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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.
Now something else is all over them. Grats.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
If you'd had measles as an adult you might feel differently.
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.
---
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.
Take a look to see if there are any corresponding changes in rate of autism? Here's a nice chance to run a natural experiment--the non-vaccinated become the test group...
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.
Actually, he was exactly factually incorrect. This absolutely is a plague. A plague (as opposed to the plague) is defined as a significant elevation in a disease or pest's levels compared to the recent norm.
That's exactly what's being described here.
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.
http://nsnbc.me/2013/05/14/bbc-news-removes-false-claims-about-measles-epidemic-after-being-busted/
the moral of the story is if you believe the bbc which is run by ATOS and pay for it you deserve what you get
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.
There is something to see here, darwinism. And its might is as magnificent as that of a river.
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".
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?
Mod parent down all you like, but cracking the numbers is actually a pretty good idea.
If the non-vaccinated kids have significantly lower rates of autism, we accept that the MMR jab is responsible in some way, even if we don't understand how yet.
If not, we accept that the whole MMR avoidance thing is utter bullcrap.
Sounds like a fair way to run an unbiased experiment to me.
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.
That's what happens in an outbreak - a transmissible disease gains sufficient foothold in a community to spread wider than it usually does. It doesn't happen all the time, otherwise it wouldn't be unusual. Herd immunity provides protection when circumstances otherwise would conspire to allow for a disease to suddenly spread across a population.
It's like driving without a seatbelt on. You're fine, because you're unlikely to have a car crash. Maybe you can drive like this for a decade, until one unlucky day, a drunk guy goes through a red light and into the side of your car at 30 miles per hour. Suddenly not having a seatbelt becomes a huge problem.
Similarly, this community could sit there with its low vaccination levels quite happily, because it's surrounded by a big country mostly composed of people with the common sense to get vaccinated, and because of that, measles has a hard time getting around and reaching these poorly-vaccinated areas. Until one day, someone who happens to have the virus moves in, and it has the run of the place.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Is it?
There is something to see here, darwinism. And its might is as magnificent as that of a river.
Evolution is so powerful that it can be stopped by beavers?
That's very true, but when the lunatics and charlatans have political control in infested areas, you can't achieve eradication. That's why we still have polio and polio vaccines. To achieve eradication, you must have a disease that has no non-human hosts (e.g. polio, measles, smallpox) and governments willing for employ mandatory vaccination of everybody. And of course you must have highly effective vaccines. Not all vaccines are that effective.
This has been done and the non-vaccinated children had very slightly higher rates of autism. http://www.jpeds.com/content/JPEDSDeStefano
Mod parent down all you like, but cracking the numbers is actually a pretty good idea.
Numbers for what? The changes in autism numbers over the past decades are caused by changes in the diagnostic criteria. Your proposal seems more pointless that comparing apples and oranges. (Those can be compared at least spectroscopically, see Scott A. Sandford, "Apples and Oranges -- A Comparison," Annals of Improbable Research, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1995).)
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
I contemplated to change my name to distance myself as far as possible from this brain dead imbecile.
Jenny Coward? Is that you?
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.
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.
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
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).
Not statistically significant I'd say, but nonetheless incredibly funny.
Yeah, I'm a misanthrope. Deal.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Well, we'll be dammed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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?
While not the UK, the CDC here in the US did go so far as to declare an epidemic of Pertussis in Washington state:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6128a1.htm
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.
Take a look to see if there are any corresponding changes in rate of autism? Here's a nice chance to run a natural experiment--the non-vaccinated become the test group...
There wasn't.
This would have became apparent relatively quickly; this measles outbreak may be 15 years after the fact, but the autism rates would have been affected within the first few years if there was anything in this. They weren't.
The research that linked autism with this vaccination was soundly debunked within a few years of being released. The original paper was fully retracted in 2004, and the researcher found guilty of misconduct and fraud.
The full sorry story is documented on Wikipedia and many other places.
The really sad part is that even a decade after the story was retracted, there are still some people who are convinced that they shouldn't immunise their kids.
