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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.
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!"
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.
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?
Modern society counteracts evolution by protecting the weak and stupid.
Ironically, this is also exactly what vaccinations do.
So is counteracting evolution good or bad?
This has been done and the non-vaccinated children had very slightly higher rates of autism. http://www.jpeds.com/content/JPEDSDeStefano
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
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
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.
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.
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
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