Archive for September, 2008

One slips through: a brilliant Home Schooling article in The Times of London

Saturday, September 6th, 2008

Down wiv school: children are best educated at home
This week need not be back-to-school week. Parents as well as their kids can benefit from home education

It is back-to-school this week. All over the country, stressed parents made last-minute dashes to the shops to force children to try on clumpy school shoes. Then they got up early, hurried their children into cars or on to buses, got stuck in jams, arrived later than intended and said a rushed goodbye. Then they found that the children had gone. Relief may have been mixed with melancholy, loss and a hope that the children were all right behind those high windows, told what to do by strangers.

The return to school is a well-established part of the journey of life. It seems normal, right and inevitable. But actually it is none of these things. Yes, it is normal in the early 21st century. But if modern civilisation started about 10,000 years ago, this way of treating children has been “normal” only for the last 2 per cent of the time. It is a new, artificial construct designed to provide education at low cost. It certainly was not created to provide a pleasant or socialising experience for children.

Schools are not clearly “right”, either. People tend to think that what everyone does and what they themselves experienced must be right. But there is nothing obviously ideal about delivering your children to other people who do not love them as you do, and who are likely to teach them things with which you may disagree. And sending children to school is not inevitable. Under the law, children must be educated. But they do not have to be educated at a school. There is another way.

Home education is not for everyone – not even a large minority. It is a luxury in most cases. The parent who becomes a home teacher earns no money. There have to be savings, or partners, husbands or wives must be willing to pay the bills. But lots of well-educated wives do not work and could save money by home educating. For those who can find a way, home-educating is a glorious, liberating, empowering, profoundly fulfilling thing to do. Far more people should try it. At present it is estimated that about 50,000 children are taught this way. The number has jumped from a decade ago but is still very few compared with America.

I have just finished two years of teaching my younger daughter, Alex, now 11. We have become very close. Many fathers see their children at supper time and a bit more at weekends. Alex and I were with each other all day, every weekday, in all sorts of places and circumstances. We knew and shared thoughts, ideas and feelings. I believe the closeness that we developed will benefit our relationship for the rest of our lives.

We had enjoyable educational trips to France, Italy and China. Instead of learning about the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius from a text book, Alex and I climbed up to the rim and peered into the still-smoking crater. We visited Pompeii and Oplontis to see the parts of Roman civilisation that had been preserved by the most famous of its eruptions.

One of the beauties of home education is that you can teach children things that you want them to know – some of which are not taught in most schools. I wanted Alex to know something of the origin of the Universe, and astronomy. We studied far more history than schools do, including overviews of Rome, China and Britain. We looked at the Second World War, using DVDs of the superb Channel 4 series on it. We started learning Italian. But all parents would have different ideas of what they want their children to know. You can go for whatever you think important. This is freedom, thrilling freedom. You don’t have to teach just what some civil servant in Whitehall has lighted upon and stuck in the national curriculum.

[…]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4677730.ece

A deceptive and unfortunate title (remember the wall-mart sold t-shirts that were removed because they disparaged Home Schoolers?) but I digress.

This is a brilliant article, written by James Bartholomew who authored a book ‘The Welfare State We’re In’ that was praised by Milton Friedman.

Its about time an article like this was printed in a national newspaper, and we can expect more I am sure, as the truth about Home Schooling spreads organically through the mass. Yes, ‘the mass‘.

And as we can read from some of the many comments on this article:

Hope that the homeschoolers will begin to withold the part of the Council tax and Government taxes that go into social engineering and dumbed down twaddle that passes for curriculum content in those holding pens of misery called schools.
chris, Dorchester, England

It is a little scary to think that every child in this country is taught exactly the same thing by the powers that be; education or indoctrination of government approved ideologies?

Children become adults by learning and socialising with adullts: parents and family. Not insecure teenagers!
Nathan, Cambridge, UK

It has already started!

Homeschoolers Threaten Our Cultural Comfort

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

Sonny Scott

Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo, Ms.

You see them at the grocery, or in a discount store.

It’s a big family by today’s standards – “just like stair steps,” as the old folks say. Freshly scrubbed boys with neatly trimmed hair and girls with braids, in clean but unfashionable clothes follow mom through the store as she fills her no-frills shopping list.

