Doctor and vaccine-defender Paul Offit has a very well-done article on Huffington Post about the recent measles outbreaks due to the antivax movements scare tactics. Offit has researched this whole thing very extensively, and wrote a book called Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure. He was recently interviewed on Skeptics Guide to the Universe, and is a clear and rational voice for truth. I strongly urge people to read what he wrote.
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The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
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January 23rd, 2009 at 7:56 am
Yikes, crackpot central over at the HuffPo comment threads.
I get annoyed at the ‘you can’t give a baby too many vaccines in one day because it’s so little’ idea. It doesn’t make sense – the kid’s been putting all kinds of crazy crap into its mouth that’s likely an inch deep in bacteria. ANd in any case, the vaccine viruses are usually dead. So worst case, it just doesn’t work and you need a booster.
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:00 am
It’s good he got HuffPo to publish that article. They’ve been guilty of spreading anti-vax woo-woo for quite some time now. Maybe they’re coming to their senses?
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:05 am
Man, if I had a kid who was exposed to measles from some anti-vaxxer woo, I’d be PO’ed.
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:12 am
[...] Thanks BA [...]
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:16 am
On the upside, these kids shouldn’t get prostate cancer…
http://www.physorg.com/news151764972.html
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:44 am
@Ryan
Except of course if your child dies from complications. Well, I guess that would definitly ensure the kid would not get any form of cancer.
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:47 am
Very nice article. My 14 year old son just got his booster for DTP a week ago. He recommended that he get a memingitus vaccine shot before he goes off for college.
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:52 am
Wow, did anyone read the comments on the article? The anti-vax crowd has really jumped all over it and are squawking that same garbage that they always do. Blah blah too many at once, blah bleah Offit’s only in it for the money, etc, etc.
There’s a LONG way to go with these people…
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:54 am
Even if docs spaced out the vaccinations so that there weren’t “too many at once” the anti-vaxxers would still be all over it like flies to that well-known pile of dung. They aren’t reasonable anymore.
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:59 am
A physician friend of mine said that the anti-vaxx crowd was going to make their children (and I quote) “dead examples of natural selection.”
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:18 am
I have mentioned it before, but I wasn’t aware until recently that Bill Maher is apparently an anti-vaxer, too.
What an idiot.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:19 am
The BA said:
Hang on a second, Phil. You need to be careful with this kind of language. All we can say for sure about the measles outbreak is that such events are rendered more likely without widespread vaccination and herd immunity than would be the case with widespread vaccination and herd immunity.
I absolutely agree that children should be vaccinated against such diseases (perhaps mumps and rubella even more so than measles) but we cannot claim a direct causative link between the failure of parents to protect their children and one specific outbreak, because such outbreaks also contain an element of chance.
I am sure that epidemiologists may, through careful study of large amounts of data, be able to show a causative link between lack of vaccination and specific outbreaks, but such studies have to be very carefully put together, and all variables have to be considered.
Having said all this, we can be fairly sure that vaccination of all children will prevent such outbreaks from occurring at all, but I don’t think we ever had 100% vaccination even before the MMR hoax.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:20 am
Uranium?!?!?!?
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:33 am
“. All we can say for sure about the measles outbreak is that such events are rendered more likely without widespread vaccination and herd immunity than would be the case with widespread vaccination and herd immunity.”
Except that there is a documented case of an anti-vaxxer’s child contracting measles in San Diego last year and passing it along to other unvaccinated children. That’s in the CDC report and in fact, the mother’s spokesperson, another anti-vaxxer, admitted as much.
See: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5708a3.htm
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:35 am
@Nigel Depledge
I believe in one of the other threads the recent CA outbreak was shown to be mainly among those who had opted out of the vaccination when a child, whose parents opted out of vaccination, contracted the disease while on vacation and brought it back.
So, the parents’ choices to not vaccinate their kids against measles did directly result in an outbreak when the measles was introduced into that population. Had they vaccinated, the outbreak would most likely not have occurred. The part that we would have difficulty proving, is whether the anti-vax movement was directly responsible for the parents choosing to not vaccinate.
Yes, we should avoid any absolute language regarding this, but I think a reasonable case could be built that the anti-vax movement played a big role, at least in the CA instance.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:44 am
@drksky
Uranium? Wow, if you’re kid is excreting large amounts of uranium you might want to make sure your kid is actually human and stop worrying about vaccines
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:45 am
As this is posted, Ginger Campbell posted:
Getting ready to interview Dr. Paul Offit, author of “Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the… http://ff.im/J7yq.via Twitter -about an hour ago
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:52 am
“Had they vaccinated, the outbreak would most likely not have occurred. ”
Obviously, since the index case was an unvaccinated child who had traveled to Switzerland and contracted the disease.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:53 am
But of course for every good point, there’s the counterpoint.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/senator-gillibrand-suppor_b_160231.html
I just wish we could truly find a cure or certainly a better understanding of autism so the whole vaccine issue would just fade away.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:18 am
@Dan: Not my son. That was a quote from one of the comments on the HuffPost (does that sound like a new drug to anyone else)? I was using it as an example of that garbage that is being spewed forth from the commenters there.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:30 am
I used to subscribe to the Huffington Post but after a slew of anti-vaxx articles last spring/summer I angrily de-listed and let the editors know that pseudo-science is what is killing the political left…not to mention children and families.
