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Measles Resurgent Due To Fear of Vaccination
florescent_beige writes "In the September Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Gregory Poland, M.D. writes that 'More than 150 cases of measles have been reported in the United States already this year and there have been similar outbreaks in Europe, a sign the disease is making an alarming comeback (abstract). The reappearance of the potentially deadly virus is the result of unfounded fears about a link between the measles shot and autism that have turned some parents against childhood vaccination.'"
This follows the recent release of a massive review of studies into the side effects of vaccination, summarized here by Nature, which did not find convincing support for the idea that MMR shots caused autism.
Unfortunately, it's not only those who refuse vaccination that end up at risk.
Stick to getting to your tits out please and leave the science to the ugly people.
Cheers.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
This kind of fear is akin to the fear of oxygen and it's fueled by the fear of science by the superstitious.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
The MMR vaccine has not shown signs of causing neurological problems; but Measles, in the not-as-rare-as-one-might-like cases where it progresses to include Encephalitis, certainly has...
Geeks will inherit the Earth.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
And thus we see natural selection at work once again.
You ignorant asshole.
What about people who were vaccinated, but the vaccination didn't take? What about people with allergies to key ingredients in the vaccinations? What about people with compromised immune systems, where the vaccination simply can't take hold?
I wouldn't have a problem with people refusing to be vaccinated if it meant that they and their offspring died. Is that a bit cruel? Yeah, but people die for worse reasons every day, so I'm not going to complain about some idiot letting his kids die because he refused to listen to logic and reason.
But when people die because someone else didn't vaccinate their kids? Because the local vaccination ratio dropped too low for herd immunity to take place? That's when I get pissed off.
Cynical Idealist
Really? Really? How can post here and not be able to read? Why not try the article in Nature or maybe the Mayo Clinic for refutation of Hadwen bullshit. More superstition rather than science.
It is well documented that the measles cures blindness, so I can only congratulate the orchestrators of this anti-vaccine campaign for having the vision to improve America's public health in such a manner.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
This year my wife mysteriously got measles (in Italy). She hadn't been vaccinated because when we were young the vaccine was not available. BUT our youngest child got it, too, because he was at the time younger than the age at which you get the shot.
I don't tell you the trouble of having a diagnosis, since the disease is so uncommon today, that after two visits, my wife finally diagnosed it herself on wikipedia (sic). And the trouble of telling all the authorities, which needed to find the lost protocols for such an infection.
To sum it up: the studies linking the shot with autism were done by an UK professor, who has been on trial for telling false results to help his own company.
When you don't get the shot and you are healthy, you're just selfishly exploiting the fact that most of "other people" will get the shot and you will be protected. BUT measles IS dangerous, and some people won't have your choice, because they are too young or too unhealthy to get that shot. They will risk severe damages by the disease, so PLEASE don't be a wimp and kindly get vaccinated.
An episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit says it, and says it well. Even presuming the cases of vacination causing autism were not bullshit, it'd still be worse to not vaccinate all our kids - more would end up dead than would end up autistic.
Of course, people don't see it that way, they just like their knee-jerk responses. I literally can not believe that people actually still refer to something so discredited. People need to spend 5 seconds doing some goddamn research on an issue - and not just looking for things to confirm what they think.
I blame the rise of the schooling system going all 'no opinion can be wrong' - it's such obvious crap, and yet people seem to believe it. I can say it's my opinion the sky is blue all day long, it doesn't make it true. Sure, some opinions - ones of taste, can not be wrong, as they are something inherant to you, but too many parents, when you try and explain that there is no reason to fear vaccinations, will just refuse to listen, tell you to stop 'telling them what to do with their children' and it's 'their opinion' that the vaccines are bad. It's such rubbish. Not only that, but people have somehow managed to grow up seeing all discussion as someone else trying to force you onto their side. The point of discussion is to try and see where the differences in your opinion are - if the other person can convince you that you are wrong, that's excellent - you have just gained something. Likewise if you can show them. Instead, people just refuse to listen to the other side of an argument.
People need to learn that being wrong isn't something bad - and that you sure as hell do not have a right to never be wrong. I get it, these parents want to look after their kids - and who can blame them for that? What I can blame them for is not actually caring enough to check what is actually good for them.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Im not sure theres ever as clear as a correlation as this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Measles_US_1944-2007_inset.png
I mean, there doesnt even seem to be a shadow of a doubt that the shots are effective, whatever other complaints you might want to make about them.
If it was just the anti-vaxxers and their offspring, then maybe I'd agree with you. It's a callous attitude, but we can't protect people from themselves. But the anti-vaxxer crowd weakens herd immunity, which causes people who can't, not won't, but can't get the vaccine, to get ill. And since those who can't get the vaccine often have weakened immune systems, this leads them to be in a worse situation than if you or I got it.
Cynical Idealist
The fact that it's hard to find anyone who dares to advertise vaccination in public has to do with the risks involved. Although the figures are very low, they're not zero. Who wants to be confronted with the mother who lost her otherwise healthy baby due to an allergic shock incurred by the vaccination process? I think that, apart from laziness or ignorance, these risks (possibly exaggerated in perception) are also the main reason why people shy away from vaccination.
Agreed. Get fucked, anti-vaxxers. Enjoy knowing that your decisions have been indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds, all so you could have absolutely no effect on your child getting autism.
Cynical Idealist
It is probably going to be said a million times but, here goes:
Firstly, no vaccination is a 100% guarantee. The best give some high 90's percent chance of immunity, many much lower. However, even when you are not fully immunized from a vaccine, it can still mean you get a much milder case of the disease.
Secondly, not all people can be immunized. Children too young to have a fully working immune system, people with cancer or some immunodeficiency. They, in stead, rely on herd immunity: If enough of the surrounding people are immunized, they won't get the disease. So, by choosing to not get immunised when you can, you basically make life much worse for children with cancer. I would say that that is a group who could use any break they can get, and does not deserve to be made more miserable.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/Measles_incidence_England%26Wales_1940-2007.png/220px-Measles_incidence_England%26Wales_1940-2007.png
Nobody (with standing) has EVER claimed that a vaccine is 100% effective at stopping whatever it is supposed to. It's impossible. For a start, evolution dictates that something stronger and more powerful and able to overcome the vaccine will, eventually, come along (that's what MRSA is, for instance) - and it's actually (in avoiding natural selection terms) worse if only a tiny minority of people are susceptible to the disease/virus/whatever than if everyone is susceptible or everyone is immune. It provides greater scope for a successful mutation to arise.
As always, dickheads with zero medical experience telling people what they should or should not do have been the bane of humanity and cost more lives than the accidents of doctors, or an ineffective vaccine.
You don't get vaccinated for YOU. You get vaccinated for OTHERS. Those with compromised immune systems, those who you would spread the disease to, those you would be an asymptomatic carrier for (Typhoid Mary), etc. You don't get immunised against German Measles (Rubella) for yourself - you do it so that you DON'T give it to that pregnant woman in your family, or who lives down the road.
That said, I haven't had any vaccinations since my school days (for purely selfish reasons that have nothing to do with their safety), but then I avoid almost everything that otherwise normal people think is "essential" in medicine nowadays - including headache tablets, stomach remedies, cold remedies and just about anything that comes in a blister-pack.
In terms of medicine, a vaccination will never be perfect, but that doesn't mean it can't eradicate a disease to the point that it leaves living memory either permanently (smallpox), or in first-world countries (polio).
Yes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Get fucked, anti-vaxxers.
Considering theirs might be a set of genes we want to get out of the gene-pool, I'm not sure that is the correct request.
.... there are risks associated with any medical procedure, including vaccinations. But vaccinations are among the safest things one can do for oneself and the community. The benefits far outweigh the risks, the science is clear on that. Most of the folk that oppose vaccinations do so out of unfounded fears, i.e. gut reactions, not rational reflection of the facts. Instead, they are swayed by the likes of Ms. McCarthy or Mr. Wakefield that there is some sort of giant medical conspiracy. It is precisely this sort of ignorance why more diseases like polio have not gone the way of smallpox, i.e. been eradicated in the wild. In the case of polio, it's thanks to nutty preachers in the affected remaining hotspots making similarly dreary claims re: the polio vaccine.
I attribute the willingness of parents to take a chance with herd immunity to the fact that they haven't themselves seen the effects of polio, whooping cough, etc. in the community around them. There is a reason that in years past people gladly lined up for polio vaccinations - they'd seen the impact, could better trade off the miniscule risk (especially with the post-Cutter-incident monitoring) with the benefits of not having dead, disfigured, or severely disabled children. Indeed, one of the biggest impacts of vaccination programs is the serious reduction in schools for the deaf, dumb, and blind.
Ironically, having rejected comparatively perfectly safe vaccination options, parents seem to have no issues with then putting all the interventionist methods to use to save their children if they do fall sick. I.e. take them to the hospital, operate, perform lots of heroic work to save the child... all of which would not have been necessary if they hadn't blindly followed quacks advice re: vaccinations. And that's what amazes me, the quacks of the world who promote anti-vaccination messages have yet to prove any causal link between MMR and/or thimerosal with autism, yet they stick to this piece of faith, not unlike the folk who will follow cult religions. It's pity for the kids, they have no one looking out for their interests.
Last but not least, what bothers me most about refusing vaccinations is that there will always be some members of the community that have to rely on herd immunity because their own immune systems are not fully functional, they are undergoing immuno-suppressing therapy, or they are allergic to some of the proteins inherent in the current manufacturing processes for most vaccines. Additionally, no vaccine is 100% effective - so depending on the ability of the virus or bacteria to spread through the community, a very high immunization rate is required to protect everyone in the herd, immunized or not.
I hope that some day the likes of Ms. McCarthy or Mr. Wakefield will own up to their hubris, character assassination, innuendo, etc. and apologize to the world not only for disrupting one of the most successful medical programs of our times, but also for killing, disfiguring, and traumatizing gaggles of children needlessly with their panic-mongering. This is not unlike shouting "Fire" in a crowded theatre - especially in the case of Mr. Wakefield where key aspects of his 'research' were later found to be faked, massive conflicts of interest were not disclosed, and interpretations were drawn without the benefit of facts.
For anyone interested in the subject, I highly recommend the books written by Dr. Offit on the matter, especially "Autisms False Prophets", and "Deadly Choices". He details the characters of the anti-vaccination movements quite nicely and shows in reference after reference what the real impacts of vaccine refusal are.
People need to spend 5 seconds doing some goddamn research on an issue
You're asking too much here.
A lot of people just can't understand the result of their search, or won't realize they should do such a search, or cannot sort through the quantity of information available (lots of dross, even in good science). They need to be told, clearly and unequivocally, what's the recommended thing to do in issues involving science/medicine/etc. Any imbecile who publicly tells them to do demonstrably harmful things should be taken to task, and held culpable to the extent which can be justified.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Dr Hadwen saw through the fraud of 'vaccination' over a hundred years ago, and none of his talks have ever been refuted. Why is that?
