Antivaxxers are people who think vaccinations cause health problems, most notably autism. This is despite study after study showing them to be wrong; there simply is no link between vaccines and autism. While there can be isolated reactions to vaccines, they are very rare, and the overall health benefits of vaccines vastly — vastly — outweigh the negatives.
But these antiscience crusaders are starting to have an effect, and it’s a bad one: measles outbreaks in the U.S. are on the rise. In the first seven months of 2008 there have been seven outbreaks — a typical year has just one — with over 130 reports of measles infections, compared to just 42 last year in total. Of these cases, 122 children were either unvaccinated or have unknown vaccination status. That’s 93%.
As it happens, there have been no deaths from these outbreaks yet, though over a dozen kids were hospitalized.
The overall vaccination rate in the U.S. probably hasn’t dropped significantly, but these outbreaks are probably due to pockets of people not vaccinating their kids. Some are from home-schoolers, others due to religious reasons… but I will guarantee that a lot of this is due to the antivaxxers spread of lies, and smearing of the medical community. We’ve seen it before, and we’ll see it again.
This part of the article is telling:
The nation once routinely saw hundreds of thousands of measles cases each year, and hundreds of deaths. But immunization campaigns were credited with dramatically reducing the numbers. The last time health officials saw this many cases was 1997, when 138 were reported.
Vaccinations work, and they save lives. Don’t believe the lies. Do the research yourself. I did, and I’m convinced the antivaxxers are wrong. And in some cases, they’re dead wrong.
Help stop them. Educate yourself, and talk about this with people. If you have a friend who is considering not vaccinating their kids, send them here, or here, or especially here. Give them the facts. They need it, to fight the onslaught of antiscience they are likely to find elsewhere.
Fight. Literally, kids’ lives depend on it.
August 22nd, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Too bad there’s no vaccine for the antivaxx stupidity syndrome… An antivaxx vaxx, I suppose…
August 22nd, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Indeed, this is precisely what antivaxxers have been warned about. Forming pockets of people who aren’t protected by vaccines.
Side note Phil: Are you going to have a separate blog for skeptic stuff vs. astronomy now that you’re president of JREF?
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:00 pm
How about relocating all the ones that won’t vaccinate.
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Exactly - it isn’t about a single child, it is about have unvaccinated children around kids that might be too young to have had all of their regular vacinations. You’re putting other people’s children at risk - seriously, this is definitely a case of the benefits so outweighing the risks.
I would never subject a child to the horrors of measles, mumps or the other host of diseases that used to kill hundreds, if not thousands of children every year. We are lucky, for the most part, to not be old enough to remember what polio-scares were like or the mass outbreaks of measles.
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:28 pm
More than just benefits outweighing risks. It’s about civic responsibility. It is about willfully putting other people, innocent children mostly, at risk.
This is child abuse.
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:33 pm
You are wrong. They haven’t proven there is no link between vacinations and autism. This is incomplete logic.
It sounds like you are on a crusade against home-schoolers. Show some proof that they are worse than public school.
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:34 pm
I was reading about this yesterday and was hoping that you’d post about it.
@Lawrence — I agree 100%. Everyone should be outraged at the unnecessary risks these children are being exposed to.
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:35 pm
The bolded 93% is irrelevant without more info on percentage of people that are vacinated or not. And lets not get carried away with the civic responsibility tripe, a person should have the right to make their own choices in medicine except for extreme cases. This does not qualify.
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:37 pm
There has also been reporting on NPR, I caught part of one story en route to work. Here’s a link, with more at the bottom of the page:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93866209
J/P=?
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Dick,
They also haven’t proven there is no link between autism and the decline of the green-billed parakeet on Sumatra. Or the decline of carburators. You can’t PROVE a negative… but you can look to prove the positive and miserably fail time and time again, which has happened with the vaccine-autism link.
Also, who the hell said that home-schoolers are “worse” than those in public schools? Non-vaccination is more common amongst home-schoolers, that’s all. No need to get that defensive, thank you.
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Mitch:
A person has the right to make their own decisions as long as they do not endanger others. Unvaccinated people endanger infants too young to be vaccinated as well as immuno-depressed of all ages.
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:44 pm
[…] Dear Anti-Vaccine Parents: […]
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:45 pm
This was a flashpoint for an argument I had with my mother this week (click my name above for juicy details). I am sure she and Phil Plait would be each other’s mutual worst nightmares. We’ve had fights about evolution, homosexuality, and everything else she’s wrong about, but after this latest meltdown, I think I can really put her behind me for good.
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:46 pm
I know I’ll get hammered here, but really, truly, I have researched both sides and am continually trying to keep reading up on the topic and I still remain unconvinced that the benefits outweigh the risks. The thing is, for me, the fear of vaccines has never been about autism. At least not ONLY autism. Mercury has likewise never been my fear since anyone who knows anything about anything knows that mercury is no longer in the shots. It’s not the heavy metals or the formaldehyde or the aborted fetuses or anything like that that concerns me.
My biggest fear is two-fold. 1) the unnatural injection of contagion into the soft tissue, especially so many contagions all at once, somehow screws with the developing immune system which can lead to any number of OTHER problems (autism only being one of the possbilities). In my research I can’t seem to find any official double-blind or whatever study being done on this type of thing. All you hear about are the stories in the admittedly anti-vax literature about kids having really harsh reactions (of varying types) right after they get their shots and the doctors telling them, “Oh no, it COULDN’T POSSIBLY be the vaccines.” So nobody researches THOSE cases. Instead, the research seems to be almost totally focused on Autism… Which I admit is as much the fault of the anti-vax camp. I’ve said in the past that I think the anti-vax folks have kind of gotten in their own way with overemphasizing the Autism/mercury link.
And my #2 fear is that the mass vaccination program has essentially robbed us of gaining NATURAL IMMUNITY. I read Phil’s post and how horrible it sounds that these hundred-plus un-vaccinated kids got measles, but I hear that and I think GOOD. Those kids will NEVER get measles again. Whereas the vaccinated kids who didn’t catch the disease will be at GREATER risk as they get older. What are the longer term effects going to be of vaccinating everybody and losing generation after generation of natural immunity? Does anybody know?
Before you begin the slaughter, please just let me assure you, I am open to your ideas. I’m not one of those people who is just shutting my ears and going “la la la la”. Thanks in part to an exchange between myself and Orac on this blog a couple months back I truly am trying to re-examine my stance on vaccines. But invariably the discussion just keeps coming back to autism and the nuttiness of the anti-vax camp. So please, be civil. I really am listening.
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:52 pm
So Brian, what is the risk for gaining immunity to measles naturally?
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:54 pm
My mother had Polio as a child. The vaccine was newly available at the time but they were poor and she kind of slipped through the cracks. I suppose she is lucky to be alive. But in any case in addition to nearly dying as a child polio left her with one leg severely disabled. She has required a brace and a cane to walk her entire life. In addition she is, in her 50s, still developing several health problems (generally lumped together as “post polio syndrome”) as a result of the disease.
People who do not vaccinate are sick. They are wrong. When not outright delusional they are downright evil.
At least with most forms of child abuse (and not-vaccinating should definitely qualify) the negligent parent is only harming their own child. Not vaccinating endangers their entire community. Every baby they have contact with too young to have been vaccinated. Every immune-compromised adult.
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:55 pm
a cynical person would point out that eventually a new equilibrium will be met wherein the anti-vaxxers will have killed themselves off with BCG, Buruli ulcers, Caliciviruses, Cholera, Dengue, Diphtheria, Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli, Epstein Barr, Helicobacter pylori, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Hepatitis E, Herpes type 2, Haemophilus influenzae type b, HIV/AIDS, Human papillomavirus, Influenza, Japanese encephalitis, Leishmaniasis, Malaria, Measles, Meningococcal meningitis, Mumps, Parainfluenza 3, Pertussis, Poliomyelitis, Rabies, Respiratory syncytial virus, Rotavirus, Rubella, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, Schistosomiasis, Shigella, Streptococcus group A, Streptococcus group B, TB, Tetanus, Tick-borne encephalitis, Tuberculosis, Typhoid and West Nile.
but hey! on the bright side, the antivaxxers are safe from a lethal ebola vaccination. at least until one is developed for human use.
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Dick Dawkins, I have a better idea: show me any evidence whatsoever you have that I am on a crusade against home schoolers.
[crickets]
I don’t say anything negative here about them — just that they are a category of non-vaccinators in this particular case — and I don’t think I have ever mentioned it before on this blog.
And yes, it’s very clear there is no link between vaccinations and autism as claimed by the antivaxxers. Read the links I provided. If there were a link as obvious as they claim, the data would be screaming it out. They don’t, so the antivaxxers are wrong.
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Brian: you need to do a bit more research on how vaccines actually WORK.
