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Bill Gates Says Anti-Vaccine Effort Kills Children
Hugh Pickens writes writes "CNN has an interesting interview with Bill Gates who says that unbelievable progress is being made in both inventing new vaccines and making sure they get out to all the children who need them. The improvements could cut the number of children who die every year from about 9 million to half that. But Gates has harsh words for those who engage in anti-vaccine efforts, especially Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who falsified data to 'prove' a fraudulent link between vaccines and autism. 'It's an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids,' says Gates. 'Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn't have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today.'"
Someone mod Bill +1 hero so he gets out of the troll area
I actually *agree* with Bill Gates on something.
I'm scared - hold me...
It's good that most children escaped the consequences of Wakefield's BS because enough were vaccinated to make it pretty hard for disease to spread. But the numbers are there showing that there were hundreds of excess deaths and life-changing disabilities, such as blindness or retardation, from kids not getting measles vaccines.
This just in: people who make knee-jerk reactions out of fear make horrible mistakes.
Everyone, let's take note of that so we don't make that mistake a ridiculous number of times every day for like ten years. Because that would totally suck.
Now, let's all mod me up +1 Funny, for a little while, then really really sad.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Not having your children vaccinated not only leaves your child open to disease, but then they can pass the disease onto others. Not vaccinating seriously harms you and others around you. Therefore, not vaccinating is equivalent to giving your child ciggarettes. QED.
Death and taxes are both inevitable, however, death doesn't get worse year after year.
If you think about it, the way you develop a vaccine is to:
Embrace : copy the original
Extend : modify that version
Extinguish : wipe out the original
Bill Gates is right at home.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo97VouL0ls
You're wrong. Vaccination relies on masses of people being vaccinated. Vaccines do not provide 100% protection. So even if you are vaccinated, if the guy sitting next to you in class is a bag of germs, you can still be infected. Vaccination greatly reduces the *probability* that you will be infected, but it does not *eliminate* it.
The anti-vaccine people have harmed many thousands of people, directly and indirectly.
The difference is that people aren't choosing not to be vaccinated themselves, they're choosing not to vaccinate their children. The state can't force you to eat healthy, but if you malnourish your children, they can be taken away. Put another way, you have the right to stupidly harm yourself. You do not have the right to stupidly harm others.
Countries with high child mortality rates have a greater problem with overpopulation. That is, if you know half your kids will die of pertussis, you will have more kids. It is paradoxical, but preventing child mortality actually decreases overpopulation.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if everybody get a chance to get vaccines, then the only people who are at risk because of not wanting vaccines are the people who have chosen it for themselves, correct?
Kids don't generally get to make that choice to be at risk.
Wakefield was not "pursued to extremes". He did research on children without ethical approval in the UK, which is an offence that leads to losing your medical license, and possibly criminal action too. He published research in a field for which he was not qualified, with falsified results. He was also running a company selling single vaccines (his research 'proved' problems for the combined vaccine) and was on the payroll of anti-vaccine lawyers whilst claiming to carry out independent research.
Choosing not to vaccinate your child endangers other people's infants who are too young to receive the vaccine, along with people who have been vaccinated but for whom the protection has diminished over time.
So, how in the hell could better vaccines and better health care help lower the world population? They can't.
Yes they can, and they do. As parents become more confident that their children will survive, they have fewer of them, and invest more resources in each child. Vaccines, good healthcare, good nutrition, and good education, all reduce population growth.
It's one thing for people to choose not to have vaccines, that is a right and it would be an assault on their person to force it upon them. It's another thing entirely for groups with an agenda to promote misinformation and falsified, unethically conducted research in order to try to influence people into refusing vaccines. The lives of the children that die from diseases that can be prevented by vaccination should be on their consciences.
You are wrong. Vaccine immunity is a statistical thing rather than an absolute. A typical vaccine might fully immunize about 80% of the recipients of the vaccine. Others might have weaker immunity or none at all. This means by not immunizing you not only endanger yourself but the people who have had the vaccine and not obtained full immunity.
The immunity of the population is cumulative as function of the total number of people immunized and the efficacy of the vaccine.
This is why laws requiring everyone that doesn't have a compelling medical reason for getting the vaccination are justified.
>how in the hell could better vaccines and better health care help lower the world population?
Populations who have lower rates of disease, and better access to health care, tend to have smaller families because they don't have to have more kids as a hedge against their own death rate.
Smaller families becomes a snowball effect to more wealth, and even better access to healthcare.
Oh, and what's so bad about population control?
