Perhaps it should be noted that sciencebasedmedicine is largely a mainstream shill site that merely gives a bit of lip service from time to time to alternative healing or criticism of mainstream medicine in order to appear non-biased. Bottom line is that if the science they pick and choose (and they have a history of naysaying studies which do not agree with conventional mainstream wisdom) does not accept something then it has to be false - which is no more of an absolute for mainstream drugs than it is for herbs, natural vitamins and minerals, cleansing, aromatherapy, accupuncture, healinig meridians and any other number of natural healing items. Sure, better to be validated than not, but one should remember that it was mainstream science which told us that Vioxx, Bextra, Alleve, Fosamax, Avandia, Prozac, Paxil, Gardasil, et al were safe.
The author of the linked article, David Gorski, has written how much he admires the mainstream attack site Quackwatch and how he was flattered to be compared to the discredited founder of Quackwatch and other pharma shill sites Stephen Barrett.
I once had the honor of being voted "Tard of the Week" at SBM for daring suggest that Patrick Swayze might have been helped more by natural cancer fighters and by building up his body and natural immune system instead of following his doctor's advice to "starve out his cancer' and thus starve and weaken his body and immune system. Swayze died not of his cancer, btw, but of wasting disease.
I am not arguing that vaccines have not had some success when it comes to guarding undernourished individuals, but given the choice of putting cocktails of known unnatural neuro-toxins, carcinogens, mutagens, etc. into human bodies versus giving them proper nourishment and immune building I would generally opt for the latter. We haven't been vaccinated at my place in a long, long, long time - and that goes for our rescued dogs and cat too.
Perhaps a better choice of words instead of "shill" would be "biased". As the name implies, Sciencebasedmedicine is very much biased in favor of mainstream medicine. I have read many articles and posts on their site, have posted there myself, and have seen how they react in favor of mainstream medicine when virtually anything negative is said about particular drugs and therapies or whenever anything positive is said in favor of alternative and natural healing, such as the false and scurrilous hit piece they published against the results from the NIH's NCAM studies thus far.
Of course they are going to be able to pick and choose plenty of "peer-reviewed" studies to back up their bias (though I would point out that the study quoted in the Natural News article was a peer-reviewed one). Positive studies about mainstream medicine and negative studies about alternatives are where the money is. Hundreds of times more money than is available for truly independent studies (such as we both agree are needed in regards to vaccine safety). The system is set up to favor mainstream medicine. Researchers and entire institutions who don't play ball and produce the desired results often find themselves blackballed and excluded from future studies, which are the lifeblood of many institutions and researchers.
In years past, one could have conducted their own research into the safety of drugs like Vioxx, Avandia, Fosamax. Prozac, etc. and easily come away with the conclusion that they were relatively safe and effective. After all, that is what the preponderance of "peer reviewed" studies said. As has been the case with those and many other drugs, the studies proved to be wrong (and in many instances fraudulent).
Also as the name implies, Natural News is very much biased in favor of natural healing and against unnatural mainstream drugs. And yes, they do tend to sensationalize - especially when it comes to the headlines chosen. But the same is true when it comes to much of what we see in mainstream news. And I would point out that Natural News had the same bias and the same kind of articles before they ever had a single sponsor. They also have a pretty strict prohibition against their writers including product names in their articles.
Speaking of Natural News and peer-reviewed studies, I wrote the following article for Natural News which is germaine to the question of putting too much faith in peer-reviewed studies:
Top Researcher Finds Medical Studies to be Largely Wrong or Fraudulent
I am not arguing the validity of the study in question - it is easy to see that other factors likely play a part. To paraphrase one comment posted beneath the article, perhaps if there were better health care and nutrition there would be less need for so many vaccines. On the other hand, I can argue all day and night long about vaccine safety. One simply has to look at the ingredients to know that they aren't completely safe. If they were, then there would not be adverse reactions reported for virtually every vaccine out there. As the former head of the National Institute of Health said, "the only safe vaccine is one which is not administered".
You must be reading a different sciencebasedmedicine site than the one I read. What I have repeatedly found is that they go out of their way to try to tell you what to think and hold anyone who disagrees up to ridicule - and I don't mean just the posters there, I mean the actual article writers. Just one example out of hundreds is this exchange on the article you linked to about vaccines:
Poster:
We object to forced vaccinations because vaccines are not thoroughly tested for safety, and never have been. Any honest vaccine researcher will admit that the evidence for LONG-TERM safety just isn’t as substantial as they would like you to believe. 10-day studies just don’t cut it.
David Gorski
What utter tripe! Vaccines are among the most extensively tested and monitored medical interventions that exist. The reason is that they are preventive, and not therapeutic, meaning that they are administered to healthy children. Consequently, they have far more stringent risk-benefit ratio requirements.than treatments.
There are many, many more worse examples. The poster was correct, by the way, in that many vaccination researchers have bemoaned the lack of long term safety studies - and what Gorski posted was utter bullcrap. There is an absolute dearth of long term studies on vaccination risks and almost no such studies on the long term effects of combinations of vaccines even by mainstream medicine and absolutely zilch when it comes to independent studies.
Regardless of the studies Gorski and his ilk pick and choose, they are rude and controlling mainstream apologists to the core and I have little use for them.
No, I didn't miss your point nor am I arguing against it. I am just pointing out the bias and rude behavior of the sciencebasedmedicine website as well as the fact that mainstream studies are often wrong.
BTW, I am a longtime NN author. So is my partner Luella May. I hardly consider either of us to be dishonest or unethical.
At any rate, we have veered a bit afield of the original issue and I find no need to continue a discussion that appears to have the potential to degenerate into a mud pattie contest.
All the best,
DQ