The dose makes the poison

One of the most fundamental concepts in pharmacology and/or toxicology is the dose-response curve, which gives a graphic representation of how the human body responds to varying doses of chemicals.  Something that is often poorly understood by laypeople, but becomes obvious if you study the topic at any length, is that there are some substances (e.g. lead) which are unsafe at any dose, and others that are necessary at low doses but toxic at high ones (e.g. table salt).  Further complicating the matter is that some substances bioaccumulate -- small doses over a long period of time can cause a toxic increase in the body tissues.  Elemental mercury, for example, doesn't get excreted readily, so even small amounts over a long period can result in harm (giving rise to "mad hatter syndrome" if sufficient quantities are ingested).  Others are water-soluble and quickly cleared by the kidneys, so it takes a great deal more to result in harm (e.g. vitamin C).

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So the subject isn't simple.  But if you're going to read anything on toxins and (especially) vaccines, you damn well better do your homework, or you're likely to get suckered by articles like the incredibly bullshit-dense "The 7 Most Dangerous Vaccines Injected Into Humans and Exactly Why They Cause More Harm Than Good" that appeared over at Natural News a few days ago.

The article, written by S. D. Wells, would be the same tired old "chemicals = bad" nonsense trotted out by damn near everyone in the alt-med world, from Vani "Food Babe" Hari to Mike "Health Ranger" Adams, except for the fact that Wells starts going into specifics about which chemicals in vaccines are bad, why, and at which doses.  Which is unfortunate for Wells, because any time these people slide over into analysis of the facts, they immediately start making claims that anyone who passed high school chemistry would know immediately are false.

Let's start with my favorite line in the whole thing, which is how the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine contains sodium chloride, which "raises blood pressure and inhibits muscle contraction and growth."  Yes, sodium chloride, i.e., plain old table salt.  He also tells us that another vaccine, Gardasil, contains this dreaded toxin at nearly 10 micrograms.  If you can imagine.

For comparison purposes, the Recommended Daily Allowance for salt is 4 grams.  To save you from doing the math, this means that the Gardasil vaccine contains 1/400,000th of the salt you ordinarily get from your food.

But in the words of the infomercial, "Wait!  There's more!"  Gardasil also contains 35 micrograms of sodium borate, which Wells tells us is a chemical used to kill cockroaches.  What he doesn't tell us is that borate is another micronutrient in the human diet, and is only toxic at huge doses -- at least huge compared to what's in Gardasil.  Again consulting the Recommended Daily Allowance tables, the RDA for boron is 1 to 6 milligrams -- about a hundred times what you get from Gardasil.

Wells doesn't just mislead and/or lie outright about the chemical constituents of vaccines, he lies about their side effects.  Gardasil, we're told, has horrific results; he says, "many girls who get the HPV vaccine beginning at age 9 for a sexually transmitted disease (diseases they dont [sic] have) go into immediate anaphylactic shock and some into comas and die."  Which is simply untrue; a study in 2012 of 189,000 girls who had been inoculated with Gardasil showed that the most common side effect was same-day syncope (i.e., they fainted), and even that was uncommon.  If that's not enough, a study of a million girls in Denmark was so side-effect free that the authors concluded that there was “no evidence supporting associations between exposure to qHPV vaccine and autoimmune, neurological, and venous thromboembolic adverse events."

But back to Wells.  Another horror he trots out is monosodium glutamate in the MMR vaccine.  If you're wondering if this is the same chemical that's used for a flavoring in Chinese food, yup, that's it.  It's also the sodium salt of one of the most common naturally occurring amino acids, and is found in tomatoes and cheese, not to mention General Tso's chicken, in quantities that are orders of magnitude more than are in the vaccination.  Then we have polysorbate 80, which Wells claims causes sterility even though it's used as an emulsifier in ice cream and a study on rats who were fed polysorbate 80 at a quantity of 0.5% of their body weight per day showed no adverse effects whatsoever.

I did get a good belly laugh at Wells's horrified statement that the swine flu vaccine contains "inactivated H1N1 virus."  After I finished laughing, I shouted at the computer screen, "How the fuck do you think vaccines are made, you nimrod?  What do you think they contain?  Holy water and magic berries?"

Then we have the wizened old claims about vaccines and mercury, even though the only vaccines that still contain thimerosal (a mercury-based stabilizer) are multivalent flu vaccines, and the stabilizer breaks down quickly to ethylmercury which is quickly cleared from the body by the kidneys.  (A lot of the confusion over mercury toxicity comes from mistaking this compound for methylmercury, which is toxic, bioaccumulates, and causes progressive nerve damage.)

And so on and so forth.  It's the same old, same old, really, but this was such an amazingly dumb example of anti-vaxx rhetoric that I thought it worth debunking.  As for me, I'm going to go look up the dose-response curve for bullshit, because I think reading Wells's article may have given me a fatal dose.

Don't drink the water

So, in our last installment of Learning About Chemistry From People Whose Last Science Class Was In The Seventh Grade, we found out that breathing air causes all of the diseases known to man.  Today we will hear about how drinking water is slowly killing us all.

