Slashdot Mirror
Fifteen Years After Autism Panic, a Plague of Measles Erupts
DavidHumus writes "Some of the longer-term effects of the anti-vaccination movement of past decades are now evident in a dramatic increase in measles. From the article: 'A measles outbreak infected 1,219 people in southwest Wales between November 2012 and early July, compared with 105 cases in all of Wales in 2011. One of the infected was Ms. Jenkins, whose grandmother, her guardian, hadn't vaccinated her as a young child. "I was afraid of the autism," says the grandmother, Margaret Mugford, 63 years old. "It was in all the papers and on TV."'"
Should be seen and not heard. Nor should anyone listen to her.
- nt -
Now something else is all over them. Grats.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Nothing to see here folks.
And here we have an illustration of your garden-variety Daily Mail reader.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
DR;PW (did not read;pay walled)
I enjoy telling the pharmacist that it's okay, I already have autism.
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It concerns me that there's a growing distrust of medicine. Every day it seems there are more and more people who insist, "Doctors don't know anything." It's a very disturbing phenomenon that's getting people killed.
The medical community needs to start doing something about this.
large numbers of people follow the advice os someone who has no training, no proof, or even a decent grasp of cause and effect.
I hope your kids die
Are diptheria, whooping cough, and polio. You can terrorize people with media stories. People will take actions that are irrational in the face of an immediate threat. We seem to be unable to weigh the costs and benefits rationally of a course of action.
Why wasn't Jesus born in Wales?
Because God couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.
"I keed! I KEEED!"
One of the infected was Ms. Jenkins, whose grandmother, her guardian, hadn't vaccinated her as a young child. "I was afraid of the autism," says the grandmother, Margaret Mugford, 63 years old. "It was in all the papers and on TV."'"
So she didn't listen to her physician. Sigh...
I'm of a mind that people like this should be charged with child abuse, regardless of their intentions. They are putting not only their own child at risk but other children as well. The science on this topic is unequivocal. Vaccines demonstrably save lives and not getting them demonstrably costs lives. Children who do not get the vaccines (without a documented medical needs exemption) should not be permitted to go to school or participate in activities with other children. Parents who do not vaccinate their children (again without a medical needs exemption) should have to explain to a court why they think they are entitled to put their child and others at risk of some very serious diseases. Yes I'm being harsh and yes I think it is appropriate the the magnitude of the problem. A vague fear of autism which is not based on credible scientific research is not sufficient grounds to not get vaccinated.
Thanks (in advance), Jenny.
the story was leaked by a government minister that there was a lot of welsh people getting measles when in reality there was no epidemic at all. its all scare tactics by the newspapers and the government who in reality want you to be scared of breathing so that you do what they want you to do.
Since the scientific definition of plague is a particular baccilus (enterobacteria Yersinia pestis), the usage of plague is entirely colloquial rather than medical. This is how you get the accepted term "a plague of $ANIMAL", e.g. rats.
And a 1000 fold increase constitutes a plague of sick people in colloquial terms just fine.
It should be obvious with a change of over ten times as much in a single year that blaming it on something fifteen years ago is just as much nonsensical.
They didn't suddenly become not-immune, they've been not-immune for a while.
If you're going to complain about the anti-vaccine people not being scientifically rigorous, you have to do so yourself.
From TFA and quoted by the poster: "A measles outbreak infected 1,219 people in southwest Wales between November 2012 and early July, compared with 105 cases in all of Wales in 2011." Wrong, see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/may/02/measles-epidemic-swansea-teenagers-targeted-vaccinations (May 2nd) "The headline total for measles across Wales is now at 1,170 cases. The number of laboratory confirmed cases in the outbreak stands at 370 out of a total of 850 samples tested." So the outbreak is exagerated by more than a factor of two.
As long as the system is so clearly corrupted by money, though, people aren't going to trust health care professionals.
People didn't vaccinate their kids because they heard a (false) series of stories on the news. The problem wasn't that they didn't trust their doctor too little but rather that they trusted the news too much. If you saw a steady parade of (dis)information from a news source you regard as credible, why would you doubt it? Saying vaccines cause autism is a nice sound bite which is easy to understand whereas the counter argument that there is no credible evidence of any link is harder to explain.
As long as big pharma is taking meds off the market and replacing them with inferior versions in order to drive down demand for a generic and force people to continue to pay them, we're all going to know it's a scam.
Name one medicine that has been "taken off the market and replaced" with an inferior version.
When the people who know what they're talking about are in widespread agreement about some issue, that's generally an indication that what they're saying is the best understanding of the issue available. If you instead decide to follow the advice of someone who is totally unqualified, that's probably going to point you towards the wrong conclusion. Especially when, as in this case, everything turned out exactly as the experts predicted it would.
So yeah, listening to Jenny McCarthy rather than just about every doctor on the planet about medical issues is stupid. And I'm sorry the kids have to suffer for their parents' stupidity.
I am officially gone from
Things are unlikely to improve unless we really improve the quality and availability of education.
Education cures ignorance, not stupidity. In the immortal words of Ron White, "you can't fix stupid".
We need to get more ambitious with eradication of disease instead of all this partial vaccination. Vaccines are nice, but it's even better not to need them. Yes, it's difficult. Yes, I see the issues getting through the final stages of Polio eradication. But I also have a small pox vaccination scar which half the people on slashdot do not have - 'cause you didn't need it. Eradication should be far cheaper long term than just fucking around with vaccinating a lot of people (but not enough) indefinitely.
It's not like he held a press conference calling for a cessation of MMR vaccination and making a causal connection to autism.
It's not like he was secretly being paid over £400,000 by vaccine damage lawyers while the study was being performed, to draw conclusions that the study hadn't made yet.
It's not like he was trying to launch multi-million-dollar biotech companies that depended on the study's results coming out in favour of his hypothesis.
It's not like the data in the paper differ from the original patient records in ways that, by some amazing coincidence, all support the paper's claims.
No, Andrew Wakefield is clearly beyond reproach.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
As is par for the course with WSJ articles, once they see x number of referrals coming from a popular social-media-like site, they throw up a paywall. Can we simply stop linking to WSJ for this reason alone?
Autism is down.
Pillock. He fabricated data itself. It was not the media that has the authority to pull him from the ranks of scientists.
There is no link between autism and vaccines. None.
Wakefield should kill himself for the damage he has done to kids and science. I would be very happy.
I'm not debating the effectiveness of the Measles vaccine (it is one of the vaccines that has the numbers to back up its claims), but are we sure that these are cases of Measles? I would assume that it is one of the few diseases that is outwardly obvious, but I also know that there was a controversy a while back at least here in the US where the CDC was running a "Get Vaccinated" campaign using massively inflated numbers. They were claiming that one of the seasonal flu varieties was spreading like wildfire because of the "uneducated anti-vaccine people", but it was discovered they were throwing in anything that was even close to the symptoms of the seasonal flu vaccine into their publications. Later actual testing found that a vast majority of the cases they were siting were not even covered by the seasonal flu vaccine. I'm all for calling out the stupidity and lies of idiots, but it should be done no matter which side of the line they are on.