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Seriously, Phil, you need to stop stating things that are not scientific. Previously you point to a study that says “thimerosal does not cause autism” and that gets inflated in your head to “vaccines do not cause autism”. This time you point to a report that says “MMR does not cause autism” and again you inflate it to “vaccines do not cause autism”.
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:06 pm
So where would you like to put the goalposts then, infidel? Be careful, you only get to do this once.
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Jenny McCarthy and her ilk are mere Trojan horses and useful idiots for Big Pharma. Think about it. As someone who has had a relative suffer from polio, I can vouch that Big Pharma made a ton of money providing treatment, assistance, and pain killers to my relative over the decades she suffered from polio. To be quite frank, it was a never ending gravy train of cash for them until her death a few years ago.
On the other hand, I will never get polio. Big Pharma made a few dollars off my vaccine, but that is nothing compared to the amount of money big pharma banked from my relative.
Yet, McCarthy and her kind want us to believe that Big Pharma is part of a plot to force dangerous, even deadly, vaccines upon us. This is sheer lunacy and no corporate board or group of shareholders would tolerate such a plan because of the money they would lose.
So, not only has McCarthy endangered decades of public health and standard of living improvements, she is empowering Big Pharma by providing undermining legitimate, educated activists and their work and by creating conditions for Big Pharma to roll back vaccines and boost their profits while we, the general public suffer. Thanks Jenny.
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:25 pm
@MarkP
So Brian, what is the risk for gaining immunity to measles naturally?
Here is a list of complications of Measles from the Mayo Clinic site. It doesn’t seem to indicate if these are complications generally experience by people HERE or in third world nations. I’ll assume they mean ANYBODY with measles.
According to Phil’s post there were 122 CASES of unvaxed kids getting measles. According the NPR article above, 15 have been hospitalized. Their symptoms were high fever, dehydration and pneumonia. In the grand scheme (and I fully realize that I am perhaps being a little too cavalier here) it seems like a relatively minor thing to go through to gain lifelong immunity.
Perhaps this is due to better overall health and nutrition in the country that these kids didn’t suffer the more extreme symptoms. Then again, perhaps not. My head honestly spins with the “yeah buts”.
———————
Measles usually lasts about 10 to 14 days. In some parts of the world, the disease is severe, even deadly. In Western countries, that’s usually not the case. People with measles may become quite ill, but most people recover completely. However, complications may include:
* Ear infection. Measles causes an ear infection in nearly one out of every 10 children.
* Encephalitis. About one in 1,000 people with measles develops encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain caused by a viral infection, which may cause vomiting, convulsions and, rarely, coma. Encephalitis can closely follow measles, or it can occur years later during adolescence as a result of a slow virus infection. The late form, called Dawson’s encephalitis, is rare.
* Pneumonia. As many as one in 15 with measles gets pneumonia, which can be life-threatening.
* Diarrhea or vomiting. These complications are more common in infants and small children.
* Bronchitis, laryngitis or croup. Measles may lead to inflammation of your voice box (larynx) or inflammation of the inner walls that line the main air passageways of your lungs (bronchial tubes).
* Pregnancy problems. Pregnant women need to take special care to avoid measles, because the disease can cause miscarriage, premature labor or babies with low birth weights.
* Low platelet count (thrombocytopenia). Measles may lead to a decrease in platelets — the type of blood cells that are essential for blood clotting.
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:26 pm
@MarkP
So Brian, what is the risk for gaining immunity to measles naturally?
Here is a list of complications of Measles from the Mayo Clinic site. It doesn’t seem to indicate if these are complications generally experience by people HERE or in third world nations. I’ll assume they mean ANYBODY with measles.
According to Phil’s post there were 122 CASES of unvaxed kids getting measles. According the NPR article above, 15 have been hospitalized. Their symptoms were high fever, dehydration and pneumonia. In the grand scheme (and I fully realize that I am perhaps being a little too cavalier here) it seems like a relatively minor thing to go through to gain lifelong immunity.
Perhaps this is due to better overall health and nutrition in the country that these kids didn’t suffer the more extreme symptoms. Then again, perhaps not. My head honestly spins with the “yeah buts”.
———————
Measles usually lasts about 10 to 14 days. In some parts of the world, the disease is severe, even deadly. In Western countries, that’s usually not the case. People with measles may become quite ill, but most people recover completely. However, complications may include:
Ear infection. Measles causes an ear infection in nearly one out of every 10 children.
Encephalitis. About one in 1,000 people with measles develops encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain caused by a viral infection, which may cause vomiting, convulsions and, rarely, coma. Encephalitis can closely follow measles, or it can occur years later during adolescence as a result of a slow virus infection. The late form, called Dawson’s encephalitis, is rare.
Pneumonia. As many as one in 15 with measles gets pneumonia, which can be life-threatening.
Diarrhea or vomiting. These complications are more common in infants and small children.
Bronchitis, laryngitis or croup. Measles may lead to inflammation of your voice box (larynx) or inflammation of the inner walls that line the main air passageways of your lungs (bronchial tubes).
Pregnancy problems. Pregnant women need to take special care to avoid measles, because the disease can cause miscarriage, premature labor or babies with low birth weights.
Low platelet count (thrombocytopenia). Measles may lead to a decrease in platelets — the type of blood cells that are essential for blood clotting.
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Why not legislate that homeschooled children must receive the same set of vaccines before they can legally be homeschooled? Religious objections should not enter into it; a public health hazard is a public health hazard.
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:28 pm
@MarkP
So Brian, what is the risk for gaining immunity to measles naturally?
ARGH, I’ve been trying to post the complications of measles info from the Mayo Clinic site but it fails to post. Maybe it makes my post too long. Let’s see if it will take the short version. The site doesn’t seem to indicate if these are complications generally experience by people HERE or in third world nations. I’ll assume they mean ANYBODY with measles.
According to Phil’s post there were 122 CASES of unvaxed kids getting measles. According the NPR article above, 15 have been hospitalized. Their symptoms were high fever, dehydration and pneumonia. In the grand scheme (and I fully realize that I am perhaps being a little too cavalier here) it seems like a relatively minor thing to go through to gain lifelong immunity.
Perhaps this is due to better overall health and nutrition in the country that these kids didn’t suffer the more extreme symptoms. Then again, perhaps not. My head honestly spins with the “yeah buts”.
———————
Measles usually lasts about 10 to 14 days. In some parts of the world, the disease is severe, even deadly. In Western countries, that’s usually not the case. People with measles may become quite ill, but most people recover completely. However, complications may include:
Ear infection. 1 in 10.
Encephalitis. 1 in 1000
Pneumonia. 1 in 15
Diarrhea or vomiting.
Bronchitis, laryngitis or croup.
Pregnancy problems.
Low platelet count (thrombocytopenia).
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Rob, the thing is that the antivaxxers aren’t killing themselves and the is no guarrantee the children would be as stupid as there parents so there is no guarantee of getting rid of the stupid.
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Brian,
From wikipedia:
There was a pandemic of rubella between 1962 and 1965, starting in Europe and spreading to the United States.[25] In the years 1964-65, the United States had an estimated 12.5 million rubella cases. This led to 11,000 miscarriages or therapeutic abortions and 20,000 cases of congenital rubella syndrome. Of these, 2,100 died as neonates, 12,000 were deaf, 3,580 were blind and 1,800 were mentally retarded. In New York alone, CRS affected 1% of all births
Pertussis is the only vaccine-preventable disease that is associated with increasing deaths in the U.S. The number of deaths increased from 4 in 1996 to 17 in 2001, almost all of which were infants under one year.
Diphtheria may remain manageable, but in more severe cases lymph nodes in the neck may swell, and breathing and swallowing will be more difficult. People in this stage should seek immediate medical attention, as obstruction in the throat may require intubation or a tracheotomy. Abnormal cardiac rhythms and can occur early in the course of the illness or weeks later, and can lead to heart failure. Diphtheria can also cause paralysis in the eye, neck, throat, or respiratory muscles. Patients with severe cases will be put in a hospital intensive care unit (ICU) and be given a diphtheria anti-toxin. Since antitoxin does not neutralize toxin that is already bound to tissues, delaying its administration is associated with an increase in mortality risk.
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Apparently Antivaxxers don’t mind killing children?
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Brian, I nearly died of measles when I was a child–I was too young to be vaccinated. I wonder who gave it to me? What are the symptoms for infants too young to be vaccinated generally?
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Here’s an interesting cartoon relating to the topic.
http://www.nearingzero.net/screen_res/nz370.jpg
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Brian, isn’t a slightly painful needle an even more minor inconvenience? Plus, you don’t require further medical treatment, unlike pneumonia and the other delightful side-effects of “natural” immunity.
