Madelaine McMasters

Hippie Bowman wrote: Good morning all! Late today. At home sick! Sigh! Have a great day all! Peace! Sounds like it's time for some chicken juice! Hugs, Hippie!

PeterCanessa Oh wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Alak Dyrssen wrote: The theory that the Large Hardon Collider would pound us in to a black hole was an illogical phallacy During the Manhattan Project, Edward Teller raised the possibility that detonation of a nuclear bomb might ignite the Earth's atmosphere. Two scientists aided Teller in calculating that it couldn't actually happen, which I suspect reduce some of the angst over development of the bomb. When I first heard of the LHC black hole scare, I immediately thought of this. I believe you have missed the joke Alak intended. Please see the last word of his sentence and any other unorthodox spelling. "Mobile phones causing cancer" was an interesting scare I think. If I remember correctly it was 'crazy thinking' that was considered quite seriously as a possibility, investigated, tested, found to have no specific or statistical link and wrapped up quietly. I haven't heard any irrational continuations so it seems to be exactly the way things should be done (although we'd like to think there was no 'crazy thinking' required in the first place). Oh yeah - and to all these things, if I can't blame fairies at the bottom of the garden or orbiting teapots I think: Lazy journalists cause scares to sell advertising. But only when they have to because it's even easier to just re-publish press releases and call it news. No, I got it Peter. Teller's concern over igniting the N2 in the atmosphere also produce joking (one can wonder if they found a sexual angle as well), with Hans Bethe taking wagers on whether it would happen. The full analysis of Teller's worry wasn't completed until after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Teller's case, he was worth listening to (even though he was a whiner), but in both cases, the virtually instantaneous end of the world was at stake. For me, the humor is deeper than the jokes. How many times will we think we're but a button push away from ending it all. Let's hope we're always wrong! The worries over EMF/RF causing cancer stem from research into non-heating effects. The thought is that, at the right frequency, DNA can be made to resonate and eventually break. Tests were done on unwound linear sections, showing that microwave radiation, as one might get from a cell phone or wi-fi/microwave oven, can indeed break DNA. Fortunately, our DNA (all six feet if it) is wound up in a ball that fits inside a human cell. This shifts the resonant frequency up so high that there's nothing we make that can reach it, except ultraviolet light, which can only break DNA in our skin because it doesn't penetrate, and ionizing radiation from X-Rays to proton beams. My Father knew quite a few scientists and engineers, and his office was in our home (I am sitting in it as I type this), so I was exposed to quite a few of those fellas growing up. One of them had done experiments with military radar, sitting in the beam until he felt uncomfortably warm. They had calculated the rate at which his body core temperature would rise, so he was in no danger of cooking. I think back to that and wonder if Otto would have lounged in the beam if he'd been a molecular biologist rather than an electrical engineer. MRI machines torque our hydrogen atoms around to align the spins of their protons. The electromagnetic fields we experience inside an MRI tunnel are many orders of magnitude larger than those we encounter anywhere else. We've yet to discover any problems from the use of MRI. Dad told me of another of his colleagues who worked at the University of Chicago (now Fermilab), building their first cyclotron. To test the thing, they placed an aquarium near the exit port and dumped the beam into it, creating a bat shaped blue glow in the water. One of the guys wondered what looking directly into the beam would be like. The bat shaped glow died out before the beam exited the tank, so it was thought that there were few particle leaving the aquarium. He looked into the beam from the far end of the aquarium and proclaimed the view to be "all sparkly!". This later developed cataracts in the one eye he used to view. He was cautious enough not to use both eyes, which seems to me to mean he was crazy enough to use one. That same cyclotron was left to run overnight as a sort of burn-in for all the systems. A crescent wrench was inadvertently left in or on the thing, and was discovered the next day by one of the technicians, who picked it up. That technician developed radiation poisoning. These stories stick with me, as cautionary tales. It's easy to think that because we know a lot, there's little we don't know.That's dangerous thinking.