This is still a good article, but the Huffington post has a lot to make up for.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:33 am
@drksky
If that’s parents statement was true I’m going to start screening my kid’s urine for Gold, Silver, Platinum and maybe some rare earth elements. If I find significant trace amounts, I figure I refine in and supplement my income.
I heard one of the neighbor’s kids had a lot of uranium in his blood, unfortunately so did their other child. The family died when critical mass was achieved during a family group hug.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:41 am
There was a whooping cough outbreak on Orcas Island north of Seattle not too long ago. Same thing as the other outbreaks, well-to-do parents living a wanna-be el natural lifestyle. Of course a dozen kids contracted a life altering and nearly 100% preventable disease.
I have a feeling autism has always been around, we just weren’t tuned in to understanding the symptoms like we are today.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:11 am
@Dmaster: I’ve seen that point made time and again by those on the side of reality. It’s not that there’s been an increase in the occurrence of autism, just an increase in the understand of and diagnosis of it. People that were once condidered “mentally retarded”, to use a very un-PC phrase, are now most likely being diagnosed as autistic.
Of course, the anit-vaxxers continue to plug up their ears and scream “lalalalalalala…I can’t hear you!”.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:31 am
Offit says in his article: “These outbreaks have not, apparently, been sobering. If anything, the number of parents choosing to delay or withhold or separate vaccines is increasing. So what will it take? ” Maybe it will take some hefty lawsuits. But those kids that got the disease were unvaccinated too, so who would file a lawsuit? It’s got to hurt people in their pocketbooks.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:31 am
@drksky
Of, course, anti-vaxers will cite the UC-Davis study that concluded that a change in diagnostic criteria or understanding of autism did not account for the increase in autism cases in CA.
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:15 pm
It does make me wonder if some of history’s geniuses were actually Autistic – like Motzart perhaps. I just get the impression that quite a few of them were very socially awkward & had other issues dealing with the public. Who knows, but it would probably make for an interesting Grad Thesis.
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:43 pm
My wife has worked with adults with mental handicaps (retarded, Down Syndrome, etc.) and is currently working with special students at the high school while pursuing a masters in developmental disabilities (not that it means anything, but verification through observations from experience) and she feels the rise in autism rates are reflected by two things: better diagnosis and parent manipulation. In the past, the worst of the autistic children would have been labeled retarded and put in care facilities with little expectation to learn and function in society. Now, there are better and more accurate ways to diagnose autism. Kids diagnosed with autism are often mainstreamed and receive more opportunity to learn and become part of society. This in turn has lead parents to get their kids diagnosed as autistic (rather than retarded) to take part in these programs. The rise in autism rates is a statistical shift from one category of developmental disability to another, not an increase in the total of those disabled.
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Sorry to double post, but I failed to read all the comments before posting. So I repeated what drksky posted, and am interested to see the study that Todd W. talks about. The fact that autism is diagnosed purely on the basis of observed behaviors should also be noted.
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:37 pm
@NASAMan
Click on my name for the abstract of the UC-Davis study. I wasn’t able to find the full text, so I’m not entirely clear on their full methodology, but one flaw I can see with the study is that using a DSS database only accounts for those cases where families/schools applied for special services. And increase in reports alone to DSS would account for the increase in cases, without having anything to say about changes in diagnostic criteria, etc.
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:38 pm
drksky said:
Yes, obviously inhaled from a period of being stationed near a battle field in Iraq where they used DU ammunition.
Plus, note that well-known heavy metal aluminium (or aluminum if you prefer). Yup, that’s why they make aeroplanes out of it, cos it’s so heavy.
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:40 pm
@NASAMan
Click on my name for the abstract of the UC-Davis study. There is one major flaw with it, but I’ve been unable to find the full text of the study, so my opinion might not be accurate, without reading the complete methodology section.
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:41 pm
@ Charles Boyer & Todd W:
I stand corrected. I did not recall seeing those reports before.
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:42 pm
The blog keeps eating my comments.
@NASAMan
Google “The Rise in Autism and the Role of Age at Diagnosis” by Hertz-Picciotto and Delwiche. I’ve only been able to find the abstract, but I can see one major flaw with their conclusions and methodology, though the complete methodology section may clear up possible misunderstandings I might have.
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Joe Smith CA said:
Heehee!
Don’t forget to check for rhodium and palladium, too. After the world switches to a hydrogen fuel-cell transport system, any metal that can act as a fuel-cell catalyst will be worth its weight in … erm …. valuable stuff.