A hundred years ago, it was just about still possible to be unconvinced by the germ theory of disease - now, not in the slightest. As for 'seeing through the fraud of vaccination', you do realise that this is basically nonsense?
What am I saying? It's like trying to convince flat earthers or geocentrists, or creationists...
When the champions of anarcho-capitalism say to STFU and get your kids vaccinated, it really does say something. Unlike the OP though, I'm not sure the blame is to placed on the school system. The places I've seen anti-vaccine hysteria promoted was on the TeeVee by Responsible People like Jenny McCarthy (and by proxy Oprah).
would take their children to get Chiropractic. Big pharma wants you all to get vaccinated with their live specimens of the Measles, Mumps and Rubella viruses so your body can learn to deal with these diseases, but it already knows how. It's just being prevented from doing so by poor alignment, non-organic foods, subluxation, voodoo, bad mojo and pesticides.
Chiropractic can save lives, just like homeopathy, acupuncture and faith-healing.
The comments here are perpetrating a myth that those who avoid the MMR vaccine for their children are therefore not vaccinating them. This is very far from the truth. At the height of the scare we decided to avoid the MMR for our two children, arranging instead for them to have three single vaccines, given a little time apart.
When they were due for their booster shots, the doctor tested them and said their immunity levels were way higher then he expected and they didn't need the normal booster. We mentioned that we'd skipped MMR and the doctor confirmed that the single vaccines give a higher level of protection.
In summary, I was suspicious about the science behind the MMR scare but decided not to chance it - all I risked was a little money, by skipping the free government MMR and paying myself for the three singles. Even though the MMR risk seemed very low, it wasn't zero.
Avoiding the MMR was a prudent, sensible choice. The hysteria that skipping MMR must inevitably lead to unprotected children is itself scaremongering. If measles is rising it's simple parental negligence and nothing to do with MMR.
The 'knee-jerk' reaction people aren't the ones that promote vaccines...
No - I'm sorry, but you can't just write it off like that. I'm not saying they should look into every little thing in depth - what they should do is know who to listen to, and when they truly can't decide - then do some research. Everyone should be capable of this - if not, then they should learn. Yes, I know it's wrong to actually expect something of people, but come on..
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
I don't mean by another human. That would be terrible. I'm referring to the "sandpaper covered rake shoved sideways up their ass" kind of fucked. You know. The fun kind. ;-)
Cynical Idealist
Anti-vaxxers aren't anti-vaxxers because they have genes for stupidity. I know a sysadmin who's an anti-vaxxer. They're anti-vaxxers because no one ever bothered to teach them how to evaluate claims critically.
Maybe you remember measles parties, but not the measles wards in hospitals, where people with their brain smashed by encephalitis were kept. In that case, maybe you would have gotten a better picture. Kids also were dying more frequently in the past, and that was not as big an issue as today, because it was not avoidable at best and anyway there were many more kids per family than today.
I was vaccinated (my choice at 18) and survived an infection. I lived with people with measles and was ok all the time. I don't see having the virus spreading to my lungs, eyes, skin and brain as a better option. And I've seen the effects, you don't want to try them.
But what if the immunity didn't take?
Cynical Idealist
so a load of people latch onto autism as a reason against vaccination, but its not the only concern. A lot of people are more concerned about lower-level negative immune system responses, such as increased allergy rates.
I'm so concerned about allergies that I'm willing to risk the death or serious illness of my child and many of the vulnerable children around him; I'm a fuckshit!!
This isn't helped by the media playing people fear of risk. You all remember the type of stats they gave out during the Fukushima nuclear power plant break down. Radiation levels are 500% above normal. People watch that sensationalism and panic. At no point did they demand to know a comparative. "Oh, the same as smoking 50 packs of high tar over a year" or something similar. You get the point.
..
In the UK a few years back. They put out a story telling women that a type of birth control pill increased their risk of getting cancer. Many women came off the pill immediately and fell pregnant as a result. A few months later they had a follow up story with a Doctor. They asked him about the risk of the drug and what was being done. They then asked his reaction to the pregnancies (which i don't think he was aware of) by the presenter. His reaction was classic a mix of amused bewilderment and a condescending - You do realise that pregnancy is incredibly more dangerous than any risk of cancer this drug ever posed. .
I think what he wanted to say was "Are you all fucking idiots?"
Darwin's coming to collect, they had their chance.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
because contagious diseases preferentially kill stupid people
In this case that's absolutely correct, or should we say contagious diseases preferentially kill stupid people's genes.
People who make decisions about their children's health based on what a celebrity said in the Oprah show are stupid, no doubt about it.
Why listen to medical science? Jenny McCarthy kills babies. Jenny McCarthy kills babies
Normally I'd say this, except that you expose people who can't get the vaccine (yet or ever). Or the people it doesn't work for. It's dangerous and irresponsible beyond just hurting your own kid.
I'm by no means saying schools promote an anit-vaccination agenda (at least, here in the UK, while I was at school - albiet it was a little back, I never saw that). My point was more that they are teaching people to believe that their 'opinions' can transcend reason and fact, and be right regardless.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
You clearly did not read the nature article as this is in no way a strawman. They did not just look at the relation between vaccines and MMR, but about negative effects of vaccines.
They found
We looked very hard and found very little evidence of serious adverse harms from vaccines
Stop putting out your own knee-jerk reactions and at least read the article you are criticising before putting out dangerous misinformation.
Good. because the kids of well informed parents who are not paranoid about science are well protected. If the religious fundamentalists declare the Irene to be a sign from god, i ma at least state this.
Up to know parents who did not vaccinate theirs kids where sure that measles are so seldom that it does not matter. They profited from the fact that the vast majority is immunized.
The relevant value is called percolation threshold. As long as the general population is immunized above this threshold, you can afford to be an egoistic idiot and not get vaccinated, because outbreaks will be small and local. If the population is not immunized that well you will get an epidemic.
Deadly. Bullshit is both very funny, and makes a lot of incredibly good points. It's not a replacement for reasearching a subject, but in addition to, and for some comedy, it's great.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
"Seat belts sometimes cause chafing, which under the right combination of sunlight and bacteria might cause skin cancer, so you should stop wearing it. Can you PROVE that seat belts don't cause skin cancer? But Doctor Scamographer said they might! Why don't you come back when there is a consensus!"
*CRASH* *SPLAT*
Never mind, then...
People need to learn that being wrong isn't something bad
No, people need to learn that having been wrong isn't something bad, but that being wrong can be.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Indeed, my poor choice of wording. Learning to correct yourself and not see it as some kind of horrible defeat is important.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Did you hear that drinking water might lead to cancer? No one's managed to disprove the link between water consumption and cancer! Therefore, I suggest that everyone stop drinking water, in order to prevent cancer. After all, what's the worst that can happen?
All sarcasm aside, that's what your argument looks like to me. Fine, there's no definitive proof that MMR and autism are completed unlinked. But there is a whole lot of evidence suggesting a lack of that link. And when you consider the consequences of not getting vaccinated (you know, dieing), I'd be willing to place my bet with science and the vaccines.
Cynical Idealist
Blame stupidity, or discredited studies, or Jenny McCarthy, or religion, or anything you like, but you'd be wrong. Take a moment for reflection on the whole business of vaccinations. Human nature is all it takes to explain this. It is also all that is necessary to correct the problem.
Measles is a scary disease. When it was prevalent, everyone could easily see the terrible consequences of letting the disease run wild. Vaccinations were implemented as a welcomed remedy even though shots are scary, and gradually the disease disappeared from public consciousness. Fast forward to today. Shots are still scary, and society concentrates on AIDS and cancer. People have no fear of measles that overcomes the scariness of vaccinations. The same goes for polio, rubella, etc.
If the unfortunate trend continues, it will solve itself using the same fear of the actual disease that we had decades ago. Sadly, it will leave a pile of victims, many of which never knew that their parents were failing them.
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
depending on where and how you live the measles vaccine still can have a higher chance of serious to deadly outcome as apposed to the chance of getting measles and having a serious to deadly outcome
Doh... That's because people in those areas are vaccinated!
Having a pediatrician that's used to servicing hacidic(sp) Jews helps as they can have religious issues with vaccines.
This is a clear cut case. Public health trumps religious issues, hasidic Jews children should be vaccinated against their parents dogmas.
No fair! You didn't quote data from 100 years ago!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The situation you describe is reliance on "herd immunity": if enough of the population is vaccinated that *your* exposure risk is negligible, then yes, there's a slightly higher risk of harm from the actual vaccine than the disease, because there's little-to-no chance of anyone around you can infect you with the disease.
The situation *now* is that because so many families have skipped the vaccinations because of the Andrew Wakefields and Jenny McCarthy's of the world raising fears of vaccine-triggered autism that the situation is now reversed: enough of the population around you have *voluntarily* skipped the immunization that you're at greater risk of the disease.
Ye fscking godz: I'm enough of a geez to remember the days of closed pools and iron lungs because of polio risk. The idea that a parent would *voluntarily* put their kid at risk for diseases because of some talking head on the TV infuriates me.
Speaking of getting one's head examined.... "Medical Mafia"? That's a new one. I'm sure it will be catchy enough to entice some other moron into subscribing to your newsletter.
n/t
Set your phasers on "funky"!
By putting out mis-information like this you are part of the reason for the large number of deaths from measels.
No he isn't, that's a fallicious argument... measels are the cause of the deaths, not misinformation, and not the GP.
Its fine to be passionate about something, and I believe you are on the right side... however, using fallicious argument to convince doubters is not the way to go. Lead with the science, they will follow.
The Admin and the Engineer
Oh, if only there was some agency out there who would review all the available research and medical documentation out there to inform us whether or not vaccines carry with them adverse health effects. I mean, if some one would just devote, say, 800 pages of research towards answering these questions in a method that is both scientifically accurate and publically consumable... Why, if there were, say, a 120 page section on the MMR vaccination, with special attention given towards the MMR vaccine and autism, maybe we could make better risk informed decisions.
I only wish such a study were available free of charge. I think a really good place for the study to be located would be at this web address
http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13164&utm_medium=etmail&utm_source=National%20Academies%20Press&utm_campaign=NAP+mail+new+08.30.11&utm_content=Downloader&utm_term=#orgs
from what a Doctor friend told me one day most of the cases he read about were amongst people from Mexico or Haiti
Measles outbreaks have been reported in Mexico this century
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Obviously I didn't mean a literal 5 seconds. Yes, reasearch takes up parent's already valuable time. So what - that's a responsibility of parenting, if you care, you can make time. Yeah, it hard - but that is parenting. You have to make a choice the child can not.
As to Penn and Teller, they are not missing the point - they knew that argument doesn't apply to the individual child - it doesn't make it less valid.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
There have been recent studies that seem to identify the actual cause. There were several recent reports that suggest a connection between essential fatty acids and autism. In particular, the studies suggest that autism is the result of either a nutritional deficiency when it comes to essential fatty acids or a failure of the body to properly metabolize essential fatty acids. Initial studies have shown a marked improvement in symptons of autism from giving autistic children supplements of essential fatty acids. This is the first line of research suggesting a cause of autism that makes sense to me.
