Vaccination

Rebuttal to ‘Megan Doodle’ Pro-Vax Nurse

Viral provax posts often make the rounds but this week I was motivated to respond to one. The post’s message wasn’t new, it’s a narrative based on misinformation and logical fallacies that gets rehashed year after year. What really rubbed me the wrong way was the author’s attitude - egotistical, selfish, demanding, and vindictive.


The author, a nurse named Megan Doodle (yes that’s her name, pictured above) stated:
"I think that people who don’t want to vaccinate should have the freedom to do so. If they think that 'Big pharma' is just trying to turn a profit or poison us all... they should be allowed to believe that. But the caveat to that is this: Then they should NOT be allowed go to the doctor or the hospital when they get sick, looking for treatment. That’s right."
"Big pharma makes those antibiotics we are going to pump you full of when you are about to die from sepsis. The steroids and epi we might give you to save your life from your anaphylaxis? Yep, big pharma is behind that too. That inhaler you need to treat your kid's asthma? Better pass on that as well, because ... you guessed it ... brought to you by Big P. Having a heart attack? Better break out your essential oils and get your affairs in order, because the only thing we have to offer you is medicine and procedures brought to you by the very same people who are responsible for those vaccines you insist are evil."

 The basic gist of Megan’s post was, “if you don’t trust Big Pharma why use ANY of their products?” I’m happy to answer that.

First, it needs to be said that from a logical point of view Megan’s argument is a hot mess. Her most glaring ‘logic fail’ is the Fallacy of False Dilemma - when something is falsely claimed to be an "either/or" situation.

Megan is proposing that people either choose to accept ALL pharmaceutical products... or NONE. I think we can all agree this is stupidly unethical. Imagine a medical professional holding you to ransom, “either you agree to let me use ANY pharmaceutical product I want on you, or you get NONE!”

There is no all or nothing in healthcare; what’s great for one patient could mean death for another.

Let’s repeat together:

Medicine should be INDIVIDUALIZED to each patient.

Megan is also paid by US, the consumer, to provide a service. WE call the shots, WE decide if we are happy with her service, WE decide if we want the products she is pushing. We are under no obligation to agree with her opinions. The service medical staff provide varies considerably, just like in any other profession, and if we don’t feel that service is up to scratch we can find better elsewhere.

If Megan were my nurse, you can bet I’d be demanding a new nurse and laying a complaint with her superiors.

Moving on.

Megan’s second ‘logic fail’ is the Fallacy of Composition - when one infers that something is true of the WHOLE based on the fact that it’s true of some PART of the whole.

Megan is inferring that because SOME medical products are proven to be worth the risk in certain situations (eg. an epipen when someone is having an allergic reaction), that means ALL medical products, including vaccines, are worth the risk. She is lumping ALL pharmaceutical products together.

Which brings us to the next fact:

Pharmaceutical products are NOT created equal.

Each product has it’s own manufacturer, it’s own composition, it’s own use, it’s own contraindications, it’s own risks and side effects, and it’s own safety and efficacy research associated with it. This means you can’t make generalized assumptions about them as a whole.

You can’t pretend they’re all equally safe and effective. Some products have a fantastic safety and efficacy track record (eg. epipens), while others (eg. vaccines), not so much.

I can already hear the screams... “But vaccines are some of the most well tested pharmaceutical products on the market!”

No, they’re not. 

No matter how many times the mantra ‘vaccines are well tested’ is repeated it won’t make it true. So I’ll repeat it again:

Vaccines are NOT well tested.

In reality, vaccines are tested with LESS scrutiny than other drugs - they’ve been given their own ‘special’ rules.

Vaccines are NOT required to undergo double-blind, inert-placebo-controlled testing.1
Vaccines are NOT required to undergo long-term safety testing.1 Vaccines are not required to be tested for carcinogenic, mutagenic, or fertility impairment risk (stated on vaccine package inserts), despite many of the ingredients in vaccines having carcinogenic, mutagenic, or fertility impairment risk in separate studies.2,3,4  Vaccines even have their own special ‘vaccine court’ so vaccine manufacturers don’t have to face real litigation when their products cause adverse side effects or death.5 This is not the case for ANY other pharmaceutical.

This is why we can’t lump vaccines in with other medical products, pretending that they ALL have the same sterling reputation - they don’t. This is why parents may decide to pass on vaccines yet say yes to an epipen or asthma inhaler.

Ahem, what about regulatory agencies?

It’s reasonable to ask, “don’t regulatory agencies, like the FDA, ensure all pharmaceutical products are safe for the public?”

