Re: _Public Health at the Crossroads_ Redux (was Re: Awful consequences of anti-vax activity)

On Apr 5, 1:02 am, schu...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Richard Schultz) wrote:
In article <077f5b31-6714-41c1-80c4-b3018962d...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, PeterB <p...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

:> What the sentence
:> following the one you claim to have cited says is "On the other hand,
:> targeted public health interventions INCLUDING VACCINATION [emphasis added]
:> personal hygiene capaigns, and improved child health care, WERE OF MAJOR
:> IMPORTANCE [emphasis added]." Do you get that? The source that *you* cited
:> *explictly states* that vaccination was among the public health
:> interventions that were of MAJOR IMPORTANCE in reducing the mortality rate.

By the way, your concluding remark in the above paragraph was a lie.
You said it " *explicity states* that vaccination was of major
importance IN REDUCING THE MORTALITY RATE [emphasis mine]," however
the words "reducing the mortality rate" do not appear in the text of
the sentence you quoted; they are YOUR words, thus it NOT explicity
stated. If you were intellectually honest, you would acknowledge this
deception, but since you did it on purpose, I know you will not.

: First, you are lying that this is stated in the following sentence,
: for obvious reasons.

Has it occurred to you that anyone with a web browser can go to amazon.com,
call up the page in question, and determine for himself or herself that
I am quoting the passage correctly and that you are (as usual) lying
about it?

I revised my earlier comment to admit that you were right about where
the sentence occurs (which doesn't change the fact that vaccine had a
minor impact, at best, on total mortality declines), but the fact you
chose NOT to respond to that revised post, as well as snipping large
amounts of commentary you were not able to answer, is most telling.

: It occurs in a later subsequent paragraph, and
: was in no way intended to qualify the earlier point. Second, if the
: authors believe that the 3.5% decline in the rate of infectious
: disease mortality represents an effect of "major importance," so what,
: it's still just 3.5% of the total decline. What's important is that
: vaccine could not have been responsible for those declines, and thus
: something else was.

You seem to have forgotten the previous two sentences of the paragraph
that you are quoting, in which it is quite clear that the subject is
the decline in *overall* mortality, not the mortality from infectious
diseases.

"...not the mortality from infectious diseases?" If you had said,
"...not JUST the mortality from infectious diseases," your comment
would not have been a lie. Mortality declines from infectious
diseases are a PART of the total, of course, but that does not change
the fact that "medical measures introduced for the major infectious
diseases" (ie., vaccine), were responsible for, at most, 3.5% of those
declines. In the earlier post that you chose not to respond to, I
cited a larger passage from "Public Health at the Crossroads:
Achievements and Prospects," to show the falsity of your argument.
Here it is:

"McKeown proposed that steady improvements in nutrition beginning in
the eighteenth century, together with improvements in water supply and
sanitation services, an increase in the general standard of living
following the Industrial Revolution, and a reduction in birth rates
propelled the health transition. The development of effective medical
measures was TOO LATE TO MAKE A MAJOR CONTRIBUTION [emphasis mine] to
the mortality decline in Europe, and other western countries. For
example, it has been estimated that, AT MOST, [emphasis mine] only
3.5% of the total decline in mortality in the United States of America
between 1900 and 1975 could be ascribed to medical measures introduced
for the major infectious diseases. On the other hand, targeted public
health interventions including vaccination, personal hygiene
campaigns, and improved child health care, were of major importance."
The last sentence of the quote, beginning with "on the other hand," is
not a retraction of the preceding acknowledgment that medical measures
were "too late to make a major contribution" to declining rates of
disease-related mortality, as you falsely claim. Clearly, the "on the
other hand" comment is a digression from the discussion of mortality,
instead referring to the importance of various health measures in the
control of disease incidence. Your effort to nullify the earlier
point that vaccine had only a very small impact, if any, to these
declines, is quite pathetic.

Of course, none of us believe that you have actually read
any more of the book than the one sentence that you like to quote.

Who is "Us?" And in 2006, when I quoted from this book, you had never
even heard of it.

:> What part of "directly quoting the source that you cited" is a "torturous
:> revision"?
:
: It is an attempt at revision if you do not agree that vaccine could
: not have been responsible for more than 3.5% of the decline in
: infectious disease mortality in the US during the period 1900 to
: 1975. Do you, or do you not, agree with that statement?

Since (1) the statement in the book is directed toward *total* mortality,
not infectious disease mortality and (2) in the following paragraph, the
authors state that McKeown's thesis is controversial, I would say that
I cannot tell whether the statement is true or false without doing
considerably more research.

If you cannot say, then how do you explain your promotion of
vaccine?

:> Why do you keep repeating a lie that anyone with access to amazon.com can
:> easily determine to be a lie?
:
: Remember, the book was cited by me in 2006, not by you. I invite
: readers to read it in order to form their own conclusions.

When they do, they will discover that you either have never read it, and
hence know about it only what your sponsors tell you, or that you have
read it and are lying about its contents.

Readers will decide for themselves who is attempting to distort the
history of vaccine effectiveness.

Or let's put it another way: if the sentence that I quoted is *not* the
one following the one that you quoted, what *is* the next sentence
on page 43 of _Public Health at the Crossroads_ following the citation
of McKeown's 3.5% figure?

Try reading my revised post, which hit the newsgroups hours before you
responded to the other one. And do feel free to respond to it anyway,
as it contains various comments you have been unable to answer without
changing the subject or ignoring historical fact.
.

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