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Study Confirms No Link Between MMR Vaccine and Autism
An anonymous reader sends word of a new study (abstract) into the relationship between the MMR vaccine and kids who develop autism. In short: there is no relationship, even for kids at high risk of developing autism. From the article:
[Researchers] examined records from a large health insurer to search for such an association. They checked the status of children continuously enrolled in the health plan from birth to at least 5 years old during 2001 to 2012. The children also had an older brother or sister continuously enrolled for at least six months between 1997 and 2012. "Consistent with studies in other populations, we observed no association between MMR vaccination and increased ASD risk among privately insured children.We also found no evidence that receipt of either 1 or 2 doses of MMR vaccination was associated with an increased risk of ASD among children who had older siblings with ASD." ... [An accompanying editorial said,] "Taken together, some dozen studies have now shown that the age of onset of ASD does not differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated children, the severity or course of ASD does not differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated children, and now the risk of ASD recurrence in families does not differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated children."
... Because this discovery was made by science.
They will just claim this is
1) Big pharma conspiracy
2) Jewish conspiracy
3) Both of the above
Antivaxers will only refer to science when it supports their own theories.
another study confirms that water is wet.
The normal people knew it already.
The conspiracy nuts will think it's just another layer of the whole conspiracy.
Bluntly, if it was just for them, I'd say "let Darwin win at least sometimes". The problem is that they're a threat to everyone around them, too.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My mind's made up, don't confuse me with the facts!
for me. for you, there is a link since you believe one to exist. sorta like string theory.
I read on this website I found on google with "Vaccines cause autism" a lot of people claiming that it does in fact cause it! I prefer believing random people on the internet than to believe actual scientific evidences!
http://howdovaccinescauseautism.com/
That's the real conundrum, I don't are about the MMR issue so much.
When I read "Study Confirms No Link Between MMR Vaccine and Autism", it sounds that "the final truth" has been found out about something.
Is it really the case?
Wouldn't it be more accurate to instead say something like: "One Study Finds No Correlation Between MMR Vaccine and Autism"?
The problem were not the people which trusted medical research to begin with. the problem was always the mccarthy of the world which distrust "big pharma" and their "research" and all of them, those anti vaxxer "know" that MMR vaccine make their kids have autism and they have even anecdote to boot.
Good luck convincing the faithful. Some rare one may be, but if it was that easy, there would be no major religion by now.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Stuff about vaccines and autism?
Then it was the vaccine itself - So0 thte stupid fucks stopped vaccinating their children - No change.
Thn they listened to a porno princess whoo's qualifications were? none.
Then it was proven that the "researcher was operating in tandem with a lawyer to make money off sympathetic juries. A lie based on lies, but they still believe.
Then Autism speaks sychophants started foaming at the mouth when certain people were removed from the "autism spectrum", because they really needed and demanded that rising epidemic.
You are as likely to change these people's minds about vaccines as you are to convince a fundamentalist Christian that the world wasn't created in 4004 b.c.e.
In fact, anti-vaxxers are just the liberal version of creationists.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Even though I don't think there is a link am I the only one baffled that they claim to have proven a negative. in reality they proved that getting the MMR does not appear to increase the chances of developing ASD. but what the headline states is an overreach.
But did anyone ask Jenny McCarthy about it?
Do you have ESP?
I found an interesting article about autism. And I'm treating it just like the anti-vaxxers. I found it on Facebook. I'm applying no scientific analysis of the contents. I'm spreading it around without putting any real thought into it, expecting everyone to just mindlessly forward it to as many people as they can find.
Is it even about autism anymore? I'm lucky enough to have some family members that are anti-vax and post about it frequently on Facebook, and it's never about autism. Now everything is about "chemicals" and "toxins" and staying natural and how measles didn't kill our grandparents. They've made up their mind, so it won't matter if science shoots down an excuse that was never in doubt to anyone that cared about science. They'll just come up with another excuse that is just as baseless.
There are some valid questions regarding our vaccine policy and it's impacts on health, which you can't find because shills on both side drown out any discussion.
People, including many medical professionals, are questioning two aspects of our policy.
1. Why have vaccines and autism rates both grown exponentially in the last 25 years? (no, detection does not come close to answering)
2. Why can we not separate vaccines into proper discussion?
The first question is related to how in 1989 Kids up until age 18 received 7 vaccines. Today, it is 72. That is a very drastically different number, and 10X is about the same rate that autism has increased. Correlation does not always equate to causation, but in this case the numbers are close. Some theories related to how many vaccines kids are getting in a single sitting. The body is having to react to the impact of a dozen diseases simultaneously depending on the series. Others relate to a change in practices where kids are getting vaccines on a schedule without evaluating their health. A body fighting off influenza is not going to be able to fight off Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Polio, Diphtheria, Varicella, and every other disease they attempt to stuff into a schedule.
