Vaccines: Shiv Chopra And Joseph Mercola
Swine flu exists. Flu vaccines are protective against influenza. The benefits of vaccination against seasonal flu and swine flu probably outweigh the risks of vaccination. Every year many people suffer and die from seasonal influenza, particularly the elderly, children younger than age 2 and people with other medical conditions or weakened immune systems. These are just some of the things you might like to bear in mind as you read the following.
In this video, Joseph Mercola describes meeting Shiv Chopra at a National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) conference. Chopra trained as a veterinarian in India and later worked in veterinarian vaccines. Mercola claims that Chopra is one of the single most qualified people in the world to discuss vaccines.
Here’s the expert opinion on the swine flu vaccine…
Mercola: Do you think the swine flu works?
Chopra: No flu vaccine has ever worked. Swine flu, we don’t even know there is such a thing. It’s a misnomer. Avian flu, these are all made-up things. The whole thing is a hoax. It has been for the last 10 years. First they started with the avian flu, and then swine flu.
That’s quite a startling claim right at the beginning of Chopra’s statement. It’s not just startling, it’s also untrue.
This abstract, for example, states that “A review of the published literature shows that vaccination of children, healthy younger adults, the elderly, and both children and adults with high-risk medical conditions provides substantial benefits, although the types of benefits vary by age.”
This one looks at “estimates of 4 measures of vaccine efficacy for live, attenuated and inactivated influenza vaccine”. If no flu vaccine has ever worked, then why can I find these academic papers on the benefits of flu vaccines and on the efficacy of different flu vaccines? Does Chopra have a different definition of “worked” than I do?
As for the daft assertions that avian flu and swine flu are hoaxes… I hardly know where to start. Chopra doesn’t suggest who the hoaxers are or what their motive(s) may be. Nor does he provide any evidence that there has been any hoax. It’s almost as if it’s something he just made up.
Here’s why Chopra thinks that bird flu is a hoax…
Chopra: Birds have lived on the Earth for 65 million years, so have their viruses including the bird flu. By now if bird flu was killing poultry and birds then all those birds and poultry should have died – by now there should be no birds on the earth. If there are, they should be immune. How is it that the bird flu virus remains in the birds?
I think I can help to clear up Chopra’s confusion. I don’t recall ever hearing anyone claim that all birds would be infected by bird flu or that all birds who were infected would die. If Chopra has got it into his head that infection and mortality rates for avian flu are both 100%, then I think I can perhaps see how this confusion arisen. It seems that one or two simple misconceptions, when coupled with rather simplistic logic, can easily lead to a confused ‘vaccine expert’.
Here is Chopra’s view of the 1918 flu epidemic:
How come they never talked about this influenza in India? We never heard of it. I never heard of it. [...] People say too much aspirin – there were no controls, we didn’t know how aspirin really worked and what damage it did. Some people may have died from internal bleeding, by taking too much aspirin and trying to bring the temperature down.
Chopra states that he never heard of the 1918 flu outbreak. Not having heard of something that happened before you were born doesn’t necessarily mean that it didn’t happen…
Dr Chopra doesn’t seem to offer any support for his claim that aspirin might have caused the 1918 flu deaths. All we get from Chopra is that “people say too much aspirin…” – we don’t get to hear which people say this, or why they say it. Chopra apparently believes that millions of people died from internal bleeding due to aspirin overdose rather than influenza and related diseases. There’s some rather more realistic comment on the 1918 flu outbreak: here and here.
Chopra’s thoughts on the testing of vaccines:
What I’m saying categorically is that vaccines have never been tested. Vaccines other than smallpox have never been tested for safety or efficacy, as they should have been.
Chopra is now claiming that vaccines have never been tested. Really? For swine flu vaccination, “both non-clinical and clinical testing is being done to gain essential information on immune response and safety. The results of studies reported to date suggest the vaccines are as safe as seasonal influenza vaccines.”
About six months before Mercola posted the audio clip of his interview with Chopra, it was announced that in Australia the first human trials of a swine flu vaccine were to begin. The National Institutes of Health have a page here that includes information on early results from trials of the swine flu vaccine announced last year.
As for other vaccines, there is the example of the Measles, Mumps and Rubella virus: MMR was thoroughly tested before it was introduced. These tests followed the routine procedures for the testing and licensing of all new medicines and vaccines at that time.