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:59 pm
researching both sides
Gotta be careful on that account. Some people support their claims with very pretty lies and distortions. I too have spent a lot of time researching and, as a professional researcher, I’m not too impressed with the quality of argument that the other side passes as reasonable. From what you have written, it sounds as if you’ve given the lies and poor quality research as much credence as the actual facts and strong research from reputable sources.
For one thing, don’t kid yourself: the return of all these old vaccine preventable diseases can return us to prevaccination mentality. In other words, autism will be the last thing on anybody’s mind next to illnesses like Measles and Polio that can have permanent and horribly debilitating complications.
In my opinion, people in the US have forgotten just how awful these diseases were. We’ve had it so good. I have an uncle who was lamed by an outbreak of Polio when he was a child in the fifties. It still impacts his life. Gain natural immunity to measles? What if the sequalae are encephalitis and retardation? At least an autist can learn how to function like a normal person (not mentioning the fact that reputable research overwhelmingly favors Autism not being caused by vaccines).
There is also that pesky little fact that the world population has increased by a lot and that illnesses like Influenza spread from one place to another by the ease with which people can now travel. Can you imagine what would happen in the modern world in the case of another Spanish Flu pandemic? That illness killed more people than World War I did and we would spread it several times more quickly now and have less capacity to quarantine the afflicted from the healthy because of how much our economy relies on specialization of indivduals. That’s a big part of why bird flu popped up in the newspaper headlines so frequently there for a while. Vaccines are the most potent weapon we have against that kind of an illness. In the modern urbanized world, a disease like Polio will wreak utter havoc: Polio got really bad in the twentieth century because of globalization and vaccines have been the counterbalance. If you want to talk about getting rid of vaccines or reducing vaccination, you need to also talk about dispersing cities and decentralizing populations so that one illness like Polio won’t manhandle an entire country, which is basically what was happening in the fifties.
With six billion plus people on the planet, if such a disease got loose without vaccination available to help stop it, you would see a level of death and economic collapse that would make the Black Plague look like a happy time. It would overshadow everything else in our previous history. We are at terrific risk in the modern world because we have such a large, dense population and we survive because we vaccinate heavily. Without literally thinning our population out to create geographic quarantine buffers, we cannot afford to not vaccinate.
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:04 pm
As soon as dozens of children start to die of diseases they could have easily been vacinated against, how much do you bet that there will be a public uproar?
I, for one, don’t feel the need for the “sacrificial lambs” before I feel outrage - don’t you dare put my child at risk because you have a “feeling” that vaccines aren’t necessary.
Again, none of us really know the horrors that children were exposed to in years past - families loosing 4 of 5 children from mumps or measles, plus the annual polio scares. It is easy to forget what was out there in the past, and could be out there in the future if this continues.
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:10 pm
@Mark Hansen
Brian, isn’t a slightly painful needle an even more minor inconvenience? Plus, you don’t require further medical treatment, unlike pneumonia and the other delightful side-effects of “natural” immunity.
Absolutely its less of an inconvenience. But it doesn’t provide lifelong immunity. I may be wrong about this but I also believe it does not allow you to pass along your immunity to your offspring. Again, my fear is that once the immunity of the vaccine wears off, we’ll be in even worse shape if we get it as adults.
@viggen
From what you have written, it sounds as if you’ve given the lies and poor quality research as much credence as the actual facts and strong research from reputable sources.
I try to be as skeptical as I can about both sides, ESPECIALLY when they start whipping out their statistics. As the adage goes, “the numbers don’t lie but they can confused.” For instance, one of my disconnects right now is how the anti-vax side shows that the death rate from certain diseases went to almost non-existant BEFORE the vaccine was introduced. But then the pro-vax camp shows you another graph that shows how the CASES of that same disease only went down AFTER the vaccine. What is the story BETWEEN those two extremes of thought? If the deaths go down, wouldn’t that seem to indicate that the EXTREME cases also probably went down? Were the high number of cases mostly minor cases where somebody got diagnosed with (say) measles but then got over it with no complications? Nobody seems to keep numbers that thoroughly. It’s either deaths or ALL cases.
I guess my question is this. The anti-vax camp says that gaining natural immunity gets passed on to your offspring. Is that complete BS? And if it’s not, aren’t we crippling future generations by not giving their immune system the tools it really needs to fight off the stronger stuff coming down the pike?
And just to reiterate because you brought it up, Autism is not really my concern. Never has been.
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Brian, the natural development of children’s immune system was irrevocably screwed the moment the first H. erectus learned to wash his or her hands. There is a theory out there with some support (more evidence than the vaccine-autism link by far) that the increasing rate of debilitating auto-immune disorders (like MS, rheumatoid arthritis, etc) in first world countries is linked to the lack of exposure children now have to environmental microbes in things like soil. By your logic, should we abandon all modern sanitation because of this possible link?
You know what NATURAL IMMUNITY means? It means an average lifespan of 25 years. It means women dying post-partum from puerperal fever. It means not naming your children until their first birthday (as a fair number of ancient cultures did) because you did not want to invest to heavily emotionally in them until you were sure they had a decent chance of surviving, infant mortality from infectious disease being THAT HIGH.
It also means a large, actively replicating population of infectious disease organisms, increasing the probability they might evolve into more virulent forms.
As for my comment on civic responsibility, I was deliberately being mild. Civic DUTY is more appropriate. If you do not vaccinate, and someone you contact gets measles, or rubella or whatever, and that person dies, you are guilty of negligent homicide in my book.
As for the argument that most measles cases are mild, SO WHAT? Autism falls on a spectrum from mild to severe as well. So do the real complications of vaccines. EVERYTHING falls in a spectrum from mild to severe. In the western world, most people do recover completely from measles. BUT THEY REQUIRE TREATMENT. How many resources must be used for this treatment? Resources no longer available to be used for something and someone else? Do you know how expensive it is to contain the outbreak of a infectious disease, not only in the hospitals where the patients are treated, but the community at large as well? In contrast to this, vaccination literally costs cents and prevents the problem from occurring in the first place.
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:30 pm
@amphiox
By your logic, should we abandon all modern sanitation because of this possible link?
Actually no, I think certain measures make absolute sense. Not drinking one’s one SH** via untreated water is definitely a good thing. Eating a steady supply of varying foods that boost the immune system that older cultures wouldn’t have had access to is a good thing. Washing hands when you get something particularly disgusting on them is a good thing. But I actually agree with you that the germophobia thing that’s been going on lately is a bad thing too. I think kids SHOULD be allowed to get germs the old fashioned way by digging in the dirt and drinking out of each others’ cups and sucking on pennies they find on the ground (out of their parent’s direct vision of course
). I also think my four year old should get chicken pox the old fashioned “man this sucks” way.
I’m not completely luddite and hippie in my thinking. I’m not QUITE as suspect of the medical community as others, though I do try and limit my own consumption of medicine if I don’t feel I really need it. I prefer to let my fever run its course rather than taking tylenol. I don’t wash my hands every ten minutes. And I don’t take antibiotics unless I actually have a bacterial infection. I hesitate to say I’m not anti-vaccines (since I clearly am and I know that drives you guys crazy) but I am certainly open to the idea that I might be horribly wrong and misled.
If you do not vaccinate, and someone you contact gets measles, or rubella or whatever, and that person dies, you are guilty of negligent homicide in my book.
Devil’s advocate, don’t you put younger children in your household at risk every time one of your older children gets a shot since they are contagious for upwards of a week after. (I’m really not trying to sound confrontational with that. I assure you I’m not asking a smarta** rhetorical question).
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Brian, didn’t see you last post before posting mine. To answer your questions there, the difference in deaths and cases is a result of improved medical treatment and sanitation reducing transmission prior to the advent of vaccines. But which is the better scenario, to get the disease and require treatment, which is successful, or not to get ill in the first place? In which does the patient suffer more? Which deprives society of more contributions from productive citizens, and which costs society more to deal with? All these factors must be (and were!) considered when the risk-benefit ratios of universal vaccination were investigated.
Natural immunity most certainly does NOT get passed on to your children, except for that immunity that is provided by the antibodies a woman secretes in her breast milk, and that is only for breast feeding children, and it is only temporary (the child cannot make these antibodies, so the immunity vanishes the moment breast feeding ends). At any rate this immunity is also granted by vaccination.
There is NO difference between “natural” immunity and the immunity provided by vaccines. The longterm immunity in both cases is produced by the same mechanisms. In some cases the immunity provided by vaccines does not last as long as that which would be provided by a natural exposure because we do not use live microbes in the vaccine, for obvious reasons. These dead microbes (or sometimes just pieces of their proteins) don’t replicate inside our bodies (among other differences with the live natural version), so our immune system sees less of them and the immune response is less strong, and so the immunity memory doesn’t last as long.