The second part surely relates to the first, but is a different discussion. That is why are we attempting to force vaccines for so many diseases and viruses that are NOT deadly or debilitating?
For example: The highest rate of mortality for Chicken Pox is 100 out of 300Million. This was what could possibly be attributed, which means that most of these people were already fatally ill with things like Leukemia when they contracted the Chicken Pox. The mortality rate of the vaccine according to the CDC is 1 in 30,000. (The actual wording on the CDC site is that 2 out of 15,000 will have extremely severe reactions to the vaccine, and 1 of those will be fatal.
You can do the math, and validate those numbers with US Census and CDC information.
To carry that thought a bit further (again you can validate this on the US CDC) We must give 3 vaccines for Varicella to have a reasonable chance of immunity. So the chances of a fatality from a vaccine is actually much higher than 1 in 30,000. Again, for a disease that was not considered fatal, or debilitating in any way.
You can run the same comparisons for morbidity and mortality for influenza and see a similar set of numbers. Try again with Gardasil which Texas attempted to mandate for boys and girls.
What vaccines are you talking about when you make your claims makes a huge difference in how we hold a discussion. Let me see if your point is educated at all, or if you are just a noise maker.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I'm not here to say there's a link between autism and vaccinations. I really have no idea. But the study looked to see if children who had siblings with autism were more likely to develop autism if they were vaccinated with the MMR. This really presupposes that there's a genetic link to autism and that multi-sibling families are more likely to have multiple children develop autism. As far as I know, that's a theory but not proven. Antivaccers often say that vaccines don't cause autism in otherwise healthy children but do cause it in children who are susceptible to brain inflammation. So, it theoretically makes sense to do a sibling study, since many people would believe that the sibling of an autistic child is more likely to be susceptible to the inflammatory effects of aluminum in the vaccines. However, whether you are pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine, as far as I know, there are no studies that show siblings of autistic children are, in fact, at higher risk for developing autism, and even if they are, that the cause of the higher risk is due to shared DNA mutations.
The more accurate headline on Slashdot and the UT San Diego website would be, "Study finds immunized siblings of autistic children not at higher risk of developing autism than immunized siblings of unaffected children."
I wanted to give my kids autism.
Think of it this way. You're living in your mom's womb, then you get born. Your mom's womb is pretty darn sterile. Suddenly, you're born and you're literally being assaulted by every germ around you, with probably thousands of them being encountered by your immune system every day.
How are a *few* shots (7 may seem like a lot to you) going to compare against thousands of things all hitting the naive immune system of an infant all at once, starting from birth, every day?
Or is it the fact that the particular antigen is injected into a muscle supposed to make it more scary?
It just seems to me that the amount of antigens presented to someone during a shot is just completely dwarfed by the natural exposure. It's just that the select few antigens in the shots just happen to be particularly helpful in helping you resist *actual serious disease*.
Also, I can't find your "varicella vaccine mortality rate of 1 in 30,000" information on the CDC website, Please provide source. What I found was this: "Other serious problems, including severe brain
reactions and low blood count, have been reported after
chickenpox vaccination. These happen so rarely experts
cannot tell whether they are caused by the vaccine or
not. If they are, it is extremely rare." I think we would hear about it if thousands of people died from the chickenpox vaccine.
Furthermore, they also say that only the FIRST dose has such an extreme reaction. So the "much higher than 1/30,000" claim you make is extremely dubious.
--PM
--PM
"Normal people" are not sufficiently technically skilled (probably you included) to be able to "know" except by appeal to authority, ...
That's how this whole controversy started - by fraudulent science by Dr. Andrew Wakefield. What are people supposed to do? Say nevermind, I'll wait for his studies to be peer reviewed and in the meantime, I'm going to risk my kid's health? And don't get me started on Jenny McArthy's total irresponsibility and our society's worship of celebrity.
And regular folks see how something is "bad" for you and then "good" for you and then "bad" again and on and on and on. Science reporting in the general media is irresponsible and I really think the scientific community needs to be a little more careful in their announcements to the public. Actually, I do not think reputable scientists should announce their findings directly to the public. It's one thing if a science reporter sees a paper in a journal, it's another when the scientist(s) calls for a press conference. And they should follow that guideline to protect their own reputations - does anyone remember the first Cold Fusion announcement? Those guys ended up with a lot of egg on their faces. That wouldn't have happened if they waited for the peer review.
See? The science of Astrology explains it all!