But it doesn’t really matter what I write about swine flu, seasonal flu, or vaccination. I don’t expect that more than 200-250 people will ever read this blog post – and most of them will probably have perfectly sensible views on vaccination. Joseph Mercola, on the other hand, has written an irresponsible blog post (with an embedded video of his interview with Chopra) that has already been viewed by over 50,000 people. Presumably, many of those 50,000 will either be unsure about vaccination or will be opposed to it. Mercola is reaching those people, I am not. This cannot be categorised as anything but a failure.
Neuroskeptic said,
January 11, 2010 at 3:15 pm
The 1918 “Spanish” flu did strike India – here is a contemporary paper reporting on the outbreak: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20425441 and elsewhere I’ve seen claims that 5% of the Indian population died of the flu, which is worse than elsewhere (although not much worse, it was bad everywhere).
As for why no-one mentioned it, few people mention it anywhere. One book about the flu was called America’s Forgotten Pandemic because… people forgot it. Or didn’t like to talk about it: http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Forgotten-Pandemic-Influenza-1918/dp/0521386950
Given which I’d be surprised if India were any different.
uberVU - social comments said,
January 11, 2010 at 3:26 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by jdc325: Vaccines: Shiv Chopra And Joseph Mercola: Bizarre anti-vaccine assertions and conspiracy theories from Shiv Chopra… http://bit.ly/6IoGcu…
draust said,
January 11, 2010 at 8:54 pm
Ahhh.. so that’s the Dr Chopra that “WakeUpPlease” was plugging on the other recent vaccine thread.
Judging by the quotes above he sounds like he is away with the fairies – so just the sort of person WakeUpPlease would regard as an authority..
MN Steve said,
January 12, 2010 at 2:30 pm
His father is nearly 100 years old and lived in India at the time, that’s what he was referring to in regards to not hearing anything about it at the time.
Seems there are plenty of studies showing that flu vaccines are ineffective, especially in the elderly
Here’s a report detailing them not effective in children either
http://www.thoracic.org/sections/publications/press-releases/conference/articles/2009/abstracts-and-press-releases/joshi.pdf
Guess it all depends on the motive for sponsoring the study as is pretty much the case for all studies.
Neuroskeptic said,
January 12, 2010 at 2:37 pm
“His father is nearly 100 years old and lived in India at the time, that’s what he was referring to in regards to not hearing anything about it at the time.”
Well his father’s an idiot, then, because it did happen. Do you dispute that?
jdc325 said,
January 12, 2010 at 6:24 pm
M N Steve – thanks for the comment and the link. I should point out that the link is to a press release for a conference abstract rather than to published research that has been peer-reviewed. The conclusions of the abstract are that:
1) TIV did not provide any protection against hospitalization in pediatric subjects’ esp. children with asthma. On the contrary, we found a 3-fold increased risk of hospitalization in subjects who did get the TIV vaccine.This may be a reflection not only of the vaccine effectiveness but also the population of children who are more likely to get the vaccine.
2) More studies are needed to assess not only the immunogenicity but also efficacy of different influenza vaccines in asthmatic subjects.
The researchers looked at the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine in preventing “Flu-Related Hospitalizations in Asthmatic Children” – which is not quite the same thing as “flu vaccines not effective in children.”
jdc325 said,
January 12, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Neuroskeptic – thanks (as always) for your comments and links.
Dr Aust – thanks for commenting. I thought you might enjoy reading about Chopra.
Cybertiger said,
January 12, 2010 at 8:51 pm
It seems the Council of Europe is thinking along the same lines as Chopra.
http://www.pharmatimes.com/WorldNews/article.aspx?id=17147
And it also seems that Britains swine-flu hero, Professor (Sir*) David Salisbury, is intent on pulling the wool over the eyes of the taxpayer, over his little scam with his big buddies of the vaccine-industrial-complex.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/340/jan11_2/c170
“The Department of Health in England is negotiating with GlaxoSmithKline over what can be done with millions of doses of swine flu vaccine it has ordered under contract from the company but that are now unlikely to be needed…. But the government signed up to around 90 million doses in May 2009, with buying power for up to 132 million if a pandemic were declared.