Idiot 2.0
Certain diseases are deadly for new born babies. Don't wait. It could kill your kid.
Vaccines are safe. Diseases are not.
Many other researchers were unable to duplicate Wakefield's work. He formed a company to promote his therapies for this problem that others were unable to find, and neglected to inform anyone of the potential conflict-of-interest. When the press exposed this, his co-authors backed away from the paper. The British medical board looked at his work, including questionable therapies on autistic children, and found him guilty of dishonesty and abuse of patients, and revoked his medical license. The Lancet retracted his article. I feel for the parents dealing with a full-out autistic child (my wife and I are raising an Aspergers/ADD grandson), but unproven therapies based on debunked theories aren't going to honestly address their problems.
to play devils advocate here, medical scince has been wrong before:
like when they started to routinely shot radiation into childrens necks in the 40s-60s to shrink their thyroids.... ended in increased cancer
I am not saying you should never trust modern medicine, but what is modern today is ancient tomorrow.
fish oil good....and now its bad.
also the amount of vaccines a child gets before they are one year oldhas almost doubled since most of the people reading this site were born
You're complaining that they compared total case reports one year to the same statistic in the preceding year? And you want them to, instead, compare two completely different measures of a disease's prevalence at different times?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I know as a fact there was a "before" and an "after" in the life of our son -- he was an apt big baby till he was 26 monthes. Then he got this compulsory vaccination (we're French) and he was 'elsewhere' for a few days. To make it short, my son is now 8.5 years old and he's a non verbal autist.
Why wasn't Jesus born in Wales?
Because God couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.
Irrelevant. Both the wise men and the virgin came from elsewhere.
Please, oh please let Darwin be right at least this one time and let the stupid and gullible die off.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As in, I'm protected against epidemic outbreaks by the basement walls.
Ezekiel 23:20
Feelings don't matter; what he said is factually correct.
As of this writing the parent was mod'ed "Troll' for that comment.
A couple of years ago, our DOT was doing some heavy projects. We taxpayers questioned the projects and how they were being implemented.
How did the bureaucrat respond? "I'm offended by these questions!" - and people backed off! So fucking what if you 'hurt' someone's feelings? Some times they MUST be hurt!
WTF people? All someone has to do is something asinine like "If you'd had measles as an adult you might feel differently." and trump and factual argument?
Regardless if the parent is confusing 'outbreak' with 'plague' (I don't think he is) he is correct.
And to the putz above who posted - "If you'd had measles as an adult you might feel differently." - No, no I wouldn't. I would feel crappy and seek medical treatment, but I wouldn't go around saying I'm a victim of plaque or some other stupid thing.
God people!
That pre 1963 Polio vaccine was contaminated with SV40 virus? CDC soon yanked the warning, and it only exists now on the Internet Archive. http://web.archive.org/web/20130522091608/http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/updates/archive/polio_and_cancer_factsheet.htm
Given that vaccines Drs want to give to kids have increased 3x since 1980, and many are for non-lethal diseases like rotavirus or for things like Hep B that a baby is highly unlikely to contract, and given that drug production is imperfect, I think many parents have legitimate concerns and being ordered to unquestionably follow their known-to-be-imperfect doctor's advice feed the backlash against vaccines.
Dr. Sears has good information for parents who want to take an informed, balanced approach:
http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/vaccines
No, I'm comparing the number of laboratory tests to the number of laboratory confirmations. Up to the start of May (by which time the outbreak had mostly run its course) there where 1170 notifications, of which 850 were tested .... of which only 370 confirmed measles. So the actual number of cases was more like 530 (1219 * 370/850).
Psychiatric illnesses are fads to some degree. Years ago, women suffered from hysteresis and hypochondria. Currently, scads of perfectly normal people are diagnosed as autistic. This fad will eventually abate, to be replaced by something else.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
So your son was completely verbal and socially proficient before he was 2 years old?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Your points are excellent, but I think you missed one. The editors of Lancet retracted the paper: http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452#ref-9
I have heard of authors retracting a paper, but this is the first time that I heard of the editors doing so.
1. Measles notifications and deaths in England and Wales, 1940-2008
2. Annual measles notifications and vaccine coverage, England and Wales 1950-2009
3. Confirmed cases of Measles, Mumps and Rubella 1996-2012
#2 is the most interesting, in conjunction with #1. #2 clearly shows the decline in vaccine coverage starting in 1998, the year Wakefield's paper came out in the Lancet. Coverage dropped from 1998 to about 2002, then started climbing again before plateauing in 2004 at a level approximately equal to the coverage rate in 1990. However, #1 shows that the number of reported cases of measles from 2004-2008 was markedly less than in the 1990 time-frame. That's strange. If the coverage level is the same, why would there be 2-3x fewer cases in 2004-2008 when compared to 1990?
According to Archive.org that page went up in 2011 and was only taken down this week.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Yes, it was. And?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Why wasn't Jesus born in Wales?
Because God couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.
Irrelevant. Both the wise men and the virgin came from elsewhere.
Now I come to think of it - the wise men came from the East, which would be London in the case of Wales, while the virgin came form the North, which would be Scotland.
Perhaps your priest knew what he was talking about after all.
I am a Statistician. One false move and you are a Statistic
But that information, counter to what your doctor was saying, would not be nearly as effective, or convincing enough to get on the news n the first place
Yes because the truth is just soooo boring.
if the medical field did not have a long history or getting things wrong spectacularly
Say what? While sometimes science goes down some wrong paths, modern medicine has a spectacular track record. They have DOUBLED live expectancies in the last one hundred years. In what bizarro universe is that somehow a failure?
and was not widely known as being completely corrupted by money.
Medicine is no more corrupted by money than any other profession and arguably less so than many. You'll have a hard time convincing me that journalism is some paragon of integrity and journalists are the ones convincing people of a (false) link between a treatment and a disease.
Also it would of helped if they had not used mercury in the shots.
There is no evidence that mercury that used to be in some vaccines ever caused a problem.
Vaccines - In the top 10 greatest inventions.
Scared parents can be really, really, really, stupid.
There was a before an after moment in my life, too. I had perfect vision until in 7th grade when suddenly everything started getting blurry. It kept getting worse. I got glasses in high school and I continued to need stronger and stronger prescriptions. It happened when I hit puberty so suddenly it sounded like that silly old legend that "masturbation will make you go blind" was true. As it turns out, vision problems tend to occur in males when they hit puberty. It had nothing to do with my "me" time.
Correlation does not prove causation. By the way, I had all my vaccinations as a baby. I don't have autism. Same with my brother, and every other kid in my school.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
It's more common than you think, especially in misconduct cases. Almost all of the authors did retract the paper's findings; Wakefield wasn't one of them.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Because the figure is inflated. If measles outbreaks are a problem then they are a problem without inflating the figure (which was generally reported similarly in the UK press). Inflating the figures is not so different from the anti-vaccine people making unjustified claims.
Why wasn't Jesus born in Wales?
Because God couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.
Irrelevant. Both the wise men and the virgin came from elsewhere.
