This reminds me of the ow “smoking causes cancer” brouhaha. First the tobacco companies said “No, it doesn’t. People who smoke and get cancer were going to get it anyway.” When the idea was finally rpoven, it became an issue of "individual rights. “I have a right to smoke and I’m not hurting anyone.” Yeah, except for the people exposed to your second hand smoke (an idea tobacco companies still reject.)
Now it’s Vaccines cause autism." Now that idea was been proven wrong “Well, I have a right not to have my child vaccinated. I’m not hurting anybody.” No, except for the children your child will expose to the measles, mumps, etc.
So as I’ve said before, I have this friend who’s anti-vaxx. Her mother friended me on Facebook for some reason, and today the mom posted a link to some BS RFK, JR.-is-a-hero anti-vaxx article. I was tempted to reply, “His much-wiser father and uncles, all of whom worked hard to save kids via mandatory vaccination, would be justifiably appalled.” I didn’t because the mom is elderly and in fragile mental health.
What’s interesting is that the mom’s posts show me how fearful she is. She never learned to swim from fear of drowning. She’s never been in a chlorinated pool because chlorine is a chemical, and chemicals are bad. Every time she sees an article saying something is bad for you (even if it’s a study of 3 people in Lapland), she posts it as a dire warning. I can now see how my friend got to be so fearful. She (my friend) has never used a microwave and has shunghite all over her apartment because of its magical ability to block EMF’s.
It’s got me thinking: what are the common denominators in anti-vaxxers. They’re not predominantly right-wing or left-wing. They’re not all uneducated. Is it that they were raised by fearful parents? That they can’t distinguish between actual and real threats? They’re neophobic and rapid changes in technology scares them?
If that were your entire post, I’d wonder how she could NOT get vaccinated for everything under the sun. How can someone like this reconcile being fearful with not taking measures to mitigate the fear sources?
So is she fearful of polio vaccine, but not of polio? Fearful of measles vaccine, but just fine with being infected with measles? This isn’t a matter of pure fear, but lack of logic.
What? “I’m not hurting anybody”? How about the child himself/herself? Blocking a child from access to essential medical care like vaccinations is nothing less than child abuse and child endangerment.
The mom doesn’t sound either very educated or very bright, and sometimes it’s just that simple.
But it always comes down to lack of logical thinking, which can also arise from emotional factors. AIUI Robert DeNiro’s son was diagnosed with autism and there can be powerful emotional drivers in those circumstances to find a “cause”, to find something to blame, something to change, because random chance is just such a terribly empty nihilistic idea. This, rather than simple stupidity, is I suspect what’s been driving his anti-vax kick.
Ug … and anti-vaxxers argue back with me when I tell them I had a firm dx of autism back in the early 60s before I ever came near a damned needle … so obviously it wasn’t caused by vaxxing. Then when I explain that every single kid in school got jabbed on the first day of school, they tell me it made me worse. I am so high functioning and ‘trained to fake it’ that most people can’t tell I am autistic.
Honestly, I don’t care, I don’t ‘identify’ as autistic, it is simply what I have that makes me ‘odd’. Would I like not to be? Probably, it would make my life easier overall. Would I take a ‘cure’ if it popped up now? Probably not, I am accustomed to being what I am.
It is what it is. I am sure that if I were impaired enough to need to live in a managed care facility, it might be different, but I know a fair number of higher functioning folk that are perfectly happy getting on with their lives.
Right, since most children get vaccines starting at age 2 and most cases of autism show up around age two, vaccines cause autism. Don’t these people know that correlation doesn’t always mean causation?
I know a woman who believes abortions create a hostile womb environment that causes future children to be homosexual (her words). Hey, there’s more gay people since abortion was made legal, so it’s obviously true!
No, no they don’t. They want it to be anything other than their genes that caused this terrible, they’d rather their kid had died, thing to happen to their perfect baby.
She’s not alone in her craziness. There are states out there that have passed laws *forcing *doctors to read a state-government-written statement that having an abortion increases (or causes) breast cancer.
Parents are allowed to let their children be endangered to some extent. My daughter rode horses, and jumped them, which is arguably more dangerous than not getting vaccinated. But parents don’t have the right to endanger other children. I couldn’t bring her friend to ride horses without permission from her parents.
This is it. Lots of people have a problem with things happening for no reason. This explains a lot of god belief also. Better to think those kids died from the tsunami because of god’s plan than from the blind forces of nature.
But there are a lot of anti-vaxxers who are doing it for the money. The ones who run supplement companies or who practice quack medicine. And who are the first to say that doctors support vaccination because they are greedy.
One “alternative” cancer remedy that’s achieved popularity via online enthusiasts is “oleander soup”, a concoction you can brew up at home, according to this and other websites.
The linked article* notes: “The most common side-effects are loose bowels, slight temperature and perhaps mild nausea, all of which should dissipate quickly as the body becomes acclimated to the extract.”
Guess what - diarrhea, nausea and fever are not uncommon side effects of chemotherapy, a key difference being that chemo has demonstrated effectiveness and oleander soup does not - along with the fact that home oleander brews are bound to contain variable levels of toxic chemicals. Not to worry, though the site has a disclaimer that warns of the risk of serious injury or death if you don’t do it right (grievous outcomes of alt med seem to always come down to the user not doing it right, or poisoning his/her body first with mainstream medical treatments. :dubious:
*this website also promotes the use of chlorine dioxide to boost your immune system. Chlorine dioxide is the active ingredient in a form of industrial bleach, despite which it has been enthusiastically touted as a treatment for autism (to remove those nasty “vaccine toxins”, doncha know). Google “bleach enema” if you have a strong stomach.
[quote]
Chiropractor who ‘claimed vaccines CAUSE measles’ is fined $100,000 by Canadian medical committee for spreading ‘harmful’ anti-vaxx myths online
[ul][li]Dr Dena Churchill spread unfounded claims on her work Facebook page[/li][li]It is against guidelines for chiropractors to discuss vaccinations[/li][li]Nova Scotia College of Chiropractors began investigating her one year ago[/li][li]A complaint was filed but Dr Churchill refused to delete her posts [/li][li]Dr Churchill confirmed reports she ‘had no remorse’ and would ‘do it all again’[/ul][/li][/quote]
FWIW, the nonsense in the first box under her picture happens to be the stuff I’ve seen lately on remarks/comments sections on news stories about vaccines and disease outbreaks.
My favorite part of the article, though, is this bit:
Ah, but they’re not chemicals, they’re natural substances!
In Spanish from Spain, químico (n) refers to the people who do chemistry; to refer to the actual things it’s got to be used as an adjective (sustancia química, producto químico). For several years now I keep running into shit translated directly from English by people whose translation indicates that chemists are harmful to your health. Makes this chemical engineer/chemist a bit pissy, it does.
How does one become a medical doctor with such poor use of the English language? What she should have said was: My mental incapacity makes me professionally incompetent.
Just to clarify, although of course it’s crazy that doctors should focus on this small element of risk in this context, as an abstracted statement of fact it’s technically true. Full term pregnancy does reduce the risk of breast cancer.