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What the Papers Don't Say About Vaccines
jamie tips an article in The Guardian's "Bad Science" column which highlights recent media coverage of the MMR vaccine. A story circulated in the past week about the death of a young child, which the parents blamed on the vaccine. When the coroner later found that it had nothing to do with the child's death, there was a followup in only one of the six papers who had covered the story.
"Does it stop there? No. Amateur physicians have long enjoyed speculating that MMR and other vaccinations are somehow 'harmful to the immune system' and responsible for the rise in conditions such as asthma and hay fever. Doubtless they must have been waiting some time for evidence to appear. ... Measles cases are rising. Middle class parents are not to blame, even if they do lack rhetorical panache when you try to have a discussion with them about it. They have been systematically and vigorously misled by the media, the people with access to all the information, who still choose, collectively, between themselves, so robustly that it might almost be a conspiracy, to give you only half the facts."
No one is interested in reading positive news like the fact the vaccine isn't actually harmful so there's no money in printing it.
When it comes to something that may seriously harm your child, whether it be vaccines or the illnesses the vaccines prevent against, it is your responsibility as a parent to not go off half-cocked and to make extremely sure that you have all the facts before you make a decision regarding the welfare of your child. If you're not up to that responsibility, then you shouldn't have custody of your kids. Plain and simple.
*Father*
Since when is this nebulous entity called "the media" the only group that "has access to all the information"? If people decide to shirk responsibility for their own lives, and blindly accept conventional wisdom, that is their choice and they have freely made it, whether or not they consciously acknowledge it.
...to read the last sentence.
They have been systematically and vigorously misled by the media, the people with access to all the information, who still choose, collectively, between themselves, so robustly that it might almost be a conspiracy, to give you only half the facts.
Six commas...
I know this is going to be viewed somewhat as flamebait, but to put it bluntly, doctors are mechanics for the human body. No more, no less. The vast, overwhelming majority of doctors have little to no true scientific training, any more so than a business person or Joe the Plumber. Even those doctors doing active medical research have limited scientific faculties IMO, having heard about this stereotype from others, read about on the internet, and dealt with it myself. Therefore, when it comes to scientific interpretation, anything coming from a doctor's mouth should be taken with at least a grain of salt, if not a shakerful.
Just gotta give up some respect to Ben Goldacre.
In the face of the standard shrill anti-science which permeates western media, he's a guy who tells it straight. A high class myth-busters, if you like.
A geek. The man.
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
"Make extremely sure that you have all the facts"? I'm a continuous skeptic about everything, and from what I've read, I'm 99.99% sure that autism and vaccines are not linked in any way - but the cause of autism is not known, so it would be irresponsible for me to run out and declare that I'm 100% sure. I'm not sure, and neither are you, and if you claim you're 100% sure, then you're being religious instead of scientific.
A parent who is less sure, say 90% sure, now has to balance the effects and probabilities that on the one hand, that the kid will get the almost-never-lethal-or-disabling measles; and on the other hand a minute chance that the kid will get the disabling malady of autism. It's their kid, so I find it unsurprising that parents are simply skipping the vaccines as long as there's the shadow of a doubt.
The only way to get the parents back on vaccine schedules is to determine the cause of autism.
It's a societal issue. Once a critical portion of the population is not immunized against a disease, then a widespread epidemic is more possible and likely. This could have severe economic impacts that go far beyond the goals of individual parents. This is why most immunization is mandatory unless there is a specific religious or health related exception. People invoking these exceptions trivially are endangering the functioning civil order. These vaccines have proven to be quite safe -- and, even if there is a risk of infection (say for example, with live polio), if the negative side-effect rate in the population is low-enough, its still something that should be mandated in order to ensure that the population as a whole is resilient to some of the Big Nasties.
You must be new here, for if you were not, you would know that us, the readers of slashdot, enjoy reading summaries which, when read slowly and carefully, provide some great meaning that, fortunately, could not have been presented to us without all the deliberately, refreshingly placed commas, all of which brighten our sad, lonely days in these dank, windowless basements which, for many of us, have been our homes for decades and, comma-willing, will continue to be for many more decades to come, for we would be distraught should our parents, who gave birth to us, of course, were to boot us out into the "real world", the simple notion of which frightens us beyond belief, really.
Sincerely, yours,
Reader, who is anonymous, for various reasons, none of which concern you, the reader of this comment.
