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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."'
Maybe now he'll let his poor kids get their polio shots.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Well, you're not blind, are you? Proof enough.
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.
Not a formal study. But sighted people using the internet make a strong case in favor of "no link".
What do you expect them to do, throw out every case that involves any question of medicine or science? What if they had done that back when defense lawyers and prosecutors first wanted to make DNA admissible?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It wasn't the courts themselves but a special master appointed by one. Though either way not so much.
Do we really want courts deciding scientific fact?
Why not? The media industry decides on the law.
OK, if I'm following this that means:
Media -> Law -> Courts -> Science
So the Media now defines science?... of course now that I think about it, that's probably not to far from the truth for a distressingly large portion of the population.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
The courts are evaluating methods and conclusions, not doing the actual research. They don't have to have medical degrees or be doctors, just understand enough science to comprehend the scientific method and enough math to follow the statistics. This follows the same argument that one shouldn't have to be a doctor to take medicines correctly, or have to be a lawyer to follow any given law.
No.. Courts make decisions based on evidence. Like in this case where there's no evidence supporting the claim that vaccines cause autism.
I have nothing compelling to say
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.
or nativity of some people. Contrary to evidence (e.g. a Danish study showing no adverse effects of the vaccinations, and possibly a reduction of asthma due to them http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/06/bad-science-mmr-vaccine), some folks still prefer urban legends over real science.
I can predict some tags for this story: duh, noshitsherlock, establishedscience, wealreadyknewthat, tellmesomethingididntknow, !news, oldnews
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.
This demonstrates some of the problems when the media picks up on these things. The CNN article states cnn.com:
... have found no association between vaccines and autism."
However, "the medical and scientific communities
"Hopefully, the determination by the Special Masters will help reassure parents that vaccines do not cause autism," the statement said.
A ruling on a court case doesn't necessarily convince me one way or the other on this. They aren't experts running experiments publishing their findings, they're examining the presented documentation, by both sides of an issue. I'm surprised that the mass media took the time to even present an article with this kind of finding; they're usually good at stirring up muck, but not pointing out when they were wrong.
I will wait for science to show me that the risks of potential side effects are outweighed by the benefits provided from these vaccinations. Until then, show me the MMR.
You are obviously ignorant of both the law and of this story.
The court didn't make a "medical decision", they made a "finding of fact". Deciding facts is the entire reason we have courts.
The plaintiffs (parents of children with autism) are required to present evidence that shows that there is a link between the vaccines and autism. The judge ruled that the evidence provided by the plaintiffs did not show such a connection, thus their complaint is dismissed. They can find more conclusive evidence and try again if they wish.
No, and they don't. They've used science as evidence in a ruling. Pay attention.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
My neighbor believed this, her husband was dumbfounded, but he and the doctor couldn't convince her otherwise. I had never even heard of it before I had talked to her husband. Kind of sad.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
If there is a judicial proceeding that hinges on a scientific question, what else are you going to do?
This wasn't some stupid "And now, we will have a judge decide some science for us!" thing. A bunch of parties sued, alleging that their children had been harmed by vaccines. The only way that those cases could be decided, is by deciding whether or not the vaccines were indeed responsible. The court doesn't "decide scientific fact", it has scientific expert witnesses and research as evidence in deciding whether or not a particular party is responsible for a particular injury. The same way that a court would use eyewitness testimony or DNA forensic evidence.
I think for some reason a lot of people find joy in finding problems with progress. They seem to want every advancement we make as people to have some dark side effect that will lead us to our doom.
There is being vigilant not taking things at face value, then there is going overboard and jumping to conclusions just to prove progress is bad.
Just recently a bill was passed to stop a chemical from being put into children's toys, however there is no evidence that it is actually harmful in that amount. And is being replaced with new chemicals that could be just as bad, if not worse.
Is it that they want to be Hero's saving us from them selfs or do they take joy in preventing progress.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
I tend to lean to the left side of the political spectrum, but two threads of liberal thought piss me off more than just about anything: anti nuke environmentalists and autism/vaccine linkers. Both group are as bad as any anti science fundamentalist, but in a way worse: they think that science and reason backs them up, when really it doesn't. They're just using it as a rationalization for their existing superstitions, mainly of the "don't mess with mother nature" variety.
Do we really want courts deciding scientific fact?
It's arguably better than lawyers and politicians deciding it without an arbitrator.
I also shudder at the thought of Joe Sixpack deciding these things. Fortunately, he hasn't much moved past whether God wants him to believe in evolution or not.
I guess that's settled.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Who else should have the final say in a damage claim? Parents accuse the producer of the vaccine to have done damage to their children by causing their autism with the vaccine. The producer claims to be innocent. That's definitely something for a court to decide.
I didn't know about this until just last week, and I'm fifty! But apparently the evidence is pretty good. Search the Web for "paternal age autism" and you'll find a raft of stuff, such as a Washington Post article that says this:
This hits home for me since there is actually some possibility I might attempt to father a child or two in the next several years. Food for thought.
On the other hand, at worst the risk is less than 1% per child.
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
Your crazy the best source for rulings on medical, political and scientific data is a celebrity!
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
No, the lack of thoes vacines is a leading indicator for...
Children killed or brain damaged by their idiot parents.
The Internet is for Porn.
Yeah, it's funny that once they got rid of the supposedly "bad" stuff in vaccinations (thimerosol), not only did autism rates not go down... they kept getting [i]higher[/i].
Obviously, something in our environment is making autism rates climb. But it doesn't look like it's the thimerosol. Even if it is from mercury (which I don't know of any data showing that it is), it seems to be mercury from some other source, not from thimerosol.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
I expect follow-up rulings on the religious beliefs of the Pope, and the bathroom habits of bears.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
And when smallpox kills a few million 20 years after that, who do I get to sue?
Concerning scientific matters, judges rely on expert testimony. In this particular case, they relied on three experts appointed by the court that there was very little evidence to support a link between MMR vaccines and autism.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
If someone has an allergic reaction to something, it is the allergic person's fault (physiologically, at least), rather than the manufacturer. Perhaps they need a warning on a vaccines that says: WARNING: vaccine may contain vaccine.
Indeed. And a right mess it is.
http://www.thatsfuckingstupid.com/index.php/2008/11/just-a-quickie-you-wont-feel-a-thing/
(founded 95,000,000 yrs ago, very space opera)
This is one of those issues that directly pits personal rights against the greater public health. It would be nice to allow people to opt out, but when they do they put the remainder of the public at risk of epidemic. It's a herd thing.
Do we really want courts deciding scientific fact?
I'm not seeing this the same way you are. What happened here is the court judged the evidence for vaccines causing autism as insufficient. In same way the court decided that 'intelligent design' was not sufficiently scientific to be taught in science classes, I suppose. The door is still open for the vaccine advocates to prove their case... but they have to do the research.
You are right, that was a 100% flamebait post, not a troll. Except of course, the connotation of a troll is that they are someone who consistantly posts inflamitory crap without bothering to add anything to the topic other than vitrol. So maybe we should see if someone else with mod points can balance it out, 50/50 troll and flamebait.
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.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Best Slashdot Co
If the government required vaccine makers to shoulder the burden of liability claims, absolutely no drug company would ever bother to manufacture them. They take a very long time to develop, sell for a relatively low price, are generally given to jury-friendly and photogenic children, and are difficult to manufacture.
The powers that be have decided that the public health benefit of vaccines existing far outweighs the risk of the govt. having to pay out liability claims.
SirWired
There was no scientific evidence that Silcone Breast implants caused illness either, but that didn't stop them from driving Dow Corning into bankruptcy with claims that they did. People do have a right to their beliefs, even if they are paranoid delusions, they have a right to refuse to get their kids immunized. What they don't have is a right to is compensation for harm that occurred after another event with no evidence that the other event actually caused the harm. In this case, the original claim was that the mercury (Thimerisol?) caused autism; it was quickly removed from vaccines, and then the claim was changed to the vaccination itself caused autism. When that couldn't be proved, then the claim was changed to several different vaccines taken closely together cause autism. (This last claim isn't quite as ridiculous as the other claims, since vaccine safety is tested a single vaccine at a time, not in combinations.) Yeah, I'm sorry about your kids' medical problems, but, like silicone implants, there is no statistical evidence that the medical problems occur any more frequently in kids that have had the vaccinations than kids that have not. Post Hoc, ergo propter hoc is still a logical fallacy.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Don't just read the headline; read the article. Three independent special masters have come to the conclusion that there is little evidence that the MMR vaccine causes autism. This conclusion was backed by a vast amount of scientific data. The masters conclude that the plaintiffs' claims are on shaky ground.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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 ?
The reason that vaccines are mandated is very simple, herd immunity. Herd immunity is what lets people that can't get the vaccines (like your friend who is allergic) live their life without serious fear of catching these deadly diseases. Yes, vaccines carry some non-trivial amount of danger, but science has verified that the danger to the individual is outweighed by the danger of society losing herd immunity.
What people don't realize is that it only takes 10-15% of the population being unvaccinated to cause a major outbreak. Once that happens, it is much more likely for a disease to mutate and be able to attack even those that are vaccinated. That's why the government mandates vaccines, and since the government is mandating vaccines. It makes sense for the government to pay out when vaccines hurt people when the government is the one that made the decision, not the manufacturers.
This is why I hesitate to let "experts" force major social projects on us.
Agreed. We're much better off listening to Jenny freakin' McCarthy.
What happens if and when 20 years from now there is serious evidence of a link between autism and some vaccines.
"Smallpox was the first disease people tried to prevent by purposely inoculating themselves with other types of infections; smallpox inoculation was started in China or India before 200 BC." Furthermore, in the UK "[v]accination was first made compulsory in 1853, and the provisions were made more stringent in 1867, 1871, and 1874."
We started the scientific experiment over 2,000 years ago and the social experiment over 150 years ago. I think we've got a pretty good handle on the statistics by now.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
They've always made decisions but courts sometimes crave a level of certainty that science isn't always able to provide and that is where mistakes can be made IMHO. Not that I think this is the case with the MMR vaccine, this issiue IS actually black-and-white. Others are not.
I think problems can arise when the science is new - e.g. shaken baby syndrome. Forensics thought they could tell when babies where being deliberately shaken to death. Unfourtunately they hadn't calibrated their forensic screens against a large enough sample of accidental trauma injuries to be able to distinguish the two - several innocent parents went to jail as a result.
Funny thing is, I have met people who are very allergic to most vaccines, and my wife knows a woman who lost one or two of her siblings (he was a healthy kid) because of a fatal reaction to one.
No one is saying vaccines are without side effects. It's just that they are rare, and their effects on society are minuscule compared to the effects of the diseases if large numbers of people fail to vaccinate. Also, just because the first visible symptoms of autism frequently show up just after the MMR vaccine does not mean the MMR vaccine caused autism.
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.
Europe: 3.5m pounds paid out in vaccine damages
source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4356027.stm
more than $916 MILLION dollars have been paid to people injured by vaccines, not just those claiming autism, because every single case there has been dismissed.
Source: http://newsok.com/high-court-should-reject-vaccine-suits/article/3321176
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
citation?
So what do you suggest? We abandon vaccines altogether? To the best of my knowledge all medical proceedures have a risk of side effects, and at the end of the day, if the benefit far outweighs the risk. If there is no possible way to know something, there is no reason they should be held responsible for their actions. I'm no lawyer, but to the best of my knowledge, the liability of a company depends on them exercising sound judgment. I would much rather have doctors decided which vaccines I need to take than, well any politician, parent, or myself. Imagine the public outrage if a company developed a vaccination against AIDS/HIV, but found out that 0.00001% of those who take the vaccine developed a deadly side effect - and as such they decided to hold it back. We can't have it both ways - the human body and nature is filled with ambiguity, and unless we offer protection to side effects which had no reasonable way of determining, the incentive to release a vaccine or treatment would be next to nothing.
Did you think before you typed that?
Take DNA for example. The courts have generally accepted that DNA is a unique identifier and that there are equipment out there that can determine if one sample of DNA matches another. Furthermore, the courts have accepted statistical data on the uniqueness of the DNA sample.
The question on whether the DNA evidence was collected and analyzed properly is typically a case by case issue.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frye_test and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daubert_standard
Are you suggesting the courts don't allow scientific evidence and instead rely on ...?
TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
Well, maybe not, but Cornell researchers found that autism spiked when cable TV became more widespread. It may or may not be related...of course, there is the factor of affluence and whether autism would be more likely to be diagnosed and treated in households that could afford cable. Maybe there's a statistically significance between whether or not parents of autistic children drive luxury cars or own large houses, too, but who knows. However, there was a difference in autism rates when correlated to television watching.
Interesting that you should say this, since the doctor who published the original study was actually paid to do the study by the parents who wanted to sue over the alleged MMR-autism link. From the BBC article:
If that wasn't bad enough, alongside with other charges (see here), there are signs of him fixing the data in the study. Not exactly what I'd call a pillar of ethical and unbiased behavior...
The view was horrible and the smell was even worse; Julie severely regretted becoming a proctologist.
What happens if and when 20 years from now there is serious evidence of a link between autism and some vaccines. 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."
I'm pretty certain the the plagues we'd suffer in the meantime through lack of vaccine uptake would deal with any sceptics nicely.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Look on the bright side - if you're one of those few million, you won't have to worry about it...
A study of 10,000 non-Amish people found that none of those people had seizures after the vaccine. To me that is all the evidence I need right there.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
There are two types of vaccines, as far as I know. One has inactive pathogen, the other has a reduced viability. If your "friend's" sibling came down with the disease and died, then correlation of that lot to determine if the vaccine had been properly prepared is in order.
If, on the other hand, they died from reaction to the vaccine carrier (often egg-based, to which some people are allergic), then that suggests that non-vaccine related allergies should have been determined prior to giving the vaccine. Most doctors ask (or have records) about your allergies which helps screen out these occurrences.
Vaccines are, without a doubt, a statistical gamble we as a society make. There will be a very, very small portion of the population which will have a reaction to the event (whether it is to the vaccine, the carrier, infection of injection spot, etc.). The payoff is wide scale reduction of seriously debilitating diseases. Yes, it looks pretty onerous from the hindsight of a parent who's child suffers, but the society as a whole reaps an enormous benefit. 10 children dying is tragic, but 10 million with polio is far, far worse.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The courts are simply (and fortunately) ruling based on the science. The studies are very clear, these vaccines do not cause autism. I feel very sorry for these families, but they (and their lawyers) have been trumpeting pseudoscience in a vain attempt to find a single target to blame.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Most drugs are toxins, and most toxins have a perfectly safe level of exposure - thats why you don't chomp down handfuls of paracetamol (tylenol I think its called in the US) each time you have a headache...
Oh, and water is also a toxin in the right dosage.
These people disagree. Both say most Amish do vaccinate, and both agree that the autism rate amongst the Amish is lower than in the general population (though present). It would seem likely that either 1) the Amish hide/do not diagnose autism or 2) there is something else about modern society other than vaccinations that cause autism. Maybe the Amish have children younger (it's known that older fathers have a higher chance of autistic children), or maybe it's something dietary, or maybe it's something chemical. The differences between the lifestyles of the Amish and the rest of the country are so multitudinous that I don't know how you could immediately correlate any health differences with vaccinations.
a court once determined the earth was at the center of the solar system as well..
evidence about autism is not as iron clad but a court cant rule on what causes autism, that's for scientist to worry about.
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
Obviously, something in our environment is making autism rates climb.
Not at all. It's a combination of 2 things:
1. the definition of autism has broadened with time so that things that weren't considered autism 50 years ago now count
2. better detection means people with autism are more likely to get counted.
The scientific consensus is that there is no reason to believe that autism is more common now than before.
*sigh* back to work...
Presently there is absolutely no medical evidence to support this. Lots of kids get these vaccines and are OK. The percentage of kids who gets these vaccines and develop autism is the same percentage of kids who get autism just because it happens.
The only evidence that shows these vaccines may cause autism are the babbling chatter of actors/actresses like Jenny McCarthy, who frequently loves to go on insane rants/shout vests against doctors/scientists - telling them they are wrong and she is right.
Autism is horrible, so is your kid dying of meals, mumps, chicken pox, etc. Let's not spread hype/garbage.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
About the only way to be allergic to a vaccine is to be allergic to the egg proteins found in the vaccine formula. If you are severely allergic to eggs, you might be allergic to vaccines. But there are egg-free versions of all the major vaccines readily available at a slightly higher price. Although even if you are allergic to eggs, the allergy would have to be VERY severe in order for vaccines to pose a serious risk to you, because the amount of egg protein found in them is quite tiny. If you truly know multiple people who are "very allergic" to most vaccines, you must know a greatly disproportionate number of people with unusually severe egg allergies. Note that any competent doctor/nurse/whatever will ask you if you (or your child) has egg allergies before administering the vaccine. This is also why they usually ask you to hang around for a short while after receiving the vaccination - it's to make sure you don't fall over and go into anaphylactic shock shortly after the injection. Again, I would like to reiterate that there are non-egg versions of vaccine available, so allergies should never prevent someone from getting a vaccination.
But again, my points stand.
1) The way the court acted isn't anything new.
2) We don't have any better way to decide disputes that concern scientific evidence.
And I could add:
3) Courts (in the US, at least) tend to favor a "lack of evidence isn't evidence of lack" approach such that they don't decide scientific fact, they simply decide if you've proven your case. In criminal cases, this is the whole "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" idea. You don't ever prove someone innocent, you just fail to make the case that they are guilty. In civil case, this is by preponderance of evidence, meaning that the court simply rules that one side is more likely right than the other based on the evidence. Neither of these are truly cases of black and white.
Didn't Wakefield try and patent a yearly, single-use vaccine before leading the scientifically-flawed study that would call into question the joint MMR vaccine? I'd say that's a glaring conflict of interest right there.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Allergies are quite easy to come by ... the vaccine has to be a small amount of the target disease (usually dead) suspended in solution. It's the solution a lot of people turn out to be allergic to.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Side note, AIDS will not kill you, me or anyone else for that matter. However it will make you more likely to die from something as simple as the common cold.
You aren't allergic to "vaccine" , you are maybe at most allergic to one of the component, and most probably not the one used to pump up your immune system, but highly probably other maybe like preserver, anti fungus etc... Still I would like to see more statistic or evidence of such allergy or how many pro-million of fatal reaction there is.
As for long term consequence, there has been no long term consequence up to now for how many vaccine ? How long will you draw your fear rule you ? 50 years ? 150 years ? 20 years is ALREADY a long time. I got my first shots of MMR far more than 20 years ago FFS. So your 20 years limit is over.
And in the mean time children have died in the UK.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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Autism rates are not climbing, the types of 'disabilities' classified as autism are climbing. Like ADHD = autism, shyness = autism.
You know, if you didn't feed your kids a pound of sugar a day and then not let them run around or interact during recess, they probably wouldn't be hyperactive twits with no friends.
I'm a little concerned. Is it possible that a specific batch of vaccines got contaminated due to poor quality assurance practises (sorta like how sometimes food gets contaminated with pathogens) and the contaminated vaccines started something like this? I once saw a hearing on C-SPAN by a congressman who basically accused a company of tainting the vaccines with a chemical that broke down into mercury in the blood resulting in mercury poisoning. But in that instance his complaint was not that the vaccine was the culprit, but that the company had not adhered to the regulations put fourth by the FDA and allowed tainted Vaccines in the wild anyway.
Does anyone else know anything about this?
Disclaimer:
And by the way, I do trash the Christian Fundamentalists in the anti-Vaccine community. Seriously. They piss me off. But then again, Christians piss me off in general. And if they had their way we'd all be back in the dark ages and disease would run rampant.
If the mercury formerly included in vaccines did cause autism, then the incidence of autism should have dropped after the mercury was removed. It didn't.
You make it sound like they put pure mercury into them. Ethylmercury does not bioaccumulate like the more dangerous methylmercury which is NOT in vaccines. Even upon removing it there was no real change in autism rates. The last statement though is a current area of research--there may very well be some environmental factor. Certainly the environment we live in today is far different than that of the past; there are whole hosts of new chemicals ingested by mothers or infants, food sources have different levels of heavy metals in them etc. That is why there is currently a large scale national study getting launched to try and figure out some of these potential environmental factors since the vaccine route was long ago dismissed.
Yes, that's correct. There has never been evidence that thimerosal has ever harmed anybody. The amount in any given dose is incredibly tiny.
They no longer do that mainly to placate paranoid know-nothings like yourself, since it was simpler to just remove it then to try to convince people with no interest in actual evidence.
That huge of an increase would have been screamingly obvious to the first person to glance at the statistics.
"I'm not a researcher, but my girlfriend who's a student met somebody who, well, isn't a trained researcher either..."
Possibly. They haven't been able to pin anything down yet, and a lot of people think it's just that we successfully diagnose autism a lot more now (100 years ago, your average GP had never even *heard* of autism--effect of no autism, or cause of no autism being found?). The one thing we do know is that it isn't the freaking vaccines, because they've studied them to death.
I blame Regan. His trickle down economics must have damaged the brains of our as of yet unborn children.
Both have about the same amount of proof either way.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Amish people do not watch television. To me that is all the evidence I need right there.
Wiki :
Before the widespread use of a vaccine against measles, its incidence was so high that infection with measles was felt to be "as inevitable as death and taxes."[3] Today, the incidence of measles has fallen to less than 1% of people under the age of 30 in countries with routine childhood vaccination.[citation needed] The benefit of vaccination against measles in preventing illness, disability, and death has been well-documented. The first 20 years of licensed measles vaccination in the U.S. prevented an estimated 52 million cases of the disease, 17,400 cases of mental retardation, and 5,200 deaths.[4]
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Thimerosal does not need to be in modern vaccines - single dose sterile packaging SHOULD be able to render it unnecessary. This is a good thing, while injecting trace amounts may not be statistically linkable to autism if you can avoid any unnecessary heavy metal exposure then you should. Same with radiation, X-rays or pesticides, each will eat away at your ability to live to 90.
We currently have the technology and economics to avoid thimerosals use, perhaps some poorer countries do not. In the West problems only arise when health staff get sloppy and reuse packs or are unable to notice a seal broken during shipment. Blaming such incidents on the FDA not allowing mercury use is incorrect - its plane old management failure, its harder to fix and most of know it too well.
Also in the context of this court case, the court did not specifically conclude MMR does not cause autism. The three masters decided that the plaintiffs could not meet a minimum burden of proof that a link existed. The plaintiffs did not have to prove that MMR caused autism; all they had to prove was that there is a plausible link. They failed to do that.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
From what I can tell, the media defines pretty much everything.
Problems:
* They stopped putting thimerosol in vaccines because people thought it might cause autism, not because they suspected it actually did.
* They don't put mercury in vaccines, they use thimerosol, a compound containing mercury.
* The fact that something is a toxin (or an element in a compound is a toxin) is of no general relevance to "does it cause X problem".
* If a vaccine changed your risk from 0.006% to 2%, that would be very easy to find with a reasonable sample size of unvaccinated children. (Vaccinated children are trivial to come by in large quantities.)
Fortunately, he hasn't much moved past whether God wants him to believe in evolution or not.
The word is in: here is proof of god's existence and disproof of evolution.
Joking. But hot on the heels of Darwin's birthday is this survey which says that only 39% of Americans believe in evolution.
"Autism is horrible, so is your kid dying of meals, mumps, chicken pox, etc." Yeah, meals especially... I mean what the heck are you feeding them?
Perhaps they need a warning on a vaccines that says: WARNING: vaccine may contain vaccine.
If I'm paying for it, it damn well better contain vaccine.
Seriously though, a warning that a small percentage of the population has dangerous allergic reactions to vaccines (same as any other substance you might come into contact with) would probably go a long way towards fending off these "OMG BAN VACCINES!" morons. The simple fact is, anything you come into contact with poses a risk of allergic reaction, whether it peanuts, penicillin, or titanium (that one surprised me as I thought it was inert, but friend of mine is allergic to it).