Sorry to interrupt your "Evil Bill's got a needle" rant but better health means people don't have ten kids in the hope that two will survive past the age of five. A "vaccine" substitute for the pill means you only need one shot a year rather than paying for pills once a month (assuming you can find a reliable source for the pills).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
You totally discount (well, outright ignore) the fact that Bill Gates is the head of the largest foundation on earth that has an aim of vaccinating every child on the planet. He has hundreds, if not thousands, of expert physicians working for him around the globe. When he says something public related to vaccinations he probably knows what he is talking about. Yes, I agree that listening to Jenny McCarthy, et. al about vaccinations was stupid. But that was because they didn't have any knowledge of the problem, just hearsay. But, dismissing Bill Gates for the same reason is exhibiting the same ignorance as the people who listened to the celebrities.
Topical, especially since the US suffers from torrents of anti-vax stupidity, which they're exporting by the ton.
Like that rather horrible, stupid, overweight and unattractive woman, Meryl Dorey, an American who is now living in the Northern Rivers of NSW, Australia, and spreading vile antivax propaganda and lies. Immunisation rates have plummeted in the Northern Rivers, and now, diseases thought gone for 50 years are making a big comeback.
And don't get me started about the stupid Muslims in Nigeria, who won't immunize their kids against polio, because some unwashed imam somewhere claimed in a sermon that the polio vaccine is a plot by teh evil jooooos to sterilize Muslims.
Normally, I wouldn't care about antivaxxers, but their evil, vile lies and willful stupidity -- all done in the name of self-aggrandisment -- is threatening the lives of innocent people who can't make informed decisions of their own.
I'm sorry to hear your child has autism — I can only imagine the difficulty of coping with something so generalized and poorly understood by modern science. You are also right: extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof; Wakefield has none. He's been stripped of his license. His paper has been retracted. And now it's come out that it was more than lacking in proof, it was a "deliberate fraud," to quote to editor of the BMJ (Dr. Godlee).
Of the 12 children in his study, children who supposedly developed entercolitis and then regressive autism after the MMR vaccination, only one of the 12 had regressive autism. Three didn't have autism at all. Five had developmental problems noted in their records before their MMR vaccine. The development of problems wasn't nearly as sudden as claimed (often months elapsed). Nine of the children's bowel tests were reported as "non-specific colitis" despite testing normal. Many of the children were recruited from lawyers who were hoping to sue the vaccine makers (can we say 'confirmation bias'?).
Most of these latter revelations have just come to light. I can only imagine how hard it must be to be in your position, to want to find an answer for causation. Especially if your child did have entercolitis and then regressive autism. But you should be aware that there isn't a shred of evidence to support this claim. Not a shred.
Also, Dr. Gupta is bordering on irresponsibility (imo) when he says to Gates, "There has been a lot of news about is there a connection with autism, for example. What do you make of all that? Dr. [Andrew] Wakefield wrote a paper about this [in The Lancet in 1998] saying he thought there was a connection." He may be a journalist, but he is a doctor first, and he could have formed his question in a way that more clearly stated what he surely knows to be facts (that Wakefield isn't licensed anymore, that the paper has been retracted and proven to be fraudulent). It's this sort of undue politeness in dancing around the truth that leave doubts in the minds of parents like yourself.
I've seen children dying of measles (in Kaduna State, northern Nigeria), and it's a terrible thing to have to see. In the case of Nigeria, it's a rumor about infertility drugs concealed in vaccines that led to a lot of resistance-to-consent amongst certain communities, and there too the damage of such a provably fraudulent statement has been a long time in undoing. I know it's tempting, maybe even easier to just believe whatever some conspiracy theorist says, but it's important to trust in the thousands of scientists who are advancing the science of saving lives, rather than the few psuedo-scientists who are trying to advance their own notoriety and financial positions.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
I hate to say it, because I HATE cigarette smoke, but most of the evidence for second hand smoke causing cancer, etc. is tremendously trumped up and in some cases just as falsified as the wakefield BS.
of course second hand smoke:
A. aggravates allergies and people with conditions like asthma
B. smells like absolute shit and sticks to clothing, wood, plastic, damn near everything
C. annoys even healthy people
but the evidence that it causes the big C in other people, which is what the big deal was really truly all about, is pretty slim unfortunately. I'm the first to say that I'd rather the hysteria be true because then we'd be rid of secondhand smoke, but just because I want something to be true doesn't mean it is.
Actually, given the choice, most kids of immunization age will skip a shot. Of course they'd also eat nothing but cake and ice cream, so perhaps it's best their parents make the choices.