You must be from Wales, since Wales isn't a city.
But I've also seen people who have had to live their whole life with the aftermath of measels (and a teacher lamed because of polio). These are far worse.
Why does it matter whether it's 500 people or 1000 people?* It's the change in the prevalence that matters. If one region has ten times the case reports normally seen in the entire country then that suggests an enormous increase in the rate of the disease.
*Consider that if the region we are talking about is 1m people, then neither is significant; if the region is 1000 people, then both figures are enormous.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
"Actually, you probably shouldn't wish illness or harm to those people."
He didn't.
1) Not on the kids, 100% absolutely.
2) Mentioned only the granny. Who didn't get the illness. So it would have been MORE FAIR if the granny who was "afraid of autism" DESPITE NOT BEING THE ONE AT RISK than if the kids (who had no choice in the matter, unless the government intervened and overrode the guardian's wishes) who get it.
Moreover, nowhere was the illness wished on the granny.
There is some social justice in that she will now know that she not only was foolish, she has irreperably damaged her grandchildren BECAUSE SHE WAS A FOOL.
That's as much justice as will happen here.
This is no more "wishing harm" on the granny than it is wishing harm on the robber to think "Good" when they are caught and go to prison.
It's not like there's some ultimate number here that they're choosing not to use. Case report figures are consistent, easy to investigate and variously over- and under-estimate (false alarms vs. infected people not going to the doctor); lab-confirmed cases are more robust, slow, hard to do and consistently underestimate. Neither is a measure of the actual prevalence of the disease, which is why it's the change in the figures versus the norm that is monitored.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You say "no kidding" but I understand this is exactly what you're doing here. Sorry, but I'll skip.
I wish I could mod you "-1, Stupid"
I have family members who have horrible reactions to whooping cough. One of them had seizures at random for the rest of his life after having hit. Another family member got vaccinated for it as a baby then got seizures for the next 8 years of his life.
I have to rely on herd immunity otherwise I can't function in life. If I had the same reactions, I wouldn't be allowed to drive a car, which would make living in this country horrible for me.
So fuck you and your "informed personal choice".
Sometimes other people know better than you. Fucking deal with it.
Therefore not ex posto facto punishment.
It needed to happen.
Too many people believe that popular opinion spouted by second rate tabloid journalists is scientifically verified fact. There needs to be something shocking and horrific to bump them out of this mindset, and their kids getting sick is one hell of a good example.
I look forward to tabloid journalism taking a nosedive as people look to experts for opinions, instead of talking heads and hand waving nutcases.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
My point is that your child's development was going to be normal up to 24 months whether he was autistic or not.
The bit in italics is my signature, it's a feature of the discussion system you're currently operating.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
"Wakefield has been unable to reproduce his results in the face of criticism, and other researchers have been unable to match them. Most of his co-authors withdrew their names from the study in 2004 after learning he had had been paid by a law firm that intended to sue vaccine manufacturers -- a serious conflict of interest he failed to disclose.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/index.html
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Too bad Andrew Wakefield, for all the blood on his hands, won't find himself in jail.
I suppose him being forcibly injected up the backside on a nightly basis, would be poetic justice.
You can do what you want at home, but if your kid's going to be sharing a space with others then you've got to respect those others' basic right to health.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
If you get to it through Google News, it's not paywalled.
I found out about that from this alternative article in Forbes.
Yeah, but in our example they'd have to be coming from England and Scotland.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Devil's Advocate: I know I know nothing, I know I have absolutely nothing to present as evidence, but I will insist that they are wrong, even though they have both knowledge and evidence. Because I am being a "Devil's Advocate" and I don't know what that means, either, but I think it means I get to just tell everyone they're wrong without having to produce any actual cognition, which is hard.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Indeed, it is the change that matters, in which case, why quote a figure which is known to be incorrect, rather than the best known figure (laboratory confirmations). However, since this year laboratory tests were suspended because the public health labs. could not keep up (nor were the untested samples kept for later analysis), we don't actually know what the change is.
It seems like we're seeing the same thing happening with a lot of the progressive protections enacted by previous generations -- Glass-Steagall, civil rights, the EPA, the 13th amendment.
"We don't need these restrictive regulations, we don't have those problems any more."
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I understand your point. And I feel the doctors we asked are honest when they answered us (with a few exceptions) there know of no correlation, even though we're not the only parents with the same story. Still, they're part of the same medical system that decides my autistic son is exempted from any further compulsory vaccination.
The over-reporting error in case reports is consistent enough that you can use it to make these comparisons. It's totally uncontroversial in actual epidemiological work so I'm not sure why you don't think it's OK here. The fact is that we won't know the total confirmed number of cases until after the outbreak is over; it's not a useful figure in this situation.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Rotavirus not fatal? Um sorry but that's wrong.
It's one of the most potentially deadly childhood diseases. Worldwide half a million children die from it each year.
Even in the US 30-60 children die from it each year.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/surv-manual/chpt13-rotavirus.html
As far as Hep B, it's a nasty chronic infection that 1 million US citizens suffer from. Most get it as a child. Over time it can cause serious liver damage.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/hepb/fs-parents.html
While that's true, there's also no evidence that using mercury in shots was ever a good idea.
So find me some evidence that it is actually a problem. Otherwise you are simply using scare tactics not based on any actual evidence. I'm willing to concede that based on what we know about mercury that the problem is worth investigating even unrelated to autism. In fact the various health agencies and vaccine makers are working to eliminate mercury from the vaccines as a precaution and have removed it from childhood vaccines since 2001. However just because something in theory seems like it might be harmful does not mean that it actually is harmful. And even if it is harmful you have to establish that the harm suffered exceeds the benefits provided by the treatment. All vaccines have some percent (typically very small) of the patient population who have adverse reactions. This fact does not mean we should stop using the vaccine nor does it mean that the formulation should be changed without any scientific basis.
Mercury is bioaccumulative. Using mercury where it is unnecessary to maximize profit is unacceptable.
Did it occur to you that using a preservative might be to ensure that the drug can be sufficiently distributed? Vaccines do have a shelf life and it's not hard to argue that someone who doesn't receive a vaccine because it has expired is a worse problem than using a preservative.
Forget doctors and news anchors, I only trust infomercial spokespersons.
Because I strongly suspect there is a tendency to increasing over-diagnosis as outbreak size grows. Most doctors will have seen few if any cases of measles, so if someone presents with a measles-like rash during an outbreak, then it is more likely to be diagnosed as measles than when there is no outbreak. I also know of one case where a child with a rash was taken to the doctor, who said, no, definitely not measles ... then noticed on the records that the child had not been noticed, and instantly changed the diagnosis (and declined to take a sample to test). As it turned out, it was not measles. I'd not argue with over-reporting being uncontroversial in general, but I question whether it is independent of outbreak size.
Of course. However they're stable enough that doing what they've done here, stating the number case reports in the early stages of the disease - especially when they've jumped by an order of magnitude - is perfectly OK.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Well, people stupid enough to believe and follow that false idea without properly researching it are automatically removing their kids from the gene pool in some cases. Tada, survival of the people not stupid enough to fall for that bullshit. I believe that's a direct Darwin quote.