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Mercury isn't used as a preservative. Thiomersal, a mercury containing compound, sometimes is. This isn't a moot point, compare ethylmercury with dimethylmercury if you don't believe me.
Human metabolism is a strange and beautiful thing.
I hate to break this to you, but we've already stopped vaccinating against smallpox.
A .006% to 2% change would be easy to detect in a population study. You could detect it with less than a thousand children in a study running less than 10 years.
The fact that such studies have been run, and no such link has been found, indicates that either the risk difference is much, much, much smaller than that, or that there is no such risk at all, or that vaccine makers bribed an unbelievable number of doctors and researchers without detection.
There are also lots of other potential correlates with autism: ... sooooo many choices here).
Environmental (as you mentioned
Conception (lots more babies via the test tube)
Detection (maybe autism level hasn't changed, but detection is better, or simply wrong more often now)
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Do the kids then get to say to the parents: "fuck you, you will pay horrifically for what you did us" ? You must not have older kids yet.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If the court is able to resolve complex scientific issues, why did we not bring them a question we want to know the answer to - like is Hawking radiation for real ?
Rather than wasting time with questions we already know the answer to.
Nullius in verba
I think this is a ruling I like, because, among other things, the scientist who wrote the original vaccination/autism link paper misrepresented his data using selective data inclusion or exclusion to support his hypothesis.
But at the same time, courts don't have to make their rulings based on any sense of 'truth'. They don't even have to make them based on best scientific research, and there are many historical cases where they haven't. In Michael Shermer's book "The Borderlands Of Science" he talks about the widespread belief in the 1920's-1950's that local injury caused cancer. While there may be a relationship between injury repair and apperance of cancer, it's pretty weak, but in the '30's people regularly sued their employers for getting hit in the ankle and later developing cancer in the other foot -- and they won. In some cases, the courts even went so far as to say that despite there being no scientific evidence to support these claims, because it was a generally held belief that there was a relationship, they decided in favor of the injured worker.
So, as I said, I *like* the court's decision, but I don't delude myself that they're Correct. They're just making a decision based on what has influenced the judges the most, and we can all hope that the decision turns out to be a good one.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Oh hush you! We all know the toxicity of mercury is inversely proportional to how much profit is being made by using it. So the more money is made by using it, the less dangerous it becomes. Since the drug companies are raking in so much cash then clearly the mercury they use has virtually no risk. I mean we could inject this stuff and not suffer from it...
Now, to be fair, most of the vaccines in question have had that mercury removed, but still. The notion of blindly trusting big pharm companies makes me a little nervous to say the least. Congress critters get mailed anthrax letters, then the military gets mandatory anthrax shots while congress critters refuse the treatment... A few mishaps later then some lawsuits and the mandatory anthrax shots are a bit less mandatory... and battle has raged for a while, but this whole time the number of military members exposed to anthrax is LESS than the number of Congress critters exposed, yet military members got it mandatory and Congress critters refused...
I don't doubt the effectiveness of the vaccines at doing their intended job of protecting from whatever disease. I question how risky they may be as the drug companies involved are certainly less than honest (would hurt their bottom line) and the government critters are more than happy to make it mandatory for others (making for a great test bed before they take it).
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
God. But watch out for his countersuit...
Uhm...water is a chemical... h2o (lower-case so o is not mistaken for zero).
The parents concern is stirred with the timing..autism and vaccinations happen around the same time, so they are using the logical fallacy "Post hoc ergo propert hoc". They are confused, frustrated and don't know any better - and there is always a lawyer or extremist looking to use that to their advantage.
Another thing that gives them a basis is that chemicals are injected into their kids at the same time, and they believe there is a bad interaction...then throw in the word "mercury" - known for poisoning people and it is not hard to understand why people, who are confused, frustrated and don't know any better are pointing fingers at vaccinations.
Given that - we need to slap around the idiots who like to argue in the face of evidence instead of hiring scientists to research and prove their claims.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
Clearly, their products are proven safe now, and there is no possible scientific link between some of these products and serious harm in children, therefore they don't need any extra legal protection.
That's not true at all. Vaccines can kill some people. This case was specific to autism - they still have a finite risk.
What happens if and when 20 years from now there is serious evidence of a link between autism and some vaccines.
Society will still be far better off than if we simply let measles, mumps, etc run wild. In the 50s there were about 4 million cases of measles per year in the US - that would be roughly equivalent to 8 million cases today given our population growth. Contrast that to autism, where there is perhaps 20,000 new cases per year - and even the most ardent anti-vaccine crusader would not blame all of them on vaccines. The birth defects, miscarriages, and therapeutic abortions from rubella alone (during an epidemic) rival autism.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I think what concerns me is the inability to deal with uncertainty. As you say the scientific-percentages are normally forced into not-proven/proven in criminal proceedings or balance of evidence in civil proceedings.
Science by contrast normally comes with error bars but court judgments not so much. Not sure how you give out a sentence of guilty +/- 30% so perhaps there is no better system. Maybe the law is fine we just need to focus on better diagnostics in the science area.
Except that we can correlate the following:
1. the vast majority of slashdotters don't have children,
2. the dangers of lead are so great that pediatricians advise expectant mothers against eating most types of high-lead fish (such as swordfish,kingfish,non-farmed tuna even) where the lead ppm/ppb is far lower than that in the thimersol
3. which has most assuredly still not worked its way out of the vaccine supply system entirely. The thing is, fair disclosure should be said. The public spazzes out and manufactures have to pull toys off of shelves for lead levels (that in some cases) was lower than what was in vaccines
4. Vaccines are often given to children weighing under 15 lbs. If we prorate exposure to the adult body, would you be willing to tolerate a known teratogenic chemical dosing scaled for the it-beer gut? No consumer in their right mind would.
5. Correlation while not causation is enough to have warning labels on tobacco products, saws (caution blade is sharp) lawn mowers (do not reach under blade while motor is spinning).
Assume people are inherently incompetent -- that's they only way any company can reliably attempt to do business (what gives with the 3 inch pull strings on kids pullalongs?!?!?)
There's just too much to actually follow up fairly in a comment
Watch out -- that's the cancer cluster myth. In any population, random events will not be uniformly distributed throughout the population, but will sometimes cluster. People in the cluster then look for a reason behind the cluster instead of recognizing it for what it is -- a product of randomness.
In answer to the first question, the special masters (3 of them in 3 different cases) said that the current scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that there is no link between childhood vaccines and autism.
In the original study that showed some sort of a link, it was later discovered that 7 out of the 8 affected kids showed indications of autism before getting the vacccines.
"No one is saying vaccines are without side effects. It's just that they are rare, and their effects on society are minuscule compared to the effects of the diseases if large numbers of people fail to vaccinate."
Right... the scourge of chicken pox!
Some vaccines like polio and small pox are aimed at saving lives, the can and should be mostly mandatory at a reasonable age.
Some vaccines like chicken pox are given so that we can be productive little cattle and get those kids into school, they should be 100% voluntary.
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
So you either live in Eastern Europe or Eastern Asia...
More like the courts are saying once and for all that the unfounded claims being made by people about vaccines causing autism have no basis in reality, which any good doctor could have told you.
The theory I have had is that autism is a genetic trait. I see it woefully common that people with severe problems are children of one or both parents who had only marginal problems.
I think the rise in autism, then, is 1) increased social acceptance of differences, 2) changes in "mating patterns", 3) the ease of finding like-minded individuals.
Right, because there are no genetic differences between the Amish and the general population. Also, they don't use artificial conception methods. Or as much drugs while carrying their babies. Etc. Etc. The number of differences between the Amish and the general population unrelated to vaccination but relevant to autism is a very long list.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Worrying about the mercury in Thimerosal is like complaining about the poisonous gas - chlorine - in table salt.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
Because many vaccines are mandated by law, there was sort of an inusrance fund setup to cover cases of adverse reaction.
From an article:
http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2009/02/12/court-rules-vaccines-not-to-blame-for-autism/
"It is worth noting the standard the court was using allowed for the petitioners (the parents of the children with autism) to demonstrate âoebiologic plausibilityâ as opposed to direct cause and effect. Scientifically, biological plausibility is an easier standard to meet."
So the courts ruled that it is not even plausible that the vaccines caused autism.
Of course one day there might be a theory and some evidence that changes this ruling.
TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
Huh? There's a positive claim "Vaccine causes autism". You can study that claim, assess its veracity, without actually knowing the causes of autism. It's no different than studying gravity. You don't have to know whether there's actually a force-mediating particle known as a graviton to study the influence of dark matter on galactic movement. Heck, you don't even have to know what dark matter is.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
But with today's laws it is very difficult to follow them all without being a lawyer.
Do the kids then get to say to the parents: "fuck you, you will pay horrifically for what you did us" ?
Well, those first two words are pretty common in the teenage years anyway...
Then we are doomed. No way to fix that without time travel... I will channel a spirit and see if they have any advice on how to fix this.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Sugar does not cause hyperactivity!
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=52516
Obviously, something in our environment is making autism rates climb.
Not at all. It's a combination of 2 things: 1. the definition of autism has broadened with time so that things that weren't considered autism 50 years ago now count 2. better detection means people with autism are more likely to get counted.
The scientific consensus is that there is no reason to believe that autism is more common now than before.
If only I had mod points...
Having worked in autism research for 5 years, just determining which potential research subjects were "autistic" enough was a challenge. Using all the standard measures (ADI, ADOS, language abilities tests, etc.) wasn't always enough. Clincal judgement plays a huge role.
I wouldn't say that the definition of autism has broadened, but rather autism is now considered a spectrum of disorders. It's more of a catch-all rather than a disorder in and of itself.
In my time in autism research, I also saw that people were pushing hard to get their mildly affected kids officially diagnosed so that they would be able to get special services. The problem here is that the schools would refuse to provide services to kids who didn't get the diagnosis, and then kick the kids out of school when they would be disruptive. So the parents were left with no alternative but seek a doctor that would give them what they wanted.
Given the above, I see this ruling to be the result of straight-up rear orifice covering by the drug companies. To rule that the autism was definitely NOT caused by vaccine when the cause in unknown is very suspicious. I wouldn't have a problem with them saying "We will not hear any more cases until you come up with real proof", but for them to say "Nothing to see here, please move along" raises the my TFH (Tin Foil Hat) level up a notch.
Disclaimer: My brother has Aspergers.
You idiots rated this guy insightful? He's just a troll. Autism is not about sugar. My son has autism, (but not ADHD) and it has nothing to do with sugar. Spend sometime with these kids and watch them struggle through life, before you spout your idiotic nonsense.
Damn, I wish I had some moderation points today..
So how long should we wait before mass vaccinations? Until the first test group has died of natural causes?
MMR has been around for something like 40 years. I think we have a pretty good set of data on it.
Have you ever seen an autistic kid? They might be a bit hyperactive, but for the most part, they could completely care less about whether they are friends with other kids or not. IT was explained to me thus: if a deaf kid or a blind kid took the autism communications diagnostic tests, they'd still pass because they do something to compensate for their communications shortcomings. The autistic kid doesn't even care.
This is my sig.
Don't forget the study showing that older parents are more likely to produce offspring with autism. Oh, and fertility treatments seem to be linked as well.
So increased detection, better understanding of the disease, people having children later in life, and increased use of fertility treatments would all seem to have some effect.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The reason you vaccinate at 2-6 months is that the mothers antibodies provide protection up until then. After about 6 months the childs immune system is essentially on it's own. If it has seen a disease (or vaccine) prior to then they can safetly develope a native immunity to it while still under the umbrella of the mothers immune protection.
Today it is rare for a baby to die. 300 years ago it was assumed that most would die before the age of 5. The primary difference is vaccines. By vaccinating children you protect the child AND you reduce the disease load on the population in general.
I am very pleased that your gamble didn't hurt your children but if enough children are not vaccinated then the rate of these disease will shoot up dramatically, and these are deadly and debilitating diseases.
What else could they do? It's their job to determine if so-n-so is legally liable for this-n-that. This isn't necessarily a scientific statement that the vaccine doesn't cause autism (though the decision is based on such statements), but is a legal statement that if you blame autism on the vaccine, the government isn't going to be on your side. And making such statements is what the court is for.
Peanut Butter?
Ben Goldacre writes for the Guardian in the UK with his excellent Bad Science column. http://www.badscience.net/2009/02/bad-science-bingo/
He recently highlighted an ill informed rant by Jeni Barnett from LBC Radio on this issue of the MMR vaccine. They seem to be unaware of the Streisand effect in trying to shut him up and remove the clip from his website.
Amish men have beards, and no known cases of HIV. I also have a beard, and therefore am immune to HIV.
Autism rates went UP after the mercury containing compound (you didn't think it was metallic mercury, did you?) usage in vaccines was reduced.
Furthermore, Autism itself has no objective test. It's a "spectrum disorder" and diagnosis is based on symptoms. Historical numbers may not be comparable.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Wrong! It is pretty clear that autism is more common than before and it seems to be something in the environment, but we do not know what, from Scientific American:
Read more here: New Study:>Autism Linked to Environment: Scientific American
The amish get autism. See here:
http://autism-news-beat.com/?p=29
why is it everyone thinks this is an 'in for a penny in for a pound' issue?
Small pox vaccine for 5 yo = good idea...
Chicken pox vaccine for a 5 yo = wtf?
whooping cough vaccine for infants = good idea
barely tested hpv vaccine for 9yo girls = wtf?
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
You're causing a serious problem in the community entirely because you're some combination of selfish and stupid. Of course you can get away with not vaccinating for some contagious disease, because you're a free rider on everyone else doing it.
There's some small risk in vaccination (very small, but it exists). You want eveyone else's kids to take the risk so that your kid doesn't have to. That's evil. Plain, simple, selfish, evil. Stop hurting other family's children to protect your own - you benefit from society in so many ways, you need to participate in society where it really matters.
This isn't "do your part, recycle" or some other BS, this is your very real duty to protect all children in society by taking a very slight risk with your own.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Oh, sweet, an anecdotal story! That's SO much better than scientific studies or court ruling based on the testimony of thousands of experts and hundreds of published papers! Thank you so much, you've completely converted me!
Actually, the Amish do have an autism problem. The Clinic for Special Children in Strausberg treats some of them. They're prone to some genetic problems, too; it's an inbred society.
I have a friend that won the lottery right after getting vaccinated. Now I get vaccinated for diseases that don't even affect my gender.
The family of 5 down the street has no autistic people. The family down the street doesn't eat dairy. To me that is all the evidence I need right there.
Seriously, why do people with math and logic skills this bad read slashdot? Did they get lost on the way to a gossip site?
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.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
ooohhh, injection of doses of different things! Guess what, we also feed them doses of different things.
The fact is that there are more antigens (threats to their immune system) on the tip of their cute little nose than there are in a vaccine shot. This is the latest argument from the anti-vaccine wingnuts, "Too much too soon." It's a complete non-sequitur. They cannot define too much nor too soon and is not based on science at all. Of course, they only come to this latest tactic because their last ones have all failed: "It's the mercury stupid" or "MMR causes a bowel problem that leads to autism"
Huh? Since when is it evil to care about your family over someone whom you don't know? Seriously, I could give a damn about a family I don't know. I want MY friends and family to survive.
I can also argue that you're being selfish; forcing one person to get a vaccine, for which you acknowledge a risk, for their kid so YOURS isn't in risk. THAT is selfish; expecting someone else to risk their kid for yours.
Thats what peer reviews are for. Both peers and courts can be wrong, but I trust the peers more.
People have suggested a "Science Court" with science-savy judges and officiers as a possibility.
First of all, the judicial branch is defined in Article III, not Article II.
So let's look at Article III:
Section 1 states that the courts wield judicial power, but it does not state how that power is to be divided amongst them. In particular, it does not say that an inferior court must wield the full judicial authority; only that such a court, created by Congress, is an instrument to which some judicial authority can be given.
Section 2 establishes the total scope of judicial power, and reserves the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. It puts a couple requirements on how criminal trials will work (e.g. jury). But, It does not further restrict Congress as to how much judicial authority they give an inferior court they create.
Section 3 limits the definition of treason...
And then we're off to Article IV, talking about the relationship among states under the Union.
Now I'm not Constitutional scholar, so if perhaps there's a definition of "inferior court" elsewhere in the document that would support your claim, please do provide a citation.
Not to mention the dangerously reactive metal sodium.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Dude, calm down. I never said autism is a joke or that all autism is ADHD.
I'll re-phrase it for you...Many other 'disorders' that aren't really disorders have been lumped into the 'autism' category. That is the cause of the 'rise' in autism cases.
Sadly, he's not a troll. What he's referring to is the new batch of what has suddenly become 'autism spectrum disorders'; seems to be the disease-du-jour especially amongst the self-diagnosing crowd. The point is that labeling children with mild difficulties as 'autistic', specifically difficulties that are really more social issues than legitimate medical problems, does not in fact indicate an autism epidemic.
I passed it along to my godson's parents. Not sure if they've read the info before, but my godson is autistic.
My Babylon
No-one is blindly trusting big pharma companies. Research has been done, studies have been run, and no link has been found. Pharma companies aren't exactly altruistic, but if you are going to make accusations of mass manipulation and cover-ups then you need to show some friggen evidence, rather than just spew unsupported paranoia.
You're misunderstanding. Autism is generally regarded as a spectrum of disorder, from those with mild behavioural difficulties all the way to those who cannot function independently in society. It's not something that can be an 'is or is not' like, e.g. Down's Syndrome.
At the mild end of the spectrum it can be really difficult, and quite subjective, to differentiate mild autism from simple naughty behaviour, and it is often when the child gets a bit older that the diagnosis is much clearer because their level of social functioning becomes much more apparent compared to those around them.
'Braver' doctors will overdiagnose and get the occasional complaint from parents saying "you labelled my child and now they're fine" because they had non-autistic spectrum behaviour problems that they grew out of. More conservative doctors will choose to watch and wait then get occasional complaints that they should have seen something subtle earlier - in fact, they probably did but decided to hold off.
You clearly have no idea how vaccines work. They'd get more dose and impact on their system from the common cold than is contained in those "dozens of different things". And you know what has also increased with the move away from vaccines? The spread of the diseases those vaccines protect against.
Also, a more developed immune system wouldn't have any impact on receiving the shots. Unless your child develops an allergy to the shot that will be given. The allergic reaction likely had nothing to do with the vaccinations, or if they did there are alternative methods of administering which would avoid the allergy.
I honestly hope none of your kids come into contact with a disease, that they would otherwise be immune to, before they've reached an age where they're "old enough" to receive the vaccine.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
Why is it so hard to understand that someone could have both received an MMR vaccine and been diagnosed with autism without there being any relation between the two? Most people with autism have had an MMR vaccine, just as most people without autism have had an MMR vaccine.
Where is the supposed plausible evidence?
Obviously, something in our environment is making autism rates climb. But it doesn't look like it's the thimerosol. Even if it is from mercury (which I don't know of any data showing that it is), it seems to be mercury from some other source, not from thimerosol.
Well, there are some people in the medical community claiming that fetal diagnostic ultra sounds, whose usage has increased significantly in recent years, may in fact account for increased incidence of autism in children.
The theory is based on thermal effects of ultra sounds. Presumably heating neural tissue in early development phases by even 1 degree is quite bad. This is actually confirmed on mice studies.
However, on the other hand, there are other people in the medical community who do not buy this argument and claim that ultra sounds are 100% safe, and that human fetuses (unlike mice) are well protected by inches of mother's tissue, and larger amount of amniotic fluid, and that ultra sounds are not focused narrowly enough to actually heat the fetus (or embryo).
I guess Google search on the topic could be interesting but inconclusive.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
"You're causing a serious problem in the community entirely because you're some combination of selfish and stupid."
Did I say I am not going to get them vaccinated *or* did I say I wanted to wait until they had their own functional immune systems.
"There's some small risk in vaccination (very small, but it exists)."
There are risks either way and with the exception of things like Polio nothing should be mandated.
"You want everyone else's kids to take the risk so that your kid doesn't have to. That's evil."
Sigh... yea that's just what I said.. its not like I said I was going to look into it again when they were a touch older or anything I must be some selfish bastard. I did start immunizations on my first kid just when the doc said I should.... she had a terrible allergic reaction here is a clue those are more dangerous in infants and small kids than they are in older kids and adults.
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/02/autism_and_the_mmr_vaccine.html A psychiatrist explains why the original link between autism and the MMR vaccine was absolute junk science of the worst sort. It was a career jump for someone who made a fake link, and had already fudged the underlying data to boot. The fact that the guy isn't in jail is kind of amazing.
I think you're wrong, but perhaps you have a point; these aren't dead yet...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Seriously, I could give a damn about a family I don't know. I want MY friends and family to survive.
Good point! Give me all your money. Now. I don't give a damn about your family that I don't know. I want MY friends and family to have money.
I can also argue that you're being selfish; forcing one person to get a vaccine, for which you acknowledge a risk, for their kid so YOURS isn't in risk.
Call me selfish, then. I'm also collecting tax money from you to fund my kids' schools. I'm a right bastard, aren't I?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Your 10-year old nephew knows nothing about medicine.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Citation please.
Maybe I could have kept giving my kid shots she was allergic to right?
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
Many other 'disorders' that aren't really disorders have been lumped into the 'autism' category. That is the cause of the 'rise' in autism cases.
The Autism spectrum generally includes classic Autism, Asberger's, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), and PDD-NOS.
Yes, the spectrum has grown, but it's not arbitrary. ADHD is not included in the spectrum, nor are a whole host of other disorders that produce behavioral problems.
http://www.mhall119.com
I've started to wonder if the reason earlier cultures had some of those bad evil non-pc ideas wasn't to just be mean evil patriarchal societies.
Maybe they figured out that bad things tended to happen if they had too many engineers having kids with other engineers. That it was better keep similar occupation men and women apart so you'd get the mathematically minded engineer procreating with the socially orientated receptionist. Like the shallow/deep roller spiel in Red Dragon (or was it Hannibal?). Shallow/Shallow or Shallow/Deep was okay. Deep/Deep, not so much...
They don't vaccinate them for smallpox anymore. They didn't even vaccinate them for that when I was young, though I did get one due the folks being in the military.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"Autism is horrible, so is your kid dying of meals, mumps, chicken pox, etc."
Chicken pox is so rarely fatal on its own that the chances of dying from it are statistically insignificant, especially among children, in whom the disease is usually less severe than it is or adults.
"Let's not spread hype/garbage."
Like for example garbage about kids dying from chicken pox?
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Well, what are you worried about? You got your shot right?
a "state study"(?)(Statens beredning för medicinsk utvärdering.) concludes childrens vaccine "Safe and efficient". No link to autism. News stub in swedish: http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=58360&a=1440032&printerfriendly=true So, I'd urge believers of a link between autism and vaccination to start picketing the Swedish government, demanding some answers. Maybe that would get more debate into more homes, since as it is now, some parents are putting my child at risk (vaccines don't give 100% protection). Measels can make you retarded and/or dead.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
It is a commonly accepted theory among psychiatrists that autism is caused by genetic causes, and not by external causes like upbringing or other factors (like vaccines).
"Lots of kids get these vaccines and are OK. The percentage of kids who gets these vaccines and develop autism is the same percentage of kids who get autism just because it happens"
But if you have been giving everyone the vaccine, then naturally the percentage of kids who get vaccines and develop autism will be very similar to the percentage of kids who get autism!
The other thing, how many humans do they test vaccines with? And what condition were those humans in (e.g. were the humans having a cold, exhausted, lack of sleep)? No matter how much you try to avoid it, some child is probably going to come down with some contagious disease (cold/fly etc) before/during the vaccination.
Why? To me there is a big difference between tests for the normal drugs and tests for childhood vaccines.
With normal drugs:
1) Not everyone will take that drug
2) Even if the drug ends up giving you problems, it's more likely to be considered an acceptable risk.
Whereas with the childhood vacciness they want most/all children to take them.
So I suggest that treatment that is to be given to _all_, should be more rigorously tested. So even if you still have to force it on everyone, you have a far better idea of what could happen.
