I am not a doctor and have no dog in this hunt, but could not avoid hearing about the controversy over the past decade or so. I had heard pretty consistently that the science behind the issue solidly refuted the connection, but didn’t know if that was a biased POV.
Seems like this court is treating this more like Evolution vs. Intelligent Design: there is no basis for the Autism Causation argument in the face of the scientific evidence, so it is not reasonable to present the opposing view as a viable perspective.
Thoughts?
Oh, shoot - I never post in Great Debates, but am now thinking that if this becomes a debate, it may belong there. I am not looking to get 2 sides ruffled about this, I am more asking that, if you have been following this issue either closely on or the fringe like me, how this news affects your POV on the topic…
I do think this might do better in GD, and you’ll probably see some good scientific posts there, WordMan.
I saw this news earlier. Thank fucking God. The fact that this is getting disputed at all is absurd, and it’ll take more than a court ruling to convince anybody that vaccines don’t cause autism, but I’m glad the court didn’t screw things up worse.
PS: [Total hijack] Have you heard Derek Trucks’ cover of that obscure Dylan tune off the new DTB album? Best slide work I think I have ever heard. [/Total hijack]
A slight drift from the topic, but this, to me, highlights our utter failure as a country to teach scientific literacy. Its one of the things that embarrasses me most about the US. We put a man on the freakin’ moon 40yrs ago, but now we have large swaths of our population who thinks the miracle of vaccines will actually make their kid disabled.
The same idea applies to other fields. Evolution vs ID, the LHC is going to destroy the world, global warming, etc. I have no idea on how to make people scientifically literate but jeeze! We need to get cracking on it.
I don’t think it really has much to do with how well we teach scientific literacy in the US. Other western nations, Britain, France, etc., have all had vaccine conspiracies similar to ours, with many of the same results. See the stuff on Wakefield and the UK in the MMR thread. And, while this is anecdotal, I know several highly educated, scientifically minded persons who believe firmly in the vaccine-autism link (they also have children with autism).
I think this has more to do with the seemingly natural need to blame something or someone for things that are out of our control.
As a pediatrician on the front lines I can tell you that this will not go far to help us with the anti-vaccine crowd. Essentially they’ll just put these judges in as part of the conspriracy.
Another antivaxer tactic will be to ignore all the well-conducted, authoritative research debunking the autism-vaccine ilnk and demand additional studies. From the link in the OP:
“…the head of one consumer group that questions vaccine safety, the National Vaccine Information Center, said the court’s ruling will do little to change the minds of most parents who suspect a link between vaccines and autism. She said more studies are needed…
“I think it is a mistake to conclude that, because these few test cases were denied compensation, it’s been decided vaccines don’t play any role in regressive autism,” said Barbara Loe Fisher, the center’s president.”
In other words, “Let’s string this out as long as we can. It’s gotta be the vaccines. It’s just gotta. We can’t possibly admit we were wrong. Vaccines are BAD.”
The NVIC, incidentally, is not accurately described as “one consumer group that questions vaccine safety”. It is an antivax propaganda organization that holds vaccines responsible for countless ills, not just autism.
Not to disagree, but I think the vaccines → autism myth is bigger in Europe than it is here. Remember the big fuss over Tony Blair getting his kid inoculated? It seems scientific illiteracy is pretty widespread.
I have gone over this with my mom repeatedly. When my kid developed autism she still thought the vaccines might have been at fault. All the data goes out the window when emotions get involved. It must be someone’s fault.
DSeid beat me to mentioning conspiracy theories, but judging from the above comments, I think that might be a better explanation as to how people fall for something like this. So Americans (and others!) are just suckers. Somehow that isn’t any more comforting…
Bolding mine
After a little more thought, yeah, most people are pretty dumb when it comes to science, no matter where they’re from. Insert obligatory comment on how hard it is to fight ignorance when people are pretty content about it.
See this idiot here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrIM2hwrLoc
Question: will tis boob EVER issue a retraction? This what we get…alowing idiot lawyers to make up theories , and parading their idiocy as science.
Yeah, it’s true. But if the government had validated this stupidity it would have been far worse. That’s the same reason I was glad RFK Jr. didn’t get a place in the Obama administration.
The shame about this one is that “science” was in their favor. There was a study…see! They weren’t making stuff up. And it seems reasonable that mercury - a known poison that is known to cause brain damage - injected into a child, might not be the brightest idea medical science has ever come up with - and they’ve come up with stupid things to do in the past - drugs that cause heart attacks or birth defects.
There were reasonable (if debatable), science-based concerns about using minute amounts of a mercury-based preservative in vaccines, and reasonable precautions were taken (by ceasing to use this preservative).
When science then showed that autism rates did not plummet after the preservative was no longer used (and in fact may have increased), and that extensive well-conducted research absolved vaccines in general (including the MMR) of causing autism, science became the enemy for a subset of distraught parents of autistic children, egged on by committed antivaxers who saw this issue as ripe for exploitation.
Today’s news is a solid blow against antivax fearmongering. Let’s make sure the policymakers on the federal and local level are listening, and keep the pressure on to assure that our children are vaccinated and safe.
Doesn’t the controversy surround the sudden onset of autism following the shots? I don’t want to take the side of defending those who refuse the innoculations but is this a function of the age the shots are given and also the age when parents would first notice the onset of autism.
What I don’t get about this “conspiracy” is how the drug companies and medical establishment profit from it. They would both make more money from drugs for sick kids than from vaccinations and I think nobody is making much treating autistic kids.
For a conspiracy theory to gain traction it usually needs the conspirators to benefit from it. Look at the JFK assassination: Whether one thinks Castro, LBJ, CIA, or the Mob did it, it doesn’t matter because his death benefited, or provided some satisfaction for, all of them.
Hmmm…maybe Big Pharm and the AMA are behind the anti-vax movement. Vaccines closed the goldmine that childhood illnesses used to be. It makes more sense than Jenny McCarthy.
On NPR this afternoon they told how government investigators studied things like home videos of the kids and saw signs that the kids were in trouble before they got vaccinated, things like not looking people in the eye and delayed speech. Also note that there were few kids who started manifesting symptoms immediately after their shots. In Wakefield’s “study” he made that claim, but the kids’ medical records show that some were showing symptoms before the shots while others didn’t until weeks or months afterward.
Seriously, though, are there any drugs used to treat autism now or any in the works? I would think that there’s little that can be done with drugs, but that’s a WAG. It seems to me that the only real treatment is learning how to parent/talk to/etc. an autistic kid.
