Tribeca Film Festival, Robert De Niro Pull Anti-Vaccination Film

theodp writes: USA Today reports that one day after defending the scheduled screening of a controversial documentary linking vaccinations to autism, Tribeca Film Festival co-founder Robert De Niro announced that the film is being pulled from the event. The film, Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe, was scheduled to debut April 24. It is directed by Andrew Wakefield, known to many as the father of the anti-vaccine movement. Wakefield authored a 1998 report on vaccinations and autism that was later retracted, He also had his medical license revoked. The decision to include the film in the festival resulted in outrage from many who are upset that the film's inclusion could offer legitimacy to a study debunked by leading scientists. "My intent in screening this film was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family," said De Niro, who has a child with autism. "But after reviewing it over the past few days with the Tribeca Film Festival team and others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for."

Comments

Doing the ecological epidemiology

[Baldrson]

Locating by-State prevalence of autism stats over a decade ago, I started collecting by-State stats on hundreds of variables including vaccinations, mercury, diseases, econometerics, demographics, etc.

Three things stood out: 1) The best single-variable ecological correlation was mother's age at first live birth. 2) The best two-variable ecological correlation was Finnish ancestry and immigration from India. 3) Of all the variables, autism averaged the least powerful correlations with the wide range of by-State variables I had collected.

The mother's age at first live birth was a lower level of correlation than the 2-variable one, but it was more "robust" -- meaning that the scatter of points followed what you would expect from a "normal" distribution.

That was clear back in 2004.

I'm no pro, was not funded and didn't even have a relative with autism spectrum at that time (I do now). The fact that the CDC hasn't conducted an all-out statistical assault of like this at the county level given all the time, money and "big data" available is damning. They just don't care -- or don't want to know.

Re:Doing the ecological epidemiology

[Anonymous Coward]

That was clear back in 2004.

I'm no pro, was not funded and didn't even have a relative with autism spectrum at that time (I do now). The fact that the CDC hasn't conducted an all-out statistical assault of like this at the county level given all the time, money and "big data" available is damning. They just don't care -- or don't want to know.

Your post was great until you got to the CDC. I work with them; your post assumes that they're job is to find the answers to all related health problems in the US. While that is partially true, it also doesn't change the fact that they are a government organization subject to the whims of politics. Case in point: it's extremely hard to get anything out of them over the past 6 months because half of the organization has been told to drop everything and focus on Zika. Years of research is now stalled because of the flaring up of a disease that is not even fatal, but it's huge in the news because it has been correlated to young moms and babies being born that have issues. There's been like 20 cases of this issue with Zika and none in the US, yet massive resources have been diverted this way ignoring the fact that 4,000 people die from TB every day, that TB and Measles and syphillis, diseases though eradicated from the US, are returning due to illegal immigration and poor vaccination efforts amongst the poorer immigrant neighborhoods, that autism is a major issue, etc.

The CDC is still a government organization and is still subject to the whims of politicians, who are influenced by their voters who are influenced by a scare-mongering media.

Anti-vaxxers

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

At least the anti-vaxxers can take credit for resurrecting diseases we thought had been eradicated.

That's right, thanks to the anti-vaxxer idiots, Measles, Mumps, Whooping Cough, and Chicken Pox are showing up once again.

Thanks, anti-vaxxer fuckheads, thanks a lot for your stupid anti-science delusions which now put everyone's children at risk.

Re:In other words...

[sudon't]

I don't see the problem with showing the film in the first place. It would only bring attention to it so pointing to the fraud could be easily countered and illustrated when people start to fall for it.

Or is there a problem pointing to where it is wrong and illustrating that?

Yeah, I'm a little leery of censorship. I know how gullible people can sometimes be, yet ideas should be able to live or die on their own. I'm not sure how I feel about this. It seems a bit paternalistic, an implicit assumption that people won't be able to think for themselves. It certainly bothers me when people with unpopular ideas are prevented from speaking on college campuses. I'm not sure this is any different.

Re:In other words...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Most vaccines are in the nineties when it comes to percent effectiveness, and some of them do near 100% effectiveness. I'd call even 90% effective "nearly all" because, with sufficient portions of the populated being vaccinated, an infection is not likely to get very far./
Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and call them 95% effective.

Now apply them to the population of the US - cal it 300 million. (Just the states were 308 as of the last census.) That's 5 million susceptible people due to vaccine failure.

Consider only the age 5-20 school-age cohort: Cut it to 20% of that (20.6% by the same census). You're still talking over a million susceptible individuals.

For epidemiology the NON-susceptible are background noise: A disease only spreads among those who can catch it, so only that population counts. Others might as well be furniture.

Even spread out among the whole country (but then re-concentrated in classrooms, school events, and schoolkid hangouts), that many human culture media are making the "herd immunity" thing a little iffy. Throw in another couple million unimmunized due to this health fraud, though, and it's a whole different ballgame.

I'm not going to shut up for fear that an anti-vaxxer might use excerpts from my (pseudonymous) rantings in their propaganda. The antidote for a lie is truth, and the main way these frauds succeed is by spreading faster than the truth can catch up with them - so shutting up makes it worse. If parts of the truth are inconvenient, that's tough.

Meanwhile, if they're fool enough to quote me, that just means more people will be led by search engines to my actual statements.

Re: Health care advice from movie actors?

[Ol Olsoc]

Thiemerosol has *not* been completely removed from vaccines. It is present in full strength in the nearly useless annual flu vaccine (only 40% - 60% effective, according to CDC. You want to to get an annual dose of bio-accumulative neurotoxic ethyl mercury for a slim chance of not getting basically a strong cold ? ) AND, on the other vaccines like the DTaP, it is still present in "trace" amounts. So get your facts right.

M'kay

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafe...

From the article:

Measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines do not and never did contain thimerosal. Varicella (chickenpox), inactivated polio (IPV), and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines have also never contained thimerosal.

Influenza (flu) vaccines are currently available in both thimerosal-containing (for multi-dose vaccine vials) and thimerosal-free versions.

Also from the article:

Research does not show any link between thimerosal in vaccines and autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder. Many well conducted studies have concluded that thimerosal in vaccines does not contribute to the development of autism. Even after thimerosal was removed from almost all childhood vaccines, autism rates continued to increase, which is the opposite of what would be expected if thimerosal caused autism.

So now you are left with only your own most powerful weapons, the conspiracy card and putting your fingers in your ears and screaming at the top of your lungs NANANANANANANANAH I CAN'T HEEEARR YOUUUUU!

Kinda weird that some folks are so hell bent on declaring thimerosol the bad guy that they are willing to allow the real cause (if there is one) go untouched. Facts, they aren't just for breakfast any more.