In the US, with proper care and diet, measles is about .5% fatal or less to someone who was not vaccinated. Even if you don't die you've got a significant (~1%) chance of having some sort of brain damage (I'm including deafness/blindness in "brain damage".)
If you have a vitamin A deficiency, though, measles can be up to 25% (or so) fatal.
Measles isn't a joke and like polio, we should eradicate it if we can.
--PM
It's a pity we have to spend research money on crap like this.
It diverts resources from useful things, so that stupid people who think Jenny McCarthy is a fucking credible source of medical information can still choose to be stupid people and not listen to facts.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The OP got the figures very wrong - there is no way a vaccine with a 1 in 30k chance of death would be approved. However lurking in all that misinformation there is a point struggling to get out. The rate of severe complications and/or death from the Chicken Pox vaccine is probably comparable to the risk of serious complications or death from the disease at least to within the limits of statistical analysis because the risk from either is so incredibly low.
There is also something particular to Chicken Pox which makes the vaccine even less desirable: length of immunity. If you actually catch Chicken Pox you get immunity for life. However if you vaccinate against it you need to continuously remember to get boosters - I believe currently every 10 or 20 years - otherwise your immunity may lapse. What is bad about this is that Chicken Pox for adults is known as Shingles which is far nastier than Chicken Pox. So in this case taking the vaccine to protect against a very mild childhood disease may lead to an increased chance of a more serious disease later in life...unless you set a 20 year alarm so you never forget a booster shot!
Pushing extremely dubious vaccines like Chicken Pox is a very bad idea. There are very legitimate questions you can ask about the value of this vaccine - it's certainly not dangerous but it is of very questionable benefit. The problem is that idiots then make the illogical leap that if one vaccine is dubious they all must be.
Seriously...if you believe vaccines are the answer to all the worlds ills, just take them...yourself, and if your kids are like you...give them a couples shots too.
I see a lot of rabid idiots posting here about things they think they know. A few can claim to experts. Please either learn to be civil or shut up. If you can't be civil and can't shut up it just proves how truly stupid you are.
He was developing perfectly normal hitting each developmental milestone. After the doctor injected the second MMR vaccine he was knocked unconscious for 45 minutes. The doctor said it's normal, don't worry about it. He changed and was diagnosed with autism shortly after. So I call BS on this "study". Read Andrew Wakefield's book. He goes point by point about everything media and courts said about him and proves their lied about everything.
On camera interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGOtDVilkUc
NVICP has paid out $3 billion in compensation for vaccine injury:
http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/data.html
Vaccine injury table:
http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/vaccinetable.html
Vaccine Court Awards Millions to Two Children With Autism
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/post2468343_b_2468343.html
Elmo Vaccination Video Blasted by Watchdog Groups
http://www.thewrap.com/elmo-vaccination-video-blasted-by-watchdog-groups/
What Watchdog Group? It is blasted by the National Vaccine Information Center, a nutbar Anti-Vax group that still believes autism is still associated with vaccination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Information_Center
Interesting how it wasn't until various drug companies started pushing their "anti-autism" drugs that the medical community started diagnosing (actually, misdiagnosing just about 'brain development' related issue as ) autism. As far as I have read, autism is not a "disease", but a cluster of symptoms indicative of a misconfiguration or incomplete growth of the brain - at birth - that the sufferer occasionally is able to grow out of. The chances of a person being able to outgrow this condition are dependent on several factors (not ordered in any rank):
1. How severely the misconfiguration is - Under-development vs not present. Runs the gamut from a slight mis-wire to a meth-high spider monkey with a punch tool.
2. How stupid their parents attempts are in "treating" it - Give the kid drugs in order to be an "absent" parent vs. force the kid to be active.
3. Nutrition - If your kid doesn't eat right, the brain won't grow right.
4. Mental Stimulus - Ignore your kid, don't pay them any attention, and see what you get.
5. Generic health care.
Real diseases (mumps, chickenpox, etc) can be prevented/treated.
Autism is a bunch of conditions, not a disease. Only some forms of autism are permanent, most is temporary.
Mental Diseases that have no basis in fact (Anti-Vaxxers, Conspiracy Theorists, etc) are self-inflicted.
Actually, if you think detection can't come close to answering, you're probably mostly buying the antivaxxer accounts--and I'm being quite charitable there. Admittedly, a good part of it also comes from changing the diagnostic criteria, which is a Problem because as my dev psych professor brutally put it, it's the end of the goddamn bell curve--literally so, as a certain amount of autistic behavior is within the range of normal, which means that if you want to increase the number of people with autism the easiest way is to literally lower the threshold.