David Salisbury, the health department’s head of immunisation, said … He would not be drawn on the details, but how much of the total order could be recouped was under discussion, he said. Options included selling or giving away the surplus stock. Another idea is to use the adjuvant, which is supplied separately, for a different pandemic.”
Who’s going to buy the surplus stock? Another pandemic? So this was just a rehearsal for the big one next year! and the year after that. This really is the Basil Fawlty of the 10 * Hotel Vaccinology talking … and you can’t possibly make this sort of stuff up.
* No honour for the New Year 2010, but the big goon will almost certainly pick up the big gong at the Queen’s next birthday.
Milt said,
January 13, 2010 at 12:51 am
Great writing, great information. Thanks very much.
Neuroskeptic said,
January 13, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Yeah, Big Pharma must have been behind the Swine Flu “scare”, it’s not as if everyone who understood basic virology was scared at first and then decided to adopt a precautionary attitude, I mean influenza has never killed anyone right? It certainly didn’t kill tens of millions in 1918. Or if it did, it never will again, lightning never strikes twice.
Big Pharma are behind quite a lot of health scares, as readers of my blog will know, but not this one.
Still waiting for that photo of you with your medical degree Cybertiger!
jdc325 said,
January 13, 2010 at 9:04 pm
Thanks for the kind words Milt.
endofatheism said,
January 15, 2010 at 2:22 pm
go shoot yourself in the head…
THE DANCE OF DEATH ON THE WORLD TRADE CENTER
THE END OF ATHEISM:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/browse_thread/thread/a6147f423c8631f7#
Skeptico said,
January 16, 2010 at 7:56 pm
Another Chopra who supports woo. Who would have thought?
Pareidolius said,
January 16, 2010 at 8:25 pm
Skeptico, you took the words right out of my mouth. However the breathtaking stupidity of this Veterinary Chopra is staggering. I mean come on, if you’re just going to make shit up like that you may as well just shut your eyes, plug your ears and yell in your best Pee Wee Herman voice: LA LA LA LA NO VACCINES LA LA NO VIRUSES NO NO NO FLU IN INDIA LA LA LA!
I’m used to nutty Chopras by now, but this one really takes the chapati. I need a cold, refreshing can of Jomer Cola™ Zero to wash down the stupid, ’cause nothing goes better with stupid than stupid.
HolisticGuy said,
January 17, 2010 at 3:40 am
I’m one who trusts virtually nothing that BIG Government and Big Business does.
Having researched the history of vaccines, I’ll pass my vaccine shot onto someone else who blindly worships and loves big business and big goverment…Enjoy!!! :)
Neuroskeptic said,
January 17, 2010 at 9:59 am
Neither do I, which I why I’m so skeptical of Big CAM. It’s an industry as big as Big Pharma, and for some reason, it has a lot more online supports. Shills, maybe? How much you getting paid?
jdc325 said,
January 17, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Neuroskeptic – I’m not sure holistic guy needs to shill for Big CAM. His website looks pretty straightforwardly commercial to me. Lots of ads, a ‘donate’ button…
Diana said,
February 2, 2010 at 8:34 pm
it’s easy to criticize when you don’t read the interview, and take words out of context.
His academic qualifications include graduation in veterinary medicine and M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Microbiology. He is the recipient of numerous academic awards, including a Fellowship of the World Health Organization. He also worked for Health Canada (their equivalent of the FDA) for many years.
also overlooked.
here are some of the quotes by Dr. Chopra in full:
“How come they never talked about this influenza in India? We never heard of it. I never heard of it. Remember, this swine flu at that time was originally called Spanish flu, and the Spanish called it French flu because the two countries were on the opposite sides of the war. And then eventually they settled on swine flu. Again, nobody knew if that was really swine flu because we didn’t know how to isolate a virus at that time,” Dr. Chopra says.
“There were no tissue cultures and the viruses didn’t grow outside living cells. We know a lot of people died; exactly what they died of, it could be swine flu, the virus, or pneumonia. We didn’t have any antibiotics at that time. So complications may have killed them. It’s even possible as some people say it was: with influenza you get fairly high fever, with some flu you get higher fever.
The aspirin at the time was a thing to reduce your body temperature. People say too much aspirin — there were no controls, we didn’t know how aspirin really worked and what damage it did. Some people may have died from internal bleeding, by taking too much aspirin and trying to bring the temperature down,” he continues.
everyone is entitled to an opinion, but when you misrepresent what someone has said, or accomplished, your point becomes moot.