Wakefield was doing everything the conspiracy theorists usually ascribe to the immoral, illicit and illegal activities of "Big Pharma". Actually breaking up the MMR into 3 separate individual immunizations would do nothing but increase the profits of big pharma and the administering physicians.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I hope you enjoy your old age, then, because it's gonna suck for you when you break a hip and there's nobody around young enough to lift you off the bathroom floor.
Breakfast served all day!
To be fair, it is a nice ass.
I think someone should fund an international campaign with a ticker that shows a running count of the number of children who have suffered and died as a result of Jenny McCarthy's anti-vaccine campaign. Get it up on billboards in major cities and run some sort of "how many kids did you kill today?" campaign on TV. Shame Jenny and celebrities like her into using their influence to spread the truth to even even wider than they spread their initial lies. Saying "Oops, my bad" and walking away doesn't make up for the carnage.
"It is an affront to our common humanity, five years after the the Millennium Summit, that 30,000 children die each day from easily preventable diseases, or that 100 million people go to bed hungry, or that 100 million children are not receiving a basic education." Bertie Ahern, Taoiseach, speaking to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2005.
Link please?
I'm all for vaccination--let's just get that out of the way up front. Wakefield has been up to no good. But Bill Gates is now on record saying that thousands of children have died as a result of Wakefield's work. I have yet to see any empirical evidence of this. Indeed, the only evidence I've seen at all (that Wakefield has had real impact) is anecdotal and often turns out to be attributable to other forces (e.g. illegal immigrants who don't know they can get free vaccinations, religious parents who refuse vaccinations anyway, that sort of thing).
It bothers me that in an argument about the unempirical, biased work of one scientist, we are trotting out in opposition not truth but different lies. This is a very big problem! And yet we are all so angry at Wakefield that no one appears willing to call Gates on the carpet to explain what he is talking about and where his data is coming from. So have we decided that lies and invented statistics are okay so long as they support something we like? Come on, people. We're better than that.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=measles+outbreak
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
Vaccines also don't last forever. You should all be getting a tetanus booster once every ten years. Tetanus is something you don't need to catch from another person; you can assume it's pretty much everywhere in the environment.
Another one that doesn't last is whooping cough (pertussis). In my region of California there have been a number of outbreaks of whooping cough in the last couple of years, mostly in affluent Marin County where parents think they know better than doctors and have stopped having their kids vaccinated. As a result, doctors now recommend that everyone get a one-time pertussis booster at some point in their adult life. The way to do it, coincidentally, is to ask for it with your next tetanus booster. The idea here is that an adult who contracts whooping cough will probably feel pretty bad, but it won't be life-threatening; still, that adult carrier doesn't want to risk passing the disease on to a child who may not have been vaccinated.
Breakfast served all day!
I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that he's been on something of an anti-vaccination crusade, especially when it comes to flu shots. He basically is of the position that the whole campaign to inoculate people against H1N1 is in and of itself a conspiracy. He's adamant that you don't need vaccines if you eat right.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Show us figures on what percentage of children in outbreaks of measles, for example, have been 'vaccinated'. Strangely enough, we never get to see those figures.
Let's look at your CDC link, since it has the exact info you want. In that case, all of the persons who developed measles had been vaccinated. So you win a point. Or do you? About fifteen percent of children vaccinated against measles won't develop immunity with the first jab, which is why a second is recommended. (Also, just for reference, the vaccine is most effective after 12 months of age, and not effective at all before six months.) So it's possible, maybe even likely that these students hadn't had their second jab (which would make 85% of the students immune, and 15% vulnerable — "The highest attack rate was 12% (9/74) for the 11th grade students (p 0.02)"). Furthermore, as I am sure you know, your immune system's memory (B-cells) 'forgets' threats over time, which is what creates the need for booster shots. The CDC indirectly notes this, "The attack rate was four times greater for students vaccinated 10 or more years before the outbreak than for students vaccinated more recently (p 0.05)". Lastly, the measles vaccine is very temperamental in its cold storage, with an acceptable range of 8 degrees, and any variance outside this range reduces its efficacy.
You lap up whatever the shills in the media tell you, then lambast anybody intelligent enough to question it...
