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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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]
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.
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.
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."
The BMJ, the Lancet, Neurotoxicology, The American Journal of Gastroenterology, The UK General Medical Council. How many peers do you need?
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.