<<>I developed a pain in my knee tonight. I due not know what the true
cause
>of this pain was and must therefore tentatively link it to the fact that
it
>occured just after reading an article by Chris Salter on GP-UK.
Just one example of a number of subscribers who seem to be under the
impression that ridicule is an acceptable alternative to intelligent
comment.>>
Personally my first thought was along the same lines as the knee pain. I
only use ridicule when I want to state strongly that some comment was, in
my view, ridiculous. It is certainly scientifically correct to say that
absence of proof is not the same of proof of absence but there are two
vital caveats, one general and one specific to the MMR argument.
The general one is that real life and human minds and bodies do not operate
on 100% reliability in any area. As I used say to my patients, nothing
made by man is 100% reliable. Even a treatment which was shown to be 100%
reliable will not be in practice because it will be contaminated by all the
"noise" of everyday human life and activity.
The specific point is that the MMR/autism/bowel disease research was
questionable to put it mildly. I still cannot understand why the Lancet
published it and it was very obvious indeed that what's is name (who went
on about possible vaccine dangers and single agent and three shots etc)
knew nothing about immunisation. Indeed I would question if his scientific
methods were sound since he chose to report what was in essence the sort of
anecdotal stuff that we in GP can certainly learn from but is widely (and
correctly) rejected as being a good basis for mass measures. Let me
rephrase---in GP we do learn from anecdote, anecdote being a particular
form of learning and more like story-telling than anything else. The art
of learning and teaching by story-telling is used in some big companies,
particularly to help develop a company culture. But for me to say that
one patient suffered condition X after treatment Y (and given the numbers
involved that would probably have more statistical power than the MMR cases
reported) and expect the whole of the UK to heed it, believe and change
practice wholesale is not something that even the most arrogant GP could
expect.
Now the facts as far as I remember them---millions of doses of MMR given
worldwide with no reported complications of autism or IBD. The risk is
therefore unquantifiably small and I do think that GP who talked about
0.0001 % or whatever was kicking for touch, covering backside and unaware
of the data.
I really don't want to say any more about those "researchers" but what I
see happening here is a classic case of
gammy research+media hype+public need for certainty and security adding up
to a rather lamentable change in thinking vis a vis MMR vaccination.
Declan
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|