For example: paracetamol is considered a safe drug - and has passed various safety tests. But if you give every child paracetamol, don't be surprised if many have a bad reaction to it. Only now they are suspecting that use of paracetamol in the first year of life increases the risk of asthma developing by 6 or 7 years.
So imagine if paracetamol was a "compulsory for all" drug.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against vaccines (or mass vaccinations). I'm just pointing out a problem with the usual reasoning.
Allergic reaction to a chemical is not the fault of the company producing this chemical, it is the bodies fault for rejecting it. It's like blaming peanut butter companies if I eat peanut butter and have an allergic reaction. To blame the company for this is abhorrently wrong. You blame a company when they make medicine that causes harm to anyone who uses it properly. In the case of these vaccinations, they have been used for MANY MANY years and there is no evidence it causes people harm. Even if it did in .01% of the population, as long as they make it known they are OK - but so far there is no evidence that links the two together except for the timing - which timing is circumstantial and not valid in any court of law in and of itself.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
Many moons ago I worked at Chuck E. Cheese's as a door checker, guess how many times I got the flu over one winter even though I had the vaccine.
I think perhaps this is not a case of either-or, but rather a sliding scale. Mildly affected kids may not need the full range of specialised services provided by schools but may instead only need more patience and understanding from their teachers. In a similar situation, my sister is completely deaf in one ear and partially deaf in the other, but she operates just about normally and only sometimes will she need things repeated or said a little louder for her. Invariably, when informed of her minor problem teachers would either ignore her needs or else treat her like she was retarded. She had more than one teacher ask her "DOO... YOOU... UUNDDERRR-STAAAND MEEE?". One school refused to have her as a student at all (because they "couldn't provide disability services") until my parents insisted they meet her face to face and actually find out that she was not, in fact, severely disabled.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I didn't make accusations of mass manipulation and cover ups. My problem is with all of the people mocking the parents for saying something isn't right. Did you know there were studies that "scientifically proved" that black's couldn't be fighter pilots. Seems that the Tuskegee Airmen being all black and one of the best fighter units should have been "scientifically impossible" based on the research that had been done, and the studies that were run, and the link that was found that said black's were incapable of being fighter pilots.
I'm not even saying that the vaccines are a bad idea. I am saying that people cling to science as often as they cling to religion and resorting to mocking the people who dare question the "authority". Science is about skepticism, not belief. Smoking used to be good for your health...
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Ever watch the movie Serenity?
They thought they had a cure for social strife, which easily kills more people that contagious diseases do...
Am I the only one to think, "Wait a second, the court doesn't get to decide this."
Vaccines either did or didn't cause autism, and that's determined scientifically by looking at the evidence. What the court rules has no impact on whether or not vaccines cause autism.
That said, I'm glad to see a courtroom see reason for a change instead of finding in favor of the party with the best lawyers.
Question everything
They stopped using thimerosal in the MMR vaccine *years* ago. In fact, that is what makes it so trivially easy to show that mercury from thimerosal in the MMR vaccine was unrelated to autism. They removed it, and nothing changed.
(And by nothing, I mean not even the anti-vaccination rhetoric. It's about as bad as the buffoons who claim that Coke is addictive because they surreptitiously still add cocaine -- undetectable cocaine, even!)
No you don't. You just think you do. Welcome to the world of anecdotal evidence and the logical fallacy of "post hoc ergo propter hoc".
Herd immunity, if you get enough people vaccinated, even those few without protection, are protected and you can basically force a disease into non-existence, if on the other side you don't get enough people vaccinated herd immunity no longer works and people will die as a result of that.
Its also questionable if freedom should allow you to let your child suffer and possibly die if a cure exists.
There's these things you might have noticed on your wife. Likely, to you, they're little pleasure apples of delight. But they also, when the hormones are just right, begin secreting a white, milky fluid, which babies are known to be fond of.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
WRONG!!!!
First, nobody knows the underlying causes of autism. One of the exacerbating circumstances with this issue is that autism is a "spectrum disorder" -- there are probably multiple causes, and no particular treatment will work across the board.
Second, vaccines are tested much the same as any other medication -- a population is selected, (assuming a double blind study) some of the population is given the actual medication while the remainder is given a placebo, statistical methods are then applied to determine the safety level. While this method validates (or invalidates) the safety of any particular medication, it says nothing about the safety of medical cocktails. Young children (less than 2 years old) are often given multiple vaccinations during a single "well" visit. Nobody has even attempted to determine if these multiple, simultaneous vaccinations are safe.
Third, and to the point, there is scientific evidence that the rate of autism is more common now than in the past. Scientific heresy you say? Consider this: In 1975 a study was performed to look at bleeding during pregnancy as a risk factor for autism and childhood psychosis. Computerized records of 30,000 children born between 1959 and 1965 at 14 university-affiliated medical centers were examined (that is a huge sample). Fourteen children were identified as having autism (by the definition used in 1975) -- a rate of 4.7 children per 10,000. This rate matched perfectly with other contemporary studies. Additionally, 6 other children were labeled as disturbed, psychotic, autistic, or schizophrenic. The remaining children were considered cognitively normal. Labeling all the cognitively non-normal children as autistic gives a rate of 6.7 children per 10,000. This rate is _far_, _far_ below even the low-end estimate of 30 per 10,000 for autistic spectrum disorders today cited by the National Institute of Health. FYI, the study was published in the highly credible Journal of autism and Childhood Schizophrenia in 1975. This is an apples-to-apples comparison folks. The rate of childhood autism is definitely increasing.
Finally, the court can make any ruling it wants. That in no way determines the cause or treatment of autism or any other disease for that matter. What is does do is throw yet another monkey wrench into the lives of families that are already struggling to deal with their situations. Our tax dollars would be better spent on medical research to identify the true causes of diseases and effective treatments.
Thimerosal has not been used in several years, and autism rates have not changed. try some of that medicine, Mr "Educate yourself"
Oh, don't sell yourself short. And anyway you don't need to be an expert, or anywhere near, to have an opinion round these here parts.
Yes, it's preposterous. For one thing, how would those alleged antibodies be transported? Teleportation aside, it would require some substance that passes from the mother to the baby on a regular basis to act as a carrier.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
One wonders how many anti-vaxers are two or more generations removed from a threat. I mean, I can point to my parents and say, "My mom got polio as a child, and had rubella while pregnant. Thankfully, my sister was in the lucky unaffected minority; German Measles leads to severe side effects (including brain damage and blindness) in over 50% of affected children. My father lost a sister to measles."
Furthermore, my vaccinated husband caught whooping cough, presumably from someone who wasn't vaccinated. Vaccines do have a failure rate for whatever reason, and we rely on herd immunity to protect those for whom it does not take. My mother-in-law stayed up with him for two weeks, trying to keep him breathing.
Anyone who has heard stories like that when growing up doesn't doubt the need for vaccines. But one wonders if the anti-vaxers are living in a bubble, or never listened to stories like this from their parents or grandparents.
--okay.
One problem I have with trying to convince people about vaccines is explaining how herd immunity works. What I want is a little computer simulation that could be little more than particles moving randomly for a set period of time (equivalent to, say, two weeks.) Into this simulator is introduced a vector, an infected person. The rest of the particles are immunized according to whatever disease this is-- you know, with a particular rate of success of 85-95%. Then you show how it spreads, with the percentages of morbidity and mortality showing up at the end.
The point there is that I'd like this simulation to be adjustable-- you start off with an immunization rate of 95% (with whichever success rate is appropriate for that vaccine) and can change that rate to show what happens to the population as a whole when a portion of the population doesn't get vaccinated. Then you could show people how their "stand on principles" can lead to epidemic or pandemic conditions.
As you might guess, I am not a programmer. Anyone want to rise to the challenge?
Actually I am a lab rat in an elaborate plot to take over the world.
Playing violent video games can cause autism too! Wait 'till Jack Thompson hears about this one!
People are mocking the questioners in this case because they have no evidence. There is no proven link. There have been scientific studies and they have been reproduced and vetted.
Your examples of racist studies are not applicable, because those could be questioned and debated based on their scientific merit, of which there was little. In this case, we have studies that show no link, and rather than question those studies', the people in question are sticking their fingers in their ears, going "Nuh uh!" and regurgitating the SAME DIS-PROVEN ARGUMENTS.
They are not being mocked because they are questioning authority. They are being mocked because they are blatantly, willfully ignorant. They are being mocked because they are encouraging the same blatant, willful ignorance in others, and that ignorance poses a very real and clear danger to others.
Many people have stood up to authority and have not been mocked. These people had evidence. These people did their due diligence in making sure that they knew what they were talking about. The woman in question is not one of these people. People laughed at the Wright brothers, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown: this woman is the latter, not the former.
If you don't agree with that, then offer some new evidence. Try to make it some that hasn't been disproven repeatedly.
I've got a 10-year old nephew that says otherwise.
What are his credentials?
Comment of the year
Thanks for the info. However, if the kid is autistic enough to warrant being kicked out of school for autistim-related disrupions wouldn't that be easy enough for a doctor to detect early on? I assume that if a doctor is weary about diagnosing a kid with autism then the kid is probably not going to be kicked out of school for autism-related disruptions. So either my assumptions are wrong (could very well be) or I'm still misunderstanding what the problem is. The AC I replied to said the problem was school's refusing to offer services to kids who aren't autistic. But I don't see that as a problem. What I do see as a problem is parents shopping around to find a doctor willing to diagnose their kid with autism because their kid got himself kicked out of school because he was disruptive. But, again I'm assuming, if his disruptions were autism-related, you wouldn't need to shop around as any competent doctor would be able to diagnose that.
That's not to say a kid can't have mild autism but still be kicked out for non-autistic spectrum behavior, but if that were the case, it'd still be parents trying to lay the blame on some thing that isn't the real issue (i.e., their kid is disruptive for non-autistic spectrum behavior).
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
Is this the same court system that ruled that cigarettes and nutrasweet don't cause cancer?
Many fewer people die or even experience an irritation from vaccinations than would die or be horribly deformed from the things prevented by the vaccinations. You probably still drive a car, don't you? Don't you know kids could die in one of those?
It amazes me how otherwise rational people can be so fucking stupid.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
There are several thousand articles on Pubmed.
While the blood doesn't mix, nutrients and other macromolecules are actively transported across the interface. This include IgG antibodies. IgG antibodies are designed to cross every barrier in the body. You find them in saliva, intestinal contents, tears, brain tissue, sweat and of course blood.
IgG antibodies are free floating (rather than attached to an immune cell). They cause the target antigen to clump up and helps other immune cells target the antigen for destruction. The infant has a representative sample of all the IgG the mother produces (every infection generates a few).
These proteins have a half life of a few months. This means that after about 3-4 months the levels start dropping quickly. Breast milk also contains these antibodies but after about 6 months the infants digestive system is efficient enough to destroy the antibodies before they make it into the blood stream.
I offer you my non-existent mod-points.
I was diagnosed with asperger's disorder 5 or 6 years ago. On the whole, my life has not been affected in any major way. While I can identify some of the signs quite easily, and I definitely have problems socializing, I would not say this somehow makes me all that far off from your usual nerd. Yes, I'm a shut-in, for the most part, with nothing but the cold glow of my LCD monitor to keep me warm, but, again, I'm posting on /. so no surprise.
Kidding aside, the doctor who diagnosed me said it was obvious to see, but that it is not so much a condition as it is a personality trait. He explained how autism is a spectrum and how severe it can be. I wasn't doomed to a life at the end of the short bus nor was I "gifted" with incredible genius the likes of which man has never seen, despite what the average idiot and mother thinks, respectively.
In most places I go, I can't mention the diagnosis without being mocked and told that I think I'm a "special little snowflake" blaming all of his problems and social defects on a made-up disease. It's really annoying.
I guess I'm just trying to say... it's better to be more conservative with the diagnosis as you showed, and to remind people that it's not necessarily a world-shattering condition in many cases.
Because as the percentage of people who don't get their children vaccinated grows, the likelihood of an outbreak increases greatly, as well as the chance of mutation which could render the vaccine ineffective.
They -do- work. They're necessary, unless you like the thought of easily preventable diseases ripping through schools full of young children, far more of whom will die of the disease than are suspected of having been afflicted with autism because of them.
Colostrum?
and your evidence for a link is....
While you're thinking, here are some actual facts.
I feel sorry for your nephew, but you have to accept that autism is naturally occuring and that there isn't always someone you can pin the blame on.
I had a lady a couple of weeks ago whose in some class that's sharing some space with my company walk by, see me in the server room, and proceeded to tell me how all those network and electrical cables were going to cause me to become fatigued and frequently ill. On the plus side, she had a friend who sells a device you plug into AC wall outlets that gets rid of the "bad" radiation.
There are ignorant morons out there, and then there are the cunning people who take advantage of them. I wish had fewer scruples, because I think there's a fortune to be made in screwing over the foolish (like the lawyers for these families, for instance).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Up until the moment stupid people decide that imaginary man in the sky forbids it or that they just don't need it.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Good point! Give me all your money. Now. I don't give a damn about your family that I don't know. I want MY friends and family to have money.
You're welcome to try and come take it from me. What is your point with this, really? You're suprised I'm not going to hand over my money to you? Really?
Call me selfish, then. I'm also collecting tax money from you to fund my kids' schools. I'm a right bastard, aren't I?
Yup.. since I didn't get a say in how many kids you had, if you're going to have more, what school they go to, how much time they spend studying, what they eat and a host of other things that are effectively out of my control. But if you want to insist I pay for your kids school, I'm going to insist they are raised a certain way.
Let's start with making schools boarding schools, so you don't interfere with their education in any way, or waste time passing your religous beliefs to them.. that's time better spent learning math as far as I'm concerned.
I've got a 10-year old nephew that says otherwise.
I'm sorry to hear about your nephew, but that's evidence of nothing.
Hypothetically, if I had a 10-year old nephew with autism that wasn't vaccinated, would that be proof that the vaccine would have prevented his autism?
Well, lets say I don't believe they work. Let's say for the sake of argument that I don't believe antibodies fight anything at all and I choose not to get them.
Now what will you do to me?
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Sugar does not cause hyperactivity!
Geeze, alright it doesn't, lay off the sugar already.
The enemies of Democracy are
Actually, so long as the unimmunized kids don't cross a certain threshold, population immunity makes it so they're not much of a risk.
Basically, so long as most people are immunized, those few who do get sick won't have anyone to spread the disease to, so it will die out right away, rather than becoming an epidemic.
That said, I think it's a really, really bad idea to skip vaccinations. I'd never do that to my kids if I had any.
I'm no expert, but I don't see how the mothers antibodies could be protecting the child after delivery[...]
From the Merck Manual Home Edition:
Obviously, this is anything but a comprehensive review of the relevant medical literature. I personally wonder how long actual antibodies last (as opposed to the immunity of which they are one facet). Hopefully, this has piqued your interest enough that you'll look deeper yourself.
But I could be wrong, maybe antibodies get through as well, it just doesn't seem likely.
How "likely" does it seem that you would have five classes of antibodies? I'm not going to beat you over the head about being wrong (which would make me, what, a bio-nazi?), but I will call you out for relying on supposition and gut feeling instead of doing even the most basic checking (not even "research") before spouting off.
If we collectively make fun of Ted Stevens for speaking "authoritatively" about things he does not understand in the least (series of tubes!), I would suggest that we are perfectly within our rights to call out each other for spouting equally ill-informed drivel about topics on which we have not bothered to read.
And if evidence does appear, the ruling can be overturned. It's a pretty straightforward system.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
That's one possibility (and it might be a very good one; I'm not disputing that). But, there is another possibility, which is that the rate of incidence of autism has stayed the same, but that our ability to diagnose it has increased. How many people that we call "autistic" today would have just been called "weird" or "slow" 50 years ago?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"Do we really want courts deciding scientific fact?"
When facts are necessary to rule on cases then the court should collect some facts.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
They work when the vast population takes them, since the disease won't be easily spread. But if there is a large portion of the population that isn't immunized, a lot of children with immunizations will get sick.
I forget the term for this, if there is a term.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Wow, your post is in bold lettering and features and exclamation point, so you must be right. You even quote a page from a "magazine" to support your argument.
I'm curious. What does "Our Unabashed Dictionary" define autim as?
BBH
While it's looking more and more like autism isn't caused by the MMR vaccine it does seem that something that is integral to our modern way of life does cause it. Before I saw Rain Man I had never heard of Autism, now I have an autistic son, my ex has another autistic son, one of my best childhood friends has an autistic son, my GF has a son with asperger's, and there are others I am aware of within my community. This can't be explained by increased diagnosis and I didn't meet any of these people as a result of the condition. There is something that has entered our environment within the past half century or so that is causing an alarming rise in the incidence of autistic spectrum disorders. I don't know what it is, perhaps it's the foam padding in our furniture, or household cleaners, or chlorinated water supplies, or TV, or microwaves, or food additives. Perhaps it is vaccines and the pharmaceutical corporations are covering it up. I simply don't know.
Beyond this..
How do you intend to "get enough people vaccinated"?
What type of assurance do you have that that year old flu shot will work on todays virus?
What do you mean by "Its also questionable if freedom should allow you to let your child suffer and possibly die if a cure exists."?
Freedom is freedom, you can't redefine what freedom *should* be. It is what it is. "if freedom should allow" what kind of bullshit statement is that?
The very last question I have for you is.. If you mandate a vaccine, and I think you would be in favor of that given your attitude.. What will you have done to me if I say no?
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
You are missing the point. Even the FDA says the mercury additive is toxic and has caused documented reactions. I am not even saying these people are correct in this case. However, there have been people that had evidence that stood up and were mocked/ostracized/executed/etc. There is no shortage of things that were once scientifically proven that were later dismised as nonsense either, especially in the medical realm. Here is a fun one.
There has been a huge rise in autism cases as of late. This could be increased diagnosis. This could be other causes. But honestly, until the root cause of the problem is found, everything is still suspect. Maybe the vaccinations do pose no risk...unless coupled with some other enviromental variable. I am sure you are aware that certain chemicals interact, maybe there is a higher risk in these vaccinations when there are other chemicals present in the child's environment. There have been numerous studies that have shown that because of all the chemicals we use in kids junk these days that kids have far higher levels of toxins in their system than their parents did. What about allergies? I can eat peanuts, it kills other people. Are peanuts safe for most people, sure, can they kill some people, absolutely. Since you seem to demand a black and white answer are peanuts dangerous or not? There can't possibly be enough studies to disprove every possible combination in which the contents of these vaccines could have been a player.
Now, I am reasonably certain the reward is greater than the risk by a pretty large margin, but that does not mean that these things may not be linked.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Second, vaccines are tested much the same as any other medication -- a population is selected, (assuming a double blind study) some of the population is given the actual medication while the remainder is given a placebo, statistical methods are then applied to determine the safety level. While this method validates (or invalidates) the safety of any particular medication, it says nothing about the safety of medical cocktails. Young children (less than 2 years old) are often given multiple vaccinations during a single "well" visit. Nobody has even attempted to determine if these multiple, simultaneous vaccinations are safe.
Third, and to the point, there is scientific evidence that the rate of autism is more common now than in the past. Scientific heresy you say? Consider this: In 1975 a study was performed to look at bleeding during pregnancy as a risk factor for autism and childhood psychosis. Computerized records of 30,000 children born between 1959 and 1965 at 14 university-affiliated medical centers were examined (that is a huge sample). Fourteen children were identified as having autism (by the definition used in 1975) -- a rate of 4.7 children per 10,000. This rate matched perfectly with other contemporary studies. Additionally, 6 other children were labeled as disturbed, psychotic, autistic, or schizophrenic. The remaining children were considered cognitively normal. Labeling all the cognitively non-normal children as autistic gives a rate of 6.7 children per 10,000. This rate is _far_, _far_ below even the low-end estimate of 30 per 10,000 for autistic spectrum disorders today cited by the National Institute of Health. FYI, the study was published in the highly credible Journal of autism and Childhood Schizophrenia in 1975. This is an apples-to-apples comparison folks. The rate of childhood autism is definitely increasing.
Finally, the court can make any ruling it wants. That in no way determines the cause or treatment of autism or any other disease for that matter. What is does do is throw yet another monkey wrench into the lives of families that are already struggling to deal with their situations. Our tax dollars would be better spent on medical research to identify the true causes of diseases and effective treatments.
They do work. Or did you fail english comprehension?
Only if it is modded +5 Insightful.
Autism, like many other diseases/illnesses can be miss-diagnosed so back in ye olden days, a poor autistic child could've been thrown in an asylum, abandoned, or even snuffed out by those unwilling to care for them.
Plus, since autism isn't an inherently genetic trait, there's no 100% accurate test for the illness. You just have observed behaviour of the participant as a sign of illness, so some people who have it will never be diagnosed whereas some who don't have it will be labelled as such if they happen to exhibit similar symptoms. This is much akin to the use of over-diagnosing signs of ADD.
Plus, if an earlier poster was accurate in their correlation that age is a contributing factor, that could also explain a dramatic rise in Autism, since by in large, people are having children at a later age in most western industrial countries.
Bye!
Yes, because N=1 trumps N=10,000 every time.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
By mandating it for those who enter public institutions, especially schools.
None, because the flu virus mutates rapidly.
Ah yes, the freedom to allow your child to die from a treatable disease and the freedom to put others at risk for a communicable disease. Also, the freedom to spread misinformation and spout unfounded "theories" as truth.
Then your child will not be allowed into the public school. The private schools may not allow you in.
Why does it have to be environmental? It could just as easily be behavioral. Having kids at an older age... Partaking in certain activities before/during conception/pregnancy...
Why is the default theory always to blame somebody else?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. For example, while there may some uncertainty in individual facts, accepted science is that life evolved on this planet from bacteria to the life we say today, with several very well known steps in between. There's no error bar for that. Similarly with other facts like sodium plus chlorine equals salt. Again, black and white.
Now, if you come in to criminal court and try to convict someone based on a theory that DOES have some significant error bars, it's just not going to fly.
I do have some reservations about the preponderance of doubt standard in civil court. But I think in general, it works as well as the science does that is presented as evidence.
This is also why we need:
1. Strong regulators who are funded to independently research this sort of stuff when needed.
2. To stop fighting out these kinds of issues in lawsuits.
When a medical procedure or drug enters the market the introducer should pay to have it tested to show that it is safe. Once this is accepted, the onus should then be on the government to show that it is not safe (or that there was clear fraud). If a government rules that a product is safe a court should not be able to award damages.
The problem is now that anybody can come up with any theory they'd like and sue for billions of dollars in a class-action. This encourages:
1. Plaintiffs to come out of the woodwork with any crazy theory to make some money.
2. Companies to avoid even researching safety issues - not because the research would cost money but because the outcome would punish them with 20/20 hindsight.
Go ahead and force companies to do safety studies if you must, but the outcome should be products pulled from the market - not lawsuits. And fraud means outright fraud. If a company finds one data point that suggests that there might be a risk, but doesn't pull a product until a study is completed several years later, they shouldn't be punished for this. If you pulled a product every time somebody got sick from it there wouldn't be anything on your pharmacy shelves. Lawyers love 20/20 hindsight. Now, if a company completes a definitive study and buries the results that is fraud. If a company completes a study and there is controversy in the data, and the company honestly reports the data to a regulator and gets the nod to put a product on the market, that isn't fraud.
Troll Much?
Vaccinations are mandatory because freedom loving hippy trippers that don't consider the costs to other people's children decide not to get their brats vaccinated. And those brats infect other hippytripper brats, and those.... Wait. Could your stupidity actually be coming back on your children?
The reason people get "freaked out" when YOU tell them that YOU don't vaccinate YOUR kids is not because they are scared for their own kids. It's because of YOUR failure to protect your children from:
1. Measles - causes facial scarring, corneal scarring, and blindness
2. Mumps - can cause infertility on older victims
3. Polio - cripples children. Completely. Paralysis and often Death for those that contract it
4. Smallpox - Facial scarring, blindness, limb deformities, paralysis.
You see, they are actually recoiling in horror at what a despicable, inhuman, horrible parent you are. Children face risks. Lots of them. Before adequate medical care, clean water, and all the other modern conveniences (starting about the 1900s), lots of children died before their 5th birthday. And you have just increased their risks from our wonderful 2009 statistics back to the 1909 statistics. Not vaccinating your child opens them up to all of this, Vaccinating opens them up to a tiny risk. Easy FREAKING choice.
