Metal Nurse: From Non-Vaccinating to Peer Vaccinator

What follows might shock a few people, especially those who only really got to know me post 2012. I was not always the stone hard pro-vaccine nurse that I am now. In fact... Most people I know today would probably define me as anti-vaccine, I am not sure if  I would. But then again I am looking at myself rather than judging someone else. This all also ties in with what I keep on saying regarding Education, Critical Thinking and Evidence.

I guess it all started with my fascination with herbal medicine and other alternative healing practices. I had a very nice and sizeable herbal remedy bookshelf. The pride of which was my 'The Green Pharmacy' by Dr James D. Duke. I'll come back to that in a bit. I also used 'Healing Foods' by Miriam Polunin, still, do when the occasion takes me. I liked my herbal teas, I was especially a big fan of Celestial Seasonings, which has proved to be extremely hard to get hold of in the UK. I liked the whole alternative lifestyle, I was an active Buddhist practising Nichiren Buddhism, I did most of my shopping in a local Health Food Shop. I was living in a town which had a big Buddhist centre just outside of it. Though in my defence I did not take to Astrology, or  Reiki, or  Faith Healers, and I had some serious doubts about  Homeopathy. As well as Bach's Remedies. But I did use the phrase "Sometimes Science Doesn't Know Everything", and right now I want to slap my younger self. But I wouldn't because as odd as it all sounds this is what made me who I am today. I didn't trust medicine that much, and if I could help it I'd rather get a herbal remedy than go to my GP and then the pharmacy. I wanted things organic when possible. I wanted things local. I wanted things compostable. I wanted cloth nappies. I wanted wholewheat pasta.

In 2004 my first child was born. Along with the usual worries of being a new parent, in a foreign country, was the question of vaccinations. I have to admit I do not remember the whole national outcry regarding the MMR and Autism, I think I was sort of cursorily aware of it. Especially the whole question of whether Tony and Cherie Blair had vaccinated their youngest son. There were also plenty of Daily Mail, Daily Express and The Independent papers containing some articles regarding the MMR vaccine in the nursing home I worked in. So it was all there, I just didn't think I had taken any of it in. But then my ex-wife and I walked into the health food shop to ask the  "experts".  We were given a pamphlet written by an art lecturer in a local college. That clearly stated that vaccines weren't necessary. That vaccines were probably more dangerous than the illnesses they prevented. That there was this obscure hospital somewhere that managed to cure ALL of their smallpox patients whereas another obscure hospital all of them died who had had the smallpox vaccine. Vaccines make babies asthma worse and induce eczema. And there and then the decision was made. My eldest was not vaccinated. She never got any of those illnesses. She did get ill. But never any of vaccine-preventable ones. Yeah, I did have to defend my decision. Using the "I am the parent, it is my right" defence. Again right now I want to punch my younger self. Have to say even then I wasn't particularly against vaccines. I did get the flu vaccine when I  could because  I was working with vulnerable people, but somehow that didn't stretch to me thinking about my home life. I just didn't see them as that important anymore... Even though, as mentioned previously, I got the flu jab when I could. And so it was left and pretty much forgotten.

Until my second child was born in 2010. Then the whole question of vaccinating the child rose again. My ex-partner was not against it. But was quite happy to follow along with what I and my ex-wife had done with my eldest child. Or at least delay the vaccines until she felt it was right for our youngest to be vaccinated. But we had a few health struggles with the youngest. She had a hard time feeding, and often little ill. Which also made us delay the vaccines. Then... three of us got this horrible cough. That would not relent. Would not stop. My eldest coughed so much one night she vomited all over her bed, and couldn't remember any of it the following day. I had to sleep with pillows propped up. My youngest coughed and coughed and struggled often to breathe. We listened, and we Googled, we searched on YouTube. To this day I am still convinced that she had Whooping Cough. But the GP's didn't agree and diagnosed her with Bronchiolitis, on the basis that he had not seen a case of  Whooping Cough in 10 years. Which in itself does say something? At the time I had been working on the bank at the local acute Hospital, so there is still the chance that I might have caught it there and passed it onto my kids. But still... Thinking about that barking noise that she made, how breathless she got, the fever, the gasp. I can't help but think that the GP was wrong. My youngest got her vaccines shortly after she had recovered from all of that, but almost a year behind schedule. But inexplicably I didn't get my eldest vaccinated. Because I didn't think she needed it.

Ninja N urse Button.

Then in March 2012. I started my academic journey as a Nurse. This is actually where me re-reading of the Green Pharmacy by Dr James Duke came into its own, throughout the book Dr Duke advocated the use of evidence, the use of critical thinking, the use of making sure you ask the experts. Because in his words he was not a doctor but a botanist. I had gone into nursing hoping to be able to start evidence-based herbal healthcare. But what I did find was the evidence was lacking in that field and I also found that medicine was at the heart herbal based. Because the majority of the medicine are based on original herbal compounds like Digoxin, or aspirin, or a lot of the chemotherapies. Then during my placements in my first year, I started encountering patients, invariably over 70 years of age, who had been inflicted by vaccine-preventable diseases, and survived but did not come out whole. There was a gentleman who was deaf because of measles. There was a lady who had callipers and used a  wheelchair because of polio. There were people with bronchiectasis because of Whooping Cough. And their friends and families who weren't so lucky and died because of those illnesses that we can now prevent from occurring. My mother told me about her experience of measles, and the siblings my grandfather lost due to Whooping Cough. I got involved in vaccine debates on Facebook, especially on a page called 'Refutations to Anti-Vaccine Memes'. I started reading a lot more scholarly articles. I reflected and I wrote. I applied my critical thinking to my past uncritical thinking.