Remember when power lines were giving our children cancer?
I'm glad they fixed that.
most urticarias do start suddenly and the reason is never found.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Recently here in NY we had a law passed to take the mercury out of vaccines (diff. kind of mercury used and not in dangerous amounts). The mother who they put on the news to hail the bill was, like me, a parent of an autistic child. However, the reason she gave for the bill was that "infants' immune systems are not well formed enough to fight the mercury". I was laughing so hard I nearly ripped something. That's what's wrong. You protest so hard you get a bill passed and go on the news to defend it, and you lack any basic understanding of the human body. If all these people think the vaccines are harmful, so be it. But I wish they would gain some basic understanding of the body first.
The age old debate about whether the flu shot can give people the flu. And the odd reaction to other components...I'm looking at you, thimerosal. Most of the discussions tend to be more heat than light.
My opinion is the fear is far greater than the actual risk would indicate. Even if the reaction rate was extremely small, litigation and the internet are going insure the stories spread far and wide. Combine a very small number of actual problems with a lot of publicity, add a dash of anecdotal evidence and I think the fear factor of vaccinations is over done.
Complicating the discussions are the number of times we've been collectively lied to by big business and big pharma. Even if they were telling the truth, we have reasonable grounds to remain suspicious. And the Bush administration installing an incompetent religious frootloop as head of the FDA hasn't exactly inspired public trust that the safety of medications and vaccines are being adequately monitored. It's easy to suspect that oversight of medication safety is every bit as good as the SEC's oversight of the financial markets.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
When parents of my pediatric patients say they're skipping vaccines, they talk more about what they read on the Internet than what they see on television or read in the newspaper. The second most common source of information cited about how vaccines are dangerous is "people [they've] talked to." Only a small percentage make a distinction about specific vaccines; most who refuse the MMR refuse everything. So, do I have to wait until we prove another negative - autism isn't caused by DTaP - to prevent common (and sometimes fatal) whooping cough? Proving that the MMR vaccine doesn't cause autism (NEJM 347:1477-1482) hasn't been enough for my vaccine refusers so far. This is a parental issue. I think the solution is basic education in the scientific method and statistics for everyone, beginning in elementary school.
Well, I'd suggest not, but there are plenty of people who take their advice from 'alternative' therapies, from the internet, from their religion and from spam email.
Of course with so many of these things it's what people want to hear: People would like there to be magical cures. People like a conspiracy - to feel that they know something everyone else doesn't - such as that MMR is actually an overall negative and hence they won't have their kids vaccinated.
The mercury was removed years ago because of people flipping over it. Kids feeling like crap after a vaccine will happen regardless of what you put in it, because of the very nature of what it does (it makes your immune system go nuts over it, which is what makes you feel like crap... like what happens when you a have a freagin cold). Oversimplifying here, but thats about it.
Spacing them out may or may not have benefits, I'm not arguing that, but its not the mercury or whatever that makes your kid go poof after a vaccine.
Consider the story about the dangers of germ-free environments. Specifically, excessive attempts to elminate germs can, in addition to creating super-bugs, cause our immune system to malfunction. Without the constant exercisng of our immune system by germs, our immune system goes into overdrive by generating an immune response to things (e.g., pollen) that are not germs.
The above story appeared for a brief moment in the news and then disappeared. Meanwhile, the quantity of advertisements for anti-bacterial products (containing triclosan) has exploded. The public prefers to watch pseudo-science commericials instead of genuine-science news stories.
The anti-science public does not care about science. If the public did care about science, it would have dramatically reduced its purchases of anti-bacterial products (thus protecting the health and lives of Americans). So, when the public does not care about science, science-related stories appear briefly in the news media and then quickly fade away in favor of stories about, say, Paris Hilton.
Usually, one can rely on the cock-up theory. However, in the case of the MMR vaccine there really was a conspiracy.
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/bc1114td.html
Because such self-reported anecdotes are not relevant in a proper statistical analysis.
If there were a correlation to be found, then the epidemiologists would be able to find it just based on the fact that a significant number of children came in with cases of hives shortly after coming in for their MMRs. Your records would support that, based simply on the objective facts that you had the MMR on date x, and came down with hives on date x+n. That's all the evidence your son's case can provide.
Your armchair analysis on a sample size of one is not evidence, and has no place in a medical record.