My two cents: You should be locked up for child endangerment if you don't vaccinate.
~Sticky
GP said "etc" (Weedlekin's finger presumably got tired before reading that far) so smallpox would fall under that - along with polio, rubella and many other lovely things.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Yes, I've seen Serenity. In fact I own it, its a good movie.
They thought they had a cure for social strife, which easily kills more people that contagious diseases do..
I've also seen "The Last Man on Earth" and "The Stand". If we can go to fiction land the pendulum swings both ways.
In the real world something like smallpox has killed more people in a day than all the vaccines administered in the last 100 years combined.
Even if the odds of the vaccination killing you are 1:10,000,000 and the odds of the disease killing you are 1:1,000,000 you common sense dictates you should take the vaccination.
Personally I would call parents that are fighting against vaccinations as irresponsible and a danger to society.
I don't think it's reasonable to make a blanket statement like this as far as all vaccines go. Different vaccines pose different risks, and different diseases also have different risks. Once you get to a point where more people or animals are injured or killed by a vaccine than the disease it's combating, it's probably time to weigh those risks and consider ditching the immunization program.
That said, I'll add that I fully agree with teh sentiment of your statement, in the sense that many immunizations pose negligible risk when administered, while they combat diseases that can be rather dangerous. The MMR vaccine is one of those that EVEN IF THERE WAS A DEFINITE LINK (which of course there is no evidence of), it would STILL be worthwhile. The anti-MMR kooks are no better than any other religious acolytes. Nothing anyone says, no hard science is ever going to dissuade them. They believe, on faith, that autism is caused by the MMR vaccine, and it's impossible to prove a negative in this case, any more than it's possible to prove conclusively that God doesn't exist.
So what is society to do about them? Prosecute the "conscientious objectors" for the harm they cause. If they're making educated decisions, surely they know the risks that the diseases pose to not only their own kids, but also everyone who their kids are around. Having that vaccination paper would absolve them of liability in the event of an outbreak, but those without proof could and should be held liable for everyone's medical bills, parents' lost work, and pain and suffering of everyone involved. If we can hold those religious kooks who let their kids die of trivial conditions because they believe prayer is more powerful than medical attention, surely this is feasible.
I'll just add that I do understand these sorts of risks and liabilities. For example, after research and careful consideration of all the risk factors and so on, I chose to cease vaccinating my animals, which are as much my family as the humans. With the horses, their risk factors are extremely low with no legal repercussions. With my dog, however...rabies is a mandatory vaccination. It's also one of the more dangerous vaccines out there from an adverse reaction standpoint (anaphylaxis resulting in death isn't exactly rare with it). However, in my home state, rabies is a virtually nonexistent threat. It's extremely rare even in non-vaccinated wildlife (aside from bats). There have been maybe a couple dozen documented cases of rabies (in non-bat species) here since 1910 or whenever the records started being kept. That includes wildlife, humans, and domestic animals. The odds of any dog in this state, even that come into contact with wildlife, contracting rabies are negligible. It's a statistic quoted by the animal control people with the large municipalities that compliance with the vaccination/license laws is less than 30%, so it's a bit of a stretch to argue that the vaccinations are keeping the virus in-check (again, consider all the unvaccinated wildlife that don't have rabies, too).
Even in light of all that though, I'm painfully aware that if my dog was to ever bite a human, it would be her death sentence since I don't have her rabies papers, since law enforcement quarantines all non-vaccinated dogs who bite humans for a week or two to see if they manifest symptoms, and then kills them regardless and has their brains shipped off for rabies testing. It's barbaric, but that's the greedy veterinary lobby at work. I choose that risk because the health risks of the vaccine, coupled with the needless expense, just seem so ridiculous in comparison. And I will do everything in my power to make sure it never comes to a test.
Normally, after "in other words", one writes a summary of what he's responding to, literally restating the same point in other words.
What you've done, however, is write "in other words" followed by something completely different from what the parent said. Nice try, but you're doing it wrong.
The parent's point regarding herd immunity was that vaccination works not only for the person who gets vaccinated, but also for other members of the community who don't get vaccinated. If you choose not to vaccinate your child, you're not only making it more likely that he'll get sick, you're also making it more likely that all the other kids who aren't vaccinated will get sick.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
I'm not missing the point. Yes all those things may be true, but if they are then there will be evidence for them. Yes, some people have been mocked despite having evidence. In many cases they were eventually proven out. This is not one of those cases. This lady believes that the vaccine causes autism because she wants it to be true. The evidence is not on her side. This unsupported cause is causing ignorant people to stop vaccinations, which is eroding our herd immunity. This is dangerous to society. She deserves to be mocked because of this.
I don't agree that, because some people were not taken seriously in the past, you must take similar people seriously now. Again, the Wright Brothers/Bozo the Clown comment applies. If this woman wants me to take her seriously, she needs to support her claims. She has not, so I won't.
if the kid is autistic enough to warrant being kicked out of school for autistim-related disrupions wouldn't that be easy enough for a doctor to detect early on?
No. Autistic children typically behave very differently in a one-on-one environment than they do in a group, between strangers and people they know, and also between an adult and their peers. Their behaviors are also not consistent, they may be fine in school 99% of the time, but then something will set them off that they can't deal with.
http://www.mhall119.com
No, you just don't understand adaptation and herd immunity. Some remedial biology classes may be in order.
Really guys, sometimes I feel glad that I live in a little bit more "socialist" country...
Here in Mexico, we have socialized health care, and all parents get a "national vaccinations card" for their kid along with their birth certificate.
This card has spaces for stamps of all the vaccinations kids have to get, along with the ages when you have to take your kid to get them. As part of the National Vaccination Program, the goverment gives all the vaccinations for free (except for the really new ones, like the HPV vaccine for girls)
"Oh, but I can ignore the card" you say? No, sorry... Your kid will be denied admission in a public school (and basically all the private schools too!) if the parents don't show that the kid has received all of the appropiate vaccinations for his/her age.
No sig for the moment.
I would, but I don't know where the guy lives :)
In the context of this discussion, your username doesn't exactly inspire confidence in your position :)
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I got a zealot, sweet! I was fishing for someone like this.
How do you intend to "get enough people vaccinated"?
By mandating it for those who enter public institutions, especially schools.
Ok, fair enough. Can I choose to opt-out? If so I agree entirely. (opt-out means totally, as in not paying for it, and not required to do anything at all in regards to it.)
Freedom is freedom, you can't redefine what freedom *should* be. It is what it is. "if freedom should allow" what kind of bullshit statement is that?
Ah yes, the freedom to allow your child to die from a treatable disease and the freedom to put others at risk for a communicable disease. Also, the freedom to spread misinformation and spout unfounded "theories" as truth.
Well.. a child has rights of his own. A parent is a ward of that child nothing more. That being said you have a right to not do whatever you would like to not do. Philosophically the Lockean Theory of rights operates in a negative seance, so a "right" or a "freedom" could never compel you to take action. Now if you harm that child, it may be in that child interest to seek a new ward, but the child is the one who should make that decision (when they are able to communicate.) Many do too they "run away" I think that's fine.. most come back but sometimes there are good reasons for this action. Freedom does require you to have to allow people to make choices you don't agree with.
If you mandate a vaccine, and I think you would be in favor of that given your attitude.. What will you have done to me if I say no?
Then your child will not be allowed into the public school. The private schools may not allow you in.
I wasn't talking about a child. Will you mandate vaccine for adults? What would happen to me if I say no to that? Will you kill me?
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Not to mention that all this focus on vaccines and autism misses the boat on Autism entirely.
My son is autistic, and it has nothing to do with his vaccination cycle. The doctor we went to used a more sedate vaccination schedule. He used the safest brands of the vaccines.
More importantly, I can look back at my son's behavior when he was just a baby and say with complete confidence he was Autistic even then.
He did not turn 2, and then have a shot that made him Autistic, he was always Austistic.
As an adult, YOU can choose not to get them, that is your right. BUT, kids get vaccinations, because parents are often stupid, and try to use their children to express their political and religious views. It's the same reason child services takes kids away from bad parents.
Your children shouldn't have to risk blindness, scarring, paralysis, and death because you don't believe what the rest of the world knows is fact. Forgive me if I trust the millions of doctors, researchers, and other health professionals over a person ignorant of the risks and the science of not vaccinating. They aren't old enough to look out for their best interests, and you're too caught up in your own "beliefs" to realize that you are risking the health, welfare, and happiness of your child.
Let me know when one of your kids gets polio, I'd love to serve on that jury.
~Sticky
Introversion is not the same thing as Autism. What you described is introversion.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Ah... perhaps I left something out.
How do you get the herd vaccinated? ..in a free society that is.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Now that the drug companies are off the hook we can go after the real cause -- Sin!
Two reasons:
1) Some people care about others, as well as themselves. Perhaps those people care whether your kids die.
2) A small subset of people cannot benefit from immunization, or have not been immunized through no fault of their own. This includes immigrants who were not given the opportunity to be immunized and people with compromised immune systems. Oh, and children of people who think vaccines are bad. These people are protected by vaccines anyway, provided enough of the rest of the population IS vaccinated. This "herd immunity" keeps diseases from spreading. Yes, you and your kids are protected (congratulations), provided ENOUGH other people do get vaccinated.
Oh, and 3) it's a whole lot cheaper to give even a whole bunch of people a three cent shot than it is to support them for the rest of their lives because something like polio has destroyed their ability to work, walk, or breathe on their own.
If this was about one woman in one isolated case this would all be nonissue. The fact is we don't understand autism very well at all and to say we can prove/disprove causes without understanding it is a little goofy. I have read the weird rantings of the crazed parents about the autism/vaccination thing, I don't take them very seriously. I have also read a lot of it coming from pediatricians or other medically knowledgable people, that don't take such a zealotry approach, suggest there may be a link, and even offer alternate explanations.
The claim and the person making the claim must be separated. In your example, there were a great number of bad attempts at flight, many operated on fundamentally wrong assumptions about how flight worked, but disproving 1, 10, or 100 of those bad ideas did not disprove that manned flight was capable, only that those specific explanations of how to do it were wrong. The guys jumping off of towers with home made wings had the right idea that man could fly, just a really bad approach. The Wright Brothers are only famous because they got it correct. The specific claims of HOW it is linked can be disproven, but that doesn't disprove the potential link itself.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
I can see what you mean, but it's entirely possible for a child to be disruptive and the issue not be autism. It could be sheer naughtiness (which may be a disorder in its own right, but not autism), it could be secondary to something like chronic pain (undiagnosed constipation is a common one), it could even be some sort of home problem or abuse. None of those things are autistic spectrum, and all of them take time to tease out. Until a child reaches an age at which they acquire complex social interactions (or should), characteristic behaviour is difficult to spot.
Think about it this way: if someone says 'my computer keeps crashing' I would assume (as a Slashdot member) you would know how to go about diagnosing that - you would need to see the complex behaviour of interacting with the operating system in order to work it out. If it was a rack in a server farm and you just had a blinking LED telling you it's not working, that wouldn't be enough.
In the meantime schools can be unsympathetic because they just see a naughty child. The nub of the issue is that actually we everyone, including schools, should be sympathetic to any child with behavioural problems, because whatever the issue, the solution is for parents and other responsible adults to provide a supportive environment, not to chuck the child out.
He ran off to America. It's up to you guys to deal with him now.
I suggest releasing Smallpox into his neighbourhood and seeing how fast he changes his mind about vaccines.
Well.. a child has rights of his own. A parent is a ward of that child nothing more. That being said you have a right to not do whatever you would like to not do. Philosophically the Lockean Theory of rights operates in a negative seance, so a "right" or a "freedom" could never compel you to take action. Now if you harm that child, it may be in that child interest to seek a new ward, but the child is the one who should make that decision (when they are able to communicate.) Many do too they "run away" I think that's fine.. most come back but sometimes there are good reasons for this action. Freedom does require you to have to allow people to make choices you don't agree with.
Yes, of course, the 4 day old infant, or the 4 year old toddler is going to get up in arms about how he/she hasn't been vaccinated and how they believe their parents are unfit to rear them. Children believe one thing when they are that old: what their parents tell them.
I wasn't talking about a child. Will you mandate vaccine for adults? What would happen to me if I say no to that? Will you kill me?
Way to jump the shark buddy.
We don't have to mandate vaccines for adults, you were vaccinated when you were little. As you grow, you are allowed to make whatever decisions you like about your own personal health and welfare, but you aren't going to be getting federal money for school, you won't be going to school, you won't be getting a government job, you'll only be able to get expensive insurance, etc. Oh, and your children have to be vaccinated.
~Sticky
But since Wikipedia defines the media, that means we define science!
Stop! Dremel time!
You do realize that different compounds of Mercury have different chemical properties, right? Sure, some are dangerous in small amounts, but not all of them.
By your reasoning, since hydrogen is a toxin, then so is water.
Also, you might be surprised at the resolution of current statistical methods, even with relatively small sample sizes. It's very possible that an increase of 0.006% is detectable depending on the quality and size of the sample and the methods used.
I think it's horrible that the FDA told manufacturers to stop using a particular preservative not based on evidence that it was dangerous, but instead because a small group of vocal and misguided parents complained about it. It was stupid and, of course, seen as an admission that there was something wrong with it (when there's no evidence at all that there is).
*sigh* back to work...
Nobody mandates a vaccine for adults.. it's done in schools so over a period of years the immunity in the general population increases.
Troll Much?
Vaccinations are mandatory because freedom loving hippy trippers that don't consider the costs to other people's children decide not to get their brats vaccinated. And those brats infect other hippytripper brats, and those.... Wait. Could your stupidity actually be coming back on your children?
The reason people get "freaked out" when YOU tell them that YOU don't vaccinate YOUR kids is not because they are scared for their own kids. It's because of YOUR failure to protect your children from:
1. Measles - causes facial scarring, corneal scarring, and blindness
2. Mumps - can cause infertility on older victims
3. Polio - cripples children. Completely. Paralysis and often Death for those that contract it
4. Smallpox - Facial scarring, blindness, limb deformities, paralysis.
You see, they are actually recoiling in horror at what a despicable, inhuman, horrible parent you are. Children face risks. Lots of them. Before adequate medical care, clean water, and all the other modern conveniences (starting about the 1900s), lots of children died before their 5th birthday. And you have just increased their risks from our wonderful 2009 statistics back to the 1909 statistics. Not vaccinating your child opens them up to all of this, Vaccinating opens them up to a tiny risk. Easy FREAKING choice.
My two cents: You should be locked up for child endangerment if you don't vaccinate.
~Sticky
Locked up? What if I don't want to be locked up? Will you send men with guns to my house? What if I say no to them too? Do you advocate killing me? .. When your saying I should be "locked up" what your saying is my choice in performing an action you like is not voluntary and that I should have my life destroyed and caged until I make the choice you like.. or be killed.
How is it, that I'm the radical one when your the one who advocates killing others? I haven't actually even said if I believe in them or not, All I did is question it and your already calling for my death.
The actions of the "believers" is what makes me skeptical of the whole thing.. you act more like a religious zealot ready to put me to the torch for practicing witchcraft than someone who uses logic to try to convince me something is good.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Tying the defendants up and tossing them in lakes. Like in the good old days.
"Thiomersal is very toxic by inhalation, ..."
It was removed from paediatric vaccines, including but by no means restricted to the one from MMR in 2001, so children who were born subsequently are very unlikely to have been exposed to it, and they definitely won't be getting any of it from the MMR vaccine.
"So what if there is no proof they 'cause' autism? Most vaccines are preserved in a deadly toxin composed of ~50% mercury that stays in your body for months. Injecting a toxic mercury compound isn't very high on my to-do list..."
Everything is toxic in high enough doses or if it finds its way into the wrong bits of our bodies, including stuff that we'd die pretty quickly without. Oxygen is one example: humans expire pretty quickly without it, but they'll die even more quickly if they inject bubbles of it into a vein or artery.
"The chances of coming in contact with the disease, and the seriousness of the disease, must be not insignificant for vaccination to make sense."
Here I agree, although it should be noted that the chances of coming into contact with many previously prevalent and lethal diseases has been significantly reduced in the Western world because of compulsory mass vaccination programmes (e.g. diphtheria, polio), so one has to be very careful about claiming that certain vaccinations aren't necessary because some diseases aren't a problem now in the countries where most Slashdotters live.
Having said the above however, I find the idea of vaccinating children against non-lethal inconvenience diseases such as chicken pox ludicrous, because the risk of dying from them is so remote that _any_ potential for serious consequences from allergic reactions / spoiled vaccine batches / whatever is unacceptable.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
OH!! I didn't realize we were talking about HappyFunUniverse, where everyone is free to make whatever decisions they want without regard for consequences!
But even in HappyFunUniverse, it's quite simple: I vaccinate those who wish to be vaccinated, and the rest die of polio. Then, only those who got vaccinated, or had some kind of crazy immunity, survive. You see, in HappyFunUniverse, I don't have to give you medical care when you are infected if I don't want to. Suddenly, HappyFunUniverse is not a fun place to be.
The problem is that we can't let you idiots who don't get vaccinated die in the RealWorld. We're required by law to treat you, to give you dogs when you go blind, to give you crutches when your polio takes away your ability to walk. If I didn't have to pay to treat you and idiots like you, I'd be all about letting you die out. Problem is, I don't have that freedom, so neither do you.
~Sticky
His gamble didn't hurt his children because you and everyone else vaccinated THEIR children. If his kid actually had a severe reaction to a vaccine then the vaccination system worked as it's supposed to: herd immunity protected those who for some reason couldn't be vaccinated.
If he just decided he didn't want his kids vaccinated then they are benefiting unfairly from the (very small) risk everyone else takes getting vaccinated.
Prior to the 1950's they used to blame the mother's of autistic children. Say that they had not nurtured their kids properly. Also, the common 'fix' for autism, was to lock them away. This was usually considered a bad parenting thing, instead of an actual mental/medical problem.
100 years ago, we just didn't pay attention to Autism the way we do now. Someone might just have been called "moody, extremely shy, quiet."
By making it a requirement for entering a public school for example.
"Vaccines could contribute to it"
Actually, the evidence is overwhelmingly that vaccines don't contribute to autism in any way whatsoever.
They could contribute to it, yes. So could alien mind control rays, Jesus playing a practical joke and parents' halitosis. Actually, there's less evidence that those things don't cause autism than there is that vaccines don't cause autism.
I say to you, sir, that this here is America and we'll not have any of your personal responsibility nonsense.
You don't have a choice. Freedom is freedom until you impinge on someone else's rights, then you get punished. Used to be that you'd just be shot by the guy you impinged, but then we figured out that humans are fallible, especially when they think their rights have been impinged, so the punishment is handed out by people with no involvement in the matter (a jury).
And I'd like to point out that it's perfectly feasible for someone to find you and lock you up without killing you. It's done every day, usually after a jury convicts you.
You follow a set of rules to enjoy the benefits of society. If you decide not to join society, then I don't care. But, since you are on slashdot, I think you are enjoying society.
~Sticky
/I'm done with you trollbait.
Do we really want courts deciding scientific fact?
Who else will?
There's no central board of scientists that declares "X is a scientific consensus and is now declared a scientific fact!", there are occasionally groups like the IPCC that make statements but there's no organization that can speak for the opinion of science as a whole.
The only problem I have is that is would be nice if the judges were also trained scientists. In this case it worked but in general I'm not convinced that judges have the scientific judgment to smell BS.
I stole this Sig
Yes, of course, the 4 day old infant, or the 4 year old toddler is going to get up in arms about how he/she hasn't been vaccinated and how they believe their parents are unfit to rear them. Children believe one thing when they are that old: what their parents tell them.
What does this have to do with you?
We don't have to mandate vaccines for adults, you were vaccinated when you were little.
So sure about that ehh? lol
As you grow, you are allowed to make whatever decisions you like about your own personal health and welfare, but you aren't going to be getting federal money for school, you won't be going to school, you won't be getting a government job, you'll only be able to get expensive insurance, etc.
I'm fine with that if I can also stop paying taxes.
"getting federal money for school" Sheash, what god dammed planet do you live on? 100% of my property taxes go to school and I don't even have kids! I can't be a bureaucrat and sponge off others.. tell me, is this what you do?
Why should I pay for something I do not use?
Oh, and your children have to be vaccinated.
Why is that? My partner is unable to produce children, so you don't have to live in fear or me.. lol. However.. I know many that do not get vaccinated and home school their kids.. Is their something wrong with that? Those kids are sharp as a whip and perfectly healthy... perhaps the reason why is *because* they don't go to a government school to get dumbed down education and every known illness under the sun.
Like I said in my original post. I don't have the answer. I don't know if it works. That doesn't matter to me. I really don't care. What matters to me MUCH MORE is there are crazy fucks out there like yourself ready to shoot people who disagree with you.. You are the dangerous and violent types in society. Your the ones who need to realize that these actions of yours are little diffrent than that of a brutish thug demanding his way with threats of force.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
thimerosal contains mercury, not lead. Also, table salt contains Sodium and Chlorine, both of which are highly toxic. Just because an element is dangerous in some forms, doesn't mean it is dangerous in every compound it is found in.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Nobody ever said vaccinations are harmless. There are numerous clinical studies to back this up -- any medication will have side-effects of some sort.
This article, however, discusses the specific case of autism caused by vaccinations. There has been virtually no scientific evidence to support this claim, and plenty to the contrary. The court's ruling shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody.
The administration of vaccines can easily be justified by the fact that you're far less likely to die from an MMR vaccine than you are to die from mumps, measles, or rubella.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
All you're saying is that there's room for uncertainty in what causes autism. That's fine, and I'm not disputing that. What I am disputing is that we should speculate that vaccines cause it without evidence. I have not seen this evidence from knowledgeable people, only bad conclusions drawn from most-likely-coincidental correlation. The current scientific evidence strongly suggests that vaccines do not cause autism. Unless someone has good evidence (as in, researched, and potential for scientific validity) to bring to the table, I am not going to take them seriously. If they try to sway public opinion in a dangerous direction without said evidence, then I'm not going to respect that person in the slightest.
In this case, no-one has managed to show a link. Correlation does not equal causation, and coincidence does not equal correlation. The only proof available is that autism rose at roughly the same time as certain vaccines, and some anecdotes that the autism "started" about when vaccines were taken. The former has been explained, and the latter has not held up to scientific scrutiny. Again, I'm not saying that its impossible for vaccines to cause autism, but that there is no evidence that it does.
Just saying that the science may be wrong is meaningless, especially when its been tested and, according to our best knowledge, it isn't. Scientific knowledge is fluid, and it can change, but you have to bring in the new evidence, formulate new hypothesis or theories, and then test those.
As far as the mother and public safety goes, we have evidence that the vaccine helps. We understand the risk of the vaccine, and its extremely likely that it does not cause autism. The fact that this mother is emotionally distraught over her autistic kid is not evidence to the contrary. I'm certainly not going to respect people who endanger their kids and the public because they're being skeptical for no good reason (and no, distrust of doctors and scientists are not a good reason).
Well, that depend on what is his "shut in" process. An austistic one, like mine, would be that it suddenly becomes hard to perceive other people, that he has difficulties to isolate human voices from background noise, and such socialization related problems.
...against the theory that jerking off causes blindness.
How is this off topic? That's exactly the same logic that these numbskull parents are using to argue their case.
There is another, more serious issue in the real universe, and that's evolution. If you're attempting to wipe out a disease, but you leave some certain portion of the population unprotected, you will increase the evolutionary pressures on the contagion in question, or, in other words, speed up the whole adaptive/evolutionary process. You may in fact be increasing the likelihood for strains of a disease that may not respond to vaccines.