The real reason I'm replying is that I want to address this comment above. I don't just lap up whatever I'm handed. Do you? When was the last time you were doing epidemiological field work? I just came back from northern Nigeria, where I was observing UNICEF and government health teams vaccinate kids, and independently surveilling measles outbreaks occurring now. Before that I was in Ghana, also working with government health teams to observe the vaccination of children, but I wasn't able to see any outbreaks. Why not? Because Ghana doesn't have outbreaks, because they maintain herd immunity amongst their under-five population. The region (like a state) I was living in for this period has a prevalence of higher than 90% for MMR vaccination, and Ghana hasn't had a measles death since 2003. In Nigeria the prevalence for vaccination in Kaduna State is around 13% for coverage of recommended vaccines, and it gets as low as 0% if you go to Jigawa State. So I'm not just lapping up whatever the "media" tells me (in fact the media is woefully silent on these sorts of matters, because most Westerners care more about Tiger Woods' indiscretions than dying kids in Nigeria), I've been in the thick of it and I've seen kids dying from measles. When was the last time (if ever?) you actually looked into this besides just lapping up what a few outcast theorists have told you to believe?
the real reason for the great reductions in some of the diseases they 'vaccinated' against - huge improvements in SANITATION.
Look, this is just bullshit, too. I've lived in Ghana, where there is sporadic running water (that you cannot drink without boiling) and no electricity and people defecate in the bush. And I've lived in Nigeria where the exact same is true. Yet in Ghana measles isn't a problem, and in Nigeria it is. This is just my anecdote, but if you look at where kids are dying from measles (or whatever disease) and you control for sanitation, you'll see that it isn't a factor. Polio (hep A, tyhpoid, cholera, etc) are spread by feces, so handwashing helps immensly there, and standing water breeds malaria (well, Anopheles mosquitoes that carry it), but there's about the extent of your sanitation argument. Once we get away from diarrheaol diseases and look at measles, sanitation isn't a factor at all (compared to rates of vaccination).
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
However, the World Health Organization reports 164,000 deaths per year from measles (which is the leading cause of death among children), not the millions claimed by Mr. Gates.
Gates was speaking about all preventable diseases in children - and from here it looks like he got his numbers right.
Major Causes of Death in Children Under Five in Developing Countries and the Contribution of Malnutrition [source: WHO and The Lancet, 2005]
Pneumonia 19%
Diarrhea 17%
Malaria 8%
Measles 4%
HIV/AIDS 3%
Although approximately 10.5 million children under 5 years of age still die every year in the world, progress has been made since 1970, when the figure was more than 17 million. ...
Today nearly all child deaths occur in developing countries, almost half of them in Africa. While some African countries have made considerable strides in reducing child mortality, the majority of African children live in countries where the survival gains of the past have been wiped out, largely as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Surviving the first five years of life [2003]
http://www.jennymccarthybodycount.com/Jenny_McCarthy_Body_Count/Home.html
it should be simple to see if those kids ALSO have the 1% autism rate of the larger population. If they do, vaccines don't cause autism.
Even more obvious: http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=anti-vaccine+deaths&l=1
Not quite. It's included in the tetanus booster. It's called DTAP [medscape.com] for Diptheria, Tetanus, Acellular Pertussis.
Yes, but like I said, in the U.S. you generally have to ask for that specific version. Otherwise they may just assume you want the tetanus-diptheria version, because it's cheaper (and it's believed adults only need the pertussis component once). Your experience might be different, for example if you live in a country with universal healthcare.
Breakfast served all day!
He was a liar and a scam artist. He fabricated a scientific study. Does it matter who pursued him?
I don't understand you people who want to beatify the guy. What the fuck is wrong with you?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Astonishing. Some people get a bit sniffy in the winter? And the vaccine for a rapidly-mutating virus doesn't always work? Except the people who don't get it - what if they weren't going to get it anyway?
I think we've just discovered a massive fraud.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
I disagree. You don't have the right to harm your child. Medical decisions are a bit of a gray area, but not so much with vaccines. There are medical reasons to avoid vaccinations - immunological disorders and so on - but unless the kid has one, they should be vaccinated. Regardless of what the parent thinks.
Your unvaccinated kid won't get anywhere near my kid, particularly if he's immunocompromised for some reason. Even if he's not, he's a lot more likely to get measles - even if he's vaccinated. It's a no-brainer to keep unvaccinated kids out of public schools.
But I say we should go further. While nobody's going to force you to eat food that has the nutrients you need, we'll force you to do it for your kid. Malnourished kids are removed because their parents are actually hurting them. So it is with vaccines. If somebody's proven themselves too stupid to make medical decisions for their kid, they shouldn't be allowed to - and not vaccinating your kids because some Playboy bimbo said it was bad on Oprah is as about as stupid a medical decision as they come.
