Lactose Is a Toxic Additive?

I'm convinced that most newspapers outside of maybe The New York Times choose their selection of letters to the editor by what strikes them as hilarious rather than praiseworthy.

The range of comments in these editors prove that we are a diverse public, to stick with mild understatement.

Although opinions on politics, religion, education, and urban issues are frequently as naive and misguided as children's letters to Santa, the ones that truly concern me are the ones that state as fact things that are known to be untrue or are simply demented. Why newspapers legitimize these letters when they obviously have others they could print instead baffles me.

Case in point. Here's the Letters to the Editor page for the Chesterfield [VA] Observer for September 17, 2008.

Although we continue to hear the mantra [that there is] "no proven link" between vaccines and these disorders/diseases, conversely, there's no conclusive evidence there is not a link. A partial list of the toxic additives/adjuvants vaccines contain: lab-altered viruses and bacteria, aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde, phenoxyethanol, gluteraldehyde, sodium chloride, MSG, gelatin, lactose, hydrochloric acid, sorbitol, antibiotics, aluminum sulfate, sodium borate, sodium acetate, hydrogen peroxide, yeast protein, egg albumin, bovine and human serum albumin.

An adjuvant, by the way, is defined as "pharmacological or immunological agents that modify the effect of other agents (e.g., drugs, vaccines) while having few if any direct effects when given by themselves."

Adjuvants are not the same as inactive ingredients, since those are presumed not to modify or affect any properties of the drug involved.

Lactose is not a toxic additive. It is not an adjuvant. Neither are many of the other items contained in that list. They are merely inactive ingredients, helpful for getting the vaccine properly into the system, but nothing more.

That list sure sounds scary if you don't know that. I think it is deliberately misleading, deliberately designed to sound scary. Where does it come from? The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), which - despite the name - is simply an anti-vaccine propaganda mill.

The list of toxic additives and adjuvants is taken from the NVIC's Vaccine Safety Bulletin. Except in the original, the list is labeled simply "excipients or ingredients." Excipients are defined as "an inactive substance used as a carrier for the active ingredients of a medication." In other words, inactive ingredients. That is not at all the same thing as an adjuvant. Nor is the word "toxic" to be found anywhere in that brochure. I contend that the substitution of loaded, inflammatory, and scary words was deliberate. They sound scientific. They have exact meanings. They have a purpose. But that purpose is not objective information.

Don't be fooled by propaganda for any cause. Anti-scientific propaganda is especially bad for you. It's almost always not scientific itself, although it may be designed to sound that way. And it's almost always wrong.