This is the issue with antibiotic resistant bacteria. The improper use of antibiotics, in this case, people not finish courses, creates a situation in which that small portion of the population of bacteria who have partial resistance survive.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
But since Wikipedia defines the media, that means we define science!
[citation needed]
Don't forget to quarantine those non-vaccinated people in HappyFunUniverse. Otherwise, the polio disease could evolve such that the vaccine is no longer effective.
Fair points although why are those the only two options? There's the possibility that there's simply something genetic. There is a certainly a genetic component to autism.
As for technology... It's oversimplifying to suggest the Amish do or do not allow certain things. There are many different amish communities, and while they tend to seek agreement with each other, the specifics of the rules are up to the individual communities.
A study of 10,000 Amish people found there are no autistic Amish people. Amish do not vaccinate. To me that is all the evidence I need right there.
The strict Amish don't use electricity or computers. Maybe computer dust is causing autism.
Correlation != Causation
The "4.7" is a rate per 10,000 individuals. Study's sample size was 30,000. The "six" you quote was from the entire sample size, or 2 per 10,000 individuals.
That is where the 6.7 came from.
6.7 + (2 * 6.7) gives us the estimated rate of 20.1 per 10,000.
That remains less than the "low-end" estimate. Interesting numbers, AC...
I guess I don't understand what you're saying. You think that a specialized court, one that has made an effort to understand a specific issue in greater detail than a general purpose court ever could is "unconstitutional" because they only look at cases that fall into that specialization?
What do you mean when you say "special courts whose purview is less than the entire judicial power"?
*sigh* back to work...
A study of 10,000 Amish people found there are no autistic Amish people. Amish do not vaccinate. To me that is all the evidence I need right there.
This is a common urban legend. It is wrong at multiple levels. First, Amish do vaccinate albeit not as frequently as the general population. Second Amish do get autism at about the same rate as the general population. . So it fails at both levels. The claim of this sort originally claim from anecodatal evidence from Reporters' Dan Olmsted and David Kirby. See http://autism-news-beat.com/?p=29. Note that the Amish have a different environment from most Americans and have a very small genepool. So even if both claims were made
A court has determined there is no causal link between vaccinations and MMR.
In other news the National Institutes of Health has decided that when both civil and criminal charges are simultaneously brought on a case, if one is in federal court and the other in a state court, it does not constitute double jeapordy.
That would be relevant irony (OK, it's sarcasm) if the title (as in the original) were accurate. It's not. The court was a compensation court. They did not rule there was no causal link, they ruled that one could not be shown conclusively enough to award compensation.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Well, not so much.
I'm pleased by the decision, I think the court got it right, and I wish that anti-vaccination charlatans would stop taking advantage of gullible parents -- but the primary reducer of early-childhood mortality almost certainly isn't vaccines.
It's a whole spectrum of improved lifestyle and healthcare. Important changes include easy access to clean water, good perinatal and postnatal medical care, year-round nutritious diet, availability of antibiotics, and nearly-universal access to heated, reasonably comfortable shelter. I'd place the importance of those points in roughly that order, with vaccination fitting in somewhere around the last entries on the list.
~Idarubicin
I'm sorry, but even the rulings of a court can't define facts or reality!
Whether it is caused by the vaccine is solely to be determined trough researching the subject.
Well... I guess if you have enough power/money/religion, you can rule everything.
I should have bought that "Obey gravity! It's the law!" shirt.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I certainly don't think there is any "proof", just a reason for caution and detailed research. Between the behavior of the companies in question, the uncertaintly of the issue, the political forces at hand, and so on. Correlation certainly does not equal causation else we would be suing icecream makers becaues increased icecream sales coincide with increased rape cases. However, there are plausible reasons for the increase in rape during increased icecream sales (its warmer out). Since there is no plausible explanation for autism other than "well, that is when it is usually diagnosed" vaccines are hardly off the hook because they haven't been proven, or even because they have been disproven in certain circumstance. There is a reason for the increase in autism and noone is totally off the hook until there is a real answer.
Now...a note on Public Safety. Measels and Rubella have been declared eradicated in this part of the world. So this isn't some massive public safety crisis that the detractors like to make it out to be. Which is one more reason that the whole thing is suspect. Fear of autism being used by one side, fear of some epidemic on the other. A whole lot of FUD is being used on both sides of this argument.
To be honest, I suspect if there is any relation it probably is in the mercury link, which is moot point because the mercury containing stuff has all but vanished from modern vaccinations. Even if they can prove the "normal" levels don't cause it, that doesn't mean that there weren't batches with abnormally high levels that did do damage. I have personally had a bad reaction to an MMR shot, and my daughter had to get blood tests to check her liver as an infant because they misprinted the dosage on some medication for her. There have been tons of cases of infants dying in hospitals because of wrong dosing. There are no shortages of human error that could have played a large role. I think it is horribly wrong to laugh these people off just because they can't prove it. I suspect these people know their kid better than any of the pundits commenting. I have known people with autistic kids, and they didn't just magically become autistic overnight. To be perfectly honest we could just be looking at mercury poisoning of these kids and getting away with the technicality of it didn't cause autism because these kids have been diagnosed with autism, even though the symptoms are strikingly similar to mercury poisoning. Aspberger's Syndrome is frequently misdiagnosed as ADD/ADHD.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
The NV's, since they are proponents of freedom as well, will automatically recognize this as a valid way of doing business. Riiiiight.
And let's not forget, the NVs are downstream of the Vs. So, the Vs pee in the water all the time, and dump sewage in it too. Why? Cause we're free to do so. And since everyone is all about freedom in HappyFunUniverse, it's all good. Even when the NVs develop dysentery.
Sometimes having rules is a real good way to make sure everyone gets some freedom.
~Sticky
One of my grandmother's siblings died as an infant, due to a severe case of the measles. It happens.
Autism has a well-known incidence of about 1-2 people per 10,000.
From a statistical standpoint, the odds that those 10,000 individuals studied were all free of autism simply due to "the luck of the draw" is easily within the realm of possibility.
That all said, it certainly is an interesting statistic. The Amish way of life is extremely different than what most of us are used to. It's certainly possible that other aspects of their lifestyle are responsible for the (alleged) reduced incidence of the disease.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
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.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Tomato is a Vegetable.
Ok, sure that's just for import/export laws and tariffs, but still.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
From what I can tell, the media defines pretty much everything.
I heard the same thing on TV, so it must be true.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
People have suggested a "Science Court" with science-savy judges and officiers as a possibility.
They already tried a Science Court back in the late 90s but it proved unsuccessful and was canceled after only a year of operation.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Measles and Rubella have been practically eradicated, but there are still isolated cases:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Rubella+cases+2008
This means that there is still a risk of resurgence if herd immunity drops enough. It isn't FUD, because the science is there to quantify the risk.
Someone pointed out this link, which I found illuminating:
http://www.thatsfuckingstupid.com/index.php/2008/11/just-a-quickie-you-wont-feel-a-thing/
There's reason for caution and research if there's evidence. Autism rose along with certain vaccines. Mercury was a concern. We removed the mercury (and subsequently discovered that the autism rates didn't change). We did studies on the vaccines in question. The rise can be explained by simple correlation. Caution was exercised. The evidence suggests that there is no danger of autism from the vaccine.
What we're seeing in the anti-vaccine community is that the evidence is being dismissed, because, by golly they're scared and angry, and they'll be damned if they let evidence stand in the way of that.
As far as general risks from vaccinations, we do know of allergic reactions and other complications. Those risks have been quantified, and a trade-off has been made. There is a fund for the extremely minuscule population of people who suffer bad reactions due to vaccines.
Will you send men with guns to my house? What if I say no to them too? Do you advocate killing me?
Why, yes, but only because I tire of Libertarian anti-government nuttery that equates any enforcement of a public good over a private choice with death. So, if you don't annoy us too much, we'll let you live. How magnanimous is that?
That is all.
Nice try, but that would imply that somehow parents bear some form of responsibility, which is unthinkable.
Clearly, the evil corporation did it, because someone (else) has to be blamed, right?
Perfect example of them not making up facts but following the existing ones. "Vegetable" is not a scientific term (well, not for plants). It is a traditional term like "bug." They looked at the pre-existing evidence and did not make up anything new. I only wish most other cases were this easy.
I'm sorry about your child's autism... and the tremendous toll it has taken on your family, but I have to tell you - reading your comment has made me ever so sadder for our society.
Sir, the only place where either the value of vaccinations or any causative relationship between vaccines and autism are still debated, is in the public press and on the Internet. Anti-vaccination has become a subculture, that is so far off the chart of what is scientifically substantiated, that it is now the prime example of how people will eagerly buy into only the biggest lies.
I have over 12 years of experience in immunology and virology... I have 2 degrees in biology and biomedical science... and after very carefully examining the peer-reviewed primary literature in the matter of autism vs. vaccines, I have found zero evidence to show a positive causative relationship... not even a strong, statistically-significant correlation.
With regards to vaccines in general, to claim that their benefits are questionable is to render the last 50 years of research null and void. It's simply wrong.
I know that my post hasn't made life any better for your family, but I do hope that it can at least help to get you back on track. Honestly, we in the medical research community have only your interests at heart. We're not all part of a giant conspiracy, and if we knew something to be harmful, we'd have withdrawn it long ago. Not trusting us, simply because there are websites full of hate and stupidity that tell you so, is quite a bit like hating black people after reading Clan literature. Every bit as insane, and may be even more damaging.
No, the sloppy thinking is clear - we need to blame the Amish.
Not all vaccines are of equal worth. I once got into a long discussion with my kids' pediatrician, in which he eloquently defended vaccines in general, but at the end he shook his head and said, "well, the chicken pox vaccine...that was sort of forced upon us by the pharmaceutical industry". His point was that chicken pox is not that dangerous a disease, and that exposure to it provides better immunization than the vaccine. But it's a lucrative little industry, and the disease itself is a huge inconvenience to working parents. So it became required, but the motivation was questionable.
Vaccines in general are hugely beneficial, but it's also healthy to question each one. The combination of an overly-protective government and a greedy pharmaceutical industry could be dangerous.
In the USA, the medical industry decides on the law, at least as it applies to medicine. The AMA began as an organization founded basically to combat natural medicine. Over time it has risen to a position of absurd power - and it is overwhelmingly controlled by big pharma.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
By educating the public about the benefits of vaccination, debunking the anti-vaccination nuts whenever they surface, and requiring vaccinations before entering public school.
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OH!! I didn't realize we were talking about HappyFunUniverse, where everyone is free to make whatever decisions they want without regard for consequences!
But even in HappyFunUniverse, it's quite simple: I vaccinate those who wish to be vaccinated, and the rest die of polio. Then, only those who got vaccinated, or had some kind of crazy immunity, survive. You see, in HappyFunUniverse, I don't have to give you medical care when you are infected if I don't want to. Suddenly, HappyFunUniverse is not a fun place to be.
The problem is that we can't let you idiots who don't get vaccinated die in the RealWorld. We're required by law to treat you, to give you dogs when you go blind, to give you crutches when your polio takes away your ability to walk. If I didn't have to pay to treat you and idiots like you, I'd be all about letting you die out. Problem is, I don't have that freedom, so neither do you.
~Sticky
Uhh.. Why would you "give me" medical care? You don't have to give that to me now even if I do get vaccinated. You have no obligation. A right can not make an obligation on others.
You don't have a choice. Freedom is freedom until you impinge on someone else's rights, then you get punished.
Used to be that you'd just be shot by the guy you impinged, but then we figured out that humans are fallible, especially when they think their rights have been impinged, so the punishment is handed out by people with no involvement in the matter (a jury).
You don't understand the concept of rights. I'll explain it to you however. Freedom *is* choice, it doesn't matter if that choice is good or bad, or if it harms or not harms, it's freedom. Anarchy is an absolute in freedom. A "right" is a philosophical concept based on property ownership. The modern understanding of this is based on the work of 17th centenary philosopher John Locke.
Rights have an interdependence upon responsibility, you can't have one without the other. When you infringe upon a right, you do not "get punished" for rights exist outside of any government structure. They exist irregardless of any government law at all. But if you do infringe upon the rights of others you are *responsible* for any damages you may have caused. We call it "justice" when the person responsible repairs the damage caused at his own expense. Punishment is not justice, it's a crime deterrent tactic, and a pretty poor one too. If a thief steals a loaf of bread, justice is when he has replaced what was stolen, it's not when he has his hand chopped off.
Now.. do I think, if you don't feed a child are you guilty of murder? The best answer I can give is "I don't know." It's not my place to answer such things. Among other libertarians and various people who understand the philosophy of liberty it's a highly debated topic. It's a difficult subject because on one hand your saying that you can infringe a right through inaction and arguing the other way would be saying the child does not own their body. The GOOD NEWS is however is that is an extreme case and for the topic at hand.. no I don't believe parents should be shot or jailed for not vaccinating their kids. You seem to.. don't you? Why is that? What's wrong with you? Why can't you leave people alone?
And I'd like to point out that it's perfectly feasible for someone to find you and lock you up without killing you. It's done every day, usually after a jury convicts you.
It's actually usually done before. Ever hear of jail? This is where you go if you submit to police. If you do not, you go in a coffin. Either way.. it's deadly force your advocating.
You follow a set of rules to enjoy the benefits of society. If you decide not to join society, then I don't care. But, since you are on slashdot, I think you are enjoying society.
I don't believe in society. I think it's a concept like religion. I *do* believe in groups of people, and I believe these groups can work t
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
If you are actively endangering others' right to life, then yes you deserved to be locked up. You like to prattle on about your rights, but are blithely ignorant to the rights of others. That makes you an asshole.
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You *almost* had the right answer to my challenge.
By educating the public about the benefits of vaccination, debunking the anti-vaccination nuts whenever they surface.
That is what you do, leave it at that.
(sorry I can't respond to everyone)
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
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Others here are suggesting that because what gets diagnosed as autism (it's a spectrum of disorders), it's possible that historical data might be of little use.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Why, yes, but only because I tire of Libertarian anti-government nuttery that equates any enforcement of a public good over a private choice with death. So, if you don't annoy us too much, we'll let you live. How magnanimous is that?
Your being sarcastic but.. I *have* noticed that ignorant thugs usually tend to result to force when they run out of good arguments.
Did you win all the debates in high school with your fists? ;)
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
That is what you do, leave it at that.
And just let the unvaccinated kids come to school to infect each other (and, possibly, the handful of kids whose immune systems didn't respond to the vaccine)?
No thanks. If you want to take advantage of free education, you can take reasonable measures to keep your kid from infecting his fellow students. Otherwise you can tech him yourself or send him to a pricey private school. (Bonus: that means you can also teach him the Holocaust never happened, the earth is 6000 years old, and 9/11 was an inside job!)
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If you are actively endangering others' right to life, then yes you deserved to be locked up.
That sounds fair enough.. however the topic is *passively* endangering another, not actively. We are talking about inaction not action.
I don't know the answer to that question. I would have to spend a great deal of time philosophizing with others about it to come to a proper answer. Since you sound convinced you know the answer, perhaps you can point me in the right direction.. who has influenced your philosophical decision in this matter?
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Actually having an Autistic son, it was quite surprising how little equipped the average doctor was to diagnose him.
While when he started preschool the people there immediately knew there was something different about him the doctors kept just sending us to more specialized specialists until we made quite a few trips to childrens hospital with a lot of testing including MRI's and things before he was diagnosed.
Also when he started school he was not talking and very frustrated with attempting to communicate. The school principal started out not even believing in autism but after the first year agreed that autism was a real disability.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Do I need to spell out the sloppy thinking ?
Yeah! Those damned Amish! If they drove cars like the rest of us, there would never be any automobile accidents!
That is all.
And just let the unvaccinated kids come to school to infect each other (and, possibly, the handful of kids whose immune systems didn't respond to the vaccine)?
You can make your own rules with your own school and kid. It's none of my business what *your* school does.
No thanks. If you want to take advantage of free education, you can take reasonable measures to keep your kid from infecting his fellow students. Otherwise you can tech him yourself or send him to a pricey private school. (Bonus: that means you can also teach him the Holocaust never happened, the earth is 6000 years old, and 9/11 was an inside job!)
What is free education? I've never heard of that before. Where do you live? People force me to pay property taxes so they can educate other peoples children around here. I don't think that's very fair. Do you?
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
tylenol I think its called in the US
Tylenol is the brand name. The American generic name is acetaminophen.
That is all.
I thought it was obvious.
I was listening to a radio program on Sunday. Someone with the title "Doctor" was saying that what would help this person was a homeopathic remedy and that it was "science based". Later he said that colon clensing products were not very effective in some cases.
With a doctor like this, it is a clear sign that we have entered a period where science education in the US is pointless because people do not understand how to think. So if you think this decision will somehow deter any of the fruitless lawsuits or somehow encourage mothers to get their children vaccinated, you are wrong.
I've always wondered about the peculiar way in which americans regard autism. Over here in europe it is tought (and taught) as children's psychosis, and treated as such. This news would be roughly equivalent to trying to prove (or even propose!) that schizophrenia is caused by adult vaccinations. Sure, there are developmental theories about chemicals which might possibly alter brain development, but even THOSE theories suggest the effect has to be caused during intrauterine life. And nobody would even dare to put one of those theories'place above plain and simple genetic predisposition. Could anyone in the field help me understand why are these very unlikely theories about autism causes the source of oh so many studies and debates? Does the public not understand very well the disease? Do american psychyatrists see it as something other than children's psycosis or even a very similar schizophrenia?
Or 3, being a more genetically insular population, there may be some genetic component more common outside of Amish communities that within it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
to get their kids viral infections treated with antibiotics, thus killing people with the beautiful antibiotic resistant strains of diseases they've helped create.
Maybe this is a silly question, but how do antibiotics work on viruses?
Rubella has pretty much been eliminated from the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubella#Prevention Of course with idiots like this it'll come back unfortunately.(Just damn sad that if they kept up the vaccine for a little while longer then nobody would need it.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
How, in a free society, do you prevent people from being killed by drivers driving the wrong way down the road.
The answer is simple, society isn't that free. Individuals are afforded a great degree of freedom, but not an unlimited amount of freedom. So, even in a free society, individuals can be compelled to do things, like getting vaccinated or not swinging the arms wildly in crowded lineups or yelling fire in a crowded theater.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"Be thankful that people are fighting for right to choose what you do with your children."
Not in this case, not getting a child vaccinated hurts everyone. Non vaccinated children may cause mutations in a virus rendering the vaccines useless. This can not happen in a vaccinated child.
Communities getting sick is bad for economics, overall health.
"That said, the fact that science cannot find a cause for the incredibly rapid increase of autism in industrialized nations isn't helping matters."
That's incorrect. It is the broadening of the term. In fact, the 'increase' follows the broadening of the term exactly. In fact, when the vaccines where changed in 1998 it had NO impact on the 'autism' rate; which was expected.
"People are looking for a common link and keep coming to a solution that is common to these nations and immunization stands out."
It's no more a common link then drinking water is a common link. It was rational to think this 30+ years ago, not any more.
"It may not be true, but it isn't that irrational."
Based on all the evidence, and there is mountains of it, it is irrational to keep thinking vaccines are the cause.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Myself. Contrary to popular belief, one can form their own opinions and beliefs without attaching themselves to someone famous.
I can't sum up my beliefs in this matter in this Slashdot post. I have given them a lot of thought, and actually constantly re-evaluate them. This isn't a forum in which I can correctly describe them. I will give a brief run-down anyway:
My position is that if you've chosen inaction, and I am directly harmed as a result of that, and not of my own actions, then you are to some degree culpable for that harm. I am not less harmed because you passively, rather than actively, endangered me.
To what degree of inaction, you ask? Well that depends on which group of people you hang around with. The libertarians would like to take this to the extreme: Don't have money to pay for doctors? You die in a ditch. Tough luck. The group of people I hang around with, which happens to be the majority, have decided that a different standard is appropriate. If you don't like our standards, you can leave. The fact that most places in this world are even less accepting of your point of view than I am is not my concern.
Contrary to popular belief, there are no such things as rights in nature. If you are fit enough, you survive. If not, you die. Groups of people, called societies, invented those, because it creates stronger societies which, in turn, increase our fitness. Societal rules which increase the living standard and sustainability of that society will propagate, while those which do not will stagnate. This may take a while, but it happens. The idea of "rights" which our societal rules are based on are slowly becoming more prevalent.
You are basically advocating a society that has no responsibility beyond the individual. I don't think such a society is very strong. I advocate that there is some degree of responsibility to others. This isn't something that can be quantified on, unless we create both our societies and see which survive. The world has steadily trended towards my interpretation.
Anyway, my position is that you can't postulate the existence of rights from thin air. "God-given" is a cop-out. Our idea of rights became popular because the philosophy increased the fitness of our society.
No, unvaccinated children can be a vector for a mutation that will render current vaccines useless.
Vaccinated kids can not be a vector. t's not possible.
Now when 95% of more of yout population is properly vaccinated, the odds of the vector is very, very low.
Do toy allergies and the fact that sometime(rare) vaccines don't take in some children we can't be at 100%
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Chicken pox isn't that serious in children, but it can be considerably more severe in adults, not to mention the virus becoming dormant and then reappearing later in life as shingles.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Chicken Pox cause death, brain damage, scars, and when your older they come back in the form of shingles. Shingles can be so painful that people have been know to kill themselves.
And the only reason not to give multiple vaccines in one shot is because you are a mean SoB that likes to see kids get poked with needles.
Please get a clue.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They stopped using thimerosal in the MMR vaccine *years* ago. In fact, that is what makes it so trivially easy to show that mercury from thimerosal in the MMR vaccine was unrelated to autism. They removed it, and nothing changed.
(And by nothing, I mean not even the anti-vaccination rhetoric. It's about as bad as the buffoons who claim that Coke is addictive because they surreptitiously still add cocaine -- undetectable cocaine, even!)
Mod this guy up. Thimerosal hasn't been used in first world vaccines for several years now. If it was the cause, we would have seen a precipitous drop in Autism cases.
You can make your own rules with your own school and kid.
Thanks, I knew you'd come around. We, the voting public, make our own rules for our public schools, and one of those rules is that kids have to be vaccinated.
What is free education? I've never heard of that before. Where do you live?
Pardon me, I would've brought my scalpel if I knew we were going to be splitting hairs here.
As you know, public schools are "free" in the sense that there's no marginal cost: you pay for public school whether or not you send your kid there. The alternatives do have a marginal cost, either in private tuition or in time spent homeschooling.
People force me to pay property taxes so they can educate other peoples children around here. I don't think that's very fair. Do you?
Yes, I do.
I also think it's fair that I'm forced to pay taxes for services I don't use, because (1) I benefit in turn from services that other people pay for but don't use, and (2) I indirectly benefit from those services anyway. The availability of public schools, for example, results in a more productive economy and less crime, which I enjoy even though I don't have kids.
If you're unhappy with this system, might I suggest moving to an abandoned island? You won't have to put in a lick of work for anyone else's benefit, and you'll get to keep 100% of whatever you manage to gather or hunt. As long as it doesn't spoil before you eat it, that is.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Yes, but unfortunately, the effectivity of this type of carrier transport is limited, because it can only take place if the mother in question isn't on Facebook.
I'm sorry to hear about your son, but the link between thimerosal and autism has been rigorously, repeatedly demonstrated not to exist, most obviously by the fact that autism diagnosis rates continued to rise long after thimerosal/mercury were no longer used to make vaccines.
You vaccinate babies for diseases like Hep B because for the most part, it's easier for the baby to get a battery of vaccinations out of the way early on. The vaccine takes more easily and effectively in a developing immune system.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Yes, some people are allergic to some vaccinnes.
However the overall effect of vaccinatio is positive, by far. It is the key reason infant mortalitl is so low in th US.
She may not be allergic to one vaccines, and allergic to another.
I hope your children are happy and health. In fact your children are why it is critical to vaccinate as many poeple was possible. With a vaccination rate of 95% and greater, you kids benefit friom the herd effect.