Your non-lethal rotavirus killed almost half a million children under 5 in 2008 alone. This does not include hospitalizations or cases of series side effects (severe dehydration, seizures, etc), just deaths.
http://www.who.int/immunization_monitoring/burden/rotavirus_estimates/en/
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
I have learned more on the subject recently especially on the subject mercury based preservatives. Turns out the last holdout on that is Flu vaccines which I haven't had in forever. They're almost completely ineffective anyway as the last few years have missed the predictions meaning people got useless mercury injections.
So for kids, I'm a little more okay with getting them fully vaccinated, however, there are still two problems:
1. Too many vaccinations for a little body to handle is a problem. I know they space them out already, but it's a problem for many kids because they aren't getting good enough nutrition to support a healthy immune system. After all, vaccinations RELY on a healthy immune system. If they aren't ready, it's either useless, a problem or both.
2. The autism rates are still climbing. It's now like 1 in 50. And that's with the recent adjustments in diagnostic criteria which was intended to lower the rate, not raise it. We have a serious epidemic which no one is reporting or talking about. If this were the common cold, people would be freaking out!!! (1 in 50... more among boys than girls, so the current odds are at least one "special kid" in each class! And at this rate of increase it will be reported as 1.5 to 2 per classroom next year.)
So we have some serious problems in this country and no one is seriously looking into it.
Way to put icing on the cake...
You cannot say "We've had outbreaks before we vaccinated as widely, therefore the removal of the vacciantion cannot be said to have caused this outbreak". We have a causation. We have a correlation. We have a statistical test between the causation and the correlation.
If you want to make a claim that this wasn't due to the removal of the vaccination then you need to show that the evidence is broken in some way and prove your statement.
A lot of "antivaxxer" dolts trumpet Wakefield in that he's a victim of a hush-up and that he shall be exonerated. A good stick in the eye of these people is that Wakefield himself only sought to discredit MMR so that he could sell his own vaccine, they assume that he is anti-vaccine altogether like them. There are articles stating this but the patent iteself is difficult to find so they ignore that. Of course, once you present the actual patent material they will go on to disown him and yet in the same fell swoop continue using his "evidence". Sometimes you can't win...
For your convenience, here is one of Wakefield's actual patents
While measles can be fatal so can be Chicken Pox, so it would be like our children saying the same thing about Chicken Pox when they are adults. Sure it is uncomfortable and not at all desirable to get the parents should not be charged.
Around 150,000 people around the world die from measels each year and about 38% of young children who get it end up being treated in a hospital. About 3 out of 1000 children who get the disease will die even with the best available medical care. Given that the vaccine demonstrably reduces the incidence and number of fatalities, I think your argument is severely flawed.
Also there more than a fear of Autism there is a moral reason some choose not to have their children vaccinated, some of these vaccines were developed using aborted fetuses
I don't care AT ALL about people's religious objections to vaccines. Such objections are a danger to public health. If these people want to endanger just themselves and are consenting adults, then fine. But I will never support them in endangering either their own children or other people based on some crazy mythology. Their right to religious freedom ends when it becomes a public health hazard. If they want to come up with an objection based on actual verifiable facts then I'm willing to discuss it.
JennyMcCarthyBodyCourt.com, great site
I don't know about that -- I'm NOT trying to prove my point or to score a point here. All I intend to do is to deliver a short testimony. I notice my initial comment was labeled as "Funny" (see: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3999673&cid=44349333). Different people have different sense of "fun".
With our government having a track record of ignoring principles of economics, please don't make them the police that regulate reporting about the harder sciences.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
seldane
No, they are not. The WSJ figures are quoted for the whole of the outbreak (by July it was essentially over); likely there were cases elsewhere in Wales, but there was no significant other outbreak so (unless we think there will be another outbreak) we can assume that the 1219 figure is broadly correct. They are not figures for the early stages (do you mean disease or outbreak?). Now, I don't have the over-diagnosis figures to hand for last year, but unless you can show me that they were around 50%, then you order-of-magnitude increase claim is pure speculation. If you check out http://www.wales.nhs.uk/sites3/page.cfm?orgId=457&pid=25444 (NHS site for Wales) you can find "Reported notifications of measles usually far exceed the actual numbers of confirmed cases. Other rashes are often mistaken for measles". Unfortunately, they don't say by how much, which is a shame because there are some claims of 3000% overdiagnosis, which seems pretty wacky.
Does this extend to all behavior that can be shown to be statistically more likely to result in injury, illness, or death?
Ahh, the slippery slope argument. The answer is of course we don't extend it to everything. However we do have to examine each activity and decide if it presents an undue risk. Some will, some won't. Not getting vaccines for a child that demonstrably prevent acquisition and transmission of potentially fatal pathogens at very low risk in my opinion is pretty clearly negligence. If that child ever gets sick from the disease or worse causes another child to get sick, that parent should have to explain themselves to a court. If a parent can convince a (scientifically educated) court that their objections to getting the child vaccinated somehow outweigh the public health risk they are presenting, then I have no further objection. Arguments I dismiss out of hand include religious practice applied to someone other than one's self (like a child) as well as arguments based on discredited or psuedo-science.
There are millions of children who are obese due to diet. Parents are in charge of the diet, obesity statistically leads to illness and death, so by your logic, shouldn't parents of obese children should be charged with child abuse?
Tempting but there is one BIG difference. Your child being obese is not going to result in another child becoming sick. Vaccines serve two purposes. One is prevention of a disease in a person and the other is to prevent transmission of that disease. While I think that parents who do not pay attention to their child's diet are indeed negligent, I think the public interest there is lower because obesity is not contagious nor is it acutely fatal.
It happens, Jack, whether you want to believe it or not. I know, I'll be called a conspiracy theorist. I am not. I am just not a coincidence theorist, either.
What do you call a sheep tied to a lamp-post in Cardiff? A leisure centre!
"The federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, better known as "vaccine court," has just awarded millions of dollars to two children with autism for "pain and suffering" and lifelong care of their injuries, which together could cost tens of millions of dollars." ..
"Some observers will say the vaccine-induced encephalopathy (brain disease) documented in both children is unrelated to their autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Others will say there is plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise. link
AccountKiller
Glad you are so happy to tread on another rights.
What rights are being trodden on here? I'm not preventing anyone from their religious beliefs. They can believe whatever crazy thing they want. But there is copious legal precedent of religious objections getting overridden in the interest of public health, both for individuals as well as for society at large. Nobody should enjoy the right to endanger the public health needlessly.
By your same logic we should ban aspirin and alcohol too.
You are seriously comparing prevention of a dangerous pathogen with a vaccine for completely unscientific reasons to using improper administration of aspirin and a overdoses of a recreational intoxicant? Neither aspiring (or other NSAIDs) are particularly dangerous when administered properly. The fact that they aren't is a separate issue of education. As for alcohol related problems, there already are laws to deal with that. Hurt someone due to your inappropriate use of alcohol and you will go to jail.