The trouble is that we live in a world where these diseases don't scare us any more because we don't see them. They ought to. If you want to know what happens to populations without immunity that are exposed to measles, try reading up on what happened when the Conquistadors introduced it to South America.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
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?
I didn't read TFA, but I'm pretty sure that the parents chose to withhold the vaccine, not that doctors randomly gave some kinds a placebo while giving the real thing to others.
Some good statistics might be able to glean some information from this (multilevel regression model or such thing), but it will not be as good as an unbiased experiment.
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.
They probably have the same rates, just that people who have a child who is autistic is probably more likely to not vaccinate subsequent children.
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
no they haven't, unless the parents are into travelling and bringing their kid with them.
what you're saying is.. well, remember the picture.. "I'm not saying it was aliens but it was!"
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I need to emphasise how extraordinarily unlikely it is for a measles outbreak to occur in a vaccinated population. Unless a new strain of measles has arisen that the vaccine is not effective against - and as far as I know measles is incredibly stable - then the only way that an outbreak can occur is in the unvaccinated population.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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?
Shut up Jenny.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
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?
but I wouldn't go around saying I'm a victim of plaque
the ironing is delicious!
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?
Oh, would you? And how many children would they need to study for it to be statistically significant?
Hint: the sample size required depends on the expected size of the effect you're looking for, and the confidence level you want. It does not depend much on population size (except for very small populations). A sample size of a thousand or so is more than enough to get statistically significant results in most cases, at an acceptable (i.e. publishable, usually 95% or higher) confidence level.
"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.
I think part of the problem is lots of people live in areas where the doctors are third world hacks that use webMD on their iPhones to diagnose patients. It's hard to trust incompetence. My kid broke his arm and after four trips to the local hospital latter I finally had to take him to an emergency room in a city two hours away after his arm swollen up like crazy and he was crying constantly. Local doctors said he sprained his elbow.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This isn't some subjective study where placebos will have an effect. I don't think 2 year olds are going to think "okay, that injection could have just been water, but I'm going to pretend to be Autistic for the rest of my life anyway".
which is totally what she said
Yeah, but you know what kills more people? The actual disease!
The rates of death and disability are so low they are acceptable vs the disease. It is a very simple tradeoff.
Who are ATOS? The lizard people, or the greys?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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.
Not exactly true; there are other factors.
Our son was born very premature, 2 lbs 12 oz. You could hold him in one hand. (He is a big strapping 13 year old now)
They are finding that there is a higher rate of autism in preemies compared to normal births. 'Decades' ago, there is a good chance he would not have survived, thus there is a higher incident of autism simply because preemies are surviving instead of dying.
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
No, but it does depend on outcome. A sample size of 10,000 and an outcome of 5,001 vs 4,999 doesn't tell me that the first option is clearly superior.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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
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?
No, but parents who are so worried about autism that they're willing to skip vaccines might be more (or less) likely to try and have their kid diagnosed with autism later in life if they start showing symptoms.
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.
Oh, would you? And how many children would they need to study for it to be statistically significant?
Statistically insignificant is a perfectly valid result - it means the difference is less than your margin of error. In other words, neither option is superior.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
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.
The research that linked autism with this vaccination was soundly debunked within a few years of being released. The original paper was fully retracted in 2004, and the researcher found guilty of misconduct and fraud.
True story: As soon as I was diagnosed with asbergers my parents had instant and perfect recollection of how my behavior changed radically after my MMR shot. A shot which happened more than 35 years before the diagnosis.
This despite the fact that anybody who have read the blue book instantly diagnoses my my entire family with various autism disorders.
Scape goat is the word.
TCAP-Abort
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?
The "test" was already done in Japan which stopped the jabs years ago. It made no difference to autism rates.
and i would be willing to bet people that had one autistic child is statistically more likely to have a second autistic child...
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.
Take a look to see if there are any corresponding changes in rate of autism? Here's a nice chance to run a natural experiment--the non-vaccinated become the test group...
There wasn't.
This would have became apparent relatively quickly; this measles outbreak may be 15 years after the fact, but the autism rates would have been affected within the first few years if there was anything in this. They weren't.