We already know that vaccine regulations are lax, but pharmaceutical regulations on the whole aren’t particularly reliable either. The FDA’s reputation is NOT stellar. They have shown time and again they favour corporate interests over public safety. The organizations apathy towards conflicts of interest has been appalling:
“The Food and Drug Administration does almost nothing to police the financial conflicts of doctors who conduct clinical trials of drugs and medical devices in human subjects, government investigators are reporting. Moreover, the investigators say, agency officials told them that trying to protect patients from such conflicts was not worth the effort.” - New York Times, 2009 6

In 2014 NSNBC published an article exposing the FDA’s blatant pandering to corporate interests over public safety:
“Between 2005 and 2011, nearly half of all new drug formulations in the US were approved without companies having to demonstrate a tangible benefit, such as relieving disease symptoms, extending life, or improving someone’s ability to go about normal activities.” - NSNCB, 2014 7

In the same year NSNBC wrote an even more damning piece:
“A recent study about institutional corruption of pharmaceuticals and the myth of safe and effective drugs, warns that over the past 35 years, patients have suffered from a largely hidden epidemic of side effects from drugs that usually have few, offsetting benefits.”
“The researchers warn that since 1906, commercial influence has compromised Congressional legislation to protect the public from unsafe drugs, adding that the authorization of user fees in 1992 has turned drug companies into the FDA’s prime clients, deepening the regulatory and cultural capture of the agency.”
“Part of the regulatory and cultural capture of the FDA has enabled the industry to successfully demand shorter average review times. Less time to thoroughly review the evidence, warn the researchers, has led to increased hospitalization and death.”
“The researchers warn that meeting the needs of the drug companies has taken priority over meeting the needs of the patients, adding that unless this corruption of regulatory intent is reversed, the situation will continue to deteriorate.” - NSNBC, 2014 8

You’d expect this type of publicity would prompt the FDA to clean up it’s act - no such luck. The situation has actually gotten worse with Trump recently nominating Scott Gottlieb, a man riddled with conflicts of interest, to head the FDA. 9

Which leads us to our next revelation:

Pharmaceutical companies are not your ‘friends’

The array of pharmaceutical products we use are made by a multitude of different manufacturers, each with their own - often dubious - track record. You can’t lump them all together. Almost all major pharmaceutical companies have faced fines for misconduct, many are repeat offenders who are fined millions year after year. 10 Some have been outed by their own employees for fudging data 11, while many have made clear their obligations are to their shareholders profits, not the public. 12,13

Like ANY product you buy, whether it be a lipstick or a carseat (and especially a medical product), the manufacturers reputation makes a huge difference in whether you choose to buy their product or not, as it should. Is the manufacturer trustworthy? Have they shown that the health and safety of their consumers is their top priority? In the case of many major pharmaceutical manufacturers, the answer is consistently NO.

Yes, we should be wary. Yes, we as consumers have damn good reasons to be wary. 14

So why bother with these companies at all? As Megan so gleefully pointed out there’s times we NEED their products. Not ALL of them, not ALL the time, for many of us it’s just the odd occasion.

“Shouldn’t we be grateful for the life-saving products they provide us?” Yes, but...

We shouldn’t tolerate corruption.

Being grateful for technology available to us doesn’t mean we turn a blind eye to corruption, it doesn’t mean we put up with dangerous products. We wouldn’t put up with it in any other industry and we shouldn’t put up with it in the pharmaceutical industry.

It’s important to remember that unless these products created a large profit many of these companies would not manufacture them at all. In fact vaccine manufacturers threatened to stop making certain vaccines altogether in the 1980’s because litigation from vaccine injured consumers was eating into their profit margins. As a result they coerced the US government into passing legislation to protect manufacturers from litigation - an important reason you cannot lump vaccines into the same group as other pharmaceuticals. 5

The drive for profit is blatantly obvious with the fact that many larger companies have stopped research into desperately needed new generation antibiotics. For them there just isn’t enough profit in it, so they focus on other drugs with higher profit margins. 15

How about the 400% price hike in epipens, for no other reason than because the manufacturing company could? 16 Desperate consumers who rely on life-saving epipens have had no other choice but to pay the 400% price hike, with some families foregoing basic necessities, so billionaire pharma executives can stuff their already bulging pockets.

Valeant pharmaceutical company CEO J. Michael Pearson said it best:
“My primary responsibility is to Valeant shareholders. We can do anything we want to do” 13

So let’s not forget the type of companies Megan is talking about when she tries to defend and glorify ‘Big Pharma’.