I don't think any rational person is suggesting that people allergic to vaccines be force to take them.
In fact, the only reason an un-vaccinated child should be allowed into public schools is if the child is allergic. And verified to be allergic.
"two month olds with dozes on different things."
There not 'dozens of different things' there tested vaccines implement a way that has been clinically tested for safety.
For the record, I have a small personal stake in this game. My son has speech apraxia. This onsets to children at about the same time as a child needs to be vaccinated.
It is easy to make a correlation and think it's causation. Fortunatly I ahve acces to a very wide array of studies and expert. While not an expert, I did spend 4 months where all my free time went into looking into this. I learned a lot.
Could new evidence(actual evidence not anecdotal) come up and change things? of course, that's science;however so many tests and studies have been done, it's not likely. And it will require a high burden of proof.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, to be honest, the fear has never been enough to convince me even beyond having had bad reactions to both Small Pox and MMR. My kids all get stuck and I have probably been stuck with twice as many vaccines as the average person. I am forced to question the thatsfuckingstupid.com link because between the rather inflamatory nature of the source and its lack of citation of where it got the numbers it doesn't exactly look unbiased and objective. I am not anti-vaccine by any stretch, I am anti-pharma company if anything. But, if you look up the history on almost all of those vaccines they came from publicly funded sources such as military medical research, universities, or other public organizations.
If the risk of resurgence is really so bad I think there is actually a much deeper root cause beyond the anti-vaccination crowd. It is the crowd that villifies the science community as elitists or otherwise uses warped science for political agendas. If there is some large crisis number of people not accepting vaccinations it is because either their doctors are not pushing it, or because they have been taught to not trust the doctors (by all means, don't trust one, get second opinions, I did that with some ankle issue and "hey your fine don't worry unless it causes constant pain" turned into "you won't walk in 10 years if we don't correct this surgically" and the second opinion was able to provide me tons of information about what was going wrong and why it was going to get worse). More and more people get trapped between Science always has the right answer at any given time and Science is a bunch of elitists that don't know what they are doing.
And for my last bit of devil's advocate. The herd immunity is all well and good until it is your kid that is negatively affected. That and I don't think we are a herd, that would seem to indicate some type of bovine and I am pretty sure cows are more peaceful than we are. We are some kind of monkey colony.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
It's evil in that you are hurting the whole of society, including your child.
It's selfish becasue it's based on a belief that is wrong, but the person refuises to acknowledge the fact to support their ideology.
The tiny risk from a vaccines is nothing compared to the result of no vaccines for people.
Remember, it's not just that your child might be sick, it's also that your child is now a vector for mutation of a disease, getting one of these diseases and dying.
Again, you are risking other people and your children FAR more by not getting vaccinated.
It is mean, evil, and ignorant beyond belief to intentionally leave them open to the risk of these diseases.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Maybe I could have kept giving my kid shots she was allergic to right?
I know you wrote that meaning to be flippant, but doing just that very thing can reduce or eliminate allergic reactions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyposensitization
I'm not convinced that vaccines gave both of my sons their Autism, but the regression coincided with the high fever that followed a vaccine - no fiction there. There are also "fever effects" in my children's developmental pattern, nothing you can publish in a peer reviewed journal or anything, but they actually seem to make progress toward "normalcy" in spurts now that often coincide with fevers. What does that mean? Who knows - I worked with a Harvard educated neuroscientist for a couple of years, and based on his stated opinions of the state of the art in understanding these kinds of cause and effect relationships in the brain, I'd guess that there's definitely something happening there, but the world's leading experts would only have hunches as to what's really going on.
It's one thing to speak in abstract probabilities, make historical references to plagues that ended before you were born, talk about the greater good, etc. etc. When you're the one on the front line watching human beings be maimed in the name of "the greater good," you start to question whose greater good is really being served, and do I really want to participate?
I do think it's suspicious that the last vaccine-autism case which was decided in favor of the injured was treated as a very specific special case, not likely applicable to anyone else, yet this one which was presented by parents who weren't as sharp or knowledgeable is being portrayed as precedent setting and a "major setback" for future plaintiffs.
There is only one way. People must be vaccinated. Period. I'd say if people aren't going to take their children to a doctor (where it will be done) what is needed is home visits. Certainly by entry into school proof of such vaccinations must be provided. And home visits for those that don't comply or decide to exclusively home school their children.
You seem to be arguing from a point of view that there is some kind of "freedom" involved. There isn't. The alternatives mean not just death and disease for the unvaccinated child but potentially the rest of the country. And given the ease of global travel today, the rest of the planet. There are no alternatives.
So does this mean a doctor comes to your house and some burly nurse holds the child down while it is given? Yes, if that is necessary to get the job done. Because you see, there is no other way. This is like a dam with just "a small leak". It is inevitable that once you allow some to be unvaccinated that the number will grow. And the results with the population density we have today are too terrible to contemplate.
So there is no option of "choice" or "freedom". There is getting vaccinated. And I believe the only way with msome parents is to enforce the needs of the population at large on the parents and children. Obviously you don't need to jail the parents - that is silly. But what is needed is clearly to use whatever is necessary to get the children vaccinated.
And there should be no options for persons entering the country, either. This was the policy quite a number of years ago in most of the civilized places in the world - you brought evidence of your vaccinations (and recent updates) with you for Customs. Failure to do so resulted in either getting some shots or entry denied. Again, for very good reasons.
The people that speak of "freedom" haven't experienced anything like a pandemic. Read up on 1918 in the US. Read up on polio in the 1940s. And consider that we have nearly twice the population density in most places that we had then. There are no options, there is no choice and there is no freedom in this matter.
Thimerisol was phased out of vaccines in 1999 and 2000. The rate of autism diagnoses has continued to rise long past the time when Thimerisol could have been causative if it were.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Myself. Contrary to popular belief, one can form their own opinions and beliefs without attaching themselves to someone famous.
I can't sum up my beliefs in this matter in this Slashdot post. I have given them a lot of thought, and actually constantly re-evaluate them. This isn't a forum in which I can correctly describe them. I will give a brief run-down anyway:
My position is that if you've chosen inaction, and I am directly harmed as a result of that, and not of my own actions, then you are to some degree culpable for that harm. I am not less harmed because you passively, rather than actively, endangered me.
To what degree of inaction, you ask? Well that depends on which group of people you hang around with. The libertarians would like to take this to the extreme: Don't have money to pay for doctors? You die in a ditch. Tough luck. The group of people I hang around with, which happens to be the majority, have decided that a different standard is appropriate.
("which happens to be the majority" Ha! How pompous of you to say that!)
The majority, so you support the majority oppressing a minority?
You say you believe that inaction can cause harm and so a person is responsible for that harm if they do not act? Right?
Now like before I said I don't have the answer to that, but I can challenge your statement. You mention that someone who does not have money to go to a doctor and how they have a right to. What your saying here is this man has a right to go to a doctor and say "cure me for free". Correct? I can take that statement no other way. So do you believe doctors are slaves if they are forced to work for other men for free? If you say "Man has the right to a doctor's care without payment.", then your saying "A doctor MUST provide care to other men without payment".
Perhaps you do not mean for this "right" to happen directly between patients and doctors (although it it *was* a right, this *is* how it would work). Perhaps you believe the doctor should be paid, but that other men should labor a percentage of their time for free. (by having their wages stolen and given to the doctor.) I would ask you in this case.. are those men not by some percentage a slave?
I think it is clearly wrong to use force others, so I think forcing others to work is also clearly wrong. I don't see how any such "right" like the one you talk about could POSSIBLY impose an obligation on another man to perform some sort of action.
If you don't like our standards, you can leave. The fact that most places in this world are even less accepting of your point of view than I am is not my concern.
You sound like a Republican. "Yoo don't like it round these parts you cin leave cowboy". Thing is, you don't seem to understand I don't subscribe to your authority. Your not a King and I have never agreed to follow you wishes, or the wishes of your made up group you call "society". Lucky for me, an authoritarian like you doesn't control any aspect of my life, nor do you have an right to do so.
Contrary to popular belief, there are no such things as rights in nature. If you are fit enough, you survive. If not, you die. Groups of people, called societies, invented those, because it creates stronger societies which, in turn, increase our fitness. Societal rules which increase the living standard and sustainability of that society will propagate, while those which do not will stagnate. This may take a while, but it happens. The idea of "rights" which our societal rules are based on are slowly becoming more prevalent.
I disagree. Rights an extension of property. You have rights because you own your body. Animals in nature *do* in fact recognize property. Just ask a bear if it believes in defending it's den. Hell even my stupid little pea brained dog believes in hiding "his" bones.
True man has taken this primitive concept and constructed a philosophy out of it. However the reason this was done w
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
I see nothing about killing people. What is necessary - for the good of all on the planet - is that everyone is indeed vaccinated. Period. Everyone.
Adults? If the adult has come from some uncivilized place where vaccination is not mandatory they need to be vaccinated before entering a country where everyone is vaccinated. Again, period, no options, no choices. That means there is a nurse at the border. This is indeed the way it was in the early 1900s.
Children? If it is necessary to have someone visit the home to insure the child is vaccinated, this needs to be done. If the parent objects, they can be removed to a different room. There is no need for anything violent or involving any use of force. It is simply necessary that everyone, adults and children be vaccinated. Period.
Let's assume for a moment that you strenously disagree with this policy. Fine, you are free to remove yourself from anywhere this policy is in force. There are plenty of places like that in the world today. What you are not free to do is intermix in any way with people that by the nature of living in a "civilized" society can assume that you and your children are vaccinated when you are not. You are not the one being protected - society at large is protecting itself from you. That is why there are no options in this matter.
Does this mean I am in favor of vaccinations being administered by whatever is necessary to administer them? Absolutely, whatever is required and no further. Just as it is necessary to restrain someone that has come into contact with a rabid animal until they are treated it is necessary to vaccinate all people. There is no difference and it is for exactly the same reasons.
Taxes? Where would that enter into this? I would say that all vaccinations should be free as they are required. Certainly in cases where the recipient can clearly afford to pay some compensation might be in order. But the point is that the vaccination is required by society for its well being. And there are no options. Not wanting to pay is irrelevent becuase it is not being done for the recipient's benefit but for society at large.
And that pretty much wraps up any argument you might have against it.
Not in the everyday sense, nor, evidently, in the legal sense.
Why do you insist not only that every word have the one same sense in every single context? That's not even true within science itself.
Are you adequate?
I like my answer better than yours.
How, in a free society, do you prevent people from being killed by drivers driving the wrong way down the road.
The answer is simple, society isn't that free. Individuals are afforded a great degree of freedom, but not an unlimited amount of freedom. So, even in a free society, individuals can be compelled to do things, like getting vaccinated or not swinging the arms wildly in crowded lineups or yelling fire in a crowded theater.
My answer is you educate them as to the danger of driving down the wrong side of the road. Most people know this already and .. even if all cops disappeared tomorrow, I'm pretty sure people would "keep right".
Your solution is to use force for everything. My solution.. teach people about the benefits of getting vaccinated. It's pretty simple, why has this escaped so many people?
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
If my kid ends up blind because you didn't vaccinate your kid on horseshit pseudo-scientific grounds, do you think I'll give a shit about the active/passive distinction in moral philosophy?
FYI, if you want to look at the ethics of the situation, you also need to read up on 'collective action problems'.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
And who defines the media?
That is what scares me the most.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
If my kid ends up blind because you didn't vaccinate your kid on horseshit pseudo-scientific grounds, do you think I'll give a shit about the active/passive distinction in moral philosophy?
I don't know will you? Will you kill me because I believe something diffrent than you do? That is my question.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
I won't kill you. But I'll happily vote for legislation saying that your children will be administered vaccinations over your wishes, just as the gov't should seize the children of Christian Scientists who refuse blood transfusions for their children.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Thanks, I knew you'd come around. We, the voting public, make our own rules for our public schools, and one of those rules is that kids have to be vaccinated.
What is free education? I've never heard of that before. Where do you live?
Pardon me, I would've brought my scalpel if I knew we were going to be splitting hairs here.
As you know, public schools are "free" in the sense that there's no marginal cost: you pay for public school whether or not you send your kid there. The alternatives do have a marginal cost, either in private tuition or in time spent homeschooling.
People force me to pay property taxes so they can educate other peoples children around here. I don't think that's very fair. Do you?
Yes, I do.
I also think it's fair that I'm forced to pay taxes for services I don't use, because (1) I benefit in turn from services that other people pay for but don't use, and (2) I indirectly benefit from those services anyway. The availability of public schools, for example, results in a more productive economy and less crime, which I enjoy even though I don't have kids.
If you're unhappy with this system, might I suggest moving to an abandoned island? You won't have to put in a lick of work for anyone else's benefit, and you'll get to keep 100% of whatever you manage to gather or hunt. As long as it doesn't spoil before you eat it, that is.
Your the second person that has deployed the "if ya don't like it, leave" argument on me today. I'll give you the same answer. You sound like a Republican when I would tell them it's wrong to bomb people in other countries. I don't subscribe to your authority. You and I made no agreement here, I'm not obliged to do what you command.
You think its fair to pay for services you don't use. That's some kind of wild belief man. I really wish you were my neighbor. I'd ask you to pay my garbage bill because it keeps your home value high. Somehow I think you would balk at that.. and you would be just in doing so.
I think its fair to pay for what you use. (and so do you, you just wont admit it.)
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Public health, like certain other things, cannot exist where we simply let people do whatever they want, hoping education is sufficient to the task. That's the harsh reality. In my town, we've had a serious TB outbreak among the homeless and drug-using community. Education is tried, but if they persist in behaviors that assure the spread of the disease, then they are forcibly quarantined.
There are limits on freedom, that's reality, and has always been reality, even in a country like the US. No one is an unlimited agent, and as much as you would like to pretend that simply educating people will somehow suffice, history, particularly the history of public health, says something quite different.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
We know that vaccines don't cause autism.
No, we really don't.
Just about every kid has been vaccinated and they don't all have it.
That's assuming that every kid has the same genes.
Vaccines could contribute to it but so could a lot of things. I blame DVDs myself. [blah, blah...]
It would be silly to ignore at least these simple facts:
whether we've now "proved" that vaccines don't cause autism is far from true. There are two more important classes to come before this same "special court" (why is there a special court, anyway?). I believe this ruling was for a class claiming that mercury and measles combined was a problem. The other classes are mercury alone, and measles alone.
However, the writing for those classes is probably already on the wall.
What if I say, you wont touch my children and by the way get the fuck off my yard.
What then?
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Public health, like certain other things, cannot exist where we simply let people do whatever they want, hoping education is sufficient to the task. That's the harsh reality. In my town, we've had a serious TB outbreak among the homeless and drug-using community. Education is tried, but if they persist in behaviors that assure the spread of the disease, then they are forcibly quarantined.
What town is this? I find that action disgusting.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
There was some famous one once, about a monkey or something.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
3 is illogical. (well all of it is but I've been there in the rest of it and it's an easy target.)
I *don't* pay to support other people, and I *won't*.
(and like everyone else on this thread, your probbly ready to have some cop shoot me in the face because you don't like that answer.)
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
And opponents of vaccinations should note that we didn't stop smallpox vaccinations because it was ineffective or dangerous...
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I agree with you. I don't know if vaccines work or not (not any more than they do). I *DO* however have a serious problem with them using force on people to get them to take them.
Yay for us +0's! ;-) The ones willing to go against this mob mentality.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
I did start immunizations on my first kid just when the doc said I should.... she had a terrible allergic reaction
Ah, so you've had a personal experience that make you no longer able to objective judge the facts. That happens, and it's kind of understandable, but doesn't make you any more correct. It just explains your error.
This is a tech forum. So I'm continuously disappointed (although not surprised anymore) that that so many here fail to understand that Science as a whole is not binary. Never has been and never will be because this world doesn't behave in such a convenient manner. Maybe since this website caters to the tech crowd coupled with the fact that (for the most part) computer science is a rare field where things are "relatively" (compared to the rest of science) cut and dry. There aren't as many mysteries in a field centered around well-understood and mass-manufactured machines. Don't assume that technology, programming and computer science are a reflection of how Science is, because it isn't.
On top of that, judges don't marry themselves to the scientific method because methods like that can hurt people too. Statistical correlation can be sufficient evidence to a judge or agency administrator. They strongly prefer cause-and-effect science, but they're not gonna allow something that's obviously toxic to get into people's food just because not enough researchers have had had enough time to study it because it's brand spanking new. Laws should be flexible enough to be interpreted, but rigid enough to remain true to the spirit of their intended purpose. The administrator's or judge's job is keeping people safe using the laws afforded to him. Being Science's bitch isn't in the job description.
**busts out a 2-inch thick Environmental Law book**
Environmental Regulation: Law, Science, and Policy
By Percival, Schroeder, Miller, and Leape
(fifth edition)
Chapter 3: Preventing Harm in the Face of Uncertainty
Page 176: Ethyl Corp. v. EPA:
The short version is that some dudes want to keep putting lead in gasoline, but the EPA wants to stop them. It eventually goes to court. EPA eventually wins.
"Where a statute is a precautionary measure, the evidence difficult to come by, uncertain, or conflicting because it is on the frontiers of scientific knowledge the regulations designed to protect the public health, and the decision that of an expert administrator, we will not demand rigorous step-by-step proof of cause and effect. Such proof may be impossible to obtain if the precautionary purpose of the statute is to be served. Of course we are not suggesting that the Administrator has the power to act on hunches or wild guesses.... [H]is conclusions must be rationally justified....However, we do hold that in such cases the Administrator may assess risks. He must take account of available facts, of course, but his inquiry does not end there. The administrator may apply his expertise to draw conclusions from suspected, but not completely substantiated, relationships between facts, from trends among facts, from theoretical projections from imperfect data, from probative preliminary data not yet certifiable as "fact," and the like. We believe that a conclusion so drawn-a risk assessment-may, if rational, form the basis for health-related regulations under the "will endanger" language of Section 211.
Limiting false positives is the guiding principle of criminal law. The objective is to limit the chance of a false conviction....A principal reason for this is that liberty is a primary good, i.e., a good for the deprivation of which there is no adequate compensation. The asymmetrical results achieved by the criminal justice system are intentional and follow from the exceptional value placed on liberty...
The costs of false negatives and false positives are asymmetrical for environmental risk [that is, the feared harm greatly exceeds the benefits of the risky activity] as well, but the asymmetry is in reverse order. For environmental risk, the asymmetrically high cost arises from a false negative: in criminal law from a false positive. Similarly, just as a primary good, liberty is an important concern in criminal law, so another primary good, health is an important concern in environmental risk m
There's a college community near me that is packed full of wingnuts. In theory it has a well-educated populace, but there's more crystals, eastern mysticism, and general insanity per square foot then a typical Final Fantasy game.
:)
I read that 16% of the population of that town is taking the religious exemption from vaccines. 16%! That is no longer just a matter of parents being weird... that's a major potential health risk. Once the non-vaccinated rise above a certain level, enough that they can routinely come into contact with each other, it will become inevitable that something nasty will spread.
It's interesting to me how unrelated this behavior is to education and wealth demographics, though. Believe me, it's not because they're "the religious right." If there was a Christian in the town, God would probably offer to save it if they could find just seven worthy men
I'm pretty sure the media handles that as well.
Then the cops show up to seize your children. If you resist, they'll use force. If that use of force results in your death, then you will not have been killed for refusing to vaccinate your children, you will have been killed for resisting lawful authority. It will be regrettable, but it will be your own responsibility, same as if refusing to pay your taxes led to you holing up in your bunker, which led to a shootout with police, which resulted in your death.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
So, despite your rhetoric about just sharing opinions, you're going to belittle me for not sharing yours? And no, I do understand your concept. I just think its wrong. Its VERY clear that you don't understand mine, as you're shoehorning my argument into the standard libertarian rhetoric. Suffice to say, I am not an authoritarian, I'm not a republican, I don't think I'm your king, I do understand the libertarian philosophy very well, and I think that its a huge load of steaming bullshit because I *do* understand it very well.
My position is that societies are based upon shared responsibility; a sort-of social contract if you will. It is from this contract that rights are derived. You can claim that rights just exist as much as you want, but short of a society to protect those rights, or compensate you when those rights are violated, any debate about whether they exist is academic.
If I come and enslave you, then all your sophistry about how you have a right to your body is moot: you really won't have time to think about it much while you're working in the coal mines. You can claim they exist even if they are violated, but if a hypothetical society does not "recognize your rights," then the end-result is the same as if they did not exist. Nor do they exist in nature: if I kill the bear and take its land, and no-one is around to stop me, then that bear's land is mine.
Rights exist because we want them to exist, and we want them to exist because they are beneficial to our society. A lot of people would consider this heresy, but I consider it a sobering dose of reality: my rights are only mine if I work to keep them.
No, I don't think majority rule is always good, which you'd know if you cared to read any of my posts. I don't think its always bad either. That's why I support forms of government which work on representative democracy, but have built-in forms of checks based on the social contract of rights. Nor do I think I have a right to dictate everything in your life, as you accused me of (via the word authoritarian).
But being allowed in society carries responsibilities. If you don't uphold these, then you are removed from society. We call this "prison." One of those responsibilities is to respect the rights of others. In turn, society has a responsibility to you: to protect your rights from others. And that's what it boils down to: shared responsibility. And we engage in this because it increases our survival chance.
To what level your responsibility ends is a matter of debate. Libertarians believe in a very limited personal responsibility towards society, and a somewhat limited responsibility of society towards them. They pretty much believe in little-to-no responsibility towards society, but expect society to respect and protect certain rights. They hold property to be the ultimate "right." The right to life equates to the right to not be murdered.
I, on the other hand, believe in some personal responsibility towards society. I believe that its our responsibility to create a society in which people have some level of safety. I believe the right to life extends to expending at least some effort to protecting people who are sick, disadvantaged, and unlucky. I believe this should be limited. I also believe that its our responsibility to forgo some personal freedoms to achieve this: some property (taxes), some privacy (vaccines). In return, society's responsibility to protect you is greater; if you are poor and dying, then it has a responsibility to heal you.
So, to answer your question, no I don't think the doctor should work for free. I think we should all chip in a little. How much? That's up to debate, and I honestly don't know the answer. I think it should be the one that maximizes the benefit to society; not just along monetary means, but freedom, security, and other considerations. Its a hard optimization to make, because there's so many variables.
As far as being part of the majority, its not pompousness. I would gather that m
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm claiming that all the scientific evidence is against any link between autism and any of the components of the MMR vaccine--that is, all the scientific evidence that doesn't come from a doctor in the pay of a group of lawyers looking for a pretext to sue the pharmaceutical companies, which is later demonstrated to be fraudulent.
I'm sympathetic to frustrated parents who want to know why their child is autistic, and who hang on to a possible explanation long past its disproven-by date. That doesn't change the science.
Yes, it is in fact easier for the baby. Vaccinations are generally trivial things, and there's no reason to vaccinate children for the adult's convenience. It's medically better to give children vaccinations than it is adults whether they're substantially at risk or not.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
What defines the media?
Stop calling truth an unreasonable philosophy.
Dr. Simoncini (http://cancerisafungus.com) remedied all cancer using sodium bicarbonate (Baking Soda). He's in jail for 4 years on unrelated charges.
Mary Tocco (http://www.marytocco.com/marytoccobio.htm) has over 20 years experience on the subject; she and her husband doesn't vaccinate their 5 children, and found philosophy & truth joined that the pre-dominant causes of vaccinating today that have caused all the ill health are in-effect more philosophical from ignorance as yours.
Mike Witort ( http://wakeupwell.org/ ) is perhaps the simplest man in existence yet more effective than all the others, specializing in nutritional remedies to correct the bodies absorption of necessary metals and proper digestion combined with lymphnode/endocrine -activating massage therapy and more knowledge blended of ancient Chinese and competing "theories" that you might not be capable of reasoning. He is constantly harassed, and has spent years in prison for following through in his ministry of good will.