Am I really more likely to die just sitting in my kitchen than from measles here in the U.S.? Seems that the answer is yes.
Vaccination is a good thing, but it would be nice to see just as much money as we are feeding the drug companies go to things that are responsible for many deaths in the U.S. each year.
Does anyone have the death statistics for 2012? I couldn't find any.
1m? 0.001 people?
In some sense it is true to the societies too. We have not encountered measles for a long time. So we forgot how deadly this microbe is. And this allowed quacks and snake oil merchants to move it make some quick buck.
This measles outbreak, tragic as it is, will serve as a booster shot and help the society to appreciate the importance of the vaccination programs.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Some of the 105 from previous years were also misreports. You've got to compare apples to apples.
Given the information we've got, the best guess for actual cases in previous years is 46 (105*370/850)
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Jenny McCarthy isn't the problem.
Barbara Walters isn't the problem.
Measles, Autism, and Vaccines aren't even the problem.
The problem is that these insane and corrupt pharmaceutical companies have such a poor history of engendering human health that nobody trusts them at all any more.
I'm pro science. I'm pro vaccine. But how can I justify endangering my kid by injecting an infant with the history of Glaxosmithkline?
That seems riskier than ANY disease.
Give me a vaccine from a company with a history of good human health decisions, and I'll gladly use it!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Right; in Holland there is currently an outbreak of measels in the 'bible-belt'. This is caused by fundamental riligious nutcases telling their followers that their god does not allow vaccinations.
http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/site/?pageid=event_desc&edis_id=EH-20130612-39573-NLD
You can do what you want at home, but if your kid's going to be sharing a space with others then you've got to respect those others' basic right to health.
Exactly. If a child has not been vaccinated and there are no valid reasons for not vaccinating (e.g allergies or whatever), that child should not be allowed in public schools / kindergarten.
In Germany, the large political parties are thinking about mandatory vaccinations: http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/zahl-der-masern-ausbrueche-steigt-union-und-spd-erwaegen-impf-pflicht-fuer-alle_aid_1042699.html
Once again, Barbara, this isn't a "controversial" opinion, it is a murderous one.
"Controversial" just means the media talking heads are talking about it. It's a propaganda tool that lets them discredit anything, sew doubt in the viewers'/listeners' minds, and divide and distract the population.
1) Pick an idea held by many people. (If that's because it's well-researched, produces prosperity and/or political stability, or otherwise sound, it's particularly suitable because it will be strongly held.)
2) Find some ideal held by a few that contradicts it. (If it's some unresearched or refuted-by-research tinfoil-hat idea, an attractive political ideology that leads to strife, etc. that's especially effectivce as well.)
3) Talk about them as if the first is in question and the second is just as well founded.
4) Because you're talking about them, label them both "controversial", thus lowering the credibility of the first and throwing the issue into doubt.
5) Confused viewers tune in to try to figure out which is right. Never tell them, so your raitings stay high.
6) Profit!
If this leads to children suffering from and dying of loathsome diseases, political strife, tyrannies, wars, economic collapse, and so on, laugh all the way to the bank and goto step 5).
People die because of this.
You betcha!
(And then they wonder why people are waking up, turning them off, and getting their news and analysis from the Internet.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Disease can happen at ANY time at ANY age. Go ahead, wait a few more months, a few more years. Maybe you won't the disease before the vaccine. Or maybe you'll get an object lesson on why your idea is dangerous insanity.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
if your kid's going to be sharing a space with others then you've got to respect those others' basic right to health
Could you explain why you got vaccinated?
Recently, the CDC put up and then removed a page linking polio vaccines to cancer-causing viruses (http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/cdc-disappears-page-linking-polio-vaccines-to-cancer-causing-viruses/). Actually, over the years, many vaccines have been found to have one contamination or another.
But then again, so does every food item we buy, our drinking water, and basically, eveything else we come into contact with.
Singling out vaccines is just the vogue thing to do. With vaccines, when you weight the risks (of some rare complications) and the benefits (immunity to some nasty diseases, in most cases), the vaccines are a clear win.
Really, this is modded "Funny"??? I know it's an anecdote and it's flawed in this argument, but how is it funny that this poor person has to watch their child struggle with Autism?
Or an enormously increased awareness of the disease.
That is a real question when the diagnosis as apparently only correct 50% of the time. It would be great to have figures on lab conformation for 2011. Meanwhile, where are the 2012 figures?
Would there be a population stupid enough to take the medical advice of a porn star over that of a physician
Fatalities from measles are about 1 in 100,000 cases, and that is typically if you don't make sure the child gets medical attention. Other than that, it's an annoyance. And, of course, not everyone gets it.
If you wonder why people don't trust their doctors, at least here in Canada, there is no longer a relationship between doctor and patient. Doctor's do their best to rush through a growing number of patients. Some guy who doesn't seem to care (or even listen) to your issues does not appear to be inherently trustworthy.
Personally, having spent 3 years trying to get someone to actually deal with my complaints, I don't have a whole lot of trust in our entire medical system. I have to be REALLY sick before I bother trying to get an appointment. In an environment like that, I am not surprised that people lack trust in the system.
I know as a fact there was a "before" and an "after" in the life of our son -- he was an apt big baby till he was 26 monthes. Then he got this compulsory vaccination (we're French) and he was 'elsewhere' for a few days. To make it short, my son is now 8.5 years old and he's a non verbal autist.
"Wakefield has been unable to reproduce his results in the face of criticism, and other researchers have been unable to match them. Most of his co-authors withdrew their names from the study in 2004 after learning he had had been paid by a law firm that intended to sue vaccine manufacturers -- a serious conflict of interest he failed to disclose.
cnn report
Don't encourage the endangering of other childrens health through a known problem (measels) because a liar (many liars in fact) tricked you into blaming the vaccinations. Also remember we have imperfect memories, particularly about things we feel emotional about.
There is no doubt the vacinations can help reduce people getting sick from these things, but there is also evidence it causes people to get sick, and to get sick from other ailments. There are patterns. I know people who have not hade any vacinations in 30 years, but never get sick from anything except maybe once every 5 years or so; very rare. Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Sars, etc. In all of these cases, more people died from the common stomach flu, but the media does not talk about that because nobody runs out and buys medical services for common items.
Right now I am seeing more kids getting "Autism" that shouldnt, and the most common denominator is innoculations.
Just like insects are always talked about in the mainstream media non-stop. Bed-bugs, mosquetos, Ticks, Spiders, Mites, Lice, etc. etc. Every year it is something different, and in every case, it's blown out of perportion.
It's not like the General Medical Council struck him off after considering both sides of the story.
Yes, because if there's one thing that keeps Big Pharma rich, it's selling everyone quick, cheap, effective vaccines instead of expensive, slow-moving treatments to long-term side effects of diseases like measles, polio, and so on.
Want to know what's profitable? Iron lungs. They're expensive and you're hooked on them for, if you're lucky, only a month or two while your body recovers from polio. If you're unlucky, you're hooked on them for life. Know what's less profitable? A single prick in the arm containing a vaccine that, even at the highest markup, costs less than 1/10,000th of a modern day life support system and prevents the disease that lands you in the iron lung in the first place.