August 2012 my eldest got all of her vaccines. Her vaccine injury was a sore arm, immunity and most likely the eventual coming of old age.

This is why I harp on about evidence and education. One cannot be without the other, and without either, I would never have learned more about vaccines. Or medicine. Or nursing. Or the consequences of not vaccinating. My eldest daughter was lucky because of herd immunity, other people often aren't that lucky.

Metal Nurse: The Peer Vaccinator

One is filled with science juice.
The other is filled with fiction.

 I have written two blogs about the importance of the flu vaccine, here and here. Especially as someone who works within healthcare. Skeptical Raptor reblogs on a regular basis Mark Crislip's snarky article which riles against dumbasses who refuse the flu vaccine. Tara Haelle took her time to debunk almost all the myths that surround the flu vaccine.

So I've started my second year as a peer vaccinator (or flu-buster, I prefer peer vaccinator because it makes me sound royal).

In this role, I make my damndest sure that my co-workers and everyone who has a role that involves patient care are vaccinated against the flu. Because our job is to help to aid our patients, and that includes protecting ourselves from the flu and this provide herd immunity for our patients who are too ill to receive it themselves. And they cannot afford to contract an illness as serious as influenza. Often healthcare workers will whine about their human rights, the problem there is of course that their human rights end where someone else's begins. Patients deserve the best treatment they can get. The problem also is that often doctors and nurses will and do end up being asymptomatic carriers, and thus can infect patients.

Now. What's the point of the picture? Well, it's to demonstrate something that a lot of anti-vaxxers don't understand. Well, the stuff they don't understand can fill a whole series by George RR Martin. But this is to demonstrate dosage. Often in their lying liars bullshit memes, they will use a mahoosive syringe like the one on the right, with a massive needle, filled with massive amounts of oddly coloured liquid. You know, a total massive amount of massive bollocks. Because their stupidity knows no bounds. On a massive scale.

Then, of course, you have those people who will blame any and/or all other illnesses they get on the flu jab. Sorry, but there are usually thousands of other respiratory illnesses flying around the same time when you get the flu jab. And for the love of gods if you smoke and you blame the jab for contracting something like pneumonia or bronchitis, then there is no helping your gullibility.

The syringe on the left is a pre-filled flu vaccine. It holds a massive 0.5 mls of flu vaccine. Barely a 1/8 of a teaspoon. With a tiny needle.

Protect yourself, care for your patients, love your family.

Do your duty.

Get vaccinated.

Metal Nurse: Edward Jenner healthcare hero

Me in Hyde Park, with  Edward Jenner

Some time ago I went to London with my beloved to spend the weekend. Whilst there I visited Hyde Park for the first time where I came across this monument of a man who changed the landscape of healthcare indefinitely. For the better. I am of course talking about one of the great pillars of public health, Edward Jenner. The father of vaccinations. You will undoubtedly read many many ‘Alternative Facts’ by anti-vaxxers. But as usual they tend to be more confined within the fiction section of third hand bookshops. They lie about vaccines in general, but some of the lies they repeat over and over again about Edward Jenner are astounding. There is a made up story that his son died after receiving the smallpox vaccine. He died at 21 from tuberculosis, which incidentally we now have a pretty effective vaccine for. They also lie about smallpox, alternating between it being never eradicated, just renamed, or simply never that bad in the first place. Yeah, between 300-500 million people died from it in the 20th century alone (until it was eradicated of course), it had 20-30% mortality rate, couldn't have been too bad a disease.

Smallpox had been a scourge on mankind throughout written history. Ancient writings about it were found in a medical book from India, dating from as early as 1500 BC. King Ramses V had been infected by it, cases found in China dating at least 1100 BC. It made no distinction between classes, it knew no boundaries, afflicting the poor and rich alike. Those who were "lucky" enough to survive would be left with permanent scarring. It is a virus mostly transmitted via close contact and droplets coughed by the infected individual. The virus could even be spread via infected cloths, incidentally how the British conquered the Americas when General Jeffrey Amherst gave Native Americans blankets carrying the smallpox virus, quickly decimating the previously unexposed population. The afflicted remained contagious until the last scab healed. There was no treatment available. The only way it could be controlled was with vaccination. And thanks to extensive immunisation programmes the last known wild case of smallpox was in Somalia, in 1977. But it is known that there are vials of smallpox left in both the US and in Russia.

Chinese Variolation

In itself the idea of immunisations wasn't anything new, an immunising technique called variolation had been practised in China and Turkey and some parts of Africa since at least 1000 BC. That form of immunization was introduced to England by the 1700's. It wasn't a particularly safe practice, though safer than getting the disease itself. It involved drying the scabs of previously infected individuals and blowing them up people noses. (Which admittedly is awfully similar to the flu nasal mist spray we use today.) In Sudan and Turkey this practice consisted of collecting fluids from the smallpox postules and rubbing the pus into a cut on the person receiving it. Uptake of either practice in Europe was lacking because the medical establishment had dismissed the practices as witchcraft or folklore. It wasn't until the 1700's that an Italian doctor by the name of Emmanuel Timoni witnessed the practice in Constantinople and then wrote about it and got it published in Philosophical Transaction in 1714, that it received some attention from the higher classes of Europe. Mostly thanks to Lady Montagu who had been permanently scarred by smallpox herself and lost her brother to the same illness.