The research that linked autism with this vaccination was soundly debunked within a few years of being released. The original paper was fully retracted in 2004, and the researcher found guilty of misconduct and fraud.
The full sorry story is documented on Wikipedia and many other places.
The really sad part is that even a decade after the story was retracted, there are still some people who are convinced that they shouldn't immunise their kids.
The trouble is that we live in a world where these diseases don't scare us any more because we don't see them. They ought to. If you want to know what happens to populations without immunity that are exposed to measles, try reading up on what happened when the Conquistadors introduced it to South America.
This is a classic "outlier" or "three sigma" case.... people do not see any more the illness, and they think that vaccination is useless. I was born in 1962, so mine is the last generation to actually have suffered through all the then common children's diseases: mumps, measles etc. The only thing I was vaccinated for was smallpox.
now color me paranoid, but not only my son and daughter have been vaccinated against everything there's a common vaccine for, but if it was at all possible I'd have them vaccinated for smallpox too. I know "it's not there any more", but....
It has been proven, time and again, that human mind is not able on average to ascertain risk/rewards for low occurrence events, or to put them in relation to existing risks. This was a case in point.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
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.
This has been done and the non-vaccinated children had very slightly higher rates of autism.
http://www.jpeds.com/content/JPEDSDeStefano
Any possibility that there's been some conflating of stupidity with autism?
Because the non-vaccinated children certainly have massive amounts of stupidity gene in their immediate ancestors....
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.
The mere fact that someone might feel differently were they in a different situation than they are currently in does not mean that their current arguments are wrong.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
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
But those parents wouldn't be a part of whatever study the guy was proposing, because they ignore evidence while giving in to their fears.
which is totally what she said
It's two pronged. Disease doesn't scare us because we rarely see it while the reputation of the medical profession and the entire industry surrounding it is in decline.
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.
As soon as I was diagnosed with asbergers my parents had instant and perfect recollection of how my behavior changed radically after my MMR shot.
My child's behavior also changed radically just after the MMR shot. Crabby, grumpy, complained of soreness at the injection site, wouldn't eat all his food, low-grade fever, attitude problems.
I was hoping for a big settlement check but then a few days later these entirely normal reactions to a shot cleared up. Tough luck son, looks like you'll be getting a job in high school after all.
JennyMcCarthyBodyCourt.com, great site
A plague (as opposed to the plague) is defined as a significant elevation in a disease or pest's levels compared to the recent norm.
Plague is rarely used in such context in modern English. Epidemic is the technical term these days. Plague has been depricated :)
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
How is it living in Alabama? I hear the weather is nice.
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.
Mod parent down all you like, but cracking the numbers is actually a pretty good idea.
If the non-vaccinated kids have significantly lower rates of autism, we accept that the MMR jab is responsible in some way, even if we don't understand how yet.
If not, we accept that the whole MMR avoidance thing is utter bullcrap.
Sounds like a fair way to run an unbiased experiment to me.
They quit using the "mercury" preservative that purportedly causes autism over a decade ago, and the rate of autism diagnoses in young children has kept going up.
The doctor that started all of his has been shown to be a fraud, sponsored by an ambulance chaser.
Your experiment would be interesting, but it's not necessary. And the outcome wouldn't convince the True Believers anyway.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
So this whole thing was faked up? I'm sure slashdotters will rise up in outrage at the BBC, just as they have at Jenny McCarthy and Andrew Wakefield...
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The really sad part is that even a decade after the story was retracted, there are still some people who are convinced that they shouldn't immunise their kids.
This is the framing bias writ large. We can see in all sorts of recent events that many people don't change their opinions even when presented with the evidence that makes their initial conclusions unsupportable.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
and i would be willing to bet people that had one autistic child is statistically more likely to have a second autistic child...
You would win that bet. The risk is about twenty times higher, 1 in 5 instead of 1 in 110.
It dose tell you that there is statistically no real difference. Which means that Jenny and the stupid parents who listened are killing children.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
to play devils advocate here, medical scince has been wrong before:
It has been right a time or too as well.
The fact that science is sometimes wrong is not evidence that some particular fringe belief is correct. Remember that "They also laughed at Bozo the Clown".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"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.