When you consider our society's recent fad toward low fat diets, if a deficiency of fatty acids is the cause of autism, it would explain the increase in autism recently (although some of that increase can also be explained by the increased range of symptoms being diagnosed as autistic). This would be especially true if autism is caused by a failure of the body to properly metabolize fatty acids. A diet that might be perfectly fine for one child, may cause problems in another child that does not process fatty acids as efficiently.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I advocate yanking their kids out of school. No vaccination, by choice? Get the hell away from my kids. Herd immunity can probably take care of the vanishingly small number of kids who can't have the vaccine for whatever medical reason.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Your reply is perfect, but I feel that you missed an opportunity for hilarious irony.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Penn & Teller did a great segment on their show 'Bullshit' about the idiocy of not getting your kids vaccinated.
Youtube link (contains swearing and open comments)
If you smoke after sex, you're doing it too fast.
Heh, I had the same thought just after I hit post.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
That's great unless your kid is too young to have the shot.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If you do not care about the human life, then perhaps you will care about your tax and insurance dollars. I would love to see insurances say to parents that if you do not immunize and your kid is sick, then the deductible is raised to 10K for any and all complications from these kinds of issues. The fact is, that it costs lives and money.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ha! It works the other way around too. I never was vaccinated against hepatitis B and now they tell me I have antibodies against it . Suck on that, science ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
They need to be told, clearly and unequivocally, what's the recommended thing to do in issues involving science/medicine/etc
Well, they have been. They've been told that vaccines are harmful, and they shouldn't give them to their kids. If we had an educated population used to questioning things and doing research themselves, then ignorant demagogues wouldn't be able to get such traction.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
So you're arguing not to use soap?
The fact is that vaccination programs have been, by any measure, among the most successful public health initiatives ever. Illnesses like polio, measles and smallpox caused untold misery and death, and were major contributors to infant and child mortality rates (which were huge before the end of the 19th century). People today, living in the comfort provided by over a century of public vaccination programs, simply do not understand this. And this garbage about vaccines causing allergies, or whatever it is you're trying to say, even if it were so, would still not be an argument vaccinations. Vaccines, like all medical procedures, carry inherent risks, but the benefits of wide-scale vaccination programs is so large that it outweighs what ultimately are a few relatively infrequent serious side-effects.
Oh, and your whole post reads like yet another idiot who comes up with a pet theory while drinking beers in the backyard with his friends. "Say, y'know Tom, I bet that MMR causes allergies. Little Billy got the MMR vaccine, and now he sneezes all the time."
Look up the cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I hate the knee jerk reaction that somehow Big Pharma is pushing vaccinations on the unwashed masses with help from the government. Most vaccinations are unprofitable especially with the risk of adverse events factored in. Companies would much rather you get sick and need treatment because a one-time shot doesn't make a lot of money. In fact, the government has to specifically create a liability fund to get companies to make vaccines for public use.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
If I can do a small part to save over a hundred thousand kids from death each year by inoculating my kids, then I feel that is worth risking the consequences of your completely unsubstantiated theory about negative immune system effects.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You're gonna get flamed and deservedl because you're spouting a bunch of rambling bullshit.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Tragedy of the commons at work?
"I don't need to vaccinate because of herd immunity" is pretty damn close to "I can keep grazing my animals on this little plot of public land"... eventually, the whole thing breaks down, and you have *no* grass for your animals -- or immunity in society.
How is this modded 5 insightful? Mods, just because someone says "I'm going to get flamed for this" doesn't mean that the person is brave or insightful.
Yes. Vaccines strengthen the immune system. Lack of exposure to the environment increases allergy rates. Vaccines should lower it. Unless you have some kind of evidence supporting your crazy position.
1. Immunity is passed through breast milk from mother to child. This is what your are thinking about. .3% chance of DYING.
2. It sounds to me like you are suggesting letting people get Measels. This is a preposterous position. If people are worried about a tiny chance of getting Autism, they are going to rationally be VERY concerned about a
The more (controlled) exposure to nasties people get, the stronger their immune system, and the less allergic reactions they should have. Vaccines do this. People's responses aren't knee jerk, they are well motivated.
The greatest generation were tough as leather with great big balls of steel, because they hadn't invented titanium yet. The eventually got off their asses and smashed the Nazis, rebuilt the world from the ashes of global war, made said Nazis put a man on the moon for us and ground communism into dust.
Fuckin' boomers, drained out social safety nets by refusing to adjust to demographic realities, lost two wars to a bunch of rice-eaters, ruined the economy repeatedly, shut down useful investment for future generations, turned their back on our manifest destiny to conquer space, engendered an society where entertainers are ludicrously compensated while teachers are vilified for taking crumbs from the mouths of millionaires and started the slide into a new dark ages by embracing ideology over facts and science.
The baby boomer generation is the greatest generation's GREATEST FAILURE.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
But I think there needs to be serious discussion into taking children away from parents who refuse to get them vaccinated.
Endangering your own child is bad enough, but when you start affecting the herd immunity of everyone else because of your scientific ignorance, something needs to be done.
It's even in the bible. Psalms 37:11. Ok, there's a typo, but that's excusable considering how often it had to be copied since its inception.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, and letting the weak die off would make the species stronger too - but we don't do it. Modern medicine is used to keep people from dying, and yes, this has adverse effects on the gene pool, but it's better than the alternative.
As to your second point, probably lots - but that isn't a problem in itself - we have to continue to carefully check and control the vaccinations that are mandated to ensure they don't become pointless or excessive.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
But so much of what we do is because of some talking head on TV!
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I'm wondering if I will hear about the real effects of these vaccinations 10 years down the road
source
wiki
Well, I suppose at least we'll find out about the "real effects" of these vaccinations before we get cheap fusion power in 20 years down the road. I'm looking towards getting my flying car in 5 years though.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Heh. I know. That was the whole joke. You know, in case the multiple winking smilies didn't make it bleeding obvious.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'll call your idea what it is: Eugenics........
somehow (sysadmin == !stupid) doesnt compute with me. There are plenty of people who can learn how to do certain (to the lay, very difficult and incomprohensible) tasks, but still qualify for the idiot card.
People, what a bunch of bastards
Of course he's responsible. It's the same mechanism as not educating your children not to look left and right before crossing the street with the argument:
"You don't need to check for cars, the drivers of the cars will do that for you!"
I think one of the problems is that vaccinations are *too* successful. Parents today (and that includes me and my wife) have never seen the ravages of Measles, Whooping Cough, Polio and the like. We have it easy because we were vaccinated when we were young. Then someone claims vaccines cause bad, scary things which plants doubt in their minds so they do a risk evaluation in their head. They know autism is bad. They probably have seen someone with autism. They have probably never seen someone with measles or whooping cough, though. Their brain tries to come up with a "bad disease" and they think of the flu. So would a lifetime of autism be worse than a week of fever and coughing? Sure. So skip the vaccines.
Problem is that their risk assessment is highly flawed. If they knew the real risks of the diseases, they'd know that this isn't "fever and coughing for a week" but coughing until you get broken ribs, hospitalization, paralysis, blindness, and death (to name a few things the diseases can cause). And these are far more common than any hypothetical vaccine-autism link. I'd much rather have my child turn out to be autistic than turn out to be dead. (As my younger son goes in for 2 vaccines today.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Damn. strike the second "not"
Our pediatrician is very much a no-nonsense sort of guy. Whenever the medical terror of the week like MERSA or Bird Flu is on the news he is a very nice counter to all the hysteria.
That said he is a firm believer in vaccinations. As he puts it, "If you ever see even one kid with meningitis it will make you run to get your kids vaccinated.".
Is it 100%? No. Are they foolproof? No! Will it greatly reduce the odds that my kids will need to suffer with some nasty disease? Yes.
when the rake is turned sideways, the sandpaper becomes irrelevant.
By putting out mis-information like this you are part of the reason for the large number of deaths from measels. From the WHO.
You clearly did not read the nature article as this is in no way a strawman. They did not just look at the relation between vaccines and MMR, but about negative effects of vaccines.
They found
We looked very hard and found very little evidence of serious adverse harms from vaccines
Stop putting out your own knee-jerk reactions and at least read the article you are criticising before putting out dangerous misinformation.
Note that I mentioned "the West". For measles death rates in the USA see http://www.healthsentinel.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2654:united-states-disease-death-rates&catid=55:united-states-deaths-from-diseases&Itemid=55 ... (I assume similar rates in western Europe), note that the rate has pretty well flat-lined since the 1950s. Didn't you realise the point of your third list item "More than 95% of measles deaths occur in low-income countries with weak health infrastructures". Sure, if you have an inadequate diet and crap housing, then measles vaccination probably is a good bet. But otherwise?
Anyway, you are latching on to measles. Check http://www.vaclib.org/basic/japanusa.htm ... "when Japan raised its minimum vaccination age to two years in 1975 the overall infant mortality rate improved"
Oh, and in response to I'm so concerned about allergies that I'm willing to risk the death or serious illness of my child and many of the vulnerable children around him; I'm a fuckshit!! .... I have personally been hospitalised with Asthma, which in my case was 100% definitely allergic. Your concerns are indeed your concerns, but I object to my concerns being dismissed as those of a fuckshit.
You pull Walter Hadwen to the limelight as the speaker against vaccination? Someone who lived a century ago, rejected the germ theory and was a member of the Plymouth Brethren (read their member list, it's quite ... scary)?
Yeah, that's a reference. I'm so convinced now.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
All the points you raise are worth looking into. But at the same time, I am pretty sure that these have all been looked into over the last half century, and continue to be researched today. If there was something there to outweigh the epidemiologic benefits, I'm pretty sure we would have discovered it by now. The benefits of vaccinating a population are clear and dramatic. If there were equally dramatic downsides, they would have been seen by now. Perhaps I am simply being naive, but I accept the opinion of the entire public health and medical community when they say that the overall benefits of widespread childhood vaccination vastly outweigh the risks.
I wasn't vaccinated, had measles, and am still around today. Not sure about what new strains there are, but plenty of people used to get measles at school when I was there and it just meant you had a few days off. A quick Google check tells me there was one measle death in 10 years in the UK, and that one person had lung problems and was already heavily on immuno-suppressant drug.
Getting measles = staying in bed with plenty of water and some nice warm soup. Dangling kid off balcony = potential death.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
So basically your philosophy of life boils down to: I've got mine, fuck everybody else!
There is no safety, in either decision. There's also a nonzero chance that if I go out today I'll get killed in a freak accident (that's also the reason why I'm against the death penalty, there's a nonzero chance that it might be applied to me, whether I did something or not).
What matters is, what is more dangerous? How high are the chances to die from the vaccination, and how high are the chances to die from the disease that it inoculates against?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
lol, the fact that many diseases were eradicated is a fraud?
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Either take the kids away from the parents, or force the family to live in isolation. Stupidity is NOT a right.
That's more our outrage-driven media environment, where telling someone they're incorrect is disrespectful to their opinions and culture.