Edward Jenner was a doctor hailing from England. Jenner himself had been inoculated when he was 8 years old via the practice of variolation. During his medical apprenticeship he took a keen interest in cowpox and how it might possibly lead to protection against smallpox, something that had been taken note of before, specifically by another English physician John Fewster, a friend of Jenner's, and a farmer named Benjamin Jesty. They had observed and reported that milkmaids infected with cowpox were invariably immune to smallpox, this essentially started the mass immunization programs. In essence he didn't discover vaccinations, he popularised it.

Jenner first experimented on eight year old James Phipps, injecting a small amount of cowpox into his arm. After James had recovered from the inoculation Jenner attempted to infect him with smallpox. Neither James nor the children who shared his bed developed smallpox, thus discovering herd immunity. His theories were revolutionary for the time and a lot of people refused to believe them. With the advent of vaccinations came the Anti-Vaccine Movement. Because the idea was so mind blowing even the establishment initially refused to believe it, leading Edward Jenner to do further experiments with more children, including his own child.

By today's standards these were extremely unethical experiments. But thanks to these experiments Jenner managed to convince the establishment of the effectiveness of his method, replacing the more dangerous variolation. Jenner was reportedly an extremely generous man, when James Phipps had married later in life and had children of his own, Jenner gave him a free lease on a house. He refused to use the discovery to make himself rich. Instead he'd devote his time to vaccinating as many people as possible, even negotiating to vaccinate French soldiers in exchange for British Prisoners of War. By 1840 variolation was confined to the past and Jenner's form of immunisation had taken over.

In addition to his research on vaccinations he also made some great headway into research on Angina Pectoris.

Without Edward Jenner there is a very good chance that we would still be dealing with mass epidemics of deadly, dangerous and disfiguring illnesses like smallpox, measles and polio. I believe Jenner's research into vaccinations was as important as John Snow's sanitation investigation, Joseph Lister’s insistence on equipment sterilisation, Ignaz Semmelweis preoccupation with the importance of hospital staffs hand-washing and Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin.

Vaccines save lives.

Edward Jenner was a hero. Even Napoleon accepted that.

Sources:
History Of Vaccines

BBC: History, Edward Jenner.

History of Immunology by Arthur Silverstein

Edward Jenner and the History of Smallpox and Vaccination, by Stefan Riedel.

Metal Nurse: The importance of the flu vaccine

In my second year as a student nurse I decided to write a blog that pretty much transformed my musings from music to health care related stuff. It was about the flu vaccine. I think it was pretty good and so did others, to the point where one of my favourite internet pages, Skeptical Raptor, reblogged it. So here I am, nearly 2 years later having been qualified for over 18 months. Still having to refute myths about this vaccine. If you work in health care there is no good excuse to refuse the vaccine. You do not have an excuse. Lets begin with a few quotes from the NMC Code of Conduct from 2015:

• "Always practise in line with the best available evidence."

• "Act without delay if you believe that there is a risk to patient safety or public protection."

• "Be aware of, and reduce as far as possible, any potential for harm associated with your practice."

• "Take all reasonable personal precautions necessary to avoid any potential health risks to colleagues, people receiving care and the public."

Those are the points that I feel are the most important. 
And of course according to the GMC Good Medical Practice:

•  If you know or suspect that you have a serious condition that you could pass on to patients, or if your judgement or performance could be affected by a condition or its treatment, you must consult a suitably qualified colleague. You must follow their advice about any changes to your practice they consider necessary. You must not rely on your own assessment of the risk to patients

• You should be immunised against common serious communicable diseases (unless otherwise contraindicated).

Swine Flu plush toy.

I would like to introduce the concept "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.". Translates as "after this, therefore, because of this.". Basically it is when you want to connect one event to another because of reasons to make the world seem like a logical place. You see a butterfly, then a thunderstorm happens. That kind of thing. It's not a very rational thinking process. Okay, why am I talking about it here? One of the many many excuses I hear regarding the flu vaccine has been "My relative had the vaccine, then they ended up with a cold."
One thing does not have to correlate with the other. Especially when the common cold is caused by coronaviruses and rhinoviruses. The flu is only caused by the influenza virus. And the flu kills. On a regular basis. According to WHO, the flu kills between 250.000 and 500.000, every year. In England in 2013-2014 the Public Health England recieved 904 reports of patients being admitted to ICU, out of those 98 died. That's a whopping 11% mortality rate. According to the European Centre For Disease Prevention and Control, the season between 2014 and 2015:

• "In 15 European countries that report mortality data to the EuroMOMO project, an excess winter mortality rate of 231.3 per 100 000 above the seasonal baseline was observed. This excess was noted for more than 11 consecutive weeks and was the highest of the last five winter seasons."

No, the flu is not just a bad cold. It's a killer. But not just deaths that we should be concerned about it's the complications that follow having the flu, the complications that arise for those who suffer from chronic illnesses, like COPD or diabetes. For those who have pre-existing lung conditions, the flu is even more deadly. Not just deadly it also exacerbates the disease and they rarely every recovered back to baseline. But it has been found that the vaccine reduces hospitalisations of diabetics by 72%, and up to 52% of those who suffer from chronic lung disease. It reduces mortality and ischaemic episodes in those who are recovering from angioplasty. It also prevents cardiacvascular events. Some of the rarer but also dangerous complications from the flu include:

• Encephalitis. 
• Menigitis.
• Guillan-Barre Syndrome.

Influenza associated encephalopathy is a rare complications. But it does have up 30% fatality rate. It is most likely to affect babies from 6 to 18 months old. With one third of those affected will suffer from neurodisabilites. 

Meningitis is a complication that occurs due to a viral infection. The influenza virus being one of the more common virus that can cause it. 