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
At least you know you are a 'tard.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Because the correct form is probably 'mercuric', 'mercuride', or some other chemo-jargon that I don't know and wasn't motivated to look up.
And it's not like they pour a little elemental mercury into every vial, though that notion seems to be what the fear-mongering thrives on.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Small town "Doctors" seem to be incompetent. My mother-in-law lives in a small midwestern town. She' 92 years old. Went to the local quack because she had pain in her hip. He prescribed Celebrex. About a month later Celebrex no longer worked. She called him and he said double the dose. That didn't work either. What would you do if you're a doctor and a 90-something women comes in complaining about a hip pain? Everybody I've asked said, "take an X-ray." Finally she went to the emergency room in the nearest big city and that's just what they did and found she had a broken femur next to the hop socket. Replacement surgery solved the problem. This reminds me of the black humor joke: What do they call the person who graduates last in their medical school class? Answer: Doctor. Good question: why is the quack in my mother-in-law's tiny town practicing medicine there? Likely couldn't get a job anywhere else because he's incompetent.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
The potato people. GP meant to type ATMOS.
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'
But they *are* a part of the "experiment" that AC claims to be "a fair way to run an unbiased experiment" which is what I am disagreeing with. There is almost certainly a bias there - the children who were not immunized had parents who made the decision not to immunize them.
If you could find children who were, say, placed for adoption where the ultimate home they lived with was random, and some had been immunized and others had not, then if you had a statistically significant number of autism diagnoses from that population, then you would have a nice unbiased experiment (but even then you aren't normalizing for genetic predisposition to these diseases that they might have inherited from their birth parents). But you probably don't have enough data from adoptions so the children who did not get vaccines were raised by parents who did not give them vaccines, and that type of parenting may be strongly correlated (positively or negatively) with autism diagnoses at later ages. Hence it will be very biased, and although statistical techniques can reduce that bias somewhat, one cannot expect conclusions coming out of this data to hold the same scientific rigor as a proper double bind study.
IIRC, it was poor experiment design that started this whole thing (yes that is an understated euphemism for the improper conduct that actually occurred), so I'm not just being pedantic - there are important distinctions to be made between the scientific method versus "statistics on a bunch of data I found."
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.
I don't know about the incompetent doctors being rural .. There are programs around my part of Kansas practically begging doctors and dentists to locate in rural areas, offering signing bonuses, accelerated payoff of student loans (as part of the compensation package),
Which would indicate an even higher likelihood that any autism increase isn't a result of the vaccine, no?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I don't believe that's the case. it wasn't a case of not believing measles was still a problem, but of aversion to believed risks of the vaccine. Measles isn't fun, but it's 'just' a disease. Autism is a lifelong condition with no cure (obviously various levels). People didn't want to expose their children to that lifelong risk and so avoided the vaccine.
Different than believing the vaccine wasn't needed.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Plague has been depricated :)
So it should show up in a different color? ;-)
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Oh don't start with the facts here.... You know how these things get reported by the press. Appeal to the emotion, quote the statistical "it's possible" and go out and find the one or two odd bad outcomes from taking the vaccine and you can get parents around the world to demand that THEIR child not get vaccinated.
I personally know of a young girl who's life was ruined by a bad reaction to a vaccine, but my children where vaccinated anyway. The statistics do NOT lie about this. The medical studies are clear that vaccines are safe and effective or they will NOT be used. Unless they are less risky than the illness they treat, no doctor in his right mind would give them.
Parents.... Do the right thing and do the vaccines recommended by your doctors. Chances are it's going to be better for your child..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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
*blind
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
I don't believe that's the case. it wasn't a case of not believing measles was still a problem, but of aversion to believed risks of the vaccine. Measles isn't fun, but it's 'just' a disease. Autism is a lifelong condition with no cure (obviously various levels). People didn't want to expose their children to that lifelong risk and so avoided the vaccine. Different than believing the vaccine wasn't needed.
thanks for the example. Risk for the vaccine giving out other kinds of outcomes, and/or not preventing measles, is statistically known. Stats for various bad consequences of measles is known also, and believe you me, my father was the village MD so I know, when measles gets in the community you either have immunity or you get it; it is quite contagious.
so, since people perceive an outlier risk of great gravity (autism) and of uncertain probability (later shown as non significant, but that's not needed; it would work equally for proven stats of very low incidence, for example low enough to take it under the chance of being permanently disabled in a car crash), they cause disabilities in their own sons and daughters.