Critical thinking - how does it work?!
I had a before and after too. Up until I was 5, I could hear. Then I caught measles, meningitis complications, then deaf.
Oh look, how convenient - yet again they didn't tell us how many of those infected had been 'vaccinated'...
I wonder why...
It must be that damned 'herd immunity' (which doesn't exist) which those damn anti-vaccinators have prevented everybody else from 'attaining'.
There is no such thing as 'vaccination', Jenner was a fraud.
Dr.Hadwen conclusively laid all this to rest over a hundred years ago, and strangely enough, NOBODY has bothered to rebut any of his speeches.
Why is that?
http://www.whale.to/v/hadwen.html
But please, if you have a rebuttal to any of Dr. Hadwen's talks, please show me.
Children today receive more than 12 times as many vaccine doses than in 1940
http://www.prisonplanet.com/children-today-receive-more-than-12-times-as-many-vaccine-doses-than-in-1940.html
http://www.omsj.org/corruption/why-push-unnecessary-vaccines-that-cripple-children
http://www.omsj.org/blogs/hpv-and-hepatitis-b-vaccines-dangerous
It's all about MONEY. A massive fraud, perpetrated on the people of the earth.
Here are just some examples from a handful of 1970s T.V. programmes and films, where people stated, as a matter of fact, that they had had measles, chickenpox or mumps, just as I and EVERYBODY I KNEW as a child had measles, chickenpox and mumps, and there was NO fear whatsoever that anybody would die or have any serious problems because of them.
Vaccination in TV programmes:
Catweazle, series 1, final part, first two minutes, Mr.Bennett's father mentions that he had chickenpox at 9.
Steptoe and Son Christmas Special - Chickenpox, last five minutes.
Robin's Nest, Series 2, Episode 7, 10:10, Robin's brother's got mumps.
Robin's Nest, Series 3, Episode 4, 18:20 - Mr Nicholls hadn't had mumps.
The Famous Five - Five Go Adventuring Again, 2:00 - George says "And what with that, and my being ill, he thought it would be a good idea if we all have lessons", Ann says "Your spots have all gone", George replies "I know, I was officially de-measled this morning".
Man About the House - Series 1, Episode 3 - After the Monopoly game, Chrissie says "I haven't had so much fun since I had the mumps".
"Larry Grayson on Pebble Mill 1992" in Mpegs/Comedy, 4:39, said he had measles twice.
'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' directed by Selznick. 10:33,
Tom: Where have you been such a long time. I haven't seen you since we got engaged.
Girl: I had the chickenpox.
Tom: You haven't got it now, have you?
Girl: No, silly, think my ma would let me out if I wasn't all cured?
Have any of you pro-vaccination cretins got any explanation for why NOBODY was worried about people catching measles, mumps or chickenpox, forty years ago? I'm afraid that the evidence is all over the T.V. programmes and films from that era - are you going to ban them?
Merck vaccine fraud exposed by two Merck virologists; company faked mumps vaccine efficacy results for over a decade, says lawsuit
http://www.naturalnews.com/036328_Merck_mumps_vaccine_False_Claims_Act.html
That is actually quite interesting comparison. What happens with a baby around 2yr old mark is not so different from hitting puberty development wise. The same hormone overload boosted development spur. I would not be surprised if it would turn out to be the true source of autism.
The Andrew Wakefield Story: How Big Pharma and the UK Government Destroyed a Man to Save a Flawed Vaccine Program
Discredited Defamation: The Fallacious Case against Dr. Andrew Wakefield
Decision Awarding Damages to Ryan Mohabi 13 Dec 2012
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders March 2009;39(3):405-13
AccountKiller
And wouldn't you agree that it is also wrong to force your beliefs upon others by exposing them against their will to an unvaccinated child who could be a carrier for numerous dangerous diseases? In a society, we all impose our beliefs upon one other to some extent. So we are dependent upon reason and evidence to minimize the harm that results.
As with so many things in life, you have to play the odds. Nobody knows everything, and anybody can be wrong. But choices based upon the best evidence are less likely to be wrong. As the saying goes, "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong--but that's the way to bet."
Sorry but this is really ignorant. Vaccines reduce the risk of infection from an encounter with an infected individual, but they don't reduce it to zero. If the exposure is high enough, a vaccinated person can still contract the disease. In addition, part of the protection provided by vaccines is due to the fact that mass vaccination reduces the probability that you will encounter in infected individual. If enough people are vaccinated so each infected person passes the disease on to less than one other person on average, then the disease cannot propagate, and dies out.
On top of that, there are people who are unvaccinated, not because they have irrational fears of vaccines, but because they are immunocompromised or allergic to some component of a vaccine. These people are completely dependent upon the vaccination of others for their protection
Autism is a developmental disorder. It manifests at a particular stage of development. This is around the time when children normally receive their vaccinations, and unvaccinated children also tend to manifest autism around this time. Given the huge number of vaccinated children, many will be diagnosed with autism around the time of their vaccinations, just purely by chance. It is natural to see causality in such an association, particularly if the child had a common vaccine reaction, such as a fever, even if it is coincidental.
I imagine that if we gave vaccinations in the teen years, there would be people just as convinced that the vaccination caused their child to be schizophrenic, because that is the age when schizophrenia typically manifests.
Please refrain from posting stories that link to articles that require a paid subscription to read.
Don't encourage the endangering of other childrens health through a known problem (measels) because a liar (many liars in fact) tricked you into blaming the vaccinations.
Make no mistake: I am on no anti vaccination crusade. I never heard of this doctor (Wakefield) prior to today. I'm a lurker here and I just droped a few words. Take it for what it is: a testimony. I am not here to convince anyone. -- My personal *feeling*, so far, is that nothing gives a kid autism (it is already in him/her, from even before birth), BUT certain things help developping autistic misbehaviors (more or less badly) and vaccines are one of them. Again, I am no scientist - what I write is just a *feeling*, fed by what I understand from doctors' explanations.
You've got it slightly wrong. First, it does not appear that the virus in question (SV40) ever caused cancer in man, and the problem was fixed long ago. Considering the danger presented by polio at the time, even with the SV40, you were better off getting the vaccine than not getting it. (I'm pretty sure that I got that vaccine myself). And anyway, this applies only to live-virus oral polio vaccine. Injected polio vaccine is treated so that there can be no live viruses of any kind in it.
It's curious that the co-author of the original paper, Professor Walker-Smith [huffingtonpost.co.uk], was subsequently totally exonerated
Totally exonerated is being so generous that you're being disingenuous. This case was about if an elderly man (who had long been retired) deserved to be "struck off" the medical record. It was the judge's conclusion that Walker-Smith was essentially an unwitting dupe rather than someone knowingly performing unapproved research on children whose parents hadn't given consent either. It doesn't say a lot for Walker-Smith's judgement, but it's better to be a pawn than a cheat, and the former isn't really enough to pull a license. Especially since he's no longer practicing.