Guillan-Barré syndrome, has long been associated with the flu vaccine. But there is a story behind that. All in all it's the story that sort of defines everything about science, how science develops knowledge and improves on what it knows and continues to define how we as healthcare professionals should follow the evidence. In 1976 there was a case of where it was linked to the flu vaccine, so researchers concluded that there might be a casual link between then the swine flu vaccine and GBS. The most current research fails to find any link between them. If you get infected by the flu you are at an increased risk of developing Guillan-Barré Syndrome, 17 times more likely to develop it in fact.

But why do I rail against health care staff who refuse to be vaccinated. Simple. We take care of acutely ill patients. We are around them all the time. We take care of people who are infected with some nasty nasty illnesses. One in three people who get infected by this virus are asymptomatic carriers. So the danger of infecting those who are vulnerable increases. Because you can pass on the virus without ever showing symptoms yourself. It is infectious for at least 24 hours prior to any symptoms developing and is infectious 5-7 days during the infection. Which is why herd immunity is so important, or community immunity for those who like concepts that rhyme. In a nutshell herd immunity is where there is enough people vaccinated against a contagious diseases to protect those who cannot be vaccinated and/or are vulnerable to disease that are easily spreadable. And (I will be repeating this point) healthcare professionals are a big part of that herd (or community) in hospitals. This is important to remember, there are people who rely on this. And all of them will be in our care. The list includes:

• Elderly
• Patients who are undergoing chemotherapy
• Patients with HIV
• Patients without a fully functioning immune system.
• Patients who are acutely ill in hospital.

The list is of course not exhaustive.

Most healthcare workers seem to have no objections to vaccinating against other illnesses, like measles or hepatitis B. But somehow they seemed to have this blind spot when it comes to the flu vaccine.
The "I've never had the flu, so I don't need the vaccine" excuse doesn't work. For the same reason as "I never got pregnant, so I don't need contraceptives." Or  "I've never been in a car crash, so I don't need a seat belt." Don't work. I've never had hepatitis B, you can be sure that I'd have that vaccine again. Same goes for all of them. I've never had Tetanus, but you can bet your bloody arse that I'd get the Tdap if I've had a serious cut when walking around mother nature. I've never had Yellow Fever, Typhoid, Cholera, Japanese Encephalitis or Hepatitis A but yes I'd have that vaccine if I was travelling to those countries where they are prevalent.

And honestly I struggle to understand why, most of the time I think it is purely out of sheer bloody mindedness rather than actual facts. Some people see it as a form or rebellion against a higher authority. It's one small needle. Once a year. And it's there to protect us, our loved ones and those who we are taking care of. There is not beating around the bush about this. At worst we will get a sore arm, 24 hours sniffles and an immune system that will know how to battle the flu. It's a myth that you get a cold after a vaccine and it's a myth that healthy people don't need a vaccine.

I have come across people who just flat our state "I don't agree with it." What is there not to agree with? It's a low risk thing to do. Even young health people have died from the flu. In fact if you look at the greatest epidemic in human history, the Spanish flu, majority of those who died were aged between 20-50. The more I listen to people who object to it, the more I get convinced that it should be mandated as a requirement to work in healthcare, like they do in America. Require those who don't vaccinate to wear masks if necessary. We are there to take care of the patient. Not our ego. Our egos will heal, some of our patients might not because of ill-thought out refusals.

"What about my right to refuse?" Well, what about it. Yeah, sure you do have the right to refuse it. But what about the right of the patient  to be taken care of by someone who works within evidence based practice? What about the right of the patient to be taken care of by someone who takes every step to make sure that THEIR health and well-being is the centre of their care?

Is the vaccine perfect? No, sadly it isn't. But it still offers the best protection available. Currently it offers between 50% and 60% protection, which is damn sight better than 0%. Though currently there are some great developments in terms of developing a universal flu vaccine. The issue is that there is more money for pharmaceutical companies in people getting ill with the flu, rather than the vaccine. But as an organisation like the NHS, we save money on people getting the vaccine. There is a reason why every medical organisation in the world recommends that their staff have the annual flu vaccine. And it's all about protection.

Are there complications with the vaccine? Certainly, but they are rare. Redness, soreness and localised swelling are most common. 1-2% of those who get the vaccine might get a fever. Rarer side effects include hives, urticaria, racing heart and high fever. Anaphylaxis might occur in 1 case per million doses given. But compared to the chances of getting the flu, I'd rather have the vaccine.

We are there to  take care of and protect our patients from harm. We barrier nurse them. We gown up and use face masks when needed. We use gloves, we wash our hands. We give intravenous antibiotics and anti-virals. But a small needle that will protect you from a dangerous disease is somehow a step too far? Really? 

Life was not always better.

Me and me other half went for a bit of a walk not that long ago. During that walk we decided to have a walk through one of the cemeteries in Lancaster. Don't judge, we just wanted to have some romantic Gothic time.

I find it fascinating walking through some of these cemeteries. The information you can get just glancing at some of the headstones is pretty interesting. Especially when you find headstones like this one. Listing 4 children that died before reaching their second birthday. 

This used to be the reality not that long ago. Couples would have hordes of children. In the hope that at least some of those would reach adulthood. And this is still the reality in certain areas of the world.

Today this isn't the reality. Today the reality is that we have 2 sometimes 3 children and we can be pretty damn certain that they will reach adulthood. Go to university, get married, have children of their own, get divorced and hope for grandchildren of their own. 

And why is this? Well there are few factors. The biggest ones being improved healthcare. Both public and private. We have vaccines for illnesses that used to maim and/or kill children in their droves. We have antibiotics. We have ventilators. We have bronchodilators. We have defibrillators. We have radiotherapy. We have chemotherapy. We have insulin! We have some of the most amazing medicine in history that ever existed. With more on their way. 