Canoro Philipp wrote: the rise would be easy to explain if the research for autism has been increased while in the past not that much attention was given to it, meaning that since more hope has been given to the parents, more parents bring their child to medical facilities in hope that they will be cured, increasing awareness of more autistic people, and also, if more characteristics has been noted as part of autism that in the past has been unknown, the people that have the new characteristics that are labeled autistic will rise with the expanded range of what is autism. This effect has been witnessed for other diseases as well. As we improve awareness and access to improved diagnostic abilities and expand the definition of a disease, the reporting rate increases. In the past, the milder cases of autism may have gone undiagnosed, called by any number of other names. I don't imagine there were many public schools in 1930 that had staff psychologists or nurses with mental health training. Now they do, so fewer kids and their parents fall through the cracks.

Alak Dyrssen wrote: The theory that the Large Hardon Collider would pound us in to a black hole was an illogical phallacy During the Manhattan Project, Edward Teller raised the possibility that detonation of a nuclear bomb might ignite the Earth's atmosphere. Two scientists aided Teller in calculating that it couldn't actually happen, which I suspect reduce some of the angst over development of the bomb. When I first heard of the LHC black hole scare, I immediately thought of this.

PeterCanessa Oh wrote: I've been trying my best to think of others but the only one I've come up with is "Power lines cause cancer" and that's from several years ago. Cell phones cause cancer? A lot of research has gone into non-heating (ie, mutagenic) effects of RF energy on tissues and I expect more will be done. I have worked on devices that purposely expose tissue to RF, so this is an area of interest to me. Here in Wisconsin, when I was a kid (and years before), there was a lot of chatter about a VLF antenna array to be installed up-state for communicating with submarines. It was throught to be a ruse to cover up the "fact" that this antenna would beam thoughts directly into our brains. Fluoride in the water (I loved Sterling Hayden's Jack D. Ripper in "Dr. Strangelove"). I don't recall what the fluoride is actually supposed to do to me. I live on well water, so must I actively participate in my own self destruction by brushing my teeth with fluoride toothpaste. Mom is 83, has survived breast cancer and still has all her own teeth. If I told her that toothpaste was responsible for both her mammary asymmetry and her beautiful smile, she might call it a wash (In all seriousness, her cancer was caught early, treated quickly, she's been healthy for 15 years and she does have a beautiful smile). Governments aren't telling us about that black-hole/asteroid thingie from the Kuiper belt that is about to destroy us. (We discussed it in a thread here). It's massive enough to be a black hole and clever enough to cause the vernal equinox to occur two days early in Iceland without perturbing anything else in the universe. Amateur astronomers are always looking for something they can get named after themselves, so they'd be thrilled to detect anything out of whack. They haven't. Widespread snooping on our cell phone conversations/hard drives/e-mail etc. (Project Tempest) The government maintains a dossier on each of us, minute in every detail. This is a theory I believe is beamed into our heads by Google so we won't worry about their cute camera cars roving our neighborhoods. Due to superbly effective muzzling by big oil companies, individuals who have built actual working perpetual energy machines are only able to leak demonstrations of their amazing discoveries via YouTube. None of these rise to the magnitude of either Global Warming or Vaccine/Autism, but the mechanisms at work are similar throughout. I think the Internet has been a boon to this kind of thinking as it allows like minded individuals to get/give positive feedback. There is both a democratization and balkanization of thought online. I am optimistic overall.

PeterCanessa Oh wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Science is not immune to the effects of money. Is it time to shift the thread from chemists to enviromentalists and the worldwide "global warming", er, no, that doesn't work, um, "climate change" conspiracy? All the money is in 'proving' the climate-change theories, not disproving or even testing them. As with this thread there was no real definition of the problem/situation for a long time, just an awful lot of pundit-warming as they could rant about almost anything they wanted. The climate 'debate' is still dishonest - almost anyone claiming "mankind is not the biggest factor affecting the climate" will instantly be ridiculed for denying that "mankind does not affect the climate", an altogether different statement. Another fascinating topic. I'm waiting for folks in the Maldives to move out so I can take my pick of paradise huts. Having been born too late to be a cargo cult priestess, I'll have to settle for squatting.