(Apparently, the world does not contain enough platinum for platinum-catalysed fuel cells to permit us to replace petrol-powered cars with fuel-cell powered cars)
January 23rd, 2009 at 7:09 pm
CNN right now has a story about a child in Minnesota dying of Hib, which there is a vaccine for and several other infants contracting it. The child who died was not vaccinated for it. According the CDC, 1 in 20 children infected with Hib dies.
If I can get the link working, here’s the link:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/23/hib.vaccine.cdc/index.html
January 24th, 2009 at 6:35 am
Hey, the good news is, Huff-Puff may actually move toward being a real news source. . .
Uh, right. and the UFOs gave me my computer.
Nigel : fuel cells — platinum or not, are unnecessary to change over to hydrogen fuel for cars.
An ordinary piston engine built to run on gasoline can be easily converted to run on hydrogen or brown’s gas.
January 24th, 2009 at 7:38 am
And now, the latest stupidity that I”VE heard of in this whole vax/antivax thing: Pox parties… where kids all get together and get chicken pox together…
and some idiot ran an ad in Craig’s List Boston last week looking for people for a reality show about Pox parties…
January 24th, 2009 at 9:14 am
From the article, “These outbreaks have not, apparently, been sobering. If anything, the number of parents choosing to delay or withhold or separate vaccines is increasing. So what will it take?”
I think the article that Cindy linked to should tell us what it will take. Until there’s a serious enough outbreak that a number of children die, there will simply be too many people who won’t take there heads out of the sand. It bothers me just a bit that the wheels of change so often require blood to lubricate them.
January 25th, 2009 at 6:42 am
@ccpetersen
Pox parties? Yes, sounds like a brilliant idea. “Let’s take a highly communicable disease and do our darnedest to spead it even farther than it would normally go! Yeah!”
Next thing you know they’ll be having Plague Parties, Typhoid Togetherness, Measles Malls…the mind boggles.
February 9th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Pox parties? YES! Because all you are who are for vax will FORCE me to put posion into my son’s body with the stupid, yes, stupid and ridiculous pox vaccine. By the time my son reaches school age it will no longer be an option for him to possibly contract it at school and I wouldn’t risk him getting shingles as an adult. So where does my choice come in? Why do we even need the pox vaccine? I myself, my sibilings as well as numerous other ppl I know ALL had it as a child. The possiblity of of serious complications are extremely rare. It’s just another government ploy to control and “protect” us.
Yes, I agree the increase in autism is partially due to the better understanding and new diagnostics. However at the same time vaccine administration has changed as well- 1980′s 10-15 vaccines between birth and 12yrs old, 2009 30+ vaccines between birth and 6yrs old. It would IGNORANT to deny some type of correlation. Also keep in mind autism is not the only “injury” linked to vaccines; learning disabilities, speech delays and mirad of other nuerological issues have been correlated as well.
If vaccines are safe, please tell me why programs such as the VICP (vaccine injury compensation program) exist. http://www.hrsa.gov/Vaccinecompensation/
Please educate yourself to both sides before jumping on the band wagon of “so what if your child ends up the martyr for thousands of others.” It’s not about anti-vax or vax. It’s about EDUCATION.
February 25th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
When my daughter was 1 month old, she received vaccines for diptheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, pneumoccocal, and hib. I never saw a VIS, nor did the doctor tell me what he was doing. They just did it, then told me to give her tylenol, as she would probably have a fever. After that, she cried straight through the night, which was unusual for her. I was never vaccinated as a child myself, as my mother being a biochemist and researched drug therapy did not believe it was necessary. Instead, she raised me on a almost completely organic diet, limiting sugar, mostly, as too much sugar can weaken your immune system. As a result, the only childhood illness I had was measles, which was uncomfortable but hardly life-threatening and was gone in about 4 days. Today, I rarely get sick. It doesn’t make sense to me to knowingly induce a fever, which CAN kill, in an infant. The problem is most parents don’t raise their children on a healthy diet today, making them susceptible to illness, whether they have been vaccinated or not. What was the percent of measles in vaccinated individuals? Also, Paul Offit holds several patents on vaccines, so he is hardly an unbiased opinion, and many recent studies have shown that titer counts do not necessarily equal immunity.
February 25th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
@Becca Anderson
Depending on your location, it is probably more likely that you benefited from herd immunity and were fortunate in your experience.
Me too. And I was fully vaccinated as a child…at least with what was available. No varicella vaccine. I had to suffer through that the natural way and am now at risk for shingles. Yay.
Can you please provide citations to well-controlled studies that show not only that excessive amounts of sugar weaken the immune system, but also what constitutes “too much”? Thank you.
This is a little bit of a straw man argument. Yes, he stands to profit from his vaccines, as do the host of people who would profit if vaccines actually caused autism – all those selling quack remedies and treatments, the majority of which are unregulated and not required to prove safety or efficacy.
Your post implies that you believe Tylenol, taken around the same time as vaccines, causes autism. If this is, indeed, your position, please provide citations to well-controlled studies showing such a causal link.