We have more food today thanks to modern agriculture and genetic modifications. We can now feed more then we ever could. Thanks to lest pesticide usage. Thanks to being able to use less space that grows more per acre.

Public sanitation is of course miles better than it used to be. Again, thanks to modern technology and science. Drinking water is safer and better than it used it be.

Dentistry is at it's best today. With fluoridation of water and more. 

And yet... And yet we have people who want to demonise today's technology. In some cases they actively campaign against them, and want to make sure that less fortunate countries don't get them. They somehow think that everything was nice and rosy in the old days. That everything was so much better in the days before modern technology.

No, it was not. Life was dirty and short. You died. And you died horribly.

Vaccines save lives. Medicine save lives. GM technology save lives. Hippies and luddites don't.

Statement.

Just in case I hadn't made it clear and to shed some light on my thinking process. Education is a wonderful thing. Not really that many years ago I used to be a fairly big believer in herbal medicine, I had actually seriously considered studying herbal medicine, that organic food was better, and a fence-sitter regarding vaccines.

Obviously as most of you will have noticed my stance on those things have changed. And changed for the better. The things that changed it were a culmination of a lot or things, firstly my duaghyer when she was very very young developed bronchioloitis but for a while me and my partner were convinced that she had whopping cough(truthfully I still think that might have been the case, but the GP hadn't seen a case of whopping cough for 10 years. Let that sink in a little) and as I started my course I started meeting more Polio survivors, all 70+ years of age.

At its finest modern medicine is based on herbal medicine, the difference is that the volatile compounds have been isolated, purified and made more potent. The rest of herbal medicine just tastes nice on chicken.

As for opposing GM technology, well that has got to be the most self centred, first world problem that I can think of. To oppose technology that creates drought resistant and pest resistant seeds that will create more food, with more nutrients, not just for the booming population of the first world (be grateful that you can waste money on organic) but also the starving population of the third world is, as stated before, self centred and selfish. Oh and if you oppose GM technology then you are wishing death on insulin dependent diabetics. And Haemophiliacs.

So here's the rub. In the next six months I will (grading pending of course) qualify as a nurse. And I will be using evidence based practice. And if some idiot then tries to convince a patient of mine that chemo is useless, that vaccines cause more problems then they solve, if they just generally advocate the use of untested, unproven and dangerous treatments instead of proven, effective safe treatments, they will feel my shoe firmly lodged into their posterior.

If you want to use these methods fine. I can live with that, but don't you fucking dare get in the way of me doing the best for my patients. And not just for my patients but the community as a whole.

This might all come across as close minded, but it is anything but. I have been willing to look at the evidence and the evidence changed my mind. Being open minded is what evidence based science is all about.

A sheep no more

There got your attention. It always strikes me as odd when people who say "Do your Research!", "Sheep!" and "Don't believe their propaganda!" always seem to be the least informed. They like to shout slogans, look at memes and then no more. This is especially true for people who like to say that they are for the environment, yet they also want to refuse all environmental help and reject all science for something like "It worked well for people in the past.". 

Case in point at the moment is all the hooha about Ecover using GM product in their products. Ecover started using oil from genetically altered algae instead of palm oil. For obvious reasons, as palm oil industry has been known to devastate forests and wildlife habitats in South America, Africa and Asia. So Ecover did the right thing by changing their product in order to preserve the environment the best, which has always been their philosophy. Even if it does mean that they make inferior products as well. But people are objecting against it because of the use of GM. For heaven's sake, which do you want? Unadulterated, okay-ish cleaner (That's still superior to other "natural" cleaning products) that is bad for the environment, saves orangutans and rain forests... Or do you want a the opposite? Of course you are welcome to argue against it, but quite frankly I am pretty sure that those developers at Ecover know more about their product and how to make it then you.

Then there's cheese. People who are against GM forget that little titbit. The rennet that is used to make cheese... That rennet, that is NOT originally from a calves stomach. Is genetically modified. Now do you want a guilt free block of cheese, or do you want to kill some more calves for your Welsh Rarebit?

A cousin of mine , wanted me to watch a video called World According to Monsanto, which in itself added nothing new, only reaffirmed lies there was a lot of FUD about in that video. That was his evidence. Nothing else, for someone who has three university degrees that is quite astounding. YouTube is great, but using Youtube does not constitute as evidence. Same with that video regarding the bees. When people hear the name Monsanto, most of them don't even know what that company does. And seem to think it's big company. It's the only company. No it isn't. That they are working towards controlling the food sector everywhere in the world, a plan that has not worked very well for them so far. Want a comparison? Well, Monsanto earned about $15 billion in 2013, but Whole Earth (For Brits think Suma) earned about $13 billion.  It is an agricultural company that does a lot of research into Genetic Modification. They sell seeds of their own design. They also sell organic seeds, as well. Monsanto are a lot of things, but most of the stories that is written about them are lies or mis-interpretations. 

I got another friend who likes to regurgitate that Suzuki meme, now there's a man who's made a lot of money from spreading FUD. He charges $30,000 for speaking at universities and hasn't done any significant research for the best part of 20 years. He is not what you can actually call reliable, in fact his story seems to be more akin of Linus Pauling. Besides for a man who says he's a scientist, he has a very unfortunate tendency to make absolute statements that he can't then follow up. The man is a clown. His knowledge of GMO's is about 20 years behind and he has not done any relevant research in any field relating to genetics or biology for well over 15 years. When he does meet other scientists who know what they are talking about he fails completely.

