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Court Rules Against Vaccine-Autism Claims Again
barnyjr writes "According to a story from Reuters, 'Vaccines that contain a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal cannot cause autism on their own, a special US court ruled on Friday, dealing one more blow to parents seeking to blame vaccines for their children's illness. The special US Court of Federal Claims ruled that vaccines could not have caused the autism of an Oregon boy, William Mead, ending his family's quest for reimbursement. ... While the state court determined the autism was vaccine-related, [Special Master George] Hastings said overwhelming medical evidence showed otherwise. The theory presented by the Meads and experts who testified on their behalf "was biologically implausible and scientifically unsupported," Hasting wrote.'"
Not only that, but why should the parents be entitled to "reimbursement" even if the immunization did cause the autism? Yes, the product should be immediately pulled, but do they have a right to get rich because of some hitherto unknown side-effect of a well intentioned vaccine? I don't think so.
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This won't stop the paranoid from preventing their children from being immunized because some of these same people have interesting theories about how the vaccines are deliberately nefarious in other ways (going as far on out there as mind control, etc). These people and their little theory have done more to damage public health in a short amount of time than a lot of other things...
It's not simply urge to blame, it's also the human tendency to believe something and then do anything possible to not have to change your belief.
Although we've been blessed with the power of rational thought that allows us to override such urges, most people seem loathe to use it in that way.
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there is non-zero risk to individuals from any medical treatment,
Yep, something to always remember about any drug you might take or any treatment you might undergo. But it's also worth remembering that there's a non-zero risk to eating food (could be tainted), driving a car, or sticking your face in a fan*. Life is all about balancing the risks, not eliminating them entirely. In some ways, we're victims of our own success at risk mitigation: we've come to view risks as optional rather than a matter of course. (Applies to not just medicine, but also space travel, the way we raise our kids, and pretty much everything else.)
* With a tip of the hat to Frank Drebin, Police Squad.
Vaccines aren't as simple as people think.
Many, many vaccines can cause seizures, and not all seizures result in physically obvious symptoms. Once a person experiences a seizure, regardless of the cause, they are significantly more likely to have seizures in the future.
Various vaccines are being promoted by their manufacturers, not because they have actual benefits, but because it's a money making position to have a vaccine that will be forced onto the general population. Look into the HPV vaccines, actual risks. The HPV vaccines may have future benefits, but the promotion by the manufacturer has been mostly to school boards and politicians; not the public. The current commercials are based on fear mongering, not education.
Many vaccines are simply about money, not health.
The Amish also don't drive cars. Maybe your mom driving a car while pregnant with you causes autism!
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You'd be surprised. There's a lot of people out there with no knowledge on a particular subject area, but who are quick to come up with a 'theory' and pass it off as fact and themselves as 'experts' in that area. Financial advisers, anyone?
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I personally find the abundant anecdotal evidence of such a link quite disturbing, requiring thorough investigation, though this is unlikely to happen due to the above reason.
The thorough investigation has happened. Several times. See for example here and here. Or you could read the CDC article. Oh, but wait, they're all government institutions! They would all be devastated by that link! That's why they lie! They all lie! The cake is a lie! Wait, wrong channel...
The point is that the anti-vaxxers - and yes, the derogative term is appropriate - are about as concerned about truth and as scientifically literate as all the Moon-hoaxers. There is nothing that scientists can do to change the minds of the anti-vaxxers, because the anti-vaxxers do not operate on a scientific basis. I just hope this blows over before too many people stop vaccinating.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Dunno if you know this or not, but there have been radical developments in greed and corruption over the last couple of decades,
People are just as corrupt as they ever have been. If you think people are more corrupt now than in years past you are either very naive or very stupid. Go pick up a history book. The methods (sort of) change but people don't.
It can all be solved and summarized in two simple words; loser pays. That would likely flush out 80% of the crap clogging the system today.
And your evidence for this is what exactly? Because it sounds vaguely logical? Yes loser pays would solve some problems but it would create others. It would reduce some of the more frivolous lawsuits but it would also make some needed lawsuits too risky to attempt. Loser pays strongly tilts the playing field towards those with the most money - even more so than it already is. I don't necessarily have a problem with the general concept of loser pays but please recognize that it isn't something that is going to cure every ill in our legal system.
Frankly if you want to reduce the load on our legal system, stop the ridiculous "war on drugs" - at least the portion related to user and possession charges. The US incarcerates a percentage of the population on minor drug charges that is way out of proportion with other industrialized nations. The war on drugs has FAR more to do with our clogged legal system than frivolous torts.
The parents in this case are suffering from the logical fallacy post hoc, ergo propter hoc, or, "after this, therefor because of this." That is, they believe that the fact that their child developed autism after being vaccinated is proof that the vaccine was the cause of the autism. This makes as much sense as saying that if you get hungry for breakfast after sunrise, the Sun's rising must have caused you to get hungry.
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Of course there's a question. It pops up semiregularly. Here in the United States, the most recent debate arose because some schools began to require vaccination for HPV (human papilloma virus). This was controversial because:
The fact that only girls can be vaccinated was an issue for some, but a very minor one. (If a medicine exists that can lower blood pressure but which only really works on people of African descent, that's not racism, no matter what anyone says.)