Oh, fuck it. It's mostly the right-wing nutzoids who are driving this problem -- their insistence that "both sides" of every story include the ignorant, stupid, wrong opinion so that they can teach Creationism and Abstience-only sex education. It's not hard to figure out who the fucking problem is.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Referenced in an other reply above: http://www.healthsentinel.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2654:united-states-disease-death-rates&catid=55:united-states-deaths-from-diseases&Itemid=55 .... note that almost the entire drop occurs *before* mass multiple vaccination. Public vaccination may have been around for over a century; mass multiple vaccination has not. My point was that we *may* have reached the point where the costs of "improved health" outweigh the benefits.
My views - not a pet theory - is based on reading, discussions with my wife (a biologist with experience in immune research), and logical deduction. I'm quite aware that correlation does not imply causation. But, hey, why bother with rational argument when you can fling out a few ill-thought-out points and a bunch of insults.
That is an unfortunate load of bullshit. I love how you fly so far into outer fucking space with your speculation that you forgot to bring your facts.
Please put a sock in it. Your opinion is not revealing anything but your own ignorance.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
No it isn't. Its the same argument as this thouught experiment.
Its the same argument as me saying you are denying me my livelihood, that you are responsible for my poverty by buying my competitor's product instead of mine. And it is clearly fallicious.
The Admin and the Engineer
If only it were limited to the kids of people who refused vaccines, then this wouldn't be such a big deal. The big deal is that there are people who can't get the vaccines who are being affected (and infected). For example, Dana McCaffery, a four week old baby who died from Whooping Cough. She was too young to be immunized and had to rely on herd immunity. Unfortunately, there were a lot of people refusing the whooping cough shots because "nobody dies from measles or whooping cough* ".
If a baby dies because some other idiots didn't get vaccinated, that's not natural selection at work. That's reckless endangerment on the part of the anti-vaccine folks.
* Meryl Dorey said that. (See: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/04/26/the-australian-antivax-movement-takes-its-toll/ ) To this day, she claims that Dana didn't die of whooping cough and it's some kind of pro-vaccination conspiracy. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Vaccination_Network#Campaign_against_the_Pertussis_.28Whooping_Cough.29_vaccine )
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I share this sentiment exactly. I have a 10 month old boy, we recently found that he's a little bit allergic to egg. Sometimes the jabs they give have egg in them. But you know what? Fuck it, he's still getting the jab in a couple of months time. They said the chances of him having a reaction to it are still pretty slim, but I'd rather if he was going to have a reaction, he did it in the presence of many qualified nurses and doctors, rather than contracting measles at a random interval in the future, whereby we might not be near any medical professionals. All because I know too many people are not vaccinating their kids, because they're fucking idiot.
This is a sore issue amongst my wife's family and ourselves. My wife and I are completely for vaccination, we're both reasonably intelligent adults and understand all the statistics and how some reports from a decade ago were complete and utter bullshit. However, her mother and aunt disagree. What makes this worse is that her aunt is a nurse, a community nurse that's supposed to promote vaccinations, but because her daughter is somewhat autistic, she doesn't trust them. I hope the guy who wrote that bullshit report, as well as every journalist who proliferated it, dies in a very painful death. Their actions, over the next few decades, could cause hundreds, maybe even thousands of people to die needlessly.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Bluntly, I'd prefer to be treated by House than some inapt hand-holder.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nope, that's not it at all. You're trying to convince someone that some kind of life-saving procedure is dangerous. Thus if you actually succeed at convincing and the person actually dies due to the lack of said life-saving procedure, you're at least partially responsible for the outcome.
That's not rocket science. It's the same with salesmen convincing someone to buy the latest and greatest which later turns out to be a turd.
It's the same with scammers who convince someone to give them money in exchange for something which turns out to be nothing.
And so on.
You could argue about the degree of responsibility. But responsible you are. You do something and as a result something else happens (or does not happen). That automatically makes you responsible for the outcome.
Don't mistake that for the legal definition of "responsibility".
Seems to highlight locations of reported places (when you search): http://healthmap.org/en/
EOM
I don't see any mention of the Jenny McCarthy body count yet. It's a well sourced web-site on the topic.
Have some more chicken nuggets, or how about you sit in the car while I smoke, or maybe lets go out in the sun without sunscreen. But NO WAY IN HELL are you getting vaccinated! People who continue to believe this false connection between autism and vaccines make me sick and I tell them so! No way do I want my son to get these virus. Hell I got chicken-poks (sp) and they weren't that bad, but since there is a vaccine for them, then I am all for it. No sense in causing suffering, or a possible epidemic spreading across a population!
IANA M.D., but it seems to me that when people around your are actually DYING from serious illnesses like cholera, scarlet fever, small pox and many, many more, the medical professionals (who were not in any way gathering statistical information in the 1800s) would tend to disregard all instances of allergies as imagined illnesses. Actual life threatening epidemics sweeping the country EVERY YEAR have a way of sharpening the focus of those who deal human suffering. Are allergy rates rising? Sure, why not. I'd like to see your stats but I'm flexible on this. Are allergy rates higher than in the 1800s? Who knows. There aren't any stats.
Please don't state your OPINIONS as facts. That's what started this mess in the first place.
I am also old enough to remember chicken pox 'parties' where stupid parents would force their perfectly healthy children to 'go play' with fever-ridden children in horrible itchy agony. I bet you never actually contracted measles or chicken pox from one of those 'parties'.
Again, please bring me the stats on the number of people per year who don't 'survive' multiple vaccine injections. I'm curious as to what that would be. Do you think it would be higher or lower than the number of people killed in car accidents each year, or killed by lightning, or killed in trout-fishing accidents, or suffocated by eating too many marshmallows. My lord, lets outlaw Campfire Marshmallows in that case. Talk about your knee-jerk reactions.
Oh, and by the way, I have this for you about Rubella from Wikipedia:
"During the epidemic in the US between 1962–1965, Rubella virus infections during pregnancy were estimated to have caused 30,000 still births and 20,000 children to be born impaired or disabled as a result of CRS (congenital rubella syndrome)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubella
Thank you but I for one respect life and want everyone to have a fair chance of being born WITHOUT PREVENTABLE BIRTH DEFECTS. Obviously you feel differently and that's your right.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
how many children have serious repercussions form the chicken pox
Plenty of them, well into their adult life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingles#Prognosis
It's a story about a fable within a fable within a fable within a fable, so you're right to use the word inception in this context!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
What is causing all the BS is the flu vaccinations. Typically there is a big chance they do fsck all. Also unless you are really old, young, or sick your chances of dying of the flu are pretty minimal.
While real vaccinations are important, do work, and protect you from stuff which can kill much more easily.
Add to the fact on the order of magnitude of which vaccinations are administered, there will always be a chance of complications or death, even if it only effects a very small percentage of the population as a whole.
I remember when meningitis was going around, my mom couldn't get me vaccinated fast enough!
So I think a lot of the public perception is being caused by these annual flu vaccinations (regardless of wacky autistic science papers). The worst part for me, is that most of these important shots are given when you are child and can't make the decisions yourself, and have to depend on having sane parents...
> No vaccination, by choice? Get the hell away from my kids.
What about if there's a measles case in too-young-to-immunized kids around them they should be held responsible. I mean - if you choose to be a danger to society you should not be part of it.
Yea, you.
Vaccinations aren't 100% effective and not all people (people allergic to eggs, for example) can be vaccinated. The measles vaccine is 95-99% effective. Thus limited outbreaks remain possible.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Or, a virus that we commonly immunize against becomes prevalent enough in the population that it can mutate into a form for which there is no vaccine.
God is imaginary
Seems that's a prevalent life philosophy any more... lots of people that are against health care and welfare, typically they've already got theirs. I'm not saying this current administration is doing even close to everything right, but most of the arguments against a lot of the public-health initiatives end up being "I've got mine, so screw everyone else"
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I know someone who majored in Japanese, then got a masters in biochemistry and was in charge of a project putting a microbiology experiment on a satellite. She's intelligent in many ways, but is also an anti-vaxxer. She grew up in an extremely conservative family though, which I think may have had something to do with it.
Nope, that's not it at all. You're trying to convince someone that some kind of life-saving procedure is dangerous. Thus if you actually succeed at convincing and the person actually dies due to the lack of said life-saving procedure, you're at least partially responsible for the outcome.
First of all, I'M not arguing against vaccinations. I am arguing that there is no moral imperative to get vaccinated, and it is silly to waste time trying to guilt people into vaccinations when THERE IS SCIENCE to serve the rational argument. Secondly, If SCIENCE tells you that you are sick and need medicine, and some non-expert tells you something different, and you listen to the fool, the fool is not responsible for your actions. Not even a little bit. Ultimately, you are responsible for your decisions and your actions. If the fool was your boss, or your commander, and ordered you, or held you at gunpoint and you were obligated to follow... only then can you begin passing blame around.
The Admin and the Engineer
There's the individual doctor, and there's the medical community. An individual doctor is just that... they're human, just like everyone else. They make mistakes. They have affairs. They don't recognize things.
Then there's the medical community, that is a science and evidence driven approach to medicine in the broad recommendations... the CDC recommends vaccines because they work, they work well, and there's virtually no risk when you look at the scale of a population.
Humans are not built to be able to understand risk like that. They only see immediate risk to themselves.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I don't see why there's such a big screaming panic about a disease that gives you spots and a bit of a temperature, and a couple of days off school...
Because for about two per thousand cases, it causes meningitis which kills about half of the affected patients, leaving many of the survivors brain damaged for life. For quite a few who don't get meningitis, it causes blindness and deafness (measles was the #1 cause of both in the 50s.) Because it causes pneumonia of the "hospitalized for days" variety in up to 30% of cases (and before oxygen therapy, IV fluids, and antibiotics killed about 10% of patients.)
I had measles before there were vaccines for it. All I have to do is mention measles to get my mother worked up -- she remembers spending a couple of weeks terrified for me, because she grew up before those treatments and even in a small town in rural Illinois she knew families who had children die of it and others who were handicapped for life.
Talk to people from India about measles, or any of the other vaccine-preventable diseases. You won't find any of them who will tell you those diseases are no big deal, because they know them. In the USA, we've mostly forgotten how bad they are. Thanks to vaccines.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The scientific method doesn't and cannot disprove anything. There's only the preponderance of evidence, or proof of a connection. That's it.
The classic example is the orbiting teapot... there's no way you can prove that there's not a teapot orbiting the sun between the orbits of mars and the earth. But you can be pretty damn sure there isn't one there by the preponderance of evidence and indicators. That is science in a nutshell.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Wait, and this isn't Darwinism at work either?
Actually, the people most at risk are those who cannot be vaccinated: the very young, and those with weak immune systems.
I never really looked at it that way. I suppose eventually evolution will select against the "youth" trait and nobody will suffer from it any more.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
While it is true that there is a low death rate due to measles in modern societies (1 or 2 per 1000 cases) about 10% of cases develop ear infections that result in permanent deafness. So, I don't think that "staying in bed with plenty of water and some nice warm soup" is the only outcome to worry about.