There’s no begging for gimcracks, no fretting, and no threats from mom. The older watch the younger, freeing mom to go peacefully about her task.

You are looking at some of the estimated 2 million children being home schooled in the U.S., and the number is growing. Their reputation for academic achievement has caused colleges to begin aggressively recruiting them. Savings to the taxpayers in instructional costs are conservatively estimated at $4 billion, and some place the figure as high as $9 billion. When you consider that these families pay taxes to support public schools, but demand nothing from them, it seems quite a deal for the public.

Home schooling parents are usually better educated than the norm, and are more likely to attend worship services. Their motives are many and varied. Some fear contagion from the anti-clericalism, coarse speech, suggestive behavior and hedonistic values that characterize secular schools. Others are concerned for their children’s safety. Some want their children to be challenged beyond the minimal competencies of the public schools. Concern for a theistic world view largely permeates the movement.

Indications are that home schooling is working well for the kids, and the parents are pleased with their choice, but the practice is coming under increasing suspicion, and even official attack, as in California.

Why do we hate (or at least distrust) these people so much?

Methinks American middle-class people are uncomfortable around the homeschooled for the same reason the alcoholic is uneasy around the teetotaler.

Their very existence represents a rejection of our values, and an indictment of our lifestyles. Those families are willing to render unto Caesar the things that Caesar’s be, but they draw the line at their children. Those of us who have put our trust in the secular state (and effectively surrendered our children to it) recognize this act of defiance as a rejection of our values, and we reject them in return.

Just as the jealous Chaldeans schemed to bring the wrath of the king upon the Hebrew eunuchs, we are happy to sic the state’s bureaucrats on these “trouble makers.” Their implicit rejection of America’s most venerated idol, Materialism, (a.k.a. “Individualism”) spurs us to heat the furnace and feed the lions.

Young families must make the decision: Will junior go to day care and day school, or will mom stay home and raise him? The rationalizations begin. “A family just can’t make it on one income.” (Our parents did.) “It just costs so much to raise a child nowadays.” (Yeah, if you buy brand-name clothing, pre-prepared food, join every club and activity, and spend half the cost of a house on the daughter’s wedding, it does.) And so, the decision is made. We give up the bulk of our waking hours with our children, as well as the formation of their minds, philosophies, and attitudes, to strangers. We compensate by getting a boat to take them to the river, a van to carry them to Little League, a 2,800-square-foot house, an ATV, a zero-turn Cub Cadet, and a fund to finance a brand-name college education. And most significantly, we claim “our right” to pursue a career for our own “self-fulfillment.”

Deep down, however, we know that our generation has eaten its seed corn. We lack the discipline and the vision to deny ourselves in the hope of something enduring and worthy for our posterity. We are tired from working extra jobs, and the looming depression threatens our 401k’s. Credit cards are nearly maxed, and it costs a $100 to fuel the Suburban.

Now the kid is raising h… again, demanding the latest Play Station as his price for doing his school work … and there goes that modest young woman in the home-made dress with her four bright-eyed, well-behaved home-schooled children in tow. Wouldn’t you just love to wipe that serene look right off her smug face?

Is it any wonder we hate her so?

[…]

http://www.djournal.com/pages/default.asp

And this of course, is why the people at the TES, The Guardian and irrational talking heads like Professor Alan Smithers and all the other imbeciles, child hating teachers and other ignorant, absurd, family hating, liberty destroying anti-education zombies hate home schooling and home schoolers.

They hate our freedom.

They hate anyone that has the freedom they do not have, the success they do not have and the relationships they do not have and are incapable of fostering. Instead of learning from people who are better than they are and who live better lives than they do, and changing their own lives, they want to destroy anyone that does not mindlessly suffer as they do. They hate the fact that the reward for choosing non-conformity is a fast track into university. They hate the fact that home schoolers appear to have their cake and eat it…and not get fat children. They are frightened of difference. They are the same people who were for segregation and every other artificial social barrier enshrined in the law. They are the same people who were for Apartheid, Jim Crow and all those other, nasty, inhuman laws.

Yes indeed, these home school haters are everywhere. You know the type:

  • They are officious whilst not having any official capacity.
  • They speak with a loud, authoritative voice that leaves no space for rebuttal.
  • They have no imagination, no idea of what liberty is and hate all that is not conforming.
  • They always say, “but what would happen if……” thinking that only bad things can happen outside of the ‘norm’.
  • They don’t know any history, and never look for it before they open their mouths.
  • They are creatures of pure bitterness and are driven by pure jealousy.