Most of the vocal complaints tended to focus on the third point: that parents were afraid that more vaccines exposed their children to greater risks. While some dissenters actually believed this, however, this argument also tended to conceal the debate over the second point.
HPV is a sexually transmitted disease. Vaccinating girls against a sexually transmitted disease is tantamount to implying they will be having sex. Vaccinating very young girls, therefore, is absolutely abhorrent and -- to conservative Christians, in particular -- only underscores the moral depravity of modern society.
Now, just to be clear, the reason you want to vaccinate girls against HPV is not to keep them from getting unsightly genital warts when they go out having sex with strange men while they're in primary school. The reason you vaccinate them at a young age is because they're not having sex then, and a vaccine only works before you catch the disease. (Some studies suggest that up to 90 percent of the adult population carries some form of HPV.) And the reason you vaccinate them at all is not to enhance their sex lives, but because if they do catch a certain form of HPV it can lead to papillomas that can be very hard to detect until they turn into cervical cancer, which, if not detected, can kill them stone dead. In other words, this is a vaccine you give someone as a girl to aid her chances of living to become an old woman.
The problem for some, though, is that removing the threat of sexually transmitted disease tends to undermine abstinence-only sexual education programs in the United States, which are a key component of the platforms of the Christian Right and anti-abortion activists. That's right; for some people, the real problem is not that vaccination gets you autism. The problem is that vaccination gets you abortions. They don't like to talk about that, though, because abortion is such a hot-button issue and many on the Left immediately tune out at any whiff of a religious undercurrent in politics. So instead they jump on the bandwagon claiming all vaccinations are "untested," "experimental," "have unknown side effects," etc. Even people who don't believe in religion can fall for junk science.
This is just one example of how these issues can quickly become clouded by politics, but it also demonstrates why we must continue to emphasize the science and the science alone. Vaccines save lives. If you get vaccinated and it doesn't directly save your life, it still might have saved mine (through effects such as herd immunity). People shouldn't die young of any disease, be it mumps, measles, polio, of cervical cancer caused by HPV.
Smallpox is wiped out, should we still immunize for it?
Interestingly enough, in the United States we don't. So I guess the "pro-vax" folks aren't as crazy as the antivax folks want to believe.
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Thimerosal was removed from vaccines years ago after the hysterical anti-vaccination claims. It had no effect on the autism diagnosis rates which continued to rise gradually due to ongoing improved medical awareness. this proved conclusively that Thimerosal was NOT a cause of Autism. If it was, even if traces remained in a few vaccines, we would still have seen a dramatic reduction in autism. The anti-vaccination crown still go on about vaccines as a cause and about Thimerosal though. It is idiotic, having made up their mind they will not listen to reason.
As a scientist I recognise the power and safety of vaccines, and I also recognise the logic in your arguments. Most of what you say I do agree with. However, I also recognise the implicit argument in your post--that vaccination should be mandatory and or the antivax crowd should be silenced--and as a human being I'm going to tell you to shove that point of view up your ass.
If you don't like the antivax crowd, you're going to have to tackle them with argument and reason, not with the iron hand of majority rules.
May the Maths Be with you!
A vaccine has about as much mercury in it as a tin of tuna. Mercury is indeed cumulatively toxic, but the amount in all the vaccinations a person will ever have is irrelevantly tiny.
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Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Both sides in this are ignorant. The "experts" are totally clueless as to what even causes Autisim. Mankind currently knows jack schitt about biology despite the massive world wide investments being made in the area.
Parents see their kids getting sick or worse after getting their shots and refuse to see anything else.
The vaccination adverse reaction reports in the US at least are public knowledge anyone interested can download the raw datasets and do their own analysis. At the end of the day even if some kids are getting sick or dead as a direct result of the vaccines statistically their still MUCH better off taking them.
We know for a fact mercury makes people retarded so injecting it in any amount into a few day old baby is also retarded. Sometimes captin obvious really needs to fly in and save us all from our own rank nonsense.
The correlation between autisim and vaccination is like the correlation between cancer and insert arbitrary substance here. With 1/5th of the worlds population dieing of cancer there is just too much noise in the signal to make any definitive conclusions. Especially when there is huge potential for disruptive negative consequences be it the cell phone industry or people not getting vaccinated. The signal if it exists will simply be ignored.
This should **NOT** give industries and people a license to act stupidly and lack conservative approach WRT things mankind is currently just too clueless to fully understand.
Use of mercury is stupid. The massive scope creep of vaccinations from must have life saving to the recent laundry lists of nonsense in the current schedules in many areas is also stupid.
Taking a few pictures of myself with an x-ray camera is a safe bet.. It is very unlikely to give me cancer and is great fun for halloween. but if I repeat the process say use an orbting high power satellite to take an x-ray picture of every living person then there is a good chance that some of those people will get cancer and die as a direct result. Statistically you'll never see it so don't sue me, you can't prove it you'll loose in court.
That its even possible for lawsuits against people who are in good faith trying (and succeding by any measure) to help people is the real problem here. People are both stupid and greedy and they get what they deserve for making no effort to rid themselves of such attributes.
Legal or freely available?
You need to make the supply chain legal, this will break the organized crime supply chains and fix a lot of problems in some of our neighboring countries (and our own). Decriminalization of use without decriminalization of supplying the stuff will only cause more problems. It's one thing if we want to make drugs illegal, but it's not really fair to export all these problems to our neighbors.
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