Source: Here
God is imaginary
Also, in places where the mercury containing ingredient was removed, the autism rate did not go down
You're missing the best part of that: the MMR never did have any mercury in it.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I heard a doctor on NPR say that if you want to know where the people who aren't getting vaccines are do the following:
-Find a Whole Foods
-draw a 10 mile radius around it (it was either 10 or 20, so I'll go with 10)
He was completely serious.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
We mentioned that we'd skipped MMR and the doctor confirmed that the single vaccines give a higher level of protection.
Find another pediatrician. The one you have is at best incompetent and at worst a quack.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Getting measles = potential death.
Measles kills about 600,000 kids a year.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Measles outbreaks have been reported in Mexico this century
The USA has had several measles outbreaks not only this century but in the past year. Oh.
All of the outbreaks have been traced to unvaccinated travelers to Europe, in particular Switzerland. (Not a big source of brown-skinned immigrants, by the way.)
Mexico has an extremely thorough measles vaccination program and treats outbreaks far more aggressively than the USA does.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
...at least locally, we have a number of Hmong and Somali immigrants (quick, guess which US city!) who for various reasons refuse to be vaccinated - cultural, religious, etc. that have nothing to do with the autism nonsense.
-Styopa
1. Immunity is passed through breast milk from mother to child. This is what your are thinking about.
No, it wasn't. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunity_(medical) and search for "placenta". There is an open question (unless someone can point me to some studies) whether vaccine induced immunity results in passive immunity as well as infection induced immunity. This should be testable with the current population in the UK. So far as I'm aware, it hasn't.
2. It sounds to me like you are suggesting letting people get Measles. This is a preposterous position.
Where exactly did I say that? I am suggesting that measles is not - and in the west in say the 50s and 60s was not - the killer it is portrayed as. My preference would be to drop multiple vaccines; to vaccinate for measles later that the current 12-15 months; and to vaccinate against mumps and rubella later as needed based on an antibody test.
That isn't quite true. Given enough exposure, it is still possible for vaccinated people to get sick. So your kids, even vaccinated, can be put at risk when all the unvaccinated kids show up for school.
These figures are extremely easy to find.
Take, for example, polio. The Salk clinical trials tested 401,974 patients, splitting them into two groups (vaccine or placebo).
57 people who had the vaccine out of 200,745 got polio.
142 people who had the placebo out of 201,229 got polio.
Run any statistic you want on these data (my favorite is the chi-square = 36.12; off the deep end of significance) - clearly the polio vaccine dramatically decreased the incidence of the disease.
Although other forms of allergic disease were described in antiquity, hay fever is surprisingly modern. Very rare descriptions can be traced back to Islamic texts of the 9th century and European texts of the 16th century. It was only in the early 19th century that the disease was carefully described and at that time was regarded as most unusual. By the end of the 19th century it had become commonplace in both Europe and North America. This paper attempts to chart the growth of hay fever through the medical literature of the 19th century. It is hoped that an understanding of the increase in prevalence between 1820 and 1900 may provide an insight for modern researchers and give some clues into possible reasons for the epidemic nature of the disease today.
IANA M.D., but it seems to me that when people around your are actually DYING from serious illnesses like cholera, scarlet fever, small pox and many, many more, the medical professionals (who were not in any way gathering statistical information in the 1800s) would tend to disregard all instances of allergies as imagined illnesses. Actual life threatening epidemics sweeping the country EVERY YEAR have a way of sharpening the focus of those who deal human suffering. Are allergy rates rising? Sure, why not. I'd like to see your stats but I'm flexible on this. Are allergy rates higher than in the 1800s? Who knows. There aren't any stats.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2222.1988.tb02872.x/abstract "It was only in the early 19th century that the disease was carefully described and at that time was regarded as most unusual"
Please don't state your OPINIONS as facts. That's what started this mess in the first place.
I am also old enough to remember chicken pox 'parties' where stupid parents would force their perfectly healthy children to 'go play' with fever-ridden children in horrible itchy agony. I bet you never actually contracted measles or chicken pox from one of those 'parties'
Pre-vaccination, chicken pox and measles are far better as a child than later in life. I don't know whether I got them at a party or elsewhere, but neither chicken pox nor measles were "horrible itchy agony". Maybe they were for some, but don't misrepresent on groups experience for everybodies.
Again, please bring me the stats on the number of people per year who don't 'survive' multiple vaccine injections. I'm curious as to what that would be. Do you think it would be higher or lower than the number of people killed in car accidents each year, or killed by lightning, or killed in trout-fishing accidents, or suffocated by eating too many marshmallows. My lord, lets outlaw Campfire Marshmallows in that case.
No idea, and I have no need of those figures. My question - for what its worth, since you don't seem to be able to read my posts - is what are the negative effects; and I don't mean autism, I mean auto-immune problems in general, such as allergies (which also kill).
Talk about your knee-jerk reactions.
Oh, and by the way, I have this for you about Rubella from Wikipedia: "During the epidemic in the US between 1962–1965, Rubella virus infections during pregnancy were estimated to have caused 30,000 still births and 20,000 children to be born impaired or disabled as a result of CRS (congenital rubella syndrome)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubella Thank you but I for one respect life and want everyone to have a fair chance of being born WITHOUT PREVENTABLE BIRTH DEFECTS. Obviously you feel differently and that's your right.
No, I don't feel differently. Test girls for rubella antibodies pre-puberty and then vaccinate as needed; there is no need for this blanket forced medication.
http://www.wwtdd.com/2011/08/jenny-mccarthy-is-still-an-idiot/
Bullshit. It's not sexist if that IS her only qualification. Seriously, Jenny McCarthy launched her career pretty much just on looking pretty naked in Playboy, and not much other qualifications. And frankly most of her career from then on revolved around being a sex symbol, including repeated working for Playboy in various roles. Her appearances in movies also have more to do with being a sex symbol than any kind of great acting talent, and it's doubtful she'd even be there at all if her husband didn't help launch her in that line of work.
But be as it may, being a sex symbol IS her only qualification. There is nothing sexist in noticing that. Nobody said that all women should stick to showing their tits, but merely that Jenny McCarthy should stick to showing her tits. Because objectively that's the only thing she ever showed any aptitude at.
Her attempt at sounding smart about anything else, from parenting to medicine have shown her to be someone surrealistically stupid and delusional. And quite dangerously so, for both her child and everyone stupid enough to listen to medical advice from someone whose only qualification is being a sex symbol.
It's not just that she picked a cause as damaging as ruining herd immunity with her anti-vaxxer idiocy, but also pushed something as irresponsible as chelation as a treatment for autism. As in, in addition to possible lasting damage, botched chelation done by "alternative medicine" scammers against autism, has actually KILLED a number of preschool children.
I don't see anything sexist to tell Jenny McCarthy to get the fuck out of giving batshit-crazy medical advice and stick to the only thing she's competent at, namely showing her tits. Not because of any kind of gender generalization, but because she's Jenny McCarty, and frankly, objectively showing her tits is the only thing she didn't manage to fuck-up. Presumably because it doesn't involve much using that crazy and stupid brain of hers. If they ever make a bra that requires any thinking to operate, yeah, she'll probably botch getting out of that too, but in the meantime it's a safe enough thing for her to do.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Then there are diseases like chicken pox, a disease in which parents would go out of their way to ensure that their children got it at a young age. So to me it's no surprise that people are forgetting how bad some of these diseases can be when schools are requiring vaccination against freaking chicken pox before letting kids attend class.
Now it could be that chicken pox can be worse than what I know of it. I'm simply basing this on the fact that everyone I know went out of their way to ensure that their kids got chicken pox.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Now it could be that chicken pox can be worse than what I know of it.
Yes, it can be. I know personally of cases where a child got pox blisters in the airway, for instance. The mortality rate isn't the same as measles (about 2/100K for healthy children), but on the other hand chicken pox (like all herpes infections) is forever. It's just that when it comes back at my age it's called "shingles."
Considering that, unlike measles, herpes zoster specifically infects the nervous system, it's hardly surprising that encephalitis is a common complication. That, plus pneumonia, are responsible for hospitalizing about one in fifty paediatric patients.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
It can be even worse.
Not exactly the same thing, but related, I have recently done the research to tell my Work's mailing list that a hoax someone had forwarded was a hoax. I was called "prepotent", because the person who spread the hoax was obviously a well meaning person, who sent the message because "he cares for us", and "it is not totally implausible, even if not true".
So people not only don't care about doing the research. They resent those who do.
Governments need to ban their stupid kids from schools and any public building unless they have the shot. If Jenny McCarthy doesn't like it she can get bent.
Companies would much rather you get sick and need treatment because a one-time shot doesn't make a lot of money.
Unless the one-time shot helps a patient live long enough to want the other drugs that the drug company sells, such as blood pressure medications, erectile dysfunction medications, and the like.
I don't see why there's such a big screaming panic about a disease that gives you spots and a bit of a temperature, and a couple of days off school...
Because for about two per thousand cases, it causes meningitis which kills about half of the affected patients, leaving many of the survivors brain damaged for life. For quite a few who don't get meningitis, it causes blindness and deafness (measles was the #1 cause of both in the 50s.) Because it causes pneumonia of the "hospitalized for days" variety in up to 30% of cases (and before oxygen therapy, IV fluids, and antibiotics killed about 10% of patients.)
Forgot to mention that catching this and other childhood diseases as an adult can also mean sterilization.
Personally...having seen too many of today's parents and their kids and what brats they are...that may not be such a bad conclusion. At least the gene pool will get some cleaning...some college girls will make some extra money from donating eggs and may have a better educated population. That is unless the most stupid ones are the ones to survive and have the kids.
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. - Charles M. Schulz
"n. A lot of people are more concerned about lower-level negative immune system responses, such as increased allergy rates."
No it isn't. Please, link a good study.
"hay fever was virtually unknown before the mid-1800s"
as was cancer, but that doesn't mean it wasn't happening.
"were not very worried about it."
ah, NO. they where deeply concerned about it. measle parties where the best way to try to control and monitor it's effects. Parent were very worried, because most of them know at least 1 person that died, or ended up brain damaged in the hospital. They did the best thing they could; which is barbaric by today's standards.
"(between killing all but the healthiest or luckiest and weakened immune or damaged systems"
I don't think you know how the immune system or vaccines work. If not, please STFU until you study up.
" I'm not anti-vaccination per-se."
You are spreading bad information, fear, and ignorance,so like it or not, you are adding the the anti-vaccine crap.
" I am against the knee-jerk vaccinate against everything policy that governments and pharma push. "You don't like public health? Do you even know pharma makes almost no money from vaccines? Dr. office often loose money on vaccinations?
Of course not, that would require actual research into the issue.
You post is like saying :I am not a flat earther per-se, but ships should never leave the line of sight of the ocean because they will get attacked by giant squid.
