If I'm going to
be able to speak intelligently about a raw diet to someone else, it has
to be based on more than just anecdotal evidence.

After awhile, after talking to thousands of people who feed like I do it
becomes more than "just anecdotal" evidence.


Unfortunately this isn't true. (It it were, it would make things *so* much
easier). The internet is a great way to create a selection bias. Like minded
people tend to stick together.

Lets say (for the sake of argument) that 1 in 10,000 (that is 0.01%) dogs
given a parvo vaccine develop a severe (we'll even say fatal, as we're
talking purely hypothetical here) reaction.

Lets say there are 50,000,000 dogs in the US. That means that we will have
5000 people in the US (in the course of a year) who can make a definite
claim that the vaccine killed there dog. (again we're talking totally
hypothetical here). Of these 5000, lets imagine that 75% of them are hopping
mad about it. So they get on the internet, and start looking around to see
if they are alone. They find each other, and it seems like *A LOT* of people
are finding the same thing.

This is a tragedy they say. The big pharmaceutical companies are *HIDING*
this information. He didn't need this vaccine anyways, and now he's dead,
and its all because of money grabbing vets and big pharmaceutical companies.

Now you might be asking yourself what's the problem with this? 5000 dogs is
a lot of dogs isn't it? If a vaccine is *KILLING* 5000 dogs every year, as a
concerned dog owner, I want to know about it.

Now, lets say all these 5000 people that year go out, and decide that decide
that they won't vaccinate their future dogs ever again, against anything.
Lets imagine that 1 in 1000 of these dogs gets infected with parvo (this is
a really rough number, but not totally out of thin air). This means that 5
out of our 5000 'anti-vaccination' people are potentially 'reformed'. We
have 4995 people left who say "Vaccinations are EVIL, they killed my dog".
They jump up and down, and scream about it, and try to get other people to
agree with them (and convince some of this 'fact'). The 'anecdotal evidence'
is that thousands of people are screaming, and no one is listening.

Assume these people are successful now. Lets say of the 50,000,000 dogs in
the US, none of them get vaccinated... against anything. Now lets imagine
that 1 in 1000 of these dogs get parvo. You still aren't very likely to get
parvo (although in a situation like this, the odds would likely go up, but
we'll assume it doesn't, at least initially increase). Now we have 50,000
sick dogs (many of whom will die) as opposed to 5000 without the vaccine.

Still, anecdotally, there are 49,950,000 happy dogs out there, but there are
more dead dogs. Anecdotally, there are still lots of happy dog owners out
there, who say that they have 'scored big against big pharmaceutical'.

But which is the better outcome?

Before you say anything, yes these numbers are totally made up (for the most
part), but I hope they illustrate why I need systematic, controlled research
as opposed to annecdotal evidence.

Dale