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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.
If you'd had measles as an adult you might feel differently.
DR;PW (did not read;pay walled)
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...
Why wasn't Jesus born in Wales?
Because God couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.
"I keed! I KEEED!"
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.
Two things. Yes, medical professionals need to act more scrupulously. But also, education needs to be advanced. People don't understand science so when doctors tell them something they weren't telling them yesterday they get all in a tiff.
As long as the system is so clearly corrupted by money, though, people aren't going to trust health care professionals. 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. As long as doctors continue to prescribe whatever drugs the reps are wining and dinind them over, we're all going to know it's a scam. As long as hospitals continue to charge whatever the market will bear, we're all going to know it's a scam.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
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.
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?
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?
I don't really blame her; she's probably doesn't have the kind of technical background that innoculates you against quackery. Nor do I really blame Andrew Wakefield; he's proven himself to be a poor scientist and generally a colossal douche, but in science there are mechanisms in place to deal with that (peer review etc). The real blame does indeed lie with the newspapers, who don't have a fucking clue about science and will send out the same guy who does the cinema reviews to cover a medical story. He of course studied Hispanic literature or whatever and doesn't know the first thing about science reporting, and falls prey to every logial fallacy and unconscious bias along the way.
Newspapers should take truth and accurate reporting seriously. They should have a science editor with a scientific background who can check the work of the reporters. If they're not going to do it, and the consequence is panics and deaths, then perhaps we (i.e. our government) need to do it for them via a regulator.
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?
This has been done and the non-vaccinated children had very slightly higher rates of autism. http://www.jpeds.com/content/JPEDSDeStefano
The answer to different medics having different opinions on a non-certain condition isn't to ask non-medics.
If you were building a bridge and two different concrete experts gave you two different opinions, you'd ask a third one or decide which you trust more based on other information. You wouldn't ask a shaman to invoke the spirit of the mountain into wet sand, and build your bridge with it.
No, Andrew Wakefield deserves a good chunk of the blame. He has caused children to die by his self-aggrandising actions, and in a just world would be up on charges for it.
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 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.
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.
Citation please. You seem to be stating a fact without any sort of substantiation.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
As in, I'm protected against epidemic outbreaks by the basement walls.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
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.
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!)
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.
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?
There's a transient effect of the current infection rate on future rates. If you have the same immunization coverage, but fewer people are infected, the likelihood of a non-immunized person coming in contact with a carrier is lower, thus the present infection rate will be lower.
The insidious bit of this particular story was that there was a supposed cover-up in which doctors were hiding the "truth" for various reasons. At that point her choice was:
a) Newspaper: if you get the MMR jab, your child might get autism, which is an incurable disability requiring a lifetime of support. Even Tony Blair refuses to say whether his kids have had it so it must be true, and the government/NHS is lying to you.
b) Doctor: if you don't get the MMR jab, your child might get measles which in a few cases can lead to complications or even be fatal.
Ordinary, lottery-playing people aren't really in a position to judge the probabilities involved, even were the newspapers' position true.
The newspapers facilitated him for their own self-interest. So they're all just awful, awful people, Wakefield and press alike.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I'm just saying that if I, a very rational person with above average IQ, has fears and doubts about getting his kid immunized for things that are a remote possibility of contracting...
I'm not trying to be insulting or confrontational here, but..
You're actually not being rational. You're obsessing over a syndrome that science has a hard time even defining. All the research seems to indicate multi-factor causes and multiple-path development toward the syndrome. You'd have more luck trying to avoid cancer. At least we recognize most of the mechanisms behind cancer. Cancer is also far more likely.
And that's an important point.
The reason I'm saying that you (and thousands of other parents) and being irrational is that you're worried about protecting your child from a very real risk with possibly severe side effects because of an extremely tiny risk of that treatment being one of the two dozen components which might trigger a syndrome. I could almost understand that tradeoff... if you hadn't driven your car to the clinic -- an action that is probably an order of magnitude more likely to kill your child than the shot is to give them autism.
