Long story short, medicine is only as good as science and science is “trial and error”. However, many medical practitioners want you to ignore that fact and take their word as law. Some practitioners (purposely or not) use fear and intimidation to push parents into getting all “recommended” treatments. More treatments mean more revenue and more money for the doctor, further reducing the motivation for them to provide individualized care, look for unbiased information (not provided by a drug company), or simply listen calmly to your actual concerns and address them.

Attached below is my response to my local pediatrician who is pushing us to immediately give our daughter all “recommended” vaccinations. She believes that our hesitation has to do with Autism (and popular media) and seems to think we’re ignorant or at least not well informed. We’re not well informed. That’s the problem. We’re down for the vaccinations as long as someone can explain (without FUD) the risk/benefit of each. I want to evaluate any and all proposed treatments on their actual merits and against their actual risks. Crazy, right?

THE VACCINATION CONUNDRUM:

Our goal as educated parents is to protect our children from unnecessary risk. In deciding whether or not to vaccinate, our challenge is to understand the risk of infection for each disease, consider the risk of significant harm from infection and weigh that against the risk of significant harm from the vaccine. Only then can we make an informed decision.

What we know:

1. All drugs and vaccines do have side effects.
2. Side effects cannot be predicted in a reliable way.
3. Drugs and other medical treatments are regularly deprecated by the medical industry due to deaths and debilitations cased by unforeseen side effects.

Educated parents tend to be on “high alert” because:

1. The medical industry does not provide adequate information to allow parents to easily weigh the risks.
2. Due to lack of time, most doctors are forced to simply convey the information that has been given to them by the drug reps and companies that make these products. Few have time to do their own research.
3. There is a clear conflict of interest present here; it is not financially compelling for a drug manufacturer to present the risk/facts in an unbiased way.

Case in point:

The Hepatitis B vaccination is strongly recommended by doctors and hospital staff at the time of birth. This recommendation does not take in to account the extremely low risk of HEP B infection in newborns. The only significant risk of infection is from an HEP B Positive mother.  However, the vaccine is recommended for all newborns regardless of whether the mother is infected or not. Also, expecting mothers are not tested for HEP B.

There are two published documents included below relating to HEP B. Vaccination. The first document questions the necessity (due to low risk) of newborn HEP B vaccination and also illustrates that the risk of death and “serious injury” as a result of vaccination outweighed the risk of infection by the disease itself.

The second document relates to a study linking a HEP B vaccine to an increased risk of the development of Multiple Sclerosis.

We chose not to vaccinate our child against HEP B. We had to make a quick decision with little data because the hospital was aggressively pushing the vaccine without providing any detailed information. After reviewing the data available and weighing the risks, I feel we made the right choice about this particular vaccination.

_____________________________________________
VACCINE: HEP B (Recommended for all newborns)

PURPOSE: Protect newborn from possible Hepatitis-B infection. Highest risk comes from infected mother. Infection risk is very minimal in the absence of an infected mother.

VACCINE RISK: In addition to deaths and “serious injury” from the vaccine, ongoing research indicates a causal link may be present between certain Hep B vaccines and life threatening or debilitating side effects including the development of Multiple Sclerosis later in life.

Below is a published letter to the editor of “Journal of the American Medical Association”:

Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 286 No. 5, August 1, 2001

To the Editor:

In their article on the impact of recommendations regarding the birth dose of Hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccine, Dr. Daum and colleagues1concluded that “special efforts may be required to make at-birth administration of HBV vaccination universal.”  However, since HBV vaccination of newborns has never been shown to be better than vaccination after the maturation of the immune system, this worry about missing the birth dose seems misplaced.

There is no scientific evidence to justify HBV vaccination before the age when those risk factors associated with the HBV transmission (sex, needles, etc.) become relevant.  Recent risk-benefit analyses show HBV vaccination among children carries one of the largest unjustified risks and substantial financial costs, second only to the new controversial conjugate pneumococcal vaccine. Specifically, HBV immunization has been associated with 53 deaths and 828 serious injuries, but for 38 million children younger than age 10 years, the total yearly incidence of HBV infection is 191. For children younger than age 14 years, the estimated total mortality secondary to HBV disease is only 11.  With such statistics, it is difficult to rationalize HBV vaccination for newborns.

Erdem I. Cantekin, PhD
Department of Otolaryngology
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA

Michael Belkin
Bainbridge Island, WA

1. Oram RJ, Daum RS, Seal JB, Lauderdale DS.  Impact of recommendations to suspend the birth dose of Hepatitis B virus vaccine.  JAMA 2001;285:1874-1879.
2. Horwin M.  Ensuring safe, effective and necessary vaccines for children.  Calif West Law Rev. 2001;37:101-148.
3. Orient J.  Statement by the AAPS in “Vaccines: Public Safety and Personal Choices” before the Government Reform Committee 1999.