Professor Walker-Smith's position was always that it was too early to even recommend suspending the MMR vaccine and that more (and larger) tests needed to be run. It was Wakefield who called his own press conference to urge suspension of the vaccine and claim that it was causing autism.
Wakefield earns his contempt among the scientific community not for being a poor scientist but that he committed fraud to supply evidence for trial lawyers and bolster his own company. We have plenty of evidence that that is what Wakefield did, but there's little strong evidence that Walker-Smith committed any fraud.
None of this though affects whether Wakefield's Lancet paper is valid. Legal rulings are not science, and the judge cannot expect to be a peer-reviewer of a paper in a field of which he has no expertise. So the decision says nothing about the Lancet MMR paper's results, or Wakefield for that matter. It's a good try trying to spin this as exoneration for the Wakefield and the antivax movement, but there's no evidence of that, which has been the antivax problem all these years.
What were you saying about a plague?
Isn't anybody the least bit bothered that with all those people able to provide blood samples, nobody will publish a paper related to common traits and potential causes? Something that's an epidemic of this level and there's nothing? No gene, no prenatal test, no blood test at 1 year old, nothing like that...
That doesn't seem just a smidge strange to anybody? Take away the vaccine discussion and just focus on autism. Explain that part.
Is it completely irrational to think that some people could be predisposed to react badly to ingredients in some vaccines? Some people can't tolerate milk and peanuts will kill them.
"This case was about if an elderly man .. deserved to be "struck off" the medical record. It was the judge's conclusion that Walker-Smith was essentially an unwitting dupe
..
I hope you don't mind me saying so, but you're making up your own quotes and talking nonsense and your retrospective re-interpreting of the judge's conclusion is totally erroneous, dishonest and bogus.
Judge Mitting's full Judgment:
"The panel had no alternative but to decide whether Professor Walker-Smith had told the truth to it and to his colleagues, contemporaneously. The GMC's approach to the fundamental issues in the case led it to believe that that was not necessary -- an error from which many of the subsequent weaknesses in the panel's determination flowed"
"The panel's determination cannot stand. I therefore quash it. Miss Glynn, on the basis of sensible instructions, does not invite me to remit it to a fresh Fitness to Practice panel for redetermination. The end result is that the finding of serious professional misconduct and the sanction of erasure are both quashed."
AccountKiller
Your plague says hi.
Idiot 2.0
Certain diseases are deadly for new born babies. Don't wait. It could kill your kid.
Vaccines are safe. Diseases are not.
Simple solution is for governments to tie child benefits and education subsidies to vaccination schedules. No vaccinations = no benefits and no free education.
In Australia liability insurance for child care operators already prevents them from taking on any children that dont have immunisation certificates.
However the anti-government nutbars will complain to high heavan about the "gubbermint" interfering in their lives and their wallets. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if there was a significant crossover between the anti-gov'ers and the anti-vaxers. Nor would I be surprised to find the majority of them are on welfare.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
It's not pure speculation, that's how much the case report rate changed by. You just don't want to believe that the case report rate is a reasonable measure for reasons that you refuse to substantiate.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Reading this, I saw:
blah blah blah "Natural News"-->ignore everything following.
Yes, Natural News = Crackpots incorporated. If people refuse vaccination, then let them pay the medical bills that ensue. Medical plans should include clauses that parents themselves must pay if their kids fall ill from crackpot fool theories.
Except that several studies show the opposite. Unvaccinated are less likely to get a whole host of conditions and diseases.
Salzburger Study
Results: of 1004 unvaccinated children, had
Asthma, 0% (8-12% in the normal population)
A-topic dermatitis 1.2% (10-20% in the normal population)
Allergies 3% (25% in the normal population)
ADHD 0.79% (5-10%) in children
Longterm Study in Guinea-Bissau (1 Kristensen I, Aaby P, Jensen H.:“Routine vaccinations and child survival: follow up study in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa”, BMJ 2000; 321: 1435–41)
The children of 15,000 mothers were observed from 1990 to 1996 for 5 years.
Result: the death rate in vaccinated children against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough is twice as high as the unvaccinated children (10.5% versus 4.7%).
New Zealand Survey (1992) (http://www.ias.org.nz)
The study involved 254 children. In which 133 children were vaccinated and 121 remained unvaccinated.
Result:
Symptom vaccinated unvaccinated
Asthma 20 (15%) 4 (3%)
Eczema or allergic rashes 43 (32%) 16 (13%)
Chronic otitis 26 (20%) 8 (7%)
Recurrent tonsillitis 11 (8%) 3 (2%)
Shortness of breath and sudden infant death syndrome 9 (7%) 2 (2%)
Hyperactivity 10 (8%) 1 (1%)
The actual truth is that there's less mercury in the entire run of childhood vaccinations -- when thimiserol was included in them -- than you get from eating a single can of tuna.
It's also been conclusively shown that the mercury in vaccines is not linked to autism in any way, by looking at autism trends in countries that did use the vaccine and then outlawed thimiserol.
All in all, the mercury content in vaccines is essentially statistical noise if you're eating fish or live anywhere downwind of a coal-fired power plant, even hundreds of miles away. So that basically includes everyone.
but i think i'd rather have measles than autism
If people refuse vaccination, then let them pay the medical bills that ensue. Medical plans should include clauses that parents themselves must pay if their kids fall ill from crackpot fool theories.
So who pays for the people who have compromised immune systems and get the disease because the herd immunity is compromised? A grandma with liver disease dying from whooping cough should count, even if she was properly immunized. Every death, immunized or not, could be attributed to lack of immunizations.
Learn to love Alaska
The herd must pay, just cut the non believers from the herd - let them pay for their folly
How many were tested last year? If there is a confirmed outbreak (more lab positives this year than all suspicions the year before, looking like 10 times the number from the year before), wouldn't you expect people to be more likely to react for similar symptoms? People are more sensitive when they are more aware.
Learn to love Alaska
Yes, someone says something that doesn't agree with your irrational personal belief, so you refuse to listen. You think you are right. They think they are right. You "know" better than they do. Why should we believe you?
Learn to love Alaska
Dr. Wakefield never suggested that vaccines were the cause - it's the preservatives PLUS the way they load up a lot of doses into a large container for mass inoculations. The theory is that the preservatives can settle and a person could get a dose with an excess of nasty stuff.
The reason Big Pharma got into it was because there are laws on the books that limit liability for vaccines - thus new pharma development is along the lines of "vaccines" for everything. All in the name of limiting damages.
Theres no such thing as a "balanced approach" when it comes to vaccines. You either get the shot or you don't. If something is revealed after you get the shot, too bad, its not like you can take it out of your body; and that TERRIFIES people.
If you tell someone getting a vaccine shot will give you a 0.1% chance of developing autism and not getting a vaccine shot will give you a 0.1% chance of contracting polio; people will naturally choose NOT to get the vaccine shot. Why? Because you can always get the vaccine shot later (albeit usually too late) but you can never remove the vaccine shot.
Secure our borders.
I highly recommend subscribing to retraction watch, which republishes and discusses retraction notices.
"Doctors don't know anything." vs Doctors who think they know everything.