I pity them as much as I despise them; as much as they hate the home schooler and the world view that they come from.

Home schooling is growing at a fantastic rate. In the end, it will seem as ordinary as rain.

In the meantime, we will have to contend with many ill considered articles written by ignorant self hating pigs. Thankfully, the internets make it possible for each of these articles to be instantly rebutted and shot down. The internets make it possible for home schoolers to connect with one another creating an impenetrable shield of truth that no lying education correspondent can cut through; home schoolers will never be alone, isolated and ripe for attack.

The retards amongst you will require a disclaimer.

If you choose to work and send your child to school are you a bad parent? Does it indicate that you do not love your child as much as a home schooling parent does? Of course not. Sending your child to school is your absolute right, and no one has the right to say to you that you are doing the wrong thing, and you should do what someone else is doing.

That is the difference between US and THEM; WE accept that it is a parent’s right to bring up their children in any way that they see fit, no matter what anyone thinks. THEY believe that there is only ONE good and proper way to rear a child, and that way is THEIR way, and all people who do not accept this must be made to conform to THEIR way of thinking and doing.

We are better than them®

And that is a FACT.

Would you like to know more?

Connecting the dots for US, instead of THEM

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

Laura Margottini at the NewScientist.com news service wrote the following:

Snoop software makes surveillance a cinch

“THIS data allows investigators to identify suspects, examine their contacts, establish relationships between conspirators and place them in a specific location at a certain time.”

So said the UK Home Office last week as it announced plans to give law-enforcement agencies, local councils and other public bodies access to the details of people’s text messages, emails and internet activity. The move followed its announcement in May that it was considering creating a massive central database to store all this data, as a tool to help the security services tackle crime and terrorism.

Meanwhile in the US the FISA Amendments Act, which became law in July, allows the security services to intercept anyone’s international phone calls and emails without a warrant for up to seven days. Governments around the world are developing increasingly sophisticated electronic surveillance methods in a bid to identify terrorist cells or spot criminal activity.

However, technology companies, in particular telecommunications firms and internet service providers, have often been criticised for assisting governments in what many see as unwarranted intrusion, most notably in China.

Now German electronics company Siemens has gone a step further, developing a complete “surveillance in a box” system called the Intelligence Platform, designed for security services in Europe and Asia. It has already sold the system to 60 countries.

According to a document obtained by New Scientist, the system integrates tasks typically done by separate surveillance teams or machines, pooling data from sources such as telephone calls, email and internet activity, bank transactions and insurance records. It then sorts through this mountain of information using software that Siemens dubs “intelligence modules”.

This software is trained on a large number of sample documents to pick out items such as names, phone numbers and places from generic text. This means it can spot names or numbers that crop up alongside anyone already of interest to the authorities, and then catalogue any documents that contain such associates.

Once a person is being monitored, pattern-recognition software first identifies their typical behaviour, such as repeated calls to certain numbers over a period of a few months. The software can then identify any deviations from the norm and flag up unusual activities, such as transactions with a foreign bank, or contact with someone who is also under surveillance, so that analysts can take a closer look.

Included within the package is a phone call “monitoring centre”, developed by the joint-venture company Nokia Siemens Networks.

However, it is far from clear whether the technology will prove accurate. Security experts warn that data-fusion technologies tend to produce a huge number of false positives, flagging up perfectly innocent people as suspicious.

[…]

New Scientist

Once again, ‘scientists’ (or in this case, a science writer) fails to connect the dots.

What is most amusing about this failure is that the article is about… connecting the dots!

We all know that everyone is separated by Six Degrees of Separation thanks to a recent thorough test of the theory.

Since this is true, that means that everyone, everywhere is Six Degrees of Separation away from a ‘criminal’. The only thing left to measure in a system like the Fusion Centers and this completely bogus software from Siemens is the level of criminality of the focus person.

This is absolutely the case because all people are connected, and so if you are going to investigate (violate) someone because they are two steps away from a ‘criminal’ you will have to assign a threat level to that person; everyone everywhere ‘knows’ or is ‘close to’ a ‘criminal’ and I put the word criminal in single quotes because what a criminal is or is not is highly variable.