The only way to get the parents back on vaccine schedules is to determine the cause of autism.
Um, no. That's not the only way.
There are two public interests here. One is preventing the outbreak of infectious diseases. The other is protecting vulnerable members of our society who are unable to defend themselves against their parents' superstition and ignorance. For either or both reasons, we can and should use the law to force parents to vaccinate their children.
Parents are prosecuted for withholding other forms of medical care from their children. For example, 11-year-old Madeline Kara Neumann died from diabetes while her parents prayed over her, and those parents are now charged, as they should be, with reckless homicide. Why not meet deliberate failure to vaccinate a child with, say, a charge of child endangerment?
Here's my reasoning: Once in a while, an article covers a subject that I am knowledgeable about. Almost always, I will find something wrong in the article. Sometimes it's just a minor mistake or a gross over-simplification. More often than not, however, the article gets it hopelessly wrong and completely misinforms the reader.
I can only conclude that the same happens in articles that cover stuff I know nothing about.
So, I pulled the number in the headline out of my ass. Kinda like the average newspaper author.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
We may not know what causes autism, but we do know what causes measles, and whooping cough, and we know that both of these can cause death. We also know how to prevent them. Also there is a bigger connection with autism rates and cable television expansion, and the rise of the internet, I hope you think carefully about letting either cable television or a high speed internet connection in your house.
Correlation != causation. There are data that suggest that a moist climate can bring about autism, or at least many came from most climates. My brother has autism sprectral disorder. Yes, we lived in a climate with 44+ inches of rain a year. So? I think a number of my family members going back generations had touches of Aspbergers. Is it in the genes? Can autism changes to the brain be triggered somehow, or by something?
Do we know if the MMR vaccine has quality control problems? That maybe there's more to the MMR than what it's supposed to prevent? Do we know any of this stuff?
No. We do not. It's sadly anecdotal except that we know more about ASD than ever before, in terms of post-diagnosis treatment. But because it's a spectral disorder, there are many conditions and variants to consider.
I had the measles. Both kinds. Didn't die. Mumps? Yes. No after-effects. But a classmate of mine had the mumps and nearly died; lost vision and hearing, and subsequently had lots of cardio issues to deal with from a damaged heart. Rubella? Haven't heard of a case in years. But I gave MMRs to both my children. They turned out ok. What might happen if I had a different batch? Dunno. Currently, the science behind all of this is very immature.
I vote for MMRs and additional research on all of the issues, especially drug dose QA and QC.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
What amazes me is their complete inability to compare risk factors (tho this is much the same as Schneier talks about re perceived risk).
Chances of a mild reaction to whooping cough vaccine runs somewhere around 1 in 10,000, with the chance of a fatal reaction about 1 in 1 million (but in that case, the child's immune system is a bomb waiting to go off, and sooner or later something will get 'em).
Chances of death if the child contracts whooping cough: about 1 in 4 with modern hospitalization, or 1 in 2 without.
To me, that's a no-brainer.
The same bullshit is permeating the dog breeder community too -- "Vaccinosis" is now blamed for everything that can possibly go wrong! How about not breeding animals whose immune systems can't handle the trivial stimulation of a vaccine? And if they can't handle vaccine, how on earth are they expected to handle a realworld exposure, at hundreds or thousands of times the strength of vaccine??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Ben Goldacre is actually an excellent journalist, a phrase that is increasingly becoming oxymoronic. He's happy exposing the BS of the big pharma companies, the alternative medicine quacks, and most importantly the media themselves.
In a media filled with "science correspondents" who either mindlessly reprint press releases or scaremonger to drive sales this is a breath of fresh air.
I really wish I could attribute the ignorant scaremongering of the media on issues like the MMR vaccine to the fact that most journalists have never even seen the inside of a science textbook. But I think the malaise runs far deeper.
The simple fact is that fear sells papers. Print a headline that strikes fear into the hearts of parents and they're likely to buy the paper to read the article. Printing a headline stating the opposite ( new study finds vaccines reduce asthma deaths ) just doesn't have the same emotional impact.
This extends beyond reporting on science to a wide range of topics. Look at the coverage given to vanishingly rare child abduction/murder cases for example. If you can generate fear you can shift product.
In a wider sense I'd also say that the atmosphere of fear this kind of media coverage generates is tolerated and even encouraged by owners and advertisers because it doesn't threaten their interests, and in many cases aligns with them.
