# Massive measles outbreak - thank you, Andrew Fucking Wakefield **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 19, 2013, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119 "2013-04-19T10:56:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 40
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/781 "2013-09-12T03:01:24Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Not sure if this is just a whoosh but I hope you know how ironically wrong this is. Salk famously refused to patent and profit from his creation. And we are so goddamned close to wiping out polio, too. ☹ Just 5 more countries and cases dropping yearly. Maybe someday soon we can put it on the list next to smallpox and rinderpest (cattle disease, wiped out by killing the infected and limited vaccinations) as another great success story of a disease which only exists in little storage vials in labs. ---
**Author:** ![Algher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Algher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algher)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/782 "2013-09-12T03:14:16Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Not sure if this is just a whoosh but I hope you know how ironically wrong this is. Salk famously refused to patent and profit from his creation. My understanding is that Salk COULDN’T patent it - it was looked into, and for some reason they did not think they could be granted a patent. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/783 "2013-09-12T03:29:03Z")
> [@Algher](#): > > My understanding is that Salk COULDN’T patent it - it was looked into, and for some reason they did not think they could be granted a patent. > [@](#): > > the lawyers from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis had looked into patenting the Salk Vaccine and concluded that it could not be patented because of prior art – that it would not be considered a patentable invention by standards of the day. [http://www.biotech-now.org/public-policy/patently-biotech/2012/01/the-real-reason-why-salk-refused-to-patent-the-polio-vaccine-a-myth-in-the-making#](http://www.biotech-now.org/public-policy/patently-biotech/2012/01/the-real-reason-why-salk-refused-to-patent-the-polio-vaccine-a-myth-in-the-making#) ---
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/784 "2013-09-12T03:29:30Z")
> [@Algher](#): > > My understanding is that Salk COULDN’T patent it - it was looked into, and for some reason they did not think they could be granted a patent. The book **Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine** by Jane S. Smith explains why in great detail. Well worth a read! ---
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/785 "2013-09-12T03:30:36Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > [http://www.biotech-now.org/public-policy/patently-biotech/2012/01/the-real-reason-why-salk-refused-to-patent-the-polio-vaccine-a-myth-in-the-making#](http://www.biotech-now.org/public-policy/patently-biotech/2012/01/the-real-reason-why-salk-refused-to-patent-the-polio-vaccine-a-myth-in-the-making#) Damn. You people are quick and informed. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/786 "2013-09-12T09:23:37Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Not sure if this is just a whoosh Really? I have to overtly identify the humor content of a sentence containing the phrase “Big Iron Lung”? ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/787 "2013-09-12T10:39:44Z")
> [@Girlundone](#): > > I vaccinated all my children, including my son with autism. It was a long time a ago, but the group of anti-vax parents at his school were very vocal and openly hostile to me. I also rejected what I saw as invasive therapies like secretin IVs and chelation therapy that so many people subjected their children to, all in the name of “curing” them. It’s quite the fanatical subculture. How the hell is this shit not considered child abuse? The more I hear about the wacko “therapies” anti-vaxxers give autistic children, the more I want to have those children taken away from them and given to parents who would actually take care of them and raise them without despising them for having a mental disability. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/788 "2013-09-12T11:06:31Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Don’t forget a book in which the main character’s life is positively _enhanced_ by a vaccine-preventable disease - ["Melanie’s](http://www.amazon.com/Melanies-Marvelous-Measles-Stephanie-Messenger/dp/1466938897) [Marvelous Measles"](http://www.skepticat.org/2013/01/a-review-of-melanies-marvelous-measles/), written by antivaxer Stephanie Messenger. Another missionary of the cult of Nurgle. ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/789 "2013-09-12T13:12:51Z")