PeterCanessa Oh wrote: Ansolutely. Progress needs creativity and creativity is usually not rational, although there are those few times when someone does something new (ie; creative) and everyone just slaps themselves and says "Of course! Why didn't I think of that". I just finished reading Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything". It's a delightful travelogue through some of the sciences, replete with oddball characters. It's a perfect tutorial on the messiness of science and the people who do it.

emmettcullen93 wrote: for wensday this one applies to Mr. Emmett right here. I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. - Thomas Alva Edison That's the spirit, Emmett! The young Edison accidentally burned down his family's barn in 1852. His home went up in flames in 1914. In 1919, as his office and library was blazing away, he woke his wife to view the event, remarking that one doesn't get to see such things very often. My contribution for the day... “Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” - Henry Ford ;-)

Paladin, thanks so much for your post. I just heard about the Silicon Valley connection and found it compelling. I too have hope that the scientific community will find solutions to a great many problems in medicine and elsewhere. The general public is simply unaware how science and the scientific community work. It's a messy business and "conspiracies" (which one might call herd-think) are constantly subjected to scrutiny. Nothing looks better on a resume than a highly publicized peer-reviewed paper that overturns a few apple carts. As more and more epidemiological data is banked online, we'll see meta analysis bloom. People will be digging through everything with ever more sophisticated analysis tools, looking for the countless needles in the haystacks of our research data. I find this growing collection of, and access to data very encouraging. But while science does have self correcting properties, there really can be large scale aberrations in the process that work against the public good. They are hardly secret, but they're difficult to rectify. As an example, there is evidence that pharmaceutical companies direct their research towards treatments that turn deadly diseases into manageable chronic conditions, rather than cure them. There is no long term profit in eliminating your customers, either by killing them or curing them. So the financial rewards of our economic system are not quite aligned with our best interests. I have friends what work in big pharma who witness this profit pressure at work in the internal review process for new research. While they are frustrated, they remain in the game with a hope of affecting the outcome for the positive. It's not hard to find other examples where this happens, such as in education and social welfare programs and military expenditures. Science is not immune to the effects of money. Not much is. I do think people in general want to do the right thing, knowing what's right is the problem and discovering that requires patience and thoughtfulness.

4-25-2013 Danica Patrick wins at Talladega. Fans are stunned when Patrick emerges from the car after her victory lap wearing a Versace sequined gown and Jimmy Chou strappy sandals. She entered the car at the beginning of the race wearing the traditional race jumpsuit and helmet. Careful analysis of race footage later shows that Patrick changed clothes during the race and crossed the finish line while touching up her lipstick in the rear view mirror. 4-25-2025 James Cameron of Planetary Resources releases video imagery of the company's first successful "lasso" of a mineral rich asteroid. A robotic survey of the asteroid's surface reveals three volcanoes (two still active) some beobab trees and a single rose. 4-25-2025 During a post-mortem analysis of LL server code, open-source coders discover that SL's ubiquitous plywood boxes actually contain sheep.

