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The source you've just cited is a 2008 antivax piece, one of several for which Sharyl Attkisson was excoriated by science journalists and medical experts.

Still, isn't it strange a Nobel prize winner was unable to see his results were wrong? What force makes someone act like that?

Here's Wikipedia's version of the vitamin C controversy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling#Molecular_medici...

ego

Offit left out information on why he started to advocate vitamins in the first place. He was diagnosed with Bright's Disease. One cause of Bright's disease is a lack of Vitamin D. Taking vitamins was the right course of action in his specific case. He most likely wanted to share his success with others, which is probably why he started advocating vitamins. It's unfortunate that he pushed vitamins as a cure as far as he did. It would be interesting to learn why he took the stance he did from people who knew him personally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright's_disease

Another good example of misleading information is the last sentence: "In 1994, Linus Pauling died of prostate cancer."

He left out the part where he was 93 at the time of his death (1901-1994). Both the incidence and mortality rate for those over 80 are very high.

http://www.medinfographics.com/cancer-statistics/prostate-ca...

p.s. I do agree with the author in that I do believe taking Vitamins is largely unnecessary if you are eating a healthy diet w/lots of vegetables, legumes and fruit. :)

Just to clarify, (1) Bright's disease is a historical catch-all for essentially all renal diseases, and (2) the causal arrow points from kidney disease to hypovitaminosis D, not the other way around. Low vitamin D is a common consequence, not cause, of kidney disease.

I agree (I am on the kidney transplant list in the uk) I take 1 Mg every other day of vitamin D plus Calcium and Bicarbonate of soda 3 times a day

It is safe to take many vaccines at once; in fact, this is the standard of care. Offit does not have credibility issues. His work on vaccines has probably saved millions of lives.

I'm pretty sure if you injected 10,000 vaccines into someone all at once, their body would explode. But please, do keep defending the guy's ridiculous hyperbole.

I'm interested to see the experimental evidence that you have to back up that statement. If you read my comment, you will see that I comment on taking simultaneous vaccines. For many vaccines, antigens for eliciting an antibody response to several diseases are combined into one formulation.

10,000 is probably 2-3 orders of magnitude greater than the number of different vaccines available on any market, so attacking or defending that number has no utility. And commenting as if that were my point detracts from the conversation.

It's much more interesting to think about how his work likely saves hundreds of lives each day, and to contemplate what we can do in our own lives to have such a great impact at such a large scale.

You misunderstand.

Every vaccine contains several grams of fluid.

10,000 injected into your body all at once would kill you.

The useful part of the vaccine is on the order of micrograms. 10,000 * a single vaccine would be on the order of milligrams. The goal of a vaccine is to introduce molecular geometries that cause your body to react and form antibodies - you don't need a lot of liquid volume to accomplish that objective.

I honestly don't know enough to know if 10,000 vaccines is hyperbole, but on the face of it it doesn't seem particularly implausible.

I'm like 99% sure that like 99% of what's injected into you when you get a vaccine is some sort of filler like a saline solution, or a preservative like that good old mercury based one that everyone used to bitch about. So it's quite likely in my mind that you could formulate some sort of "everything vaccine" with a sufficient quantity of dead viruses or virus parts from 10,000 different viruses, and fit it into a single, normal-sized syringe.

Find me 10,000 different vaccines, I'm happy to guinea pig it.

Speaking of ridiculous hyperbole, are you sure you haven't confused vaccines with something else? Vaccine's active ingredients are made of very teeny tiny things such as deactivated viruses, and are not generally noted for their explodyness.

Some comments:

In Australia the immunisation schedule includes (at the age of 2,4 and 6 months) 8 vaccines, one of which includes 13 valencies (13v pneumococcal pneumoniae). This is effectively 20 vaccines at the same time due to the 13 bacterial components included in pneumovax.

You are right in that not only is it standard of care (ie, not dangerous) but it is less traumatic to have them all at once (8 vaccines is 5 needles and a syrup for rotavirus, the addition of which decreased paediatric hospital admissions in Australia by 100,000 pa). Above all else, it is actually more effective to deliver multiple vaccines at once. More antigens seem to generate a stronger immune response, not in 'severity', as in, possibility of severe reaction, but in seroconversion and decreased need for additional later vaccines.

Using Paul Graham's disagreement hierarchy (http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html), your first paragraph is DH2 (responding to tone), and the rest is DH1 (ad hominem). Do you have any arguments relating to the points being made?

Not seeing the tonal disagreement in P1 - that looks like a fairly legit dissection of the assumptions in an argument to me. What phrasing made you feel it was tonal?

The first paragraph correctly points out that the "seven previous studies" are not applicable to the general public, despite the fact that the article attempts to do so. That is not responding to tone, that is responding to content.

The second paragraph rightfully questions the integrity of the author based on past deceptive statements made in a similar capacity. It also points out a legitimate conflict of interest. Neither of these are ad hominem.

I take issue with 'ad hominem'.

If a police officer is found to commit perjury or otherwise tamper with evidence on one case, We the people find just cause with all of their cases.

The same goes for powerful people whom sit on drug panels in a company whilst holding a federal position requiring drugs. Because he held a dire conflict of interest, I do not see how we can trust him.

it is certainly not safe to take 10,000 at once

I think this claim needs justification. Just because it feels true is not enough.

Justification: a typical vaccine volume is 0.5mL. Injecting 5L of any liquid into a child intramuscularly would cause severe health problems, to say the least.

That's not a good example because you can easily combine multiple vaccines into a single injection.

First, with the irrelevant aside: vaccines aren't made of pure viruses. They're mostly filler.

Second, here is what I recall about Dr Offit's chain of reasoning.

  1. You need some amount of virus particles to provoke the
     immune reaction, call it 1 million.  (I'm too lazy to
     try to google the numbers myself.)
  2. You need some amount of immune cells of the various
     types to carry out the immune reaction which results in
     immunity, call it 10 million.
  3. You have a total of 1 trillion of these immune cells in
     your body.  (Once again, I'm making up the exact
     numbers.)
  4. So therefore, the capacity of the immune system is
     sufficient to deal with
     1 trillion / 10 million = 100,000 vaccines at once.

Third, and most importantly, of course 10,000 vaccines at once is hyperbole, but it's making a very important point. The question wasn't "Should we give our childrens 1 vaccine or 10,000 vaccines?", it was a debate about whether a three-vaccine (or was it seven?) combo "stressed" the immune system too much.

Dr Offit's point wasn't "Nah, let's give them 10,000 vaccines!" It was that when you go from 1 vaccine to 7 vaccines, you're increasing the load on your immune system from 0.01% to 0.07% and we've all got better things to worry about than that.

The burden of proof in this case lies with anyone making the "10,000" claim the first place. You don't get to make wild and outlandish statements and expect them to be taken at face value until specifically debunked.

The person who made the original claim does not post on HN, but the person who thinks that it is "certainly" unsafe does post here. Use of the word "certainly" implies that the answer is so obvious that we should all know the reasons why. Well, I don't. So I asked.

Fair. After doing a little more research I now believe the 10,000 claim is not as outlandish as I once had thought, so your request for validation is justified.

The only place that Dr. Offit has a credibility problem is with those who choose to ignore the mountain of scientific evidence supporting the safety and efficacy of vaccines.