The massively connected nature of people is the reason why these systems cannot possibly work. It also explains why there are an irrationally large number of people on the ‘terrorist’ watch list in the USA; if they are secretly using this software or something like it to see who is connected to who, they will find that everyone is connected to everyone, and everyone is a potential terrorist according to the software. That is why there are literally millions of people falsely listed as ‘potential terrorists’ in the USA. Just to be clear, I do not accept that there is such a thing as a ‘potential terrorist’ in the first place.

No one working with the systems has had the guts to stand up and say that the emperor has no clothes, and that it is impossible for this many people to all be potential terrorists. Eternal shame upon them.

The writer of this New Scientist article should know about Six Degrees of Separation, that it has very recently been demonstrated to be true, and she should have made the insight jump and use this to make the case that these ‘services’ cannot ever work and to explain why they should not be deployed.

If the terrorist threat is real, and you are doing this to try and catch terrorists, then these systems should not be used because they throw up too many false positives and put too many people into the system that have no relation to ‘the enemy’. This confusion would stop you from getting to the real bad guys and stopping what you are trying to stop. The Six Degrees factor makes it even worse, as you are bound to be putting everyone in the system since everyone ‘knows’ everyone. These systems are actually dangerous in the physical sense AND the moral sense.

It is clear that these systems should not be deployed because they do not help you do what you need to do. This is quite apart from the moral aspect of mass violation of innocent people. Guilt by Association is known by people who can use the Google to be an inductive form of fallacy:

An association fallacy is an inductive formal fallacy of the type hasty generalization or red herring which asserts that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another, merely by an irrelevant association. The two types are sometimes referred to as guilt by association and honor by association. Association fallacies are a special case of red herring, and can be based on an appeal to emotion.

[…]

Wikipedia

Everyone who worked on this software will have been aware of all of this. They are selling software, and will have simply given the authorities who are computer and maths illiterates what they asked for. The question is, what is the real reason they want it in the first place.

It is clear that the people who ordered these systems are not interested in ‘terrorists’. They want this to use against enemy corporations, politicians that need to be shut down and every other nefarious thing you can imagine. Do you remember the arrest of the British executives for ‘gambling offences’ the USVISIT system and the passenger list data are being used not to stop ‘terrorists’ but to capture people, in this case, who are not even criminals at all.

That is what this is all about. Anyone who says otherwise is completely delusional. All the evidence points to this, and all the other evidence that no one wants to accept is the icing on the cake.

Do I have to actually type out that the ID Card and the NIR would be used as a key part of a guilt by association system? Oyster is already being used in this way; they have the swipes of all the Oyster cards at a certain time / location locus and then they investigate every one. You will be in BIG TROUBLE if purely by chance you were the passenger that swiped just before or after a criminal; the software would assume that you were traveling together since you were in such close proximity.

And this brings us to the final point in this post.

Once cash is banished from public transport, the only way to travel on it will be with Oyster. That means that they will be surveilling everyone by default, and the guilt by association will be used against you by default.

Now extend this to the cash you use every day to by anything.

Once cash is driven out of the marketplace, the same systems will be used universally; only much much worse.

Lets say that you pay a plumber to do some work for you, and that plumber did work on the black market. Everyone who paid him in the new Beast Money® would immediately be subject to investigation to see how they were connected to the black economy. This scenario is faulty of course, because in the cashless society, the state will extract its payments automatically and you will have no control over your money at all, never mind privacy.

The bottom line is that the engineers, architects, programmers, scientists and everyone who can make systems needs to have a moral code instilled in them so that no one will be willing to supply the mortar, or the bricks or the door hinges or anything else for the gas chambers. It takes a very small number of people to devise and deploy these systems and in the networked world, everyone everywhere can be involuntarily plugged into them and made to suffer, barring a massive, unprecedented revolt.

I fear that an appeal to high standards may fall on deaf ears.

We shall see.

Sticking it to the kids

Monday, September 1st, 2008

There were two marketing men and a clinical research director sitting in a pub… ‘Why did the chickenpox vaccine cross the road?’ ‘To get to the mass market on the other side!’

‘Thats not funny. There is no market for chickenpox vaccine.’ ‘Oh yes there is, they just don’t know it yet…’

……………….