(note: in the above post, 'you' means 'one' or 'somebody', nothing personal)
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
It's been done and didn't convince them. It was depressing hearing a radio program where a vaccination expert and a person in charge of a anti-vaccination group put there points to some parents with young babies who then voted on it. The doctor talked about the outcomes of a trial involving two million children in the UK while the other person indulged in character assassination and piles of emotional bullshit. She was playing a manipulative game where truth did not remotely matter while the doctor had to be professional and stick to facts. An unemployed high school dropout with a hobby was putting doubt into everyone's heads about the qualifications of somebody that has been working on infectious diseases for forty years.
Of course lies and emotional bullshit won because parents with a newborn baby were being told they would be bad parents if they exposed their babies to the mercury that isn't even in the vaccine that the program was about. It was depressing and to an extent was a glimpse into how evil some of the people involved are. They should get a different hobby that manipulates people in a more harmless way instead of this dangerous hobby that is convincing parents to put their children in danger.
Once, Bill Gates, the Pope, and the Anti-Vaccine Man was on a plane together. As things always goes in jokes, while in-flight the pilot died of heart attack, while at the same time the engines caught on fire.
This lead to the three men having to jump out of the plane, and of course there are only two parachutes. Bill Gates declares that as the smartest man Earth, he must be saved, grabs one of the parachutes, and jumps. The Pope looks at the Anti-Vaccine Man, and says "here, young man, take mine. You still have years in front of you" to which the Anti-Vaccine Man replies "No, it is a known fact that those contraptions can fail at times, so it is better to jump without one" and jumped out of the plane. The Pope shakes his head, jump with the remaining parachute, and after landing safely holds a speech declaring that while God is good, even He can not help retards.
The End.
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
Never happen. He's an atheist.
(Yes, I know about Peter Stark)
As for that narcolepsy link: If it's on the Huffington Post, it's automatically wrong. They are setting themselves up as the internet epicentre of pseudoscientific crap.
How about a link from the Finnish National Institute For Health And Welfare? Link is to the English version of their pressrelease.
Or...World Health Organisation?
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
So what about the suspected link here? An illness that kills less people than the regular flu gets global attention (and HUGE vaccine demand),
Normal seasonal flu kills hundreds of thousands of people each year.
As such, "less people than the regular flu" doesn't say a lot. Your link also says that they still think it's a net positive, meaning more people would have died without than contracted narcolepsy with.
A lot more than "better than normal flu" is required to make something harmless.
You're not going to get cancer by inhaling a little environmental cigarette smoke.
If I go to a bar once in a while, I won't get cancer from the smoke, even if the smoke is so thick it's more like a fog.
I don't envy the bartender who has to be there the whole day.
What if I am sharing an office with a coworker who does likes to smoke inside? What if I am allergic to some chemical inside the smoke?
Outside (and in your home, provided you live alone or everyone is OK with it and you do not have children living with you), sure, smoke as much as you want, it won't affect me.
The BMJ, the Lancet, Neurotoxicology, The American Journal of Gastroenterology, The UK General Medical Council. How many peers do you need?
Do you have the right to let your child poor gasoline on themselves, light a match, and then run into a school full of other children and burn down the school killing how many other children who's parents would let play with gasoline and matches?
When you don't vaccinate your child, it's not just your child that's at risk, it also includes all the others they are in contact with. Why the bloody hell do you think they send sick children home when parents ignore the standard "don't send sick children to school" policies?
Maybe you have the right to subject your child to additional unnecessary risks, which in a legal stance I suspect is rather questionable due to all the cases I've heard of where parents were over-ridden to obtain necessary medical aid for minors.
But even if you are, you do NOT have any right to subject other peoples children to those same avoidable risks.
Here's an idea, if you really insist on ignoring the countless millions of case studies and instead go with one discredited quack and don't mind risking your childrens health, then keep your kids out of the schools and parks and other places where children congregate. Your disregard for their safety isn't fair to them or their parents.
You've picked the weak one out of the mix instead of tuberculosis, polio, tetanus, rubella or even measles - why is that? Even if you rig the game that way chicken pox is worse than you think and the chance of catching it is obviously reduced as less people around you are susceptable (which renders your 20x risk statement above a bad guess or deliberately misleading).
Is it just the first example you can think of or have you been conned into rigging the game as well?
I'll take your word for it that the linked above example is over the top emotional bullshit because advertisers and PR people are paid to do such manipulative shit. You and I are not paid to do so and have no such excuse. We should not assume that all vaccination has problems because of an anecdote about advertising hype.
No, parents are the CARETAKERS of children, not their OWNERS. You do not "own" other humans. Children are not toys.
Give it a break
Reducing childhood mortality lowers fertility rates within a generation or so. This is because parents in developing nations won't have large numbers of children if they know that their chances of survival are good.