Yes, you literally sound that ignorant to people who know this issue.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There's a lot of misunderstanding about this whole vaccination process. People started refusing vaccines not because they vaccines themselves affected their children but because the mercury based preservatives in those vaccines did. The preservatives are added to multi-doze vaccines, which most of the vaccines manufacturer's have shifted their production, ending most of single doze lines because of much higher profit on multi-doze orders. There was a Rolling Stones article on this a while ago. http://www.autismcoach.com/Rolling%20Stone%20Autism%20Article.htm Contrary to USA, most European countries ended mercury based vaccines back in the 1970's. Now because of the massive outcry against mercury based preservatives, a lot of vaccines manufacturers have switched to aluminum based ones. But distrust is still there and the lack of single doze is only feeding that mistrust. Now before you go and say that I don't know what I'm talking about, I have 2 nephews and a niece that became autistic after being given vaccines with thimerisol based preservatives. Each was give multiple vaccines at once, as is often done nowadays and is actually recommended by FDA. Each shot contained enough mercury, that if that amount of mercury was spilled on the floor, it would require a hazmat to clean up. All the children were perfectly fine before that and were really smart and outgoing. This was about 18 years ago. Another thing to consider is that mercury does not leave the body, it accumulates over lifetime. The only way to remove it, is through some rather aggressive chemo-therapy, so can't be done to young kids. One of my nephews had the process performed on him when he was about 12 and he became much better but the family didn't have the money or the will to put him though several more that were needed to remove the remaining mercury. Now, not every child is going to have that reaction but you don't know until you try. So before you go a label these people as complete idiots, try to put yourself in their place...
" I am arguing that there is no moral imperative to get vaccinated"
And you are wrong.
Not getting vaccinnated harms OTHER PEOPLE. It reduces the herd immunity effect, and they are a vector for mutation. It hurt people who can't be vaccinated(allergies to the medicine) or whose vaccines didn't take.(combined its about 5% overall)
" the fool is not responsible for your actions. "
It is when the fool is presented as an expert, lies about the topic, and is given more air time then actual experts. Specifically, they share some of the responsibility.
" or held you at gunpoint and you were obligated to follow."
What a marvelously simple and stupid world you must live in to think people spreading bad information bear no responsibility for those lies.
Sure, I told him I packed his parachute, but I didn't hold a gun to his head to make him jump.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
health sentinel? HEALTH SENTINEL? are you fucking kidding me?
Here is proof we are visited by aliens:
http://atlantisbook.com/
I mean, it's a nice graph, too bad it measure per 100K and not per 1000. Nice manipulation to drowned out inconvient facts.
"... and logical deduction. "
I have yet to see any of that in any of your posts.
Here are the three top reason people are helthier:
Hand washing, flush toilets, and vaccines.
3 of every 1000 people with measles die. 1 in a hundred in third world countries.
If only there was a site known for it's rigor ,, oh wait:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm#measles
"..*may* have reached the point where the costs of "improved health" outweigh the benefits."
We haven't, all the evidences point to you being wrong.
You are experiencing the GIGO effect.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Then someone claims vaccines cause bad, scary things which plants doubt in their minds so they do a risk evaluation in their head. They know autism is bad. They probably have seen someone with autism. They have probably never seen someone with measles or whooping cough, though. Their brain tries to come up with a "bad disease" and they think of the flu. So would a lifetime of autism be worse than a week of fever and coughing? Sure. So skip the vaccines.
Having had a sister pass away from pneumonia from either mumps or measles (doesn't matter since both can now be vaccinated against)...have also worked extensively with autistic children. Have seen both ends of the this discussion.
The point is that many of these autistic children have their infirmity because not of an imagined threat which can be pointed to...but because either/both of the parents have bad genetics. It's too tough for many people to even consider that something outside of their control (other than not having children or having an abortion once you find out) is the cause of their children's disability. Parents don't want to hear or understand that if they didn't want to have an autistic child...they should have never had sex and gotten pregnant in the first place. By not controlling your urges to have children...the parents are the ones who caused their child to develop autism...NOT a vaccine.
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. - Charles M. Schulz
When I was a kid growing up in Russia, if you got measles, neighbors with young kids would actually bring their kids over, so they can get infected and develop immunity to it for later in life. My sister had it and the whole neighborhood was over in a course of the week or 2 she had it. No one died and I've seen this over and over. Later all kids had the measles vaccine while in school, I think it was 1st or 2nd grade. Back then the doctors didn't give it to your within the first 2 weeks of your life...
2) If the odds of getting measles is less than 1 in 1000, and the most negative affects (death) are at 1 in 1000, then NOT getting the shot puts you at 1 in 1,000,000 chance of death. Just like getting the effing shot in the first place.
Conveniently ignoring all of the other stuff he mentioned, which has higher occurring rates when you get the measles. Not to mention ignoring the fact that as immunization goes down, rates of infection go up, meaning that the rates of negative effects go up.
3) Why not let the measles run a little wild and see if "the market" or whoever can find some solutions to that. Make this a win-win-win.
There is ABSOLUTELY NO WIN in any of that. Except maybe for a pharma company executive. It is completely lose for everybody else. Of course, anyone who describes the "free market" as win-win typically only care about that scenario.
But unlike Rick Perry, I am opposed to FORCED vaccination by the government.
Not your choice. You don't have the right to put other people's children in danger. You want to participate in society? You get the goddamned shot.
Your logic and numbers are flawed. As fewer people are vaccinated, the chance of getting it will increase dramatically.
Just another eugenicist. They were the Libertarians of yesteryear, selfish and wicked.
The eugenicists of the late 19th and early 20th century were proud socialists. This is a matter of historical fact that can't be revised to suit your personal political agenda.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Here goes my Karma.
Some parents are a little concerned about the number of immunizations that children receive in a very short time. There seem to be concerns that
27 separate immunizations over the first 18 months of a child's life may be stressing the immune system a little too much. If you start forcing people to do things they don't not understand they will resist, I hope society would stop calling them stupid, treat the parents like rational people and give them an educated choice.
Evolution doesn't make things better in the sense that we know. You might be best adapted to your current environment, but this doesn't necessarily make you better than your predecessor, only more likely to pass on your genes in the current situation.
Check out Irish Elk. There's a lot of different thoughts as to why they died-out, most involving their massive antlers. These were thought to be for mating display, where the most "evolved" had the biggest antlers and got all the girls. Along comes humans and a climate change which makes the antler advantage less appealing, and they're now extinct.
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
Having measles as a child is a different beast than having measles as an adult. If you don't have access to vaccines you want to be exposed to it as a child, hence the practice of measles parties.
The children are still at risk from complications of measles but those complications are lesser than what an adult would face.
The problems is that important vaccines are bundled with unimportant vaccines. For example, the only way to get measles (rubeola) vaccine, is to get MMVR vaccine, which also includes mumps, varicella and rubella. Measles is serious, but rubella, mumps and varicella (chicken pox) generally have very good prognosis with healthy and nourished children (I had them all as a child and all my friends did, and no one had any complications). Parents should have a choice to do individual vaccines. Measles is always a good idea to vaccinate against. Rubella, mumps and varicella - only necessary for malnourished and/or children with health issues, or when the parents do not want to deal with the nuisance of a sick child.
> The reappearance of the potentially deadly virus
Hang on, any virus, including the common cold, is potentially deadly. The treatment for uncomplicated Measles is roughly the same as a case of the flu. Isolation, bed rest, and ibuprofin. You don't think the case is overstated just a little?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
> I had measles before there were vaccines for it.
Yep, so did I, back in the sixties, and there was nothing to it. I'm sorry, there just wasn't. With most people it's just not a big deal. Getting upset doesn't make it so.
However, in my twenties I caught a common cold and it developed into double pneumonia. Took me two and a half months to shake it and I was fairly ill all through that time. Was even coughing up a little blood at one time. I'm a little afraid of catching colds now. We are all products of our experiences. You see people at work overuse Purell and chances are, they had a bad experience with a common ailment. It happens.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
My daughter got the chicken pox vaccine, and promptly caught chicken pox. I always wondered if that was the intention of the vaccine.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I hate the knee jerk reaction that somehow Big Pharma is pushing vaccinations on the unwashed masses with help from the government. Most vaccinations are unprofitable especially with the risk of adverse events factored in. Companies would much rather you get sick and need treatment because a one-time shot doesn't make a lot of money. In fact, the government has to specifically create a liability fund to get companies to make vaccines for public use.
Oh, yea, it's a ludicrous reaction. We all know about Big Pharma's lobbying efforts for patents, and extended patents, protections from lawsuits, donations to Rick Perry who then mandated Gardacil to all school girls in Texas. But in this one instance, they are being just purely altruistic. How can anyone doubt it?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
immigrants, esp. illegals, bring it in. But with so many kids not vaccinated, it has spread quick enough. Just like small pox, we really should make it a mission to vaccinate EVERYBODY on this planet.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
For what it's worth, autism isn't the only negative outcome anti-vax folks attribute to vaccination. There may not be much evidence to support most of the claims, but some of them have some meat. For instance, this study found a weak but significant risk of childhood asthma stemming from the Hep B vaccination.
Does it therefore follow that they're not worth preventing?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
2) If the odds of getting measles is less than 1 in 1000
They aren't. In a society like the one I grew up in (70's UK) without measles immunisation, more or less everybody got measles.
But unlike Rick Perry, I am opposed to FORCED vaccination by the government.
The measles vaccine is not 100% effective on individuals. It relies, to an extent on herd immunity, which is to say, it works by lowering the probability that the virus will transfer from one person to the next to the point where it will die out before it can spread.
It is your duty to society to be vaccinated and to get your children vaccinated.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
If you refuse to vaccinate your kids because of some imagined fear (not because of egg allergy or something rational), you are guilty of child abuse and at the very least, you should be fined heavily.
And you should be investigated for other signs of abuse.
--
BMO
They need to be told, clearly and unequivocally, what's the recommended thing to do in issues involving science/medicine/etc.
Well, they have been. They've been told that vaccines are harmful, and they shouldn't give them to their kids. If we had an educated population used to questioning things and doing research themselves, then ignorant demagogues wouldn't be able to get such traction.
And those demagogues are one part of the problem. The fact that they are not held responsible for the damage they can be proven to cause is another part of it. And that's why I also said (but you inexplicably cut out):
Any imbecile who publicly tells them to do demonstrably harmful things should be taken to task, and held culpable to the extent which can be justified.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
So people not only don't care about doing the research. They resent those who do.
"No good deed goes unpunished". Sad, but true.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Measles has a fatality rate of 0.3% so if the entire population of the UK was not vaccinated, you could expect nearly 200k people that are currently alive to have died from it.
Man, you really need that seminar!
They went out of their way because chicken pox as an adult is really bad. Giving children chicken pox is effectively a vaccine against adult chicken pox. If there's now an actual vaccine that can prevent the childhood disease, then that's even better.
Even presuming the cases of vacination causing autism were not bullshit, it'd still be worse to not vaccinate all our kids - more would end up dead than would end up autistic.