Talking about intellectual dishonesty, Vandana Shiva has been a vocal opponent against GMO. And she also uses the title Dr. You would have thought that she has some kind of doctorate in biology, environmental studies or the like. No, it's in philosophy. She lies about her qualifications and people believe those lies. And she charges $40,000. Can you imagine how much income her and David would earn if they tried to tell the truth? Probably not a lot.

GMO can also mean a lot of different things. But these people are against all of them. For example. Golden Rice, is rice with vitamin A added. This is meant to help nations where sources of Vitamin A are scarce. Yet Greenpeace go out of their way to destroy those crops, leaving people in the third world to go blind due to lack of that vitamin. How can you complain that there hasn't been enough testing WHEN YOU DESTROY THE CROPS THAT ARE MEANT FOR TESTING?

Oh, and that lie about 47,500 Indian farmers committed suicide because of GM Cotton? Yeah, that's a lie. Complete and utter lie, spread by liars and charlatans like Vandana Shiva and David Suzuki.

That lie about GM eggplants, where farmers in Bangladesh were supposedly spraying more pesticides on their plants and that their plants weren't thriving. Yeah, that's a lie.

IT'S ALL ABOUT MONEY!

And that lie that Organic is better for you, with more nutrients, better taste and less pesticide use. That's a HUGE lie spread by Health Food Shops in order to line their pockets. The taste is the same, nutrients are the same AND they use more pesticides then conventional farming because the pesticide that the Organic industry rely on are no where near as reliable or effective. And before people start pointing out to me the latest and "greatest" study that was funded by an organic society. It measured more anti-oxidants and those aren't as great as some people like to imagine they are.

"Don't believe their propaganda!" Oh so you want me to believe yours instead? On what basis? You seem to be lying through your teeth as well, whether you are aware of it or not. You might not be aware because you're just repeating someone else's lies that sound good and fit within your social network so you repeat it without fact checking it. 

All of this can be said of vaccines as well. I still get people on my Facebook list posting that fucking stupid article stating "Courts quietly confirm MMR causes Autism." No they did not. This is from some small Italian court that the Italian Department of Health didn't even bother to show up for because they didn't think that the judge would actually rule against them and where the Prosecutor used the Wakefield "study" as evidence AND this is from the same country that jailed seismologists for manslaughter for not predicting an earthquake. This is of course ignoring the fact that Wakefield only used 12 kids, lied about his data, lied about his funding, performed procedures that the Ethics committee never approved off and has since been making tidy profit of people who still believe his lies. This also ignores every single piece of research that has been done since completely and utterly disproving any link. Including the most recent one that including 1.2 million subjects. Now compare that to Wakefields lies of 12 children. 

As for when people yell "THEY ARE PUMPING POISON INTO THE VEINS OF BABBIES!!!". No they are not. A vaccine that is in a syringe is 0.5 ml. Think of a teaspoon, that can hold 5 ml. How can anyone pump NOUGHT POINT FIVE MILLILITRES into anyone is beyond the realm of possibility. And it is a intramuscular injection. Not a intravenous injection. Ever come across the concept of LD50? No? Of course not, because you are a keyboard warrior who thinks that you know better then immunologists, biologists, toxicologists, doctors virologists around the world because you read something written by The Refusers. LD50 is essentially what Paracelsus said in the 1600

Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy.

LD50 is:

"a standard measurement of acute toxicity that is stated in milligrams (mg) of pesticide per kilogram (kg) of body weight. An LD50 represents the individual dose required to kill 50 percent of a population of test animals (e.g., rats, fish, mice, cockroaches)."

So get it now? Poison is the dose. Toxicity is the dose. Anything that fits in a 0.5 ml syringe is NOT POISON.

Reading Natural News is not research. Reading Collective Evolution is not research. Food babe, not research. Vaccination Information Network has no information on Vaccines. Family Health Freedom Network is not research.

Same goes for Nuclear Power. There has been a lot of talk regarding how Germany are closing their nuclear power plants and opening more Windmills and Solar Power plants, both fine and dandy, nothing against those. But neglecting to mention that they are also opening more Coal Power Plants. Which pollute more then any other kind of power station. Nuclear Power plants are superior, they are more environmentally friendly. That smoke you see from the scary scary looking chimneys, not smoke. But steam. For those people who are against fracking. You know why they are doing so much fracking at the moment? It's because some of you  are also against Nuclear power so the energy companies and governments are forced to look for energy elsewhere. So am I saying that Nuclear Power is the only answer? Well, no of course not but we shou. Solar panels and Wind Turbines are excellent, but they are not without their very very expensive costs and also do have adverse affects in the environment. What you have to remember is that solar panels aren't made from thin air. Producing those panels do have affect the environment. After about 20 years they have to be replaced.  Same with wind turbines, they can and do impact on the environment especially birds and bats and again they can only last 20 years, 25 tops. Whereas a nuclear power station can last up to 50 years, even as long as 70 years before the reactor needs to be replaced. All of these options are expensive to set up, but without a doubt they will pay in the long term. But in terms of long term effects, nuclear wins hands down.

Do your Research

So in the words of other people. Do your research and stop talking shit. If you actually care about the environment, if you actually care about other human beings besides yourself, if you actually care about what happens in less fortunate countries then the UK or the US (Or Iceland), then do your research and do it properly. But remember that this is why we have experts, because any individual can't know everything. Just because you've read research on open heart surgery for thoracic aortic aneurysm doesn't mean that you are qualified to do it.

Just remember though, just because you don't understand the science or the technology does not automatically make it evil. Just because a company invests millions of dollars(pounds, yen, whatever) does not mean that it is purely against humankind. What kind of a business strategy is it to knowingly kill your customers. And after spending millions of pounds(dollars, rubees, whatever) and years into researching and developing technology THAT CAN HELP HUMANKIND why should they not be financially compensated?