My kids pulminologist went on vacation and his backup changed all my son's meds the first time he saw him knowing barely anything about him but with assurances that the meds (inhaled steroids) were better. My son died three weeks later of pulminary failure even though he had been doing so well before that he had passed sleep studies with flying colors and been decanualated.
You tell me why doctors deserve my trust? F**k that, they earn trust like anyone else.
All he wanted was to move more units of drugs listed on the poster in his office... probably trying to get some kickback from the drug company. F**k that guy.
They may very well be a few cases where a child become autist after a vaccine. Maybe he wouldn't be an autist if he didn't get that vaccine. Perhaps he got a bad allergic reaction or a powerful fever from it. Perhaps children ought to be a bit older when getting that vaccine. There may be room for improvement still.
But the chance of getting autism from vaccine is demonstrably much lower than the chance of getting killed/disabled by the diseases vaccine prevents. What is worst - having 3 of 1000 children die from measles, or 1 of a million become autist? Note that those few who react badly to the vaccine may very well be the same that will react badly to the real disease too. After all, the real disease contains the same stuff as the vaccine, but in a more powerful form.
Idiot 2.0
Certain diseases are deadly for new born babies. Don't wait. It could kill your kid.
Vaccines are safe. Diseases are not.
please tell that to the mothers in India who have seen the benefits up close and personal.
There is no panacea.
Big snore
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
VItamin D deficiency, lack of phytonutrients, lack of iodine, lack of omega-3s, excessive preformed vitamin A, lack of early breastfeeding, lack of exercise to move lymph around, artificial ingredients in food, food allergies or lactose intolerance, environmental toxins including heavy metals, and so on could all contribute to weakened immune systems and a build up of toxins in the body leading to mental dysfunction (relative to a historic normal). Examples:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/autism/
http://drhyman.com/blog/2010/12/09/breakthrough-discovery-on-the-causes-of-autism/
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/adhd-dr-fuhrmans-antiadhd-plan.html
In that mess of possibilities, some small quantity of mercury, aluminum, and other toxins from vaccines is possibly just one more drop in the bucket. Ideally, the bucket is constantly getting emptied by the body (including through the immune system and other cleaning systems) so it does not overflow and lead to things like mitochondrial dysfunction.
But some stuff, like vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy and the first few years, is structural about how the brain is wired.
Many people have reported success making thing somewhat better with the above approaches to addressing autism (beyond behavioral approaches as well, like training to read facial expressions better). The oft-vilified on Slashdot Jenny McCarthy's "Generation Rescue" website has some success stories of improvements via better diet and other interventions:
http://www.generationrescue.org/recovery/stories-of-recovery/
Whatever one thinks of the vaccine connection, eating better generally is unlikely to hurt. Although I'd look to someone like Dr. Fuhrman or Dr. Hyman for better general dietary advice than just "gluten/casein free', even as food allergies may be a piece of the puzzle for some kids labelled autistic.
I agree though that parents and guardians of autism spectrum children may often feel desperate, and that is, as you say, a risk for getting preyed on in some way (whether by alternatives or the mainstream).
Good luck with your grandson! Hopefully he can learn to make the most of his unique strengths and connections as "Positive psychology".
Today's schools have become so different from those of a generation ago, making all this even harder. Watch out for "the war on kids", especially the push in many schools to drug boys for wanting to be outside in the sunshine running around playing:
http://www.thewaronkids.com/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
mainly: http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2009/09/02/measles-deaths-pre-vaccine/#comment-37709
Other discussion:
http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/graphs/#Meas_Mort_UK_USA
"The main advances in combating disease over 200 years have been better food and clean drinking water. Improved sanitation, less overcrowded and better living conditions also contribute. This is also borne out in published peer reviewed research:
"The questionable contribution of medical measures to the decline of mortality in the United States in the twentieth century". McKinlay JB, McKinlay SM, Milbank Mem Fund Q Health Soc. 1977 Summer; 55(3): 405-28.
"Symposium: Accomplishments in Child Nutrition during the 20th Century. Infant Mortality in the 20th Century, Dramatic but Uneven Progress" Myron E. Wegman School of Public Health, University of Michigan: J. Nutr. 131: 401S--408S, 2001.
. . .
The majority of third world child deaths still occur despite vaccination. These children need proper food, clean water to drink and wash in and sanitation. We give them vaccines instead."
Although comments there disagree. Note that the first article (I linked to a comment) disagrees with the second. So, read both and all the comments and make up your own mind. One issue is looking at mortality vs. incidence. But which should we really care about more? What seems clear is that, at best, the measles vaccine is preventing on the order of 100 deaths per year in the USA, compared to tens of thousands of deaths per year a century in the past most of which were eliminated before the vaccine was introduced (via quarantine, nutrition, better care, and possibly even the disease itself evolving to be less deadly).
A lot of modern medicine, it seems, is to kick the healing can down the road a little farther and keep people working and going to school, instead of taking some time off to rest at home (including while fasting which can cure many diseases by boosting the immune system and providing time and circumstances for the body to heal itself).
Didn't make the front page, but a story I submitted a while back on the emergence of tools to track anyone questioning any aspect of vaccines:
"New surveillance tool to track posts about vaccines"
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=47163539
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
... and have no government benefits for any child who is not breastfed for 2+ years, given adequate vitamin D, and given a lot of vegetables, fruits, and beans, all of which are shown to improve overall immune system functioning... Any kid who is fed junk food, including refined sugar, which has been shown to suppress immune functioning should also be denied benefits. Further, since school is a breeding ground for disease transmission, anyone who does not homeschool should also be denied any government assistance. After all, vaccines only prevent (at best) some specific diseases. What I list above would prevent the incidence of most diseases -- including ones there are no vaccines for, which is most of them including future ones that emerge.
While we are at it, let's also deny benefits (including tax deductions) to those adults who do not eat right and so run a greater risk of being a burden on society. Same for smokers, or those who drive badly, or are promiscuous and so at risk of STDs. Same for those who do not exercise enough.
So, what would be the next step in putting this expanded version of your idea into action? Maybe we could have a big government database to review what people purchase on their credit cards at grocery stores and restaurants and score people's eating habits that way? Not sure how to check the other things... Maybe paid police informants like this one?
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/25/shock-undercover-police-agent-caught-on-tape-seemingly-planting-drugs-on-ny-business-owner/
Or maybe two-way telescreens in every room being mandatory? /sarcasm
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
There is a link between the fever that kids get as a result of the immunization that can cause autistic spectrum disorder due to an underlying mitochondrial disorder, but this only happens in less than .01% of the time.
There have been some studies linking prolonged fevers in the **pregnant mother** with increased risk of ASD...
There have also been some studies that indicate a prevalence of a certain type of mitochondrial disorder in those diagnosed with ASD...
However, I don't know of any studies that link any potential fever that a **child** gets due to vaccination to a mitochondrial disorder, or a predisposition to ASD. It appears that the underlying mitochondrial disorder itself may be the risk factor independent of any vaccination or fever.
This sounds to me a case of someone sympathetic to anit-vac camp putting 1+2 together and getting 10,000.