A vaccination is nothing more than a controlled infection, in which we seek to obtain the immunological benefits without exposing ourselves to the normal risks. If we wanted lifelong immunity we could do it easily, just vaccinate with fully live and unattenuated microbes, but the whole point of vaccination is to avoid being exposed to a live and unattenuated microbe!
One really has to examine each vaccine separately as individual medications. When a new vaccine hits the market, we should consider it with the same skepticism we regard with any new medical product.
The corollary of this argument is that things like mercury, contaminants (or any other component of the vaccine that does not directly contribute to the development of immunity) is completely irrelevant to the question of vaccination in general. If one or more of these are implicated in side-effects, the proper response is simply to change the composition of the vaccine and continue to give the new vaccine.
But for the older vaccines, the ones that most people talk about when we talk about universal vaccination programs, the evidence in favor has accumulated over decades. Skepticism on these amounts to idiocy. Antivaccination for these is social irresponsibility.
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Brian - I actually agree with you on the chickenpox. I’ve posted that several times on prior threads.
As for exposing my hypothetical younger children when my hypothetical older children get a shot, sure it is a risk, BUT the big difference is that the risk is much, much, much smaller than the alternative situation. There is always risk. I would expose my hypothetical children to the risk of being run over by a car every time I open the door and let them play outside.
Also, as I said before, a vaccination is a controlled infection. This means I know exactly when the exposure occurred, and can plan accordingly to further reduce the risk. I cannot do this with a natural infection, as most of them have asymptomatic incubation periods.
I most certainly would not be able to do anything if it is my neighbour’s kid, who, not vaccinated, gets the disease and exposes my hypothetical children to it.
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Hmmm… Why is the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program already at a new record in number of awards? By their own data they are at 121 when they never got above 82 in previous years. They may not break last year’s record of $91,449,433.89 in compensation, but they are at $74,104,517.63 right now. Clearly something is going on…
If vaccines are completely safe, then why is there a secret court where they seal the information and don’t put it out on the table for everyone to read? I’m all about it, but I don’t like it when secrets are kept. Let’s go back and put 100% of the data out there for everyone to see and read about. I wouldn’t buy that aviation was safe if the government kept accident information under lock and key, and I wouldn’t expect anyone else to do it either. Let’s have 100% disclosure and then we can have a real discussion.
August 22nd, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Just to point out even more blatantly the sheer self-destructive lunacy of the autism-vaccine argument, we can do the cost-benefit assessment using the assumption that there actually is a proven, certain link between autism and a certain vaccine. We could then determine the minimum autism risk above which that particular vaccine would no longer be recommended.
I’m pretty sure the risk would have to be extremely high, over 1/1000, perhaps over 1/100, (varying depending on which vaccine and disease the association with autism was linked to) before we could even think of modifying the vaccination schedule and consider it justifiable, let along not vaccinating at all.
Which is to say, even if there IS a link between autism and vaccines, for everything except chickenpox and HPV, you should still vaccinate. And society should still vaccinate universally.
August 22nd, 2008 at 6:23 pm
@amphiox
To answer your questions there, the difference in deaths and cases is a result of improved medical treatment and sanitation reducing transmission prior to the advent of vaccines. But which is the better scenario, to get the disease and require treatment, which is successful, or not to get ill in the first place?
Honestly, my mind still goes to the thought that it’s better to get the disease and have a crappy week or two, but which gives your immune system the “practice” it needs to become stronger. I don’t know if there’s ANY scientific merit to this line of thought, but it seems like the more disease it fights off an wins against naturally would strengthen the overall immune system to fight other things off, including diseases we don’t or can’t vaccinate against, or most especially against diseases that have yet to mutate and pop up that we don’t even know about.
Perhaps to my detriment, I like to quote a George Carlin routine where he talks about America’s constant fear of germs and how people are trying to eliminate all possible contagions in their life: “What are you going to do when some super virus comes along and turns your vital organs into liquid S***? I’ll tell you what you’re gonna do, you’re gonna get sick, and you’re gonna die and you’re gonna deserve it, cuz you’re f’in weak and you’ve got an f’in weak immune system.” I know George isn’t exactly an authority figure in this debate but it does make ME wonder if there is some merit to that idea of giving the immune system actual practice on diseases that it can actually fight off for the sake of strengthening it for down the line.
On a side note, thank you for remaining non-confrontational in your posts. Seriously, I’ve seen how easily people in the pro-vax camp can get pretty antagonistic of people like me, so I sincerely appreciate your non-condescending academic approach in this discussion. I truly am trying to get to the bottom of this whole thing in my head and it’s much easier when I’m not being cut ad hominem to pieces just for asking questions. So thank you.
August 22nd, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Vaccines ARE practice for the immune system.
And, due to the elegant specificity of the immune response, building immunity to one virus gives you zilch protection from a different virus. It can, however, be weakened - taxed by an infection - which can open up the risk of a severe secondary infection.
August 22nd, 2008 at 6:37 pm
I get a flu vaccine every year in December. I have been doing this for the last 15 years. I have only had one bad case of flu in the last 5 years, and even then I only missed 2 days of work. I have also found the colds that I have caught are milder than others seem to get. I know that the vaccine does not cover all the possible strains in any given year, yet it seems to have given me added protection. I certainly have never become ill from the vaccine as some people have told me when I suggest they get a flu shot. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Much of the anti-vaccination movement may be driven by the fear that vaccinations cause autism. (My impression). The only way that the issue will be done away with is when science can figure out what does cause autism. Until then, people will be afraid (not necessarily stupid) and make the wrong choices in an attempt to protect their child. Hopefully soon, the cause will be isolated.
Education and training for parents (and healthcare workers on how to gain parents trust) is needed.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Dick… living up to your first name.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Sorry BA, but, I get sick of these idiots…
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:17 pm
It’s a global problem. Parts of the Islamic world have gotten a bug up their rears over polio vaccines. As a result there areas where children are being crippled by polio when it just doesn’t need to happen. Countries where polio was eradicated have started seeing cases again. This is a *direct* result of muslim clerics and imams issuing fatwas warning against the vaccinations. International health workers are denied access to some areas, and in some cases are beaten. But, hey, Allah is good and great and all that.
http://vaccine.immunodefence.com/2007/01/muslim-urged-to-shun-unholy-va.html
We really have to get these folks hooked up with the Christian Scientists. Together they can pray their ailments away.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Brian said “Honestly, my mind still goes to the thought that it’s better to get the disease and have a crappy week or two, but which gives your immune system the “practice” it needs to become stronger.”
BZZZT… wrong. It is a nasty disease, and even if you survive there are other long term health issues caused by the full disease. Things like deafness, blindness, and even SSPE… and sometimes full on brain damage (okay, I posted a long thing with Munged URLs twice, but I got caught, so this is why I am listing the paper):
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2006;160:302-309. “Impact of Specific Medical Interventions on Reducing the Prevalence of Mental Retardation”… which says “Approximately 1 in 1000 children with clinical measles develops encephalitis. Although most children with encephalitis recover without sequelae, approximately 15% die and 25% of survivors develop complications such as Mental Retardation. We assumed that approximately 1 in 5000 cases of measles leads to Mental Retardation.” (modified for clarity)
Now please, show me the real scientific literature that shows the MMR is riskier than measles. Not an opinion, not a news report, definitely not a comedians opinion and not an anecdote. Real science, something like this paper of the number of deaths from the last major outbreak of measles in the late 1980s and early 1990s:
J Infect Dis. 2004 May 1;189 Suppl 1:S69-77.
Acute measles mortality in the United States, 1987-2002 …” We estimated that 259 measles deaths actually occurred; the reporting efficiencies were 64% for the NCHS and 71% for the NIP. Overall the death-to-case ratio was 2.54 and 2.83 deaths/1000 reported cases, using the NCHS and NIP data, respectively.”
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:30 pm
@BudgetAstronomer
And, due to the elegant specificity of the immune response, building immunity to one virus gives you zilch protection from a different virus.
Is that actually true? Sure, getting measles maybe doesn’t give you IMMUNITY to, say, polio, but doesn’t it give your immune system the equivalent of a full body workout, making it stronger so that if and when polio does come along it can battle it more effectively? Have there been any studies that type of thing?
@RL
Much of the anti-vaccination movement may be driven by the fear that vaccinations cause autism.
I totally agree and as a non-vaxer that drives me crazy because I feel like the whole argument ends up being about how vaccines do or don’t cause autism that we don’t address the other concerns… or when we do, anti-vaxxers get accused of moving goalposts.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:35 pm
And my #2 fear is that the mass vaccination program has essentially robbed us of gaining NATURAL IMMUNITY.
Jesus Tap Dancing Christ, how do you think vaccines work in the first place? They train your own immune system by introducing a dead, inactivated or attenuated versions of a virus without the risk of the full blown thing.