Hepatitis B vaccine and the risk of CNS inflammatory demyelination in childhood.

Mikaeloff Y, Caridade G, Suissa S, Tardieu M.

Service de Neurologie Pédiatrique, CHU Bicêtre, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, Le Kremlin-Bicêtre Cedex, France yann.mikaeloff@bct.aphp.fr

Comment in:

• Neurology. 2009 Oct 27;73(17):1426-7.
• Neurology. 2009 Mar 10;72(10):870-1.
• Neurology. 2009 Jun 9;72(23):2053.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The risk of CNS inflammatory demyelination associated with hepatitis B (HB) vaccine is debated, with studies reporting conflicting findings.

METHODS: We conducted a population-based case-control study where the cases were children with a first episode of acute CNS inflammatory demyelination in France (1994-2003). Each case was matched on age, sex, and geographic location to up to 12 controls, randomly selected from the general population. Information on vaccinations was confirmed by a copy of the vaccination certificate. The odds ratios (ORs) of CNS inflammatory demyelination associated with HB vaccination were estimated using conditional logistic regression.

RESULTS: The rates of HB vaccination in the 3 years before the index date were 24.4% for the 349 cases and 27.3% for their 2,941 matched controls. HB vaccination within this period was not associated with an increase in the rate of CNS inflammatory demyelination (adjusted OR, 0.74; 0.54-1.02), neither >3 years nor as a function of the number of injections or brand type. When the analysis was restricted to subjects compliant with vaccination, HB vaccine exposure >3 years before index date was associated with an increased trend (1.50; 0.93-2.43), essentially from the Engerix B vaccine (1.74; 1.03-2.95). The OR was particularly elevated for this brand in patients with confirmed multiple sclerosis (2.77; 1.23-6.24).

CONCLUSIONS: Hepatitis B vaccination does not generally increase the risk of CNS inflammatory demyelination in childhood. However, the Engerix B vaccine appears to increase this risk, particularly for confirmed multiple sclerosis, in the longer term. Our results require confirmation in future studies.

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iPhone is all about the experience. The style. That’s Apple in a nutshell. It’s not always about features. It is nice to have choices. I’m glad there is a choice. For me, it’s iPhone 4 because I’m a sucker for that experience and style. It’s beautiful and it works well. I don’t care to run MySQL (in the background) on my mobile device. I just want the best possible phone/information device experience. For my money that’s iPhone. It’s like comparing a Corvette ZR1 with a Ferarri. The Vette is cheaper AND faster around the track, but the Ferrari is a Ferrari…

My game is only 3 bucks. Yet, people are out making an effort to pirate it. What’s funny is that this doesn’t bother me in the least. It kind of makes me happy.

As a kid, “Juarez” was a very close friend of mine. I started out in about 1986 with an Atari ST and a 1200bps modem and I quickly set out to find free software. At 12 I had no income and  a huge desire to collect and try as much software as possible. I spent countless hours finding warez BBSs that carried Atari ST stuff. And countless more getting access, trading software, and playing with my pirated software booty! I later ran several semi-popular warez BBSs including Burning Chrome ][ (801), The Turing Registry (714), and The Black Sun (714).

As I pirated I always said I wouldn’t care if I was on the other end. If I was the software developer and kids (or slovenly adults) were stealing from me, I’d be fine with it. I’m glad to say now that I’m on the other side, I don’t care. People are stealing from me. Getting my game for free and I don’t care.

Why? Because there will always be pirates and they actually help more than they hurt. A pirate spends an inordinate amount of time pirating. It’s sport. It’s clearly not about the $3 my game costs. But these pirates are enthusiasts as well. They want to play EVERY game, even if only once. They recommend games to people who don’t pirate, increasing your paying customers. It’s the long tail. Kids on the bleeding edge don’t pay. They even offer to help long tailers not pay. But in the end, people with more money than time (your actual customer) will pay.

Today, while I still maintain the skills to easily pirate iPhone games, I never do. It’s not worth it to me. I’m busy and have more money than time. It’s not that I can’t pirate, or that I am scared to pirate, I just don’t want the hassle. Pirating software is ALWAYS a hassle even for the most accomplished pirate. Most pirates eventually grow out of it and start paying for things they like either to earnestly support the artist/creator or simply to avoid the hassle.

This is why I hate invasive copy protection. It does nothing to stop the real pirates and it usually inconveniences the actual paying customer. The pirates are not your customer. They are your “social marketing” team.

In almost 2 weeks of heavy use I’d never seen a wifi problem with my iPad and didn’t even know one existed until I synced it with iTunes. BEWARE. Here’s the deets:

When I synced the iPad, iTunes starts to install every single app I’ve ever purchased/installed on my iPhone. This includes all of the apps I’ve deleted from my iphone. So I interrupt it and tell iTunes not to sync apps. iTunes then says it must remove ALL of the apps from my iPad. ALL. This is done as a retarded DRM measure and is one of the top reasons why I hate iTunes. This does nothing to prevent piracy but instead punishes the loyal paying customer, me.