This folds into the fact that, frankly, the US school system has a perverse incentive to have as many students as possible diagnosed with a disability--they get money for it--and it's one of the easiest ones to game this way. (Yes, this qualifies as practicing medicine without a license and is harmful but since when did that ever stop the public schools?)
The least nasty player in all of this is that we've lost the perverse incentive to avoid diagnosis, as the stigma's decreased and, well, forced sterlizations & euthanasia is no longer anywhere near a problem as it was around 90 years ago. (Some of these court cases are still being settled though.)
Now, on the rest of it? If the clinic fails to check the health before giving the vaccine, GTFO. Vaccines should never be given to somebody not healthy. This is why I was delayed on one of mine when I had to get mine redone--I walked in and was bounced to the ER for a serious infection.
I don't know what you mean by the '17 vaccines,' but then I live in an area where the list is...about five, all of which are cheap and out of patent. I don't actually trust Gardasil, but that's because the way they did the challenge in testing it is absurd. (This is basically the gold standard, and is deliberately infecting somebody who has gotten the vaccine with what the vaccine is supposed to be against. Very few diseases are so bad as to warrant using a faux antigen--arguably, none are, as if they're dangerous enough to make it ethically doubtful to deliberately infect somebody who volunteered and knowingly consents to doing this test, it ought to be also unethical to sell it as a vaccine because it'll still get tested this way, just on people who did not knowingly volunteer to do so...and you can cover for it a lot more easily.)
That said, we actually do have some pretty strong proof that autism is probably a defect in brain development--last I checked we'd pushed back the earliest age at which we can diagnose it to before you should be getting any vaccines, namely six months. At least some cases can be traced to exposure to diseases at the prenatal stage, as the whole idea that the womb is a sterile, clean environment is hilariously wrong--let's take rubella, for example.
People exposed to it in the womb can end up with autism.
Ever asked what the R in MMR is for? I did, or rather I read the info sheet the clinic had to give me before accepting my consent to get it (again). It's rubella. Oh, and it turns out the vaccine is not for-life, regardless of what was previously thought; herd immunity just covered for a lot of people's immune systems 'forgetting,' sort of the equivalent of nobody noticing if antique computer viruses are no longer protected against by antivirus programs because there's little chance of somebody encountering an infected system anymore...
http://www.vaccines.gov/basics/safety/side_effects/
Thanks for pointing that out
How many kids has Jenny McCarthy and other antivaxers at least indirectly killed?
Parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids (except for the very few with justifiable medical reasons at the direction of a doctor) are bad parents.
Antivax==child abuse
1. Why have vaccines and autism rates both grown exponentially in the last 25 years? (no, detection does not come close to answering)
Changes to the definition and protocols for diagnosing it account for the rate changes just fine.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Try actually searching the CDC site, and you can find some amazing information. Your page is quite different from this CDC page. Funny that attempt to call me a shill yet completely ignore the disclaimer on these pages. How did you miss the fact that the date of your information is from 2008, and provided by Merck. You do know that there are numerous manufacturers of different types of varicella vaccine don't you? And you only cover one.. shame on you.
The page I linked above has this:
(This information taken from MMRV VIS dated 5/21/10. If the actual VIS is more recent than this date, the information on this page needs to be updated.)
Amazingly you find yet more information on that link, I know.. research is hard.
This CDC page says 4 in 1 million. or 1 in 250,000 which is still how many times higher than 100 in 300 Million? I'm not able to find the 1 in 30,000 number at the moment, but I don't need to do so to prove that the odds of death are higher with the vaccine.. for a non-lethal and non-debilitating virus. Sure, I'll retract the 1 in 30,000 and replace it with 1 in 250,000 and you still have 24 times greater chance of death than with the virus (not considering how improvements in medical treatments would change the highest ever rated mortality rate for chicken pox.)
I await your retraction of false allegations and apology for shitty research..
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I picked on the Varicella vaccine for a reason, namely that I have done some hefty research on this. The only misinformation is yours, stop reading the first thing you find and believing it's the gospel. CDC's web site is full of many studies, some more recent than others. So lets clear up two of your completely false points
First, The varicella vaccine does NOT make you immune to shingles. That is a fairy tale, and if it's not on Snopes yet it should be. Manufacturers don't make the claim, and CDC states flat out that Shingles is not impacted by the vaccine what so ever.
Next, there is no such thing as immunity to chicken pox. People who have had the vaccine series still have a 10-20% chance of infection (depending on which study you read on the CDC's site). People who received the live vaccine will amazingly be able to transmit and have all of the chicken pox symptoms with a milder version, and still be infected by a more severe case due to natural exposure. The whole reason for the newer series of both varicella and MMR is that they were only 60-80% effective (again, choose a study). They "believe" that with a series of 3 there is an effective rate of 90%.