Newer vaccines insert key elements of a virus’ DNA into a human or animal cell. This triggers recognition and a response by the immune system. They are experimental, but hold promise being very easy (read: cheap) to create and store, and supposed last a long time.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Honestly, my mind still goes to the thought that it’s better to get the disease and have a crappy week or two, but which gives your immune system the “practice” it needs to become stronger.
Tell that to HIV positive folks. Idiot.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:45 pm
@HCN
Now please, show me the real scientific literature that shows the MMR is riskier than measles. Not an opinion, not a news report, definitely not a comedians opinion and not an anecdote.
Will you settle for another couple of questions?
Approximately 1 in 1000 children with clinical measles develops encephalitis.
Just so I’m clear, is “clinical measles” different from regular measles? Or is “clinical measles” another way of say somebody who actually got hospitalized due to the disease? Because that would greatly change how I would interpret that 1 in 1000 stat.
It is a nasty disease, and even if you survive there are other long term health issues caused by the full disease. Things like deafness, blindness, and even SSPE… and sometimes full on brain damage
Sure, but aren’t these worst-case scenarios that don’t really happen all that often? Because you could give worst case scenarios about anything in life. According to that Mayo Clinic thing I posted earlier, the odds of getting anything worse than just a fever aren’t all that terribly high. Sure you MIGHT get those worse symptoms, but generally speaking, wouldn’t they tend to affect primarily people whose immune systems were already compromised by some other factor like unsanitary living conditions or the like?
The thing I also have a hard time with is the inability to know how many people catch the disease and never realize they have it. You know, it just feels like one suck of a cold for a few days and then they’re over it. The way it is now, we can only know about the “reported” cases. And if somebody is reporting it, it obviously has progressed to a point where they felt they needed medical attention. How many other cases never go reported because the body fought it off. Do 1 in 1000 people with measles get encephalitus… or do 1 in 1000 people who actually come to the doctor for measles get encephalitus? I wonder what the ratio is of EVERY case, reported and unreported, of measles and the side effects they get. I know there is know way to know this, and again, I assure you I’m not just being willfully difficult here. It’s just that every answer brings up more questions.
Actually this seems like it would be a really interesting study for somebody to conduct. Start testing people who have never been vaccinated and see which diseases they have developed immunity to. Have there been any studies like that. I bet the results would be pretty intriguing no matter what they were. It might shed some light onto which of these “cases” are major and which ones passed by with barely more than a sniffle.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:48 pm
@Quiet Desperation
Newer vaccines insert key elements of a virus’ DNA into a human or animal cell. This triggers recognition and a response by the immune system. They are experimental, but hold promise being very easy (read: cheap) to create and store, and supposed last a long time.
I haven’t heard of this. Can you give me a link… if the blogger software let’s it get by.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Read the paper… and clinical measles is the same as regular measles but has been positively identified.
And measles in a reportable disease, so if they go to the doctor it gets identified, but it is usually pretty clear.
Stop stalling, answer the questions, or better yet — do some real reading from reliable sources about the disease. I would post the URL, but seems to be a big no-no. Read the measles chapter of the CDC Pink Book, it has explanation of the symptoms, how it is identified and complications. Just google “cdc pink book measles” (first link).
Or read up on Roald Dahl, find out how is oldest child died. She seemed to have a worst case scenario, don’t you think? (sorry can’t link to it but it is easy to find)
Oh, and the blogger software is not letting my links in, even though I munged them. What you need to do is just put the word “pubmed” into your browser, you will immediately directed to an index of most of the medical research that occurs on this planet. Then put in words that you think will get you to interesting information, like “dna vaccine”, and you should find some interesting stuff (oh, if you put the paper title in the search bar you will get an abstract, with a link to the right to the actual paper).
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Thanks for the leads HCN. I will check them out and get back to you.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:33 pm
You will never win against these people, or rather, the people who promote this stuff not the people who fall for it. To them it isn’t about facts, knowledge, research, or common sense, it is about what they believe and there is nothing you can say to change it. This goes for young earth creationists, etc. Instead of trying to keep them from doing what they are doing, we should try and win the people they are trying to convert. I am glad to see that you agree.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:34 pm
@ Brian
Just so I’m clear, is “clinical measles” different from regular measles?
“Clinical measles” would be an actual health care provider diagnosed the illness. As opposed to going on WebMD, reading the list of symptoms, and saying, “Oh, my kid has measles.”
Sure, getting measles maybe doesn’t give you IMMUNITY to, say, polio, but doesn’t it give your immune system the equivalent of a full body workout, making it stronger so that if and when polio does come along it can battle it more effectively?
No, it just allows your body to protect you from the full-blown, miserable, possibly life-threatening or hospitalization-required illness. However, if you don’t have any immunities to anything, you’re opening your (or your child’s) body to a slew of minor illnesses that accumulate into something major.
And as for the Carlin bit, I always took that as slamming these germophobes who want to turn their kids into a version of the sterile animals at Notre Dame’s labs that have NO immunity and therefore can never leave their cages, as the common cold could kill them. He didn’t mean not to vaccinate, he meant not to keep your kids in a hamster bubble. Not to obsessively wash your hands and Purell your world to death.
You seem to think that pneumonia is nothing. My dad (who’s in his mid-50’s and in excellent health) almost DIED due to pneumonia earlier this year. Just because it’s not something that is a widespread outbreak of death due to, doesn’t make it any less lethal. Not trying to be mean (if it comes off that way, it was not my intention) just trying to add in my 2 cents. ^_^
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Why my 15yo daughter got four shots a couple of weeks ago. My 13yo son got two.
I held off getting the HPV vaccination for my 15yo daughter. I wanted to hear about problems. I reviewed the adverse effects. But then decided I’d feel very guilty if she later developed cervical cancer and I could have prevented it. Shot #1.
I don’t like to see my (generally very healthy) kids sick. Chicken pox isn’t fun. Some of the neighbors kids had it when my daughter was born. Good thing she was a few days late. Otherwise, they would have visited before showing symptoms. Chicken pox is dangerous for infants. My nephew has permanent scars on his face. You can’t tell a kid under one to not scratch. So my kids got that vaccine as soon as they could. And they just got the booster. Shot #2.
I had a friend die suddenly of bacterial meningitis when we were both about 12. Shot #3.
And I keep us all up-to-date on the tetanus. Shot #4.
My daughter didn’t like getting four shots, but at least at 15 she understands why. It’s harder to explain to an 18-month-old. Her arms didn’t feel good for a few days. She’ll need more HPV shots.
But I’d much rather they ache in their arms than run high fevers and have seizures, be covered with itchy spots that may leave scars, miss a week or more of school, or even die. Life is risky. Maybe they’ll have a bad side effect. But that’s very unlikely especially with healthy kids. Maybe the chicken pox vaccine doesn’t give lifelong immunity. But it gives some immunity now, and then they get a booster.
And in the meantime, they aren’t sick with preventable diseases. And they aren’t spreading those diseases while they are contagious but not symptomatic. Chicken pox is contagious 48 hours before spots appear. Measles is contagious four days before spots appear and 90% (!) of an infected person’s close contacts who aren’t immune will catch it. By keeping my kids immunized and healthy, I help them not spread the diseases to others. It’s part of being a responsible member of the community.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:48 pm
I have been following this discussion and appreciate that Brian’s earnest questioning has lead to (mostly) earnest conversation on vaccine safety and risk/benefit analysis. Most conversations on this topic are much uglier.
Amphiox,
You said that, “But which is the better scenario, to get the disease and require treatment, which is successful, or not to get ill in the first place?”, which touches on something that seems to be missing from this conversation.
One of the difficulties in discussing this is that people who are pro-vaccination instantly label people like me, who believe vaccines cause serious damage, including autism, as into-vaxxers and move forward through the debate as if vaccination is an all or nothing proposition.
I realize that Brian’s line of questioning is a vaccinate or not vaccinate question, but other parts of the discussion seem to ignore that there is a middle ground between fully vaccinating according to the CDC’s recommended schedule.
One other very important distinction that also needs to be made here is that the risk/benefit ratio from vaccination is not only different for each vaccine, (which you touched on when you said that new vaccines should be assessed) but it is different for every person.
Vaccination is not safe for all people any more than antibiotics or any pharmaceutical is safe for all people. Or even any single food is safe for all people. Strawberries and peanut butter can kill people.
But while no one here would argue for one second with a parents who withholds a prophylactic antibiotic from a child who is likely to have an adverse reaction to it, parents doing the same with a vaccine are being called truly horrible things by many on this list.
No one here seems to be arguing with the fact that vaccines can cause serious injury, and even death, to some. Yet you are still saying that everyone should be vaccinated universally.
What you have done in that policy is to sentence a subset of the population, that is genetically vulnerable, to life long illness, disability and death. Before they even take a their first breath.