Rick Simpson "Run From The Cure" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjhT9282-Tw ) has been growing acres of high-THC marijuana on his estate over at Canada and the the Royals arrive to uproot it all without charges; they don't charge him because he has affidavits in place and compurgatorial statements from people that were about to die and his "gamble" saved them; he uses typical "junk" science to refine Hemp oil with THC from the plants, and gives it to whomever is about to die. There were many people with less than 2 weeks estimated to live, and letting their skin absorb the THC oil or just ingest it would kill the nastiest of diseases. The Royal Mounted Police continues to harass because they think the Royals estimated theirselves a street value of $10k worth of plants goes into making half a cup of his thick resin. He doesn't sell it for smoke, and will not get a license because people like your philosophy is what makes the truth such a hindrance to license everything that is free and good.
All these people have 1 thing in common; they don't force anyone to abide, they just wait for you to receive them; free states. If you want to force people to accept innoculations, then you'll undoubtedly accept one of theirs in equal exchange to recompense the damages that occur.
I would login if I could, but Slashdot moderation has slandered (user ID account "nradude") this from being seen.
I approve this message,
without prejudice,
m. Gregory Thomas(tm).
Actually, I think the definition of a true troll should be -polite, -sincere, and +clear. That's on the theory that they fixed the broken moderation system to make it multidimensional. It's actually possible for a troll to say something that is +insightful, but to say it in such a way that no one wants to hear it.
However, that was linked to the suggestion (of course ignored) that karma should also be multi-dimensional, and people who had earned strong karma in a particular dimension would also have the ability to award (or remove) two mod points at a time for posts along the same dimension. For example, someone who had earned a strong +humor rating for making many witty posts (a true rarity on today's /.) would be credited for recognizing humor in other people's comments.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Yes, I was vaccinated against small pox and polio and that was it. Caught measles, mumps and chickenpox. Never caught german measles which is a different disease from regular measles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_measles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Well ideally kids that are at-risk for the vaccine shouldn't be given it. I'm not a doctor, so I don't know if there's a way to screen. Herd immunity is all well and good - because if your kid is at risk, he can not take the vaccine and still be safe. It's just when too many people opt-out that there's a problem.
As far as science is concerned, I seem argumentative, but I really agree with you that too many people treat it as a religion. Its not. If the lady had some solid evidence, then by all means we should look into it. Science is a process, and part of that process is to question our conclusions when new evidence comes to light.
I agree with second opinions - but that means you shouldn't trust *a* doctor, not doctors in general. If you are sick, then doctors are your best bet for getting healed. Get a second opinion, or even a third.
Unfortunately, people extend this idea to the point where they don't trust any doctor and think all doctors are elitists. Its the same with scientists. Unfortunately, we have a huge anti-intellectual kick here in the US. A frightening number of people truly believe that the "wisdom of the common man" beats out those years of research and education, and to insist otherwise is elitist.
So yeah, don't treat science as a religion, but don't think it has nothing to offer. I think we agree on that point. My only disagreement is that I don't think that we should humor the autism debate unless they have some new evidence to bring forth.
It would be nice if it worked that way. Unfortunately the way it actually works is better demonstrated by the 2008 measles outbreak in San Diego. Some of the victims were too young to have gotten their measles vaccination.
The idiot parents who took their unvaccinated child to Switzerland and brought him back with the measles should feel free to stick to their beliefs.
They should also be forced to compensate their victims for any medical care, including lost time at work, and any costs incurred by the city, state, medical facilities, and the airlines because of their beliefs put a lot people at risk and cost the rest of us a lot of money.
Support SETI@home
That's the thing about the fringe -- it's just like the fringe on a jacket hem. Left or right, it doesn't matter: it goes all the way around.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
You think its fair to pay for services you don't use. That's some kind of wild belief man.
Actually, it's a standard, normal, almost boringly commonplace belief. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but governments and taxes exist all around the world, and there's no significant opposition to those concepts.
For all except a few people on the fringes, the question of whether it's fair to tax people for services they end up not using has been settled long ago. The ship has sailed. Feel free to rant against the evils of taxation on your own, but I hope you know how silly you sound to the rest of us.
I really wish you were my neighbor. I'd ask you to pay my garbage bill because it keeps your home value high. Somehow I think you would balk at that.. and you would be just in doing so.
First, let me say I love how you're painting this as a strange belief of mine, when my beliefs here are actually in line with, well, nearly everyone except you. It's one of the funniest things I've ever seen on Slashdot.
Now then: if I were your neighbor, I wouldn't pay for your garbage bill because I don't really care how messy your yard is, or what effect that might have on my home's value. If it presented a safety hazard, I'd just report you.
On the other hand, I have no problem paying for firemen who put out other people's fires, police who solve crimes committed against other people and courts to try other people's cases, parks and lakes that I never visit myself, schools to which I have no children to send, food stamps and medical care for people who earn less than I do, and so on.
These are societal benefits, and I don't mind paying to live in a society where these things are available. As you may have noticed, most people don't mind paying for them: that's why they exist.
I don't know how things work in your neck of the woods, but around here, we vote on levies to fund things like schools and fire service -- and those levies pass without exception. That's democracy. Sorry if you don't like it, but that's how we do things in America.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Oo, sorry, *double* fail there. Properly spelled (as it is in the OP), nativity is indeed a word in the English language, as evidenced by entries in dictionaries such as, say, Wiktionary, or Merriam-Webster. However, given that it means "birth" (and usually Jesus' birth at that, c.f. Christmas dioramas), you're probably right that the OP meant naïveté instead. :)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I think the underlying problem is that diagnosing autism (among other mental disorders) isn't as easy as checking an insulin level or blood pressure. Things are not black and white when it comes to the human mind.
There's a lot of fail in the parent.
The courts did not decide scientific fact. The courts surveyed the scientific/medical establishment to see what their belief was in light of much evidence and many direct studies; the medical/scientific establishment reported that, scientifically, there was zero link between vaccines and autism, and this after studying it extensively over the last decade. The court said "Okay, you know best" and then ruled on a case where the parents of an autistic child were trying to recover monetary damages from the vaccine fund.
No. "Herd immunity" is an additional benefit to widespread vaccination, where the percentage of people in a given group that are vaccinated is equated to an additional level of protection against the disease because the vaccinated individual is less likely to be exposed to the disease in the first place. Vaccines offer a very high degree of resistence to a disease, not perfect immunity; reducing the odds of exposure is a worthwhile goal too, and protects those who don't get vaccinated for legitimate medical reasons. And there's a larger issue too, which is that your decision to not vaccinate your children materially affects my child, sitting in the desk next to him at school, because you increase my child's exposure to crippling and potentially deadly diseases.
Thimerisol hasn't been in vaccines for 8 years, during which time the rate of diagnoses of autism actually increased; if there was a causal link between Thimerisol and autism, you would expect the rate to decrease. As for aluminum and other metals, there have been no demonstrated links between their presence and any adverse effects of vaccines, and this is after a decade of heavy scrutiny looking for links.
If your child is receiving a battery of vaccines that will help him, what's wrong with adding one more when it's been thoroughly demonstrated that the vaccines do not cause autism? Besides, there are other ways to catch Hep B than needles or sex.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
> If my kid ends up blind because you didn't vaccinate your kid ... ... it'll be because you also didn't vaccinate your kid.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Wrong. Vaccinations do not confer perfect immunity, only a (usually) high degree of immunity or resistance. Not to mention that a pool of unvaccinated carriers or sufferers can lead to mutations of the disease that my kid's vaccinations can't handle.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Let's do a little thought experiment here, one that's commonly offered in classes on moral philosophy. It's called "The Baby Crushing Machine." It's a hydraulic press into which a baby has been placed. You're standing in front of the machine. Two scenarios:
1. You press the button to start the machine. The press crushes the baby.
2. The machine is started when you arrive. You can press the button to stop the press, but you don't. The press crushes the baby.
Assume there are no other relevant details.
Now, obviously the difference here is that in (1), you're the active cause of the baby's death, while in (2), your inaction allows the baby to die. In which scenario are you more morally culpable for the death of the baby, if there's a difference, and why?
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
The people who are claiming that government mandated vaccinations resulted in their child's autism are typically the same people who would claim that the government is responsible for their child being afflicted with a disease because the vaccination wasn't mandated.
That's interesting, though it's anecdotal I do know of a multiple cases where kids with diagnosed ADHD has become better after switching to LCHF food. Ie they cut down on the sugar.
The only research paper I have read about in this area that disproves that sugar leads to hyperactivity was sponsored by the sugar industries...
"This message was brought to you by Sarcasm and Troll Feeders United (or STFU, for you un-hip people)."
It was that study that made me decide against getting one of those 4d movie ultrasounds done of my son - no medical benefit and a possible risk.
Help children born unable to swallow - www.tofs.org.uk
I can attest to that as I am myself deaf in my right ear, and partly deaf in my left ear. There was a period in my youth when I was evaluated at length by by doctors who thought I may have a mild case of Asperger's Syndrome over and above my hearing difficulty, however, the diagnosis did not prove conclusive with enough evidence. I suspect at times they may have been right, but, the circumstances and lack of clinical research at the time was not enough (bare in mind I live in a so called "third world" country). As for specialised services, my primary school sent me in for a series of test, of which I passed with flying colours and was able to cope with regular schooling with relatively no difficulty. I am thankful for that, I probably would not be where I am were I sent to a specialised school. That being said, there was many occasions when I have been treated as a "retard", simply because I could not hear what was being said. In most cases I have to bring forth my hearing difficulty, to explain why I could not hear, and in most cases people take that into consideration when communicating with me without being overly sensitive. I've also had to undergo speech therapy, which really helped me a bit. Over the years I found ways to disguise my disability with the effect that most people I meet these days are absolutely clueless they are dealing with a deaf person :)
Or that other well known disorder, Slashdotter syndrome.
This is inability to carry on a conversation without excessive condescending remarks, name calling and the strange habit of classifying everyone into one of several categories based on whether or not you agree with them instead of the truth of their remarks.
Huh? Since when is it evil to care about your family over someone whom you don't know? Seriously, I could give a damn about a family I don't know. I want MY friends and family to survive.
I can also argue that you're being selfish; forcing one person to get a vaccine, for which you acknowledge a risk, for their kid so YOURS isn't in risk. THAT is selfish; expecting someone else to risk their kid for yours.
The great thing is that, as more people see the wisdom of not vaccinating, the odds that their kids die from the disease that they could have vaccinated against goes up! It's win-win all around.
Obviously, something in our environment is making autism rates climb. But it doesn't look like it's the thimerosol. Even if it is from mercury (which I don't know of any data showing that it is), it seems to be mercury from some other source, not from thimerosol.
Not to mention, worrying about the mercury in your thimerosol causing autism is like worrying about being poisoned by the chlorine in your table salt, or the flammability of the hydrogen in your tap water. Component elements of compounds undergo a chemical reaction when they combine, and don't retain their original properties.
Does anyone remember an article that was posted here several years ago about higher autism rates in areas with a lot of high-tech companies? It's been a while, but I seem to remember that the rates were higher among children of two parents with autistic tendencies themselves, suggesting that the possibility of a genetic link exists.
Not everybody who enters the US from a foreign country is an immigrant, illegal or otherwise.
Your solution is to use force for everything. My solution.. teach people about the benefits of getting vaccinated. It's pretty simple, why has this escaped so many people?
Because deep down, a lot of people are stupid, ignorant and greedy animals that'll use any excuse they can find to further their own selfish needs and desires.
Case in point, when a good part of the windows in downtown Enschede were blown out by the explosion, it took less than 5 minutes for folks to start looting from the shops that had become accessible. A good chunk of a city blows up, people are hurt/dying, and their first priority is their own selfish, not to mention illegal, interests.
These are the people that can only remain part of society through force. The moment they are given any sort of leeway whatsoever they'll do whatever the fuck they damn well please without any thought of the consequences for themselves in the longer run or for anyone else in any run at all.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Perhaps you missed part of my post. Here, let me quote it again for you:
"there are alternative methods of administering [vaccines] which would avoid the allergy."
Also, did you have any tests run to determine if your other children also have the same allergy? Even if there are no alternative administration methods, all of your children may not be affected. It'd be a shame to extrapolate from a single data point and apply the results to all of your decisions.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
This is illustrative of the degree of medical ignorance behind the antivaccine hysteria. The very fact that vaccines work in young children (and the medical evidence is unequivocal that they do) proves that have functional immune systems.
Pretty much by definition.
My older son has a diagnosis of Aspberger's. We had one ultrasound done, and I still have the videotape. What is striking about this video is that he is "stimming" in the video using exactly the mannerisms he does now. At 8 weeks in utero!
To me this says:
* Vaccines did not cause his condition
* Nor did ultrasound
* Nor did anything else we may have done as clueless parents.
So every time I hear of some new theory trying to explain this condition in terms of blame, I get cranky.
It is also very clear to me that there is a likely genetic component - I am not on the spectrum (and my social intuition is fine when I bother to use it ;-) ) but I do have a lot of traits that I can use to help me with insights into his condition and needs.
One poster above mentioned that there is a correlation between age of childbearing and autism. I am wondering now if this is really a correlation between age of marriage/commitment and being on the spectrum? That is, autism disorders are largely genetic and those with them take longer to "settle down and raise a family" because of the social obstacles?
Come on, evil? Really? Exactly what is the scientific definition of evil?
I don't know, but I bet Dawkins' next book will tell us...
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
Also, A legal "finding of fact" also does not make it empirically true. Since a court is only able to use the the evidence presented before it (and prior legal rulings) the ultimate truth of a decision can always be in question. Our legal system is a general framework to solve sociological issues, not determine absolute truths.
The best example would be evidence ruled inadmissible for some reason - say a judge rules police didn't have probable cause and didn't get a search warrant so incontrovertible evidence is not allowed to be presented. A court may well find a someone not guilty as a matter of law - but as a matter of absolute truth we can know, and prove otherwise.
Vote Quimby.
Google amish autism. There are a few Amish with autism. They have either been vaccinated or have elevated levels of mercury presumably from an environmental exposure. I am not against vaccination but facts like these carry more weight than "scientific" studies that are funded or at least influenced by drug companies. The difference is Science for profit vs Science for knowledge.
You mean, something to the effect that he was a normal, healthy, happy boy before he got the vaccine. Then he got sick right after the vaccine, and subsequently developed the signs and symptoms associated with autistic behaviour?
From the Canadian public health agency:
"Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative used in many vaccines. In large concentrations, or over extended periods of exposure, mercury can cause damage to the brain and the kidneys."
"Nevertheless, NACI has recommended a long-term goal of removing thimersol from vaccines, provided that safe alternatives to this preservative can be found. This will help to reduce unnecessary environmental exposure to mercury."
While it is smart PR to state that there is no "proven" link, Kids are nevertheless getting caught in the grip of this poison. It is to me, somewhat telling that the agency is pushing for the removal of Mercury in these drugs. Me, I'm sort of a fan of not having mercury voluntarily injected into either myself or my child.
Autism Rates Drop After Mercury Removed From Childhood Vaccines
Mar 3rd, 2006
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/38784.php
An article in the March 10, 2006 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons shows that since mercury was removed from childhood vaccines, the alarming increase in reported rates of autism and other neurological disorders (NDs) in children not only stopped, but actually dropped sharply - by as much as 35%.
Using the government's own databases, independent researchers analyzed reports of childhood NDs, including autism, before and after removal of mercury-based preservatives. Authors David A. Geier, B.A. and Mark R. Geier, M.D., Ph.D. analyze data from the CDC's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and the California Department of Developmental Services (CDDS) in "Early Downward Trends in Neurodevelopmental Disorders Following Removal of Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines."
The numbers from California show that reported autism rates hit a high of 800 in May 2003. If that trend had continued, the reports would have skyrocketed to more than 1000 by the beginning of 2006. But in fact, the Geiers report that the number actually went down to only 620, a real decrease of 22%, and a decrease from the projections of 35%.
This analysis directly contradicts 2004 recommendations of the Institute of Medicine which examined vaccine safety data from the National Immunization Program (NIP) of the CDC.
Full disclosure: In case you haven't guessed, I'm the parent of an autistic child and my wife and I have chosen *not* to vaccinate. It is an informed decision arrived at after much research and consideration.
The problem here is that a large part of the research families of autistic (and not autistic) children have been given was gathered around the work of Andrew Wakefield, who has recently been found to have outright fabricated his evidence linking the MMR vaccine to autism.
Why his story isn't being reported louder, I don't know, but this is the unethical and immoral tool who has convinced so many families to put the health of their children and of society's children as a whole, at risk.
You were lied to. It's not your fault, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't re-examine the situation.
Didn't they just announce the presence of mercury in High Fructose Corn Syrup, which is in almost every processed food and drink today?
Umm you do know that they have removed the mercury compound from the vaccines and the autism rate didn't change.
We have found NO evidence of a link. To ignore that face is as you put it silly.
I understand the guilt and desperation that having an autistic child causes. I have a member of my family with autism.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Well, even if the theory was right, it would still not imply that ALL cases are caused by ultra sound. No one is claiming that only one thing causes it. Important distinction.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
At one point, we were worried that our child had Austism-like symptoms. We took him to a doctor that specialized in that sort of thing. At the end of his tests, he drew a line. He pointed to the right side of the line. "This is Austism." Then he moved to the middle of the line. "This is Asberger's." (A kind of "mild autism.") Then he pointed a little to the left of that. "This is where your son is." In other words, he was on the spectrum but not enough to be diagnosed with Asberger's and definitely not enough to be diagnosed with Autism.
Now, my son exhibits a lot of things that I did as a child. I was never diagnosed with anything, but I think that's more because we're better able to identify the whole spectrum now than we were 25 years ago.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
My son (age 5) began this school year very disruptive. He couldn't sit still, he was hitting kids, crying for no reason, etc. We got him tested but was told he didn't have autism. Then we did some research and came upon the solution. He has allergies and was taking Singular. They completely cleared up his allergies but we had noticed some personality changes. Those changes slowly got worse until we had a little monster on our hands. Our doctor ordered him off the Singular and within 2 weeks he was back to our normal son. We've heard anecdotal evidence of other parents in the same situation (include one mother of a 5 year old whose story at first I thought my wife wrote until I saw the name). Yes, this is anecdotal evidence and not a proper scientific study, but it was quite clear to us what caused it. Using the "computer keeps crashing" analogy you gave, it would be like having your computer keep crashing, uninstalling a piece of software, and then having the system running fine. You might not know 100% for sure that that software caused the crashes, but it's quite likely that it did.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
No, it just means that we need to get Science to define Media. Then the circle will be complete.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
You and your virulent spawn should be locked away where they can't infect the rest of us.
snig
FWIW, I would be very interested in the research you conducted when arriving at your conclusion to not vaccinate. I will be having children soon, and have read the anti-vaccine stories. However research has dictated there is no correlation between vaccines and autism, and I believe it.
Disclosure: I am a scientist in the medical field and while I don't work on vaccines and toxins, I am familiar with statistical methods used to arrive at these conclusions.
When you were a kid, they didn't make a point of telling you, "You could die or suffer permanent brain damage from this disease." It was unavoidable, so why scare the kid? Just cross your fingers and hope he comes through it OK. Better to get it early, because the risk rises with age.
Here is a software analogy to vaccination, thinking of a vaccine like a software patch. These are the sorts of meta issues that are rarely discussed when focusing on pseudo-arguments about the results of specific studies.
Vaccinations are like software patches that are proprietary closed-source products, that companies make money off of selling, and that patch installation service providers use to drive business throughput for their other services. Much of the regulation of these patches is done by people who have a direct or indirect commercial stake in this industry and convincing people they need the patch.
Vaccinations are like software patches that are generally released with only testing against a small population of software environments; this is like Microsoft releasing a single patch for everyone which modifies *all* x86 PC software in the world (including everything on GNU/Linux) after having tested it on a few versions of Windows and looking at the performance afterwards of a few major applications over a few months or a couple years. Anything a few years down the road is considered not to be related to the patch and in any case would be hard to prove.
Vaccinations are like software patches that you can't back out -- ever.
Vaccinations are like software patches that change their code (formulation and quality control) year to year even if they are said to be to prevent the same problem, with claims for the "safe and effective" nature of previous patches being used to justify claims about new untested patches from this year's batch.
Vaccinations are like software patches that claim to be effective against last years trojan or worm or virus, ignoring the fact that trojans and worms and viruses mutate.
Vaccinations are like software patches that usually only work in a positive way for ten years or so.
Vaccination are like software patches that might be pushing some unknown limit of total patches that can be accepted and still have decent computing performance in the face of new demands on the system.
Vaccinations are like software patches that are built on a culture of patching security vulnerabilities without ever emphasizing basic security precautions like using encryption or administrator-level authentication. For example, extended breastfeeding through the toddler years promotes the general immunological wellbeing of a person for life: :-)
http://www.llli.org//NB/NBextended.html
Thus, one might think infant formula should be prescription only (for rare special cases) since formula decreases "herd immunity", but formula is available everywhere without a prescription, showing a double standard here. Chances are about half of US slashdotters were raised entirely on formula and will create a lifetime infection risk for everyone around them as well as suffer from worse health. Yet, formula feeding is supposedly "a matter of personal choice" and was promoted by the medical care community in the past and continues to be heavily promoted among new parents by that industry. Similarly, good nutrition, enough sleep, avoiding bad stress but having enough good stress, having face-to-face friends, and similar things, promote wellness, but junk food, allnighters, programming death marches, and spending too much time on slashdot are all legal.
There are a bunch more analogies one could make, thought they are more abstract, related to co-evolution or auto-immune disorders.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9115571
Anyway, the bigger picture is being missed here it seems to me. That is why it is so hard to assess risk versus reward. That is not to argue that any specific vaccine or schedule has any specific consequence, although administering HepB vaccine at birth to children of non-positive mothers certainly seems questionable to me.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Now, to be fair, most of the vaccines in question have had that mercury removed, but still. The notion of blindly trusting big pharm companies makes me a little nervous to say the least.
You're right about not trusting corp's to do anything but make money. And don't be so sure about those vaccines being mercury free:
http://www.whale.to/a/mercury7.html
----
During an investigation into the mercury issue, HAPI learned that
Thimerosal, a 50% mercury compound, is still being used to produce
most vaccines and that the manufacturers are simply "filtering it
out" of the final product. However, according to Boyd Haley, PhD,
Chemistry Department Chair, University of Kentucky, mercury binds to
the antigenic protein in the vaccine and cannot be completely, 100%
filtered out.
All four vaccine vials tested contained mercury despite manufacturer
claims that two of the vials were completely mercury free. All four
vials also contained aluminum, one nine times more than the other
three, which tremendously enhances the toxicity of mercury causing
neuronal death in the brain.
----
I think the point might be that perhaps the school should deal with a disruptive child in a more constructive fashion than kicking them out without needing a full-blown autism diagnosis. How 'bout a little middle ground?
OTOH, not knowing the details, perhaps they already did. Certainly, at some point they need to consider the other children in the class and take action.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Argumentative is fun even when it gets a little confrontational so long as it doesn't completely turn into poo flinging flame nonsense. Ultimately that is part of my gripe with the many of the comments here is that the vast majority of people here are just pointing and laughing at these people and then pointing at someone else's research as evidence. I almost hope they find a link just so these folks get to say "Wow...I was real asshole about that and I was wrong". Hell, I don't have a problem with people even saying "but evidence here, here and here shows X". It is the "these parents are stupid and dangers to society" angle that bothers me because the people really screaming about it are just armchair quarterbacking the issue and don't actually have expertise themselves on the subject.
In terms of the vaccination/autism thing the evidence I have seen is circumstantial. Holding anyone responsible at this point is very premature, but it certainly warrants continued investigation along multiple paths rather than totally discounting the general claim. There could be some weight to the circumstantial evidence even if a solid link has not been identified. Of course, I also think that throwing on the blinders and focusing only on vaccines is a horrible idea as well. Until the case is solved everyone is a suspect.