Just because you don't understand the science, does not mean that the science is flawed. 

Student Nurse Perspective: GM technology in Health

Not sure how to quite start this, maybe with a little background again. For some time I had been involved in the alternative lifestyle. I had never really put much thought into GMO technology because it seemed so out of my knowledgesphere. I had heard the phrase Frankenfoods, I had vaguely heard of a company called Monsanto. But on the whole not much. I was told that I should avoid GM foods. It never really struck me as something that important. Now since I started my nursing education I have been taking care a lot of people with diabetes and have to use insulin. Again it wasn’t something I had thought much about until someone pointed out to me that human insulin is made using GM technology. Since throwing my weight behind the pro-gmo camp I have found it amazing that people are so against this technology; even people who work in healthcare who either just want to remain ignorant or just are ignorant of it’s value. I find this technology amazing! Not only is going to save lives, it already has.

For the record, I am not a biologist, but I’d like to think that I’ve got a rudimentary knowledge of it. Which is why I tend to check up with sites like Sense About Science, Genetic Literacy Project and Skeptical Raptor. I do not reference in any kind of organized way but I do provide as many links as possible where I feel it is needed... and sometimes where it isn’t needed.

Left: Child on starvation diet
Right: Same child after getting insulin

Diabetes mellitus (DM) type 1 and 2 are diseases that affect a persons ability to regulate their blood glucose levels. Both diseases are characterized by chronic high blood sugar. If left unregulated, high blood sugar can lead to acute diabetic ketoacidosis and death with long term complications of kidney failure, heart disease and blindness. DM type 1 and 2 are frightening illnesses, that depending on how you think of it, we have only fairly recently been able to get control of. The key word being control because we still have not found a cure for either, only management strategies.

Historically, DM is not a new disease There have been references to both types of DM in ancient Egyptian manuscripts and the name diabetes was coined by Ancient Greeks. In India they had already divided DM into two types; if you were “lucky” enough to receive a diagnosis you might survive for a further 1.4 years, but more often than not you would die within months if not weeks. The standard treatment at the time was starvation, which remained the standard treatment for type 1 DM until the discovery of insulin.

Insulin was discovered in the 1920's by Dr. Frederick Banting, who experimented on hundreds of dogs. It had been previously known that DM had something to do with the pancreas, but the association with the disease was still undiscovered. Dr. Banting's dog experiment established that dogs without their pancreas would develop diabetes; their blood sugars would shoot up and they’d get hungry and thirsty. All of that subsided when they were injected with ground up pancreas. Dr. Banting's would go onto discover that it was a substance called insulin that is created by the beta cells that are located in the Islets of Langerhans in the pancreas that regulates the blood sugar. After extensive experimentation, it was decided to try injecting insulin into a person, a 14 year old boy who was at deaths door before being given the first insulin injection. He went on to live live for a further 13 years.

The history of insulin is quite fascinating. It was the first protein that was completely sequenced in the 50’s. Up until the 1980’s, we were using bovine and porcine insulin; meaning that we were essentially harvesting insulin from the slaughtered leftovers of cows and pigs. While insulin from animal sources saved a lot of lives, there were major drawbacks with allergic reactions, not to mention that bovine and porcine insulin are not human insulin and there was not such thing as "control". Something had to be done to find a supply of insulin that was reliable and continuous. Researchers in the 1960's had been able to synthesize some insulin, but not enough to satisfy demand. That all changed in the 70’s when a company called Genentech started working with City of Hope Research Institute to combine human insulin gene into a bacteria in order to create insulin. Following extensive testing and refining, it was released for the general public in the 1980’s. I’ll try and explain the process of GE human insulin as simply as possible.

To make human insulin the pharmaceutical companies use a Recombinant DNA Technology, they insert insulin gene into a bacteria called E.Coli, though some manufacturers use yeast. As stated before insulin is a protein, it is composed of 51 amino acids, that are separated into A Chain with 21 amino acids and B chain with 30. A and B chain are synthesized separately. The bacteria with their new gene are allowed to ferment and thus multiply. After sufficient amount of time they are then taken out of their fermenting tanks and broken up, with the insulin protein chains extracted. The two strains are then combined with a disulfide bond. Then when all of that is done, the whole mixture is purified even further so all we end up with is a big batch of insulin. Then thereafter they add other ingredients to the mix in order to prevent bacterial contamination, to create a neutral base and to create intermediate to long-acting insulin.

There will be steps that I have missed, but in a nutshell that is how it is done. So yeah insulin. GMO. And since its discovery it has saved millions of lives that otherwise would not have been possible. Currently, there is some exciting work where insulin is harvested from Safflowers. Which would be cheaper and possibly easier to produce, along with that it could be better suited for inhalable insulin. Again, this is GMO technology at its best.

Spanish Flu killed 50 - 100 million
worldwide

I have already waxed lyrically about the importance of the flu vaccine for health care workers. The flu is a very serious disease at any age, but it is at its most deadly for children under five and the elderly, and of course those who suffer from immunodeficiencies due to assorted reasons. As a healthcare worker I see it as my duty to get the flu vaccine every season. The flu vaccine, unfortunately, is probably the least effective vaccine we have got at the moment. Depending on the season it’s efficacy can vary from 30% - 70%. The way we make the influenza vaccine at the moment is by using eggs. Lots and lots of eggs. And usually it takes between 1 - 2 eggs per dose of vaccine; it’s very laborious and, well, inefficient. There are couple of problems that we face with the any flu vaccine; to make a more effective and universal vaccine it would take around 12-15 years of research to develop and create with a cost somewhere between $500 million to $1 billion. This puts off nearly all of the pharmaceutical companies. Another problem with flu vaccines made from eggs is that people with egg allergies can suffer allergic reactions, hence there are now two different ways of creating a flu vaccine in the works, and one that is still being researched.