Megan continues:
"Stop being so naive. Everything has risks. Everything has side effects. Medicine is not perfect.”

Naive? Really? Parents don’t choose to not vaccinate on a whim. This isn’t a joke or a fad to them. For many non-vax parents the choice to vaccinate would come with a high likelihood of serious neurological injury or death - in their situation the benefits of vaccination very clearly DON’T outweigh the risks.

When you hear “anti-vax” think “parent of a vax-injured child”.

Parents who don’t vaccinate are very often parents of vaccine injured children, and are more aware than most of the pitfalls of medicine. They’ve witnessed their children convulsing with post-vaccination seizures and screaming in pain from brain swelling. They were left to pick up the pieces as their children regressed mentally into post-vaccination neurological impairment. They don’t need reminding that “medicine is not perfect” from an insensitive, ‘tone deaf’ nurse. Everyday they are faced with a living, breathing reminder of the devastation “imperfect” medicine can bring. 18

When Megan says, “everything has risks” she again nonchalantly lumps vaccines in with other pharmaceuticals, implying they’re on a level playing field when we know they’re NOT. The cost vs benefit of an epipen for instance bears no resemblance to any vaccine. Megan will never convince parents who’ve witnessed first hand the devastation vaccines can bring that vaccines are safe.

Her post continues:
“We advocate for vaccinating your children and yourself because science has PROVEN it's the most effective method of controlling the spread of disease and giving you and everyone around you the best chance of NOT DYING from something preventable.”

Flat out dogma. Megan advocates vaccinating our children because that’s what the health department orders her to do. She tells us vaccines are the most effective method of controlling disease because that’s what the health department orders her to say.

There’s a reason she doesn’t provide any studies to bolster her argument - because there aren’t any. There is NO proof that the overall benefits of vaccinating children outweigh the overall risks. There is no independent, fully-vaccinated vs non-vaccinated, long-term study analyzing the overall health of both groups. It doesn’t exist, and without it no person, no matter their station in life, has ANY credence insisting that vaccines are worth the risk.

The German KIGGS study was the closest we’ve come to a vaxed vs non-vaxed study, but like many others it suffered from conflicts of interest which resulted in data tampering after another researcher used the data to show the vaccinated children in the study suffered significantly higher rates of illness and disorders. This prompted the KIGGS authors to remove the relevant data, making the data pool too small for the new researcher’s results to be considered significant afterward. 19

So let’s hold off on the wishful, vaccine-worshiping dogma until we actually  HAVE evidence to say one way or another just how beneficial or risky vaccines are.

The post continues:
“Believe me when I say that not vaccinating yourself or your children because you believe that big pharma only cares about profit or that the scientific medical community has been duped, is 100 percent insanity.;"

No, I don’t believe Megan. Whether Megan wants to a accept it or not…

Our medical system HAS been corrupted.

People far more educated than Megan have published thousands of scientific studies proving that the scientific medical community is riddled with conflicts of interest tied to the pharmaceutical industry, and together they are corrupting the healthcare system.  In fact there’s scientific journals and conferences dedicated to the subject. 20

Perhaps one of the best descriptions of how this occurs was published last year (2017) by NPR:
“The long arm of the pharmaceutical industry continues to pervade practically every area of medicine, reaching those who write guidelines that shape doctors' practices, patient advocacy organizations, letter writers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and even oncologists on Twitter, according to a series of papers on money and influence published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine.” - NPR, 2017 21

I believe Megan desperately wants that not to be true. ‘Big Pharma’ is an industry she’s deeply embedded in and one that she’s staked her reputation on, publicly. She has too much to lose to ever entertain the possibility that the industry she’s backing is no longer entirely honorable or ethical, and in many instances she may be causing her patients more harm than good.

The post continues:
"I personally take offense to anyone who implies that medical professionals, like myself, would ever administer anything to anyone, especially a child, that would intentionally harm them.”

No one is saying that Megan would INTENTIONALLY hurt her patients, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t unknowingly caused more harm than good by administering vaccines or other pharmaceuticals and procedures to her patients.

Modern medicine has a lot to answer for.