I repeat this story often when this subject comes up, and I really need to spend some time to find the original article: There was a story about a school district where a parent had spotted a stranger near the school while students were going to buses after school. The school insisted that staff was keeping a close eye on students and offered to increase its presence in the area. A number of parents let their fears override their rationality, and began driving their kids to school instead of letting them take the bus. The more parents who stopped using the buses, the more that followed suit. After a month, the school sent out notices, begging parents to use the buses. Over the month, two children had been killed in car accidents, and two more injured. The stranger was never seen again, and there was never any evidence to suggest they were anything more than a coincidental passer-by. But in order to "save" their kids from an unsubstantiated, extremely rare threat, the parents willingly subjected them to an even greater threat, which had very real effects.
And yet the fraud itself was uncovered by other scientists. So it would appear that the process itself is more-or-less working.
It is distrust of medicine as a science - look at what people are faced with:
- Doctors who wont prescribe birth controls, because of the doctors faith, not the patients.
- Anyone with the title "Dr" (of what, from where) can appear on TV and flog the latest magic beans from the amazon as a cure for everything, unopposed.
- Advertising for every 3 month cycle of trendy "natural/traditional/herbal/secret" cures also attacks pharmaceuticals as "unnatural chemicals"
- Any a time a doctor screws up its a news worthy event
- Everyone has a friend who went to a doctor (or doctors) that misdiagnosed something major (anecdotal: I know someone who saw 4 doctors before the last finally noticed the fist sized tumour growing a creeper up her spine).
- All doctors are paid by drug companies to play golf, everyone knows that.
Is it any wonder when something as scary as "MMR causes autism" hits the headlines, people take notice and don't ask their doctors. Everything in the media screams "don't trust doctors", why take the risk of autism, doctors have been wrong before?
As a parent of ASD diagnosed twins it certainly crossed my mind did it start when they were immunised. Certainly it was a traumatic time and I felt their behaviour changed after, but no, the symptoms were there before but they just were not advanced enough for it to be obvious. It didn't help that doctors kept telling us "they are twins, they will develop late" (see!). My wife and I as two reasonably intelligent people, knowing the MMR link was debunked, still wanted to put off further immunisations - the fear was there, even though we knew it was not to blame. How can you blame other people with less discerning processing and intelligence to make better decisions with so much bad information.
That said I really feel some parents want something to blame - "its not my genes, it was that evil MMR which was just a scam by doctors to sell drugs.". I looked for it when we got the news - something else was to blame, not us. I can imagine others do something similar.
"If everybody is thinking alike, somebody isn't thinking" - Gen. George S. Patton
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.
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
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
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
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)
Thanks for insulting me. Now I can take the safeties off the weapons.
Did you really mean to say that out loud? Deary deary me.
Thimerosal has been shown to break down inside the body in exactly the way it isn't supposed to.
If it breaks down at all (most of it is excreted intact over a period of a few days or weeks) it forms ethylmercury which is not exactly harmless but is not particularly potent. Methylmercury is a lot nastier and anti-vaccination loons often don't or won't realise the difference a single letter makes in a chemical compound name hence the fluff and fluster from ill-informed folks like yourself.
And the chlorine in salt isn't the kind of chlorine that's really harmful, which is why what you're saying is fucking hilarious.
ORLY? What kind of not-really-harmful chlorine are you referring to? All isotopes of Cl are equally poisonous in elemental form and there are no other alternative forms of chlorine in the universe (well, my universe at least. I don't know what it's like where you come from). In table salt the Cl atom is bound very closely to a sodium atom, in Thimerosal the Hg atom is linked to a sulphur atom and an ethyl group, the latter of which results in ethylmercury if the molecule breaks at the sulphur bond. If there is a pathway to produce methylmercury it doesn't seem to be common or prevalent before the byproducts get excreted.
you can't comprehend that Thimerosal isn't the only preservative available.
It's a very good preservative for the specific job of preventing lots of deaths and injury from contaminated bulk vaccine -- see for example the incident (referred to in the Google article about Thimerosal) in 1928 when a batch of contaminated diptheria vaccine killed 12 children out of 21 treated. Thimerosal doesn't affect the vaccine which in many cases is basically a low-grade infection as far as the body is concerned, a soup of protein coats and killed viruses that antiseptics are designed to destroy. Thimerosal is well-proven with a long track record of not being deleterious to the population being vaccinated. What more could you want?
J schools are the problem.
Or maybe it's just that the media thrives on controversy, not on informing the public.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
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