If a paper was to start scaremongering to the same extent(i.e. fearmongering multi-page spreads several times a week) about the (very real) threats to it's readers from global warming, foreign wars or lax regulations, it would be branded as a crazy left wing rag and rapidly ditched by advertisers, assuming the owners didn't fire the journo's responsible first.
I keep hearing this, and it is really off base. If you give a pathogen a place to breed it may mutate into something that can bypass vaccince-created immunity.
So as much as you are gambling that you won't get infected because 80% of others have had the vaccine, those 80% are gambling on YOUR lack of immunity rendering their own immunity null and void if you give the pathogen a place to mutate.
The unvaccinated pose a greater danger to the general population than the vaccines pose to the individual.
Helminthic therapy is the intentional infection of a person with a parasite. The parasite mitigates the immune response of the immune system. The idea is to choose a helminth (parasite) that 1) can't replicate in the body and 2) won't have any adverse side effects. Luckily there are two such species of parasite. These worms live in in the intestine and are well-tolerated by most individuals.
The effects of these buggers is reduces asthma, allergies, arthritis, and other issue from over-active immune systems.
The idea is that the human immune system evolved with these parasites, so they are factored into a balanced immune system. Clean societies don't have these, so the immune system overreacts, thus causing problems.
I plan to get it, (for my food allergies) but it is not yet accepted by western medicine.
PS. I am allergic to beef, chicken, egg (egg is used for the flu shot), all shellfish, corn, rye barley... the list goes on. I can't even drink beer, unless it is a special sorghum beer.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I was born in the UK in 1961, and so grew up in the era where we weren't vaccinated against things like measels and chicken pox, and so of course we caught them, and we were fine. There may be rare side effects of these diseases, but the coincident rise in autism coupled with the rise in vaccination at least doesn't indicate autism as one of the side effects. As it happened I also almost died as an infant as a result of the DTP vaccine, and consequently wasn't given the 2nd shot of the series. I did subsequently catch whooping cough, and although it was unpleasant, it's sure better than being dead.
IAAP (I am a physician - specifically pediatrics). First off, "you" may have been "fine" when you "got measles," but the population of England wasn't. Measles isn't chicken pox - it's a LOT worse. It's pretty rare to die of pox, but measles will kill you, give you encephalitis, make you go deaf, or a lot of horrible, horrible things. It's not just a bunch of itchy spots for a month.
And second, as for your reaction to the DTaP vaccine, there is a widely known side effect of the vaccine (specifically the "P" part against Pertussis, aka Whopping Cough). We are well aware of the side effect and it is known. That is not the same as speculation about an unproven side effect believed by the public and rejected by most of the scientific community. Hmm, sounds a *lot* like the Global Warming denier community. Oh wait, but those guys are kooks, right? *You're* just being skeptical, right?
That being said, your physician is either an idiot, or to be fair, maybe this wasn't known in 1960s UK - the solution to the DTaP reaction you describe is to administer just the D and T portions and not adding the Pertussis part. Congratulations, you were not immunized against Tetanus or Diptheria.
The reason why this debate has been and is still going on, even with the evidence to the contrary, is the money trail.
The average cost of therapies for Autism is about $50,000 - $100,000 US per year for at least 2 - 3 years for those who end up being higher functioning and even more for those that are lower functioning. Health Insurance companies refuse to pay the costs calling it a mental health issue (will be interesting to see where mental health parity leads), the schools do not want to pay for it because they do not see it as a medical issue, and for those who never get the ability to survive on their own, the government is not real interested in paying for their care for the rest of their lives. I am sure that in some ways, athasma is in a similar area.
To make the situation worse, there is stress on the whole family. The parents cannot go out together because they cannot find someone to care for their kid. The other kids feel left out. There is the monetary stress. Simply put they want someone to pay.
Who better than a big bad corporation who has deep pockets. So of course, now they are going to be blamed. The lawyers pick it up for the money and the media picks it up because situations like that sell news. Even worse, if there is evidence that proves that this group is wrong, it is either ignored or there is a conspiracy. I remember a couple of months ago where we here on Slashdot where a mother and person with Autism did a blog against the whole MMR causes vaccines argument and was vigorously subpeonaed by a lawyer fighting for anti-vaccine parents. This occurred in the Dow-Corning fight with Silicone Breast implants too.