Now, substitute chickenpox with ‘human papillomavirus’ (HPV) and you have this year’s new mass market. And the size of that market, as we’ve said before, is every child alive now and forever. And if Merck get their way, every older woman too.

Today, girls in Scotland have been brought into the HPV vaccination programme, having been told that they will be at less risk of cervical cancer.

Schools start cancer vaccinations

Injection

Every secondary schoolgirl in the UK is to be offered the injections

Scottish schoolgirls are to become the first in the UK to be vaccinated against cervical cancer.

Schools in the Lanarkshire, Tayside, Grampian and Western Isles NHS areas are to begin vaccinating 12 and 13-year-old girls from this week.

Pupils in other areas of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland will follow in the coming weeks.

All girls aged between 12 and 17 should have been offered the vaccine by August next year.

The immunisation programme is to get under way in Scotland before other parts of the UK because its school term has already started.

The Cervarix vaccine works by targeting HPV, the virus which causes cervical cancer. Its manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, said it should prevent 70% of cases – saving about 70 lives a year in Scotland.

HMG chose Cervarix over Gardasil, for as yet unspecified reasons and despite Gardasil being a better choice healthwise – always assuming you want the vaccine in the first place!

The vaccine is given in three separate doses and – at about £240 for a course – is the most expensive vaccine to be routinely offered by the NHS.

£240 for every girl now and forever direct from taxpayers coffers to GSK shareholders.  “Wow! There’s the money river! Pa, bring the buckets!”

Dr McKenzie added: “They must understand that the vaccine is fantastic news for preventing cervical cancer, but it can only be combated by using cervical screening and the vaccine.

“So when they are called for screening aged 20 they really must come along whether they have had the vaccine or not.”

The number of girls aged between 20 and 25 who come forward for cervical smears is already declining.

Some fears have been expressed that the vaccination programme will cause even fewer to attend screening, while questions have also been asked about why so much money is being spent on saving the lives of less that 100 Scottish women a year.

Good fears, good questions, as yet not satisfactorily explained. There is the question about how long protection lasts, meaning boosters are inevitable at current estimates. And questions as to whether a drop in screening rates would completely abolish any success in prevention, given the small numbers of patients involved.

But really, this is all so much fluff covering the truth of modern pharmaceutical marketing techniques: by using available media, you (the gullible sheeple) can be made to fear absolutely anything. You will then buy any snake-oil BigPharma comes up with to protect you against The Fear.

This technique even has a name. ‘Astro-turfing‘.

Not only this, but BigPharma can then wine, dine and otherwise bribe your ‘elected’ officials into committing hundreds of millions of pounds worth of public funds towards the cost of Snake-Oil.

Not convinced? Try this excellent and pretty comprehensive, utterly compelling, ‘how it works’ piece from the New York Times:

One of the vaccines, Gardasil, from Merck, is made available to the poorest girls in the country, up to age 18, at a potential cost to the United States government of more than $1 billion; proposals to mandate the vaccine for girls in middle schools have been offered in 24 states, and one will take effect in Virginia this fall. Even the normally stingy British National Health Service will start giving the other vaccine — Cervarix, from GlaxoSmithKline — to all 12-year-old girls at school this September.

The lightning-fast transition from newly minted vaccine to must-have injection in the United States and Europe represents a triumph of what the manufacturers call education and their critics call marketing. The vaccines, which offer some protection against infection from sexually transmitted viruses, are far more expensive than earlier vaccines against other diseases — Gardasil’s list price is $360 for the three-dose series, and the total cost is typically $400 to nearly $1,000 with markup and office visits (and often only partially covered by health insurance).

Award-winning advertising has promoted the vaccines. Before the film “Sex and the City,” some moviegoers in the United States saw ads for Gardasil. On YouTube and in advertisements on popular shows like “Law and Order,” a multiethnic cast of young professionals urges girls to become “one less statistic” by getting vaccinated.

The vaccine makers have also brought attention to cervical cancer by providing money for activities by patients’ and women’s groups, doctors and medical experts, lobbyists and political organizations interested in the disease, sometimes in ways that skirt disclosure requirements or obscure the companies’ involvement.

In the United States, hundreds of doctors have been recruited and trained to give talks about Gardasil — $4,500 for a lecture — and some have made hundreds of thousands of dollars. Politicians have been lobbied and invited to receptions urging them to legislate against a global killer. And former state officials have been recruited to lobby their former colleagues.

