Be afraid

In my opinion, all women should fear Sharia Law. We must be vigilant to ensure it does not infect our society as we know it. PHOEBE BEACH

Cooper’s Beach country. Here are the complication rates again, for a country like New Zealand.

Of 100 children with measles, 14 will get an ear infection, 12 will get diarrhoea, nine will get pneumonia, five will get croup, one will have convulsions. Of 1000 children who get measles, three will get thrombocytopaenic purpura (TCPP), one will die, one or two will get encephalitis and one in 100,000 will later get sclerosing panencephalitis, and die from it.

Following immunisation, a child is 2000 times less likely to develop encephalitis and 100 times less likely to get TCPP.

In their latest ramble through the antiimmunisation blogosphere, OGP has come across Dr Andrew Mawson's notorious survey that purported to show that a vaccinated sample had significantly higher rates of allergies, autism, ADHD and learning disabilities than an unvaccinated sample of home-schooled children.

Only an abstract was published in ‘Frontiers in Public Health’ (a pay-topublish journal) in 2016, and then, after being severely criticised, it was withdrawn. The paper was eventually published in 2017 (for US$2000) in another pay-to-publish journal, the ‘Journal of Translational Science,’ only to be withdrawn again.

Analysis of a paper of this sort is complex, requiring as it does some knowledge of experimental design and inferential statistics, and I will not try readers' patience by attempting it here, except to echo one critic, Dr David Gorski, who wrote, “Mawson's study is so biased, flawed, and incompetently carried out and analysed that its results can be discounted as almost certainly worthless.” (https;/ /sciencebasedmedicine.org/no-two-studiespurporting)

Another highly critical account wrote, “This study, with its suspect statistics and devil-may-care attitude towards methodological design, is a case study in how to publish a misleading paper with faulty data.” It may be found at https:/ www.snopes.com/news/2017/05/17

The scientists at OGP seem to have missed ‘N Eng J Med’ 2002;347;1477-1482, which reports a study of all children born in Denmark over eight years (537,303 children versus Mawson's 660), which concluded, “This study provides strong evidence against the hypothesis that MMR vaccine causes autism.” Every child's documentation was documented, as was every diagnosis of autism, whereas Mawson relied on the recall of self-selected mothers completing an online survey.

OGP later quotes a study from 2003, led by Thomas Verstraeten, as showing that thiomerosal in vaccines “...appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and... other neurological disorders in children.” The study concludes, on the contrary, “No consistent significant associations were found between (thiomerosal-containing vaccines) and neurodevelopmental outcomes.”

Further studies have confirmed this. A bibliography updated to February 2018 that led to this conclusion may be found at https;/www.fda.gov/biologicsbloodvaccines/safetyavailability/vaccines safety/ ucm096228

No doubt the OGP scientists are aware of these papers, though it seems to have escaped their notice that thiomerosal has not been used in vaccines in New Zealand for a long time, so the point is moot.

BILL MORRIS

Pukenui Shame on our politicians! We used to be a first world country when graded on our living standards, education measuring literacy and mathematical skills, health and housinG. A UN human rights committee is shocked by New Zealand’s record on child poverty, inadequate housing, incarceration rate and violence, abuse and bullying.

We understand that the housing issue happened under the previous government’s nine-year tenure, with its massive immigration policies, but there seems to be no change in the current government’s immigration policies, exacerbating our insufficient housing, with the consequent social problems noted by the UN.

In the meantime, we have a massive blow-out in the health budget, and this latest Health Committee had pharmaceutical companies wanting a larger share.

Most recently, cannabis has been relegalised in Guam, a so-called ‘banana republic,’ and Georgia, an eastern bloc country. We should learn from other third world countries, who appear to cut the cloth to suit the purse. They have limited funds, so it could be assumed that allowing the people to grow their own medicine will enable their health budget to be spent on life-saving operations, such as appendectomies, instead of waiting for them to burst.

A member of our group was one of five people in one day who had burst appendixes, because the consultant said he did not do unnecessary appendectomies, and her operation was 27 hours after it had burst. How many people are dying because life-saving operations cannot be performed because of limited hospital budgets?

It could be that government needs an accountant who understands economics, and will ensure our money is spent properly, not just supporting MPs’ personal beliefs on prohibition.

With the plethora of scientific evidence of the efficacy of cannabis on so many diseases, and the US patent, which lists over 100 health conditions for which cannabis may be beneficial, cannabis needs to be re-legalised immediately, both for economic reasons and for our wellbeing – a promise made by our Prime Minister. BEVERLEY ALDRIDGE Kathleen Pattinson Seniors’ Voice

Otamatea