I’d rather be naked than expose my child to preventable diseases.
<Insert your nude body shot here>
GET YOUR CHILDREN VACCINATED!
I like this new campaign idea.
Take out the silicone and this is what hers really look like.
It’s interesting that you can come on this message board and talk about the benefits of vaccinations without getting crapped on by the wackos. Makes me proud, somehow.
I started to read to comments and got so depressed. Mostly it makes me feel like a huge asshole because I find myself wishing pertussis on children whose parents are so selfish and wrong that it would just be so fantastic if their idiot decisions had repercussions… then I realize that I’m wishing for babies to get sick and possibly die.
But you know if there was a major outbreak and all the anti-vaxxers kids got sick, somehow that would be Big Pharm’s fault too.
I’m still reading the comments and I want to scream.
How can people be so arrogantly dumb?
So far we have accusations that Bill Gates is using vaccines as a secret plot to control the world’s population, that 9-11 was an inside job and that all studies on vaccines but those conducted by “holistic” doctors are flawed. We also get the allegation that I must get huge pHARM checks each month, that Jenny McCarthy is a valid source and the CDC is deliberately ignoring a huge epidemic of vaccine injured children so they can keep taking money from the pharm companies.
Oh and of course the constant refrain that vaccines contain toxins like formaldehyde. Which, as people have pointed out over and over again, is a natural byproduct of your metabolism and already exists in your own body in far greater quantities than you’ll find in vaccines.
I had forgotten just how stupid and crazy the anti-vax nuts really are.
You’re a braver person than I.
What I still don’t know is: do they have an actual explanation for “how”?
I’ve never personally known any anti-vaxers, but sometimes come across people who think that you should put a gold ring on a stye or think that of you have a cold OD-ing on vit-C will cure you. My response is always: “how?” How would that happen? There is never an answer. You go through all the baby steps with them and find that actually, there is no “how”, because it’s a load of crap.
So what’s the anti-vax “how”? OK, there used to be a component in some vaccinations until the '90s that they thought caused autism. How? What did this component do?
The ani-vax argument actually goes back a few centuries.
Edward Jenner developed the first modern day vaccine. Basically he refined a process that had been known about for centuries called variolation. Variolation was a procedure that used dried particules of smallpox to induce smallpox in people. What this did was to make people catch smallpox but usually in a more minor and survivable form. People were desperate to do anything to avoid smallpox. The disease had about a one third fatality rate. If it didn’t kill you outright, it had a strong chance of leaving you blind or disfigured. And it was terrifyingly contagious.
Jenner refined variolation and made it far less dangerous. People could now get the vaccine and have a far lower chance of getting the disease.
The anti-vax nuts jumped on him. They accused him of subverting the natural order of things, turning people into cows and going against god’s will.
They’ve been at it ever since.
The modern anti-vax movement stems from a few additional arguments. Basically they argue that vaccines contain dangerous chemicals that hurt children. Those chemicals they believe had led to widespread increases in diseases like autism, asthma and diabetes. They also argue that vaccine preventable diseases were on the way out before invention of vaccines due to factors like better hygiene. Babies and children are better off gettting these relatively harmless diseases rather than the more dangerous vaccines. Neglectful parents now want an easy way out instead of letting their children get natural immunity from vaccine preventable diseases.
Of course none of these allegations are true.
Vaccines don’t contain dangerous chemicals. They contain small amounts of material that aren’t harmless unless ingested in much larger quantities. It’s like arguing that you shouldn’t drink water because people drown.
Vaccines have not led to an increase in diseases. In fact we’re still not sure if there is an increase in diseases like autism. In many cases what we’re seeing is a shift in diagnostic criteria. Autism used to require a child to exhibit hand flapping. That is no longer required. Kids who might have been labeled mentally retarded a generation ago are now often called autistic instead. Kids who might have died from asthma in the 1930’s now survive because of better treatment methods.
Vaccines preventable diseases are still pretty common and extremely dangerous. For example hib which is a form of meningitis. Until the development of the vaccine in the 1980’s peds would routinely see horrible cases of this illness and a fair number of dead babies as a result. Today it’s still a problem in the developing world but we are lucky here and have access to the vaccine so hib rates and deaths have dropped drastically.
Many of these disease are also more dangerous the younger you get them. Hep b is the classic example. An adult will have a far greater chance of passing it through their system. A baby will get it and have a high chance of becoming a chronic carrier and winding up in liver failure. More than 600,000 people die from it each year.
Vaccines are a form of natural immunity. They essentially allow your body to mount an immune response without actually going through the disease. Getting a shot might mean a little soreness at the site of injection. Get diphtheria or tetanus and even today there’s no known real cure or treatment other than waiting it out and palliative care. Worse, some of these diseases are highly contagious. Getting the disease doesn’t even always mean lifelong immunity. You can get pertussis more than once. The Chinese call it the one hundred day cough. Even adults can cough so hard from it they can break a rib. Babies have coughing fits and can turn blue from lack of oxygen. The disease will kill one in a hundred outright and leave one in 250 permanently brain damaged.
Measles is one of the world’s most contagious diseases. Nearly everyone got it until the development of the vaccine. Hundreds of children died each year and about a thousand developed permanent lifelong impairments. Measles still kills over a hundred thousand kids today primarily because of lack of access to the vaccine. France had over 15,000 cases last year and six deaths.
In short the anti-vax people are dimwitted, birdbrained, contagiously ignorant ignoramuses who should never be allowed near the table let alone a place at it. It infuriates me that elected officials tend to take them seriously.
Absolutely!