PeterCanessa Oh wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: PeterCanessa Oh wrote: Taking a stand against received wisdom is indeed difficult and likely to be ridiculed. Indeed, and that does sometimes spring from irrational thought. Irrationality is natural and not without benefit. Just as mutation is a fundamental component of biological evolution, irrational thinking seems to be an important part of our technological evolution. I'm sure my analogy is imperfect, but selection may be to mutation as science is to "crazy" thinking. Yeees, I'm not great on philosophy of science, mostly getting it from Popper's books and general history. Let's be clear about 'irrational thought and 'crazy thinking' though, in the context of medicine at least. I would say irrational thought is just that, with no evidence or 'system' to support it. While it's possible something (currently considered) irrational is true there's absolutely no good evidence to support it. That sodding teapot orbiting the sun is an example. In contrast theories like circulation of the blood, germ theory, etc. were "crazy thinking". They went totally against the perceived wisdom at the time so 'educated' people automatically called them crazy. As with Galileo 'perceived wisdom' often had the force of law and the power of life and death. And yet those theories weren't proposed irrationally but because there was good evidence to support them. Eventually this evidence was examined and accepted by enough people that it became the new perceived wisdom. To avoid a logical fallacy we now have to say that there are two useful definitions of a 'good scientist/doctor'. The first is someone who has learnt, understood and applies the current perceived wisdom. The second is someone who spots errors and ommissions in perceived wisdom and works - rationally but perhaps crazily :-) - to correct them. Collectively we hope those are the same people, but they often are not. All too often the dogma of perceived wisdom, reinforced with awards for agreeing and ridicule for disagreeing, prevent a lot of doctors thinking crazy 'outside the box' things. If nothing else, they're just too busy applying what they know to evaluate what they don't know. On your more general point - mutation|selection, ideas|science - I'm quite happy with that as a concept, I like the theory of memes, for instance, but I think we need a better definition of 'science'. (Or at least I do, it not being my field). Yep, I should have been more careful to set a scope on "crazy", but pithy must be compact, right? I was indeed trying to get at what you're saying, that we need some people who are rational enough to make actual progress in some endeavor, but irrational enough to oppose direction (dogma). We have the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise. I am ever aware of this in myself, as my mind jumps to most bizarre conclusions at times. I believe this explains my sense of humor, my professional success, and my Father's lifelong attempts to give/send me away ;-) Taken to extremes, this propensity to find meaning leads to imaginary actors. A great many of those actors have been immortalized in books, some of which may still be found in hotels or burning in piles on city streets. On smaller scales, they poison our water and our children and tell us stuff that just ain't so. I've read theories (or maybe they were ramblings) that mixing a pinch of oppositionality (which is irrational) with a bit of paranoia (also irrational) may be the engine that has powered some of our greatest discoveries. Newton was at once brilliant and subversive, discovering the laws of motion and gravitation while trying to disprove the Holy Trinity at Trinity college. That does make me smile. We're all irrational somewhere and sometime, Peter. Maybe that's a curse and a blessing?

Medhue Simoni wrote: Did you really watch the video? I provided you with a reply that contained over half a dozen quotes from the video, complete with time markers spanning through the first hour. Having been given that, you ask if I watched the video. From this, I could conclude (and this is not an exhaustive list): 1) You have significant problems with comprehension. 2) You believe that insulting people is an effective way to win arguments. 3) You are too emotionally invested to argue rationally or with civility. There is a little edge in that list, but I think I can be forgiven for my frustration given the abrasive nature of your participation in this thread. I do not continue to engage you with any thought that I might change your mind. I have had many discussions like this with others over the years and I know better. My interaction with you is intended to give you the opportunity to publicly paint yourself in the most unflattering tones. I am curious to know if you are able to resist my charms.

Medhue Simoni wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Celestiall Nightfire wrote: I don't own a television, nor do I know what a LIfetime drama is. Nor do I. I'm beginning to spot a pattern here, Celestiall. ;-) You had the opportunity to debunk all the stuff in the videos, yet you have given not 1 arguement other than crazy, in a thread about logical fallacies? Every single so called credible study that the CDC uses to defend the non link to vaccines has been discredited in this thread, and you have given no response but crazy. That's not a valid response. It appears that Celestiall, who is far more familiar with mercury/autism than I, has provided some links for you. I hope you don't mind if I defer to her expertise in the details while I stick to the issue of logical fallacy and methods of argumentation elsewhere in this thread.

Medhue Simoni wrote: Look at the title to the last column on the table "Approval Date for Thimerosal Free or Thimerosal / Preservative Free (Trace Thimerosal)*** Formulation". If read as it should be read, it is stating that all the vaccines in the list once had Thimerosal, and the dates in that column are it's approval dates for Thimerosal free or trace amounts. Now, I'm sure this is a mistake, because I know of some of them that have never had it. So, either some1 doesn't really know how to label a table, or it's saying they all had Thimerosal. You'd think some1 in government could write a clearly stated table. It is clearly stated. The column shows the approval date for those re-formulations which got approval. If something wasn't reformulated, it wouldn't have an approval date. That is indicated by "Never contained Thimerosal". This is like the NA entries you often see in data lists indicating "Not Applicable". This labeling practice is pretty commonplace. ETA: I see Innula responded while I was on the phone and my post sat waiting for "Post". A girl likes to be seen, so I'll leave my response, even though it's superfluous.