That reminds me of what Nassim Taleb told me at a conference; the twin towers killed more than 3.000 people. Wanna know how? people switched from air travel to cars.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
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
Yeah, but you know what kills more people? The actual disease!
Yeah, but first you have to catch the disease. And in this day and age, it is far more likely to die from a vaccine than it is to catch the disease in the first place. Therefore my child will take that risk.
Yes, I realize the folly of that logic. I'm simply saying what I suspect others may be thinking.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Because it's not the normal "bad" mercury that everyone knows about. The type they used in vaccines was able to be naturally excreted. The bad kind cannot.
Now there's a hint and what really is going on. Narcissistic parents looking to blame something, anything for their defective children, which can't possibly have come from their perfect gene's. That's the real sickness, parents who want to parade their children around like prize pet's and always seeking to blame other's for their children's failures.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
This is not correct: Measles isn't fun, but it's 'just' a disease. This might be true for children. But it is no longer true for young adults and adults. Getting measles when you are in puberty can lead to very nasty side effects. As an adult you get easy brain or lung infections that either render you brain damaged or dead very easily.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Well one option has you at much higher risk of getting the disease that is being vaccinated. In that regard, one of the options is superior.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Think you're missing out a few there...
Born in '67, vaccinated against Diptheria, Whooping cough, polio and TB...
Not too sure on the smallpox., maybe by my time, it'd been officially eradicated.
Well yes, that's a given. WRT autism though, neither option is superior (as it were).
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
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?
It shouldn't be a surprise that the reputation of the medical profession is in decline when they do things like tell parents that chicken pox and polio are equal threats to health.
Would there be a population stupid enough to take the medical advice of a porn star over that of a physician
Better hope that in his entire life they never goes anywhere vaccination isn't routinely practiced. Given the folks who are anti-vaccination, its going to be rare for them to get out of your rotorwash; but it really sucks rocks to get a childhood disease (in my case chickenpox) as an adult. From (I believe) a non-english speaking checkout dude at Target (he was showing bumps, coulda been acne, started a few days later tho, I worked from home so little interaction with the greater unwashed...).
You really are exposed to more of the uncontrolled world than you think, and will be more so in the future. The game theory that says avoiding the vaccination risk in an otherwise totally vaccinated population is a win fails to account for the risk of being unvaccinated in a population of marginally vaccinated. Then your risk skyrockets.
andy
Yes, some localities offer lots of incentives, but in the end, they're still in Buttfuck, KS. Doctors who want the excitement and activities available nearer large population centers still won't relocate, my wife among them.
I'd say that's not helping their cause one bit.
Not exactly true; there are other factors. Our son was born very premature, 2 lbs 12 oz. You could hold him in one hand. (He is a big strapping 13 year old now) They are finding that there is a higher rate of autism in preemies compared to normal births. 'Decades' ago, there is a good chance he would not have survived, thus there is a higher incident of autism simply because preemies are surviving instead of dying.
Thank you for taking the time to point this out. I don't think this is properly taken into consideration.
If enough people do that, the outcome will be predictable.
No, it means that the tested hypothesis has not been proven, and you must yield to the current null hypothesis. If you run an experiment and the results don't support the test, that *is* the result. When you start saying that you don't have a result, you end up with things like the Vioxx case.
Exactly. My kids are not more or less important than anyone else's kids. And that's the exact reason why they will be vaccinated. No one should be forced to deal with some disease because some looney decided to punch a gaping hole in our herd immunity. Sacrifice yourself, don't sacrifice others.
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?!