Anyone who wants to pirate any app in the App Store and install it for FREE can simply jailbreak their device, go to http://thepiratebay.com and download and install every damned paid app in the app store. This is easy and is perpetrated constantly by those so inclined. Apple is behaving like every other FAILED organization who doesn’t understand security. In an attempt to mitigate (loss) risk they punish the innocent while doing nothing to stop the actual threat. For other similar examples see PC Game DRM or anything the TSA has ever done.

1. I don’t want most iphone apps on my iPad
2. I definerly don’t want apps I’ve deleted from my iPhone on my iPad or my iPhone.
3. I DO want access to apps I have purchased for my iPhone on my iPad but I will install them through the app store without iTunes, thank you.
4. I DO NOT want to hav to select from the 500+ apps, which ones to sync.
5. All I wanted really was for iTunes not the fuck with my apps at all. Just install the goddamned pictures!!!

Once I synced and let iTunes remove all of my apps, the iPad had the wifi bug. It still has it.

Apple has acknowledged a wifi problem with iPads. The symtoms vary but the iPad either drops the wifi connection, drops and forgets the password, or drops during lock/hibernate. Mine is doing the last and I suppose least irritating of these. Upon lock (and sitting for multiple minutes) it drops the wifi connection and must be manually reconnected in settings.

Nothing changed on my infrastructure. The iPad immedialty started losing wifi on sleep/lock after syncing. All other devices, including macs and iphones maintain a consistent wifi connection. This is not an issue with my router (WRT54G) this is an issue with the iPad firmware. This issue DID NOT appear until after iTunes molested my iPad.

I’ve been trying several things to get it back to normal. So far nothing has worked. I’ll post something if I fix it.

———–
FIXED!!!
———–

Changing iPad brightness fixed the problem. As indicated In the apple support doc referenced above. I still hate iTunes.

The tablet has finally arrived after all these years. How many years? In 1992 I worked for a company that was building tablets for the military. 18 years ago I had one of these systems in my bedroom. The company was GRiD Systems and they had working production tablet computers based on the i486/33 I believe. They ran a tablet version of Windows 3.1. They were neat for the time but still sucked. This time it’s different.

Yes yes… the iPad is just a big iPhone. Now that I have one, I use the iPhone a lot less in the house. But…. I didn’t want to read books on my iPhone. It’s awesome as a pocket sized device but there are things which, simply due to size  it’s not well suited for.

Long story short, I believe this will take over for 80% of what we currently use desktops and laptops for. Plus it adds new applications and new opportunities for interaction and creativity that open up entirely new use cases.

PROS:

• A new class of device that makes existing applications more enjoyable and opens up entirely new use cases.
• Beautiful and sexy as we expect from Apple.
• Battery Life is unbelievable. I’ve had it for 3 days using it a lot and it’s still running on the charge that it came with OUT OF THE BOX!
• Books are great. Lot’s of free books in the iBook store from the Gutenberg Project. Currently reading Sherlock Holmes.

CONS

• HEAVY. I’d gladly trade half the battery life for half the weight.
• Awkward to hold, mainly because it’s heavy.
• You’ll want iPad specific apps cause they are way cooler. So you will be buying more, possibly duplicate apps that are also more expensive.

iTunes sucks. It has always sucked. It sucks even more now that I have to use it regularly in order to use my iPhone and iPad. It has to be updated at least twice a month. It’s cumbersome and slow even on a fast machine. It’s antiquated. I hate it very much and always have. I used to bypass it and refuse to use it on my early ipods but you’ve been pushing it more and more. Connecting everything to it. Please stop.

Also, resource forks on network drives SUCKS as well.

Thanks,

-Shon

Here’s the simple script:

cat commands | while read LINE
do say "$LINE" -o "$LINE.aiff"
done

Of course if you google “wordpress database connection error” or any iteration of that you get a bunch of fools who don’t know how to config their blog and answers related to that. This wasn’t my problem. I knew it could connect because replacing the data with an old copy of the db via “mysql -p db <dbbackup brought it all back fine. Problem was I didn’t have a recent backup… despite my recent post on backing up databases . This blog fell into the lower priority que and therefore didn’t get scripted for backup on the new box.

ANYWAY the point is for those folks who may be getting a DB connection error from wordpress and know it’s not a DB connection problem, I recommend using PHPmyAdmin to export your posts and/or comments table from the current (corrupt) DB and importing them to a known good copy of the DB. You can do this on a table by table basis to get your good and current data into the structure of an old (but non-corrupt) copy of the DB. I just did this and now the blog is back. Of course you’d want to check the data first and make sure it’s there/good.