Yeah, pushing dubious vaccines is bad. I brought up some legitimate questions which you simply dismissed without doing ample research. "it's certainly not dangerous" is an outright lie. Here I quickly found that the odds for a "severe" reaction to MMR (not MMRV) is 1 in 250,000. Compared to the severe complications to the raw varicella virus, it s certainly more dangerous. I'll certainly be fair and retract the 1 in 30,000 (looks like the CDC removed that link) and go with the 1 in 250,000. My points are all still valid because the vaccine is exponentially higher risk.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
There are certainly many factors that could be impacting increased physiological disorders. Average age is the only factor and we have ruled out everything else? Prove it!
Look at factors that have changed in the last 30 years along with the ~300% increase in autism, and there are several.
I await your amazing proof, and hope you validate the source. No! An opinion piece from WebMD or any other site does not constitute a study.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
We fully vaccinate our children. But the moment any government tries to force any self-respecting parent to do anything with their kids will have some serious fish slappage coming their way. If I think a vaccine is dangerous I'm not giving it to my child. And no, I do not trust the government to be reasonable about my health decisions or those for my child.
I trust my doctor, not the government.
He says the current vaccines are safe so we vaccinate. If he told me an ebola vaccine was safe I'd consider it, but the decision ultimately lies with me as the parent. Anyone who tells me I *have* to inject anything into my children will have some serious Jem'Hadar rage to deal with.
Thanks for letting this anonymous coward rant and get some stress off the chest.
As someone who was diagnosed a number of years ago as autistic, I can't help but be slightly offended at the notion
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You claim I'm full of shit, then list out exactly what I called out. You claim to get testy about this, yet ignore the CDC's vaccine schedule. Fact: Varicella is not, and never has been, considered a fatal or debilitating disease. Why is it in the same category as Polio? Later you claim "it's not innocent and cute" but I don't see any proof that it's dangerous. I never claimed it was innocent or cute for that matter, I simply stated that it was not lethal or debilitating. Like I said above, 100 out of 300 million mortality rate. Outside of that, if you stop scratching the sores there are no issues. Influenza has not been considered a fatal illness since the time when we began treating dehydration by IV, yet it's in the same category as Polio as well.
The 7 vaccines you mention up until about 1989 were given how many times? Exactly once. Compared to each today being given 3 times. Varicella vaccinations did not exist until the 1990s, and went through several horrible issues and recalls (perhaps you just forgot to mention the egg based vaccine). But we can't talk about vaccines as different entities, they are all identical in ingredients, effects, and effectiveness right? WRONG.
I never ever stated that any of these vaccines were bad, go back and read my post again. I said that there has been both an increase in number and little discussion for the patient's health when giving vaccines. A perfectly healthy child getting 1xMMR is something we had 40 years experience with to know it was safe. We don't have the same track knowledge base for an unhealthy kid getting 1xMMR, 1xDTap, 1xInfluenza, 1xHep a/b (depending), gardasil, etc... every 6-12 months for years on end during their most prominent development ages. In fact, change that to the healthy kid getting all of this simultaneously, and we don't have enough research to claim it's always safe, especially if a person should not be receiving a vaccine (see next).
As I stated above, manufacturers recommend that you do not get a vaccinations all the time. In fact here is one of many CDC warnings, this one about MMR. Different vaccines have different warnings for when not to get vaccinated. Make sure you check dates and defer to the Manufacturer's information as the CDC claims they do if you are going to present a rebuttal and claim "always safe".
So I brought up several distinct points and told you that my source was the CDC. You claimed "nuh uh" to one point, lied to back your "nuh un", and finally claimed I'm full of shit. Go figure.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I know what works! Evidence! Maybe if we stop repeating that it doesn't work, it'll start working! Why do you write the exact posts that you expect to read? I'm very happy for evidence, even if it ony helps convert a tiny number of people! I wish it worked better, but.. YAY!
Nothing new, but nothing new either. Tell me, how many T-Cell tests are given by all of the various outlets providing vaccines? The most common thing, which I mentioned, is that doctors often check and ask about general health prior to vaccinating kids. That was the practice in the 70s - late 1980s at least. Today there are many places providing vaccines that are not doctors.
Secondly, an abstract study does not trump the CDC for accuracy. I fully agree that testing for autism has become better, just not enough to account for the 300% increase in rates. As a few other people said, sugar consumption is higher today than 30 years ago. Average age for parents is higher than 30 years ago. Why can we not study _all_ of these things instead of claiming that 1 is immune from consideration? Oh yeah, money..
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
For more than a century, and from the advent of psychology to the late 1970s homosexuality was a "treatable mental disorder". For about a century, lead was believed to be beneficial to healing. Like any other time in history there can be errors. We find errors by critiquing the status quo.