We need a good plague to get idiots to realize how immunity works. We're about due anyways - it's been what, nearly a hundred years since the Spanish flu pandemic? It just makes me sad when you have people in Haiti and Africa literally begging for vaccinations so their kids might have a chance at survival, and affluent anti-vaxxers who are so deadset against it because there is a miniscule chance reported by a retracted study that their kid MIGHT get an ultimately survivable disease. Because you know, their kid becoming infected with a disease and spreading it to the rest of the susceptible population is SO much better. The dichotomy is heartbreaking. Buy the damn vaccine and send it overseas if you don't want it so someone who isn't a moron can have a chance.
I think this happens in almost every branch of medicine, and it doesn't specifically require 3rd world hacks. For instance, I have a history of getting peritonsillar abscesses about every other year (basically pre-tonsillitis, the cell barrier around the tonsil has been breached and if I get a bad sore throat, the whole thing turns into a massive abscess that has to be lanced, drained, and I have to be given huge amounts of antibiotics). I can't get my tonsil's removed because the recovery time for an adult is more than a month out of work. Several times now I have gone to the hospital, told the attending doctor exactly what the issue was, how it needed to be treated, what antibiotics work, what anabolic steroid to use, and how much liquified vicodin I need to be able to start eating again (your throat almost swells shut). More than 3/4ths of the time, the attending doctor would tell me it was just strep throat and give me some minor meds. I finally got fed up with it and pay the extra for no-referral insurance. I call the ENT, make an appointment, get my throat lanced, and am relieved in about 3 hours. I think the issue may have something to do with lots of resident hospitals using almost exclusively resident physicians. A resident is not the same thing as a full experienced doctor, and hospitals seem to forget that. Especially when it isn't your usual broken arm, gunshot wound or case of the sniffles.
There have been isolated outbreaks of smallpox, so you may be a trend setter.
Ah yes, I suppose the mentality is, "it is better to risk death from measles than to live with a special needs child who is mostly functional."
The old death rate from measle pneumonia was 30%, and it still is for anyone who is immunocompromised (though with modern medicine it has dropped to as low as .3% for healthy people). 90% of unvaccinated people will get the disease when they come in contact with an infected person. Not disagreeing with you at all, those death rates only include the pneumonia side-effect.
The whole "officially eradicated" thing makes no sense to me, especially when we still see outbreaks. In 2011 there was a sizable outbreak in Jakarta. So how can something be eradicated if it still pops up in the wild?
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.
In related news, polls find 7% believe the moon landing was a hoax.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I never said it was a logical choice :)
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
This is my complaint with the Chicken Pox vaccine. The Chicken Pox vaccine has already shown to not offer life long protection. Getting the disease does offer life long protection. It is a relatively mild disease that less than a third as dangerous as home cooked meals. So far, we have seen a drop from about 100 deaths a year to somewhere around ~50. The kids are being temporarily protected. Thus chicken pox has a hard time getting around and reaching the vulnerable adults. In another 10 years, we are likely to have an adult population that has no immunity and is only avoiding the disease because it is uncommon. Until one day someone who happens to have the virus moves in...
You seem to be suffering from a plague of apostrophes. You should see if there's a pill for that, or seek a career in making signs for restaurants.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
I don't think Slashdot IDs are up to 8675309.
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 is the probability of being killed while wearing a seatbelt in a situation where you would survive by not wearing one?
"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
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.
Yes, it is. Since the data shows no correlation between vaccination and autism, the hypothesis that vaccination leads to autism has been de-bunked. Not that it ever was a hypothesis even.
Compared the number of children who'd die from the disease., the number who die from the vaccine. Since there is no link between autism and vaccine, that means that only heavily moronic parents would not vaccinate their children, and morons who put their children at risk because they hold a nonsense belief should be disqualified as parents and their children removed from their care.
And in this day and age, it is far more likely to die from a vaccine than it is to catch the disease in the first place
Someone who "reasons" in this way were eitther born stupid or or had parents hitting them over the head with hammers for the formative years of their life.
Therefore my child will take that risk
That is a logic that disqualifies you as a parent, and you should also be shunned by normal society since you are putting countless children at risk of dying. So far, Jenny McCarthy, and other anti-vaccination nuts are directly responsible for almost 1200 dead children in the US alone, and more than 10 000 children who got sick, many with long-term negative effects.
