“a nutritional consultation cannot provide diagnosis of medical conditions. You must consult your doctor if you are experiencing symptoms that give you cause for concern.”

A large number of nutrition therapist websites have that disclaimer. I am not convinced they actually mean it. Given how often it comes up I get the impression BANT or the ION have told them to do it to protect themselves. Therefore when something goes wrong and they are sued they can just say: “As my website and promotional literature makes clear I do not treat medical conditions.”

Kind of makes you wonder what they do actually do other than promoting supplements and stupid diets. It would appear that when things go wrong it is the fault of the client ….. how very professional.

It is disappointing that these tedious tactics are so predictable – and predictably used in a disappointing manner.

1. “Only mention competing interests when you are referring to people who disagree with you.”
It is amazing the lengths that some people will go to to perceive competing interests for people who are pro-MMR, for instance. The same people will ignore any genuine competing interest (however blatant) when it is someone anti-vaccination. Holford ignores Halvorsen’s CI for vaccines and his own for curcumin / turmeric, but invents a CI for David Colquhoun. Some posters on the JABS forum are able to perceive CIs (whether they actually exist or not) for any scientist who dares to point out that the MMR vaccine has a good safety profile, but ignore Wakefield’s CIs. I think “one-eyed” just about covers it.

2. “No matter how many studies there are, of whatever size and quality – not to mention type – pick one that suits your argument. You aren’t trying to get to the truth here – you’re trying to win an argument.”
If a meta-analysis providing information on 228,000 subjects fails to support your hypothesis / prejudice [delete as appropriate], simply look for another study – and keep going til you find one that suits. Whether it has 110,000 subjects or 11,000 [I suspect 11 subjects would not be too few for some...].

Do you have any idea of how much the Holford-Halvorsen axis of anti-vax proposed schedule of single vaccinations would cost…

Short answer – somewhere between £1200-2000 per child, depending on the vaccines. It might be as ‘low’ as £250 or so if parents decided to settle for single measles vaccines but no mumps or rubella – and to a la carte the remainder from the NHS. Tricky to tell. Halvorsen’s single vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella pricelist and for single or small substitutes for combination vaccines.

I’ll take a look and try to come up with some answers.

the new 5-in-1 vaccine has polio and Hib added, so the load on a child’s immune system is further increased.

You really are up against it aren’t you when every sentence contains something wrong or objectionable. No mention of Dr Paul Offit’s calculations about the number of antigens that a healthy baby can cope with at one time?

A more practical way to determine the diversity of the immune response would be to estimate the number of vaccines to which a child could respond at one time. If we assume that 1) approximately 10 ng/mL of antibody is likely to be an effective concentration of antibody per epitope (an immunologically distinct region of a protein or polysaccharide),39 2) generation of 10 ng/mL requires approximately 10^3 B-cells per mL,39 3) a single B-cell clone takes about 1 week to reach the 10^3 progeny B-cells required to secrete 10 ng/mL of antibody39 (therefore, vaccine-epitope-specific immune responses found about 1 week after immunization can be generated initially from a single B-cell clone per mL), 4) each vaccine contains approximately 100 antigens and 10 epitopes per antigen (ie, 10^3 epitopes), and 5) approximately 10^7 B cells are present per mL of circulating blood,39 then each infant would have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10 000 vaccines at any one time (obtained by dividing 10^7 B cells per mL by 10^3 epitopes per vaccine). ..

Of course, most vaccines contain far fewer than 100 antigens (for example, the hepatitis B, diphtheria, and tetanus vaccines each contain 1 antigen), so the estimated number of vaccines to which a child could respond is conservative. But using this estimate, we would predict that if 11 vaccines were given to infants at one time, then about 0.1% of the immune system would be “used up”.

Do you have any idea of how much the Holford-Halvorsen axis of anti-vax proposed schedule of single vaccinations would cost – overlooking travel expenses etc.?

a nutritional consultation cannot provide diagnosis of medical conditions. You must consult your doctor if you are experiencing symptoms that give you cause for concern.

I wonder if Holford – and his associates at companies such as YorkTest – would concur?