I’m with HolisticGuy in that I’ve done my own research, and have formed my own educated opinion on the matter. You all should do the same.
draust said,
February 2, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Diana
I am sorry, but if you lack the background and training, you do not have the “context” to interpret detailed scientific or medical research findings, or even presentations of them by folk like Dr Chopra. Thus an opinion you form on the basis of reading their work, or random internet sites, is NOT an “educated” opinion. It is actually a wholly miseducated one, because you lack the context to tell whether what you are reading is real science, or raving nonsense.
Much of what Chopra says is utter scientific hogwash. One example:
A virus that always kills its host would soon disappear, so in evolutionary terms it would be a dead end. So what Chopra says is daft. The virus is well evolved precisely because it lives and multiplies in, but does NOT kill (all) it’s avian hosts. It infects the bird, making the host bird’s cells produce more virus, in the meantime making the bird.ill (this is in a sense a side-effect – the point is viral infection and replication, not killing the host). The virus is spread to other birds. That is what the virus evolves to do. Meanwhile, some, but not all, of the hosts die. And the virus mutates, so that the birds (or you) are not “totally immune” after having the disease once. So the next time you see it, a few years later perhaps, you are only partially immune. It is actually a kind of co-existence.
The same thing exactly is true of humans and influenza. The virus “lives” with us. Chopra’s statement is like saying humans should have long since been wiped out by ‘flu, if ‘flu was able to kill, because there has always been ‘flu, and that the fact we are still here proves ‘flu is never deadly. Again, this is evident claptrap. While ‘flu may often kill by causing secondary pneumonia, it can kill on its own. If Chopra says otherwise he is away with the fairies.
There is another point leading on from this. Since what Chopra says is such utter tripe, you have to wonder what he learned from his DVM MSc PhD. And to a scientist, that someone could state as fact something so scientifically nonsensical tells you right off the bat that anything else. he says is likely to be highly untrustworthy. That is what I mean by the “context” to interpret correctly what you are being told.
GWC352 said,
February 10, 2010 at 6:14 pm
I guess the scary thing is how this ‘scientist’ was in charge of anything whatsoever to do with the veterinary regulatory agency of a country of Canada’s stature. Being in the Public Service Commission of the Canadian government provides a great deal of ‘protection’ from management in any attempts to remove this guy , as the evidence has shown. If he were to meet with resistance in advancing himself up the ladder at a government agency , what methods might exist to overcome that resistance? If you weren’t getting what you wanted from your bosses and you worked in the public eye, how would you gain an advantage over them?
Diana said,
February 20, 2010 at 10:22 pm
Dr Aust
I never said I agreed with everything Dr. Chopra had to say, my point was only that if you are going to criticize, then you must use the entire quote. The same with credentials.
I also never said what my opinion on the matter was, so how do you know if it is educated or not? My personal beliefs are not formed solely through internet articles and interviews. I consider those types of things to be of entertainment value, rather than of an educational one.
That being said, as far as my opinion on vaccines are concerned as with any medical intervention, it’s risk vs. benefit. I have never gotten a flu vaccine of any kind, I’m not in a high risk category. But if I were to be mauled by a rabid animal tomorrow, you bet your sweet ass I’d accept a rabies vaccination.
Good lord man, I’m not ‘away with the fairies,’ as you put it.
draust said,
February 20, 2010 at 10:36 pm
Fair enough, Diana. I repeat, though, that it is transparently clear to any scientifically knowledgeable person reading his ramblings that Chopra is away with the fairies.
Re. credentials they are “necessary but not sufficient”, as the saying is. Andrew Wakefield of MMR infamy has a medical degree and passed the exams for Membership of the Royal Colleges of Surgery and of Pathology, But that still didn’t make him a good doctor, or a even a passable scientist. Or stop him being, to quote the General Medical Council “dishonest”.
“Risk vs. benefit” is right for vaccinations. It is just that, for all the common childhood vaccinations in modern use, the equation is overwhelmingly in favour of benefit. That is why the NHS in the UK has them on the schedule.
As to ‘flu vaccine, the policy in the UK is precisely to offer it to those in the high-risk categories.