The vaccine program is failing because the CDC and AAP are being blatantly dishonest and parents can sniff out their BS. My son suffered an autistic regression after his 18 month shots, four years ago, and since then I have been reading research and trying to get specific answers from health authorities (and docs) on the massive holes in vaccine safety research, and when they hear those questions they scatter like roaches in the kitchen when the lights go on.
Until they start being honest about vaccine injuries, the vaccine program will just continue in a downward slide and more measles cases will pop up.
And until they start screening to see which children are vulnerable to vaccine injury, we will just know that they don’t actually give a rats a** on which kids are getting hurt. They have decided that our children, who are at the bottom of the genetic bell curve, are disposable, and when medical professionals treat people’s children that way, they stop trusting them.
If the vaccine program is important to you guys, then encourage open discussion about the problems vaccines cause and put measures in place to screen for them, and treat them IMMEDIATELY.
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Brian,
You also need to factor in that the measles vaccine can also cause encephalitis.
I won’t try to post the link as no one has been successful, but if you google Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, you will get the HHS site and there is a link to the list of vaccine injuries.
Note that MMR can cause measles and encephalitis.
also note the symptoms:
Loss of eye contact
Not responding to stimuli (except for loud shouting)
Seems detached from the world around them
Often accompanied by seizures.
THAT is a description of a child that would be diagnosed with autism. (I know you are not a fan of the autism diagnosis focus, but that is the life I am living, so there you go… sorry).
That was also a description of my son when I took him into his pediatrician and said that he had been like that from since his shots (his was DTaP which also causes encepalopathy). He got an “Autism” diagnosis and it was not until a year later until I knew to take him to a doc that would actually examine him and treat his physical symptoms. And when we did, he got better. (not all the way, but he came halfway home).
The problem is that pediatricians are NOT taught that children can get neuro-inflammation from the vaccine, but only from old school viral exposure. They are not taught to look for vaccine induced encepalopathy. I have talked to two young docs finishing up med school recently and neither one of them had ever heard of vaccine induced encepalopathy.
ANY child taken into almost ANY pediatrician in this country tomorrow, that displayed the above symptoms (as long as seizure was not one of them) would be slapped with and autism label, and their case would not be medically investigated. And if mom said, “he has been like this since his vaccines”, she would be told that vaccines don’t cause autism and that she was just, “looking for someone to blame”.
So health officials can continue to claim that severe neurological vaccine reactions are “rare” because they are all being misdiagnosed as “Autism” which has “no known cause or cure”.
So while you need to factor in the MMR encepalopathy, you can’t actually get an accurate incidence rate for it, just that it exists and that parents who claim vaccine induced autism after MMR may actually have MMR induced encepalopathy.
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Another good reason not to have active reservoirs of any virus out there is they evolve. I do not want some random mutation that makes the disease worse to pop up in someone just because selfish idiot didn’t vaccinate. Every infection is a chance for the virus to change into something new.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:12 pm
THANK YOU GINGER!!!
I, too, have been following this discussion, and your comments were just what this discussion needed; input from someone who has a child who was sadly and unfortunatly injured by a vaccine. We have heard from others who “knew someone” who had “vaccine-preventable” disease, but your outlook is personal, current and should hopefully cause people to THINK.
This is exactly my issue with vaccines. I’m not saying they don’t work!!! They probably do offer some/much immunity to the diseases they are intended to prevent. But NOONE is looking at the risks! They are being dismissed and affected children and their families are led to believe that if their problems truly were vaccine related, that is was for the better good of the community. And what’s worse is that these risks are not even discussed before the injection.
I would be more likely to accept the risks of vaccination if they were actually discussed. If they are finally brought out into the open, rather than parents having to FIGHT with doctors, CORONERS, judges etc that they were VACCINE RELATED INJURIES, then maybe they would actually be researched. It is impossible to say that vaccines cause NO damage if there has not been any research done!!! Having no evidence does not prove they are safe, it only means that the cries and pleas of mourning parents have been ignored and swept under the rug for the “greater good”.
Only when these injuries can be actually researched and modifications can be made and tested (has anyone heard the term “peer-reviewed randomized control trial”????? Apparently not vaccine makers…) will I be reassured that my child is not being used as a guinea pig. Perhaps we allow more than one company to develop vaccines. Then we the consumer can CHOOSE whose vaccine we give our kids. (That’s how we got mercury out of vaccines… by consumer demand) This will force vaccine makers to actually uphold safety standards that they claim they have.
Again, I am not saying that vaccines don’t work. I’m not saying they haven’t benefitted the community greatly (though I do have questions about the validitity of some studies). I just want the suffering to come out into the open so people can see for themselves the damage vaccines CAN do. After there is an outcry, then maybe vaccines will be produced that are SAFE AND EFFECTIVE. And then, I will vaccinate my children.
And be careful before you call me a “sick, wrong, delusional, downright evil, stupid idiot who doesn’t mind killing children.” (as per previous posts) According to all my research, I should be saying that to you.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:23 pm
The “natural immunity” argument suffers from the fact that there’s nothing natural about most childhood diseases. For the overwhelming majority of human evolution, our population was too small and dispersed to support a disease like measles that confers essentially lifelong immunity. People may have contracted it here and there, but it certainly would not have been a rite of passage.
After the development of agriculture, c. 10,000 years ago, human birth rates and population densities soared. Now, measles, mumps, etc. could circulate continuously in the population. In fact, their high prevalence, combined with lifelong immunity, is what made them childhood diseases. (The more likely something is, the younger you’ll be, on average, when it happens to you.) But this only occurred around 10,000 years ago — probably much less for some diseases. We didn’t evolve with this stuff; if anything, childhood infections seem to damage our later health. (Read http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/health/30age.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2 ) Jared Diamond’s book _Guns, Germs and Steel_ has an excellent analysis on the phenomenon.
Our immune systems do apparently need contact with certain germs and parasites. Read _Good Germs, Bad Germs_ by Jessica Snyder Sachs or Google “hygiene hypothesis” to learn more about this. Some soil bacteria are on this list. If you want your kids to develop good immune systems, encourage them to play outside, adopt a dog, and don’t be too strict about handwashing. (This, of course, is in addition to good nutrition and enough sleep.) But skipping vaccines won’t help.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:29 pm
GingerTaylor:
Maybe MMR can cause encephalopathy/encephalitis, but isn’t measles far more likely to do so? I had encephalitis (from an unrelated cause — something transmitted by ticks) as an infant and have permanent impairments of balance and muscle control, enough that I use a power wheelchair for mobility. Any disease that can cause encephalitis as a complication should NOT be taken lightly. (BTW, I wouldn’t be surprised if encephalitis sometimes caused autism.)
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Ginger Taylor said “You also need to factor in that the measles vaccine can also cause encephalitis.”
In what rate compared to the actual disease? The disease causes encephalitis at a rate of 1 out of 1000 (with about 15% of those ending in death, and another 25% of them ending in permanent neurological damage).
Now give us the real scientific evidence that the rates of encephalitis with the MMR is more than with measles (and mumps and rubella). Something on the order of what I cited earlier, which you must have missed. Here, I’ll cut and paste it for you:
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2006;160:302-309. “Impact of Specific Medical Interventions on Reducing the Prevalence of Mental Retardation”… which says “Approximately 1 in 1000 children with clinical measles develops encephalitis. Although most children with encephalitis recover without sequelae, approximately 15% die and 25% of survivors develop complications such as Mental Retardation. We assumed that approximately 1 in 5000 cases of measles leads to Mental Retardation.” (modified for clarity)
Also, for your benefit Ginger, I give you a cite showing what the rate of death was with the last major outbreak in the late 1980s and early 1990s:
J Infect Dis. 2004 May 1;189 Suppl 1:S69-77.
Acute measles mortality in the United States, 1987-2002. … “We estimated that 259 measles deaths actually occurred; the reporting efficiencies were 64% for the NCHS and 71% for the NIP. Overall the death-to-case ratio was 2.54 and 2.83 deaths/1000 reported cases, using the NCHS and NIP data, respectively. ”
That is a death rate of over 1 in 500 cases.
Now here is some other fun facts, the numbers difference in 50 years for measles in seven years (from Appendix G of the CDC Pink Book, the underscores for spacing — though the proportional font makes it difficult):
Year____Cases____Deaths__Year____Cases____Deaths
2000_______86______ 1____1950___319124____468
2001______116______ 1____1951___530118____683
2002_______44______ 0____1952___683077____618
2003_______56______ 1____1953___449146____462
2004_______37______ NA___1954___682720____518
2005_______66______ NA___1955___555156____345
2006_______55______ NA___1956___611936____530
Total______460______3 or more____3831277___3624
So what you see on the bottom is the total for seven years. In the 1950s the USA population was half of what it is now (see the Wiki article on Demographics_of_the_United_States). So if we stopped using the MMR (which has been used in the USA since 1971, and has never contained thimerosal), those numbers of cases and deaths could double, not to mention the permanent neurological disabilities (matching and exceeding your definition of autism, because they might also be blind, paralyzed or deaf along with severely impaired mental ability).