Please, I'd love to see the documentation for that. The only thing I have found was a rumor of an outbreak in Jharkhand, India, but it turned out to be chickenpox.
To my knowledge, all outbreaks of smallpox the past few decades have resulted from researchers handling the virus in a lab setting.
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
Keep in mind that the margin of error depends on your confidence level. So, to be completely correct, one would need to say that something is statistically insignificant at a 95% confidence level or something.
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
There are many more suspected cases this year than suspected cases last year. The number of confirmed cases was not reported for last year, so the BBC used the numbers given, a direct comparison to the year before. They have reported cases for both years. There is provably more measles this year than last. There is some argument about how much more, but that's not important to the story itself.
Plus, BBC didn't lie. They were given official numbers, and wrote a story around them. The numbers weren't faked, and even if you disagree with them, the BBC wasn't complicit in coming up with them.
Learn to love Alaska
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
I don't believe that. I had seen my immunization records long ago, needed them to get into college. My children have had fewer shots than me, though for more diseases. The ones added are good ones to add. The newer child had chicken pox immunization. The older child had the pox, and got scars from it. Ask him in 20 years whether he'd rather have had one shot he'll never remember or a lifetime of scars (though not too bad, and mainly arms).
Learn to love Alaska
Run the numbers on high power (I.E. higher resolution) ultrasounds vs. autism and ultrasounds look a hell of a lot more likely to be a cause than the MMR vaccine.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I've often wondered, since we presently diagnose autism symptomatically, we can't even be sure we're talking about one condition, or multiple conditions with similar symptoms.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Big snore
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
I need to emphasise how extraordinarily unlikely it is for a measles outbreak to occur in a vaccinated population. Unless a new strain of measles has arisen that the vaccine is not effective against - and as far as I know measles is incredibly stable - then the only way that an outbreak can occur is in the unvaccinated population.
What an absolute load of bullshit
Measles (Rubeola) in Previously Immunized Children, Pediatrics Vol. 46 No. 3 September 1970, pp. 397-402
Measles Outbreak among Vaccinated High School Students — Illinois, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) 1984 Report
A measles outbreak at a college with a prematriculation immunization requirement. American Journal of Public Health (1991)
Explosive School-based Measles Outbreak, American Journal of Epidemiology, 1998
Largest Measles Outbreak in the Americas since 2000: Quebec Ongoing Epidemic, IDSA Boston Oral Abstract, 2011
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.
Crack the numbers correctly, too. the MMR vaccine and autism are your variables - where are all the controls, and how are you going to get human trials on this? The parent is making health decisions for the child; a parent who would choose - on the continuum of risk vs. reward - to deny the vaccine in order to lessen the chance of autism is going to make a lot of life-decisions for that child. Someone with the resources of Jenny McC can afford to put her child in a less-densely populated school, fresh fruits and vegetables, weeks of vacation to spend bonding with the child(-ren) .. where the average, city-dwelling parent is working 2 jobs; cannot afford to shop at Whole Foods, and especially cannot afford the annual tuition of a 4-door sedan per year of PreSchool through 8th grade.
How does these numbers change when your primary food market is a bodega / deli within walking distance; your air quality is polluted by transit and/or industry, your teenage child is raising your 7 and 8 year-olds, or , more suburban (or in Greely, Colorado) your water quality, (and base noise level) is affected by all those fracking wells down the road?
Don't get me wrong - I don't think the Medical establishment has the only right answer.. just a good approximation of what is available, combined with economic and social pressures. My "western-trained" doctor recommended that I follow a diet inspired by Gary Null http://prn.fm/tag/gary-null/ over 30 years ago; he even offered me a hand-me-down juicer because his wife just bought him a new one. I practice meditation, and I see many yoga techniques adopted in modern physical therapy. I also think that most parents have the right to decide what is best for their offspring.
However - I want to know if I'm sending my kid to school and a few of his classmates were never immunized for life-threatening diseases.
One last philosophy question: which is more valued to society? preserving the mind of a child who might get autism from a vaccine, or the life of a child who dies from exposure to disease from a non-vaccinated peer?
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.