Add to the fact that in most cases, scientists cannot and will not say for 100% certainty that MMR does not cause Autism. This is because nothing is 100%. If 100 people jump out of a 3rd story window and all die, are you 100% certain that the 101st also will die when the jump out. In fact, the agent which is claimed to cause the issues has been removed from vaccines in many states in the USA and the expected drop in autism has not occurred. That should be enough proof for most people that they are looking up the wrong path.
I do not think this will die however until someone/thing comes up with a system to pay for the treatments of autism and other issues. This is all about the money.
The incidence of diagnosis of autism is up, but that doesn't necessarily mean the incidence of occurrence is up also. It could very well be that it simply went undiagnosed before -- instead of being called "autistic," the children were just called "slow" or "shy" or "retarded" or something.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
And you miss out the prisoner's dilemma.
If you're the only one that doesn't get vaccinated then that's fine, but the moment it becomes popular then whooping cough rapidly becomes more common.
I think the solution is basic education in the scientific method and statistics for everyone, beginning in elementary school.
This is wrong. People don't care. Teaching about the scientific method and statistics won't make them care. It's too many steps removed from the vaccine issue for the average attention-span anyway.
We have a cultural problem. It's not about the scientific method. People believe in conspiracy theories. People believe in shadowy corporations who are secretly out to get them. People believe in secret cover-ups. People believe everyone's got a hidden agenda or a conflict of interest. But, most importantly, people believe they're the exception. They have it figured out. They're wise. They're not going to be fooled like everyone else.
It's a self-esteem problem -- too much self-esteem. It's a lack of respect for others. It's laziness. It's irresponsibility. It's self-focus and emotional self-investment. It's not being completely grown-up.
The scientific method won't help because it's only useful if the answer it leads to fulfills some emotional need you have. Otherwise, it can be discounted in favor of the process that leads to a more fulfilling answer.
I don't know what the solution is. Removing some of the societal rewards for making bad choices would help.
More specifically, the risks posed to an individual are far outweighed by the same individual's benefit gained by living in a thoroughly vaccinated society. It's not a question of individual vs. societal benefits, it's that people who refuse vaccinations for spurious reasons are free-riding on the herd immunity (whilst simultaneously degrading it a tiny bit) of all the other individuals who properly weighed the risks and got vaccinated.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I find it miraculous that anyone of us over the age of 40 survived at all. There is so much hype about peanut butter allergies, laundry detergent allergies, supposedly deadly inoculations and the terrible dangers of dust and dirt.
In the 60's and 70's as elementary school students we all ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, played outside, ate dirt (not me but of of my younger siblings did), got scraped up, sunburned, poison ivy/oak/sumac and rolled around in the grass. If the prevalence of terrible medical conditions were so common as they are claimed of today, we would have all died before we were 11 years old.
How many children today are on Ritalin or other behavior modifying medicines? In my childhood if you acted up repeatedly you would be spanked with a belt or a shoe.
There is a common thread through all of this; more and more parents would rather assign some condition, allergy or psychological problem to their children, rather than accepting that their poor parenting skills and lack of oversight is the primary reason on why their children appear to have problems. So let's not get inoculations for our children, after all, smallpox, bubonic plague and malaria are all "natural" and we should live closer to nature.
The "victim" mentality is all pervasive and we are passing it off to our children. Should we really be surprised by the apathy and disconnection of our children from societal structures? This will be our legacy, civilizations who decline to these levels have traditionally collapsed after a few decades.
Tisha Hayes
If there is no connection why do we see so many stories similar to mine?
Because the age that vaccines are given is the same age that the symptoms of autism (et al) start to manifest. It's as simple as that.
People have tried vaccines without mercury. People have tried giving vaccines at different times. People have tried forgoing vaccines. And guess what? The same percentage of each group of kids developed all the same awful conditions that are blamed on vaccines.
I am waiting for the stories blaming the scare for the disease to come out. It has to happen eventually. The media just needs to make sure that they don't make the dumbass parents look like dumbasses for being dumbasses about not vaccinating their kids.
Sort of a "i know we sold you on not doing this thing, but now that you aren't doing this thing and your kids are dying, we decided to tell you that the people who made up how bad this thing was were dumb and we were just following the press coverage heard, so get mad at them."
It'll happen. You heard it here first.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press