i want to talk a little about the mesothelioma claim b/c its of special interest to me -- i help study the cancer at uni in my capacity as a computer scientist. mesothelioma is a very deadly cancer and its very difficult to cure. especially back in the 1950's when there wasn't a lot of good treatments. its also very aggressive, with a 23% survival rate for patients with pleural mesothelioma and a 74% survival rate for patients with peritoneal mesothelioma after 3 years (the difference between pleural and peritoneal mesothelioma is that they target different tissues in the lung). basically, to summarize, if you get mesothelioma there's a likely chance of you dying and also dying pretty quickly. if SV40 causes mesothelioma, i would expect lung cancer death rates to have jumped when the contaminated polio vaccine was introduced in the mid 1950's. i would also expect there to be little to no lead/lag in the data -- as soon as the contaminated polio vaccines are distributed, we should see an immediate spike in the death rates. i've done a little bit of digging and it doesn't look like this is the case:
there is a big jump in the male death rate around that time, but interestingly enough there isn't one in the female death rate. assuming the polio vaccine was distributed to basically everyone, this shows a contradiction for the SV40 claim. the female death rate should have also spiked at this time. on a side note, why did the male death rate due to lung cancer increase during this time?
it appears that the sales of cigarettes leads lung cancer deaths in the US, which would make sense because we know cigarettes cause lung cancer. what is the breakdown by gender?
doesn't go as far back as i would like but it clearly shows that women smoked less than men during this time. this puts the first figure into perspective. it looks like that either SV40 does not cause mesothelioma, or that 100 million americans were not exposed to SV40. even if 10-30 million americans were exposed to SV40, i would still expect a large spike in the death rates for both genders, something we do not see here.
anyways, my conclusion is that the claims of these anti-vaxxers don't really make any sense to me. their claims seem like they are not supported by historical data. the scientists in conan's post probably knew about this and it also probably helped form part of their conclusion as well. scientists are smart people and they are especially interested in statistics like this.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ijc.22425 in the abstract of this report, they say that they actually did consider historical data like this and they also found a contradiction.
how is it that people come to believe this junk when the science and history clearly states otherwise? now it is time for my section on misleading language and how to weed it out when reading sources (ive been wanting to brown townyze misleading language for a while so im fitting it into this post):
Can the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Be Trusted?
At one point, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) admitted on its website that the polio vaccine had been contaminated. They later removed this information. (View a snapshot of this removed page here)
The original report disclosed that more than 98 million Americans received the contaminated vaccine between 1955 and 1963, and explained that SV40 could lead to certain types of cancer. Later this admission was downplayed to state that there was no proof the virus caused the cancers, and since not all doses of the vaccine were contaminated, an estimated 10 to 30 million Americans were all who were at risk.
The CDC repeatedly referred to studies done by two scientists which concluded that SV40 did not cause cancer in humans, only in lab animals.
so immediately we have:
- the implication that anything published first is absolute and cannot be changed
- the subsequent refinement of science and data is a sort of cover up
- referring to any particular scientists/studies makes the CDC untrustworthy
let's break down the first one. what the forget? if this were true we would still be living in the stone ages. think about it: we used to believe that the sun revolved around the earth. that diseases could be cured by correcting the four different humors in the human body through bloodletting. that cigarettes do not cause lung cancer. among other unconditionally insane beliefs. imagine the state of the world we would live in if what is published first was absolute and cannot be changed. yet, this absolutism is what thetruthaboutvaccines.com seemingly believes in, shown by trying to discredit the further research that went into the topic of SV40 (key words: admission, downplayed. thetruthaboutvaccines.com is implying that the original report is absolutely correct, which has since been shown to be absolutely incorrect). i bring this point up because this mindset exists absolutely everywhere, from climate change, flat earthism, politics, and more. any time that anyone backs down or any time anyone corrects previously incorrect information its some sort of cover up and "they"'re withholding the truth from us or some other complete horsestuff. this is not how real life works. this is not how science works.
science works by testing, testing, testing, testing, testing, and testing. tests are flawed, theories are flawed and the human beings conducting the tests are flawed. mistakes are made. however, as science has proven to us time and time again, the certainty of conclusions on a topic only become stronger as time goes on. take for instance the evolution of the field of physics. it started with newton's equations, and slowly evolved into relativity and special relativity as newton's claims were tested against the real world. as time went on, the tests became more and more precise and we were able to show that newton was wrong, and that more nuanced equations were needed. from this, we were able to refine physics to a point where we use it to launch rockets into space and land them back on the same launchpad they came from. from this, we are able to use technologies like GPS to navigate to anywhere we want, with the theories of special relativity backing up the technology in the form of needed time corrections on the GPS satellites themselves. from this, computers were born with the microchips powering them becoming ever smaller with transistors reaching the size of 10s of atoms. science is an iterative process that continually builds upon itself to produce more and more accurate results. this is all to say that the evolution of science is backed up by real life mechanisms becoming more and more advanced through the incorporation of the latest science. implying that this iteration it is some sort of cover up and that an "admission" was "downplayed" when further refinement shows that SV40 was less of a concern than it was previously is treating this entire subject in bad faith. treating the refinement of science as a cover up tells me that you actually don't care at all about the science. you just want to believe in some spooky conspiracy theory just for the sake of believing in it. i don't blame you, believing in something that nobody else believes is exciting and it gives you an opportunity to seem knowledgeable about a subject that you might otherwise not be. but, i apologize, you're just simply incorrect. believing in this bogus is dangerous, especially concerning the topic of vaccines which cure deadly diseases. you want to know the reason why people are so concerned about your children, gothboy? its because your harebrained beliefs are a risk to their health and safety. you implying otherwise only demonstrates your total lack of self awareness of the whole situation.
wow that paragraph ended up being a lot longer than i thought it would be. anyways, time to address the last bullet point. obviously referring to corrected information time and time again doesn't make the CDC untrustworthy. as i have shown, science is refinement. continually referring to the most up-to-date science makes you more truth worthy, because it shows that you are concerned about the topic and that you are willing to divert funding and resources to the topic. scientists don't work backwards from a conclusion. the scientists conducting the studies did not say "hey, i think SV40 doesn't cause cancer" and then connect the dots to that conclusion, no matter how incorrect the data is. scientists objectively review the data and when they find a contradiction to already accepted results, its usually pretty stunning for them. continually referring to the most up-to-date information shows that the CDC has integrity when it comes to this topic and wants to ensure that whatever they say is the most correct it can be at the time. this would make sense, since the CDC is a leading healthcare organization in the US and wants to make sure that US citizens are not dying. it would make sense that the most recent science they promote shows that US citizens are not dying to SV40. like i showed at the very top of this post, the original numbers of 100 million people exposed to SV40 in the US simply does not make any sense at all.
Poll