I didn't intend this to be a discussion of childhood death and disease, but it's actually quite interesting.

According to The Decline of Childhood Mortality, by Kenneth Hill, Department of Population Dynamics, School of Hygiene and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University:

Note that these numbers are for death by first birthday. The report goes on to discuss childhood mortality for various periods and geographical regions. The older records are not as reliable as modern data, and what data does exist probably ignores the poor.

Yet the US stands at 180 out of 224, in infant mortatity.

That's a list on which you don't want to be number one.

Edit: From your link:

I did not know that.

Yes, but 180 ain't so hot either.

What does any of this have to do with bad astronomy?

Thimerosal was voluntarily removed from childhood vaccines ten years ago. The only childhood vaccine still containing it seems to be a Sanofi Pasteur dip-tet, for which there are several other options.

The removal of Thimerosal from childhood vaccines had no impact on climbing autism rates in the US and EU.

Here is the table of which vaccines contain Thimerosal.

Incorrect. See pages 125-139 of the book you purchased, since you seem to have forgotten. The data from the handful of studies you are alluding to were examined in wholly illogical (at worst, fraudulent) ways--for example, one study looked at the numbers by year of diagnosis, rather than year of birth, despite the obvious fact that it was children born after a certain year who did or not not have the thimerosal, and when you re-graph the very same data they were looking at, the reduction in gain after Thimerosal was removed becomes clear. Not a true reduction in cases, of course, because as it has been explained repeatedly, Thimerosal was only one small piece of the probem, but a reduction in the upward slope of the graph.

I'll assume that by "interesting" you mean "still nowhere near my completely bullshit number of 30-40%." For fuck's sake, the death rate for soldiers in the Civil War was only 25%.

At any rate, it's true, infant mortality has been vastly improved by things like pre-natal care, neonatal intensive care, and even things like surgery in utero. That has nothing to do with the rates of infectious disease, or the vaccinations intended to prevent them.

IIRC - Many countries have different definitions of "live birth" which skews the numbers.

Not that, cf. I meant it's interesting to see how people react when someone doesn't agree with them.

I didn't realize a thread about Bad Astronomy would get anyone so excited.

From today's post regarding testing of a cruise missile in 1986:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/ba..._testblast.jpg

Yeah, that's what Penn was doing when he screamed obscenities and flung props around the room. He was merely disagreeing.

You gonna cop to the utter ridiculousness of your made-up statistics, or just keep letting it slide?

Sorry, cf. I thought I addressed it in post 16.

But the other point was that I don't think they were trying to be precise in the number of bowling pins that were knocked down.

If you are back participating in the threads, Clod, we have unfinished business. I need you to watch the final Desiree Jennings video, which I posted here. It occurred only a few days after you declared your retirement from the threads.

After you watch it, tell me once again that you believe she was injured by a vaccine and had dystonia.

http://cellar.org/2010/autismcases2.png

This is a graph of new autism cases in the US. Note that the graph was prepared by Thoughtful House on the basis of CDC data. I have removed the years that mark the horizontal axis. Please point to the year Thimerosal was taken out of childhood vaccines.

Point is, "a reduction in the upward slope of the graph" is not a very interesting correlation.

Oh I know, I wasn't suggesting they were, I just included the study to point out that it shouldn't be assumed that this rare mitochondrial disorder that makes some children susceptible shouldn't be assumed to occur naturally. It may, it may not, or any combo thereof.
I realize that study doesn't prove anything, but it's a jumping off point. Some things that are ingredients in some other things we inject into humans can cause harm we don't at first realize. Ie. pregnant women receiving flu shots might injure their fetus in a way that only shows up later when they are vaccinated (or stressed in some other way).