“There was incredible pressure from industry and politics,” said Dr. Jon Abramson, a professor of pediatrics at Wake Forest University who was chairman of the committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that recommended the vaccine for all girls once they reached 11 or 12.

This big push is making people crazy — thinking they’re bad moms if they don’t get their kids vaccinated,” said Dr. Abby Lippman, a professor at McGill University in Montreal and policy director of the Canadian Women’s Health Network. Canada will spend $300 million on a cervical cancer vaccine program.

…And why the sudden alarm in developed countries about cervical cancer, some experts ask. A major killer in the developing world, particularly Africa, where the vaccines are too expensive for use, cervical cancer is classified as very rare in the West because it is almost always preventable through regular Pap smears, which detect precancerous cells early enough for effective treatment. Indeed, because the vaccines prevent only 70 percent of cervical cancers, Pap smear screening must continue anyway.

“Merck lobbied every opinion leader, women’s group, medical society, politicians, and went directly to the people — it created a sense of panic that says you have to have this vaccine now,” said Dr. Diane Harper, a professor of medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. Dr. Harper was a principal investigator on the clinical trials of both Gardasil and Cervarix, and she spent 2006-7 on sabbatical at the World Health Organization developing plans for cervical cancer vaccine programs around the world. […]

In television advertisements, a cast of hip people in their 20s — artists, writers and professionals — describe why they got the shots, in the language of liberation, such as, “I chose to get vaccinated because my dreams don’t include cervical cancer.” The advertisements direct viewers to gardasil.com, which includes patients’ stories, buddy icons and downloads for holding an event at sororities.

Girls of any age who have had one dose of the vaccine can ask for text-message “reminders” from Merck to get the next two shots. The offers come with another reminder: “I understand that the information I provide will be used by Merck or those working on behalf of Merck for market research purposes.”

For such efforts, Merck last May swept the 2008 Pharmaceutical Advertising and Marketing Excellence awards, and Gardasil was named Brand of the Year by Pharmaceutical Executive magazine.

The marketing helped make Gardasil one of Merck’s best sellers, with a projected sales of $1.4 billion to $1.6 billion outside Europe this year, and more from sales in Europe, where Merck sells the vaccine through a joint venture with Sanofi Aventis.

Gregory A. Poland, a vaccine expert at the Mayo Clinic, was a nonvoting member on the C.D.C. panel that recommended Gardasil in 2006 and has publicly defended the panel’s decision. Records show he received at least $27,420 in expenses and consulting fees from Merck from 1999 to 2007. Both the C.D.C. and Dr. Michael Camilleri, chairman of the Mayo Clinic Conflict of Interest Review Board, speaking on Dr. Poland’s behalf, said the payments complied with institutional requirements.

In the United States, 41 states have passed or begun considering legislation on cervical cancer, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and 24 have considered proposals to mandate the vaccine for girls, generally in middle school…

The only state to pass a bill requiring the vaccine for school entry is Virginia; it takes effect in October, after school begins, so will first apply in 2009.

Merck has a growing economic interest in Virginia. In December 2006, Merck announced it would invest $57 million to expand its Elkton, Va., plant to make Gardasil, helped by a $700,000 grant from a state economic development agency that is part of the executive branch. Two months later, Gov. Tim Kaine, who has been mentioned as a possible Democratic vice presidential candidate, signed legislation requiring Gardasil for schoolgirls. Four months after that, Merck pledged to invest $193 million more in the plant to make drugs and vaccines, helped by a state grant of $1.5 million.

In Texas, Merck hired Gov. Rick Perry’s former chief of staff as a lobbyist, and contributed $6,000 to the governor and $38,000 to other legislators. Last February, Mr. Perry ordered that all schoolgirls be inoculated with Gardasil, a pronouncement that was overturned by the Texas Legislature, 181 to 3, a few months after the financial conflicts were revealed.

One rationale for inoculating boys is that entire populations should be vaccinated to achieve what is called herd immunity. But critics ask whether it is worth conducting a campaign on the scale of the one used against polio to eliminate a generally harmless virus.

Said Dr. Raffle, the British cervical cancer specialist: “Oh, dear. If we give it to boys, then all pretense of scientific worth and cost analysis goes out the window.”

