2007 documentation for Prevnar: “has not been evaluated for carcinogenic potential or impairment of fertility” ([213] p 3467). Meaning that they don’t even know whether or not this unnecessary vaccine causes cancer or may render the child sterile or infertile in adulthood.
The final shocker is that the clinical trials done for Prevnar were for otitis media, not for meningitis. As far as meningitis is concerned, the PDR doesn’t even claim efficacy; and yet all the CDC’s promo literature recommends the vaccine for meningitis, in the absence of supporting science. All that misrepresenting of meningitis statistics cited above is smoke and mirrors. So even though Prevnar is marketed by the pediatric sales force across the US as protection against otitis media and meningitis, the manufacturer never cites any studies actually performed for meningitis. It’s an unfounded claim, a marketing technique.
It is astounding that when Prevnar was first introduced into the Mandated Schedule, they started with 4 doses: at 2, 4, 6 and 12 months. And the two month dose is given on the same day along with 5 other vaccines! That remains the current Mandated Schedule dose.
Japanese are apparently a little less blasé about Prevnar than we are. In Mar 2011, both Prevnar and H. influenzae vaccines were banned in the entire country after 6 children died. [7] That story was barred from American media and only carried in Europe, Asia and Canada.
Try asking any American parent what either of those vaccines is for. Go ahead. Both are still on our Schedule: 7 shots.
THE BIRTH OF THEORETICAL DISEASES
The Prevnar vaccine marked a departure in the philosophy of vaccine mandating: vaccines for theoretical diseases. In the past, vaccines were claimed to be necessary to prevent standard infectious diseases which were supposedly caused by known pathogens: MMR, DPT, hepatitis, smallpox. But in the post 9/11 world, it seems that diseases no longer have to be real to require a vaccine. All that is necessary now is to label and then market a threat. Any threat.
Like temporary redness of the eardrum.