But I still don’t get the “how” of their argument. So there is a “chemical” in a vaccine and that gives children autism. How? What does the chemical supposedly do? Do the anti-vaxers actually use that argument at all? Or is it simply: my child is autistic and I’m pissed off? I get that that will be the vast majority of anti-vaxers, but isn’t there someone among them who tries to actually explain how this chemical supposedly causes autism?
I’d ask the crazy commenters, but uhm… I’m scared! :eek:
The modern day argument centers around a chemical compound called thimerosol. Thimerosol is a form of mercury and was used as a preservative. Mercury sounds scary initially. However there are different forms of mercury. Thimerosol is ethylmercury. It’s like the difference between wood alcohol (a dangerous poison) and grain alcohol (not going to kill you).
People argued that autism is really mercury poisoning. This argument has several problems. One of them is that the symptoms of mercury poisoning don’t match up with the symptoms of autism. To take just one example people with mercury poisoning have smaller than average heads. People with autism tend to have larger than average heads.
Another problem is that they took the compound out about a decade ago. Autism rates did not go down. In fact they’ve continued to climb.
So the crazies moved on. They now argue that the combined effects of all chemicals in all vaccines are bad. Or babies can’t handle so many vaccines so early in life. Or the pHARM companies are covering up the bad effects of chemicals in vaccines. Or there’s a large subset of children who can get bad effects from vaccines which act as a trigger and then lead to autism.
It’s always the vaccines. Always. It’s never differing diagnostic criteria or increased awarness or other factors like increased use of c-sections and older men fathering children.
Another argument is that the MMR vaccine causes autism. They can’t make the autism equals mercury poisoning with this one because it never had thimerosol.
Instead they reference the infamous Andrew Wakefield paper. The paper was published in the Lancet. The paper caused an immediate sensation that still lingers. The Lancet repudiated the paper two years ago.
As a parent of a child with
what we refer to as “classic” autism. I have found that no amount of explanation helps anti vaccine fear mongers. It is sad really for numerous reasons, one is the obvious that LavenderBlue and Kolga wrote about. Another is that money going into autism causes ends up sending some to anti vaccine researchers when that money could go to legitimate science.
I gave up on almost all forums dedicated to autism, because loons were allowed to spew their shit. And that is another shame for parents who want to cope with others.
you can’t reason people out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.
Here’s a whole nice list of studies refudiating the whole vaccines equals autism link. It was compiled by my co-author.
Multiple studies in multiple countries over multiple decades with multiple research groups using multiple research models and multiple funding sources have found no link between vaccines and autism.
A Finnish study that looked at 1.8 million people in terms of the relationship between vacccines and adverse events, including autism. No link was found:
http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/9643797/reload=0;jsessionid=mLq71FMeRXidCH5Xpnrs.0
A Danish study that looked at more than 500,000 people. No link between the MMR and autism was found: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa021134
A Canadian study that ruled out an association between thimerosal or the MMR vaccine and autism: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/118/1/e139.short
A Japanese study that showed no relationship between vaccines and
autism: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2005.01425.x/full
A California study showing no relationship between vaccines and autism:
http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=482546
A review of the hypothesis that vaccines are related to autism:
Ah, thanks!
So supposedly mercury, which is bull because none of the symptoms match up (plus, I’m sure they can verify that others autists don’t have mercury poisoning). Then, as it became clear the position was untenable they made a mad scramble for anything else they could think of, without actually giving a “how”. I’m guessing the majority of run-of-the-mill anti-vaxers don’t even go that far, they probably stop at: “lots of chemicals = bad”.
It’s important to understand, because it helps refute their non-argument. I always feel I need to properly understand their position, which is difficult among their unintelligible ravings. So thanks for clearing it up 
The first things they did, where blood tests on my daughter. Lead/mercury etc as well as for genetic illnesses that mimic autism especially known in females. Forget what it is called right now. And I think that was SOP, so most parents of autistic children are well aware the child isn’t loaded with metals. Yet they still seem to fall for this.
As an aside, I had a letter to the editor once thanking the local theater place for being so accepting when Barney came to town. We have VIP backstage/front row seats but it was to much for my daughter and within the first 5 minutes was headed out the door. A worker stopped us asked us what was wrong we explained he offered a box seat. She enjoyed the rest of the show from above. I wrote to thank them because frankly it was awesome for them to do. Instantly my phone was ringing explaining to me how the coal plants in this area poisoned my daughter and caused her autism. Not from just one wacko either… :smack::smack::smack::smack:
Rett syndrome? (Rett syndrome - Wikipedia)
I’ll be very happy to answer any questions you want. I strongly recommend Dr. Offit’s books as well as ours. In **Autism’s False Prophets ** he really lays out the history of the mercury hypothesis.
There’s been a lot of scare-mongering from sources that might look legitimate on the surface but are deeply flawed if you look more closely.
For example Salon published an article by RFK Jr. in 2005 making the autism equals mercury hypothesis. The article recieved widespead publicity at the time. It was later retracted by the magazine.
Here’s a takedown of it by Respectful Insolence. The blog’s author is a cancer surgeon.
The hypothesis also gained further ground with the publication of a book called **Evidence of Harm **by David Kirby.
Respectful Insolence details the book’s flaws:
That would be it.
From the great Isaac Asimov:
He said this in 1980, and it seems even truer today.
Nicely done. Keep fighting the good fight, demoralizing though it may be.
I learned everything I needed to know about the average anti-vaxxer a few years ago during a segment on NPR’s Science Friday (I believe it was this segment; I remember that Paul Offit was the guest). They got a caller who was trying to argue the anti-vax position, and Offit was countering with remarkable politeness, grace and patience. Eventually the host asked the caller, “Is there anything Dr. Offit could possibly say that would change your mind on the issue,” to which the caller gave an emphatic, flat, unambiguous, “no.” THey terminated the call and moved on.
Like someone upthread said - you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.