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Court Rules Autism Not Caused By Childhood Vaccine
wiredog writes "From The Washington Post comes word that three special masters have decided that MMR vaccines do not cause autism. 'Special master George Hastings said the parents ... had "been misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment." ... "the evidence advanced by the petitioners has fallen far short of demonstrating ... a link."'
Do we really want courts deciding scientific fact?
Why not? The media industry decides on the law.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
Where have you been? Courts have always not only made medical decisions, but ones in various other areas of science, too, when there is a dispute. What exactly do you think forensics are, anyway? They do the same things courts have always done - rely on expert witnesses. As soon as you come up with a better way to correctly solve disputes involving factual claims, please do let the world know.
Good, now maybe that idiot Jenny McCarthy will shut her mouth about this. There are no telling how many kids have been put at risk because they're listing to celebrities harping their pseudo-science.
Autism occurs and makes itself known about the same time as the vaccination occurs, which may explain why some people makes that connection.
But even if there was a small risk of autism related to the vaccination the risks involved by not being vaccinated are higher and the risk of an epidemic is higher if there is no vaccination performed.
So if it's possible to get a vaccination - get it. People avoiding vaccination are a breeding ground for diseases like polio and a lot of other nasty things. The only disease successfully erased is smallpox - unless it escapes a laboratory somewhere, in which case we may have a disaster on our hands.
Personally I would call parents that are fighting against vaccinations as irresponsible and a danger to society.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Do we really want courts deciding scientific fact?
I don't know do we?
Because our society has certainly decided that scientists can no longer decide scientific facts. If that were not the case, we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with.
Over the last 10 years, US and UK have spent tens of millions of dollars to provide "negative proof" of something that we had already known, just to quiet down the conspiracy theorists. But instead of quieting them down, this has empowered them, by giving them and their claims legitimacy. Now, we're faced with a situation where childhood vaccination has taken a nosedive, and we're seeing old goodies like measles re-emerge into small (for now) epidemics. And as herd immunity is eroded further, we will see additional diseases make an impressive comeback.
So now that we took the right to make educated judgments about medical and scientific matters, away from doctors and scientists, we've also demonstrated that as a society we're incapable of making rational decisions... which isn't surprising. The only option left seems to be the courts, where reasonably educated judges may or may not rule according to the best data available. Well... at least there's a chance.
And for those who will scream at me about mercury in vaccines, why don't you compare a single or rare exposure to a tiny amount of mercury... to how much mercury you must feed to your children via fish... and corn syrup.
And when smallpox kills a few million 20 years after that, who do I get to sue?
The people who mandated them will say "sorry we didn't know," but the parents should be able to say to them "fuck you, you will pay horrifically for what you did to our kids, you miserable social engineers."
And when the kids catch these horrible diseases what then?
The parents will say, "Sorry we didn't know, we thought we knew best." Do the kids then get to say to the parents: "fuck you, you will pay horrifically for what you did us" ?
Just curious.
The one disappointing thing here is that the court blames physicians for the public misconception. In reality, the blame lies more with the mass media, who turned the original claims into a massive health scare.
The vast majority of physicians correctly investigated the claims and determined that the evidence did not stand up to scrutiny. But the media took that and turned it into their beloved "lone rebel" story, with a parents' champion fighting to get the truth out while the sinister establishment tried to suppress it. Result? Massive decrease in vaccine uptake, threatening public health and risking a deadly epidemic. All because "your children are at risk" sells more papers than "oops, we goofed up, turns out vaccines are safe after all".
"This is why I hesitate to let "experts" force major social projects on us. "
So instead of "experts" you want people with no real education in the subject, no real facts, and a lot of fear and guess work to decide?
We know that vaccines don't cause autism. Just about every kid has been vaccinated and they don't all have it.
Vaccines could contribute to it but so could a lot of things. I blame DVDs myself. The huge increase in autism started when DVDs started to replace video tapes.
So we should also ban DVDs.
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Amish people are far less likely to be involved in automobile accidents than the general population. Amish do not vaccinate, therefore vaccinations cause automobile accidents..
Do I need to spell out the sloppy thinking ?
This is why I hesitate to let "experts" force major social projects on us.
But you do this every day. The specifications for fuel containers, electricity transmission, microwave usage, drugs, food, drink as all brought about from open public discussion around a set of targeted studies. There are thousands of risks you take every day based on the statements of experts that set the margin for error as low as society wants, including the squabbling over the last few percentage points.
If there's a link between vaccines and autism 20 years from now, then *society itself* will have learned something. You may be horrified, but this occurs every day, and plenty of children & adults "pay" for these mistakes. Lead paint, drugs come and go, gaseous output from industry, heavy metals in manufacturing, etc. Lots of exposure to the "safe" chemicals we make and use every day will undoubtedly have new effects learned about them in the future, and some will be negative.
You are not living in the future, nor is society omnipotent. You can do your best to push the discoveries along as fast as possible, but you're going to have to accept your place in history, as we all. For example: you skipped the century of common transmission of animal-borne diseases in congested cities, but are now living in the century of plastic, fossil fuels and biological experimentation. There may never be a time when your actions don't involve some calculated risk, where you didn't do the calculations yourself.
Right now, there is no observable link between vaccines and autism, and there may never be. Fund more studies if you want, but don't skip the vaccines, you're just butting heads with society in general.
Wait, what is the problem? Either the kids actually have Autism and doctors should have diagnosed them, or parents of disruptive kids without Autism need get their kids to behave. Maybe you worded it wrongly, but it sounds like you are saying the problem is that schools are refusing to provide services to kids who don't need those services. That's not a problem. If the kid isn't Autistic, he shouldn't be treated as if he is. If a kid isn't Autistic and is being disruptive, he should be kicked out and the parents should be told to deal with that, not shop around for a doctor willing to misdiagnose just so the parents can claim that their non-Autistic kid isn't really a bad person.
Or are your really suggesting that the problem is doctors need to do a better job of detecting earlier so that autistic kids can get the services they need? I'm really not sure. Please clarify.
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