The problem is that statistics doesn't work at the small scale, and people's understanding of risk doesn't either. It would be nice to say X% of children in our society will wind up autistic and society will be ready to handle the situation (hopefully for very small X); in the real world if it's YOUR kid then you have a 100% screwed up future to deal with and it's all your own problem, and that is the risk that people calculate against.
I'm even more concerned about more subtle effects. I believe that we're raising an entire generation of kids many of whom have a small degradation from where they would have been without high fevers as babies. What if we have been knocking 3 or 4 percent off the IQ of, say, 3/4 of the kids who got these shots so early? Maybe the constant dumbing-down of academic testing and school results is because we've been dumbing-down the people.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Measles isn't terrible. Almost everyone over 65 has had the measles. Just like all of us in our 30s had Chicken Pox, but our kids won't because of vaccination.
Another part of the problem is a general loss of trust for the medical profession. Thanks to HMOs, the doctor is just some person in a white coat. Not the trusted practitioner who has taken care of your family for years and years and will likely continue doing so (whose advice would tend to actually carry some weight).
Meanwhile, in addition to the truly dangerous diseases, they want you to get annual vaccines against their best (and often wrong) guess as to what flu will be going around, even if you're not in the risk group. They want to vaccinate for chicken pox. We routinely see both news stories about how drugs that big pharma swore were safe are killing people or leaving them severely disabled. We see commercials where they encourage us to take prescription drugs for minor problems and then the list of side effects reads like an episode of 1000 ways to die.
Restore the doctor-patient relationship and start doing actual risk-benefit analysis for new drugs (and require new drugs to be either more effective or less dangerous than the current treatment rather than simply more effective than placebo), and there will be less problems like this.
You are correct about measles. But why do I need to get vaccinated for rubella and chicken pox in order to get the measles vaccine? Rubella and chicken pox are generally harmless and with good nutrition and modern medicine to mitigate possible secondary infections, they are a little more than a nuisance (I had varicella and rubella as a child and so did everyone else). The problems is that children today receive too many vaccine injections - about 30 shots till age 6. Can you proof that quantitative accumulations go not lead to qualitative changes?
Problem is that their risk assessment is highly flawed.
And it's intentionally skewed to be flawed. Every time I hear the autism scare tale, it's that "the vaccine causes autism". Not "increases your risk of", not "might have a connection to". It's phrased to imply that if you get the vaccine and *don't* get autism, you have somehow beaten the odds.
When you stack that on today's environment of "OMG YOU MUST PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN FROM EVERYTHING" that is inflicted on parents (disclaimer: I have a four-year-old, and people freak out about *everything* these days), it's not surprising that the issue continues to get traction.
And post on /.
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
boomers seem to be doing a pretty good job of refusing to accept responsibility for the damage they've caused, or to actually fix any of it. I take it you are one of them.
Of course, this completely ignores a few key issues.
First, vaccination is VERY polarized. What this means for someone like me, who hates the idea of using mercury for injections, as well as the idea of my kid suffering from a potentially risky disease, is that there is nowhere to go that actually tells you the truth about vaccines. They either say your kids going to die or be autistic if you give it to them, or they say nothing bad has ever been linked to vaccinations (not even sudden onset of fever and death within hours of getting the vaccination). So how do I determine who's lying to me more?
Second, there ARE reasons you shouldn't get a vaccination. The only place besides the internet where I've heard such things is in the media when they talk about egg-based vaccinations, such as when the H1N1 vaccination was first released. So, when I check out a vaccination my doctor was going to give my kid, and see that he has not one, not two, but three of the contraindications for that vaccinations, I'm somewhat less inclined to trust the experts.
Third, which I can't back up (and the data doubtless came from a rabidly anti-vaccination site, since measured and reasonable anti-vaccination sites don't exist), death rates from most infectious diseases have been trending downwards for the last century, primarily due to better hygiene and nutrition. So saying that vaccination has caused all these improvements without comparing trends prior to the inception and general use of vaccinations is disingenuous at best.
Fourth, some vaccinations are just stupid for some, if not all, people. I remember a few years back (about 10?) how there was a discussion to give all kids a hepatitis C (I think) vaccination at about the 10 to 12 year old range. The big issue was, you had a 1% chance to get hep C in the next 10 to 15 years while you had a 2% chance to get it from the actual vaccination. Now this is foggy, but even if the percentages were reversed, I'd rather take my 2% over 10 years and being careful than roll the dice and see if I get it right away (you know those averages include all the stupid people, not just the normal and unlucky people). Then there's the chickenpox vaccine. When it first came out and was being promoted (5 to 8 years ago, I think), they were talking about how 315 children died of chickenpox in the US in the previous year. Sure, that's a Big Scary Number, but 100 times more die from the flu every year, mostly children and the elderly. And exactly how many people get chickenpox every year anyway, reported or estimated? Do 10% die, 1%, 0.01%? The advertisers certainly weren't bothering to tell me, and if the number had been compelling, I'm sure they would have used that Big Scary Number, too...
Now, as far as the thimerisol is concerned, I don't know if studies were done to see how this behaved in your body, so I don't know how well bound the mercury is. I think the prudent choice would be to limit your exposure in any case (and now I look over to the CFL in my lamp...light bulbs never break, do they?). Having just reviewed the FDA site, it seems they agreed with me in 2004. Since I'm not American, and since my kids were born before then, that wouldn't have benefited me anyway.
My final analysis will be to get my kids current with the vaccinations they can take, after verification that they don't meet the contraindications. What I expect this will mean is that one won't get any vaccinations and the others won't get all of them. One of the reasons will be so we can travel abroad with fewer hassles, and more safety - not everywhere I want to go has the health and hygiene standards we enjoy at home. And those hassles won't entirely go away simply because of those vaccinations that my child shouldn't have in the first place.
P.S. It's worth noting that my opinions aren't due to me not having to go through these childhood diseases. I've had chickenpox, measles, and german measles. I didn't have mumps or whooping cough (although I had a schoolmate who who had whooping cough, and it wasn't terribly pretty) - I was vaccinated for those. The success of vaccines didn't have much of a bearing on my personal experience, or my feelings about them. What I'd like is balanced, reasonable information.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Perhaps if they stopped putting mercury and other things in them that kill people in there people wouldn't have problems taking them.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
I wasn't vaccinated, had measles, and am still around today. Not sure about what new strains there are, but plenty of people used to get measles at school when I was there and it just meant you had a few days off. A quick Google check tells me there was one measle death in 10 years in the UK, and that one person had lung problems and was already heavily on immuno-suppressant drug.
Getting measles = staying in bed with plenty of water and some nice warm soup. Dangling kid off balcony = potential death.
Phillip.
I don't know, Wikipedia states
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles#Epidemiology
"Mortality in developed countries is ~1/1000. In sub-Saharan Africa, mortality is ~10%. In cases with complications, the rate may rise to 20–30%."
A mortality rate of 1/1000 might actually be higher than dangling a kid off a balcony. Considering that the child mortality rate in developed countries is only about 6 per thousand live births, if we ditched the whole vaccination thing there would be a lot of dead children in not too long.
From the wikipedia article:
"On May 24, 2011 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the United States has had 118 measles cases so far this year. The 118 cases were reported by 23 states and New York City between Jan 1 and May 20. Of the 118 cases, 105 (89%) were associated with cases abroad and 105 (89%) of the 118 patients had not been vaccinated.[74]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_mortality
At the risk of asking a stupid question, who exactly are they catching measles from if the majority of the population is, and has been for a long time, vaccinated?
People travel a lot these days. Someone brings it in from someplace where it is still present.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles_outbreaks_in_the_2000s
On May 24, 2011 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the United States has had 118 measles cases so far this year. The 118 cases were reported by 23 states and New York City between Jan 1 and May 20. Of the 118 cases, 105 (89%) were associated with cases abroad and 105 (89%) of the 118 patients had not been vaccinated.
Don't make measles sound worse than it is. 103 F fever for 3 or four days, rash, sensitivity to light.
I had it, as did my brother, and we are both fine. My friends had it, there were fine. None of us went to the hospital either. Granted we were all descended from Northern Europe and pretty resistant to it.
Now polio is whole different matter. Although most people who got it did make a full recovery, including my uncle, the fraction who didn't were anywhere from partially paralyzed to living an iron lung.
What you have there is a fallacy of composition, just because, by themselves, the things that make up the vaccine are bad, the vaccine itself is bad.
I'll make an example. I am not a fan of drinking rum neat - I'm also not someone who enjoys cola much, and yet make me a rum and cola and I can enjoy it. You can not take an item and presume it is simply the sum of it's parts directly.
I understand how vaccinations work. Why is mercury there? Well, a quick bit of research shows it actually isn't - since 2001 it's been slowly taken out of vaccines and replaced with alternatives. The answer as to why it was there - it was there in very small amounts as a preservative. It's commonplace to see preservatives (that in larger amounts, alone, would be harmful) in your food, so why is it surprising in a vaccine? They have to be stored, and it was tested and showed no adverse effects.
The answer here is perspective - mercury is in things like tuna that people eat - as long as you don't eat only tuna, it's not a problem. Getting a few vaccines that contain micrograms of a mercury-containing substance is not an issue. To be sensationalist and say things like 'near lethal' is just flat out wrong.
What you need to do is go and look beyond the sources you have done - look at the studies, the facts, and the figures - and don't get caught up in the sensationalist stuff - yes, vaccines don't sound very good when you hear about them, but when you understand why they have these things in, and how they work, it's not something to be scared about. The diseases they protect you from, on the other hand, those are.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Your immune system doesn't know how it got the blueprint for immunity. A vaccine and being exposed to it are no different to what is basically a molecule catcher and matcher.
"We live as though the world were as it should be, to show it what it can be." - Joss Whedon via Angel
I keep hearing this in the thread...do your kids not age? Are they selling robot kids that are perpetually too young for the shots? I mean, we're talking months at most, here.
"We live as though the world were as it should be, to show it what it can be." - Joss Whedon via Angel
I would never suggest that we should just accept something without monitoring it. Things can change, we can learn new things.
This said - the only sane way to go through life is acting based on the most likely thing to happen. Sure, in 5 seconds, gravity could dissapear completely - but you don't live as though that's the case - you live with the most likely case in mind.
You say the vaccinations are not good? Why? They are tested, and lots of people have been given them. With the number of people that have been given them, if there was some link, then it would have shown itself by now, and would be testable and repeatable. Just because medical science hasn't found a link doesn't mean one doesn't exist - you are completely right. However, to act as though there is one when there hasn't been one proven is insane. The reality is that vaccines are tested and provable to protect you from a number of bad diseases - even something like chicken pox can do serious damage in the right circumstance, and it's better to never have it. This is shown in repeatable experiments. The supposed negative effects of those vaccines has never been shown in any repeatable experiment, in fact, quite the opposite. They have good effects, and no shown bad effects, the choice is simple.
To argue you should not take a vaccine because of a potential risk is just flat out illogical. If makes no more sense than working on the assumption there is an elephant in your bathtub - it's technically possible, but you'd never do things on the basis it was true without reason to do so. The only difference is there hasn't been some media hysteria about the elephant in your bathtub that doesn't exist - instead it's about the risks of vaccines - risks that do not exist.