The first one is called FluBlok, created by Protein Sciences, which uses a recombinant technology and insect cell cultures to create the vaccines. This is done by injecting a baculovirus into the insect cell culture, which in turns creates a protein that most influenza viruses have called hemagglutunin. This methods uses no other fragments of the flu virus, it contains no traces of adjuvants or antibiotics, and most importantly, no egg. Unfortunately, so far it has been found to be 44% effective.

The second one is called Flucelvax, made by Novartis. Again this is made with cell culture, but this time of mammalian origin. Other than the origins of the cell culture, Flucelvax is made using the same technology as FluBlok . Remarkably, Flucevlax was found to be more effective than FluBlok, 77% effective in fact.

Both rely on Recombinant DNA Technology. It is a technology that cuts up DNA molecules and splices the fragments together in. In other words it is the process taking a DNA fragment from somewhere else and fuse it with another DNA fragment. For example the insulin gene that has been spliced into an E.Coli bacteria.

The third flu vaccine is personally the one that excites me the most. This flu vaccine is made from genetically modified tobacco plants. Finally tobacco plants will be used for something other than to puff into our lungs. The business Medicago is leading the way in this front; for each plant, there is the potential of up to 50 doses of a flu vaccine. The exact details I don’t know and even if I did, I wouldn't be allowed to say. In essence:

“Although the exact process is proprietary, Medicago starts with tobacco plants grown in greenhouses. After about five weeks, the plants are suspended in a solution made from a human-safe bacteria found in soil. That solution in effect tells the tobacco plant to produce large quantities of an influenza viral protein. Once the plants take up that solution, they incubate for about five days.” [Source]

Unfortunately this is still in testing stages, but it would be a great cost-saver as it’s the cheapest way they have found to make a flu vaccine. At least until they find a universal flu vaccine. Medicago has been concentrating on using plants in order to create their vaccines, because it’s a comparatively inexpensive process and produces higher yields. Additionally, a flu vaccine can be made ready within 3 weeks from identifying a seasonal and/or pandemic strain.

These systems all have the advantage that they are not dependent on egg supply and more time can be dedicated towards calculating what flu strains will be most commonly in circulation.

Other medication that uses Recombinant Technology is rhGH. Which is short for recombinant Human Growth Hormone, under the brand name Humatrope. Human Growth Hormone (HGH) is necessary to stimulate cell production, growth and regeneration. It is created in the pituitary gland located in the brain. If there is lack of HGH in children, than the effects are diminished growth, obesity, lack of sexual development and disrupted mental development. There is also the danger of hypoglycaemic episodes. Again, this is where Genentech came in; they inserted the DNA code for HGH into plasmids that were then in turn introduced into our superhero bacteria, E. coli. Prior to this we had to harvest human growth hormones from human cadavers (much like insulin was harvested from slaughtered cows and pigs), and in order to gain at least a years supply you would need up to 50 pituitary glands.

The last Tsar family, Alexis the
youngest had haemophilia.

Then there’s haemophilia. Haemophilia is a genetic condition where blood clotting factors are impaired, causing a person to bleed profusely even with a minor wound. This is usually a genetic disorder where there is a lack of Factor VIII. The most famous example of this is the last Tsar family where Alexis, the youngest son, badly suffered from the condition. Currently, we rely on blood donations in order to treat this, which is all well and good, but we continually run into the problem of lack of donations. Spurred on by worries surrounding the lack of consistent screening of blood, and with the potential of contaminations and antibody formation to donated blood, a group of scientists in 1986 developed a way to create Factor IX. This was done by splicing Factor IX gene into plasmids, that were then inserted into hamster ovary cells along with plasmids that were treated with a gene that was coded for resistance against methotrexate.

These are just a few examples of GE technology in medicine. There are already over 110 medications on the market that are made using biotechnology with more being researched everyday and more than 350 million people feeling the benefits because of it. For example we also have antithrombin III, used to prevent blood clotting during surgery, that we collect from the milk of transgenic goats. There has been some research done regarding a vaccine against Alzheimer's using tomatoes. Organ transplant might not have to rely on organ donors anymore, with research going into making tissue that could be used to make variety of human organs! This technology provides us with the best tools in order to combat diseases that at this moment have no cure. Not only that, with the current problem we are facing regarding antibiotic resistance, biotechnology is being used to fully explore alternatives. Thanks to this technology, we are developing even more cancer treatments, and while the cure might be some time off, at least we can give people more quality years of life. With this we technology we also can stop relying on animal derived products and go towards plant based manufacturing, instead of using CHO cells. It allows us to produce more convenient storage of raw materials at a lower cost and is arguably better for the environment.

Yet out there are people who are against biotechnology, mostly for what seems to be idealistic reasons rather than any actual factual reasons. Most people who are against GMO don’t seem to realize just how useful and prevalent it is, or in fact what it is. They don’t seem to understand that biotechnology has been in use ever since humankind picked up agriculture. Biotechnology in medicine has been used, successfully, for the last 30-odd years! They don’t seem to be able to reconcile that the GMO technology they oppose so much (especially in agriculture) is helping to keep people with diabetes and haemophilia alive and well. For me, personally, as someone who works in healthcare, I cannot wait to assist people with more effective treatments as they become available. I am meant to work as part of an evidence-based practice and people who are against this technology, for whatever reasons, are not following the evidence.