Vaccines typically have between a 95% and 99% effectiveness rating. Assuming that my children can all get the vaccine, there’s between a 1/20 and 1/100 chance that it doesn’t take. Meaning that there is still risk there. Of course, that’s assuming that my children can get all the vaccines. Newborns cannot get vaccinated, and they are among the most likely to die from diseases like Measles. Immunocompromised people cannot get vaccinated. The very old often cannot get vaccinated. Particularly with diseases like measles, which are extremely infectious (R0=12-18), it’s important to protect people via herd immunity. But herd immunity breaks down when you have too many unvaccinated people.
You seem to be running the antivax playbook. I strongly recommend you stop that shit and get educated. Your bad ideas are literally killing people.
The core purpose of vaccination is not to give the recipient 100% immunity, because you don’t need to reduce the transmission rate to zero to wipe the disease out. All you need to do is reduce the transmission rate below one and any outbreak will naturally die out on its own. It’s like a nuclear chain reaction - give a disease a supercritical mass where each infectee spreads the disease to at least one additional person, and the disease will thrive. Deprive it of that supercritical mass and the outbreak will shrink as the transmission rate isn’t high enough to replace the people who recover from the illness.
Which shows that they are not following CDC recommendations, and are indeed making their own schedules: the opposite of one of the ideas the movie sells, and you bought.
The rest of the movie’s fare contains exactly as much truth: none at all.
I think you need an update on what science is, and should stop confusing the OP. It seems very odd to be trying to equate a preference in language style with an evidence-based position on established fact. All the more so when the correlation you imply is manifestly not true. It seems that you literally have a bee in your bonnet over this issue. Try not to let the little fellow sting you. And incidentally, as much as he may be your vaunted idol, Steven Pinker is not always right about all things, neither about subjective matters of style, nor necessarily about theories of cognition.
Well the movie will probably be in your community soon where you will have a chance to see it yourself and possibly to go to a question and answer session with Dr. Wakefield himself.
So the vast amount of actual information we’ve given you rebutting Wakefield’s assertions hasn’t even slightly convinced you? If so, I think you may be impervious to argument.
But sure, I’d love to go to a Wakefield Q&A. I could ask him things like “Why did you perform **painful and dangerous procedures **such as lumbar punctures, colonoscopies and barium meals on children without ethical approval?” or “Why did you take blood samples at a children’s birthday party?” or "Why did you make ludicrous claims about linking bowel disease with autism based on case studies of only eight children? or “How do you sleep at night knowing how many people have died as a result of your lies?” Yes, could be worth going.
He is NO LONGER a doctor. Having been stripped of all credentials by every governing body of his once profession.
Which should tell you everything you need to know about the veracity of his claims.
And no, the movie WON’T be in any theatres near me, or most people. I find it highly unlikely it will get a very wide release, anywhere.
But if it’s got a shot anywhere it’s got to be in the US. Where willful ignorance and complete disregard for actual evidence based conclusions seems to be the order of the day.
As already said, it would be highly unethical for Wakefield to use the title “Doctor” under the circumstances, not that it would stop him, considering his past history – the guy is practically the walking definition of the word “fraud”:
On 28 January 2010, a five-member statutory tribunal of the GMC found three dozen charges proved, including four counts of dishonesty and 12 counts involving the abuse of developmentally challenged children. The panel ruled that Wakefield had “failed in his duties as a responsible consultant”, acted both against the interests of his patients, and “dishonestly and irresponsibly” in his published research. The Lancet fully retracted the 1998 publication on the basis of the GMC’s findings, noting that elements of the manuscript had been falsified. The Lancet’s editor-in-chief Richard Horton said the paper was “utterly false” and that the journal had been “deceived”. Three months following The Lancet’s retraction, Wakefield was struck off the UK medical register, with a statement identifying deliberate falsification in the research published in The Lancet, and was barred from practising medicine in the UK.
Fuck no, if that rat bastard ever comes to my community I’m filing a complaint against him for “crimes against public health”. While that particular bit of the Spanish Penal Code is nowadays used most frequently for illegal drug trafficking, its definition does include peddling medical stuff (including information) which you know to be against public health.
Thanks, wolfpup. Urbanredneck, this is what anti-vaxxers sound like. Lots of official-looking evidence that turns out to be totally irrelevant, combined with sneering attacks on the character of the folks with science on their side, and precious little else.
Er… yes, but no. Rust does not somehow create clostridium tetani bacteria. It’s true that rusty metal is a great place for the endospores c. tetani uses to wait out a welcoming environment, but that’s basically because of the rough surface rusty metal has and the lack of free oxygen in rusty metal which is luxury to an anaerobic beastie like c. tetani.
Also if you get a cut and it gets infected with, say, aeromonas hydrophila, tetanus vaccines are meaningless. Also the death rate for clostridium tetani is not close to 100%.
None of those corrections have anything to do with the basic point, which is that only a fool would fail to vaccinate. But in the service of telling the true facts, we should acknowledge that tetanus is not a “you will die,” infection. You’ll die about ten percent of the time.
Well, can’t let Bricker get by with being the only Truth Enforcer in this thread.
The best ones approach that (i.e. the measles component of MMR), but some others are not nearly as good at inducing immunity (for instance the mumps component of MMR, pertussis component of DTaP and influenza), with mumps and pertussis immunity declining over time. Still, even less than perfect vaccines commonly result in less serious illness if one does get infected, which could be important to parents who don’t want to see kids in the hospital coughing their lungs out. And the impressive but non-complete immunity offered by vaccines reinforces the need for high vaccine uptake rates, so that herd immunity doesn’t give outbreaks a chance to occur and expose those who are susceptible.
Not quite. The vast majority do (including pediatricians), but there’s a small yet disturbing minority who omit or delay vaccines and/or encourage parents to do so (google Jay Gordon and Bob Sears).
It pains me to say this, but unless the institution(s) who awarded him degrees manage to revoke them, he’s still a doctor. I agree that it’s deceptive for him to presented as “Dr. Wakefield” to audiences, unless they are also informed that he was struck off the medical register for ethical violations and is not licensed to practice medicine anywhere.
Speaking of “sneering attacks on…character”, I’d like to commit one on Neil Z. Miller, author of multiple antivaccine books and a new article alleging that combining childhood vaccines at one doctor’s visit is not safe (it’s getting a rave reception at Age of Autism, home of virulent antivax stylings). In addition to the article’s claims being thoroughly bogus (as documented here), Neil Z. Miller is also known for his claims of having communicated with extraterrestrials (and facilitating contacts with them through his daughter).
The antivax movement is full of such loons, conspiracy-shouters, uneducated and mis-educated fringe characters and struck-off doctors (Mark Geier is another one whose had medical licenses taken away). Citing such people as authorities merely highlights the bankruptcy of antivax “science”.
Just so you understand something, Wakefield is not anti-vax. He was developing (and patented) his own vaccine. He and his business partners were looking to eliminate the competition(the MMR vaccine).
Brian Deer is a British investigative reporter who pretty much blew the whole thing open on Wakefield. The link goes to the entire series of stories he wrote layoing out the whole case.
Bonus: Wakefield’s patent application for his vaccine.