> [@LavenderBlue](#): > > Remember the wonderful children’s book _Cheaper by the Dozen_? The book about the Gilbreths and their twelve children? IRL, they didn’t have twelve kids. They had eleven because one died of diphtheria. Laura Ingalls Wilder, of Little House on the Prairie fame, was married to Almanzo Wilder. He was disabled by a stroke also as a result of diphtheria. Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, lost a daughter to measles. > > It’s all in there if you look alas. I read history books each week and there it is again and again and again. Ben Franklin lost a son to smallpox. Go look at an old graveyard. It’s all little babies and kids dead again and again and again from diseases we don’t even think about today. There’s a wonderful series called “All of a Kind Children” that takes place in I think the 1910s in New York City, based on the author’s own life and family. It talks about the fear parents had of polio (one of the characters is partially paralyzed from it), and how horrible it was when all the children had scarlet fever and had to be quarantined. It describes a child delirious with fever and how frightening it was not to be able to do anything to help her. If it seems as though people took things like measles in stride, I think that it’s a function of 1) measles were bad but there were other things that were much worse, and 2) there wasn’t much to be done except deal with it, what else were parents supposed to do? Didn’t make it fun or something you’d want to have to face if you didn’t have to. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/790 "2013-09-12T13:25:34Z")
> [@SpazCat](#): > > How the hell is this shit not considered child abuse? Secretin therapy and chelation are mild stuff compared to [chemical castration](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chemical-castration-of-autistic-children-leads-to-the-downfall-of-dr-mark-geier/) and [industrial bleach enemas](http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/2012/06/dangerous-interventions-mms-and-autism.html) used on autistic children. Proponents of these “therapies” seem immune to the sad irony of blasting Big Pharma over vaccines, while using a Big Pharma drug (Lupron) for a purpose never intended by its makers (or evidence-based MDs). Inflicting bleach enemas on kids to remove “toxins” never strikes them as bizarrely irrational either. ---
**Author:** ![Uber\_the\_Goober](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/58956e/32.png) [@Uber\_the\_Goober](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uber_the_Goober)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/791 "2013-09-12T13:51:06Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Secretin therapy and chelation are mild stuff compared to [chemical castration](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chemical-castration-of-autistic-children-leads-to-the-downfall-of-dr-mark-geier/) and [industrial bleach enemas](http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/2012/06/dangerous-interventions-mms-and-autism.html) used on autistic children. > > Proponents of these “therapies” seem immune to the sad irony of blasting Big Pharma over vaccines, while using a Big Pharma drug (Lupron) for a purpose never intended by its makers (or evidence-based MDs). Inflicting bleach enemas on kids to remove “toxins” never strikes them as bizarrely irrational either. This, coupled with those books, what was it, “melanie’s marvelous malodorous membranes” or some shit, I can’t fathom the depths of stupidity that would allow such cruelty, and call it “cure”. To have the aptitude required to put together a message, distribute that message to millions, but then to have the message contain this kind of content - I simply do not understand the mental disconnect. They’re smart enough to get people to believe them, but stupid enough to believe the shit themselves. Which is why my first gut reaction is “Kill it with fire!!!” - Just like clearing a disease out of a herd of animals - the ones who are sick, get separated and killed to protect the herd. I’m all for freedoms, of speech, pursuit of happiness, all that. But if you’re going to literally refuse to be educated, if you’re too dumb to grasp the basic facts presented to you, if you’re too fucking arrogant and evil to stop harming your children with your stupidity, then you don’t deserve to live. These shits are lucky I’m not the fucking emperor - or in possession of Superman level powers. There’d be some frickin’ \*\*cleansing \*\*going on, and it would be much more effective than a bleach enema… ---
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/792 "2013-09-12T15:10:15Z")