My emphases. What a great article. Balanced, factual, well-written, undramatic. Take note, BBQ.

The anti-HPV push appears to have recruited BBQ, who try to attach a team of wild horses to your heartstrings to make sure you get the message. Embarassing and irrelevant to the real story.

So, like chickenpox vaccine before it, and who-knows-what after it, BigPharma take the population as one big cash cow and milk it, regardless of need or healthcare priorities, regardless of how better public money may be spent, regardless of fully examining any potential health hazards associated with their products.

Do you trust a vaccine created to fulfil a market created out of a need for profit?

En Gardasil: an update

Monday, September 1st, 2008

We previously addressed the ‘encouragement’ of HPV vaccination for minors, particularly girls, with the vaccine Gardasil.

For summary, we may conclude;

1. Gardasil has not been proven to directly cause any deaths.

2. Gardasil appears to have been contrived to open a new market rather than address a pressing healthcare issue.

3. The efficacy of Gardasil (how long protection lasts and how good that protection is) is questionable and still undetermined. Available estimates indicate 3-5 year protection from 3 doses.

4. Fear-mongering works both ways.

5. While it may be hard to see the truth, it must be looked for. Merck, GlaxoSmithkline and your goverments (US and UK at least) wish you to submit your daughters (and possibly sons) to yet another injection or their say-so. Are you sure you have no questions?

Today the vaccination of Scottish girls begins, and with it a lesson in how to manipulate a population for profit, and with no regard for their health. This will be addressed shortly.

There were several comments to the initial Gardasil post, some of which were via email and were not published at the time, and which now follow below, for completeness:

PLEASE (RE-)READ THE PUBLISHED COMMENTS FIRST.
Response 5:

May I burn down that straw man?

Aspirin is safe; that is the difference between it and Guadakill. Aspirin was initially prepared from the bark of trees. It is a naturally occurring medicine, unlike Guardakill which is a man made poison.

There is *no straw man here*. Aspirin and STW are used, in my context, to denounce your point on alum, i.e. that just because you don’t understand how something works doesn’t mean it must be distrusted. One could apply this to all homeopathy, I just picked SJW at random. According to ‘the science’ SJW is no more effective than a placebo. http://nccam.nih.gov/health/stjohnswort/#science And that from the National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

St Johns Wort is also a naturally occurring plant, and is therefore much safer and preferable as a medicine. It also has a long history of safe use.

Now, HERE is a straw man. I would guess there are many more deaths from digitalis than Gardasil will ever manage, despite also being a plant with a long history of safe use. Aspirin kills 500 people in the US per year, apparently. Just a stat, and probably through misuse, but its still a killer. One can twist anything… omigoditsachemical! …. its all about context. Alum has been used for /just/ 60 years and has recently been ‘proven’ safe on paper, when anyone who has used it has known it is safe in vivo. And yes, I’ve used it and taken it. http://www.drugresearcher.com/news/ng.asp?id=49797-alum-given-clean Together we could say “Who do you trust?”. Or, “Why trust one drug and not the other?”, as someone clever once said. Now we both know the answers to /those/ questions.

Mankind is much better off living inside and with his environment. Guardakill is an unnatural medicine; the need for it is artificial, the lust behind its making is the lust for money, and while the medicine itself is not evil, the people who make it most certainly are.

I would agree with this. What I wouldn’t agree with is throwing petrol and matches on non-existant straw men. There should be enough real, substantive data and well-argued opinion (and there is) to let people come to their own conclusion… that only a fool would inject their child with ‘GovDrugX’.

Guardasil has killed people. That is a fact.

No it’s not! You can show people the reality, but you can’t make up ‘the truth’. Those FDA reports should put enough doubt in anyones mind about Gardasil, but there is no “Gardasil Kills – Fact”. If one starts sounding like the Daily Mail, credibility flies out of the window.

The rules of peer review do not extend into the coroners office, and those recorded deaths and the numbers of people damaged are *not* opinion. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System is not going to falsely attribute death to a vaccine (I would imagine) which is where those numbers come from.

Wrong again! I read all the FDA/VAERS reports last night and not a single one attributes death to Gardasil.

Not.
A.
Single.
One.

They merely report adverse effects in anything from minutes to weeks following Gardasil vaccination. Many of the patients had other injections at the same time. Many had so long between jab and death that mentioning Gardasil seems nothing more than thoroughness.