Celestiall Nightfire wrote: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/autism-treatment/AN01488 While reading about chelation therapy, I stumbled across this... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18949650 If the abstract accurately represents the situation, one could wonder if there's a logical fallacy there. The patient was killed by administration of the improper chelating agent (in another article I did not bookmark, I think it was stated that the wrong agent was delivered at the dosage for the correct agent). The conclusion of the report is that chelation therapy can have tragic consequences. From the abstract alone, the conclusion I would draw is that medical errors can have tragic consequences. Administration of the correct chelating agent at the correct dose would, one might guess, not be fatal. While I don't think Medhue is arguing his case terribly well, I don't think any of us are suggesting that science is error free. This might be an example of of that, twice over.

Celestiall Nightfire wrote: I don't own a television, nor do I know what a LIfetime drama is. Nor do I. I'm beginning to spot a pattern here, Celestiall. ;-)

PeterCanessa Oh wrote: Taking a stand against received wisdom is indeed difficult and likely to be ridiculed. Indeed, and that does sometimes spring from irrational thought. Irrationality is natural and not without benefit. Just as mutation is a fundamental component of biological evolution, irrational thinking seems to be an important part of our technological evolution. I'm sure my analogy is imperfect, but selection may be to mutation as science is to "crazy" thinking.

PeterCanessa Oh wrote: Yes, commercial and political interests lie and cheat. To accuse every chemist, every doctor, every bioloist and every government in the world of doing so about this issue unless they agree with you is stretching credulity. Peter, even if you believed that every chemist, doctor, biologist and government in the world lies and cheats (they actually do! ;-), it's hard to explain such large scale collective actions as global conspiracies. One interesting property of actual conspiracies is that eventually (and more than proportionally dependent on size of the conspiracy) participants often see a profit in revealing them. One interesting property of imagined conspiracies is that people rarely imagine only one. Welcome to humanity!

4-23-65,000,000BC The Tertiary period kicks off with a bang when dinosaur astronomer Tyrone "Dr. T" Rex fails to detect the approaching Chicxulub asteroid. Archaeologists eventually discover that Dr. Rex's oversight was likely the result of pushing his telescope off course with his nose every time he reached for the focus knob with his too-short arms. 4-23-2011 Facebook's chat support lines are swamped when users of the game "Farmville" report the mysterious appearance of crop circles. 4-23-2013 The TSA suffers yet another embarrassment when it is revealed that airport full body scanners appear to show that everyone is actually Rick Astley.

Quickly pulls an umbrella from her root beer and another from her hair and puts them safely away.

Charolotte Caxton wrote: Innominatus Blackheart wrote: That's the only prerequisite for the change to a fat red bowling pin figure from a blue or other color, to post 3,000 times? No, there's also a ritual involved. I still have a snipped off bit of neck-tie, a champagne stained satin slipper (right), three li'l paper umbrellas and a valet parking stub with lipstick prints (Maybelline Mauve-ulous, I think) from your indoctrination.

Innula Zenovka wrote: Thanks, Madelaine. You've saved me a lot of time, it seems, watching that. Did he, at any point, actually come out and say, "and we know that such-and-such a vaccine causes (or is associated with) autism because of such-and-such a study, published in such-and-such a journal"? I want to check his references, you see, and in this context I'm not so much interested in the general, and non-contentious, proposition that, taken in sufficient amounts, mercury is bad for you as I am in the specific proposition that a particular vaccine is bad for children, be it because of the amounts of mercury it contains or for some other reason. It's all very well for people to dismiss studies they don't like as being rigged by "Big Pharma" (thus economically combining "ad hominem" with "The Texas Sharpshooter," I think) but I like to look up research myself. There was no point where Dr. Ayoub cited such research, Innula. I really wanted him to toss me a bone, but it never happened. Every example cited was via malformed or contradictory analogy. I have been through IRB reviews that would have shredded a presentation like Ayoub's. The sort of analogical errors he made would have gotten me shut down pretty quickly. But things really went wild when he moved from medicine to motivation.