Man, with all of the air we breathe and water we drink, it's a surprise that the human race isn't extinct by now.

This latest sermon from the Church of Wingnuttery ties into the whole anti-fluoridation movement.  You probably are aware of the controversy surrounding fluoridation of water to prevent tooth decay; despite multiple peer-reviewed studies that have shown that this is safe and effective (read two of them here and here), there are people who think that fluoridation is basically the government's way of slowly murdering us all.  (Of course the government wants to kill all of its citizens.  Don't make me use the word "sheeple" in your general direction.)  Further, because of the presence of fluoride minerals in soils and bedrock, fresh water is naturally fluoridated, with a concentration averaging around 0.2 ppm.  Seawater has concentrations ten times higher than that, and aquatic animals seem to be able to tolerate it just fine.

So, fluoride is pretty safe, in low doses, and will save you the cost and trauma of multiple trips to the dentist.  But don't take my word for it.  Don't take the scientists' word for it, either.  No, instead, you should trust the likes of "April," who wrote an article for the website Starseed411 called "How Does Your Drinking Water Affect You?" that should be inscribed forever in the annals of Making Shit Up.

April starts out with a chemistry lesson:

We have all known all our lives that our drinkng [sic] water supply is H20, 2 parts hydrogen and 1 part oxygen. There is an old book called Natural Philosophy by: G.P. Quakenbos, A.M., entered according to act of Congress in the year 1859, by G.P. Quakenbos, the Clerk Office of The District Court of The United States, for the Southern District of New York. This book states that towards the end of the 18th century water was found to be a compound substance made up of a combination of oxygen and hydrogen, combined in the proportion of 1 to 8. Meaning 1 part oxygen and 8 parts hydrogen. H80.

I knew it!  I knew there was something wrong with my well water!  It just isn't hydrogen-y enough.

So, anyway, if water is supposed to be eight parts hydrogen to one part oxygen, how did it end up as familiar old H₂O?

The answer, of course, is fluoridation:

Fluoride was infused into the water to destroy and remove 6 parts hydrogen. Our water supply affects us by hardening our pineal gland, by age 12 the pineal gland is calicified [sic], and by adulthood it is atrophied.

That nasty old fluoride!  Stealing away 75% of the hydrogen from our water, and hoarding it all for itself!  And making our pineal glands go all... crusty.  Terrifying!  But what effects does this have, and what can we do about it?

The pineal gland (third eye) is the seed of our soul and our connection to the spiritual, physical world, and higher frequencies. This gland is our power source. The pineal gland is like a built in wireless transmitter. when the pineal gland becomes awaken, learning abilitys are heightened; enhanced creativity; intuition; triggered psychic abilities, and experience bliss. Fluoride in the drinking water seals these capabilitys [sic]. You can awaken your pineal gland through eliminating bad sugars, processed foods, and fluoride from your body.

Well, that explains why I've experienced so little bliss lately.

Now, lest you think that "April" is just one aberrant wacko, take a look at the highly scientific editorial "Water is Poison" (gist: fluoride rots your bones, destroys your immune system, and is being used by the government for purposes of "eugenics"), not to mention "Fluoride: The Lunatic Drug" (which reads like a compendium of anti-scientific craziness ranking right up there with the best of David Icke).  The upshot: fluoride doesn't prevent cavities.  It causes cancer, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's disease, and kidney problems, not to mention making you "stupid, docile, and subservient."

In any case, let's clear a few things up.  Fluoride, in the miniscule doses you'd get from either naturally or artificially fluoridated water, is completely harmless, and has little other effect than strengthening your tooth enamel.  This has been repeatedly demonstrated to the satisfaction of panels of scientists trained in human physiology.  Of course it's poisonous in large doses; so are a great many other things, including caffeine, aspirin, and table salt.  If you don't understand how this works, there's this thing called a dose-response curve that you might want to investigate that will hopefully clarify the point.

Also, it bears mention that if fluoride is as horrible as these people claim, there should be a fairly strong correlation between living in a community that fluoridates its water and terrible health.  So, take a look at this map, from the National Center for Health Statistics:

Percentage of communities, state-by-state, that fluoridate their water

So, from this map, we should expect the greatest number of sane and healthy people should be in states like New Hampshire, and that the citizens of New Mexico should be... worried.  But take a look at this map of cancer incidence, from the Center for Disease Control:

Do the words "no correlation" mean anything to you?  And none of the other diseases the anti-fluoridation crowd wants to attribute to fluoride in the water -- Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, type-2 diabetes, and kidney failure -- show any greater degree of correlation.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find maps showing the incidence of being "stupid, docile, and subservient."  Maybe the Center for Disease Control isn't putting that data out there because it's too damning, I don't know.

Anyhow, that's about all I have time for today.  It's amazing to me that there are people who swallow this stuff (figuratively speaking; I hear that anti-science nonsense is toxic in high doses!).  But judging by the controversy that erupts every time a community puts fluoridation up to the vote, apparently there are a great many people who aren't swayed by research, and instead are convinced by alarmist rhetoric.  I suppose I can't do much about that, but I do hope that they have their dental insurance paid up.