You KNOW what [we] think of these ‘medicines’, and you know what [we] will do for our daughters. If drugs like Gardasil and chickenpox vaccine are to exposed for the fraudulent, greed-soaked tripe that they are then it must be done through strong, coherent argument and not by setting flame to reality.
——————————————————-

Response 6/7 combined:

>> Guardasil has killed people. That is a fact.
>>
>> No it’s not! You can show people the reality, but you can’t make up ‘the
>> truth’. Those FDA reports should put enough doubt in anyones mind about
>> Gardasil, but there is no “Gardasil Kills – Fact”. If one starts
>> sounding like the Daily Mail, credibility flies out of the window.
>>

>
> So you are telling me that the report that attributes the deaths of
> those girls to Gardasil is false, yes?
>
>

JudicialWatch’s conclusion that G-causes-D is OPINION based on a misinterpretation of official documents. The reports never link G and D. They are simple, clear reports which state known facts about each case.

> then what you are saying is that Judicial Watch are libeling Merc. Both
> things cannot be true at the same time.
>
> http://www.judicialwatch.org/6428.shtml says unambiguously that the
> deaths are related to Gardasil. Are you saying that they are lying?
>

Not lying per se, but distorting beyond reasonable limits. As I said previously, this does no good and leaves them looking like rabid haters without the ability to construct a strong enough argument from the available information, without resorting to screeching FEAR! EVIL! DEATH!

>
> http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2007/GardasilVAERSUpdatedDeaths0907.pdf
>
> ??? so the above is a forgery? Help me out here!
>
> That is a VAERS report listing Gardasil as the cause of death!
>

NO!!! Read that pdf!
Lets see…

1st page: ‘Gardasil did not cause the patients death’

P.2 ‘Cause of death was sudden death’. Other factors involved. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.3 All just hearsay! A nurse who heard from a nurse… and anaphylaxis DOES NOT occur 3 days after exposure. It’s a bit quicker than that. Ask anyone with a peanut/bee sting allergy. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.4 Hearsay! Bloodclot 2 weeks after vacc. Could have been any cause!Does not blame Gardasil.

P.5 Death 2 weeks after vacc. No direct link at all. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.6 Another 2 week gap Does not blame Gardasil.

P.7 States ‘manner of death natural’!!!! Does not blame Gardasil.

P.8 History of heart problems, died of heart problem. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.9 Viral sepsis and secondary infection. Symptoms started BEFORE last vaccine. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.10 Hearsay, no cause of death reported. Does not blame Gardasil.

Are you now seeing the difference between the official VAERS reports and the conlusions/opinions in the JudWac piece?

> then they would NEVER list Gardasil as the cause of death if they were
> not absolutely sure would they not?
>

See above Gardasil is NEVER listed as cause of death by VAERS.

Why trust one source and not another?
Just because JudWac appear to agree with our stance on BigPharma does not mean they are virtuous truth-givers. They have their agenda, just as Merck does.

We at Blogdial should know better though, and decide for ourselves.

Now, who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? ((C) Groucho)

> What have I missed here?
>

The blindingly obvious! That Mercks clinical trial, and JudWac’s take on the VAERS reports are all spin to support a position, and somewhere under it all, crushed and splintered, lies the reality.

> I’m not sure what the reality is; VARERS says ‘death by Gardasil’ you
> say no such reports even exist.
>

VAERS NEVER EVER says death by Gardasil. See above. See the BMJ article on safety.

> The ambiguity, the complexity, everything about it screams out to me
> that it must be totally shunned. An impenetrable reality is as bad as a
> lie, and in the face of that, taking the risk is just not an option.
>

But we can find the reality, when we remember to treat JudWac with the same basic scepticism that we treat Merck. I would like to believe JudWac, but they give me no reason to do so when I look at the reality behind what they are saying.

> Then add into the mix that Justice Watch had to sue for the information,
> the case is closed; these guys are evil and their medicine is no good!
>

And JudWac are misguided, severely biased, narrow-minded, blinkered scaremongers whose stance does not stand up to the most preliminary of scrutinies. But we have found this out, and we can understand the reality. We can take each for what it is and still know that Merck is evil, and that JudWac is at least trying to stand on the right side.

Because… as someone clever once said… We Are The Best.