Trusting someone does not make them correct, and there are a good number of medical professionals who don't believe vaccines are always safe. I know of at least two that have moved out of the country and written books about the deals certain companies make with regulators, and how they are ostracized and lose their licenses if they don't play ball.
The lack of trust is not with the Doctors. The lack of trust is in companies who have a history of caring more about profits than people. Further with a Government that is more than happy to risk it's populace for their own "science" agendas. (See the radioactive waste dumped on poor areas of LA, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, Project MkUltra, etc... ). Does every Medical professional claim that Merck, Monsanto, Bayer, etc.. are all imperfect and altruistic companies aiming for a perfectly healthy populace?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Maybe those upper middle class parents associate vaccination with third world countries, and they're dark skinned and/or poor and filthy children sitting naked in dirt. Anti vaxxers children are superior to those halve humans. Watch this: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/previe...
http://www.theatlantic.com/hea...
http://www.latimes.com/busines...
The antivaxers don't read scientific papers, the antivaxers don't read papers, the antivaxers don't read. They don't trust science. I used to play D&D. I was in a dungeon and the DM had set things up fairly well. A large troll came in. I didn't believe it (I thought it was a spell). I said so. The DM said "but its there" I said "I think its a spell". He calculated a die roll for me to continue in this way "get a 20 sided die, and roll a 17 or higher to disbelieve". I did and got an 18. I didn't die right away, but the others were fighting a +20 troll with magic while I merrily wandered down the hall. The point being that if someone doesn't want to believe something, they won't. Einstein was asked about elderly physicists not believing some of his theories of Relativity and refusing to believe. He said some of them would have to die for the Physics world to come to a concensus. And that's what happened. With anti-vaxers, they will have to get the disease and get really sick and not see dozens of doctors and nurses who have been vaccinated not get sick, and they still won't believe. I've seen people refuse 'scientific cancer therapy'. They wanted their traditional cultural medicines. The doctors said that there is a 90+% chance of recovery with chemotherapy. They refused and went to court. They won. Little girl died 6 months later. You can refuse to believe in science if you want, but the pesky thing about science is that even after you stop believing in it, its still there.
http://vaers.hhs.gov/data/inde...
So all of the adverse vaccine reactions reported on this official government website (hundreds of thousands) must all be a coincidence, right?
I'm certainly not a "scientist", but I was always taught that mercurty (primary adjuvant used in vaccinations for decades) was highly toxic and can cause brain damage. Anyone care to refute that?
Grass Grows.
If it can be shown the kid infected and damaged another kid. Maybe peole will respond to money.
Well that's that then. All of the autistic children that I know - but I'm no database, I'm a teacher - are over 12.
Quite obvious trick to search in a group where they have not been labelled autistic yet.
OK, here for reference what that page says:
How... magnanimous of you. Why not just a simple, honest admission that you were completely and utterly wrong, then leave it at that before you make an even bigger fool of yourself? Oh wait, too late:
Before I start, I am not an antivaxxer but I do believe them to be one of many immune system stressors that help trigger an auto-immune disorder called NIDS (Neuro-Immune Dysfunction Syndromes) that makes kids "act" autistic. In other words, autism would happen with or without the vaccines but in my son's case the vaccine was the last thing to occur before the knock-out punch happened. This happens so often, it's why the vaccines get blamed despite whatever study results are posted. My son developed normally until 18 months and then shut down the evening of his MMR. He also had two additional vaccines that day along with it. This was years before anyone talked about autism vs vaccines. That night he behaved like he had the flu (but this was in August) and his personality was different which is normal when you feel like crap. We called the doctor and she said he probably had a mild reaction to it and it should pass otherwise come back in. The flu like symptoms went away but his bubbly personality was gone and he was now sensitive to sounds. His stats were normal so the doctor sent us to some specialists to try to help us figure out what was going on. To make a long story short, it took 5 long years to get an autism diagnosis. A similar situation occurred to an old classmate of mine with his step-son. At the time we were convinced it was the vaccines because it was the last thing that changed before he "turned off". We hit the internet and found a doctor in Tarzana, CA (Dr. Michael Goldberg) that spoke to Congress about the rising rates of autism. He explained that traditional autism is a neurological disorder so it is unlikely the cause of the increase that is seen. It makes more sense for it to be viral and there is a type of herpes that lives in the brain in most of the population (HHV6 and HHV7). The thought is the immune system goes sideways and the virus that normally coexists starts to affect the temporal lobe where it lives and then comedy ensues. My son's HHV6 levels were 300% higher than normal levels. Dr. Goldberg prescribed Kutapressin (the old school anti-herpes medicine) and his autistic symptoms decreased along with the levels. Unfortunately, the immune system has to win the battle on it's own and auto-immune disorders don't always give up easily so my son is now improved to moderate on the spectrum. A couple of my son's classmates and my coworkers daughter have completely snapped out of autism which should be impossible if it's a neurological disorder but makes sense if it's viral and the immune system was able to find a way to co-exist with the virus again. Anyway, I wrote this because when families see their kids turn off just after the MMR shot it's hard to wrap your brain around why science is saying the two aren't even loosely related. To add insult to injury, you have people on the outside of your Hell mocking you because you say you saw what you saw. If that's you, hopefully you can now see how what you saw and what science is saying can both be true.