The research analyzing the safety and efficacy of pharmaceuticals and medical care is NOT kind. Each year approximately 2.2 million US hospital patients experience adverse drug reactions to prescribed medications, and 106,000 will die due to adverse drug reactions to prescribed medications (study here). 22

A study in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that adverse events to prescribed drugs were almost 4 times more common than adverse events relating to the actual procedure the patients were prescribed the drugs for. 23

A Johns Hopkins study concluded iatrogenic death - deaths directly attributable to medical care - are the third leading cause of death in the US, responsible for 250,000 deaths per year. 24

The British Medical Journal published a scathing report on the safety and efficacy of conventional medicine in which they found just 13% of treatments were scientifically proven to be beneficial. 25

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Megan’s unwavering faith in the pharmaceutical industry is understandable given that it is her job to administer their products. The realization that she may be causing her patients more harm than good by administering those products is a bitter pill to swallow.

In fact it’s a bitter pill I’ve seen medical staff stubbornly REFUSE to swallow even when faced point-blank with the evidence of harm the vaccine they administered caused in a patient. “Oh it can’t be the vaccine’s fault, it’s just a coincidence.”  The staggering amount of times medical staff have said this to parents with vaccine injured children is unforgivable.

While Megan might tout that she’s an upstanding nurse who would never knowingly harm a patient, many of us know from experience she does NOT speak for ALL her colleagues.

I’m sorry to Megan if her fragile ego takes “offense” to the knowledge that some people in her profession DO indeed knowingly harm others, but it’s a reality she’ll have to come to grips with. For the sake of her patients, I hope she does fast.

The post continues:
“I take even more offense to anyone that would imply that a college educated professional, like myself, is incapable of 'doing the research.'"

I’ve met plenty of people like Megan who think having a degree magically means they’re always right. Sometimes we all need reminding:

Medical staff are not all-knowing gods.

Arrogance, particularly with medical professionals in my experience, is strong. They have a really hard time accepting new information from... anyone, even more experienced medical professionals.

That type of arrogant, too-proud-to-admit-I’m-wrong attitude can be dangerous in the medical field, especially given that medical staff like Megan have likely learnt very little about vaccines.

Vaccinology, immunology, or epidemiology are specialties NOT included in general medical degrees – these specialties require additional training. The article, “Vaccines: What Your Doctors Know and Don’t Know”, includes a compilation of quotes from doctors revealing what they learnt about vaccines in med school. An excerpt:
"Doctors learn a lot about diseases in medical school, but we learn very little about vaccines. … We don’t review the research ourselves. We never learn what goes into making vaccines or how their safety is studied. So, when patients want a little more information about shots, all we can really say as doctors is that the diseases are bad and the shots are good. – Dr Bob Sears”26

I was once in a discussion with a family doctor who expressed concern over an article she read which touted, “doctors spend their lives researching vaccines”. The problem she had was that this statement simply isn’t true AT ALL. The doctor explained that not only are doctors taught extremely little about vaccines in med school, they DON’T routinely do ongoing research either – they would love to but simply don’t have the time.

She went on to say that the bulk of the recommendations doctors make are dictated to them by major health organizations - doctors are told what to recommend to their patients, they generally don’t develop these recommendations after years of independent research.

You can find more interviews with a range of medical professionals describing how much medical schools actually teach about vaccines here and here.

Let’s not forget too that Megan’s implication that having a medical degree automatically means she’s right, is an example of another logical fallacy: Appeal to Authority. This is when one uses an authority's support as evidence for an argument's conclusion, instead of using reputable evidence such as an independent, high-quality study. A public persona is not enough to garner the public’s trust, we NEED cold, hard evidence. Our children’s lives depend on it.

The post continues:
"People always fire back with something like, 'well if you are vaccinated, why do you care that I’m not? If you are so sure your vaccines work, It’s not like you can catch it.' You are 100 percent right. I will probably be just fine. It’s my newborn baby who is too young to be vaccinated that I’m worried about, it’s my friend who is going through chemo, it’s a neighbor that is immune compromised, it’s my cousin who is allergic and can’t receive the vaccine. Yes, we tell you to get vaccinated to protect yourself, but it’s so much bigger than that. Vaccinate. Because it’s not just about YOU."

There’s an easy rebuttal to that:

You are NOT required to set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.

Why should someone be forced to risk their own child’s health or even life for someone else’s? How is that ethical or even logical?

My son is one of the statistics who had a severe vaccine reaction and can no longer be vaccinated. Does that mean I demand others vaccinate their kids to protect mine? NEVER in a million years would I ask that of another parent. I cannot guarantee the same reaction that happened to my child won't happen theirs. Then their child would be in the same boat as mine! To demand parents take that risk is not only unethical, it is utterly selfish.

Whenever I see a parent demanding that the rest of the population vaccinate to protect their child, I cringe. They seem completely oblivious to the risks they are demanding others to take for the sake of their child.

“But the risks of vaccinating are one in a million!”