Medhue Simoni wrote: The simple fact that you don't understand his analogy given your own knowledge with his example, shows that you don't want to understand it, you just want to find fault where there is none. I replied: You have no knowledge of what I do or do not "want to understand". To suggest you know otherwise is arrogance for all to see. He then said: For 1, I never suggested that I knew anything besides the fact that vaccine's connection to autism was not debunked. So, in one sentence you state my lack of understanding as a "fact", then state that this fact shows I "don't want to understand". You then completely contradicted yourself by claiming you don't know that fact. And now we get to the point in such arguments that seems unfortunatley unavoidable. I find myself face to face with someone who will not argue rationally. What am I to do besides wish you well?

Medhue Simoni wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: 6:55 “That’s like taking a six months supply (of a cardiac drug) today.” Cardiac drugs do not act on the human body at all like heavy metals do. Digoxin, a popular cardiac drug used to treat rhythm disorders, has a low therapeutic index (the margin of safety between efficacy and toxicity), warfarin does too, it’s a life saving blood thinner at low doses, an effective rat poison at high doses, causing lethal bleed out. The doctor (the video states he is an MD) was surely taught this in medical school. Which is probably why he used that example, because in the context of what he is talking, it suits very well. The simple fact that you don't understand his analogy given your own knowledge with his example, shows that you don't want to understand it, you just want to find fault where there is none. Madelaine McMasters wrote: 1:00:39 “Nigeria’s growth was leading Africa, so it doesn’t surprise me that GAVI was immunizing the heck out of Nigeria.” Dr. Ayoub is suggesting that governments were conspiring to reduce Nigeria’s population by vaccinating them (presumably to inflict the fertility reducing properties of mercury on the unsuspecting population). Oddly enough, if you believe Rosling’s suggestion that lowering infant mortality and increasing lifespan will lower the birth rate (because women don’t feel the need to have replacement children to counter the infant mortality rate), vaccinations will indeed lower population growth by improving quality and length of life. Did you quote your statement directly out of Bill Gate's handbook, cause it is the same exact arguement that he makes, hence why he believe injecting poison into people is good for them. Vaccine advocate always make the case that dispite some bad side effects, overall, it is good for the population. This is a completely socialist ideology. As an individual, I don't care if it's overall good for every1, if it hurts me or my child, I don't want it, and I have the inherit right to say no, irreguardless of the made up fears that form the whole reasoning around vaccines. If you get injured, you should just suck it up and take it for the team, right? What will you do if you are diagnosed with cardiac atrial fibrillation and prescibed digoxin, which has a that low theraputic index? Taking even sliightly more than you should could kill you. What if you are diagnosed with coronary artery disease or have a stroke and are prescribed warfarin (coumadin) to thin your blood? Will you refuse to take it because it's used as rat poison? The dose is the poison, Medhue. There are a great many materials which have therapeutic benefit in the correct amount and are lethal in the wrong amount. You have no knowledge of what I do or do not "want to understand". To suggest you know otherwise is arrogance for all to see.

