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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...
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.
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.
Unfortunately that would only be the case if refusing the vaccines removed them from the gene pool, but unfortunately it doesn't. Instead if exposes people who cannot have the vaccine due to allergies, immune system deficiencies etc. Not to mention the increased risk that in an environment where most people are immune to infection but some people are not there can be increased chance of it mutating and becoming more virulent or even potentially being able to work around the existing immunities.
I'm sick of hearing this shit. People die because of this. And not just the anti-vaxxers' kids, but people who, for one reason or another, don't or can't develop the immunity, despite getting the vaccination. Or people who can't get the vaccination.
Cynical Idealist
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.
.... 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
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.
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.
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?"
But the thing is, you're an outlier. Most parents who refuse the MMR vaccine refuse all forms of vaccines. Thus giving their children no immunity. I applaud you for taking the time to investigate the issue, and make an informed decision. This article isn't about people like you, it's about people who leave their kids with no immunity whatsoever. You, at least, made sure they were vaccinated against all three diseases, even if you didn't take the government standard MMR vaccine.
Thank you for getting your children vaccinated.
Cynical Idealist
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.
You are the exception, rather than the rule. Most people who are scared of MMR do not understand that there is a difference between MMR and getting vaccines for the 3 diseases separately. So if they're scared of one, they're scared of all.
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.
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)
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.
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/
That's probably because you were exposed to it, but never showed the symptoms. In your case, you got lucky.
Cynical Idealist
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
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.
She is lying to push forward a personal agenda that is directly responsible for the deaths of LOTS of children. She knows she has lots of influence, she knows if she wasn't pushing this agenda that large numbers of children/babies would get vaccines.
There is a moral imperative to not do something that you know will cause wide spread harm to a large part of a population.
She's just like any other conspiracy theorist. More concerned with finding a greater truth, than they are with actual reality. I think she knows she is full of crap. On one hand she's a has been celebrity. On the other hand, she can be famous again. Who cares if innocent children have to pay the price?
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.
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.
Well, that or everyone seems to overestimate how funny their own jokes are, and I'm obviously no exception. I guess having to explain that it was a joke is a pretty good indication that it wasn't particularly funny. Oh well, back to the drawing board...
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
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
Seems to highlight locations of reported places (when you search): http://healthmap.org/en/
I don't see any mention of the Jenny McCarthy body count yet. It's a well sourced web-site on the topic.
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,
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
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,
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.