Dr. Kurt Perkins on vaccines

This is a rather long article, and perhaps no one will feel like plowing through the whole thing. Especially seeing as it turns out that Dr. Perkins is a chiropractor:

http://www.drkurtperkins.com/2012/05/my-crystal-clear-stance-on-vaccines.html

However, I am mainly interested in one claim. From the article:

[i]"The scientific mantra of vaccines is that they are safe and effective based on their research. Their research is flawed and is a double standard from any other drug product studied. The Gold Standard in research design is the double blinded, randomized controlled trial (RCT).
This means that people are split into 2 groups randomly and participants are given either the real thing or the fake thing being tested. Then progress is charted on who gets better, who gets worse, and the like. In theory there should be no bias as to reporting because the researchers don’t know who is in the placebo or the real intervention group.

How many vaccines have ever been studied in this manner? ZERO! The reason? The researchers will say they cannot perform an RCT because it would be unethical to NOT give a child a vaccine because if that child dies of something that could have been prevented, then they don’t want to be responsible."[/i]

Does anyone here know whether this is true? Have no RCTs ever been performed on vaccines? If not, on what do we base our confidence that they work?

Perkins’ main argument seems to be that most of the diseases that we invented vaccines for were in decline anyway by the time the vaccines were introduced, mainly because of better sanitation and nutrition. As far as I know, he is at least partially right about this, but that does not necessarily mean we needn’t vaccinate.

I’d be interested in hearing some comments.

It’s hardly unexpected from sCAMmers. Perkins lies on every count.

'Luthon64

Yes, but that’s an evil government source, so it doesn’t count. :slight_smile:

I have become somewhat interested in the psychology of this stuff, but the problem is that psychology is itself not all too scientific a discipline. :slight_smile:

What interests me here is why Perkins and his ilk do what they do. No doubt some of them are just in it for the money and are cynical psychopaths, but I don’t think all of them or even most of them are. It seems as if the majority are quite sincere, but why then the lies? Do they know they are lying? Do they perhaps feel that vaccines are so evil that it justifies a few white lies about the research until such time as we have definitive proof?

I wonder if any research has been done on this. Some time ago I read an interesting article about a study that showed that when anti-vaccine folks are given the dry facts, they become MORE anti-vaccine as a result. I.e. the normal skeptical route of countering the stuff with facts has no impact, and it is not clear what, if anything, would.

Now, when it comes to creationism, there is no point at all trying to convince them of anything. On a Yahoo mailing list called DebunkCreation we have followed a different strategy, and simply showed up their lunacy for all to see instead of trying to convince them. As long as they are a tiny minority they can’t do much harm, and it is better to educate the general public than to try educating them. Perhaps the same is true for the anti-vaccine crowd. But what does one do if this madness spreads through most of the population?

I too have often wondered about this and am not really sure what the mechanisms are. If I had to guess, I’d say that being true starts out as a sincere conviction, and over time it becomes so engrained in the believer’s psyche that such thinking becomes automatic. What sets the committed woo merchant apart from people who have a scientific and/or sceptical bent is that the former have somehow made a huge personal investment in their beliefs, and consequently even the faintest suggestion that they might be mistaken is taken as a diminution of their person, perhaps even as an affront. Moreover, to avoid the imagined embarrassment that would accompany an admission of having been mistaken, they develop elaborate defence procedures to rationalise away any contradictory facts, evidence and argument. (“Oh, what tangled webs we weave…”)

In other words, they have difficulty separating ego from factual beliefs about the world (which may be an evolutionary artefact of the dependence of survival on the brain’s pattern-recognition efficiency). This would account for three manifestations frequently seen in such cases: (1) the passion and vehemence with which such beliefs are defended, (2) the extraordinarily facile and even absurd arguments that are presented, and (3) in the rare cases where a conversion/revision does happen, it usually takes an appreciable period of time, rather than being more or less instantaneous (cf. neuroplasticity).

But that’s all pure speculation and could easily be profoundly wrong.

'Luthon64

But that’s all pure speculation and could easily be profoundly wrong
Not necessarily wrong, maybe a generalisation though. I suspect there are many of us on this forum who take similar views on our values and beliefs and defend them in like fashion, but more interestingly, some of us in the distant past probably defended stuff that you may be ashamed to mention today! I was e.g. totally convinced of the efficacy of a Pretoria-based 'bossiedoktor's' cures in the 1960's and had proof of this. Even today I still wonder about it as the one girl-friend I had suffered from a heart condition (diagnosed by very well-known cardio specialist)...then she visited this bossiedoktor who said all she suffered from was an enlargement of her aorta...gave her pilletjies and three months later when she went back to the cardio guy, she was declared cured....indeed a miracle (according to the specialist)! Today, she (age 63) has broken several world swimming records as a master swimmer. Maybe she just grew out of it or needed rest from intensive training etc...probably many possibilities. Her father was a Appellate Judge and not the easiest person to convince of stuff and nonsense, was nonplussed as well.