I would vaccinate my own child but agree with parts of the antivaxer platform.
And it is a platform, because people have become so polarized and dismissive. Here's what I see on the platform:
1. the scientific method today is perverted by corporate influence, bad peer review, and broken statistics
2. scientists are biased toward themselves when studying their past behaviour
3. doctors give themselves a free pass to manipulate their patients with falsehood to increase "compliance": they tell each other one story and the public another
With respect to #2, thimerosal was removed in 1992 from all child vaccines (but not from the adult flu vaccine). I don't expect science will ever honestly study whether doctors caused an autism epidemic by dosing all those children with mercury or not. This study, cutoff 2001, doesn't answer that question. It's better than a study with earlier cutoff would have been for answering the question, "should I vaccinate my child?" but most of the discussion here is about the other question, that it doesn't answer, "did doctors cause this epidemic?"
The job of academia is to inform people, the job of (at least an american) citizen is to make their own choices and live with the consequences.
IF your consequence is that your child isn't allowed into some private schools.. well then, that's your choice. BUT public schools should not have the right to require a parent to "be a parent in whatever way the government currently sees fit" it's BS.
I really don't understand why this whole issue is suddenly EVERYWHERE in the press.. OMFG some people make bad decisions despite research, news at 11! Think of the children!.. the ones that were vaccinated and not at risk, or the ones who's parents made a choice on? Cause, i get the basic feeling that there isn't even an actual problem here..
the only REAL possible problem is the vaccinations themselves. since they aren't 100% effective, if you are in public you get a slightly more weighted dice roll on wether or not the thing even worked.. you get that by traveling to another country too.. soo should we be banning that?
it's enough to make a person go all tin-foil hat and wonder why the novaccies are being attacked in the media so urgently..
Oops, apologies, a thoroughly derpy error on my part: the death rate from chickenpox is actually a teensy smidgin higher than 1 in 3 million, ranging from 1 in 100,000 in children [1], to 1 in 4000 in adults [2]. From CDC's Pinkbook:
My guess [3] is that s.petry took the US's 100 deaths per year and divided it by 300M population to arrive at 1 per 3M death rate, but of course that calculation would only work if the entire population was catching chickenpox every year, whereas only only few percent of the population actually do: those catching it for the first time, those who failed to develop an immune response after catching it previously, and those whose immune systems are compromised for other reasons.
--
[1] or "acceptable losses" in antivax-speak
[2] a.k.a. "they deserved it anyway for not getting sick sooner"
[3] Actually, I know this is what s.petry did, 'cos I made the exact same mistake doing a quick back-of-the-envelope conversion from CDC's description of chickenpox killing 100 people per year prior to varicella vaccine introduction. But it had that "off smell" to it, so I went back and researched further till I found the right numbers, posted them publicly apologizing for any confusion caused, and moved on. Self-correction, it's the nuts.
Sure it's a small number, but some people who receive the vaccine will die because of a bad reaction to the vaccine. The government passed legislation that protects the makers of vaccines against lawsuits. What does the study have to say about the people who are killed as a result of receiving the vaccine?
Will this end just like the 2004 study by the CDC? With one of the 3 scientists involved getting whistleblower protection and stating that the numbers were fudged?
http://www.morganverkamp.com/august-27-2014-press-release-statement-of-william-w-thompson-ph-d-regarding-the-2004-article-examining-the-possibility-of-a-relationship-between-mmr-vaccine-and-autism/
A 340% increase in autism among black, males, who got the MMR vaccine before the age of 3.
Now if I was head of the CDC and my scientists were telling me this the first thing I'd do is change the protocol to give them the vaccine AFTER the age of 3 and see if the problem went away. I would also get serious followup studies going to check the kids vitamin D & A levels because both are crucial for vaccines to work and be safer.
Of course I'd never get a job at MERC for 3-4 times my salary at the CDC like the then head of the CDC did. Her response? Withdraw 41% of the kids from the study because they didn't have birth certificates so their race couldn't be determined. Ignore the fact that their race was clearly stated on the school forms.
