Poneke on Meningococcal B
April 16th, 2008 at 12:50 pm by David FarrarPoneke has his usual trademark lengthy and well researched post on the Meningococcal B immunisation campaign and laments that the media treat actual doctors and scientists with more scepticism than the fantastic claims often made by alternative medicine promoters.
The comments are interesting with Russell Brown explaining his views and involvement, and also a supportive comment by David Cunliffe for the post. Excellent to see Ministers making comments on blogs.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
“…and laments that the media treat actual doctors and scientists with more s[k]epticism than the fantastic claims often made by alternative medicine promoters.”
Hear, hear!
Vote:April 16th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
If only Cunliffe had actually said something worth saying.
Myself I would rather hear from an Opposition spokesman over a Cabinet minister… at least ’til November
Vote:April 16th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
I really do wonder why something is called ‘alternative’ medicine – either it’s medicine or it isn’t, surely.
Vote:April 16th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
This is an international problem based on the incorrect assumption that EVERY story must have an opposing viewpoint to be balanced. One example: Some loony-tune in the US predicted that various factors coinciding would cause an earthquake on the New Madrid fault zone, located in the east central US. ALL of the professional earth scientists said it wouldn’t happen, and that there was no correlation with those factors. The media worked VERY hard to find ONE researcher (at a low-rank state university) who would give even a small amount of credence to the absurd claim. The comment was “We can’t rule it out” caused the media there to go with it big time, even though ALL of the scientific evidence pointed to NO correlations with any of the factors raised. The result – a number of states in the region closed schools, state offices, etc. What happened? NADA!! Just as predicted by scientists.
Many many many more examples. Let’s not even start on climate change, on which there IS a 99.9 % scientific consensus. (I would have said 100 % but I could not be certain that there wasn’t one credible bit of research in opposition.)
Vote:April 16th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
David in Chch, I just had a similar comment ready to fire off. You just beat me to it.
Vote:I completely agree – the issue of balance is a problematic one. I was going to use intelligent design as an example that is used to ‘balance’ the evolution ‘debate’.
April 16th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Actually, David, this was one of Poneke’s weaker efforts. I didn’t think s/he would be quite so blinkered. Journalists ought to at least give the appearance of balance, but Poneke has thrown that out the window here. Why was a vaccine necessary? Why did $250 million need to be spent? Crucial questions, I would have thought.
In 2004, the Health Ministry released a list of the major causes of death. On the list were various cancers, heart disease, suicide, etc. Curiously, meningococcal deaths didn’t rate a mention. That’s hardly surprising given the small numbers that die from the virus. In 2004, only five people died from the epidemic strain – that’s out of a total of 28,636 deaths across the population. In other words, less than 0.1% of all deaths were caused by the epidemic strain. But that didn’t stop the Government from embarking on the biggest health campaign ever. And what has been the result? Well, seven people died from the disease in 2006, another seven died last year, and two have died so far this year. Small numbers to be sure, but such was the case at the time the vaccine was rolled out. People continue to die at roughly the same rate as when the vaccine was introduced.
I would’ve thought that National’s policy on such an unnecessary vaccine was simple: user pays. Why should the vast majority of people who will never contract the virus pay for healthy people, who also are unlikely to contract the virus, to have a jab? It’s a bit like me having to pay for my neighbour’s house insurance, despite the fact he can afford to pay for his own!
Vote:April 16th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Ditto David in Chch, when I read Poneke’s article yesterday the parellels between immunisation deniers and AGW deniers just kept jumping out. Interesting to note that, judging by his comment at Poneke’s, Owen is also an immunisation denier.
Vote:David Hansford addresses the medias obsession with “balance”, again specifically regarding coverage of GW but likewise applicable to other issues.
http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3541/columnists/10716/some_like_it_hot.html
April 16th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
I have to agree to some extent ross, but in the situation of a disease that moves through a population some peope not being immunised raises the risk for others so it’s an issue for the community collectively not just as individuals, like dumping something nasty into a commonly owned water supply.
Vote:April 16th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Hehe, the only people on the planet that are staunch supporters of alternative medicines (pseudo-science) are the green supporters . See Phil U loves psychics (especially TV2 Sensing Murder program) and one can only inferred that he may be going to a psychic healer. There is no doubt that most greenies view big pharmaceutical companies as evil (yeah, Sue Kedgley and the likes), but they champion homeopathy, faith healing, crystal ball reading, and so forth.
I had challenged the NZ Homeopathy president in Mt. Eden for a public debate with members of his organisation regarding the scientific validity of homeopathy but he declined.
Andrew W, disease treatment is not a complex system phenomena, you either use the null hypothesis to validate that the treatment works or doesn’t work, but climate system is a true complex system and you can’t compare them, because you’re comparing apples & oranges.
Hey Andrew, my financial market analytic software application is just about to be released (beta version), and I do have some models in weather derivatives, which some of those models are variants of the IPCC climate models. Are you keen to play your money in the financial market using the sophisticated IPCC models that I have implemented in my software? There are various other models available (not just weather derivatives) for interest-rate based derivatives & equities, plus fixed incomes, but I figured out that insurance industries may be interested in weather derivatives and this is why I implemented IPCC models.
Would you like to gamble your money using the IPCC climate model algorithms? If you are , then please let me know, so I can sent you info with details of how to login.
Vote:April 17th, 2008 at 6:25 am
> in the situation of a disease that moves through a population some peope not being immunised raises the risk for others.
Even the Healthy Ministry hasn’t said that. And the fact is that the majority of the population weren’t vaccinated; the vaccine was given to under 20s only.
Vote:April 17th, 2008 at 8:57 am
The health department does say that and so does everyone who understand what an epidemic is, gettinga high percentage innoculated is important to break the epidemic.
Vote:The majority of the population suseptable to the infection was innoculated.