No, not really. If you added up all the antigens that one is exposed to in an entire lifetime of vaccinations, it is still a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of antigens you’re exposed to in a single day.
I suppose you could make the argument that the majority of those antigens don’t find their way directly into the bloodstream, but the amount that does through the lungs, food, and the occasional cut and scrape is still orders of magnitude more than vaccinations.
You’re falling victim to the same faulty premise a lot of anti-vaxxers do, which is “A then B, therefore A causes B.” Correlation (or I guess in this cause lack of correlation, since you’re arguing it’s a lack of getting the disease causing the problems,) does not equal causation.
Why not go for the idea that “all the new cancers” (which are what, exactly?*) are caused by plastics, pesticides or cellphones (whose usage could be linked to rising incidence/increased awareness of whatever disease one would like to blame them for)? That’d “explain everything” if it wasn’t for the fact that correlation does not equal causation in those instances either.
*Interesting article in the N.Y. Times recently about the discovery of cancer in mummies and a study showing its prevalence in such artifacts is about what we’d expect given modern cancer rates. We have more awareness of cancer in modern times because it’s a likelier cause of death than in the old days, when epidermics of infectious disease and sepsis killed people at a relatively young age before cancer had a chance to develop.
**also, some infectious diseases actually trigger cancer in their victims, as in the case of human papillomavirus, Epstein-Barr virus and HIV.
Chicken pox ain’t exactly a walk in the park, either. The mortality is about 6.7 cases per 100,000, but it can cause all kinds of virus-related nastiness, such as meningitis, otitis, arthritis, pneumonia, aw hell. I’ll just provide a cite. That’s not including the increased risk of shingles and other zoster-related problems that can crop up later in life.
So as autism rates went up the rates of other similar diseases declined. That makes more sense than vaccination somehow triggers autism.
Wakefield is one of the evil bastards of our time. He ought be in jail for malpractice. Part of his motivation for the original study was to provide a justification of his new and improved MMR vaccine. Greedy, incompetent creep.
Charlie Brooker is a God. He is a columnist for The Guardian, if you want to read him. He also has a show called ScreenWipe where he does to TV what he does to News in NewsWipe (ScreenWipe actually came first). There’s also a single episode GamesWipe somewhere for video games. He also has a rather amusing panel show about TV called “You Have Been Watching”.
He also broke the hearts of millions of men in the UK by marrying Konnie Huq, one of the foxiest ladies to have ever presented the kids TV show “Blue Peter”. THE BASTARD. SHE WAS MINE.
I love Charlie Brooker. He’s up there with Louis Theroux as far as I am concerned. I’m a heterosexual male, but given the chance I’d probably bum either of them.
I suspect they both would let you if you did it in an ironic way and they could make a program segment out of it.
But yes, I third Charlie Brooker and Ben Goldacre.
Both, in their way battle manfully against the fuzzy thinking in science and the barely hidden hypocrisy and contempt in the media.
[boast] I’ve got signed copies of “bad science” and “the big bang” by Simon Singh as a “thank you” when I donated to the “Sense about Science” libel campaign recently. Those in the UK fond of rationality and free speech might want to check that out [/boast]
Interesting assertion. Quite possibly true. Do you have proof? No? Then It. Is. Open. For. Investigation.
Truthfully, it’s probably a dry hole, but there’s no reason you can’t investigate it. In context of the above assertions remarked upon by Sattua, one part was provably false, the other is testable.
I still don’t quite get this case. The Big G agrees to a settlement, which only gives credence to the anti-vaxxers, espcially with the lawyer crowing about how they admitted the link. Shoulda squashed this bug, but I guess that wasn’t an option. . . .
It’s already been investigated, and in far more scientific settings than a message board. Try here, here and here. They look at how many antibodies are created and how many can be created to get an idea about the number of antigens you’re exposed to in your life.
It’s estimated that humans can generate about 10 billion different antibodies. Over a lifetime, in response to exposure to antigens, people make between 1 and 100 million different antibodies. How many does the vaccine schedule produce? Thirty. In theory, infants have the capacity to respond to 10,000 vaccines at the same time. If the 11 recommended vaccines were given all at the same time, their immune systems would use 0.1% of their capacity to process them.
Before he was on the TV he was a games journalist. I used to read PC Zone and his articles were always the funniest. The mag got pulled from the shelves twice. Once because of his ‘cruelty zoo’ article which was supposed to be a parody of Lara Croft but, as they were forced to remove all references to her, it just came across as a bit sick.
The second time the mag got pulled had nothing to do with CB. Whoever compiled the cover disk added a ton of custom made DOOM maps he’d pulled from the internet. One of the levels contained porn (and was obviously named). Oops.
I’m on a Washington State autism alias, and there’s plenty of people still buying into the autism is caused by vaccines “even if it’s not proved yet.”
I mean, I’d love to be able to sue someone for “causing” my daughter’s autism too but let’s stop smoking crack based on some evil bastard’s bullshit get rich quick scheme off the back of a not insignificant number of kids that died because their ignorant parents bought into the dream.