This is a constant issue and reinforces my opinion that children should be taught basic logic in schools - people make so many fallacies while discussing an issue, and don't think rationally about issues.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Well, those of us still breeding always seem to have a kid under 6 months :)
But seriously, you can't just put your life on hold for 6 months every time you have a kid. You still have to go to the store, you still have to sit on the bus/train (if you don't have a car), you still have to get in taxis, your other filthy kid is still in school bringing home everything communicable. You might be going to work yourself, bringing home everything that your co-workers have. You might even have to put that little baby into daycare if you aren't well-off enough to have one parent take time off. That first 6 months is really, really scary.
We like to think of ourselves as individuals, but the fact is that we rely on the herd. If one of the herd gets out of line in a way that puts the rest of us at risk, we need to crack down.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You were lucky then. There are complications from measles that are a lot worse than fever, rash and sensitivity to light. About 1 in 1,000 people with measles develop encephalitis "an inflammation of the brain that may cause vomiting, convulsions and, rarely, coma or even death. Encephalitis can closely follow measles, or it can occur months late." (Source: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/measles/DS00331/DSECTION=complications )
Personally, I'd rather give my kids a measles shot than take a 1 in 1,000 risk of encephalitis.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
(Using http://antiantivax.flurf.net/ as my source for all of the following.)
1. Thimerisol is only really present in the flu vaccines nowadays (though there are non-thimerisol versions). Most other vaccines remove any mercury used before the vaccine gets shipped. At most, there are trace amounts of mercury in the dose of vaccine you get. Even that mercury won't build up to toxic levels as some anti-vax folks claim, though. It's ethylmercury, not methylmercury and has a half life of a few days to a week. Even if you get three injections at once of vaccines with trace amounts of mercury, it'll be flushed from your system by the time you get your next shots.
There are side effects to vaccines. In most cases (something like 99.999%), any side effects that manifest will be limited to a sore arm (or leg if the child gets the injection there), minor injection-site swelling and possibly a short-lived fever. I don't know of any cases of someone suddenly dying from vaccinations. Even if there were, though, they would be so rare that the risk of sudden death by vaccine would be much less than the risk of death by measles, whooping cough or the other vaccinated diseases.
2. There are valid reasons to not get a vaccine. For example, allergies or an immune system problem. In this case, I don't think anybody is claiming you should get the vaccine anyway. If you worry that you or your child would have an allergic reaction, a doctor can perform an allergy test. If your doctor is ignoring valid reasons to not give your child a vaccine, then the solution isn't skipping all vaccines and declaring them evil, but to find a better doctor. (NOTE: This doesn't mean doctor-shopping because your doctor insists that the MMR doesn't cause autism and you were convinced by a website that it does.)
3. Many of the vaccine-prevented diseases are airborne. These wouldn't be helped by greater hygiene. In addition, in regions where vaccine rates plummet, the diseases have seen a resurgence. If the drop was hygiene-related then shouldn't vaccination rates rising or lowering have no effect on disease rates? In addition, from the flurf site linked to above: "Before the approval of the vaccine, paralytic polio struck 13,000-20,000 individuals every year in the U.S. The number of cases peaked at 21,000 in 1952, only three years before approval of the vaccine. By 1960, there were only 2,525 cases, and only 61 cases in 1965." When the vaccine was introduced, disease rates plummeted. I know that correlation doesn't equal causation, but in times like this is strongly points to a link. If you turn a variable up and down (introduce polio vaccines vs. dropping vaccine rates) and the observed phenomenon has a repeatable, consistent reaction, then the rational conclusion is that they are linked.
4. Part of the reason is herd immunity. Even if you don't come down with the disease, you could still carry it from one person to another. If you are vaccinated, though, you aren't a conduit. Also, isn't it better for a child to get a shot in the arm and be protected against a disease like Chicken Pox then be out of school for a week, itching at sores all over their body, and possibly suffering complications? As far as getting Hep C from the vaccine, I'd ask for some sources for that. Getting a disease from the vaccine would require the use of a live vaccine without any modifications to keep it from multiplying. I don't think those are used anymore (for obvious reasons).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Having gone through a couple of different strains of measles, mumps just before puberty, and was missed by the polio epidemic before the vaccine was available while kids I knew were crippled... I appreciate the danger that they present a little differently than younger folks might...
The minor danger involved in vaccinations for all of the above doesn't begin to approach the real world effects of the disease...
The local school district (with just one campus k-12) doesn't let kids without vaccinations enroll... the cold and flue effects on attendance are quite bad enough...
My kids got their vaccinations on time with my complete blessing, with the exception of hepatitis vaccine that the clinic gave my youngest before asking...
Unlike most other vaccinations today, that on has potential side effects that scared the pants off me...
I had just spent several weeks deciding whether or not the risk TO MY KIDS from MY taking it was worth the potential benefits... and the technician at the clinic just poked the three month old little guy without a second's concern...
None of us has turned into a "Typhoid Mary" with a permanent case of infectious hepatitis so me missed that potential side effect....
It is a Very Good Thing that the creator of the pseudoscience putting so many kids at risk is being prosecuted to the full extent of the law...
I removed a former co-worker from my friends list because some of the (Christian offshoot) religious groups he was part of were ending up in my feed regularly as he "liked" them etc.
The straw that broke the camel's back was a call to ban/boycott immunization because they believed vaccines were made from (or made from testing with) aborted baby fetuses.
Greedy jackass.
Wanna know what evil looks like? Andrew Wakefield.
Measles is bad, and Whooping cough is a nightmare. 5 years ago, I contracted a case of whooping cough. The febrile stage went away in a week, but the cough took a couple months. Good Gawd, the coughing spasms could come on at any time. Usually at the beginning of an intake of breath. Several times I almost passed out. That is one deadly little affliction.
I think that darling Jenny should be arrested for manslaughter at the least. She's wrong about the vaccine-autism link, and promoting a deadly practice.
Th anti-vaccine crowd shows all the signs of zealotry. First the cause is the mercury based preservative, then after it was removed, with no change in the rate of cases of autism, the "problem became the vaccines themselves. Next it will be the composition of the hypodermic syringes. When you are proven wrong, move the goalposts (my favorite mixed metaphor)
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Measles isn't terrible.
Right... like the way playing Russian Roulette "isn't terrible" because 5/6 people who play survive unharmed.
For a healthy individual with modern medical care the fatality rate is 3 in a thousand. It is insanely contagous, 90% of unprotected people sharing a living space will become infected and it can easily be passed with casual or indirect contact. The fatality rate is around 30% if an immunocompromised person becomes infected, and the fatality rate can be nearly that high for a malnourished individual with poor health care. Even in healthy individuals Measles has particularly high rates of serious complications including pneumonia, brain damage, and permanent damage to vision or hearing upto and including blindness or deafness.
Measles and Mumps "merely" elevates the risk of miscarriage for pregnant women, whereas Rubella causes high rates of miscarriages and severe birth defects.
But yeah, most people who get Measles survive with no permanent damage. It's not like it's the Plague. Oh wait, I think maybe I'd rather get the Plague than Measles. Nowadays we have antibiotics that can easily cure the Plague with little risk of death or complications. We have no cure or even treatment for Measles. All doctors can do is attempt to manage the symptoms.
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As the grandparent said, and as you partially agreed, part of the "probleM' is that vaccines have been so successful that people are oblivious to just how nasty these diseases can be and why we were so desperate to develop vaccines for them.
You're right that Rubella is little more than a nuisance... in terms of the person directly infected. The part you are missing is that Rubella is a horrific disease in terms of pregnant women. Rubella scoots right across the placenta and disrupts the developing fetus. This results in either miscarriage or seriously nasty birth defects.
When the Rubella vaccine was first developed they first tried just vaccinating girls, but it was ineffective. Even a vaccinated pregnant woman would still pass the virus on to the fetus when she was exposed to it via the father (or other male) who was infected.
The problems is that children today receive too many vaccine injections
The problem today is that children aren't getting enough vaccine injections. We still don't have vaccines for AIDS, the common cold, and countess other diseases.
If I could get a vaccine for the common cold, I'd take it. And I'd give it to my kids. Sure the common cold isn't life threatening, but the misery of infection and the secondary eye-ear-throat infections and the disruption to school and work... they far outweigh the trivial nuisance of one more vaccination.
A crackpot&fraud doctor started the whole thing with bogus claims of a vaccine-autism link, then a gutter-level-tabloid papers hyped up that doctor's claims, then autism parents desperate for an explanation latched on to the story, and then the idiot mainstream press ran with it bringing the "controversy" to the general public. And now there's all this baseless woo that maybe there's something mysteriously dangerous about vaccines. This woo that there's some controversy and you can't trust anyone or anything (not even your doctor) because no one's really sure. And when parents feel unsure that there might some sort of danger, they of course base their decisions on "better safe than sorry". Except there was never anything to the story in the first place, and scientists have confirmed that vaccines are about the safest thing you'll ever face in life (and far safer than most of the foods you feed your kids), and the "better safe than sorry" worry over vaccines is putting their kids in danger.
I really wish the news would quite hyping "controversies" by grabbing a typical random scientist on one side and a crackpot on the other side and presenting a "debate" as if the two sides were equal... presenting the lone crackpot as if he were equally as credible as the other person representing the entire medical or scientific community.
Whatever happened to investigative journalism where a reporter pent the time and effort checking someone's credentials and checking claims and investigated the evidence and informing people which side is lying or not-credible? Hell, I'd be satisfied if they'd just start off by pointing out that one side represents mainstream scientists/doctors and mentioning that the other side is a small minority / fringe position generally rejected by mainstream professionals in the field. It takes no deep investigation or judgment to accurately identify majority view vs minority view.
Sorry if I got carried away ranting. I really just intended to explain the Rubella thing and my frustration at the whole anti-vaxxer movement just sorta spewed out :D
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Don't make measles sound harmless either. Just because you and four of your friends happened to play russian roulette and came out fine doesn't mean russian roulette isn't seriously dangerous.
In healthy people with modern medical care the death rate is 3 per 1000. It is insanely infectious, 90% of unprotected people sharing a living space will be infected, with high risk of infection from casual or indirect contact. If an immunocompromized person is infected the fatality rate is about 30%. Measles also has a a significant risk of serious complications including brain damage, and permanent damage to vision or hearing upto and including deafness or blindness.
Rubella is a minor nuisance infection, at least as far as the direct infection itself. However it's a horrific disease when a pregnant woman is exposed (even if the woman herself is immunized!). If a pregnant woman is exposed to an infected person the virus will scoot right across the placenta and disrupt the developing fetus. When it doesn't outright kill the fetus (causing miscarriage), it results in horrific birth defects.
Mumps is mostly "merely" painful, except for the 30% chance it will infect the testicles of post-pubescent males. At which point it often results in sterility.
Vaccines have been so successful that most people have forgotten why we were so desperate to develop these vaccines in the first place.
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