Okay, I've watched the entire video and have some notes. I have quoted (sometimes paraphrasing slightly) at various points in the video and offer my comments thereafter. 6:40 "You know what, the EPA is right, but you have to interpret it a certain way." The doctor implies that the "certain way" is improper without offering any explanation for why that's so. In truth, one must almost always interpret things “in a certain way”. It’s already becoming clear that Dr. Ayoub is doing precisely that, interpreting data in a way that distorts it to his ends. The transient and chronic effects of heavy metal exposures are different, and treating them the same, as the doctor does, does not mean they are the same. 6:55 “That’s like taking a six months supply (of a cardiac drug) today.” Cardiac drugs do not act on the human body at all like heavy metals do. Digoxin, a popular cardiac drug used to treat rhythm disorders, has a low therapeutic index (the margin of safety between efficacy and toxicity), warfarin does too, it’s a life saving blood thinner at low doses, an effective rat poison at high doses, causing lethal bleed out. The doctor (the video states he is an MD) was surely taught this in medical school. 17:40 “They could have killed a horse with the doses they were giving.” This was offered as proof that mercury was unsafe. On careful analysis, this statement actually works against the claim and simply states the obvious that horses are bigger than people and if you give someone enough poison to kill a horse, you shouldn't be surprised if it kills a human. 34.56 “The number one cause of death in the US is not heart disease or cancer, it’s medicine.” Having read “To Err is Human” during a period in my career when I worked on methods to reduce medical errors, I am familiar with this particular misrepresentation of the facts. There are indeed hundreds of thousands of deaths each year in which adverse drug reactions, medical errors and the like are proximal causes. The suggestion that medicine is therefore the number one cause of death is fallacious as it ignores the deaths that would have occurred in the absence of our health care system. If I wished to make an analogous argument for heart disease, I would claim that, while heart disease killed 699,647 Americans last year, the complete absence of hearts in Americans would produce more than 300 million deaths. So, though hearts aren't perfect, I'm glad we have them. 44:40 Dr. Ayoub posits theory #3, that somebody (never mentioned) might be using mercury as a population control tool (or for genocide). 51:50 It is suggested that, during the Nixon administration, the government decided that population control might become necessary and there was no reason to tell the public if and when the government does something about it. 57:10 A female reporter writes about GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization), provoking some unnamed nefarious entity to fly black helicopters over her house for three weeks. This makes me wonder if anyone has done a study of the efficacy of flying black helicopters over people’s houses. 1:00:00 “Doesn’t good health promote (population) growth? If you can’t feed yourself, why would you want ten kids?” Ayoub’s conjecture does not agree with the data, as you can see in Hans Rosling’s research. Population growth slows as infant mortality declines. Rosling's work is known to many people, including me, but apparently not to Dr. Ayoub, who claims to have worked hard to understand these things. 1:00:39 “Nigeria’s growth was leading Africa, so it doesn’t surprise me that GAVI was immunizing the heck out of Nigeria.” Dr. Ayoub is suggesting that governments were conspiring to reduce Nigeria’s population by vaccinating them (presumably to inflict the fertility reducing properties of mercury on the unsuspecting population). Oddly enough, if you believe Rosling’s suggestion that lowering infant mortality and increasing lifespan will lower the birth rate (because women don’t feel the need to have replacement children to counter the infant mortality rate), vaccinations will indeed lower population growth by improving quality and length of life. At this point, I stopped taking notes because because the mountain of logical fallacies was threatening to bow my desktop. If I wanted to curb world population growth, would I taint vaccines with mercury in small doses, causing an anecdotal death rate? Or would I simply find ways to make the vaccines less effective, killing millions of people in the process? Apparently Dr. Ayoub thinks governments are smart enough to carry out genocidal conspiracies of global proportion but too stupid to find effective ways to do it. Simply avoiding intervention in the Congo probably eliminated a few million people, didn’t cost a dime, and placed the blame right in the Congo. The toxic effects of heavy metals are somewhat known and research continues. There truly is a sort of grandfathering effect in medicine, where old methods and practices do not receive as much scrutiny as new ones, simply by virtue of their having been in place for so long, with no obvious deleterious effects. This is no secret. But this not mean that there is no scrutiny. But, to suggest that vaccinations are a tool to control the world’s population by increasing infertility, with the side effect of autism makes no sense, even ignoring intent. It takes very little research to show that any harmful effect of mercury is vastly outweighed by the benefits of vaccination. Dr. Ayoub’s ignorance of some very well understood relationships casts the veracity of his entire argument into doubt. CDC reports a 57% increase in reported Autism cases from 2002-2006. The removal of thiomersal from many vaccines should provide some epidemiological data points over the coming years which will reveal or dispute the mercury causation theory. So Medhue, I have watched your 90 minute video and found it unconvincing. I might have been swayed by Dr. Ayoub if he hadn’t exhibited a convincing lack of understanding of things that were actually not central to his argument (population control) but upon which he dedicated the bulk of his presentation. He also used misleading analogies in the areas where he should have known better. I do hope that the mountain of logical fallacies in Dr. Ayoub's presentation don't dissuade people from keeping track of the issues he attempted to address, and I don't think it will. I have just spent three hours bringing myself up-to-date on this issue, which would not have happened if not for your post.