Saturday, September 03, 2005

A Little Math Test for Generation Rescue

According to the Generation Rescue website's self-serving explanation of the death of Abubakar Tariq Nadama, who was killed when he received chelation with EDTA for either lead or mercury toxicity (but actually for autism), the number of children receiving chelation for autism is about 10,000. Actual quote:
"We estimate there are 10,000 autistic children today receiving some form of chelation therapy, up from a handful five years ago."


QUESTION: With 10,000 children receiving the treatment and one (1) death, what is the mortality rate per million children treated?

ANSWER: 100 deaths per million treated.


QUESTION: If the actual number of children being chelated is less than 10,000, will the number of deaths per million treated go up, go down or stay the same?

ANSWER: Go up.


QUESTION: Since the smallox vaccine is considered to be one of the most dangerous modern vaccines - so much so that plans to vaccinate medical and emergency response personnel were scrapped despite concerns that smallpox would be a good biological terror agent - what is the mortality rate for smallpox vaccine?

ANSWER: 3.5 deaths per million treated.


QUESTION: What is the mortality rate for childhood vaccines?

ANSWER: Less than 1 per million treated.


QUESTION: Which number is largest: 1, 3.5 or 100?

ANSWER: 100.


Please be sure that your name is on your test paper and hand them in before the end of class.


Prometheus.

12 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This post would be accurate if it is found that the child died from an adverse reaction to EDTA. owever, the child's death was most likely caused by the doctors negligence.

If it is found that the doctor was not administering the medication properly (which it certainly seems like to me) you cannot attribute the death to the chelation itself, but to physician error.ms

03 September, 2005 19:46  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

03 September, 2005 19:47  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am so sorry about the double comment!

03 September, 2005 19:48  
Blogger Orac said...

Death statistics for vaccines don't take into account if they were administered properly or not. The child's death from chelation (which was almost certainly the cause of that child's death) still counts.

03 September, 2005 20:07  
Blogger Prometheus said...

Anonymous - no problem about the double comment - happens all the time to me. It has been deleted.

However, even if the death were due to an error on the part of the physician, it still gets counted against EDTA. Same as if a person dies because a physician gives them penicillin when they are allergic to it - it still get counted as a death due to penicillin.

The stated reason that drug administration errors get counted against the drug is drugs that are relatively unforgiving of errors should be noted as such. If the "normal" dose of a drug can kill if it is injected too fast, that is a sign that the drug has some "safety issues".

I do agree that the death was due to physician error - three errors that I can see:

[1] Inappropriate drug for the stated condition (lead or mercury toxicity).

[2] Inappropriate administration of the drug.

[3] Use of a drug for a condition that it has not been demonstrated to help (autism).

Number [3] is a "soft call", because it is esentially "off-label" prescribing, which is sort of a "grey area", medico-legally. However, you can bet your paycheck that a malpractice lawyer would jump on that in a New York minute.


Prometheus

03 September, 2005 20:12  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

There has been more that just 10,000 people (even children only) in the entire world that have used chelation. There must be a more accurate way to assess the safety of chelation & find true numbers without using JB's estimation.

07 September, 2005 07:20  
Blogger JP said...

Sure. People that are using chelation today can do actual clinical trials and peer-reviewed research that shows the safety of their protocol in children, and its efficacy in treating autism.

07 September, 2005 08:05  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very few parents use the IV push form of chelation. This doctor really was negligent in this matter. Let's look at all of the other deaths from chelation in the last 50 years... Where are they?

Now let's talk about the 14 children a year with behavioral issue like autism that die from taking Ritalin... Hmmmmm...

26 September, 2005 07:49  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mr Prometheus
In your post you mentioned:

QUESTION: Since the smallox vaccine is considered to be one of the most dangerous modern vaccines - so much so that plans to vaccinate medical and emergency response personnel were scrapped despite concerns that smallpox would be a good biological terror agent - what is the mortality rate for smallpox vaccine?

ANSWER: 3.5 deaths per million treated.


QUESTION: What is the mortality rate for childhood vaccines?

ANSWER: Less than 1 per million treated.

Unfortunately, this is not exact.
There are a lot of reports not only of deaths, but also of damage of different level related to vaccines in scientific literature.
Please consult
http://www.whale.to/a/adv.html
In a recent consultation to doctors in USA; only 10 % report/relate reactions to vaccines. So these numbers are near 10 % of the real number.
http://www.whale.to/v/quackwatch.html
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/vaers.html
Please read
http://www.whale.to/v/dam.html
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/dpt2.html
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/journal.html
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/mmr8.html
http://www.whale.to/vaccine/meningitis1.html
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/polio3.html
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/polio3.html
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/rubella4.html
And
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/yazbak.html
and a lot of more information that I can send to you if you are interested.
María Luján-Argentina

02 October, 2005 11:35  
Blogger Prometheus said...

Ms. Lujan,

My intention was to focus on deaths only, since we have no data on the number of children who have sustained injury while being chelated as treatment for autism. In fact, there is no safety data for using chelation for this condition.

On the assumption that chelation with DMSA or DMPS for autism has the same incidence of complications as using DMSA for lead, I would have expected a number of reported injuries if 10,000 children (or more) have received this treatment. The fact that we have not heard of these injuries makes me suspect that they are not being reported.

And who would the complications be reported to? Since the practitioners using chelation for autism are not involved in legitimate studies, there is no IRB oversight - and they are not obligated to report their complications to any governmental body. The only way to discover the number of non-lethal (or even lethal) complications of using chelation for autism is through the media - a very hit-and-miss proposition.

So, your information (from some very questionable sources) about non-lethal injuries from vaccines is not particularly relevant to this discussion.

Prometheus.

02 October, 2005 17:32  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mr Prometheus
Sorry but the information is not from very questionable source, if you read it, these are papers published in very important journals. I think that it is relevant. I respectfully disagree with you.
I repeat, there are a lot of deaths that can be possibly related to vaccines that are not reported linked to them.
I do not understand your point. If you mention something is science, If I do is questionable??
Did you read the manuscript of John Hopkins about immunological activation in brain, published last January?
Have you ever read the Dr Bradstreet Congressional Testimony? The Dr Jepson protocol? and I can mention a LOT more...
If you are interested I can send them to you and you will find that they are supported by a LOT of papers published in very important journals.
Please let me know.
Sincerely
MAría Luján Ferreira

03 October, 2005 09:47  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You don't have children on the autism spectrum, that much is clear. We have four children. Three were injured by thimerosal. The years of tests, doctors, therapies and chelation have yielded three now normal children, and the fourth remains blessedly free of injury as he was not exposed to thimerosal. The research is clear: certain people have a genetic predisposition to be harmed by exposure to heavy metals, more than the general population. Not very different from pink disease: it was caused by a mercury-laced teething powder that devasted one in 500 babies in the first half of the 20th century until pulled from the shelves. Not every child will be injured by thimerosal in the same serious way ours were, but if that child (or three) is yours, you will do something about it. For us, chelation was the cure. To go from speechless four year old twins, and a 6 year old that was nearly labeled Autistic through his elementary school, to now completely normal children - well, I challenge anyone to tell me chelation is the wrong approach. I am glad that you have never had to contemplate these decisions for your children - it is a nightmare. One we have woken up from, thankfully.

17 October, 2006 14:34  

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