Why do you want us to go back to the days of hundreds of children dying from measles?
Why do you think what has happened in Japan and the UK will not happen in the USA? In Japan last year almost a hundred schools were closed to step an outbreak of measles. From BMJ 2007;334:1292 (23 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.39248.481701.DB …”An outbreak of measles in Japan has led to the closure of more than a hundred schools and universities in the past month and to calls for a new push to eradicate the virus completely. Japan is one of the few industrialised countries yet to eliminate the disease.”
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Jane said “(BTW, I wouldn’t be surprised if encephalitis sometimes caused autism.)”
Actually, the “R” part of the MMR is for rubella. Congenital Rubella Syndrome (what happens to a baby when a pregnant woman get rubella) is one known cause of autism (along with stillbirth, mental retardation, blindness, deafness and a bunch of other stuff).
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Ginger Taylor,
I am truely sorry for your child’s condition, but you have given only the barest hint of an impending logical argument that it had anything to do with vaccines. A young child on the regular vaccine schedule is being given shots every year or two, so any condition that pops up before the age of six is going to be “right after” a vaccination.
You mention that you have asked doctors questions, but practicing medical doctors are NOT medical researchers, they have nurses to hunt down their information, should they need anything beyond what they can get through a quick google, and they will “scatter like roaches” if a tough question is asked because it is better to save face by being absent than to admit that they don’t know of the latest Lancet article, which it is not their job to know.
Ask a PhD in epidemiology what they think of the vax schedule.
Ask a PhD in Biology about the immune system (Brian).
MD’s are trained and educated to follow procedures, so even if they didn’t know a thing about “vaccine induced encephalopathy”, they would know the symptoms of encephalopathy, and would test for and treat it, whatever its cause.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Jane and HCN,
As I mentioned at the end of my previous post, because docs are not schooled in it, it is not being correctly diagnosed, so we don’t know what the actual rate is for comparison’s sake.
But when health officials say, “benefits outweigh the risks”, they are not adding vaccine induced encepalopathy into the risks (how many other real world risks are they leaving out of that assessment? Type 1 Diabetes, juvenile arthritis, asthma? All are increasing and all are autoimmune disorders, we know that the adjuvants in vaccines can cause autoimmune disorders. Has a relationship been properly assessed?).
And we will not be able to make good risk assessments until everyone tones down the rhetoric, comes to the table and faces the fact that vaccines cause serious damage in some and that it is time re-evaluate the current vaccine schedule.
I know that many blame “parental fears” for the drop in vaccinating, but I put to you that the “public health officials fears” that admitting the truth about vaccine injury will cause people to completely quit vaccinating is causing them to make foolish and unsupported safety statements that parents can see right through.
HCN…
I thought we had already established a 1 in 500 death rate from measles infection? Perhaps that was on another thread. Never mind.
CDC reports .2 death rate and .1 encepalopathy rate, just so we are working from the same numbers.
“So if we stopped using the MMR… Why do you want us to go back to the days of hundreds of children dying from measles?” I don’t think you read my two posts completely. (And can we loose the drama please).
Again, there is a middle ground between universal vaccination and abandoning vaccination, and a myriad of different ways to vaccinate someone. What we should be doing is coming up with methods of determining who is at risk for vaccine injury and making vaccine decisions according to risk/benefit analysis guidelines to be applied to EACH INDIVIDUAL CHILD according to their risk factors and vulnerabilities.
Remember, it is a physicians ethical obligation to make determinations on what to recommend for a child’s medical treatment based on what is in that child’s best interest, not in the best interest of those in the waiting room or the general population. If a pharmaceutical is likely to make a child sick, it does not matter how beneficial it is to everyone else, it should not be given to that child.
If we can wipe out a disease with a vaccine, then great! But we can’t allow a even a small percentage of the population to be harmed to do so.
We are NOT currently threatened with a viral epidemic. This is not 1918 or the 1940’s. NOW is the part of the history of vaccines where we have the breathing room (and the public demand) to make vaccines safer and more individualized.
Finding those risk/screening mechanisms BEGINS with finding a true incidence of any given vaccine side effect and comparing that rate to those not given the vaccine. Since the medical profession has not even sniffed in this direction (CDC refuses to do vaccinated v. unvaccinated population studies) then children who should not be vaccinated will continue to be needlessly injured by vaccination, and other children who could be safely vaccinated will go with out them because parents do not trust health authorities and their poor risk assessments.
One last point. If “autism” really is largely vaccine encepalopathy, then we need to start figuring out the death rate from “autism” (because autism does kill children, usually because they do not see the dangers around them and become accident and assault victims).
This year my son was in autism class of three 6 year olds, (all vaccine injuries). One child died when she got out of her parents yard and drowned in the neighbors pool in May. That was 1/3 of my child’s class lost to accidents that were a direct result of autism symptoms.
Now I know that the accident rate is not that high, but no one is keeping track of how many children with autism die untimely deaths from merely going outside their home as compared to the general population of children, and how many are abused and can’t report it leading to their deaths.
If we want to know the real risks, we have to factor in all the precious little ones were not safe because of their “autism”.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Good timing. This article was front page news today. It’s a story about a couple of parents who are on the run with their two-day-old child because they were so paranoid about the aluminium that was supposedly in the Hepatitis B vaccine. The mother has Hep B, and they reckon that they can treat it more effectively than any ‘neurological damage’ from the vaccine. He’s also refused to have his three-year-old vaccinated - or even screened for it! Both kids have as high as a 40% chance of having Hep B - would they rather subject a kid to THAT rather than one little vaccination?
I do admit, I sympathise with them wanting to do some research first, but they’ve HAD time. The mother has had Hep B for YEARS - that’s plenty of time to do some research! And in the mean time, they’re subjecting both kids to SERIOUS health issues.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Some are not Anti vaccine, just anti MMR
Parents want the choice to have the injections done separately instead of all at once. Is that so much to ask?
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:23 pm
And the evidence that seperate vaccines are safer is where?
Also, that argument does not hold water in the USA. Americans have been able to obtain the single vaccines for ages (well, until the manufacturer decided to stop making the single mumps vaccine recently)
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:25 pm
And Jane… of course any disease that causes encephalitis should not be taken lightly… nor should any vaccine.
But taking it seriously does not mean an unwise jump to blanket vaccination with out knowing what the fall out can be.
And I would add, part of this problem is that something in us arrogant humans actually believes that we can control nature and wipe out diseases. And part of becoming wise will be realizing that we just can’t.
We have to make the wisest choices we can, and ALWAYS be humbly learning.
I am convinced that in a hundred years people will look back at our vaccine program now and shudder. We are hammering kids with vaccines, and not just the serious illnesses, but chicken pox and rotavirus.
American reasoning… if three are good, then 30 will be ten times better!!!
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Ginger, I told you to give me the evidence, not anecdotes. Try harder.
Oh, and yeah… my middle child is a lifeguard, he has had to jump in the pool to rescue kids who decided to swim when they could not. They are not autistic.
Give me real evidence, not anecdotes.
August 23rd, 2008 at 12:04 am
@ Ginger
> If we can wipe out a disease with a vaccine, then great! But we can’t allow a even
> a small percentage of the population to be harmed to do so.
While your point (that research determining which people are at particular risk for vaccine related injuries is a good idea) is valid, I’m afraid I must disagree with this conclusion.
Smallpox, for example, is a dire threat to a human population. Vaccinating essentially the entire human population has virtually eradicated the disease… and yet there were side effects of the smallpox vaccination. See the CDC web site if the link doesn’t show up:
(http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox/vaccination/reactions-vacc-public.asp)
Risk/benefit analysis that are centered entirely upon the individual are as unbalanced and unjust as those that are centered entirely upon the population. There are times when the advantage to the population outweighs individual risk.
The important factor is not the riskiness of the vaccination, per se, but the relative advantage and disadvantage of the vaccination in comparison to the disease.
If 1 person in every 10,000 is killed by disease “foosnarticus”, and only 1 person in every 500,000 people is killed by the vaccine, *and* the disease is significantly virulent… well, there’s 6 billion people on the planet, give or take, forced vaccinations are a death sentence for 12,000 people. Of course, if we don’t vaccinate everyone, not everyone will get the disease for various other factors (foosnarticus may only have a transmission rate of 10%, for example).
However, crunching numbers, assuming a 10% transmission rate and a possibly exposed standing population of 300 million, that would mean that 30 million people could be infected, of which would result in 3,000 deaths.