Sort of like winning the lotto this legal bribery scam isn't it. Just get yourself into the right position and then don't do the right thing. Voila you are rich!
According to the CDC, about 1.5% of children in the US have autism. Of those, about 90% have had normal vaccinations. If you're one of the unlucky parents, you're going to be looking for a cause. Of course, it MUST be the vaccinations, what else could it be??? There is probably no way to convince these parents otherwise.
a study finding no link does not confirm the absence of a link.
The last thing that hit?
Quite a few years ago, my wife ate some Dairy Queen Dilly Bars, and then became seriously ill. She was blaming Dairy Queen, as the illness seemed to just follow from eating the stuff. Then I drank some A&W Cream Soda, and it seemed to upset my stomach, and develop into the same sort of illness. It would appear that we got sick, and associated what we ate or drank as the disease was starting to show up with the disease.
I still can't drink A&W Cream Soda, though (not that that's any loss).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It also turns out there is another reason this vaccine is bad. Older adults in contact with children who have chicken pox get a boost to their immune response to the vaccine which helps prevents shingles. The vaccine prevents this from happening: see this.
I feel like many of you would change your mind if you had a perfectly healthy child, and then literally no less than a month after vaccination you watch them regress into themselves, constantly screaming, rolling their eyes into the back of their heads, becoming un responsive, loosing their personality.
Moreso, you would be sceptical that the MMR causes 'no damage' if you yourself received the vaccine at age 19, then no less than a month later were thrown into the depths of an auto immune condition. This is what happened to me, it seems to close to be coincidence. For the past 6 years my life has been hell. Up until I was 19 I was perfectly healthy, at the gym 5 days a week, happy, social, great career prospects. Now I am confined to my bed 95% of the time, and have an immune system that is at war with itself
Many people will say 'its just coincidence' but through this journey I have met literally thousands of people who have had similar experiences - too many for it to be coincidence. Even if the MMR vaccine is declared to damage health, it wont cure me, but it might stop other people having to go through the suffering I go through. Then again many people do not react. It could be the MMR saves them from getting measles and dying... who knows. What I know, is i am almost certain the MMR put me in this hell. Make up your own mind. I am very scientifically minded, but I also am aware that not everything on paper is gospel, despite countless scientific studies. Only in the past decade are we discovering the dangers and micro biome shattering effects of antibiotics after things like penicillin which were dubbed the holly grail of medicines. Humans make mistakes. Take everything with a pinch of salt. People cling on to their opinions because they don't want to loose their sense of identity. All i know is i'm in a living hell, heck... perhaps it wasn't the vaccine... but it seems much too coincidental that i would get a jab and suddenly start deteriorating.
I understand what you're saying; correlation does not imply causation. To explain my intended point using your analogy, it would be like my entire neighborhood showed up to Dairy Queen and all ate the Dilly Bars and got a similar illness. We all agreed it must have been the food because how else could so many people have the same experience from the same activity? After going to the doctor, we found out we all had a preexisting condition exacerbated by milk and the Kardashian family. Even if we hadn't eaten the Dilly Bars, Kim Kardashian was guaranteed to make us sick given her pictures are freaking everywhere. All I was trying to say was given the multitude of people experiencing the problem on the exact same day as the shots, it's very easy to fall prey to suspecting the vaccines when no other explanation can be easily found. If science can adequately answer the timing paradox, it would help the parents that experienced it to change their views.
Contrary to your argument, those who receive the chickenpox vaccine seem to have proven to have a lower risk of shingles [cdc.gov] (scroll to "Risk Factors").
Now I could accuse you of spreading lies and deceit but really that would be behaving exactly like the anti-vaxxers: adopting a preconceived notion, ignoring all scientific evidence to the contrary and getting mad at anyone who disagrees. So how about we adopt a more scientific stance which is that for the specific case of the Chicken Pox vaccine there is no clear evidence that it is a net benefit to individuals or society over just catching the disease as a child and recovering? The risk of the vaccine is not measurably less than the risk of the disease and there are clear questions about the net affect of susceptibility of adults to shingles: it might be good or it might be bad but we really don't have a clue either way.
My position is that if there is no clear evidence for any benefit from a medical procedure then you don't do it. If that changes with more studies and they can show that there is a clear benefit then great I'd be 100% behind it. In the meantime I would argue that it is unethical to coerce people into undergoing a medical procedure for which there is no evidence of a net benefit to them or to society. Worse, because in this one specific case, the evidence is lacking you give the anti-vaxxers ammunition which they can use to shoot at the cases where the vaccine is incredibly beneficial and absolutely should be taken by everyone.