I think the Scientific community is at least partially at fault for the current state of affairs. There is very little effort made to communicate information outside of their circles or to make it understood that science is an everchanging patchwork of best guesses and not rigid unchanging belief. Atomic theory has gone through monumental changes over time, it all roughly represents the same ideas, but the specifics of it have shifted dramatically. The only time science really ever makes the news is in cases like this where it is being beaten, abused, and warped by all sides in political/economic debate. Science is being used more and more as a means to prove that preconcieved idea X is right/wrong rather than as building blocks to form ideas.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Women over 30 impart increased risks to their children as far as other ailments and diseases go. Has Autism been investigated as having anything to do with the mother's age when the baby is delivered?
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Not in the everyday sense, nor, evidently, in the legal sense. Why do you insist not only that every word have the one same sense in every single context? That's not even true within science itself.
Water is a chemical, period. I don't know how you are getting that it is sometimes a chemical and sometimes not a chemical. You swim in water...it is a chemical. You drink water...it is a chemical. You look at water...it is a chemical. You talk about water...it is a chemical. We are talking about a physical thing. As for "why do you insist not only that every word have the one same..." I do not know where you are getting this from. Where did I say that, hint that, or argue that? As a communications expert I am fully aware that words can have different meanings/symbols based on time, place, audience, context. A prime example is the swastika. Today most people know it as a symbol of racism, hatred, warmongering, Hitler, Nazi Germany. But it wasn't always like that...it is a symbol used by Hindu (buddhist) religion.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
I'm not an autism researcher, but consider that recent research has implicated a set of genes in autism.
It's quite possibly (likely even) that our modern society is selecting for these genes in reproduction, causing the rate of people catching the right combination (autism) to climb.
Chicken pox is so rarely fatal
Like for example garbage about kids dying from chicken pox?
In one sentence you claim it is garbage that kids die from chicken pox, in another you state it happens (even though rarely).
Then again your dumb ass neglects to think of (or at least state) that I was using a generalization (maybe wrong to do so on my part, but not enough to counter my arguments).
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
You are a fucktard. You make false statements with absolutely no backing, far worse that jenny mcarthy who actually cites researchers and studies. There is no way for you to know: "The percentage of kids who gets these vaccines and develop autism is the same percentage of kids who get autism just because it happens." There is no proof one way or the other and to say such a thing as fact is irresponsible and moronic.
Yes, there is: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/01/california-stud.html
Google knows everything, you know nothing. DIAF - kthxbye
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
Interestingly enough, people who postpone having kids until they're older, and have the money for fertility treatments, would correspond highly with "intelligent high-income professionals".
Potentially goes great with a hypothesis where asperger's and autism come genetically from a combination of "intelligence" genes being selected for by society rewarding people with these genes with higher salaries, doing well in school, etc.
(again, just a hypothesis, I am not an autism researcher)
Have you spent any time at all actually talking to a doctor about this? Or have you written them off a "the enemy" who will do whatever it takes to infect your child?
Yes, allergic reactions occur. If your child had an allergic reaction to a shot, you should be doing your very best to try and figure out what actually caused it before they're exposed to it again. And then you should have presented that to a doctor so they could find one of the other ways of providing the vaccine without the agent that caused the allergic reaction.
Instead, you've just written off all vaccines and are on the border of advocating that others do it, too. You'll wait until your children are young enough to have immune systems strong enough to carry a dangerous virus and spread it to others with weak immune systems while your children survive. Thanks for that.
My nephew was diagnosed with Pertussis when he was about 18 months old. He lost weight and damaged his ears and hearing. The doctors said that it wouldn't be clear just how much damage was done until he got older. His mother had opted not to pay for the vaccine because she thought it was pointless ("I've never heard of anyone getting DTP before"). Unfortunately for my nephew, lots of people in her family felt the same way. When a few of them got sick, they didn't think much about it. They never even went to a doctor. However, my nephew's immune system wasn't as strong as theirs. For him, the illness posed a real danger and it took months for him to recover.
So, on behalf of my nephew, I'd like to say thanks for helping to increase the number of children who have to be subjected to painful and developmentally challenging diseases. It's nice to know that your unwillingness to be proactive will only hurt everyone else around you.
Lemme guess, you're a Ron Paul supporter too.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Drat. Now you all know viruses can use computers... ;-)
That's a great attitude to take. However, it only works when its held by selfish freeloaders like you.
What would happen if someone in your family were in a serious accident and needed surgery? Where do you think the blood they use comes from?
Donating blood isn't a risk-free activity. Many people find the process to be uncomfortable or even painful. A number of people have had serious complications. There have even been rare occasions where people have died. However, even knowing these risks, people still do it. Why? Because if by taking a tiny risk every six weeks, I am able to save the life of one of your family members, then I am beyond happy.
Because I'm not a selfish prick who thinks that I owe nothing to society.
Open your eyes. If you think that you're not surrounded by people doing selfless acts to make your family safer, happier, and healthier, then you're too stupid to make commentary on society and ethics.
Now, I reserve the word "evil" for greater transgressions than you've committed, but I am sickened by anyone who sits around taking all the luxuries provided by society and then whining when someone scolds them for not trying to do their part.
It's evil in that you are hurting the whole of society, including your child.
Self-preservation isn't evil. Also, it's not hurting the "whole of society" if society chose to be vaccinated.. my own stupidity (note that I DO think vaccines are a good idea.. just don't think FORCING them is) may affect me and my family, but it's really no one else's business.
It's selfish becasue it's based on a belief that is wrong, but the person refuises to acknowledge the fact to support their ideology.
The only point I'm aruging is that it should be up to the parents to choose what's best for them and their family. I think it's pretty much a given that we DON'T want society to dictate how you raise your kids, right? Honestly, if you think it's your job to override the parent's wishes for the safety of the child, we really shouldn't let ANY parents keep their children, since 90% of all sexual abuse cases are family members molesting the child, not a stranger. So from that point of view, they'd be better off with strangers.
The tiny risk from a vaccines is nothing compared to the result of no vaccines for people.
I never said I was against vaccines or people getting them. I'm against people forcing others to take a risk with a kid that isn't theirs. I believe that stupid people should be allowed to suffer the full consequences of their stupidity.
Remember, it's not just that your child might be sick, it's also that your child is now a vector for mutation of a disease, getting one of these diseases and dying.
And what's the risk that our drugs ONLY leave drug-resistent strains of the virus around? I'd say the risk of this is as small as the risks involved in vaccinating to begin with.
Again, you are risking other people and your children FAR more by not getting vaccinated.
It is mean, evil, and ignorant beyond belief to intentionally leave them open to the risk of these diseases.
And it's not evil to force your will upon others? What if there's a religous objection to vaccination? If you're fine with staying "tough shit" then I think that opens up religion to all sorts of other attacks. People have been using religion to oppress people for centuries. Personally I'd love nothing more than for organized religion to vanish.. but I'm not going to force it out of people either.
Chicken Pox is a less dangerous disease, to be sure. However, Chicken Pox has a higher rate of "complications" than vaccines. While most people think the worst that can happen during a chicken pox infection is some faint scarring, bad things can happen when the virus infects tissue in and around the face, including the throat, nose, and eyes.
Not to mention that the chicken pox virus lays dormant for an indeterminate period of time, possibly reappearing as shingles some time later and causing significant amounts of pain.
Do people die? I figure there have to be a few, but generally no. Do we need to just accept this suffering because we like being libertarian? That seems silly.
While I'm on the fence about mandating a chicken pox vaccine, I also can't think of just why anyone would say: "No thanks, I'll take the disease." or perhaps worse: "Nah, I'll probably be dead before my child has to suffer the nearly-untreatable pain of shingles."
Ha! Best comment in this thread! I wouldn't take that bet. :)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
At bottom, you're making a very reasonable sounding case for a conspiracy theory that has been exhaustively demonstrated to be false and fraudulent at its root, and then saying "since we can't know for certain, people should be allowed to make the choice themselves." Except that leaving it to individual choice leads to public health risks with potentially severe consequences that are very real.
There's no propaganda machine making people hate you. There's a lot of concerned citizens who recognize that you're making the wrong choice because you're receiving (and fostering) bad information, and less tolerance for your idiosyncratic beliefs because it leads to material risk for everyone else. Why should I respect your choices when they're demonstrably wrong and harmful to me?
This in particular is the most pernicious part of your response. It gets at the heart of the collective action problem that is vaccination: It might seem individually best to avoid the risk, but if too many individuals make that choice, it actually increases the risk for every individual. It's NIMBYism on the level of the bloodstream that endangers everyone. Worse still, people are taking it upon themselves to make judgements that they are unqualified to make--that's why the bad science and worse anecdotal evidence takes root on vaccine denier message boards, leading to people making the wrong choice.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
You're ignoring the risk of your child spreading disease while you're "looking into it". You've had an encounter with the sort of risk inherent in the system, the risk that everyone takes, so now you're gunshy. You're just arrogantly assuming you know more medicine than your doctors. Well, I'll just quote your sig back to you.
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I don't want to argue if they work or not.. I don't know, I'm not that smart..
But isn't that the key part of legally requiring anything for a child? Or are you saying that nothing no matter how beneficial should be legally required for children? If so, then it's easy to argue that there is by this standard no such thing as parental negligence.
What's with you anti-freedom Nazi's pushing vaccines on peoples children?
Freedom is a misunderstood concept I find. Freedom do to something is often touted as if it is intrinsically good. Which is stupid. The freedom to put people into wood-chippers is at least hard to argue as intrinsically good. At this point people retreat to a position of "I should be free to do something under the circumstance it is not harmful to someone else"
Oh hey...now go back an read the paragraph about effectiveness and you now understand why your argument is invalid.
I don't think that's likely. In my state, the rate of autism has gone up twenty times in twenty years. That's not the sort of increase you see if some dudes start liking chicks who can't look them in the eyes during sex...
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Did you win all the debates in high school with your fists? ;)
Only when I had to.
That is all.
No, my intent is to not elevate my own opinion and research over that of the medical community just because it's mine. Earlier you asked about what I would consider legitimate medical reasons not to get vaccinated. My answer is that I don't know, I'm not a doctor. I'm a thoughtful, smart, well-read person who recognizes that there are practical limits to my ability to fully understand some issues without becoming the experts on whom I ultimately rely anyway.
You're acting like it's simply a matter of 'make an informed choice'. You're ignoring the anti-vaccine community's propagation of misinformation, the way they swap anecdotes of autistic children and misrepresented research. You're ignoring the near unanimity of the medical community that there is no link in favor of a perversely wrong grassroots community of self-appointed experts whose ultimate legacy is widespread outbreaks of preventable diseases. You're ignoring that keeping alive questions that have already been answered creates the false appearance of a controversy. We don't buy it when we're talking about teaching the 'controversy over creationism' in schools, so why is the fake controversy over vaccines a sacred cow?
Let me ask you a direct question: Now that it's pretty much completely settled scientifically that there's no link between Thimerosal in vaccines and autism, what responsibility does Dr. Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy and other boosters of the anti-vaccine movement bear for the very real suffering they caused among children whose parents didn't vaccinate them because they thought that there were real concerns about the vaccine?
It's not that someone else wants to choose B, it's that B is 'no vaccine at all' and hope that an outbreak doesn't occur because too many people chose B.
But to answer your question directly, I would look at whether or not the mercury and aluminum vaccine had been demonstrated to be harmful or not in that form. This is one of those facts that the anti-vaccine crowd glosses over, that the mercury in Thimerosal is in a chemically unreactive form that delivers a smaller dose than is in a 6oz. can of Tuna. If the mercury and aluminum vaccine had a long history of being safely used, and the only apparent problem was a spurious link to autism that had been debunked, I probably wouldn't care.
You're committing the same sin here that you accuse me and others of committing against you, to view your argument as a one side of a black and white dichotomy of unstinting loyalty to scientific consensus versus a total refusal to vaccinate. Of course I'll inform myself, and ask questions, but at the end of the day I'll recognize that I'm ultimately dependent upon the best efforts of the medical and scientific community to help me and mine rather than hurt us. My responsibility for possibly making a mistake that hurts my child doesn't make me smarter or better educated than the doctor who might administer the mistake. Life isn't fair, but irrational, cargo-cult home medicine decisions don't improve it. In this case, they make it worse.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Picking up on this conversation late, but wanted to chip in anyway...
My eldest son is also diagnosed autistic - and like yours, communication is his main problem. He'll be 8 in March and is still communicating with us in very basic ways. Very sweet natured and quite capable/responsible, but lacks speech.
Unlike you, the situation was picked up by his teacher's at pre-school (trying to think back - he would have been about 3?), but our doctor was pushing it back and saying it was just a normal symptom for boy's in multi-lingual environments (I am a native English speaker, my wife speaks Flemish) to fall behind in this area.
His younger brother is babbling away like he swallowed two dictionaries - just turned 2 a month back - maybe doesn't say a lot, but I guess not all doctor's and teacher's are equal? That's not to disparage our doctor, but really just to emphasise the difficulties involved in diagnosing it I guess.
Anyway, don't really have anything to add to the conversation :-), but just wanted to say you're not alone :-).
And as well all know, that was the exact moment the American civilization tumbled into chaos, never to rise again.
I'm sorry my nine-byte, one-line, hand-typed, sig without so much as a hyperlink or inane quote is so disturbing to you. I'll make sure to fix that right away. And I'll talk to Taco to ensure my decade's worth of posts here are edited to remove this offense to the eyes.
Or maybe I won't.
SirWired
You do realize that a single medical study is not nearly enough to establish a trend, right? Even if it appears to give statistically significant results, if it isn't correlated to another study with similar results, it could just be an outlier, or the result of bad controls, etc.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
It's not like diagnosing it was what I came there for. I was seeing a therapist to deal with depression and stress. It just turned out the guy was something of a specialist in autism research as well and saw it.
Besides, it's not like diagnosing something has any special implications or requirements.
"Well, this is probably a reason why you act like you do, which is fine."
"Ok, cool."
Well, despite my desire to not feed trolls, I'll bite:
Sometimes, you know, it can be relevant to a conversation already in progress.
It's one thing to speak in abstract probabilities, make historical references to plagues that ended before you were born, talk about the greater good, etc. etc. When you're the one on the front line watching human beings be maimed in the name of "the greater good," you start to question whose greater good is really being served, and do I really want to participate?
You raise a valid point. The further removed from the carnage of those decisions the easier it is to make those decisions without feeling the consequences.
But still, can you really say they are making the wrong decisions?
There was a rather grisly murder on a bus in Canada a few months ago. A passenger, pulled a knife and killed and decapitated a fellow passenger. Horrific stuff.
What should they do about it? The family will have to bear this tragedy for the rest of their lives, and I'm sure we can all agree that no one should ever have to experience this.
But in reality, what should we REALLY do about it? Nothing. We should do nothing. As hard as it is to accept, especially for the people who suffered the most, its the right course of action. We can't make the world safe from a crazy person. Even if we went to the trouble of screening and searching every passenger who ever gets on a bus in North America (and just think what that would mean; think of all the greyhounds stopping in buttfuck nowhere...). The crazy person would have just killed somone somere where else...maybe at a McDonalds. Maybe at the theatre. Maybe at the mall. Maybe in line to get searched for weapons before getting on a bus.
The point I'm making is the people most directly affected by these sorts of things are the least rational at deciding what to do about them. You need some distance to have a practical perspective. As hard as it might be to have a child needlessly suffer, its insanity to spare them that suffering by switching to a policy that WILL lead to 10x as many to suffer, and doubly insane if you don't even know if it will actually spare the child you are trying to save. Yet, a parent, watching their child suffer will not hesitate to make that "locally optimal", "globally catastrophic" type of decision.
I empathize with you. I have kids myself.
"In one sentence you claim it is garbage that kids die from chicken pox, in another you state it happens (even though rarely)."
Go ahead and quote a small part of what I actually wrote so you can pretend that you were entirely correct in claiming that children die of chicken pox. The fact that the sentence from which it was gleaned quite clearly stated that _the adult form of chicken pox_ is more severe that the childhood one (as is also for example the case with mumps), is of course irrelevant, as is the other trivial fact that none of the incredibly tiny number of recorded deaths from chicken pox were children despite them being by far the most likely group to contract it.
"Then again your dumb ass neglects to think of (or at least state) that I was using a generalization"
Oh look, an ad-hominem together with a desperate attempt to manoeuvre around having to admit that you were wrong. It is indeed rare to find such an edifying combination of defensive insulting, intellectual dishonesty, and hypocrisy in one compact package!
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
There is also the small fact of increased population.
Double the population of a city and you, roughly, double the amount of people with autism in that city.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Yeah, well, if that's the case, maybe you men-folk would like to shoulder the burden this time of the underpaid, powerless secretary position.
Thanks,
The laws (in the US) still permit a bit of individual decision-making in the matter of vaccines, as long as they're still permitting us that freedom, people will exercise it for what they think, or more likely feel, is right.
"Ah, so you've had a personal experience that make you no longer able to objective judge the facts. "
I love the circular logic...
Bob: 'vaccines dont really hurt anyone'
Tom: 'They almost killed my kid'
Bob: 'Well we cant count that, youre biased by experience'
Bob: 'see vaccines never hurt anyone'
--
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
"Have you spent any time at all actually talking to a doctor about this?"
I have said many places on this thread that I am working with my doctor on age and risk appropriate vaccines. Not everyone who disagrees with the masses is some rube scares when the sky dragon eats the sun at night.
"If your child had an allergic reaction to a shot, you should be doing your very best to try and figure out what actually caused it before they're exposed to it again."
No S*&^ Really... phew I knew those scratch test were for something.. The problem is there are *millions* of things to be allergic to and I don't quite want to scratch for everything. For example I abstained from Shrip most of my life because of a terrible allergic reaction as a kid... turns out I am not allergic to shrimp I am allergic to the preservatives that some ships use when they are without refrigeration.
"Instead, you've just written off all vaccines and are on the border of advocating that others do it, too. "
Where? Where did I (1) write them all off or (2) advocate for others to do so.
"My nephew was diagnosed with Pertussis when he was about 18 months old. He lost weight and damaged his ears and hearing."
One of the vaccines my kids got at 12 months but hey Im some rube right?
"So, on behalf of my nephew, I'd like to say thanks for helping to increase the number of children who have to be subjected to painful and developmentally challenging diseases."
And on behalf of the academy I want to give you this Oscar for playing the self righteous ass who did not even read my post before playing you're role to perfection... nicely done sir..
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
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.
And how do you get a diagnosis? My nephew isn't autistic, but does have a learning disability. He was ordered to have an assessment, and it was never done (well, not until the court case about it). The School district spent about $50,000 in order to deny a student $2,000 in additional services, and when they lost the court case, the court ruled that it's too late to make up for the past services rendered so that even though the school district lost, they didn't need to provide any services anyway because it's too late.
So how are these children supposed to get services and diagnostics? The trained professionals are instructed to ignore disabilities because identifying them costs the district money (and will be fired for pointing them out, as they are not trained doctors and as such should not be making any judgements about such things and to do so opens the school to liability and is therefore banned). And when asked and required to by law, they don't do it and won't do it until taken to court, and when they lose in court, their "punishment" is to be told that they should have done it but it's too late now. The trained professionals will not help the children and go out of their way to harm them. So what are the parents supposed to do?
Learn to love Alaska
Let me guess, your a Marxist.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
[quote]Because deep down, a lot of people are stupid, ignorant and greedy animals that'll use any excuse they can find to further their own selfish needs and desires.[quote]
If you *really* believe that then why would you want to put them in positions of power over others? Do politicians not apply to this rule? hehe Perhaps they are the cream of the crop.. the upper echelon of human society.. right?
Get lost and take your society with you.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
So, despite your rhetoric about just sharing opinions, you're going to belittle me for not sharing yours? And no, I do understand your concept. I just think its wrong. Its VERY clear that you don't understand mine, as you're shoehorning my argument into the standard libertarian rhetoric. Suffice to say, I am not an authoritarian, I'm not a republican, I don't think I'm your king, I do understand the libertarian philosophy very well, and I think that its a huge load of steaming bullshit because I *do* understand it very well.
Ok, except I'm not a libertarian. You are absolutely free to hold whatever view you like, no matter how illogical or inconsistent it is. Don't let me stop you from believing what you want. However.. to protect your world view and ideology from further danger.. you may not want to read past this point.
My position is that societies are based upon shared responsibility; a sort-of social contract if you will. It is from this contract that rights are derived. You can claim that rights just exist as much as you want, but short of a society to protect those rights, or compensate you when those rights are violated, any debate about whether they exist is academic.
A popular notion.. but proper understanding of these is more than academic, it's critical because the resulting framework you base you reasoning on is based on this concept.. to say it's trivial is rather astounding and shows your ignorance. If you can't figure out if rights are natural or not, everything else you build your reasoning upon will be flawed.
Stop, go figure that out, then get back to me.
To approach your "social contract" statement factually I would ask where *is* this contract? I didn't sign it. I don't agree to it. How can you be a party to a contract an agreement that you don't agree to? Although you would just respond to this by saying something to the effect that the contract is justly forced upon me for some reason or other.
I would must rather approach this from a philosophical angle then the factual one because I believe it is a better argument. It doesn't matter if it's legal, it matters if it's just. To rephrase your point.. what your saying is "society" creates "rights". Basically the populace collective allows each other liberty. This extends to the logic that rights flow from those that are governed. Do I correctly understand you? (I don't know what you mean by "sort-of" either it is or it isn't, make up your mind.)
This is also a very old argument.. it is a rehashed version of the "consent of the governed" VS. "divine right of kings" argument. People who believe as I do argue that men are born free, and derive their liberty from their humanity, on the other side of this argument are those such as yourself who believe that men are only granted their liberty from their government, be it a king or form of popularly elected body. They believe there needs to be an intermediary between nature and man that grants rights.
I don't know exactly where people get the idea that government grants them their rights but its pretty fallacious. I hear people make this argument then see that they get upset because of Chinese human rights violations. If you believe what you do, why get angry about that I would ask.. their government simply choose diffrent rights than your government did.. isn't that ok? The answer is NO It's not ok.. and the reason why is your rights do not come from a contract, a piece of paper, an elected body, a majority, a ruling communist party, a oligarchy, or a king. You have rights, because you and nobody else has ownership over your own body.
There is a good line in the movie The Patriot about there being no difference between 1 tyrant 3000 miles away and 3000 tyrants 1 mile away. Just because you vote does not mean the actions as a result are mortal, just, or right. Tyranny is tyranny it doesn't matter how you get there. Voting to have force used upon others is a form of violence.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
You take things to such extremes, lol
People always have to bring out the "baby's heads on pikes" and "shooting strangers in the street" arguments against freedom because they are only appealing to the fear factor.
You could simply require people on your property were NV. What about not on your property? Well do don't control that do you. It's possible for a free society to deal with cases like this, although I think it wouldn't matter to most.. unless there was something like the black death going around.
Most likely a private school would require it or not, case closed, nobody gets shot nobody gets forced to take anything.
Freedom is about choice. Mandatory is NOT freedom.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Wait, I'm confused. Didn't the government concede that some kids (Hannah Polling specifically, and in general those with mitochondrial disorders) can have such adverse reactions to vaccines as to induce or contribute to Autism. Isn't there a government "vaccination injury compensation" program? Didn't the Polling family get compensated from this program for her autism? I'm getting conflicting messages here. One court rules one way, another court rules another. Both sides point to the ruling that they previously believed in. That doesn't sound very scientific to me. The AAP says that it is "unproven" that there is a link between autism and vaccines. That is very different than saying that it is proven that there is not link. Also, haven't children died from vaccines? Yes, there are plenty of merits to vaccinations. But please, don't claim that they're safe or that we know all of the consequences of them. If you want to claim acceptable loses. That is fine too; at least that's honest. Since we have proven (err. I mean the courts have ruled) that vaccines can be too much for kids with mitochondrial disorders, wouldn't it be better if we tested for mitochondrial disorders before administering vaccines?
crucifixion?