Cybertiger said,
February 21, 2010 at 8:26 am
““Risk vs. benefit” is right for vaccinations. It is just that, for all the common childhood vaccinations in modern use, the equation is overwhelmingly in favour of benefit. That is why the NHS in the UK has them on the schedule. ”
Typical cobblers, typical Droopy tosh.
“Andrew Wakefield of MMR infamy has a medical degree and passed the exams for Membership of the Royal Colleges of Surgery and of Pathology, But that still didn’t make him a good doctor, or a even a passable scientist. Or stop him being, to quote the General Medical Council “dishonest”.”
You’re pompous prat, Droopy Draust, the worst of the worst.
jdc325 said,
February 21, 2010 at 12:01 pm
“I never said I agreed with everything Dr. Chopra had to say, my point was only that if you are going to criticize, then you must use the entire quote.”
If I had quoted the entire transcript this blog post would have been so long as to be unreadable. I quoted excerpts from the transcript and linked back to the original website that carried the full interview and transcript so that people could check for themselves the veracity of my quotes, whether they fairly represented Chopra’s views, and the context in which his comments were made.
“it’s easy to criticize when you don’t read the interview, and take words out of context.”
I read the whole interview, and it was still easy to criticise. Please point to where I have taken Chopra’s views out of context.
“everyone is entitled to an opinion, but when you misrepresent what someone has said, or accomplished, your point becomes moot.”
Where have I misrepresented Chopra’s views?
Diana said,
February 21, 2010 at 10:03 pm
jdc325:
I didn’t say you needed to quote the entire transcript. That’s obviously not possible in a format such as this. What I mean by the entire quote is you take a portion of what he said on the topic, and leave out another portion of it. It’s not a complete thought. Dr Chopra’s English grammar leaves quite a bit to be desired…I think we can all agree on that. But you have to look at all of it to understand what he’s trying to say.
Let’s take the Bird-flu quote:
DC: “Absolutely, that’s why I call it a hoax. I can forgive President Bush. He’s a politician,
but the people who are advising presidents, prime ministers, governments, and the
WHO are talking about the same without even batting an eyelash. Bird flu is coming
from wild birds, which is what they were saying. Birds have lived on the earth for 65
million years, and so have their viruses including the bird flu. If bird flu was killing poultry
or birds, then all those birds and poultry should have died by now. There should be no
birds on Earth. If there are, they should be immune. How is it that the bird flu virus
remains in the birds? Obviously, viruses remain; there is an ecosystem. There are
viruses, bacteria, and other species, and this is the cycle of life. This is how it works.
Once in a while a disease comes; some people and animals get sick, some die, and
then the whole system keeps on going again. These are the cycles of outbreaks and so on. ”
a whole different viewpoint from the one you portrayed. I believe what he’s referring to here is the information being spread by the Government and media about the ‘Bird Flu’ was inaccurate… because as you can see above, he goes on to say:
‘Obviously, viruses remain; there is an ecosystem. There are
viruses, bacteria, and other species, and this is the cycle of life. This is how it works.
Once in a while a disease comes; some people and animals get sick, some die, and
then the whole system keeps on going again. These are the cycles of outbreaks and so on. ”
meaning in essence that he believed that the portion that you quoted was ridiculous and untrue.
That is what I meant. When you leave out the first and last portion of the statement, it is an entirely different viewpoint altogether. I mean I think the guy is definitely kind of nutty, but it looks bad when you pick and choose what suits your viewpoint.
I’m curious as to what you thought about the food portion of the interview?
Science-Based Medicine » More Breast Cancer Awareness Month pseudoscience from (who else?) Joe Mercola said,
October 24, 2011 at 6:59 am
[...] safety. Since then, he appears to have drifted further and further into dubious medicine, including anti-vaccine views (Chopra has even said that “no flu vaccine has ever worked”) and crankery about [...]
Science-Based Medicine » The Greater Good: Pure, unadulterated anti-vaccine propaganda masquerading as a “balanced” documentary said,
November 7, 2011 at 7:59 am
[...] (who is an all purpose medical crank and, like many all purpose medical cranks, anti-vaccine), Dr. Shiv Chopra (who is anti-vaccine to the core), Dr. Richard Deth (who was an expert witness for the plaintiffs [...]
Alexander said,
December 2, 2012 at 2:23 am
U did fail my friend