Which one is better? On a simple “causing death” analysis, it would seem to sway in the favor of *not* vaccinating, right?
Or does it? In the first case, we know that the survivors of the vaccination *aren’t* going to get the disease. We can re-task resources. The variability factor is removed. The disease won’t crop up elsewhere, where resources for dealing with an outbreak may not be present. The second case doesn’t allow for ancillary deaths (in any large outbreak of disease, lots of people are going to die for reasons other than infection).
On an individual basis, most people wouldn’t even bother to do a real risk analysis here, they’d be scared to death of the disease and a one in half-million shot that you draw the black queen is pretty long odds.
On a broad basis, even forced vaccinations is probably a net benefit to the entire population in most cases.
All that aside, its evident that you have decided that your child’s autism was caused by the vaccination (from your quote “This year my son was in autism class of three 6 year olds, (all vaccine injuries”). And yet you have not stated why you believe this to be so, other than the fact that he started displaying symptoms of autism after being vaccinated (which can simply be a correlation implies causation fallacy on your part).
also @MamaApple
You may have a point in that there is a lack of studies showing (with a level of evidence with which you are comfortable) that there is no link between autism and vaccines (Phil certainly thinks otherwise, I haven’t bothered to exhaustively research it myself), but that’s not properly germane to your argument. What studies have been done that show a causal relationship?
Aside from “they haven’t proved vaccinations are safe”, what evidence do you have that supports your assertion that vaccines caused your son’s autism? What is the foundational cause for your suspicions? Why do you assume vaccines are responsible for your son’s autism, other than… well, other than any other possible environmental, viral, bacteriological, genetic, etc. source?
Every “antivaxxer” that I’ve seen has relied upon either anecdotal evidence or complaints about the rigors of pro-vaccine studies. I have yet to see a credible study that shows some supposed high correlation between vaccines and autism, and I have heard no physiological or biological reference that explains a plausible causal link between the two.
While attacking the credibility of your opponent’s evidence is important in any scientific debate, you need to have some sort of foundational evidence supporting your own.
August 23rd, 2008 at 12:15 am
The Madsen study (linked by Phil at top, reference here: http://www.chop.edu/consumer/jsp/division/generic.jsp?id=84662#mmr) seems to be pretty compelling in its own right. Admittedly, I’m not going to bother to read the entire study itself and examine the methodology (and there’s always the possibility of error), but on the basis of this alone speaking simply as a mathematician, it’s statistically impossible that there is link between autism and vaccinations.
August 23rd, 2008 at 12:36 am
Ginger
I’ll have to point out that us “arrogant humans actually believes that we can control nature and wipe out diseases” DID. Small pox has been wiped out, save for a few samples under human control.
August 23rd, 2008 at 12:41 am
90 years ago a single type of virus killed 50 million people in about one year.
If another virus of that lethality were to emerge (and its knocking on our doorstep - the H5N1 avian flu virus), and we were to develop a vaccine against it, anyone objecting to its mandatory deployment would be a criminal.
August 23rd, 2008 at 1:15 am
[…] fear. Do you have friends who are afraid to have their children vaccinated? Show them articles like this. We all have a relative who doesn’t trust doctors and seeks out so-called alternative […]
August 23rd, 2008 at 1:21 am
There was an article in my local paper this morning (link: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/parents-on-the-run/2008/08/22/1219262525169.html) about a mother who has Hepatitis B who has been ordered by a court to have her baby vaccinated against that disease. In this article, the parents say they “do not have enough information about the possible effects of aluminium in the vaccine” to make the decision whether to vaccinate. The child’s grandfather is said to be a member of the Australian Vaccination Network. According to the Australian Vaccination Network’s website, the risk of adverse reactions to the Hep B vaccine is estimated at less than half a percent (4 in 1000). Yet the parents of this child are prepared to take a five to 40 per cent risk that the child will catch Hep B from its mother, leading to a further 30 per cent risk of debilitation and early death, according to the figures given in the article. I agree, this is child abuse.
August 23rd, 2008 at 2:12 am
Ginger: “If we can wipe out a disease with a vaccine, then great! But we can’t allow a even a small percentage of the population to be harmed to do so.”
That is absurd, to say the least. If fewer people are negatively affected by a treatment than by the disease it treats, the treatment is a net benefit to humanity. I cannot comprehend how someone could see it any other way, unless operating under some sort of sociopathic worldview in which it’s OK for a larger portion of the population to suffer, so long as YOUR kid’s okay. Please understand that there’s an entire world outside of your house wherein vaccines have caused a net benefit.
August 23rd, 2008 at 2:36 am
How about not using the term antivaccinationist? I much prefer the term preventable and possibly deadly disease-proponent.
August 23rd, 2008 at 3:25 am
Thought I might throw in a couple of things I’ve seen recently in Australia:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/23/2344344.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/23/2344537.htm (Couple remain in hiding to avoid immunising baby)
(”The baby’s mother suffers from Hepatitis B, but both parents believe the illness can be managed more effectively than any potential damage from the vaccine.”)
34% of girls are not getting the HPV vaccine because parents are concerned that it makes them promiscuous. (The West Australian Sat/August 23rd - not the worlds best rag, but its all we’ve got!)
There are a few others, but I haven’t been able to find them again.
Once again, we’re seeing aluminium in the vaccine argument coming up… at least the health department are trying to do something about it, but they’re probably not going about it the right way!
August 23rd, 2008 at 6:27 am
I know I am late to the thread but with regards to the Chicken Pox virus is in some cases it flares up in later life as the “Shingles” and is excrutiatingly painful. My stepfather went through it in his mid 30’s about 15 years ago and even today he still suffers from pain/nerve damage caused by the virus. Even NATURAL immunity for chicken pox declines over time and some people get it a second time. This is particularly dangerous for our elder community who may also suffer from weakened immune response. So take your non-vaccinated child to go visit grandma at the nursing home, wipe out 1/3 of the population…
If this were a pure Darwin Awards Nominee thing where the anti-vaxxers were just making themselves suffer, and kill their own children then so be it, but it’s not. Their “life-decision” can potentially have catastrophic affects for the rest of us and those around them. Someone way above said this was negligent homicide. I don’t think that’s strong enough.
IANAB (Biologist) but I find myself thinking that increase outbreaks, also increases the risk of mutation, which may be vaccine-resistant. So the scenario goes something like this. The classic disease takes foothold in an anti-vaccine community, as it runs it’s course those people come in contact with vaccinated individuals, however it seems reasonable to me to suppose that the walking talking anti-vaccinated petri dishes are culturing scores of the little buggers and a mutation which is vaccine proof manages to make the leap into the broader population.
August 23rd, 2008 at 6:49 am
Is there any truth to this data:
Probability of someone (no vaccination) catching measles in the US: 1:300,000,000
Chance of Autism (based on rate of Autism diagnosis) in the US: 6:300,000,000
Just curious. I don’t know if that data is accurate or not, but so many of you here contend you are experts so I pose the question to you.
August 23rd, 2008 at 6:52 am
I’ve yet to find a doctor that wouldn’t listen to a parent’s concern & be open to modifying the vaccination schedule in such a way as to space them out a bit, but still meet the requirements of immunity.
My wife and I put off the Hep-B vaccine in the hospital, because we felt our baby had quite enough shots for a two day period. The doctors had no problem with our request & we felt completely justified in our decision.
Over the past nine months, we’ve been on a very good schedule - getting all of the shots required, in a pace that we (and our doctor) has been comfortable with. Parents should feel comfortable speaking with their doctors about all concerns they have about their child’s health - and listening to the advice of certified medical professionals.
August 23rd, 2008 at 7:51 am
This isn’t going to change until a famous person’s child dies because of this crap.
August 23rd, 2008 at 7:54 am
Dick Dawkens said:
No, Dick, you are wrong. It has been proven that there is no link between vaccination and autism. Studies have been carried out that would certainly have detected any putative link, and they did not. Therefore, there is no link. It is not a case of there not being enough data - the research has been done, the data are in and there is no link.
You have obviously been listening to the antivax propaganda. Maybe it’s time you investigated the actual science instead.
August 23rd, 2008 at 8:01 am
Mitch Miller said:
No, Mitch, you are wrong.
By not vaccinating your children, you really are putting other people’s children at risk. That is frakking irresponsible at best, or criminally negligent at worst. And what about the kids themselves? They are too young to be able to make the choice for themselves, and must rely on their parents to do what is best for them. Any parent that doesn’t get their kids vaccinated as appropriate is risking their child’s health and wellbeing.
I live in the UK, and I am old enough (just) to remember a time when you could not send your kids to school if they had not been vaccinated against a range of viruses (including polio and several others, but I cannot recall which ones). Because of the high density of population in modern towns and cities, vaccination is essent