NO, they’re not.

Only 1% of vaccine adverse reactions are estimated to be reported. An HHS funded study by Harvard Medical School tracked reporting to VAERS over a three-year period at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care involving 715,000 patients and found that “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported.”  28

Additionally, researchers still have very little idea about exactly who is at risk of vaccine reaction and there is still no routine screening to weed out those with genetic anomalies that make them more susceptible.

NO ONE has any place demanding a parent consent to a preventative pharmaceutical for their already healthy child when it has such poor safety testing and includes neurological damage and death as possible side effects. That is NOT OK, and never will be.

What I’ll never understand about people like Megan is why she is not standing beside people like myself, demanding that vaccines be made safer? We know for a fact every year kids continue to suffer severe vaccine reactions - some die. How can we condone the dismissal of so many children’s lives as “collateral damage”? Why aren’t we ALL standing up for these children, demanding manufacturers make safer vaccines?


Sources:

1. HHS Vaccine Safety Responsibilities and Notice

2. Aluminium & DNA Damage

3. Aluminium & Cancer

4. Aluminium & Fertility Impairment

5. NVIC Position Statement, National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986

6. F.D.A. Is Lax on Oversight During Trials, Inquiry Finds
Gardiner Harris. Jan 11, 2009
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/us/12fda.html?fta=y



9. FDA Nominee, Paid Millions by Industry, Says He’ll Recuse Himself if Needed
Katie Thomas, March 29, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/health/fda-nominee-scott-gottlieb-recuse-conflicts.html

10. Lawsuits Against Pharma Companies
https://www.drugdangers.com/manufacturers/

11. Scientists Sue Merck: allege fraud, mislabeling, and false certification of MMR vaccine. Suzanne Humphries, MD,  JUNE 25, 2012
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dqm005XdY532KGqPyDHAXvVd0GV-GOFe/view?usp=sharing 

12. Pharma chief defends 400% drug price rise as a ‘moral requirement’
David Crow, Sept 12, 2018
https://www.ft.com/content/48b0ce2c-b544-11e8-bbc3-ccd7de085ffe

13. Pharma CEO: We’re in Business of Shareholder Profit, Not Helping the Sick
https://www.healthfreedoms.org/pharma-ceo-were-in-business-of-shareholder-profit-not-helping-the-sick/

14. Pharma Company Corruption

15. Industry Corruption Studies, Articles etc.

16. Pharmaceutical companies are backing away from a growing threat that could kill 10 million people a year by 2050. Charlotte Hu, Jul 19, 2018

17. Why Did Mylan Hike EpiPen Prices 400%? Because They Could
Emily Willingham, Aug 21, 2016


19. Vaccine Free Children Are Healthier

20. From Twitter To Treatment Guidelines, Industry Influence Permeates Medicine.
CHARLES ORNSTEIN, January 17, 2017
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/17/510226214/from-twitter-to-treatment-guidelines-industry-influence-permeates-medicine

21. Research Integrity and Peer Review Journal

Journal of Medical Ethics

Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics

International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication

World Conference on Research Integrity

22. Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients: a meta-analysis of prospective studies. Lazarou J et al.  JAMA. 1998 Apr 15;279(15):1200-5.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9555760

23. Medication errors in hospitalized cardiovascular patients.
LaPointe NM1, Jollis JG. Arch Intern Med. 2003 Jun 23;163(12):1461-6.

24.Johns Hopkins study suggests medical errors are third-leading cause of death in U.S. Vanessa McMains / Published May 4, 2016

25. The Mythology Of Science-Based Medicine. Huffington Post, 03/18/2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-larry-dossey/the-mythology-of-science_b_412475.html

26. Vaccines: What Your Doctors Know and Don’t Know
27. How Much Is Taught on Vaccines In Medical School? Published March 22, 2017

28. Electronic Support for Public Health–Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (ESP:VAERS). Lazarus, Ross, 2011

29. Adversomics: a new paradigm for vaccine safety and design
Jennifer A. Whitaker, et al. Expert Rev Vaccines. 2015 Jul; 14(7): 935–947.

I'm a 30 something year old proud mother to four rambunctious little boys. I investigate all things 'mother' but have a leaning towards breastfeeding, birth, vaccination, and child learning.

You Might Also Like

2 comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 10, 2018 at 8:37 PM

    LOVE this post! Thank you for your knowledge, passion and voice. X

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. chérie babyNovember 11, 2018 at 9:20 AM

      Thank you so much. Glad you enjoyed the read. It's so important to correct misinformation. xx

      Delete