> [@Uber\_the\_Goober](#): > > Um, I watched that video, and while I don’t have any particular preconceived notions going into it, it appeared that the video dealt exclusively with the system parents must go through when they believe their child has suffered vaccine related autism. > > Nothing about whether it’s linked, just that there’s some conflicts of interest in the departments to which parents must go for recourse. > > Is there something I’m missing about what he said? My friend Dorit Reiss, a law professor at UCLA, provides a more detailed summary as to exactly why the allegations in that video are wrong: > **[Moms Who Vax](http://momswhovax.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-national-vaccine-compensation.html)** > > The National Vaccine Compensation Injury Act:  A Compromise – not an Injustice Or: Why the Latest Video from the Canary Party is Mislead... ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/793 "2013-09-12T15:11:32Z")
Of interest: > **[Summary of Vaccine Survey Results](https://skepchick.org/2013/09/summary-of-vaccine-survey-results/)** > > As you have probably already heard, Women Thinking, inc has spent the last couple years working on a project funded by the JREF to survey parents who are fence-sitters on the issue of vaccinating t… Note that last point. ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/794 "2013-09-12T15:59:17Z")
> [@Uber\_the\_Goober](#): > > These shits are lucky I’m not the fucking emperor - or in possession of Superman level powers. There’d be some frickin’ \*\*cleansing \*\*going on, and it would be much more effective than a bleach enema… You seem to feel strongly about this. 😉 Seriously, though, just change “autism” to “Down Syndrome” or something like that and imagine so-called “parents” giving bleach enemas to their children. They’d be charged with child abuse to the eleventh level and their kids would be taken away from them so fast that the rotation of the Earth would change due to the spinning. Why this isn’t happening I do not know. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/795 "2013-09-12T17:01:28Z")
> [@Uber\_the\_Goober](#): > > Understood, accepted, got it. > > So it’s really a question of whether or not I \*care \*that evolution will actually be working the way that it should… > > Those born with immunity, or able to immunize themselves, don’t die. The rest, do. It’s not the parents who die, it’s their kids. Ignorance and general dumbassedness are not entirely genetic. I’m sure you know some reasonable and intelligent people whose parents are… let’s just say not so reasonable and intelligent. My parents have some opinions that I find repugnant. Fortunately for me, those opinions do not include opposition to vaccination for potentially deadly or crippling diseases. The antivaxers’ kids aren’t so lucky. ---
**Author:** ![Girlundone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/919ad9/32.png) [@Girlundone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Girlundone)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/796 "2013-09-13T01:05:58Z")
[QUOTE=Jackmannii] Secretin therapy and chelation are mild stuff compared to chemical castration and industrial bleach enemas used on autistic children. [/QUOTE] I had not heard of either of these “therapies” but it does not surprise me, having met some of these type parents when my son was very young. Fucking sickening. ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/797 "2013-09-13T13:02:14Z")
> [@Kolga](#): > > This, times forty infinities. > > Adults who choose not to get their boosters (oh, and by the way, adults reading this? GO GET YOUR GODDAMN BOOSTERS) are making a decision for themselves. A stupid one that I will mock, but still. OK, I’ll expose my gap in knowledge and take one for the team. I’m 61 and had all the recommended vaxes as a child. I get a flu shot every year, I keep up on my tetanus shots, I will get the shingles vax this year. What boosters do I need? ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/798 "2013-09-13T13:11:21Z")
6 cheerleaders and a mascot. ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/799 "2013-09-13T13:25:17Z")
> [@Grey](#): > > 6 cheerleaders and a mascot. While I like the way you think, somehow I’m guessing that isn’t the correct answer. ---
**Author:** ![MickNickMaggies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/59ef9b/32.png) [@MickNickMaggies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MickNickMaggies)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119/800 "2013-09-13T13:48:18Z")
I’m going to add my own dumb question- I’m allergic to the Tdap, myself, and have never gotten the pertussis booster (I have had tetanus boosters). Baby will be getting all the vaccines, but is there anything I can do or try to not put baby at risk until she has hers? Is there something better than Adacel (which is what I apparently reacted to as a child)? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119.md?page=39) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-measles-outbreak-thank-you-andrew-fucking-wakefield/656119.md?page=41)